Category Archives: from This Hunger is Secret
Audio Post – February 17, 2012 – mostly read from my journal
I am just going to let this post speak for itself. I am reviewing it today March 5 and I am in awe of what I hear…a strong, empowered woman….Just have a listen.
Most likely I will bookmark this page and listen when I am feeling down in the dumps, and remember the way I felt when I was reading all this stuff to you over the phone. Just hearing this brings it all back for me.
Audio Post: Excerpt from my memoir, This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness
note: This book is available in e-book form from Chipmunkapublishing. See sidebar for details (above my photo). Paperback version will be coming out soon! You can find out more information and read more excerpts at www.juliegreene.name.
More thoughts
Most days, all I feel is despair. I eat very little. I have very little hope in my heart. I have glimmers of joy, but these are becoming fewer and fewer as time goes on.
It has been less than two months that I have been experiencing It. They don’t yet know what It is. They may not for a while. And it looks like It will go on and on.
No, I am not “doing this to myself.” Trust me, there are concrete physical symptoms that go along with the scrambled thoughts I experience.
As time goes on–it is inevitable–my treatment team will believe me less and less regarding the existence of It, unless It shows up on some neurological test. The Thing didn’t show up on any test that was administered. After a while, they decided that I was “faking it.”
I risked my life trying to get to therapy on public transportation yesterday. It was raging. I nearly walked off the platform on the Red Line at Central Square because I was so confused. That would have meant certain death. Not to mention having had to walk in traffic, cross streets, etc. I actually told this to my therapist. She obviously didn’t believe me.
Like my eating disorder, It follows me everywhere, and, like my eating disorder, It kills.
I do not like having a killer inside my head.
************************
View an online magazine, Quay Journal, that has published excerpts from my book, This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness.
http://www.quayjournal.org/ Check the table of contents. There are two separate memoir sections of my work.
Excerpts from This Hunger Is Secret pubished online
Quay Journal has published two excerpts from This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness.
Here’s the link:
Quay Journal also comes out in hard copy.
The first excerpt, “2008/1997/Going Back” is the epilogue. It makes me cry every time I read it, for reasons I can never put a finger on. The second is an excerpt from my chapter, “Locker #47.” Why the chapter is called this…well, you’ll have to read the book! This excerpt was actually my graduation reading!
Meanwhile, when I submitted these chapters, it was well before the book was published. There were changes and edits I made in the rewrites. I tried to catch them all. Apologies if I did not. As you know, I have been very ill.
Here’s the link to the publisher’s website where you can purchase my book:
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1709
You may purchase it in e-book form now, or wait for the paperback to come out.
This Hunger Is Secret is now available for the Kindle!
My memoir, This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness is now available for instant download for the Kindle.
Click here:
For information about my book, go to:
http://www.juliegreene.name/This_Hunger_Is_Secret.html
Excerpt from This Hunger Is Secret – Book Available Now!
This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness is available now! It has been published!
To download the book in .pdf form, click here. The paperback will be coming out in May 2011.
Here’s an excerpt. Read about my funny parents here:
Family Therapy
“Julie’s not right with herself,” my mother put it during our first family session with Diana. I’d been at Crossroads Day Treatment for about a month.
Diana asked, “Mrs. Greene, could you clarify?”
My mother waved her arms around dramatically. “She doesn’t like herself, that’s all!”
“Erna,” said my father, “let the therapist talk.”
My mother went on, “Julie screams at us! Throws things! She raids the cookie bin when nobody’s around!” My mother set her arms back into her lap and said quietly, “You know, I’ve had to lock up the hermit cookies, giant oatmeal-raisin cookies, and lemon squares in the liquor cabinet to keep her from eating them all!”
My father said, “What’s with all this eating, anyway? Why can’t she just stop it? Erna lets us each have one or two cookies with dinner, that’s all.”
“And they’re not allowed cookies until after their fruit!” My mother crossed her arms emphatically.
“It’s a rule in our family.”
Diana interjected, “Mr. and Mrs. Greene, you both seem very–”
“We’re not angry,” my mother wailed, “we’re just concerned!” She threw her arms in the air. “She doesn’t get any exercise! She’s getting to be a fattie!”
“Exercise is very important!”
“And she drinks coffee all day long! Coffee! Bad for you!”
My father cleared his throat. “Since she left school and moved in with us, she’s completely abandoned her studies.”
My mother said, “She hasn’t touched a piece of music composition paper–“
“–or her trumpet.” My parents nodded in agreement.
“Julie,” demanded my father, “when are you going to quit smoking?” He turned to Diana, who had already held her hands out in a “T”–“time out.” He ignored her. “And she’s friends with this Irene!”
“My God! Irene!”
“Irene’s not a proper girl. Uneducated.”
“Irene’s not a good influence on Julie,” said my mother, her hands on her hips. “She smokes! My God!”
“Very bad influence!”
“Julie says Irene is a light smoker, but–”
“Smoking is smoking, dammit!”
There was a pause, and then Diana said, “There is no reason to raise our voices here, Mr. Greene.”
”No, and I don’t think she’s Jewish, either,” my father muttered.
“Julie’s old enough to choose her own friends,” said my mother. “Why Irene?”
My father said, “Why can’t she be friends with Sandra Bach, who used to come here to Crossroads? Sandra studies at Brandeis University, and she goes to our Temple–”
“Alan, we can’t choose Julie’s friends for her, can we?”
“And if we don’t?” my father said loudly. “Look what happened to–”
“Phil and Ned are adults Alan!”
“They’re dating shiksas!”
I had long since buried my face in my hands. At last, Diana turned to me and said, “Julie, what would you like to say to your parents?”
I shook my head, and did not look up.
“Julie, you have this opportunity,” said Diana. “What would you like to tell them?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”
**************
To download This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness in .pdf form click here.
THIS HUNGER IS SECRET is now available!
Click here to download the .pdf file! You can download it RIGHT NOW!
This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness will be available in paperback form in about nine months.
The publisher is Chipmunkapublishing. Their website is www.chipmunka.com
Manuscript sent to Chipmunkapublishing
Hi everyone, I sent off the final version of my manuscript just now. It is like letting go of a helium balloon and letting it go wherever it wants to go. Or at least that’s how it feels right now.
I’m kinda scared. But relieved, too. Now I don’t have the pressure of getting it done, of worrying that the publisher might get impatient with me, feeling that I can’t get on with any other projects (except writing to you, of course).
Now, I pretty much answer whatever questions they might have, and sit back and wait and see what happens. And hope there are no snags.
Snags…my whole life has been a one big snag since I turned 22.
I dealt with it. I do have two degrees after all. I have a book on the way. I met a wonderful man, fell in love with him, and dated him for many years. I survived his sudden passing. I have a wonderful dog. Doesn’t that count for something?
This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness is about what happens when you find out you have a mental illness. It’s about living with mental illness. It’s about dealing with it. It’s about surviving it.
You know, this is weird: Proofreading the book, I can’t help but weep when I read some of the chapters. It surprises me which ones make me cry. Some of them make me tear up every time I read through them. I can’t help it. I think these chapters are happy–and sad–and I don’t know why. Some of them are about me being skinny, or at least I’m skinny when the events take place, and these chapters are hard to take. Some of them I can’t imagine reading aloud. Not now. Not now, maybe not ever.
So I’ve let it go. If I can touch one person, if one person reads it and can relate, or if one person reads it and and is moved in some way, then I’ve done my job.
Proofreading of This Hunger Is Secret is Finished
I have finished proofreading This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness. Finally.
What should have taken about two weeks took about three months, because I have been in a state of starvation.
Every time I go through certain points in the manuscript, I change something minuscule, then I go over it again, and change it back, just for the sake of changing something. It’s time to let it go. I plan to send it in to the publisher first thing tomorrow, or maybe later tonight if I get some food into me. It takes a bit of energy to click on SEND.
Proofreading This Hunger Is Secret
Most people find proofreading a tedious task. Right now, though, I’m enjoying it. My friend Teri is also going through the manuscript and finding various types of errors that I hadn’t picked up on: missing punctuation, repeated words, misspellings, and the like, but not too many of these. This Hunger Is Secret was originally my master’s thesis, after all, and I made a point of keeping errors at a minimum when I handed in my thesis to begin with. It has gone through a couple of revisions since my graduation. (Hey, it’s been almost exactly a year since I graduated!)
Meanwhile, I am going over the manuscript yet another time. I am still finding little inconsistencies. For instance, in my chapter, “At the Crossroads,” I stated that the program went on field trips that lasted all day Wednesdays. Then I stated that the doctor came on Wednesdays to see patients. Wait a minute. This couldn’t be right. How could the doctor see patients if everyone was out on a field trip? No, actually, when I searched my memory, I realized that the doctor came on Thursdays. Did it matter? Not really, but a careful reader might notice this inconsistency.
I did a couple of other things. Since submitting my manuscript to Chipmunka, I had revised my chapter, “Breakfast,” and had come up with two different versions, to use as possible stand-alone pieces. One of these I had designed for a reading I gave. I decided to substitute one of the new versions–with minor adjustments–for the original version in THIS. The differences are subtle, but Teri confirms that the new version is tighter, and an improvement over the original. And yes, she caught a spelling error in it. Thank you, Teri.
Another thing I did was to reverse the order of two of my very short chapters. In one chapter, “Kohlrabi,” I mentioned the character. In the second chapter, “A conversation from the past,” I introduced him. Doesn’t it make sense to introduce him first? Not necessarily, but in this case, it was a no-brainer. When I revised my short chapter, “Kohlrabi,” it was no longer a stand-alone, for many reasons, not just because of my reference to this character.
These were the only real structural changes, if you could call them that, that I made to the manuscript during this proofread. I couldn’t resist. You would never know that I did these at the last minute.
This brings back memories of late April and May, 2009, when I made last-minute additions to THIS and even changed the title right before the deadline, before mailing it in to my advisor, Darrah Cloud, and my second reader, Beatrix Gates.
I am reminded of my starvation days back then, of my intense fear that my therapist would hospitalize me right around the time that I was completing my thesis. After a particularly harrowing therapy session, I called Darrah in a panic, and told her what my therapist said, that she might hospitalize me, and that I should probably do something about getting the current version of my thesis in, though there was still a bit of time before the deadline.
I ended up sending Darrah my .doc files, and the converted .pdf files. It seemed to be an impossible task. I was so, so hungry, so starved, that I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing. Everything was a fuzz. And the added threat of hospitalization made the mental confusion all the worse.
I did come up with a newer version of my thesis after that, and did safely turn it in, early in fact. I graduated. I made it, ED and all. It was a joyous time. Not a cloud in the sky. But I was so cold, so very, very cold that summer.
I still get cold easily. And some people think that now that I am eating, I am “over” my ED. Huh? I am ruled by this stupid ED. Now just as much as ever, maybe more. I just eat. Go through the motions. Maybe that’s all I can expect of myself right now, just eating for Puzzle, for my friends, for my treatment team. Eating because I cannot go back.
But wow, do I ever miss starvation. You’d think that I would be happy to see it gone. I am not. I miss the feeling of a totally empty stomach. I miss hunger pangs. I miss feeling weak and starved. I miss putting off eating until I can’t stand it anymore. I miss eating as little as I possibly can. I miss the suffering, and the belief that I could suffer better than anyone else.
Some days, I feel ravenous. I feel hungry all day long. I feel like I could eat continuously. This is my body needing to repair itself from all the deprivation.
Other days, I feel no hunger. I have to force myself to eat. Or I forget to eat. These are the days when it gets tricky. It is getting like this more and more.
I am not saying that I am going downhill with my progress. I seem to be gaining weight right on schedule. My hair is even growing back. It is very, very noticeable. You can see the extra hair growing in all the way across a room. The new hair is very soft and healthy, as far as I can tell. There are many other changes that I am noticing, all proof that I am eating well and taking better care of myself. I wouldn’t be growing hair back if there wasn’t a truly dramatic change in my lifestyle, would I?
It is very strange that the threat of death did not scare me into eating. Why is this? I kept on doing what I was doing until they threatened to put me back in the ED hospital. Did I see this as being even worse than death? In my sick mind, yes.
Summer moves on. It is very hot here in Massachusetts, USA. Better that than cold. Maybe, by the time winter hits, I will have enough body fat to keep me a little warmer than I was last winter, whether I like it or not.
