Save Sofia, Save Ourselves.

does anyone remember this lovely girl?

it's okay if you don't.
i forgive you. 
just go read my post: How to Save a Life. 
For those of you who weren't around or don't remember, this is Sofia.
Sofia has an eating disorder. 
She needs our help. 
Badly.
Back in October, I asked you guys to check out her fundraising page because she was trying to raise money  to get into treatment. The same treatment facility that I trust because I, personally, was able to find a peaceful place to being my recovery there. 
Starting today, I'm doing a Momofuku giveaway (scroll to the bottom of this post for details), and begging you to donate.
You see, after she did some fundraising and after Sofia's father took out money from his savings, Sofia was able to go into treatment like we all were hoping she would. Phew.
But her insurance cut out super early again. Big Surprise there, right? 
She also is still in the appeals process. It's kind of a bummer. 
Sofia has worked so hard and come so far, even in the midst of her debilitating mental illness.
Here is some of Sofia's wisdom about recovery that I think you all deserve to hear:

                                             “it was then that I realized, my moment of clarity wasn’t 

 going to come. That moment in movies where the heavens part and the addict wakes up and realizes their illness is 

going to kill them and it scares them into changing their behavior. I mean I’ve had little moments like that. Where I saw the reality of my situation and it terrified me. I’ve had moments where I come out of it enough to realize the insanity of my behavior and the seriousness of my medical status and the very potentially fatal consequences of my actions…and this is part of why I realized that I needed to reach out and find a way to come up with this money, because I will die before I'm just startled  enough to just stop."

[she is implying here that she needs proper treatment, she understands that she can't do this on her own]

And you see, all of this is why Sofia inspires me. She's a fighter.

She sets off a spark in me. 

She makes me think of this quotation:

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela

I wouldn't ask you all to take a moment of your time, and possibly a cent  from your wallet if this didn't mean something. Sofia means something. I know it. 
But she's just one person, right?
What's the point of giving money to just one person?
You might be asking yourself this question. 
I know i did.
Here's the thing, though. While physically yes, Sofia is, in fact, just one person in this universe of ours, she means more than that. 
really, she does. 
Don't believe me?
I see myself Sofia. 
I also see you in Sofia.
Yes, you, you, the one  reading this right at this very moment. 
Sofia represents all of us when we are at the very bottom of our ropes. the end of the line. desperate. pleading. needy.
this, my friends, is not a fun place for anyone to be. But we've all been there. 
I have. I will again. 
You have. And you probably will again, too.
Your low and my low probably don't look the same. 
Maybe the last time you were at the end of your rope, it was because a loved one was sick. Or your dog was lost. Or maybe you lost a job, or a friend, or maybe you just spilled some coffee and stubbed your toe and just wanted a shoulder to cry on.

Was somebody there to help you up?
Really, think about it.
Or did you do fix it, get better, get well, become happier, yourself again all on your own?
Was it the smile of a kind stranger that knocked you back into reality? Or maybe a husbands' firm hug?
Whatever it was, I hope you were not alone. I hope that somebody helped you. I hope that that inspires you to help Sofia. Sofia is in all of us. We just need to see it. 
The question then is, really, will you help yourself?


here's the link to her fundraiser: http://www.giveforward.com/stillfighting


and one last quotation from Sofia:

                       "I really don’t know what more I can do but be totally honest and be persistent…and not 

                       worry about what people think about this persistence [to raise money], because the 

                       persistence is for my life…I can tell you about my passion to help the world, I can tell you 

                       that I understand that I am just one person, no more or less important or special than the 

                       next, but that I also believe we are all worth saving."

with love and gratitude,

Rose

EDIT:
GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED, AS THE TECHNICAL FUNDRAISING TIME IS OVER. If you still feel compelled to promote or donate please, by all means, go ahead. That would be what they might call noble. ;)

*

things i love. (in no particular order.)

french fries. 

i mean, who doesn't love the feel of a spicy, crispy, fried stick o' salted potato on their tongue? 
i especially love that i can eat a few with friends, and now can be spared the fear of instantly gaining ten pounds and don't have to order a bucket- load of guilt and self-loathing on the side. 

love, mom.

i loved chuckling at this note my mom left me yesterday, because she got so crazed and stressed before she had to run off to dinner that she felt the need to remind me six times to please walk the dog (i received an email and a few text messages too, mind you.)

eating pb& j (well actually almond butter and jam, but who's asking?) for dinner. well, with a side of chocolate, duh.

 clothing that pretends it belongs it the army. 

S'mores!!!
(recipe at bottom)
i decided to write a post about some things that i love. i've said this before, but i love a lot of things.
my inspiration for this post was more so that i've been having a kind of hard week, getting back into school and all, and i wanted to remind myself of all the things that are still great in my life. 
I've been having a lot of anxiety lately, and today my therapist asked me what things do i do (healthy things, of course) that can help me relieve my anxiety. The main thing i  thought of was blogging.
i freaking love blogging. I loved doing my last post (written mainly by Amanda, of course) on friendship and eating disorders, and i loved hearing all the feedback on it. I so enjoy getting into conversations with people about topics that we have in common like this, and where else would i be able to hear strangers' stories, or take their words of advice?

and, i've said this before i think, but i want to help people. i love getting questions from readers or people who stumbled on my blog about recovery and the likes. it makes me so thrilled when people reach out, as if they are taking a step towards recovery, and i love being a part of that.

Now, call me nosy, but i adore reading other blogs. I mean how much fun is it to live, eat OIAJ, go to foodbuzz, run a marathon or practice yoga and a million other things (vicariously* ;) ) all in one day?!

it's pretty amazing, i'd say.

All of this, and feeling supported and like there are other people who i genuinely like, or who i "get" who "get" me out in the world, is the thing that keeps me the most sane, even on my crazy days.

and i'm so grateful for that.

hope you all are having a good week!

Not your Papas' Campfire S'mores 

(recipe adapted from Sprinkles of Parsley)

you will need:

15 (about 8oz?)graham crackers

11/3 Cup butter 

chocolate chips(i used plain-old semi-sweet Nestle, but any kind would be fine)

mini-marshmallows!

recipe:

preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

put all the graham crackers in a plastic bag (or two). mash them up using the bottom side of a measuring cup (or something else, idk) until all that's left are crumbs

add butter and mix until it's evenly distributed

spread in 8X8 baking pan, sprayed with non-stick spray. (line the pan with a sheet or two of tin foil that is also sprayed on the top, so you can transfer the s'mores and then get them off the foil w/o trouble!)

dump on the choc chips and then marshmallows! stick in the oven for 20 minutes. 

voila! instant campfire. now anyone know any good folk songs we can sing? :)

use your words & eat your food

DON'T eat your words and use your food. k?


I wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. Your words helped me more than you know. 
I've hopped back on the recovery bandwagon and am feeling much better because of it.
I'll post more later, after i go out to dinner & hopefully write my religion essay but i wanted to share this poem that i wrote with all of you. 
I had to write a poem based on Allen Ginsberg's Howl for Carl Solomon for my english class.
If you haven't read it, Howl is a great poem. Ginsberg writes about the suffering he experienced and it speaks to the "outcasts" of American society (those who are more focused on love and meaning in life, rather than material "success") and he does it beautifully. We had to write a poem "to someone who understands" (you). I wrote to to a dear friend of mine who i met in treatment. I changed the name for the sake of her privacy, but i thought you all might appreciate it.

Whisper

For Sarah Halper

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by hunger,

Fakeness, lonesome, searching for something beautiful.

Abandoned and unloved, they paint their mouths shut with silence.

Whispery silhouettes run down the sidewalks of insanity,

And stop to glare at grotesque fun-house mirror projections

Of fat and tired limbs,

Glistening with the sweat of hate.

Shells of women who sit on concrete

Smoking endless cigarettes, burning up their lungs

As payback for continuing to swallow air

Organs stubbornly gripping to life

Even when a fragile heart patters like early rain

It beats at the wrong

Moments.

They damn their stupid hearts

For beating at all.

They drink whole pots of coffee

Black liquor, free of sins.

Poured into sad paper cups

During early hours of black mornings

When the rest of the population

Finds solace in quiet minds, minds that

Have not forgotten how to rest, to dream.

Sleepless with self-loathing and malnutrition

They grip fire-hot mugs

Blue-boned fingers, numb and cold

Sipping freedom liquid.

Girls who spend all the seconds

Of melancholy

Photographing mental x-rays

Of beauty beyond their grasp.

Who look at dirt and see holiness,

God and redemption incarnate, sad skeletons.

Twenty thirty and forty-somethings

Trapped in the pain of adolescence

Who never found their way out

Of uncertainty and un-belonging.

Stuck in a sea of mental agony

Riding waves of want

Trampled by harsh, un-caring waters

Hitting the ocean floor over and over again

Choking on salt, gasping for breath

They flail their arms in vain

And No-one sees them drowning.

They hunger for love and affection

Skip lunch, dine on crackers and wine.

Or gorge themselves on cakes of saints,

Stuff themselves to the gills with counterfeit care.

The rumble of their bellies, the pangs in bed at night

Fails to make loneliness seem less Encompassing.

Sarah, I’m with you at midnight

When the crack of light dawns on your kitchen floor

And all before you, you see breads and soups and chocolate

The beginnings and end of your love.

I’m with you in Colorado,

When you play houseguest as your Norwegian father

A connoisseur of disaster

Offers you the finest cheeses,

Not knowing that all you wanted was a second glance.

I’m with you when you read my words

And your mind insists they don’t apply to you

That nobody knows you, that you are not one of us.

I’m with you in Los Angeles

Where hippies disguise themselves as buddahs

And bow down to vegan, soul-less gods,

Chanting the words that will save you.

I’m with you in Santa Monica

Where you hide from yourself

And look to better women of the past

Who might teach you how not to need, not to be so much.

I’m with you inside heavy- closed doors,

When you cry salty tears,

Asking anyone to make you less.

I’m with you in Agoura Hills

Where hypocrisy and beauty made us sick to our stomachs

And we were terrified, tranquilized, frozen in time.

What is beauty? You will ask.

Beauty is the warmth of your cheek

As you embrace my shaking body.

Beauty is the flash of your teeth when you laugh.

It’s the crackle of the fire near my chilled feet.

Beauty eludes us, dear Sarah,

In our search for something unconditional.

It’s a receding horizon, a firefly we’ll never catch.

A glow we can only see in front of us

Never to be held, contained within a see-through jar.

If beauty is love

And love is food

Well then, we are screwed, you say.

I bite my tongue before I suggest

That perhaps, you should come for supper.

Recovery Essay

As promised, here is my essay. It's kind of awful and incoherent and I'm really not sure that he's going to understand it but maybe i'll proof read it tomorrow if I'm a little more lucid. Or make any changes that ya'll suggest (if you do it before 1 pm NYC time!). We had to put a Huck Finn quote at the beginning as a sort of epigraph. Mine is the moment where Huck decides to help Jim get away, even though he's terribly conflicted.

Warning: It's kind of terribly long for a blog post. Feel free to skip if you don't feel like being bored out of your mind. ;)

“It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because, I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied it for a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’ ­– and tore it up… and if I could think of anything worse, I’d do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog” (Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 223).

           

            There is no one moment that I can say it all started. No single glance towards the mirror. No stinging comments. No terrible, abusive father. I can’t give you a concrete answer to the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, or ‘when’, and certainly not the ‘why’. What I can give you is a lot of blurs. Blurs that mesh together and go from dark to light to dark to lighter and back to dark again. And the blurs eventually meander over to the lighter side, hopefully to stay, each step precarious, toes checking for quicksand or faulty rocks, just waiting to slide off a steep cliff.

            It’s hard to remember most of the facts. I can remember the feelings, or the lack thereof- the numbness. The pain. I can remember the frenzy to get out of the pain. I can remember the knots in my stomach as I sat in classroom chairs, staring blankly out at the world, counting the minutes until I could escape. My stomach would be twisting and turning in knots, my brain obsessing over food, my body begging me to eat something with all the power it could muster. I would watch the clock and jiggle my foot and anxiously wait until I could run out and do what I knew would help me escape. I could buy food -- lots and lots of food, and eat it as fast as I could and then throw it up. I’ll go back and forth from the mess of the kitchen to my sticky bathroom floor until my skin is pale, my temples are pounding, and my heart is racing ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom.   I'll go and lie face- down in bed, exhausted. Other days, I would sit alone in my room and makes lists and charts of calories, fat grams and pounds on the scale and obsess for hours. I’d make scrapbooks of pictures of anorexic models. I’d spend hours on the Internet looking at images and reading stories about girls who were sick and sad and didn’t eat. I’d stare at the mirror in disgust, seeing all the things that were wrong with me. I’d run to the scale hidden in my bathroom to hop on and hop off, clenching my jaw, hoping to see the numbers go down. I did anything and everything not to be in the world, to find a way out, to build a reality separate from everything I was afraid of.

            I remember those days in a blur. They were pain and sorrow and neediness and fear all wrapped up in my mind and made a little bit more tolerable by the insanity of an eating disorder. I don’t like thinking about, or writing about those times. Something about it feels unsafe. I don’t want to get to close. I fear that closeness may leave me teetering on the edge of a building and I can’t look too far down, or I might loose my footing, slip, and fall. It would be a long, long way down.

            What I want to talk about is the world where I live now. And how I stumbled all the way here. These days are different. And it’s taken a lot to get here. I still have a ways to go. I guess I’ll start at the beginning, although, to be honest, I’m not sure I know where exactly that is.

            The thing about recovering from an eating disorder is that it is, in fact, simple: you eat. The thing that is not so simple about it is everything that happens when you do. An eating disorder was the way I kept a precarious grip on life. It held me together, albeit minimally. When I let it go, I felt everything fall disastrously into pieces, and I was back exactly where I started, and with a few more wounds to show for it.  

            I knew that I didn’t want to die, but I also wasn’t particularly sure I wanted to live. I thought I’d give living a try, though, and if it just “wasn’t for me” I could go back. So, I ate. I ate and ate and ate. Eventually, I cried. The food filled me up and there was no more room inside me to hold back the tears.

            I remember the day that I looked at a slice of pizza and burst into tears. Rachel, a woman who was only a few years older than me, with a sweet smile and a borderline-cheesy-happy disposition, but who inspired me nonetheless, was my therapist. She sat with me when I curled up in a ball of agony, thinking of the pizza in my stomach, imagining it spreading to all the parts of my body and making me fat, as I had always feared I was. (I will learn later, very, very slowly, that “fat” is actually, in my case, a synonym for “unloved, undeserving, and fundamentally "wrong") I wanted it out. Stupid pizza. I wanted it all out. If only I could just throw up, just this one last time, I begged, I’ll never do it again. She came over and gave me a hug. She sat with me and rubbed my back. She braided my hair and told me that I was going to be okay. Eventually, I believed her. 

           Maybe this was the moment where the change happened, where the tables turn and I finally took the right fork in the road, or crumpled up the proverbial letter. I don’t know. What I do know is this: recovery, for me, was about love. It was about needing love, wanting love, and wanting to love others. In first grade, my teacher sent home a report card to my parents that said that I while I was shy, I gave the best hugs of any student in the class. I knew why this was. Whenever I hugged someone, I really meant it. I loved people so much that it scared me. I wanted to love all my friends all the time and get the same in return. When I grew up, and realized that this wasn’t “cool” or acceptable, I learned to cut down. Cut down on the love, and cut down on the food. What I’ve learned now is that I need to tell people I love them and show that when I want to, ask for the love I need in return, and eat and keep all of my food.

            Every time before, when I had wanted to return to the darkness, the black haze of sickness that had cradled me for so long, there was no one there to stop me. Now, this time, I had people who cared about me. Rachel, I knew cared about me. This scared me tremendously, I was afraid of caring back, afraid that I would lose her and be left more desolate and alone than I had before. But it was in those moments, where someone was there again and again, to rub my back because she didn’t want me to hurt myself that I learned to choose the love over the sickness. It was being loved that allowed me to eat my food. That made all the difference.

          After meals, my friend Laura and I used to go out into the backyard of the house we were living in, stand on the porch, and scream. We’d hold hands and wail until our throats were hoarse, trying desperately to get something out of us. We wanted some kind of release, because everything we were feeling was so intense. We knew we had to do this though, to let it all out, even if the neighbors wanted to kill us. It was this, or go back down below, to the numbers and voices and mirrors and porcelain. I think I’ve always been an intense person, and this probably won’t change. I don’t scream out my New York City apartment building now, though, because I’ve gotten used to all the madness that comes with eating, and with living in the world like a real person. Some days I still feel pretty insane. I can feel the intensity well up inside of me like a knot in my stomach and my head starts to go around in dangerous circles. I either find a way to cope with this or I slip and return to the obsessions and the loneliness on a cold, hard, bathroom floor. The thing is, now, when that happens I know how to get back out, I’ve learned how to peel myself off the floor, and go and ask for a hug.

Daddy's Little Girl?

It just occurred to me tonight that I will never be able to do enough to please my father.
I had a really good day and was in a good mood when I met him for dinner.
It was at a really great restaurant that focuses on all different ways of serving mussels, which I love.
Our dinner conversation was really okay for the most part. We were getting along.
We ended up talking a lot about college, and a project that I might (note: may or may not) work on this coming year, in regards to my academic interests and so forth. He really loves this kind of conversation because I was open to discussing the project with him, and he thinks (and is probably correct) that if I do later undertake this project, and if I do it well, then I have a better chance of getting into a top-tier school (which is something he has always wanted me to do).
Anyway, this conversation made him really happy, because the man is obsessed with achievement (that's another story) and would like to have a daughter who continues in his "successful" footsteps.
I felt good talking/thinking about this project, too. (Aside from the huge knot of anxiety that was growing in my stomach while I considered all the work it would entail...) 
I was a little mad at him at dinner because as always happens towards the end of our meals, he started getting anxious cause it was late and he wanted to get the check and go home. At this point, he tends to just zone out and seems completely uninterested in me,  and he just sits back and looks bored.
When we walked out, I told him that he was all out of his bread that he likes to have for breakfast, so we went to the nearby supermarket. He's a picky dude, and there wasn't any of the stuff he really likes, so I offered to just get some of it for him tomorrow afternoon, but he said it didn't matter. We finally got in a cab and he was obviously tired, so I offered to walk the dog for him. He said yes, that would be nice. (Even though I've walked the dog twice today so it's technically his turn). 
When we got home, I was feeding Willy before we went out, when Dad came in and started freaking out because there was no cold water in the fridge. I had taken the large bottle with me this afternoon when I went to the park and forgotten to replace it. He started stomping around the kitchen muttering to me about how it's "not fair" and "why do you always take my water?" and "can't you ever do what I ask you to do?" before he just stomped off to his room.
I broke the fuck down.
I went into my room and hysterically for a few minutes.
It occurred to me that I could try and try and try to do everything I thought would make my Dad happy, but it's never going to be enough. Even if I do get into a top school, and act like the nicest, sweetest most loving daughter and do all the chores I can, there's always going to be something that I just can't do to please him. 
In some way, I'm never good enough for him. 
I need to figure out how to just be "good enough" for myself, because otherwise, I'm going to be like a hamster in a wheel, running and running and getting nowhere.
When I came back from walking Willy I literally cleaned up the entire kitchen (it's been getting messier and messier these past few days cause my mom is out of town and I've been procrastinating doing them and my Dad couldn't ever possibly be bothered with something as trivial as dishes!) 
It just makes me sad that I'm never going to be able to please him.
In a way, though, I'm also glad that I have come to my own realization about this finally, because I think (hopefully!) it will save me a lot of suffering in the future.

Holden is wrong

My night ended up being okay.

The reason? Relationships.

R (my therapist from my old tx center) called me at around 9, right as we were all finishing dinner.

It was so nice to talk to her, even though it wasn't for long.

I think it just made it more clear to me how so much of everything that i'm struggling with right now has a lot to do with my loneliness. 

I love her so much.  I love just being on the phone with her. I always feel so connected and understood. I told her everything that has been going on with me and she said that it made her really sad to think of me, walking to the gym today, crying because I was so lonely and thinking that going to the gym was all I could do to avoid that. 

 She's so crazy also. She started telling me about how she's recently become obsessed with HGTV. Like, what? Ha, that's why I love her. She's just so real. She's such a friend. After I talked to her I didn't want to throw up anymore. Having that relationship is more important to me than throwing up.

I just finished re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. Oh god how I love that book. Holden Caufield, such a sad guy. There's this part where he goes into a phone booth and realizes that he has no one to call. That's how I feel most of the time.  Like I  just want somebody to talk to, somebody to feel connected to, but then I look in my phone and I can't think of anyone who would really want to talk to me at that moment. In the last line of the book Holden says "I think I even miss that goddamn Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody". 

That's wrong though. That's Holden's (and my) fear. That if you get close to people you're going to miss them too much, because you will lose them. But part of recovery is learning how to open up and let people in, even if it's scary. You have to take the risk that you will miss them and feel lonely sometimes, like I did this morning (and like I do most of the time, quite frankly). But you have to do it anyway. You have to love people and let them love you. That's all you can do. 

The Hardest Part

The hardest part of recovery is not the food. It is not eating three meals (and some snacks) every day.
It is not choosing whether or not to have cereal, a bagel, or oatmeal in the morning. It is not deciding whether or not to go for that extra walk, to push yourself hard, even when you're exhausted.
It's also not body image. It's not trying to love myself as I am right now in this moment in this flesh, and not X amt of pounds lost from now. It's not calming myself down when I see someone thinner than I am, who I want to look like.
The hardest part of recovery is facing the truth. It's facing the reality of the situations that brought you to the eating disordered hell that you are trying so hard to escape. It's taking a good, long, almost-blinding look at the painful things that food, exercise & body image were distracting you from.
The hardest part of recovery is looking life squarely in the face, seeing it for what it's worth, and accepting it as is, unconditionally.
For me, that truth has a lot to do with the love that I haven't gotten from the people around me. The pain that I am avoiding with food and weight obsessions is the pain of knowing that sometimes people don't love me the way I want to be loved.
It's the reality that sometimes- no-  most of the time, life is not exactly what we want it to be. People aren't who we want them to be, and our choices are not always the best.


Recovery is looking disappointment square in the face, and then eating and keeping your fucking food anyway.