I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet here. I keep wanting to write– starting to write– but nothing’s been coming out quite right, so I delete it or put it away to revisit, and the silence continues. Apparently the only thing I can think to write about lately is myself, and that always comes with mixed feelings.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Silly journal updates, emails, anything. After being holed up sick & aching for a solid two weeks of finals, once it was all over, all the things I’d been thinking about, wanting to write about vanished from my mind and all I could think about was leaving the house, interacting with actual people (besides my partner, who, though she is my favorite person in the entire world, cannot healthily be the entirety of my interpersonal interactive world) and watching really bad television. I always used to be embarrassed to admit that I watch TV but damn, it is really good way to turn your brain off, and sometimes that’s necessary, you know?
There was also a lot to think about. This is semester was brutal. My immune system disappeared, I was constantly sick and never fully recovered before contracting something else. I lost a lot of weight very quickly without meaning to but also without giving a whole lot of time or effort to preventing or fixing the situation, and basically looked and felt like hell most of the time. I was able to keep it together enough to avoid the imminent danger zone, but not by much. I’m petite which means even at my healthiest I don’t have much of a buffer, and didn’t start off the semester all that healthy.
And it took a toll. My body has been extraordinarily resilient over the past eleven years of off and on too low weights and malnutrition; my bones are fine, my heart is fine, there’s no permanent damage (at least for now). My body has come through for me over and over again, has survived a lot of abuse relatively unscathed. But you know what, it pitches a much bigger fit about it these days. I am only twenty-three, but I am a lot less resilient than I used to be. Maybe it’s because I’m so much healthier in so many other ways, maybe it’s because I am so much more present in my body than I used to be, maybe it’s because my beliefs about how I ought to treat myself have shifted so radically even when my behaviors fail to match up, but damn. I feel the mistreatment in ways I never used to, and much more quickly. It’s mostly little things– nausea, the way it hurts to sit down on uncushioned surfaces for too long, constant fatigue– but they add up. And I am not as willing or good at pushing through as I used to be.
But it was more than the physicalities. It was my ability to focus, think clearly, work efficiently, be present. Acknowledging that the way that I take care of myself (or don’t) can literally make me slower, less able to think– honestly, that I’m not as smart or sharp or able–it’s a much harder pill to swallow. Because deep down, I know that I’m really fucking smart and I can produce amazing work. So the fact that I was just scraping by, that my work was adequate when it could have been so much more– it’s hard. I mean, we all have rough patches and shit happens and it’s not the end of the world. But when it comes down to it, this isn’t about perfectionism or over-achieving but realizing, remembering, again, that I cannot be the person I want to be when I don’t take care of myself.
And I am often not very good about taking care of myself. After all of these years, not eating is my default setting. It’s my response to stress, to anger, to a busy schedule, to just about anything upsetting and plenty of things that aren’t all that upsetting. It’s not a conscious response and if I’m not vigilant, I don’t even notice.
I did notice these last months, but I didn’t have the time or space or energy to deal with it– my work load was too heavy, my schedule too busy, my partner and I both so exhausted all the time. I did what I was able to keep my health stable enough to finish the semester, and just kept saying, as soon as school’s out, as soon as I’m done, it’ll be different. And then the semester was suddenly (finally) over, and it took me a while to remember, oh yeah, this isn’t going to fix itself.
It’s weird in some ways, to write about this here, because rightly or not, I am sure none of you are all that interested in hearing me blather about myself. And I keep thinking, wait, this blog was supposed to be at least quasi-academic. But in the end, it kind of is. Because though my academia obviously isn’t about me, it’s about the activism I’m invested in and the communities I am a part of and an ally to, and it’s not really that useful to abstract myself in order to sound “objective” (or whatever). And it’s not honest. It’s the other reason I haven’t been writing– I can never manage to write anything worthwhile when I’m afraid of really telling the truth.
I’ve been thinking a lot about notions of space– willingness to take it and fill it, the idea of giving self-care the same span and time that my eating disorder has claimed. (I will write some other time about semantics and definitions of ‘eating disorder,’ because it so uncomfortable to use that term in reference to my current self and I want to make all sorts of qualifications). And at least for the moment, it’s going pretty well. I’m actually gaining weight and keeping it on, which is nice. My body is slowly starting to feel better. I think about the coming fall and all the work I’ll be doing over the next school year, and I want it to be fucking brilliant. I want to not be a crazy person, which is a tall order for the healthiest of people in the process of thesising. I want to be able to dance again. I want to be done with the bullshit. Which means actually doing the work now. It feels pretty good to be able to say that things are actually improving, in a way that I believe will last and keep getting better.
In a lot of ways, I think the last eleven years has been a process of getting better than I’ve been, but never really better, never solid for all that long. And though the on going steps of better-than-I-was are hugely important, and deserve recognition– I’m ready for something longer lasting. Something revolutionary. And actually believing that I am capable of that in a way I haven’t in a long time. I know so few people who’ve maintained long term recovery around their eating disorders, and far fewer whose recoveries look anything like what I want for myself. But dammit if I am not going to figure this shit out. This is so much of the work I want to do both academically and professionally, and you can’t fairly ask folks to try recovery if you don’t know that it’s possible, which you can’t really know if you haven’t achieved it for yourself. Not to mention– it’s fucking hard, painful work that you’ve no real right to ask someone else to do if you weren’t willing to do it yourself. And I want that for my community, for all the folks I love, and the ones I don’t know, who are bogged down by these messes, too. I want it for myself. It’s a revolution I can get behind.
