Holiday cheer

It's difficult to title a blog that's as aimless as this one. I think I started with the idea that I would combine elements of comedy (cheer) with the more serious subject matters to which I am drawn (philosophy, though tbh nothing bores me more than philosophy, at least in the academic sense of the word). The result has been more of a verbal and emotional vomit, an expression of the inconsistency of my mind and mood. Sometimes ironic, silly, superficial and light-hearted, but more often earnest, angry, indignant, pleading and above all, inconsistent. I write when I need to bleed; when the guilt of not creating makes sitting still an impossibility. Perhaps this is why so much of my writing feels angry.

It's the day after Thanksgiving, a decidedly gray Black Friday. It's dreary outside, wet and cold and bleak. I woke with an entire day stretched out before me, which sounds like the beginning of an exciting adventure, if my life were a children's story. But since my life is not a children's story, it was just the beginning of a long battle between opposing impulses. My body wants to sleep, but my mind reels with noise that is more sensing than articulating. A sense of dread that is linked to the things I ought to be doing today (writing for work, writing for art, cleaning the oven, working out, organizing the stack of papers in my office). An impulse towards mutiny against the inherent lack of fun there is in behaving an adult. An awareness of social commitments and an instinctive formulation of excuses that will allow me to avoid wearing pants, leaving the house and interacting with some fun and interesting people. A physical discomfort that I can now, upon reflection, identify as the unconscious muffling of the urge to eat myself into oblivion.

Being a sober person, free from drugs and alcohol, is in many ways easier than being a recovering anxious-depressive-bulimic. Not that any of it's easy, especially during this festive time of year, but if I had to rank my destructive tendencies in terms of how difficult they are to resist, I'd say drugs are the easiest, followed by alcohol, followed by bulimia.

Here's a thing you should know about bulimia, because as soon as I say the word, I cringe knowing you are probably stereotyping me as the privileged white girl who is obsessed with being skinny. And while that's not altogether false, it's hardly a holistic description of who I am. Binging on food is just a way of reaching oblivion. It's a drug, in other words. And to someone who suffers from anxiety, or at least to me, oblivion is an ideal state of mind. One which I never reach unless I am sleeping. The trouble with being abstinent from all mind and mood altering drugs is that there is no reprieve from my mind or mood. And my mind, which dictates my moods, often tortures me.

Drugs would take considerable effort (for an introvert) to obtain. Alcohol less so, but that drug still easier to avoid than food. And I can avoid food more easily than I can avoid anxiety and depression. But that's a different animal. You'd think by now I'd have learned that I can't avoid these things, be them impulses, obsessions, desires, cravings or tendencies. But somewhere behind the noise of my mind there exists a belief that not only can I control my urges to behave badly, but that I have to. When the truth is, I can't and don't. I can only account for my actions, and that erroneous belief reveals another belief: that I am incapable of resisting urges.

Understanding that doesn't make it easier. I dated a guy who loved the cliche, "knowledge is power" and used it to justify his obsession with diet fads and nutrition advice. But he was overweight. None of that so-called knowledge empowered him to stop overeating. In Nichiren Buddhism, there is a saying that a sword is useless in the hand of a coward. What I need is not a better understanding of why I'm so stressed out and irritable when I have a day off and all should be well, but the courage to act in a way that will relieve that stress.

So let's call this entry a courageous thrust of the sword. Mostly ineffectual, sure, but a valiant attempt. And I do feel a bit better. Happy holidays!