August 1
I made fudge. If you need a fast chocolate fix, this is the quickest ever.
1 bag of semisweet chocolate chips
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla
Pour the sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips into a bowl and nuke them for one minute. Add the vanilla and stir until smooth. Pour into a parchment-lined 8x8 or 9x9 pan. Refrigerate for 2 hours. Eat.
This recipe is the epitome of me in the kitchen. I don’t do anything that involves a lot of prep work.
I am once again recovering from severe emotional dysregulation.
I feel hopeless. Even my writing is like horrible homework.
I want to do the writing part of writing and leave the promotion part to someone who knows what the hell they are doing. I am not a social butterfly. I am more of a social pill bug. If I see someone coming, I curl myself up into a ball and hope they won’t notice me. Unfortunately, at my size, it’s hard for them to miss me.
Social pill bugs tend not to be treated well, even at the doctor’s office. Dr. Deborah Serani, a psychologist who lives with clinical depression, writes about this phenomenon in her excellent Psychology Today article.
This vitally important takeaway from the article sizes up (Heh! See what I did there?) the attitude that heavy people and patients with mental illness just “aren’t trying hard enough.”
In 1948, The World Health Organization defined health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. Regrettably, it didn't take into account chronic illness or disease and the layered challenges individuals face with such conditions. While the definition of health has changed over the years, most professionals - and the general public - believe health is a state of well-being that a person "earns" or "maintains." This social construct goes like this:
If you eat well, you will be well.
If you exercise, you will be fit.
If you don't have good mental health, you just aren't trying hard enough.
And that those who can't, won't or don't achieve well-being are just weak, lazy - or worse - need to be shamed to get it done.
Shaming doesn’t work, but even doctors, who are supposed to be so much smartier than the rest of us, don’t understand this. If shaming worked there would be no addicts of any kind. There would be no fat people, and nobody would have mental health problems. Everyone would eat the exact right amount of the exact optimal kind of food at every meal. Nobody would drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or weed, snort cocaine, inject heroin, or become addicted to pills. Everyone would be content to do the jobs assigned to them by those in power.
I recommend re-reading Brave New World. Or reading it for the first time if you haven’t read it yet.
As for me, if hating myself thin never worked during the thirty-three years I tried to do just that, it sure as fuck ain’t gonna work now. The doctor should have berated my thyroid, which killed itself and thrust me onto the path to largeness when I was just thirteen years old. She should have berated my ovaries, which developed PCOS once I was old enough to menstruate. She should have berated my pancreas, which waited until I was 49 years old, but then joined my thyroid in death.
If anything, this woman of medicine who is so much smartier than me should have berated me for becoming bulimic at twelve and starting down a path of lifelong food insecurity, both self-imposed (dieting) and involuntary (not having the money to buy adequate supplies of food while social services tells me I make too much money to qualify for assistance.) Better yet, rather than berating an old broad coming to you because she has a fucking sleep disorder and the sleep specialist said she should, why not berate a society that allows food insecurity and pushes people to hate their bodies?
TREAT THE PATIENT, NOT THE CHART!
This doctor, by the way?
A pulmonologist.
I was there to find out if something was awry with my lungs, not to have bad drugs with serious side effects suggested to me on the slim chance (see what I did there?) they might turn me into the svelte, slinky vixen that every woman is supposed to be.
I am not unaware of my size nor of the theoretical correlation between my size and conditions. However, I’m working on making peace with my body and food because dieting and eating disorders (among other factors) have caused me serious trauma. Even if I remain at my current size (given my history, this is the most likely outcome) my overall health will still improve if I am receiving appropriate care for my underlying conditions.
I guess everyone would have been happier if I’d lived fast, died young, and left a good-looking corpse.
Fuck all of them.
I look out of my shell and realize I’ve failed at my goal of opening people’s eyes to the way bias against troubled people or those who don’t conform to a certain rigid standard of beauty and acceptability hurts the world.
I am aware that I’m ugly.
Those who puff up their egos by shaming those who don’t conform to their standards don’t realize they are ugly too.
I had a couple pieces of the fudge. I think I prefer cookie bars.
Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I don’t eat dessert after every meal or even every day.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
