addisonarmstronghmed-blog

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Find Your Band

I went with the theme of multitasking! Skype ringing (because I’ve lost my phone), a pen clicking, and papers flipping. I attempted to stay consistent with the timing throughout, but I did not really succeed.

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Take 3

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Take 2

My first instinct after watching the first video was to correct my mistakes rather than to keep doing them, so here I made the mistake of trying to fix my mistake and then remembering to make it (all of which I try to emulate on the third try). 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7QWASi0VlA

Take 1

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I’ve never gotten my ears pierced. At first, I had no interest (I was the kind of child that read books and climbed trees and wore whatever odd outfit my mother laid out for me); eventually, it became a sort of intentional, stubborn thing. I’m not afraid it would hurt, but I am afraid of the fact that a society of perfectly sane people can normalize something like poking literal holes in your body just so you can stick stuff in your ears to look nice.

Obviously, I’m overthinking it. And earrings are fun, and expressive, and I’m being overly critical.

But that’s why I decided to wear these clip-on earrings the other day, despite the fact that they are huge and ostentatious and sparkly. (They’re actually left over from a dance recital costume from when I was five! I remember them hurting a lot more then.)

Anyway, I surprised myself by enjoying wearing these earrings. I felt sort of special, more noticeable - even though the only person that commented on them was three years old and said nothing but “Why are you wearing those?”

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The Read text (ignored)

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In my personal experience, the stigma of anorexia has been far worse than the stigma of any other mental illness. I take sertraline (brand name Zoloft) now—and when people find out, particularly other girls of my generation—no one blinks an eye.

The anorexia, however, is different.

There is no medication to treat anorexia, no known rhyme or reason to it—and so it is seen less as a legitimate illness and more as a choice.

So it’s embarrassing. People assume I’m vain, or weak, or shallow. That I care about nothing but myself or my appearance. That I want attention more than anything else. Otherwise, why would I have done this to myself? Well, I didn’t. The anorexia did. The spoon represents that.

In fact, it represents a lot:

Irrationality. When I was recovering, eating again, I had yogurt (plain, vanilla, no fat) every morning. And I could only eat it with a plastic spoon. No real silverware. My brain was not working right. This was not about gaining weight. This was not about looking good. This was about obsessions, compulsions, rituals and control.

Me. Aside from the obvious imagery, that I was whittled down to be about the shape of this spoon—and this is a flawed metaphor, because weight is not always indicative of an eating disorder—I was, in so many other ways, just a stick. A plastic shell. I lost every part of myself. I don’t think I laughed, or ever really smiled. I didn’t care about school. I stopped seeing my friends.

Disposability. I was throwing my body away. I was throwing my life away.

Being handled. None of this was fun. None of this was exciting. None of this was what I wanted. None of this was my choice. But the illness was controlling me, eating me alive. Like a spoon, I was in its hands, not my own.

Disclaimer: For the sake of clarity—this was back in eighth grade, and I had a really supportive family and really great professional help that eventually helped me set things right again. I was one of the lucky ones.