"Some People Find that it's Easier to Hate than to Wait Any More..."
I am dealing with two things right now; one is really annoying and the other is probably a good thing. So. I will make navel-gazing livejournal posts.
First of all, I am currently holding the position of being one of the only religious people in my group of friends. For the most part this isn't a problem. I am not the kind of Christian who has an interest in the conversion of others, and in general my friends are not the kind of people who look down on Christians. But--and this is the thing that is really frustrating me--we do not appear to have established that just because I find some religious humour humourous I will not get offended if people make offencive religious jokes.
I mean, I don't want to seem humourless and unable to deal with the issues inherent in my religion. But there are jokes that are funny and there are jokes that are outright upsetting to me, and a couple of my friends are apparently neither able to make that distinction nor to read my body language and interpret from it that I am not finding the situation funny. It's really awkward, too, because I don't want to get up in anybody's face and say "Hey, excuse me, that's not funny to me," but I also don't feel comfortable listening to some of this stuff. And God knows I have tried just leaving the table, but, again, apparently my body language is not clear enough, because these same people are not making that connexion.
Moreover, beyond humour, I am dealing with the fact that a lot of people are kind of bringing their grievances with Christianity to me (I think as a combination of my being religion and having a Judeo-Christian religious major [for anybody who's not aware, I changed my major to pre-seminary last semester!]), and expecting me to answer bigtime philosophical and religious questions and discrepancies within Christianity, and then having one of two reactions: either reacting as if my explanation is not good enough and as if, since my explanation isn't good enough, I should accept the inherent pointlessness of my religion and admit that it is stupid; or immediately countering all my explanations with Biblical studies that I already know about and treating me as though I know nothing about religion despite the fact that it is, you know, my major.
I haven't hit anybody yet, but I am starting to get really, really twitchy.
(And this isn't even touching on the people--not friends, luckily--who have expressed the opinion that because I am Christian and hope to be a priest at some future point, I am obligated to hate gay people, liberal people, minority groups, and sex, and also that it is not possible for me to secretary of the gay/straight alliance here on campus [which I am] or to believe in scientific theories like evolution [which I do], and that it is funny to make offencive religious comments solely to be offencive, which isn't actually offencive to me because I am not invested in them. >_> The reason it bothers me when my friends do it is because they're my friends.)
The other thing that I want to navelgaze about is bulimia. I was fourteen when I started to develop my eating disorder. I was sixteen when I was diagnosed, and I clung, I swear to God, like a drowning girl to my diagnosis, which was EDNOS: eating disorder not otherwise specified. The reason this diagnosis was so important to me was because it wasn't bulimia.
The thing about having an ED is that is basically a means of transforming your entire life into an exercise in shame, and how much shame you can avoid and how much you can withstand. Part of the reason I got an EDNOS diagnosis was because I lied to the doctor diagnosing me. This is the thing: bulimia is the "bad" disorder. Anorexia is the good one.
If you're anorexic, it means you aren't eating. Textbook anorexics, and media portrayals of anorexics, are girls who are skinny. Bulimia? Bulimia is the fat girl who eats too much. It doesn't matter if you're purging, you don't tend to lose weight on bulimia. It doesn't matter that it's destroying your metabolism, your bones, your vitamin balance, and your life. Bulimia is more shameful than anorexia. Even the word sounds fat.
Bear in mind that this is speaking as someone who was almost definitely bulimic. For an anorexic, the picture probably looks way different. But from this end of the table, bulimia is bad, anorexia is good, because anorexic girls get skinny. I used to pray to God at night to make me anorexic. If I were anorexic, I wouldn't eat at all, and that would mean I wouldn't have to spend five hours a day treadmilling. It would mean I wouldn't have to kneel over the toilet trying desperately to throw up (turns out I can't trigger my own gag reflex! God knows I tried). In my head, anorexic girls were beautiful, even if they were sick: at least their sickness paid off. Mine was definitely not paying off.
I'm a few months short of twenty now, and this is the first time I've been able to admit to anyone--myself, anyone--that I was bulimic. Until last night, when people asked about my eating disorder, I would say EDNOS; in fact, sometimes I would even lie and say anorexic, just to avoid the shame.
I am finally saying, definitively, that neither disorder is shameful. No disorder is shameful. Also, neither disorder is good. An eating disorder is a bad sickness that comes to you, sometimes as a present from society and cultural norms, sometimes from a need for control when you are feeling like you have none (as mine did); but it doesn't make you a good person or a bad person, and you can't measure your self-worth by it.
So: yes. I was bulimic. I'm much better now. I hardly ever weigh myself, I keep my exercise to what's fun and pleasant, and I don't measure it (thirty minutes or two hours or five hours, they're all paths to making judgements); I eat what I want and not what I think I should, because when you get to a point where you actually listen to your body instead of your crazy brain or Cosmopolitan, your body is actually pretty communicative. Which doesn't mean I don't have bad days, because God knows I do. But I'm not ashamed of myself all the time. And I can go beautiful places without thinking that I despoil them with my presence, I can have fun with my friends without thinking that I don't deserve that because of my fatness.
I would never judge anyone based on what she eats, or what she weighs, and I do my best not to perpetuate our culture of food-based shame, because I lived that shame my every waking moment for three horrific years, and nobody deserves to have to go through that, not one of the beautiful women of the world with all their potential.
Also? Don't lie to the doctor. Unless you have mine, 'cause he really did suck.
Also also: I managed to find a temporary therapist until mine comes back. She seems nice. We have our first meeting Tuesday. She got my name right on the first try! Best of all, she is FREE. Ha ha ha.
Also also also, I bought myself a Bruce Springsteen CD. It was only five dollars! >_>
First of all, I am currently holding the position of being one of the only religious people in my group of friends. For the most part this isn't a problem. I am not the kind of Christian who has an interest in the conversion of others, and in general my friends are not the kind of people who look down on Christians. But--and this is the thing that is really frustrating me--we do not appear to have established that just because I find some religious humour humourous I will not get offended if people make offencive religious jokes.
I mean, I don't want to seem humourless and unable to deal with the issues inherent in my religion. But there are jokes that are funny and there are jokes that are outright upsetting to me, and a couple of my friends are apparently neither able to make that distinction nor to read my body language and interpret from it that I am not finding the situation funny. It's really awkward, too, because I don't want to get up in anybody's face and say "Hey, excuse me, that's not funny to me," but I also don't feel comfortable listening to some of this stuff. And God knows I have tried just leaving the table, but, again, apparently my body language is not clear enough, because these same people are not making that connexion.
Moreover, beyond humour, I am dealing with the fact that a lot of people are kind of bringing their grievances with Christianity to me (I think as a combination of my being religion and having a Judeo-Christian religious major [for anybody who's not aware, I changed my major to pre-seminary last semester!]), and expecting me to answer bigtime philosophical and religious questions and discrepancies within Christianity, and then having one of two reactions: either reacting as if my explanation is not good enough and as if, since my explanation isn't good enough, I should accept the inherent pointlessness of my religion and admit that it is stupid; or immediately countering all my explanations with Biblical studies that I already know about and treating me as though I know nothing about religion despite the fact that it is, you know, my major.
I haven't hit anybody yet, but I am starting to get really, really twitchy.
(And this isn't even touching on the people--not friends, luckily--who have expressed the opinion that because I am Christian and hope to be a priest at some future point, I am obligated to hate gay people, liberal people, minority groups, and sex, and also that it is not possible for me to secretary of the gay/straight alliance here on campus [which I am] or to believe in scientific theories like evolution [which I do], and that it is funny to make offencive religious comments solely to be offencive, which isn't actually offencive to me because I am not invested in them. >_> The reason it bothers me when my friends do it is because they're my friends.)
The other thing that I want to navelgaze about is bulimia. I was fourteen when I started to develop my eating disorder. I was sixteen when I was diagnosed, and I clung, I swear to God, like a drowning girl to my diagnosis, which was EDNOS: eating disorder not otherwise specified. The reason this diagnosis was so important to me was because it wasn't bulimia.
The thing about having an ED is that is basically a means of transforming your entire life into an exercise in shame, and how much shame you can avoid and how much you can withstand. Part of the reason I got an EDNOS diagnosis was because I lied to the doctor diagnosing me. This is the thing: bulimia is the "bad" disorder. Anorexia is the good one.
If you're anorexic, it means you aren't eating. Textbook anorexics, and media portrayals of anorexics, are girls who are skinny. Bulimia? Bulimia is the fat girl who eats too much. It doesn't matter if you're purging, you don't tend to lose weight on bulimia. It doesn't matter that it's destroying your metabolism, your bones, your vitamin balance, and your life. Bulimia is more shameful than anorexia. Even the word sounds fat.
Bear in mind that this is speaking as someone who was almost definitely bulimic. For an anorexic, the picture probably looks way different. But from this end of the table, bulimia is bad, anorexia is good, because anorexic girls get skinny. I used to pray to God at night to make me anorexic. If I were anorexic, I wouldn't eat at all, and that would mean I wouldn't have to spend five hours a day treadmilling. It would mean I wouldn't have to kneel over the toilet trying desperately to throw up (turns out I can't trigger my own gag reflex! God knows I tried). In my head, anorexic girls were beautiful, even if they were sick: at least their sickness paid off. Mine was definitely not paying off.
I'm a few months short of twenty now, and this is the first time I've been able to admit to anyone--myself, anyone--that I was bulimic. Until last night, when people asked about my eating disorder, I would say EDNOS; in fact, sometimes I would even lie and say anorexic, just to avoid the shame.
I am finally saying, definitively, that neither disorder is shameful. No disorder is shameful. Also, neither disorder is good. An eating disorder is a bad sickness that comes to you, sometimes as a present from society and cultural norms, sometimes from a need for control when you are feeling like you have none (as mine did); but it doesn't make you a good person or a bad person, and you can't measure your self-worth by it.
So: yes. I was bulimic. I'm much better now. I hardly ever weigh myself, I keep my exercise to what's fun and pleasant, and I don't measure it (thirty minutes or two hours or five hours, they're all paths to making judgements); I eat what I want and not what I think I should, because when you get to a point where you actually listen to your body instead of your crazy brain or Cosmopolitan, your body is actually pretty communicative. Which doesn't mean I don't have bad days, because God knows I do. But I'm not ashamed of myself all the time. And I can go beautiful places without thinking that I despoil them with my presence, I can have fun with my friends without thinking that I don't deserve that because of my fatness.
I would never judge anyone based on what she eats, or what she weighs, and I do my best not to perpetuate our culture of food-based shame, because I lived that shame my every waking moment for three horrific years, and nobody deserves to have to go through that, not one of the beautiful women of the world with all their potential.
Also? Don't lie to the doctor. Unless you have mine, 'cause he really did suck.
Also also: I managed to find a temporary therapist until mine comes back. She seems nice. We have our first meeting Tuesday. She got my name right on the first try! Best of all, she is FREE. Ha ha ha.
Also also also, I bought myself a Bruce Springsteen CD. It was only five dollars! >_>