Peripatetic Anoretic

2008-07-11T08:26:00.001-07:00

An anthology of feminist responses towards eating disorders.

I am so going to do this. Who wants in?

Quick hit

2008-05-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

I've been too busy trying to deny the fact that I'm backsliding to devote much mental energy to analyzing why.

Back in the saddle

2008-04-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up my parents always asked me what I thought, not what I felt. I've only recently been able to being a sentence with "I feel like..." without thinking I was saying a dirty word. For awhile that was actually a funny passive-aggressive thing with my shrink. She's say, "How do you feel about that?" and I'd respond with "Well, I think that...."

I'm not a fan of emotions. They are both overwhelming and unpleasant. Even the good ones, to be honest. Happy memories just stir up fears for the future. And when there's so much going on inside me, so much percolating and bubbling, worries and hopes and the desperate attempts to crush that hope, excitement and trepidation and is-he-going-to-calls take up a lot of space inside.

I compensate by eating less. Makes sense, doesn't it? I'm already full. Not of food, but of other stuff. If I compound that other stuff with food, I'd explode.

A step forward

2008-04-17T11:41:00.001-07:00

On the plus side, I'm less dysmorphic than I've ever been. I look in the mirror, and day after day after day I see a skinny dude rather than a chunky girl. In the mirror, in plate glass windows, in the shower, I look at myself and think wow, there isn't much there at all. I've stopped pretending that my pants have magically grown, or that my belts have stretched.

What's even more exciting is that I don't like my arms or my legs. Frankly, I think it's kind of unattractive that my legs are lost even in "skinny jeans." Or that the bones in my arms are right there.

On the other hand, I'm completely in love with my midsection, and I'm pleased with the visibility of a few of my ribs, and the prominence of my pelvic saddle.

Man, bodies and our perceptions of them are complicated.

Leave me alone.

2008-04-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

You know why I haven't been updating lately? Because I don't want to think about this stuff.

I've been in a really, really good mood. There are a couple of things in my life that are going really well. Specifically, with a guy that I like, and with the novel I wrote. I'm nervous and scared and looking forward to the future and completely unsure of what's going to happen, but I'm flying.

But when I'm nervous and unsure I start to restrict, apparently. I thought I'd only restrict if I was depressed or angry. Turns out, I can wander through the day with a grin on my face, and come back from vacation a couple pounds lighter than when I left.

But I don't want to think about it.

Dreams and progress

2008-04-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

I had a dream the other night where I stepped on the scale and I was four whole pounds heavier than normal. And I flipped.

In dreams I'm usually as logical as ever. I knew that four pounds, from 118 to 122, was not a big deal at all. Even in my dream my clothes fit the same, and I looked the same in the mirror. And yet, I was terrified. Of what I can't say.

However, in the realm of progress, I'm starting to get really annoyed with my body. In a healthy way. I don't like that I can't buy skinny jeans (on me, see, they're just jeans). I used to be overjoyed that I could feel my hip bones, and now they're just starting to bother me. I'm starting to feel as if I should have some more covering. That maybe being tiny, contained, corseted by my own self-control rather than an external girdle isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I once thought about writing a paper on the corset, and how it's become internalized by this diet culture. That's a really good idea for a paper. Maybe I'll start outlining it when I'm on the plane. If only I was in grad school...

Waaaaiting.

2008-04-04T08:44:00.001-07:00

I told myself, once I move back, get a job, get a steady income, have a nice clean kitchen, and a grocery store nearby, I will totally get back on my meal plan.

All those things are in place, and I'm still only eating maybe 2/3 of my meal plan every day.

It'd be nice if I could just throw up my hands and say "I don't know what's wrong with me! Why, oh, why am I doing this? Why is it so hard to tackle recovery head-on?"

Thing is, though, I do know why. I don't feel safe right now. I'm flying out to San Francisco next weekend for a conference. I'm negotiating an overwhelming crush on someone. I'm negotiating a friendship with my ex. I'm back on the hamster wheel of work, dinner with friends, fundraisers, life in the city, and it doesn't feel like I'm going anywhere, so now I'm concerned about, y'know, My Future.

Being eating-disordered makes me feel safe. It's comforting, and familiar. So I guess I'm waiting until I don't need it to feel that way. G-d knows when that will be, or how it will come.

Or, I'm waiting for the realization that anorexia is the opposite of being safe. That I'm clinging to the side of a cliff, which feels safe, until I see the drop below and the nice, solid ledge above.

My own standard narrative

2008-04-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Back when medical gatekeepers (all two of 'em) would deny trans people hormones and surgeries unless they conformed to heteronormative standards of masculinity and femininity, it was necessary for such folks to skew their life stories to access them.

So while I'm sure there are plenty of trans people out there who knew from the second they were born that they were, like, a boy trapped in a girl's body, or vice versa, I'm equally sure that many more people who present that story to the public actually have a far more nuanced and complex relationship to their gender and their body. Which is why I have no problem admitting that yeah, I used to wear a lot of skirts, even the occasional little black one. Sparkly tank tops. Until I was twenty I didn't leave my room without eyeshadow and mascara. And that doesn't make me any less of a man now. I just took the scenic route.

See, for a long time I thought that my intense, constant, at times crippling discomfort and distaste at my body was because I was, you know, fat. Or at least anorexic (see the "Invisible Fat" post). I figured, if I could just get the eating disorder thing under control, while at the same time dropping a lot of weight, I would suddenly feel at home in my body. And later, I thought that if I embraced feminism, body positivity, fat acceptance, I could just rationalize away my feelings.

Then I learned about the trans, started strapping down my chest, and dressing like a boy. For a good couple years there, like magic my ED-related issues vanished. I was suddenly okay with my body (so long as it was bound flat and sheathed in swathes of denim and cotton). I thought, this PROVES that I'm "really" trans. If I had only figured this out sooner, I never would have been eating-disordered and body dysphoric. It's all about the gender! Being a boy fixes everything! I win at life.

Then I started transition, and stopped eating.

This forced me to confront the countless ways that lives and identities are colored, shaded, nuanced. It is not only about the eating disorder, the way I imagine my gut sticks out or my thighs spread. It is also not only about gender, about the way that puberties (both of 'em) have changed my hips, my chest, my muscle mass. It is not only about my mother, or my father, or what TV shows I watched and what books I read.

I wish it was just about one thing. One easy to identify, easy to label cause that could be discovered, rooted out and destroyed. Unfortunately, I am that one thing, and I am neither easily identified nor easily labeled.

In his cups

2008-04-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

As a trans person, I've gotten used to having other people treat my body like it's public property. I'll never forget the chiropractor who asked if I had a dick, or the customer at the bookstore who stared at my chest and asked about my breasts.

So it's not especially difficult for me to admit publicly that yes, I am a man with breasts. I haven't had top surgery yet, nor have I even started thinking about it as anything other than an idea.

This is for a couple reasons. One is, it's wicked expensive and I have a limited income. It's hard to plan, takes a lot of effort to research, and is generally just a pain. I'm lucky to be small-chested enough that I can get by just wearing a sports bra, and people assume I've had surgery. Heck, sometimes I pass even without binding. And my general body/size/weight dysphoria is overwhelming enough that the added gender dysphoria really doesn't bother me all that much.

But more importantly, I haven't considered top surgery lately because my body has already changed enough, in ways that are disorienting enough. I look at my profile in the mirror and think, who's that scrawny fella, and where did he come from? I already don't recognize myself, and worry that if I have a completely flat chest I'll recognize myself even less.

Also, I'm still worried that my transition and my eating disorder/general body dysphoria are more intertwined than I'd like to think. That maybe I transitioned to get thinner. That maybe I want top surgery not because I want a male chest, but I want a flat, almost two-dimensional, chest that takes up even less space in the world than it did before.

Less than nothing

2008-03-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

I remember being thirteen and excited as all get-out that I had a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch khakis, size zero.

I had fooled Abercrombie&Fitch into thinking that I was skinny. I could fool my classmates into thinking that I was one of them, because I was wearing the popular-girl pants. I could fool myself, that I came from the type of family that could afford A&F, that was Gentile, wealthy, normal.

But the size itself never really occurred to me. A zero, really? What does that mean?

Men's sizes are a lot easier. I'm pretty sure that no matter where I'm getting my pants, I can wear anywhere between a 28 and a 30. Sometimes they're cut different, sometimes the waist is too high or low or the pockets aren't right, but it's rare that they just don't fit.

But what's even more comforting about men's clothing is that it gives you an actual number that corresponds to your body. 28, 32, 36, those are at least based on how big you are around. But zero? What is zero based on?

One way of looking at it is, it's just messed up that women's clothing is so subjectively-sized. Complicated, confusing, and what is a "perfect size six," anyways?

But on a theoretical level, getting down to the zeros is just messed up. Size zero (or double-zero, which A&F also sells) shouldn't exist. Zero=nothing. It's like saying that women and girls who want to be thinner, who want to fit into the smallest size, should strive to be less than nothing. That they should take up no space. That a woman who barely exists is ideal.

I think it's problematic and sexist and a symptom of oppression that so many women to want to lose weight. If women were always saying oh, if only I was a size 24, 26, whatever, I'd still be up in arms. But at least those numbers have some correspondence to an actual woman's body, in the same way that the jeans I'm wearing now correspond to my body. But size zero? What is that? Who wants to not exist?

So I know this guy...

2008-03-31T07:05:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you how surreal it was to call up shrinks, hospitals, psych wards and ask for help.

They'd ask me questions, and I'd answer them. How often do you throw up? Are you suicidal? How much do you eat per day?

I'd answer honestly, and yet still feel like I was lying. Who, me, depressed? I'm not the kind of person to throw up three times a day. Other people, sick people, people with eating disorders do that kind of thing. I don't. I'm normal. I'm sane.

My buddy, on the other hand, is real sick. When intake coordinators would ask me those questions, I'd answer with the same level of detachment as if I was talking about a friend of mine. Even sitting in a shrink's office, looking her in the eye and telling her that I was afraid I might die, I didn't really feel it. It felt like, a guy I know is afraid he might die, and I'm telling her that, just a reporting angel, not particularly invested one way or the other.

This is kind of a running theme in my life, this detachment. This body does not belong to me. My mother is fine, it's someone else's mother who's in bed, out of her mind in pain or on painkillers. It must suck to have your cat die six weeks after you move to a new town.

This is a survival mechanism, I'm sure, but it's an awfully alienating one. It makes me feel like I'm never actually around, that I'm always hovering on the edges, watching one lad's descent and ascent. My buddy is getting better, but I don't know where that leaves me.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2008-03-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

One thing that's just plain annoying about my tranorexia (being a trans person with an eating disorder) is how severely it's hampered by ability to talk about my body.

See, one thing that we transsexuals like to do (or at least we newer 'uns still going through puberty) is document in exhausting detail the ways our bodies have changed. Someone asked me to today if my eyebrows got bushier after testosterone, because he wanted to know if his would, too. It's pretty constant, the comparisons of belly hair, voice cracking, hairline, and muscle mass.

One thing we also talk a lot about is weight and fat redistribution. One common side effect of testosterone is that it makes your body fat shift into a more "male" pattern. Fat concentrated in one's hips and butt tends to migrate to the gut, since that's the way men are typically built. Many transmen gain weight as a direct result of hormone therapy, others lose, others stay exactly the same.

But, as always, I'm somewhat excluded from these conversations. Yeah, I can tell you about my body hair (practically covered in it) and weirdly popping veins, but I'm not sure about the rest. I know I lost weight after starting T, but starting T kind of coincided with the whole starvation experiment. I know that my hips would have probably lost padding, but I'm not sure if they would have been reduced to the plane of easily-palpable bone that I now play with in bed every night. My jawline has squared off, but would my face have gotten thinner without testosterone, because I kinda-sorta stopped eating?

I don't know if I'll ever know. I wish I could. I know some guys who have "transition journals," where they document every change, and I wish I could talk about the wonderful ways that my body has changed to better fit my gender identity, and not always have the caveat that I might not look like this if I weren't underweight.

Prove it!

2008-03-21T09:55:00.001-07:00

My third-grade class was pretty chaotic. It was an inauspicious combination of an inefficient teacher and too many disruptive kids. I was pretty quiet, though, liked to read, liked to help, so the teacher loved me. She made sure that all the other kids knew how much she loved me, too, which didn't exactly help my social standing.

I started to feel icky. Stomach aches, chronic, every day at around the same time. I started asking, can I please go to the nurse's office? And 'cause I was such a good kid, she'd let me.

Of course, I didn't present with anything aside from a stomachache. No fever, no vomiting, nothing. Just, "My stomach hurts." After awhile the nurse started telling me to go back to class, you're not really sick, and once that my constant stomach aches were symptomatic of being in love. Finally, after missing weeks from school, my mom took me to the doctor, who prescribed me with Mylanta. Apparently even 9-year-olds can get stress-induced ulcers.

But...well, it took so long for anyone to believe that anything was wrong with me, and even the doctor said that I wasn't sick yet, just that maybe I was a little to stressed-out. Since then I would have full-fledged panic attacks if I felt sick at school, refusing to go unless I was actually throwing up. If I didn't have a fever of over, like, 100, I felt too guilty to stay home, because if I didn't look sick, have the symptoms of being sick, I must just be lazy, dumb, and worthless.

Years and years later, I still thought that if I went to the nurse's office without actually being sick, they'd send me home. So I lost a lot of weight, damaged my heart, went into the doctor and said "I'm sick." This time they said, over and over, "Why yes you are! But we still won't help you."

Though I'm eternally grateful to those who did help, and who advocated on my behalf.

Lightbulb

2008-03-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

One day in July, I realized that my actions were destroying my relationship, and I had no idea how I had gotten to that point. It was a slow day at the bookstore, so I pulled out a pen and started writing, stream of consciousness, trying to figure out how exactly things got so bad.

There was a lightbulb moment. "I never used to restrict," I wrote. "I always ate enough. But I was hungry all the time."

I thought, wait a second. Being hungry all the time means, fairly specifically, that one is not eating enough. Because if you're eating enough, you're not hungry all the time. I remember sitting on the bus, in class, at home, aching with hunger, obsessing about food, sometimes weak or dizzy, often couldn't climb the stairs without my heart pounding, telling myself that I ate too much to be anorexic.

The last time I saw my parents, I tried to tell my father this, words like pulling teeth. He didn't believe me, said that my "story just didn't match up," because, after all, he saw me eat dinner. He suggested that what I was feeling was instead an emotional hunger. That I was, in fact, binge-eating, eating past the point of fullness, to the point of pain, in order to sate some sort of emotional need, because "that's what I was doing."

So, my father just admitted to having an eating disorder, as a way of denying mine. I told him, it sure felt like physical hunger. Told him, I was chronically underweight for most of my youth. Not sure how that correlates with binge-eating. He just shook his head and said that my story didn't make sense.

Sideshow

2008-03-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

My mother's relationship to her body, to mine, and to other is (surprise surprise!) extremely complicated. I've known since I was very young that my mother has had anorexia (though she never called it that), bulimia (though she never called it that) and binge-eating disorder (though she never called it that).

She claims that she watched me with an eagle-eye, to make sure I never developed an eating disorder. She often affirmed that I was quite thin, and that even if I wasn't thin, that was okay. She's a feminist, and would occasionally comment on the media's distorted portrayal of women's bodies.

She showed no such respect towards the bodies of actual people, however. I can't tell you the number of times she would huff under her breath, and quietly bid me to look at some fat person with the gall to be in public near her.

"Did you see that?" she'd sometimes ask later. "How do people let themselves get so morbidly obese?" Sometimes, if she was out on her own, she would come home and tell me about some fat person she saw in line, at the store, at the bank. Sometimes she'd mention that they smelled, or that they couldn't walk right, or were in a wheelchair.

The one summer I visited them after college, I had been recently inducted into feminism, size acceptance, and the idea that people's bodies are their own business and shouldn't held up for ridicule. I tried to confront her about this, and she tried to rebut.

"But I don't only insult fat people! Sometimes I'll mention just how skinny some actresses are, if they look anorexic or something!"

"Mom...you sound different when you're talking about them. When you point how a thin woman there's always this air of admiration in your voice. A sort of awe-struck tone, like you were looking at a sculpture." I should have also said, Mom, no matter who you're talking about it's not right to discuss people as if they were sideshow freaks. I didn't say that, because I was too terrified of actually confronting my mother to go that far.

I don't remember the rest of the conversation, but my father came up to me afterwards, and thanked me for defending him. Did I mention that my father has always been a big fella? I wonder why he put up with it for so long.

You can't make me! I wish you would

2008-03-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

Back to our regularly scheduled blogging, as opposed to self-excoriation.

Before I went to the crazyschool that was specifically about eating disorders, I stumbled upon a different program. A partial-hospitalization, next door to a hospital, that was specifically for GLBTQ people struggling with comorbid psychological disorders.

The makeup was predominantly non-trans male, gay, white. There was one bi, non-trans girl, two people who seemed somewhere on the MTF spectrum, and me. The vast majority of the people there were struggling with alcoholism or other addictions, and a handful were trying to cope with depression. One man had recovered from bulimia, but he was in treatment for anger management problems and depression.

I was, of course, the only FTM, and the only anoretic. And they didn't know what to do with me.

Like, at the beginning and end of each day, you were to rate your "cravings," on a scale of one to ten. One being, nope, doing good. Ten being, as soon as I leave I'm going to get wasted. "Cravings," they said, could be for any other form of self-destructive behavior, or maladaptive coping mechanisms, so I always, always listed my cravings as a ten. Because I showed up having skipped breakfast, and I knew that when I left that place I would walk miles and miles to get home, and then, once home, maybe let myself have a fat-free yogurt. Or a popcorn. I found that, despite their claims to the contrary, saying these things out loud did absolutely nothing to prevent them.

I kept saying to the people who ran it, you need to help me, this isn't helping, I'm going to die. They kept saying, "This is a good option! Stick with the program!" I told them, "But you're not making me eat!" One of them actually had the nerve to say "No, Colin, we won't make you eat. But we will provide you with a supportive atmosphere when you choose to eat."

So every day, as we traipsed over to the cafeteria, I would get a small bowl and fill it with carrot sticks, lettuce and cucumber, occasionally stealing a bite from off of someone's plate. Once, one of the counselors asked if I ate lunch. "Yeah," I said, "If you count carrot sticks and cucumber as lunch."

"Good," she said, nodding approvingly. "GOOD?!" I shrieked. "That is not enough! I should be eating more, but I just can't make myself!" She said, well, at least you ate something. I thought, these people are going to kill me.

The best part was when I was called in to speak with the nurse. She asked about my behaviors, and then weighed me. She said, you know, if you were next door in the eating disorders ward, I'd be weighing you in a hospital gown, so for now just empty your pockets.

"There's an ED ward next door?" I asked hopefully. "Is there a free spot? Can I be transferred?"

"Oh, no." She smiled nervously. "It's very small. I don't think you'd be a good fit. And besides, it's only for women."

I thought, again, these people are going to kill me. Luckily, it only took another two weeks to find a hospital that actually made me eat.

Two steps back

2008-03-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not blogging as much right now because I'm angry with myself.

See, as much as I style my self a New! and Exciting! kind of anoretic, the truth is that I'm a lot closer to the stereotype than I'd like to admit. Perhaps more conscious of my disordered thoughts and behaviors than others, more aware of the theoretical foundations behind them, but...well, I've always been smart as hell, and it really hasn't done me a lot of good. I can't rationalize away my disorder.

I'm angry at myself because I like being thin. I'm angry that I'm too scared of what others think of me to actually raise my voice and use my thin privilege to successfully ally myself with fat folks. I'm angry because I'm happier in my body now that I'm toeing the line between sickness and health, than I ever was back when I was solidly in the "healthy" camp.

I wish I could get to the root of my disorder, but they are spread far and wide and long, some cracking through the earth, other deeply buried. Right now I'm just sitting between them, looking up at the branches, overwhelmed by the task before me.

Not accepting my own.

2008-03-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

I told my friend Jill, I don't really consider myself a fat ally. I'm too anorexic for that.

Like, let's say I knew this girl who said she was a queer ally. She was totally fine with you and me and everyone else doing whatever we wanted to whoever we wanted. But she never would. She has bisexual impulses, but she would never, ever, ever act on them. Because it's okay for other people to be queer. Just not her. That's someone I'd tell to get out of my community.

Jill actually tried to convince me that I can consider myself a fat ally. She had some good arguments, but in the end I decided that I can talk the talk, but I can't walk the walk yet. I can stand up for fat folks when I'm assured that I'm in a pretty safe space, but around the hostile, I keep my mouth mostly shut. I never spoke up in high school when I heard kids making gay jokes or Jewish jokes, either. A year and change on testosterone, I'm still waiting for my balls to come in.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I'm working on it. But I'm not there yet. First I need to stop intentionally keeping myself underweight. And I need to learn how to utilize my thin privilege instead of hiding behind my dysphoria.

All about the timing

2008-03-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

When I started law school, I noticed a guy wandering around. Just my type--older, bigger, bearish, bald with a red beard. We never really chatted that much, but one day I was in the Commons, reading Harry Potter and trying to decide whether or not I should drop out. He walked by, said hello, and we started chatting.

After awhile I asked him, so, you're forty. How'd you get to be a law student now? You mind talking about it?

He didn't mind at all. He told me that when he was in his late teens and early twenties, he was just a mess. Depressed, suicidal, he had an eating disorder--

I stopped him. Wait, what? You did? So do I. Can you tell me more about it?

It was quite a story. It's not every day you find out that a bear you've a crush on used to be an anorexic little gayboy. I thanked him profusely for talking to me about it. Told him, I didn't really want to get into my own stuff at first because, y'know, I'm trans...anorexia is for girls...didn't want him to think I was just a really butch girl, ya know? He scoffed at that, said that eating disorders are genderless, and that having one doesn't make me any less of a man.

So anyway, he worked, went to a lot of therapy, dealt with his demons, and now he's in law school and doing well. Gave me a lot to think about. I decided to drop out because I realized that I can't be a lawyer if I die before I graduate...and that if I don't die, I have the rest of my life to go back to school.

What to say.

2008-03-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Back when I was still actively losing weight, a buddy of mine, who was completely confounded by the whole idea of eating disorders, said "Can't they just give you the foie gras treatment?"

I then impressed him with my impersonation of a goose.

INVISIBLE FAT!

2008-03-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

I'm a fairly logical person. Even when I'm crazy, there's a part of me that can stand apart and look at myself, head cocked, and think "Now, you know that just isn't right." Even when I was trying to starve myself to death I could analyze, very clearly, why it was happening. That just wasn't enough to stop it.

This split, between what I believed and what I knew, was very confusing back when I was younger. I would stand in front of a mirror and stare at myself. Weigh myself. Compare my body with the bodies of everyone else. Pinch and poke and prod and slap. I always came to the conclusion that I was extremely fat.

I also knew, objectively, that I was underweight. When girls would talk about how much they weighed, I always "won." I knew my pants size was, you know, tiny. That doctors would comment on how skinny I was, my parents would tell stories about how I used to be mistaken for a much younger child, and looking at my body I'd think, I could stand to lose from weight, but where would it come from?

The only logical conclusion, I concluded, was that I was fat, but in some sort of magical, invisible way that no one could see but me. While I might look skinny, if you just paid a little bit more attention you would notice that I was overspilling my boundaries, intruding into space where I shouldn't intrude, and that I could be the poster child for the obesity epidemic. The invisible obesity epidemic.

The fact that no one could see it but me didn't make it any easier to deal with. I'd still starve myself, count grams of fat obsessively, exercise compulsively, cry, and read the memoirs of cancer survivors with longing because chemo makes you lose weight.

Maybe if I had been in therapy during those years, I could have figured out that I didn't actually think I was fat. I probably felt sad, a lot of the time. Angry. Neglected. Isolated. Unpopular. Maybe I would have been able to voice, albeit haltingly, the wide chasm I saw between myself and other girls, how I just didn't feel like a girl, didn't want to be a girl, couldn't imagine growing up as a girl. Maybe I could have figured out that there was a lot going on behind the surface that no one noticed because I just hid behind books.

But how does that chain of reasoning go? All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Fat is bad; I am bad; I am fat.

It made sense at the time. I do live in America, after all.

A boy by any other name.

2008-03-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

My father once referred to my "sudden onset of anorexia," and I laughed. Barked, really. "That's just because you weren't paying attention," I told him.

I've gone through more name changes than any one person is entitled to, and I think it's related to my eating disorder. First, there was the name my parents gave me. I couldn't deal with the spelling of it. There were these two letters, two damn letters, that were rounded and short. They made my name short and fat, I thought, and thus whenever someone saw my name, said my name, they would see a short, fat little girl. And I couldn't deal with that.

So I cast about for a new way to spell my name. By the third grade I finally hit upon two letters, two angular letters stretching both up and down, that transformed my name from small and squat to tall and willowy. I thought, now when people see my name, they'll see someone tall and skinny. And then maybe I will turn into that, too. Of course, by "tall and skinny" I meant a whole range of things from happy to popular to confident to athletic, which is a fantasy. But I kept spelling my name this way until I was sixteen, at which point my mother got it legally changed.

When I decided to be a boy I went looking for a boy name, and hit upon the one that everyone currently calls me. Not coincidentally, it contains those two tall, angled letters that I substituted so long ago. Also not coincidentally, it is a name I associate with boys in high school. Tall, muscular jocks, blond and popular, striding through the halls like the own the world, in the way that straight, white, non-trans, able-bodied American men do own the world. But I never thought the name would stick...if being trans wasn't a phase, I wanted my parents to rename me.

Now, two years later, I'm still a fella, and my parents want nothing to do with it. I'm also more actively critiquing my eating disordered behavior and body dysphoria. Working at unpacking all the meanings that I and other put into words like "fat," "tall," "thin," "round," and all the rest. The privileges and associations attached to those terms that are completely unrelated to what a person's body actually looks like, and what it either allows or prevents them from doing.

And now I've gone to Colin. I had considered Colin, when I turned into a boy, but rejected it. I admitted that Colin too closely matched my image of myself, while the name I ended up choosing was as divorced from my self-image as a name could be. And if you look at it, there is a rounded C, a short, round o, and a short i, barely relieved by the tall, straight l. And those were too close to the letters I had already banished.

But now that I'm passing, and my legal name is still quite female, it's time to think about changing my name forever. And for the first time in my life, I think I'm going to have my name reflect who I am, and not who I wish I was.

Ideal for who?

2008-03-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

I managed to get a copy of my discharge sheet from crazyschool. There wasn't much on it of note, seeing as I was extremely compliant and only there for a couple weeks, but one thing stuck out.

They listed my intake weight, my discharge weight, and my ideal weight. The first two I don't quarrel with, but I'm wondering how they got to that magic ideal weight.

I may as well go into numbers. They shouldn't be triggering, seeing as I didn't get as sick as, you know, anoretics are supposed to get. I'm going to guess that before I started restricting, I was around 130 pounds. I never weighed myself so I don't know, but once I started weighing I had been restricting for months, and I was down to around 127. That number slowly crept down, and down, and down, and after the final plunge into illness I got to 108. I was discharged at 115.

Now, they tell me that my ideal weight is 121. Funny, I disagree. I think my ideal weight is whatever it was back when I was eating normally, fairly active, felt healthy and didn't give a damn. I'm at around 118, 119 now, which is supposedly just a hair under my ideal weight, and due to some recent stressors I've restricted some this past week.

I'm going to guess they did my ideal weight using the sensitive calibration of the extremely precise Body Mass Index, which takes your height, your weight, and figures out if you're healthy. Not your metabolism, activity level, ratio of fat to muscle, blood chemistry, sex, gender, or anything else. Just your height and your weight. According to them, I'm so almost perfect. I think I'm still sick.

Yeah, not a big fan of crazyschool. Even they thought I should lose weight back when I was sane and healthy.

Tic Tac Toe

2008-03-11T07:34:00.001-07:00

The moms in my neighborhood organized a carpool during middle school. One mom drove us every Monday, and she would usually stop at the nearby grocery store and buy us all hot chocolates.

I'd use my allowance to buy a thing of Tic-Tacs, the dark green ones. On Monday I'd just pop 'em in my mouth without thinking twice. Come Tuesday I'd start to obsess. I'd count them, over and over, always worried that I'd miss one. I'd drift off during math class, but would tangle my brain into knots multiplying, dividing, figuring out how many school hours were left per week, how many Tic Tacs I could have per day to make them last down to the last minute on Friday, how many that factored out per hour. I thought about asking our science teacher to do an experiment where we dissolved Tic Tacs so I could figure out just how long one could last in my mouth, so I could calculate it more exactly.

My family was broke, but it's not like I couldn't afford to buy another thing of Tic Tacs come, say, Wednesday or Thursday. It wasn't like the Tic Tac factory suffered a tragic explosion, limiting the world's supply of dark-green Tic Tacs only to the wealthy bourgeoisie. I think it was the act of calculated deprivation that appealed to me. If I could measure out my Tic Tacs accordingly, I was safe. I wouldn't run out, and suddenly experience a Tic Tac emergency on a Friday morning. I had enough to last, and didn't need to suffer the indignity of requesting more than my weekly (self-imposed) ration.

Later on as an adolescent, I would try to self-diagnose myself with anorexia, but always ran up against the cliched explanation that eating disorders are "about control." I never, ever mistook control over food for control over my life, I thought with a sense of desperate superiority. But then, come high school I had stopped carrying Tic Tacs around in my front pocket, and had forgotten the way I used them to mete out the days and hours of my earlier years.

Spirit and flesh

2008-03-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

When I was in treatment, people would occasionally bring up the idea of "torture pants." You know, those pants that used to fit, back when, but don't anymore. Or pants that are supposedly the right size, but are cut just a tad differently, so they're maybe too tight in places that you weren't expecting.

You'd be amazed by how much time we spent in crazyschool talking about pants. I brought up a pair of khakis I had worn to work several times per week, from when I was 18 up through August of that past year. They had always fit me exactly the same, for all those years. A little tighter than I like around the waist, generally not needing a belt, uncomfortable enough that I couldn't wait to change out of them at the end of my shift.

A few months after leaving that job, and right after entering treatment, I put them on out of curiosity. Pulled 'em up, let go, and watched them fall straight down.

I brought this up in group, and this girl smiled and nodded knowingly. "I love it when that happens, too" she said.

I shook my head. "I was scared," I said. She looked surprised. "I mean, sure, the sick part of me is happy that I lost weight. But it's so...disorienting. To know that...there used to be flesh there, and now there isn't. I keep wondering where it went."

I wasn't a Philosophy major in school, but I studied enough about the changing concepts of the Self, and how that is and isn't related to the boundaries of a person's body, to approach weight loss with an overly intellectual frame of reference. If there is less of my body, what does that say about my mind? My spirit? The space I take up in the world, and in the minds of others? What does it mean that I extend less dimensionally than I did when I was 19?

No one in group was really able to follow my chain of thought, likely because I had so many questions and so few answers. But I think this line of thinking, in a nutshell, is why I have an eating disorder. I want there to be as little of me as possible. I'm not entirely sure why I've attached such significance to the ideas of enough, not enough, and too much, but I'm betting that if that gets figured out I'll suddenly be able to eat breakfast.

Preaching, but not to the choir.

2008-03-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

When I was an undergraduate I started this kick-ass club about body image, eating disorders, and activism. We did the activist project I mentioned before with A&F, put body-positive fliers all over campus, co-sponsored events and held discussions.

It was a dismal failure. There was me, one girl generally recognized as the campus loon, and a few other occasional members. When I asked other girls, staunch feminists all, why they didn't want to join the answers were vague. One girl thought it was just about eating disorders, and said that, because she didn't have one, she didn't want to join. Others just said they were too busy, or they'd come next week, or maybe later.

I think it was because very few people were willing to reconsider their ideas surrounding women's bodies. I went to an undergraduate institution with a lot of extremely privileged young women. There were very few fat women on campus, something I noticed early on. I was thin, I guess, but nothing compared to the tall, willowy women floating around in their hip-huggers and tube tops.

There were plenty of active student groups that were pro-choice, involved with queer rights, against workplace discrimination, against racism, and the like, but I found very, very few women willing to acknowledge thin privilege. Even basic rants against oppressive images of women in the media were half-hearted, especially because you'd then go to the dining hall and see women pile up their plates with spinach and vinegar, or a big glop of cottage cheese.

For awhile I was screaming mad, but I seemed to be the only one. Not too long after I gave up I came out as trans, and decided that it was highly inappropriate for a man to tell women how to feel about their bodies. I just spent the rest of my college career seething.

How do you dismantle the master's house when you've got so many people living in it?

Of or pertaining to Aristotle

2008-03-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering, the definition of peripatetic is:

1.	walking or traveling about; itinerant.

2.	(initial capital letter) of or pertaining to Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens.

4.	a person who walks or travels about.

I've always liked to take walks. Before I had an iPod it was the best way for me to daydream. Now I love strutting around my city, taking in everything and imagining that everyone is looking at me, wondering who that young man is and where he's going.

During my various intakes for eating disorder treatment, they would ask me if I over-exercised, and I'd always say no. I don't go to the gym. I do sit-ups, but hardly in excess. In general I'm pretty sedentary except for the walking.

Now the question is, where is the line between walking for pleasure and walking as a compulsion? I think when I was more actively anorexic it crossed the line. I would walk for hours, from one town to the other, bypassing every train stop that would take me from door to door. Often I'd get off the train miles before my stop, just to pass the time. I didn't do it to lose weight, precisely. Knowing I was burning calories was nice, of course, but I think it was more symptomatic of depression. After all, I had nothing to do and nowhere to go, so taking the train would really just mean I had to spend more time in my room wondering how my life had collapsed so completely.

Now I have a desk job. I sit all day, and it's been getting harder and harder to justify staying on my meal plan. To compensate I walk from here to there--it's not like I have homework, and I have an iPod and comfortable boots, so why not? At times I worry, though, that I'm "engaging in a behavior" or something. I'm afraid to be honest with myself.

But if I stopped walking I'd have to rename this blog, and that would just be a hassle.

What I'm hungry for

2008-03-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

As I was starting to get sick, I tried to explain to a friend what it felt like to be hungry. In halting words I told her it was like I was in an overheated room, clad in a wool sweater and a down coat. Being hungry felt like taking off layers. Like stripping down and reducing myself to the minimum.

It's hard to say how accurate that still is. I can now recognize that I achieve a sort of comfort from being hungry, a perverse feeling of strength and competence. Recognizing this is a huge step.

This realization came like a thunderbolt. It was a few months after I started hormones, when I was beginning to notice that I was feeling dizzy all the time, that I would go from "huh, maybe I should eat something" to crashing blood sugar and feelings of illness with little to no warning. After going out with friends for dinner, and feeling like I was about to pass out on the street, I realized that I was happy. And proud of myself. And I couldn't figure out why.

It was because back in the day, even up through college, I had associated hunger with achievement. If I was hungry, that meant that I was succeeding in my goal of not eating, of getting by on the minimum, of not giving in to my own needs. I had linked these two feelings in my subconscious so closely that years later, triggered by an adolescent metabolism in a 22-year-old body, a lot of my old behaviors came flooding back.

I had hoped that recognizing this link could keep me from continuing to restrict. After all, I'm an intelligent person, and a feminist, and generally committed to my own health an well-being, so surely I can conquer these compulsions and go back to normal! Unfortunately, while I was, and remain, both intelligent and feminist, I've never been very good at taking care of myself, and the leaping feeling of joy and strength I got from feeling hungry was just too intoxicating to forfeit.

Maybe I should figure out some sort of aversion therapy, so I associate hunger with, I don't know, the smell of a backed-up sewer, or getting hit on the head with a frying pan. Any ideas?

It's not about law school, either.

2008-03-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

A bunch of people have nodded knowingly. "It must have been the stress from law school that made it hard to eat, right?"

Yep. That's it. "Stress." That's why all my other classmates were wandering around the halls like cadavers, nibbling Cheerios from the same damn baggie every day, and stopping by the doctor's office every week to get weighed. It's a totally common side effect of law school, dying from starvation.

I hate reductive answers. Eating disorders are about control. I'm queer and trans because I was abused. I'm thin because I eat right and exercise. Oh, and now that Hillary's running for office, we're totally post-feminism.

Here'n'queer

2008-03-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

I have a sneaking suspicion that the women I went to crazyschool with didn't know what to make of me.

For one, when I got bored and hyper I'd start spewing off feminist theory about eating disorders, patriarchy, the media, zines, and activism. I caught them giving each other confused looks, as if they were wondering why this guy knew so much about Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi.

And one time during "body image group" a girl talked about how she felt as if everyone was looking at her and her fat, like there was a spotlight trained on her. "I know exactly what you mean," I said. "I used to wear two binders to keep my chest really flat, but one day I left for work only wearing one. I had a panic attack, and kept my arms crossed in front of my chest so tightly that people were wondering what was wrong. If I had just let it be no one would have noticed, but I just felt so...exposed. Spilling out of my skin. It was awful."

There were a lot of blank looks. A few people looked at my chest, which was pretty flat, as I was wearing a tight sports bra and a baggy T-shirt, and I'm naturally very small-chested. They would have been a lot less confused had they known I was trans, but since I wasn't supposed to disclose, they were left wondering why a boy felt the need to wrap up his torso.

Yep, you read that right. I was told by the staff and by the director of the program that I shouldn't come out. If I wanted to tell the girls that I was a female-to-male transsexual, of course they couldn't stop me, but no one thought that it was appropriate. They didn't believe that any good might come of it. They couldn't even imagine a reason why I might want to.

I asked the director why. "Well," he said awkwardly, "how is that relevant to the mission of the clinic? It's not the program's place to bring outside issues into group."

"Okay," I said, "but I am in the group. And I am trans. Therefore, it is not an outside issue. Christine is allowed to talk about her children, and Anna is allowed to talk about her husband. Those are both outside issues for me! Why am I not allowed to talk about my body, my life, in the same way as everyone else?"

He maintained that my body and my life was somehow outside the scope of the program. It would make the other people uncomfortable (because, of course, it's always preferable to bow to bigotry and prejudice than to challenge it). "And besides," he said, "Why do you want people to know? What does this have to do with eating disorder treatment?"

I thought for a minute. How does my female-assigned body relate to my eating disorder? How did being raised and socialized as a girl in this culture contribute to my body image? How did my shifting metabolism alter my relationship to my body? How could it possibly matter, in a group therapy session, that I can relate to these women on what it was like to grow up as a girl and young woman in this culture?

In short, what does the rest of my life have anything to do with what landed me in treatment?

But, of course, it's hard to be both a patient and an advocate for yourself. I argued with him some, and told some of the girls I became friendly with, and generally just confused everyone else.

u cant haz cheezburger

2008-03-07T06:40:00.000-08:00

I believe that G-d killed my cat.

No, stay with me.

See, my furry little orange girl moved in with me when I graduated from college. When I moved to go to law school it was hard to find an apartment that was cat-friendly, so I finally settled for a place I didn't much like. As I started to get sick, my cat became more than just a cat to me. She was the reason why I couldn't just pick up and move again--how am I going to move with her again? I can't find another cat-friendly apartment on such short notice. And hospitalization? Don't even think about it! I can't go to a hospital, who would take care of my kitten?

A couple weeks before I was hospitalized, right before I decided to drop out of school, I was packing up to visit home for the weekend. I was petting my kitten telling her I'd be back soon, to be good, that I'd miss her. But something was different. I realized with a jolt that my cat was very, very thin. I was never able to feel her spine before, or her little ribs. The little paunch that always hung down was gone.

I went to check her food bowl. Full. And I realized I hadn't had to refill it for a few days. Her litter box? Empty. But...well, she was walking around and meowing, and even hopped up onto the bathtub to say hi. I figured, well, maybe she's sick, but she won't die in a weekend. And I'm bloody sick. My cat is too thin, and so am I. She's not eating, and neither am I. I need to go home, to be around people that will help me eat.

So I left, and the next night got a call from my roommates, who told me she was crying. They took her to the pet hospital, who called me back and told me that my little girl was very, very sick. That if I had $3-$5K they might be able to diagnose her. Not fix her, just figure out why she was so sick. So I went to my friend's place, cried all night, got on the first bus back, and held my kitten in my lap while they put her to sleep.

That night I called my parents and told them that I was dropping out of school and seeking treatment for anorexia. I don't know if I would have been able to take that step (before it was too late) without the seemingly divine intervention. Not only did my excuse for not seeking treatment die, she also died in the exact same way that I was currently dying. I never used to be able to feel my ribcage before, either, and I never went grocery shopping anymore. But I figured I'd be fine.

I thought it was funny...

2008-03-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

This was going to be a response to a comment, but I thought it was funny enough to put as a post.

I was out with friends for a birthday dinner. He chose a restaurant that specializes in wonderful chocolatey desserts, but see, I'm not a huge dessert person. I like bites of this'n'that, but too much sweet, all at once, just isn't satisfying. So I got a Cobb salad (you know, with turkey and bacon and cheese and eggs), and just got bites off of everyone's brownie skillets and Death By Chocolates.

The only woman at the table, a friend of a friend, was making predictable comments about how her diet starts tomorrow, about how calories don't count if you pretend that it's celery, stuff like that. And she looks over at me and says, with mock disdain, "And he's over there eating a salad like an anorexic!"

All of my friends who heard her fell dead silent. I cracked up. "Hey!" I said, a big smile on my face, "I just got out of the hospital for that!"

"No way. You're kidding," she said, disbelief on her face.

"Nope, I'm not," I said, still laughing. "I was hospitalized for anorexia a couple months ago."

"No, no, you gotta be joking."

"No, really, look at how scrawny my arms still are. Seriously. Ha! Pwned!"

Part of me felt bad that I embarrassed her so badly. But I thought it was hilarious. And come on, if you're gonna make a joke about a potentially fatal psychological disorder, you should be ready for the consequences.

I still think it's funny, though.

What not to say

2008-03-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

Seeing as this is a running theme in my life, and in the lives of just about everyone I know who's queer, trans, eating-disordered, an addict, of color, not American-born, disabled, fat, wtf-ever, you'll probably see a lot of similar posts.

For now, I'll just ask you to not tell me how healthy I look. Granted, it's better than when folks say "You've gained weight! But it looks good on you!" But still.

For one, it's like when people comment on my transition. Thanks, I don't actually want to be reminded that I used to sound like a girl, and look like a girl, and that no matter how filled-in my sideburns get you're still going to see me as a girl. It's not nice to remind someone that they used to look like they were dying. I remember, thanks.

But the "health" comment. That's complicated. I'm not the sort of anoretic who thinks he's fat. Yeah, done that when I was younger, but right now my body dysphoria is pretty much under control. So I'm not worried that "healthy" is a synonym for "fat."

But see, it's scary to be healthy. I wanted to be sick. It was a way to tell people that I needed help, that something was wrong. That I was deserving of care. Telling me that I look healthy makes me think that no one's going to care about me anymore.

Out of the streets and into the closets!

2008-03-06T07:32:00.001-08:00

My finest body-activism moment was getting together a group of people and trekking to the mall. We were all dressed in heteronormative drag, so as to escape notice, and fanned out in the Abercrombie&Fitch, pretending to be shopping.

What we were really doing was distributing little slips of paper I had printed out and cut up the night before. "Did You Know?" it asked. "Abercrombie & Fitch won't hire you if you're not cute enough (that's illegal)/thinks racism is funny/Makes thongs for little girls/Encourages eating disorders/Uses sweatshop labor to make its clothing."

We rifled through the skirts and pants, and dropped them into the pockets. The staff were all too busy flirting with each other to pay attention, so it was really easy. And awesome. The best part was when someone from the local newspaper found one and included it in their article.

It's probably wasn't the most legal of actions, but I'd still recommend it. Or something similar...in diet books, maybe, or fashion magazines.

Blast from the past!

2008-03-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

Ya know, I never had the standard boy-trapped-in-a-girl's-body thing going on. Not as a child, not as an adolescent, not even now, really. I usually just felt trapped.

Like many people with eating disorders (heck, like most women/people in this society) I thought that once I lost weight I would turn into a whole new person. You know, the kind of person who wore bikinis at the beach and went to blacklit clubs with her trendy friends, who went shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch and could fit into a size zero.

Granted, I did fit into a size zero, but somehow that wasn't enough. Despite the fact that I already had a girl's body, breasts and hips and a nicely curved waist, I thought that if I lost weight my body would look more like the girls I saw on the cheerleading squad. And if I looked like them, maybe I could fool them into thinking I was one of them. And if I could fool them into thinking I was one of them, maybe I could fool myself.

There was one day in high school when the administrators organized an after-school meeting to talk about eating disorders. I don't know how I worked up the courage to go, but I sat on the floor and made small talk with an emaciated girl I recognized from my Spanish class. Then the group began, and two girls, seniors both, started talking about their eating disorders. I don't remember what they said because I was too busy tracing patterns on the carpet and shrieking in my head, but at one point I just couldn't take it and I fled for the girl's bathroom, sobbing.

The girl who had already spoke came in after me. She asked me if I was okay and I, tears streaming down my face, nodded. She asked if I wanted to talk to her or a counselor, and I shook my head. So she left, I stayed, pulled myself together, and went to the library.

Sitting there, though, in a room full of young women, I felt profoundly apart. I know it's a common trope of adolescent angst to think of oneself as different, so I'm sure that every girl in that room was thinking "I'm not like the rest of them." But I think I knew on some level that I did not belong in a community of women as one of them, and that I could never come to terms with my body while it was incorrectly gendered. It wasn't that I thought I was fat, exactly. But I knew something was wrong with my body, and there are a lot more commercials for Weight Watchers than there are for testosterone.

Remember the hippopotamus oath!

2008-03-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

No blog about eating disorders, transsexuals, or queers would be complete without at least one story of an incompetent doctor. Luckily, this isn't one of those stories.

I had called up my campus health center and asked if they had any nutritionists. Of course, the problem wasn't that I didn't know how to feed myself, but I thought it was a step in the right direction. They had no nutritionists, but scheduled me for a general checkup.

The first person to see me was the nurse, Leeann. The standard weight, BP, temp, all that. She asked me what medications I was on. "I'm half the standard dosage of testosterone," I said. "I don't know how much that is, exactly...50ccs every two weeks? I'm not sure, I just put it into the syringe."

She thought for a moment. "Well, a standard dose is 100ccs every two weeks. If you're on half a dose, that would make it 100 per month. Does that sound right?" I stammered a response, so amazed and happy that she actually knew what the standard dose was that I couldn't form a complete sentence. I was expecting a barrage of questions. "What do you mean, you inject testosterone? Wait, what are you? Where does it go? Is it hard? How are your parents? Have you had the surgery?" Nope, none of that. She just treated me like I was a patient on a specific medication. Uncanny.

Then the doctor came in. She introduced herself as Dr. Rothstein, and one of her first questions was "Now, my daughter tells me that some people prefer the pronoun 'ze.' What pronoun do you go by?"

I had barely recovered from getting competent care from the nurse, and now I was given a doctor who actually knew what trans stuff was! Who actually thought to ask about my pronoun! Who didn't assume that I had to go by anything! I grinned hugely and said, "I go by 'he.' Thanks for asking." I told her that she looked a lot like my mother (dark, Jewish, short hair), but my mother would never call me by the right pronoun.

We got down to business. She asked me why I was there, and I said "I think I have an eating disorder."

She nodded.

I waited. Waited for her to act surprised, because I didn't look anorexic. Or confused, because queers don't get eating disorders, and neither do men. I waited for her to tell me that I was interesting, or unusual, or complicated, one of those adjectives I would hear many times down the road to explain why I was denied adequate care. But she didn't say any of that. She just waited for me to talk more.

So, I explained that I was restricting...I wasn't sick yet, but I was worried about getting there. She asked about my caloric intake, exercise level, purging behaviors, all the questions you'd ask a patient with an eating disorder. She didn't ask about what kind of sex I had, or what it felt like to be on T, or when I first knew that I was a boy trapped in a girl's body. She did ask me to come in every week and get my vitals done, so she could monitor my health. It was unbelievable.

Looking back on it, this is sad. I should not be grateful that a doctor treated me like a patient and not a medical experiment or exotic specimen. I am grateful, however, because their treatment of me, the care they took and the attention that they paid, helped sustain me for those times when I was denied treatment, or told I was "interesting" and showed the door, or when I was asked more questions about my gender identity than about why, exactly, I was throwing up thrice daily.

I wish that compassionate medical treatment was the rule instead of the exception. Perhaps it is, for people that aren't exceptions to the rules. I wouldn't know.

A bit of background

2008-03-05T07:24:00.000-08:00

Here is the story, nipped and tucked and edited and rehearsed, that I use to explain the past year or so of my life. Maybe this should have been post #1, but I haven't figured out how to use Blogspot yet.

What I say is, I have engaged in eating disordered behaviors and thought patterns for just about my entire life. I probably never fulfilled all the criteria for a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, and I never got sick enough to warrant treatment, but I still count an eating disorder as one of the backdrops of my life and emotional terrain.

There was a brief reprieve from these behaviors when I came out as trans. Binding my breasts flat, hiding my female curves in baggy clothing, getting people to call me "he" instead of "she" all helped me come to some terms with my body and food. I even learned how to feed myself, mostly, and stayed at a constant weight for several years. It felt like getting out of prison.

But then I found myself in the middle of a convergence of events that seemed tailor-made to lead me down the road to relapse.

The first was hormonal transition. This second puberty, with the cracking voice and belly fur, was wonderful, voluntary, and profoundly disorienting. I had come to terms with my food issues for the most part, and I had finally figured out how to feed myself so I was energetic, healthy, and at my natural set point. But suddenly my changing body required more and more food, and different food at different times, just to feel normal. And that terrified me. I had heard some transguys say that T made them gain weight, and while I proudly spouted off fat-positive statements, secretly the idea of gaining a gut made me panic. I tried to ignore my body again, tried to convince myself that all I needed were iron pills or vitamins instead of more calories, but I started to lose weight, started to feel sick all the time and be dizzy, all the time. I had to re-learn how to feed myself, and that was not something I was psychologically prepared to handle.

The second trigger was my impending move, away from my home, my queer family, the city that I love more than I can say. I had chosen to leave a life that I built for the law library and briefing cases and no free time ever. Deep down I knew I didn't want that, but to admit to such a huge mistake--a mistake that made my parents proud, that made me feel like I was going to really accomplish something, that would help me Change the World--wasn't possible. So deep down I thought, maybe if I get sick I can leave law school but it won't be my fault.

Along this same line was The Relationship. It'll take a whole 'nother blog just to scratch the surface, but I can say that I needed more attention than he could give. I thought that if I got sick, he'd have to take better care of me. Instead of licking subway poles I gave into my own impulses and lost some weight. I started to get sick, and he started to pull away. I thought, it's not working! I have to get sicker! So I got sicker, and he pulled away even more. Still not convinced by logic (why was I in law school?) I got still sicker. Then we stopped speaking, and I had to go to a hospital.

So that's my story, neatly triangulated. It's not that simple, of course, but it's a good start towards gaining clarity.

Telling the difference

2008-03-04T12:32:00.000-08:00

At the urging of a concerned third party, I dragged myself to a 12-step meeting, an Overeater's Anonymous geared towards people with anorexia and bulimia. Undereater's Anonymous, I'd call it if I were to keep going.

I've always assumed that "Anonymous" meetings wouldn't help a cynical little smart-aleck like me, but I've had such a hard time finding help that I tried to keep an open mind. I didn't think that a 12-step program was my thing, but figured that if it worked for so many other people there might be something to it. I'm still perfectly willing to accept that it might be useful for people dealing with substance abuse, and that it might even work for people with compulsive eating issues.

But...honestly, I really hate having to translate. Having to re-configure everything they say through the lens of anorexia. All that talk of abstinence...counting days...whatever, just doesn't fit. And there's a reason why one basic ground rule of so many groups is to avoid speaking about particular behaviors, to avoid triggering people as much as possible. UA seems hell-bent to bring up every trigger imaginable, in the name of "honesty." Fuck, after hearing people talk about how they weighed 95lbs, ate an apple a day, whatever, I came out more triggered than I went in, and I spent the entire time body-checking.

I am not going to say that getting sober, quitting smoking, whatever, is easy. Or uncomplicated. But there is a certain simplicity about abstinence. Either you had a drink, or you didn't. Either you smoked, or you didn't. Hell, either you binged or you didn't. But what does it mean to say that one has had thirty days of abstinence, when what you're talking about is abstaining from food in the first place? Whereas one could go the rest of one's life without alcohol, without heroin, the entire point of recovering from anorexia is to get one to go *back* to the substance in question.

I know they were talking about abstaining from eating-disordered behaviors. Abstaining from restricting. But with eating disorders the lines are much less clear. Some people without eating disorders skip breakfast on a regular basis. They were in a hurry, just weren't hungry, just didn't feel like it. Whereas if I skip breakfast it's probably because the idea of breakfast was just too overwhelming that day. Should my measurement be my meal plan? Should I consider every day that I don't follow my meal plan to be a day that I've engaged in disordered behavior? I don't think so, because very few people follow a meal plan like the one they gave me.

Besides, I don't like the idea that I am "powerless over this disease." Furthermore, I'm completely unwilling to hand over control to a "Higher Power." Sure, I think that G-d killed my cat, but that was just a way to poke me into doing something--I made all those damned phone calls myself.

Besides, one size does not fit all. This entire country has an eating disorder, and you can't convince me that my particular manifestation of it is just a disease, like cancer, or an addiction. Something pure and simple, that can be fixed by working through the steps, on the Program's terms and not on my own.

Fat is an issue

2008-03-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

I could spend the rest of my life writing about feminism, women's issues, patriarchy, bodies, health, class, race, and all the other intersections of identity that help explain eating disorders.

And yet I would still be somehow left out of the conversation. Yes, I am a feminist, and yes, I believe that fat is a feminist issue, that eating disorders are partially due to misogyny and sexism and fear of female power.

But...well, I'm a man with an eating disorder. And while my eating disorder has spanned my life both as a girl and as a boy, (or a woman or a man), it got much, much worse since transition. And while I was female-identified I could argue up a storm about the modeling industry, the media, magazines, Photoshop, all the rest, how they conspired against me loving my female body the way it was, those arguments never rang true.

And now that I'm male-identified, with a scruffy little beard, broader shoulders and a more defined jaw-line, I find conversations about feminism and eating disorders exhilarating and inspirational and more true than ever, but they still don't help me.

It's scary to step out of theory and into lived experience, but that is part of why I started this blog. To help fill in the gaps. I've always lived in the gaps, and it's time I stopped letting others speak for me.

Patriotism

2008-03-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

For future reference: I refer to my stint in the partial-hospitalization program at an eating-disorders clinic as "Crazyschool."

I don't have a lot of stories from crazyschool, but one stands out.

See, they have all these rules about food. Perfectly reasonable ones, that I followed dutifully. You can only slice your apples once, for example. No bizarre combinations of condiments. You're not allowed to take six bites to eat a single Cheerio (I admit that was a hard one to drop). And unlike some of the other patients, I recognized the importance of these rules. Decreasing the rituals and obsessions we develop around food, de-escalating food from a terrifying, overwhelming experience to just something you gotta do to survive. And hopefully, something you grow to enjoy.

When a girl said "But it's GROSS to just, like, eat a banana! Who does that? In bites? I have to cut it up into [a ridiculous number of slices], that's not weird!" I thought, sweetie, really? Bananas aren't that complicated. Just take a bite.

But one day, one of our snack options was Oreos. I usually picked the least intimidating of the snack choices, usually fruit and string cheese (I couldn't really handle the popcorn or the trail mix). But that day I decided to be brave, and checked off "Oreos" on the list of options. I knew that every snack had to be accompanied by 8oz of milk, and I was embarrassingly excited about the prospect of Oreos'n'milk, just like when I was younger, before I wasn't allowed to eat Oreos.

So snacktime arrived, I poured my milk, and started chattering about how excited I was about dipping Oreos in milk. Our watcher said, "Oh, but remember, you're not allowed to dip."

Histrionics ensued. What do you mean? I know the rules, but it's Oreos! And milk! Come on!

She refused. Rules is rules. And besides, some of the patients have, in the past, used dipping as a way to hide uneaten food. She put down the packet of Oreos in front of me and crossed her arms, daring me to dip.

My last chance. Last argument. I used to be in law school, for heaven's sake. I can beat this.

"If you don't let me dip my Oreos in my milk," I said, voice cracking like an adolescent's, "the terrorists will win."

I thought it was pretty funny, but apparently no one else got the joke. I pushed away the Oreos and got myself a box of raisins and some string cheese. The next time I went grocery shopping, though, I bought myself an entire package of Oreos, for the first time ever. So I guess I won after all.

Know fat chicks.

2008-03-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

One of my friends helped save my life. See, if left to my own devices I would only eat dry Cheerios (six bites per Cheerio), fat-free yogurt (an hour for a 6oz carton), and fat-free popcorn. If I let myself eat, say, pasta with butter, or ice cream, it was with the foreknowledge that it wouldn't be digested.

That rule didn't apply when eating with friends, though, especially when said friends had bathroom doors that didn't close all the way.

Jill would cook for me. One meal in particular I remember was miraculous. Four courses, all made from scratch. Millet and quinoa with dried cranberries. Red lentils with curry. Spinach and sauteed sweet potatoes. For dessert? Crepes with sweetened ricotta and strawberries. Seriously, even when I knew how to feed myself I wasn't that good at it.

She talked for a long time about how important a balanced diet was for her. She made sure to have have just so many complex carbs, so many green vegetables, so much protein from various sources per day. She was vegetarian, bought organic, cooked from scratch, was intimately familiar with the nutritional information of seitan, various whole grains, leafy greens versus roots. Just listening to her made me feel healthy.

Jill is also fat. Not chubby, not stocky, not big boned. She is a fat young woman, and is fine with it. She has been involved with fat performance troups, fat community activism, fat queer art, and other groups dedicated to fat acceptance, body acceptance, and health at any size. I, on the other hand, was skinny, dizzy, manic and in constant physical pain.

It's funny, I told her. You eat better than just about anyone I know. You have a relationship with food that's healthier than I can even imagine. Whereas what little I eat is nutritionally blank, and I puke up most of it. But plenty of doctors, and just about any layperson, would look at you and me and congratulate me for being so healthy and disciplined, and tell you to lay off the fried Twinkies, you fatty.

I mean, it wasn't funny, and we both knew it. But we were both living proof that you can be fat and healthy, and thin and dying. Now if only we could get the rest of the world to believe us.

Turned away

2008-03-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

I had called a world-renowned eating disorders clinic the day before and spoke to an intake coordinator. She asked me the standard questions, the ones that I had gotten so used to reciting I barely noticed them. Are you restricting (Yes), how many calories are you taking in per day (I try to keep it below 800), Are you purging (Yes) how often (1-3 times per day) are you on medication (Yes) which ones (Celexa and testosterone).

That last almost always gives them pause. I explain, I am transsexual, female-to-male, and at that point I had been injecting T, half of the "normal" dosage for about nine months. The nice young woman paused, then asked for my insurance information. All that done, she said she'd call me back tomorrow with some treatment options.

I was excited. I had gone onto their website earlier, and they had a whole entire page dedicated to men with eating disorders, saying that the numbers of men with anorexia, bulimia, and ED-NOS are rising, but many men are never treated for these conditions due to the assumption that eating disorders are only a women's problem. I figured they would be especially able to help me, since I pass as male and identify as male but am still legally female.

They called me back the next morning. "I ran your insurance information," she said, "and you're really well covered." Great! I exclaimed.

"But..." my heart jumped. "I spoke with my supervisor, and she said that because you now identify as male, you're not eligible for our inpatient, residential, or day patient programs. We can get you set up with a weekly therapy appointment, though, and if you need help planning meals we can refer you to a nutritionist."

"But...on your website...." I trailed off. "But I'm still legally female. What if I shave and don't bind my chest? Maybe people will think I'm just a masculine-looking woman."

"No," she said, "I'm sorry."

"That's..." I couldn't finish the sentence, and hung up.

"That's fine," I said into my empty room. "I'll just die, then."

I didn't die, thank G-d, but if I had they would be to blame. They would, and so would the three other hospitals that told me I couldn't get help because I didn't want to be a girl.

Phrasing the question

2008-03-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

A shrink asked me, "When did you eating disorder begin?"

I was kind of at a loss about how to make her really understand, this well-coiffed, older blond woman with her perfect hair and makeup and pantsuit. But I told her the truth--it started when I was four, and I went to bed hungry because I was afraid to ask my mother for something to eat.

She looked at me incredulously. "Four? That's awfully young. No, when did it really start?"

"Um, like, I was fifteen? And I saw this cheerleader? And I was like, maybe if I lose some weight I'll look like her? Is that what you want me to say? Because it's not my story."

She looked taken aback, and the rest of our first and last session continued with unabated hostility.

I believe my eating disorder started before the age of five. I remember asking my mother a question in our old house in Chicago, and as we moved when I was five, it had to be before then.

"Mooooom? What would you do if I said I was hungry?"

Notice the phrasing. Not "Mom, I'm hungry." Not "Mom, can I have something to eat." But rather, "What would you do if I said...."

My hunger was humiliating. My need, or desire, for more food, put me in a position of powerlessness, because when you're shorter than the kitchen table you can't exactly reach for your own snack. I needed my mother to get food for me, but what if she said no? What if, having admitted my hunger to her, she told me that I'd already eaten enough that night? That I should have eaten when I had the chance? What if my mother thought I was greedy, insatiable, needed too much, wanted too much, actually (heaven forfend) had desires?

She could then be in a position to deny me them, and that wasn't a power I was willing to grant. In my simple little five-year-old mind I thought that if I phrased the question that way, as a hypothetical, if she was unwilling to give me food I could pretend that I didn't want it anyways, and thus my stoic, ascetic facade could remain unblemished.

As is so often the case, I don't remember her answer any of the many times I asked this question. But I sure remember the question, and the fears that drove me to pose it.

It's not about control.

2008-02-29T14:21:00.001-08:00

People say that eating disorders are "about control." Mine never was.

The day my doctor told me I was at risk for "sudden cardiac death," I debated with myself like a perverse Eddie Izzard. Cake, or death?

The fact that I had to ask myself that question showed me that I was not in control. If I was in control of my life I would still be in law school. I would not be dizzy, or bruising like a peach. I would not be at risk for sudden cardiac death. And I would not be actually weighing the pros and cons of dying vs. the stale bran muffin in my backpack.

A normal person, a person in control of his or her life, wouldn't even have to have that debate. If a doctor said, "You will die if you do not eat," s/he would eat. Or, more likely, s/he wouldn't have even gotten to that point in the first place. Getting to that point represents a loss of control.

I don't remember the choice I made that day. I'm still alive, though, so I guess I continue to choose the cake. But if I were in control of my life, my eating disorder, my sense of self, it wouldn't even be a choice. It would just be dessert.