II. I Favor The Sunsets -

The truth of the matter is that going downstairs to the basement to retrieve what have you – paper napkins, paper towels, tissue, toilet paper, water bottles, Q-Tips, dishwashing soap – provokes reactionary judgement of myself, by my parents. Failing to bring up all of my folded laundry in one fell swoop, also causes them to call upon historical evidence of my compulsive tendencies to move without a need, instead acting on psychiatric impulse. This is also known as maladaptive behavior – a way for me to burn off anything that I may have eaten at an earlier time in order for me to feel lighter, more delicate, dainty, and feminine.

Femininity for me was not defined by menstruation – which I have not experienced for years due to my restrictive eating – or lack of eating – habits. Femininity was akin to long and lean lines, 2-Dimensional in configuration, without bumps or curves. A clean slate is what I aimed for; I aimed for an aura of perfection that is founded on principles of innocence, one which is maintained by celibacy, for example.

I could argue that past performance does not dictate present ability. But even my response is, and I quote Alexis Beldedel’s character on Gilmore Girls: “Wise men call that a sucker’s maxim.” It is my belief, brought to my attention so articulately by my late friend, Mike, who recently lost his life to anorexia nervosa, that one lives with anorexia nervosa for their lifetime – made prematurely finite by the eating disorder.

“I think for me, I have just accepted my limitations when it comes to recovery. I know what I want out of life and now it is just ensuring I nourish my body appropriately to make that a reality. I’m not going to force feed myself to make sure I’m gaining pounds per week like in treatment,” he said.

“I don’t love the cold. I prefer it over snow, but I struggle to stay warm regardless of the temperature. I guess at this point I have just accepted that I have to live life a bit differently than what might be considered normal. As long as I can still do the things I enjoy, that’s all that matters,” he continued.

It’s true, what he said. I, he/she/they do not want to gain or in clinically sensitive terms, “restore” weigh when suffering from a restrictive eating disorder. No one chooses to passively be uncomfortable and fight the seemingly unstoppable. No one thinks they’re voice – the one telling them that enough is never enough, that being catcalled is their fault, or that the vulgarity is their own body, is not their own but instead is some other being – the abstract, anthropomorphized “Ed” aka “E.D.” or “Eating Disorder.”

Let me be clear: I want to crawl out of my skin. My self-repulsion, my stomach fullness and distention so apparent to me, so sentient to me, that I cannot help but know that I can no longer fill the hole formed between my thumb and index finer with my upper arm, or my entire midsection with the holes formed just that way with both hands, one on either side.

The holes formed by index fingers and thumbs, are now broken, undone, and spilling out with skin and its underlayer of fat and hidden, God-given, muscle. This physical transformation may seem like I’m going into remission, so to speak, and that me again losing weight to an unhealthy proportion, by the powers that be and not me, is the equivalent to a relapse. But it is my truth that I am recovering and am not at a static recovered state.

But the static status quo – the environment I am in, does exist.

When I walked outside of my house during the middle of the day, last Thursday, because I hqd taken off from work, it was like magic, It was like a fantastical world from Alice in Wonderland. Squirrels pranced, boughs of branches bounced underneath birds of different varietals. Dips in cracked and buckled earth, still unscathed by manmade asphalt, welled with residual water from a trifecta of the previous night’s rainfall, morning dew, and sprinkled lawns of suburbia. White spottled mushrooms grew from said lawns, wild, unabashed, and perkily standing erect.

The same could be said for when I left the hospital a couple of weeks ago. As soon as I was discharged, I voluntarily walked out alone, a few shopping bags in each hand, in tow, including my right hand that had a small blood clot due to the intravenous administration. As soon as I stepped out into the summer sun, I felt my soon to plummet again mental health, ever so slightly improve. I felt levity, forcing my still light stature against the weighing down gravitational pull exacerbated by the heat. It was like every car that passed as I waited for my father to pick me up, was a mirage emerging from the horizon in purview of the Long Island desert. It was like I had never seen daylight before. My life was now saved several times, mostly by the sun setting - especially the early sunsets that are so characteristic of Fall and Winter. The darkness gave me life.

In pursuit of living, I am actively doing the uncomfortable, seemingly without agency and autonomy. It’s not passive. It is my self-coerced attempt at recovery. But it’s what my pal Mike said, “Living with this disease is a daily hell that never feels like it ever goes away, even in recovery.”

I. A Hospital A Day, Makes the Doctor Go Away.

Less than two weeks ago, I spent five days in the hospital – all because I went to Urgent Care. And I am glad that I did, because no, I do not have any intention of hurting myself. And for a point of reference as to why I mention that, is because in the psychiatric disciplinary practice, you’re first asked whether or not you have any intention to do so. I wanted to live, and intuition signaled a sense that my organs were giving out, and my body was shutting down.

I chalked up my chest pain and shortness of breath, my chronic fatigue and constant numbness of fingers and toes, a constant iciness when faced with the slightest of breezes, to my anorexia. And it was, but it went beyond that. My parents swore that for the past few weeks, any photo of me was like seeing an apparition appear in the background, as if the grim reaper would make an unwelcomed visit a couple of months before seeing renditions of the character show up as a Trick-Or-Treater. They always volunteer to take me to a hospital, which I always adamantly refute. My mother would constantly diagnose me with dehydration. She was a year-round witch whose magic included out-predicting the meteorologists about weather and forewarning when things may transpire without said events actually materializing yet.

Upon walking into Urgent Care, I was immediately declared severely dehydrated and required an intravenous solution to help rehydrate me – that which is done solely in a hospital setting. At first, I denied being guilty as charged. While waiting for my father to pick me up, I started blinking through black dots, pixelated-like images of the world that was tangibly around me, until blinking did nothing but produce an opaquer black. I scrambled to a chair, saying internally to do so, to scramble, hunched over with clumsy footing. Upon sitting in the chair, no longer waiting to be called in to see the physician assistant for a non-existent doctor, I could almost taste scrambled eggs. I continue to deny myself the privilege of softly folding whisked eggs into a tie-dye of cloudy whites and sunny yolks, because it requires the additional caloric energy found in a cooking fat of some sort. And that would cause me to cut on the single sesame sea salt crisp that I like to pair with my eggs in the morning.

“Excuse me. Would you be able to get me a water bottle?” I asked the employee who was about to use the medication vending machine. There was a mini fridge with small water bottles for the taking about a foot away from me. Clearly, I could not make it that far. “I feel like I am going to pass out,” I said. I started quivering, trembling, and shaking. She said that she had to take my blood pressure. The computer output: 77. My blood pressure was far too low and continued to drop. She said an ambulance had to be called immediately. I signed the infamous AMA – Against Medical Advice – to be taken, instead opting to be taken to my select hospital a couple of miles away by my father who was already on his way.

Waiting to be seen in the Emergency Room, I started to black out again until fluids were administered and I started feeling awakened. I was now alert. Blood was drawn, not without a struggle to fill vials with a low supply of it.

I also am incredibly grateful for a divine order, hukam, as Sikhs regard it, that led to me meeting some of the most competent and qualified medical professionals for whom a regard for life is whole – body, mind, and soul. No eye was left unbattered, no brow furrowed, and there was no indication of Botox present. That is to say, when I winced and not having anyone be able to insert a much-needed intravenous line (I.V.) so that I could be rehydrated, have my electrolytes balanced, and receive two blood transfusions that I had signed off on, the head doctor, the nurses, the medical students, and the residents and attendings, all winced too.

I no longer slighted doctors of osteopathic medicine (D.O.s ) versus medical degree-holders (M.D.s) as being cop-outs, remedial, and unqualified. The head of the medical team was not only genuinely concerned, but had sincere eyes and sighs - he leaned against the wall opposite my stretcher bed: “Who is to say you leave here and then return because it happens again?” How would this get any better - steady, consistent, and amplified nutrition. The concept was more than feasible.

To no longer deprive myself- to afford to be able to eat without guilt - had already begun in the hospital. To no longer run - mentally panicking myself into doing so, through the pain, beyond the elevated and then decreased heart rate, and while holding myself from relieving my bowels. Physically - it meant that I could finally rest my body and restore my depleted adrenals. Mentally, however, I felt lazy and repulsive, with a strong need to be compulsive; I wanted to walk the ward as much as I could without provoking suspicions. I wanted to run despite my discomfort.

I wanted to go back to high intensity interval training. I wanted to at least purchase a standing desk, if not a walking pad like the girlies on Instagram’s wellness pages. I was researching other weighted hula hoops that I could somehow fold up and conceal so my father wouldn’t throw it out a third time. I was also figuring out whether I could purchase a weighted vest and wear it underneath sweatshirts. Could Bala Bangles work out? My dad suggested I take yoga. Within seconds I thought about taking Yoga Sculpt classes - they would never know that it was a calorie killer- that it was a bastardized version of our ancestral roots that is true yoga.

But the trauma of having blood infused into my own, a blood clot in my right hand from an I.V., my time spent in the ACUTE Center for Eating Disorders in a psychiatric hospital upstate years ago, having to supplement sodium, iron, thiamine - It all froze the aforementioned mental efforts at pursuing forbidden movement. Instead, I have thus far kept my promises; I haven’t skipped meals on weekends like I always did. I no longer run. No longer move at any given moment.

My body has changed immediately. The weight I was when I entered the hospital felt too high when others assured me it wasn't. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t healthy. And yet no one had unearthed what I already knew, that it wasn’t exactly sustainable.

So here I am. So here I stand, my knees not buckling, legs giving way beneath me. My face is pigmented once more. I can have blood drawn without the need for interventions that mapped out sonogram images of my blood vessels, as if I didn't lose my period for decades and was expecting. So here I am, nauseous at all times, experiencing night sweats, and migraines, and having every ounce gained on my body going straight to my abdomen to protect organs neglected, and causing my body to be in pain.

If only my co-workers knew how much pain I was and am in. If only others saw how my now tight clothing makes me want to recoil into myself. If only you knew.