The Walk

I took a walk tonight. I’d been sitting in the big puffy chair of my living room all afternoon alternately reading and napping. Hours went by and I did actually finish the book that my book club will be discussing tomorrow. The Painted Veil. It is a book that I have read before, but am glad to read again and this time with a group of people since there is so much to think and talk about in this book. So, after hours spent in that chair it felt like a good idea to go for a walk –a short one as the daylight hours are so much shorter already. I started walking in my neighborhood and then saw what looked like a church steeple ahead and I thought it would be fun to walk to the church and see more of the building. I was surprised that it was a Catholic church – surprised because there are several in this area of town, in fact, a large and prestigious one not too far away. I decided to run up the steps, try the doors, and if the church was open, to sit down and perhaps pray for a little while. The doors were locked and so I got it into my head to run up and down the steps of the church 5 times. I had Modest Mouse playing on my iPod and I did it, quickly and easily. Not that I wasn’t out of breath a bit, but I felt powerful and vital and proud to be out there with my body, taking up space and being active.

That may have been about the time that I got the idea to walk over to the Seattle University campus. It struck me that it would be a good destination for the walk, an interesting place to discover, and once there, a spot to sit, reflect and heal. In February I broke up with someone I’d been dating for about seven months. It was excruciatingly painful, and the months that have followed have been a complicated mix of despair, reawakening, hope, exploration, sorrow, new choices, loneliness, and exhaustion. Oh, and a period of just plain old depression in there as well.

Reading The Painted Veil today I was struck by how well the author portrays the faults of a seductive male character. The woman who loves him discovers over time how selfish, cowardly, and cruel he is – and one of these scenes is chilling to read. I am struck by Somerset Maugham’s ability to capture the way in which her heart holds both an honest appraisal of his character – she is able to despise him after coming to terms with his true character - and a continued longing for him. Time passes and the longing seems to have completely disappeared, and then it suddenly reappears even in the midst of her clarity of sight and strength of voice.

I wanted to walk on the Seattle University campus this evening because that is where my ex-boyfriend works. Today is a Saturday so there would be no chance of running into him. That was not the point, although I had a line in my head that I would not have minded delivering: “I have forgiven you, I still love you, and yet I really dislike you.” I rather hoped that I might be able to walk and find a spot on the grounds where I could take a seat and reflect and pray and perhaps let go of another morsel or so of anger and sorrow. To encounter another wave of forgiveness and healing.

I overshot the campus a little bit, and actually bypassed the section where he works, so the spot I had in mind I had to let go. I kept walking the campus though, and made my way to the Chapel of St. Ignatius, a wonderfully designed space for worship and prayer. The chapel offers thick, carved glass windows, panels of colored glass that bring different hues to the chapel based on the time of day, and intriguing sculptures. I find the chapel beautiful and I particularly love it for its prayer room. The room has at its center a large branch suspended from the ceiling. A lantern hangs from the end of the branch, attached by many thin, black chains. Why so many chains, I found myself wondering this evening. A curious marble box also sits in the middle of the room. The box features a small, pretty little lock and some kind of light emanates from the box. I find these objects interesting, but the walls of this room are the draw for me. Someone wallpapered these walls with some kind of thick, textured paper. It makes me think of a cast on an arm. After applying wallpaper, the designer then dripped wax down all the walls. I see layer upon layer of dripped wax and I picture candles lit in prayer. When I step into this room I feel as though it is a record of the countless prayers lifted to God century upon century by people of every color. I feel surrounded by heartache and desire and faith.

Tonight I made my way to this chapel and this strange prayer room, then sat to pray. I was aware in that space of how much I still love a man who was cowardly and cruel in his own way, a way that often looked like kindness. I still feel hurt by him, and I still fantasize from time to time that he will be sorry and want to seek my forgiveness. In my prayers I tried to confess that and release that striving for a different resolution. I also laid bare my loneliness and desire before God. Sitting in that room of wax-testimony prayers, I thought of Hannah coming to the temple and pleading with God to honor her heart-stricken desire for a child. I thought of Mary’s grief upon seeing her son wrenched from life and nailed to a tree.

You have been acquainted with grief, oh Lord, you have walked amongst us and known the sting of love. You have heard the voices of women raised in profound longing, looking to you to answer the desires of their hearts. My voice joins theirs, and I ask you to bring your compassionate presence closer to me, and to kindle my faith so that I do not fail to imagine that love may arrive again.

On Freedom

I’ve had much to think about since the Red Mango incident chronicled below. Someone asked me if I am in the habit of celebrating good decisions, the little victories experienced in this drama of mine with food. I had told him about different ways my compulsions play out, and how huge the conflict feels in the moment. He wondered aloud if I ever stopped after a good choice and celebrated that achievement. “Of course not,” I thought to myself, “because the good choice is just what any normal person ought to do—its not some great feat or spectacular accomplishment. Hooray for me, I didn’t keep eating after reaching fullness!” Yet, I heard the kind invitation in his voice to recognize that though something like stopping when full might be a comparatively simple thing next to climbing Mount Everest or taking the Oscar for Best Actress or inventing a vaccine to cure AIDS, for me, at this stage in my life, stopping when full is a significant shift in practice.

So I am looking now to integrate celebration into the rhythm of my life, to find ways to remind myself that this journey is going somewhere, that change is happening, and that I can gain confidence as I watch myself make different choices. Perhaps adults aren’t as different from children as we think. Good parenting isn’t only about discipline; it is also about celebrating successes. I am parenting myself these days, integrating new disciplines and stopping to take joy in the moments when I choose well. There is something playful and alive about this new orientation. I’ve now been practicing yoga for about two months; I’m also blogging and learning to knit. What?! Sometimes I think, “Who is this woman, picking up these new interests, keeping herself in a space where growth and flourishing have the potential to be more a part of her life?” Oh, that’s me!

The same friend who encouraged me to celebrate good choices listened to me as I talked about the drama that plays out for me when I go to a restaurant on my own. At first it seems like a fun reward, to end a yoga session with an outing to the Mexican restaurant down the street. However, once I get there I find myself pouring over the menu looking for the right thing to order. This takes much time and energy. When the food arrives I can tell it is more than I need and then I start an intense inner dialogue about whether to plan to eat half of it or three-quarters, and if it’s three-quarters, won’t that feel like an odd amount to box up, but then it’s wasteful to just leave it and will half be enough… It may be that going to a restaurant on my own is almost like a test of myself. Will I make it through this time with just the right amount of food, or will I cave and push the limits of my body and give in to the drama? The stakes are so high, so I’m withdrawing for a time from the contest. I’m taking a manageable time frame (two weeks) and I am committing to myself to not eat out on my own on weeknights, and to do so only once on the weekend. I am a single woman, and going out to eat, or picking something up on a Tuesday night after work seems so much easier than heading home to cook alone, eat alone, and clean up alone. This is a significant pledge.

So, celebration time. I have finished my first week and I have not eaten out or ordered in any of the week nights. Hurrah! I really did it and it wasn’t very painful! Last weekend, it didn’t even feel important to have my one meal out and so instead of going to a restaurant I stopped by a Red Mango store – yes, Red Mango at last – and had a small serving with fresh fruit. It was delicious and I enjoyed it and it was just the right amount and at a point when my stomach needed a little something to tide it over. It was enough, and I was glad to discover that.

Yesterday I was driving home from brunch at a friend’s house and it occurred to me that it was Saturday and that meant that I now had license to have a meal outside my home. I could go anywhere I wanted and choose which meal of the weekend to make my excursion meal. An odd thing happened. No, I’m not going to say that it suddenly didn’t seem that important. What I realized was that something like panic started to flare up. What would I choose, out of so many choices? How would I navigate the field of food options? That’s when I realized how much anxiety I had spared myself by choosing to avoid eating out during the week. My energies had gone elsewhere, and to good effect. I had been more available to interactions with others, working out, reading, and enjoying time at home.

So I find myself kicking around some beginning thoughts on freedom. As I’ve stepped into facing this drama of mine with food, I’ve been so afraid of losing freedom. I’ve been rebelling against something all this time and any suggestion of taking serious measures to change behavior gets me twitching. I was able to take on this latest experiment with weeknight eating habits because I only had to commit to two weeks at a time, and the weekend is still available for a meal outside my home. It is so natural to think of freedom as the permission to have whatever one wants, to live without restraint. Yet given the fiercely circling anxieties in my life around food, right now restraint feels like freedom: freedom from self-contests, experiments with will power, the juggling of fantasy and reality. Freedom to breathe, pursue kinder activities, rest. The freedom to celebrate a better integration of my mind, my soul, and this beautiful, extraordinary body of mine.

Can discipline be freedom?

To Bed, Without any Red Mango

I am beside myself. I just left the outdoor mall where Red Mango is now in business, but without any Red Mango to enjoy. This is not a real crisis; the Red Mango store just opened up and will likely be there for several months at least, and the mall is no more than 15 minutes from home, so I can easily stop by some time when I am hungry and craving frozen yoghurt. However, there is a voice crying out inside me, a voice not unlike that of a young child being dragged away from the toy she discovered in the store and wants to take home, has to take home, because it is the only toy she will ever want. The thing is, I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t hungry and so there was no reason for Red Mango, even if I had spotted it a little earlier in the afternoon and been anticipating a visit for frozen yoghurt and interesting toppings. I wasn’t hungry.

I compulsively eat. It may not be a daily thing, but I have some regular patterns, and one of them seems to be a determination to avoid being deprived of whatever wonderful food-centered moment has captured my imagination. Sometimes I am reading a novel and someone with an eating disorder is featured and two things happen, my back starts to tense up and at the same time I lean into the words, hoping to find myself in this character, to find an author who can speak with insight into what drives a woman to eat in unhealthy ways. Invariably though I find someone whose habits are extreme (eating an entire pizza), or whose cravings are centered on Oreos and doughnuts. I will occasionally really want an Oreo, more often a doughnut. These are not at the center of my compulsions though. My compulsions are often less about the actual food and more about the promise of a perfect, delightful moment. Somehow in my mind it is food that makes an occasion special.

Yesterday I finally went to the zoo after planning to go for some time. I’d never been to the zoo in town and I thought it would be fun to start doing some exploring of my own city – to play tourist. It was a great idea – an outing that would involve exploring bus options, seeing flamingoes, re-connecting with my city. However, as I started thinking about a trip to the zoo my mind quickly went to the potential street food and special snacks I could pick up between visits to the elephants and the orangutans. The zoo would be fun, but the zoo topped with great zoo food would be even better! A good part of my anticipation of a visit to the zoo was related to the opportunity to stop at carts and themed-huts and get what?....a hot dog perhaps, a Nutty Buddy, gosh, I don’t even really know what I was expecting, but in my mind it would be some kind of wonderful indulgence in whatever magical items would be open to me. I finally got to the zoo and soon noticed the food pavilion just inside the gates. I wasn’t hungry, so I headed straight for the flamingoes, making a mental note of the pavilion so I could come back and pick up food and get out a book and maybe lounge for awhile at a table in the sun. When it came time for lunch and I was actually hungry, nothing greasy or cheesy or accompanied by fries appealed to me. What I really wanted was something healthy. Here I was surrounded by ice cream and chili dogs and nachos and lasagna and none of them appealed to me. The very pavilion struck me as sad. Where was this great food moment I thought I was going to have? I settled for a chicken sandwich and a large Diet Pepsi. I decided I could back later for ice cream when that would appeal to me – after more animals.

Shortly after the raptors I came across a food hut and picked up a frozen fruit bar, passing up the ice cream sandwich and the Day-Glo push-up treat, after walking past the Mexican fries, popcorn and sausage and onions. The fruit bar seemed like the perfect choice, and it was wonderful, with real whole strawberries. Savored while looking at the wallabies. Besides, I would top of the day by riding the bus to Madrona where I could stop at Cupcake Royal and get a wonderful buttercream topped little cake. I would read and eat a cupcake and then when hungry for dinner, walk across the street to the pub for a beer and fish and chips? A hamburger? Whatever would strike my mood in the moment. In the end there was no cupcake (the bakery ran out) and a friend called and invited me to get Thai with her. In the end I still ate too much pad see iew, so I can’t claim it as a day of nothing but healthy choices. It was, however, a day of multiple good choices and more exercise than I usually get on a Saturday. I was kinder to my body than usual.

And today I was also kind, though it felt so costly. I turned the corner and found the Red Mango store open. Finally. I had walked past it numerous times this summer while it was still being built. Now it was open. I was hungry for lunch, and frozen yoghurt wasn’t exactly lunch food so I instantly came up with a plan. I would get a light lunch, curl up in a big puffy chair at Barnes and Noble to read for an hour or so, and then stop at Red Mango. It would be a great day! I had the lunch and felt full, too full even to want to get a free refill of Diet Coke. I threw the cup away and ran my next few errands. I then walked through the entire Barnes and Noble and couldn’t find an available comfortable chair. I made do with a bench and realized my back was hurting. It was time to leave. That forced a decision: go home, still full and without Red Mango, or get Red Mango and eat in spite of not being hungry just so I could fulfill the food fantasy I had constructed for the afternoon. It was a huge dilemma, stirring misery as I moved more and more toward a decision that would involve walking away from the Red Mango. I don’t know how long this pattern has been going on, this pattern of food being so central to a sense of occasion, the difficulty in walking away from something as simple as a dish of frozen yoghurt. I would imagine it has been with me for a long time and now I’m beginning to face it. It is as though I fear being deprived, not just of the food but also of the magic moment I build up in my mind centered around that food. More is involved than a food fantasy, close on its heels arises the anxiety that catches me in a drama of whether, this time, I will choose wisely or not. The stakes escalate, the decision is of maximum importance and finally I say, “Fuck it! I can’t believe I’m stressing out over this!” I would estimate that 9 times out of 10 in this circumstance, damning the anxiety that is making my life so crazy – over such a ridiculous decision! – I go for the extra food, or the greasy food, or the food that will give me a stomach ache because it is not what my body needs. In a strange, bizarre way, it is my self-critique that leads to permission to overeat. That self-critique can be so cruel, so rigid and then in its face I call it rigid and “free” myself from its tyranny. Eating becomes an act of freedom, an act of a will that refuses to cower before anxiety.

Compulsive behavior is complex. This is a piece of my story with food, a piece of my struggle. This is what compulsive eating looks like in my life. I think things are beginning to change and that gives me hope, but I’ll take your prayers.

Bird v. Woman

Recently I woke up at 5:45 in the morning, on a Saturday. I woke because I heard a sound in my house. My roommate was away and I was alone, so my mind raced to thoughts of an intruder. Not just one intruder actually, but multiple. Multiple drug-addicted thieves who had finally entered my house, having left it and me unharmed for a whole year. It was finally happening. I lay paralyzed in bed, listening for more noise, and after a few minutes I could hear something moving in the bedroom next door. It did occur to me that perhaps Susan had come home, stopped in to pick something up and because of the early hour had determined it best not to call and let me know that she would be in the house. That could be it. But I was fairly certain that the noise I was hearing was not coming from Susan. I heard the sound of window blinds and began to wonder if some kind of animal was on her window sill. I knew she had left her windows open so that there would be fresh air even in her absence. Perhaps it was a squirrel standing on the sill and rustling the blinds a little.

That is a much better image to have in one’s mind than an image of drug-addicted thieves ransacking one’s home, going room by room and collecting DVD players, iPods, silverware, and whatever else they havethe inclination to take. Much better to have a squirrel on one’s sill, and yet such an image is far less compelling and so I returned to the thieves and the fury that I was about to awaken in them as I caught them in the act. Before I could get out of bed and stumble upon their illegal activity, I would have to come to terms with my wardrobe situation. I was in a nightgown, a simple black knit nightgown with spaghetti straps. Nothing overtly sexy, something simple and practical, stopping just above the knee. To step out of my bedroom in that would probably invite rape, I told myself. If one catches robbers in the act they will be furious and they will turn on a nightgown wearing innocent woman and commit rape. “No,” I said to myself, “I cannot think that. To think that runs counter to what I believe as a feminist. One does not asked to be raped. They may be just a bit more aware that I am a woman if I am wearing a nightgown, but I am no more complicit in my own attack than if I were wearing pajamas.” When one has drug-addicted robbers in one’s home, this kind of internal deconstruction is important. It is best to clarify what you truly believe before walking into certain rape and murder. Or so I believe.

I managed to return to the squirrel possibility, talking myself out of the murderous thieves scenario, and finally stepped out of my bed. I walked into the other room and quickly saw the trouble. A bird had flown into the room and gotten stuck between the window pane and the blinds and my presence in the room was causing the bird a great deal of anxiety. It started flapping its wings like crazy, only getting them tangled in the blinds. I was horrified. All I could think of was the Hitchcock movie The Birds. I ran out of the room and closed the door. If nothing else I would at least contain its flight pattern. The last thing I wanted was some half-crazed bird flying about the house.

I called 911 and they quickly…yes, I really called 911. I know you think I’m crazy – really, I know you think this, because every time I tell this story to someone they interrupt me and say something like, “No! You didn’t really call 911?!” I guess I figured that if firemen were always getting cats out of trees surely one of them could come over to the home of a nightgown wearing woman with a bird stuck in her roommate’s bedroom. And so I called 911 and they quickly informed me that this was not the sort of thing they get involved with. But they were kind enough to ask about the size of the bird and when I told them I thought it could be a crow they sounded alarmed and found me a phone number for a wildlife rescue agency. I called the agency. I called my landlord and I called my mom. No one answered the phone – it was after all, only 6 in the morning on a Saturday. I was beside myself. I had no idea how to get that bird out – and it was big! Not just a little sparrow, but a big bird, only slightly smaller than a pigeon. If I did not get it out it could potentially die in that room. It would die and it would start to rot unless I picked it up. But if I went to pick it up I would no doubt discover that it was actually still alive and it would flap and peck at me and send distressed calls out and other birds would be alerted and they would come, enraged, entering my home and attacking me in order to avenge this bird’s inevitable death. All the more reason to just leave it up there I guess, locked in the room, taking all the time it needed to die quietly. But then it would rot, and there would be maggots to deal with and that was just more than I was ready to take on. Once again, I found the motivation to move.

I went outside to assess the predicament from the lawn and there was the bird trying, trying, trying to fly through the glass window. (No, I was not still in my nightgown.) It was perched in the middle of the window, on the upper frame of the lower pane of glass. It stood there, not realizing that it needed to drop down to get to the opening of the window where it could fly out. It would spread its wings, get them caught in the blinds, start to panic and then bang its beak against the glass, trying to fly through the window. Then it would grow still and stay still for a couple minutes. And then, once again, it would open its wings, get caught, get panicked, and try to fly through a section of the window just a little to the left. Then it would grow still again. Over and over again the bird repeated this pattern.

I stood there shaking my head and I started to cry a little. I cried, not because I pitied the bird and its predicament. I cried because it just felt like such a frustrating fresh proof of my singleness. I couldn't turn to a husband to take care of this for me – this was mine to deal with – this big freaked out bird that would probably fly right into my face if I got near it and then I'd look like that guy in the movie who got his eyes pecked out by the dreadful, malicious birds. So I stood there and prayed to God. I prayed, “If you care about this bird, and if you care about me, could you please usher this bird out of the window? I think that would be a really good, concrete demonstration of your love for me.” I waited a few minutes. Then I added to my original prayer, saying that it would be okay if help came in a human form, perhaps some stranger walking down the street, or my landlord. God did not actually need to whisper to the bird and create a full-fledged miracle. And then it occurred to me that maybe I was that human form. I was not pleased at that prospect. It did not strike me as a profound realization. I was not amused.

So I opened the garage, picked up a plastic rake with a nice long handle, headed upstairs, and put on my protective clothing. What protective clothing? Well, that would be jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. I drew the strings of the sweatshirt tight around my face and put on my glasses. I opened the bedroom door and the bird started freaking out. I let it settle down and then slowly advanced with the rake and from halfway across the room, used its prongs to grab the bottom of the blinds and lift them away from the window so the bird could move its wings. The bird was agitated for a few seconds and then started moving from one side of its perch to the other, pacing the length of the window. It did not think about dropping down – it was still focused on the pane of glass in front of it, still trying to poke through it, no doubt dizzy from all the times it had already banged its head against the glass. And I rolled my eyes and thought, “God, come on, please get this bird to go out!” I simpered and pleased with God. Minutes went by and my arms started getting tired from holding the rake and I started trying to figure out what else I could do. Should I try to use the rake to shoo it out? What if I accidentally hit it, and hit it hard, either killing it or getting it really upset? What if I were to get closer and it started flying around the small room, shitting all over the place?

Finally, I opted to start bringing the blinds back closer to the bird, and I think what happened was that the blinds kind of bumped his head and the bird got frightened and it slipped off its perch and kind of dropped further down the window and then suddenly it found the opening and was out of the house. With me repeating over and over again, “Oh, God, please let it get out. Oh, God please, let it get out.”

And if I haven’t already given you proof that my mind is a very strange one, let me now tell you that in the middle of getting really angry with the bird for still trying to fly through the glass even after I’d made the way clear – in the midst of becoming more and more distressed that this bird was never going to get out, I thought, “This would actually make for a good sermon illustration. I've got some holes in my sermon for tomorrow and this is just the thing I could use." It’s true. Exhausted, fearful, anxious to have that bird out of my house, I was struck by the image of that bird continually striking the window over and over again, trying to fly through it no matter how many times it had failed to be able to do so before. And I was struck by my own likeness to that bird, unable to see another way within reach, unable to imagine anything more than the perch I’m on and the bit of world that I can see immediately in front of me. I need out – I need freedom, and surely the way out is right before me, but it’s not working, so I try again and again and hope for a different result. Until someone else comes, makes a way, perhaps even knocks me off my perch so that I can see the world before me differently and discover an open window to fly through. And that is where I am today, off my perch, robbed of my "necessary" pane of glass, and trying to sniff out the open spot that is surely not too distant.

Today...

Today I am cross
Bereft of hope
Impatient and weary of others.
Today I am done with dogs underfoot
Things to be done
People to watch out for
Responses to offer up -
Expected responses, thoughtful responses.
Today I crawl into myself, retreating, though
My body stays with others and
I stay in the conversation
Barely.
Tonight I am still angry and as I give myself the gentle space
In which to be angry
I find that I am, above all things,
Sad.
And so I weep
Without knowing why, I weep.
And that is the kindness that this evening
I allow myself.
I am cross and I am unspeakably kind
Tonight.