When it Rains… – Eating Disorders

When it rains, it pours, right? Or so the saying goes. It actually did finally rain a great deal this week, and the garden saw that it was good:

Yep, that’s a real live pineapple you see right there, and I’ve got six of them. They are all the product of table scraps. Amazing, right? I will show you an easy how-to guide in an upcoming post so that you can grow your own pineapples at home.

While I was working in the garden today, I had a few lucky ladybugs join me.

Do you know why ladybugs are considered lucky? They are a farmer’s friend. They help keep away the destructive pests naturally.

I was very busy yesterday transplanting all of my sunflower sprouts.

They don’t look like much yet, and they’ve got a lot of living up to do, but I have confidence they will do very well like others have done in the past.

I planted them all along my fenceline, directly in front of my muscadine grape vines which are now starting to fill in for the season.

I am thinking. I am writing. I am running and reflecting. I am enjoying the silence and solitude of my house. The silence and solitude which is, in stark contrast to, the cacophonous, disruptive, persistent, insistent sound of my anxiety. It’s clamoring for my attention. I can see it in my peripheral vision, but I’m trying to ignore it, so here I sit, typing. Or actually, I’m not really sitting, it’s more like crouching, like Gollum.

Another girl in the Eating Disorder Community died yesterday. Her name was Deena. She was 34.

I’ve been writing ALOT. SO MUCH. Overmuch. And then, not enough. My writing productivity is cyclical. You could chart it right along with my Bipolar mood swings. When I am writing, I can’t stop. And I don’t mean writing a blog post like this. I mean more like the flight of ideas writing, the stream-of-consciousness writing; and I don’t sleep. According to research, that’s not good.

“Patients with bipolar disorder often suffer from sleep problems even when many of their other symptoms are well-controlled…the impact that sleep quality might have on mood outcome in bipolar disorder may be different for men and women…For women, poor sleep quality predicted increased severity and frequency of depression and increased severity and variability of mania.”-Source

Here’s a round-up of what I’ve been up to & where I’ve recently been published outside of this blog:

Read my most recent article published yesterday, May 5th, by The Mighty. It discusses my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You can read it here.
BlogHer published another one of my articles on their website, yesterday, May 5th! Two in one day! I am featured here on their front page. Please do me a favor: visit and “like” the article! This is a publication that I would really like to write for again. Thanks!
Another published post went up in April on The Mighty about body image, parenting, and cultural influence. It was a featured story on the front page that did well. You’ve read a version of it here. Check it Out!
And my first real, legitimate outside published post in early April that started it all was on The Mighty about mental health and stigma. It also was a featured story on the front page that did quite well. You’ve read a version of it here. Check it Out!

Other places to find select work of mine in slightly different forums if you are interested:

Medium

Contently

Amazon

I have been working diligently on my writing. Unfortunately, that fact is not glaringly apparent because, for the amount of work I’ve submitted, I just don’t have much to show for it. ??

Writers get a lot of rejections (mostly in the form of unanswered pitches), and it can make you question your ability, your worth as a writer.

What the hell was I thinking? I must have been manic when I sent in my work! The editors are probably literally falling out of their chairs, laughing at my naivety. And those affiliated with universities and writing courses are most definitely using my work as prototype, an outline, in their classes on what, precisely, NOT to do.

These are, among the many, many negative and discouraging thoughts swimming through my mind on a day-to-day basis.

This is shaky ground.

Writing, I mean.

Not just writing, per se, it’s more the writing and then sending it in, asking for feedback, challenging myself to do this professionally. I don’t like this place, this space; it’s scary and unproven. What if I’ve just been pretending?

This is shaky ground.

If I spend hours writing and then hours hunting down and pitching literary magazines, websites, blogs, etc with my work, does that make me real? Because–haha–I’ve been doing that and more, and I feel less “real” than ever. When someone says to me “You should be a writer,” I don’t know how to respond. Is that a compliment? An an assessment of aptitude? Or an underhanded observation that I am not actually a writer but maybe one day I might prove talented? At what point does one officially become a “writer”? Who’s to make that judgment?

It’s actually likely that I will go through my entire life having not been acknowledged as a writer by specific people, regardless of whether my work is published or not, so I obviously have to change my thinking.

But that’s difficult.

Because, like I said, it’s shaky ground, and I am a perfectionist.

They were all from the same Literary magazine–I submitted 2 poetry pieces, 1 flash fiction, and 3 nonfiction pieces and all of them were answered with a “Thanks, but this is foolishness! No, I am kidding. It was the most gracious and encouraging letter ever, but I definitely saw white and developed a searing pain in my stomach for a good five minutes or so.

Speaking of perfection, here’s The Mighty article from yesterday on Perfectionism. It was originally published here, but I adapted it slightly for their site. Have a read if you haven’t already:

I cannot overstate how alienating and distressing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can be. By definition, OCD is an anxiety disorder that produces intrusive thoughts that lead to excessive feelings of uneasiness and apprehension. These feelings are so intolerable, sufferers are compelled to act on certain behaviors or rituals to help mitigate their torturous thoughts.

To make matters worse, the majority of us can recognize our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are irrational and often inappropriate, but we feel powerless to stop them. We know it’s illogical but can’t seem to help ourselves. I know I certainly can’t.

Like any black and white thinker, I’m notorious for struggling with completing projects because I fear my work will be interpreted as less than perfect. My intense fear of making the “wrong decision” has often rendered me paralyzed. Everything I do needs to be “done right” or “perfect” to my standards, and I always set the bar too high for myself. Thus, I set myself up for failure.

I’m in the half of adults with OCD who had a childhood onset of the disorder. Around the age of 6 years old, I recall becoming unnaturally concerned with symmetry. Objects in my childhood home had to be lined up perfectly straight, facing the same direction or equidistant from each other. I became especially meticulous with the state of my bedroom. Any deviation from the “perfect placement” of objects caused me extreme distress.

In middle school, I would often avoid having friends over because they would “mess up” the perfect organization in my room. I was appalled at their carelessness; how they would casually pick up an object and then put it down in a different location or condition. They would sit on my perfectly made bed and rumple the covers. I couldn’t cope. To avoid the torture of seeing my perfect organization torn asunder, I would usually arrange playdates or sleepovers to take place at my friends’ houses, rather than my own. Frequently, I wouldn’t even allow myself to sleep in my bed in order to avoid the anxiety of having to go through the bed-making process the next morning.

In high school, things got progressively worse. My clothes closet held garments which I had painstakingly arranged in order of color and category. Each hanger faced the same direction and was evenly spaced. Visiting girlfriends would naturally be inclined to browse through the closet, wanting to see if there was anything they might like to borrow. As an insecure teenager, I was concerned with appearing “normal,” so I endured the destruction and disruptions, telling myself it would be OK; I would “fix” everything when they left.

Around this time, my desperate need for perfection turned inward, and the focus became having a perfect body at any cost. Anorexia nervosa and then later, bulimia nervosa took over, and I still battle the urges at varying degrees on any given day.

Besides the daily battle with eating disordered behaviors, my obsessive compulsive nature dictates that my schedule must be rigidly followed, my workouts must be executed without deviation, my bed must be made perfectly, my refrigerator must be stocked with labels facing out, and that I meet plenty of other time-consuming, irrational and humiliating “requirements”.

My gardening has been the one area of my life that exists outside the perfectionistic bubble. There’s so much work to be done and tending to do, I simply don’t have the time or energy to fuss over whether rows of crops are symmetrical. Nature positively defies me by growing my plants to varying heights and widths. I have no control over it, and there’s a sense of peace and freedom in knowing and accepting that. Yesterday, while chatting on the phone with my mom and somewhat distractedly pulling weeds from my front yard garden, I came face to face with perfection:

Perfection! The tallest sunflower’s bloom had finally opened, revealing the most perfect sunflower I have yet encountered. But even though the bloom is perfect, it’s a different height from all the other sunflowers. It doesn’t match with the others and the row is uneven. Right now, the pouring rain is most likely causing some petals to fall to the ground. The perfect sunflower is, in fact, imperfect. Nothing is perfect in my garden. Not one thing in the whole of my front, side or back yards is perfect.

And I’ve learned that is perfection.

When it rains, it pours, right? Or so the saying goes. It actually did finally rain a great deal this week, and the garden saw that it was good:

Yep, that’s a real live pineapple you see right there, and I’ve got six of them. They are all the product of table scraps. Amazing, right? I will show you an easy how-to guide in an upcoming post so that you can grow your own pineapples at home.

While I was working in the garden today, I had a few lucky ladybugs join me.

Do you know why ladybugs are considered lucky? They are a farmer’s friend. They help keep away the destructive pests naturally.

I was very busy yesterday transplanting all of my sunflower sprouts.

They don’t look like much yet, and they’ve got a lot of living up to do, but I have confidence they will do very well like others have done in the past.

I planted them all along my fenceline, directly in front of my muscadine grape vines which are now starting to fill in for the season.

Another girl in the Eating Disorder Community died yesterday. Her name was Deena. She was 34.

Here’s a round-up of what I’ve been up to & where I’ve recently been published outside of this blog:

Read my most recent article published yesterday, May 5th, by The Mighty. It discusses my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You can read it here.

BlogHer published another one of my articles on their website, yesterday, May 5th! Two in one day! I am featured here on their front page. Please do me a favor: visit and “like” the article! This is a publication that I would really like to write for again. Thanks!

Another published post went up in April on The Mighty about body image, parenting, and cultural influence. It was a featured story on the front page that did well. You’ve read a version of it here. Check it Out!

And my first real, legitimate outside published post in early April that started it all was on The Mighty about mental health and stigma. It also was a featured story on the front page that did quite well. You’ve read a version of it here. Check it Out!

I have been working diligently on my writing. Unfortunately, that fact is not glaringly apparent because, for the amount of work I’ve submitted, I just don’t have much to show for it. ??

Writers get a lot of rejections (mostly in the form of unanswered pitches), and it can make you question your ability, your worth as a writer.

These are, among the many, many negative and discouraging thoughts swimming through my mind on a day-to-day basis.

This is shaky ground.

Writing, I mean.

Not just writing, per se, it’s more the writing and then sending it in, asking for feedback, challenging myself to do this professionally. I don’t like this place, this space; it’s scary and unproven. What if I’ve just been pretending?

This is shaky ground.

It’s actually likely that I will go through my entire life having not been acknowledged as a writer by specific people, regardless of whether my work is published or not, so I obviously have to change my thinking.

But that’s difficult.

Because, like I said, it’s shaky ground, and I am a perfectionist.

Speaking of perfection, here’s The Mighty article from yesterday on Perfectionism. It was originally published here, but I adapted it slightly for their site. Have a read if you haven’t already:

POLICIES & DISCLAIMER