Yesterday, I resolved to do something nice for somebody, so I bought them a little present (scented soap in the shape of a rose, a little box of chocolates, two girly pens and vanilla orchid spa lotion mini kit, to be exact). Today, I thought I should do something nice for me too, so I stopped at my favorite little coffee shop for lunch on a beautiful autumn day in my home town.
I love this little place because it is privately owned and not a big chain coffee shop. I savored the moments as I wrote in my eco-friendly mauve journal, drinking my bourbon pecan coffee, sitting under a large black and white photograph of Audrey Hepburn, and listened to Adele on the radio, I felt supremely and delightfully spoiled.
It is amazing how taking a few moments out of a busy day to enjoy something beautiful can make the whole world seem better and life seem more steady. That I believe, is the real appeal of the coffee shop phenomenon. Of course, they are also a reactionary symptom of our post-modern, over-worked and under-meditated society. Putting that aside, though, there is something compelling about the notion of taking a few moments and just sit somewhere where the music is not blasting too loudly and people are speaking more quietly (because they are sitting more close to strangers in a small space). Maybe that is the real reason why we pay for the extra dollars and cents for our soy-milk lattes.
Sure, I could have fixed myself a cup of coffee at home. I make a lovely brew of coffee and I have Lactaid to go with it. I can listen to Adele at home, and I frequently do. There is even a lovely view from my kitchen window out into the peach and apple trees and herb garden outside. But if I had walked home and attempted to relax in my kitchen as I brewed myself a cup of coffee, I know what would have happened. I would have noticed a dirty dish in the sink and washed it, or gone upstairs to do my laundry or tidy my room, then I would have gotten distracted by something online, and forgoten about the coffee. After I had tidied up and attempted to sit down again, I would have thought to myself, "There is still time to work out and shower before my Shakespeare pupils arrive!" and set off into belly-dancing heaven. But belly-dancing heaven is a very different heaven from the coffee shop heaven I experienced around lunchtime. I would not have taken the time to enjoy my lunch because I would not have been setting the time aside to go and do just that. I am so glad that I went. Even though I was tempted several times to text my boyfriend, to share my pleasures with him, I am very glad I did not bring my phone or netbook with me. The best way to savor a coffee shop experience is without any other distractions. Because even though I was not sitting in silence, my soul sipped something that tasted almost like silence and quenched a little of its thirst for it. It is those delicious, fleeting moments of mundane yet unearthly pleasure that drive my imagination and nurture my soul. It is that which reminds me of all the things that I have to be grateful for; like my ability to see the cold beauty of an October morning, or smell coffee, or taste some soothing, hot bisque, or hear music.
Today I am more disposed to thank God for the gift that is my life than I would have been had I not stopped walking, gone into the shop and sat down to think. So thank you, God, for life. And everyone else, go sit down for a few minutes, or a half an hour, and pour yourself some good coffee.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Weariness, Burdens and Hunger
"Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Come, oh blessed of my Father! For I was hungry, and you gave me food."
"I am the Bread of Life...He who eats of this bread shall not hunger."
"Let the little children come to me, the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."
"By His wounds we are healed."
It occurs to me that in the Scriptures, and in particular, the New Testament, God the Son frequently refers to us as desperately in need of Him. He calls us "weary", "burdened" and "hungry" and tells us that He can give us rest, refresh us, comfort us, strengthen us or feed us.
To somebody like me...to all people who are like me...and there are many, many, more than I wish that there were...this is a source of acute confusion and profound consolation.
To those who read this, who are like me, you know who we are.
We are children.
We are weary.
We are burdened.
We are wounded.
We are hungry.
In this society, in this country, in this century...these are not welcome things to be. In the land of independence, we seem to have forgotten what to do with children. We alternate between wanting to prolong their adolescence and wanting them to "grow up" prematurely. That is, when they are allowed to live at all. And they not always are. Health has become a bit of an obsession in our age, like most things we have found that are natural goods. It has reached the point where the sick man is nearly as intolerable as the disease.
In an age where there is such a fixation with violence, there is a contradictory fear of human passion and human suffering or of having to truly enter into that mystery with a person. And in the United States especially, "the land of plenty", who would have thought that one could be so hungry? There is food everywhere! Yet there is hunger. I know.
I do not remember at what point in my childhood it all began. I was so young when that blinding, breaking, unnatural hunger started knawing at me. My mother used to jokingly say, "The first time I held you after you were born, you looked me right in the eye with this look that said, 'I know who you are, and it's time to eat!"
I was born fat.
I was long overdue, after all. The umbilical cord nearly strangled me.
I had to be cut out of my mother's body, weighing at nearly ten pounds.
My aunts looked at me and warned my mother, "Christina! She is such a HUGE baby! I can barely lift her up, and she is an infant! So dense! She weighs even heavier than she looks! You will have to be careful of her! So she will be more normal looking when she grows!"
My mother would nod nervously or sniff defensively depending upon how confident she felt each particular family reunion of her ability to dutifully cure me of my "density".
Maybe it started when she started cutting down my portion sizes. She would dutifully give me a portion each meal, half the size of those being given my younger siblings and informed me that it needed to be done because "I had a slower metabolism". I was perhaps the only four year old on my block who could say "slow metabolism." When that did not seem to give her the results she desired she started givin me smaller portions of desserts, and less frequent sweets. Not my younger siblings. They could eat as much as they wanted. One by one, ten children came after me. And no matter what age I was, it never had to be explained why Maria had to eat less or why Maria could not have a cookie. Maybe that was one of the reasons why it happened, maybe seeing my siblings eat so much of all the foods that I craved that were denied me, and having them leave the table satisfied, while I still felt hungry, made me even hungrier. Or maybe it was how she kept telling me that I needed to lose weight and be thinner and kept telling me to eat less so I would be "slender and graceful". "Don't you want to grow up to be beautiful? You will be so unhappy if you grow up to be ugly and fat!"
But I don't think that that was it by itself. It made me hungrier, but I think it all started the day I first saw my father scream at and hit my Mom and call her a bitch.
That might have been how it started.
Then it all got worse. Everything got worse.
"Don't grow up to be a stupid bitch like your mother. Grow up to be a smart, obedient woman!"
"Don't ever marry a man like your father! I will disown you! You are not my daughter if you marry a bum like him!"
"Don't eat that cookie, Maria, it will make you fat! No man will love you if you are fat!"
"You will grow up to be beautiful, so long as you work hard to maintain your beauty."
"Your mother is a fat, stupid, ugly bitch! She is not loveable. You have to be loveable for people to love you. Do not be like her."
"Is that a double chin! Oh no! It is not beautiful!"
"I guess God gave you that nose to keep you humble."
"You inherited your mother's ugly chin. But the rest of you is beautiful, even if you are a little overweight."
"Turn around and let me look at you! Hold still and let me see!...Yes...you will need to work on that. If you were just a little thinner...you would be beautiful."
Looking back at old photos of my childhood I am always surprised to see how slender I actually was. I was not skinny, but I was certainly not a chubby child between the ages of 4-14. I thought that I was though. I was informed nearly daily that I was. Children believe about themselves what you say. It is part of the responsibility of parenting. In time, I learned to stop complaining about how hungry I felt all the time.
Emotional eating is one of the most common symptoms of child abuse. The other most common symptom is bed-wetting. My mother saw that most of my ten younger siblings wet the bed. But I never did. I guess she mistakenly thought that it was because I was not afraid, like the rest of the children. Because she never "had to spank me, such a good girl" and my father "did not hit me very often".
He did not as often as he did the others. It was true. He did not beat me mercilessly with that huge handmade plywood paddle or whip me until I got welts on my back with belts and rubber sticks. He did that to his sons mostly, after they turned six or seven. Instead he made me watch. I can still hear their pleas. I can still hear the howls or pain. I can hear my father's screams of rage as clearly as though it were yesterday and I don't think anyone in that neighborhood was ever able to forget that sound. But he did not beat me that way. Because I was "the good child". I used to wish that he would. So it would take away the guilt of not having shared the pain.
But I still had to be "the good child". Nobody loves what is not loveable. Both of my parents told me, at separate instances, between the time that I was seven and ten, that they had nearly left. That they had almost left that good for nothing forever. But that they had stayed because they 'remembered my sweet little face."
It was a very big responsibility for a child of seven or a child of ten. I took my burden very seriously, for you see, I loved my parents.
I loved them so much. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to obey them because I wanted to please them. I wanted to make them happy. They were so unhappy.Poor Dada! Poor Mama! So angry. Had I done something wrong? Was it my fault? Hadn't I done a good job?
Yes, it was my fault. That was made clear to me too.
If she had screamed at me and called me names, it was because I had deserved them.
If he screamed at me and slapped my little face it was because I had not been paying close enough attention for the sound of his voice.
The babies kept coming. We got poorer.
I got busier and busier.
Around the age of nine is when I remember the weariness coming upon me.
The fatigue, the constant ceasless work and the exhaustion. My quest for sanctity became inexorably tied to my struggle for absolute perfection in everything.
Washing, drying, folding laundry. So much, so much laundry.
Endless dishwashing. Cooking, scrubbing floors, changing diapers, wiping noses and bottoms. Dusting, moving furniture, teaching children, studying. There was so much food to cook, so many mouths to feed. Except mine. I was still so hungry! When I reached the age of fifteen I encountered a few more problems.
"Maria, you have really hit a growth spurt!" My mother said, "I need to put you on a stricter diet. We will take long walks every day...and here are some weights to lift. Try to do at least a hundred sit-ups every day! Don't you want to be beautiful?"
My father started appraising me and saying, "You are growing into quite a voluptuous young woman. You have such soft arms and such big,beautiful breasts...What is wrong with you? Can't you take a compliment? Come sit on my lap for a minute! Haha! Silly girl!Fine, you don't want to sit on my lap, go be a recluse up in your room as usual! You are turning into such a rebellious teenager!"
My mother was afraid of the traits that my father made me ashamed of, thus confirming that I should be ashamed of it. "Have you ever considered breast reduction surgery?"
"Where a bulkier sweater! Your chest is too big!"
"Wear skirts, you do not want to draw any more attention to your butt!"
"That dress is indecent, you immodest girl! Have you no sense!? Wear dresses that hide your shape. You are disproportionate anyway!"
"I should have beaten you more when you were a kid! Then you would not give me that silent face! That look you give me! You don't say anything! But I know what you are thinking, you evil, proud, rebellious girl! Go ahead and keep smearing that paint on your face! All the makeup in the world will not cover up your ugly soul!"
Now the burden of guilt was greater than ever, growing like cancers in my psyche like my hunger, my desire for love, my terror of abandonment and my weariness. By the time I was fifteen I began to pray regularly for death. At the age of sixteen I tried to run away from home to join a convent. (Needless to say, the sisters made me come back.) At the age of seventeen my growing strengths and mind were noticing more than ever the inconsistencies and untruths that infested my life and the lives my parents lived. I had always known that they were not always right, and told myself to depend upon God more than them. But at the age of seventeen, it reached a pitch. My parents did not know who I was, and I was determined to leave it that way. I left for college.
College is too much to sum up, but I will try.
College is where I learned the full meaning of the terms "divorce", "annullment", "assualt and battery", "child abuse", "truama" and "emotional binge eating". The college years were very eventful and my parents were very active in trying to exert control over my life. Only now it was Dad trying to buy my love and not me trying to earn his. My mother also taught me the full meaning of the words "delusional" "nuerotic" and "verbal cruelty".
Most Freshmen gain fifteen pounds. I gained at least twenty. And I did not lose it. Most victims of abuse, no matter how bright, suffer academically through loss of sleep, inability to concentrate and emotional baggage. Many do not survive college. I failed out of one college. Had to live some months with my mother. She brought my self esteem low enough to ensure that when by the time a transferred as a sophmore to another college, I gained a sophmore fifteen. In college, I learned that I was strange. I learned that I was afraid. The hunger and weariness were my constant companions whatever friends or admirers came and went. I learned new levels of loneliness. It is a miracle I graduated. Also, several undiagnosed food allergies help speed up my weight gain even after my binge eating desisted.
I did.
I was lucky.
And I was ill. I had still not been properly treated. I had recieved some brief counseling from a series of well-meaing, but clueless, damaging people.
I was hesitant to reveal my burdens to healers even though discovery was inevitable. In some places I was met with a kind of morbid fascination, like one has when one meets a very exotic, ugly new animal. In others I was met with horror and accused of hatred and unnatural, prideful attitudes. Which is very strange, because I have never hated anybody in my life. The pain would be less if I could. In still other places I was met with a kind of piteous contempt. In most places the response was well-meaning, useless, clueless "sympathy". And, miraculously, in one place or two, I did meet people who seemed to understand and empathize.
This is why I must write this. Because of the paucity and the value of those genuinely kindly people who cared about me when my own parents did not.
I must raise awareness so that you who read do not duplicate those cold looks I have recieved or say those cutting words to one who already prays for death.
I have graduated from college and have attempted with limited success to heal and go on working a fighting for life. I have cut off ties from both parents, who are still blindly intent upon hurting me and others. I have lived to see some of my abused siblings become abusive and have had to escape them too.
But I have made friends along the way. Though in my moments of darkness, I forget. They do not live near me now. I was always privately afraid of becoming a burden to them. I have, after all, been a burdensome thing if my parents are to be believed.
I am still tired.
I am still hungry.
I am still wounded.
I am still afraid.
In the years following college, my eating habits became healthier. I did not binge eat anymore, but damage to my body image had been done.
I was now a "larger woman".
In this society, that is code for "a person that you can be rude toward because they are too stupid and lazy to do anything about it. Because if they are fat, they MUST be stupid or lazy, obviously."
In this society "fat" is synonymous with "unloveable".
"Nobody will love you if you are fat".
Nobody
Nobody
Nobody will love you
From the ages of eight to seventeen I had dieted constantly. Between the ages of eighteen and 21 I was an emotional binge eater. Thus at age 22, size 16, my old enemy, hunger, took on a new form. I began to willfully starve myself.
You see, I had it in my head that I did not deserve to eat. I was too ugly and fat to eat too much. I ate normally and heartily around my friends of course. One meal a day. One good sized meal. They did not even suspect. I was too fat. Besides, maybe even some of my close friends had gotten a little too used to seeing me unwell. At times I fought this self-destruction, told myself I was not that fat, that I should not want to be thin just because a misogynist society said that I was supposed to look a certain way. That it was not going to make me happy, that I should not buy into a false notion of self-worth based upon "beauty", "productivity" and "sucess". That I should not desire to be seen as a good toy as opposed to a bad toy, when I was not a toy at all.
I told myself all those things, and tried to crawl out of the grave I had dug for myself.
Some days were high and others were low.
Some days I would know that I was good and valued and beautiful and loved.
Then other days, one of my friends would invite to give one more person a ride, and tell me to move to the front seat. "So that there would be more room. We can fit four in the back seat that way, if you are in the front".
I would not eat for days after one good comment like that.
My combination of depression, the inactivity that usually accompanies it, lask of enough employment, and my mistreatment of myself resulted in me going up to a size 20.
Now at the age of 26, events were happening to bring about a renewed desire to die, deeper depression, and heavier weariness.
Now the weariness reached a head. I found work and worked physically very hard again. And now I ate less than ever. But now I had found a counselor and was seeking help.
"Maria, have you ever heard of Borderline Personality Disorder? It is characterized by an unstable sense of self, usually an unstable sense of self worth, and self-image. The usual symptoms include...
Desparate attempts to avoid real or imagined abandonment...
Sometimes binge eating...sometimes eating disorders and starvation...
Depression and extreme anxiety are also two common symptoms...You say you always suffer guilt and you don't know what it is that you have done. That you see yourself as a bad person even though all your friends say that you are good. That you hate yourself when your friends love you. That you would rather die than be "fat" again. That you do not like to be looked at because you are afraid of scrutiny and judgement. "
"Are you saying that I have a mental illness?"
"I am saying that you have been hurt. You have been terribly, horribly hurt and you did not do anything to deserve it. You need to see yourself as loveable and worth while and good. I think you have been fighting for that truth all of your life, but you have been hurt, never healed, and now your wounds are starting to cripple you. Maria, you ate nothing but one banana, two slices of lunchmeat and a handful of spinach today. This is how you have been eating for a while now. This month alone, you lost ten pounds. The month before that, you went down two sizes. When you first moved to this town eight months ago, you were a size 20, now you are a size 10." my counselor says!
"People tell me that I look better now. They treat me like I am a better person. Like I am smarter, healthier, faster, stronger and more beautiful."
"But you were healthier before, when you were eating better!" My boyfriend exclaims, "You were always ALWAYS beautiful! You were always strong, always smart! If some people did not always see that, that was their loss! You are NOT more beautiful now! You can't make yourself more beautiful than you already are! You are the most beautiful woman in the world! You need to eat. You deserve to eat. Please eat!"
All of my short and long life has been a battle, and I am starting to see that the battle for my life is just begun. Some days I win it, and some days I lose it. Some days I know that God is fighting with me and loves me and created me for a purpose. Other days the darkness closes in upon me and I cry out to God begging him to let me die and asking Him why He ever created such a worthless person.
This is not an easy story to share. But I had an idea that maybe it would be cathartic to a degree and that maybe it could help somebody to understand what this kind of struggle is like. Or if they already know it by experience (God forbid) to be encouraged to seek help for themselves. To not give up the battle for their lives. There is a loving God in heaven. Nobdoy had to tell me that demons existed. That I knew. The single most difficult thing for me to accept in Christianity is that God loves us. Or more to the point, that God loves me. Not only that, that God would become MAN for US. For ME.
First, he let himself become a vulnerable little child, just like us.
Then he grew up, and made friends who did not understand Him and enemies that He did not deserve.
Then He let Himself get beaten, crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross and peirced in the heart with a lance. He gave His life to save us. And He said, "Father, Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
"Maria, you MUST forgive!"
"But I did forgive me parents! I have forgiven them! It hurts me that I cannot be with them because they will try to hurt me again!"
"No, no. I meant yourself. You have to forgive yourself. You blame yourself for wrongs that you never did. And you need to let go of that guilt. God does not blame you. He does not look at you and say, "Evil girl!" He sees you and knows you, and loves you. Forgive yourself."
"I will try. I will. I must."
"You must believe!" cries another friend.
Today I choose to believe.
"I am the Bread of Life...He who eats of this bread shall not hunger."
"Let the little children come to me, the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."
"By His wounds we are healed."
It occurs to me that in the Scriptures, and in particular, the New Testament, God the Son frequently refers to us as desperately in need of Him. He calls us "weary", "burdened" and "hungry" and tells us that He can give us rest, refresh us, comfort us, strengthen us or feed us.
To somebody like me...to all people who are like me...and there are many, many, more than I wish that there were...this is a source of acute confusion and profound consolation.
To those who read this, who are like me, you know who we are.
We are children.
We are weary.
We are burdened.
We are wounded.
We are hungry.
In this society, in this country, in this century...these are not welcome things to be. In the land of independence, we seem to have forgotten what to do with children. We alternate between wanting to prolong their adolescence and wanting them to "grow up" prematurely. That is, when they are allowed to live at all. And they not always are. Health has become a bit of an obsession in our age, like most things we have found that are natural goods. It has reached the point where the sick man is nearly as intolerable as the disease.
In an age where there is such a fixation with violence, there is a contradictory fear of human passion and human suffering or of having to truly enter into that mystery with a person. And in the United States especially, "the land of plenty", who would have thought that one could be so hungry? There is food everywhere! Yet there is hunger. I know.
I do not remember at what point in my childhood it all began. I was so young when that blinding, breaking, unnatural hunger started knawing at me. My mother used to jokingly say, "The first time I held you after you were born, you looked me right in the eye with this look that said, 'I know who you are, and it's time to eat!"
I was born fat.
I was long overdue, after all. The umbilical cord nearly strangled me.
I had to be cut out of my mother's body, weighing at nearly ten pounds.
My aunts looked at me and warned my mother, "Christina! She is such a HUGE baby! I can barely lift her up, and she is an infant! So dense! She weighs even heavier than she looks! You will have to be careful of her! So she will be more normal looking when she grows!"
My mother would nod nervously or sniff defensively depending upon how confident she felt each particular family reunion of her ability to dutifully cure me of my "density".
Maybe it started when she started cutting down my portion sizes. She would dutifully give me a portion each meal, half the size of those being given my younger siblings and informed me that it needed to be done because "I had a slower metabolism". I was perhaps the only four year old on my block who could say "slow metabolism." When that did not seem to give her the results she desired she started givin me smaller portions of desserts, and less frequent sweets. Not my younger siblings. They could eat as much as they wanted. One by one, ten children came after me. And no matter what age I was, it never had to be explained why Maria had to eat less or why Maria could not have a cookie. Maybe that was one of the reasons why it happened, maybe seeing my siblings eat so much of all the foods that I craved that were denied me, and having them leave the table satisfied, while I still felt hungry, made me even hungrier. Or maybe it was how she kept telling me that I needed to lose weight and be thinner and kept telling me to eat less so I would be "slender and graceful". "Don't you want to grow up to be beautiful? You will be so unhappy if you grow up to be ugly and fat!"
But I don't think that that was it by itself. It made me hungrier, but I think it all started the day I first saw my father scream at and hit my Mom and call her a bitch.
That might have been how it started.
Then it all got worse. Everything got worse.
"Don't grow up to be a stupid bitch like your mother. Grow up to be a smart, obedient woman!"
"Don't ever marry a man like your father! I will disown you! You are not my daughter if you marry a bum like him!"
"Don't eat that cookie, Maria, it will make you fat! No man will love you if you are fat!"
"You will grow up to be beautiful, so long as you work hard to maintain your beauty."
"Your mother is a fat, stupid, ugly bitch! She is not loveable. You have to be loveable for people to love you. Do not be like her."
"Is that a double chin! Oh no! It is not beautiful!"
"I guess God gave you that nose to keep you humble."
"You inherited your mother's ugly chin. But the rest of you is beautiful, even if you are a little overweight."
"Turn around and let me look at you! Hold still and let me see!...Yes...you will need to work on that. If you were just a little thinner...you would be beautiful."
Looking back at old photos of my childhood I am always surprised to see how slender I actually was. I was not skinny, but I was certainly not a chubby child between the ages of 4-14. I thought that I was though. I was informed nearly daily that I was. Children believe about themselves what you say. It is part of the responsibility of parenting. In time, I learned to stop complaining about how hungry I felt all the time.
Emotional eating is one of the most common symptoms of child abuse. The other most common symptom is bed-wetting. My mother saw that most of my ten younger siblings wet the bed. But I never did. I guess she mistakenly thought that it was because I was not afraid, like the rest of the children. Because she never "had to spank me, such a good girl" and my father "did not hit me very often".
He did not as often as he did the others. It was true. He did not beat me mercilessly with that huge handmade plywood paddle or whip me until I got welts on my back with belts and rubber sticks. He did that to his sons mostly, after they turned six or seven. Instead he made me watch. I can still hear their pleas. I can still hear the howls or pain. I can hear my father's screams of rage as clearly as though it were yesterday and I don't think anyone in that neighborhood was ever able to forget that sound. But he did not beat me that way. Because I was "the good child". I used to wish that he would. So it would take away the guilt of not having shared the pain.
But I still had to be "the good child". Nobody loves what is not loveable. Both of my parents told me, at separate instances, between the time that I was seven and ten, that they had nearly left. That they had almost left that good for nothing forever. But that they had stayed because they 'remembered my sweet little face."
It was a very big responsibility for a child of seven or a child of ten. I took my burden very seriously, for you see, I loved my parents.
I loved them so much. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to obey them because I wanted to please them. I wanted to make them happy. They were so unhappy.Poor Dada! Poor Mama! So angry. Had I done something wrong? Was it my fault? Hadn't I done a good job?
Yes, it was my fault. That was made clear to me too.
If she had screamed at me and called me names, it was because I had deserved them.
If he screamed at me and slapped my little face it was because I had not been paying close enough attention for the sound of his voice.
The babies kept coming. We got poorer.
I got busier and busier.
Around the age of nine is when I remember the weariness coming upon me.
The fatigue, the constant ceasless work and the exhaustion. My quest for sanctity became inexorably tied to my struggle for absolute perfection in everything.
Washing, drying, folding laundry. So much, so much laundry.
Endless dishwashing. Cooking, scrubbing floors, changing diapers, wiping noses and bottoms. Dusting, moving furniture, teaching children, studying. There was so much food to cook, so many mouths to feed. Except mine. I was still so hungry! When I reached the age of fifteen I encountered a few more problems.
"Maria, you have really hit a growth spurt!" My mother said, "I need to put you on a stricter diet. We will take long walks every day...and here are some weights to lift. Try to do at least a hundred sit-ups every day! Don't you want to be beautiful?"
My father started appraising me and saying, "You are growing into quite a voluptuous young woman. You have such soft arms and such big,beautiful breasts...What is wrong with you? Can't you take a compliment? Come sit on my lap for a minute! Haha! Silly girl!Fine, you don't want to sit on my lap, go be a recluse up in your room as usual! You are turning into such a rebellious teenager!"
My mother was afraid of the traits that my father made me ashamed of, thus confirming that I should be ashamed of it. "Have you ever considered breast reduction surgery?"
"Where a bulkier sweater! Your chest is too big!"
"Wear skirts, you do not want to draw any more attention to your butt!"
"That dress is indecent, you immodest girl! Have you no sense!? Wear dresses that hide your shape. You are disproportionate anyway!"
"I should have beaten you more when you were a kid! Then you would not give me that silent face! That look you give me! You don't say anything! But I know what you are thinking, you evil, proud, rebellious girl! Go ahead and keep smearing that paint on your face! All the makeup in the world will not cover up your ugly soul!"
Now the burden of guilt was greater than ever, growing like cancers in my psyche like my hunger, my desire for love, my terror of abandonment and my weariness. By the time I was fifteen I began to pray regularly for death. At the age of sixteen I tried to run away from home to join a convent. (Needless to say, the sisters made me come back.) At the age of seventeen my growing strengths and mind were noticing more than ever the inconsistencies and untruths that infested my life and the lives my parents lived. I had always known that they were not always right, and told myself to depend upon God more than them. But at the age of seventeen, it reached a pitch. My parents did not know who I was, and I was determined to leave it that way. I left for college.
College is too much to sum up, but I will try.
College is where I learned the full meaning of the terms "divorce", "annullment", "assualt and battery", "child abuse", "truama" and "emotional binge eating". The college years were very eventful and my parents were very active in trying to exert control over my life. Only now it was Dad trying to buy my love and not me trying to earn his. My mother also taught me the full meaning of the words "delusional" "nuerotic" and "verbal cruelty".
Most Freshmen gain fifteen pounds. I gained at least twenty. And I did not lose it. Most victims of abuse, no matter how bright, suffer academically through loss of sleep, inability to concentrate and emotional baggage. Many do not survive college. I failed out of one college. Had to live some months with my mother. She brought my self esteem low enough to ensure that when by the time a transferred as a sophmore to another college, I gained a sophmore fifteen. In college, I learned that I was strange. I learned that I was afraid. The hunger and weariness were my constant companions whatever friends or admirers came and went. I learned new levels of loneliness. It is a miracle I graduated. Also, several undiagnosed food allergies help speed up my weight gain even after my binge eating desisted.
I did.
I was lucky.
And I was ill. I had still not been properly treated. I had recieved some brief counseling from a series of well-meaing, but clueless, damaging people.
I was hesitant to reveal my burdens to healers even though discovery was inevitable. In some places I was met with a kind of morbid fascination, like one has when one meets a very exotic, ugly new animal. In others I was met with horror and accused of hatred and unnatural, prideful attitudes. Which is very strange, because I have never hated anybody in my life. The pain would be less if I could. In still other places I was met with a kind of piteous contempt. In most places the response was well-meaning, useless, clueless "sympathy". And, miraculously, in one place or two, I did meet people who seemed to understand and empathize.
This is why I must write this. Because of the paucity and the value of those genuinely kindly people who cared about me when my own parents did not.
I must raise awareness so that you who read do not duplicate those cold looks I have recieved or say those cutting words to one who already prays for death.
I have graduated from college and have attempted with limited success to heal and go on working a fighting for life. I have cut off ties from both parents, who are still blindly intent upon hurting me and others. I have lived to see some of my abused siblings become abusive and have had to escape them too.
But I have made friends along the way. Though in my moments of darkness, I forget. They do not live near me now. I was always privately afraid of becoming a burden to them. I have, after all, been a burdensome thing if my parents are to be believed.
I am still tired.
I am still hungry.
I am still wounded.
I am still afraid.
In the years following college, my eating habits became healthier. I did not binge eat anymore, but damage to my body image had been done.
I was now a "larger woman".
In this society, that is code for "a person that you can be rude toward because they are too stupid and lazy to do anything about it. Because if they are fat, they MUST be stupid or lazy, obviously."
In this society "fat" is synonymous with "unloveable".
"Nobody will love you if you are fat".
Nobody
Nobody
Nobody will love you
From the ages of eight to seventeen I had dieted constantly. Between the ages of eighteen and 21 I was an emotional binge eater. Thus at age 22, size 16, my old enemy, hunger, took on a new form. I began to willfully starve myself.
You see, I had it in my head that I did not deserve to eat. I was too ugly and fat to eat too much. I ate normally and heartily around my friends of course. One meal a day. One good sized meal. They did not even suspect. I was too fat. Besides, maybe even some of my close friends had gotten a little too used to seeing me unwell. At times I fought this self-destruction, told myself I was not that fat, that I should not want to be thin just because a misogynist society said that I was supposed to look a certain way. That it was not going to make me happy, that I should not buy into a false notion of self-worth based upon "beauty", "productivity" and "sucess". That I should not desire to be seen as a good toy as opposed to a bad toy, when I was not a toy at all.
I told myself all those things, and tried to crawl out of the grave I had dug for myself.
Some days were high and others were low.
Some days I would know that I was good and valued and beautiful and loved.
Then other days, one of my friends would invite to give one more person a ride, and tell me to move to the front seat. "So that there would be more room. We can fit four in the back seat that way, if you are in the front".
I would not eat for days after one good comment like that.
My combination of depression, the inactivity that usually accompanies it, lask of enough employment, and my mistreatment of myself resulted in me going up to a size 20.
Now at the age of 26, events were happening to bring about a renewed desire to die, deeper depression, and heavier weariness.
Now the weariness reached a head. I found work and worked physically very hard again. And now I ate less than ever. But now I had found a counselor and was seeking help.
"Maria, have you ever heard of Borderline Personality Disorder? It is characterized by an unstable sense of self, usually an unstable sense of self worth, and self-image. The usual symptoms include...
Desparate attempts to avoid real or imagined abandonment...
Sometimes binge eating...sometimes eating disorders and starvation...
Depression and extreme anxiety are also two common symptoms...You say you always suffer guilt and you don't know what it is that you have done. That you see yourself as a bad person even though all your friends say that you are good. That you hate yourself when your friends love you. That you would rather die than be "fat" again. That you do not like to be looked at because you are afraid of scrutiny and judgement. "
"Are you saying that I have a mental illness?"
"I am saying that you have been hurt. You have been terribly, horribly hurt and you did not do anything to deserve it. You need to see yourself as loveable and worth while and good. I think you have been fighting for that truth all of your life, but you have been hurt, never healed, and now your wounds are starting to cripple you. Maria, you ate nothing but one banana, two slices of lunchmeat and a handful of spinach today. This is how you have been eating for a while now. This month alone, you lost ten pounds. The month before that, you went down two sizes. When you first moved to this town eight months ago, you were a size 20, now you are a size 10." my counselor says!
"People tell me that I look better now. They treat me like I am a better person. Like I am smarter, healthier, faster, stronger and more beautiful."
"But you were healthier before, when you were eating better!" My boyfriend exclaims, "You were always ALWAYS beautiful! You were always strong, always smart! If some people did not always see that, that was their loss! You are NOT more beautiful now! You can't make yourself more beautiful than you already are! You are the most beautiful woman in the world! You need to eat. You deserve to eat. Please eat!"
All of my short and long life has been a battle, and I am starting to see that the battle for my life is just begun. Some days I win it, and some days I lose it. Some days I know that God is fighting with me and loves me and created me for a purpose. Other days the darkness closes in upon me and I cry out to God begging him to let me die and asking Him why He ever created such a worthless person.
This is not an easy story to share. But I had an idea that maybe it would be cathartic to a degree and that maybe it could help somebody to understand what this kind of struggle is like. Or if they already know it by experience (God forbid) to be encouraged to seek help for themselves. To not give up the battle for their lives. There is a loving God in heaven. Nobdoy had to tell me that demons existed. That I knew. The single most difficult thing for me to accept in Christianity is that God loves us. Or more to the point, that God loves me. Not only that, that God would become MAN for US. For ME.
First, he let himself become a vulnerable little child, just like us.
Then he grew up, and made friends who did not understand Him and enemies that He did not deserve.
Then He let Himself get beaten, crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross and peirced in the heart with a lance. He gave His life to save us. And He said, "Father, Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
"Maria, you MUST forgive!"
"But I did forgive me parents! I have forgiven them! It hurts me that I cannot be with them because they will try to hurt me again!"
"No, no. I meant yourself. You have to forgive yourself. You blame yourself for wrongs that you never did. And you need to let go of that guilt. God does not blame you. He does not look at you and say, "Evil girl!" He sees you and knows you, and loves you. Forgive yourself."
"I will try. I will. I must."
"You must believe!" cries another friend.
Today I choose to believe.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
How To Lose Four Dress Sizes In Three Months
Directions
1-Hate yourself.
2-Convince yourself that you are fat and ugly.
3-Be surrounded by a society obsessed with semi-emaciation. Live in a culture where it is assumed, for instance, that all women want to drop four sizes in three months.
4-Work very hard on a job that keeps you on your feet for eight hour shifts, and walk two miles there and back home every day to get to said job. Then when you get home, do some more walking to get to the church, the bank, the library. Then go home and do some crunches.
5-Be unhappy and stressed out, that clouds your better judgement.
6-Have very little money with which to buy food.
7-Become so ashamed of your financial state, that you are half convinced that you don't deserve to eat.
8-Live far away from friends who will talk any sense into you or even notice that you are not eating properly.
9-(And this is the key one) Do not eat.
If you do eat something, make sure it is only one small meal a day. Like one veggie wrap, or one salad, or one yogurt. No meat, no cheese, no salt, no butter, no soda, no alchohol, very limited starches. No fat, basically, very little carbs...very little protein...I guess very little anything and everything...No chips, no crackers, no sweets of any kind. Nothing with preservatives in it. Nothing with natural and artificial flavors in it. Nothing high in calories...pretty much nothing processed. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so skip it and drink coffee instead. The caffiene will stimulate the brain and give you a buzz so that your body will be temporarily distracted that you have not fed it. Coffee dulls hunger too, and if you drink lots of it, it will fool your body into thinking that it does not want food for HOURS. Only put a little skim milk in the coffee (FOR HEAVEN's SAKE, NO CREAM OR SUGAR!)
10-Drink tons of water. At least a dozen glasses a day. This is a distortion of something that is actually a good diet tip. If you drink a healthy amount of water, your body will not think that it is hungry when it is really just dehydrated. If you drink tons of water, it will flush everything out of your system, fool you for thirty more minutes into thinking that you dont need to eat, and keep you from passing out from light-headedness.
11-If you wake up at two in the morning, ravenous, because you have not eaten in twelve hours, instead of eating, get up and exercise. You will exhaust yourself to such an extent that you will force your body to collapse even though it is screaming at you for you to feed it.
12-Guilt yourself over everything you eat. That way, if you ever cave and eat (gasp) two meals in one day, or something with eggs or cheese in it...you will renew your efforts to never eat eggs or cheese or anything with fat in it ever again.
This will continue the cycle of guilt, shame and hunger, always, always hunger.
But hey, you might lose that accursed, hateful, hideous, loathesome body mass. You might look smaller. One day you will wake up and find that none of your clothes fit you. You will go test yourself and find that you have shrunk at a rate of more than one size per month. Then if people compliment you that you look better this way, that you are now closer to being beautiful and respectable than you were before...well then...why stop?
If people think you're so inspirational, why dissappoint them? Who knows, by Easter, you might even make it down to size ten. If people think that it is a subject of rejoicing that you shrank this much, whoa, you must have been a cow before the shrinkage!
So now you know the "inspirational" story about how I changed in only three months from being a "larger" woman to just a large woman. Is this the example you wanted? Not what you expected? Well what DID you expect? How else do you think this happens? The only other methods for this drastic change in this short a time are weight-loss drugs, lyposuction, and chronic smoking problems. But hey? At least you are thin? Right? Or thinner?
Alright, maybe this is not the healthiest way to live. But it never really was about health, was it?
Do not kid yourselves. It was about a dress size. It was about appearances.
The title of the note that you are reading is similar to an ad that you will find in any newspaper. "Lose weight faster!" "Drop twenty pounds in 30 days!" "It will make you look better!" "It will make you more desirable!" "It will turn you into a beauty queen" "Burn calories and melt fat faster! Faster! Faster!" "It will make you feel better about yourself!" "It will improve your date prospects" "It will improve your sex life".
The title of this note did not say, "10 heart-healthy tips for Sunday Brunch" or "Get off the couch and Enjoy the Fresh Air!" It said "Get smaller at an insane pace".
I will NEVER be small.
I will NEVER be skinny.
No matter how much I punish myself for it. No matter how much the world hates me for it.
On my good days this is a matter of indifference to me.
But on my bad days, which have been far more frequent of late...it leaves me with nothing but despair. Despair for what I have become and what I will degenerate into further, and despair for this taut, thin, malnourished world.
1-Hate yourself.
2-Convince yourself that you are fat and ugly.
3-Be surrounded by a society obsessed with semi-emaciation. Live in a culture where it is assumed, for instance, that all women want to drop four sizes in three months.
4-Work very hard on a job that keeps you on your feet for eight hour shifts, and walk two miles there and back home every day to get to said job. Then when you get home, do some more walking to get to the church, the bank, the library. Then go home and do some crunches.
5-Be unhappy and stressed out, that clouds your better judgement.
6-Have very little money with which to buy food.
7-Become so ashamed of your financial state, that you are half convinced that you don't deserve to eat.
8-Live far away from friends who will talk any sense into you or even notice that you are not eating properly.
9-(And this is the key one) Do not eat.
If you do eat something, make sure it is only one small meal a day. Like one veggie wrap, or one salad, or one yogurt. No meat, no cheese, no salt, no butter, no soda, no alchohol, very limited starches. No fat, basically, very little carbs...very little protein...I guess very little anything and everything...No chips, no crackers, no sweets of any kind. Nothing with preservatives in it. Nothing with natural and artificial flavors in it. Nothing high in calories...pretty much nothing processed. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so skip it and drink coffee instead. The caffiene will stimulate the brain and give you a buzz so that your body will be temporarily distracted that you have not fed it. Coffee dulls hunger too, and if you drink lots of it, it will fool your body into thinking that it does not want food for HOURS. Only put a little skim milk in the coffee (FOR HEAVEN's SAKE, NO CREAM OR SUGAR!)
10-Drink tons of water. At least a dozen glasses a day. This is a distortion of something that is actually a good diet tip. If you drink a healthy amount of water, your body will not think that it is hungry when it is really just dehydrated. If you drink tons of water, it will flush everything out of your system, fool you for thirty more minutes into thinking that you dont need to eat, and keep you from passing out from light-headedness.
11-If you wake up at two in the morning, ravenous, because you have not eaten in twelve hours, instead of eating, get up and exercise. You will exhaust yourself to such an extent that you will force your body to collapse even though it is screaming at you for you to feed it.
12-Guilt yourself over everything you eat. That way, if you ever cave and eat (gasp) two meals in one day, or something with eggs or cheese in it...you will renew your efforts to never eat eggs or cheese or anything with fat in it ever again.
This will continue the cycle of guilt, shame and hunger, always, always hunger.
But hey, you might lose that accursed, hateful, hideous, loathesome body mass. You might look smaller. One day you will wake up and find that none of your clothes fit you. You will go test yourself and find that you have shrunk at a rate of more than one size per month. Then if people compliment you that you look better this way, that you are now closer to being beautiful and respectable than you were before...well then...why stop?
If people think you're so inspirational, why dissappoint them? Who knows, by Easter, you might even make it down to size ten. If people think that it is a subject of rejoicing that you shrank this much, whoa, you must have been a cow before the shrinkage!
So now you know the "inspirational" story about how I changed in only three months from being a "larger" woman to just a large woman. Is this the example you wanted? Not what you expected? Well what DID you expect? How else do you think this happens? The only other methods for this drastic change in this short a time are weight-loss drugs, lyposuction, and chronic smoking problems. But hey? At least you are thin? Right? Or thinner?
Alright, maybe this is not the healthiest way to live. But it never really was about health, was it?
Do not kid yourselves. It was about a dress size. It was about appearances.
The title of the note that you are reading is similar to an ad that you will find in any newspaper. "Lose weight faster!" "Drop twenty pounds in 30 days!" "It will make you look better!" "It will make you more desirable!" "It will turn you into a beauty queen" "Burn calories and melt fat faster! Faster! Faster!" "It will make you feel better about yourself!" "It will improve your date prospects" "It will improve your sex life".
The title of this note did not say, "10 heart-healthy tips for Sunday Brunch" or "Get off the couch and Enjoy the Fresh Air!" It said "Get smaller at an insane pace".
I will NEVER be small.
I will NEVER be skinny.
No matter how much I punish myself for it. No matter how much the world hates me for it.
On my good days this is a matter of indifference to me.
But on my bad days, which have been far more frequent of late...it leaves me with nothing but despair. Despair for what I have become and what I will degenerate into further, and despair for this taut, thin, malnourished world.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Good Girl or Bad Girl?
(Proceed with caution, contains "strong" language. What a misleading expression!)
I hear the terms "good girl" and "bad girl" thrown about all the time, by men as well as women. When I ask women what they mean by that, they usually say something vague about a "good girl" being boring, or "too cutesy" or "too passive" or "too tame" or something to be diesired in a teen or twenty-something, but not in a thirty-something, tough, real, working girl of the twenty-first century. When they try to define "bad girl" they associate her with somebody simultaneously "cool" and "hot". "Volcanic", independent, wild, unpredictable, dangerous. They might add as a caveat that though the "bad" girl is better than the "good" girl, maybe the "bad girl" is too unsafe or unstable to be ALL the time.
Most of them feel a pressure to be a weird blend of both. Hence the schizophrenia in the way women are portrayed in photos in the media. Case in point, I saw a little book at Barnes and Noble's once that was entitled: The Good Girl's Guide To Bad Girl Sex. So, if I am understanding the modern woman's dilemma correctly, we are encouraged to post photos of ourselves presently ourselves as "solid, dependable, reliable, proffessional, emancipated" women in the workplace, in our professional lives, in our familys, we can bot cute, good "girls" when we do not want to scare men away. In other words, when we are trying to convince men that we are not "gold-diggers" or spendthirifts, that we won't cheat on them, then we adopt a "good girl" expression. But we feel pressure to compete with the playboy bunnies that they stare at while they masturbate (that we can't insist that our men get rid of or stop doing, because that's being demanding, which is not "good") so we buy outfits and strike a "bad" girl pose, so that our men will continue to see us as exciting and alluring. This combination is the worst alternative of all, not only because again, women are sacrificing what is good for them (as they are too wont to do) for the unrealistic demands imposed on them by society and the men in their lives. It is also because we are allowed less to be ourselves than ever before. People talk about the "Virgin vs. Whore" mentality of a previous era, how women were tidily compartmentalized and constrained and that how this narrow way of thinking no longer is here today and aren't we fortunate and smarter than our grandparents, yahah yadah yadah.
But it is not gone. If I had been born in the '40s or 50's, I would have hated it (I hope) that if I would be considered "marriage material", graced with the condescension of my husband's dirty socks, martini mixing priveleges, and the queen of his kitchen if only I wore the appropriate clothing, did not spend too much of his hard-earned money at the beauty parlor, had dinner ready when he got home, always had a warm, gentle smile, and pretended that I knew nothing about his infidelities. If I dared to wear something too provocative, dared to reward his infidelity with argument, accusation, sulkiness, or (gasp!) an indiscretion or two of my own, or (oh horror!) left him, then I would not be "marriage material". If I flirted too much, or wore too much black, or showed too much cleavage, or gave off a certain air of sultry, wild, abandon or danced with too much hip movement, the "good" little church-going boys would know that I was not "marriage material" but that it would be perfectly exceptable to go "parking" with me for the senior dance. It would be acceptable for the Boss to call me into his office and lock the door behind us, since I was not "marriage material" anyway. I would be an acceptable candidate for Dear Old George's cheating on his wife, but he would never, never marry me. Because years ago I had made an incorrect choice, and gotten into unfavored habits, and now there is no getting out of them, because now the men can all sense that I am "bad" and that is that. "You mus'nt give your heart to a wild thing!" Holly Golightly warns about herself.
But this age has not progressed us and it still has not eradicated that way of thinking. Men, especially nauseatingly "good" churchgoing boys still talk about "good" women as "marriage" material for them and "bad" girls being very "fuck-worthy" (their words, out of their own mouths, not mine!) but not "marriage material". they are good enough to look up on porntube and good enough to drool over in movies, or fool around with before you settle down, or after you have settled down if the little woman at home does not know (but she really should not complain, as he, after all, has graced her with the honorary title of "mother of his children". The "bad" girls, you wear a condom for, or give her money for an abortion, because God forbid you should sire a child with a "bad" girl.) We still think in that way, though many of us pretend that we do not. Before at least a woman was either one or the other, now she has to be both! We reward the Vanessa Hudgens of this world for dressing provacatively and making "bad girl" faces and "bad girl" poses in front of the camera, but we gasp and frown if she sends a nude picture of herself in an email. Most women want to be a combination of sweet, approachable, funny, cute Jenniffer Aniston "America's Sweetheart", AND Angelina the fierce, tough, wild-eyed, full-lipped, femme fatale-Jolie (because Brad Pitt chose Jen at first, then left her for Jolie). Or, for an older generation, Eddie Fisher might have married Debbie Reynolds (a perfect example of the "good" girl, with her starry, wide blue eyes, cute face, warm smile, blushing cheeks and cooing voice) but he left her for Elizabeth Taylor, (who later dumped him, good for her!). It is terrible hard work to be both Debbie Reynolds (think Tammy and the Bachelor, Singing in the Rain, Bundle of Joy) AND Elizabeth Taylor (think Butterfield 8, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Cleopatra). To me, growing up, I never thought of them in terms of whether or not some guy thought that they were "good" or "bad". Sure, my dad alway "respected" Debbie Reynolds, but he still gaped at Elizabeth Taylor. To me, though, they were simply...women. Complex, imperfect, wonderous, pathetic, mysterious and beautiful, always, always, beautiful. They were more than the false images carved out for them, as every woman is, whether famous or not. I have been both idealized and demonized enough to know that idolization and sexualization are two sides on the same coin of objectification.
Whether a man looks me in the eyes and tells me that he wants to marry me, because I am "so good, so pure, the most perfect and unusually immaculate woman he has ever met, the most pristine in the world, blah blah blah" or stares at my breasts and says that he wants to "fuck" me because I am the "curviest, sexiest, wildest, little thang" in the club, neither of those poor fools will ever see the real me, because they have been trained like dogs to look for cues of whether each woman is a good bit of territory to bury a bone, or to piss and shit on, because some other dog has been there and had the same idea. They both think they are reading the cues correctly and picking up the right vibe, and they are both wrong. Which really breaks my heart, because men are NOT dogs. They are awe-inspiring, complex and beautiful too, and they are being cheated by the media and society that trains them to act like dogs, just as much, if not more so, than we are. And no woman EVER deserves to have her heart broken, or to be treated as though she were worthless, no matter how many men she has slept with, no matter how many inches from her collar-bone her neckline is, or how tight her jeans are, or how short her hemline. My message is not just for Christians, but it has more meaning for Christians who know that Christ said "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "if your neighbor strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other" and "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" and "You wicked servant, I FORGAVE YOU the ENTIRE DEBT! Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow?" I have read the whole bible many times and I do not recall a single passage where Christ says, "If a woman acts like a lady, treat her like a lady, but if she's a bitch, or a whore or an idiot call her a bitch, whore or idiot to her face and treat her like one" or "Women who do and say exactly what you want them to do or say all of the time are worth your time and trouble. Women who don't act the way you want them to are worthless." or "If people are sinners, the best thing to do is to never let them near anybody and to tell everybody to stay away from them. That way, they all know who is bad and who is good and the good ones can stay good, and the bad ones...can stay...bad?"
Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that you have to be like Hosea and marry a prostitute. All I am saying is that God told Hosea to do that and chose that symbol of that poor woman to represent Us...all of us...not just the ones who have lost their virginity, no just the ones who dress improperly, not just the ones on the cover of your porn magazine, not just the one you saw at the Gentleman's club last night...He meant YOU. There is ESSENTIALLY no difference between that girl you stare at on porntube and your sister that you won't let any of your buddies date.
Regina Doman, paraphrasing Von Hildebrand wrote a brilliant little bit that expresses everything I mean, better than I can. It is from her novel, The Midnight Dancers.
"Once upon a time there were men and women in the world."
"Just as there are now." ...
"And there was a devil, as there also is now, and he desired to destroy the happiness of man and woman. So he created a twisted looking glass. The looking-glass was not a mirror, but a piece of glass so invisible that a man could look through it and not realize that he was seeing a twisted reality. And it reflected a bit, like a mirror, so a man could see himself, or what he thought was himself. ... Now, this glass was made particularly for men, and the devil made sure that the men looked through it whenever they chanced to look at women. And this glass changed the women. ... It reduced them. ...
So that, to a man looking through the glass, the woman appeared to be an object, a pretty plaything for his pleasure. Now, the man might know that the woman had brains or talents, or any number of other gifts, but when he looked through the mirror, he saw her only as a toy. And the devil made every effort to push that glass before a man's eyes when he was young as possible. So that most men were so used to looking through the glass that, even when it wasn't there, the images in the glass dictated their reality. ... There was a further trick to the devil's glass. The glass taught men to sort all women into two types--worthwhile, and not worthwhile. Or 'good' and 'bad' as some took to calling them. Good toys and bad toys. And so this was the way they had of speaking about women among themselves. And, as you can imagine, the women could'nt help overhearing these conversations. And even though most of the women had not glanced through the mirror, they could'nt help thinking of themselves in this manner. As toys. Good toys or bad toys."
"What was the difference between the good toys and the bad toys?" Rachael said, scraping at the rock with her fingernail.
"Nothing," Paul said.
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Nothing essential. Once you have decided to see a person as a toy, the degrees between the toys are close to non-existent. But for practical purposes as far as the deluded man was concerned, there was a difference."
"Which was?" ...
"Time," Paul said slowly, "Only time. You spend more time with a good toy. Lots of time. You date her, you take her out, you pay her compliments, you might even marry her. But in the end, she's just a toy."
"And the bad toys?"
His face had a rigid, hard look to it. "You don't waste your time. You play with them, but not for long. Maybe not even twenty-four hours. And then you don't care if you ever see her again. Remember," he said, "From this twisted point of view, a smart man does not waste his time on bad toys."
"But what about Christian men?" she objected.
"Christian men were taught to look through this mirror too. Sometimes, the attached more importance to the "good" versus "bad" distinction. You have to make sure you marry a "good" toy. Because a Christian man does not waste his time on "bad' toys. You want a good toy. Just one. Or at any rate, one at a time."
... "But it's not fair!"
"Of course it's not!"
"I don't believe all men are like this!"
"They're not. But don't underestimate the power of the looking glass. ...You see, in a deluded man's world, there is no place for an old toy, or an ugly toy, or a toy that doesn't have the right figure, or whose body does not work the way it should--a handicapped toy, a toy that has fallen ill. If a toy was once a good toy, you might hang around--after all she was once a good toy. And you can feast on the memories, and keep an eye on other good toys from the sidelines or glance at the bad toys in the magazines--but a 'smart' man does not let himself get stuck with a broken toy, particularly one that has been used and is in need of repair."
Ladies, you are nobody's toy, whether "good" or "bad". Don't even let them call you that. Don't even admit to the demeaning title. It is not a bad thing to be wild and human beings are naturally "dangerous" but you are also meant to be strong and loyal. Innocence is not uncool. You do not have to be either a disney princess or a femme fatale (thanks to Colin Mason for that phrase). You do not have to be a weird blend of both either. Joan of Arc was NOT a safe, quiet, undemanding girl. She kept her honor and she is one of the wildest, craziest people in history. Her persecuters called her "witch" and "indecent". You do not have to be Debbie Reynolds crying under a piano, hiding from Gene Kelly in order to get married. You can be as bold as Elizabeth Taylor, grinding the heel of her stiletto into an assaulting rogues's expensive shoe. That is not wicked and never will be.
I hear the terms "good girl" and "bad girl" thrown about all the time, by men as well as women. When I ask women what they mean by that, they usually say something vague about a "good girl" being boring, or "too cutesy" or "too passive" or "too tame" or something to be diesired in a teen or twenty-something, but not in a thirty-something, tough, real, working girl of the twenty-first century. When they try to define "bad girl" they associate her with somebody simultaneously "cool" and "hot". "Volcanic", independent, wild, unpredictable, dangerous. They might add as a caveat that though the "bad" girl is better than the "good" girl, maybe the "bad girl" is too unsafe or unstable to be ALL the time.
Most of them feel a pressure to be a weird blend of both. Hence the schizophrenia in the way women are portrayed in photos in the media. Case in point, I saw a little book at Barnes and Noble's once that was entitled: The Good Girl's Guide To Bad Girl Sex. So, if I am understanding the modern woman's dilemma correctly, we are encouraged to post photos of ourselves presently ourselves as "solid, dependable, reliable, proffessional, emancipated" women in the workplace, in our professional lives, in our familys, we can bot cute, good "girls" when we do not want to scare men away. In other words, when we are trying to convince men that we are not "gold-diggers" or spendthirifts, that we won't cheat on them, then we adopt a "good girl" expression. But we feel pressure to compete with the playboy bunnies that they stare at while they masturbate (that we can't insist that our men get rid of or stop doing, because that's being demanding, which is not "good") so we buy outfits and strike a "bad" girl pose, so that our men will continue to see us as exciting and alluring. This combination is the worst alternative of all, not only because again, women are sacrificing what is good for them (as they are too wont to do) for the unrealistic demands imposed on them by society and the men in their lives. It is also because we are allowed less to be ourselves than ever before. People talk about the "Virgin vs. Whore" mentality of a previous era, how women were tidily compartmentalized and constrained and that how this narrow way of thinking no longer is here today and aren't we fortunate and smarter than our grandparents, yahah yadah yadah.
But it is not gone. If I had been born in the '40s or 50's, I would have hated it (I hope) that if I would be considered "marriage material", graced with the condescension of my husband's dirty socks, martini mixing priveleges, and the queen of his kitchen if only I wore the appropriate clothing, did not spend too much of his hard-earned money at the beauty parlor, had dinner ready when he got home, always had a warm, gentle smile, and pretended that I knew nothing about his infidelities. If I dared to wear something too provocative, dared to reward his infidelity with argument, accusation, sulkiness, or (gasp!) an indiscretion or two of my own, or (oh horror!) left him, then I would not be "marriage material". If I flirted too much, or wore too much black, or showed too much cleavage, or gave off a certain air of sultry, wild, abandon or danced with too much hip movement, the "good" little church-going boys would know that I was not "marriage material" but that it would be perfectly exceptable to go "parking" with me for the senior dance. It would be acceptable for the Boss to call me into his office and lock the door behind us, since I was not "marriage material" anyway. I would be an acceptable candidate for Dear Old George's cheating on his wife, but he would never, never marry me. Because years ago I had made an incorrect choice, and gotten into unfavored habits, and now there is no getting out of them, because now the men can all sense that I am "bad" and that is that. "You mus'nt give your heart to a wild thing!" Holly Golightly warns about herself.
But this age has not progressed us and it still has not eradicated that way of thinking. Men, especially nauseatingly "good" churchgoing boys still talk about "good" women as "marriage" material for them and "bad" girls being very "fuck-worthy" (their words, out of their own mouths, not mine!) but not "marriage material". they are good enough to look up on porntube and good enough to drool over in movies, or fool around with before you settle down, or after you have settled down if the little woman at home does not know (but she really should not complain, as he, after all, has graced her with the honorary title of "mother of his children". The "bad" girls, you wear a condom for, or give her money for an abortion, because God forbid you should sire a child with a "bad" girl.) We still think in that way, though many of us pretend that we do not. Before at least a woman was either one or the other, now she has to be both! We reward the Vanessa Hudgens of this world for dressing provacatively and making "bad girl" faces and "bad girl" poses in front of the camera, but we gasp and frown if she sends a nude picture of herself in an email. Most women want to be a combination of sweet, approachable, funny, cute Jenniffer Aniston "America's Sweetheart", AND Angelina the fierce, tough, wild-eyed, full-lipped, femme fatale-Jolie (because Brad Pitt chose Jen at first, then left her for Jolie). Or, for an older generation, Eddie Fisher might have married Debbie Reynolds (a perfect example of the "good" girl, with her starry, wide blue eyes, cute face, warm smile, blushing cheeks and cooing voice) but he left her for Elizabeth Taylor, (who later dumped him, good for her!). It is terrible hard work to be both Debbie Reynolds (think Tammy and the Bachelor, Singing in the Rain, Bundle of Joy) AND Elizabeth Taylor (think Butterfield 8, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Cleopatra). To me, growing up, I never thought of them in terms of whether or not some guy thought that they were "good" or "bad". Sure, my dad alway "respected" Debbie Reynolds, but he still gaped at Elizabeth Taylor. To me, though, they were simply...women. Complex, imperfect, wonderous, pathetic, mysterious and beautiful, always, always, beautiful. They were more than the false images carved out for them, as every woman is, whether famous or not. I have been both idealized and demonized enough to know that idolization and sexualization are two sides on the same coin of objectification.
Whether a man looks me in the eyes and tells me that he wants to marry me, because I am "so good, so pure, the most perfect and unusually immaculate woman he has ever met, the most pristine in the world, blah blah blah" or stares at my breasts and says that he wants to "fuck" me because I am the "curviest, sexiest, wildest, little thang" in the club, neither of those poor fools will ever see the real me, because they have been trained like dogs to look for cues of whether each woman is a good bit of territory to bury a bone, or to piss and shit on, because some other dog has been there and had the same idea. They both think they are reading the cues correctly and picking up the right vibe, and they are both wrong. Which really breaks my heart, because men are NOT dogs. They are awe-inspiring, complex and beautiful too, and they are being cheated by the media and society that trains them to act like dogs, just as much, if not more so, than we are. And no woman EVER deserves to have her heart broken, or to be treated as though she were worthless, no matter how many men she has slept with, no matter how many inches from her collar-bone her neckline is, or how tight her jeans are, or how short her hemline. My message is not just for Christians, but it has more meaning for Christians who know that Christ said "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "if your neighbor strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other" and "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" and "You wicked servant, I FORGAVE YOU the ENTIRE DEBT! Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow?" I have read the whole bible many times and I do not recall a single passage where Christ says, "If a woman acts like a lady, treat her like a lady, but if she's a bitch, or a whore or an idiot call her a bitch, whore or idiot to her face and treat her like one" or "Women who do and say exactly what you want them to do or say all of the time are worth your time and trouble. Women who don't act the way you want them to are worthless." or "If people are sinners, the best thing to do is to never let them near anybody and to tell everybody to stay away from them. That way, they all know who is bad and who is good and the good ones can stay good, and the bad ones...can stay...bad?"
Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that you have to be like Hosea and marry a prostitute. All I am saying is that God told Hosea to do that and chose that symbol of that poor woman to represent Us...all of us...not just the ones who have lost their virginity, no just the ones who dress improperly, not just the ones on the cover of your porn magazine, not just the one you saw at the Gentleman's club last night...He meant YOU. There is ESSENTIALLY no difference between that girl you stare at on porntube and your sister that you won't let any of your buddies date.
Regina Doman, paraphrasing Von Hildebrand wrote a brilliant little bit that expresses everything I mean, better than I can. It is from her novel, The Midnight Dancers.
"Once upon a time there were men and women in the world."
"Just as there are now." ...
"And there was a devil, as there also is now, and he desired to destroy the happiness of man and woman. So he created a twisted looking glass. The looking-glass was not a mirror, but a piece of glass so invisible that a man could look through it and not realize that he was seeing a twisted reality. And it reflected a bit, like a mirror, so a man could see himself, or what he thought was himself. ... Now, this glass was made particularly for men, and the devil made sure that the men looked through it whenever they chanced to look at women. And this glass changed the women. ... It reduced them. ...
So that, to a man looking through the glass, the woman appeared to be an object, a pretty plaything for his pleasure. Now, the man might know that the woman had brains or talents, or any number of other gifts, but when he looked through the mirror, he saw her only as a toy. And the devil made every effort to push that glass before a man's eyes when he was young as possible. So that most men were so used to looking through the glass that, even when it wasn't there, the images in the glass dictated their reality. ... There was a further trick to the devil's glass. The glass taught men to sort all women into two types--worthwhile, and not worthwhile. Or 'good' and 'bad' as some took to calling them. Good toys and bad toys. And so this was the way they had of speaking about women among themselves. And, as you can imagine, the women could'nt help overhearing these conversations. And even though most of the women had not glanced through the mirror, they could'nt help thinking of themselves in this manner. As toys. Good toys or bad toys."
"What was the difference between the good toys and the bad toys?" Rachael said, scraping at the rock with her fingernail.
"Nothing," Paul said.
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Nothing essential. Once you have decided to see a person as a toy, the degrees between the toys are close to non-existent. But for practical purposes as far as the deluded man was concerned, there was a difference."
"Which was?" ...
"Time," Paul said slowly, "Only time. You spend more time with a good toy. Lots of time. You date her, you take her out, you pay her compliments, you might even marry her. But in the end, she's just a toy."
"And the bad toys?"
His face had a rigid, hard look to it. "You don't waste your time. You play with them, but not for long. Maybe not even twenty-four hours. And then you don't care if you ever see her again. Remember," he said, "From this twisted point of view, a smart man does not waste his time on bad toys."
"But what about Christian men?" she objected.
"Christian men were taught to look through this mirror too. Sometimes, the attached more importance to the "good" versus "bad" distinction. You have to make sure you marry a "good" toy. Because a Christian man does not waste his time on "bad' toys. You want a good toy. Just one. Or at any rate, one at a time."
... "But it's not fair!"
"Of course it's not!"
"I don't believe all men are like this!"
"They're not. But don't underestimate the power of the looking glass. ...You see, in a deluded man's world, there is no place for an old toy, or an ugly toy, or a toy that doesn't have the right figure, or whose body does not work the way it should--a handicapped toy, a toy that has fallen ill. If a toy was once a good toy, you might hang around--after all she was once a good toy. And you can feast on the memories, and keep an eye on other good toys from the sidelines or glance at the bad toys in the magazines--but a 'smart' man does not let himself get stuck with a broken toy, particularly one that has been used and is in need of repair."
Ladies, you are nobody's toy, whether "good" or "bad". Don't even let them call you that. Don't even admit to the demeaning title. It is not a bad thing to be wild and human beings are naturally "dangerous" but you are also meant to be strong and loyal. Innocence is not uncool. You do not have to be either a disney princess or a femme fatale (thanks to Colin Mason for that phrase). You do not have to be a weird blend of both either. Joan of Arc was NOT a safe, quiet, undemanding girl. She kept her honor and she is one of the wildest, craziest people in history. Her persecuters called her "witch" and "indecent". You do not have to be Debbie Reynolds crying under a piano, hiding from Gene Kelly in order to get married. You can be as bold as Elizabeth Taylor, grinding the heel of her stiletto into an assaulting rogues's expensive shoe. That is not wicked and never will be.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
My New Year's Reflection and Resolution
Reflecting upon my short life thus far, I imagined what I would have to say about it, were it to end today (I know, I know. Typical "Melancholic Maria" moment). This is my attempt to express what I have concluded.
Almost nothing good has come easily, except the most wonderful and mysterious gifts. Every inch of the way has been a struggle, and the extent of progression is not prodigious. But examining myself and my life with my most critical eye, I can honestly say that I never slacked off, and I always tried my hardest to do the right thing in every circumstance. I have never chosen something I believed was a neccessary evil. I have never admitted that there was any such thing as a neccessary evil. I have never compromised my principles. I have always been truthful to others and especially tried to be so toward myself. I have never hated anybody in my life and have never intended harm upon anyone. As for the gifts given me, I can unequivocally say that I did nothing to deserve them, especially my friends and my sisters and brothers. As for the enemies I have made, I can honestly look into my conscience and their wrath and maltreatment and say that I have done nothing to merit that in them either.
I have discerned that although the list of things that I want to change about myself or improve in myself seems to lengthen each year, although I don't believe I will ever feel quite at home in this life and this world, or will ever understand why I was placed here by God, or even concieved of, in His Mind, for that matter, I can go on living with the mystery. I can forgive myself for having lived this life, because it is not really a small life, although it looks that way, to skeptics. I have decided to stop being a skeptic.
I also admit that in my life, I have been unforgiving, hardhearted and acted solely out of anger to one person only, and that person was myself. While in previous years, I was tempted to consider this of little importance, (because it was only myself, after all, who was hurting) I have decided now that that was at the root of every mistake I have ever made and that if left unchecked it could subvert everything good that I wanted toward everything that I love and every goal for which I have worked. Ironically, I seem to be the only person in the world that I would not hug if he needed it. Osama Bin Laden, Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, Nancy Pelosi, Josef Stalin, Margaret Sanger, Vlad the Terrible, Genghis Khan, anyone else, just not me. It seems that in my own past esteem I am only person whose suffering merited indifference. I have now decided that this is not true, that no human being should be hated, not even myself.
So while my list of things I could resolve upon this year are seemingly endless (Get a better job, make more money, be able to afford a doctor and dentist visit, smile more, get more books, make more friends, slim down, get more organized, be more tenacious about what you want, grow in wisdom, sing in church again, pray with more order and consistency and fervor, get married, have kids, get a new hair-do, learn to sew, learn how to cook chicken cordon-bleu...) I have decided that the most important resolution of all, is the one that is the most difficult for me: to hope.
Because my hope has always been hampered by my inability to accept what I do not understand, my inability to forgive myself for my failings, and my lack of emotional conviction that God loves me or truly has a part for me in His plan that is important. Yet, this is precisely the most important thing to believe. It is the grace granted us in absolution in the sacrament of penance, in the mystical union with Christ in the Eucharist, in the miraculous gift of life itself. Hope is not a virtue that come naturally for me (or for anyone for that matter). That is why it is called a theological, an infused, supernatural virtue.
So, this new resolution comes with the truth that this gift, this very resolution, must be prayed for, and accepted as yet another gift from God. The gift of hope in His goodness and His mery and His love, is my central and principle desire for myself this year. As with all other self-imposed commandments that mark each new year with every person, though one tends to think of it as something that one must hold oneself to by sheer will-power, we secretly know that what we call "resolutions" are actually prayers, for ourselves, to the God that gave us that will and that mind with which to say, "This year, I resolve..."
Almost nothing good has come easily, except the most wonderful and mysterious gifts. Every inch of the way has been a struggle, and the extent of progression is not prodigious. But examining myself and my life with my most critical eye, I can honestly say that I never slacked off, and I always tried my hardest to do the right thing in every circumstance. I have never chosen something I believed was a neccessary evil. I have never admitted that there was any such thing as a neccessary evil. I have never compromised my principles. I have always been truthful to others and especially tried to be so toward myself. I have never hated anybody in my life and have never intended harm upon anyone. As for the gifts given me, I can unequivocally say that I did nothing to deserve them, especially my friends and my sisters and brothers. As for the enemies I have made, I can honestly look into my conscience and their wrath and maltreatment and say that I have done nothing to merit that in them either.
I have discerned that although the list of things that I want to change about myself or improve in myself seems to lengthen each year, although I don't believe I will ever feel quite at home in this life and this world, or will ever understand why I was placed here by God, or even concieved of, in His Mind, for that matter, I can go on living with the mystery. I can forgive myself for having lived this life, because it is not really a small life, although it looks that way, to skeptics. I have decided to stop being a skeptic.
I also admit that in my life, I have been unforgiving, hardhearted and acted solely out of anger to one person only, and that person was myself. While in previous years, I was tempted to consider this of little importance, (because it was only myself, after all, who was hurting) I have decided now that that was at the root of every mistake I have ever made and that if left unchecked it could subvert everything good that I wanted toward everything that I love and every goal for which I have worked. Ironically, I seem to be the only person in the world that I would not hug if he needed it. Osama Bin Laden, Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, Nancy Pelosi, Josef Stalin, Margaret Sanger, Vlad the Terrible, Genghis Khan, anyone else, just not me. It seems that in my own past esteem I am only person whose suffering merited indifference. I have now decided that this is not true, that no human being should be hated, not even myself.
So while my list of things I could resolve upon this year are seemingly endless (Get a better job, make more money, be able to afford a doctor and dentist visit, smile more, get more books, make more friends, slim down, get more organized, be more tenacious about what you want, grow in wisdom, sing in church again, pray with more order and consistency and fervor, get married, have kids, get a new hair-do, learn to sew, learn how to cook chicken cordon-bleu...) I have decided that the most important resolution of all, is the one that is the most difficult for me: to hope.
Because my hope has always been hampered by my inability to accept what I do not understand, my inability to forgive myself for my failings, and my lack of emotional conviction that God loves me or truly has a part for me in His plan that is important. Yet, this is precisely the most important thing to believe. It is the grace granted us in absolution in the sacrament of penance, in the mystical union with Christ in the Eucharist, in the miraculous gift of life itself. Hope is not a virtue that come naturally for me (or for anyone for that matter). That is why it is called a theological, an infused, supernatural virtue.
So, this new resolution comes with the truth that this gift, this very resolution, must be prayed for, and accepted as yet another gift from God. The gift of hope in His goodness and His mery and His love, is my central and principle desire for myself this year. As with all other self-imposed commandments that mark each new year with every person, though one tends to think of it as something that one must hold oneself to by sheer will-power, we secretly know that what we call "resolutions" are actually prayers, for ourselves, to the God that gave us that will and that mind with which to say, "This year, I resolve..."
Friday, July 15, 2011
Homesickness
So today I have recieved news and it looks like I am going to get a new place and a new job in a new town. It seems like it has taken such a long struggle for me to get this far. While I am in shock at how blessed I am after such a long haul, I can't help pining in my heart for the small town that I have called home for six years and even more for the dear darling friends and acquaintences I have come to know. I miss all of you so much already.
I am so tired of having to say goodbye to the people that I love. I am trusting, though, that since God seems to have finally answered some of my prayers in the affirmative, that He might say yes to a few more and that His vision of my ultimate Good still will be recognizable to me when I find it.
If home is where your heart is, then there are bits of my heart in so many places and I am still so young. Life is such a prolonged pang of separation. It makes me long all the more for heaven.
I told my youngest sister once that Heaven is a place where there are no more goodbyes. I miss my youngest sister so much at this moment that I can barely breathe.
Dear God, I know in my mind and hope in my heart that You have a great plan for my life, and You know that I have been trying to follow your Will all of my life. You also know that I don't have the strength to do it without You. So please keep sustaining me in existence and helping me not to die of my heartaches, worries, loneliness and old wounds. Please protect me in my work and provide the means so that I can finally be financially safe and free. Please take care of all the people that I love.
I am so tired of having to say goodbye to the people that I love. I am trusting, though, that since God seems to have finally answered some of my prayers in the affirmative, that He might say yes to a few more and that His vision of my ultimate Good still will be recognizable to me when I find it.
If home is where your heart is, then there are bits of my heart in so many places and I am still so young. Life is such a prolonged pang of separation. It makes me long all the more for heaven.
I told my youngest sister once that Heaven is a place where there are no more goodbyes. I miss my youngest sister so much at this moment that I can barely breathe.
Dear God, I know in my mind and hope in my heart that You have a great plan for my life, and You know that I have been trying to follow your Will all of my life. You also know that I don't have the strength to do it without You. So please keep sustaining me in existence and helping me not to die of my heartaches, worries, loneliness and old wounds. Please protect me in my work and provide the means so that I can finally be financially safe and free. Please take care of all the people that I love.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
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