the other day i was sitting in my bed, smelling my new ikea lingonberry candle, stomach full of “swedish” cinnamon rolls. and i started shaking a bit.
my whole body was buzzing, not even from my new-found caffeine addiction.
or high fructose corn syrup lovingly dolloped atop the cinnamon rolls.
i was just so overcome with how fantastic everything is.
realizing that my limbs aren’t just there to look nice is always an interesting lesson. realizing that, when i was seventeen, i never could relate to any of the “real girl” models in seventeen magazine and being okay with it. they never had tips that suited my short pixie hair cuts that i gave myself in my garage on particularly humid floridian afternoons in july (and again when i was nineteen, whoops). all i can think about is how cool it is that my hair is just a bunch of long strands of dead protein.
realizing that the body does really cool things like convert just-eaten bananas to muscle and energy (i mean, it’s much more than that. but i digress) is far more fascinating than finding out what size pants your friend wears at forever 21 (and to those girls who actually inquire about your friends’ sizes, i just.. ijustdon’tunderstandyou).
to be quite frank, i’d much rather have my legs covered by my favorite pair of bike shorts on their way to a place they’ve never been before. or covered in mud. god, i could write a whole novel about how much i like mud and getting muddy. or stained by the grass. or sticky with accidental cherry-red popsicle stains from an intermission at contra dancing. my body does cool things every second of the day. even when i’m sleeping.
a few weekends ago i had the pleasure of biking the boston marathon route at midnight. my old roommate remarked half way through the ride, “man, mackenzie. you have very nice, long legs.” at first i was flattered. and then i wanted to say, “these legs just biked thirteen mile. that’s not the point?!” but then i stifled myself because i like to keep my angry fire breathing feminist dragon at bay. and because my mother always taught me to take a compliment.
it’s taken me a while to get to this point. it’s taken a lot of listening to regina spektor’s “folding chair” on repeat to solidify this idea that a perfect body is one that has eyelashes to catch sweat. it’s taken a lot of eye-opening eve ensler ted talks like this one to realize that twenty year olds don’t need to feel bad about upper arm jiggle because it allows them to converse or relate with other twenty year old girls. i just want to shake those girls and say “your legs and torso GOT you to this clothing store. isn’t that amazing?!” to become disembodied from your own body is the saddest thing you can ever let happen. because really, i don’t even know what size i wear at forever 21, so why should you?
my body enjoys at least two cups of half-caf iced instant coffee a day with soy creamer. it doesn’t mind the feel and the history of thrifted clothing. it feels coziest on electric blankets, on a road bike going across the mass ave. bridge, and on my wooded floor when i have the time for my “diy-mani-pedi-’twilight zone’-viewing-hour”. it thrives off of new linguistic factoids, a new library book, a new route. if it could be described as any piece of clothing that i own, my body would be my knee-high mustard-colored boots.
it’s not here to look good. that’s not the point.
“one grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.
one not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.
one fine day.”
-lawrence ferlinghetti, recipe for happiness in khaborovsk or anyplace.
-jan owen, the return.
“oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much”
-frank o’hara.
listening to laura marling on repeat. especially this jam. and this one.
going on the this website and getting lost for a few hours. i don’t know how people can waste so much time scrolling through tumblr when this website exists.
wearing the flats my big brother picked me out for christmas, all silvery and bow’d and perfectly sized for my monster feet.
the rustle of the green line trains underneath my chair.
bright green peacoat and happy scarf, all nestled in my favorite part of the library that overlooks the common. on a friday afternoon, when it’s less social, more quiet, more conducive to listening to my favorite sub-genre of music, “pissed off english chicks”, and entering writing contests.
i am the happiness. this is my spot.
“the campus, an academy of trees,
under which some hand, the wind’s i guess,
had scattered the pale light
of thousands of spring beauties,
petals stained with pink veins;
secret, blooming for themselves.
we sat among them.
your long fingers, thin body,
and long bones of improbable genius;
some scattered gene as kafka must have had.
your deep voice, this passing dust of miracles.
that simple that was myself, half conscious,
as though each moment was a page
where words appeared; the bent hammer of the type
struck against the moving ribbon.
the light air, the restless leaves;
the ripple of time warped by our longing.
there, as if we were painted
by some unknown impressionist.”
-ruth stone, in the next galaxy.
{valti and i, renfrew. 2005. }
for a long time after i left remuda, i never wanted to be tied back to my stay there. i had my t-shirt, my internal battle scars, and that’s all i wanted. i didn’t want to be “that girl with an eating disorder”, because i knew how they had been misperceived as “vain”, immature, or attention-seeking. once i finally gave myself permission as a human being to eat what i wanted, a long and arduous battle of the wits, i tried as hard as i could to distance myself further from that persona that i knew the people from my past distantly remembered.
i threw out my long-standing vegetarianism in high school and went to haiti with my church youth group to haiti, ate goat and fresh caught lobster with gusto, and prided myself on my “insatiable” appetite. i wore clothes that made me feel comfortable, not cute, or attention-seeking. baggy button downs and stretchy jeans became my mainstays and they helped me feign comfort with myself. i forced myself to eat a lot on first dates with guys because i never wanted them to think i was insecure about how i looked. i slowly but surely became comfortable with myself, but not after feigning it for a year or two. i made bad jokes often. i forced myself to dance around campus and blow bubbles during lunch time (true story. i was so “manic pixie dream girl” that it was kind of disgusting). i was trying to throw everybody off the scent that i might have spent my entire freshman year of high school devising ways to hide food with a feeding tube shoved down my nose.
until now. because i realize more than even that now, as a recovered anorexic, to turn my back on those who aren’t recovered. to withhold my story of how i eventually got better was intensely selfish. when i was in treatment, it was so predominant how little you heard of recovered girls and boys who had passed through the doors of the treatment center. you might hear one or two success stories, but they always had a tinge of a “eh, it’s only a matter of time before they relapse” at the end of them. no happily ever afters involving being able to go to buffets and not have a panic attack. no images of eating cake without sobbing an hour later. when those things are totally possible. i realized that if i could confidently eat a plate of fried goat in the house of a haitian pastor, and risotto with a smile on my face and a question of what was for dessert, that others could too. as the girl who found herself hiding her head in couch cushions rather than interacting with others for fun, i knew that yelling my story from the mountain tops was not only needed, but essential.
i can now say with confidence that i am not afraid of being associated with my eating disorder now, five years after my last relapse. it’s a part of my life that is great in the past tense, as it should be. but i’m not afraid of telling my story in the present tense. because it’s true. and because it will always be there, but that doesn’t mean it should be swept underneath a rug. that’s an insult to all the girls who haven’t heard enough success stories. when people find out that i suffered from anorexia, they always seem shocked. “wow, you just seem so confident and comfortable,” they’d say. and that is true to an extent. i am confident, because i don’t think there is any other way to think of yourself other than the number one advocate of yourself. and i’m comfortable because i surround myself with comfortable people, and we cheer each other on. and in a way, i sort of find myself wanting for people to remember that i went through that part of my life. i want them to see that yes, i did pride myself over how little i could eat. and yes, i couldn’t stand for more than five minutes sometimes without fainting.
i want something entirely different to be what they deduce from meeting me. not that i am the furthest point away from a girl with an eating disorder, but that i am someone who grew off of that eating disorder. to look at me now, look at what a scared, little anorexic girl can be.
