Palin Alert

Apparently Sarah Palin is now claiming that "Obamacare" (definitely the official name for the new healthcare program, right?) will actually be the cause of more abortions. This is because Obamacare is the "biggest advance of the abortion industry" -- did y'all know about the abortion industry? It's rockin'. You should definitely take out stock before it gets more popular!

http://jezebel.com/5687720/sarah-palin-claims-health-care-act-will-cause-more-abortions?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jezebel%2Ffull+(Jezebel)

too much to say

It's been so long and so much has happened -- just a month and a couple of days, but it seems like a lot of transitions and swings to and fro in the lives of my recovery, queer identity, academics, love, finances, and living situation.

...so I won't go into it, but instead will say that things are much better than they were, and will also post pictures of the boots I want.Steve Madden above, Seychelles below. Lizzie has the Seychelles and I hate her for it.

Recovery?

From Friday through Tuesday, I basically ate my full meal plan. It sucked. By that I suppose I mean that I felt angry, trapped, resentful, and, most prominently, terrified. MH says that I won't lose control, that Mollie knows what she's doing with my meal plan, that my weight won't spiral out of control, but I don't know that she understands that my body gains weight so fast. It seems like I can already see it. I looked in the mirror last night in the bathroom at AEW's and it was just so clear to me that I had already put on some of the pounds I'd lost this summer.

I know this all sounds so irrational. It does, doesn't it? But it's the truth about how I feel. I'm determined not to gain the weight back.

I thought things were going better -- or at least that I had them under control. Following the small meal plan that Mollie gave me a couple of months ago was working well for me. Getting exchanges in liquid forms was working for me. Skipping a meal every once in a while and replacing it with something more snack-ish was working for me. I guess I'm wrong with every single one of those sentences, because people keep telling me that I am, and also because it's proven to be wrong in the past that I can restrict indefinitely.

...and yet somehow it's so hard to let go of. I wrote just a moment ago that I'm determined not to gain the weight back -- but I didn't acknowledge the consequences. Let me acknowledge them now.

Dishonest relationships with my closest friends and family
Losing my relationship with AEW
Losing control of my restricting, leading to B/P behaviors
Falling back into SH behaviors (this one seems very unlikely)
Fucking up academically (this one seems VERY likely)
Falling back into a pattern of drama and provocativeness

How can I justify any of my current behavior when I look at what I could be losing? Christ, LOOK at it. Look at what I would be losing. And yet I can't let go of the idea of losing weight, remain fearful of eating normal, solid food? What is wrong with me? This is so irrational that I am left with the fact I have to admit, again, that I have an eating disorder. Yes, all of us who have been at LPCH have been taught to say "I have an ED" the same way men and women in AA have been taught that they must say "I am an alcoholic."
...I suppose, though, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I have an active eating disorder. I am not actively in recovery. This feels terrible to say. Maybe it's not true. Maybe I have an active disorder but am also active in recovery?

James Franco Looks Lovely in Drag

So, interestingly enough, James Franco -- someone whose appearance and presentation to me seemed very masculine prior to this -- has appeared on the cover of the magazine Candy, which self-describes as

the first fashion magazine ever completely dedicated to celebrating transvestism, transexuality, cross dressing and androgyny

So that's cool. He looks like a super-confident queen!

uh-oh, is your child a "prehomosexual"?

via Jezebel and Scientific American

Apparently, this photo illustrates what your little girl might look like if she is a "pre-homosexual." This is seriously problematic in a number of ways. First of all, let's just address this fucking picture: a very angry-looking little girl wearing worn jeans and holding a baseball glove. How many stereotypes of lesbianism does this play into? (1) Softball; (2) Angry; (3) Masculine* . . . why is this child so unhappy? Apparently, her parents are letting her be the little tomboy she is, so I imagine she's probably pretty content. This looks kind of like the pictures of me or Liz P. as children . . . baggy jeans, boxers, big t-shirts, playing in the dirt. She didn't turn out gay, and I didn't turn out butch. So this picture must SOMEHOW NOT BE ACCURATELY PREDICTIVE OF GAYNESS!!! OMG OMG OMG.

Honestly, though, I feel betrayed by Scientific American! They're supposed to be a reputable journal and they're using the phrase prehomosexuality? That seems to assume that one isn't born gay, but rather develops symptoms of gayness and then turns into a big ol' dyke/fairy.

There are signs, some would say omens, glimmering in certain children’s demeanors that, probably ever since there were children, have caused parents’ brows to crinkle with worry.

Okay, so that part seems to imply that we might have been born this way. That's a good sign, because SciAm should be quite aware of the studies they've probably published previously that indicate the truth of that. However, it's really negative -- "omens"?

To be fair -- SciAm's article is not as awful as the title makes it sound, now that I've read it. Go ahead and take a peek, and look at Jezebel's critique, and tell me what you think.

*Not that masculinity isn't innate in some lesbians, duh. Just not all of us.

reflections on thoughts from the past

I found the journal that I was writing in in 2007. There are entries from the spring and summer, from right before I went into treatment and a very few notes from during treatment. Some of them really struck me. These excerpts are from 15 May 2007.

I'm really happy to be buying clothes that fit, and I can accept that they're Ms instead of S or XS... but at the same time, seeing so many tiny thin, toned women walking around Boston is really difficult. Not just difficult -- anxiety-provoking, painful, panic-inducing, and jealous, too, of course. A lot, though, lately I've been feeling sad or just wistful -- kind of an "I-know-I-can't-be-that" feeling, which is something I've never even come close to accepting before. Sometimes it feels like weakness to accept it -- other times, strength. I don't know -- I guess I don't think either of those is a cop-out. It's weakness in that it's giving in to my body by eating and believing that's okay. It's strength in that it's difficult to fight what I've conditioned myself to believe is the only okay thing: starve or feel horribly guilty.

For a time, I was able to accept that I had to let go of those disordered desires. I shouldn't say that I was able to accept, I should say worked hard enough to accept. In treatment and Magnolia House, I worked very hard. I worked very hard for a long time after that, too. Are my struggles now because I'm no longer working hard? Did I give up at some point, or just get complacent?

Treatment will certainly be interesting. I had all these questions: Am I sick enough? - am I thin enough? - Will it be horrible? - Will the other women be horrible? - Will...? - but I don't have/get to ask them anymore, because going inpatient isn't an OPTION to consider anymore; it's my mom's mandate. I'm not fighting it anymore; in a lot of ways, that's freeing. I wish this could have happened in early high school. I feel like I was less aware of what was going on and why, and that an intervention then would have been a little simpler. Perhaps if it'd happened, I could have avoided some of the pain of senior year and the chaotic difficulty of freshman year at Macalester.

One thing I am sure of now is that I did go into treatment at the right time. Earlier in high school I don't think it would have stuck. I think the pressures of ballet and/or cross country & track, in addition to my obsessiveness about school and refusal to take anti-depressants, would have been too much to withstand a tenuous recovery (as adolescent recoveries so often are, unfortunately). At 19, my maturity level was finally (barely) in the right place to take it all in.

I'm not scared because I keep seeing treatment as "learning how to eat" -- recovery from the symptoms. But what will be so hard, I think, will be dealing with the "underlyingness," not just of the ED, but of me. The eating disorder permeates so much of my life, is so much of my life in all its manifestations and symptoms, and I lean on it so heavily. Sometimes it's a fallback/excuse/distraction from other things, yes. Other times, however, it has not functioned solely to fill a void, but rather as a huge entity of its own. . . I mean to say that it was taking up legitimate psychic space, not being used as a filler. Anyway, either way, it's a part of every relationship I have -- interpersonal, with my spaces, with my schoolwork -- and so letting go of my eating disorder would, I think, do two things. (1): Leave spaces to fill, and (2): Expose parts of me that I don't know yet. Re: the spaces it would leave, I'm actually looking forward to that in some ways; it would mean time and emotional /mental ability to dedicate to a vast number of things at Mac and in the world. About #2, though, I'm apprehensive; what are those things about myself that my eating disorder currently overshadows? Is there anything there, or is this it, me? Is there anything good there? Anything epiphanic, brilliant, revolutionary -- or is it just uninspired and bland in there? I don't really believe it's either. I hope for richness of personality, depth of love, openness of soul. I don't expect or need glory. I just worry that I can't live up to (. . .).

(I like the word "underlyingness" in there. I think JMW and I might have coined that one in high school. (Did we, J?))

It did permeate so much, didn't it? Those of you who have been there know it. People think it's food -- they're even surprised and sad when we say it's every meal, every snack, every fucking bite. But they don't understand that it's not just every meal that's taken over by the disordered thoughts and feelings; it's every minute. It reminds me of something that AEW wrote about being visibly queer, visibly butch: that she is "stared down in every grocery store, every mall, every public bathroom." A different topic and struggle, definitely, but the idea that the struggle itself penetrates every experience of every day. Your identity is, well, who you are, and when your identity has become an eating disorder, the eating disorder influences every aspect of your world.

As far as the end of that excerpt goes -- the part questioning who I am and what's underneath my ED -- those questions have begun to return. In November 2007, when I was in Magnolia House, I wrote this:

It's such a huge relief to feel like I can be who I am and really like that person. It's been such a subtle change -- I don't feel like I'm a completely different person from who I was when I was so full of self-hatred and illness, and I guess that's because I haven't changed as a person; rather, I began to see who was underneath the layers of pain and chaos and depression. I like that person. I like her self-reliance and her ability to ask for help. I like her compassion and her sense of humor. I like not feeling ashamed of "provocative" comments (because now I say them in appropriate settings). I like being rid of the stress that comes with chameleon-ism...I like seeing her remain evenly, groundedly, herself with different friends. And I like that she finds out that people like her, not her many facades.

. . . Anyway, it's kind of wondrous to read that. By that I mean both that it makes me feel admiration and wonder at how centered and healthy I was, and also that it makes me wonder how I've gotten far away from believing those things anymore. How do I get back there? How did I get there in the first place? I didn't write when I was in treatment, just before and afterward (in Mag). I didn't read books, either, though people kept sending them to me to distract me during my "free time." I just didn't have the mental energy to do so. I wish I had, though, because I feel like I need the resources that I had when I was in treatment but without going back inpatient.

I don't need inpatient care right now. I'm happy with a lot of things in my life, and I'm not fucking them up; if I were, that would be a major red flag. It's senior year and I want to graduate -- can't believe I'll be leaving college with two degrees soon and ending a long, important phase of my life. I can't wait, and I don't want to mess up my GPA/scholarship/pride in my work/etc. I'm really happy dating AEW, really happy, regardless of how things began and how many people tell me I've jumped into things. There's a Fiona Apple lyric from the song "Parting Gift," We ended bad / but I love where we started -- and I feel just the opposite about things with me and AEW.

"I want to stay in love with my sorrow / oh, but God, I want to let it go."

dear E!, what the fuck are you thinking? love, clara.

SOOO, the latest disgusting reality show to hit the air soon? It's called Bridalplasty and will feature brides-to-be competing to win small challenges (like every other reality show) that have to do with engagements, weddings, etc. The twist? The winner of the challenges gets to CHOOSE HER OWN PLASTIC SURGERY PROCEDURE, which is completed for her before her wedding, and then the groom DOESN'T GET TO SEE HER "NEW FACE" until he lifts the veil at the wedding! I don't even know how to rant about this -- I'd love to hear what media critic Jen Pozner has to say about it -- looking forward to her feedback whenever it pops up on the interwebs.

(via Jezebel)

TheFrisky gets something right for once

"We’ve come a long way, baby—but if you ask Gloria Steinem, the de facto mother of modern feminism, we still have a really long way to go."

The article actually does a good job discussing women's place in society and how they're the only ones to ask the question, "Can I do family and work?" while men are content to settle for one or the other or both with few consequences -- because they assume that women will take care of the rest of it. I mean, I think that's a total oversimplification, but kudos to TheFrisky for doing something less awful than some of their other stuff.

adventures at the abortion clinic

B__, one of the regular protesters who's been there for years and years with his wife R___, informed me on Friday that he prays for me every day (I thanked him, sincerely, because I think that's very kind of him), and then told me that I'm "too intelligent to be pro-choice. To be honest, I'm very concerned for your soul---I want you to end up in the Kingdom of Heaven." . . . I don't really understand why MY salvation is at risk just because of this, in their eyes. Maybe I should tell him about all the gay sex I have so he can switch his focus. Honestly, I would, except then they'd have motivation for the anti-choice cause by saying that all the pro-choice women are never going to be pregnant because they're gay as fuck.

40 Days for Life starts soon, and the Tulsa chapter of it has been paying top dollar for a bunch of billboards around Tulsa that make so much no sense at all -- it's a picture of a cute little baby, and next to it are the words Where Have All the Babies Gone? I overheard a friend saying, "I mean, I see them screaming at the supermarket all the time, so they can't be that far away..." Seriously, they could have SUCH BETTER advertising than that. I have to wonder where they're getting so much goddamn money for this shit. And they're constantly blaming Repro for our abuse of funds -- despite that we're a non-profit organization.
. . . And are they trying to do a play on words with the lovely Peter, Paul, & Mary song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Because that's really weird.

feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

-e.e. cummings

_________

You know, I think it might be a blessing in disguise that I am so governed by my emotions. I'm sometimes so overwhelmed that I get depressed, anxious, despairing, dramatic, bulimic, whatever -- but isn't that something that, if I could harness it, could be a powerful gift? Couldn't I write again, write for real, write well? I miss being able to put those feelings into poems instead of behaviors. They're much nicer that way, and much more contained.

from a letter to Mae, plus some mo'

Just because I'm doing better than I was before doesn't mean I'm ready to be all gung-ho-recovery-girl. I don't want to be perceived as that right now if it's not how I really feel, if it doesn't reflect my level of motivation. But really, I don't know what I want or what I am doing, or where any of this is going to lead me. Does that count as working on recovery?

Why are we stuck in these battles we already have the tools to win? Why are we not content with the beauty, strength, love, and intelligence that each of us sees in the other? Sometimes I am incredulous that it has been 3 years of our lives that we have known each other and fought together and yet we still battle the same demons. . . . but maybe it is naive of me to think that demons ever change -- maybe they are constants in everyone's lives and ours happen to manifest in this way over and over. In one way, maybe we are lucky to be able to give our demons a name --ED, self-harm, bulimia, anorexia-- while others battle blindly against nameless, faceless ones. At the same time, though, I wonder if that makes us the unlucky ones; in naming our problems, do we give ourselves an excuse not to look at their core, look behind them to find out the real troubles, just because we think already know what they are? We know so many words, but we have still been fighting for years and years. Since I was 14! That's 9 years.

I don't mean to make it sound like I think our struggles are fruitless. On the contrary, I think we have . . . uh, a lot of fruit. I don't at all think we're hopeless. I just wish it didn't have to be like this.

thoughts from a lesbian on fighting for feminism while fighting against an ED

I'm returning to this blog thing with a bit more passion and direction. "Passion" might not be the right word, actually. "Purpose" might be more accurate. I'm going to purposefully focus on the things I'm passionate about. And then write about them here.

Currently, that means focusing on feminism, lesbianism(/queerness generally), eating disorders(/recovery), and cats. Mreowww.

All of those things are (obviously) interconnected; my feminist self is so proud of me for coming out and being happily gay, but that same feminist voice is very irritated with the part of me that is refusing to get both feet over the doorstep of recovery from my eating disorder. And I think that Floozy is obese again, which is definitely related to EDs and recovery, because I'm letting her meal plan get out of hand as much as mine. Sorry, Flooze. We will work on our MPs together. My ED urges also are interfering with my relationships, as they always do -- friends, family, love -- everything is affected, and it will be affected in the same way every time. How can I keep telling myself that it's not true, that "It'll be different this time because of ________"? It's easy to fool myself into thinking that I'll get away with being in recovery halfway. It's easy to think I can just lose a little bit of weight and then I'll be able to stop, that it won't lead to a cycle of restricting, bingeing, restricting, purging . . . Maybe seeing it in print here will help me be accountable, help me realize that I've admitted it's impossible to hold onto just half of my mental health and ignore the rest.

A disclaimer for my friends from LPCH: I'm going to be posting a lot of thoughts about recovery and eating disorders and how I'm doing personally, and I don't want it to be triggering -- but it might be, and if it is, just comment or shoot me an email and I'll be more careful / take down the offending post.

thinking about rob

a friend of mine from moscow named rob has been struggling with cancer for the past year, and is now in severe liver failure. rob and i were never very close, but he was eli's best friend, so we had plenty of interaction, and it's so weird to think about him dying. i hate the truth that people as young as we are are very capable of death, of getting cancer. i'm terrified of cancer. i don't understand it and i don't want to imagine myself or my loved ones going through what rob and his family are going through now. he is in my thoughts.

September:
Rob is gone now.

Boobs@Bard

what do you think of this? i'm not sure what inspires the creation of such a thing. is it some ass thinking, "hey, i wonder how many girls will show me their tits on here if i make up this random website" or something more along the lines of "let's be empowered and comfortable with our bodies"?

some of these seem to be coming from a pro-female body / empowered / celebration-of-self idea:

...but others seem more girls gone wild-esque, which makes me uncomfortable.

like this one, which has the caption "TWINS!":

or this one:

not quite two weeks

so, i went out with liz, sam, and anna last night and had some drinks at this lovely japanese restaurant downtown. also got fast food for lunch. also was half an hour late to an hour-long meeting... but at the end of the day i felt quite nice (drunk, too) and not regretful.

i'm listening to cuts from tegan&sara's demo recording of the con, which is by far my favorite album of theirs. i wish i had the demo version too, but they only sold it for a limited time for charity. maybe i can find it on ebay or something. i'm sad that i didn't get a chance to go to their shows this time around... hopefully they'll release an album in the next year or two right on the heels of sainthood. i don't even like sainthood much.

i like sara's hair in the video for "call it off." i think it would be a good cut to do while i keep growing my hair out, since it has no style right now and that's getting annoying.

here we go again

i think i'm getting in over my head with work. perhaps this is a way to make up for my declining academic motivation? last semester, i hardly worked at all. for rent and food, i relied on the check from my mom. while certainly sufficient, that routine left me with less spending money and nothing toward savings. (it also left me with excellent grades.) now that anna and i are trying to save for tickets for greece this summer, i want to be putting more towards savings. i also love my $4.65 drink at starbucks, which is unjustifiable without a paycheck that can be used -- in part -- for frivolity. so the fact that i've taken on more hours at work isn't just to cover up my insecurities about this semester's academics. it is partly that, though, i guess.

tonight's shift was with a little girl named Abby. adorable until it was time for bed, and then less adorable but not too bad. we played an elaborate game involving an ariel umbrella, tinkerbell beanbag, beanie baby bear, and some pillows. we also watched the new tinkerbell movie, and i have to say -- not too bad! while tink's everyday wear hasn't improved from her peter pan costume...

then: ...and now:

...she does have an interesting new outfit that she wears on her solo adventure (for which she abandons her boyfriend):

anyway, i found the movie to be pretty damn cute (though my expectations were low -- was imagining something along the lines of the 3D animated barbie movies that started coming out in the early 2000s). also, they took her name "Tinker" and made her an actual tinker, one who builds machines a la Belle's father, Maurice. she's quite the renaissance man fairy.

academic negligence...

what is up with me missing so much class this semester? have i gotten cocky, thinking i can keep my grades up missing class once or twice a week? this is not good. i really need to do well this semester -- i don't know what's gotten into me. this morning i had to have anna drop me off at class because i woke up at exactly 10:00 (when class starts), so i was ten minutes late for a 50-minute class. maybe while i'm doing the 2 weeks of sobriety, i should do 2 weeks of not missing class, too.

kittenz

also, here's a video we took of Kitten last night:


proof that she is satan.

a break

it's time to take a break from alcohol and mcdonald's. it's not like i've been drinking all that much; it just feels like time to remove that variable from my life for a little while and focus on important things. as far as mcdonald's goes -- well, first of all, i feel a little guilty about the health factor. more importantly, though, if i'm getting fast food often, it means that i'm not making time to sit down and have real meals. quality time with myself and/or others to eat and enjoy the food is good for me, and i know the consequences of not doing it.