CLXXI. Mother, May I?

I’m 26 and I don’t need permission to go out. I don’t need permission to do this or that or anything else that I want to do, and yet I think deep down, I don’t want to venture out on my own. I don’t want to waver from routine. I’ll just end up reprimanding myself.

My friend told me that this penchant for routine is akin to being habitual about something- being robotic about something. To be able to adapt this way of life- doing the same day after day is a form of therapy. It’s meant to put one on track. It’s meant to take the overthinking work out of the equation. He needed that and I needed that. I need that. I think I do. I think I do.

I think it’s not ok for me to skip dinner and just consume my 9 pounds of watermelon. It’s not ok yet. But I did deem it ok to eliminate the caloric protein shakes in the dead of night that helped me to gain whatever I have so far. And then I grew anxious and purchased six more bottles - there are five left - after I finished over 40. I plan on returning the rest. I saved the receipt. I can’t do this anymore. For no reason other than its complete abnormality.

I bought my mother a “skinny” vanilla latte today - far less in calories than my organic protein shake. I heard her say that it tasted nice. She took several sips before dumping more than three-quarters of it down the kitchen sink. “I’m full,” she said. There went four dollars and change, down the drain, quite literally.

My mother would rule me not eating dinner as out of the question. She would snicker and form that half-protruding pout - “the evil smile,” I call it. And yet she’s full off of less than anserving size of farmers’ market cherry pie and less than two pounds of watermelon, even after working out: a combination of yoga, squats, glutes floor work, and crunches.

“Go ahead. Skip dinner,” she said, taunting me. It was a dare, not an ultimatum.

So let’s play a little game of Truth Or Dare. Dares don’t apply to me, so truth it is. Here we go.

I can’t help but feel gluttonous, especially due to the fact that I neglected my workout for her sake- we had plans made Thursday evening, that she decided to debunk Saturday morning- the day of said plans’ execution.

My routine was thrown off once again. Anxiety ensued but I went with the flow.
We decided to look at charcoal grills. Why? I have no idea. There are no plans to have people over for a barbecue, like we used to. I wouldn’t enjoy eating because while everyone else is fasting for the feast, I’ll be chomping away all day.

Just like today.

I told my mother we should go out - bask in Summer’s soon-to-end glory. I was met with a scowl, and a triumphant declaration of heat causing fatal repercussions- especially for someone like me- underweight, she said.

I am known for loving and thriving in conditions as hot as 110-degrees Farenheit and especially as someone who doesn’t weigh as much as before, I love the heat more so. I don’t feel chills. Warmth is preferred.

And so we made our routine trips- from air conditioned house to car to storefront-one being the farmers’ market which is owned by a man who exclaimed that I was my mother’s daughter and that he sees me here all the time. Yes, I am a glutton.

But to the man working on the construction of a defunct cleaner-tailor storefront, I’m the woman who walks a lot. I didn’t tell my mothe that little tidbit, but for a full three days, I stopped taking my walks, fearful that I may be overdoing it. Fearful that I may have lost weight even though my face looks fuller, my hair is healthier, my legs have stretch marks and jiggle a bit, and the car now recognizes me as a human - the light for “passenger airbag off” is no longer enlightened like an ambulance.

So we’re in the parking lot of the place I frequent for my watermelon, sweet potatoes, and acorn squash. Today I picked up a new one-serve, 17-gram fat-filled packet of sunflower seed butter as well.

A woman in her 50s or 60s, roundabout my mother’s age, emerged from her blood-red Ford Mustang. I saw her before my mother did. She was anorexia defined. Her physical state surpassed my original low weight by leaps and bounds. This woman has zero-body fat. All the sinews of her muscle can be seen. Her legs are stilts. I don’t know how she can walk.
I wasn’t disgusted, but I was empathetic and I observed with a mix of mild curiosity, unfortunately, some kinship, and fear for her life.

Then my mother saw her.

She was shocked. She was disgusted. She gasped, called on God in the way that agnostics do, and immediately bowed her head and threw one hand over her already obscured vision from the chic Burberry aviators I wish I could wear had I actually bothered to put on contact lenses or to approve of the way I looked without glasses.

Before she covered her face as if Paparazzi were all over her, I said, “I know. I know.”
I was never as bad as that, I told my mom.
She replied incredulously, “you don’t want to be like that.” She said this in an accusatory manner. As if I fancied the opened-coffin look.

The woman offended my mother and yet, ironically, my mom seems to emulate her by fasting from 2:30 pm until tomorrow morning when she’ll again sip on coffee and dine on an anorexic sliver of cherry pie.

I’m 26 but my mother still slights me for going out for less than an hour without a car because God forbid I walk. I don’t need to take it, but I cannot deny my ears nor the fact that one’s children are expected to obey.

I’m 26 and yet I feel imprisoned.

I flipped when she told me she wasn’t going to eat because she had a few bites of watermelon and ate lunch “late,” before I ate my own lunch. I could have avoided the argument, but part of me relishes the fact that I don’t have to seek approval for taking off from the house for longer than 45 minutes when we’re on talking terms. Part of me relishes the fact that I’ll be left alone so that when I eat, despite not being hungry, over half of my food intake for the day, I’ll be alone. No one will have to see me be the glutton.

What irks me though is that my mother keeps saying that she’s not [insert low weight here].Because I am no longer that skinny. I gained and I feel that because I am no longer that weight, I shouldn’t be eating as much as I am counseled to eat.

What irks me is that she wants to eat outside and buy dessert but will just have that meal all day - a treat - while I’ll have to keep consuming more and more.

What irks me is that she seems to empathize with me: “gain the weight and then you can kickbox again.” It’s as though she doesn’t really think that will ever happen. She’s just feigning support, to placate me.

Mother, may I?

May I understand where on Earth you’re coming from.

CLXX. Picture Perfect -

A red bubble, a number, and a tap later revealed something that the mirror did not: a snapshot of an imperfect life. That seems contrary to the culture we’re used to,doesn’t it? A culture in which photos on social media show only the times where we’re rosy-cheeked. Like that time someone had not posted anything on social media until a magazine profile of herself came out and then disappeared again until the next time something fortuitous came up.

In my case, however, I saw a sickly, deathly, person with spindly arms in the picture. The teeth were exposed in a foreign smile. The face stretched out for a body too small. The smile rehearsed.
Unrecognizable and yet in an instant, identifiable.
I went from person to number, and still not yet a statistic. One can only hope that I will never be one.

This picture motivated me to eat 300 more calories before I went to sleep the day before yesterday. This picture motivated me to eat a carb-heavy organic bar with a spoon dipped into a new jar of all natural sesame-cranberry peanut butter and then 2 tablespoons of the same with a few bites of a protein bar the night after.

“Do you know how many calories are in a teaspoon of peanut butter,” the man at the gym had asked me when deciding I had not gained.
I did know- all too well. I have a confession: I love nut butters. I switch between raw cashew and almond butters, 2 Tablespoons daily until yesterday when I had just about 4 tablespoons. My Memorial Day buy was organic honey sunflower butter after trying it courtesy of the Penn Station GNC. It was a last-minute purchase before embarking on a trip without a kitchen. I figured that as long as I had some sort of carb-vessel, I could slather on my favorite condiment and make a sandwich. I remember the nutritionist who I abandoned last year, telling me to eat 4 T a day if I so desired. That scared me: I know it’s healthy, but that much fat content?
And just as soon as I finished eating beyond fullness, suddenly regretting the consumption, I looked at this photo again.

My picture did not justify my eating beyond fullness, beyond satisfaction, but instead proved to me that I can and that I have to. I do have to eat more than he, she, and most anyone else has to.

In the picture I saw some attributes I liked: my big eyes reappeared, perhaps a bit too large for the face at the moment, but at least they were no longer snake-like slits struggling to open and close due to the lack of skin elasticity that was once an issue.
I saw my teeth - straight and a bright white with dark black crevices peeking through, a sign of gaps between the teeth, void of any plaque buildup due to my meticulous flossing and brushing.
I saw my skin, and although slightly burned and tanned over the weekend when I neglected to apply my vitamin C enriched face cream, was pretty clear - a testament to my exfoliate, cleanse, tone, and moisturize regimen that is always on repeat.

I’m looking at this photo while walking and instead of trying to find the sunlight, I’m dodging the sun rays from cloud-parted skies in an effort to find shade. I’m no longer cold in eighty-degree weather. I’m not quite boiling, but I have always had a high tolerance for heat. I’m dodging the sun so I won’t turn ashen. Suddenly I realize, I’m making strides but my kin doesn’t seem to notice or acknowledge them. Maybe it’s a case of being too close to notice.

Maybe they need a picture to look at. It turns out that move is picture perfect.

CLXVIV. Happy Haunts -

There are things that make me happy, but that also haunt me. For example, having a song playing in your head that you associate with a particular time in your life. While it may evoke beautiful memories, it also evokes something altogether terrible.

I find myself on occasion singing in my head the rhythmic beats of a non coherent language. It goes a little something like this: “boom, boom, shh, shh” followed by “Now drop!” Each syllable is matched by a bodily movement. The “drop” is a split second jump-squat. The song is part of a Zumba mix I used to practice daily as an at-home workout during graduate school. I practiced this routine so much that I still remember full sections of it after not having glanced at the YouTube video in over a year.

Sometimes your life’s soundtrack isn’t terrible but does cause your vision to blur because that time can’t be brought back.

Another happy haunt for me
are basil leaves. Yesterday, my mother decided to make my father’s recipe: An avocado-basil pesto with white wine mixed in with spaghetti cooked in butter. I think pasta is a wasted carb that takes up room in your body for no reason other than to satiate, so I didn’t eat it. Then again, I’m allergic to avocado, (insert gasp here), so I couldn’t have consumed it anyway.
As I took out the bunch of basil leaves bought at our local Fairway, a waft of sweet and sharp herb scent swept me away to another time.

I saw snapshots of my old house, of my old backyard enlightened by a summer sun. I heard my mother cackling from the second-story window facing the backyard as I dodged bumble bees while trying to clip basil leaves from the burgeoning green basil plant growing in our yard. I felt the heat of the sun tanning my forearms and felt the creeping of embarrassment redden my already rose-hued warm cheeks because I had the sneaking suspicion that the brothers who lived next door and who were also my peers, caught stealing glances of me hopping around with scissors and leaves like a forest nymph.

“I smell my childhood,” I said out loud yesterday. I remember the basil leaves being made for pesto, or thrown into a plain pasta. I remember the basil leaves being planted between a folded onion-tomato omelette on a summer Sunday morning.

And as I’m typing this, a part of me wants to let out a cry, but only in my mind’s eye. My eyes are dry. My hands are dry too now that I think of it. Actually, my scalp is dry as well- I was just searching for a conditioning hair mask earlier this morning.

There is a lingering faint smell of garlic bread in my brother’s wake. He’s off to the O.R.and the baked loaf still sits in its entirety on top of the seemingly pristine granite island. It came out warm and fresh from the local farmer’s market yesterday evening, and so the condensation soaked through the wax white paper bag, causing me to place it in the plastic produce bag and then again in two other plastic grocery bags. It looks like a packaged organ that my brother must have seen during his time on the hospital’s transplant unit.

I was in charge of the bread yesterday while he went to wander the market aisles in oblivion, a therapeutic activity he never has time for. I was not privy to the garlic bread condensation that moisturized my patchy hands until they began to feel unfamiliar. That is to say, my hands began to feel unusually smooth, lubricated almost, and certainly dampened.

I looked down at them and then inhaled deeply. And all I remembered were the garlic knots from the corner pizzeria in the neighborhood I grew up in - a favorite treat of mine.

I’m happy to say that I am developing new happy haunts.
The birds that chirp here are varied. There aren’t just two fighting one another. There isn’t a single pigeon, instead there are bright red birds, black and orange ones with pointy beaks, birds with crowns atop their head, and small black Ravens.

I’ve seen rabbits hopping along instead of squirrels scurrying.

There is the sound of lawn mowers that are mostly being wielded by homeowners as opposed to laborers. The laborers here don’t ogle me, instead throwing up their hand in a friendly wave or nodding in acknowledgement of human-to-human interaction.

There are the sounds of kids voices at the nearby school, but not from fighting or harassment, nor are there any profanities, so commonly heard of in New York City.

There are school buses pulling up and adolescents exiting with backpack straps on both shoulders and pants above their hip bones.

There is a corner deli that smells not of charred bacon, but of gourmet styled sandwiches. There is wood paneling inside and a nice umbrella seating area just outside.

Instead of satellites and window air conditioning units jutting out of identical houses from the exterior, there are manicured lawns in front of uniquely different looking single-family homes. Roofs are covered with solar panels and there are white picket fences without any graffiti in sight.

Culs de sac replace dead ends.

And I am coming around the bend as well, moving along without a dead end in sight.

CLXVIII. Real Time- Real Talk -

I used to take for granted my parents, brother, and I all being at home at the same time.
I used to be so immune to the aroma of sautéed onions and spices in the large metal kadahi, or large concave wok, inhaling deeply without knowledge that this smell would be fleeting if ever present in the near future.
The warmth of security in company and pungent cooking smells, powerful kitchen exhaust aside, was something I never fathomed going away. It was part of me and it still is.

On this unusually cold day for mid-May, my brother has returned home for a little less than 24-hours. My dad doesn’t have a business meeting to attend to and my mother finished cleaning, washing, and cooking before the brother’s arrival. Both my parents and brother are now indulging in some much-needed self-care. I suppose I am too in writing this.
She’s blowdrying her hair while flipping through pixelated pages of a novel on her Kindle, all after doing yoga.
The father is in the basement powerlifting and cycling.
The brother is showering after his second consecutive 24-hour surgical shift.

The aroma of the meal my mom prepared for my brother’s rare visit, but that I won’t eat, a meat dish, is delicious smelling and invokes my childhood memories. Yet it also provokes my pre-existing nausea and that ill feeling, causing my face to contort, trumps all.

So now a candle has been lit. It has a musky cedar wood scent left over from the holiday season coinciding with December.

It’s May, but I’m cold because of the overcast skies and blustery breeze and also because I haven’t yet showered; It is Sunday and I only get 5 or less hours of sleep a night, so taking a late warm bath seems comforting and smart. My reasoning is as follows: I can go to bed smelling of fresh fragrance and body soap essence, my milk and honey body lotion and feet cream and my rose face moisturizer. The next morning I can go to the gym for a less-than-intense 20 minutes, still feeling fresh and then cleanse after. It all works out. In fact, it almost seems effortless.

And it’s times like these where appreciation for such effortless tasks trumps any irritation associated with problems. It is this feeling of gratefulness that in turn makes me feel warm, cozy, and grateful. I feel my youth returning to me in these moments. I wouldn’t say it’s a flashback. There is no going back. Rather, I would call this nostalgia of a more tangible variety than the pining that comes part and parcel with it.

And then I snap back to the here and now.
My brother is sleeping. My father is likely on his iPad. My mother declares that she’s “too full” from a sandwich and won’t eat the dinner she cooked.
Essentially, the dinner is for the men, the sex that requires more food.
The comparisons and self-consciousness starts again. I ignored the English Muffin she had for dinner yesterday despite the fact that I had an entire roasted acorn squash with Mahi Mahi that I cooked. While higher in calorie, my meal was made of wholesome, healthy foods- more nutritious than the enriched flour of her English muffin, that’s for damn sure.

Clearly the comparison is still lingering in the back of my mind.

Like the day before yesterday, when I went out to eat in front of someone who didn’t. Or the day after, when someone else said they would watch me eat because they weren’t planning on eating themselves. My life has suddenly revolved around food again because, irony of all ironies, I seem to be the only person who (insert expletive in the form of a gerund here), eats.

I’m frustrated. I’m upset. I’m determined - to do what, I don’t know. Survive or live? I know the answer is the latter but why isn’t it happening? My God, why is it taking so long?
Why must everyday resolve and devolve into something less than ideal? Hell, less than just mediocre?

I’m doing what I have to do. I am.

Neither self-entitled nor attention-seeking; I’ve never taken a selfie. I apply and apply and apply some more, my skill sets squandered in the eye of the hurricane that is this millennial generation. I didn’t have to walk 80 miles in the snow in wrecked shoes, but this generation of mine is more difficult, I promise you that.

Sleeping, driving, watching - and here I am, hours later, in circles, I am typing silently for you.

CLXVII. Bobbing around -

I’m bobbing around the truth and I’m bobbing around while living truly.

I’m bobbing around the fact that what once were misshapen Bobby pins, stretched out in an attempt to tame my thick hair, strewn about bathroom floor tiles, are now replaced by new-as-can be Bobby pins. These Bobby pins slide off of thin strands of straight hair. These Bobby pins are not survivors despite having tried in earnest to hold on for dear life.

Brown Bobby pins now replace the black ones. My hair is growing out in that same dusky brown that gets lighter in the sun from when I was a baby and didn’t know about styling products and other hair products with chemical altering properties that may have contributed to making my hair appear darker.

I never skipped, but I have to increase.

Dear me,
It’s like agreeing to settle. It’s like agreeing to stay average, to just barely pass. So what makes you tick? Excelling, that’s what. Going above and beyond is what makes me tick. So increase then, and think of it as a cap in your feather. A dear friend for whom I am grateful for, articulated that increasing was deserving of a pat on the back. Why? Because you’re that much closer to your goal.

The point isn’t to compensate for eating by partaking in any mobile activity. No, the point is to eat so as to refuel for all the ways that life is meant to be - enjoying and pursuing non-sedentary activity. Because let’s be honest: spicy and palette-tickling food burns calories, delicious caffeinated coffee makes your heart work, burning calories, and that gut-provoking laughter burns calories. Living burns calories and if I cannot burn calories, than I’m not alive.
The caveat or the solution, rather, is to eat and eat and consume and consume.
That may sound gluttonous but this is a case of semantics. Logically, one could substitute the verbs eat and consume with live. Doesn’t that sound motivating? The solution to living is to live. It’s that simple. It’s truly that simple.

I’m not idiotic enough to believe that life is simple, because it’s not. But in order for complexity to surface, life must be present in the first place.
When that happens, 20 or 30 pounds down the line, complexities will arise, but I can’t think about that now. I need to think about life. I need to think about living. I need to think about living in order for me to not have to think about living. Life should just be. It should be a given.

Perhaps that explains why I believe meditation is so ridiculous a pursuit. We’re not naturally composed to concentrate on breathing. We’re just supposed to breathe. Our body knows to breathe. My body, ravaged by an internal storm and external feud, knows to breathe.

I don’t find death to be natural, especially when people want for it, ask for it, and suggest it.
I never liked when kids picked flowers growing from the ground or causally brushed against fragile branches with leaves in order to display some sort of superiority in strength. I
never cared for those people who spot an ant trekking across the pavement and then proceed to step on it. I find those acts vile.

Life is meant to be lived, and there is no bobbing around that fact.

CLXVI. Pillsbury Dough Boy, Personified -

I took days off, weeks in fact. It was a break - a much needed one. I was straddling the mislabel of physical therapy with a workout. It sure as hell worked me out. I saw cuts and I felt aches - decreasingly so as time went on. The concept of rest days was no longer a foreign concept, nor were the twin identities of protein and power, and carb and cardio.

I was determined and developed a routine that inadvertently altered another in-place routine. The after-effects were like tremors before a full-fledged earthquake. My ears were sticking out again. My set of meticulously cared for white teeth, no plaque in sight, began to protrude once more.

How can the body be so fickle and yet so robust?

So I went in the other direction - Immobility and upped the food intake. The concept of gains reared its head, but not in the way of Kardashian-inspired baggage: the hard shell exterior. This baggage was the far more functional one - the canvas one that has an extra zipper with the option to expand your luggage, increasing the space it takes up by a couple of inches, enabling it to weigh more.

Sometimes I’m happy to be the Pillsbury dough woman.

If all it takes is a poke to make me giggle, to make me laugh like I used to, then white chef’s hat I shall don- no questions asked.

Other times, I don’t want to wear the all white suit with a pouch that sticks out and that rolls with every waddle-like movement. Then again, I’ve been accustomed to a waddle. It’s some new sort of gait that is so unlike me but is required because of the gap between my thighs.

I don’t want to start from square-one: to mold and carve new layers of protrusion into something more straight-edged and 2-D. Also, is it a coincidence that the color white is worn when honoring the dead with last rights?

Then again, I just purchased white attire for a summer wedding because of its light and airy vibe.

So here I am- going back and forth about what I want.There is pent up energy that has to be unleashed. And that’s what I want.

I want to be that Pillsbury cinnamon roll or biscuit cylinder. I want to be unwound and stretched out, my internal layer to be revealed.
I want for all of it to take, like a poke of a finger to make me laugh, a fingernail to slit the interior cardboard cylinder, releasing the pressure and exposing the glistening dough inside.

The pros far outweigh the cons in this instance. Pillsbury it is. And when all is said and done, mark my words, I’ll be dressed in a cute white chef’s hat,
a button down white shirt tucked into white pants with an equestrian-style thin blue ribbon wound around a neck (without the Adam’s apple) for Halloween this year.
I haven’t dressed up in a costume in far too long.
I haven’t laughed in just as long.

CLXV. Fri-Nay-

Counting down the hours until Friday comes around is my weekly dreaded chore. I must be the only person to absolutely house unadulterated hate toward the concept of the weekend. It all began in college. Weekends were when the campus would become a ghost town and though I had plenty of friends, I never felt more alone. I would rejoice at the Sunday crowds in the depths of the libraries, right before classes would begin the next day. Throughout the week dining with a meal plan was not at all deserving of its less than favorable reputation.

All hands were on deck, and my veggie burger station were all systems a-go. I relished the special black bean burger on days when the more “structured” in texture, miscellaneous veggie burger was not available. Additionally, a new stash of soup crackers would be piled high in the bowl that I zoned in on while trying not to attract attention as I fished for my favorites: The Keebler rectangles and oyster pouches so that I would always leave a heaping mound of flaky saltines left behind.

After college, I came to enjoy weekends as I once had, in the depths of my childhood when school, Girl Scouts, piano lessons, and dance practice would take a backseat to 3-hour long Hindi films and going out with my parents to dine and shop. Since this past year in graduate school, however, weekends at home was a major shock to my system and my way of doing things. Suddenly my disordered eating habits were on full display.

I no longer felt like I had earned the right to sit and enjoy watching a film or have an appetite for delicious food when I had not fasted and/or could work it off. I no longer danced or had physical education. I read. I wrote. I rode on the subway. I attended graduate school. I analyzed. Weekends are still like this, despite the fact that I now eat a solid three meals and a snack that is my weight in fruit. My daily breakfast of protein-no batter-pancakes is scrutinized for its time-consuming and smoke-inducing quality while cooking. As the weather is opening up, I’m beginning to harp back onto my childhood which was largely spent outdoors. I’m finally accepting, rather than realizing, that phases in life exist. That is to say, so what if I no longer play street hockey on roller skates or that playing tag now counts as an invasion of space equivalent to harassment? So what if being active is now slotted for a certain time as opposed to sprinkled with abandon? Who cares that my metabolism isn’t that of a child’s? Who really cares? These changes are part and parcel of growing up.

Isn’t this what I always wanted? It is.

I remember fire drills and half-days, reminiscing about being an adult who can appreciate the outdoors during the daytime and can hear birds chirp like I can now.

Last Friday my mother took the day off and while I know her doing so is ultimately to wind down and actually use one of her accumulated vacation days that her bosses have been pushing for her to use, I believe that she, in part, wants to spend time with me. I’ve been selfishly pushing everyone away, dreading the Friday I no longer have for myself.I’ve been counting down the days and mentally preparing myself for when I have to share that last vestige of alone-time before I am fully exposed on Saturday and Sunday.

That Friday, while pleasant, transitioned to Saturday. Another hellish weekend day. Yet again an argument. Yet again, a sinking feeling in the gut. Yet again, a desire to break away from all the shackles of a hard adulthood and wholeheartedly indulge in what could be. The adulthood I always dreamed of was one that isn’t this no matter how hard I try and make it out to be that way. Yet again, no offer from a job I am more more than qualified for after passing rounds one, two, three, and sometimes more. Yet again, no response to my email and an impression of my tweet but not any human reception of said tweet.

I came to know early last week that this past Friday, my mother again had off. This time for ‘Good Friday.’ I thought today would be well and good, especially after our heart-to-heart on Thursday, however, it wasn’t even 11 am before a scuffle had ensued. That was to be expected. What wasn’t to be expected is that she again has off this upcoming Friday.

I’m taking this with a grain of salt. After all, it is kind of my prep for the upcoming week abroad. That’s right: A week in which I will be sharing a room and every passing day no longer by myself. We’re headed out and I can only imagine what is to come.

At least it is Monday - let the mental prep begin.

CLXIV. Dear Father -

Advice to an Anorexic begins like this:

“White foods: bread, potatoes, rice, ice cream…”

10 minutes later:

“Oreos!”

Pause

“Beer- Then you’ll become like me.”

And all I could say was “thank you” and smile. Something about this eccentric man gave off a paternal essence. I said thank you and this is coming from a person who hails from a strict non-drinking household aside from using cooking wine and my brother and parents’ occasional consumption of Ba Ba Rum from famed NYC bakery, Veniero’s. This is coming from someone who refuses to consume any type of refined sugar; from a person who eats fiber-filled whole and ancient grains and the lower-glycemic versions of starch known as sweet potatoes. I am a person who went from eating zero-fat, denying my body the ability to absorb whatever little nutrients I was getting from throat drops, crackers, tomatoes, ginger ale, and coffee, to stave off hunger, to a person who fell in love with healthy fats: nut and seed butters, fish, olive oil, and luscious egg yolks.

I met this man at a place where I voluntarily chose to walk the risky path yet again. I decided to reconstruct muscle while trying to put on weight. He was wondering what someone looking the way I do - stick-like - was doing in a place where healthy bulges and rotundity was commonplace.
He asked me what my ethnicity was and proceeded to talk nonsensical chatter about someone else he knows who hails from India after finding out my father was from there. This was all after he kept confusing Pakistan with India. I was insulted to say the least, but mostly just unamused by his need to categorize all Indians as tough and oppressive.

Since then, he’s always initiated a “hi, how are you?” And most recently, “have you been gaining weight?”

He told me had a daughter around my age. “She weighs 130-pounds at least,” he said.
This man is white by the way and apparently, his daughter, who I’ve seen around the gym, is either adopted or mixed, and is beyond pretty. She is 130-pounds all lean muscle from what I can tell. Her arms are cylindrical but not flabby. Clear of face, rosy pigmentation that surmises good health, and seemingly of a hybrid race like myself from one of India’s neighboring Southeast Asian countries - she reminded me of my past self.
She reminded me of the girl who could lift 20 pounds while doing crunches or who could sprint up stairs without being winded.
She was his daughter.

And with this realization, I felt as though I had, in turn, become his daughter as well.

My father had given me the same advice, minus the beer part. He told me to eat bread and rice. He scolded me when he found my mother’s bag of 35-calorie pack freeze-dried apple crisps because he thought they were mine. He grew happy when he found my mother’s pack of Oreos a couple of days later, again, mistaking them for being my own.

He was losing his patience and so too was my proxy daddy who asked with angst if I was putting on any weight at all. I am losing my patience as well. It’s the first of March and I have a little more than three months until my next birthday- until that anniversary where I was made to sip on my first 365-calorie beverage, Ensure, to have my first blood transfusion, my first time going into anaphylactic shock, and my first time since birth that I was home-bound for the entirety of my favorite season: summer.

The abdominal bloating started before I increased my increased food intake but will remain for some time until weight restoration and redistribution . I went from avoiding hugging my parents so they wouldn’t have to feel my bones, to avoiding having to feel self-conscious about the water-retaining cushion around my midsection. I miss hugging.

“Speed this up as much as possible,” my father pleaded.
“Then you can work on your body the way you like- with cardio.”
“The longer you take, the worse it is.”

This last statement caused me to believe that it was for his own benefit - the selfishness, am I right? No, I am wrong. That sentiment is of course ridiculous. My father doesn’t want his daughter to be fat nor does he want her to become healthier and stronger only so that his family unit wouldn’t be ostracized by the quote unquote community.
He wants his daughter to once again laugh while watching late-night television. He wants her to be compared to the old-world Hindi film beauties of his youth again. He wants her to indulge in the cuisine that he had grown up with, to eat the food she once did and that her ancestors did. He wants her to swap out black bean soup for dal and whole grain muffins for atta or whole wheat rotis. He wants her to ditch the pounds of fruit for ghee-laced confections.

“You’re not eating the food that you’re meant to eat, which suits you,” my father said.

I asked him what he meant.

“You eat either Indian or Spanish food because that is what you are,” he said.

He wants to see the dimple in her chin again - the same one that his mother had. He wants her hair to be feral yet tamed again as opposed to being thin and scalp-exposing. He wants her to be fertile so she can start her own family. He wants her to find love and to get married.

I want what he wants. Rather, he wants what I want. I’m selfish.

So, father, I have a confession to make:

I’m the selfish one and I am sorry for being so.

This is my time one way or the other. I just have to flip it in the direction I want to see myself in. Thriving as opposed to surviving.

CLXIII. Time + Energy = Love-

Self-care is now a “thing.” So is self-love. Now that’s a game-changer if there ever were one, especially for today, Valentine’s Day. Self-care and love, or Thing One and Thing Two, are as quirky as their namesakes in Dr. Seuss books.

With flaming fluoride toothpaste- blue colored hair and bright red onesies, Things One and Two don’t care about their weird appearance, even as full-time residents of the all-too-weird Whoville. They’re in love with themselves. They love to do for themselves.

Doing for my self is something that is hard to fathom. I cannot bring myself to have a mani-pedi done more than once a year. Having both luxuries performed at the same time is even more indulgent. While my wardrobe has expanded exponentially over the years, I always waited for prices to come down and in the mean time, lost out on discontinued designs.

In this respect and many others, I am not my parents’ daughter. I grew up with the idea that quality trumps all, no matter the price. I, however, have always held fast unto money. I always wait for my one-cent penny as change. I don’t mind going back into CVS to adjust the price of an item I already purchased because I forgot my coupon at home. I always compare the prices for necessities among competing pharmacies.
Ironically, my nuclear family thinks I’m wasting time and expending an unwarranted amount of energy calculating costs, traveling, attempting to manicure my right hand with my far less graceful left one.

That unused Christmas greeting card that I never remembered to return still haunts me to this day. I don’t even remember the cost but I do know that it was the equivalent to those consumer-beware clauses on almost all over-the-counter medications: I could have purchased my out-of-season 99 cent/pound watermelon for the day.

I don’t mind spending money on food, otherwise known as fuel or nourishment for the body. Still, I think more than twice about buying that black bean soup when I could have my maybe $2 meal of a roasted sweet potato with an egg-white Swiss scramble or my slightly higher-end meal of a 4 oz. piece of salmon (that comes in packs of 8) with my organic black forbidden rice ($4.99 for 7 servings which I could stretch to 8.)

My version of self-love is one that doesn’t mind spending extra in order to deter hoarding or abundance. That is to say, I buy what I need on a day-to-day basis, like fruit, so as not to over indulge while also ensuring freshness.
I buy my GMO-free nut butters, when I can, in individual one-serving squeeze packets instead of the jar.
It’s not a matter of convenience, you see. I don’t mind scooping out from a jar and measuring the number of tablespoons per serving. I don’t mind using a measuring spoon, a butter knife to level-off any excess, and then a serving spoon to transfer the resulting amount onto a plate for consumption.
I buy these packets out of self-love; so that I don’t have to fret over whether or not my serving size is accurate. One less thing to over-analyze about.

Time is the crux of self-love and self-care. It takes time to love yourself.

After denying myself the trending 2016 planner and calendar stalls and kiosks at every corner amongst resolution-abiding citizens last month, I finally caved in yesterday and have accepted that yes, I do need an agenda to schedule my life.
Hustling does that to you. Interviews, socializing, dinner reservations, deadlines - working from home on both the familial and professional fronts is a legitimate job: Enter 2016.

As for jobs, well. I decided to splurge on the self-care front with a double whammy before one of my biggest interviews to date: I straightened my hair and had an extra-long wearing manicure done.
Update: the interview was rescheduled and my insufferably flattened out hair and scuffed up black nail polish in only two days’ time are making me rethink this newfound self love regimen.

All that said, I have made peace with this because I’m better for it. My cuticles are no longer painfully chafing and I had a good dose of much-needed serotonin. Still, I’d rather do for others. And so I purchased a gift for a friend. The issue here was not that, but that I, who lives within walking distance of Citibank and its ATMs had, in deference to staying active and prepping for job interviews, had counted on someone else to drive me to withdraw cash before buying said gift. I ended up having to use a multi bank ATM and paid a $3.50 fee to pull out my own money.

The self-loathing kicked in.

Not one to self deprecate - I never put myself down and always carry my head up high - had thought that if I could only go back and had done this and/or that, this would have never happened or that could have happened.

Self-love is not equivalent to having pride in one’s self: keeping one’s back erect, and believing whole heartedly in one’s capabilities.
There is a clear and definitive difference in those two concepts and I’m just beginning to realize this now.

Giving back and contributing to society requires energy and that internal force is a direct byproduct of caring for one’s self.
Just like It takes money to make money, investing in your corporeal form pays back manifold.

CLXII. Be Still -

In sophomore year of college, I was part of history.
The University of Pennsylvania announced a snow day. Even more earth shattering was that the time off from school and work, associated with the most pleasant memories of childhood abandon, like building a snowman and having piping hot pancakes for breakfast, toasty cookies in the afternoon and a hearty pasta dish for dinner, lasted two consecutive days. That’s right. Two snow days In a row. You could imagine the amount of snow that fell.

That year, every inkling of magic that snow seemed to possess for me, had changed for the worse.
Snow and I were never the same. We still haven’t made amends. That is why this eminent snowstorm is wreaking havoc on me. The anxiety I am experiencing as people post photos of snowfall in the surrounding northeastern provinces, like D.C., is making me antsy.

And so it has begun. A sparkling blanket has appeared on the street outside my house. I am staring down at it from the alcove at the top of my stairs.

I remember when my mom used to host annual Christmas parties at our house - parties that weren’t catered. My parents made vegetable kofta from scratch and improvised bread-crumb coated aloo tikkis - potato patties. I remember when she and I wanted to wear red that day. I wanted to wear jingle bell earrings, and I did.

That year it snowed. It was magical. It was the white Christmas all those carols refer to. The songs materialized. Music was tangible. All that seemed out of reach had suddenly become tactile. The taciturnity of the snow and blessed day was pierced by giggles and the sound of polyester down jackets getting wet as my friends on the block laid flat against the surface of the snow-covered ground to create angelic footpaths.

One day in high school it was snowing mid-afternoon. By the time I was dismissed in the late afternoon, the buildup was considerable. Waiting for the city bus that likely would never come, was hellish.
I remember my ill-equipped rebellious adolescent feet, housed in mere ballet flats, being submerged in ice. My extremities felt frost-bitten. It was Valentine’s Day and I was daydreaming about a faceless prince all the while. I was also enjoying being in the company of my peers and other New Yorkers. The shared suffering was akin to huddling together for bodily warmth. The snow created a community.

I’m only human, a realist, and a temperamental New Yorker and so my patience was quickly expiring. Just then, my father’s car pulled up sleekly against the curb where the bus should have come but never did. I slid into the backseat, engulfed by the warmth of the heated car and the paternal feeling of love. Those were the days we didn’t argue- when hurtful exchanges weren’t made. Those were the days relationships weren’t in disrepair.

I knew my dad would come early from work that day regardless of the weather because he would take my mother and I out for a Valentine’s dinner. My brother was away at college.
Always ravenous, especially after school, and always that kid who relished non-home cooking, I was excited because I knew that the wait to sit at a dimly lit restaurant wouldn’t be long.

What I didn’t know is that I would have a gift waiting for me in the backseat of the car. Turning to my left, I found a gift bag addressed to me. Inside were a variety of sweet confections. He didn’t have time to go to Godiva that year, but there were Raisinets and other theater-going chocolate. A red envelope with a card was also inside.
Oh snow- it does wonders for the soul.

Flash forward to that fateful day in college. The university neglected to clean the front of my dormitory building, one of the oldest on campus. Just when I was getting used to not being in one of the high rise campus apartments due to the lottery system, I was snowed in my dorm for more than two days.
As a personal, self-imposed rule, I never kept any food in my room. I feared I would become fat if I did. I only ate my meals from the dining hall, which was closed because of the storm and once it had opened, I found nothing suitable to eat. For those three days I was starving and without food. If not for the kindness of my suite mate, I would have gone crazy. She offered me hot chocolate - a caloric beverage I never would have consumed. That day, however, every drop soothed my being.

I hated the snow for all it was - I hated its gaudy crystalline appearance so similar to the cheap diamond renditions of cubic zirconia. I hated it with all my being. And I still hate the snow to this day.

I hate the long lines in the supermarkets. I hate that even though we’re quite stocked up on everything, I won’t be able to buy my fruit fresh which I do daily. I made sure to buy enough for two days but I just dipped into what was supposed to be tomorrow’s supply of fruit and now I feel not only bad for caving into a perfectly normal and human craving, but also anxious about the idea of rationing.

I have everything I need for this weekend’s snow storm: I have my protein packed salmon in the freezer, my multigrain bread, my unsweetened cashew milk, oats for days, cinnamon, vanilla protein powder, my raw almond and cashew butters, my spinach and artichoke hummus, my extra-large free range brown eggs, and two large sweet potatoes. I have my beta-carotene, protein, carbs, fats, and multivitamin on hand. Hell, I even have a double stock of hair, skin, and nail vitamin. Both of these supplements are fortified with extra vitamin C to stave off any illness that this weather may cause.

We’re locked and loaded, and yet I’m anxious to not have the option of venturing outside and absorbing some of that all natural Vitamin D.

I’m Jodie Foster in The Panic Room. When will I get out? It’s times like this that I itch for Spring.

My adult self longs for the lengthy bloc of a month, void of any holidays, known as March. The month that all school-goers detest because it seems an inordinate length of time to be without a break off from school.
For me, however, March is the month when Spring seems to make itself known. Egg coloring kits and chemically- derived marshmallows in an array of neon colors and in the shape of birds, for which kids should be carded at the register, are piled high on store shelves.

I still have fond memories of my mother hiding little Easter baskets with crinkly pastel-colored cellophane that hid plastic eggs with m&ms inside, mini shortbread cookies, and malted chocolate egg-bites.

Spring and I are on good terms - for now.

I can only hope that I’ll be close to weight-restored when the sun’s warmth is as potent as the light it sheds so that I can bike ride and picnic, mull around for miles in beautiful weather and visit a vineyard or hiking trail.

CLXI. The Writing Room -

I now have a library in my house. I have a place to put that nifty heavy-weight trinket made of metal that has molded pens gathered on top and an engraved quotation about how writers think and do.
Manhattan has some place called “The Writing Room,” where alcoholic beverages are imbibed, culinary repertories are primary and is thus reflected in the prices, and the vestiges of writers’ lore are solely reminiscent in decor.
There are now writers’ colonies - clubs in the city - that aforementioned borough - where one can burrow away in steadfast thoughts of fictional worlds or nonfictional memories, transcribed interviews, and creative expression.

My writing room, I believe, has always been in my mind. Now, it has shifted into the crevices of my inner being even more so. Maybe that shift is a result of my post-lowest weight daily Omega-3 and -6 overload from salmon, egg, and nut consumption.
Do I meditate? I was asked this earlier today. I replied that no I didn’t. Sure, I tried, however I’m too in my head to practice something so contrary to my being. Meditation is to produce a numbing sound and I always thrived on music. Meditation is like being in that scientifically-proven soundproofed room in which someone’s eardrums could burst because all that person hears is their blood vessels dilating and constricting, their blood flowing, and their heart thumping. It’s like hearing the annoying second-hand of a clock.

Is anyone out there though? Does anyone read this? I never cared as to the answer- as far as this blog is concerned. This platform was and is for me. Still, my writing in the pixelated public domain has catapulted me into social media abandon so that I’ve become familiar with skill sets not easily taught. It’s placed me into a social context both casually and professionally.
My posts have been a conversation starter more than I care to admit. It has been the source of family disturbance. It has opened the door for many an internship into the journalism world when I was starting out as a recent liberal arts graduate who was, up until then, a walking smorgasbord of politics, historical and sociological health practices, and premedical topics.

Now, however, my blog is no longer a recreational indulgence that I once found myself fully engrossed in while on campus. I never felt more like a millennial, intellectual, Ivy League- attending student, like the fictional character, Rory Gilmore, than when I blogged. This fortuitous venture just happened to coincide with my last year of college.

I would have the urge to blog about something altogether different than that last post I wrote, immediately after having published it. I had to pace myself. I needed to engage in the self-discipline of not having my readers, my peers, be sick of consecutive posts. Also, I needed to actually finish coursework.

I used to occupy my free time not spent walking to and from classes, or criss-crossing campus for dance practice, by sitting down in a campus cafe. I would settle down, no longer toting around my laptop, and sip on a latte in hand whilst writing on this blog.

Now I blog on-the-go. Right now I am typing on my iPhone’s notepad feature whilst walking around my empty house. I don’t dance anymore. I don’t burn energy at all.
Clearly, every topic that my blog posts of late promise to adhere to, eventually end up at the same place - I’ve been diagnosed with anorexia. I’m not allowed to burn calories and even if I had the chance to engage in cardio, I am too true to myself to do it when I know I have to pack on pounds.

Back to my writing and the question, does anyone read this? I have been transparent and made it quite clear that I am no longer the chirpy, curly-haired, voluminous-facial-cheek possessing, Indian music-loving girl who would order the foods she loved without measuring and without a clue as to the calorie count. In fact, this saddening (at least to me) fact has been plastered all over my Facebook wall. I don’t tweet about my published posts upon them going live nor do I have a public Instagram account. Still, this blog is listed on my resume, in my Twitter profile, on my publicly viewed LinkedIn profile, and is listed as a caption to more than one public Facebook profile picture.

That said, my friends and the people who have had direct access to my new blog posts are unaware of what I am writing about- of my current state of being. I find myself having to explain to them why I ordered my entree with appetizers and am eating before they ever receive their own course.

“My blog,” I say. “Have you read it?” I ask as a preface to telling them about my temporarily new self.

Why should I expect them to read it? Is it because they used to? Is it because acquaintances have mentioned that they read my blog or that I have received maybe a couple of direct messages sent to me from a friend of a friend who happened upon my blog and enjoyed reading it?

Perhaps this temporarily new me is also a different writer than before. Prose has definitely replaced the more poetic language I once used. Humor is dark as opposed to quirky.

I have noticed this too.

CLX. Spidery Spirit Animal -

On all fours and meticulously inspecting my sheen white tiled bathroom floor for inevitable specks of dirt - (I’m suddenly finding non-carpeted floors high maintenance to the nth degree) - I had caught movement in my periphery. The offender was brown, a dark brown- a hazelnut brown. I’m allergic to hazelnuts.

The fiend was a spider. A small spider with an enlarged midsection not unlike mine. I’m constantly bloated in my recovery from a year of restrictive eating habits. The spider also had spindly extremities. So skinny were they that the limbs seemed longer than they actually are. This was also not unlike my veiny arms and legs. I once had voluminous thighs reminiscent of my Latina side and solid arms that evoked those of my bangle-decorated Indian ancestral matriarchs. Now my limbs are considerably deflated and give off the appearance of being lengthier than they actually are.

That spider was mocking me. That spider was me anthropomorphized. I was shocked by the sighting.

My parents had built this house from nothing- we went brick by brick, hinge by hinge, knob by knob to erect this customized house. It was brand spanking new. It was in a league all of its own. This house is not a Tudor nor is it a colonial. This house is a post-modern millennial. I suppose arachnids are natural to the suburban habitat we moved to. Our neighbor has a mini animal farm in his backyard after all.

I quickly did the deed I hated to do and flung the balled up paper towel in the receptacle as soon as I had checked to make sure my spirit animal was caught. It was. I had been caught too.

I am caught in this anorexic limbo. I sometimes forget what my face is supposed to look like. I sometimes forget that it’s possible to feel the burn of a strenuous cardio workout. I sometimes forget that I had used to enjoy sitting for over two and a half hours watching a Hindi film in the theater without having to expend energy and burn calories so I can work up an appetite.

The next day I had also forgotten all about the incident between me and the magically appeared spider. And then I remembered for the sake of small talk. That spider-appearance was one of the more exciting things to have happened to me during my days that are consumed by sending out resumes and cover letters, applying to magazines, and washing dishes and planning and cooking up protein, carb, and fat-proportioned meals. I told my mother about the spider.

For some reason I expected to hear something along the lines of the lack of cleanliness despite the fact that everyone knew my unofficial domestic duty was to constantly ensure that dirt was absent and to notify anyone who would listen when dirt was present. “You know seeing a spider is good luck,” my mother said. “That’s what grandma always said,” she continued, referring to her own mom. Suddenly I replayed the event in my head and the spider now seemed to take on a new hue.

I was Charlotte, that fictional character in the classic children’s novel that is mandated by so many a classroom curriculum. It was kind of random. Perhaps the spider was good luck. It’s a new year and I need luck on my side.

Old wives’ tale aside, logically, spiders weave webs. Webs are sticky, gelatinous spider-discharge. It functions to catch all that come in its vicinity. Hence the phrase, “caught in a web of lies.” How then could a web-yielding spider be fortuitous? How could it be a sign of being freed from my anorexia? I don’t know what to think about 2016, except that I will be turning 26, am still unmarried, still not yet engaged, still underweight, still - at a standstill.

It’s just the beginning and as of yesterday, I have 6 months until I’m officially past my mid-twenties. One thing is for sure, my spidy senses are tingling and I’m itching to move on. Here’s to weaving my own web.

CLIX. Non-Sticky Bandages -

Bandages, better known as Band-AIDS, are meant to be ripped off. The act of using your fingernails to detach the ends from your skin once a dry scab has formed is unpleasant, but it is also necessary. It’s like pulling off the sticky price-tag on something you’re gifting. Ideally a band-AID should be time-sensitive: Be sticky enough to let blood-clotting work it’s magic and keep out infection, and be non-adhesive enough to come off easily without the finagling of having to scrape off the leftover glue from your skin, only to then apply bandages when the aforementioned scratching is no doubt unsuccessful.

Unfortunately for us, bandages are like what sticky notes, better known as Post-It’s, should be. That is to say, they stick to you at their own discretion instead of eventually falling off. As a result, our hair is pulled out from their follicles and our skin is stretched so that both males and females feel that wrath of a localized pregnancy. In other words, the stretching of your skin as you try in vain to peel off a particularly stubborn bandage.

Therein, someone somewhere has coined the analogy, “rip it off like a band-AID,” which does well to insinuate that despite any hesitancy we have in pursuing a task, we’re to do it anyway. Might as well get it over and done with.

What lies beneath the bandage is a sign of both trauma and healing. After all, bodily trauma ignites an inflammation stage that triggers the blood-clotting process - for the non-hemophiliac population that is.
A hemophiliac is someone who inherited the genetic mutation which prevents blood from clotting.

Not too long ago I was cutting up my daily evening snack of a 6-pound (or more) watermelon. The knife slipped and I did not know that I had cut my finger because I didn’t feel any pain initially and it was not until I saw the blood seeping out that I realized I had been cut. The blood kept seeping and it wouldn’t stop. Hemophilia was not the cause and I presumed stitches were necessary. With 25 minutes until one of NYC’s last remaining open Urgent Care centers was closing and with hopes to dodge the ER, I got to the center with 5 minutes to spare.

I didn’t need stitches, but the cut was deep enough to warrant a never ending stream of bright red fluid so uncannily reminiscent of the sweet, product of summer-melon.

I ripped off my bandage the next day- always impatient with having a foreign object wedged between the tactility of my fingertips and the world around me. What remained was a gaping cut that didn’t close up for another 10 days so that I felt a dull pain with every encounter the wound made with the elements.

I ripped off the bandage and yet there was no calming effect or one-button recovery as the analogy had promised.

Recovery isn’t a fast-track. It’s tough and goes beyond the physical. It’s counter-intuitive and contradictory. It’s seemingly courageous but also seemingly cowardly. It’s an alliteration of the letter c because it is so comparable.

It’s crappy and not at all dissimilar to my city’s brainchild: the cronut - it’s ridiculous but appealing.

The hybrid confection of croissant and donut is something that is crazy, but is just crazy enough to work.

Recovery from anything is a science. Scientifically speaking, it’s crazy that the process of recovery is riddled with its own set of problems and yet eventually is the only proven path to attain the coveted outcome - and in my case, that is to gain weight.

It’s so ‘cronut’ to me that I have to eat despite not feeling hungry. It’s so cronut to me that I have to feel gluttonous and feel as though my belly has expanded beyond capacity and yet everyone else sees scrawny arms and spoke-like shoulder blades jutting out. It is so cronut to me that I am constipated at all times and in an attempt to rid myself of this fullness by pacing around my house, I’m actually delaying any recovery from occurring.

I’m stuck between a coagulated rock of sugar and a hard shell of a donut that has hidden inside a buttery soft croissant; that is to say, I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, better known as: The “cronut.”

CLVIII. Recovery Part IV: Holiday Hell -

It’s the holiday season. In my house, and in many others, this means two things: Food and family. For me, this includes one more thing - fear, only adding to this alliterative context.

Diwali has only recently just passed. We usually buy a small box of mithai - sweets - just for us, in addition to buying for others. For those who prefer the non traditional route, we buy pastries at the Lower East Side Italian bakery that my parents frequented before my older brother was born and that my mom went to before ever having met my father.

This time around, my parents bought pastries for themselves. I opted out of a baked item. I don’t even think they bothered to ask if I had wanted anything.
This year, everyone opted out of the box of Indian dessert, however, we received a rather large box that was from a famed sweet seller in Jackson Heights. My father decided to keep it at home. Inside the box was a large variety, including some of my favorites. I couldn’t bring myself to eat any save for ¼ of two, so ½ of one over the course of a week.

Today is the birth of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev Ji. At the Sikh temple, you’re not only given prashad - a token blessing in the form of halwa or a confection made up of equal parts sugar, wheat flour, and ghee - but you’re also given, should you want, langar - a full vegetarian meal.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and this year there will most likely be a Punjabi spread at the dining table, almost identical to what is found in the temple save for extras in the form of fried appetizers, meat dishes, and desserts galore.

Added to this, I’m moving into my family’s new home this weekend. After two years of building from scratch and designing my bedroom alone which entailed ordering wallpaper from England, discovering a handcrafted bed carved from mango wood and inspired by Myanmar, and hanging a Turkish lantern above said bed, there will be nary time to utilize the new kitchen much less the old one.
Take-out will be a given.

Recovering from anorexia and having to eat more than I have ever ate in my life, I have been trying in earnest to balance my carb, fat, and protein intake. I can’t skimp or skip a meal nor can I workout to stave off fullness like everyone else can.

That is why I am so fearful.
I fear my stomach will burst. I fear that I will never enjoy my holidays much less life should I eat any extra morsels. Constantly without an appetite and bloated: I know this to be normal.
I know all the weight will disproportionately go to my midsection - always flat for the entirety of my life up until now, ironically, when I’m almost 30 pounds below what I should weigh. I know it will take upwards of eight months before the weight redistributes from my abdomen to the rest of my body. I know that in order to feel hunger again, I have to increase my intake so as to rev up my nonexistent metabolism.
Easier said than done.

I know all this and yet it is so difficult to swallow - no pun was intended but I guess that since I have decided to leave the wording as is, the pun is intended.

Truth is, in the past I ate without a care and without planning, because subconsciously I knew that I had not eaten much or anything else and so I could indulge in that second serving of dinner or that piece of pie. I enjoyed taking a fistful of prashad, not minding the ghee that left my hands shiny from its oily fatty content.

I ate all those delightful seasonal specialties because I deserved it - I had worked out or ate nil in anticipation of “splurging” on the expected tasty nourishment that came with days off from school and work.

My mother and I used to go to the bakery on weekends. It was sort of our bonding time. I remember how pleasant it was. We wouldn’t argue about how much I or she was eating or how full we felt or how much we had to work out after.
We would both order a caffeinated beverage. I would either have an apricot hamentashen or apricot-amaretto marzipan-covered “railroad” tart. She would usually opt for the traditional Napoleon or cannoli. I remember both of us heating up the lemony-ricotta flaky sfogiatelle pastries the morning after my father brought them home from Manhattan. That was our breakfast.

I remember calling the local bakery everyday between the end of September and Thanksgiving to see if their inventory now included pumpkin and sweet potato pie.

A week ago, my mother asked if I would eat any of the pies should they have them. I adamantly answered that I would not. So she opted out as well.
My parents love sweets and so the steadfastness was short-lived. To make up for the absence of Apple, pumpkin, and sweet potato pies, my mother bought a pumpkin cheesecake yesterday for her and my father. She picked it up from the bakery section of the supermarket.
I was horrified. Parish the thought: a post-modern confectionary concoction made on the premise of a supermarket, that while lovely, is by no means equivalent to one of the artisanal bakeries that my mother, brother and I had grown up with. Our palettes are much too refined for a supermarket-buy.
I then felt terribly sad. By refusing to share in the holiday spirit, I had denied my parents of enjoying the holidays as well.
I then felt good- disciplined. I am 25-years-old and I decide what I put into my body.

I consciously left my mom alone yesterday when she was cutting a slice of the pumpkin spice - latte inspired cheesecake. I heard her dismiss it. The distaste was audible. It was terrible. She had to nullify the terrible aftertaste and so I heard her reaching for the next best thing she could find in the kitchen to mask the artificial flavors. Toothpaste just wouldn’t cut it.

This morning when I went to make my oatmeal, the cheesecake was gone. Its resemblance to toxic waste caused her to dispose of it in multiple bags before being placed into the large garbage bag, sitting in a bin on the side of my house.

I remember eating bagels and preferring them sliced and toasted outside instead of at home and on the stove. I remember asking for extra butter. I remember sopping up the requisite mess with the pillowy bagel instead of patting it with napkins.
The same napkins I would use to hide balled up pieces of bread that my parents tried to make me eat whilst I began this journey of losing weight and in the process, losing myself.

Al this I remember. I remember us fighting leading up to, during, and after holidays in the past as well, but for different reasons that did not revolve around me or my health.

Despite the cheesecake fiasco, the mood was relatively light. We were watching one of the many piled up DVR-ed shows that we hadn’t had time to watch. We ate different dinners. My mother made penne a la vodka with traces of ham for her and my father. A buttered baguette would accompany it. Vocalized regret ensued, not surprisingly. We all have become incredibly anal about our food choices.

I was to make my white wine-seared salmon on a bed of black rice with low-sodium soy sauce and a couple of egg whites.

And then all hell broke loose. Not about our differing dinner plans, but about an unknown number on a scale. About the stupid God Forsaken “passenger airbag off” light that flashes on the dashboard even while I’m sitting there. It was about all these inanimate things. What is scary was that the terrible ambience in my house, only hours before Thanksgiving, is about me - considered inanimate by cars and everyone else but me.

I’m scared and I am fearful, but I am so much more than that as well.

“I am Kayak, hear me roar.”

Because Emily Gilmore from Gilmore Girls knows what’s up: I’m not a canoe. I don’t need to be steered by two paddles manhandled by two separate persons.

I’m a kayak- all I need is my own self to steer my own course.

CLVII. A Casual, Causal Affair -

*Note: Written yesterday.

Today is Halloween. I think I’m going to dress as myself, as an off-duty, university sweats-dressed, model. I think I’d like to complete my get-up with my slouchy knitted pom pom beanie. The weather certainly calls for it.

You could have been a model, my father said. I scoffed. You could have modeled- you were perfect: flawless skin, a lean, athletic and yet feminine frame. Now I can pretend to be a model since I’m not her anymore. At least not yet.

I was always a witch.
Out of competitiveness in the academic arena for as long as I could remember, I was, and continue to be, power hungry. I indulged in the concept of supernatural witchcraft. To exercise power by using intellectually crafted language via spells, a form of writing, was right up my alley. I thought that the idea of using chemistry to create potions and tonics was so stunningly cerebral. And the popular Steven Spielberg produced television series, Charmed, appealed to my young girl hood. I lived vicariously through those on-screen characters who were so fashionable. They were three sisters and I only knew of brothers.

I went into a Long Island Target last week with my parents after convincing them to join me in shedding off these past years of stress, anxiety, and constant obsessing. That which is life. I wanted to embrace the autumnal spirit spearheaded by Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte.

I purposely prefaced “Target” with “Long Island” because the geographic location of a franchise is directly correlated to the inventory they carry. Keep this in mind.

In years past, my mother would voluntarily escort a large group of my friends from the neighborhood to go trick-or-treating. There was the guy across the street and a little down the way who gave out King-sized candy bars. There were the South Indian Christians, parents to Freddy and Bobby (cousins) who bonded with my two male cousins and brother, a couple of houses down. Their house was directly across the street from The King. Their parents would open their own respective doors since they lived in separate spaces within a two-family house. Without fail, both sets of parents were dressed in sleepwear. The mothers were dressed in floor-length Victorian-like nightgowns. The fathers wore pajama sets: V-neck button down shirt over wide-leg pants. They always gave us money- mostly change and sometimes bills. There was the house around the block that although a tad bit creepy, housed a warm-hearted, now faceless and gender-less person who handed out snack-sized chips of all kinds.

There was the house that gave out the candy-apples in either a caramel-nut combo or a jelly-coconut flaked duo, and then there were the houses that gave out the most economical treats: the minis. We knew who were most likely to be our proxy parents, those money conscious job-going adults who empathized with kids enough to hand out a notch above those 25-cent machine hard candies and to buy brand-named favorites like Skittles, m&ms, Hershey’s, Whoppers, and Nestle varieties. We were privy to those house dwellers who were handing out old-school brands to the candies for which our generation lost the taste for: tootsie rolls (both the lollipops and chewy bow-tie wrapped caramel-cocoa concoctions), and Mary Jane peanut brittle. We knew who felt bored enough to not mind being bothered with trick-or-treaters but who were also dismal failures in our assessment, surpassing mediocrity because they opted for those hard-as-a-rock yet colorful candies, including those off-holiday sugary hearts neatly lined up in a row so reminiscent of the chemical chains that make up their composition. These were the bulk candies, those that filled up our bags and that our parents disposed of first. And then there were the incompetent: those house-sitters who dared to sprinkle loose, not packaged candy corn and other such items made for social consumption indoors. Even prior to the anthrax scare of the early 2000s, these treats were not disposed of by parents, but instead littered in the streets immediately after being received.

Suddenly the leaf-strewn blocks in my village- believe it or not, where I live is a village by definition, became a makeshift Candy Land game board. Back in Target: I had to forgo hiking, farm gallivanting, apple picking, and pumpkin consuming (self-imposed), due to my anorexia.

That being said, I was on a mission to part-take in the fall activity I could actually participate in since it was home-based- doling out treats to costumed children. Always predisposed to creativity - let’s just say I favored Barney over Sesame Street - I wanted to part take in a Do-It-Yourself project. I wanted to make goodie bags with anything but your run of the mill treats. I wanted to put healthy snacks in them, not crap.

In Target, there was an entire aisle dedicated to healthy and organic treats to hand out for Halloween, including balanced fats, protein, and carb combinations housed into little bunny rabbits and goldfish shapes. They were, of course, three times the price of the adjacent 4 aisles that had your go-to Halloween favorites. As I wandered into the lone organic aisle,  a recovering anorexic, my parents’ speechless balking was palpable. Parsimonious person that I am, I thought, “I already have so many expenses what with eminent weddings, grad school loans, a new house and I don’t have children yet. Why should I spend money on the few and far between trick-or-treaters? Why should I push my ethos on anyone else?” So I settled for pretzel packages.

My father then said, “Kids like chocolate.” I had a flashback of myself, separating the solid chocolate from the rest of the candy. My mother said, “They’re just going to throw the pretzels out and it will be a waste of money anyway.” I saw myself throwing away all the treats I did not care for. She had a point and I did not want our money spent for naught.

We bought a large bag of favorite chocolate items. This bag was not as expensive as Annie’s Organic Bunnies, but was the priciest among the regular confectionery options: Cookies in Cream Hershey’s white chocolate, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, a regular Hershey’s bar, and Whoppers. This selection epitomized a good Halloween when I was growing up.

This year we kept our door open and the lights on for a full two hours before closing them and locking up as we used to. Only some children came by: Less than 10 said, “Trick or Treat,” and even less were dressed up.

We have a metal mixing bowl filled with the leftover chocolate at the foot of our stairs. I dare not venture down those stairs lest more of the cold air that seeps from the gap underneath the door touches my skin. I dare not venture down those stairs, far too early to venture out before I embark on the first day of my first job of my life, of my career.

I am one flight up and I think it best to keep climbing.

CLVI. Part III: Breaking Bad Bread -

Food boggles my mind.

Inspirational quotations on Instagram include something along the lines of, “Eat Well and Travel Often.” Of course you have the ever famous movie adaptation of the book, “Eat, Pray, Love.” Then there is the Food Network and Canadian-import, The Cooking Channel, both offering competitions for the home chef, the dismally doomed cook willing to nourish one’s self without the aid of pre-made, packaged foods, the aspiring culinary students in their youth, the hipster-entrepreneurs who want to express their creativity through a gypsy lifestyle as a food-trucker, and celebrity cooks who continue to build on their career. Even on the rightist FOX network one can watch Masterchef and Hell’s Kitchen. On Bravo, there is the ever-prestigious Top Chef hosted by model, Padma Lakshmi.

Models who eat, and more over, those who cook, are in vogue. Karlie Kloss’s organic “Perfect 10” cookies sold at the female-helmed Momofoku Milk Bar packs a double dose of good-doing with its philanthropic price tag and healthy ingredients. Padma Lakshmi and Victoria Secret Angel Camilla Alves both appeared on the TODAY show on separate occasions to lead their own cooking demos as a testament to their pasts as novice models trying to survive on nil job-payments and harping on their primal instinct to recreate meals familiar to their cultural palette: Laskmi made lentils and Alves made a chili carne. Let’s not forget Chrissy Teigen, the Sports Illustrated,
Doppelgänger of domesticity defined, who curates a food blog and is currently working on her cookbook.

Hell, this past Tuesday, the 13th of October, a new episode of Chopped aired in which all of the contestants were not only professional cooks but also models: two males and two females. The latter contingent happened to have suffered from anorexia and bulimia.

Recently, Michael Kors launched a t-shirt collection that raises awareness and funds for children facing hunger.

Food is fuel. Food is necessary for survival, yes. But a relationship with food? What is that all about? Only up until a week ago did I find the phraseology altogether wacky. I was upset by it: To me, it seemed that our tech-centric generation had reached the threshold for scrolling through food porn to such a degree that looking up from the screen and forming relationships with other human beings was a foreign concept.

Then, as a journalist who houses opinions but is judicial by nature, sought answers by speaking with others, especially experts. These primary sources,combined with actively reading (we’re talking Post-It accessorizong here,) through a secondary source- a book assigned by my nutritionist - I wavered in my stance.
Or rather, I side-stepped and did a Step Aerobics’ inspired pivot. I no longer had a stance and instead became a knowledgeable and altogether unbiased journalistic human- a hybrid professional who has not fully withdrawn from the human race.

According to my source, a practicing registered dietitian and nutritionist, a relationship with food is not uncanny because their is one animate participant and one inanimate player in the equation. It’s just like having a relationship with a season or a place. She had a point. A wordsmith, I believe I got caught up in the literal semantics rather than the the philosophical component. In theory, we make associations between smell and sound and tangible goings on in our lives.

My relationship with food has altered. Since beginning a routine of three solid meals a day, which I haven’t done since perhaps weekends during the time I was in middle school, I’ve developed a love for the taste of eggs. I love white fish and indulge in the healthy omega fats found in salmon and all natural nut butters. Fruit has become an indulgence that seems so much more juicy and forbidden than those baked concoctions scattering New York City’s artisanal doughnut shops and traditional Italian trattorias.

It was only this past June that I didn’t know how to make an egg much less know what it tasted like.

I was told by the head nurse to “take it easy” when eating a boiled egg. One boiled egg.
The egg was cold and shiny, sitting perfectly in a plastic container with an overpriced tag from the hospital’s Au Bon Paine. I thought I would bite into it and it would taste like a fluffy marshmallow.
I was ravenous ever since being diagnosed with anorexia, as is normal with the initial days of re-feeding my body after a year of deprivation. I quickly took a small piece with my plastic, sterile white fork and bit into the gelatinous textured egg. Instead of the fluffy texture I imagined it to be, the hard-boiled egg was rich and dense. The yolk was so different from the white- it was so savory and weighed so heavily on me. Take it slow I did, then.

Without me having to search, so far my day has been filled with ideas and thoughts of food: From scheduling a long overdue appointment with my nutritionist, to making breakfast plans with a peer, to visiting Facebook only to find my friend sharing a New York Times Op-Ed about our generation’s rampant gluten-free eating habits, and yet another friend tweeting about a familiarly culturally culinary experience.

The New York Times article is riddled with harsh, albeit, necessary words to the hipsters that don’t appreciate masterfully savory and sweet donuts, (although even these indulgent food choices market greener, environmentally-friendly choices). We’re a society coaxed into thinking food intolerance is normal and commonplace. Gluten, historically partially responsible for species going from nomad to settler, now has a bad rep. We’re reverting to “paleo” now.

You might say this is an example of learning from history, but it isn’t. Never before had people, even myself in the 90’s, dabbed away at pizza or refused to eat complimentary bread, or even imagined eating egg whites as opposed to a full-fledged omelet, a true yolky-yellow color and all the bells and whistles of fresh, chopped tomatoes and basil grown in my backyard.

This society, while relearning that the full egg is actually good for you and creates a protective layer of healthy fat around the liver as opposed to the midsection - thank you, #yolkporn - is not learning from history.

Our generation is re-adapting the past instead.

History by definition is a change over time. Just as we changed from nomad to settler, from squatting to sitting on a chair or even toilet once indoor plumbing came into existence, we’re grabbing at a state of time - the past - as opposed to the changes made over time - history. We’ve traded in chairs for stationary bike-desks.
Sometimes our bodies need rest and our bodies always need nourishment. I have relearned this and now it’s just a matter of applying it.

So here we go, I’m on a mission to gain weight. It’s an uphill battle living in a society where my fellow millennials are rocking Lululemon yoga pants, taking selfies of themselves flexing in overpriced- gym mirrors, and being applauded in the most self-deprecating manner of flattery, also known as, “#goals.”

Excuse me, but I’d like to think of myself as having my own goals, thank you.

I have to gain. Everyday will be fairly sedentary. As it is, I have been cooking breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner. I can see stretch marks appearing across my hip bones and pelvis, but I’m still dangerously underweight. I can see my skin shedding on my upper arms as the circumference widens, yet my extremities are still bony.

I’m gaining, but only ever so slowly and it’s now a race against the clock. I have to learn from history: the only treatment proven to help treat - there is no cure for anorexia, is to consume 2500+ calories a day without any movement.

I have accepted this.

I can say with certainty that a gym membership will be awaiting me after this is all said and done, which, admittedly frightens me. Not the gym membership - my God what I would do to feel that burn, that surge of serotonin again - but the fact that I won’t be active for months and lose my once defined and toned body, which I already lost because of my anorexia.

This is my relationship with food, now.
And like history dictates, it will change over time.

CLV. Part II. Recovering & Uncovering -

Walking this morning,the Sunday that marks the week on which the first day of fall falls, it feels as though I am making my way to the bus stop, headed to high school where I can expect to hear classical music play every hour on the hour. The sky is dusky - a twilight of early morning slumber before daybreak. The breeze is cool but smells slightly of salt, as if the air just made its way off the Long Island Sound, especially for my borderline Queens village.

It feels that way, except for the fact that today is a Saturday, or rather, Sunday and the sidewalks are empty. Except that I mixed up Saturday with Sunday. In high school I dutifully documented my endless amount of tasks in a planner. Oh, and except for the fact that I am now in my mid-twenties, finished with both college and graduate school. Not to mention that prior to leaving my house this morning, I whipped my freshly washed naturally curly hair into a high messy bun with a single, thin black band.

This was unheard of during my time at a high school where plush, velvet Juicy Couture bags lined lockers and custom-made BCBG gowns were tailored for prom at Tavern on the Green. My hair would always be pin-straight, well past my shoulders in length, and a good deal thicker albeit more damaged. I would always have my hair pinned and bound just so and a thin black band never did suffice.

Even the crickets sound different as I am walking and typing this.

That’s another difference. I am writing whilst walking, my portable smartphone in hand. (And while I still have no patience to manicure my nails, I made sure to succinctly clip, file, buff, make smoother, and shine them before heading out this morning. Too much time had passed since I took off the chipping away high-end nail polish I had on for my cousin’s engagement two weeks ago.) Another difference - I still go on a walk for inspiration but I no longer have to rush back home and make a beeline to my desktop computer in order to document my curated stream of thoughts.

Today, before I left, I lathered and then exfoliated my face, toned my skin with aloe Vera, rose-infused witch hazel from an organic foods market before moisturizing with a heftily-priced facial skin cream that promises to work beneath the surface and prevent currently nonexistent sun exposure with a high SPF. Today, I whipped out my ATM card to withdraw cash for my father’s birthday present, which is not so different from my usual gift-giving tendencies. Except that I now have money stashed away in a bank account as opposed to the porcelain, hand-painted piggy bank at the back of my closet.

Today I never boarded the city bus to take me to the largely Eastern European area where my school is located. I don’t even think I saw a bus pass. Today is Sunday after all. I’m passing by a fruit stand that never existed before as I make my way back home. The watermelon season is officially over. I’m surprised to say that I’m slightly saddened by this fact. Yet I am even more saddened by the fact that I still place fruits on a nutritional hierarchy.

I now profess fruits as my dessert. I never did before. I am now battling anorexia and working towards eating intuitively. I never did have this battle before. I never had to. I was a dancer, a Harrisite forced to run on the track and drop and give 50 push-ups, sit-ups, and crunches day in and day out. I didn’t have to have a body running on empty now either I suppose. That was my wrongdoing.

I passed the Dunkin’ Donuts where I used to purchase a buttered and toasted bagel or a blueberry donut with a medium (not grande) coffee - light and sweet, meaning lots of milk and at least one teaspoon of sugar - before high school. I had abs and a stomach as flat as a surfing board regardless. Then again, I never ate lunch then, but at least I had hearty meals and snacks. Food was fuel for my active day ahead.

Now food is fuel, in much larger quantities, and is for my survival. It’s the only way I can be kept alive. It’s the only treatment I have. Now I’m headed home to a steaming bowl of oatmeal with banana, granola, and a dollop of cashew milk and generous sprinkling of cinnamon.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is making mistakes and living through them whilst remedying them. I am looking at the time frantically instead of truly enjoying my walk because I cannot be expending energy while trying to house as much caloric energy as possible.

I can tone later they all say- thirty pounds later.

Too much time has passed. I feel fine, but I fear the upcoming reprimands. I still have a couple of blocks to go before I reach home. I’m anxious and defiant, at peace but also in discomfort because of how full I am from yesterday.

I’m almost there.

CLIV. Part I: Serious about Serotonin-

I’m seriously starved of serotonin. I’m starved of that euphoric enigma that I would experience when entering a basement in Jackson Heights from which obnoxiously loud bhangra music is bound to be blaring. This lackluster feeling is  temporary, so there is no need for concern. I’m currently dwelling on the lining beneath that silver one, but a cloud is but a cloud. Fluffy and soft and fluid - It’s malleable beyond belief, just as our bodies are robust.

There are times, like today, when the sun is shone so brightly through the windows I would look out of as an Ivy-League obsessed youth filled with wanderlust, and I feel good. I’m smiling on the inside.

I have a content place - a “happy place” or a “happy” medium - which I have occupied on occasion. It comes and goes and mostly dwells in the future that could be - that will be. It dwells in hope, which I suppose is its own enigma: Time will pass eventually. This hurdle is quite tall, no doubt. The lack of exercise is making time seem endless despite its obvious finality.

Most of the time I am in a flux. I’m seesawing on a fulcrum that waddles between despair and dogmatism. The fulcrum itself is “determination,” personified. I am determined, no doubt, to walk the path ahead of me, faltering be damned. For my journey is crooked enough. I think I have acquired lessons and experiences that a successful person (evidently) is required to have in order to have some sort of perspective that qualifies them to have their memories and achievements bound, read, and distributed.

Where there is depth, there is reach.

I do not want to occupy the depths of hell so famed by Dante. After all, I was never one for classic reads. I fancy myself a hipster before the Bushwick Brooklynites replaced the borough’s once heard of baseball team, The Cyclones.

So here I stand, or rather sit, unabashedly basking in the glory of not having to travel underground or on buses. My bones wouldn’t be able to bear it. A slight jab, for me and all those who have traveled this hellish path, is the equivalent to a punch in the jocular. We would have the wind taken out of us - our breaths light and airy as opposed to a healthy person’s panting, heavy by nature.

It’s that feeling that some of us have been unlucky enough to experience. That feeling known as a “food coma.” Quite literally-speaking, a food coma is a severe drop in blood pressure that immediately results in blacking out after the consumption of caloric units. In other words, someone like me becomes weighed down by energy - caloric units - which for someone else - that “normal” person who I once was, or never really was, is known as fullness.

The concept of being ravenous, blacked out, awakened, and then adjusted to a new-found set of hunger pangs after weeks of no appetite, paves way for a fullness that never goes away. The appetite is lost while being built up.

You’re continuously sated, but never satisfied.

There is this disconnect between the mind and the body, one created by the self, that must now repair itself.
In actuality, I must repair it. I did the damage.
I must go past the fullness and learn to consume, to hydrate, to nourish myself - everyone else be damned. I must eat more than a grown man who works out. I must eat more than I want. It’s a race against the clock to recalibrate a never-fully calibrated metabolic clock.

The kitchen has now become my domain.
It’s not only the heart of the household’s dynamics, it’s also the grim reaper’s abode - the epicenter from which plans to annihilate all that is right and well for a family’s dynamics.

It just so happens that my kitchen has two elevated stools with cushioned chocolate-colored leather seats. They’re perfectly crafted for my once-fluid-filled feet that reminded me of the water-bags I would toss haphazardly with friends who were also neighbors.

I would run around all day, or roller-skate, bike ride and race on foot, hide and then would seek, before coming back inside for a bowl of pasta, a childhood favorite my mom would agree to make.

These leather seats protect my exposed frame to the wooden structure beneath it.These stools are, when not used, tucked neatly underneath a protruding slab of granite that looks out onto the living room/dining room of my youth.

I would always fear sitting here. Just like now, as I am typing this, my forearms and elbows are impolitely resting on the makeshift table/granite slab, especially during the act of eating. What if this huge piece of granite, weighing upwards of hundreds of pounds, were to succumb to the force of gravity and in turn the force vector from my arms - my own weight - only to crash on top of my legs?

Now I am not fearful of this happening. If I sit in a passenger seat, the light on the dashboard will still be flashing “Passenger Airbag Off.”

The smart hybrid of a car does not detect a human body present.

And yet I still exist. I’m here.

CLIII. Three and Thirds -

Third time’s a charm.

Three strikes, you’re out.

It is this counter-intuitive rule of thirds that has consumed my life throughout the past 12 months. This time period preceded, went well-into, and past, my graduate academic career. Three near-death experiences that I can call my own; that I have control over and that I had control over; all of them intertwined in their own deceivingly mischievous way.

Mirrors were not reflecting what was presented in front of them. Sensations emerged that felt altogether supernatural and yet were, and remain, as natural as those sensations felt after one of early summer’s mosquitoes land on human flesh. I use this analogy because the scenario played out in front of me. A little over a week ago, to be more exact, and which at the time was a little over a week into summer.

An opaque black mosquito landed above my left eyebrow, while I was sitting indoors.You would think that you would feel something should a spindly-legged creature be traipsing all over your skin and piercing it in an attempt to suck blood. Sure enough, you eventually see the mosquito pulsating and in tandem with your own struggling to stay afloat-blood vessels.

If only momentarily, fleetingly, really, the L-shaped legs are midair, away from your grasp. A nonexistent grasp because I would never even consider cupping my shoe-string fingers - covered in a spider-web like vasculature that can be seen through my translucent skin - around that blood-sucking parasite mid-flight.

Suddenly - a sensation. This one, normal. This one, expected. Surely an itchy pimple-like reaction will ensue. I looked in the mirror. A huge swelling had appeared on one side of my forehead within seconds. It was red and looked like a large blotchy patch, but it did not itch and perhaps in minutes, or perhaps even in a time duration that could still be quantified into seconds, the large tumor-like swelling had disappeared.

My skin was tauter than ever. The elasticity of our largest organ on full display and yet this stretched out smoothness covering my forehead was anything but a sign of rejuvenation and youth. Ironically, I had just reported and written a 5,000-plus word length article regarding the use of one’s own blood to achieve a rejuvenated, rosy-cheeked, and healthy appearance.

My cheeks, known for being plump and uncannily similar to my father and his mother, disguising high cheekbones that my older brother had also inherited but were not hidden underneath cheeks - sacs of skin that looked like what a fatigued person’s under-eye circles would appear like through a microscope. His high, downward-angled bones were on full display and chiseled. Then again, he’s a male and I always loved my face - a doppelganger to that of my paternal grandmother.

“This is my moneymaker,” I would always say, referring to my face - lovely-arched eyebrows, dimpled chin, and plump rose cheeks conferred around a prominent nose, the bridge of which was slightly elevated - a characteristic of my both rustic and majestic Punjabi ancestry amongst my patriarchal paternal side. I, the lone daughter. Externally I always dismissed and insulted my nose. I always resented my larger-than-life cheeks. Internally, however, I felt blessed. I felt pretty.

My face would have this innate quality to take on a milky and delicately porcelain pallor during the end of fall. This healthy-pale skin pigmentation would last into winter and early spring. In the late spring and summer (my favorite season) months, my skin would become darker, bypassing any olive tones, instead heading straight for the copper-nickel hybrid tones. My face is unlike any other.

Not like any other no more, that is. Now, my face is not what it used to be. The cheeks are deflated. Despite a lack of sleep, there are no bags, only hollows. My face is angled in all the wrong ways. My jawline is akin to a haphazard etch-a-sketch creation instead of a linearly-defined contoured shape. You know what I am referring to, don’t you? Some of us have an oval shape, others a square, some with a cleft, and another subset of the population with a heart-shape.

Back to the pesky mosquito:

And here’s where the supernatural (or so I thought) came in: The short shelf-life, as it were, of my swollen mosquito bite that was no more, was not a sign of me having defied the aging process.

Instead, this was a signal. This was it. This was the last straw.

This my friend, was the sign of death.

Let me clarify. This was not the sign of a premature death. Death was to be expected. That explains why this was the sign of imminent death. It had been jogging - or to be more exact, race-walking - behind me for days, weeks, months, a year.

Sometimes I wake up to believe I can continue on with the course of my day. Minus this year, I mean. Take out the daily schedule from this past year and replace it with the one before the involuntary nervous system crept up to claim a stake in physiology. As I remember from biology courses, all too often the involuntary system was overlooked by its more popular counterpart: the voluntary, or somatic nervous system.

Perhaps the involuntary system suffered from an inferiority complex because something that is involuntary means that it is not something that is controllable. It’s expected. It’s not impossible. It’s not extraordinary. By definition, it is bound to happen. By definition, it is definable, it’s finite, it’s limited and thereby, it’s power is curbed.

Now was it’s time to shine.
Now was it’s time to take revenge.

See the parallel between the above and the third time’s a charm v. three strikes, you’re out, dichotomy? I certainly do.

No matter how many times you’re told you’re not the only one affected. In all honesty, you truly are. No one else has your nerves and feels their body pulsating, tightening, feeling weighed down, or unbalanced and light. Nor does anyone else feel the poking and prodding performed in an attempt to reach something that just barely exists. No one else is conferred lackluster advice and given unwanted and furthermore, ignorant, advice and artificial concern over, and over, and over again. No one else but you are physiologically feeling what you are feeling.

That is why: You are, in fact, in control. You can do this. I can do this. And as soon as I do, I would not dare return the favor of offering feigned advice that is actually a disguised opportunity to satiate the need to gossip.

I would rather a stream of people fill the landscape that I see when I look over my shoulder, trailing behind me as I move onwards.

CLII. Control or Lack Thereof -

To command, demand, or passively-aggressively ask, is to exert control that may or may not be fulfilled. To have self-control is commonly thought of as a boon. While it very well may be a character flaw, having someone else control, no matter how valid their intentions are, is detrimental.
Usurpation of autonomy stirs up the rebel response, or the need to oppose. Herein lies two modes of opposition: the right and the wrong.

You could oppose with good reason, like having a premeditated intent, or you could oppose for the sake of spiting the controller. I find myself tethered to both the good and the bad. That is to say, my intent inevitably spites the controller. There is a contradiction here and it is such that I cannot classify my control as anything but an innate right to assert one’s self. To assert myself.

Beware of being controlled by your subject, my thesis adviser warned me prior to outlining my brainchild for me. I had lost my control, or so I thought. Truth is, I wanted to be dismissed as soon as possible, to take the three train, bus ride, and walk home a week before classes would again resume.Yes sir. Indeed. I’ll have you call me some days later just so I can definitively assert my control. Let’s replace “autonomy” with “wiggle room,” and there you have it.

Put that license into use and drive, I’m told. After researching the route I would have to take and having, of late, experienced weather-induced house arrest, I decided that driving would not replace my miles long walks but instead enable to me to make up for the missed cardio such that I could transport myself to an indoor recreational activity.

Before traipsing down the stairs, I make sure to slide out my clear of face photo ID taken that was taken before I went to college almost seven years ago. In the photo my hair is naturally curly and in a side ponytail. At the time I was wearing a  V-neck t-shirt over a black crew neck so as to preserve the modesty of hardly exposed collar bones. That was my decision.
Now, I prance into the car, collar bones on full display: a simultaneous extroverted pat on the back and reminder of things that may be lost, or rather covered, underneath a newly formed layer of lipids acquired under the careful gaze of a compatriot’s care, or what I consider, a competitors’ scorn.

Yesterday my face dropped beyond the potency of your everyday gravitational force. The creases in my skin deepened further so that the shadows of the lit living room, in an attempt to resist the darkness of evening, made for me having a very unsightly look, I’m sure. The contours of my face had evolved into a harrowed, pudgy mess. My cupid’s bow seemed carved into a permanent battle scar. My will to balance weight around my expanding waist had been drawn out. My will to the undo salt consumption with sweet nothingness was canceled out. My coffee consumption this morning is circulating endlessly making for a nauseous swirl of fuel burned on intellectual boredom.

Still, I am in control. Laptop out, phone battery preserved for a necessary walk to be taken after the three train and one bus ride home: Repeat.
I’m imagining reading through a magazine that I’d like to write for in the future, distraught at the fact that I cannot imagine it into existence, but proud of such an exhibition of control. I’m choosing not to spend money on so transient a possession.

Control and clarity are constants and they are contradictions. They’re constants that are constantly being sought. Is the alliteration a coincidence? Not necessarily. It takes a level of control.