The Magical Third Strand

When I got married two and a half years ago, I had a lot of pre-conceived opinions. I knew marriage wasn’t going to be easy, but I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were going to make it. My confidence came from the belief that my fiancé and I had a special secret weapon against the trials of marriage: we had God. God was the third strand that would keep our marriage together, no matter what. I believed that my marriage was inherently stronger than those of non-believers. After all, God gave us superior insight and patience. God had gifted us with stronger and more powerful feelings of commitment. God had promised us that our cord of three strands would not be easily broken. I knew that my marriage was better than your marriage because God was supernaturally holding us together.

Imagine my surprise when I faced reality for the first time. We had been married for about 6 months. I was deep in post-patriarchy depression and I cried myself to sleep almost every night. My husband and I prayed together every day, but still I could see the toll my struggles were taking our marriage. I didn’t know how to feel better, and he didn’t know how to help me. I often thought of how much better off he would be without me. As I began facing my childhood for the first time, I developed a visceral reaction to anything that felt restrictive to me. I remember the exact moment when I first realized the magnitude of my “till death do us part” commitment.

I was sitting on my bed in our tiny apartment folding clothes. I started to think about the rest of my life. I was 19, and already the biggest decisions of my life were behind me. I would be folding these same socks and underwear every week for the rest. Of. My. Life.  I suddenly felt trapped, claustrophobic in my own life. I had committed to this marriage before God, and now I couldn’t leave. Ever. My chest constricted and my breath came faster. “I can’t do this.” I thought. “I can’t do this.”  

I imagined packing my things and leaving right then. My heart swelled with hope at the idea of being truly free for the first time in my life. Those thoughts terrified me, and in that moment I felt betrayed by God. “You promised that I wouldn’t have to feel this way!” I prayed through the tears. “You promised you would hold us together!” I felt cold and naked as I realized that there was no supernatural power keeping me here in this apartment with this man. There was no safety net protecting our marriage. There was nothing but our own desires, and I didn’t even know what I wanted.

What first felt like betrayal, turned out to be the most freeing realization of my married life. I examined my heart and gave myself permission to think about what I wanted. I gave myself permission to pursue the things that made me happy. I made a lot of changes in my life, like going back to school and moving to a new state. The biggest breakthrough of all was realizing that I wanted to be with my spouse. He makes me laugh, his personality compliments mine. He believes in me even when I don’t believe in myself. He does not “complete me,” but I cannot imagine my life without him. The life that I have is the life that I want.

The love we have for each other, and the commitment we made to each other is stronger and more profound than it has ever been. Many people question the strength and validity of our marriage because we are “unequally yoked” or too egalitarian. I used to do the same thing. The idea of stepping into a lifelong commitment is substantially less terrifying when you think you have a supernatural shield around you and your spouse. But how much more beautiful is a wedding where two flawed humans commit to one another, fully aware of the challenges they will face? How much more powerful is a marriage where two people stay together because they want to?

There is no magical third strand holding my marriage together, it’s just us. We promised each other that no matter what happens, we will never stop working on our marriage. We promised that no matter how our feelings change, we will never give up on our love. I mean it, and know that he does too. And that’s good enough for me.

Self Hatred and the Morning Person

I got up this morning at the usual time and rushed through my weekday morning routine. I’ve been doing the same thing every day for the last 3 years: shower, hair, makeup, clothes, and shoes, fly out the door just in time to make it to the office by 8. 

Getting ready in the morning has always been like a nightmare for me, ever since I was a kid. I’ve always hated my body, and squeezing into clothes makes me self conscious. Staring myself in the face without makeup makes me uncomfortable. Putting on my hand-me-down jewelry that isn’t quite fashionable embarrasses me. Leaving the house with all these insecurities makes me anxious and nervous. Maybe it’s the anticipation that makes me wake up nauseas and sore every morning, feeling like I’ve caught the flue overnight. Depression hits me the hardest in the morning.

Up until recently, if you asked me if I’m a “morning person” I would always say NO. Mornings are awful. Mornings mean facing overwhelming self-hatred. Mornings mean another long day of adversity. Waking up means the disappointment of knowing that I’m still alive. I’d rather just stay buried under the blankets where no one will know I exist.

There are a number of factors that led to my self-hatred. The Patriarchal society I grew up in demonized a woman’s body and sexuality while simultaneously glorifying the concept of the sweet, childlike virgin bride that I knew I would never emulate. I was never encouraged to express my emotions, so all my confusing feelings stayed trapped inside me. Being bisexual (and being taught that such things were abominable) also caused me to vilify a woman’s body in general. It was easier to hate it than admit to forbidden attraction. When paired with depression and lack of education, my natural bodily development became a waking nightmare. The hatred I had for myself and my body was not just a passing teenage phase; it was a devastating condition that colored my entire world in a muddy shade of black.

 For most of my life I sincerely believed that I was stupid, worthless, ugly, lazy, gluttonous, and sloppy. Self hatred is painful, debilitating, and dangerous. Lucky for me, I have people in my life who understand that. I am here today, I am healthy today, because my Hunnie, my sister, and a few close friends chose to take my struggles seriously. They insisted again and again that the opinions I had of myself were false.  They were there for me day or night to talk me though my anxiety.  It took countless long talks and years of hard work to get me to the place I am today. 

This is actually me wearing my fave brown dress pants



I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point this last year the heavy fog of depression, anxiety, and self hatred started to dissipate. It wasn’t until this morning that I realized how far I have come. I found myself singing in the shower at 6:00am (sorry neighbor). I winked at myself in the mirror while rubbing product into my super short hair. I put on my favorite checkered socks and walked around the house in my underwear without cringing every time I passed a mirror. And when my grey dress pants were too small to button, I switched to the bigger brown pair and it didn’t even bother me. Really.

This is ME we’re talking about here. The same girl who, at 8 years old, covered her whole body with washcloths in the bathtub because she didn’t want to have to see how “fat” she was. The same girl who refused to look in the mirror for much of her teenage life.. The same girl who stopped eating because a friend mentioned that she had a “little pooch.” And there I was this morning, smiling at my curves and meaning it. I just thought “welp, guess I’m not a size 8 after all.” Those grey pants were milestone for me.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to someone who’s hurting. You don’t have to say much. Simply tell them the truth:

You are beautiful.

                                 You are smart.

                                                           You are strong.

                                                                                         You can be anything you want to be.

And don’t stop saying it until they start to believe.

Imaginary Friend

I sometimes hear my non-religious friends making jokes about Christians and mocking them for their “imaginary friend,” god. The implication is that Christians are foolish, weak, or childish for their beliefs.

I do not call myself a Christian. The idea of a Deity that human beings can understand seems impossible to me. But my spouse is a Christian, many of my close friends are Christians. To them, faith means the security of knowing they are loved and accepted by someone, even when their lives and their hearts are in chaos. Their faith isn't about politics or perfection, it's about purpose and inner peace.

Everybody needs to be loved.

So why should we mock somebody who chooses to believe that they are unconditionally and eternally loved by a higher power?

I am lucky enough to have a loving and supportive spouse, family, and community, but that doesn’t make it okay for me to ridicule those who choose to seek out love and support from a god and a church.

We live in a world full of questions; let’s not mock each other’s answers.

Dear Diary: Body Images

I was browsing through my childhood diary again this week and I came across this gem. I drew this when  I was 11 years old. It is clear from the picture that my perception of beauty was already twisted. 

The red head with curly hair and a curvy frame was deemed "ugly" and the extremely thin girl with straight hair and giant lips is "almost prity." Imagine my horror as I grew up into a body similar to that of my "ugly" redheaded drawing.

Fundimentalist doctrine teaches that a woman's body is somthing to be ashamed of and hidden. It teaches that womanhood is synonymous with frailty and china-doll perfection. I believe that fundamentalist doctrine devastates a girl's ability to love and respect her body. 

I also found it ironic that the "ugly" one is wearing an apron. I mean if she's not attractive enough to get a man with her looks, she'd better be able to cook or she's basically worthless. Ugh.

Probably Not

Do you remember when I couldn’t breathe? Probably not. But I do.

 I remember the sensation of weight on my chest, weight on my eyelids, weight on my heart. Expectations were heavy, Responsibilities were unrealistic, Burdens were unbearable. You thought I was strong, you thought I was fine. But it’s only because you never asked. Were you too caught up in your own pain to see mine? Was your baggage so binding that you did notice the bags you strapped to my back every day?

When I think about that life, about those days in the big brick house, I feel the air slip out of my lungs. My chest tightens, and I feel heavy. I know there were so many good times. So many hugs and smiles. Christmas cookies, and back scratches. I wish those memories were sharper, and clearer, and brighter. But when I look back, everything is covered in fog. Heavy fog.

Do you remember when I hated myself? Probably not. I never told you.

 Sometimes I wonder if you noticed the blood through my sleeve and chose not to speak up. It’s easier to believe you never saw. Was your pain so raw that you never noticed me crying myself to sleep? Would you have been surprised to find me dead at last, my arm submerged in a bathtub full of blood, just like I fantasized a thousand times?

You try to tell me how beautiful I am now. But the part of me that needed to hear that grew up and moved out a long time ago.

Do you remember the day I learned I was evil? Probably not. But I do.

 I remember your words, immortalized in the pages of my diary, came to life and stood before my eyes like living demons. Liar, untrustworthy, lazy, selfish. You taught me to ask God for forgiveness. You promised me that He would make me perfect. But he didn’t, and that’s when I knew I was evil, wrong, bad, lost. Were you proud of me? Of all the time I spent on my knees hating my own guts? Did you mistake my self-deprecation for humility? Or was this your desired result?

I already forgave you for the things you did, on accident or otherwise. I have taken responsibility for my life and my feelings. But the marks remain, like sunspots from the glare of your unrelenting righteousness.  I don’t want to blame you for the depression, for the years I spent swimming against the current, trying to break away from the darkness. I don’t want to hate you for the anxiety I’ve experienced over every small decision.

 But some day I’d like to hear you admit that you were wrong, and mean it. If that’s selfish of me, I’m sorry.

You remember the laughter and the warmth. You remember your ups and downs. Maybe you even have regrets. But do you remember my daily struggle to be perfect for you? Do you remember how I felt when I failed every single day? Probably not. But I do, and I wish with all my heart that I could forget.

Starving

This is a short story i wrote about anorexia for my Fiction Literature class. It is a modern retelling of "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka. I drew from my own experience with disordered thought to write this.

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In the College years, mom and dad’s interest The Girl’s anorexia suffered a marked decline. It used to be that she could never take a breath without being asked if she was feeling well, but College changed all that. High school was a different time. Back then the whole family was engaged in keeping her “healthy”. At first they didn’t notice when she stopped eating, but it was never long before her hollow cheeks gave her away. Parental involvement grew from day to day, suddenly they wanted to talk to her, suddenly even her teachers seemed to care. Two weeks would go by, maybe three, and then they would take her to see the “Doctor.” It was a new one every time. They examined her with stethoscopes, needles, and prying questions. Some nights, mom and dad would make her sit at the table with them for a talk. So she sat there, knee’s pressed tight to her sharp unpadded ribs, and pretended to listen. They would cling to each other for safety, and mom would sputter and cry. The Girl would smile and nod, and sometimes let mom hold her hands, (if only to let her feel how skinny she was.) But inevitably she would withdraw back into herself. She wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, just feeling. She focused on that deep, delicious emptiness inside and took teeny tiny sips of cold black coffee through a straw.

Eventually mom and dad would give up on conversation. They would work together (for once) and take shifts discretely watching her, like guards. She often heard them whispering about drugs and boyfriends, trying to find a way to fix her. They thought she was troubled, or that she had become a victim of some kind. Sometimes they would lay traps for her, pretending to be late in picking her up from school, so they could watch and see what bad crowd she had fallen in with. Nothing was more frustrating to The Girl than these traps. They made her almost want to eat again, just to prove that she was fine. She stopped talking to all her friends, and would spend every weekend at home with the family. But this just made them all the more suspicious that she was hiding some bad influence. The Girl was quite willing to spend every waking hour with them, just to prove, again and again that there was nothing wrong with her. She was happy and well adjusted, and skinny.

Of course no one could watch her at all times of day and night, so they remained suspicious that she was harboring some deep psychological damage. Only The Girl herself knew that there was nothing wrong. She starved because she wanted to, because it made her happy. She knew that starving would completely satisfy her, if it were not for all the questions and doctors and worries and fears. There were other things that made starving unsatisfying for The Girl, things like Grandma’s eyes filling with tears at every family party. The little cousins were always afraid to come near her because they found the sight of her gaunt flesh too terrifying. She supposed they all thought she hated herself, but The Girl knew what nobody else knew: starving felt amazing. She made no secret of the fact that she was happy. She felt good and clean and delightfully hollow, but everyone insisted on pitying her. They all thought she was sad and sick, and she became more and more determined to prove them wrong.

The girl soon learned, however, that mom and dad would only withhold judgment for a little over a month. After about 40 days she would inevitably find herself in a cold white hospital bed, with vile, liquid nutrition being pumped in through a tube. They often came in the night, when she was lying deep in a mountain of blankets, hovering next to sleep. Dad would roll her up in the blankets like a straight jacket and carry her down the stairs while mom stood by whimpering and clutching at her nightgown. More than once The Girl had considered struggling, but she always found that her body was strangely weak and unresponsive. It never failed to make her angry. Why now after 40 whole days? Why did they insist on robbing her of her source of joy? She could have gone on so much longer, but they had no respect for her body, no faith in her choices. They would leave her there in treatment for days, and eventually welcome her back home with an obnoxious feast. “This time she’s cured for sure” they would say, and mom would spoon tiny mouthfuls of soup into The Girl’s dry mouth.

And so she lived for many years, with brief periods of “health” in between sessions of happiness. Eventually however, mom and dad grew tired. Grandma stopped crying, and the cousins got used to her horror story body. Every Doctor in town had long since given up, she was a lost case. They had all come to wrong conclusion, still after all this time, no one believed her when she said that starving made her truly happy. After graduation, she left for a college 9 hours east. It was a big busy place with a thousand new faces. There were people of every shape and size, and no one ever thought there was a thing wrong with her. They gave her a tiny room at the end of a hall, and she spent most of her time there with stacks of books and tiny little coffee pot that brewed one weak cup at a time. Sometimes she would leave the door open, and the occasional burst of young voiced would bring a surge of emotions. It was not long, however, before she learned that the voices were not coming her way. Every once in a while the Resident Assistant would stop by for a little chat, but even those visits became infrequent.

So The Girl turned her focus to starving. Soon she grew too tired to bother with class. She sat in the dark and felt the sweet shudder of the air slipping in and out of her lungs. She was finally doing it, starving for longer than she had ever hoped. The name tag on her door grew tattered and fell down as time lost all meaning. No one came to her door any more, of course they didn’t! They had nothing to be worried about. Finally they understood that she was perfectly fine. Starving filled her soul filled with unshakable satisfaction.  Days passed, the semester ended and another one began.

One day, the facilities manager happened to notice the tiny room at the end of the hall. “Why haven’t we rented out this room?” he asked. Then someone remembered the tiny girl, with feather soft hairs all over her body. “Did she forget to move out?” they wanted to know. They poked around in the dark until they found her, curled up under a mountain of blankets near the floor heater under the window. “Are you alright?” asked the manager.

 “Did I miss my finals?” she asked, her voice now a raspy breath. The manager gestured to his attendant to get to a phone. He mimed a 3-didget phone number, and then leaned down closer to the figure on the floor.

 “It’s okay” he told her, “they will forgive you.”

“I just wanted you all to respect me” she whispered.

“Why shouldn’t we respect you, you poor thing?”

“Because I HAVE to starve. I can’t help it. I can’t stop” The manager seemed moved by her pitiful words. He found her skeletal hand in the blanket cocoon and held onto it tightly.

“Why?” He sounded tearful, “why can’t you stop?” He moved his ear closer to her chapped lips.

“Because I couldn’t ever find anything else to make me happy. If I had found it, believe me I would have loved to live just like you and everybody else…” and those were her last words. The ambulance came, and calls were made to the family. Dad tried to sue the school for neglect, but The Girl had been an adult, and nothing ever came of it. The school cleaned that tiny room right up and rented it out to vibrant young soccer player named Maya. Girls congregated in her room every night, and caused a cheerful ruckus that kept the RA on her toes. Some people found Maya to be too boisterous and loud, but they mostly just braced themselves, surrounding her like planets to the sun, and never wanted to move on.

Chasing Perfection

My Mother and Father were born into broken families. Both had alcoholic fathers and were raised in poverty. Both had troubled siblings and my father was physically abused. Christianity provided them with hope and purpose. They met and fell deeply in love. He was a soldier, she was a teaching student. They married and started a family right away. A beautiful baby girl, and then two, and then three. They loved their children and each other very much, but i imagine they were still afraid. Would love be enough to keep these precious little ones safe? What if the lies of the world drew them away from the love and hope of Jesus? What if they were brainwashed in school and there was nothing they could do to stop it? What if bad people drew them into drugs and alcohol, like Dad's sister? what if they made mistakes in raising them and they ended up bitter and wounded like Mom's sister?

One day my mother found an article in the newspaper about homeschooling. My dad, who had hated every moment of public school, loved the idea. They started looking into it. They soon discovered what they had been searching for all along. They discovered people who knew all the answers. Books that promised healthy happy children that feared God and loved their parents. This system taught them what God REALLY wanted for them. If they followed these steps, God would bless them. Their family would never suffer the way that THEY had suffered as children. It was calm in a world of chaos. It answered every question and calmed every fear. They implemented their new beliefs and soon began to reap the blessings of God.
It was may years before those babies grew up and rocked the boat. We are not the chaste, happy, selfless children they were promised we'd be. Between the oldest five there is depression, drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, self mutilation, sexual abuse, eating disorders, and suicide attempts.  But still they will not renounce the system. They hush it up, brush it under the rug, and let everybody think that we're still perfect. They see the system as something good that they were never able to achieve.  Today i see my cousins falling into the same trap.

My father's sister struggled with alcoholism and bulimia her whole life. She and her husband made some terrible mistakes and eventually their family fell apart. leaving my cousin Wendy (not her real name) and her two siblings in a wake of destruction. Her brother got into drugs, she struggled with depression. Then she met Jesus at church, and then a boy at college. This boy has 11 siblings. He was home schooled in a family that looks just as perfect as mine. His sisters are submissive and his father is a strong leader. Wendy has fallen hard for this boy and everything he represents. She hopes to have his children, and teach them at home just as God intended. She wants to follow the system to a T. She has been promised that they will never suffer the way that she did. They wont get in to drugs like her little brother. they wont lose their virginity to a liar or lose their mother to the bottle. She thinks she has found the answer to all her fears and questions.

I have tried to pull her back from the edge, to save her like i saved myself. Maybe i still can. But right now, all she can see is perfection.The promise of certainty that just does not exist. I just hope that some day when her children tell her she was wrong, she'll have what it takes to admit it, and maybe stop this cycle once and for all...