Here it is. another year. another National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is upon us. 2010. It seems that right now…that this year…I know less and less people who are talking about eating disorders. Maybe it is because I am talking less about eating disorders. I am continually further and further in time from that time in my life, where it was my life.
And I like that it is not something I have to talk about all the time anymore. I like that I do not have to explain my behavior– why I eat at very specific times and very specific quantities of food, why I see a therapist every week, why I disappeared to Tucson for 80 days.
And. I wonder if it is useful to talk about eating disorders. or just to talk honestly. to consider our relationships with food and feelings and life and bodies and ideas. I think that sometimes it can be useful to bring it up and start a dialogue, to connect and understand and release the shames that often inherently in my perception exist in secrets. Maybe I need slash want to bring it up more. so we all know that we are never alone.
I feel sad when I think people forget how perfect they already are; for example, when people are dieting, it seems like people idealize their lives when their diets are over, idealize their bodies when their diets have fulfilled their purposes instead of recognizing that change for assumed health can be beneficial and also we are beautiful and perfect as we are right now. I love and accept myself unconditionally as I am right now. That is something I have said many many many many many times to myself when I am in times of change or when I am doubting myself. Bodies and lives flow. ever-changing. Changes can happen, yet it is hard for me to support extreme goal-oriented changes because then the process and the everyday experiences lose their validity. when the end goal is all that matters. What about health through slow and joyful means? Instead of punishment and shame and intentions to be something else. Because no matter my body, I am me am me am me am me.
There is this gym that triggers me regularly, daily. I feel angry when I encounter the membership heckler on the street, who asks me, “where do you work out?” and I say, “I don’t” and he says, “well that’s not something to be proud of…blah blah blah” and I think why isn’t it something to be proud of?? I am proud that I am healthy and alive! I do not enter this facility that advertises themselves by encouraging people to get a better body this 2010. My body is perfect. And I can exercise it’s physicalness in so many ways without going to this place where people run on treadmills with headphones and televisions and track how many calories they burn, and then go in the locker room and weigh themselves and consider how many calories they need to burn tomorrow…because I can be outside! I can walk and run! I can be in nature and community! I can work with my body. and meditate and practice yoga and go dancing with my friends…and further physicalness. through life.
not that gyms are evil. and I am not anti-gym or anything. I want to stress that there are other options. and that not knowing my weight frees me from a system that tells me that this is what I should weigh. instead of relying on my body to tell me what is right for me. instead of relying on taste and smell and the way my body feels to decide what and how I should eat.
and speaking of eating,
Last night…Daniel and I had a very very special (as special as it was birthday celebration)– we went to dinner at GREAT LAKE, a tiny pizza place in Chicago. Where we sat and breathed and watched our heavenly heavenly pizzas made with a real person’s hands. Oh it was glorious. I respect a place where the people who own it do things the way they want to, where the customer is not always right, where it seems like they are just cooking some food for us, and there is less distance between the cook and the customer. hooray! and then afterwards we went and ate a cannolli at the tiny Italian bakery…also heavenly! mmmmm.
what a glorious experience of deliciousness and celebration. so hooray for life and celebrating and bodies and being!
I am glad to be alive. I am thankful to be alive. so let’s talk about it. feel free to talk to me about it.
