Short vs Long Term Gratification: A Discussion of Length

Length is a polarizing subject. From the metric system’s use of centimeters to our high maintenance regard for both feet and inches to describe height, length can be both bad and good. Cutting the length of the written word means making edits that equates with clarity and a conciseness. It means foregoing embellishment, which can be hyperbolic. The prefix hyper- signifies an elaboration, a superfluous amount, and an overall imbalance. Too much length means wordiness. Too much length means having to go to a tailor to get some article of clothing hemmed. And yet when it comes to gratification, it is the long-term type that is heralded. Those kids, who have the wherewithal to sit in front of a sweet treat without devouring it until they are permitted to, are rewarded.

The saying, life is too short, gives no reason to reprimand these very same obedient children. Shouldn’t we seek the short-term gratification? Is the short-term always simply an easy-fix or garnered through some unsavory means that may be illegal?

I’ll never forget going to see and sit with my grandmother during her chemotherapy. My mother came along. I was in graduate school at the time and this was during the nascent stages of not yet diagnosed anorexia. I had not eaten, and my grandmother’s drop in weight and absence of appetite fortified my will power to starve. My mother, thinking I had eaten, did not think twice about my grandmother or me when she whipped out the danish I had purchased for her at one of Manhattan’s antiquated bakeries. I remarked that my mother should not be eating that, to which my grandma replied that life was too short and my mother should eat it freely. I felt betrayed, admittedly, but the truth was that my grandmother was not starving; she had no concept of hunger. I, however, had suppressed the hunger I did have.

The longer I went without eating, the more my biology altered. I had entered survival mode, and I too no longer received cues for hunger and fullness. The longer one remains underweight, the longer the brain’s chemistry is manipulated, and the stronger the grip of the disorder. It felt gratifying to feel empty, but that emptiness was short-lived. In this case, short-term gratification was just that. I sought to feel productive by walking for miles on end and disciplined for going without food, yet in the long-term, my body and mind were impaired, I isolated, and career prospects were bleaker than ever before as a result.

Short-term gratification is considered ill will because one is willing an end to come to fruition without pursuing the means to achieve an end. It’s like applying for an associate-level position without experiencing entry-level. Short-term gratification can also be an abstraction, like having an exponential level of endurance without performing grueling exercises to achieve said stamina. It too can be magical – like attending school, going through the motions and doing as said with effort – but then riding on those coattails of academic achievement without applying that knowledge thereafter.

Short-term gratification is considered an easy way out instead of an efficient way in. The short–term gratification that comes from a power nap or siesta is considered efficient and conducive to priming for optimal productivity. A long slumber, however, is oftentimes considered lazy. Hitting “snooze” on an alarm clock to sleep longer is considered a maladaptive behavior when in fact a lengthier amount of shut-eye could reap a massive turnaround in work productivity. Procrastination is putting off productivity by lengthening the amount of time to perform a task and is therefore oftentimes rebuked as a poor character trait. Yet procrastination seems to be lauded insofar as the saying that goes, good things come to those who wait. This wait is equal to a lengthy amount of time without forcing any type of control over the outcome. This is called patience and is placed on such a pedestal that it is biblical, endowed with mortal sublimity.

Length is also referred to in a crude manner, but we’re all adults here. Attraction and natural bodily functions provide a sense of healthy normalcy. Length can be considered all good and well; at least, that’s what she said, but enough of the sexual innuendos because the point has been made.

Gratification, whether it be short or long, is difficult to come by. So much so that self-help guidance many times advises that a list of gratitude be created in order to remind one’s self that we have more than we have not. The list is a form of short-term gratification. In the moment, one is reminded of possessions that one could otherwise exist without.  In many ways, then, short-term and long-term are neutral entities that belong to a relativity spectrum. One may say it is better to invest in a stock that is on the high, only to have it drop at a later date, in the long-term.  

Or perhaps it is better to apply to college “early action” or “early decision,” in December because your criteria go beyond the standards and there is a smaller pool of applicants. But what about the long-term chance that you can gain admissions to other institutions that provides a choice? You’ll never know, but then again, you likely won’t miss what you never had: relativity. Let’s take rolling admissions. It may seem better to get your application in at the start, when they’re reviewed on a first-come, first-serve basis, however, waiting for a longer term may provide one with extra careful revision of the materials that can substantially improve the quality of one’s application and thereby improving one’s chances. 

Short-term versus long-term length is a quandary that many people base their life’s choices on and favoring one over the other according to societal perceptions conjured from what is likely trial and error of different scenarios. Short-term may refer to a percentage of time – what’s two hours out of twenty-four? Well, that’s a twelfth of the day and while that may seem like a slice of time, it can also be chock full of traumatic moments. Imagine running through the gamut of exercises for an hour, much less two. Imagine how fatigued the body may feel only minutes in. Short and long lengths of time are so polarizing in that they can discern between those who can run for miles, like marathoners, from those who do not run and prefer to walk. Yet short and long lengths of time are so universally regarded as right and wrong that society homogeneously coalesces around things like procrastination being bad yet power naps being efficient.

In my last essay I spoke to the righteousness of long hair – how it proved vitality in its growth and strength in its protein-laden strand. Yet long hair can also prove to be a false sense of security or an appendage depended on. That being said, long hair can be like catnaps – they help to power us through tasks. Perhaps the hair boosted confidence and provided a shroud to hide behind had in some ways helped one to perform a seemingly insurmountable task.

When it comes to life, longevity can be considered a blessing and a curse. Many believe they would not want to outlive their kin if they were to live for a long time. Still, we study Blue Zones, the sites around the globe that have the highest index of the longest living humans. There is a cookbook that critically assesses the dietary intake of these people and their way of life, as if it could be a paradigm for those humans living outside of the zones who want to live as long as they possibly can. Living forever, or immortality, is an impossibility and is considered by most to be blasphemous, or even a way of cheating the human race and some other divine power. Living forever cannot be characterized as long because it is not tethered to a concept of time.

Short and long are definite timetables. They describe that which is finite. Length is finite. It is not necessary to subscribe to short-term or long-term. Perhaps this is where size does matter insofar as if there is anything we can learn from pant sizes, it is that varying lengths like short, regular, and tall, are a testament to the inadequacy of length as a measure of anything but society’s peripheral vision because even the numerical is subject to standards.

The Hire. The Hair. The Closer to God.

On the second floor of the psychiatric hospital amid rolling hills in what New York City dwellers consider to be the precipice of “upstate,” is the eating disorder unit. We patients were far and few between. The adult unit had, at most, about eight people at one time. Some had dual diagnoses, and in fact, most, including myself I would later find out, had some other psychiatric issue that pushed us to restrict food intake to ascetic-levels so that our bodies were skeletal mannequins – an inanimate object that model, activist, and most recently a NYT bestselling author, Emily Ratajkowski, identifies as when disassociating. When a mannequin, she is but a body used to meet and end, as described in My Body. Our skin was a map of blood vessels. Our temples visibly throbbed at all times, indicating our heart was somehow still pumping in spite of our orthostatic drops in pulse and blood pressure. There was one such patient who epitomized this collective description, except she had a trait that surpassed even my own: a head of thick hair.

Malnourishment and the body’s mechanism of protecting itself amidst famine include foregoing any superfluous bodily functions – like reproduction and hair growth. Somewhat contradictory, as the body reroutes blood going to hair follicular cells to help protect organs, the body also develops light tufts of facial and body hair, known as lanugo, in an effort to provide warmth from no longer insulated bodies. When in the throes of the physical repercussions of anorexia, a low body mass index, hair tends to fall. Contradictory, once more, is that the hair continues to fall while the body is gaining weight and recovering because new hair growth pushes out the deadened vestiges of hair’s past.

This young Frenchwoman, my peer, could have been mistaken for myself only a few weeks ago with a light olive tinted skin wrapped tightly around chiseled cheek bones and a jutted jawline. She, however, had thick auburn highlighted brunette hair that was loosely wound around itself, squarely on the crown of her head, like the pom on a Scottish tam, or more aptly, the pointy stub on a French beret. The hair on top of her head was like a conical birthday hat, ironically so, because she seemed so close to death. The higher her hair, the closer she seemed to be to God, like fasting ascetics who hallucinate, sometimes high on hunger, and sometimes on other natural forces.

She would remain on the balls of her feet, standing for more than the thirty second-allotted time that we were permitted to stand. One couldn’t say she paced the windowless hallway that we were cordoned off to either. She took evenly steadied strides, as if wading on a body of water that would suddenly emerge from her eye sockets as she burst into tears, trembling in fear, as if she saw a ghost, like looking into the mirror. Anyone would think she was crazy, but instead, she was catatonic, heavily medicated on antipsychotics to manage her eating disorder.

After years of participating in compulsory activity and behaviors that further strengthened my eating disorder, I accepted medication. At the beginning, I found myself staring straight ahead, standing so that the blood in my feet collected to the extent of making me feel as if I were floating rather than rooted. It still happens, sometimes. I mentioned this to my care providers who denied this phenomenon as a symptom. My dosage was so low that it was simply a means to control my rituals and behaviors associated with reduced cognition and unhealthy low body weight. I was not catatonic, as others had deemed I would become. These “others” stigmatized medication from the outset. These “others” are my closest kin.

Instead of being a mannequin - I was not disassociating- I was projecting vitality, sending ripples of animate quality into the space around me. I took up space. Standing and staring: I was focusing so acutely and keenly on my inner thoughts that it shook me. I was so shook that my hair, tied up in a high bun atop my head, precariously seesawed in tandem. Once grown out long, and now chopped up in layers going longitudinally and latidunal, my hair is wound up in a loose bun a majority of the time. My tresses sometimes escape, framing my face in loose curlicues.  

I stand and it sears deeply that I am not financially independent, vulnerable to abuses from the silent treatment given by talent acquisition to the constant barrage of insults hurled in my direction. Lucky for me, standing, seesawing, shaken, I dodge the profanity, but they still brush by me. So that even when my hair falls from God’s good graces, it remains untangled, as it were, otherwise wound up in a silky submission. 

If I were hired, perhaps I would regain my faith, and be closer to God. Perhaps my hair on the crown of my head brings me closer to God. According to The Atlantic, “women in particular have been told for centuries that their hair is their glory, which paraphrases a biblical edict, about long hair as a demonstration of righteousness before God. A full head of hair, Donovan, the Whistler dermatologist, pointed out, is still a crude, unscientific shorthand for youth, for healthy living, for vitality.” Perhaps that young Frenchwomen and I kept our hair in a high topknot as a subconscious way of finding our footing on a path designated by some other unworldly being. It was supernatural, staying erect despite gravity’s pull. Our hair, vertically furled, was our power. 

It takes power to not hide behind a sheet of hair. It takes power to try and be hired despite the outcome being out of your control. Human resource management is gravity and I, the applicant trying to be hired, trying to move higher, falls prey. The higher I reach, the closer I am to godly independence, away from abusers, away from the confines of my past habits. I would argue that past behaviors is no indicator of future habits. Wise people may call this logic a sucker’s maxim, but that’s just it. Wise people are mortals; they aren’t divine powers beyond our understanding. The higher the hair, the closer to God and to be hired brings me closer to godliness as well.  

Sure, being hired bears money and money inherently has value. Value is valued. Financial independence is seen as antithetical to laziness. To be hired means having purpose that is endowed by a schedule. Time is fleeting, and anything fleeting or temporary, is valuable. Its not a matter of worshiping work, instead, it is a matter of proximity to that which is worshiped. Hired, you’re worshiped in some form. You are a human resource. You’re more human than ever when hired. Even so, you’re closer to God for it.

Owed: You owe it to me. I owe it to me, too.

Years ago, I was lamenting on the state of affairs: I was unemployed after earning two Ivy League degrees and completing credits toward a second masters degree. My uncle replied with a hard facial expression-tight-lipped and eyes narrowed, “You’re not owed anything.” I carry that statement with me until this day, concluding that his very frank quip could be rendered obsolete seeing as how he was related solely by marriage.  After all, blood is thicker than water. A split second later, however, another uncle by marriage won over my good graces when he said that I had worked hard for something that never transpired –an entry level job, a foot in the door, and a career trajectory. In other words, forces outside of my control had dominated my life’s journey. Still, the bad cop sentiment burned deeply. I never felt that I was owed anything and instead felt that I deserved something. The former sentence clause has me in the passive, whereas in the clause following the conjunctive “and,” I am in the active. I felt actively inclined my entire life until now.

My uncle’s statement resurfaced a week or so ago, when I went on my daily grocery run for fresh produce. I fancied the fancier products: cotton candy grapes that tasted of the eastern delicacy rose syrup spiked milk from my youth, the gumdrop grapes that tasted what pomegranate seeds looked like – glossy delectable jewels, and sumo oranges that are large, seedless spheres of naturally sugared juice wrapped in fibrous regalia. These scientifically engineered works of art were contradictory and we paid the price for it.

A cashier rang up my grocery a year ago. I remember her Rapunzel-like curled shiny hair seeming to struggle as much as she did with the tattered plastic produce bag filled to capacity with organic stone fruit. I remember feeling elephantine and embarrassed that my daily provisions could be measured in pounds. Upon scurrying out, I took a look at the receipt only to see that the charges for my fruit did not match my consumption. It then dawned on me that as she fought with the Fuji apples, trying to fit all onto the register’s scale, only a fraction of the bushel actually was measured and paid for.  That day, I realized how affordable fruit could be and furthermore, should be. The question is, at what cost?

Self-checkout operates according to an honor system because there is not a security check in place; the weight of products already rang up are not weighed again after being placed on the scale. In other words, one could place any small weight on the scale and then proceed to place a much larger quantity on the already rang up platform. One day, this very scenario played out when I was ringing up my pounds of fruit, only to drive off and realize that the total till was much less than what it usually is. I checked my receipt and sure enough, the contents of my strained produce bag were far too much to be withheld in an enclosed place that is the scale, so that only part of my fruit was accounted for in the price per pound. Ever since then, I had felt it was a human right to have accessible produce and that if the weight of goods was not accurate, than the better for it. Yet, every time I left the market, I felt as if I was bandit – mouth dry, quick of breath, and heavy footed, slogging my way until I found safe ground that was a car in motion – a getaway car. It wasn’t until the attendants caught sight of my register’s affordable prices that they started ringing up my fruit for me. It was demeaning but also humbling and suddenly it rang in my ears – that I was not owed anything, not even food.

To be owed and to deserve are not equitable entities in a logical deduction. The former can mean to do with the intent that someone will pay back in return, and the latter is to do with the intent of doing, just to complete a task. Both, however, are conditional. To be owed is to do something on the condition that something is attained. To deserve is to do on the condition that something is gained that otherwise wouldn’t, and this can include something as intangible as knowledge gained from having studied. Fancy fruit, is affordable and deserved by those work hard for it. I, however, am unemployed and can make do with less flavorful but equally filling fruit. The customer service associates at the market made me rethink what I can and should have and how I can go about having that which I want.

According to psychologist and tenured professor at Penn, Adam Grant, rethinking offsets a switch that induces doubt, and furthermore, discovery. We owe it to ourselves to not be so convinced with the status quo that we are unwilling to evolve with new truth. In this instance, we’re not owed anything, and instead, we are owing in a reflexive manner of speak. So when my uncle said I am not owed anything, he could be referring also to me not owing anything to myself. Herein, there is something to be worked through.

Let’s take that which I struggle with daily but I want to make clear is not my identity: an eating disorder – anorexia with orthorexic tendencies. I owe it to myself to abstain from maladaptive behaviors that have only served to coddle my compulsions – like going on a treadmill despite feeling like my legs will give way beneath me so that my torso will hit a moving belt and fling me into the hard piece of machinery behind me. I owe it to myself to recover. I’m not owed recovery if I do not make an effort to curb compulsory activity, and even if I do, curbing means that there are still times when I will give in – I’ll push myself to continue race walking uphill, and that does not alter the neural pathways of a habit formed. I haven’t broken my habit if I do not completely cut out exercise from my life. I owe recovery to myself. I’m not owed recovery. I have to earn it. I have to deserve it.

This is where I falter: The concept of earning and deserving are oftentimes equated with one another, but they are not distinct isolated entities. Although I can be self-deprecating and say that I do not deserve health, if I were to be speaking to anyone else, I would say that no one deserves to be ill. I owe it to myself to extricate me from a setting that can be triggering; to not go downstairs when someone in my household is on the treadmill or go to the gym.  It’s not fair for someone suffering from alcoholism to go to a bar and expect to be ok from abstinence. No one owes them anything, just like no one owes me anything – the favor of not exercising.

In the third episode of the final season of my favorite television series, Gilmore Girls, Frenchman, Michel Gerard, the Inn concierge and friend of protagonist, Lorelei Gilmore, declared that Lorelei would take him to her mother’s Cotillion. Michel said, “You have no choice. You owe me.” He then proceeds to stick seven Post-Its in slow staccato succession along Lorelei’s arm that reads, “I / Owe / You / One /Big /Favor/ Lorelei Gilmore.” This script does well to demonstrate the concept of what “to owe” means in two ways: the giving and receiving end. First, Michel says that someone else owes him. The context is that Lorelei asked him to take care of her dog while she was away, which he did and which resulted in her dog traumatizing Michel’s own dogs while pillaging his belonging in the process. Michel did not dog sit on the condition that he is owed anything, and neither did he deserve to be owed anything. Instead, Michel had an experience filled with unwarranted harm that jogged someone else, the giver, to owe a favor. Michel had accepted the gesture and used it to that affect. In this instance, Lorelei was merely placating Michel for the inconvenience with no real intention to make it up to him, however, the reflex to owe was readily apparent. To owe is a one-time deal. It isn’t a loan.

There are case scenarios when this reflex, to owe someone on the receiving end of a shorter straw in a stack, so to speak, can be reflexive in another manner of speak. I spoke to my therapist and psychiatrist on two separate occasions about feeling like a financial burden, accepting costly treatment because of no other alternative. My father was approached on this subject, to which he responded that he felt God had purposely endowed him with the means to take care of his daughter, for whom life panned out in a series of unfortunate scenarios. The father-son duo, psychiatrist and therapist respectively, had said that I should be an opportunist and that my father was getting something out of his gesture as well. I owed him that.

The concept of giving is not so selfless. The giver is on the receiving end as well because he/she experiences an uptick in endorphins when giving back unto someone else. So when my uncle said that I am not owed anything, the statement is supposed to be giving. He may be getting something out of telling me this. Perhaps he owes it to himself to owe it to me. He jogged me into rethinking, into doubting, and while there is such a thing as doubt-induced rethinking and discovery, there is also a debilitating doubt that induces a lack of confidence and complete lack of action. He owes me.

Family Matters in a Full House, M.D.

The title of this essay is made up of three 90’s sitcom titles and does well to inform you what I’ll be writing about: the domestic dynamics of a house filled with immediate family members, one of whom is a surgeon- my older brother; My only brother. All four of us, my parents, brother and I, have only recently begun living in the same house. I have been living with my parents since graduating college in 2012, gone for at most, a month in between. My brother, however, had been living on his own since graduating from high school in 2004. He went onto college in the Midwest, then to medical school in Maryland, and then began his medical residency requiring round-the-clock availability, so he lived in a dormitory a block away from the teaching hospital, affiliated with a medical school.

As of August, he became a full-fledged staff surgeon at a hospital up north, straddling the beginning of New York City’s conception of “upstate,” and a borough. The hospital is not too far away from my parent’s Long Island home and after years of living alone and his busy schedule not permitting an apartment search, he settled in to his forever bedroom here at home. His clothes will be laundered and dinner will be set for him every night, regardless of his arrival. "

It was only a couple of weeks ago that one night he had never returned home. Apparently, the patient influx, severity of cases, and surgeries, had accumulated to such a degree that my brother hobbled up the brick steps over 24-hours later still in his magenta scrubs and a dazed look on his face. He had not slept. Not even two minutes later, his cell rang. Work-life boundaries on full display, I thought, as he neglected to answer it. If there were an emergency, they would call his landline. You read correctly. In addition to the house landline, my brother had installed a separate landline solely for his room-turned-office. As if on-call- pun intended – as soon as his cell stopped ringing, his landline rang.

It seems there is a 90s regression or rather, full circle being made in fashion and beauty – curtain bangs and wide leg pants, for example. There is also a 90s throwback to living together again. Only this time, we’re not in the home where we experienced our formative years and we’re neither children nor adolescents. We’re both in our thirties and living in a large bricked home that is the lovechild of our parents’ hard-earned moving-on-up story.

This time, his sister is actively struggling with an eating disorder.
My brother has become one more person I compare myself with: His movement and meals, his steps and snacks, the hours he sleeps and the help he is not asked for like I am asked - to clean or take inventory in the household- are all comparisons. It’s not too bad; I remind myself that there is not a direct parallel since he is male and I am female, and since he is four years older, born in the 80s.

It is close quarters in here. We’re all operating on our own schedules in tandem with one another’s schedules. I prefer taking a shower in one bathroom, using the toilet in another, brushing my teeth and washing my face in yet another. That is another difference. Growing up, until age 8, we had a single bathroom and then we had two thereafter. Now we have 2 full bathrooms and one half bathroom. Then again, at least a third of the time, in the first place, an apartment owned by former President Trump in Jamaica, Queens, we were in diapers so a single bathroom wasn’t too cumbersome.

The loud arguments and profanity have decreased ever so slightly since my brother’s arrival. He has the power to mudsling with realistic results: threats to leave the house and go to his own place had materialized in the past. There were times when he walked out with suitcase in hand, never to be heard of again until someone decided he was worth calling up. His hectic schedule also makes him prey to our predatory sounds of domestic discord, causing us to bite our tongue in a silence so deafening that my brother is oblivious to.

He runs away from conflict, which makes sense considering he is a surgeon meant to solve problematic discourse. I throw myself into it, however, and some may say that I stir issues out of dormancy. I live in the past and those memories are not simply reveries of a dormant mind. It’s as though I do not want to progress farther into the distance and instead run on a track and field lane, rewinding my memories over and over again. I guess that makes me fashionable and timeless, simultaneously, and this societally accepted concept of style is what keeps me running into the storied past. It is as though my brother runs away from existing conflict on a what-constitutes-a-story parabola. On the same graph, I run back to the beginning, the part of the parabola that is prior to the climax, always making my way to just short of the resolution phase. It’s like I do not want to resolve and like I want to be in perpetual pain. Pain is beauty and beauty is pain, but not necessarily fashion. That’s where I go wrong.

We’re four living in a house and in the rare instances that we find all four of us available and willing to be in each other’s company, usually around the kitchen island, scheming for ways to short-circuit small talk and instead conjure craft projects, we came up with one – celebrating holidays. Much like my brother and I used to hang ornaments on our always real tree, with October first’s arrival tomorrow, the plan is to decorate chocolate cookie Haunted Houses at some point during the month. Attempts to add holiday cheer are conjured with décor. Upon shopping for some, one of the hanging indoor wall signs said something along the lines of, “This way to this Haunted House,” and it read all too familiar because this house, in so many ways, is haunted. Another 90s throwback here is The Addams Family. I feel like Wendy, a grimace pasted onto a face of pale pallor. That’s not to say that things are dismal. After all, that sitcom was a comedy. It is to say that our humor is dark and dry – enter: Seinfeld.

It’s a full house here, where family matters but in the way of tolerance and compromise rather than coexistence. Think: House, M.D., who circumnavigates the issue until the last minute eureka! This is followed by a diagnosis and then treatment; a pattern, that like a period’s cycle, leaves only a short time between weeklong bleeds. We’re bleeding most of the time. We’re four adults with autonomy redefined. The matter is relearning what we know – what we are convinced we know to be true – such as our methods for operating on the day-to-day. We’re a Full House, M.D., Family Matters – we each, individually matter and the full house is the problem to be diagnosed.  

Smitten, Bitten, And Not Forgotten

New England is one of those compound words in nature that I feel inclined to break down into smaller parts. I can thank my Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour mastery theory, specifically in advanced calculus during my freshman year at Penn. After my first college midterm – I received a D – I swapped my wellbeing for studying at all hours, which landed me in the E.R. on more than one occasion. First, I was chronically constipated, then threatened with a leave of absence for anorexia treatment, then later for a severely sprained ankle, a scratched cornea before another midterm, and one especially traumatic experience. I was studying in the makeshift library across from my dorm’s courtyard in pajama pants and flip-flops during the daytime. It wasn’t until 4 am the next morning that I left, only to witness a full-blown blizzard. I slipped and fell, landing squarely on my coccyx. That’s right, my tailbone and the vestige of evolution had slammed on the edge of a concrete stair step. I saw stars, only because my line of sight was vertical, the sky and numbers, both imaginary and not, swirling in my head. I studied so much that I stumped the PhD student adjunct and was academically advised to major in mathematics. I never took a math class again.

New England can be broken down into “new” and “England.” The former is something I do not care for – newness – that inherently identifies with change. I struggle with change, both the phenomenon and the material noun. With regard to the latter, clinging coins cause my compulsive tendencies to come to the surface. I have to organize change in one enclosed place, getting rid of the pennies and strategically keeping the quarters as if they were gold. Neither am I an anglophile. I believe the American Ivy League trumps Oxford and Cambridge. I never had a longing to visit England and bore a revolutionary, patriotic stamp of decolonization doctrine. I am an American and damn proud of it. I cannot understand Queen’s English and the accent is something I understand solely with strained concentration. I have no affinity for the royal family. Yet, New England has had my heart since its inception into my vocabulary.

I traveled to New Hampshire during the last week of August and beginning of the Labor Day weekend in order to displace myself from triggers and potential disordered behaviors what with the close quarters of having family members at home performing in ways that are directly responsible for making my house into a gym. Exercise is triggering. Going up and down the stairs, standing while eating, the free weights and treadmill, they all provoke thoughts of losing weight as an accomplishment and constant goal. I also took off in order to heal my body and mind – to rationally assert that the indoctrinated concept of less body is some how more – was false. It was time for me to pretend that the former was what landed me a D on the midterm that is recovery from anorexia.

Traveling to New England for the fourth time, I had standards. They are proving to be more disappointing than expectations.  Let’s try and parse out why that is. Standards are mandated structural guideposts. Attaining standards is not a viable concept. One is without the mandated standards aside from that which has past associations; there can be no possession thereof. Past associations refers to the benchmarks of experiences lived. These memories are what forms standards. It is not that one cannot attain, but rather \ one cannot meet standards. This means that one fails at meeting a milestone, like a baby not yet forming words or intelligible sounds that could be a language, as we know it to be.

New Hampshire’s motto, “live free or die,” is my truth. I am not free, not free from numbers, mileage, speed, nutritional content, from a reality of an elite education and entrenched standards for employment that keep me out of the workforce. The trip to the “live free or die” state was by definition, not a bout of escapism. Instead, I was hit with a harsh difficult reality, and it is bittersweet.

I was bitten by wanderlust, smitten by the chance of leaving behind so strong triggers that nothing could prevent this whiplash. That which bites, it pains and punctures. That which deflates, can inflate once more. I should know. It has happened before.

The only affirmation I adapted in the last decade or so was that there was a before and there is an after. I stopped typing just beforehand. I had paused at choosing a tense – present progressive or future. I chose the former; I chose to use is instead of will be because of time’s continuity. Before happened already. After, however, is in the making until it becomes a before. The inherent “progress” in the continuity of the progressive adverb is what I believe is a proactive stance on recovery. Progress is to move forward without a specified pace because it is not without hiccups.

The itinerary was full in New Hampshire because every place worth visiting was located a minimum of an hour and a half drive away. Hours were spent in a car. Most of the time, I was uncomfortably cold but also lethargic, fatigued, and bogged down by an endurance athlete-level of activity for several weeks prior to the trip. I found myself horizontal in the backseat, curled into a mature-baby fetal position: too long limbs to curl fully. Born two weeks late, it was only natural that I be in this position anyhow.  

I huddled beneath my parents’ denim jackets, a hoodie, a cardigan, anything to negate the Freon-powered air conditioning. I dozed off here and there, and while I felt lazy, I also felt relieved and rested, on the cusp of a breakthrough – to respect my body once more and not pulverize it into the ground, beneath weight that isn’t my own, and also through runs that exacerbate weight that is my own with each high impact foot hitting the ground. My face began filling out once more and some color returned. This time, however, a pale pallor overtook any rosiness and flush of blood now circulating in a body at rest.

I still felt wildly unsure about progress being made upon returning home. I still knew that there were moving parts, namely, other people pursuing their own actions of their own accord without regard for me, my perception of their actions, their influence, and their affect on me. I found myself counting again: minutes and seconds on the navigational system. In the wee hours of late evening and early morning, I counted the hours left until I could forego my feigned slumber and could take a shower at a respectable time: 3:30 to 4 am depending on the day’s excursions schedule which called for us vacating the inn at 6 am.  

I found myself wanting to return home because I had the quintessential heebie jeebies sleeping on a rollaway bed at an inn – my first experience in an inn and not at a hotel that has places to dine and decompress outside of one’s reserved room, abides by stringent sterility standards, and includes amenities.  Perhaps the cottage-style of the inn in a 17th-century old mansion was all too similar to my home. It was a rustic-chic refurbished room with cathedral ceilings, wooden beams, a fireplace, and a window that overlooked a gazebo. Yet, on the final day, I decided I did not want to come home immediately, becoming paler at the thought of returning to forces extending beyond my control. Forces that reached such a degree, that their collective potency shifted the force of gravity and threw me into the air, without weight, so that I was not grounded and would depend on the mechanism of 5-4-3-2-1, denoting the five senses: 5 things one can see, 4 that one can touch, 3 things one can hear, 2 things one can smell, and that which one can taste. 

I was bitten by wanderlust. I fell into my natural surroundings face forward, downward, upward, but not behind. I would lay on my back in the backseat of the car, looking upward, or down at my feet as I crouched, enshrouded and hunched, a human windbreaker battling the wrath of the worst weather on Earth at Mount Washington, towering 6,288 feet into the air. I looked forward and to the sides, my head cocked like a hobnobbing peacock.

I was bitten perhaps too hard, the air sucked out of me like a balloon no longer knotted. My skin didn’t shrivel, instead it was smooth and soft, supple even, like a waxy balloon and that’s how I know that being smitten and therefore, bitten, isn’t as bad as they say. They – the negative ones – say that having expectations sets you up for disappointment. I guess the diction proves that the positive ones may have some truth when the say that a setback sets you up for a comeback. And that’s what being bitten by wanderlust is: Always wanting to come back – to come back to traveling, to come back to one’s center, somewhere over there, not here, to a new place. 

Gifting: A Toxic Trait.

My bank account consists of the remnants of all that my parents deposited for my use during college. It was meant to last for a short duration: the beginning of orientation before freshman year and perhaps a few months in. It wasn’t until my trifold, snap closure, cognac and mahogany brown monogrammed Coach wallet was stolen in second semester senior year, that any money was withdrawn from my bank account. Get this: I never involved myself with anything bank-related, alma mater aside. My daily treks were inundated with Wharton’s legacy of business mavens assigned tasks all too similar to those set out by another Wharton alum and a certain former reality television maverick turned-president, Donald Trump. The homework was near identical to challenges seen on The Apprentice.

Like any millenial writer who grew up writing in cursive and didn’t have a cell phone until high school, (a Motorola Pebble and Razor), I penned my pin and account number on a slip of paper that I slipped into one of my wallet pockets. The person who swiped my wallet had entered the bank a few blocks down from the supermarket, not even a couple of minutes after committing the crime, and wiped my bank account clean. After months of investigation concluded, I received a phone call and mail to my home back in New York, where I remained after I had graduated. The bank notified me that all the stolen money was returned. The envelope contents included 60-minute-level pixel images of the man who pick-pocketed me, including his short trip to the bank a few minutes later. He was being held in custody.

Flash forward 9 years later: My bank account consists of the returned money, the severance package from my two-weeks’ time at a major magazine that shuttered down suddenly in the thick of the print-is-dead era – 2015. My bank account also included payment for a few freelance articles – two of which were killed – and paychecks from my time in retail during the heyday of my anorexia – something that at first was meant to help me heal but instead became another way for me to be on the balls of my feet for an endless amount of hours, without food.

I use whatever money I have for making purchases that uphold my penchant for appreciating the finer things in life, including food items like sumo oranges that cost $3.99 per pound, and certified organic raw cashew butter, potent eau de parfum from Europe, and designer floor-length dresses, pants, and blouses. In the vein of investing in quality and not quantity, meaning a low turnover rate, these purchases are as rare as the oud wood imported from the Arab peninsula or the saffron threads tediously plucked from the Kashmiri floral buds that I enrobe my body in after both my morning and evening showers, even if that means the highly valued concentrate will only come into contact with an unwed bed, unappreciated by no one but myself. The saturated perfume will also serve to battle the overwhelming smell of sweat-laden air I was exposed to while at the gym. The perfume on my skin protected myself from the gym smell, almost like a broken hollandaise sauce. The fragrance fends off the offending smell from absorbing into my pores and then its muscle mass becomes fatigued, lets its guard down and washes off with my incessant scrubbing in my post-workout bath.

The bulk of my debit charges and cash withdrawal are gifts for holidays, birthdays, thanks, ‘thinking of you’ – essentially, walk down the Hallmark card aisle and that it is near-to my account statement. I enjoy gifting and it is something best left unrequited. What I mean to say is, for me, receiving gifts is akin to having my photo taken in that it is desired to a certain degree, but is neither necessary nor expected. Sure, I would like to document my person, however, not in the sense of being vain. The probability of me disliking my photo is high. Possession is a symbol of human progression. To have is to hold, quite literally, and this tangibility is quintessentially human. It’s a sign of life, as well as having earned, either by means of merit or making enough of a human connection to warrant another’s acknowledgment of your being.  Back to gift giving: I retain the same childlike glee at having someone gift me anything, when it is completely unexpected and the person is someone I had never gifted. When the gift comes from kin, or anyone with who I have an established relationship, it is riddled with shame and guilt, markedly, as I have aged.

A month ago, a box left at my doorstep had a return address from the European fragrance sommelier I adore. Neither me nor anyone else had ordered me the rather expensive perfume. Let’s put it this way, there are no such thing as samples. And what could mistakenly be considered a sample in negligible fluid ounces costs more than half of the original amount. Inside was a slim bottle that was larger than a sample but less than a regular-sized bottle. Suffice it to say, its value was not small. A card noted appreciation at my frequent visits to the shop, purchases, and social media-publicized adoration for the brand. The merchant with whom I have had lengthy conversations, shed tears in front of, and hugged pre-COVID signed it. It was a thoughtful gesture, and I was on a high. Then and there I decided I would drop by with some culinary confections.

This desire to show my thanks could be considered my toxic trait. I imagine it is like what Lorelei Gilmore references about daughter Rory, and her daughter’s then-boyfriend, Dean, partaking in when neither refused to hang up the phone first, continuously reiterating, “no, you’re prettier.” This toxic trait includes not being gifted necessarily, but instead being given something voluntarily. At the gym, post-COVID, I mistakenly thought the 45-minutes of drills had ended and chucked my surgical mask, only to realize I still had sprints. Another gym-goer took out her leopard-printed disposable mask that may have cost more for aesthetic purposes, though I have always demonized animal print on something other than the animal on which it is naturally derived. I felt horrible, and so I promised to purchase a Starbucks gift card, enough for a beverage. She refused to accept it, vehemently so, until I told her to just enjoy a drink on me. Either the awkwardness of the exchange, the start of the workout, or the universal basic human need to ingest fluids, led to her finally accepting the card.

My birthday is forthcoming, and yet I feel remarkably guarded at the thought of being gifted anything from my parents, particularly when they already provide for me – car payments and maintenance, cell phone, health insurance, out-of-pocket doctors’ insurance, clothing, grocery, and shelter. My mother is someone who shows her love, maybe it’s love or perhaps an obligatory show of niceties toward an offspring she hates, through materialism. She’ll purchase the French fragrance I douse myself in, or the religious amulets fabricated from precious stones and 24-karat gold that I hold dear to my heart in spite of her daily remark that there is no God. She’ll offer to drive me somewhere, so long as dinner doesn’t have to be made, nothing is on television for her to watch, she has someone to call, completed her workout, or finished painting her nails and blowing out her hair.

My mother’s toxic trait isn’t the aforementioned putting of herself first. I am, after all, an adult woman. According to my father, this means that I know what my mother’s motives are for suddenly taking to exercise religiously and favoring Thai food – he’s getting at something that has been gnawing at him and I honest to God have no inkling of a clue as to what he is referring. I am as pure as can be, and am ignorant to any misgivings between man and woman.

My mother’s toxic trait is manifold, but one stands out and it is this resounding need to be negative, as if a miserable existence is something to hold in high regard. Everyday she’ll greet her sister or mother with, “Nada. Misma mierda todos los dias.” This translates to, “nothing. The same shit everyday.” I absolutely detest this type of response to the inquiry, “que hace” or “what are you up to?” My mother is not very refined, and I believe that this is mainly due to her apathy toward academia and highbrow intellect. Even with her choice of car – she’ll eye monster truck-like automobiles. Hummers will stir a singsong humming. Pick-up trucks are her pick-me-ups. Jeeps compel her to jeer at anything without snow tires. She tends to victimize herself, deftly ignoring the fact that we all cater to her on her birthday, and Mother’s Day, two weeks after. In our biracial household, she claims most of the holidays as her own, not even belonging to her children who are merely half of her. And on those days as well, we all do as she wishes and sees fit and that includes the schedule of events if she so desires that we go out – we’re never to go out on the day of because there are too many people - the food on the table, the décor, and the gifts. She says that she doesn’t ask for any of it, and yet her hints are not lost on us either. I gave her the only flowers she likes – tulips – and that I don’t care for. I made reservations at a Michelin-starred restaurant, told them in advance that it was her day so she was served a pana cotta, a trinket box, a whole host of other gifts, and she finally found her Jeep. I could not upkeep the act of being ok with her on-the-day-of pleasantries before raising hell a few hours thereafter. So I confronted her about this toxic trait and asked if she had any awareness as to how we try to make the day cheery and memorable for her. I asked her why she claims things are always crappy when we cater to her wishes. She said she was aware, smiling, genuinely so. I know because I cannot remember the last time I had smiled, or giggled, or didn’t have a deep searing hole burning my insides. And then she said something else that only added fuel to this fire.

She assured me that she would purchase anything I wanted: more high-end perfume, another religious amulet, or that Gucci enamel timepiece I had been eyeing for years. I did not want any of it. I vehemently declined this offer that could be mine for the low, low price of the definition of insanity - doing the same things over and over – gift-giving and receiving. When I tell her this, she becomes agitated and suddenly threatens to return or deny anything I have or may gift her in the future. I know the intention behind my gifts, and I know the distinct nature of her own, and for this reason, including her verbalized and tangible disdain for me, I cannot accept any gift she may give.

Gifting and philanthropy are not synonymous. Raising money for suicide prevention, addiction or eating disorder treatment, for example, are for purposes of bettering someone’s life by ethical conduct, even if it is in contrast to one’s will. Another example is fictional but does well to demonstrate the distinct nature between a gift and donation. Character Lane Kim, from Gilmore Girls, is made to look extraordinarily pregnant, or as one of her fellow cast members referred to her – a fertility goddess. She was expecting twin boys and was still working as a waitress in Luke’s Diner during her final trimester. As she was clearing a table, she picked up the tip from the table and confronted the diner: She proclaimed that she was pregnant and not a charity case who needed their pity, though petty works here too, cash.

The concept of paying it forward, however, is akin to gifting, as is reflected in the cyclic nature of doing for someone as one has done for them, only this time, the giver and recipient are constantly changing. Paying for the Starbucks’ order of the people in the car behind you in the drive-in queue exemplifies this concept. Tipping is included in this scenario. Local news’ propagated scenario of a diner tipping an amount of cash that supersedes any standard gratuity percentage, for example. This gesture amounts to – no pun intended – recognizing the service that someone performs, otherwise only modestly compensated for in salary. Here, one is thought of as deserving, or having earned.

On this birthday, I had been wishing to be kept at peace – no cards, no gifts or grand gestures, and certainly no competitive jabs I claimed to have once thrived on while walking the stone-laid paths of campus.

It Hibernates in the Summer: The Aisle

It is that time of year again: When patriotic paraphernalia, think stars and stripes, mountain-mandated rope, prairie-peddling tents, and shining sea necessities like floaties and folding beach chairs – all coalesce into the aisle-du jour of your choice large store for miscellaneous basic human needs. It’s the aisle that rotates inventory almost weekly. This aisle is a rendition of the United Nations with a parity of faiths, depending on the season. Once the Easter bunnies hop on out, and Passover, well, passes and is over, this aisle remains a red, white, and blue hodgepodge of barbecue grills, coal, marshmallows, Hershey’s chocolate, graham crackers, suntan lotion, and beach buckets. The long-awaited shower to wipe off the sand will be when white goes out of style come Labor Day.

This marketing schematic was as bleak as a rainy day was when I was growing up. It was a time when mobile cellular phones were commodities afforded to the coming-of-age and I spent free time outdoors, visiting friends, dabbling in sports, and walking to the Library, deli, or any other place my feet would bring me to. My eyes clouded over once the aisle that turned over seemingly weekly remained at a standstill for months on end, no clear holiday in sight. The aisle became a direct contradiction to my favorite season. Summer: When schools closed, my hair and skin glowed golden, and I turned a year older a couple of weeks prior to the longest day of the year.

I found myself pining for September in advance of Easter this year. I find myself wanting to forget that the next two weeks are dedicated to my mother – her birthday and Mother’s Day because societal norms morally condone the power trip that has been on long before and after that window of time. I want to skip over the camping, beach-going, Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day trifecta of the country I love and call home. My spite for this time frame is not a matter of love. It hits deeper. It hits my mind, beyond my heart.

My pining for the post-Labor Day aisle goes as deep as the aroma from fallen pine needles of Christmas trees. Just like leaves, or rather needles turn over, so too does this aisle. It’s not so much change as it is a turnover. Think skin cells: they turnover quickly, shed off, but the genetic makeup remains unchanged. I seek solace in the familiarity of knowing what is to come. This is how I feel when I watch series that are off-air. In contrast, the discontent I feel with the summer aisle is akin to the first few episodes of reality televised competitions and having to familiarize myself with the contestants.

I do not take pleasure in the earlier sunsets, as I mentioned in my last essay, and would rather see the sunshine-ombre color scheme reflected only in candy corn. I would rather the aisle shift into back-to-school mode. Like a true New Yorker fashion, I opt for the tonal black and white color scheme found in composition books. When the pandemic caused schools to shutter, however, the start of my favorite aisle became nonexistent. The aisle seemed to go out of business, per se, not unlike the number of stores that already shuttered post-pandemic, during which profits were being made almost exclusively online so that overhead costs were an unnecessary burden.

This shift was similar to print publications’ premature eulogy. Keep in mind that despite some publications no longer going to press, many more magazines not only reappeared but also came to fruition. One thing is for certain, we’re all still human, and the ability to use our senses, like touching – turning over a page – is a basic necessity. 

As tears are shed, consolation calms, and houses of worship are locked, I find myself wanting to extend my arms in an embrace, longing for human touch. Today, however, I felt oddly inhuman, and not due to the pandemic. I was numb. I am numb, though I believe it is wearing off. Numbness disrupts the body’s signaling something wrong. It hinders one from seeking out the remedy necessary to offset pain. This was something I experienced at my lowest weight. This numbness was total- mind, body, soul sucking.

At the time, I also experienced a physical numbness caused by low body weight such that I would take boiling hot showers and almost sit inside the fireplace without feeling any warmth until well after anyone else would jump away in time to escape a stinging burn. Even when I had begun to feel the warmth creeping, searing into my skin, I would gingerly edge away instead of jump. I felt a slow burn. The type I imagine a libido provides – one that I lack still, hormones off kilter, and without a period for over seven years now. 

The odd thing about numbness is that it is almost intolerable. Going to the dentist and having him apply Novocain would make speaking, eating, showing face, looking in the mirror, implausible. It made one drool and drawl. And so, I never did find truth in mental health professionals’ explanations about self-destructive behaviors, like not eating and over-exercising, being used as coping mechanisms to avoid sitting with feelings. Hell, I wanted to feel. I want for hunger, for the relief in vacating my bowels- something that is painfully slow. And it dawns on me, as I type this out, that I could not tolerate sitting it out.

Sitting it out from dance practice in college before our annual show because I had sprained my ankle in an attempt at outperforming the girl next to me on the treadmill who I never cared for, caused me to spend hours feeling unproductive and remorse at the temporary high I felt in “beating” her. She went onto another Ivy League, like myself, but she has a steady job post-medical school, married her college sweetheart, and is living a blissful life while I remain the unemployed writer, artist, single, and existing with an eating disorder. I suppose this absence of fulfilling expectations, the starving artist as my placeholder in lieu of marital status, is my attempt at not sitting with the feelings. 

The summer days are long. The heat manifests in ways unforeseen before now. Before the eating disorder ever existed, I indulged in the warmth of the sun, welcomed my browning skin at odds with my mother’s western one that turns rose pink instead of tan. I longed for the brown highlights in my hair, all the strands of which are now a light brown, lighter than they were in all of my youth, an oddity that still disturbs me. Now, however, the heat exacerbates the sweats I feel at all times due to my body’s inability to regulate temperature accordingly as a result of malnourishment and inconsistent energy intake. Last summer, in the throes of the pandemic, I struggled with the lengthier days, more time to sit it out until I couldn’t any longer. In the early morning, I would sweat it out in the basement absent of air circulation, and then I would sweat it out again, walking for an hour at minimum, later in the day.

In the way that I have made amends with spring and Daylight Savings this year, a goal of mine, I want to make it a goal to reclaim summer, perhaps not to celebrate anything but the present, day to day witnessing of the earth’s rotation. Going down the aisle can provide me with challenges - productivity, defined. I can challenge myself to enjoying grilled food, the prospect of hosting a smore’s soiree, to reminding myself that my days of playing wiffle ball are not to be mourned. So let it be known.

Count Backward, First. Spring Forward, Second.

In the several days following Valentines Day and yet another snowstorm, it dawns on me: I am no longer that “spring chicken,” who makes sure that all her eggs are in a row. Hell, I no longer have ovulating eggs, but that’s an aside. Back when I was akin to webbed feet poultry, particularly useful for the rainy season, I welcomed more daylight hours, which meant freedom; afforded to someone coming of age that is not yet permitted to gallivant at dusk. The later sunset was all the allowance I ever needed.

Once spring arrived, I was quick to have an after school snack, complete homework and extracurricular activities, and then venture outside whether that be to take a walk along the avenue, sit on my stoop, or scope out what my neighborhood friends were up to. Now, I don’t welcome a later sunset. I am always exhausted by the self-inflicted bombardment of thoughts and so I could at least count on the darkness for socially normalized winding down, if anything, forcing me to believe that I should put my mind at rest.

I have begun to hear birds chirping in the early hours. I have noticed the sunrise altered from the past several weeks. There are now streaks of pastel pink and orange in an amicable ombre dissimilar from the striking and paradoxical fiery reds and burnt oranges that appear on the coldest of winter days. Dainty motifs, and delicate silhouettes in the latest clothing collections pry out my girlish feminine affinity from the depths of my cotton candy pink childhood bedroom walls. I opt out of the solid swatches better aligned with my 30-year-old preferences and beeline to the bandana print – a slightly more mature sister to its floral counterpart.

On a clear spring day, the sun shines through the slits of the blinds, aggravating me in the process. I intentionally keep the blinds drawn to prevent natural light. My aggravation aggravates me because I want to welcome the windows’ unannounced guests, just as I had done during my formative years, when I was ordered to draw the blinds closed once nightfall descended. Times have changed. I want to spring into action – be employed, write, cook something more calorically dense – an actual meal, defined and not prefaced with “micro-,” defying normative constructions in a millenial pursuit to prove that everyone and everything can be correct.

I come back to writing this almost two weeks later. The sun rises by 6 am now, the birds are chirping to no end at all hours of the day. The weather is deceiving. The sun shines in clear skies, beckoning me, only to leave me winded upon opening the door to a blustery cold whiplash. It’s still winter, my girl.

I left off from writing this again, and come back over a week later. We are still in the midst of winter. It is overcast on several days. Snow falls in the silently sweet manner we wish it had done so months ago, when it should have, while we were in anticipation of a white Christmas. Now, the white precipitate is unwelcome. Now, we wish we were seeing someone’s wishes floating airborne, uplifted, still riding on hope – the aftermath of having blown on a dandelion.

It is St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th. I was up since before 5 am, in bed with fever and chills. My feet were ice, my head on fire, and my body, a burden. I had my second dose of the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 some hours before. Today, I uncomfortably tiptoed out of bed so as not to stir my parents who I do not get along with. They barrage me with bitter insults, inevitably taint me with the stigma of a ravaging eating disorder and unemployment as a dual-degree holding adult still living at home. I tiptoed to make my breakfast that is judged as disordered because its too healthy, which they presumably equate to being on a diet. I tiptoed because I aim to quickly rush out to the gym without confronting their harrowing glares that sear into my soul, enabling the internal compulsion to do excess. I become an adolescent in angst – rebellious.

While the past two days have been frenetic, and anything but a revocation of spring – clean, fresh, washed by rain, and grown from Earth – one of the most jolting days I have experienced since returning home from inpatient treatment in 2019, was this past Sunday, Daylight Savings. I wanted to embrace the prolonged daylight hours, knowing that I have had less than stellar experiences with the concept since anorexia surfaced. I no longer had the cover of night to covertly grind bones into the ground. Now, I did not need any cloaking device. I had nothing to conceal.

On Sunday, after even less than the four hours in bed, not sleeping, I glanced at the time. It was already 7 am. I counted backward first. It should have, would have, been almost 6 am. I then sprung forward, off my bed, as it dawned on me – the clock sprung forward. By that time, fatigued and head pounding, I will have had finished eating breakfast and be on my way to the gym. Sunday was my designated day of rest from any form of exercise, that is, until I took off on Friday at my mother’s will. As an adult, this stirred me, and as someone suffering from exercise compulsion, this fueled me to go down into the basement where I engage in a painful exercise routine. That was my Sunday and my experience Daylight Savings Day. I was on edge, rushed, frenzied, and hurting.

The beautiful thing about life is that so long as one is alive, there is always an opportunity to cleanse. That which is done cannot be undone – the empty promise for what “cleanse” is and can do according to marketers. We can cleanse, freshen – not refresh, generate, create, produce. After all, it isn’t the Spring Equinox yet. And the groundhog has granted me a buffer. I can still make peace with spring.  There is still time for me to open the blinds. Perhaps I’ll ever so slightly let the shutters flirt with each other instead of touch – one window. Then I’ll try to let them part ways and find themselves for a while. Maybe I’ll see if they can handle long-distance, and then from there, I’ll venture to a second window.

Time Better Spent

Sprawled out on the rug in front of my fireplace on an early evening, not surprisingly, I am opting to keep the living room’s recessed lights off. Bright lights disturb me. Ambient lighting also perturbs me. Skylights are unwelcome reminders of not having everything in your control, reiterating that mother nature will act at will, even when squarely enclosed by a ceiling and walls, negating her temperamental angst, like precipitation; sheltered from the elements.

There was a time, long ago, when my morning routine’s initial step would be to open the window blinds and let the light in, whether that be from the reflective beams on snow mounds or puddles on overcast days, or sun rays perforating fluffy clouds in the Tropical Skittle variety-blue. That was ages ago. I lived in Queens, then. I lived a few blocks away from Long Island and not in the thick of the most diverse pocket of the country, and yet even living in the thicket- on the fringes of New York City -my pulse was in tandem to the blaring music from passing cars, the dribble of basketballs on the pavement, the occasional creaking of iron fences so unlike the quietude of a picket fence. I could still hear the squeals of children playing outside, walking to and from school unlike the yellow-bus drop-offs on Long Island. I could hear kitchen cabinetry from open windows, so unlike the soft-close cabinets that single-family Nassau County households mandate.

I prefer the type of ambience invoked by restaurant interior design, the ‘intel’ of which suggests that darker, periphery-like vision increases the allure of the dining experience. The fireplace at home is rectangular and matte black with flames illuminated in a linear fashion, falling and rising with a remote control. The fireplace is set in stone – literally – surrounded by a floor-to-ceiling façade of blue-grey stone set in a Tetris-like fashion. I want to go back and edit the possessive pronoun for the fireplace I am laying next to. It is not mine. I did not purchase it. It was my parents’ hard-earned money that paid for the fireplace and this Long Island house that I have lived in since graduating with my masters’ degree. At 30-years-old and still recovering from anorexia after hitting a rock-bottom last year at 60 pounds, I have finally accepted that what is their own is my own and what is mine, is also theirs. We have a joint account on life.

Their last testament, the two people who I consider my mortal enemies, are also my Gods that I plea to, seek guidance and acknowledgement, blessings and sustenance from, have left everything to my brother and I. We both deny wanting anything. If one thing is for certain, it is that my brother and I do not want for money: We’re academics, or as my father says, book-sheltered. We have high IQs. We are not mainstream. We are paranoid, anal people hell-bent on contributing to the world and leaving some type of intellectual impact that does not get compensated for monetarily, and quite possibly, not even intellectually. The difference between my brother and I, aside for the fact that my mother has left all her semiprecious jewels to me, is that he is a full-fledged surgeon, and I am still not hired, striving for a staff writing position, or at the very least, penning stories for a myriad of publications who never respond to my pitches.

The difference is that I am the starving artist – quite literally – starved. It’s as if the energy within me becomes ignited and calories, a measurement of energy, weigh me down. The entire rationale is confounding because it is irrational and yet logically, caloric density creates weight. Perhaps I am thinking too hard about this. I seem to be proving my father correct. I’m stuck in my head, and that does not fare well in an unceasing world constantly in motion. The paradox is that physically remaining in motion does not bode well for making moves when in recovery from anorexia, and staying sedentary instead, in armchair pursuits like writing and researching, driving and communicating, are actually enabling me to make moves and move on.

Currently, my time is consumed by thoughts of food, meals, snacks, weight, exercising, and wanting, striving, and praying for a job – yes, for fiscal propriety, but also for self-fulfillment. I want to be able to appreciate coming back home after a day spent outside. I want my craft of writing to be read, for its content to be absorbed and documented. I want to be able to lounge and not prioritize panting, gasping for air, forcing myself to do a string of super-sets that include burpees, explosive knee drives, plank jacks, and squat jumps, in some attempt at proving my value and strength. My painfully cracked fingers grasp onto metallic oxidized free-weights as I grind my triceps. I tremble in anguish, sob, and convince myself to get through an hour in the basement where there is no insulation and to sweat takes effort. Imagine then, the magnitude of effort taken so that my flesh and bone outlines are imprinted onto the black exercise mats on the floor for a good hour after I had come upstairs, dripping.

You would think that me sprawled on my back in front of the fireplace would be a vote of success. The truth is, me sprawled out onto the rug in complete darkness, hoping that the idea of time passing by having made everything better, was naïve. I rested my aching, overly exercised body and sought refuge from expending more energy in arguments, but I was also fending off a mental hunger, again eating less than what I should be and too afraid to eat when not physically hungry because it would be at a time I deemed too close to when I would have my meal. I felt parched, my tongue too dry, making it impossible to swallow. My head was throbbing, and I was hoping the anxiety would finally cease once I had dinner and multiple fruits for snack.

I dropped off from writing this over ten days ago and I am picking up again. I have reclined in front of the fireplace numerous more times since then. Today, I find myself again in the position of conflict. My body feels icy, my disposition as well. I woke up to a full house- full of judgment and unsettled conflict. Everyone is working from home because of the snow. My brother was visiting home after a year, and as he planned in advance, was about to leave.

My father asserts that he will go into work regardless of the weather and so I am left to stay with my mother – the one who dabbles in dialogue and downward dogs that trigger the eating disorder exponentially. I find myself, today, as planned, venturing down into the basement, unfinished, with a television, stationary bike, treadmill, free weights, barbells, and household products like detergent and toilet paper. There are plastic containers filled with lives lived – certificates, school notes, yearbooks, board games, and photos.

I left off from writing this once more. So here is an update: My father ended up not going to work, instead, shoveling our property the entire day. My mother was visibly agitated, her frothy demeanor going flat the more the snow outside fell and the closer my brother was getting ready to leave, like the disappearing foam of nonfat milk from her Starbucks latte I used to swallow within minutes but that she sips on for hours.

I fried two eggs so that the whites were fully cooked and the yolks did not run, layered each one on toasted slices of bread that were dressed with American cheese. I pressed it down and dabbed at it with paper towel having used a tad too much oil. I sliced it in half, placed it on a new swath of paper towel set on top of aluminum foil, and then wrapped the sandwich entirely, swaddled like a newborn that I accept at never having the opportunity to carry myself. The sandwich was for my brother to take on the road.

After a lengthy hiatus from exercising in my basement, I had planned on venturing there again yesterday, prior to knowing that I would have company at home. I was on edge because I knew my mother would disapprove of me engaging in any type of exercise. Sure enough, as soon as I mentioned my plan to go downstairs but engaging in responsible movement, my mother said she would go on the treadmill. We were at it. She disapproved of my food choices and movement, and I was triggered by her watchful eye and desire to burn energy on the treadmill. My time would have been better spent not mulling over my mother’s judgment, the exercise routine I would engage in, and my plans to restrict food consumption later on.

I waver between spending time writing this or some other essay to post on my website, or typing another cover letter sent out on the web, falling through the silken strands or caught, consumed, and spit out. Should I spend my time reading fiction – a novel, or perhaps articles in my subscribed-to print magazines? That then begs the question of whether or not I should read the online-content from said publications? Should I make sure to remain in the know by spending time on social media?

Where my time is better spent, I am uncertain. I want to hold value - a narcissistic goal to some- insomuch as I want to contribute to others, to impact this world, to have the space I take up have value and not take away from others – an altruistic concept. Then again, value, a measure, exists solely by means of comparison. It is as if to argue that without dismal days, one could not be aware nor appreciative of those moments you would never want to end. It is like the crash and burn after Halloween – a one day celebration that is anticipated with Fall’s arrival.

I don’t like being sprawled out in front of the fireplace because what was once designated as a form of self-care, an acceptance of rest, a recovery milestone at being sedentary and imbibing company around the fireplace, and a central concept of the human basic, shelter, is now considered a warning flare. The last time I reclined, I was weak, frail, and dying. It was a fortnight before I entered the Emergency Room. Me laying horizontally in front of the fireplace conjures dreadful memories and suggests that my body is giving out once more.

So here I sit, typing this, because this is where my time should be spent as of now; preserving my body, spirit, and mind. My time is best spent repairing my health. My time is best spent disengaged from my kin who choose not to discuss and instead want time to pass, solidifying everyone’s conviction in their self, and in the process, unraveling anything tying us together, anything keeping us grounded, anything keeping ourselves from no longer being a tidy ball of yarn. I yearn to wrap the yarn fastidiously, but it is mistaken for me toying.