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  • Men, Love Addiction, and Miracles

    I believe in miracles. Where you from? You sexy thang.

    That’s right, I’m talking to you. Who? Me? Yes, you. You. (Me.) I’m that sexy thang I’ve been searching for all along. And I believe in miracles.

    I also love men. Handsome, strong, funny, sultry, scrumptious, manly men. And yet: they can’t fix me and are not responsible for making me happy.

    For the past four+ years I have been completely alone. I’ve dated here and there and have had a couple of trysts that, well, let’s just say they didn’t lead to anything. But mostly I have been completely alone, and let me absolutely clear when I say that: I’ve been having a hell of a time. I have been alone, but not lonely. I have been alone, but not without adventure and excitement. I have become my very own best friend and nurturing mother and inspiring life coach and number one advocate. And I have a lot of fun with shiny lil me.

    I think I had my first crush when I was three or four. Preschool love. How do you beat that? Ian had the best Play-doh, and he didn’t eat it like all the other boys, and he made me laugh when he made those fart noises. He had beautiful brown eyes and a sweet little smile. As I made my way through the rest of preschool and then elementary and middle school there was Colin and Scottie and Jason and James and Michael and Danny and Taylor and Tyler. There were the older boys whom I admired from afar: Nate, Paul, Aaron, Will. And in my fantasies, boy oh boy did they sweep me off my feet! What a damsel I wanted to play, waiting for my handsome prince to come rescue me and fix me and change my life forever! I believed the fairytales and the Disney movies; in order to be whole or changed or saved, some great guy was going to have to fall in love with me. How to make this happen?

    When I finally did start dating in high school, if you could even call it that, I found that men (boys) were not these handsome princes or dashing romantics I had seen in the movies. Curse you, Disney! High school boys were not Prince Eric and Prince Charming and Prince Phillip. They were not even the Beast. They were mean ol’ boys who just wanted blow jobs and a chance at getting laid. Sure, they objectified us like the princes in the movies. But they didn’t pay attention. They didn’t fight for us. They didn’t look at us like we were the only girls in the world. Can you blame ’em? I think the testosterone that courses through their veins is so heightened all they can think about is the next place to jerk off in secret. And it’s often quite similar for girls, actually. Plus, boys are fed the same lines of bullshit as girls about “who they are supposed to be” and what makes them “manly.” The message is often that, in addition to being stoic, sleeping with lots of pretty girls make you manly.

    I didn’t have any mega-serious romances in high school. I had a couple of short-term relationships in eleventh and twelfth grade. I lost my virginity in tenth grade, drunk. (That’s another entry.) I hooked up with guys here and there and had a few big crushes that went unrequited. I wasn’t bad looking, but I wasn’t drop dead gorgeous like some of my friends, and I never had that killer confidence that attracts men like flies to honey. I was definitely a friend to guys, and the majority of my “best friends” were male. I also was a huge pothead and partier, fairly smart and articulate, sort of cynical, and maybe even a little intimidating or aloof. So I wasn’t getting major ass. High school boys don’t want no hassles.

    It wasn’t until I turned nineteen that I had my first major relationship. And this is what he rescued me from, and what I found all of my subsequent relationships would rescue me from: the challenge of learning how to love and take care of myself.

    Noah and I met in rehab. Just wait, it’s not as terrible as it sounds. This wasn’t some lockdown hospital in the woods of Minnesota. We were in Dana Point in in mid-July at a sober living type place that was a lot like summer camp. He was southern, from Georgia, a decent guy with a terrible drinking problem. He was six years older and already planning to inherit his father’s business back home in Buford. We stayed together about a year. Half of that year was done long distance after he moved back home. I flew to see him a few times, he came to see me. There was a lot of love. There was also a lot of naiveté. I knew I wasn’t going to stay with him. He wanted me to move to Georgia and marry him. I still wanted to party and sleep with lots of guys. Needless to say, we went our separate ways. Lucky for me, I was willing to expand my horizons and try my luck at a different suitor who perhaps had something better to offer. Had I married him, I would have thrown my life away. (Noah is married with three kids now, and I couldn’t be happier for him.)

    Next came Mark, and rescue me he did. From having to look at anything about myself. From having to feel a thing. Mark passed away almost a year ago, rest his sweet soul. He was a good kid who couldn’t stay sober. And despite our relationship being the most toxic and tumultuous and ridiculous thing ever, it ended on decent terms, and the last time I saw him was peaceful and kind. He was a great big crazy love. Our first kiss was starbursts and fireworks and all honey-coated tongues. We found every excuse to have sex, all the time. I fell deeply and madly in love with him. And for two years, I couldn’t leave him. He cheated on me from the beginning and was a killer liar. I wasn’t much better, as I thought revenge was the best medicine and fancied myself quite a victim in the relationship. I slept with his friend who was also in his “band,” who then “fell in love” with me, so the band had to break up. We’d fight and split and get back together after a few days or weeks and have amazing makeup sex. We thought that that amazing sex was love. C’mon, give me a break – we were twenty-two.

    We were also drug addicts and alcoholics, and despite being sober for most of our time together, we weren’t beacons of health and recovery. We were still sick on the inside and using each other to fix. He was the best glass of whisky out there. He was like pure cocaine and a handful of Oxy. He was a joint rolled smooth that settled into your bones. He was the Marlboro Red after hours of sex.

    And it really was like that. I thought Mark completed me. I thought he was my soul mate. I thought my life would be over without him. I was physically ill when we weren’t together. I didn’t know how to be alone. When it finally was over and I couldn’t stand it anymore, I found out what I needed to do: get another boyfriend.

    And thus continued a stream of serial monogamy. From nineteen to twenty-five, I didn’t go more than a week without being “in a relationship.” Noah, Mark, Kris, Christopher, Tyler. With a lot of other dudes peppered in here and there. And it wasn’t a slut thing. It wasn’t a sex thing. It was an inability to be alone.

    Kris came after Mark, and we had a lot of fun together. I was drinking again, and he liked to drink, too, and so we drank every night and every day. We smoked a lot of pot and occasionally took drugs. We went out to eat and to the beach and watched a lot of movies and TV. He helped me move back to Los Angeles, and i settled him down when he had these insane nightmares that made him tremble. He got a dog that we took care of together. We fought sometimes, mostly because I needed him to fix me and he wasn’t. I was also a terrible alcoholic.

    And then, thank god, I got sober again. So I left him for a sober guy, also named Chris, spelled differently.

    I thought for a time that Christopher and I would get married. We had a lot of that looking good on the outside stuff going on. Both sober, both in or finishing college, both attractive, both artistic, both coming from decent families. He grew close with my family and I with his. We were the epitome of two people who “fell in love” immediately, then got to know each other and realized we were rather incompatible but were too deep in love so we were going to make it work.

    I was terribly unhealthy, still. All of that healing that needed to happen from years of alcoholism and trauma? Well, there just wasn’t space for it on account of that fact that I was a dedicated English major at UCLA and in a very serious relationship with the love of my life. So all of that shit transferred to an eating disorder and chronic pain. It’s got to go somewhere if it doesn’t come out. And the relationship could not survive it.

    Christopher broke up with me in March 2009, just a few months shy of my college graduation. I was a little over a year sober, starving myself and obsessed with food, suffering from chronic pain, and quite frankly, spiritually and mentally and emotionally sick. He had grown to hate me. Nothing makes you more selfish and cold and unbecoming and unsexy than anorexia.

    It hurt to my bones for him to leave me. And I begged him to take me back. I told him I was getting help and willing to get better. (And I was. Something clicked when he broke up with me and I started to realize the extent of my disordered eating.) I started going to OA and trying to find healing around my chronic pain. He wouldn’t budge. He was steadfast in his resentment towards me and his pride over walking away. After a few months of begging and Facebook stalking and fetal-position crying, I let go of him and I let it be. I tried to be happy without him. I graduated college and had a fun summer and went to Europe for two weeks with my father. I tried to get better with my food and body obsession. I tried to forget about him. I thought, jesus, it’s been six months now, he should be out of my head and heart. He wasn’t.

    But it wasn’t Christopher that wouldn’t leave my heart. Granted, he was a great guy to lose. He was kind and handsome and intelligent and interesting. He was sensitive and sexy. I look back on our time together fondly, especially the beginning. (He’s married now, too, and god bless.) But no, it wasn’t him who wouldn’t leave. It was this desperate inability to be alone. I literally couldn’t stand it. And without him, despite my efforts, I couldn’t really get on top of the eating disorder stuff and continued to cycle through periods of bulimia and restriction. I was totally obsessed with making my outsides look better so I could get him back or at the very least find a guy to replace him.

    Finally, after a few failed attempts at dating, I met Tyler. Sweet, sexy, handsome, drug addicted Tyler.

    I still to this day think about him regularly. I’m not sure why. It was short-lived. I hated how it ended. But it had to end.

    I had seen Tyler for a long time at different meetings. He was always identifying as a newcomer, meaning he had less than thirty days sober. I didn’t think much of him at first. Didn’t find him all that attractive. He was so tall and skinny, and I normally wasn’t into super skinny dudes. I also respected the fact that he wasn’t sober for very long and therefore “unhealthy.” (Not that I was all that healthy despite my twenty two months clean.) Because I wasn’t attracted to him, I had no qualms about saying hello and chatting with him during breaks. Oh, the irony. He always seemed to be pretty charmed by the fact that I was talking to him. I was just trying to be nice.

    But then I saw him at a coffee shop in late October. I was with one of my best friends, Yuki, eating dark chocolate and smoking Parliaments and sipping on lattes after one of our regular Santa Monica meetings. Tyler showed up with his best friend, Josh, and they came and sat with us. We ended up talking for hours. I remember a huge portion of the conversation was about our incredulity at this latest fashion of guys wearing shirts with those ridiculous deep V’s. “Sounds like you want a cowboy,” Tyler said, all nonchalance in his plain white t and brown cords. That did it. Some sort of sparkly magic filled the air. You could cut the attraction between us with a knife and all that. I was like, whoa, who the hell are you? Can we get naked and ride off into the sunset now, please?

    It was on. He was hands down the sexiest person I had ever been with. In fact, he still is the sexiest man I have ever been with. Call it drug addiction, call it red flags (that’s what my therapist would say), but he made me come every time we had sex, and that is no small feat. Not only that, but he was sweet and charming. And he was cool. He was genuine. He got it, you know what I mean? Not that I cared, but even politically we saw eye to eye. There were many sweet moments: playing cards at Starbucks, dancing to records in his tiny apartment, driving to San Francisco (to take me to a special back doctor for my then mysterious chronic pain), a trip to San Diego to meet his parents. He’d leave me love notes when he left for school. I slept more soundly in his bed than I had anywhere else.

    But it was also built on lies. He wasn’t sober, and he didn’t want to be sober. I wanted to stay sober, despite my struggles. I was also still quite miserable, underneath it all. I had no real solution for my chronic pain, and I was still in the throes of all my eating disorder nonsense.

    We only stayed together a few months, and when he told me he wasn’t sober, I broke up with him. I was pretty cold about it, too. I was so very angry. I knew we had the potential to be something special, and yet I blamed his lack of sobriety on why it wouldn’t work. I may as well have been drinking, too, though, for all of my inner peace.

    And then I was. I still had one more relapse in me that would lead to my true breakdown and true rebuilding/spiritual awakening. A mighty relapse it was – a thirst for death. I had been sober almost three years, and in just two short weeks I was addicted to pills again, drunk every day, sleeping with strange men, and completely suicidal. Alcoholism is no joke.

    But this isn’t a post on that, though all of this is greatly connected. (Of course it is.) This is about men. This is about how I thought that I would never be enough or complete without a man by my side. This is about how I spent my entire life looking at boys to see if they were looking at me. To see if I measured up. To see if they wanted me. If they found me sexy and attractive, it meant I was worth something. If they wanted to be with me, it meant I was saved. I lived for so long believing that as long as I had a boyfriend I would be taken care of and would soon feel good enough. When I got sober again and began to rebuild my life in a completely different fashion, it clicked for me how much I had used men, much like I had used drugs and alcohol and food. I wasn’t participating in equal and healthy and committed relationships. I was seeking something outside of myself to fix my inner wounds, to set right what felt so wrong in me. And much like drugs and alcohol and food, men worked for a while to fix me. And for a while it even seemed like the socially acceptable and appropriate thing to do. And then it stopped. For four+ years, it stopped.

    I learned how to completely and wholeheartedly stand on my own two feet and make no one or no thing responsible for my well-being and happiness. The only one responsible for myself is me. Me and my Higher Power. Me and my sweet soul. When it’s an inside job, and I firmly believe that creating a joyous life is primarily an inside job, nothing on the outside suffices. NOTHING. Noth – ing. And learning to do things alone and be at total peace alone is the greatest gift you can give yourself. I have traveled alone and gone to movies alone and lived alone and slept alone and attended parties alone (the only single person, often) and have gone home alone and to museums alone and shows alone lived my whole life alone, and it has been utterly rewarding and fulfilling and invaluable.

    I have been alone, but I have not been lonely. Here and there maybe, when I’ve watched a funny movie and thought, this would be nice to share with someone. When I’ve wanted physical intimacy. When I’ve gone to weddings. And I still desire to find a partner to share my life with and possibly build a new life. But I don’t need it to fix me. I don’t need it to make me whole.  I don’t need it to save me.

    As Ani Di Franco said, “I ain’t no damsel in distress. And I don’t need to be rescued.”

    I believe in miracles, and I am one. Just me. By myself. You sexy thang.

  • Lookin’ Good

    Online shopping, you can be a real sexy bitch. J Brand jeans, Alexander Wang tees, Ray-ban shades, funky gladiator sandals. I could spend five hundred bucks in five minutes with just the click of a button. They shipped fast and shipped for free. And a better self would arrive at my doorstep! Sweet Baby Girl, you bought in, literally, to the lie. You can’t put on inner peace and love.

    Don’t get me wrong – I still like nice clothes and putting together stylish outfits. I can still appreciate that we often do feel better when we take the time to wear something appealing rather than just puttering around in sweat pants and baggy shirts. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look nice and feel comfortable in our skin. And our clothes can certainly function as a form of creativity and expression and art.

    But it can get so out of hand. It can get so…all-consuming. And for many of us these days, it can be come a game of chase that leaves us panting in the dust, hating ourselves, and wondering “why can’t I ever be good enough?”

    I’m not going to preach too much about consumerism or sexism or the whole objectification of women (and men, now, too) that has taught us to be, first and foremost highly concerned with what we look like. I’m not so much angry about it anymore as I am aware and willing to make choices that take the blinders off and help me not buy in. I think many of us can agree that we live in a culture and a society that encourages spending and accumulating to find happiness and that teaches us that our very worth is measured by what we look like, wear, and own. In a nutshell, we live in an external and extroverted culture that doesn’t want to bother with the inner landscape of humanity all that much. What a fuss to tend to what we cannot see! But oh, but oh but oh! how we miss out on the richness of life when we live that way.

    I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt. We are visual creatures – who wouldn’t at first believe that if everything looks nice, it must be nice, right?

    Not so much, from my experience.

    When I was 24, I was a size 2. I looked thin and hot, by Los Angeles standards. I had a stylish haircut and great highlights that cost 350 bucks a pop. I wore expensive trendy clothes and expensive pretty makeup. I hung out with girls running down the same American dream. I drove a nice car, was finishing my degree at UCLA, was sober. I had a good-looking boyfriend and we were “in love.” It all looked really damn good from the outside.

    What was it actually like? Well, I lived off of vegetables and grilled chicken and green tea. I had no period and no libido. I weighed myself ten times a day. My skin was turning this strange hue of orange on account of all of the carrots I would compulsively eat. I’d binge on cereal and pretzel and chocolate and then throw up in the toilet. I drained my bank account each month in order to buy a new pair of tighter jeans that would only fit for a month until I inevitably could no longer starve myself smaller. I obsessively shopped online and checked Facebook to compare myself to other girls. I suffered daily from chronic pain. I lived in fear and anxiety and utter low self-worth. The thinner I got, the worse I felt. My boyfriend and I never had sex, we didn’t treat each other all that well. We stayed together long after the relationship was healthy. I went to AA meetings and obsessed about what other girls were wearing and felt less than if they had a nicer bag than me. I was jealous of girls who were able to buy nicer shoes and purses and dresses. I was jealous of girls who were drop dead gorgeous. I also felt strangely superior to girls who were heavier than I was at the time. I was filled with rage and bitterness. I hated my father. I hated everyone. I hated myself the most. And then I relapsed back into addiction.

    Not so sexy now, huh?

    I’m not blaming the purses and the jeans, here. Obviously, they weren’t out to get me. But what I am pointing a finger at is our culture’s encouragement of fixing the outsides. Buy this outfit your life will change! Drive this car if you want to be good enough! Look this way if you want to be worthy! Get a boyfriend, and then you’ll be saved!  I have found, dear ones, that that is all a heaping load of crap. It’s actually impossible to feel good from the outside in. Clothes and cars and shapes and images are just objects, and objects don’t have feelings. Even another soul, even the shiniest brightest soul, cannot make you happy. It’s got to come from within. From the inside out. Always.

    It took me a while to believe this. It took some trial and error. It’s interesting how we buy into culture, because for a long time I was scared to stop caring about all of that stuff. I had major FOMO. (Fear of Missing Out.) I still sometimes get a little scared. Because it’s unconventional and daring and different to not buy in. It takes a willingness to stand alone and apart from the machine of accumulation and consuming and tweaking and fixing. But it is such a relief!

    Look, I still buy things. I still have a lot of clothes. (Too many, and I am always schlepping bags to Good Will.) I still drive a nice car and like a great pair of jeans. I still want to be pretty and healthy and attractive. But the sting has been taken out. I don’t obsessively online shop or have to get the latest bag or keep up with the other girls and what they are wearing and toting. It just doesn’t interest me anymore. What interests me is looking good on the inside. And by that I mean feeling good. Toning up that soul instead of those muscles. I like to read a lot of books and listen to music and write and pray and meditate. I like to get lots of sleep and rest. I like to laugh and play with my friends and my students and my family. I like to watch films that make me weep. I like to eat delicious food and healthy food and sometimes junk food. I love to take long walks and occasionally break into runs. I like to treat myself to some new clothes when necessary. (The great irony was that, when I went through a long period of necessary weight gain and fluctuating size, I hated shopping, and I had to drag myself kicking and screaming into H&M and Bloomingdales. Today, it’s getting a bit more balanced.) To be honest, I still only wear 20% of the clothes that I own. I plan this summer to get rid of most of my stuff and (try to!) just stick to the basics. It’s so much easier and so much more comfortable. I no longer desire to own a bunch of stuff and to accumulate more. I no longer feel this pressure to have nice things in order to make me feel good enough. It doesn’t work, and I don’t need it.

    As they say in the rooms, recovery is an inside job. It has very little to do with the outside world. We are not what we own or wear or appear. We are not our physical beauty or body shape or size. We are what’s on the inside. And you can’t buy it.

  • “And maybe some faith would do me good…”

    Since I was little child, I always believe in some kind of Higher Power. Lucky for me, it has shifted and changed over the years.

    My parents raised me as a casual Methodist. We attended church each Sunday until I was around eleven. I sang in the children’s choir and sneaked cookies and coffee after what I considered to be boring Sunday school classes and sermons, always itchy in my dress and tights.

    It was a community thing more so than a hyper-religious thing. I look back on those Sundays fondly. I had many friends and the church was calm and casual and felt very warm and safe. But I don’t remember it ever feeling about Jesus. It felt more about family and love.

    Not that I have anything against Jesus. In fact, I love Jesus, but perhaps not in the way that people assume one might love Him. Or how people think you’re supposed to love HIm.

    I remember praying a lot as a child. I talked to God before bed. For reasons I won’t yet get into, I was a pretty lost and confused child, and by the time puberty rolled around I was filled with anxiety and crippling self-consciousness and a complete lack of guidance and tools for dealing with feelings. I had learned to check out through food and sugar and television and make-believe. So I talked to God. I asked him to make my life better and easier. I begged him to make me prettier, to clear up my burgeoning acne, to make boys like me, to make my friends not hurt my feelings. None of what I prayed for seemed to come true, but I strongly believed that God was still listening. And yet it wasn’t really Jesus. It felt more like a benevolent being that was watching over me and didn’t mind listening to my childish wanting.

    I spiraled into years of drug and alcohol abuse starting around age fourteen. It was a great escape, an exhilarating relief, a self-medicating journey that would eventually lead me to a self-actualizing and healing journey and to a God I could really play ball with. At that time, a mixed teenager desperate for someone to help me feel okay and understand, I didn’t stop believing in God, but I do think I stopped praying. And I did what most teenagers do – I renounced any and all organized religion and deemed all who had convictions of religious faith to be idiots and bigots and Republicans. (My parents.) Those years were a blur of heightened ups and downs and moments of joy and discovery and immense suffering and destruction. It was a time of music and smoke and sex and deep depression. I was always stoned and often drunk and very lost but always searching. I wasn’t entirely bitter. I believed in something. I wanted something more. I got really into yoga around fifteen and sixteen, and that connected to me back to the idea that there was something greater than me and my selfish pain. It was the only thing besides drugs that made me feel truly at peace. Looking back, God was actually everywhere. In music. In the books I read. In the refusal to give up completely. But I didn’t really know or understand. I still thought the Answer had become whatever I could shove into my body. But not for long.

    When I finally made it to the shore of recovery for the first time at age nineteen, I started to think about God again. I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and was introduced to the 12 steps. The idea of God didn’t scare me when I first read the steps. But I didn’t understand what it meant to “come to believe in a Higher Power that could restore me to sanity” (step 2) or “turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Him” (step 3.) I didn’t understand what those steps meant at the time, but I let my sponsor take me through them nevertheless. I thought it was as simple as saying, “sure I believe in God. Let’s do this.” It wasn’t.

    From nineteen to twenty-five I vacillated between periods of sobriety and relapse. I had at various times six months and eighteen months and 30 months sober. I went to meetings and went through the steps with my sponsor. I sponsored other girls here and there. I thought I had faith. I thought I had courage. I thought I was doing it right. Really, I was just substituting alcohol and drugs for other obsessions: sex, relationships, food, money, school, clothes, smoking, perfectionism. I spent more time obsessing about boyfriends and toxic relationships or my weight and latest diet than surrendering to a God of my understanding. I still fundamentally believed that I had to control and manage my life. And there was always deep within me an unsettled anxiety and fear that nothing was okay. I couldn’t shake it, no matter how many meetings I went to. I didn’t realize that there was still a world of trauma beneath the surface that had no space to be addressed so long as I kept substituting my addiction for other unhealthy behaviors and refusing to let go of control.

    I was also just a kid. What did I know? I was doing the best I could with what I knew and understood at the time. I thought I was supposed to do well in school and find a nice guy and look pretty and be skinny and I’d eventually get married and have babies and live happily ever after. Ha. Not so.

    Around 24, I started to hate God. I had developed severe chronic pain in my body and suffered daily with debilitating aches and sharp burning from my neck to my toes. At the time, I thought I was sick. I thought I had autoimmune diseases or spinal deterioration or severe damage to ligaments and tendons and scar tissue. I had been in car accidents and had fallen down stairs and had injured myself running. I thought my body was broken. I would later discover that my pain was directly related to my emotional suffering and trauma, but at the time I had no clue. Again, what did I know? Just a kid.

    I decided I was a victim and that God was punishing me and that I would never be okay. I thought, what is the point of living if I am going to be in pain each day and filled with self-hatred and self-pity and despair? I hated my entire world. It was bizarre, actually, because looking back there was so much to be joyous about, and yet my soul was dirty. My alcoholism was creeping back in due to my lack of faith and toxic attitude. I started to drink again. Got addicted to opiates again. Spent all my money on pills and cocaine. Slept around. Drove drunk. Hated myself. Wanted to die. The whole nine yards.

    That went on for a few months. It wasn’t sustainable. Had I continued, I surely would have died or ended up in jail or some sort of institution. I am blessed beyond measure that I never killed someone while driving under the influence and didn’t overdose on pills.

    See, I thought it was God doing this to me. But it wasn’t. It was me doing this to me. My small sense of self, my battered inner child, my disease of alcoholism, my ego – whatever you want to call it. It wasn’t my authentic self, my soul, my God. That was actually there all along, my shining soul, though I had shoved it far away into a corner where I couldn’t see or hear or feel it.

    Addiction is like that. It’s like pouring heaps and heaps of black sludge and tar and dirt and shit over our shiny diamond souls until they’re so buried we think they’re gone. We get confused. We think we’re empty and broken beyond repair. I really believed that. I really truly deeply believed for a time that life was hopeless. I thought, if the drugs can’t kill me, I’ll hang myself with a jump rope. I even had a plan. I came to find though, that the soul is never gone, and we are never broken beyond repair. We just have to be willing to clean out all that goop in order to get back in touch with it. It takes work. Who wants to shovel their own shit? Not me. And I resisted it for a while, just like anyone would. But damn, is it worth it. I’m so thankful I was willing.

    I don’t know why I was lucky enough to get sober again. I don’t know if it was sheer determination or God’s grace or dumb luck or coincidence. Probably all of that. Or maybe it was meant to be. Or maybe it just worked out that way. Who knows. Doesn’t matter. I do know that in the miserable depths of addiction I got on my knees and asked God to help me. I reached out to my sponsor and asked her to help me. I confessed to my parents what was happening – again – and asked them to help me. And they all did.

    And I started to get really interested in building a new God and, as they say in the rooms, finding a faith that works. I read countless books on various forms of spirituality and religion and holistic health self-care. I started meditating and praying on a daily basis. I started sharing with fellow women the quite disturbing thoughts and feelings I had about myself. I went through the steps again with my sponsor. I didn’t get into any sort of romantic or sexual relationship. I sought help for my eating disorder and began to heal from chronic pain. I went for runs and long walks. I went to yoga. I wrote like crazy in journals. I did some therapy. I spent a lot of time alone. In slow increments, my life began to transform. There was this shift after a year. Then again after two years. Then three. Now four. And still each day. At first, it was like I could literally feel that black goop and heaping piles of dirt and shit begin to dislodge. A snake had uncoiled itself from around my heart and throat. I started to breathe better. I could sit a little more comfortably in my skin. I wasn’t so angry. I found, in fact, that I was actually quite sad. Tears seeped through my eyes with delicate grace. It was a tremendous relief to feel grief instead of rage. It was a  tremendous relief to feel period. Then I started to feel other things, like joy. I started to feel so deeply joyful and alive and energetic and happy for no reason. I felt at times like I glowed and radiated love. I would still get angry. And sad. And sometimes terrified and enraged. I would still sometimes revert back to hating myself. Even today, once in a while, I feel that old self-hatred. But it doesn’t stick. Because my God is HUGE. My faith is enormous and always larger than my fear and small sense of self. My faith is real. And it’s awesome.

    The road to recovery is rocky and brutal and glorious and exhilarating. It’s the most wonderful thing I have ever done. It is a road to self-discovery and self-love and limitless expansion of our hearts and souls and perception. I have gone from vehemently hating myself to absolutely loving myself. From being terrified of everything to having unshakeable faith that I am being carried through all of life’s difficulties. From thinking I have to figure everything out to relying on something larger than me to infuse me with the courage to let go.

    I guess you could say, I am reborn. In the way I believed Jesus would be proud of. Not in a kooky way. Not in some religious, fundamental, zealous, righteous way. In a human way. The way we all deserve to be – no matter what kind of faith we practice or God we build.

  • Becoming Women

    NOTE: I wrote this entry over two years ago. I think there are some valid parts to it, so I decided to copy and paste it into my blog, but it feels tinged with anger, self-pity, and the voice of a girl still very much struggling with food issues and loving her body. Still, I thought it was necessary to include it – I don’t identify as much with this voice today, which is great news. Recovery is real.

    I was a pretty happy child until around age nine or ten. I don’t remember very much, but I do remember the absence of crippling fear and self-consciousness. I remember feeling relatively comfortable in my body.

    But then something happened as I entered upper fourth grade: I began to feel less than. It makes sense that girls would begin to feel a shift around that time and the span between ten and twelve years old. We are entering the early stages of puberty, which means that our bodies are beginning to change and grow, we are becoming less family and more peer focused, we are noticing our sexuality. I remember feeling a shift within me physically, a wave of depression come over me, and an awareness of my body in a way I never had before. But the biggest change of all was the sudden awareness that my body was not okay. My body was not good enough and needed fixing. Suddenly the words “fat” and “skinny” and “diet” were in my vocabulary. Suddenly I was comparing myself to other girls. Suddenly we became aware that boys talked to the prettiest girl in the class, even if she wasn’t all that nice or interesting or intelligent. It didn’t help that I had a critical and controlling father who revered beautiful women and kept copies of Playboy and Victoria Secret in his home, and a mother who didn’t know how to protect me from his abusive behavior. Yet even had my father been a man who loved and accepted my body and my looks completely and wholeheartedly, or better yet could care less and revered me for my heart and character, I would not have escaped the “Conversation,” as Ashley Judd calls it, about girls and women and the hyper-focus on our bodies, weight, and sexuality. Regardless of how far women have come as equal citizens and how wonderful our lives can be, we are still faced with endless objectification when it comes to our bodies and sexuality and are taught to accept it, to get over it, to deal with it, because look how far we’ve come. What more could we want, right? 

    I think it is no coincidence, and I am paraphrasing what many other pioneering feminists have said before me, that the more power women have gained as citizens, the more there has been a societal emphasis for us to focus on maintaining our figures and overall appearance. Women are still often commended for their physical attributes, before any emphasis is given to their actions and character. A woman is still expected to look exceptionally attractive whatever her role may be, and to not make an effort to do so brings criticism, judgement, and shame, as if she doesn’t have enough self-esteem to “put herself together.” God forbid we don’t look good while doing good.

    Focus on body and image functions as a tremendously effective distraction and keeps us from putting our energy into what truly matters: our creativity, passions, relationships, service to others, spiritual growth, participation in politics, art, media, and so forth. I’m not saying women don’t have a choice to defend against this, because we do, but it is what society teaches us and continues to teach the younger generations of women.

    Despite these flaws in our society, I strongly believe that at the end of the day, only you can truly help yourself. You cannot wait around for someone else to tell you that you’re alright. Waiting around for society to change is a huge waste of time and a rather futile exercise. Instead, I like to think of it all like a hefty challenge that I’m game to rise to: damn right I will defy all expectations of being a woman in America, America. Damn right I will not kill myself trying to conform to what you expect me to be.

    I have been in recovery from addiction for many years now, and it has been, for lack of a better term, a process. One of those diagrams with the jagged line. Recovery can be messy and seemingly “worse” than the alternative. But that is the process. The eating disorder behaviors and body image issues have certainly been the most challenging in that you cannot simply stop eating or stop hating yourself overnight. They are so much more deeply wrapped up in self-worth and self-esteem and relationships with others, the capacity for intimacy. I no longer feel shame for being an alcoholic and an addict. I accept it, I’ve made peace with it, I’ve made amends, and I no longer even think about drinking or doing drugs.

    But I do sometimes feel shame over my body. I do sometimes think a diet and losing weight will solve all my problems. I do sometimes think I’m still single because I’m not physically attractive enough. And why is that? Why would I feel such shame over my body? Shame is the inherent feeling that you, as a whole, are flawed and bad. Why do so many of us feel that we are bad because our bodies aren’t perfect? Because we’re not super thin? That we will not be loved until we look beautiful and perfect? It can only come from the constant exposure to unrealistic and impossible expectations fed to us since we were very young. Since we were those lost little fourth grade girls. Our bodies are our homes, our temples where our spirits live, and if we are ashamed of where we live, life can be truly miserable. And yet, that jagged line on the diagram moves up and down and up and down, and we do, if we put in the time to recover, get better. We learn to be kinder and gentler with ourselves.

    As I am approaching the end of my twenties, established in a career as an educator, continually growing and thriving spiritually and creatively, I have given up the diet charade. I am starting to love and accept my body as it is, and to let go of the constant need for validation and approval from society. I choose instead to approve of and validate myself. The outside approval will not come anyway, and it is never based in authenticity, nor does it ever really stick or feel all that good. The Buddhists would call seeking approval a form of attachment, and attachment to anything outside of yourself always leads to inevitable disappointment and letdown. That has been my work, and it is the responsibility of each individual, if they want peace and serenity, to cultivate a similar sort of mindset, perspective, or practice. If they want it. It’s a free country, and you certain don’t have to. But, if you want it, you have to do it. No one can do it for you.

    Even when I was my thinnest, starving and freezing and miserable in my size 26 pants, I did not feel good enough. A size 0 became the goal. 105 pounds became the goal. I had no period and no libido and a boyfriend who hitting the road. I weighed myself constantly and measured my hips and waistline. I was terrified of food and obsessed with food. In a nutshell, I was insane. Never underestimate the severity of an eating disorder, even if the person doesn’t look like she needs to be hospitalized immediately. I can’t tell you how many compliments I got when I was underweight, especially from girls my own age. It wasn’t until my dad said I needed to eat more protein, and my good friend pointed out that my skin turned orange from only eating vegetables, and when I didn’t eat the Valentine’s Day dinner that my boyfriend made, and when I had absolutely no energy to even walk around the block, that I started to see how sick I was. That was over six years ago, and my body has certainly restored. I have made tremendous progress mentally and emotionally and with my eating habits. But as I said, it’s a disorder that sticks, and it isn’t as simple as stopping drinking. We have to eat, and our eating won’t change overnight. When you have to play with the tiger everyday, rest assured you will sometimes brush up against its gnashing teeth.

    It is still so easy to think, because it is what we are taught, that a diet will fix it all. A diet will solve my feelings of low self-worth. A diet will make him love me. But it’s a lie. A diet is not a lifestyle or a means to self-improvement – it’s a prison. Whatever form it comes in. Even the ever-touted and revered “health diets” of today are prisons. (And there’s a term now for obsession and restriction in the name of “health:” orthorexia.) There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to eliminate processed foods and freaky chemicals from our diet – but when it turns into full blown obsession and control and fear of eating anything that is “bad;” essentially, if it takes over your life, it is not healthy. When I transitioned from anorexia to a paleo diet to raw vegan, I was still doing the same thing – starving myself and restricting most foods and then losing all control and bingeing and sometimes purging.

    Today I am continually making peace with food and eating what I want, when I want it, and stopping when I’m full. It’s so simple and yet pretty miraculous because, as anyone who has ever suffered from an eating disorder knows, it is NOT easy. I do wish it’s what I had done all along. It would have been gentler for my body. wish I could go back to myself at twenty-two before anorexia took hold, and love and celebrate that body. Because it was good enough. Because, even today, my metabolism and skin and energy levels are still recovering from years of abuse. And yet I do trust my jagged line. It is joyous and liberating that I can eat today without a thought and get on with my life. What comes next is practicing loving my body exactly as it is, at every moment. Not comparing it to photo-shopped images and starving celebrities and fourteen year old girls. None of this can be done perfectly. Some days I feel wonderful and beautiful and sexy and confident in my skin and others I get those old eating disorder thoughts – that if only I were thinner (smaller!) I would be better, more lovable, happier. But I have enough tools to know what to do today when those thoughts come. And those tools are all about self-love and self-acceptance, not trying to fix myself or improve my body. The greatest gift is that I know in my heart I will NEVER diet or restrict again. I know it doesn’t work, and frankly, even if it did (temporarily) I don’t fucking want to. As Caroline Dooner, creator of the incredible and pioneering blog The Fuck It Diet says, Fuck. It. 

    I have never felt more inspired to be a woman in my life. We have tremendous power, and we best use it. I used to be afraid to be a woman and I used to be afraid of other women, threatened by girls who I assumed were my enemy, my competition, but today I have compassion and empathy, for we all endure this struggle together. We all know what it is like to feel like we come second to men. To firstly be praised or ridiculed for our looks. To be treated as if we are incapable of tasks that “only men can do.” We are taught to accept it as normal and appropriate that there has never been a female president, that the great thinkers and writers and historical figures that we study in school are mostly male. We are taught that if we are sexually harassed or assaulted it is somehow our own fault. We are called “sluts” and “whores” and “bitches,” told we are too emotional and irrational, objectified constantly by our own friends and peers, and this doesn’t even begin to cover how women are treated in third world countries and under totalitarian governments.

    Eckart Tolle often writes and speaks about the “pain-body,” the suffering within us that can take over and ruin our lives if we don’t watch our thinking. Not only do we carry the pain of our individual lives, but we carry the pain of the current culture and the cultures that came before us. No man (woman) is an island, and none of us are exempt from feeling the pain and suffering of others, especially those of our same group. He speaks of African-Americans and Jews as having a tremendously tender and excruciating pain-body, due to the persecution and oppression both groups suffered throughout history. He speaks of women, too, and how, although in many regions of the world we have progressed in our freedoms and basic human rights, we still all carry the pain of how women have been persecuted and abused throughout history and how they still are today. We’ve come a long way, but not long enough.

    The diet/beauty/weight world is highly connected to a patriarchal mechanism that strips away the humanity of women and therefore normalizes the objectification of women. It is everywhere, completely normalized. Open a women’s fashion magazine (and then never do it again) and look at the ads. Listen to how women are interviewed and compare it to the question’s men are asked. Look at how twelve year old girls are dressing today. Listen to how teenage boys talk about girls. Objectification is so normalized that women now defend it and agree to it. Women learn their place. (I’m not saying that Nicky Minaj and Miley Cyrus don’t have the power to be role models – I support them for (if they are) doing exactly what they want to do and love being half-naked in every video and picture that is taken of them. More power to ’em. But it is worth noting that, in the media to see a girl fully clothed and not shaking her ass and tits has become a rarefied thing.)

    I used to be one of those women. I used to be wildly attracted to “alpha males” who treated me like garbage and loved me for my looks and sexuality rather than my mind, my sense of humor, my character. I used to want a man to love me for being beautiful, because if he didn’t, it meant I wasn’t. I used to think it was okay the way the boys I hung out with in high school talked to me and talked about girls. I used to think it was my fault when I was sexually assaulted because I’d had too much to drink. But it wasn’t. I love sex and freedom of expression as much as anyone. I don’t at all believe in censorship or telling people want to do. I’m even cool with pornography. It’s not so much the form it comes in as it is the thoughts and feelings of the women behind these forms. Are they exercising their human rights? Great. Do they feel pressured into such behavior because they think it is the only way they will get attention? Not so great. Do they love themselves? Do they feel good enough and equal in their rights and dignity to men? Do they have choices? Confidence? A shot at learning and growing and creating? Self-respect and self-esteem?

    I lost my way around age ten. I stayed lost for a long time. I never questioned anything until my mid-twenties. I’m so glad I started to ask questions. That I stopped taking it all at face-value. I’m so grateful I was willing to face my eating disorder and develop self-love and self-respect from the inside out. If I can do it, so can you. Recovery is possible and awakenings are possible and change is always possible. Don’t underestimate the power of good faith and determination. And I can’t wait to turn thirty.

  • At First

    There’s a saying that the only way to start is to start, but when it comes to writing, the beginning can be tricky. Especially when it comes to a blog.

    When writing fiction, I have found the beginning to be the easiest. I can grasp a catchy opening line or a great idea for a character or a compelling first chapter. But then what?

    It helps to have purpose. It helps to have a theme. It helps to have some sort of guiding force to thread through the various entries of a blog. I myself read a lot of blogs specifically geared toward topics like travel, film, and poetry.

    This blog isn’t as finely tuned. It isn’t yet so sharply pinpointed. How could it be? Nothing begins without edges of roughness. Writing is, by its very nature, an art that get refined through process and revision.

    But I will lead with this: I think I have something to say, in the sense that I think I have something to give. I believe I have stories to tell and experiences to share that may offer solace to someone in need of freedom from suffering. I may have something to express that offers inspiration. Perhaps I can offer the smallest dose of laughter or tenderness or create a crack in a heart, our hearts that get so hardened. That is good enough for me.

    I titled this blog Sweet Baby Girl, because those are the words I say to myself today as an act of love and an offering of compassion. I say them to myself with patience. Calm. Kindness. Acceptance. They are the words I wish had been said to me when I was a child and very afraid. They are the words that replace how I used to speak to myself when I didn’t know better; when the way I spoke to myself was harsh and and severe and poisoned with hatred and shame. No longer.

    If you are someone who is suffering from any form of addiction, be it drugs, alcohol, food, body, sex, money, shopping, smoking, relationships, work, your own destructive thoughts…there might be something here for you. If you are looking to feel not so alone in the midst of a life that is often so challenging, there might be something here for you. If you are looking to connect to stories or searching for tools that might help you move through recovery, whatever recovery means for you, there might be something here for you. I encourage you to look around. Take what you like, leave the rest.