Mo Co Fo Sho

In this blog, I have made it a policy not to discuss my views on homosexuality, gay rights, queer theory, etc... I don't exactly hide the fact that I am a lesbian (if you've ever met me in person you'll know that I'm actually exceedingly open about the fact), but I do know that it's an extremely touchy subject for some people.

Especially considering many girls with eating disorders come from hyper-christian or otherwise strongly fundamentalist homes, I've chosen not to broadcast my gayness in this blog for their and their families' sake. Sadly, I have no doubt that if I were to discuss these subjects with prevalence, many readers would be completely turned off to everything I have to say - even though I truly believe I have some important, helpful things to say about eating disorders and recovery therefrom.

Today, however, I'm going to break with tradition.

If you're strongly homophobic, get hives and nausea from the sight of a gay person, notice your eyes start to bleed around us, etc, you may want to stop reading now.

...Well, I was going to start this with a rousing speech about how today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, but just found out it's actually next Tuesday. Nevertheless, this is transgender awareness week, so it still applies. Sorta.

If gay men and women suffer an abnormally high rate of murder and hate crimes, transgendered individuals have to face so much more. I simply cannot fathom the amount of hatred and fear these people have to deal with on just walking out their doors each morning. It is both disgusting and heartbreaking to witness suffering on such an extreme level for such a petty reason.

Hate groups like Focus on the Family's Love Won Out or PFOX (a response group to the better known PFLAG), when addressing the issue of transgenderism, love to cite the American Psychiatric Association which still classifies something called Gender Identity Disorder. According to these groups, it is evidence that even the psychiatric community agrees that transgenderism is a disorder.

GID is a disorder. However, it isn't aptly named. The poor choice of wording leads ignorant, badly informed people to believe that GID refers to transgender. In my opinion, just as Multiple Personality Disorder was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder to stifle the prevailing confusion of DID with schizophrenia and BiPolar disorder, GID needs a new name. My personal suggestion would be Gender Confusion Disorder. Particularly after having lived in Washington, DC, worked in restaurants (which for some reason get a really high rate of gay employees), and having attended one of the most gay-friendly universities in the country, I've known a lot of gay and transgendered individuals. To say that gender identity is never disordered would be just as stupid as saying it's a disorder to begin with.

Let's start by defining some terms. Sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity come to mind as good places to begin. Scientifically speaking, your sexuality is the sex you are based on genital identification. Typically, this is a simple one. Unfortunately, it isn't always... Many people are born intersexed, meaning they have either ambiguous genitals or, in rare cases, both sets. Someone who is intersexed is not transsexual. A lot of parents will arbitrarily choose a sex for children born this way hoping it will simplify things later in life. Your sexual orientation refers to the gender to which you are predominantly attracted (i.e. homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, asexual).

Gender identity refers to the gender with which you most strongly identify. Someone who is sexually female may identify as male but not choose to actually undergo a gender transition. Same applies to male-to-female individuals. Some scholars have suggested that St Joan of Arc falls into the former category, and there are examples of Egyptian Pharaoh who were sexually female but adopted male attire and behaviors to fill their roles. Other people, like myself, prefer to label themselves as androgynes or gender queers. Basically, that means that we don't identify with one sex or the other and instead feel somewhere in between the two cultural standards of gender polarity.

For whatever reason, males who identify as female receive by far the majority of persecution for their gender identity in religious, political, and cultural settings.

Increasingly, many states are taking action to enact laws which will specifically protect transgendered individuals' rights to safety and normal life. One really touchy subject would be restrooms and public showers: should a trans female be allowed to use the womens' facilities even if she is still genitally male?

In Montgomery County, Maryland, where I grew up, a law was proposed and voted on Tuesday to allow transgendered individuals to use the facilities appropriate to their gender identity. Given that Montgomery County also houses several of the largest, most strictly fundamentalist churches in the state, this caused a HUGE stir.

National groups (like PFOX - Parents and Friends Of eX-gays) spread the word trying to get as many people as possible to protest this measure. They argue that it is a bill to allow men into women's restrooms, thereby opening the gates for a flood of pedophilia and crime.

What protesters to do not seem either to realize or just accept is that this measure is not to allow men into women's restrooms. The point of this bill is to stop forcing women to use the men's room.

A crossdresser is not necessarily someone who is gender identified with the other sex. A crossdresser may refer to a transexual, or it may just as easily refer to a heterosexual man who sometimes wears women's clothing for sexual gratification. This is not the same thing as identifying as female. A transgender female, possibly aside from her genital sexuality, is female. If someone identifies as female in the way this bill is aiming to protect, it does not mean they are pretending to be a woman to gain a better vantage point for preying on other women. They're dressing and behaving in a feminine way because they feel that they are female.

Connecting back to my earlier mention of Gender Identity Disorder, I want to explain why I feel that there is often a disordered connection when referencing questions of gender identity. The term most commonly used now is gender dysphoria. Dysphoria basically means distress, or a mental disconnect between what one wants and what is, or what one wants and one believes to be right/true/etc. Why I'm having a hard time explaining this today is beyond me, considering I'm dysphoric about other issues nine times out of ten... Dysphoria is an inner conflict which causes mental and emotional distress, is I guess the best way I can think to succinctly word it.

Gender dysphoria is listed as the main sign/symptom for GID. Basically, this means that to be classified as having GID you have to show significant distress and discomfort over your sexuality vs what you feel to be your appropriate gender. This part is often undoubtedly disordered. I've had the privilege of being good friends with several transsexuals over the last few years, and the most heartbreaking thing has been watching as they struggle with feeling like freaks and mistakes, or that they're stuck in an incorrectly sexed body, that there is no hope or remedy, that life will forever be marked by painful, awkward feelings of somehow being made wrong. This is gender dysphoria.

The reason I argue Gender Identity Disorder is the wrong term is because once the person has figured out how to fix the question of gender (be it sexual reassignment surgery, transvestism, acceptance), the dysphoria greatly diminishes. It's a matter of recognizing and accepting one's gender identity - the identity itself isn't the problem.

Here I'm going to shout out to K.T., Brandon, Rae, Ben, Jeremy, Melissa, Tammi, and all the other wonderful, awesome, ridiculously brave queer and trans people I've had the chance to know. I don't think any of them read this... But if they do, they need to know how awesome they are.

This week, I am incredibly proud to say I come from Montgomery County. When they bill was put to the vote Tuesday, it passed unanimously. Maryland may still have a long way to go when it comes to recognizing equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transexual individuals, but this bill passing is a huge step. I'm still not proud to be an American, because this country is waaay behind on so many issues, but at least I'm proud to come from Mo Co.

Multiple Confessions

It's so hard to write when your hands are shaking...

Perhaps as long as the science of psychology has been around, people have prescribed art and writing assignments as ways of healing damaged minds. I've always used my writing to help me cope with painful emotional and mental difficulties that have come up throughout my life. Especially lately, as I've been preparing to re-enter therapy for real and seriously this time, I've been increasingly aware of the fact that I can neither be fair to you, as readers, nor fair to myself without being completely honest in this blog.

It isn't fair to YOU because you've come to read a truthful, raw, sincere blog. It isn't fair not to give you the complete picture, to skate over aspects of my life which I'm too frightened to discuss. For one thing, it may well leave you lost since you'll only be getting fractured glimpses. Beyond that this incomplete, bullet-style relation is boring, if nothing else. It's all the reasons for which I hate abridged books... and yet that's what I'm doing to my blog, for fear of the consequences of honesty.

Granted, whoever first said honesty was the best policy must have led a pretty damned sheltered existence at best. Complete honesty is only an occasionally wise move, subject to factors variable and diverse as the audience and the weather. I'm not endorsing a life lived entirely in lies, but discretionary disclosure and carefully tainted perspectives can still get you out of a hell of a lot of trouble. How many thousands of people would have survived over the years had they only told a small lie when pressed by the man with the sword?

So now you see a bit of the dilemma I face. Honesty for the sake of true, quality writing? Honesty for the sake of my recovery?

Lies for the sake of face, humiliation, security, friends...family?

As I've known since the first of my livejournals to this, my most recent and current blog, there are more than faceless strangers reading the words I type. Even through those periods in my life when I've tried to hide my words, I knew that if someone really wanted to, they'd find a way to read them (and often did). I'm sure of many who read this and suspect many more, ranging from lovers to best friends to siblings and parents, uncles and aunts and therapists, cousins, former teachers, coworkers, casual acquaintances, schoolmates, god knows whom else. That's a whole lot of an audience. I've now way of knowing if they read daily or when the fancy hits them, if they care about me as a person or find this an interesting read. I've had people find my blog by googling random subjects or being referred from and recommended by well-known sites.

...All that makes this blog seem a lot more impressive than it is, and the stakes much higher than they are.

In the end it boils down to me being aware that the confession I want to make is controversial even in some of the best of academic and psychiatric circles. Media portrayals, which adore any slightly comical, novel idea, love to misconstrue the realities of it to fit into their needs, to the detriment of anyone trying to come out about their situation. Popular opinion loves to snatch quickly at what they understand, add a liberal helping of speculation, a portion of doubt and ridicule, and a heaping of false facts and gossip to everything they hear and see.

All these things said, I wish to discuss a couple more disclaimers before continuing.

To my friends: please comment with your support, but don't do so without being informed. While this is an entry about something I'm frightened to reveal, I'm actually quite happy with it in many ways. It's not nearly as shameful as outsiders think. It's complicated, yes, and can be quite embarrassing, awkward, even dangerous, but this is neither a death sentence nor a mark of disability. Just an aspect of who I am.

To my family: you are the biggest reason I've hesitated; not gonna lie. Your religious views in particular make this an especially complicated thing to discuss because as much as you learn and are willing to research, many churches remain way behind the times on psychiatric issues, leaving you in an unfortunate position of being subtly or blatantly misinformed and not aware of it. I ask you now to show me the respect of not talking to me about this until I give you the okay. I encourage you to learn more; if you want, I'm happy to recommend books and websites and Crystal probably can show you even more resources than I can. But please, don't send me a long letter/email/phone call telling me you're praying for me and recommending resources of your own and encouraging me to talk to a pastor and that you understand/have answers etc, etc. Please don't be offended, but I don't want your resources. This is something I've been aware of for years, and I've done tons of research on my own. I've talked to doctors with specialties and degrees you probably don't know exist. Especially when I lived in DC I went to institutes with 'National' in front of the title to make sure I could get the best care possible.

...God, that makes it sound like I'm dying! Okay. Before I go any farther and make you think I've got some rare, bizarre brain dementia or fungus or am infested by sentient, parasitic slugs (Animorphs, anyone?), let me state first and foremost that aside from any previously mentioned health issues, I am fine. There is NOTHING organically or physiologically or otherwise physically wrong with me. This is completely mental, and even then I hesitate to use the common nomenclature 'disorder'.

My name is Tina Malament. I'm twenty-almost-one years old. I'm a waitress. I have major depressive disorder, anorexia nervosa, obsessive compulsive tendencies, various other diagnoses....

And dissociative identity disorder.

Commonly misinformed, many people call it multiple personality disorder (which is an outdated term).

I don't have a good side and an evil side. (Please do me the courtesy of not relegating me to a coin or a comic book villain!) I'm not demon possessed. I'm not bipolar, I don't alternate between highs and lows born from a chemical imballance.

To clarify on my pet peeve, I DON'T HAVE F-ING SCHIZOPHRENIA! I don't hear voices the way you might think; I don't have a false perception of reality or hallucinations or a savior complex. Dissociative Identity Disorder (hereby: DID) is often portrayed/labelled in mass media events as schizophrenia. See also: Heroes, Me, Myself, and Irene, Fight Club, etc. Some of those have elements of DID which are pretty accurate.... Others are completely bullshit off the mark. (Actually, I really liked a lot of the way it was portrayed in Heroes, beyond the artistic licenses taken... The way she looked when switching personalities and the way she described the amnesia are pretty good. Fight Club, on the other hand, sucked. Great movie, but sucked.)

If you've seen/read Sybill, you should know that I have no desire to be hypnotized and integrated. It would probably not help, for one thing. That book, while seen as a sort of media authority on DID, is roughly fifty years out of date when it comes to the actual assessment and treatment of the disorder.

Yes, I have more than one 'personality part'. They're called alters. Yes, they have names, genders, age ranges, complete memories and life histories and very diverse opinions on life, the universe, and everything. Some of them often appear more harmful than others; some are sweet, some tend to be very angry, some exist for very specific purposes and can seem simplistic because of this. Many are good at things which I'm bad at, or vice versa. We have different opinions about freaking everything, speak differently, have different typing and spelling errors, different tastes in foods, even different health problems. We hold our body differently depending on who's out. We like different clothes and colors and activities.

Probably you'll get introduced to everybody as they see fit. Several have already written the entries in this blog; you may or may not have noticed when writing styles shift, vocabularies and sentence styles vary. Maybe you'll notice now that you're looking for it; who knows. Maybe when you expect someone to be a single, cohesive person it's harder to realize when they aren't.

I think we're going to cut it off now. That's probably enough to think about for one day, right?

Here are a couple of websites for you to look at since we barely covered the basics of what DID is... We've been over it so many times with so many people that it gets really tiresome to discuss after a while, particularly when there are so many valuable resources on the internet!
--->Merck - fairly awesome for overview purposes, except for the treatment goals part.
--->Religious perspectives and misperceptions answered. Sort of.
--->Surprisingly good FAQ section on a random AOL-sponsored information site.
--->The Significant Others' Guide to coping with DID

Oh yeah, one final thing... Please, please, do me a personal favor and DO NOT go to wikipedia for information about this. Their entry on the subject was so inflammatory and ill-informed that it made me write a nasty letter to wikipedia about it and create an account so that I could try to go in and edit the entry. (Which I never got done, but still, I worked on it. The entry is so riddled with error that it needs to be completely rewritten and we haven't had the energy for it.)

Shannon, thank you for all the support you've given us since we told you. Probably if you hadn't taken the news so well we wouldn't be able to come out here and now... (Are you proud?)

Readers... We now humbly await your thoughts.

Idle hands...

It's odd how days off actually seem to be what kill me a little.

Working thirty-five to forty hours a week exhausts me on every level, but conversely it gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, shower, dress nicely, and generally pull myself together. I've lately had a bad habit (tongue in cheek on that 'habit' part) of dissociating somewhat throughout the work day... I'm the dead-end job zombie on so many levels. Is it better to go through a series of depersonalized days, but to get through them nonetheless, or to be like I was in DC and fall apart all the time at work? I'm starting to think the reason I never was promoted to a trainer position was that they couldn't trust my emotional stability... God knows how many times they had to send me home because I couldn't stop sobbing.

When I've got a day off, though, it tends to be bad news. Work keeps me busy, work keeps me distracted. More importantly perhaps, it keeps me talking to people and smiling a lot (even if the smiles are fake - fake it 'til you make it?). Days like today, I'm bogged down with household chores and domestic errands, like three hours at the DMV and hundred-dollar grocery trips. By the end of a 'day off' I'm more tired and emotional than a work day. More prone to sobbing and manic cleaning sprees as a method to hopefully ward off self-injury.

I play with my keettens and try to channel the emotional tension/energy into art projects, but more often than not I get frustrated with the whole affair and stare hopelessly at a blank page for hours. I try to read, but internal chaos can be unbelievably distracting. It's like being on a poorly fitting medication; the words jump on the page, lines blur and buzz, my eyes read and reread and generally can't stay focused for sh-t.

Being alone while Crystal's at work is especially bad. I talk to myself, I talk to myselves, I talk to the kittens, I talk to the walls. I fall silent when I feel especially crazy. The silence hems me in and makes me feel crazier. I turn on the TV for company and get angry at the characters for always saying the same things, never varying, never wavering or blinking if I scream at them. (Film characters are quite pretentious that way, it seems. Worst of all, if you watch the same movie twice, you'll notice no one ever does anything new, not so much as a sigh or a sneeze. ) So I turn off the TV and am again stuck with that god-awful silence....

Come August first my new insurance kicks in. God help the man who stands in the way of me and a psychiatrist... First thing I'm going to do is get on some meds.

Don't get me wrong, I still think medication tends to be overprescribed. From what I've seen, too many people are on it who don't need it, and the stigma surrounding medication because of that means that too many people who legitimately need it are afraid to take it. Our system is completely f-kd up. I want to slap every media guru who's referenced happy pills and made derogatory comments about crazy people, therapists, Freudian psychology, psych meds, and on and on and on. All this stigma and negative stereotyping doesn't make our lives any easier. It's hard enough to get onto medication because of personal fears; external derision helps nothing.

....Can you tell I'm a little out of focus tonight?

That's why I need medication... To calm the racing thoughts just a little, temper the moods, ease the rumination, soothe the reason-less hurt. Medication really does exist for a REASON. It really is meant to help, not stupefy or control or drug you happy. It doesn't work that way, for one thing. Medication isn't going to cure me in the slightest. It's just going to help calm me enough that I'll be able to get a more solid start on recovery.

Reflections on self-injury

Sigh... After an eight AM meeting, I opened this morning... And now, coming on briefly after I got off, Crystal closes tonight. So no baby all day. Makes me sad.

Feelings of instability have increased markedly lately. My feelings about eating (if not quite my habits themselves) have begun to improve, but the depression and anxiety hang around as they always have. It's been about four or five months since I last cut and the urges are strong again. They never really go away.

I don't talk about my cutting much. I guess that it's something which feels like it's always been with me and still feels more like a friend and companion than a bad coping mechanism or dangerous, destructive habit. It's one of those things which therapy has yet to talk me out of. So far most, if not all, of my previous therapists have wanted me to go to an inpatient facility to tackle the issue.

I've always argued around aggressive treatment/inpatient as primarily a matter of affordability (after all, right now I can't even afford therapy in and of itself) and secondarily as a Not Really Major Issue. Somehow the infrequency of my indulgence makes me think it's less of a problem. (Isn't it?) Things have never been so bad that I'd cut multiple times a day (well, not usually) and as a general course have been once every few weeks at most. Over the past year and a half or so, once every few months. That's not a big deal. Right?

Of course... There is the porning. Like I used to food-porn with anorexia, I cut-porn now. Most recently, the scenes in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Professor Umbridge's wicked little quill have provided both a trigger and feelings of satisfaction, at least to some degree. The internet teems with triggers and 'porn'. The imagination fills in where my physical actions continue to refrain. While physically I may not have cut for months, I guess you could say I'm a total porn addict. A few times a day, maybe. Constant daydreaming, sometimes.

Here's the thing, though. Technically, I'm not harming anyone by this. Beyond that, I'm not sure how to stop it. Beyond that, I'm definitely not sure I WANT to stop.

I never 'gave up' cutting as a personal resolution or a decision to recover, heal, overcome. I never have wanted to stop. (This was another reason I argued against inpatient: most places, unless you're a serious medical harm to yourself/others, require that you sign a contract certifying you're entering the program of your own initiative and with a strong desire to recover.) I suppose it's a sign that my thoughts in this area are still ruefully unhealthy or something, but no one's ever managed to convince me either of how cutting hurts me or how I'd be better off without it.

The reasons I've physically stopped are simple: other people. Namely, Crystal, my little brother, and total strangers who see my body and look horrified. Were I completely alone and able to ignore others better, I'd probably continue to self-injure on a weekly or daily basis.

I don't know how to deal with the sense of loss. I don't know how to cope with the feelings of self-hatred, anxiety, loneliness, emptiness, self-loathing, inadequacy, helplessness, mania - even just boredom. These are all some of the things which drive me to self-injury, physical or imaginary. When I'm not self-injuring regularly I feel a loss of identity and a lack of completion. Something is MISSING. I grieve for it in a way usually reserved for close loved ones. In the same way that I get confused about who I am if not an anorectic, I don't know who I am if not a cutter. (God, how BDSM does that sound?)

There's a hotline that I've often been referred to and never called - 1-800-DONT-CUT. It's supposed to be really good; I've read much of the book written by the people who started the line and they actually run the only inpatient program I've so much as considered for self-injury. (The reason I've never called is that when I'm to the point that I want to actually self-harm, I don't want anyone to talk me out of it, deter me, or break my mood.) Lately I've been wanting to call them just to talk about this in lieu of a therapist: how do I face the sense of emptiness that comes without cutting?

I wonder a lot if this is a normal feeling. More and more the Powers That Be are looking down on calling self-injury an addiction, opting instead for a more learned behavior, benefits/rewards approach, but I still feel like 'addiction' may be the best term. After all, don't recovering alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts reference this feeling of confusion, lack of direction, etc? (Hell, isn't that part of what AA and its higher power teaching is about? Just redirect that passion!) I don't know. It's one of those areas that I'm left aware both of my personal lack of knowledge and the communal lack of understanding in this area.

Therapists have given me dozens of worksheets and thought pattern charts and you-name-its to fill in, to understand the thoughts and emotions that drive my urge to self-injure. These charts often backfire and, instead of helping me to break it down and understand my feelings, lead me to think that I'm either too damn crazy for a chart or just plain have a glitch in the system. I've got so many filled out charts with reasons ranging from the classic 'anger at' whomever to things the docs can't understand (or accept as truthful) like boredom, feeling 'too' happy, feeling distractible, and missing someone.

Several docs have been adamant that all my urges are simple: anger turned inward. ...even though anger is rarely a motivating feeling.

Several tell me it's frustrated sexual energy, or sexual fear, or sexual something. (Freud is aliiiive!)

Others still insist I just want attention. (After all, I gave up a long time ago on trying to hide all the damn scars where most cutters will still opt for long sleeves no matter the weather.)

In the end, I often have to wonder if anyone truly has a solid understanding of self-injury, its triggers and motivators. Maybe that's why it's so hard to want to give up: if no one can help me understand what it is and how it works in the first place, how can they convince me it's an altogether 'bad' thing?

------

In other news, August 1st my new insurance kicks in. I stopped seeing Shelley about a month ago and have been (again) out of therapy since then. I've been unmedicated since February due to the whole insurance cut-off fiasco. All improvement, stagnation, or backsliding has been the result of lack of any sort of treatment whatsoever beyond the self-nurture I've learned to give myself.

I have the number for another therapist with whom I'm supposed to call and set up an intake... She has a lot of extensive, varied experience and works with an organization which seems to have really good policies toward medication... So I guess that once August rolls around we'll see what's what with that.

Scares and scars

Short entry, just some thoughts for the day... Thirty-two hours worked since Wednesday, putting in more tomorrow.

At the intake Tuesday, new therapist Shelley saw my scars and said that I was a keloid healer. Back when I was big into getting new piercings, keloids were a phobia of mine, so I didn't believe her when she told me my scars were keloids.... After some research today, I've determined they are indeed NOT keloids. For one thing, it's incredibly rare for white people to get keloids; fifteen to one ratio black/hispanic to white/asian/other. Also, keloids are more tumorous in appearance - my scars are just raised, red, and uglay.

Conclusion: they have healed abnormally, but are call hypertrophic scars, not keloid. The biggest reason this is a comfort is that hypertrophic scars reduce in time. Keloids get bigger. Also, h. scars are much more treatable than keloids; because the latter get bigger over time, removing them will just cause an even larger keloid to grow in more than half the cases.

For comparison, keloids vs. hypertrophic, this proved quite the useful link. DO NOT GO THERE if scars will trigger you! Please, please know and respect your limits.

In other news, my scars hurt today. They're like my trick leg... Any change in the weather makes them prickly and painful.

In other news.... Sleep. That is all.

See? Still alive!

Damn. I guess it HAS been a long time since I've updated.

Really, there's no good excuse for it. In fact, there is no excuse for it, period. I just haven't felt like it. And I haven't done it. I've laid around on my arse whenever I'm not at work and have had absolutely no motivation toward doing anything. The things on my mind have been subjects I choose not to discuss in my blog for various personal reasons that may remain no matter how public my life goes.

SO. Crystal suggests I write an entry on the character Maris from Frasier. Since moving here I've become kind of addicted to this show and even find Maris amusing. If you've read this blog for very long then you'll know I take issue with the way eating disorders are depicted in pretty much all sorts of television and movies and other forms of media. I hate it when they're made fun or light of and especially when people with them are mocked. But for some reason, Maris is really really funny.

If you don't watch Frasier, the whole premise of the show is about being all pretentious and psychiatric and although it's really Freudian a lot of the time it's still pretty damn funny. Maris is the wife (later, ex-wife) of one of the main characters, Niles Crane, and is a pretty serious anorexic. You never actually see her throughout the whole run of the show. For a succinct explanation, I go to Wikipedia. "Maris is described as an exceptionally insecure, petty, domineering and generally unpleasant woman, selfish and obsessed with social standing. She is described as being extremely thin and rarely eats, consuming only tiny morsels of food when she does. Frasier compares her to a bag of flour: "bleached, 100% fat-free and best kept in an air-tight container". Frasier also once sarcastically referred to Maris as "ounces of fun". She is intensely neurotic and suffers from a wide array of medical conditions and phobias."

Maybe I laugh too lightly, but, again, I think that the jokes made about her are really funny. Some of them come really close to home, but in general I think it's good to be able to look at some of the ways anorectics think and be able to laugh. Honestly, sometimes if I can step back and think logically about things, some of the ways that I think are just plain ludicrous. (That's not to say I can get away from them easily, but seriously, to be terrified to walk past a McDonald's because I think I'll somehow breathe in the calories...It's just funny!)

Well, since beyond that I really don't much feel like updating (or thinking, or writing, hence updating) I'm going to leave you with some of my favorite quotes. So tell me. Funny? Offensive? Or just plain unremarkable? Provide me your answers. Go.

Niles: Just remember that she can't have shellfish... poultry, red meat, staturated fats, nitrates, wheat, starch, sulfates, MSG or herring. Did I say nuts?
Frasier: Oh, I think that's implied.

Frasier: Where's Maris?
Niles: Well, we were just getting ready to leave the house when Maris caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror--

Niles, on the phone: Calm down, dear, calm down. Listen. Take a left, then the second right, then a left again. Okay. Okay, goodbye, sweetheart. (Hangs up)
Frasier: Maris got lost again?
Niles: Yes, she wandered into the kitchen by mistake. I had to talk her back to the living room.

Daphne: You know, when I was younger, I dreamed of being a ballerina meself.Niles: So did Maris. The poor thing could never get her weight up enough.
(I love that one... It makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.)

Niles: Yes, Maris, I'm sure. No, no, you can't gain weight from a glucose I.V. No, no, my little worrywart, there's no such thing as a Nutrasweet drip.
(And this. Because honestly, if you've ever been on an IV, has that not been the biggest worry of all time? Even if it was just saline...)

Niles: It's time I braved the dark streets and got back to my Maris. I just hope it isn't like the lightning storm last month. The only way I could coax her out from under the bed was by tying a Prozac to the end of a string.
(Hehehe. Crystal drew a cartoon of herself trying to lure me off the floor that way... Made me laugh.)

Niles: Maybe it wouldn't hurt to look into getting some of her eggs frozen.
Frasier: I suspect they're only a few degrees away from that now.

Niles: Poor Maris, she's so worried - she hasn't had much hospital experience, except for the usual childhood things - tonsils, adenoids, force-feeding.

Niles: My wife Maris has all our servants down at your campaign headquarters licking envelopes. She'd do it herself, but the poor thing can't produce saliva.

Niles: She's pushed me around long enough. Metaphorically of course. In reality she can hardly push at all. Like that terrible afternoon last spring she spent trapped in the revolving doors at Bergdorf's!

Niles: Yes, Maris and I have taken to giving each other gag gifts. I gave her a cookbook.

Roz, peeking through the keyhole: I see her coat on a hat rack.
Frasier: Look closer. Is the hat rack moving?
Roz, horrified: Oh my God!!

Niles: I've never seen her look so seductive. She wore a clingy gown, crimson lipstick, even earrings, which she tends to avoid as they make her head droop...

Frasier: Maris never let you cook for her.
Niles: That's true. The closest I ever got was restocking the pills in her bedside Lazy Susan.

Frasier: It's hard to believe that's the same woman who once sprained her wrist from having too much dip on a cracker.

...Haha, well, now even if you like the quotes you've no reason to watch the show, eh? I've given you some of the best. Well, in any case, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

On Suicides and Faking It

Although this has been several days in the brewing it’s hard to determine how to begin an entry with this particular subject… The reason it’s been so on my mind is that, aside from the fact that depression makes you think of it, one of the girls whose blogs I follow seems to be preparing her own internet death.

I know that to accuse someone of getting ready to fake their death is an enormous, outrageous, melodramatically serious thing. However, I do know what I’m talking about: I’ve dealt with it multiple times in the past. I’ve thought that I’d lost close friends four times in the past only to find out later that they faked it. I don’t have a clue how many other cases I’ve heard of in which the heartbreaking loss of someone loved and admired turned out only days later to have been completely fabricated.

A suicide attempt is not something to shrug off lightly as a grab for attention. In fact, that misconception is among the top three falsely held beliefs about mental illness that drive me absolutely batshit, right up there with eating disorders are vanity and depression is ungratefulness, etc. Similarly, I think that to say faking one’s suicide is purely for attention is also a grave misstatement. At the same time, though, in all the cases I’ve observed I do feel that attention is a large part of it.

Even for suicide attempts the attention thing usually has at least some role, although I don’t feel it’s in the intentional, manipulative way people typically believe. Any attempt, serious or not, is desperation to get relief and find some sort of comfort. In many cases the comfort sought may well be the element one gets when hospitalized – being completely taken care of, getting a break from school and bills and all the crap contributing most heavily to the depression that led to it in the first place.

For many people caught in a suicidal depression the thought of committing oneself is a lot scarier than the idea of dying. As such, if a mild attempt can serve the same purpose without the humiliation of checking into a mental ward, it seems quite a bit more desirable. Additionally, it lends a twisted feeling of legitimacy since you have concrete evidence proving the depression and need for care.

…This is unlikely to make any sense to anyone who hasn’t felt what I’m trying to explain. That’s the totally sucky thing about mental illness: it isn’t logical and it’s impossible to explain logically to someone who isn’t already crazy.

In any case, what I’m trying to explain is that depression makes you feel completely horrible, hopeless, and helpless. If it hasn’t quite gotten to the point that one seriously, one-hundred-percent, for sure wants to die, a half-hearted attempt shows the world how bad it really is inside and hands over that helplessness to someone else to deal with so that you can have a few minutes to breathe and heal. That, in my opinion, is the attention-grabbing aspect of suicide attempts. It seems selfish to all looking on from the outside but to the depressive it’s the only last-ditch effort that makes any sense. Again, don’t forget that depression is anything but logical.

Returning to the concept of faked deaths.

This… I don’t fully understand. I have theories but I’ve never faked my own suicide, only gone with the real attempts... (Which is more f-ed up? God knows.) In all the years I’ve spent online making friends, having feuds, falling in love, suffering explosive fights, I’ve known dozens of people and grown close to many of them. Because most of the circles I’ve frequented in the past have been eating disorder and mental illness related, close friends have gone in and out of hospitals, inpatient facilities, outpatient treatment centers, disappeared without warning, called me on the phone, sent letters, etc, etc.

Two of those friends killed themselves. One died when she was fourteen and I was sixteen. She just disappeared from the internet and I didn’t even know for sure that she had died until recently, when her mom e-mailed me after reading the article about my t’shirt project and asked if I’d ever known her daughter Jade. The other was not a close friend, but a close friend of a close friend… Her parents found her in her car in a coma a few days after she’d gone missing to us in the online world. She died later of liver failure.

::sighs:: I’m sorry for all the cheer here.

The reason I’m bringing those memories up is that in order to talk about faked suicide with the gravity it warrants, you’ve got to understand the reason it causes so much terror and pain. Because it isn’t always fake. It tears us apart because maybe we’ve lost people in the past and maybe we’re afraid of losing you, too.

The thing that angers me so much about faked suicide is that, while I’m almost sure it isn’t malicious and I am sure there’s just as much hurt going on as in a real attempt, the very nature of it is such that the faker gets to sit back and watch everything going on while they’re supposedly in the ICU, judging all of our reactions, trying to see who’s going to miss them most and who “really cares”. It’s just completely… I don’t even know what word I’m trying to find. Low. Dirty. Under-handed. To lead all your closest friends on, convince them you’re dying or dead, just because you want to see who your ‘true’ friends are…? It seems totally sickening to me.

The hardest part about it is that when you’re in the position of watching the drama unfold it’s almost impossible to call the person out. You’re emotionally shredded, scared half to death yourself, and the thought of falsely accusing your friend of doing this to you is beyond reason.

Right now, the blogger I initially mentioned has supposedly just come out of a coma, her kidneys failing from years of anorexia, now in an intensive inpatient unit. Her neighbor is supposedly the one updating her journal to keep all her friends informed of the situation is her neighbor who, without explanation or apparent reason, suddenly has the keys to her house and all her credit cards and everything. The whole situation is completely impossible to make sense of…

I don’t want to go into all the details there. If she really is as sick and close to death as the writer claims, I don’t want to talk badly of my friend. If she isn’t, it’d be almost as bad to write a vitriolic expose and thereby risk pushing all the buttons needed to make the theoretical situation a real one.

That’s why fake suicide sucks so horribly. There’s no easy way to handle it one way or the other. It’s a full and complete double bind, catch 22, rock-and-a-hard-place suckfest.

Melissa, I hope you’re okay.

ED Awareness Week!

(Thank you to Laurie for reminding me. I guess I've been distracted, or just lame and forgetful...)

...Heh. Given the times, I feel like I should wear my t'shirt a lot to make a sort of positive statement. It's strange though. I can be one of the most vocal people ever, speak in front of crowds, publish the nitty gritty ugly details of my life and depression on the internet... But I'm still nervous about 'coming out' to anyone who might actually know and see me on a regular basis. None of my coworkers know about my disorder - not even Daniel, even though we spend so much time together outside work as well as at it. I'm terrified to let them find anything out about who I am outside the workplace.

I preach regularly against stigma and tell others to not be afraid to acknowledge their disorder but when it's my life and reputation on the line it's a totally different story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not confessing to being a total hypocrite. The thing is, for me to admit to anything the person pretty much has to back me into a corner and pose a true/false, yes/no question before I'll confess.

It's embarrassing. After ten years of depression, eating issues, self-injury, even more years of panic attacks and anxiety struggles, it's still utterly shameful to have someone call me out about any of them.

I don't know how to reclaim our disorders. That sounds totally horrible and not as simple and elegant as I want it to be, but the point I'm trying to make is that most, if not all, psychological disorders are an all-time favorite joke subject in this culture.

...God, this is de-railing. I've lost my direction and am rewriting each sentence like five times before getting so fed up I just leave it as is. Ugh. I think I'll cut it short.

Basically, the reason is that I'm really upset (yes, overreacting probably) about my book... I mentioned last week that my favorite book was stolen/accidentally-taken-and-not-returned by someone at work and I've not been able to get it back. As such, I'm currently trying to buy a new copy.

Problem is, a paperback edition just came out (which comparatively SUCKS) and new copies of the hardback edition are virtually gone. This book is too special and means too much to me to buy a beat up used copy and on average the book, new, sells for twenty-five to thirty bucks. Or if I purchase it via Amazon it's 16.79 but won't be shipped out until April. The special edition, which is what I had, starts at $70.

::headdesk, cries:: I want my book baaaaaack!

Reply to a reader

An interesting comment was left here yesterday... It was anonymous, no e-mail, no name, so in order to reply to it I'm going to do so here. Readers, should you feel I'm out of line or agree with the commenter or have something to say about this whole business, please chime in. Feedback rules.

I've been following your blog for a while now, and here's a thought: instead of trying to find someone or something (modern society, religion, Hollywood, etc.) to take the blame for those entrapped in an ED, why not invest your energy into helping others like you did when you started your t-shirt project?

...Maybe I'm not making myself clear or perhaps you're misunderstanding me, but I don't think I EVER said society, religion, media, or any other entity was responsible for the eating disorder epidemic. In fact, if I've misstated myself in such a gruesomely inaccurate way I owe everyone who may ever have read this blog an enormous apology.

Eating disorders are in NO WAY the fault of an outside source. Eating disorders are a mental illness. That means that something at some point in time went wrong inside my (for instance) brain, causing me to distort the way I perceive myself mentally and physically. Additionally, that switch made it so that the standards I hold for beauty, health, perfection, and self-worth are warped into a nasty misrepresentation of reality. Normal people don't look at a drastically underweight model and think, wow! she's gorgeous! I should starve myself so I can look like her! No. There has to already be something wrong with that person's thinking to cause looking at someone emaciated to seem desirable.

Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing someone underweight, tired, but otherwise still acceptable and beautiful in the eyes of god and others, my mind takes all those features and twists them around into something disgusting. Either I see someone emaciated and sallow like a holocaust caricature, hair stringy and face a mask of dark hollows and ugliness, or I see someone puffy and jiggly and gluttonous whom I loathe for what I perceive to be greed and a total lack of self-control. For the first person, I hate her for abusing her body and being a hypocrite.

I cannot look in the mirror and see myself as others see me. I cannot think about myself and be proud of my achievements or my strides toward health without being overwhelmed by the thousand little things for which I hate myself.

That is what an eating disorder is. It's why it's called a disorder - the natural order of my thinking about my self and my body somehow got thrown out of whack. There is no logic driving an eating disorder. I'm not driven by a desire to look like a media image or modern societal pressures or a religious motivation for punishment. The reason I do discuss those things so frequently is that they DO have a part to play in EDs. Plus, I keep this blog as much for informative purposes as helping others. In fact, it helps and comforts me to see advances being made culturally and hear others comment on media and religion in a way that challenges ideals I might hold toward them.

While those things in NO WAY cause EDs, they undeniably contribute.
--> TV, magazines, etc, provide an abundance of visual triggers as they put underweight women forth as a positive examples of beauty and achievement.
--> Society embraces those images and translates the messages into something that, to an eating disordered mind, sounds like, "Unless you are emaciated, you are a failure and everyone hates you."
--> Religion - specifically the Christian religion - messes with our heads because there is so much emphasis on human failings and the need to put to death pride and sin. For someone who already hates him/herself and feels they are the completely worthless scum, this can literally cause suicidality. It can lead to forms of self-injury as a way to punish the self for any minor transgression. Eating disorders became the most rampant in any era and culture but our current one in the middle ages when Christianity took over Europe, because to starve oneself showed such great self-discipline and commitment to the faith. Oh! To love god so much that one didn't need to eat! Do you have ANY idea how many saints got their sainthood by starving to death??
...Breathe. Breathing. Okay. Point being. Religion is a HUGE contributing factor in many, many cases. It's why you hear of so many girls coming down with these disorders who are daughters of pastors and religious families, good, stable family, middle-class Americans. Religion.

Also, one more thing on that. Crystal pointed out that I need to balance this, because Christianity is not all bad. My experiences may have been, which is why I am so ranty about it, but many women also are helped by religion, even rescued by it. Many religious communities embrace women suffering from EDs and help them, encourage them, comfort them. They are understanding and nurturing and the wonderful safety that sufferers need.

The reason I tend to be so strongly negative toward Christianity is that I come from a background which was catalyst and even direct encouragement for many of my issues. I suffered too many years of being told panic disorder was my fault, depression was my fault, and anorexia was my vanity. Except not that nicely. I experienced nothing but pain at the hands of Christians who thought they were helping and, as such, am really bitter toward the religion. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on this subject. I just speak from personal experience.

Returning to main point: Being able to live and function healthfully as a member of society as it stands means that I, and others with EDs, have to learn to reallign our thinking toward these pressures so we can cope with them despite our messed up brains.

You are undeniably correct when you say our society is screwed up it's perspective on beauty (thin is in), but please don't throw the baby out of the bath water.

...I love the misstatement of that colloquialism. Otherwise, I think I covered this above.

A few screwed up people shouldn't be considered representative of the majority.

Agreed. Most assuredly agreed. But I still don't see what that has to do with any of the points I've been trying to make... I haven't made any attacks on celebrities or Christians (yes, I attack many dogmatic standards. That is DIFFERENT.) or teachers or whomever. I'm attacking what is already spoken of in a general, amorphous sense: beliefs and standards. It has little or nothing to do with "a few screwed up people".

I'm sure there are probably one or two whacko's at your place of business (Cheesecake Factory?), but it would be quite unjust to label you and your co-workers as whacko's based on the character of just a few.

Not to go into this much, but... You could probably label us all crazy, actually.

That's MY rant and I'm sticking to it. Now, go forth and do something good for yourself and for someone else today!

Well, you may not like it, but I feel that I just did something good for myself and others here. Sorry.

As a final note, I'd like to point out that this blog was not started with any mission statement saying it was going to be just encouragement for fellow sufferers. My goal has been as much to educate as to help - the t'shirts are information, not just personal statement.

And aside from that? It's also my journal in many ways. I write about what I'm thinking about. When I'm going through rough spells, it's not as cheery. When I'm pissed off it reflects that.

Yes, I want to help other girls. They are on my heart twenty-four hours a day. I start crying multiple times throughout the day when I see some girl walk by with a scar from an NG tube or dark hollows under her cheekbones or sores around her mouth. It tears me apart. I want more than anything to just take all that pain away from them, even onto myself if I could.

Speaking honestly about eating disorders, how they feel, what they do, and why they're happening, seems to me like a help for those girls. EDs are extraordinarily shameful and surrounded by stigma and misperceptions. Few people know any more about EDs than what they see on the news or the skinny girls they run into now and then. Education is helpful because if you actually know facts about what this is and what causes it you know better how to help and encourage.

Empowerment is help. Putting to death misperceptions is help. Education is help.

There are more ways for me to help girls with eating disorders than just a little note of encouragement every day. I'm trying to do all that I can, however I can, and will keep on doing so as long as I'm able.