A Flea

Yesterday I found a flea on Gracie.

A flea.

A flea.

One of the most annoying things ever. I had to go to the store and buy flea shampoo, prep the bathroom and torture my dog. For A. Single. Flea.

Gracie’s hatred of baths penetrates to the deepest core of her being. Therefore she is highly skilled in detecting when a bath is imminent.

I don’t have to say a word. She just knows. 

Her instinctual response: I must run!

See, I’m on the bed. I can’t take a bath right now. I’m really busy. 

After I chase her off the bed -

See, I’m in the closet. I really just need some alone time. Come back never. 

I roust her from the closet. She runs back to the bed. This we repeat several times until finally:

I must wedge myself into the farthest corner of the bed! Oh – there seems to be a headboard under my butt.  Am I stuck? OK…what’s my next move?

By the way, this is the dog – this dog who has to be dragged off the bed and into the bathtub using her collar and leash – this is the dog who has nearly killed me trying to plunge over a 5-foot bank into a sluggish trickle of putrescent runoff water. This is the dog who follows me into the bathroom every morning to sniff inside the tub.

Why she does this remains a mystery, but it is an integral part of our daily routine.

Anyway. Last night’s bath was particularly torturous for Gracie because the flea shampoo had to sit for 5 minutes before being rinsed out. This meant that I sat on the toilet seat across from her holding forth on the benefits of flea shampoo, and how much better she would feel when that one flea was dead, and how sometimes in life we have to do things we don’t like, but it builds character.

Gracie’s translation: I’m making you stand soaking wet in this strange ceramic container for no good reason. The end.

I may have attempted to give Gracie a mohawk while the shampoo soaked.

The floor…the floor…the floor is mere inches away…

Are we done yet? Please? Can I get out now? Please? Please?

Please? Please? Please? Please? Please?

When finally I released my hostage, she rampaged joyfully through the apartment!

I’m FREE!! I’m FREE!! 

She doused the bathroom! She dried herself off on the carpet! She did a flying leap over my knee (a trick she had hitherto refused to perform)!! She snapped tiny treats out of the air! Then she sprawled on the bed and didn’t move for hours, exhausted from the trauma of bath time.

That flea better be dead.

Melting Kitchen Utensils and Other Pointless Randomness

Yesterday I was sad. Today I’m happy. In fact, I just ran several laps around my apartment, which made me slightly dizzy because my apartment’s pretty small.

Gracie merely eyed me; she was probably thinking, “What the…? Why is she running in circles – I’m not even chasing her. And she’s not chasing anything!”

Well, Gracie, I was chasing down my thoughts, OK?! So don’t judge.

My thoughts tonight are running randomly, alighting on various unrelated occurrences from the past few weeks.

Like when I made Elixir of Spoon instead of rhubarb compote. As I caramelized the sugar, I also caramelized the spoon. My beautiful rhubarb had to go away, down the sink. I maybe cried. Just kidding. But I did scream and stomp, and the elixir remnants then turned to cement on the bottom of the pot.

There are just things you shouldn’t do in the kitchen, and cooking over high heat with plastic spoons is one. Also, putting whole trunks of broccoli into a running garbage disposal is another. Note to self: only on Home Improvement do garbage disposals actually shred things like hockey pucks, broccoli heads, etc.

Also, leaving a rubber Pyrex lid on top of a hot stove burner should be avoided. You will no longer have a complete set of Pyrex dishes with matching lids. And you will never – EVER – get the melted lid off the burner.

Finally, you should use oven mitts. Just saying.

My second attempt at rhubarb compote succeeded since I decided wooden spoons would be a wise investment. It is the loveliest jewel-pink color and tastes perfect on top of my morning oatmeal.

Here’s another random incident: while walking to my car headed to work, I looked down to see in my hand my pocketbook and the TV remote.

And then, this phone call while at work:

Me: “Good afternoon, this is Meredith.”

Guy: “Meredith?!” 

Me: “Yes….”

Guy: “Well! My name is April.”

Me: “How can I help you? (?!?)”

Guy: “I’m the Caaaab Maaaaannnnn…I pick up all them drunks? And I’m ’bout ready to come over there and pick you up.”

He was calling to find out the balance on his account.

Oh, my job.

Oh, life.

Oh…JOGGERS! If you are one, listen carefully.

Carefully. 

Shouting, “WE’REGONNABEONYOURLEFT!!!!” 2 seconds before you are, in fact, on my left, isn’t helpful.

All right – I’m signing off of this pointless post.

I hope I don’t get picked up by The Cab Man.

 

For good measure, one other thing you probably shouldn't do - photograph and drive.

Finally, because I'm obsessed with my dog, and it rained today!

Before and After

Tonight I’m feeling sad. It’s not the sobbing-until-I-can-no-longer-breathe-through-my-nose kind of sadness – good thing for Gracie, because she never knows quite what to do with my emotional breakdowns. This is more of a thoughtful sadness of spirit as I reflect on a year gone by.

My hair is very thin. I’m afraid to look at myself when it’s wet because I can see then just how thin it is. This physical response to the stress and malnutrition and chaos of recent months has caused me to reflect on the time…the lost time, the painful time, the dark time.

I’m sad for many months of depression, lost joy, and all the hours wasted chasing down a slippery number that doesn’t even exist.

I’m sad because I decided one year ago to wean off of Zoloft and I’m sad because it didn’t work and because life unraveled for a while  and getting back to where I was is a slow process.

It’s natural to be sad about these things, and to feel like it’s all my own fault for trying to go off the medicine.

Many times I’ve questioned why I made what I view as a bad decision, and wished I hadn’t. None of this ever would have happened, then. But it wasn’t a bad decision, really; it was simply something I wanted to try, and it didn’t work. Like, at all.

My reasons for attempting it don’t seem hardly as compelling now as they did. However, God is sovereign over all things, even my own choices. His reasons are the ones that matter.

Tonight, I have no clear idea what those might be. I’m simply writing to unburden a heavy heart and move forward. I am writing to awaken hope and faith that God is able to repay me for the years the locusts have eaten.

“Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste” – how easy it has been for me to wring my hands over losing my Before: before the horrible SSRI withdrawal symptoms, the depression and OCD and anorexia. Albeit a relatively brief relapse, to me the ground lost seems great. (And comparison never helps.)

But -

“Be not afraid…for the open pastures are becoming green.” 

I certainly wasn’t completely inculpable in all that happened; I did make some very bad choices knowing full well that they were. It’s proper to reflect soberly on the consequences. Yet God restores.

He allows humbling seasons, painful seasons, but after, he brings back life.

Joel 2:3, 23, 25 

Playing Red Rover with E.D.

A few nights ago while walking Gracie, I thought about Red Rover. Remember, that game from elementary school? I thought about it because I watched Gracie trot through a patch of clover. This reminded me of several violation letters I’d sent that week to homeowners with “spreading clover” in their yards; and that led me – quite naturally, I believe – to the phrase “clover taking over”.

And what rhymes with “clover” and “over”? “Rover”! And thus, I ended up contemplating the game Red Rover. You’d get two lines of kids facing each other, joining hands. One side would choose a player from the opposite side to attempt to break through their line, and yell in unison, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send GERTRUDE RIGHT OVER!!”

Chosen Gertrude would then thunder across the playground and try to break through a link in the enemy chain. She’d choose the link she deemed weakest, two kids holding hands who didn’t look strong enough to withstand her force. If she did break through, Gertrude chose someone from the enemy line to take back to her side. The strongest one, of course. If she didn’t, she was added to the enemy line.

It was a game of 6-year-old strategy – a balancing act. Should you call the hulking, red-faced kid, on the hope that you’d withstand his brute strength and add him to your team? Or should you call the diminutive, pig-tailed girl just to increase your numbers? The team with the most members at the end of the game won.

Somehow this clover-over-rover thought train led me to compare Red Rover to my eating disorder recovery. I thought about how a few days earlier I’d commented on a fellow blogger’s post, both of us agreeing that even after we concluded living with ED was hell, neither of us were able to simply “throw it away”.

It seems like it should be so easy: you hate it, so stop it. JUST EAT. JUST STOP.
But recovery is far from being that quick or simple. For some, maybe – but not for me.

Like a lot of eating disorder sufferers, my brain thinks only in black and white. So it was natural for me to tell myself, “OK – from here on out, perfection. Starting tomorrow, I will never binge again. I will eat perfectly, I will eschew all cookies, I will run on the elliptical, I will lose 5 pounds, feel pure, and stay that way forever”.

Um…..no.

Recovery for me has been more like a years-long game of Red Rover between Healthy Me and my eating disorder. Sometimes E.D. has more on his team, sometimes I have more on mine. Sometimes it seems like E.D. has ALL the strongest kids on his team, and he’s just recapturing pieces of me at his leisure. It’s laughably easy for him – he doesn’t even have to try, really. He’s so intimidating, my team gives up without even putting up a fight.

E.D.’s players all know the weakest links in my chain of defense. I realized that to beat him, I have to be careful which one I take on, and when.

I love to bake. I have a major sweet tooth. Lately I keep falling into the same trap. “I’m strong enough to have cookies in the house.”

Woops. Turns out I’m not. E.D. took back a piece of my confidence. Then he went straight for the weakest player on my team:

RED ROVER, RED ROVER! SEND HEALTHY BODY IMAGE ON OVER!

Yeah…I think you can guess how well that went.

But I’m back in the lead now. So if you’re reading this, and you can relate, be encouraged. You don’t have to throw E.D. away all at once. In fact, you probably can’t. Don’t try to take on what you’re not strong enough for right now. Recovery is a game of strategy. Make smart moves, and you can win.

Good Hungry

On a recent Monday as I left work on my way home for lunch, I realized something wonderful: I was hungry!

This wasn’t the hungry that feels like a metal ball in my gut
Or the kind that numbs my brain

Or the hungry that encompasses my entire body, that feels like my mouth is a starting gate at Churchill Downs and my appetite is a racehorse ready to run and never stop as soon as it opens.

It wasn’t the hungry that screams even louder knowing it will be ignored.

This was good hungry.

My hunger/fullness cues had been suppressed by several months of starvation-level dieting punctuated by binges that left me curled in on myself in agony. Rebuilding my recovery again was confusing because half the time, I didn’t know why I was eating:

Was I really eating in response to physical hunger, or was I only eating because I thought I SHOULD be hungry?
Was I eating just to be eating?
Or out of fear that I would be restricting if I didn’t?

Most of the time, my stomach felt neutral – not empty, not full. Not satisfied, but not dissatisfied. Interpreting my behavior seemed impossible, and I constantly questioned my motives.

So that moment of clarity between my body and my mind, when I recognized legitimate, real hunger – that felt good.

My body had known what to do with the calories I’d given it after all. It wasn’t a freak of nature that did not respond normally to food. I could eat and not gain and gain and gain forever.

Worst fear NOT confirmed!

My body was now clearly communicating its needs, and at the right time – lunch time. I probably took a skip or two on my way to the car, knowing that I, without guilt or confusion, could go home and eat honey-toasted peanut butter on soft whole wheat bakery bread, a candy-striped honeycrisp apple and carrot sticks. And I could – and did – stop when I was satisfied.

And if I could do it today, I could do it again. And again, and again. I could trust my body, and I could trust myself.

But most importantly, I could trust my faithful God to bring me back to a place of health, to once more set my feet in a spacious place.

I enjoyed every bite of that peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I loved it so much, I refused to share any of it with Gracie.

Luckily, Gracie loves carrot sticks almost as much as she loves me.

*Aw!*

True Story

If you’re a single female and you find a strange man hiding in the stairwell of your office building, generally you run away.

Unless you’re someone (*coughmecough*) who generally always feels safe because you grew up in a town where things like this show up in the police blotter:

“5:17 p.m. Police officers and deputies were called to a report of a suspicious-looking item in a yard in the 2400 block of Ski Trail Lane. Police officers investigated the item and determined it was a potato.” 

True story. Who wouldn’t feel safe in a town where a random potato materializing in your yard constitutes a suspicious item?

So - if you’re me – and if you open the door at the top of the stairwell on your way to your car for lunch; and you hear a plastic bag rustle below you and think it’s just someone else walking down but get to the bottom and realize you haven’t heard the exit door open;

and if you peer into the dark angle under the stairs and see someone’s feet…

Well, this is the scene in the horror movie where the victim suddenly realizes

She’s not alone.

*scree SCREE SCREE!*

At this point, if you’re me, this is what you might do:

Ask cautiously, “Sir…are you O.K.?”
Feet remain frozen in place. No answer.
Again: “Sir…are you O.K.?”
Silence. Uncertainty. Creepiness.

Then you hear, from without the shadows, an emphatic and slightly self-conscious reply – “JUST MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS!”

What kind of business, is your question? Because, you see, several years ago, this very stairwell – in fact, the precise place where the Feet are now trying to hide – was deemed a suitable substitute for a toilet. Someone pooped here.

You start to leave, but pause halfway out the door, torn between self-preservation and the desire to never, ever, clean up a pile of human poop that has been sitting for three days in an airless stairwell. Ever. Again.

Never mind the fact that you volunteered to do it yourself; that’s beside the point. No one is going to poop under these stairs again if you have anything to do with it!!! Although, you’re still quite proud of your ingenuity in converting a cardboard box into a poop-scooper.

Anyway -
As you hesitate between leaving and staying, a Nice Man walks in on his way to one of the offices, and sees you.
Emboldened now that you’re not alone, you ask the Feet again – “What are you doing under our stairs?!” (Notice how closely you identify with your place of employment here.)

Nice Man sees the Feet and says, “Dude – are you ok?”
Ousted from his hiding place, the “dude” under the stairs finally stalks out, a small bottle of liquor and a bundle of plastic bags in his arms.
He looks at you both and says, “You got beverages – I got beverages!” And beelines out of the building by the side door.

“Beverages”? Where? Huh?

The story ends boringly enough. You follow the Dude around the corner of the building, where you see him polish off HIS beverage and get into the passenger seat of a car parked in front. He and the driver peace out. Nice Man paces the sidewalk protectively until they do.

Then – if you’re me – after going home for lunch, you quickly become the office hero before getting mildly yelled at for not leaving right away and calling the police. One of your coworkers then mentions a horror movie she’s seen called The People Under the Stairs, in which people under the stairs reach up and
LALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING!!!

You decide to take the elevator from now on.

But your elevator-riding stint lasts only a few days due to the fact that it takes less time to walk out of the office, past the elevator, down to the end of the hall, down the stairs, out the side door and around the building than it does to actually ride your elevator.
And the building is only two stories. That’s how slow it is.

You once got stuck on this elevator while conducting the fire safety test. Turns out it wasn’t safe. The doors shut on the second floor, and did not reopen upon command. None of the buttons worked. The emergency phone was dead. You rang the alarm bell 20 times, but no one came, even though the office lobby is literally feet away.

After someone walking by heard you yelling, you spent a blissful hour trapped inside the elevator while your coworkers sat on the other side playing 20 questions with you, shoving magazines and candy through the tiny crack between the doors, and attempting to pry them open with metal objects.

Ever since, you’ve secretly wished this would happen again. It hasn’t.

So you’re back to taking the stairs.

True story.

Of All Things Most Sweet

I found a bird’s nest on the sidewalk yesterday evening on my walk with Gracie. I picked it up and carried it home.

It fit perfectly in the palm of my hand, light as a breath.

The tiny, weaving work of a tiny creature.

Pine needles and grass and fuzz and a curly strip of blue paper, a few baby feathers left behind.

I couldn’t help but picture the little life that labored so diligently to make this, and the one that found warmth and safety here.

It reminded me that I also am a tiny creature on this earth, engaged in my own tiny work. I settle here fleetingly before my times yield to other seasons.

What can I do but give thanks for joy, for meaning and even satisfaction in all my fragile toil, for the security of knowing that I am not only carried in my Father’s hands but carved there forever?

A few hours ago I looked up from my book as the day faded to washed denim dusk, then deepened to indigo.

I listened to the birds calling to each other as they found their nests for the night.

Truly “life of all things is most sweet”.  ~ Matthew Lawrence

Entertainment Purposes Only

Because I am tired tonight – soooooo tired – I have decided not to think. Therefore, the following is for entertainment purposes only. Please note this post is in no way intended to reflect negatively on my brothers’ current levels of maturity.

*Titter!*

No, really – it’s not.

This is what happens when you give a 10-year-old girl a hot pink camera. You get classic sibling photos like this one:

Brother on the left:

I hate this.

This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. 

Approach any closer with that comb, Mom, and I will wither you where you stand with my searing glare.

I hate these stupid overalls. 

Brother on the right:

Yeah, that’s right – I’m awesome.

My grandpa sweater is awesome.

I look like a J. Crew model in this sweater.

My poofy bloomer pants are also awesome – so don’t mess with me.

I love these two little brothers of mine.

They’re not so little any more; in fact, they’re both over 6 feet tall. They’ve matured in many essential ways since this picture. For example, they can now brush their teeth without getting toothpaste on the ceiling. I think.

So, clearly, they’ve changed. But in many ways, they’re still the same to me.

Still cute, still hilarious.

And their clothing choices are still questionable.

Collin, if you’re reading this: that jacket you left in the dryer over Christmas, the one that makes you look like a giant yellow and black checkerboard?

It

Will.

Be.

Destroyed.

The End.

How I Feel vs. What I Am

Digging through my catch-all drawers over the weekend (with the goal of actually being able to use them for clothes – haha!) I unearthed these pieces of my recovery past. Though from several years ago, it hurts to read them because I don’t have to travel too far down into myself to find the same feelings still jabbing my spirit:

It’s not hard to see why that girl felt crushed and vulnerable under the weight of life, with a mental megaphone booming self-hatred in the background.

To me, this is a picture of shame.

Then, I found this:

Regardless of how I feel about myself, the bottom line is:

I am loved.

Regardless of what other people say or see or think, my own mistakes, my humanness, my circumstances, my appearance -

I am loved.

Those old anti-Meredith tapes of mine became CDs. They grew with me. They didn’t go away. Instead they ran and ran and ran, seamlessly from year to year, cutting deep tracks, until they became white noise in my spirit that I hardly noticed.

I encourage you to write your own list. Listen, transcribe. Bring your darkness into the light.

Then write your own bottom line:

YOU ARE LOVED.

Your list doesn’t define you. Your feelings don’t define you.

The love of Christ defines you.

This love is wider, longer, higher, than your feelings can reach; it runs deeper than any grooves of pain.

His is the love that will deliver you from yourself.

As Strong as…as a Very Weak Horse!

Recovery stinks sometimes. It stinks when you look completely normal – even skinny – to the people around you, but you see Pudge in the mirror. You cringe when you drive over a pot hole and feel Jiggle. The angle under your chin isn’t as sharp as it was a week ago. You hate getting dressed because you feel your body filling out your clothes.  When people say you’re nuts for thinking you’re too big or you’ve gained weight, you think they’re nuts if they can’t see what you’re talking about.

It’s no use trying to make anyone understand why your mind recoils so violently at the idea of taking up space in the world, why it’s such an awful feeling when your stomach touches your shirt.

Days like this, when recovery Really Stinks, call for undiluted I Love Lucy Therapy. On bad body image days, I pop in one of my favorite episodes, “The Diet”. In this episode Lucy makes the horrible discovery that she weighs not 110 but 132 pounds and sobs (reference above image), “I walked into this room weighing 110 – I now weigh 132! That’s 22 pounds in 10 minutes!”

Feel that way all the time, Lucy.

“I’m nothing but a BIG BLoated Bunch of BLUbber!”

Yep.  That too.

But being “plump” doesn’t keep Lucy from auditioning for Ricky’s nightclub act. I love watching Lucy try to fit in with the other dancers by rolling up her pants and shirt and pulling her collar down over her shoulders, and I love it not least because Lucille Ball isn’t skinny. Beautiful, but not thin.

I start to feel a little better.

Now Lucy is clomping frantically around her apartment in frumpy sweats trying to lose 12 pounds in four days, in order to fit into her size 12 costume for the number. (Note: size 12, not size 00. And even given the shift in women’s dress sizes since the 1950s, that’s still, I believe, a pretty normal size.)

After Lucy collapses into a chair, Ethel hoists her onto the scale and exclaims with glee, “Another 5 ounces!!”

Dinner for Lucy that night consists of a stalk of celery on a plate, which Lucy bitterly slathers with steak sauce. Finally she resorts to sitting hours in a “human pressure cooker” (steam cabinet) to roast off the needed pounds.

Perhaps it’s seeing my weight-loss obsession distilled into 20 minutes of ridiculousness that cheers me up so much. After all, that’s what it is: ridiculous.

When I’m laughing at Lucy starving and exercising and cooking herself until she can barely stand, I’m really laughing at myself. Of course eating disorders aren’t funny: they’re deadly. Because I’ve been on a feeding tube myself I will be the last person to make fun of that struggle. But having come through the worst of my own disorder, it helps me to laugh at E.D.

On recovery days when E.D. tells me that panic at 1-pound weight gain is fully justified or saying no to a cookie will actually make a difference on the scale – those are the days when the eating disorder needs to be put in its place. Those lies are Plain Silly. (One pound – really, E.D.?!) After all, life is too important, too much fun, too short to waste time running laps and eating celery and “going down to the corner bakery and smell the bread” without tasting any of it.

The Lie says I am strong, I am powerful, because I can say No, because I can make my body obey me and stifle appetite. Really, though, I am only, as Lucy tries to assure Ethel when she stumbles dazed out of the human pressure cooker, “as strong as…as a very weak horse!”

Which isn’t strong at all.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9-11