You Can’t Handle the Truth, and other Phrases Based in Reality, Even the Disordered One

Nothing will change if nothing changes. This phrase is irksome, to judge it mildly. My brother repeatedly said this to me in a last-ditch effort at helping to reel his younger Ivy-educated, popular, all-rounder sister from stumbling face-forward onto the Long Island buckled sidewalk he knew she laboriously clambered on while talking to him on the phone. Easier said than done was another phrase that seemed less a guideline and more so, a mandated lecture. Change inevitably leads to the unexpected, and that can cause anticipatory anxiety.

During one of my many readings about navigating life through a pandemic, I came across an argument for quelling anxiety by re-watching repeats of films and television series that were previously aired and seen. During the depths of my disorder, my nightcap was re-watching episodes of Gilmore Girls. My father, who has determined that I am the karma he has to live with after I quipped that he would be suffering from a cosmic backlash, would endlessly pick on anything he could in a subconscious attempt at pathologizing all I did into a symptom of anorexia nervosa. From the sweatpants I walked out the house in that he claimed was me feeling uncomfortable in my body and hiding away from who I was, to my penchant for watching Gilmore Girls, now celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2020, which he claimed was me being stuck in a rut and not moving on.

I stopped watching television series all together, however; still unemployed and also focusing on recovery from the grips of an eating disorder, both treatment professionals and kin suggest that I should take this time to do absolutely nothing. That is to say, they want me to preoccupy my headspace with things other than numbers, schedules, wallowing about a dearth of jobs and inactivity on the career front. During residential treatment, a quarantine of its own, the weekly visit with the psychiatrist was like a game of Ping-Pong. We tapped our chatter with an endless array of commas, keeping thoughts buoyant, floating on air currents between us.

Our initial getting to know one another started with him stumbling on my name, and then us coming to the mutual decision to not dabble with any type of medication and instead focus on rewiring thoughts with intellect and behavioral practice. He wanted me to practice mediation. He wanted me to focus on nothing aside from my presence, breathing, grounded to the Earth. He didn’t want me to take out books from the library, (not a possibility regardless,) for “how to do nothing.” He did not want me to study. He wanted me to just do absolutely nothing. I never did master this, but I won’t say that it was due to lack of attempt. I was about to say lack of trying, but I feel trying is a loaded concept; There are degrees of trying based on time and effort, both of which are quantifiable. Whenever he would pass around the landing’s hallway, where I sat next to the window, busying myself with reading or writing, I would immediately stash away pages, pretending to not be preoccupied.

It has almost been one full year since I left treatment, and though changes have come and gone, I have found that recovery has not yet surfaced and the phrase, old habits die-hard, rings in my ears. I suppose this penchant for knowing what is to come - by nature, a habit is a repeatedly practiced behavior with known though not necessarily desirable, outcomes – parallels to me re-watching rerun episodes of old series. I know the gist of the dialogue, the climax, the conflict, the impending resolution, and the cliffhangers that I have clambered up time and time again without falling over. According to news write-ups during the pandemic, people have been coping increasingly by viewing old television shows, production having ceased aside, because there is no anticipation. You know what will happen.

According to my therapist, climbing up this tumultuous terrain without having yet crashed, is me using old behaviors to cope, like eating less, moving more, and running on empty. It is not until I begin to see yellowing cracked skin and feel depleted, as if I were wading through water, that I temporarily snap out of my reverie about everything being fine. He said I was playing a game of Russian roulette. Either that or I was playing with fire. I nodded silently, knowing this without him having to say it, but also appreciating the clarity he provided me with. What he said next, however, held so much truth that it sticks in my head with the adherence and purpose of a pale banana yellow Post-It note: I was like a substance abuser, endlessly scheming for my next fix of exercise or low calorie concoction.

It’s not true that with practice, makes perfect. If there is anything that feeds this illness, allowing it to grow and thrive, it is the concept of achieving some self-actualized state of otherworldliness. Perhaps asceticism, hallucinating from starvation, reverberating heart beat no longer cloaked behind an exposed rib cage, and quivering due to tingling sensations from an electrolyte imbalance, is associated with achieving a closeness to both the very concept of life and whoever you believe is its creator. Organized religion aside, that this vast world and its inhabitants are wondrous, mammoth concepts, is an observation that is irrefutable. This concept was suggested by journalist and comedian, Sopan Deb, an agnostic, mentioned in his memoir, Missed Translations.

Could it be that I extend my dining experience with volume eats, like low caloric food items that cause bulk and a feeling of fullness, in order to distract myself from the world at large and not just to quell this feeling of being deprived of food? Could it be that sitting for an hour, munching, never feeling quite satisfied, is me resting my not yet healthy body after a strenuous exercise routine as much as to assert that if I could not have control over my career trajectory, then at least I could have some sort of control over my body, and in some way, my recovery? Am I numbing out, yet again?

These questions are answers. These questions and answers, two for one, or, killing two birds with one stone, are figments of a mind bifurcated. In one hemisphere, or on one hand, so to speak, there is the disorder that assures me I am safe and fine and, on the other, there is a healthier, rational mind that signals starvation and an undernourished body that is ailing and screaming for more- more care, more rest, more food, more variety, more commitment. And in this way, is the crux of the issue: more is never quite enough.