Diary Entry: An April Fool

Today is April Fool's day and I can tell you I feel like one.

Diaries are usually private. Mine is not. Mine is so open and leaves me so exposed that I have to hide under an alias; a fake persona. Why? I live as a schizo-affective in secret. Only my shrink, family, and my ex-boyfriends know. I make them all pinky swear not to tell anybody else. I know one day my secret might come out to my casual friends and professors. I brace myself for the moment that happens. I will try my best not to run into the distance, towards the safety of my warm bed, to hide under my covers and cower.

My last entry made me a little sad when I reread it today. The article I read on the NY Times blog was so positive and hopeful, but I let all those nasty comments at the end get under my skin. I made a pact with myself not to delete any entries I make, even if I am totally upset at the time, because that would be like artistic dishonesty. Instead, I will just post and let it stand as a moment that I cannot take back. Despite wanting to go back and delete the part when I get all agitated over the article's comments, I won't delete the last blog entry. You are free to judge me based on what my fingers type at any given moment. Just don't send me any hate mail, I am too sensitive and your words will sting deeply.

This entry is just a moment of ephemeral vulnerability. As soon as I finish posting this I will go take a walk along the canal banks and listen to industrial music. I will dream of being able to state my mental disability without fear of scorn. I will daydream about going to graduate school and doing research papers that will get high grades. Some people daydream about winning the lottery---I daydream about writing an amazing paper on linguistics. Funny, huh?

Thank you for reading! :)

Joining the Cult of Thinness

The Cult of Thinness is a book by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. Her credentials are top notch; she is both a professor of sociology at Boston College and a woman who was asked to investigate why so many college-aged females were brought in to the college health center for eating disorders. Through intense research, personal interviews, and her own brilliant insights, Professor Hesse-Biber wound up writing a series of books on women's weight issues, books which delve into deeper topics such as women's rights and roles in American society.

As a Chicana (Chicana=Mexican female born in the US), one might think I would have some insulation to the peer pressures to be thin that plagues so many Caucasian females. However, I was raised in California with copies of Cosmo, Vogue, and 17 magazine just like everyone else and the effects were on par as my Caucasian counter-parts. No, I couldn't ever be pale-skinned and blonde, but being thin was the one thing I could be. Wanting to fit in with my classmates, who were predominately Caucasian, I picked at my food, dieted whenever I didn't fit into size 5 anymore in order to get back to size 5, and I never went over 115 until my mid-20's

 I was thoughtlessly thin until around age 23 or 24 when Zyprexa, the anti-psychotic drug (I became schizo-affective in my 20's), cause me to gain upwards of 60-70 pounds. This isn't unheard of as one of my psychiatrists commented that he'd had a patient who'd rapidly gained 100 pounds as soon as he was put on Zyprexa. As soon as I was 25, when most people are graduating from college, getting real jobs, and maybe even getting married,  my life dissolved into one of regimented pill-taking, intense psychological scrutiny, the inability to complete college due to psychiatric disability, and the part I dreaded most: living as a fat person. If society had treated me differently I wouldn't have minded the fat as much as I did, but I was publicly ridiculed for being 180 pounds on a 5' 1" -5'2" build.

At age 26 (or 25, I forget) I fasted myself back to 135 pounds. Nowhere near my skinniest weight, I was miserably. Shortly thereafter, the effects of an untreated metal illness kicked in and I was soon being poked, prodded, and scrutinized inside a psychiatric hospital where the familiar faces of the mental health staff were shocked to see how much weight I'd lost. I couldn't understand why they were so adamant that I eat 3 meals a day: couldn't they see that the weight gain was worse than the mental illness? No, they did not see that the weight gain was worse and instead they dutifully forced me to drink milk and eat at least half of all my meals. Combined with my new medications and the accompanying side effects, I gained all the weight back, plus about 10 pounds.

Then, I yo-yo'd from a size 14 to a size 16, back to a size 14, and back to a size 16 before I got my life together and was admitted to the University.

Happy ending, right? Ex-EDNOS female now a size 14 (162-164 pounds), getting exercise, going to University, taking proper medication for mental illness, all goes well, right?

If that were true I probably wouldn't gravitate towards books on self-image. For that matter, I wouldn't be writing graphic tales of my mental illness and personal life experiences on the internet for anybody to read!

Reading The Cult of Thinness made me realize how zany it was to believe that being fat was worse than being insane. The sad thing is, according to the book, this belief is perfectly normal in our society. Dieting is like a rite of passage. Mexicans have quinceneras, where 15 year olds dress up like brides and take Catholic vows, Americans have weigh-ins, not to see if you're healthy or not, but to determine just how much weight you must lose to be acceptable to society.

I say all this like I'm going to jump off the band-wagon, but shirking this sort of social media brainwashing isn't that easy. If anything, I have to re-take my vow of dieting. I feel like I got married to this idea of thinness at age 13, cheated on Thin by getting fat in my mid-twenties, and am only now making amends by eating a zucchini for lunch. Just like in the Catholic faith, there is no divorce once you join the Cult of Thinness.

To those of you who are ready to get a divorce, read this book! It has amazing insights into how women focus on their appearance to avoid focusing on glass ceilings, wage discrimination, war, and other horrors of modern life.

The Cult of Thinness Book for sale on amazon dot com

Confessions of a Closet Bisexual

What do I have to lose, I did state I was a confessional writer.

She was a size 2, taller than me, with a deep voice, and a model's open, blank face. We were in British literature together and when she approached me to ask what we did the day she missed class, I felt something flutter out of her, like a question mark hanging in the air.

I told her what we did, glancing away, feeling sheepishly uncomfortable. I couldn't gauge why she was asking me, of all people, I wasn't part of her clique, those girls who sit clustered together, their skinny bodies, their effortless hair, the brand name jeans, and their sparkling cell phone covers that glittered in their hands while they texted. They were like upper class posh girls, barely 20, and there I was, age 28, a size 14 and only five feet tall, dressed in thrift store khakis and a low cut thrift store tank top, with ratty blue walking shoes, and the only thing to my name the A grade I got on my exam.

I looked around, we were alone in the room. She began to talk to me, telling me about her modeling shoot. At first I was a little put off, I am sort of anti-fashion, as you might guess, but I didn't want to brush her off or appear too jealous so I asked her how it went and who was she modeling for. We chatted, I let her go on and on about her shoot, the exact position of the male model, the cost of the jewelry they posed her in (40,000 dollars worth of jewelry), and how much money she made.

This girl caught me totally off guard, one minute I was analyzing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in my journal, the next I'm sitting next to a real-life model queen describing her glamorous life. I figured she wanted to brag to somebody, but there was a weird undercurrent I was getting. She walked over to my desk and stood behind me, peering at my class notes. She was standing close enough for me to smell her shower freshness. She asked me to tell her what she'd missed and she kept tiptoeing closer, until her black designer t-shirt caressed my shoulder. I was suddenly turned on. OHhhhh, I realized, you're a tomboy. Then students entered the classroom, glanced at us, me sitting with the model leaning over my shoulder, and the model girl fled back to her seat. The moment was ruined. At the time, I didn't get what exactly that moment was, but I felt a deep conviction that the model girl had been enjoying her time alone with me, and vice versa.

For the rest of the class we kept throwing discrete looks at each other. I glanced at her skinny arms to make sure she didn't have a severe eating disorder, she glanced at my wrist tattoos. She didn't speak to anybody else when everybody else took their seats, and whatever energy she had displayed with me had become muted into a silent, brooding stare aimed mostly at her desk.

I might have approached the model girl on my own the next day, except my friend, a busty linguistics major like myself, was curious about how my Arabic class was going, and I had turned my attention to my friend, as I had a secret crush on her with her blue eyes and long dirty blonde hair, and those oversized t-shirts that minimized her assets. Then class ended last week, and I can still feel that vibe the model girl gave off when it was just the two of us, so close.

I know what you're thinking, why would a pretty model want me? It's just attraction, sometimes to a body, sometimes to a face, sometimes to a mind. You can't control who you become attracted to, and I felt her being drawn to me for whatever reason (I'm guessing my mind, as I am too plump).

Now that I'm waiting for my British literature grade to be posted, my thoughts keep turning back to her, to her deep, guttural voice and clear skin. Will I ever see her again? If I do, would I have the courage to spark a friendship? Maybe exchange email addresses?

Being a closet bisexual is difficult. The only time I came on to a girl I was soundly rejected. She was not into me, at all. I felt that sting for years to the point where it prevented me from coming out. It seemed like a lot of hassle just to get rejected by the girl I liked.

I still haven't had sex with a female. I'd like to, it's the only thought that excites me, men barely excite me, and they usually ruin my arousal by acting like assholes, but I'm too shy. I'm only an exhibitionist online. In real life, I'm studious, introverted, and afraid of rejection.

I tried to come out to my ex-boyfriend, not the one I just broke up with, but one from a long time ago who I've kept in contact with for many years, but he wouldn't have it. He kept changing the subject.  I love him dearly, but it's this model girl who invades my thoughts all the time. Wherever she is, I want her back.