maybe being a writer - even if it doesn't define you career wise - but feeling as though you are a writer - will be a constant tension. knowing that you have to perceive, for the materials necessary to create, means you have to be actively living. not just alive, but living. and yet, writing is a way of living. but it takes time away from the other life. the time when you could be mindless, unproductive, distracted, free. the time when you can turn off, see the world, feel the world but not try to memorize it for text.
my reason for becoming healthier was always to gain time. if my thoughts weren't consumed by image hating, what could my thoughts be focused on? i will go out on a limb here and say most females, at some point in their youth, experience this obsessive compulsive thinking, analyzing, idealizing, predicting around a certain "love/crush interest". this figure consumes one's thoughts - he becomes the topic of conversation with friends - one asks for help - one feels discouraged - one lets him decide who she is - and in all this confusion one forgets herself - she changes the way she sees herself.
unfortunately that was an extremely loose fleshing out, but i have no brain at the moment. my point is that i, too, experienced that. more than once, many times. it took up space in my mind and time with my friends. it helped me derive meaning. but then, one day having never consciously realized, i became aware that i had stopped worrying about my relationships with men, that it never seemed to be a problem, that it never was an issue larger than myself. it was what it was. i was confident and had no qualms. and if anything i was indifferent to needing to make it a problem. because i knew how easy and free it was meant to be.
my weight issue being less and less of...well...an "issue" and the above not being a "problem" all have showed me how our internal manifestations determine us to a degree and for a time being. we are committed to our thoughts more than to our actions. my goal with weight is what i have seen happen with my experiences with men. i am able to write about them intimately, but still at an emotional distance. i understand what can be conveyed (beyond my own experiences) but i am not attached to them. I AM NOT MAKING SENSE. basically, i enjoy writing the complications of a romance - the tension between physicality and intimacy - the disconnect - desire - rawness - the crude - the unspoken within a romance.
but i can only do this because i am not pained by my experiences, or at least not any longer. i see them as moments worthy of being shown bare and pulled apart.
i want this from my relationship with weight as well. i want to see it separate from myself. i want who i was then separate from who i am trying to be today. i want to be able to be critical. but more than that, i want to be able to give the character credit. i want some how to love who that person is. i want to write about weight only if i can show readers that haven't suffered from an eating disorder, the amount of willpower and determination those that have had to have. how the intention is for the outside to be hated, so one can begin to understand what it truly is that is worthy of love, admiration, praise.
it's complicated and i still don't think i am close to giving a character with an image-disorder the credit s/he deserves. i could philosophize it but i couldn't let myself dive blindly into the psychology. i couldn't feel about it yet. although the image and the body are truly metaphors for romance.
i try not to say i "hate" things, but i will say i am appalled by females on facebook that write all over their pictures and/or friend's photographs what a "thinspo" they are (thin inspiration) or how they "look like a 12 year old boy" or "omg you are so thin, i'm fat!" or "drugs are bad" the comments go on and on. i think it is unfortunate how people want to spotlight themselves like this - how they choose to represent superficiality, willing - how they are absolutely missing the mark. i never lost half my body to look like i was "important" and doing drugs at clubs, drinking only champagne. i never lost half my body so i could laugh and call myself a 12 year old boy because my vertebrae was showing through my dress. those things happened because i got two forms of attention 1) being called "thinspo" by a hundred naive girls 2) being yelled after and asked to leave restaurants because i looked like a diseased little boy.
the difference is i never said those things about myself. i never was my own cheerleader, raising pompoms for anorexic cheer. and our generation does. they think it is a chic to loose their period for six months because they are malnourished. they are inspiring themselves and others - other "friends" - to be sick, as well. i have such difficulty grasping any of it - and i still have difficulty sympathizing with them or me for falling victim to its potency.
at some point, i think i will try and collect as many comments i received as i can and go from there. they are shocking but importantly, real. and in a way, it does the writing for me. i don't have to feel so much. or at least all at once.
12.01.06chelsea, we've admired you all along not because of how you look or how you dress but because of you who you are. so many people love the way you write and i for one, love your sincerity and your love for culture and your interest in seeking out the things you love and having dreams. something that has helped me is the realization that when it comes down to it, your mind and your personality and your confidence make up who you are. that is the...essence, if you will, of a human being. just remember that as years go on, we may get wrinkles, we may get wider, we may turn into the polar opposite of our youth. but at least our minds will still be the same. and everyone will still treat us the same way. and if they don't, then.... why would we want to be around a person like that? i really truly believe that one day you're going to be famous for your mind, (and not your body) and that's the one thing to be proud of the most.12.02.06i was at the union sq green market today and had a really great conversation with the lady who every week sells me the most delicious scones and what i have found to be the best french bread in the city. we were talking about how hard it was to buy a baguette because if youre one person eating alone, it gets stale quite quickly. she suggested sharing it with a friend, and it said id love to... if only my friends ate carbs! it was then when she admitted to me that anorexia had taken 10 years of her life. ten years she felt were wasted. ten years when she could have been experiencing all the pleasures living in our world had to offer. ten years when she could have been eating these incredible scones and being truly happy with just being. we only live once, she said.my response: beautiful story. i think about it a lot. all the richness that i am lucky enough to partake in, but don't. i have this intense love that i am capable of experiencing - and want to - but have been scared of knowing. i think it does go back to the fact that i wanted hardship. i thought i deserved it. i knew it, in some form at some time. when i no longer had it in one area, i replaced it in another. soon enough you have to accept the beauty in not looking for problems. not looking for the hardship to breed character. an honest smile would probably be my most provocative work. not pain, not regret, and not holding back from the availability of my honest desires.12.05.06its really scary living up to our full potential. bc it is only then when we are the most exposed to the world and to failure.andits really scary being happy, because we think... then what? the scariest part of letting ourselves be truly happy is the alternative to that--if we're truly happy, if we are fortunate enough to know what that is, we can't always be... and we'll have to then experience true unhappiness as well. and thats a scary thought.i dont know if that made sense, but its something ive been dealing with this school year as well (not food issues, friend issues). while doubt and fear sometimes creep in for me, i focused this year on doing what i love (simple things--cooking, going to galleries, going to the greenmarket, the flea market) and being by myself, just trying to be a better person. a few weeks ago, something changed. i just felt back to who i used to be before new york changed me, before i felt distanced from my former self, and i smiled that genuine smile you speak about.the incredible lightness of being, that free but incontrol of myself feeling is priceless. now, i go outside my apt, breathe in the crisp air, and search for the perfect apple at the greenmarket, and smile. really, honestly, uncontroably smile.[sorry, that was an essay].her honesty struck me, and so does yours. its so hard, but get better and feel free!
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4 comments:
Chelsea, I am so happy for you. We were both in a difficult place and it manifested within us both. You are too beautiful a person and a writer to lose to it.
I miss you. I hope to meet up someday and see what beautiful women we've become.
Hilary
I know what you mean when you try to write out that person that was disordered. So much of that person is untouchable, unwritable, because the reason is always just below the surface.
It's funny how it was for me in that I had never fully learned what the term Anorexia meant, until I was in the hospital.
I see girls now who are using terms such as "thinspo" and inspirational quotes to make themselves not eat and I am amazed because I never knew of any of these when I was sick. And it makes me wonder if what they are can be called Anorexic. For the such low level that I had experienced inwardly made me oblivious to the outside world. I came out of it "learned" of a different sense of self. I don't think I could ever do it justice in my writings.
klekan,
you are absolutely right. the person is untouchable, before after and during the disorder. i remember how alternated my sense of reality was - physically the world felt different on me and my relation to it was as well. very similar too a hallucinogentic effect, which of course ties in with how your body responds when it knows it is being under nourished.
i think what makes the character unwritable because it can't be an accurate reflection. there is the mind looking back and there is the mind of the anorexic that was disillusioned. one would say to explain the motivations ie. control, abuse, the want to be desired, or to achieve the rather unattainable (starving, loosing weight when it was so difficult to loose weight the healthy way) yet all these reasons seem almost artificial - they seem like excuses for something more, something deeper, something respectable, relatable and so intensified that it became out of ones control.
i think females on the whole are confused. they would rather be told who to be, then listen to themselves talking within their interior. so many individuals do not even understand that concept. the media knows the image is unattainable and that you have to be hungry for to achieve... and so just like that, it becomes their focus because people will go after it, want these things and the media wants money. this just floods down on the masses.
people want to be good people. they want to have genuine intentions, they want to honest with themselves before others. and yet, it is a struggle... and it is a borderline that many fall off of...how to care, admire aesthetics, understand the definition of beauty but without becoming emotionally invested in the physicality of it. images cannot define you. you have to work against them - at a distance because they are naturally self-imposing.
i hadn't know about the names either. but unfortunately, there are hundreds you have an eating disorder that has drained away their sanity. in one sense it is almost cultish. people have followings, nominate girls as leaders. my image was taken and used as young girls own icons for their self. it is all backwards. they try to achieve what they are not because they haven't discovered who they are (even when they are silently existing). but one will not find out by materiality. they have to allow themselves to be seen through. and then they have to risk themselves everyday. they have to push themselves face first outside of control, and experience what it feels like to gain freedom... finally with no loses.
congrats on getting better.
hil,
it feels good to hear from you. and it has been undeniably too long. regardless of how things manifested within us our first year, we were lucky to have each other throughout it. even if we had the same 'goal', at least we both understood it and each other. imagine, during everything we both experienced love. and the saying is, you have to love yourself before you can be in love with someone else. i know we always did love who we were.
we should meet at target. or just catch up whilst dancing to prince ali.
i love you suite mate,
chelsea.
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