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Week 5, To my Best Friend

Dear Kristen,

I can’t believe we have been friends for (over!) 23 years. It’s amazing to have a friendship that you can’t even remember beginning, because we were so young. I’m incredibly grateful and lucky to have a friendship as strong as ours- having a bond that lasts so long is rare and special, I know that, and I’ll never take it for granted. So many of my happiest and dearest memories are with you. From playing in the park by our houses to making jewelry to be sold at neighborhood block parties (whatever happened to our big business plan? Missed opportunity…), to eating cookie dough and watching scary movies; our week long LOST binge during that big blizzard in high school that got us 4 snow days in a row, to sleigh riding and watching Jessie break her leg going over a “jump”; working as camp counselors together, whisper-giggling with your Mom at the kitchen counter in our pajamas when she’d hear us come in late after too many drinks; getting our first waxes (and then trying our own..), painting our nails and crying about separating for college. We’ve carried each other through heartbreak, times of celebration and times of regret, like when I got those terrible highlights and when you tried to go punk (what were you thinking?!). I wouldn’t have gotten through high school without your help in math after school, or those two years at URI without our weekly Skype chats. You’re one of the only people I can be totally embarrassing with while feeling completely unembarrassed, masterfully quote Friends with, and lean on for advice or comfort.  I know you’re always there as shoulder to cry on and rely on. I love your infectious smile, quick wit, and sharp sense of style. I love your limitless positivity, dry humor and excellent bill-splitting abilities.  You’re smart, kind, and beautiful- I hope you never forget that.

I remember when we were young, sitting at my parent’s dining room table and coloring with crayons pictures of us as old ladies, sitting in rocking chairs on a porch. I guess in our dreams we shared a little cottage together in our old age; what a sweet thought that was. And even now, living in different cities with futures that may look different than we’d planned, I know we’ll share tears, laughs and hugs when we’re old and wrinkled, like we’d sketched on those pages. Not everyone is so lucky to know without a shadow of a doubt that someone will be in their life at 3, 13, 30- even 103. How blessed are we to live with such confidence? To you, a best friend then, now, and forever.

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Week 4, Living With ED

Adam and I rarely fight, which is something I thought about recently, right before getting into a huge fight. Did I manifest this? He is incredibly thoughtful, generous, romantic, all around amazing and good to me in every way. So why do I occasionally have the compulsion to sabotage it all? There isn’t anything poetic or cryptically romantic about it, not a lovers’ quarrel in that storybook way. Because last night, what set me off was food. Not just any food, but delicious greasy, earned, fatty, unhealthy, carb-y, disgusting, fantasize-able, caloric, guilty, yummy, BAD food. The kind you eat because you forfeited 48 hours-worth of eating for or because you know you’ll get rid of it before it’s too late… the kind you’ll have 1 bell pepper (33 calories) and black coffee (2 cals.) over two days to for; the kind of food you’ll cry on the treadmill for or bite your knuckles over the toilet bowl for; the kind you’ll push through migraines, cold sweats, bruising and light-headedness for.

But last night after a long day out, Adam dangled the idea of treat food- sweet food, goal food, reward food, REAL food. He suggested pizza for dinner together and after a long day of quiet patience and desperation, he changed his mind. Afterso. much. waiting. Instead, he suggested I go it alone. Like sending me to walk the plank, recklessly offering, “You can still have it babe, but I already ate” without a clue. The statement was like a slap in the face, an abandonment leaving me to face the music, fight the war- alone. No appreciation for all that hard work that would be going to nothing. No idea that I finally deservedit. Clenched teeth concealed a mouth that watered, achingly, pleadingly and hazy anger flooded my head. I felt like a fallen, unsung hero… and so, we fought.  

How can you explain yourself and make amends, knowing how irrational you must seem? How can I explain that it wasn’t justabout the pizza… and yet, that it’s alwaysabout the pizza. When your thoughts are still and calm [like his], with a belly rarely in demand, you’ll never understand the frustration, resentment, desperation, yearning, earning, craving, waiting, patience, crawling, counting, pacing, stalling…

The worst part about living with- or more aptly, hiding- an eating disorder is that even though I know I was wrong, I still feel so wronged. How silly is that? My head and heart are always at odds. Honest thoughts hold hands with bleaker ones that always seem to steer the wheel. I wished I could yell at Adam all the thoughts in my head; don’t you know that to change food plans is to change life plans? To change numbers and counts, workouts and burning, sacrificing hours of sleep or eating in favor of moving and starving to fix the wrongs that no one else thinks I’ve committed. I want to live unbridled (yet, unchecked, unaccountable, unobserved) and find a healthy, balanced “ideal” (and then 5 lbs. thinner than that). I want to be uncomplicated and grounded, feet firmly on the ground (while feeling empty, weightless).  

In the end, we came together, my apologies offering little explanation. Yet Adam forgave me for my ridiculous ‘moodiness’ in the way that only he can- with endless love and patience. And as for me, I’ll keep searching for light that’s undefined by my lightness.

[livssummerblog]

Week 3, Expectations

Expectations need to be managed, sometimes to perfection: without them, you’ll never be disappointed, but might lose the experience of excitement. You have an image in your head that’s been played out over and over, envisioning every detail and scenario. So often, the anticipation and build-up are better than the real thing. That feeling leading up to something important gives you butterflies in your stomach and those nervous giggles. But sometimes, all that time spent eagerly waiting causes you to build up expectations in your head, to a place that reality can’t possibly fulfill.

This is never truer than when it comes to big holidays- Halloween, Christmas, and the worst of all, New Year. The holidays conjure images of glitter, glitz and glam. You imagine showing up to a Halloween party in a handmade costume that you crafted to absolute perfection. Friends comment that they hardly recognize you, it looks like genuine movie-quality and your makeup, ‘my gosh, are you an artist’? But when it rolls around, your creation looks more DIYed than designed, and your makeup leaves people puzzled. Dreams of Christmas are sparkly, magical and frosted, filled with charm and cheer, and a tree that’s branches are gathered up over piles of neatly wrapped gifts. Instead, Uncle Gary is charmlessly wasted and Grandma gives you a lumpy knit sweater-again. Without fail, however, New Year’s Eve remains one of the most overrated and underwhelming holidays of all time.  I’ve had my fair share of celebrations that fizzled and flopped like most people have, yet one sticks out in its memorable misery.

In the late winter of 2013, my friends and I struck gold with our New Year’s eve plan. We’d found an open bar deal that would get us entry and access to a popular New York City club and its’ liquor stash for a few hours before and after the clock struck midnight. We’d be able to watch the ball drop amidst a crowd of fellow partyers and dance the night away, all for the very reasonable price of $99 per ticket. This plan was fool proof: we would be in one place all night and wisely avoiding Manhattan’s holiday madness and we’d calculated that a night’s worth of drinks, club- door cover charge and special occasion surge pricing would all amount to well over one hundred bucks; we were being impressively frugal. We acted fast and bought a bunch of tickets, feeling confident in our pre-planning and thoughtfulness.

When New Year’s Eve rolled around and it was time to ring in 2014, we sauntered up to the club with high hopes. It was past nine when our bar deal began, and we were ready to make up for lost time. We felt good in our glittery outfits, high heels and dark pencil around our eyes. We were confident, cool, chic. We were anticipating a night of dancing, popping champagne at midnight and cheering with the upbeat crowd- until we turned the corner and saw a line of people just like us, waiting in angst. We took it in stride and joined the line. Before long, we’d noticed that the line was extending far behind us and the clock showed we’d been waiting for over an hour without movement. The crowd began to pulse, growing frustrated and restless; our time was money with a bar deal that allotted us mere hours of free drinks. Not only that, it was approaching 12 and the party hadn’t even begun. Tension grew as the crowd pressed the bouncers, “what’s going on? Why aren’t you letting anyone in?”. The door hadn’t opened once, and there wasn’t a soul inside. Was this a scam? We grew frustrated, a collective voice pushing and prodding for entry and still, no one was let inside. Finally, the bouncers had enough and decided to clear the impatient line out.

My memory plays the scene out in slow motion. I can see the two gargantuan men stand up from their stools at the slick glass doors and reach into their dinner jacket pockets. With one swift motion, their arms swept the crowd in double time, emitting a cloud of gas above us. Some part of me realized what had happened before anyone else, and I shoved my friends frantically into the street. Move. Go. Run. We’d all been MACEd.

The scene that ensued would’ve looked like a bombsite to an uninformed witness. In an instant, the crowd fell to the ground clutching their faces, their eyes. Grown men were on their knees in hysterics, head in hands. There were girls crying and screaming, people standing disoriented and confused, not sure where to move or what to do next. There were jackets, purses and cell phones on the ground that had been dropped in tears and panic. No one could see, and we stumbled around frantically, screeching out in pain. Adrenaline surged through my body long enough to try to reconnect people with their partners and things, and then finally get us away. When we were at a safe distance, I realized I had been sprayed at short range directly in the face and was in immense pain. Kohl eyeliner and glitter streamed down my face in flaming streaks and my scalp, mouth, nose and skin burned. We weren’t feeling so cool and glamorous anymore.

Ultimately, we’d found out what happened after a civil suit began on behalf of the people who’d been hospitalized that night with temporary vision loss. The club had inappropriately oversold tickets, with no regard for its space’s maximum occupancy. People turned up by the hundreds, and bouncers hoped that by keeping doors closed and drunk people waiting for hours, enough people would get fed up and walk away. Unfortunately for us all, that didn’t happen. I guess like us, the deal just seemed too good to pass up and, in the end, the deal was too good to be true.

Maybe our problem was getting so excited about our big plan- we certainly had big ideas about ourselves and the night ahead. We had set ourselves up for disappointment, and the universe unprecedently delivered. Looking back, I can’t believe how well we handled it. Fleeing, we headed straight for the train station, got a drink and celebrated the New Year on the train home. Upon arrival, we went straight to a local party and made the most of the (rest of) our night. I’m so proud of our quick rebound, even looking war-torn and disheveled, out $99. With the club under pressure from lawyers and incredibly bad publicity, we all got our money back and had nothing to show for the ordeal except a weird story to tell and an incredibly swollen face for about 4 days after.

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Saturday, June 16th: Social Media

When I was a little girl, I was never allowed to say, “I’m bored”. And if I did? The answer was, “Go do something”. That something could’ve been anything from playing outside, doing a craft, finding a friend, cleaning my room, or bothering my brother. The things I’d try to cure my boredom were limitless, all of which were ultimately somewhat productive (except maybe, annoying my brother). Sometimes in the car, on errands with my parents or road trips with the family, I would find myself bored. When this happened, I had to problem solve or think ahead: bring a coloring book next time, put in a CD, simply daydream, or play stupid car games that [probably] bothered my brother.

Today, there is no time for boredom. In fact, kids are cut off at the source before that restless feeling even sets in; immediately, there is a phone or device in-hand, distracting from the moment even before down-time crops up at all. Boredom, the ultimate catalyst for creativity, is extinct.  More often than not, kids and adults alike find themselves compulsively and obsessively patrolling their social media pages, keeping track of their likes and those of others. They tune in to this virtual world whenever they wantto, and even sometimes when they don’t particularly wantto, simply ‘just becausee’. Yet this habit has hardly remained a want but instead has devolved into a need. People find themselves needing this digital and completely intangible connection. I wonder a lot about how this will affect our development and interpersonal relationships going forward. Will we even know how to talk to one another face to face? Will we find a way to become even more inseparable from our devices, beyond newly invented glasses and watch accommodations? Will we become even more distanced from others emotionally, intimately, and physically, further misinterpreting (and otherwise unaccepting) harmless, positive touch?

I once did a project on the curative, healing powers of human touch. It’s a vital sensory experience that we need for development and survival, yet one that’s occurrence is rapidly decreasing. In a strange paradox, our culture has become increasingly sexualized, promoting images and ideas of physical closeness and skin exposure/contact, all while our people display and accept less and less positive, platonic touch. Why? Are we so accustomed to online/social media portrayals of touch that when we encounter it in real life, it feels foreign, unwanted and automatically assaultive? That’s what the research seemed to suggest. Americans reportedly engage in far less tactile interactions like handshakes, pats on the back and even friendly hugs than other nations- and at a cost. Simple gestures like these can boost happy hormones in the brain, a sense of security and accomplishment, and even lead to improved long-term health outcomes. But despite the positives, social media reliance (among other things) was identified as a cause and barrier. We simply don’t engage in-person that much anymore.

Most of all, I worry about how social media and technology effects kids. Already, we see how a social media presence on impressionable youths (like middle-school aged) can be overwhelming detrimental. Bullying becomes easier, suicides have gone up and are getting younger, and kids base their entire worth on the amount, or lack of, likes they receive on their pages. Teens of years past could go through regrettable, awkward phases- like all adolescents do- with nothing but cringe-worthy memories to show for it. For teens today, their bad days are immortalized online, vulnerable to vicious scrutiny and the ever-present threat of viral status. They seek validation, praise and confidence all from friends or strangers online. This is such a dangerous world for young kids from the perspective of privacy and security, as well as psychologically, socially, and emotionally.

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Sunday, June 10th: Identity

Identity is a funny thing, always changing yet remaining constant enough to make you recognizable. Like the skin of fruit, your surface color and texture changes with the seasons and phases of your life, all while wrapped around a true you tucked inside at the core, unaltered.

It’s hard to see yourself for who you really are, or for who you are in the eyes of others- after all, an apple can only see the comparative ripeness of its’ peers while still hanging from the proverbial tree of life. But finally, when a person steps back, to see their place in the tangled web of branches, do they finally have a sense of themselves amongst others. For me, recognizing your place beside others in the world is identity, and stepping back to appreciate this connection can be accomplished through expressive writing.

        I’m not quite sure I’ve yet to figure out who I am or what my story is, but I know how far I’ve come. When I first set off for college, I was a bright eyed 18-year-old, nervously leaving home for the first time. I left a comfortable New York home amongst a big, loving, Sicilian family to be a young adult, alone in a new state with new people who had new ideals. The college scene quickly washed over me and pulled me out to sea; I was drowning before I knew what happened.

        In high school, a diagnosis of ADD never really bothered me if you’d asked me outright but truthfully, it made me feel a little less-than in a way I’d never admit to myself or anyone else. With the label growing commonplace, I wasn’t worried about the stigma or title so much as I worried about the accuracy it held: I truly couldn’t keep up Attention, I had a clear Deficit in knowledge, and felt exceptionally Disordered amongst my organized, recklessly intelligent peers. I envied the ease with which they’d scan an assignment onceover and get to work, as I reread the same sentence over repeatedly with desperation, pleading with myself for it to just ‘get in my head’, ‘please just make sense of the words’. Still somehow, I managed, floating along, buoyant with protective humor yet anchored by shame.  

       In college, however, my difficulties crashed down like a tidal wave. In this new place without support from family or friends, the steady ground retreated from under my feet with the current. Shakily, I tried to navigate the rough tide anyway, quietly wading, refusing to call out for help on dry land. But the water’s pull was relentless; the new people here weren’t like the ones I’d known at home, and their intentions were quite different. Greek-life members felt like pirates now, with sorority girls looting the ship of my confidence and frat brothers preening, gold teeth winking behind greedy smiles ready to commandeer at any time. When the water finally swallowed me up, I left school- two years in- and never looked back.

     Several years later, I took a deep breath of fresh air, clarity filling my lungs, and decided I’d try it all again. This time, though, I’d do it my way- a far cry from the way I believed I should to keep up with my affluent, suburban peers. I transferred to the College of New Rochelle, determined to say “I did it” at the end of it all. I remind myself that though I ended up on a different path than I’d imagined, it’s one I forged confidently for myself. I remind myself to never be embarrassed about struggling, to never be ashamed to ask for help, and to always root down with those whose intentions are firmly grounded, next to yours. So far, that’s my story and the rest is yet to be written.