Let's Talk Bodies! Bodies Bodies Bodies

Inspired by a post by the wonderful Tracey http://justas1am.blogspot.co.uk/ , I decided to follow her lead and do a bit of body blogging. I am much more comfortable with my body than I used to be, and I've made huge strides in eating disorder recovery - and the classic ED paradox of constantly looking at your body, yet never actually managing to see it, because your vision is too full of all the pain and the hurt you're channeling onto your poor old body.

Straight up, life is much better now than is had been for longer than I like to think about, so on a very simple level there's less for me to be dumping on my body and blaming it for. And yet...

The negatives. Let's just say it and be done with it.

LEGS. My legs have been the rather unwilling object of a lot of my perfectionism. They're never thin enough, and I hate the thigh wobble with a passion. I also have a bit of a hang-up about whether or not they touch at the top, how close together I can get my feet before they do, etc - which I know is textbook ED.

HIPS. They're just. so. wide. That's it.

TUMMY. Oh, my poor little tummy. Never flat enough, never small enough. I'm technically ok with it not being flat (there's a womb in there, for fuck sake), but whenever the "flab" sticks out over jeans etc I just want to hide it. And I haven't even got flab, what is wrong with me?!

BUM. Bottom, arse, derriere, glutimus maximus - whatever you call it, everyone I know thinks their is either too flat or too big. This might sound weird but I actually hate the fact that mine is what many would consider ideal. This comes down to being sexy, and the fact that even the thought of it makes me squirm. Obsession with thinness is directly related to this, because thin = good without necessarily =ing sexy. Of course I want to look good, but sexy? Not in a million years. I am incredibly uncomfortable with guys looking at me in a sexual way, but let's face it they're going to whatever you look like! Thanks, instinct. You got my back. NOT.

ARMS. What is it with upper arms? Every photo of me, that's what I look at. -_- I still do that thing, when I'm sat on my bed and I catch myself in the mirror, of resting on my knees because it makes my arms look thinner. Wtf.

FACE. It's lush that I don't think I'm butt-ugly any more, but it's the sexy thing again. Not gonna lie, when I get dressed up and go to a restaurant or whatever, I notice heads turning. And I fucking hate it. I will literally do everything I can to avoid getting up and going anywhere (toilet/outside to answer my phone/etc) because I don't want to walk back in again and be aware of eyes on me. Esdhfljwef *shudder*

Right, that's that done. Now then.
Positives

My body works. It does almost all of the things it's supposed to - ok, my wrists might not really work (RSI, sigh), but they're not totally unusable. I'm sitting here typing, right?

I'm not physically disabled or disfigured. When I say that I'm grateful for this, I don't mean that those who are disabled or disfigured automatically and necessarily have a lower quality of life, because that's clearly BS. But it does make everything so much easier because the whole world is accessible to me, and when I'm travelling I don't have to worry about it. Also as an actor, not being facially/visually disfigured is bloody useful - it shouldn't be, but there it is.

OK, so my thighs wobble. That's because when you shake something, it wobbles. This is not cosmetics, this is basic physics. Ditto for when you sit down - yes, your thighs might suddenly look twice as wide. But hello, that's because they're half as thick. The shape has changed. The amount of fat on them has not.

And while we're talking about wide limbs, let's give a nod to the upper arms. When you hug someone, are they thinking 'gosh I think this person's upper arms are looking 2mm wider than they did before'? No - they're thinking 'mmmmmm hugs :)'.

And as for sexy, well. I might not like the attention, but if anyone dares to act on it without my consent I will sul ki do their ass until they want to crawl back into their mother's womb. And you know what? One of these days I'm gonna fall in love with somebody, and then I shall embark on a meticulously planned campaign of seduction that renders them totally incapable of looking at anyone else without thinking of me. And y'know, if I ever have my heart broken, I've got everything I need to inflict crippling jealousy in the most immature, throwing-toys-out-of-the-pram way possible. So there.

No matter how much I may dislike my body, no matter how much I may use it as a scapegoat for all the other crap going on in my life (if I only lose weight everything will be better! =D ... what? O.o), it does so much that I take for granted. And being able to take a good, well-functioning body for granted is a privilege that I intend to start honouring.

BOOM.
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You really want to leave me a comment with your body loves and hates. Yyyyeah you do. x

F*ck Mirrors!

I'm having a moment here.

I was watching a video about putting sticky notes on your mirror(s) with nice qualities about you, and then I started wondering what if I put a diagram of how mirrors work from a physics point of view, to remind yourself that that's all it is. Light bouncing off cells and surfaces and hitting your eyes upside-down and getting flipped over by your brain etc. How all it can show you is the outermost layer of your body as a living organism.

And then it occurred to me that this whole thing of 'you get what you give', 'you're a good person, people love you' etc is quite a nice parallel. Because you are reflected in other people. The way you treat them affects the way they treat you. The way they think of you might be totally different to the way you think of yourself, but then all they're going on is the way you behave towards them, and that's normally very positive. Because we're good at convincing ourselves that we're useless etc, but if you want to know what you look like, use other people as a mirror. Temperament, personality, honesty, integrity - all personal traits reflect themselves in other people, just the same way light reflects off matter.

So please, everybody reading this, stop obsessing over that piece of f*cking glass and go find out what you really look like. The end.

Managing Healing - what do you do?!

Hey everyone.

As you may know I came back from Russia in the beginning of April because I basically couldn't take any more - stress from my job, stress from other people messing me around, and all of that on top of other things I was trying to deal with to begin with. When I went out, I was still recovering from the huge amount of stress that is Oxford - and let's not forget that the end of that term was marked by an overdose - and had then been put through a pretty awful summer of uncertainty and frustration just trying to get to Moscow in the first place. When I got there, I spent the first couple of months starting to process the overdose, which I hadn't done until then, and that was obviously quite tough.

What it comes down to is that I hadn't had a break since my depression started, not a real break, not the kind of break that you leave feeling actually able to face life again. Any of the experiences that have fallen between 2004 and now would have warranted some healing time, but part of what's made it such a struggle is that I never get that chance, and every new trial comes before the weight of the one before has been lifted. I was kinda feeling like a huge Jenga tower - just about upright, but put one more block on the top, or take one out from the middle, and I'll collapse completely. That's what was happening. That's why I had to finally put my foot down and leave.

I know it was the right decision because as soon as I made it, something changed. I decided I was going to leave on a particularly horrible afternoon, and that evening I was going out to an English club. As I stood in the metro watching the train coming down through the tunnel, I suddenly realised that I had no desire to jump in front of it. Without even being consciously aware of it, that's what I had been thinking every time I stood on a metro platform for I don't even know how long. I had never been planning to do it, it's just that the thought always crossed my mind, in the way that when you pass a holiday advert you momentarily picture yourself on that beach. Realising that it had stopped was what alerted me to how fucked up it was.

I've been home for two months, and I really don't know where the time has gone. I wanted to use it for healing, but I don't know how to go about it. I'm torn between wanting to set myself tasks and goals, and feeling that actually the constant need for tasks and goals might be contributing to this mess in the first place. I'm not very good at letting things happen gradually, following their own course, even though they have been. I'm not nearly as depressed as I was, in fact I've been feeling much better; my eating and more importantly my attitude to eating has changed, and those are both massive results. But I was sensing that within weeks of coming back, so what have I done with the time since then?

I think the worry is legitimate because I'm starting a Masters in October and if I'm not ready for, if I'm not healed enough by then, I honestly don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do. But neither do I know how to ensure that the necessary healing happens. Aaaah!

Anybody there?

Been reading other people's blogs, and keep realising that I've been neglecting my own for quite a long time! Well, I never have posted very regularly. I suppose since I have so few readers I never feel like it's worth it - I have a journal for writing for myself, if the blog is for other people and there aren't any other people then...what's the point, you know? But at the same time, nobody's going to start reading a blog that's never updated...so idk, we'll see where this goes. Maybe I'll start posting more often, maybe I'll still mainly to YT updates, maybe I'll find a nice balance of the two.

I guess the reason I feel I should be blogging is because, even if nobody reads it, the fact is that someone *might*, and that makes me in some way accountable. Like, if I put it out there that I'm using behaviours, for example, the mere fact that it's on the interwebz means I'm not stuck in my own shell not answering to anyone and not having to be honest with anyone else about what's going on. I suppose it would help if I knew for certain that it would get read, but even if it doesn't, it's still there in clear writing, and that means I can't ignore it.

Some accountability would probably be helpful right now. I tried joining MentorCONNECT but was distinctly underwhelmed, I might make a YT video on it because I'm interested to see if any of my viewers have had a similar experience, or a more positive one, and just generally what you guys think. I actually brought the book Beating Ana, written by the founder of MentorCONNECT and the reason I went on the site at all, with me after Christmas. But I haven't even looked at it. I have read some of another recovery book I downloaded onto my Kindle app, but not as much as I should.

Thing is, I'm not exactly relapsing...but I'm certainly not recovering. Not by miles. I suppose I'm trying to, but really, that's only my vague attitude - I'm not putting it into practice. And I need to DO something about it. And I don't think I could do that alone.

So, if you're there, let me know. Let's talk. Let's do this blogging shit!

Celebrating "Might Have Been's"

I know it sounds a bit controversial, because isn't the normal line to forget all the coulda shoulda woulda, to let go of what might have been and embrace what is?

I fully agree with the principle - but actually, I think sometimes, it's a Good Thing to remember what could have, but hasn't, happened. Because the idea of forgetting the might have been's is about letting go of opportunities we didn't seize, and good experiences we missed. But let's remember that we also manage to make decisions which purposely *avoid* certain circumstances - and yet when we do successfully avoid them, we don't celebrate it as a success. Bad situation avoided, everything's fine, move on. And yet it's not equal, is it?

When something terrible happens, we quite rightly lament how we (whoever that means) failed to prevent it: we could have done this, we should have thought of that. But when we actually do what we "could have done", when we think of what we "should have thought of" - when we do all those things which, if we hadn't done, we'd be kicking ourselves about afterwards - we don't congratulate ourselves. Intensity of regret is always correlated to the gravity of the tragedy you failed to prevent, whereas celebration of tragedy aversion never is.

My main example here is going to be about suicide attempts, which is an extreme but because condensed version of my general point. When somebody embarks upon a suicide attempt, but stops in the process, all anybody says afterwards is "you shouldn't have done that", "you've behaved unacceptably", etc - not in those words, maybe, but that's often the gist. Yet there are two actions involved there: starting, and stopping. If you stop and turn back during a suicide attempt, you've probably just saved a life, because if you hadn't stopped, you probably would have killed yourself. OK, if you hadn't stopped at that precise moment maybe you would still have survived somehow, but you can't ever be sure. So why don't people throw a freakin party in honour of the fact that this person did not complete suicide?

This is the kind of "might have been's" that I encourage everyone to celebrate. A lot of the time when battling with demons, we find ourselves in situations of real danger and often it's down to us to stay safe. But we don't congratulate ourselves when we manage to get out of a sticky spot, or do the right thing. To make up an example from ED recovery: in the past, you've fainted from not eating breakfast or lunch. Today, you have eaten breakfast and lunch, and you haven't fainted. No, it's not a definite that if you hadn't had those meals, you would have fainted - but the fact is that you did eat them, and you haven't fainted. If for some reason today you had restricted, and collapsed, afterwards you would have been berating yourself for not having those meals - if I'd only had them, everything would be fine. Well hello, you did have them! And that's why everything is fine! You avoided a crisis!

That's why every single achievement is worth celebrating in recovery, because you never know what awful things you're avoiding each time you make the right decision. Don't just accept that you did what you were supposed to and carry on - celebrate everything that goes right, because it could so easily have gone wrong.

Name Change and Other Developments

Since I'm no longer at Oxford (not possible!!) I think it's time to do away with 'Oxford Blues'. I think I was the only person who got the pun anyway.

Besides, I shall now be blogging about different things. Still depression, still eating disorder recovery, but now in the big wide world rather than the insane, manic bubble that is Oxford University. It was a challenge in itself, but I've survived it, and my life is changing.

On September 1st I'll be flying out to Moscow to start a new life for a year. Yes, I'll be coming back to Britain after that year to do an MA in Interpreting and Translating at Bath (if they'll have me), but I intend to return to Russia when I've done that. It's where the work is, it's where the fun is, it's where the Russian is.

My job that I had set up fell through a few days ago: I was going to be nannying a 12-year-old girl from a family so VIP that the contract stated I wasn't allowed to tell anyone their surname, and teaching her English in preparation for going to Swiss boarding school. Then Family X, as I call them, suddenly decided they only needed a part-time nanny, not full-time as I was going to be. Well, I say full-time; that is, out-of-school hours 4 days a week and one day at the weekend. They would also take me on holiday with them to Italy for two months in the summer and continue to pay me, thank you very much. So I was pretty bummed when they pulled out of the deal, to say the least.

Fortunately, I did have a fall-back, and my boss very generously looked into some alternatives for me too. I shall soon have a Skype interview with a new family, also VIP according to the agency I contacted (called 'Prestige', which tells you all you need to know about their clientele), so we'll see how this pans out. It's basically the same job but with a much younger child, 5 years old, and I have no experience of working with children - eek! They know this perfectly well having seen my CV, but whatevs, employing me is their call. The pay would be £36k (ker-ching!) plus any overtime I worked by going on holiday with them. I know right, tough job but someone's gotta do it? Yeah.

I'm also going to be acting a lot and teaching drama at the Moscow English Drama School, which is a joke because I've never been to drama school. My training goes as far as Drama GCSE (that's age 15 for those outside England). Luckily the school is not training professionals, but just using drama as a way for Russians to improve their English, and allowing expats to socialise in a fun and creative way. Just as well, really, given that I have no technique whatsoever. The only technique (if you can call it that) which I am familiar with is all Stanislavski, having studied him in my theatre module at Oxford, but I'm hardly going to teach his 'system'. There's no such thing and anyway, it was designed for over-emotional Russians, not tight-laced Englishmen. I'm halfway through 'Trusting the Actor' by Brian Astbury, a friend's old drama tutor from East 15; his theory is that, quite the opposite to Russians, English actors need to think less and feel more, and I quite agree. So that will be my goal, despite having a mixed class of compatriots and Muscovites. We'll see how it goes...

On the eating disorder side of things, well, it's mixed. I've had a stomach upset for over a week now, diagnosed today as indigestion (i.e. acid reflux) and basically haven't been able to eat. I've lost not a lot but not an insignificant amount of weight - ED is loving it, recovery brain is banging its head on the table. So very very triggered to keep restricting even when I can eat again, you know how it goes - I'll just lose a bit more and then I'll stop - but I cannot allow myself to fall into that cycle again. Anorexia kills, full stop, and I don't want my parents to have to bury me. So, onwards and upwards.