Drug companies…grrr

I can’t believe it.  I was just over at weather dot com and found out that Cymbalta was approved for lower back pain management.  What next?  They must be getting really desperate to sell their poisons.

If you want are considering taking a powerful antidepressant to manage chronic lower or upper or anywhere anything, read all about what I went through with the last antidepressant I was on.

When I was overweight my back hurt ALL the time.  It really sucked.  I was overweight because of the psych meds I took.

Oh, by the way, I have taken Cymbalta for depression.  It was one of those that did absolutely nothing.  Once, Dr. P gave me a wicked high dose of it and had me on it for a few days to “get me over the hump.”  It worked.  But she said it wasn’t a safe dose to stay on for long.

Wow, I really wish I never started taking these pills.  I am so happy to be getting off of them.  Three more days of Topamax, which I have tapered, and then I am off of it and only taking two remaining psych meds, Trileptal and Lamictal.

I feel decent today, by the way.

The only reason I ever wanted to be on pills was to stop binge eating.  I actually begged to be put on meds for this in the 1980′s when the research was coming out.   The doctors hadn’t read this research (I have the book still, called New Hope for Binge Eaters or something like that) and refused to give me meds, saying this research didn’t exist.  The therapist I had asked me which drug I had read about.  I told her.  She asked me, “How do you spell Imipramine?”  1982 I think.  I do believe that getting on Lithium was certainly a lifesaver for me because it stopped binge eating in for me in 1984, and there were no other treatments for this condition available to me.  I was young and didn’t know much about the world.  I was isolated and lived in a rural area and the doctors knew nothing.  Lithium worked for years until they insisted on adding other drugs and mucking me up.

I am convinced that the non-drug alternatives to these psych meds are the way to go, at least for me and for many people.   Doctors are very quick to push pills.  I think if they are going to be used at all, it should be short term.   The problem is that once you get on them, the doctors, and you, are convinced you “need” them and should stay on them for a long, long time, maybe for the rest of your shortened life.

If anyone asks me, I will most likely keep my mouth shut, though.  If someone takes a psych med and it’s helping them, then it’s not my place to burst their bubble and yap about how nasty these pills are.   They help, but they do other things that really suck, especially after you’ve been taking them for years.  If I am asked, I’ll say something, but really, what you put into your mouth is your business.

Like I said in the hospital, keep your eyes on your own tray, and I’ll keep my eyes on mine.

Julie Greene is back: Never fear, I am always here

My blog disappeared.  Wow.  I received an e-mail from a friend letting me know and asking me if I was okay.  It was a good thing cuz I was able to straighten out the whole thing very quickly and get back to my same  ole online presence loud and clear and big-mouthed as ever.  It was an automatic computer thingy that wordpress dot com does that I don’t want to mull over.  Well, I do.  But I want to let you know that I’m back.

I do not shut up.

I made up my mind quite some time back that if I see something that is flat out wrong, along the lines of social injustice, I’m not going to waste time getting therapized as a way to fix the social injustice.

You do not make applesauce by putting a chicken in the oven.  Cuz no matter how well you spice the chicken, you will never, ever end up with applesauce.

(Oh, by the way, mention of specific foods  is “triggering” to people, or so I’ve been told.  I’m not going to delete my metaphor.  Deal with your entriggerment any healthy or unhealthy way you want.  I haven’t actually stuck chicken and applesauce on a table and demanded that you eat it, have I?)

If I, personally, take a pill to dull my passion about this social injustice.

If I am going to sit in a group and talk about it, it’s not going to be a group that teaches me to cope with passion.  It’s not going to be a group that teaches me to correct my thinking patterns.  My thinking patterns are wonderful.  My thinking is what makes me who I am.  If I write something that isn’t fresh and special, if it says nothing new, there’s no reason to put it out there or expect that anyone will consider reading or listening.  This goes for all writers.  Treasure your uniqueness and let it take you to a place where no one has ever, ever been.  Tread unbroken ground.  This is the revolution.

If I am to be part of a group of human beings, we will make change.  We will plan, and act.  We will compare ideas.  We will consider possibilities and dreams and hopes.

We will rethink our own backyards and cultivate them a new way.  This is the beginning of change.

I have a personal stake in this.  Of course, I didn’t need to say that, because it is redundant.  This is change.  The personal and the political are inseparable.  I knew it all along, well before I stumbled into my eating disorder, and then, year after year, walked the path of the downtrodden, the misunderstood, the invisible.

I am blessed because of this mission.  So few have this opportunity.  I have the strength, the ability, the courage, the gift, the driven nature within me, and the dire necessity to do this.  Is it my duty?  I don’t see life that way.  Maybe it’s because I’ve never been a parent.  I do this because it’s my only option, my only way out.  To survive I must continue to strive toward change.

I made a sister site.  It’s in the workings, barely started.

Here’s the link:

adreamforus.wordpress.com  The one post I made describes what the site will be about.  I love you folks so much.

Misinterpretations and assumptions

Okay, I have had a very, very bad headache nonstop since 4am.  And yes, I did check my blood pressure.  I do this now and then out of curiosity.  People who are skinny and don’t eat much run the risk of low blood pressure and pulse, and I have experienced both of these things. This is the reason I got the BP/P monitor in the first place, last summer.

History: I take, or, rather, took, an antidepressant that shot both my blood pressure up slightly and my pulse to the roof, or at least by comparison to where it was before.  This was a side effect of the medication.  I was not too pleased about this side effect, and it was one of the reasons I tapered off the medication.  I am waiting for this side effect to go away.

This antidepressant is called Imipramine.  It is actually the first antidepressant ever invented.  It is no longer popular.  Once Prozac and the other Prozac-like drugs came on the market, Imipramine and the other “tricyclics” got ignored.  It so happens that most doctors and nurses don’t even know what Imipramine is, or what the side effects are.  They don’t know how to prescribe them, either.

When I was at Walden, none of the staff were aware that Imipramine raises blood pressure and pulse.  They saw that my blood pressure was typically 130 over 85, shrugged, attributed it to my age, and forgot about it.  They assumed my pulse, usually 94, was due to anxiety.  They did not go back and look at my previous records at the very same hospital, and see that my pulse was almost always under 60.

Everywhere I have gone, I have had to point out to yes, medical professionals, what Imipramine is, how to spell it, the fact that it is an antidepressant, and what the very, very common side effects are and yes I have read the drug insert and yes these are verified by the drug company.

“This couldn’t possibly be a medication side effect.  Ninety is a perfectly safe pulse.  Nothing is wrong with your blood pressure.”

The nurse practitioner on my case didn’t read my chart unless I asked her to, and even when I did ask, she usually didn’t bother to do so for a few days, making excuses that she hadn’t had time.  It was blatantly obvious.  It was especially amusing when I put in a loud complaint about this, in writing, in my chart.  When she came to see me, it was clear that she had not read my complaint.  Ha ha.  When I asked her about “maximum doses” of medications and stuff, she had to check with her supervisor on how to reduce or raise them.  Huh?  This person prescribes?  She never looked at my vital signs or results of blood tests that I know of.

But oh yes, she looked at what I weighed each morning.  That was all that mattered.

And I am hysterical mental patient?  I am the one considered incompetent?  My T considered me so, so incompetent that she took the hospital’s word over mine.

She and my primary care doctor wanted to send me to the state hospital because they felt I was mentally incompetent.

Who, really, is incompetent?

Anyway….

I think I have made it perfectly clear that I am not incompetent.  Yet the reality exists that I have been alone and a little concerned and extremely inconvenienced since 4am with an excruciating headache.  It is debilitating and I could barely dress myself.

No, this does not mean “poor self-care,” and if I didn’t have this mental patient label no one would make this assumption.

Yes, I have a history of chronic dehydration due to my eating disorder.  I have learned that I have a weird feeling in my body when I am severely dehydrated.  Headache is part of this feeling, at least for me.  I woke up feeling that way yesterday morning.  I don’t take this lightly.  I hydrate.  I do not overhydrate.  I care for myself.

So that could be part of what’s happening.  Or this could be Imipramine withdrawal.  Yes, I tapered appropriately, exactly the same way they tapered me while I was in the hospital.

It could be one of those freak things.

I am not hysterical mental patient.  I don’t need group therapy for this, thank you.  Nor do I need to make a long, long list of emergency coping skills, and on the bottom is, “Call my therapist or the Crisis Team” with their numbers written in just in case I am too emotionally unstable to remember them.

All the above are why I divorced the mental health system.

All of the above are why I am sitting here writing this right now.

All of the above are why I am dealing with this pretty much all by myself, which is a mixed bag, sadly.

I think I will try to get some sleep.  I’m going to try to get to a class at church tonight.

Now that I have divorced mental health, at least I won’t get “Section Twelved” and carted off by police to the hospital against my will for having a headache.

Please don’t ask me to rate the quality of my day on a scale of one to ten

More often than not, I feel kinda embarrassed or even ashamed mentioning “progress” I’ve made with my mental health.  This is not usually because I’m afraid to speak too soon.  Sometimes, though, I’m afraid my “progress” will be stolen from me.  What I mean is that it will be denied or made trivial.  I’ll mention an example of progress robbery and you’ll see exactly what I mean in a flash.  In brief:  I was 26 and wicked discouraged an no way did I expect help right at that moment.  No one listened, no one cared, and no one that was treating me knew anything about eating disorders or cared that I had one, so I’d long since stopped talking about it, and given up.  I had no faith in the doctor.  He decided to give me Lithium.  I took it.  Right away, my eating disorder improved.  Nothing I had tried even compared to how much this pill helped me.  I said to the doctor, “This Lithium has helped me very much.  It feels like a miracle.”  He said, “This is not true.  Lithium doesn’t work that fast.  You couldn’t possibly be better.  What eating disorder?”

So theft is one reason I hesitate to reveal progress.  I have had progress denied and stolen from me many times.  Folks don’t see the change in me even though I feel it deep inside me and know it’s there, or they claim it’s not possible.  Well, it’s my body.  What I feel is what I feel.  You don’t feel what I feel.  What in fact isn’t possible, Doctor, is for one person to feel another person’s feelings.

The other reason I hesitate to mention progress is due to embarrassment.  This goes way, way back, probably deep back to early childhood.  Oh, I could probably go on and on about progress with toilet training and go into making poops and getting praised up and down for my so-called progress with body function, maybe write an entire essay on that alone.  But I won’t.

I think I will indeed focus on my parents, though, but at a much later time in my life.  I’m talking about a time when they were overly involved in my mental health care.  I would say that it went so overboard that they were privy to unlimited information about my case from my psychiatrist and therapist.  At any time, they could call these people and discuss my general welfare in detail with these people.  Not only that, but these people shared stuff with my parents that they never shared with me, stuff about future plans for my care, for instance.  My parents could ask any question they wanted and they’d get an answer.  In this sense, my treaters and parents together considered me a child who didn’t have any capability or responsibility when it came to my own care, or need or desire for knowledge.

So you get the picture.  Little Julie with a room full of big adults.  The playing field.  The doctor asks, “Julie, can you tell us how you are feeling?”  My parents on the edge of their seats, ready with their pom-poms and confetti.  I wait a minute.  I take a breath.  I say, “I think I’m feeling…I’m feeling…I think I feel good today.”  My parents jump for joy.  My mom waves her arms and cheers.  “Yay Julie!  Rah rah Julie!”  And then the parade starts.  Posters are erected for Julie.  “Look at Julie!  We’re so proud of you!  Rah rah!  Let’s all go out and get some slurpies and stuffed animals!  Everyone, come and see big Julie, all better!  She is the star of the show!”

So you can imagine.

Okay, so say my response is that I feel bad today.  Here’s what they say in response.  Their faces fall.  They droop.  They say, “Aww.  You lost.   Let ‘s kiss your boo-boos and make them all better.”  Certainly no raised arms.  No parade.  And to the doctor, “What’s wrong?  Give her more pills!”

So this was my cheerleading team, for years.  Yes, they rubbed it in.   They rubbed their own noses in it, saw it so up close that they saw nothing else, and nothing else mattered.   They were short-sighted.  They were unwise, and they were fools.  I was unwise as well to let all this continue for as long as it did.  What I wanted to tell them was, “Hey, ‘This too shall pass.’”  I saw as well as any of them there that not only did life have its ups and downs, but that life was more complicated than just having a bad day or a good day.

Finally, I pulled the confidentiality card, and stopped allowing my parents to participate in any way in my care.  For many years, I continued to argue fruitlessly that to rate my “mood” on a scale of one to ten, as doctors and other mental health practitioners often insist, is trivializing “mood” to the extreme.  The same goes for rating how my day went.  How can I put a number to something that is qualitative and not quantitative?  How can I put a number to something that has many, many dimensions?  This is like rah rah.  This is trivializing. This is like reducing to “good” or “bad.”  This is saying whether I won or not when I didn’t win or lose this day.  I breathed this day.  I might have felt like a winner or felt like a loser, but that’s only one of the many, many thoughts and feelings that I have had when all is said and done.

So I hesitate to mention any progress.  But right here right now on April 10, 2012, I do feel progress is happening.  I am fifty-four years old and I have spoken about some of this progress and repeated some of it over and over and over.  Some of it I haven’t mentioned out of embarrassment, fearing rah rah, fearing that someone (real or imagined) will pounce on it and steal it.

When I was in the hospital, I used to write stuff down, and I’d have these meetings with the doctors and bring my writings with me.  Nine times out of ten…well, no…just about always, no matter how much or how little I’d written, they’d sit there and say, “Say it in your own words,” or they’d say, “How about summarizing.”

I have a couple of things to say.

These are my words, first of all.

Secondly, this thing that I have written is a summary.  That’s why I wrote it in the first place.

But before I even had a chance to say that much, most of them had already sized me up.  They hadn’t even read my chart.  But they’d flipped open a page, written their orders, and said they had no more time for me.  Case closed.

Now and then, I’d walk into these meetings with something written in list form.  A tiny piece of paper gets a more positive response, and I’m more likely to get more of their time, maybe even more of their attention.  Sometimes, I wrote progress lists.

Here is my progress list for April 10, 2012:

I am forging my own path in regards to my care.
I have rejected “traditional care.”
I have rejected inpatient eating disorders treatment.
I have rejected tried and rejected the one “eating disorders” partial program that I tried.
No residential care takes “public assistance” insurance (Medicare, Medicaid) and I have rejected these forms of treatment.
I choose to stop therapy.
I have chosen to taper off as many psychotropic poisons as I can.  I started this process and have done well.
I chose to stop DMH services.
I chose to end “weekly weight checks” and cease weight-centered eating disorders treatment.
I chose not to follow a traditional “meal plan.”

Without hesitation or doubt, I know that the above decisions were and continue to be the right path and my true destination.

Where am I headed?  I am forging my own path now.
No one tells me what to do.
This means I make mistakes.
When you are doing “traditional care” with a “team approach,” mistakes get made, too.
The difference now is that I am the one making the mistakes.
I and I alone am responsible for the mistakes I make.
I own them.
I forgive myself, pick myself up, and move on.
Sometimes, it takes a bit to get going again.

Here are some very concrete examples.  I will try not to get too embarrassed over this.
I have experimented some with my medications.
And if you are bored with this gibberish, skip this paragraph
And go on to the next one, okay?
Lowered my Trileptal.  That didn’t work out too well, so I put it back up again.
But I seem okay on half the Lamictal I was taking.  Better, in fact.
Naturally, it’s all experimentation.
Of course I do shitloads and shitloads of reading and re-reading of
drug inserts and interactions and titrations and stuff I read all over the place about side effects
and potentiation (which means when one drug makes another drug more effective than it normally is)
and weird things that happen when you get off a drug
that the drug companies hid from the public.
What’s most important is what happens to me
How I react.  How I benefit or don’t benefit or react badly to a drug.
Lamictal kept me awake at night and gave me double vision.
I used to take 600 a day.  It says clearly on the insert that is included with the original bottle
That for “bipolar,” doses above 200 produce no further effect
While in certain research, higher doses are claimed to have effect…hmm….
I have lowered my dose from 600 to 100.  I feel much better, can sleep finally,
And finally, finally, when I look at Puzzle, I am less puzzled,
Because I see my one dog, and not two.
I can’t afford twice the vet bills.
I am off my antidepressant because it stopped antidepressing
And stopped stopping my bingeing.
I’m hoping that my vital signs will normalize.
I’m hoping that my breasts will return to normal size
And in so doing, maybe I’ll get some relief from body dysmorphia
Which I think is caused by increased breast size from galactorrhea
(this time I think I have it spelled right)
Which is increased milk production, a side effect of the antidepressant.
And I am also successfully reducing my Topamax.
It, too, has pooped out.
As used to prevent bingeing, it doesn’t work for years and years, typically, I’ve read.
For whatever reason, Trileptal seems to help me
So I’ll stay on it.
Enough about meds.

And here’s a bit about food:
I played around with what types of food I ate
What types of food I purchased
What types of food I could afford
I made decisions based on food price
I made decisions based on nutritional value
I made decisions based on how long I could store a food
Where I stored that food
How I stored that food
What quantities I would have to purchase
Whether it contained sugar
What form of sugar
I asked myself how much sugar I wanted to consume
I asked myself about how different foods made me feel
Both physically and emotionally
Whether a food made me feel satisfied
Whether a food tasted good
I thought about flavor
What went with what
I thought about what foods felt scary to me
For any reason.
I knew that I didn’t have to justify to any other person
Why these foods felt scary.
I noticed that when something was labeled “natural”
This word, “natural” was pretty much meaningless.
I want to buy food that I can bring home on the bus
Or carry on my back in a knapsack.
I asked whether a food contained a whole ton of salt
I asked myself about processed foods
I decided that diet soda was a waste of food stamps
Which really I already knew
I no longer buy coffee at coffee shops, ever
My own is better
I noticed that processed foods were more expensive
I noticed that foods that were made already
Were much more expensive
Than if I bought the ingredients and put them together myself
I considered the risk of ending up bingeing on that food
I made decisions based on what would make me fat
How many calories were in it
Yes, I admit this.

I found myself suddenly very, very broke
And go to food pantries now
I have learned a lot about food pantries
Through experience.
It takes practice.
I want to write about the unique experience
What it’s like to have an eating disorder
And experience a food pantry.
I have learned what to choose in canned food.
And what not to choose.

Yes, I still binge.
This has changed drastically.
I no longer spend…how much of a bill was I running up?
It is unthinkable.
We’re talking cash.  Well, no more.
I don’t do sugar binges anymore.  This is amazing.
Don’t ask me how I made this change.  I do have a credit card and I very well could use it,
But I don’t.
I don’t run out and buy cake or ice cream or candy or peanut butter
I don’t eat a stick of butter by itself
No donuts or pastries or muffins or bakery stuff
No pretzels or chips
No cheese or cookies
Nothing delivered or from a restaurant of any kind

Why is this?
It is embarrassing and awkward buying this stuff.
I can’t afford it.
It’s damn embarrassing using my food stamps to pay for it.
It makes me feel very, very sick afterward.

So.
Oatmeal.
Pasta (not that “ramen” shit, which tastes like pure oil to me).
Canned soup on sale.
Canned veggies on sale.
Any quick-cooking, very inexpensive grain, whatever’s on sale.
Potatoes.
Yams.
Leftovers.
Canned pumpkin (I get a lot of coupons for it).
Fresh veggies (not expensive ones).

I have almost broken my tendency to dig into Puzzle’s food.
Almost.
I am just about dog-food free.

When you add it all up
And consider everything
I have spent time eating nothing at all for days.
I have spent time bingeing for several days in a row.
These two things are the same as before.
But what I binge on has changed,
So financially, I’m not dropping hundreds of dollars a month

And the other thing that has changed
And here I’m a little embarrassed to admit this
Is that I have spent a few days
Actually eating meals.
This is brand new.
No, not real big meals.
It’s kinda scary.
No, not freaking “meal plan”
An approach I did indeed try, over and over
And it never worked for me.
I am forging my own way.
I am experimenting.
Trying out.
Seeing for myself and my own body
What works and what doesn’t work.
I will continue what works and stop doing what doesn’t work.
“Meal plan” didn’t work.
I would rather do something that not only works
But is inexpensive, healthy, practical, and logical.

I see progress.
I see learning from mistakes.
I enjoy learning.
I am not embarrassed about learning.
I am proud to share the fact that I have learned new things with others.
I am proud to say that I have found things that have worked.
I am cautious about suggesting to anyone else to do what I am doing.
I encourage others, though, to look around, to keep an open mind
To listen
And to realize

Although my path may be a little bumpy
You can trip on any path, even one that is well-trodden.

I carry a flashlight.
I bring my dog with me.
I pick up after her.
I pick up
After myself.

So,

I have a couple more things to say, and then I’ll shut up.

These are my words, first of all.

Secondly, this thing that I have written is bit longer than a summary.

There is a place for summaries, and there are places where I can go on and on in as much detail as I want.

This is my blog, a place where I write whatever I want.  A place where no one tells me “time’s up,” and shoos me out of the office.

If you didn’t want to read this, you wouldn’t have gotten this far down.

And now that you’ve gotten here, it’s my turn to say, “Time’s up.”

You can get out of this blog entry now, and walk through the door.

My door is never, never locked.

 

I want to buy food that I can carry home on the bus
Or on my back in a knapsack.

 

 

 

Are you listening? A post about eating disorders and a lot of other things

I was going to talk about this yesterday but for various reasons, I didn’t.  There have been  a bunch of studies done on teen suicide, and from what I can tell, I guess they looked into what was going on with these kids, some of this by doing studies with kids that survived suicide attempts.  Is it shocking that so many of these kids had eating disorders?

Over and over, I’ve heard mental health professionals talk about “impulsivity,” that bingeing and binge-purge behavior is impulsive, as is self-harm behavior such as making cuts in oneself with a razor blade for no practical purpose.  They say that teens, or anyone, with these binge or binge/purge behaviors who attempt suicide, or who do commit suicide, are impulsive.

Dear Mental Health Idiots, how dare you make assumptions about what is going on in my head.  How dare you try to fit me into a mold.  The fact that I am a person with anorexia nervosa and am 54 years old…think about it…this fact alone breaks your freaking mold already.  I break all your molds in so many ways, more ways than your accusing fingers can count.

You know something else?  I am so, so strong, so much stronger than all your molds.  And if I hadn’t been, I would have been crushed by the system, your mental health system, long, long ago.

I have proof that I have shattered your molds.  Do you want to see this proof?  Do you?

I am sitting here typing these words, and that is your proof.  Look at the fucking odds of this happening.  I must be a freak or something.

I am not alive BECAUSE of the mental health system.  I cannot believe the years of mental health bullshit that I have survived and lived through somehow.  I survived not only thirty-two years of starvation, two suicide attempts in the form of drug overdose, and binge eating, oh let me also add physical, verbal, and sexual violence from human beings and a couple of motor vehicle accidents…and thirty-one years of violent treatment in the system.

Wow, I’m alive.  Shake off the dust.  Now what?

Dear Mental Health Professionals, when you force someone into a mold and assume things about what is going on in their heads, you are already turning your backs.

One of these molds is the concept of “diagnosis.”  Diagnosis exists for insurance purposes mostly.  There are numbers corresponding to each specific diagnosis.  The clinician writes down these numbers, which come straight out of the DSM-whatever, on a form and sends this form to the insurance company, to make sure he or she gets paid for “treating” you.

You are not a number.  You are so, so much more.

Let me go on to say that if the clinician doesn’t know a thing about you, or hasn’t listened, or has slept through the session (I have had a couple who have done just that), he or she will pick a diagnosis in a strategic manner that ensures that he or she gets paid.  He or she will find justification for doing whatever he or she damn pleases.  This includes, for instance, coverage for more therapy sessions each year.  Does this sound harmless?  Well, strategic choice of DSM number can also justify whether to send this patient to a psychiatrist who will then prescribe psychiatric medications, and insurance covering this psychiatric visit.  And yes, this number can justify locking you up, even against your will.

You know something?  A lot of the time, this number is deliberately fudged.  You know something else?  You are not a number.  You know something else?  If I were to gather up my records from over thirty years of treatment, I’ll bet I have accumulated so many “wrong numbers” that if you were to pick up the phone and dial them all, the FCC would be after you in no time.

I am not a number.  I break all the molds.  I am that strong.  Nobody fits into molds.  There shouldn’t be molds.  People who are professionals who are trying to help people with eating disorders should quit assuming ANYTHING about their patients.  My suggestion is that you be a blank slate.  Listen.  And for gods sakes, stay awake.

I self-harmed in 1982.  I had never heard of self-harm.  I never heard the term self-harm until 1998, in fact.  In 1982 I cut myself with a razor blade.  I didn’t think anyone else did this.  I thought I was the only one.  I had no clue why I was doing it.

I have permanent marks on my arms because of this self-harm.  Nowadays, when professionals see these, they assume all kinds of things about me.  They hear “eating disorder” and jump to even more false conclusions.

When I finally ended up in the hospital in January 1983, no one even asked me why I had done self-harm.   They sent me “upstairs.”  I fired the shrink that put me in there (this is in my book) and hired this supposedly kind, compassionate psychologist/psychiatrist combination to take his place.  They made their money (they were very rich) by faking compassion mostly.  I fell for it.  That part is not in my book.  They didn’t know what the hell they were doing.

The truth is that therapists don’t want to talk about really painful stuff.  Oh, they will tell you to let it all out.  They will tell you that you need to “work on your issues.”  But there are a lot of things that I think therapists can’t stand hearing.  I think it’s too painful for them, or too far out there, or outside of their professional range.  I stopped talking about my experience in a brainwashing cult years ago.  Yes, I experienced being brainwashed, I mean, Google brainwashing techniques and you’ll see a host of stuff including sleep deprivation, isolation, abuse, and so on and so on…it has nothing to do at all with being gullible or easily swayed…anyway, I stopped talking about it with therapists because of the faces they made, like it was too unbearable for them and they didn’t want me to go on any further.  I was told that my experience was irrelevant to my treatment and didn’t matter, or was in the past and that I should “let it go,” etc.  My experience changed me and affects me to this day.  It makes me who I am, that is, Julie Greene 2012.  It’s in my book, and is described more fully in the book I wrote for Nano 2009 called Summer in November.   Curiously enough, it was when I joined this cult that I began to believe in God.  Now do you understand?  I have not been the same since.

No, therapists get mighty uncomfortable hearing about what is really going on with us.  No therapist wanted to hear about the abuse I went through in high school.  They say they do, but really, they don’t.  Most therapists I’ve had didn’t want to hear at all.  They ask at the first session and that’s all, subject dropped, never mind that I am who I am right here right now because of this thing that happened to me that went on for four years of my life.  Never mind that it is completely inexcusable that the school saw what was happening and made no attempt to interfere or offer any assistance.  They even encouraged and praised my abuser.  So I wrote about it.  The term “bullying” is the closest I can get to describing what went on.  And you know something?  This isn’t “past tense.”  Go onto Google and you’ll see that bullying is going on in every school everywhere in the world today, yes, in 2012 just as it was when I was in high school in the 1970s.  Right under the teachers’ noses.  Go look up bullying and suicide and you will see that kids that are bullied often end up committing suicide.  My high school failed me miserably.

My last therapist, God bless her, she was an excellent therapist, but she got very, very squirmy when I talked about my abuser.  I don’t think she was aware of how many times she changed the subject whenever I got to this.  Therapists are human and not flawless.  With most therapists, I never bothered to bring it up.  I didn’t even say, “This is what made me different.”  All those years 90% of them never knew this basic fact about me.  What was the point?  To be told that it is irrelevant?  To be told, “Don’t dwell on the past”?  To be told that my 50 minutes are up?  Or worse, to be told that the abuse was all my fault?

Okay, if you are a mental health professional reading this right now you might be jumping to conclusions about people who have been abused.  You might think:  hmm…abused, eating disorder, cutting…I see the picture.

What picture?  Are you squeezing me into yet another mold?  Well, quit it.  I am going to get graphic for a moment.

Imagine someone twenty-four years old.  She knows she has an eating disorder now.  After having this eating disorder for a year and keeping it secret, she finally went to get help.  She spent three months in once-a-week therapy but only got worse.  She was unable to continue with college.  All this time, she didn’t know that there was such thing as eating disorders.  She thought she was the only one.  Apparently, the therapist never taught her any of this stuff, or basic terminology such as “restricting,” “anorexia nervosa,” or “binge eating.”  It was not the therapist’s fault.  It just turned out that way.  She moved out of town and went into day treatment, where the program had no clue how to treat her eating disorder.  There was very little knowledge.  None of her therapy at this program addresses her eating disorder.  Most of the time, she keeps her disorder secret from the other clients there.  Actually, the therapists there only hear a fraction of what she experiences, day after day after day.  She gets worse.  After nine months of this, she relocates, hoping for a better life.  She knows that the day treatment program was not the answer.

This is the scenario: She is twenty-four and has a temp job.  She has the shittiest therapist on the planet.  In my book, I made this therapist a woman, and called her Megan, but this is a composite character.  It was actually a guy.  I made him Megan because otherwise I would have had to go into a bunch of explanations about one therapist getting laid off and replaced by another, stuff not worth getting into, and it would have slowed down the narration and bored the reader.  Truth is, it makes no difference who this therapist was because I was going to change the name anyway.  A bad therapist is a bad therapist and this one was bad shit and that’s the whole point.  Regarding my cutting…and I quote:

“You can do that as much as you want.  So long as you don’t kill yourself.”

I began cutting around that time, after leaving the day treatment program, pretty much giving up on that actually, moving, and working the meaningless temp job.  I remember the long drive home from work.  Stopping at every store to buy binge food.  Bingeing while driving.  Weaving in the road.  My vision blurring in and out of focus.

Once, I was stopped by a cop.  He shined his flashlight around in my car.  Food wrappers all over the place.  Then he said, “Well, obviously you haven’t been drinking.  We were looking for bottles, stuff like that.  You can go.  Drive carefully.”

Every night, I went to bed never knowing if I’d sleep or if I’d lay awake in digestive agony.  It was on the nights of insomnia that I did the cutting.  I think this went on over a period of a number of weeks.  I did it with razor blades.

If you are a mental health professional, perhaps you are jumping to false conclusions about me right now.  You are thinking, “impulsive” or “poor coping skills” or “cutting to relieve intense emotions,” or whatever mold you are trying to fit me into.

But I do not fit into your fucking mold.  You know, just about every therapist changes the subject when I describe to him or her that I didn’t cut impulsively.  I thought it through very carefully.  I did not slash my arms in a swift, angry manner.  I looked at the razor blade, first of all, and decided that there was a basic problem because it was double-edged.  I put masking tape on one of the sides so that my right hand wouldn’t get cut in the process of cutting my left arm.  What does this tell you?  Think about it.  If this were truly an impulsive act, would I have even stopped to consider this, and bothered with the masking tape?

I have never told any therapist about the masking tape.  They stop me before I get halfway there.  I make a general statement about impulsivity and cutting, which they almost always push aside.  They wrongly  assume that all cutting is the same, and that all people cut for the exact same reasons, and try to force me into a mold because of something that I did so long ago that no way am I at risk for doing it at present.

So here I am with the masking-taped razor blade, held by my right hand because I am right handed.  Well, what now?  I am going to think about it.  Yes, hold the razor blade, look at it, look at my left arm, which is still uncut, and contemplate the situation.  No, not standing there, angry and emotional and desperate and impulsive and needing release…hardly.  I was lying in bed, worn out, alone, I’ve written in my journal and concluded that there are no answers, nobody fucking cares, nobody is listening, I am getting worse and worse, I have a shit therapist who sits there and smokes all session and doesn’t know a damn thing about me.  Why?  He put me into the Jewish American Princess mold the moment we met, said he got the picture within minutes and didn’t need to know anything else.  Told me what my Jewish mommy was like and what my Jewish daddy was like even before I’d said a word about either of them.  Yes, told me.  It’s called Oppressive Therapy.

The therapist that I originally had, had attempted to refer me to the agency’s one and only psychiatrist, Dr. Scully.  This is in my book.  Dr. Scully insisted on delaying our appointment.  This happened over and over.  He had been called away.  Mistake in scheduling.  Et cetera.  Then, finally, he said he didn’t want to see me until after I’d been given an assessment by the agency’s psychologist, that is, psychological testing.  Weeks passed, and then I had this testing, grueling hours of inkblots, pictures that I was supposed to interpret, and some kind of personality test with yes or no questions if I remember correctly.  Many of the questions used slang or informal terms that I was not familiar with, or I found the questions were ambiguously worded.  I asked myself what would result if English were my second language, or if I knew very little English.  This would affect the entire psychological test, not only that part that I was now filling out now in the room by myself.  What a useless test.  Then, refusing to tell me the results of the test, Dr. Scully said he refused to meet with me.  I did not even speak with Dr. Scully at all, but heard this through my therapist that I had at the time.  Soon after, this therapist that I had been seeing was laid off from the agency.  Scully insisted that I see this new, shit therapist that performed Oppressive Therapy on me as I described in the previous paragraph.  I began cutting soon after.  Hmmm…

Well, back to the cutting itself and the masking taped-razor blade.  Yes, I was desperate because I was stuck with a shit therapist who was not only giving me no assistance, but abusing me every time I came to his office.  Every night bingeing, not only while driving home because I couldn’t hold on until I arrived at some defunct or dark, empty parking lot, shoving as much as I could into my mouth as fast as I could until there was no more room to fit anything in.  Most of the food trash I dumped into whatever trash can I could find, but only if I could do it without anyone seeing me do this.  It was a small town and who knows if anyone that knew me, maybe someone from way back in my past, saw me doing this shameful act.  Hell, they could be an undercover cop, pick through the trash and see what I’d thrown out.  I parked my car at my cold, cold half-duplex that I shared with my abusive roommate (another story altogether) and staggered inside, waiting for whatever my roommate had in store for me.   Yelling at me for not keeping the apartment clean typically.  Yeah, like I was so miserable in my body, stuffed full with junk food, barely able to stand up, sit up, walk around, certainly not bend over, now I was supposed to sweep the floor or clean the tub?  So damn depressed…what the heck showed up on these psych tests anyway?  And since when did she ever do any housecleaning?  I was stuck with her, stuck with this therapist, no one cared.  Well, she cared, but it was really weird.  Long story that I explain clearly in my book that will come out in paperback very soon.  I tried a support group but no one there had this type of eating disorder.  This is not in my book.  They were all overeaters and everyone was older than me.  Overeating is very different from bingeing and fasting, and I had only recently become slightly overweight, before that normal weight, before that severely underweight.  The overeaters had never heard of bulimia, in fact.  I had been diagnosed with this but of course just about all people who suffer bulimia throw up, so it was nearly impossible to explain to the people who suffered overeating what bulimia was without being really awkward about it.  This was a very caring group.  But because by this time I had become very ill, I was having increasing difficulty with absolutely everything in life.  They saw this, and reached out every way they could.  It must have been very sad for them to see me sink lower and lower.  It made me sad to see their sad faces.  Maybe I was letting them down by being the way I was.  Maybe I was a failure, called a Jewish American Princess who had fallen from her throne, failed to finish school and then was shunned by her college, Bennington College (wouldn’t that just figure it would be Bennington, as I was stereotyped “rich Bennington girl” by “townies,” my roommate, and probably that shit therapist), I fell from my throne and hit ground real hard, broken every bone in my body in fact.  What was the use of going on?  I was stuck with a therapist that didn’t even believe that I binged, and if he did, thought it was a trivial matter.  He didn’t believe that I was depressed.  He thought I everything I said was a lie.  Actually, I didn’t say all that much while in his office.  Rather, he talked about what I was like and why I was that way.  I thought about killing myself.  Maybe I would cut my wrist, and I would bleed to death.  I had heard that if you cut yourself from elbow to wrist it would work, while a cut across the arm horizontally won’t work.

My exact reason for cutting was this:  It was a contemplated, deliberate, planned-out practice run for actual suicide.  I wanted to get warmed up to the feeling of cutting skin so that I would have courage when the time came to do this.  Each time, I dug deeper.  But I had to repeatedly dig in.  I wasn’t able do do it in a single stroke.  I never got to the point of having that kind of guts.

Yes, guts.  Not impulse.  Guts.

And no, I have not told any therapist any of this stuff because as soon as they ask me if I have ever cut and I say, “Yes,” they assume.  They assume tons of stuff about me and even start to put a diagnosis onto me based on this one behavior that happened in 1983, and a tiny bit in 1997 but not much really.   Not only that, they don’t even hear these dates and seem to forget that it’s been the 21st Century for how long now?  When I start to explain why I cut in 1983, they cut me off because they already know enough about me thank you.

Do you hear me, World of Mental Health Professionals?  Quit your molds.  We are people.  We are not diagnoses.  Treat people, not categories.  Quit assuming.  Listen to the stories.  Listen to the entire story.  You may be surprised.

Psychotherapy appointments are generally 45 to 50 minutes.  Psychotherapy is some form of talk therapy.  Psychiatry appointments, that is, appointments where you are prescribed medication, are typically 15 to 20 minutes.

In this brief time, how can this pill doctor know anything, anything at all about you?

So many times, I have gone into Dr. P’s office and gotten a 20-minute lecture about my weight.  That is, Dr. P looks on her computer and sees what Dr. K has punched in for my latest weight that she took at my appointment with her, and then Dr. P turns to me and gives me a grueling lecture.  And that’s it.  On the way home, my feelings are ambiguous.  Maybe I feel really good cuz I’m skinny in her eyes.  Maybe, on the other hand, I feel shitty cuz it was a wasted appointment and I had other things I wanted to talk about.

Sometimes, I’ve gone in there and don’t say much, but she says how well I’m doing, and I feel like shit inside really.  I leave.  On the train, I might feel decent, only cuz I wasn’t sectioned, or because she isn’t going to blab to my T that I should be sectioned.  On the other hand, I feel shitty cuz I feel so misunderstood, misinterpreted…I don’t even give a shit.  This happened a lot of times.  This happened the last time I saw her.  Psychiatry is useless.  Maybe it’s useless.  Twenty minutes, ten if she’s running late, you say hi, while you’re in there her beeper goes off a zillion times, she taps a few things you say into the computer verbatim just for the record, you’re out of there with prescriptions and that’s about it.

Well, dang, imagine being a teen and going through all this and it’s doubly shit.  Teens are misunderstood to begin with.  They have the schools, too.  Have schools changed all that much?  Bullying is still happening.  The classrooms have more kids in them, that is, classroom size is bigger than ever and budgets are slashed and slashed and slashed again.  Teachers are overworked and underpaid.  How can they give individual attention to the kids if teacher-student ratio is so high?  The kids need this.  Many kids aren’t getting what they need from their parents.  Their parents aren’t good listeners or they don’t give a damn or they have financial woes or they are drug abusers or kid abusers or they’re going through a divorce or the family situation is just plain warped.

The kids aren’t being listened to at home or at school.  If no one lends an ear, are they going to speak at all?  Probably not.  Chances are, they will hold it all inside.  That’s what I did.  That’s what kids are doing right now and that’s why I DO need to speak up and tell my story.  My story is happening NOW, in the classrooms and in the homes everywhere where kids exist.

Where is the mental health system in all this?  Therapists, are you listening?  Treatment centers for eating disorders, are you listening?  Emergency rooms, are you listening?  What happens when a starving kid shows up?  Are you assuming?  Putting the kids into molds?  Listen again.  Ask questions.  What happened back in December when I showed up at Mount Auburn Hospital, starving?  I stated clearly that I had the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, and hadn’t eaten anything with calories in it for six days.  Why did you say that I felt like fainting…ahem…because I was “anxious,” and sent me home with the diagnosis of an anxiety disorder?  Yes, you asked me specific questions.  I remember these questions.  You asked me leading questions that pointed to an anxiety disorder.  You tried to get me to answer all these questions so that I would fit into this mold.  You were busy.  I have Medicaid and Medicare, no money, maybe insurance whatever, maybe my useless DMH person (it was her boss that they talked to and neither knows anything about eating disorders) said something bizarre, who knows.  Emergency rooms, do you hear me?  Learn something about eating disorders.  At least know what they are.  Mount Auburn Hospital had no time for me and wanted me out of there.  They weren’t educated about eating disorders.  Even so, when a skinny 54-year-old woman shows up and states what her diagnosis is and then says she hasn’t eaten a thing for six days, hey, common sense, it’s freaking serious, you don’t have to be a doctor to know this.

(I don’t have a clue why I went there in the first place, because no way did I want to be hospitalized.  On the other hand, when you are starving, you aren’t exactly thinking very clearly.  Obviously they weren’t, either.)

Okay, I am complaining and not saying what WE can do about it.  I am saying that I am going to change the world and haven’t done all that much yet, done a heck of a lot of hanging out and moping around, stayed in bed a few days, hung out at the library a bit, and lived with my eating disorder.  What I have done is to vastly improve my life in many ways, take an entirely new approach, take my life into my own hands (self-reliance…yeah…was it Thoreau?)…I have goals that I want to achieve…I am working toward these goals…I am determined to help people with eating disorders, and no, I don’t have to be “recovered” to do this…there is no time…why should I wait for “recovery” when so many people are in need?  Why do I need to say, “I have to wait till I’m recovered and I can’t help anyone until I help myself.”  Because this is selfishness.

Today is what matters.  Not some nebulous, vague Tomorrow.  Tomorrow might never happen.  I might die first.  Get real.  I might not even make it to fifty-five.  Don’t tell me not to talk this way, cuz I’m only being realistic.  Plenty of people die in their sleep for no reason at all.  Plenty of things happen that don’t make sense to us.  Plenty of things happen that we find “unfair.”  Let me say right here and right now that in life, there is no “fair” and “unfair.”  Say it is a hot summer day, and you are out in the middle of a hot parking lot, and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a thunderous downpour.  You don’t have an umbrella because the weather guy said zero percent chance, so you get drenched.  Unfair?  Oh, honestly!  There is nothing unfair or immoral about it.  How is rain at all wrong?  Did nature goof?  No, you goofed.  You and I know full well that nobody, even the weather guys, even now in 2012, aren’t perfect.  You took a chance.  I do this sometimes, don’t bother with an umbrella.  If you got wet, you got wet.  It’s not the same as getting your wallet stolen.  There’s no need to call the police or your lawyer or grief counseling.

I don’t see life as unfair, much as you do hear me bitch and moan and yell and scream.  You know what I call this?  It’s called speaking out.  It’s called expressing yourself in writing.  I think more people need to do this.  I think more people with eating disorders need to speak out about what it’s like to live with an eating disorder.  I think more people who have eating disorders need to come out of the closet and say, right here and now, say OUT LOUD, just say it:

I HAVE AN EATING DISORDER.

I HAVE ANOREXIA NERVOSA.

I HAVE BULIMIA.

I HAVE BINGE EATING DISORDER.

I CHEW AND SPIT.

I MAKE MYSELF THROW UP.

I EAT THE EXACT SAME THING EVERY DAY.

I CAN’T CONTROL MY EATING.

I OVEREXERCISE TO THE POINT OF EXHAUSTION TO LOSE WEIGHT.

I STARVE MYSELF.

I THINK ABOUT MY WEIGHT ALL DAY LONG IN SECRET.

I ABUSE LAXATIVES.

I ABUSE DIET PILLS.

MY EATING HAS TO BE PERFECT, OR I FALL APART

I FEEL COMPELLED TO EAT THINGS THAT PEOPLE DON’T CONSIDER TO BE HUMAN FOOD

I WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT MORE THAN I WANT TO REMAIN ALIVE

Say it out loud, or write it down and put this writing online so the world can see.  Write books.  Educate the world.  I do it here in my blog and I am on the top of Google in many categories.  Most of the people who read here are in the US, others are mostly from English-speaking countries cuz I write in English, some are from countries where they speak other languages but folks know English quite well as a second language or learn it early on in school.  Still others are from countries where many do not know English.

We still don’t know the exact cause of eating disorders.  Not really.  It sounds like there have to be a bunch of puzzle pieces that fit together.  If all the pieces are there, the puzzle gets made.  There you are.  But everyone is different, and therefore no two puzzles are alike.

Yeah, you know what I’m going to say, that my dog named Puzzle will need to get a walk soon.  Life.

Okay, another thing we need to do, we, meaning, if you are an adult, or everyone, cuz if you are a kid you are headed there and I pray that you reach that point safely.  Kids need an adult in their lives, like one adult that listens to them, one adult that cares.  Like one cool teacher.  Are you a cool teacher?  Are you a cool teacher that cares about kids?  Do you take a bit of time, maybe after school, and hang out with the kids, maybe talk to them a bit, open your heart to them and listen?  Can you stop grading papers just for an hour a day after school and just sit with them, let them into your classroom or office?

Are you a cool coach?  What about the kids on the team that don’t seem quite right?  Are you concerned about their physical health?  Are they taking drugs?  What about their weight?  Maybe working out too much or not eating right?  Did you hear someone throwing up?  Did you see a cut on someone’s arm?  Just sit with them.  Just be there.  Any time they want to talk about it, you are there and you will listen.

There are many ways that we as adults can get involved with kids.  I don’t see kids much in my daily life.  Maybe you do. I know of the Big Brother Big Sister organization and I have heard good things about it.  It is a two-year commitment if you want to do it.  They do an intensive background check and I am sorry to say that they screen for mental illness, which really blows…anyway, I have not looked into it for myself and have never seen an application or been through an interview or know what questions they would ask me personally.  I’ll bet they’d shoo me out the door in a minute or two.

But maybe it’s more important to me, right here right now, to reach out to kids in my daily life.  Like tomorrow.  I’ll be at church tomorrow and I’ll see kids at social hour.  Not a lot of kids cuz we have a small church.  Most families don’t have kids, or they have one or two, or they have grown kids that are out of the house and living far away, some with kids of their own.  There are a couple of babies at church.  During services, the kids go to religious education, and the babies stay in the nursery.  The kids are wicked cute.  They tend to run around a lot and do kid things.  They stay at the service for about ten minutes, then they walk out and go to their own classes, and while they are walking out, we sing a song.  The song is pretty.  I usually cry during this song.  I don’t know why.  Maybe cuz I see that the kids are so loved.  The ones that have just learned to walk hold their parents’ hands.  They teeter.  They waddle in their diapers.  Some of the ones that are slightly older trot along merrily.  Their hair sways with them as they pass through the door.  I wipe my tears.

Maybe tomorrow I will quit my shyness around kids, and I’ll try to talk to one of them.  I’m a bit awkward around kids, but I got more comfortable around teens after I was at Alcott.  Or shall I say I got to loving teens and caring deeply about them.  I’ll talk to one of them.  No big deal.  Maybe ask what they like to do, or if they have a pet.

Oh damn, I’m crying now.

It sucks being a teenager.  Or it sucked for me.  Please, reach out to those kids.  It sucks having an eating disorder and it sucked for every single person in that ward no matter what their age was, young or old.  This is no freaking game.  It’s life and death.

Just listen.  We need you.  Reach out.  Connect.  We all need this.  And it needs to start now.

News about me!

I have been meaning to write here for days but for whatever reason haven’t done so.    I’ve been spending time writing in pencil lately.  I worked on a couple of stories and I’m ambivalent about both.  They are both memoir stories.  One happened to me a long, long time ago, and the other happened less than a week ago.  In brief:

The first is about a creepy experience with an aunt who spent time in a concentration camp.  I haven’t a clue which one or where, or any of the details.  They did talk about it…sort of.  Maybe I just didn’t want to hear, not because it was too painful, but because it happened before I was born and I had no interest in history.  I thought history was irrelevant to modern times and didn’t see myself as having any influence on the larger goings-on in the world, anyway.  It was all parent stuff, even when I was an older kid.  Parents read newspapers and I was a lowly high school student, just a puppet in society, kicked around, teased, bullied, enslaved…oh, I could use all kinds of words that meant I had no control, nothing, a non-life…all I wanted was to be free…move out and have a life of my own.  What I didn’t realize was that it was inevitable that I, too, would very soon become an adult myself.

So this aunt took me aside.  That was as far as I got.  She was damn creepy.  Anyway, if I had continued with the story, she took me to this creepy part of the mansion where my bossy, domineering grandma lived (my mom’s mom), and gave me a lecture, saying that of the three kids in my family, I was the one who most obviously “looked the most Jewish,” and therefore it was my obligation, as Jew, to carry on the Jewish tradition.  This, and guilt-tripping because I had not done this, had quit Hebrew school, had not chosen to travel to Israel and live on a Kibbutz, or study at a…forget what it’s called but it’s a Jewish school thingy that is very intense, hold on a sec.  Yeshiva.  That’s it.  It’s not a seminary, but kind of very religious school.  And she guilt-tripped me because my parents hadn’t brought me up Jewish enough, like it was my fault…my dad had blown it by not sending us kids to a Jewish day school…our friends were not Jewish…we had mingled with non-Jews…on and on and on…even comparing me to the other cousins.  Then she started talking about the concept of Jewish suffering.  That got me going, that is, I started crying, but she didn’t see.  Maybe she had bad eyesight…yeah, I guess that was what it was.  I fled out of there as fast as I could.  I rushed down the stairs, dying for fresh, cool air.  Then (I was going to fudge this part of the story a bit) I saw one of the younger cousins, drunk on all four glasses of wine (this takes place at the Passover Seder) puking in the front bushes.  I guess the story ends there, but I  can’t recall exactly cuz of course I never got around to writing that far.

The other story is about my brother, Ned, that is, who showed up at my apartment on Saturday.   I felt good about the visit at the time that I was writing the story, but now I feel shitty about it.  I did some thinking.  He was in town for a while.  Sort of.  He came up to see my mom, then he went skiing for a bunch of days, then he came back.  When he called, the first thing he did was to indicate surprise that I was out of the hospital.  Well, heck.  The least he could have done was to come visit.  He damn well knew what hospital I was in.  I had told him clearly the name of the hospital, the location, and the name of the unit, and he had written it down.  This was about a week into my stay.  I had also given him the number to the nurses’ station in case he hadn’t been able to reach me on the patient phones.  He didn’t even call the hospital while he was in town to find out visiting hours.  I also found out my brother Phil spent an extensive time in town a few weeks ago and made no attempt to contact me.  I have not heard a word from him since the sixth or seventh of February!  He figuratively dumped me off at the hospital, and left me there to rot, saying, again figuratively, “That’s taken care of,” and wiped his hands clean of me.  That’s how I see it.

Dang.  I had tried.  On Saturday and Sunday, when I had started writing this story, I felt that my attitude toward my brothers had turned  around.  I thought that the doors I had knocked on repeatedly for maybe twenty years, doors that never, never opened for me, would maybe open for me if I presented to them a person free of the mental health system at last.  Like I was going to do this chameleon act and be this changed person, no longer institutionalized.  Then maybe they’d love me.

I had mixed feelings about this story anyway.  It was too rushed.  Way, way too rushed.  The thought was nice.  But it was fiction.  Fiction is a lie and an exaggeration.  That is fiction in a nutshell.

I feel crappy today.  Wicked crappy.  Mentally, I’m fine.  I’m not depressed at all.  But I think I’m dehydrated.  I can’t beat this.  I drink plenty of fluids.  In the past, I have had, say…I am clueless as to the exact amount, but at least a half gallon…definitely more than a half gallon of fluids at night, and in the morning, ended up with a blood test indicating dehydration.  This, of course, was not in my recent hospitalization.  They never allowed me that much water.  I am drinking fine now, reasonable amounts, spacing it throughout the day.  I carry a water bottle with me most of the time, and fill it up periodically whenever I can.  Sometimes, I forget the bottle, though.

I don’t know what it is.  I have no appetite.  I kept looking in the fridge, and then looking in the cabinet, back and forth.  This isn’t my ED keeping me away right now.  I’m fairly sure of it.  I have no appetite even for my black coffee, which has no calories.

Change of subject.  I wrote a reading list and have this list written up at the library’s site with the call numbers, etc.  I put a few of these books in as requests.  One of these is by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who has written a lot of books that have been translated into many languages.  I believe he won the Nobel Peace Prize quite some time ago.  Another book I found in the catalog, and this one I have on my list.  A third has ended up missing within the library system and is not obtainable in any system I’ve searched around here.  Coincidentally, I found it on Amazon and at the same time, managed to pay under$5 for it including shipping.  I read the reviews to make sure it was something I was seeking.

Another writer that piqued my curiosity is Stanton Peele.  He has an unconventional view of addiction.  I was unable to quite ascertain what exactly was meant by “unconventional,” but my best guess was that maybe he believes the American media is paying too much attention too addiction and society is placing too much blame for its ills on this ailment, focusing self-help on curing addiction.  We shall see.  I googled him and went roundabout, ending up at a site that protested forced attendance at spiritually-based addiction meetings, stating that these meetings, in some areas in the country, always used the Lord’s Prayer and were consistently attended entirely by Christians.  This forced attendance that this site mentioned happens when a person is on parole for breaking the law and has an alcohol or drug problem.  The parole officer, apparently, checks up on the parolee to make sure that this attendance requirement is being met.  The folks at the site stated that it was illegal to push Christianity or a specific religion, or even belief in a Higher Power (actually, this Higher Power is soon after specified as God) on a person, that this was against the First Amendment.

Hmmm.  While I feel that the folks at this site are absolutely right, that the law should not require that the meetings or treatment HAS to be one of these groups, and leave as the only option groups that are all spiritually based, I don’t think the only options should be groups that are non-spiritual.  Hardly.

If you can prove that standing on your head will cure 90% of cocaine addicts, I mean really prove that this will work, tell those law guys, show them the statistics, and convince them that the parolees should do this in order to better themselves.  If they are convinced by your presentation, then perhaps this will be a new requirement for those capable of standing on their heads.

When I was a kid, I did headstands all the time to impress people.  Right now, the last thing I want to do is to stand on my head cuz I feel so lousy.  I am so glad, also, that I never did cocaine.  This saves me the headstand cure, should it ever be discovered that it does indeed work.

Oy, I want to keep on talking to you but I want to lie down.  I will keep going and then stop when I can’t go any further.  I feel great after stopping therapy.  It was the right thing to do.  I feel freed up, no longer scared that I’m going to end up in the state hospital.  So mostly, I am relieved.  Just like my whole self is sighing, “Phew!”   What’s weird is that I feel like I’m getting out of the house more and that I’m more active all of a sudden.  I don’t know.  Energized and motivated, focused on self-improvement and self-everything.  I’m in charge now.

I went to see the acupuncturist yesterday and it was a fabulous experience.  This approach is like nothing else I have ever experienced.  First of all, my number one beef with “traditional,” and might I add “Western” medical method of treating eating disorders, that is, the one and only option (“team” approach, “step-down”, etc, and all that these entail)  is that the practitioners of this “traditional Western” eating disorders treatment, or perhaps I ought to broaden this and say ALL mental health treatment in the Western world, treats the patient with disrespect, sometimes subtly, but often very blatantly.  It is clear that Eastern practitioners and the whole Eastern treatment philosophy has a different take on what treatment is.  You don’t glean this from any website, and you won’t learn half of what someone with an eating disorder can get out of acupuncture treatment.  Let me say first off that it would be different for each person.  Why?  Duh.  I’m not a height and weight, nor are you.  I am Julie Greene and I have certain things going on in my body, mind, and spirit.  I described what these things were.  The acupuncturist pointed out a few other things, and you know something?  I didn’t even know these things were going on with me, and she’s absolutely right.  Not only that, I told her some stuff that I’ve been trying to convince medical people for months now, and not only did she believe me, but she said that all put together, these things make a very, very clear and believable picture.  We were entirely straight with each other.  She is referring me to the school where she used to teach, where I can get inexpensive or possibly free care.  She explained thoroughly how treatment plans work, what takes place in an acupuncture session, and what to expect.  She even told me which supervisor to ask for at the acupuncture school, and told me that she would speak to that supervisor, whom of course she knows, and send over her notes.  As far as seeing an improvement, she said that the patients she has treated with eating disorders have seen marked improvement, but in my case I will probably see less improvement since my case is so advanced, however, she feels that it will certainly be worth my while to follow through with this.  I agree!

Okay, let’s see…what else.  I have decided that since I am so absolutely disgusted that I was unable, after a long, long search, to find any “group” for people with eating disorders that would accept me, or that wasn’t ridiculously expensive, I will start my own!  This, of course, will be therapist-free!  So this will not be a “therapy” group.  I am kind of sick of the word “group.”  It is so mental health cliche.  So it will be called a “gathering.”  I will find a meeting space, one that is accessible with accessible bathrooms, and I will check the space out myself to make sure that yes, accessible means accessible.  Renting the space…maybe asking for donations from members…whatever they can afford.  I haven’t decided if this is “drop-in” or if you have to “join,” but for certain this gathering will be welcoming, that is, anyone can be there regardless of where they are at ED-wise, male or female, welcoming to anyone of any race or religion or economic status or sexual orientation or how they choose to identify themselves sexually, or body shape or size or what or how they eat and there is no requirement that they be in any sort of “treatment” while they are attending this group or be at some minimum weight or minimum medical condition…how can we not serve those most in need?  People choose to refuse medical treatment for many reasons, and often, are refused medical treatment, turned away due to non-insurance, or kicked out of residential treatment for stupid reasons, or homeless, or suddenly jobless.  You can’t assume anything.

What we would talk about and what we wouldn’t talk about in this gathering…hmm…I guess it would be a really positive thing to say what works for you, and the positive things you are doing to help yourself.  And also what you tried and didn’t work.  Books you read that impressed you that you would recommend.   No pro-_n_ talk or pro-mi_ talk.  How, specifically, would this be defined?  This would have to be laid out.  Maybe we could have writing time and reading what we wrote.

Maybe, as an offshoot of this gathering, an eating disorders writing group.  As a culmination, or perhaps ongoing project, we would do a public reading of our works, or joint writing project, or mixed media project, slide show with artwork and readings possibly.  So unlike going to those eating disorder conferences and hearing “recovery stories,” from people who had no choice but to do “traditional” treatment, you’d hear writings and possibly all types of art of all types from people at all stages of their eating disorder, and this would be in many genres, not necessarily autobiography.

Me personally?  I want to be “out there” as much as possible.  Let’s face it, I know more about eating disorders than most medical professionals do.  I don’t know a thing about what it feels like to self-induce vomit because I’ve never done it, but I sure know body dysmorphia first-hand.  A lot of eating disorders specialists don’t know eating disorders.  Training means nothing unless you “get it.”  Like the feeling I had when I thought the diet cola I’d bought wasn’t really diet.  This was in February, not long before I went into the hospital.  I thought I’d been tricked by the generic cola company and that they had mislabeled the bottle, and that they had switched them.  I searched on the Internet to see if there had been a cola recall.  I was terrified.  So I told them this when I went into the hospital.  Dang!  They wanted me to take a freaking antipsychotic.  I was wise enough to tell the admitting shrink that no, I don’t need your pills, thank you.  My brain is starved and I haven’t been thinking clearly for months, can’t you see?  No pill will FEED the brain.  I have had more first-hand experience with eating disorders than many medical professionals have even been in the medical profession.  Not only that, I’ve had round-the-clock experience.

So I feel perfectly confident, competent, and qualified to write about eating disorders and read in front of an audience about my first-hand experience.  I know a lot of places around here where I can arrange a reading.  I am lucky to live in an urban area where there are so many opportunities and venues and nonprofits and interesting 0rganizations to explore.

Okay, what else…the acupuncture school called me back, and I have an appointment in a week!

Mass General suddenly called me yesterday.  They found my running shoes and clothes!  After all this time!  They were lost last July, that is, taken from me in the psych emergency room and never returned to me.  I was told that I was reimbursed.  I pursued this, as I mentioned before, and was given the runaround of course…pass the buck…so I was disgusted, meanwhile had had to replace them, having nothing else to wear, and saved the receipts, but to no avail.  I had lost out, in the hole not only $117, but the cost of the flip-flops I’d had to purchase in the gift shop just to get home on the subway, having nothing to put on my feet for the journey.  I’m going to be picking up this stuff tomorrow.  They have it at the medical floor I was on.

Okay, I’m going to get going.  I can’t think of much more to talk about.  I’m surprised that I stayed up this long.   I have this pile of laundry on the floor.  The least I can do is to pick it up and put it in the laundry bag.  I’m surprised that Puzzle isn’t lying all over the pile of laundry.  You’d think that Puzzle would settle herself among my filthy, stinky socks and have the time of her life.

Saying goodbye to my T, continued from where I left off, now having arrived at the library

As I have just stated, I am an opinionated person, and these are my opinions.  You don’t have to agree with me, though maybe you do.  You don’t even have to read this, though maybe you are curious about what is written here.   If you’re looking for an entry that’s written with perfect grammar and punctuation, and free of syntax errors, you’re in the wrong place.  It’s not that I don’t give a shit about this stuff, cuz I do.   It’s just that this stuff isn’t priority right now.  Living well is all about choosing what is priority and what isn’t.  Thinking carefully about this, and then making a decision.  And again, that’s my opinion and you don’t have to listen to me.

Okay, where did I leave off?  Emotional disorders…I stated that everyone can have disordered emotions when they are in a hurry and all folks have to do to order their emotions is to stop being in a hurry.  Enough said.  Well, maybe not.  There may be a difference between having an “emotional disorder” and having “disordered emotions.”  Naw.  This is just a figment of whatever.  It’s all words, anyway.

But there is a difference between having “disordered eating” and having an “eating disorder.”  Of this I am certain.  Who determines this?  Agreeably, the medical profession DOES give patients diagnoses.  This may or may not be a good thing.  I have heard directly from patients…about 50/50…that some patients feel validated by the diagnosis.  They feel that they have finally been listened to, that someone cares and believes what they say.  I felt this way.  Maybe because I had waited for so long, through the early 1980′s before Karen Carpenter, in such a tragic way screamed out to the world the words, “Anorexia nervosa….”  Anyway, another bunch of folks felt labeled by their eating disorder diagnoses given to them by the medical profession, and some were affected in a truly negative way.  They became their eating disorders, however subtly.

Maybe this should be re-done.  Maybe having an eating disorder should be self-defined.  In AA they say you should take an honest look at yourself and ask yourself if you are an alcoholic.  But I am rambling here.  If you are troubled by your eating and related issues, maybe you should take action.  I said, action.  And I said, you.  Not someone else.

Okay, more.

More about emotions.  Therapists and emotions, different theories of emotions, people and so-called illness and emotions, etc.

I have spoken about channeling emotions in my previous entry, how I want to channel my anger and put it to good use and become an activist.  I told my therapist today about this. I explained to her that I feel inspired by so many great activists in history such as Martin Luther King who saw so many wrongs in the world and sought to right them.  Precisely.  I have seen how people with eating disorders fall between the cracks.  I see how we do not have a voice.  We are silenced by the society, by insurance companies, by the mental health system, by the medical profession at large…and sadly, by many who mean well.  By silencing minorities within us, we are all silenced, and by this I specifically mean that writers who use female-specific language when they discuss eating disorders, thus excluding male sufferers, do us all a disservice.

I say this because feminism has for a long time been for all of us.  What, after all, does equality mean?  Equality is for everyone.  What benefits the downtrodden will benefit society as a whole.  What benefits the downtrodden will embrace our planet and strengthen it and sustain it.

I believe that anything is possible.  I believe that life is Maybe.  I have thrown Yes And No out the window and embrace this Maybe.  Is there a God?  Well, maybe.  I have God in my heart, but you don’t have to, and as many of you know full well, I change my mind faster than I can type.

I love my church.  It is a UU church.  UU is so Maybe.  Maybe my minister would agree, maybe not.  We don’t push our members to believe in a certain creed or a certain God and we don’t like the usual dogma.

Sometimes when I write here in my blog I get opinionated and maybe that can be defined as pushy, but maybe not, and if you were to meet me in person, you’d say that I’m not a pushy person.  Headstrong at times.  Stubborn at times.  Rude occasionally but in general I make a point of being polite and kind.  Extremely self-centered.  What the heck.  Can’t help it.  I’m a writer, after all.

I was talking about emotions and theories about emotions.  There is this theory that some people have, let me see if I can get the words right, some sort of intensity of emotions more than other people, or extreme emotions, and maybe these people can’t handle their emotions and therefore are immature or unstable or have boundary problems or act out or do self-destructive things or have bad tempers or addictions or are suicidal…all of the above folks definitely need therapy…whatever.

By some groups, these intense emotional states are called “extreme states.”  Again, whatever.  Words are words.

I’ve heard all the coping skills stuff and as I said in my previous entry I’m wicked sick of the therapy cliches.  I have no need for stress balls.  I was given a pair and never used them.  I have never put an orange into the freezer.  It’s a waste of good nutritious food.  I do not take deep breaths as a “coping skill” on a therapist’s command.  These are my lungs, thank you, I’ll take deep breaths for a doctor with a stethoscope for a damn good practical reason.  I am sick of coping skills therapy bullshit.  If I want to use coping skills, I’ll use what works, and they’d better believe that by now I know what works and what doesn’t.  I have long ago ceased the need for lessons.

Nor do I think some people experience more intense emotions than other people.  I think some people think more deeply.  I think some people spend time seeking meaning in their lives, and some people don’t really care.  I think there are times in our lives when we pause to seek this meaning.  I think there are times in our lives when we are stopped by something that makes us think.  I think some people are thinkers all their lives, and some people don’t ever pause to think.  This is very sad indeed.  They don’t have time to think.  They are in too much of a hurry.

I do like to think deeply.  I do want to sustain Passion in my life.  Passion involves deep thinking and it also involves channeling whatever emotions I am experiencing.  It might mean writing.  It might mean speaking aloud to someone or some group of people.  It might mean channeling a very deep emotion or strong emotion.

There is absolutely nothing “wrong” with me.   There is certainly nothing morally wrong with me.  I am not a sinner.  I do not believe in sin, though I have certainly made oodles of mistakes because everyone tends to screw up now and then.  No, correction: I screw up a lot.  That’ s what erasers are for.  I admit I have in my possession some really decent erasers.  I can’t stand the ones that smudge.

There is nothing psychiatric wrong with me due to my intense emotions or depth of thought.   Passion is a good thing.   I made it my goal not long ago to be more Passionate.  I made it my goal not long ago to sustain a constant and strong level of Passion in my life.

Maybe you will discover where your Passion is leading you.  If you are writing, write, and keep on writing.  I honestly believe that Passion is by nature creative and life-sustaining. I truly believe that leading a life of Passion will give a person a purpose, a reason to keep on living and growing and learning within their art.

So today was my last day of therapy.  We said goodbye.  I am not having therapy for a while.  I feel okay about it.

I am going to work on my character flaws.  I am going to make a list of them.  Maybe I should think of them as challenges, like the things that I am up against in life.  “Flaws” implies that I ought to be perfect.  Like I said, I don’t want to live Yes Or No.  I want to live Maybe. After all, Bush was Yes Or No and he got voted out of office a long time ago.

I need to work on Body Dysmorphia, but that’s kind of a biggie.  I need to work on shame.  I need to work on my tendency to discriminate against people based on what their age is, that is, I tend to judge people or make sweeping assumptions about people based on their chronological age.  I need to stop doing this.  I need to work on procrastination.  Like how long did it take me to return those CDs to the library?  Geez.  I’d like to read a couple of books that I feel are important for me to read right now.

I’m doing really, really well with spending less money and being conscious of my monetary situation, and at the same time not dwelling on it needlessly.  My eating is improving slowly.  I am doing well at being assertive with others and explaining to others that I am taking my time improving my eating.  I am amazed at how well I now know myself and understand what my shortcomings are.  I am amazed at how effectively my writing helps me.  I am happy that I spend less time and energy over-apologizing to people and annoying people by apologizing over and over.  I like that I am bold now.   I like that I stand up for my rights.  I have my Power and I am strong.  I make good decisions.

Okay, the library is closing and I might as well end this.  It’s as good enough a time as any.  See ya later.

 

 

 

 

A Path of My Own

On Monday, I showed up for my usual 1pm therapy session with a letter for my therapist.  I had begun writing the letter as soon as I had returned from church Sunday afternoon.  I’m not certain when I had finished writing it.  Immediately before leaving the house, I made certain to weed out  sloppiness, repetitiveness, unnecessary cuss words that when overused, lose their value as shock or taboo words, verb tense inconsistency, and so on and so on and so on…in other words, I weeded out many of the errors you see here that I do in this blog in just about every entry I create.

Oh yes, one more thing you know I do here is that I contradict myself.  I say one thing one day, then another thing the very next day.  Well, of course.  There are two sides of the bed.  No, let me contradict myself right there. Most beds are four-sided.  No, let me contradict myself yet another time!  Beds are three-dimensional in space.  In addition to the four sides, there are a top and a bottom.  I have never heard of a person getting out of bed via the bottom of the bed.  How would I do this?  My bed has no hole in it. If it did, would I go through this hole to get out of the bed via the bottom?   Or at least no hole yet.  What kind of day would I have if I got out of bed this way?  Would the bottom be one of the “wrong” sides or one of the “right” sides?  What sort of blog entry would result?  Would it be the most contradictory blog entry yet?  Would it even make sense?

No, honestly…Some days, I say I am going to eat and some days I say I want to be get skinnier and have no food in the house, and so on.  So I might say in the entire blog entry…you know how I am…that life sucks and I hate humans and that nobody loves me and this apartment is freezing as always…I have a thermometer that proves it right here at my desk…see?  It’s only 76!  You know my deal.  And then I wrap up the entry and say that there’s hope.  Maybe I leave it at that so you won’t go away feeling bummed out like I am.  Maybe I leave it like that because I, too, wish deep inside that there was hope for myself.  Or maybe I leave it at that because it’s just plain a nice way to sum up.  It’s a nice twist, a surprise, just something that, as a writer, I find that it is maybe a trademark or mine, one of my writerly tendencies.  As a matter of fact, deep down inside, I have an optimist’s heart.  At least I do as a writer, and probably as a human being as well.  I think we all do.  I think that spark in all of us can get buried in some bad shit, but it’s there.  It’s there in everyone.

That spark is even there in people I’m pissed at.  It would be helpful for me to remember this.  Maybe I need to see that spark of goodness in these people, every single one of them, instead of repetitively going over and over every single shitass thing that has been done to me in the past, that is, over the years and years of being shit on.  Yes, it is true that I have been shit on more than most people have been shit on.  Why?  Because I am a shit magnet.  It’s not anyone’s fault that I am a shit magnet.  It’s not my fault.  I just came out this way.  I was born with it.  It’s not my parents’ fault even though they reinforced this thing in me by the way they acted.  They were just being parents.  Repeatedly blaming them, over and over is doing me absolutely no good.

My mother, it is true, has a lot of problems.  Maybe I should just use a general, vague term like “problems” and leave it at that instead of using the term “abuse.”    She does have the spark.

At the same time, just because she has the spark does not mean that I have to go over there and spend time with her.  Just because she has the spark does not mean I should forcefully purge all the anger out of myself.  I am incapable of self-induced purging, remember?  I’m not going to punch pillows or do scream therapy or hold onto a frozen orange or do psychodrama or any of that therapy bullshit.  I am not going to waste my precious library time (when I could be working on book #6) sitting around in freaking day treatment with a bunch of other mental patients five days a week in “group” talking about my mother non-stop or talking about how I’m going to use “coping skills” when I feel old angry feelings or memories pop into my head.

Actually, I have, over many, many years, learned about these “coping skills.”  This list of coping skills has been sitting around since 1997.  I have been wasting my time continuing to be talked to, talked down to, repeated to over and over, about coping skills.  I am blue in the face about coping skills.  Enough already.  I heard you the first time.  I learned years ago.  Don’t insult me.  My memory isn’t that bad.  I am intelligent.  My hearing is pretty good.  Sometimes, I play stupid.  You tell me, “How about a shower?” and I say, “Gee, I hadn’t thought of that, actually!”  Dang.  This is because I figure I don’t need your fucking run-of-the-mill insulting put-down advice, anyway, and the shower is a nice place to be absolutely alone, if I can stand the bullshit feelings I have about my body size and shape while washing myself, but let me not get into that right now.  You obviously don’t get that issue.

You see, when I got my strength back…maybe it’s been a month now…that I’ve had my Power and have recognized my Power…and no, I am not experiencing a “delusion of grandeur” (those of you with heads on your shoulders and a bit of common sense in you know this by now)…this Power has to do with WRITING and with WORDS…and with VOICE as well…I have my voice and a place in the world and I will use my voice…I will roar and the world will hear me…I speak aloud and it is important…ALL PEOPLE WITH EATING DISORDERS HAVE A STORY…YOU NEED TO FIND YOUR STORY…trust me…trust me…

At any rate, I realized, when my Power came to me, that anger is a feeling, and nothing more.  I realized this through writing about anger.  I felt angry at the hospital.  I told the hospital people this.  I filled out their survey last night, very late, and will mail it in today.  I was very specific.  I wrote down my phone number and said that the survey people could call anytime.  There was a place where you could write this.  I used the word “disrespect” more than once.  I feel a lot of disrespect more than anything from the human race.  From other people.  Period.  Strangers even.  Because of what I look like.  Because of stereotyping.  Etc.  I’ll get into this in a minute.  Just hold on.  I need to get back to the subject of anger because I have a few things to say about it.

Anger can’t hurt me physically.  Like, it isn’t going to break a bone.  The last thing I need is another fracture that will put me out of commission for a couple of months!  It doesn’t sting like an insect bite and you don’t need any kind of painkiller or allergy pill for it.  It’s not loud.  You can’t hear it at all!  It’s not like that dumb TV that was constantly blaring in September when I was hospitalized. Nothing like that.  You can’t sense it with any of the five senses and it’s not tangible or edible and has no size or shape.  It doesn’t commit a crime or a sin and it isn’t human or a god or an extraterrestrial thing such as a Martian or from any other planet or a Vulcan like Spock or anything else I saw on Star Trek.

So what is anger?  Anger is a feeling, of course.  Can we agree on this?  Are there “bad” feelings and “good” feelings?  Or can we say that there are “comfortable” feelings and “uncomfortable” feelings?

In the hospital, when I was just there, they told us that feelings were not bad or good.  They told us that some feelings were comfortable and some feelings were uncomfortable.  Actually, I decided that the first statement was definitely true.  The issue of feelings, of human emotion, was not a moral issue.  This is self-evident.  There is nothing morally wrong with having a certain feeling, whatever it is.  You can’t help having this feeling.  It comes into your gut.  If you end up breaking the law or doing something that is not right in the moral sense, such as stealing money from a homeless person while they are sleeping in a park, or…well, never mind…I am just sitting here trying to get creative thinking up a really, really bad thing you can do…and who am I to judge another person?  (Make your own decision what is right based on sound, careful thinking.  Take your time.  You’ll be glad you did.  This is what I learned.)…if you break the law, or do something morally wrong, then this is an ACTION.  Your actions can be moral issues but your feelings are inside of you and are not a moral issue.  They are not wrong or right.  They are not good or bad.   You experience them.  They are there.  That’s all.

As for feelings being “comfortable” and “uncomfortable,” this was verified by the group leader and people confirmed this by stating that when they felt an uncomfortable feeling they had “acted out” by either doing “destructive” behaviors such as “eating disorders” behaviors (restricting, bingeing, purging, overexercising, etc), or other behaviors such as cutting, punching walls, having a tantrum, and involuntary things such as panic attacks, sweating, or hyperventilating.  The list goes on.  Or they did non-destructive things, “coping skills they had either learned through therapy (laugh) or had picked up during their lifetimes, such as walking the dog, crafts, screaming into a pillow so that no one can hear, listening to one of those dumb (basically cuz I can’t stand them) relaxation tapes, counting backwards, calling a friend, taking a PRN, and so on and so forth.

I was disturbed by this.  I thought about it and early on, I spoke up.  Actually, I concluded that the statement that feelings are decidedly “comfortable” or “uncomfortable” to varying degrees (maybe there is a difference between, say, “peeved,” “annoyed,” “angry,” and “in a rage), is a bit psycho-bullshit.  Let me explain.  If you reject this statement, and make up your mind that by all means feelings do not have to have anything to do with comfort, then a whole new world opens up.

Don’t ask me what happened to me exactly.  I do know that I rejected a lot of stuff.  I rejected a lot of traditional psych stuff suddenly.  I opened my eyes and saw it for exactly what it was.  I realized what it meant to have this illness 32 years and to be in therapy for 31 of those years and get nothing out of therapy.  That is, writing about myself would have done the exact same thing or more.  Like journaling or writing my books, any and all of them (the fiction ones, trust me, they’re all about me…it’s a given), and here in my blog, too, it’s self-discovery, like a non-stop memoir or personal essay or journal entry, depending on the day…

NOW LET ME SAY RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW THAT IF YOU ARE A WRITER, YOU WILL DISCOVER THAT THE STATEMENT THAT I JUST MADE IS INDEED TRUE…YOU WILL EVENTUALLY DISCOVER IT, I HOPE.  HOW DO I DEFINE WRITER?  IF YOU WRITE, YOU ARE A WRITER.  PERIOD.

GO.  WRITE.  BE A WRITER.  WRITE A LOT.  DO THERAPY ON YOURSELF AND SAVE SOME MONEY INSTEAD OF SITTING ON A COUCH.

Anyway, I worked this out early on, that feelings are feelings and if you reject that they don’t have to have a comfort level, they become this thing you can channel and actually put to good use for your own benefit.  Every feeling you have you can use to shovel out a path for yourself, a path into the future.  And this is exactly what I did.

Actually, I did this not only because I wanted to do this, but it was essential that I do this to survive at all.  I had to eat to stay alive and not to die.  I needed to have this path, because I needed to have a direction in which to walk.  What would I do without a path?  I would not be able to walk anywhere.  I would become frozen in time.  I needed a future, something to want for myself, some reason to live, some reason to keep on eating, even after I left the hospital…especially after I left.  I kept on saying this, even out loud I said this.

I needed my anger.  I needed my anger.  My anger is energy.  My anger is movement, continuous, flowing.  It needs direction.  It needs to be roped in.  Channeled…funneled…When you do this, it’s more concentrated and more powerful and forceful…laws of physics I guess.  But it which direction?  There were so, so many dimensions of my life, so many questions, so few answers.  So many times in the past year I had thought I was at some kind of turning point.  Had I been?  Was this really an important question to be asking, right here and right now?  Was “turning point” only a label, some artificial map point or writerly nonsense thing they stick into novels just to make a decent-looking plot?

Channel my anger…I looked around me and saw the kids…or at least mostly kids but quite a number of adults as well…many ages…folks, all of us…we’d all fallen between the cracks.  I certainly had.  I’ve done so much writing about this, especially recently.  I saw it for the first time in the kids, in the world in which they lived, how by all means their schools had completely failed them.  This was inexcusable.  An atrocity.  The schools need to be number one.  Even more than parents.  Parents are flawed and this cannot be helped.  There are between one and four parents if you include step-parents.  There is a whole school, well, a lot, lot, lot of adult school people compared to the number of parents, and these are professionals with professional training who should know better than to let these kids down.  The medical profession, too…had failed some…not all…of these kids.  The adult world in general…by definition…me too…kids are kids…seventeen, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen…let’s face it, these ages suck for just about every kid.  How many of them are happy?  How many of them truly feel understood by the world?  There are a handful, a small handful, that enjoy these years.  Like a couple.  These are put in front of the photograph, on display.  The rest walk down the street, kick stones, and wonder what life’s about, and if it’s worth going on at all.  Maybe sixteen will be better.  Maybe seventeen.  They’re not even in the picture.  They didn’t show up for the shoot.

I just have to do something.  For all of us.  For everyone, young or any age, with an eating disorder.  We fall between the cracks in any dimension.  I started right away, right then and there.  I strengthened myself.  I had my voice, my Power now.  I spoke up.  I made mistakes, lots of them, but I thought out my decisions and tried to do what was right, to channel my anger and act and make good decisions, right what was wrong in constructive and creative ways.  Sometimes it meant just smiling at someone and telling them to have a nice day, or good morning or something like that.  Many times it meant doing what was right by being a good example.  Many times it meant breaking unit rules to do what was morally right.  Contradiction?  I don’t think so.  I’ll get back to this.  Often, it meant doing lots, lots, lots of writing.  It meant doing lots of speaking aloud, speaking audibly and clearly, getting certain messages out loudly and clearly (I don’t mean shouting, just making sure I spoke so that I was enunciating and not mumbling).  Sometimes, I had to do this by using subtleties and hints.  Why?  Because I was in my own way, encouraging people to question the unit’s message, which was to blindly do as you were told and be submissive to what the unit staff were telling you.

I feel strongly that people, that is, patients, should speak up and question everything about their treatment.  There is nothing wrong to doubt something.  If you are being given a medicine, ask what the name of it is, and the spelling of the medicine and the name of the brand name and generic(s) associated with it.  Get a printout.  I don’t mean the dumb nursing printout that only tells you three or four side effects.  I meant the entire drug insert that comes with the bottle.  Demand that you get this.  You have the right to this.  The staff DO have Internet access.  Don’t let them bullshit you.  They do.  The Internet does have ALL these bottle enclosures that pharmacists can give you.  If they say they do not have time, tell them to make time ASAP.  Trust me, 99% of doctors and nurses don’t have a clue about drug side effects.  Sad to say, you are the one who is going to have to look these up on the Internet.  Most of them do know about interactions, at least the more serious no-no’s in terms of interactions.  Pharmacists definitely know these interactions and many pharmacies these days won’t even dispense drugs that produce serious interactions without doctor’s approval for whatever reason.  Another idea is to call a pharmacist from the hospital phone (I just thought this up).  These people not only have instant computer access but they are drug gurus.  Not only that…if you are going to take this a step further and look into studies that have been done on particular meds, ignore the studies done by the manufacturer, or take these studies with a grain of salt.  They are probably fudged.  It’ll be tough, but try to find independent studies.  Take message boards with a grain of salt as well.  You have to “interpret” message boards.  Again, tough.  How credible is this person?  What kind of message board is this?  How often do you see this side effect mentioned?  When I saw the side effect of ataxia, that is, effectively “swaying” from Trileptal mentioned over and over and over at every single message board I saw, I realized that the manufacturer downplayed this side effect and also the representatives effectively downplayed in their sales pitch to doctors about the frequency that this side effect had occurred in patients.  Google weight gain and Zyprexa on You-Tube and you can find a former drug sales guy talking about how he was told by the company to lie to doctors about weight gain from Zyprexa.  Let me not go on.  Get the drug insert and don’t take no for an answer.  And okay one more thing.  Talk to other patients, too.  Other patients are a great resource and they’re right there.  I’m not saying to freak out over side effects, no, not that at all.  But you do need to beware of them.  And you need to let people know that by all means, you are a worthwhile person and have a place in this world, not a lowly person on the bottom of the huge totem pole called Mental Hospital.

Other things: Ask questions every step of the way.  Question everything.  This is illogical so why are you doing it?  If a rule makes no sense, get together a bunch of patients and ask that it be changed.  Insist that if a decision is made about you, that it is put in writing, and that this piece of writing is put in your chart, especially, of course, if it is one that you have been waiting for and hoping for.  Stick to your guns.  Also, if you hear some theory or something that you don’t agree with in group or that doesn’t make sense, or if you have another idea, speak up.  Don’t take their bullshit as god-honest truth.  There are other ways of doing things besides “conventional.”  There are people out there who recover from eating disorders in very unconventional ways.  I am looking into alternatives because this “team” approach isn’t working for me.  Conventional-type hospitalization didn’t work for me.  What worked for me was to throw out most of what they attempted to throw into me and cast before me a path of my own.  I did this through my writing.  I think the smarter staff realized that this was happening.  The less smart ones may have sensed it only subconsciously and maybe that was the reason for their extreme hostility toward me.  In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I left.

I have knocked on doors.  Doors have opened and doors have remained closed.  I have taken all sorts of turns in this crazy maze.  I have gotten lost and and then found again, but actually, you are right where you are sitting, right here, right now, so no one is ever lost in time or space.  Even if I get out of the wrong side of bed, I am still out of bed anyway, and can find my way to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, and Puzzle will want her walk no matter what the weather is like.  So everything is just fine with the world.

So I left inpatient, and walked out into this fine world.  The weather was awesome.  I didn’t feel so great.  I had the headache from Hell.  I had felt wicked shitty for the past few days.  No, not freaking tension like the staff was telling me, nor was it the fucking “fluorescent lights,” this too, is complete BS for god’s sakes, I have fluorescent lights at home that have never done this to me, and I do have this “dry air” they are trying to tell me is causing it from my useless heating panels…So I got the precise answer shortly after boarding the bus, on this gorgeous day, this perfect day for a hospital discharge, this inviting day…and as a matter of fact, I had just finished telling the cab driver that if he ever needed to send a kid to eating disorders treatment, he should send the kid to the place I was…

So I get onto the bus.  It’s so damn crowded I can’t move, but I’m lucky and get a seat.  Like a minute later…I swear the bus stopped (verb tense disagreement here) at every single stop!…anyway, I got this gigantic foot cramp.  I am absolutely not kidding you.  Wicked painful.  I thought I would never, ever, ever walk again.  Naw, exaggeration.  I’ve had them before.  What I didn’t know was if I could unkink it before my stop came.  It was so painful and there was no room to stretch out my leg to try to flex it or do anything fancy to get it worked out.  Dang!  Have I mentioned this before?  Of course I have.  I mentioned the nosebleed as well, didn’t I?  The one that went on and on and bled and bled…that I got just after the foot cramp?

It all came crashing in.  The realization.  I was just in the hospital.  I had asked for water over and over, said I was thirsty, and they were too busy to get it for me, this went on for two days…my blood hadn’t been tested…even if it had, of course would anyone have taken note of it?  Probably not.  The NP never read my chart, rarely even opened it.  I don’t know…bummed out…disillusionment…uncertainty…doubt as to how to think about my whole experience at the hospital and what my opinion was and how I should judge my experience and what I should do and think and act and react.  It was a negative…only part was positive and that was that I knew that self-care was very important.  Hydration was essential.  Another thing was the realization that there was one heck of a lot more baloney going on over there than I had originally realized.  I had to re-do my thinking and re-think everything and make some decisions.  I had all the time in the world to do these things.  I have a lot of things to do, a lot of writing and a lot of speaking up and thinking for myself from now on.  No one, no one is going to kick me around ever again.  Julie Greene is coming back.

Hydration…getting back on Impramine…had to do it for eating disorder reasons…doing what I need to to care for my body.  It’s been really rough, and it’s hard cuz by default it’s tough for anyone to self-care when you’re two or three weeks out of inpatient and alone, alone, alone to the extreme to the point where I have gone for days and days with no human contact or even a word with another human, not a polite hello or in passing on the street or a glance at a cash register or even the phone ringing with a recorded human voice on the other end asking if I needed my gutter cleaned.  Nothing.  But I have my Sundays when I go to church and this is good.  And my writing.  Not seeing people is temporary.  It is not exactly the most healthy option.  It is healthier than being around negative people who are going attempt to run my life.  It is also a lot healthier than wasting my time becoming institutionalized all over again in freaking day treatment.  Ugh.  Or backsliding as a result of wasting my time at a so-called clubhouse, or any other mental health institution.  Reminds me of the passive, overly drugged person without a voice that I was when I was younger.  I am no longer that silenced person.  I do have my voice now, and you will hear me from now on.

I have looked into a host of alternatives, some of which I have mentioned and some I have not.  I have looked into some that are free or inexpensive.  I have looked into some others that turned out to be ridiculously expensive, like you wouldn’t believe, and I had to put my foot down.  I felt certainty and then second thoughts and signed nothing so far.

Except I did write the letter to my therapist.  I fired her.  Thursday is our last session.  This was a decision I made last weekend.

“Fired” is a word with bad connotations.  I made the decision on my own and we, together, agreed on it.  Where from here?  I’m just not certain.  I have signed nothing.

Writing is something that helps.  I know this.  Writing has helped me since the day I learned to write.  I wrote my first book at age seven.  Now, I have always said that my first book was the one I started when I turned 40, haven’t I?  Nope.  Here is another one of my contradictions, you say.  Well, I just remembered this recently.  I’ll tell you someday.  Or maybe I already have.  Maybe I’ll just bore you and be repetitive.  Another character flaw I freely and unashamedly admit to.  I think sometimes it’s okay to say something more than once if you say it a little differently to make a different point or use the information for a different purpose.  I guess I’m talking like a writer now.  What gets boring is if a person goes on and on, like when I keep on harping on Zyprexa and weight gain…I mean geez, enough already!  Besides, I went way, way off-topic when I went on that rant, didn’t I?

Was the book I wrote at seven indeed a book?  According to Nano, National Novel Writing Month, it wasn’t a book, because it was far from 50,000 words.  Maybe it was 50 words…????  But wow it was therapeutic.  I stapled it together.  Kind of.  It was bound.  Kind of.  Never mind.  Writing is writing is writing.  It was memoir.  A story about a car accident I was in.  I must have known about how to write a “hook.”  Those of you trained in writing know about a “hook,” the first sentence you are supposed to start off with (but who writes these so-called rules?) that brings in the reader with a bang.  My first sentence was, “Our car flipped over.”  My second sentence was, “And we got out.”  The rest of the book is about everything that happened AFTER the accident.  This is not exactly juvenile literature, mind you.  Let me say that “we” didn’t include me.  I was stuck in the “way back” of the station wagon and trapped back there.

One thing I do remember is this:  There was really no way out of the way-back for me.  It was a three-dimensional space.  We exist in three dimensions, so there was the floor above me, the ceiling of the station wagon, on which I was seated, below me, the two windows on either side, a bunch of suitcases sealing me off from the front of the car and no way for me to get past them, and the rear swinging exit thingy.  I guess you’d call it a door, which swung to the side.  Everything was wrong and backwards and topsy-turvy for sure.  They’d gotten everyone out but me.  The front windshield had smashed but no one got hurt from that.  My grandmother, knowing her, was probably going, “Oy, oy,” over and over.  Sometimes she was resourceful and incredible in a crisis and sometimes she’d just lose her head.

So what does my mom do?  She found this tiny space, this space that was about three inches wide, sticks her hand into it, and tries to pull me through it.  Is this body dysmorphia projected onto me, or what?  No seven-year-old is three inches wide.  Was I supposed to not eat honey for a month, like Pooh Bear when he was stuck in Rabbit’s hole, so that I could fit through this three-inch space that my mother expected me to fit through?

Like I said, you should really question everything you see around you, especially the way you are treated and expectations that others place on you.  If you see something that doesn’t make the least bit of sense, in other words, that is illogical, speak up.  You have a voice.

Logic, in fact, prevailed.  Common sense.  You know what common sense was?  It came from a complete stranger.  I watched him walk toward the upside-down station wagon, toward the way-back.  It was a simple act of kindness toward another human being, an act of courtesy, something that is done time after time all around the world.  He opened the door for me.

So a door was opened for me, and doors continue to open for me.  Many don’t open.  Sometimes I get frustrated knocking and knocking with no results.  Well you know something?  What did I do when I was a kid?  Well geez!  Nobody’s home!  Don’t keep on knocking!  Just leave an envelope and go on.  If you don’t get your collection money at that door, maybe the next customer will pay the bill.  Eventually, the collecting is over and you’re tired.  You put all the bills and coins together and call it a day.

Actually, I never was a paper girl.  Well, I was.  For two weeks I subbed for someone.  It was my brother that had a paper route.  Times have changed…sometimes as an inpatient I used to tell the younger patients about the sixties when things were different, when cigarettes came out of machines, when music had scratches, and about my first record album that I ever owned, and how my parents didn’t allow rock music in the house, and we had only a black and white TV and a couple of TV channels.  We had a “party line” for our phone service for a while, too.  I guess most people did.  Most of the patients there were born in the 1990′s and could barely remember a time when we didn’t have the Internet.  I enjoyed being entertaining and telling stories about to some of them was long, long ago.  Some were rather amazed that my grandmother, the one that said “Oy, oy!” at the car accident, was born in 1900, and the other one was born in the 1800′s.  To tell you the truth, both of them said “Oy” a lot.  But I could tell them apart.

So I’m well into 54 now (and thankfully not a mom or a grandmother, I kind of like the simplicity of it all) and well out of 53 thankfully, therapistless as of 2pm tomorrow, with a lot up in the air…well, no, most things are not in fact in the air but attached to the ground, when you think of it…there are clouds and planets and the sun and stars and such in the air, and of course air itself…so…maybe everything is therefore grounded and I needn’t worry.

It feels decent being on the ground.  I’ve got a nice place to sit, and I think I’ll stick around for a while.

 

 

What a contradictory situation!

As I have told you, my T told me stuff yesterday that absolutely floored me, namely, the talk of sending me to the state hospital.  Before my admission to Walden, I heard from a source that I thought was reliable that it was practically impossible to get into a state hospital, as admissions were basically closed.

However, while I was at Alcott, I found out that this was not the case, that eating disorders patients were in fact still being sent to state hospitals, and what was true in 1997 (that I knew of then) is still true now: no eating disorders treatment exists in state hospitals…still.  Eating disorders patients are being mixed in with patients with other illnesses and have to follow rules that suicidal and homocidal patients have to follow.  These are very strict rules regarding sharps, such as use of pens and pencils even.  In fact, the “waiting period” may be quicker than I originally thought, that is, the period between original “commitment” and actually being transferred from regular hospital to state hospital is perhaps a month, I’m guessing.  That’s a short, short, scarily short time to weasel out of a commitment.

Perhaps the time to start taking action is NOW.  But what kind of action should I be taking?

I did speak with P, boss of my useless (as I have previously stated) DMH person who does nothing for me.  I stated to his face that she has done nothing for me, period.  What more could I say?  The ball is in his court.  If I am in the state hospital and she is going to be my worker while I am there, the situation is going to be pathetic.  I won’t be able to get anything that I need.  I can picture it now…three-week wait for the proper shampoo.  This is going to really suck.

But of course the object is not to end up in the state hospital in the first place.  I will need a good person from DMH to advocate for me and I don’t know if they have such people or if it’s their job to do such a thing.  I don’t truly think they have grounds to put me in the state hospital.  I am not suicidal or homocidal and I have such a strong commitment to helping others, making a statement, telling my story, and changing the world.  This is so pathetic.  I won’t even pass the initial screening.  How can they do this to me?

I think they, mental health professionals as a whole, feel incredibly threatened by me.  They are shaken to the core.  I will not take shit from anyone.  I am going to turn the entire mental health system upside-down.  I have a big, big voice now.  I can write and speak.  I make sense.  I make an impact.  I take chances.  I step forward.  I have risen.  World, watch out.

I think they want to do away with me because they are so threatened.  Just put me away to shut me up for a long, long time. So that I can’t write in my blog.  So that I can’t write my next book.  So that I can’t give readings and I can’t speak out.  They are trying to make me lose my Power, trying to steal it away from me.  This cannot be done.  My words are everywhere and I am Googlable.  I am right here, right now, in my words.

They are absolutely fucked and I am no longer going to sit by and watch shit happen and do nothing.  I made this commitment to myself when I joined the church.  If I see something happening, some wrong done to a person or group of people, especially those who are downtrodden, I will speak out.  I will do what I can to personally not do harm to the planet, and in thus doing, I am caring for my body and my personal surroundings and my soul.  I will do what I can to come to the aid of those who I feel I can help, especially people with eating disorders, even though in my so-called recovery I may be far worse off and have far fewer chances of any better life than they (though this in fact cannot be predicted), because I do have something to give, and I am committed to giving everything I have, and it is through this that I feel I have a reason for eating well and continuing on with my life.

Having come to these conclusions, and not having known these things prior to my admission to Alcott February 8, Wednesday, when by some miracle I stepped onto the #70 bus, the same one mentioned in the Epilogue of my memoir, This Hunger Is Secret, and dragged myself into the Admissions Office, and still being committed to these things, why the fuck are they thinking of sending me to the state hospital?

And why the fuck are they stating that I owe Alcott an apology, when it is in fact Alcott that owes me an apology, for reasons I have stated over and over and over in here?  I think I am finally, finally, finally not dehydrated.  But it has taken a while.

I am still waiting, patiently or not patiently, for the Imipramine to kick in.  It has not.  Tomorrow morning the temps will go down to 28, and I hope to get out early wearing my usual bulky no-show down coat.  I hope to get to Goodwill first thing, and buy a very, very bulky waist-free spring coat, the bulkier and less revealing the better, something I can hide in, and it would be great if the coat had a hood to hide my face in as well.  Something that covers my entire thighs, and hopefully is well below the knee.  It’s getting up to 56 tomorrow, and 62 on Thursday.  I won’t be able to get away with the down coat much longer.  What I love about this down coat is that when I stuff the large pockets, my bulging stomach is completely hidden.  If the Imipramine kicks in right this second and I never binge again, it will still take a long, long time before my huge stomach is gone.  I have a lot of hiding to do for quite some time, folks.

Yes, it is contradictory, my shame.  You know that I am very “out” about my eating disorder and really don’t hesitate to tell people.  So many years have passed.  But when it comes to “fat stomach”….I have my limitations.  This I choose not to walk around putting on display.  I will talk about it and that is enough display, much, much, more than most folks do, and I must say it’s extremely daring to do what I do.  I write it all down for a reason…and might I add that my T questions that I bother to write down what I go through following a binge, rolling around in pain on my bed for hours?  She questions, for  instance, that I mentioned the gory details…I think it’s important, that’s all.  Why sugar-coat?  Why use euphemisms?  There is nothing worse than avoiding the subject.

I plan to write some sort of letter, e-mail that is, cc my minister, our minister intern, my therapist, and the social worker at the hospital.  I’m not exactly sure what this e-mail is going to say.  It’s going to touch on a lot of things I’ve stated over the last couple of days.  Yes, I am angry.  No, I do not belong in the state hospital, this is the most ridiculous idea I have heard and it shocks me that it has been suggested.  I have been bingeing, massive bingeing, for an entire week, and I don’t see an end to it.  I do plan to ask for help.

Some thoughts after grocery shopping this evening

I should probably tell this whole story out of order, rather than as a chronology that narrates this evening’s journey.  Maybe start with how the whole thing ended, how I blew up at this complete stranger for absolutely no reason, or at least none apparent to him.  I’ve never seen him before and for god’s sakes I hope I never, never see this guy again.  I was standing at the door near the elevator that has to be opened with the main key.  While I was fiddling with my key, standing right at the door window, this stranger guy opened the door smack into my face, smashing the door into my glasses, which smashed into my face.

We have a window in the door that people can peek through.  I mean, isn’t it kind of the usual thing to do, that if you’re going to open a door, that you look to make sure that you’re not opening it into someone and knocking them over?  It’s not a peephole.  It’s a regular-sized window.  Unless you’re vision-impaired, the only way you’re not going to see is if you don’t bother to look.  However, this has happened before.  No, let me take that back and say it’s a chronic problem.  I’ve been smashed into a lot by careless people on the other side of that door.

I know what you’re thinking.  Julie Greene is going to totally analyze this event and pick it apart and turn it around and philosophize and then suddenly relate it to eating disorders, right?  Or maybe Julie Greene will find it an excuse to dismiss the entire human race as shitasses and say that life isn’t worth living and that people have fucked her over for thirty-two years of eating disorder and fifty-four years of life, and that life will never change and she might as well starve herself and she’ll keep you posted. Or…let’s see, what else can I do with this….I don’t know.

I’m not going to particularly surprise you, actually.  I’m going to relate this to “therapy crap.”  Ordinarily, I go overboard to be polite and kind to people.  I have my exceptions but I am polite and kind and maintain a certain amount of poise and self-control.  Or shall I say I retain the ability to stay in control enough to speak in not only complete sentences, but the control to form paragraphs as well…this takes…shall I say a bit of thinking…slowing down of the mind…if I am to be tactful and polite and speak my mind and make a point and be clear, no matter what I emotion I feel and no matter at what intensity I feel this emotion…I am generally able to be okay about it all.

When the door smashed in my face this evening, no, I was not cool.  Not at all.  I said, or I think I said, “You should have looked!”

I don’t recall his words.  He said no swear word, but the expression on his face…venom, venom, venom.  He might as well have been foaming at the mouth.

So I come into my apartment and shut the door behind me and I feel my whole body kind of fall, fall, fall, and the image of his face and the spittle and the venom and the flash of the thoughts I’d been ruminating and ruminating through and around at the time that this whole door thing happened all were pushing down upon me.

I don’t know when it was that I first started being spooked by the first movement of Brahms’ First Symphony.  I have always considered this piece, especially the opening, the most brilliant pieces of music ever written.  What was Brahms’ thinking when he wrote this?  How old was I when I first heard this?  I mean, actually heard it, when it actually sunk it, the sound of it…Boom!  Boom!  Boom!  That bass drum.  The pulling apart, pulling apart, pulling apart, like both wrists are tied, apart from each other, each on opposite sides of the bed, and each ankle is tied, each on opposite sides, and the bed pulls and pulls apart, splitting your body and mind apart, apart, apart.

As I closed the apartment door and set down my groceries, I could hear Brahms’ First Symphony, opening bars, or at least I felt the oppressive bass drum beating me down and the heavy, heavy feeling in my body sinking me down and a sinking emotional feeling.

Really, it hadn’t been necessarily a bad thing that just before the door incident, as I was walking home, I was replaying some key stuff about my relationship, my friendship that is, with the man who raped me in 2008.  Sometimes, it’s okay to think about this stuff, to ask questions, and then lay it to rest again.  I am strong.  I am not a candle in the wind.  I may cry easily, but my skin does not break.  I can watch the needle going in while a phlebotomist takes my blood, and discuss the entire procedure while it’s going on, and no, I have never done intravenous drugs.  I am one tough cookie, and don’t ask how many calories are in me.  Calories have no relevance to this tough cookie.  I am so tough that I transcend calories.

So it really wasn’t all that big of a deal to think these things about this guy, except the whole weird combination…the door, the venom, now this was a very strange mix indeed.  But my memories…there were a few things that came up.  The fact that I was on this sedating drug that spring.  This was kind of a factor I’d forgotten about.  I don’t know why Dr. P had suddenly insisted that we retry Lithium.  I’ve told you that Lithium was a miracle drug for me back in 1984.  But bodies change over time.  2008 and my body had changed and in 1984 1200 mgs was fine, but in 2008 even 300 mgs I couldn’t handle.  I just couldn’t stay awake.  You know what a “nap attack” is?  I think you know.  I kept telling Dr. P what the Lithium was doing to me.  I don’t know why she insisted that I stay on it and stay on it and stay on it.  Months and months and months of this sleeping and sleeping bullshit.  I missed a semester of school and I think that’s why.  I’ll have to check my records.

So I was friends with this guy.  Spring of 2008.  Kind of rekindled.  Very bullshit.  Very much because there was really no one else to whom I could turn.  I was lonely.  He was there.  We could talk.  We could relate.  He was nice.  Just nice.  Easygoing.  I didn’t like that I was friends with a guy.  Just as a matter of principle.  Just plain too friendly with him.  People talk.  Talk a lot.  I didn’t like the way he looked at me.  Some of the things that he said.  A lot of the things.  He was cheap.  McDonald’s cheap.  Target cheap.  Just made of the cloth you don’t have to iron, wash and wear, always clean and fresh done with Tide detergent like Mama taught him.

I think twice I was there and had a nap attack, and he said you can sleep here, I don’t mind, and he got out some blankets for me and I slept I think on one of his lounge chairs once, and on his bed the other time.  I was out cold.  He didn’t touch me.  I didn’t like the statement that I was making.  I didn’t like that I felt out of control with my sleeping, and that to him, I appeared out of control as well, just kind of a flopsy, drugged doll.

He called me cunt.  I don’t know when this happened or started or how often.  I said nothing in return.

He said things about my body.  He didn’t understand why I didn’t feel terrific about the things that he was saying.

He kissed me with kisses that showed me that he did not view me as equal to him, but that he viewed himself as dominant over me.  These kisses were done to me forcefully.  I don’t know when this started.  It must not have been long before.  I was so drugged.  There was no time to think.  I didn’t have the ability.  He was my friend.  My only ally.  How could I turn to him now?  How could I trust him now?

You cunt.  Bye, cunt.  See you tonight.

It’s late right now.  I’m glad I got all that written down.  It wasn’t painful remembering.  It was mostly satisfying.  Why?  I am not in that space now.  He is not in my life now.  It is over with now.  It is part of my past now.  It is done with.  I can write about it and in doing so, nothing bad will happen and this will not cause it to become real again.  I like writing and I like being a good writer and I like communicating and I believe in telling it like it is and if I disturb you in the process, it is part of the process and it is part of my duty to myself and to you that I am doing and writing and being just who I am, right here, right now.

So the door incident happened and the weird mix.  Memory, door, venomous face, Brahms. Snapping at that guy.  Flash of anger, I guess.  Now, here’s where the “therapy shit” comes in.

Therapists make a big deal about anger.  They have a lot of crap to say over it and much of it is pure crap, trust me.  What does one do with one’s anger?  They say people do stupid things with anger like poor coping things such as bingeing, cutting, drinking, gambling, over-exercising, and all this is because they are uncomfortable with bad feelings and don’t like feeling these feelings.  These people feel too intensely, the therapists say, and therefore, these people have something wrong with them and need extra therapy.  Complete bullshit.

Nobody has anything WRONG with them.  WRONG is moral.  You are not bad.  There is nothing bad about you there is nothing morally wrong with you.  If you feel intensely, be passionate.  Live passionately.  Live deeply.  Dig deeper into the earth and reach higher into the sky, higher now than ever.  Make a bigger mark on the planet and shout out to the world and tell them who you are.  Tell them your story because your story matters.

And this is what to do with bad feelings such as anger.  First of all, anger is not bad.  Anger is not good.  Anger is.  Anger is mostly very useful, but you have to use it right.  It is a tool, and every tool has to be used right.  You wouldn’t use a can opener to brush your teeth, would you?  I am rather pissed about this bashing door happening one too many times.  I have thought about it.  Actually, tonight is the first time I have REALLY paid much attention to it at all.  If my own radically inappropriate behavior toward this venom guy hadn’t shocked the pants off of me and got me thinking and analyzing (as you know I frequently do on here) I would never have come to channel my anger and use it constructively.  On Monday, or as soon as I get up the energy, I am going to request that a sign be posted on this door, “Open with Caution.”  I will thoroughly explain why this sign needs to be posted and that this is a chronic problem.  Of course, no one else has mentioned it.  They will say this.  I will say that…Never mind…I have it all planned out what I will say.  Nobody pushes Julie Greene around anymore.  Nobody bullshits Julie Greene.  That sign is going to be put up.

Yes, I was the shortest kid in the class, the one who wore glasses and I was the slowest runner, the one who was picked last for the team.  I was the one they all laughed at.  Are you reading this now?  Are you?  Are you the one that picked the teams?  Are you the one that determined that I was the weakest?  Well, think again.

I am coming back.