O my love, my love, my love

Back from the Pudding and the cast dinner afterwards with Dad, Michele, her daughter Eva, the other actors, and a few of Dad's blue-haired admirers. Its the kind of thing I wish I could have brought a friend or a date to just to have someone's shoulder to fall asleep on and to talk to and make fun of how everyone fawned over Dad...who cracked me up tonight with his readings, truth be told. Michelle, too, with The Loudest Voice. I had no idea she could do a thick accent like that!

So home now, cold ocean breeze coming through, red thermal shirt with snowflakes isn't really cutting it. Pretty lonely, though accomplished, very very tired, very much missing Jessica. I hear I missed the first snow. I've been trying to picture Harvard street with the light dusting of it all evening. Its too uncomfortable to think about most of the time, especially when faced with the baking pavement that LA has to offer these days. Its just not right. So much isn't right now. Anyhow, the Alleluia went well (with the exception of our accompanist being noticeably and unapologetically drunk), as did Past Three O'clock and the Exultate. More tomorrow after yoga, the Cantori Concert, and yet another dinner with Dad (who seems to be my best friend and my constant date lately).

In the meantime Bryce sent me this, and its resurrected my spirit a little bit. Especially the boy with glasses at 0:56.

be small enough

Grueling day. It felt like mum was everywhere, so was mention of her 17 year olds who were out of the house. I absentmindedly accepted friendship requests on facebook from people I didn't know an opened myself up to some mean emails. And then got a "supportive" one from Lucy that felt back-handed and cold. Eating very little today felt like an accomplishment. So did not crying in front of the kids. Going to the church for a full run-through pudding rehearsal till 10. Medford habits die hard.

Get smoked like dutches from the master

Uuuuugh no kitten yet. I did go to the westside shelter both Friday and Saturday morning but on Friday they were closed and on Saturday I still didn't have confirmation from Dee, so I went home empty-handed. Also, more difficulties with apparent new roommate allergies (she's allergic to some breeds of short-hair cats but doesn't know which one, and I know I don't want a long hair cat because, y'know, they've got long hair and get all sheddy and somehow I think are slightly less cute because there's literally more cat.) Long story short, even if I were to get a short-hair kitten I'd have to keep it in my room all the time to protect her allergies, that means litter box and cat food in my one room. A scent I experienced in Medford, and am happy to leave there. I was looking forward to keeping the litter box in the bathroom and its food dish in the kitchen (with my food dishes) but no such luck. *sigh* More will be revealed.

Thinking about the new roomie situation has given me pause to realize that I'm really sad Peter's leaving. I went to brunch with Dad and Michelle after rehearsal today (killer chinese chicken salad and a piece of Michelle's french toast) and Dad was asking whether or not I was feeling lonely these days, and without thinking about it I responded that I guess I didn't feel lonely because I had Peter and Kevin there. Even when I don't see them, at least I know that Peter was my family lifeline when I didn't talk to Mom, Dad or Kate in any given day (as though that ever happened). I just like knowing that he's across the hall, available to come re-wire my computer and television so when I turn off the light switch, my desk lamp turns off instead of my cable box. Without him here I know I'll still have Kevin to hang out with, but I'll feel a little more disconnected from my folks and have to do a little more active reaching out to make sure I'm not isolating.

I'm also totally shirking on the work Alecya asked me to do this week. I'm in second step territory again (we're aiming for a different spiritual experience this time...the fourth time) an in addition to the reading and step writing, she's asked me to begin every morning with the set-aside prayer (for which she's given me additional text that for some reason has proven impossible to memorize), followed by 20 minutes of unedited writing (or 3 full pages, whichever comes first), followed by 20 minutes (20!) of meditation, and 5 minutes of reflection. I've been copping out of all but the prayer with the excuse that a) I don't have a notebook to write in and b) I don't know how to meditate for that long. So I honestly haven't tried, and I just wanted to put it in writing for myself because I know I'm weening out here out of my own laziness and unwillingness to do the kind of work she's asking me to do. I know I shouldn't be whining about this but it requires me to get up an extra hour earlier than I otherwise would - that's more concentration that I have even doing something that I love! Ugh. It honestly feels like overkill just thinking about it. I guess I'm building a resentment about not being allowed to plow on through my 4th step, but maybe I'm just choosing to be cranky about that because its easier than acknowledging that I'm lazy and uninspired lately. Even spiritually disconnected. Feel like I'm going through the motions lately instead of really locking into it. Lately, I've felt most connected when working with Sarah, and its been about a week since we've sat down and gone through the book or her writing. God I hope she's doing okay in there. Maybe I need to start raising my hand when they ask for available sponsors. I guess I just don't feel available for much of anything lately.



And in other news...
Been watching these non-stop.

Part 1:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin1-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 2:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin2-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 3:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin3-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 4:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin4-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 5:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin5-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 6:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin6-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 7:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin7-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 8:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin8-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 9:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin9-11videoonCastTVVideoSearch.flv

Part 10:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin10-11videoonCastTVVideoSearc.flv

Part 11:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c383/2medusa/?action=view¤t=HBOThin11-11videoonCastTVVideoSearc.flv

the takeover, the sweeping insensitivity

Good meeting this morning...as usual I suppose. I love walking in there when I feel like I'm on top of the world, like I can preach about how program clearly works because look how awesome I am, look how together I am, look how well-employed, easy to relate to, emotionally-grounded and articulate I can be. But this morning it was really hard to even get out of bed and go to the meeting, let alone open my mouth. I wasn't planning on sharing both because I just wasn't in the mood, and also because I so enjoy being one of the ones who sits in the front with her sponsee who looks healthy and in recovery, who has solid employment and a clear head and limited emotional turbulence. This morning I just wasn't that, I was still feeling ashamed about the Clearview stuff (still am), I felt wobbly about the People magazine stuff, my food has been weirdly clean and inappropriately small, and none of this was stuff that I wanted to share with this group. But when an older woman spoke up about how safe she feels in the rooms, how she can bring her food and her shame to this home group and speak about them in a way that her parents and her friends and her husband would never understand, how she could be more honest here than anywhere, I understood that it was a matter of my poor ego, and I really had to. So I did, without specifics, but enough to express that I was far from perfect and was struggling both with shame about my behavior and my food. It felt better. Not great, but like I'd come clean with my community and that was helpful.

Afterwards I went to coffee with Jessica, a girl that mom and Nancy had met on their cruise who was also at the meeting. She kept referring to her wife. I liked that. No stumbling around the word 'partner'. We hashed out her food a little bit, talked about shame (of course), and then I zipped off to a rehearsal for the pudding (Mozart's Alleluia). Lunch after with Kali (arugula and beet salad with a side of turkey chili and cheese on top), and we talked endlessly about our respective relationship history and sexuality and promiscuity and getting needs met and on and on...it was pretty much the first conversation I've had with anyone, program or otherwise, about my past behavior in which I didn't feel the need to crucify myself to get the point across that I was dreadfully ashamed of my behavior. I just...spoke it. This is what I did. This is what I was feeling. This is what I think about it. Kali was so grounded in her responses and observations. I actually walked away feeling like I had an interaction with a non-sponsee female program peer that mattered, not something that felt vapid- needlessly and superficially "deep" because I'm trying so hard to connect.

It felt real. Normal. Not some life-changing interaction where I'm shaken to the core at my capacity for human connection. Just normalfish (which is life-changing in itself, though likely temporary).
Then rollerblading, laundry at Dad's, and home for lavash. Maybe I'll paint my toes tonight.



When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; -- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

-Keats

think that there's a soul somewhere thats leading me around

Did the People Magazine this morning, then came home and slept for an hour and a half because for some reason I can't seem to sleep at night. I also couldn't escape the vain thought that perhaps I should be out in the world taking advantage of the beautiful makeup job they'd done on me instead of smearing it all over the pillowcase but just as I was reconsidering my choice I fell asleep.
Woke up to Sarah calling in crisis, about to do her Sierra Tucson intake interview, and I talked to her for awhile. As lucky as I am to not be in that pre-treatment surrender space of knowing you're about to go into a voluntary prison and feeling the panic that the world will shift around you while you're in there, I can't help but feel deeply sad that I'm out, alone in this real world and feel about as much a part of it as I did in treatment. Its all shifting around me as though I operated from my own little vaccuum, like I may as well be in treatment myself. Guess its all just self-absorbed powerlessness, that terminal uniqueness thing. Feel like I'm living in a Ben Folds five song

Is it the feeling i get when i wake to your face...is it standing right here, singin' this song?

Sooo the soundtracks that I've had for my time in the car are getting stranger and stranger. It appears that I'm in a period right now where my musical ADD has subsided and rather than switching frantically between tracks, I'm listening to the same five songs over and over and over, and even stranger, all the way through! And then I go back and play them again! I love finding new music that pumps my adrenaline, especially when I realize I'm really looking forward to my next drive just so I can listen to it.

So here's the current play list. I'm already blushing in anticipation as I realize its a rather diverse and scattered list, each with limited appeal despite that wide range, but its whats keeping me afloat right now and I'll be happy to look back on this next year and god "omigod I remember those months so clearly because of the way that music timestamped that period!"

So we start off with a little Christian Rock (not because I'm a Jesus girl IN THE LEAST but cause I'm a sucker for the implied harmonies and the connective vowel tissue in the word 'Hosanna')


Next is Owl City's Fireflies which I haven't stopped singing for the past three weeks.


And the third one on the playlist, as embarrassed and ashamed as I am to have this in the mix, is the adrenaline kicker of the three. Honestly, all I can do is hang my head in shame as I avow that I'm really into this song right now. The music video is pretty freeking dumb, so I won't even bother mentioning it, but the song.... heh....day-um girl!






I'd started this post while I was at Mirman in some down time when I wasn't transposing for the B-flat trumpet, and its been quite a day since. Between getting sacked at Clearview, seeing Sarah off to treatment and having the tiniest dinner I've had in a long time I'm just pretty overwhelmed. And exhausted. White flag waving here.

without being disrespectful....damn girl!

I had one of the happiest solo mornings I've ever had by myself today. I say solo because I can think of some mornings where the experience of waking up was a thrilling one in itself just because I was waking up with the person I loved, and that there was a a lavash in my very near future. Or a Panera breakfast sandwich. Or both. So I specify solo because I'm waking up alone and brushing my teeth by myself and reflecting on the events of the previous night (a butt-numbingly challenging yoga class at a new studio with Sarah, followed by leisurely dinner with her at Chaya Venice, an upscale and slightly more classy/expensive than I'd anticipated sushi joint near my Dad's house).
Anyway, I woke up, found my saturday morning pj outfit (blue tufts sweats and ferris state hoodie), brushed teeth, grabbed a luna bar out of the cupboard, headed to my car where I sang Fireflies all the way to my meeting, and then sat through it. What I love about that meeting is that every time I walk in I get to deconstruct that ideas about me that I've spent the week developing. I walk in with beliefs like "I'm socially inept, I can make small talk with people but I don't really know how to connect, I'm inherently lonely, I'm selfish and broken and can't care about others, I'm going to be alone forever etc." The longer I go between meetings, the more I really do begin to believe my own thinking, but this meeting is especially helpful in unraveling all of those thoughts. I walked in this morning with plans to meet this girl named Jessica (a friend of Mom's that she and Nancy met on a women's cruise last week) who is new to program but wrestles with her own ED issues, and plans to meet Sarah, my sponsee (we now have a standing post-meeting coffee date that is getting longer and longer and awesomer and awesomer), and found myself hugging and How Are You-ing (with genuine interest, not just as a formality) a good handful of meeting regulars that I'm actually getting to know and talk to regularly. A woman I've seen since I first started going to LA OA meetings way back when, spoke and concentrated on the loneliness of her disease, and the ways in which it was far more lonely than her alcoholism, how in her opinion the folks with food issues walk with different level of shame because of what she called the "gluttony factor", which all people with addictive/compulsive thinking have (maybe all people period), but which we get to see more clearly because we deal with food as opposed to alcohol or drugs or gambling etc. We get to see in a different light how our behavior (or food) compares to other peoples, and how what we want or feel entitled to is obviously so much greater than what others want or need. How we literally take bigger portions (or fantasize about taking bigger portions) than other people do. How our craving is greater than other peoples. The very word 'gluttony' comes from the latin word gluttire meaning to gulp down or swallow, pertaining specifically to food, and the word has such a shameful stigma around it. I liked that idea. But then again I like most ideas that imply that I'm in more pain than others. As though it makes me special or less accountable...or more valuable? Anyhow, it felt especially poignant to walk into this meeting eager to shed those uncomfortable thoughts about myself and be made aware of all the ways in my life that I'm trying to prove those thoughts wrong. I'm working really closely with my sponsee (whom I adore), I make phone calls to program people who know my name and my story, and I know theirs, women know me at my regular meetings, I'm starting to make more connections with people at Mirman and some of the other PA's at CV, (Alix and I laughed our freekin' butts off when we lead wrap-up group tonight, and she's definitely someone I'd want to hang out with outside of work!)
After the meeting Sarah and I went to get coffee at the Rose Cafe (where they have a $5 minimum for credit card so I just had to buy a croissant with my latte, pity) and we talked for over an hour about our Dads, our histories, our respective relationship crazy, what its like to fall hard for a woman, what its like eating creme brulee very slowly, and why it is we are prone to the kind of self abuse we put ourselves through. I never run out of things to talk about with this girl, she's very smart and just as lost as I was in my ED. I'm always amazed that time passes so damn quickly when we're shooting the shit, and how genuinely interested I am in helping her not so I can pat myself on the back as a good sponsor, but because I really want her well and healthy and happy. I'm astonished every time I realize I'm capable of real friendship; I dunno if this counts because technically its a sponsor/sponsee relationship, but quite honestly it doesn't matter to me what I'm calling it. To me it just comes down to this: here's a woman who's my age, who HAS the body type that I tried to achieve in my bulimia, who's pretty in ways that I do feel a little threatened by, and who is smart in ways that really interest me, and I'm making an honest, true connection with her without simultaneously trying to find ways in which I'm better than her!
It was such a rich morning. I felt like I was wallowing in gratitude for what I'm slowly by slowly beginning to create for myself. I feel enriched by my peers in program, and by the new hope I have (at least for tonight) that I won't always function out of such a self-deprecating place. I feel like a bit of a tool yammering on about self-love and connection and wanting to be settled with myself, but it took Elizabeth Gilbert an intense few years to even jump-start that process, and that was accelerated because she had help from a freekin Guru and an Ashram and pizza from Naples and a medicine man in Bali. I've got me and Alecya and some peanut butter and a good home group. And hopefully a higher power that hasn't forgotten who I am.

I can't come from the pit of that dorm room in London and the dark nights alone in Medford to a benchmark morning like this and not be on some greater path that's leading me towards loving who I am, something beautiful, my highest self. That's the prayer at least.
According to John Mayer (and that whole soundtrack from that day on the lake) good love is on the way