21-Day Sugar Detox -- My First Ever Restricted Diet Done For "The Right Reasons"

My friends tend to freak out at the idea of me doing any sort of restricted diet, since my normal diet tends to involve much restriction and I'm not, let's say, in a condition of excess. But I believe this is the first time I've undertaken a diet for self-care reasons rather than straight deprivation. Why??
Try this on for size: If I'm (1) attached to the familiarity of an old pattern and (2) eating inappropriate foods, I get cut off from my body's innate wisdom. And therefore: My body does have innate wisdom, she knows what is good for her. (Oh how amazing if that could be true!)

I have so many positive associations around fruit. Eating lots of it helped me out of the very lowest point of my anorexia--eating it, but also getting involved in growing, harvesting, and sharing it. I was so much the fruit girl, that's how everyone knew me. And despite all that I came to know and understand about how unnatural fruit is today, I still find myself harboring a Garden of Eden fantasy; I still hold a belief somewhere within me that it's the "perfect"/"highest"/"most righteous/correct" food. And so even after I ate no fruit for a year as I cleansed the worst case of candida my naturopath had ever seen, I gravitated back toward it. And again last year, despite a year of mostly coconut cream which was one of my best years digestion-wise. What's more, the years of fruitarianism mean that my estimation of a serving size for fruit is still potentially inflated.

Back on the fruit this year, I was in trouble. Intense sugar cravings, blood sugar swings. I never used to think of food as a comfort source, and how that evolved in me is for another post, but fruit+sugar cravings was sending me into even sweeter foods; foods that I knew were terrible for me, that made me feel terrible. It's no secret that part of my m.o. is pretty serious calorie restriction. But eating so much sugar when I did eat, I was hungry all the time. So I relied on chewable vitamin C, drink mixes, fasting every other day, and the fasting+lots of fruit sent me into the horrifying unfamiliar territory of binge-purge.
Meanwhile, I couldn't digest anything, couldn't sleep for the stomach pains and nausea, and had such severe bloating, the gas often wouldn't even come out in a colonic session! I was walking around 80-some pounds with a balloon belly. I would read/hear about people who'd gone gluten free, cut out dairy, and were feeling like a million bucks, and I felt like such a victim! Here I was, no gluten or dairy ever, absolutely wretched in my body. And yet at the same time there was a dive into gluten-free cookies here, an energy bar (aka sugary soy) there; even brightly colored sucralose candy one time, to my own disbelief--things I knew made me feel worse and yet somehow felt either entitled to or compelled to. Yes, straight-up sugar, as well as some white grains. In some twisted way I was able to give the cane sugar portion a pass because I haven't historically had a problem with sugar, but cookies made of rice flour? Sometimes with omega-6 oils like sunflower and canola??? My system can barely handle any kind of whole grain, so what's a bunch of finely starchified poison-powder going to do in there?
Even as I felt sorry for myself, part of me had the "sucker" lights lit up. Part of me was calling bullshit. At the MFA program residency, where I had a little less control over food availability and timings, I brought protein powder and gave myself the informal limit of two servings of fruit per day. Two things: I felt much better, and I had godawful sugar cravings, resolving into a couple breakouts into the fruit.
Perfect, then! I knew what I needed to do, and I knew for myself that in order to circumvent self-sabotage, I needed a framework where I'd committed to doing it. Even though I felt completely like myself with the crave and intermittent binge/purge , I knew myself well enough to know that if I laid down a framework, I would comply.

And so, when I heard an interview with Diane Sanfilippo about her 21-Day Sugar Detox a day or two after returning from the MFA residency, I decided it was time.

Stay tuned for my reflections on the twenty-one days!

MOVING--and FUEL

I'm MOVING! That much is obvious from the previous post. And I was naughty--I put a teaser on Facebook about having booked passage on the ferry. But where, when?
The "why" is well known. Living in Alaska has been an unscheduled blessing of opportunity; not one this chilly willy would ever have sought out. I am deeply grateful, but I'm not one of those who came eagerly to Alaska and could never imagine being based anywhere else. My intention when this house-sitting opportunity came to me was that at the end of it, I'd have a destination "Outside."

I'm heading to this country:

The outskirts of Tucson, AZ!
Yay for Israel-like warm weather, gardens and permaculture, a good university, writers, friends--and a lovely couple whose land I'll be living on and whose gardens and heritage poultry birds I'll help out with.

When I bought my car a year ago, I had the fantasy that I would drive away from AK, take the ferry down the Inside Passage, and onward to my new place. Here I come!
When I bought the car--my biggest ever investment in myself aside from going to school--I was also very clear, on this blog and elsewhere, that having a "good" car, ten years old as opposed to a beater, was a declaration of intent to be safe and sound, not marginal, and that the car should symbolize my own bodily vehicle.
My car was at the mechanic's today, getting mileage-appropriate work done, being thoroughly checked over, even little details like replacing the battery in the door opener taken care of.
When my car runs low on gas, I fill it up as soon as I can.

Why is it so much harder to refuel myself?
Guys, it is much harder than gassing up a car. If you leave a car underfueled, as far as I know it'll simply run better once fueled appropriately. When you underfuel a body, the stomach produces less acid because there's less call for it, and the pancreas and intestines produce fewer enzymes. Less stomach acid means nasty things are more likely to survive into the intestines, so infections are more likely. Without the enzymes, digestion doesn't happen smoothly If you're purging by whatever means it increases the chance of inflammation, which leads to water retention and even more dilute acids, and it can appear as if you gained weight fasted so you freak out because your body doesn't seem to be following the laws of physics. On top of all this, you're stressed. And you're probably eating really bizarre concoctions because of what your brain says is okay to eat. So when you do eat, it hurts, it's exhausting, it often leads to pain/gas/bloat; it often seems like too much to deal with, it doesn't feel good, it leads to behaviors that are physically painful and feel out of control.

Yes. All of the above.  But if I tell you that my low energy in recent months may well be largely due to my frequently not making the effort to eat, or getting rid of what I did eat, you would probably say, as they say in Israel, "Good morning, Eliyahu!"

I'm ready and excited to move, and the road trip is an adventure I can't wait to share on this blog. I'm already contacting old friends I may drive by, already eagerly anticipating catching up with some dear ones I haven't seen in years. And I love my car, and my shiny new atlas, and my ferry ticket--but they won't get me there--I need to be fueled and strong and stable. I OWN this! The last week has been better.

Now, consider the gates open. I welcome all your road trip anecdotes, advice, warnings, tales, "never do this"s, suggestions on packing/planning/shipping/how to say farewell to beloved friends here and to Homer that has been such a kind home to me these past few years.

Onward!

"...and your life is in your hands."

When I get a line of poetry going through my head, it's usually for a good reason.
Lately:    voi ch'entrate, and your life is in your hands. -- the final line of Robert Lowell's "The Exile's Return." 
"Voi ch'entrate" is elliptical for Dante's lasciate ogne speranze voi ch'entrate, better known as "abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

And the truth is, I'm staring down a precipice.

But aren't we all, always? I take my life in my hands with every breath. That part was clear. But I didn't understand why I was getting the "abandon hope" part of the quote. Maybe it was just along for the ride.

Thank goodness I've been listening to all the self-empowerment and personal development audios. I listened to Roz Savage, the English lady who left behind her corporate life to follow passion, and has rowed solo across oceans. One of her lessons from aboard boat was don't indulge in hope. My ears pricked up. In the middle of the ocean, in a storm, with a broken oar and a waterlogged radio. hope may lead to paralysis, apathy, and a feeling of disempowerment as you try to replace your initiative and responsibility with wishing and longing.
So, actually, Robert Lowell (and little miz Ela), abandoning hope and acknowledging that your life is in your hands are two arms of the same embrace--embracing personal accountability.

My life is in my hands as I stare down a precipice and as I check my hope at the door. 
I'm learning so much right now, rediscovering my urge and delight in creative writing and translating, and throwing myself down the rabbit hole of a whole new endeavor, learning and being coached to run a business. In my ripe old age, I'm finally learning about finances! I'm finally bringing myself into participation (one of the reasons I first started this blog, participation) in one of the most potent and ubiquitous means of circulation.
And it's uncanny how well what I'm learning about business fits in with many of the spiritual/personal development changes I've been working on. I'm looking forward to sharing more detail on that.
But there is also a demand for unflinching honesty. If you're going to lay out resources you don't have, you'd better be very clear about where you're borrowing it from, and on what terms. Things have to match up. 

I have a mismatch. I'm excited, optimistic, engaged. I feel really good. And/but--I feel really good despite... When I say or think x is really good despite... is usually when something's about to go awry. But really, I feel okay. And yet, it was wisdom to decide not to go to the writers' conference at the end of this month because I'm not at the top of my notch. But I'm feeling okay! But objective markers of measurement would insist I'm not okay. And there's such a mismatch, I can hardly believe it even standing on two different scales, even getting feedback from people I trust.

Now would be an extremely inconvenient time to have to go away to treatment. But I'm back at the point of being told it's go away by choice or else I'll lose the choice.
I'm finding this pretty difficult to digest. It makes going off and studying up on LLC paperwork seem relatively easy.
And my life is in my hands.

In the Ears of the Hearer, In the Eyes of the Beholder; Five Paradoxes of Self Development; One Intention

Why do I see an elephant in the desert?

Work has been a little slow, although I have a lot of rusty German to brush up with a new translation project just revving into gear. Meanwhile, I've been swimming in an ocean of teleseminars/webinars/summits/start-the-year guidance. I've finished my critical paper for my MFA, and am revising the thesis and contemplating what it will mean to have that qualification. It's always been about the process, not the product; but part of being and becoming a writer is, of course, producing a body of work.
Which is why I'm writing a second blog post this week--I've been intending to go back up to two or three posts per week instead of one for some time now, and it's time to put my fingers where my intentions are.
According to one of the wise teachers I listened to this past week, an African proverb says

While you are praying, move your feet.

Set the intention, open your heart, believe in yourself, give your subconscious the experience that your desired outcome is already in existence, pray, ask the angels for help, pay attention to your dreams...

and act.

It's my belief that we see and hear what we believe in, and also that we see and hear exactly what we need to see and hear in order to shift our beliefs. (Otherwise, why would we see elephants in the desert?) If that's a paradox, here are four more from the wisdom I've been absorbing:

1.  Say "yes" to what the universe offers you   OR   You must know when to say "no" to what's offered
2. Talk about your intentions and recruit other people to broadcast them to the universe   OR   Don't talk about the intentions; don't give naysayers the chance to pull you back
3. Set many intentions for the year  OR  Set one or two intentions every month   OR  Set one or two intentions on your birthday   OR  Don't set intentions at all
4. Only you know what is true for you; tune in and listen to your inner voice   OR   If your best thinking isn't getting you where you wish, get some good help/hire a coach

I'm in transition right now. Coming to the end of my time in Alaska, but not yet knowing where to next, or when. Nearly finished with my MFA, with no six-figure book contract or tenure-track position in sight nor solicited. 

I'm also the smallest I've been in close to ten years, less than when I went away in 2012. I feel better than I did then, though, so I'm still musing over whether it's truly an issue in my current transition.

One intention I do want to put out there, though, is that I intend to produce more than I consume.

It isn't my plan to accomplish that merely through minimal food consumption! 

My intention is--more beauty, more joy, more sharing, more dreams, more giving, more receiving, more learning but more teaching too, more excellence, more love, more blog posts--MORE!

So there's a bonus paradox for you.

Watch out for another post soon in which I'll share some commonalities in all the different wisdom I've been absorbing. Oh, and check out the Future of Nutrition Conference, starting Monday January 27, in which I expect a plethora of paradoxes, since nutrition thinkers from all sides of the spectrum are going to be giving of their best--55 of them!

Love and Light in ears and eyes.

Choosing Housemates and Guests

Fresh fruit in Alaskan winter feels like a decadent blessing--notice the date on the plate, which seems more reasonable; notice the snake on the plate.

There's turmeric brought back from England, too, like the last time I went. Last time I brought turmeric back it was the harbinger of hard times for me physically, and the same again now, or worse. So many scientific studies are bogus because they claim, for example, that cholesterol causes heart disease, confounding correlation "a happens when b happens" with causation "in the presence of/because of b, you get a." Today's lesson. Returning from England with turmeric and having my weight/food relationship in free fall have happened together twice now, but that does not mean the one causes the other. There is a much bigger picture to be taken into account. Lots of other fruit on the plate--and the snake.

This has been such a rich week in terms of Internet-based offerings in the setting intentions/personal development arena. I could have listened to great audios all day every day. And there's still more to come! We've had intention setting, nutrition, manifestation, sacred journaling, yoga... Next week, there's The Future of Nutrition Conference, with five days of talks--the first four days twelve talks on the hour EST (I guess I'll be waking up early), the fifth day "only" eight. I'm always relieved that they offer 24-hour replays in case anything's actually going on, you know, in my "real" lift. I'm looking forward to this one because there's a dizzying array of nutrition experts, from low-fat vegan promoters to paleo dieters, from raw vegans to low carbers. I love the opportunity to listen to such a spectrum of views in short order; it enables me to note commonalities, spot fallacies, notice what I'm attracted to.
I've been taking notes on the other summits/webinars, and  I'll share some in my next post.

I'm grateful to have had those guests into my temporary home. They're ephemeral visitors, my sojourn here is temporary, and yet listening to them has offered me some modes for creating stability.

Another guest I had in this house was less welcome: a mouse. Having lived in the jungle with rats and centipedes and biting ants in the bed, you'd think mice would be no big deal to me. But man, I was so upset! Last summer I had a serious mouse problem in the small-dark-room living situation I had then. They got into my stored food--I'd inadvertently left some nuts and other mouse-attractants in plastic bags instead of glass jars. But the little buggers ate into my bag of cinnamon, my nori sheets, my spirulina, and other things I'd never have guessed a mouse would eat! Between the damp/dark/smell/irritation, I guess I grew some antipathy back then. 

There was only one mouse, and I chose to expel it from this space; I didn't want it as a room mate. But ever since it was here, I've been seeing mice everywhere! Moving shadows, my hair in my peripheral vision, passing hallucinations...all mice!
My wise mom told me once, "If you have unwanted guests, don't entertain them, and they will leave." There's nothing lying around for a mouse to eat here. Not even the phantom mice.

Here are the housemates I did choose. I mentioned sprouts before. I now have some little clover greens, one or two milk thistles, sunflower sprouts. They struggle in the yellowish light here, reaching eagerly and leggily toward it. I love how the sunflower sprouts loop up, still with that black seed cap on their dicot leaves, hands clasped in prayer.

I was sat on a chair beside this table, writing, and heard the sort of soft-fall noise that usually startles me and is sometimes hallucinatory. It was the sound of one of those sunflower husks dropping from a sprout, the liberated leaves opening out. Hello, hallowed.

Gut Feelings--No More Eating To Please

Just at the four week mark in England, heading to Israel tomorrow; I finished translating Alpha this morning! And sent in the final portion of my second packet of this year's MFA work (i.e. thesis and critical paper work). Doesn't it always feel good to have some closure before a trip?
For a little more closure, since I'm burning the candle hard at both ends anyway, the promised post on some food stuff that isn't going away (yet?)
You'd think--I keep thinking--that a light bulb will go off and I'll have it all figured out and have created a sustainable, simple, failsafe way to fuel my physical existence in this world and perhaps even understand that this is necessary as a prerequisite to other things.

But just as I failed to find one single "bottom", the light bulb moment is elusive too, and I keep bobbing around the same old gyre. That said, my current problem is a result of having tried something "new" but finding it led back to "same old." Since getting out of the hospital--two months now, yay!--I'd been trying to eat a variety of foods rather than living mostly on coconut milk. This meant experimenting with legumes and gluten free grains, and even, via an ill-advised purchase of a marked-down-gluten-free boxed brownie mix, with some refined flour and sugar in the dynamite medium of chocolate. Oh, my proclivity for marked down goods! Always gets me in trouble. And then I allowed my mum to get me similar gluten free packaged goods to sample over here. I learned that my body, like most bodies, is susceptible to addiction to the chocolate/sugar combination, and suffered much guilt and painful cravings even while being able to taste the essential emptiness of that food.. 
I continued with the illusion that my body could cope with these foods...
And even relaxed my ban on sucralose so I could have good old English ginger beer in the zero calorie version.

This ginger beer is from Sainsbury's; the "diet" versions from two other supermarkets I looked at had barley malt in the ingredients! Diet soda that isn't gluten free?! Aside from the sucralose, the above picture has two other issues. The enormous amount of liquid recalls a flagging of massive liquid consumption as ominous in a post of about 18 months ago. And, well, the diet product. Um, of course it's reasonable for me to try the products over here and see what they're like, right? It's quite good, incidentally.
I got sick. Not from the sucralose--so far that seems okay. From the food, from expanding my palette and kidding myself that I could handle a broader range of foods. There were two days in the past week that I basically couldn't do anything, except some translating, and was just in abject pain all through the inside of my body. I've had to scale the variety way back and to accept that I have to be super careful. Even relying heavily on charcoal and silica gel and enzymes, if I have one bite too many I am in agony. I already mentioned using tons of charcoal a little while back, but I wasn't yet ready then to face that the things I was choosing to eat were simply making me sick.
So, no I can't just eat anything gluten free and be okay. And I can't just go out to eat and trust I won't get sick if I order something I know will work. And no I can't just eat more of something because it tastes good. I was doing quite a bit of "eating to please" also, and can't do that anymore. Whether my gut issues are a result of having celiac or are created/exacerbated by the history of self starvation is a moot point at this stage, and saying a person can go gung ho on all kinds of foods in the interests of "recovery" or of fitting in with other people is misguided if there are genuine problems, even if getting sick doesn't happen immediately.
If you have gut permeability issues, they can preclude good digestion even if you're not getting symptoms of indigestion. Inflammation will build up, until you're confronted with it harshly as I was last week, and as I could have avoided being by laying off grains, legumes, and refined sugar also. Since sucralose is sucrose with the hydrogen bonds replaced with chlorine, it's pretty likely it could penetrate a leaky gut in a not-so-nice way, so I should probably reconsider the ginger beer and (unpictured) energy drinks.
Duh, right?! A light bulb turning off and on like a fireworks display--can't I just keep it on and act on the realization?
The best part is that my mum has undertaken to remind me not to eat "too much", which will be a welcome contrast from her expressing concern over whether I've eaten "enough".
Ugh, I don't love talking about food! Do you hate me talking about food? It's good to have this under awareness before we go to Israel, since the food is so fantastic and tempting there. I'm relieved to be back on the straight and narrow, and to have overridden the "eat to please" imperative, to have headed back to more bearable ways to deal with the problem that generally, eating tends to beget eating.

And Finally...

Final Prompts from HWAMC:

 You made it! 30 posts in 30 days! Today, write a recap of your experience. What was your favorite prompt? Least favorite? What have you learned?
 Describe your HAWMC experience in one word!

Recap: April has been an extremely transitional and often uncomfortable month. I transitioned away from two months of dog-sitting in a comfortable, large, somewhat remote home. My grandmother, who is very important to me, died--age 93 and ailing, but suddenly nonetheless--and I found myself dropping everything, including an enormous amount of money, and flying to Israel. Then I returned to AK, spent less than two weeks alone in the water-less cabin that has been my home for several years and is no longer, and thence out to Athens, GA, where I am now. Even without the extra trip provided by those few days off my meds, the month has been a whirligig of displacement, recollection, keen emotion, and uncertainty for the future. Nonetheless, there have been some glimmers of optimism toward that future also. 

Additionally, I finally got my own domain and started this wordpress blog, as I'd been talking about doing for about two years, thinking I'd have time this month to learn/teach myself how to do all sorts of things to make it just how I wanted it, as well as migrating the original blog over here.

Was I crazy? I don't even have my blogroll in my dashboard, let alone the comments set up, such a big reason for me to move... -- But therein lies much of what I've learned in this month. Life is full of ironies, and:

• No matter how pretty or not-pretty it looks, the blog comes with me everywhere.
• Sometimes having a prompt helped get me to write a post even when the day was basically over; other times the prompt was a turn-off to my creativity.
• Paradoxically, I think I may have lost readers during this process. I don't think anyone has come over to my blog from HAWMC either. Paradoxically, I'm not feeling too hurt right now. As I breathe life into this new blog, I draw on my new sensitivity to and understanding of audience/readership and feel I'm honing it even when I suspect no one's reading at all and 24 out of the 24 comments I receive are spam trying to make my nonexistent readers buy sunglasses, solar panels, or penises.
• Despite being a constant companion, my blog hasn't taken over my life, not remotely. But I think I only skipped one day the whole month, this past Sunday, despite all that long-haul travel.
• I'm learning how to talk frankly and openly about having bipolar disorder and beginning to recognize that if I am willing to be frank and open, my eloquence as a writer may turn out helpful to others. May turn out to be helpful to me, too!
• I'm (back) in the "Well, I don't really have anorexia" frame of mind. Do you think I do?

Prompts: I liked the "day to day" prompt because of how it invited us to look at our conditions integrated into the rest of the world and life, as they in fact are. Adversity the day before got me going, so perhaps I liked it in that sense. I didn't like the prompts about social media and making compilations of those. I'm simply too ignorant.

The HAWMC experience in one word? Sidewinder.

Acrostics, HAWMC 12

See this also at  http://ulteriorharmony.org/blog/2013/04/13/acrostics-hawmc-home-again/ 

Hey, this is super late, isn't it? I've gone from having early posts to having late posts. Because I just got home to Homer this night, and it's weird. I haven't slept in this cabin for well over two months, am going to have to reacclimate to outhouse/hauling water. I'm a little wired and tweaked.

 Write a health acrostic for your condition, hashtag, or username! (acrostic = a poem where every letter of a word serves as the first letter of a word or phrase)

Funny story--in middle school, we had just started playing lacrosse. A few weeks later in English class we did acrostics. The next day, someone who hadn't been paying attention was getting grilled. Among other things, she was demanded to define an acrostic. She said "It's a stick you play on the field with." I can never hear the word acrostic without thinking of that. But what the heck word do I choose as my acrostic word? Which condition? Or which part of my formal scroll of diagnosis?

Alien in this body, alien in this world, I said

No                                                                                                                                                 

Over and over, too much or too many of me, too                                                                   

Rowdy, too much body; I said Alien no body,                                                                       

Evanescent, ever at the point of                                                                                                  

eXit through the liminal cell-gate to become                                                                              

Illuminated, illusory, not limited by physical positioning                                                          

Acting without favor or appetite

Because sometimes I am huge hugening the world and other times                                         

I am suffocated under the world contracting down from outside me                                   

Perhaps one day I'll learn to quit                                                                                         

Opposing pole with pole; stall at                                                                                                 

Luminous liminal cell-gate                                                                                                   

Acting without favor or appetite, all fall stall                                                                         

Ravishing evanescence.

And I'm going to leave it at that because otherwise I'll get up and do something dangerous.

HWAMC #12 Hindsight

Enjoy this post at  http://ulteriorharmony.org/blog/2013/04/12/hawmc-12-hindsight/ ‎

 If you could go back in time and talk to yourself on the day of diagnosis, what would you say?
 What have you learned about being a patient that has surprised you most?        GO!

The response to either of these can be the same, on a certain understanding of "diagnosis."

Here it is: They've got your number, Ela. You might believe it's the wrong number, predicated on their system from which you wish to be a fugitive except in the case of incipient organ failure. You might not want to be reduced to a number. But the same number will keep coming up whenever you encounter "their system." Does that consistency tell you something? And listen up: here's the second part. Some of what they offer up is actually going to be helpful to you.

Yes, "they" "got their hands on me" when I turned myself in with incipient organ failure, couldn't stand up again after I got there, etc IVs in nonexistent veins etc no blood pressure etc ng tube etc... But within a couple days they had diagnostic paperwork for bipolar, and also for borderline, that they wanted me to look at to see if I might confess to one or book myself into the other. I was so mad, I wouldn't even glance at either one. All I wanted was for them to stand me back up on my feet and let me out so I could carry on not-eating, driving dangerously, climbing walls, etc. Three more months of treatment didn't do much to change that, but the realization did eventually dawn that if I wanted to be part of society in any broader or more universal way, I needed to be more than just barely on my feet. Howling/Haoleing in the Hawaiian jungle is fine for a while, but I want to be able to offer more.

So, what would I whisper in the ear of the frightened, angry, sad, very sick younger me in that hospital bed? I'd tell her that not only did these people, these "they," mean well (which she sort of understood already); they actually have some techniques and chemistries that really will help me. That if she'd opened those diagnostics and allowed these people who knew her so little to know her better, they might have offered more appropriate medications rather than blundering around with SSRIs and antipsychotics and making her even more scared of and disbelieving in medications, so that she might have had ways to feel better much sooner in her life. That diagnosis can actually be a relief, and a means to self-knowledge.

But I'd also tell her she's pretty much right about the inefficacy of anorexia treatment. She's not always going to be able to stay out of treatment, and there will be times when she stays out and really should be in. She should confess to herself that as ghastly as treatment centers are, there's a part of her that actually likes the safety and camaraderie of the experience, and she shouldn't beat up on herself for that ambivalence. I'd tell her she needs to decide very consciously how she wants to be about food and body, and should accept that that whole part of life will be tripping her up for ever, just as it always had. She needs to know that when not-eating becomes a full-time job, there's not much left to life and people turn away. She needs to know how to manage so that she's just being tripped up, rather than hovering close to death.

They got your number, a compound number, and it doesn't go away. But they are not evil, and can actually help.

HAWMC and Social Networking

Prompt #11:                                                                                                                                             Write about your favorite social network. Do you love Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest? Why?

Apologies at the beginning--my English  is all tangled up...

I confess I'm grateful for the "push" to contribute to my blog daily, glad of the sense of regular putting out (and output) in this topsy-turvy time--my homeward journey, in which I regain the eleven lost hours and, if I make the two tight connections, get to Anchorage by the middle of Friday, starts this evening--but I also confess this is not one of my favorite prompts. The alternate prompt to the one I've featured required extolling one's favorite iPhone app related to our health condition. Well, I'm sure some helpful stuff will come out of that. And I actually have an iPhone and really appreciate it. However, most of my life I have lived far behind the technological leading edge and know very well what it's like to live in a society that expects you to have a certain technology and predicates everything on that state of entitled possession. So everyone has a cellphone, so suddenly no one can make a precise plan for where to meet. You don't have a cellphone and came all the way from another town, and it's "call when you get there," but everyone has a cellphone, right, so no one bothers to repair the payphones when they're out of order, so then what do you do? Wheedle passers-by for a quick call?

I'm just leery of focusing health activism on something so specific, not available to everyone by any means...and what about apps for other smartphones anyway?

Of course, if we get into branding, we're on the path all the way back to whether I'm an anorexic bipolar or a witch or a saint in the making, since I'm sure there are arguments that our diagnostic terms are brands of their own.

Anyway, I haven't had my iPhone long enough to explore all the wonderland it offers. As for social networks, the only one I really have spent time with is Facebook, so that'll have to be my pick. I like it first of all because I was invited to join (years ago) by a very dear real-life friend who had moved far away, and the core of my large base of friends is composed of dear real-life friends who are far away. That depth of contact/connection makes the experience real, sincere, and personal. The few FB friends with whom I don't have a strong personal connection are either friends of friends or are people from whom I can learn or with whom I might be able to share something.

The more I give Twitter my attention the more I like it. I can learn so much more, and share so much and do so much. I'm relatively new to it. Thanks to the HAWMC last year, I have a Pinterest account, but that's the extent of it. I'm not visual. And ze ma yesh...

Nu yalla chev're. N'daber b'karov...

Brain on the Fritz -- HAWMC 7

 Say WHAT!? What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve heard about health or your condition?
Where did you hear it and what did you think?

Well, lots of options here! I think I'll leave the anorexia comments alone this time, as anyone could think them up--from s/he just needs to snap out of it to it's all about the fashion industry to it's purely a result of undiagnosed food allergies to no one with  anorexia really has food allergies, they just cut everything out and end up with oversensitive systems, which situation reverses if they're crammed with bland and calorie-dense pabulum for months... OK, so I mentioned a bunch.

But perhaps the most surprising thing I heard about bipolar disorder was actually at an ED treatment center, and said by a psychiatrist. The fact that he said the exact same thing about PTSD makes it even a little more suspect to me. He said bipolar disorder consists of seizures in the brain. That the brain simply goes on the fritz and causes the bipolar behaviors. I'm not sure how that plays out when bipolar behavior consists of being depressed for a year; I guess it's easier to see when someone's charging around being manic. It's true, some of the medications most commonly used for bipolar disorder were initially classified as anti-seizure medications. But that doesn't mean seizures are all they treat (think taking aspirin as a blood thinner, and many other examples).
The part of this that makes me chuckle is that this psychiatrist eventually said to me, in exasperation, "You just need to stop doing crazy things!!"

HAWMC Wordless Wednesday

Black and white with a splash of red barely noticeable. A bag with all you need just upstream of you. Light awaits your squeeze out of the hole. You took off your mitten and left it off and will freeze your hand. 
Must be skinny to be able to squeeze into and out of small spaces. Hides in small dark spaces. Give birth to yourself repeatedly through the dark tunnel back and forth. Black and white and red and always shades of other colors shed by the light.
Can't just leave a simple picture because words are where life resides.

HAWMC #2--Witch Diagnosis; Diagnoses Culturally Mediated

So. HAWMC Day Two. The beat goes on. However, I might be on my way to Israel and if so, I may not have sufficiently reliable internet access to keep the beat going every day I'm gone. And (should I be ashamed about this?) I haven't had/won't have time to prewrite all the posts I can't write on the day. I plead special circumstances.

Today’s Prompts: (I picked one)

• Introduce your condition(s) to other Health Activists. What are 5 things you want them to know about your condition/your activism?

I shared yesterday that I'm just coming into realization that using my writing for health activism is part of my life-responsibility. I also shared that the simple salt, Lithium Carbonate, has been a salvation for me. The fact that it's helped me so much suggests I have a condition for which it's a specific.

Sooo?

Five hundred years ago, I'd have been diagnosed as a witch, or else a saint. I'd have spun weird herbal spells, lived on weird broths of herbal twigs, flown on broomsticks, raved and then eaten worms and lurked in a cave far from humanity. Or I'd have borne self-inflicted stigmata, fallen down in faints and seen visions, receiving the voices of the divine, temptation of the devil, given food away away away to the poor but refused to eat anything besides Holy Communion. 

I'd have died young (as I expected to in this life), either burned for witchcraft or expired from malnourishment or disguised suicide through religious ecstasy.

Today, under the aegis of modern medicine, I'm diagnosed (with the full ceremonial title) Bipolar 1, Mixed Type, Psychotic Features, with the comorbidity Anorexia Nervosa. 

As a surgeon who stitched me up said, that's quite a moniker to have attached to someone.

Five things I want people to know (spread over two conditions):

(1) As shown above, diagnosis is predicated on the age in which we live. 

(2) However, today's medications can work. Example: today is the first time I've experienced a grandparent dying when I've been on lithium. (My grandmother was the last to go.) And my reaction has been very different this time. I feel how her death affects me and my mother. And my relationship with my mother. I feel how my other relatives are feeling, and her carer who lived with her the last few years. I'm happy she died suddenly and quickly, but I feel a huge sense of loss. With my other grandparents, I was glad for them and their peaceful departures, but even with my other grandmother, whose bed I was standing beside when she died, I didn't feel anything. 

I can't explain this in terms of maturity--when my other grandmother died, I was in my mid-twenties--nor in terms of closeness--my other grandmother lived next door to us for several years! In addition, the flavor of empathy I feel for myself and for my relatives is a certain connection I only became aware of after getting on lithium.

(3) Many anorectics don't care about their appearance at all but paradoxically desperately want/need to be thinner than everyone else, feel competitive with other anorectics. Even I, appearance-oblivious as I am, have sometimes had those feelings, and there are few things of which I'm more ashamed.

(4) I can't have kids. Sometimes I have a death wish that causes me to do dangerous things impulsively. I have almost died several times, and people whom I care about in many different places I've lived have been in stressful fear of my life many times. I haven't been able to finish or curate things I care about. I have a trail of personas, domiciles, vocations I've spun away from; the only thing persistent throughout has been way-with-words. On the other hand--I was in the top of my class at Oxford University, while playing classical music at a very high level.  I passed all my PhD exams first time at Berkeley, which hadn't been done in the department memory. Why I didn't complete (haven't yet completed) the doctorate is another question for another day. But I learn fast. Especially when words and language are involved, but versatility involves quick learning and just from looking at all the places I've lived you couldn't say I'm not versatile.
The good news: I have found ways to work meaningfully without having to be within the conventional framework, which I wouldn't be able to hold down.

(5) Despite (4), and especially with the help of meds and therapy, those of us with these conditions can learn to do better, be less crazy, less depressed, find a sustainable nutrition strategy. It's called condition management and it means things like making sure one gets regular and adequate sleep (like I haven't been doing), having good relationships, taking medications regularly, eating properly. It may include the odd hospitalization or ER visit, but please see that as part of the learning process. And I for one am not going to be offended if a friend of mine encourages me to manage my condition, whether by reminding me to get sleep or just by talking and listening. I find it harder to talk about food and eating, but I am trying to be more open to doing so.

Another Perspective on Sharing Suffering

It's been so long since I last posted--again! That outflow onto the beach that I pictured bearded with ice a week or so ago...

...is now shorn of snow and flowing freely.

As should I be, I can't help but feeling.
I don't know what's preventing me from writing more here.
It's true, I'm not settled on where "here" is right now. I've been talking about migrating this blog and changing its appearance for months now. The superficial blogger-internal face-lift I've given it recently seems only to have rendered it buggier and less user-friendly (user-unfriendlier?) so I may undo that.
And the blog displacement and stagnating migration intent are only highly convenient metaphors for what's going on in my own life at the moment.
I did just see 22:22:22 on March 22, which should have told me it's time to get ready for bed, but it made me superstitiously happy and excited to write at least "something." I do have a pretty neat photos post almost ready to go, too.
But the truth is, I had far too much work this past week. And my faculties seem to be diminished and less than equal to overburdened weeks. Apprehension of loss of my own particular brilliance on which I've always been able to rely has rammed me further into the posthole of despair, the tunnel stopped at one end.
Manic seems such a long way away, and meds only make the posthole tunnel less deep and final.
And I confess it's been so long since I've eaten or drunk anything without accompanying punishing nausea and pain, I'm starting to drive myself crazy with the frantic mental scrabblings of what I might add in or (more likely) take out of my diet. And this without "indiscretions" or castor oil punishments for well over a week.

I can't see the woods for the words, as I am saying a lot at the moment (quoting myself from a half-written poem). But I am recognizing how right my wonderful naturopath is in emphasizing that words can be my salvation. As I've been trying to think through my creative thesis for my MFA--it really is coming to that time already!--and suffering through everything I laid out above and many other life stresses, which make it harder to focus, I found a path by meditating on words. Passion is a tense of "suffering," and compassion (from Latin) or sympathy (from Greek) mean suffering together, sharing the experience. But if you choose to be a victim of your suffering, your passion, you are christ on the cross, excruciated, a grand and solo passion that can only be venerated or turned away from in pity and horror.
In other words, I need to acknowledge my sufferings as normal for someone in my circumstances rather than thinking of them as extraordinary and specific to me (even if my behaviors sometimes exacerbate the pain)--and then I can write about them in such a way that my readers will see themselves and suffer together--sympathize. Without the possibility of sympathy, what I write will be alienating; the crucified figure left alone in a desert place, the paradox of standing out when no one can bear to look. (After I came out of my worst period of anorexia seven or eight years ago, which was beyond excruciating for anyone who had to be around me, let alone for me, some friends and colleagues came up to me and shared that they had had to look away during that time; watching me die was too much to bear. The book of my life unreadable.)
I am learning to write a book for companions (sharers of sustenance) and compatients (sharers in suffering).

How to Accomplish More Than You Think Possible in a Short Time

Especially for those of us in school, whether teaching or studying, or both, at this season temporal movement seems reversed: we take tiny steps, making scant forward progress, while the Holidays hurtle toward us, leaving ever less space while our string of tasks remains just as long, starts to overstretch the space remaining.

What do you do when your list, as whittled down to essentials as you can make it, still doesn't fit in the space? 
Either: You have to find a way to fold that string of tasks in half, or coil it up, squish it down, so that you're taking care of more than one thing at a time.
Or: You have to burn through the tasks at a higher rate, so that you do things one at a time, but faster than you ever had reason to believe yourself capable of.

With the "folding the string in half" method, you could take a blog post and turn it into an essay for your "packet" that's due on Christmas Eve, so that the single thought/observation fuels two separate pieces of writing. Or make up one huge base of chocolate from which to make several different goodies. Or, if you're really pushed for time, don't make the chocolate from scratch, and make simpler goodies!

With the "burning through at a higher rate," you're essentially speeding up time from your own end. The Holidays, or whatever deadline, are speeding toward you; you speed up to meet it. You're not defeated by time!
That's exactly what I recently did to meet my Ultimatum. And not because I was smart about it--I wasn't in a condition to be smart at that point. I was fading out. I overcame time out of necessity, because I'd left what I had to do until the last minute. I had around a week, and even with some fudging with clothes and food, I needed to gain more than a pound a day (2-3pounds per week is what's considered safe). I'd lost time, thinking the race was already lost. My biggest message? 
To overcome the inevitable, you have to go against everything you normally swear by.
I could write "weight loss tips" for the rest of my life, no doubt--without even thinking, those behaviors are what I do around food. So, for that week or so, I did the opposite of my usual self every possible time. Three cups of coconut cream a day no skimping. Full-calorie almond milk as well, chocolate flavored because you like that flavor better and it has more calories. In smoothies, with all the smoothie fixings in proper serving sizes, not the usual pinches. Rice cracker instead of carrot. Dip on cracker instead of naked carrot. Some substantial starch with the veggies, not veggies alone. With some sort of heavy sauce on top. Full? Eat some more. About to lose the whole lot? Back off, wait. Think you can hold some more down? Eat it. Drinking? Drink something caloric. Green powder in juice, not water. What are you doing putting stevia in your tea? Put something caloric, like honey. Oh yes you are going to eat dessert, and you're going to eat a brownie, not half a square of 90% cocoa chocolate that keeps you going all afternoon. Yes, you never eat at night. Well then, have a snack before you head up the ladder. Yes, you don't like an early breakfast. OK so drink mango juice that you never let yourself drink and don't dilute it and drink lots and then make breakfast. 
Big time-defeater: calories per bite. Yes, apples are healthier than gluten free cookies, and yes, a big apple is substantial. And yes, I prefer apples to gluten free cookies. But I can't deny that the latter are much easier to eat, for more calories per bite, and they don't keep me chewing for minutes so if I overcome my horror, I can eat far more of them at a sitting. Calories per bite, and frequency of ingestion of calorie dense items. 
Not just counter to my usual practice, but horrifying to my sensibilities. And once I'm out of my comfort zone, I can find unlikely allies.
Potato chips! Eww?! Usually I eat them once or twice a year, and regret it ferociously. The regret stems partly from my aesthetic attitude toward the chips (recrimination, self-flagellation), and largely from the fact that they always leave me with a stomach ache. At this point, though? I have a permanent stomach ache anyway, can't even lie flat at night. Bring 'em on! Loads of calories, take up very little stomach space, easy to each. And the oil and salt were actually somewhat stomach-calming. I showed up for Phil's birthday party already reflux-stuffed, wondering how I'd eat anything, afraid people would think I still wasn't eating. Getting into the potato chips in the appetizers enabled me to eat not only a bunch of the chips themselves but a proper meal, with dessert (in a bigger serving than I could comprehend), also. Potato chips became my friend. 
And now I know, too, that salty and oily food could help an upset stomach. Avocado and nori, anyone?
One thing I didn't do was eat anything I'm actually allergic to, like gluten, or highly intolerant of (and opposed to in principle) like dairy, as that would have undermined the effort. 
Finally, I left nothing to chance. I took the scale with me when I went to my appointment. It's a four hour drive to Anchorage at least, and I know long drives are dehydrating. Thank goodness I did.

So, I turned over on its head all my ordinary behaviors and ate as much as I could, as often as I could. I left nothing to chance, and I utilized some fudging to finesse and ensure success. 

(Edited to add one more important thing blown out of my head with the arrival of unexpected guests:) -- During that "push to exceed the possible" period, I did not keep my eye on the goal. It would have been fatal to do so--I was trying to accomplish something I thought was impossible! I stepped on the scale a couple days in, and my weight had gone down (hypermetabolism), obliterating some of the progress. There was temptation to give up right there, or to use this as a goad to try even harder. I had to drive from my head that this was Monday and my appointment was Friday and there was still so far to go. I had to rescale my map so that Friday didn't even fit on the screen, and look no farther than the next calorie-dense bite. I knew when the appointment was; my psyche was suffused with that consciousness. No need to keep breaking focus by looking at your watch.

As a writer? Instead of going out and out and out to get more experience, I should sit down alone in the loft all afternoon and write, without stimuli everywhere. Instead of catching snippets of my life work, stuffing them in my thought-pocket and hoping I'll remember them among the dust bunnies, I should grab my pen the instant those thoughts come, and get them down, and nudge them farther. Reverse old patterns. Know that I can get something done in far less time than I think. And when I'm writing for a deadline, sit there and write, and write, and write. Zoom in so close that the deadline doesn't even appear on my thought-horizon. I know when the deadline is; my psyche is suffused with that consciousness. No need to keep breaking focus by looking at your watch.

One last thought, before I go off to ponder further the metaphor of my eating sprint-a-thon as applied to writing: It was a sprint, and it was a reversal of the normal. As a result, it was unsustainable. Very quickly, I was drawn back to my old habits. Everything has too many calories again and I have no appetite. But if I go back down, we're straight back to where I was a mere few weeks ago, except possibly worse. So while it's unsustainable, the scenario that forced the sprint is fresh enough in my mind that I remember why I had to sprint. Maybe I can be better organized in other aspects of life too.

Meanwhile, I just hand-grated a whole pound of cacao butter to inaugurate my annual goodie-making extravaganza. Some things I really prefer to make from scratch.

But I have the powdered sugar and all that stuff ready too for those who prefer that!

Candles, Chanukah, Turning the Gaze Toward

It was the first day of Chanukah when I decided to go wrestle with a poem instead of getting my blog post up. Actually, by then it was the second day, courtesy of our being so far to the left of whence time is measured. (Day teeters into day.) It's still the second day under my fingers here and now, but in Israel they're well into the third. (Day unto day uttereth...what kind of speech?)

What I loved most about Chanukah as a kid was the candle-lighting -- how the candle for each of the eight days was on the stand, even if it would remain unlit till the last day, how the candles for the earliest days burned farther down, with blacker wicks, than the pristine latecomers...best of all, though, was the shamash: the ninth candle without which none of the candles would be alight; the candle that wasn't even counted, that didn't have its day, but that you could hold alight in your hand, and pass on light to others. Shamash is server, but to me, shamash was the one who got to work all the magic. I wanted to be that one! (Day unto day, light unto light.)

from: http://socialtimes.com/

Back in England, I was familiar with Chanukah, Christmas, Diwali, Eid-ul-Fitr (that one was puzzling to me, because my Arabic-speaking Israeli grandmother calls every holiday "Eid," including those at the opposite end of the year). From my reading of novels set in Roman times, such as Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth, I knew then about the pagan Yule festival too. I loved the synergy between all these religions, that each held a festival of lights around the same time each year, although it did not yet occur to me to wonder why places like India, with far less dark, needed a festival of lights, or whether the southern hemisphere needed to have these in June. (The candle passes from faith to faith to faith.)

And yes, all these faiths, and secular non-faiths too, use candles not only as naked, direct light in darkness, but also as a drawing-in of energy and attention; the visual equivalent of a ringing bell.

I now don't know why it made me so happy, as a little kid, to feel assured that all religions were ultimately the same act of praise to the same God. I don't know why, rather than studying the matter deeply and seeking how to bring people back together, I chose instead to turn my face away when I began to learn of all the divisions among believers, among humans. So many cherished beliefs are shattered in the teens.

The tailspin from which I'm now emerging is the most malignant phase in an attitude of steadfast turning away, toward passage into a different plane of existence entirely. As I emerge, dodging shame; as I accept the various crutches of lifestyle, medication, friendships, foods, upon which I have to lean, I begin to gaze into candlelight, trataka meditation. Gazing into the light, feeling the air around me fill with sound beyond my ears' own ringing, I think of my family in Israel, where it is tomorrow; of who I was yesterday, of how candles and festivals and hand-holding across race and creed and space show those subtle connections, those ulterior harmonies, that might just win out over being separate, heads turned away.

Sunt Lacrima Rerum -- Always in Season

Three times in the past three weeks. On Monday, it was around "sixteen-one thousand" in my litany, standing on one leg in front of the cop car; my car in the ditch, eleven below zero. The day before, it was seeing Tom and Jeanie's movie for the first time since Lucas died. A couple weeks before that, it was being unable to remember a friend's phone number as I continued in the downward spiral now thankfully reversed.

Sunt lacrima rerum, says Vergil. Literally, "There are tears for things." As humans, with human experiences we have tears.

I find myself seasonal like the Nile in this. At times, I don't cry for months on end. Other times, I cry nonstop. At the treatment centers this summer it got to be embarrassing at times--I'd say my goal for the day was not to cry, and would be crying twenty minutes later. But until these past few weeks, I hadn't cried since getting out of treatment.

I accept my small bouts of weeping with gratitude, an opportunity to allow some balance in the water table. Laughter's similarly seasonal. Lately, I've found myself laughing more, where it had stopped pretty much entirely. I welcome small bouts of laughter. Why not laugh a little, weep a little, every day? Why can't the grace of being moved by life be an everyday nourishment?

As a writer, I wish to make myself laugh and cry every day as I engage with the wonder of the universe. To make others laugh and cry also. If I can't find it within myself, I can read and watch movies to educate me and make up the deficit as I laugh and cry (I am so far deficient in film education, and am grateful every time I watch a single film to fill the gap a little).

The obvious metaphor: I have gone from habitually eating almost nothing to eating everything I could hold and more, for an ultimatum. One whole week later, the barren season beckons with siren song; the complications of appetite strike fear. Why can't daily nourishment be part of a full life, like tears and laughter, and the ecstatic connectedness to which they are a response?

Tears, laughter, adequate and appropriate sustenance. May they always be in season.