Over the course of precisely one year, I have issued scores of pronouncements pertaining to ways in which I might bridle my disordered habits. Established on March 1, 2013 during a brief stint in Los Angeles, this series of posts --now numbering fifty-eight-- was seen as a vehicle for chronicling weight restoration after half a lifetime of obsessive-compulsive exercise and food restriction. To punctuate twelve months of entries I offer a thumbnail account of my preluding history with hospitalization. As a step towards full disclosure, of removing remaining artifice, I believe readers are owed this information.
Although I have followed anorexic instincts for twenty-odd years, it has only been for the last ten that I have been in a certifiably low BMI range. True, I was first brought to a medical center, with need for physical convalescence, at age thirteen, but with my doctor's persuasion and influence I managed to reach a level of seemingly normal health. I would go on to be nutritionally starved, yet on the ripe side of slender, through high school and college, until academic pressures and complications from oral surgery disastrously collided in the second half of 2003. In the decade that followed I have never kept myself very long at a level where I might comfortably don a bathing suit or sleeveless shirt, for fear of being branded "outrageously/irresponsibly thin". (Yes, strangers have berated and shunned me when in lighter clothing.) By the summer of 2009 I was truly yearning to inhabit a cosmetically-pleasing posture, but after moving back in with my parents it became clear any stores of resolve would need compensation from experienced medical authorities. I returned to the guidance of a friendly nutritionist and, by 2011, had also secured an agreeable and supportive therapist, not to mention an equally sympathetic MD. But on the home front my parents were not comfortable enforcing the doctors' edicts, and as an adult it was embarrassing to plead for stricter boundaries. With limited options, in January 2011 I committed myself to a local psychiatric center for addicts and suicidals, and, although I did not put on pounds, I left with an improved approach to eating in which I divided my calories between two meals instead of one large supper. Between 2004 and 2006 I had been in better-equipped clinics, but return enrollment in these options became tricky after leaving my early twenties and the umbrella of family insurance. If the last year has taught me anything, it is that overcoming a debilitating, self-sustained malady is especially difficult without at least a few weeks of residential reconditioning within an appropriately attuned correctional center. Like any motor, my mind requires recalibration. It would almost certainly benefit my recovery to backtrack and revisit previous essays, approaching various plans and proclamations as if with a stranger's eye. At the very least, I should freely take and consume my own advice. It's not as if the goal is beyond human ability. As I've said before, even the youngest of creatures involuntarily recognizes the goodness of mother's milk. Rather, it is a quotidian function, so deceptively simple...
Although I have followed anorexic instincts for twenty-odd years, it has only been for the last ten that I have been in a certifiably low BMI range. True, I was first brought to a medical center, with need for physical convalescence, at age thirteen, but with my doctor's persuasion and influence I managed to reach a level of seemingly normal health. I would go on to be nutritionally starved, yet on the ripe side of slender, through high school and college, until academic pressures and complications from oral surgery disastrously collided in the second half of 2003. In the decade that followed I have never kept myself very long at a level where I might comfortably don a bathing suit or sleeveless shirt, for fear of being branded "outrageously/irresponsibly thin". (Yes, strangers have berated and shunned me when in lighter clothing.) By the summer of 2009 I was truly yearning to inhabit a cosmetically-pleasing posture, but after moving back in with my parents it became clear any stores of resolve would need compensation from experienced medical authorities. I returned to the guidance of a friendly nutritionist and, by 2011, had also secured an agreeable and supportive therapist, not to mention an equally sympathetic MD. But on the home front my parents were not comfortable enforcing the doctors' edicts, and as an adult it was embarrassing to plead for stricter boundaries. With limited options, in January 2011 I committed myself to a local psychiatric center for addicts and suicidals, and, although I did not put on pounds, I left with an improved approach to eating in which I divided my calories between two meals instead of one large supper. Between 2004 and 2006 I had been in better-equipped clinics, but return enrollment in these options became tricky after leaving my early twenties and the umbrella of family insurance. If the last year has taught me anything, it is that overcoming a debilitating, self-sustained malady is especially difficult without at least a few weeks of residential reconditioning within an appropriately attuned correctional center. Like any motor, my mind requires recalibration. It would almost certainly benefit my recovery to backtrack and revisit previous essays, approaching various plans and proclamations as if with a stranger's eye. At the very least, I should freely take and consume my own advice. It's not as if the goal is beyond human ability. As I've said before, even the youngest of creatures involuntarily recognizes the goodness of mother's milk. Rather, it is a quotidian function, so deceptively simple...
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| So close to this wish -- I can almost "taste" it. |
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| March MMXIII: Selfie with retro specs sourced from So. Cal |
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| February MMXIV: Same cashmere turban and scarf, seen in mirror |
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