My Bathroom Scale Sneaked into my Bedroom

My bathroom scale sneaked into my bedroom this month. It now sits in front of my reading chair, like a bizarre ottoman. Sometimes I even rest my feet on it while I read this spy thriller, "At Risk." In order to get to my reading chair I have to step over the scale. Usually, I wind up sitting on my chair, thinking about my weight. I could take about how  weight is another corset for modern women, or how people discriminate against people who are overweight but I will not (at least not right now).

Right now, I would like to devote a little entry to the topic of why I want to lose weight. I want to look like Marilyn Monroe. End of blog, lol.

I still remember that day in the psychiatric facility, three years ago and 25 pounds ago. My social worker was telling me about my axis. Axis 1 is like one diagnosis, Axis 2 is another diagnosis. In medical jargon, it is essentially "things that are horribly wrong with you in a tidy little list." My axis said I was schizo-affective. Then, horribly, he said my other axis was clinical obesity. I knew I was overweight. I was about 184 pounds and only 5 feet, 2 inches, but obese? I thought obese was for women who could only wear mumus and whose arms were the width of my thighs. I know better know, but back then it was a terrible shock. Not only was I crazy, I was fat as well.

Two to three years later I am still schizo-affective. However, I am only clinically overweight now and not obese. I have lost 25 pounds since that initial diagnosis. My weight yesterday was 159 pounds, down from 184, which was not even the "peak" of my weight (my first semester of University I packed on pounds during finals week). I can never go back to not exercising for a minimum of 20 minutes daily, plus one hour walks, or I will gain everything back. I can also never return to eating 2,000 calories or more a day, ever. My body adjusted to getting 1800, then 1600, now 1300 calories a day. To shove in 2,000 calories would probably lead to significant amounts of weight gain. I will just get used to limiting my caloric intake. Cut fast food consumption. Cut what fast food I do eat into halves and eat only half. My staples are no longer home-cooked chicken and sandwiches. Now, my main staples are sauteed zucchini, cucumber sprayed with olive oil and flavored with Splenda packets, plain yogurt with Splenda packets, boiled and sauteed cauliflower with cumin, cayenne, and coriander spices, cereal, oatmeal, and tomato with roasted bell pepper and cheese sandwiches. When I eat fast food I either make sure I have had less than 2,000 calories for the day, or I feel really guilty and decrease my calories for the following day.

Maybe you can tell, I have not eaten breakfast yet, which is why I am rambling on about food. I am planning on having half a packet of instant oatmeal. Only half a packet because I will be baby-sitting my elderly grandmother for half of today, which means no taking hour long walks and doing morning exercise on my stationary bike. Maybe for a snack, a peach. Then for another snack, red-leaf chard lettuce mixed with mandarin oranges and a low calorie spritzer. Then lunch....dreading having to choose something for lunch. Then, a cucumber with olive oil and splenda. I like splenda on my cucumber because it makes the cucumber taste like fruit.

My goal for this summer is to lose 20 pounds. I will likely only lose 5 pounds, but whatever, at least I set a goal for myself. So if you ever stop by this little blog and see like four entries in a row of random meals, listed like some kind of restaurant menu, that is because I am concentrating my energy on losing more weight. 159 is less than 184, but not by that much. I want to reach 139 pounds. No wait, I will reach 139 pounds.

PANOPTICON

Last semester I took a political science course with a self-proclaimed Marxist professor. He was handsome, charming, brilliant, and vehemently against the exploitation of the masses. One day he lectured on what is known as the "panopticon" model of surveillance.

Panopticon refers to an architectural structure of a building that is so high that it can see into the houses below. The houses below are all built with a see-through roof, like a glass ceiling. Every see-through house is placed so that 100% of what goes on inside the house is visible to those in the great tower.

According to my professor, prisons and mental asylums were built on this principle. Though I've never been in prison or committed any felonies which warrant imprisoning, I have served time in psychiatric facilities.

The triage room in the Emergency Room is built Panopticon-style. They place you in a room with no door and no light switch so that you are bathed in light, rendering sleep an impossibility. Over head, a camera captures every second you spend in the room, and you are never allowed outside the room except to use the bathroom. If you use the bathroom for too long a security guard bangs on the door, taser and baton on his belt, and orders you to come outside.

To make matters worse, they force you and the other mental patients into a common blue hospital shirt and pants. This seems to be part of the process of stripping your personality down to its barest bits. I remember taking my hospital issued socks off because I hated what the padded soles represented: institutionalization. A guard, having watched me remove my hospital-issued socks, entered my space and ordered me to put them back on. It seemed like such a trivial detail: socks. However, we both understood the socks to be compliance, to be a part of my shaming costume of the mentally unfit. The socks weren't just socks, they were fuzzy shackles I had to wear, as a ward of the state. I put them back on. Later I removed them again, frustrated and unable to think straight in my manic-induced psychotic state. Again, the guard entered and ordered my socks back on.

After 48 hours of constant, bright fluorescent lights, cameras and security guards watching my every move, and a cocky doctor casually signing my life away on my medical chart, I was restrained on a stretcher and moved to a long-term psych ward. There, patients were allowed to get in my face and threaten me without reproach and the staff were cold, manipulative, and contemptuous. Sometimes, I hated the outside of my room so much that I refused to leave my bed. A doctor told me I was just making it worse for myself, why wouldn't I comply with the program. I insisted I was on strike. He upped my dose of anti-psychotics and anti-depressants. Eventually, spurred on by artificial chemicals, I got out of bed and grudgingly showed up for group and lunch.

This pattern happened more than once, more than thrice, even. Being a poor person who can't afford health insurance, I wound up being hospitalized quite a number of times before the State realized it would be cheaper just to pay for outpatient services than to have to warehouse me in another panopticon institution for the rest of my life.

What's my point? Panopticons exist. They are a form of thought control, of behavioral modification. Yes, I am better for being so humiliated, stripped down, and drugged, but I wonder if there is not a better way to help mental invalids?

If you're in the mental health field, please consider alternatives to this opticon method of treatment. While I am obedient with my mother, the University, and society, a part of me remains that mental patient that rolls of the gray, padded sock and tosses it on the ground. Maybe you should, too. Not all panopticons are as obvious as psychiatric hospitals. Some panopticons exist in the mind.