« World Falling Up | Main | Ascetic »
December 11, 2007
Don't Forget Who's Taking You Home
Wow, this entry has been riding around in my head for years. Like baby opossums on the mommy opossum's back, blog entries sometimes are carried around by me for a long time before they are ready to walk out into the world on their own.
Two years ago, not that long after MR had moved in, shortly after Luke had started working with me, I kept hearing Michael Buble's version of "Save the Last Dance" on the radio. I usually heard it during the two to three minutes between when I'd drop Luke off at his house (remember how he used to ride with me because he had no car?) and when I'd arrive at my own house to park the car and go home to my darling Orange one.
But don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darlin, save the last dance for me.
Why did this obvious tribute to monogamy strike me as a freedom song?
I'm sure it started with the contradiction between who was taking me home and whose arms I was gonna be. Hmmmm... late thirties Harvard educated labor organizer, the person I still credit with re-awakening my passion for my work after a long time when I didn't care as much as I need to, my intellectual soul mate and one of the most annoying people on earth when he just won't let the point go. That was who was taking me home... or who I was taking home... or whom? Should it be whom?
But in whose arms I was gonna be... that would be the mid-thirties orange Canadian life-extensionist, one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen up close, who can also be annoying in his own soft-spoken way, but who put up with so much during all the times when I really was a mess.
So what does that mean?
Luke's first month I had the largest credit card bill I've ever had because we spent way too much money going out eating and drinking. Not exactly responsible little CR girl, eh?
Yeah, I didn't care. Not much. I'd been working so hard to be perfect little wifey, attempting to cook all the meals and do all the cleaning and stay sane while working like I do... I really thought I could be superwoman. I still suffer from that delusion from time to time, but the perpetual need of the kitchen floor to be mopped talks me out of it. MR loves me for me, not any surface resemblance to Martha Stewart, and we were both a lot happier once I figured that out.
But what was I looking for in all that going out and eating and drinking and ignoring the cat hair on the floor?
Some kinda sense of being free. Some sort of escape from the constant (utterly self-imposed)feeling that I was failing.
I have high standards for myself, and because I frequently can meet them I find I am encouraged to keep trying. But there are times when I ask too much of myself, or when I allow others to ask too much of me. There have been multiple occasions on which I was fairly sure Edward was trying to kill me with how hard he pushes me at work... so I solved that problem by pushing myself even harder than he ever could.
I have this irksome little habit that it doesn't take an expert on human behavior to detect: I decide what I want to be, or to do, and I surround myself with very strong people who are or do that. Really well. Then I sometimes externalize my own expectations for myself, projecting them onto the people I've collected. And sometimes those people play right along, actively articulating those expectations, and threatening to hold me to them.
For the most part, this technique has worked well for me. For example, some twelve years ago I fell in love with the great Francis, who remains one of my closest friends, and allowed his confidence in my ability to become a great labor organizer to fuel the nightmarish journey that was the early part of my career. Dragons to be slain because handsome prince to be won... the gender-bended fairy tale worked for me. Eventually, after winning the biggest campaign of my career to date, we did finally make an attempt to date, and we quickly decided we were better off as good friends. Not due to any lack of my ability in the bed in LA, mind you. He met someone else, we were on opposite coasts, we moved on. We still talk all the damn time, and he is my best source of support whenever I find myself smashed up over another crazy genius boy.
Sometime in March of 2004, I was learning about CR. I was into it. Super into it. I needed to find a way to stop feeling so crappy all the time, and I saw that this was it. I also kinda wanted a boyfriend, and wasn't willing to settle for the young suburban professionals one meets at the bars in my town. Nope, no one who didn't nearly make my heart stop everytime he walked into the room would do (was that a double negative?) I exchanged a few emails with MR, the head of the CR Society study, the best writer on the CR list who could explain all this life-saving science in terms that I who never took a biology class could understand, and use, and he threw me a lifeline that I grabbed and held onto with all the strength I had.
Then on the 25th, or was it the 24th, of March, he didn't answer my email.
Hmmmm, thought I.
Of course he was just busy. He is terrible about answering emails, y'all know.
Hmmmmm, thought I. I will turn myself into the perfect CR princess, and you will sorely regret the day you failed to answer my email.
And I did. For the most part. With a few problems. Sure, I lost forty pounds. I learned how to use the nutritional software with the precision of a world-champion Tetris player. I know my stuff really well. I started a blog to a) keep myself on CR b) attract a boy who wouldn't fall for just a pretty girl.
[Mental note: Why can't I just go for the boys who like pretty girls? Why must all this mental/spiritual/emotional stuff come up? Can't long hair and a great body and pretty nails be enough for once? Where are all the shallow men in America?]
But I was never perfect. I've gone on and off real CR, I've strayed very far into the realm of obesity avoidance, not CR, I've had way too much wine, and lately I've taken up secondhand smoking. I don't blame MR for being concerned and at times frustrated.
I don't blame him for wanting to be sure that at the end of the day, I'm on with the project we signed on for together. Life-extension, CR being the only known method that actually works at this time. He wants to be with me for a long, long time. He loves me.
And I don't blame my friends for feeling like this is a little nuts, and for feeling, on occasion, that MR puts too much pressure on me. They love me: they just want to see me happy. And I'm not always as intellectually honest as I should be about the degree to which I hide behind MR's wishes for me as a smokescreen (what the hell is a smokescreen anyway) for my own CR goals when I find the goals hard to reach. It's easier, sometimes, to paint a picture of myself as torn between two sets of incompatible goals than it is to recognize that sometimes I just don't put the self-discipline into my CR practice that I really wish I did. I fell in love with MR for the man he is, but I acquired my super-star crush on the CR rockstar largely because I wanted to *be* him, not just mate with him and then eat him like I would if we were tarantulas.
So riddle me this: the girl who surrounds herself with people she wants to become more like has now chosen to spend most of her time with an anarchist. With the one person who resolutely will not tell her what to do.
I ask him, "If you were me, what would you do?"
"I'd take up smoking," he says, and I know he won't give me an answer.
Now, after all these years, I have finally backed myself into a corner where I have to decide what I want, what I a la Spice Girls really really want.
Not cause MR wants me to. Not cause Edward wants me to. Not cause the work requires it. Susie and Lisa and Danny and Edward and my mom and all you wonderful friends out there in the bloggie world will stand by me no matter what. The danger of having friends who really love you is that you can't just fall back on their expectations to figure out what to do next.
Whatever I do, most people in the universe will have a problem with it. That ship sailed long ago. I'm a labor organizer, a thin girl, a fuck-me feminist (though as of late I have become a "fuck me when you find it convenient, because I certainly don't want to trouble you" type of feminist. I think it's an over thirty thing.) I was born radical, and controversial.
I'm sick of fear. Fear of hunger, fear of losing, fear of being alone, fear of disappointing the people closest to me, fear of running out of money and having to beg my friends for treats.
At the base of it, hunger is about fear. Fear that you'll never eat again, never have your needs met. But if you know you'll be okay, no matter what, the fear goes away. I find that these days I've ceased to be afraid of most things. I am still afraid of motorcycles, and marriage, and babies. But I'm not really afraid of nearly as many things as I used to be. Being afraid is a great way to put off making your own decisions. As long as you're scared, you can just tread water, afraid to make a change. But that also gets in the way of figuring out who you are. I have at times felt like I was a collection of fears. For someone who is pretty freaking fearless in her work life, I'll admit, this is odd. Mostly I was afraid that if I wasn't exactly what whomever wanted me to be, I'd get left alone, and I'd be sad. And then in the effort to turn myself into whatever it was that (insert name of any one of a series of strange men I've dated) wanted me to be, I'd end up losing a piece of that strong, independent woman (insert name of freak, for as my father points out, the one thing all my boyfriends had in common is that they are weird!) fell for in the first place.
But don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
When I used to drive home listening to that song, I'd think, for just a brief second, that no matter who I went out with, who I worked with, who/whom I fell in love with, the person taking me home was well, me.
And me, as it turns out, or I, as would be gramatically correct, think that aging sucks. Don't feel like doing it. Know a lot about CR. Enough to know that for the last while, I haven't been doing serious enough CR to reach my goals, either short term or long term.
Around the corner, waiting to wake up, is the sleeping beauty version of me that actually does CR, not just obesity avoidance. Miss M is quite right that I am now at my "natural" weight. This is not real CR. Do I want real CR, the kind that might actually have an effect on the aging process, as opposed to this fantasy version aka moderate CR where nobody is ever in the slightest bit hungry or inconvenienced? I think so. I wouldn't mind a couple of kisses from Prince Charming (and anything else I can get for that matter) but unlike in the fairy tales, I have to wake myself up.
I have not yet given up on slowing my biological aging process. And I know I'm a lot more fun to be around when I'm in the CR Zen groove. So there. The era of whining to my friends that CR is soooo hard and MR is so sad when I fall off the wagon is over. Whining, finished. I am ready to do battle with biological aging. I feel like the last three years were just a warm up. GAME ON!
Our life may not have turned out to be a fairy tale, though it certainly has had fairy tale aspects. MR didn't show up and immediately banish every part of me that wanted to engage in distinctly non-CR friendly practices. That's something I can only do for myself. The fantasy that some boy will come along and solve all your problems is one that we women have been indoctrinated with from day one, but sitting around waiting for it to happen can take much longer than even those of us who hope to benefit from life-extension really have to wait. If I want a longer, healthier life, I've got to get it myself.
Which doesn't mean I'm about to give up my kisses. I hear they make you live longer.
Posted by april at December 11, 2007 1:26 AM
Comments
Wow! What an entry April! Your blog has become about MUCH more than CR!!
Thank you for being so honest and open. It's hard when we change and the people and things that meant so much to us begin to become less a part of who we are NOW. We torture and rationalize, and tell ourselves we are best with who we are with, and that the person who once fulfilled our needs is still doing so, when actually we know deep down that they are really holding us back.
It's clear that you are changing and finding out what is REALLY important to you NOW - and maybe CR and MR are really not that big a part of it any more. I wish you strength and courage to live true to your heart, and the clarity and will to fight the rationalizations that hold all of us back.
Posted by: Mary M at December 11, 2007 1:44 PM
I really enjoy your blog - thanks so much for writing. I imagine you know about this and have decided not to take this approach for some very good reason - but have you considered Seth Robert's Shangri-la approach for appetite suppression?
Posted by: Reader in Nashville at December 12, 2007 7:26 AM
I also really enjoy your blog, which I found through you commenting at "Every Woman Has An Eating Disorder"--though I don't have an eating disorder, like you, I value the discussion. I greatly respect your writing for several reasons:
-honesty about your very human day-to-day struggles
-a radical dedication to worker's rights (had to respect your work there), anti-fat bias, eating-is-not-an-ethical-issue
-showing how you manage/juggle eating out and being social with your health
I initially thought about CR when I came across your blog, 'well, that's great if that works for her, a little weird, but fine (I am not a calorie-counter)'. Note that the reason I didn't write it off immediately is your union work and stated views on fat-I had to respect you. But then I did some reading (as you requested) and realized that I do essentially eat a moderate vegan CR diet. And I'm always trying to eat only what I need and no more, and cram the nutrition into every piece of food I eat. So, not so different. Your blog is a great resource.
Also, I do read that fat acceptance blog often, for a different point of view (though I will never agree with "all food and fat is neutral"--clearly just not true!). It's unfortunate that she felt the need to write that about you, but if you go through the comments, it's clear that many of the readers have an extremely unhealthy relationship with food and equate healthy eating with either awful yo-yo dieting or eating ad lib (not being able to go 4 hours without food!? Not being able to have a certain food makes life not worth living!? whoa). They are hurting and it's easy to attack something than be open-minded and question our individual beliefs. So please keep on writing so openly, those of us who are open-minded and interested really appreciate it.
Posted by: Reader in Minneapolis at December 12, 2007 9:39 AM