phantom pain.

there's this phenomenon among amputees that's known as phantom pain.  in the days and weeks that follow amputation, patients often feel pain (or itching or burning or simply a presence) in their no longer existing limbs. because the limbs do not exist, neither does the pain. hence the name "phantom".

according to the mayo clinic, codeine and morphine are options for some sufferers of phantom pain. but what i don't like about narcotics, as opposed to the myriad of other available treatments, is that they alter the patient's awareness and clarity and presence (and can just threaten overall health) all to escape them from pain that doesn't  even exist. although these medications bring temporary relief, if the victim of phantom pain is ever going to experience true freedom, he or she is going to have to face the discomfort and difficulty and longevity of one of the alternative treatment options that will treat the pain at its source, that will get rid of it for good.

as i wandered through a dismal week of bad body image last week, i found the core of my being crying out for some relief. i wanted nothing more than to dive into the depths of my disorder, to shut out the screaming voices that have tortured me to no end.




as i was plotting my return to the arms of my disorder, i remembered what has happened before and what would happen again. i remembered standing in front of the mirror at the lowest weight i would ever reach, tears streaming down my face because what i saw still wasn't thin. i remembered how good it felt to devote myself to the single cause of starvation, how quiet the voices would get when they had me where they wanted me, i thirsted for the quietness, but i realized that the quietness was a sense of relief from an excruciating pain with no basis for existence. i also realized that the quietness would only remain as long as i was actively starving. if at any moment i sought some semblance of satisfaction with myself and the mirror, some strand of truth, the voices would chime in and spur me on to further destruction.


i realized that treating my body as if it were as big as the false reflection before me would be the same thing as a victim of phantom pain treating their non-existent, aching limb as if it were actually there.


in other words, starving a body in order to calm a mind is as absurd as

pumping morphine to numb an arm or a leg that doesn't exist.

the only real solution is for the sufferer to stop catering to the false version of his or her body. at first, It may be impossible to bridge the gap between delusion and reality with thoughts or words, so the sufferer must bridge the gap with actions. the amputee has got to get off the morphine and move forward. the anorexic has got to trust that her perspective is skewed and she's got to keep eating and living and waiting for the day that some ray of truth comes shining in her window.

when i look in the mirror, the girl i see is fat. as maddening as it is to see her staring back at me, taunting me and telling me i'm worth nothing, i know somewhere, deep down, that the fat i'm feeling and seeing and hating isn't there. it's a phantom- an illusion cast before me by my disorder. as sweet a relief as acting in my disorder would bring, i refuse to live my life according to a perception that isn't real. 

thankfully, my phantom pain is not constantly at its worst. this morning, i was thankful to wake up to a version of myself in the mirror that was a little easier to swallow. so i'm going to keep living and eating and i'm going to wait until the phantom in the mirror goes away for good. until then, life is sweet enough to manage, and it's certainly better than the alternative :)

love,


ea

1. (see definition 1 above): for most women, a size zero does not only denote the absence of magnitude and quantity of a woman's physique, but of the functionality her reproductive, integumentary and cardiovascular systems; her mental focus and clarity; her relationships; her sense of humor; her outside interests, hobbies and talents; who she is. 

2. (see definitions 2 & 3 above): the number zero is the first of many numbers which were created by man to achieve some cohesive sense of order and quantity. leave it to our culture to seek redemption and self-worth in our own number system, rather than the multitude of beauty (or lack thereof for which we might serve as vessels of restoration if we weren't so distracted) our Creator meant for us to enjoy. 

3. (see definition 4 above): why do we think that we will tap into an unending wealth of self-significance by fitting into a size that is called and recognized by a name denoting insignificance?

4. (see definition 5 above): for most women, fitting into a zero means hollowing out the place our hearts and minds once dwelled, creating a starvation-induced absence in which we think that we'll find ourselves. we forget what opinions, thoughts, and needs and wants feel like. when we seek neutrality in our pant size, we must accept neutrality in exchange for individuality as well. 

5. (see definition 6 above): perhaps, the size we so desperately desire to claim as our own is as its definition denotes: an arbitrarily, conveniently assigned label; a puff of air we abandon all else to grasp- only to find our hands empty.

yesterday, i dug the last of the zeroes from my closet and consigned them.  my laptop is currently sitting on a pair of thighs that will never touch the inside of a garment sized zero again. i'm thankful.

love,

EA

clay birds.

when i was in honduras, a couple other women and i joined a mi esperanza founder on a short road trip to a pottery co-op on the el salvador border to restock the pottery we sell in our store.

the pottery is made from natural clay derived from the banks of a nearby river and fired in clay stoves behind its makers houses. the co-op with which mi esperanza partners is comprised solely of women. i spent the day getting to know them. they are golden.

although i had not previously seen its place of origin, i've been viewing/purchasing the pottery ever since i began work with mi esperanza, so i knew which pieces we needed.

as i sifted through a floor full of pottery, searching for the bowls and cups and vases we typically carry, i saw a different piece i'd never seen. it was a small bird with a rounded head and a sloping neck that widened and shallowed into a triangular body. it sat a cool smooth weight in my palm and stared peacefully from two dotted eyes on either side of its rounded head that preceded a barely protruding beak. it was striped with off-white lines that swirled down its neck and around its body and across its back.

a honduran woman had artfully drawn each of the swirls with her hands. the bird was one of a kind. there never had been, nor would there ever be, another like it.
I looked at the bird and smiled. I would absolutely be taking one home.

When we'd gathered all we were planning to buy, the stocky Honduran woman in charge of the business smiled warmly, lifting her forearm to wipe the shine from her brow before beginning to count our number of pieces.

While we waited, the girls and I made our way behind the house, startling black speckled hens with our steps. The ground below was dusty and rough with rocks and twisted roots; but the dust, as if pouring itself forth into regeneration, led into lushness upon lushness. First was green grass, followed by dew-dripping crop rows from which black tree trunks rose, the fullness of their green leaves like an open curtain. The leaves gave way to rising grey mountains which stood in untouchable friendship, as if they protected the lenca potters and their houses and the woman and child across the street scrubbing clothes on a washboard.

I breathed a moment and looked, then stepped to shed on the left. The floor was smooth concrete. The roof overhead was held up by four posts, the walls open. Aside from a small path that'd been cleared, piles and tubs full of yet-to-be finished pottery lined the shed floors. There were thousands of pieces, all of them light, wet looking grey.

I came to a yellow tub and leaned forward to see inside. The bottom was filled with birds like the one I'd held moments before, none of them with vibrant designs, but identically empty-eyed, each of them the same, murky grey as the pieces surrounding.

The birds stared blankly from their sides. To look at them was to lose sight of what they were, to understand them as a pointed pile of grey inside a plastic yellow circle. If not for remembering their future as polished cordovan individuals with designs of hand-drawn ivory, to look at them would be a minor heartbreak.

I considered the vastness of difference between the finished birds. No two were alike, but all were equally beautiful.

I considered the facelessness of the birds at my feet, and I remembered the dull monotony with which I lived each day in my disorder. I wanted to make myself exquisite and unique and beautifully alone; i wanted to be special and unordinary and above; but my very attempt at redemption reduced me to a diagnoses, a single number out of nearly 10 million females in my country alone who were waking up and thinking the very same thoughts. I stripped myself of me. I was empty-eyed and grey, a clay bird in a pile of identicals.

When for a moment, I understood what I'd done, understood what I was missing, and stepped into the fear, it was as if a kind Honduran women in dirty, black Mary janes and once-white apron reached into the tub and pulled me out. She dusted me off and rinsed me in water. She painted me with stripes and swirls and shapes- a design no other bird would ever have. She made me beautiful.

But to set the designs would require a time of firing inside the hot kiln behind her house. Once emerged from the flames, the designs would no longer be painted, they would be an irremovable part of me forever.

In many ways, recovery is like a hot kiln. It is uncomfortable and sweaty and sometimes it burns. But recovery, if maintained, will make each of us the person we are- the person we thought we would find in the grey.

Love,

ea

please accept my deepest apologies...

...as i've taken more than the brief hiatus i promised two posts ago. 

i was not relapsing, as i fear some of you may have suspected. i was recovering from a case of stubborn honduran diarrhea/fever which was followed by vacation bible school which was accompanied by a terrible cold (who gets a cold when its 120 degrees out?).

anyways...i'm back now.

my mom has kind of a terrible back that likes to wedge itself out of place time-to-time. it decided to wedge the other day and in an effort take better care of herself than usual (this stuff runs in families), she's actually staying off her feet, and asked that i help her by running a few of her errands today. for whatever reason, she didn't like when i referred to it as "doing her bidding".

one of the tasks scratched onto the post-it she gave me was to run by her place of employment (which happens to be my former high school) and pick up a few papers.

i always feel a little bit like i might have a nervous breakdown when i visit the old campus. it's just hard to reconcile my present self with my eating disorder's old stomping grounds.

i attempted to mask my discomfort from myself by defiantly swerving my car into a handicapped parking space. i'm an alum, i thought, i can park where i want.


i walked inside to the office and peaked down the hall, searching for the familiar face with access to the papers i was getting for my mom. moments later, her large brown eyes appeared from a small back office and we greeted one another.

"you look great!" she said knowingly.

to my pleasant surprise, i found myself happy that'd she'd said so. to my pleasant surprise, i felt my mouth turn upward into a smile and thank her, as if her words were a nice addition to a day with which i would otherwise have been perfectly content.

as i walked to my car with a manila folder newly tucked under my arm, i realized what people were really trying to say all those times when they said i looked "better" or "healthy" or "beautiful" or "glowing".

no one was trying to tell me i'd gained weight or that i was looking chubby or fat or any of the other irrational things i thought.

i thought about seeing a person after a measure of time and noticing that the person had gained a substantial amount of weight that they did not necessarily need. i thought about how dumb it would be to tell someone that they looked great if they'd gained a whole bunch of unnecessary weight and how most people would just say nothing.

in other words, the countless number of "you look so much better"s i've gotten and resented would never have formed as thoughts in any of their speakers' minds if i had been fat or an unneeded number of pounds larger when they said them.


what i took as flaming arrows that seared my heart and twisted my thoughts were really just people who loved me wanting to say, "hey- you didn't look so good for awhile- but now it doesn't hurt me to look at you- i see that you've experienced some victory and i wanted you to know that i noticed because i'm sure it's been hard."


fellow strugglers- if people are relieved to see us "healthy", so much so that they speak it aloud, then we must have looked worse than we knew before, and we must look far better than we know we look now.

it's good to be back.

love,

ea

some lovely facts.

1. i changed my plane ticket and therefore, am still in honduras

2. mi esperanza's awesome jewelry designer is here this week. we are collaborating on several projects and im learning lots from her.

3. tomorrow, some cool people and i are visiting a beautiful place full of artesian shops known as Valle de Angeles.

4. i have successfully incorporated a number of new words into my working spanish vocabulary.

5. my hondo-mom {lori connell: the woman in charge of mi esperanza} made banana walnut pancakes with nutella for dinner. we ate them outside and enjoyed them immensely.

of one mind.

im currently sitting in "my" bedroom in my missionary friends' house in honduras, listening to early birds chirp outside my open window and taking comfort in the humming breeze of the large white box fan at the right-hand foot of my bed.

beneath me is a patchwork quilt of a hundred different colors and behind me is a stack of feather pillows. i am exceedingly happy.

ive spent the past twelve days working again with mi esperanza, designing a couple of new products, loving the women we work with, and spending lots of time with the founder of mi esperanza, one of the very best people I know.

i can't excuse the past 12 day's lack of blogging with the fact that ive been busy. although I have been on somewhat of a constant go, i would be lying if i said that i haven't had plenty of time for writing at night; this is a third world country and im a young female- there's not a whole lot i can safely be up to after dark.

I hope that no one takes this wrongly, or assumes what i am about to say as anything more than temporary, but the reason that ive chosen to neglect the blog for nearly two weeks is simple: i haven't wanted to think about eating disorders.

my eating disorder was such a measure of who i was for so long, that when I went into recovery, I found myself wondering who I was supposed to be. for a time, i think it was necessary and i think it was healthy to just know myself as someone in recovery from an eating disorder. the absence of my disorder left me with little else to which i could cling. i thought just as much about recovery as id thought of my disorder- both were full time jobs- and both required constant care and maintenance.

ive often wondered about the distant future- when my recovery will be a fact about me, rather than the core of me. I used to fear the time that those days would come true- subconsciously imagining myself suspended in space with nothing to ground me, nothing solid to grab- when I though of them.

but here in honduras, i am wondering if those days are still so far away.

when im soaking in this time with some of the most precious souls I know, ive found that to divide my attention, to anchor a portion of my thoughts to my own recovery, to recovery in general, would not solidify who i am as one might think, but would dilute the kind of focus I want to give.

I am forever shaped by the road that ive walked, but im beginning to see that it is not where ive come from nor where im going that makes me worth being where i am right now.

i have not blogged for two weeks, because although my actions have continued to mirror that of a recovered lifestyle, my thoughts and my heart have been on the work here.

i am no less passionate about recovery from eating disorders. in some ways, i think i've found a new level of passion for recovery in my desire to separate my thoughts from recovery itself.

this is by no means the end of my blog. ill be back next week, but until then, i hope no one minds if i simply don't think about it.

ill still be me {if not, ill be more of me} when i get back.

love from Honduras,

ea...p.s...see a picture of mi esperanza's newest product below:

i've got a lot of things i want to say...

..so it's going to be hard to narrow them all down into one cohesive post, but i suppose i'll try.

i've spent this past week at the beach with my family. i always think a lot at the beach. i think its because my family is one of those families that likes to keep a lot of things the same. so we've essentially enjoyed the same basic beach vacation in the same condo on the same beach since i was 14. living the same week over and over, one time each year, is quite the thought-provoking tradition, as i can consolidate all the past year's changes and growth into my thoughts and feelings and responses and behaviors of this one week and compare it to its past versions.

i was walking down the beach early yesterday morning and talking with God. I found myself thinking that this was the best feeling in the world- communing with my father and best friend- hearing the heart-swelling whispers of His spirit inside me alongside the waves that He created, crashing at my feet.

my mind shifted, as it often does, to my disorder. and i thought that sometimes it felt like the best feeling in the world too. i spent a lot of time attempting to cater to my disorder and my life simultaneously- living ** or so pounds underweight, taking downward dives every so often, only to pull myself out for another few months' until i could stand it no longer and i gave in to the compulsion to dip down into worse danger again. each slip deeper into my disorder was a thrilling sense of rightness with myself and with the world. each lowering heart rate i counted, each grave look on my doctor's face when i was in high school, each walk up to my college dorm my junior year that i wasn't sure i was going to be able to finish gave me a feeling like i was holding a kite and it had suddenly caught wind- i was doing what i loved and i was doing it well. it was the best feeling in the world.

as lovely a feeling as immersion in one's greatest downfall can be, and as unpleasant as life so often is, I began to wonder how it is that anyone ever makes it out of anything. i concluded that the best way to describe the journey to recovery {from anything} is as a realization of how much one loves the thing one is supposed to hate; an admission that there are two "best feelings in the world". the one of them is real and true- it is a summation of all things felt and experienced- it allows and celebrates the feeling of all feelings- it is imperfect and it is human but it is life. the other, though safe and unpainful and avoidant, is a phony, hollow existence that if not death itself, is a direct route to it.

i'd been looking at the houses up the sand banks as i thought. my mind stilled and i shifted my gaze straight down the shoreline. The sun was barely out of the eastern most horizon. It shone low and bright on the morning waves. They were luminescent like molten silver, rising to a bright boil and crashing into the glittering sand. the stacks of distant high rises were a foggy, majestic gray, standing against the sky like a holy city, its only road the silver shore.

i turned and stood with my feet wide apart, facing outward to the endless ocean. to my left was the unearthly beauty of the rising sun on sea- a momentary manifestation of divine promise- what i will forever believe was in some way, a preview of my eternal home. to my right was a beach- it was a watercolor palette of blue and sand with white caps and a brushed blue sky. it was lovely. but compared to the regal sight to my left, to turn and to walk to the right would have been an utter waste.

it isn't often that we're allowed a black-and-white sort of picture of the choices we have in life. many times, we know little more than what's good and what's best, and we're afraid to choose what's best because we only know that the people we admire and God and everyone else think its best, and we're afraid that we'll give up what we know and love, only to find that what was supposed to be better isn't better at all. 

but as i stood there, staring out, turning my head to the left then to the right, i felt i was experiencing the way that many of our choices would look if we were able to see their consequences beforehand. 

but the thing is, we aren't able to see the outcome of our decisions before we make them. to really gain anything in life, (no pun intended) we have to submit ourselves to a measure of risk. we have to risk losing what we think we love, risk feeling what we thought would kill us to feel, risk doing what we thought would destroy us in order to find that for which we were really made to live. 

i suppose what distinguishes one "best feeling in the world" from another is identifying what we really want our lives to mean. i could refuse to eat another bite for the remainder of today, and i could put on my shoes and make my way to the elliptical and i could stay there and let the euphoric numbness mount and it would feel like the best feeling in the world. but i'm not living for numbness and i'm no longer living to be thin, so as good as immersing myself in my disorder may feel, it couldn't possibly be the best feeling in the world, because it is a path completely opposite from the one that i've chosen to take. 

sometimes, it's hard to face life without our downfalls, but it'd be harder to walk their shores knowing somewhere deep down that we were making the mistake of a lifetime.

love,

ea