When "Help" Is a Dirty Word

It was my turn on the Playground Duty rotation recently. I'm love my middle school kids, but it's always fun to hang out with the little guys. The kindergarteners and first graders gave me hugs and high-fives and showed me their missing teeth. One asked me to tie his shoe, another to zip her jacket, yet another to open his squeezable yogurt. I started keeping track of these requests. By the time the bell rang, I had been asked for help twelve times. In twenty five minutes. None of these appeals came with an embarrassed, "I'm sorry, I hate to bother you," or the ashamed admission, "I know I should be able to do this myself, I'm just a mess right now." The kids needed help, they asked, I helped. Pretty straightforward.

Except it's not always straightforward, at least for some of us. When a five-year old has a problem she needs solving, she thinks nothing of reaching out to someone bigger, wiser, and with better fine-motor skills. When a 31-year old (me) has a problem she needs solving, she vows to work ten times harder to figure that problem out on her own, all the while maintaining perfect composure and refusing to admit there's anything wrong. That approach wouldn't work for the five-year old; the shoes would go untied and be tripped over, the jacket would stay unzipped and a chill would be caught, the yogurt wouldn't open and there would be tears. The approach doesn't work so well for the 31-year old either, as it happens.

Somewhere along the way I developed this notion that asking for help is a sign of weakness. I taught myself to be self-sufficient, and when that didn't work, I taught myself to lie and manipulate in order to cover up whatever calamity I was mired in. I'm not sure when this shift took place. A long time ago, if I needed a cup in a high cabinet, I would've asked someone to get it for me. I wasn't born resistant to help. That behavior hatched and grew like a parasite until eventually my whole brain was contaminated. I think it's normal for teenagers to go through this phase; they're flexing their independence and they need space to try, fall, and try again. Most people realize in early adulthood that everyone needs a hand sometimes, and they lighten up.

Some of us don't. Some of us become so revolted by the mere notion of asking for help that we'd rather die trying to do it ourselves than admit we're struggling. We want to be strong. We want to be capable. We want to be needless, wantless, anti-dependent. We love when people ask us for help, of course. The helper is in the power position. God forbid we should need to be rescued ourselves, though. Can you imagine?

I've done a lot of growing and healing over the last several years, but this is one of the issues I still struggle to overcome. I love looking like I have all my shit together. There's no drug quite like hearing someone ask, in awe, "How do you do it all?" Well, friend, since you asked, I do it all by sacrificing every last shred of sleep and sanity. (Probably not the expected answer.) The truth is, I do it all because I'm absolutely terrified of what might happen if I don't.

I can ask for the simple, practical things. "Can you watch my kids for a half-hour?" "Can I borrow your stapler?" "Would you mind covering me for five minutes so I can run to the bathroom?" There's no guilt attached to that stuff. But sometimes I want (need) to say, "I'm really having a hard time. Can we talk?" or, "I'm scared that things aren't going well. I'm not sure what to do." Those are the things I don't speak aloud. Those are the things with sacks full of shame and guilt tied to them like anchors. Incidentally, those are the things that are the most important. Funny how that works.

My challenge to myself - and to any of you who battle the insecurity demon - is to be more childlike. Instead of attaching all sorts of self-deprecating connotations to asking for help, let's just throw caution to the wind and DO IT. What's the worst that can happen? Someone says no? Worse, we get judged? Well, is that such a big deal, since we've been judging ourselves this whole time anyway? If someone says no or cops an attitude, we'll just move on to the next person. Lucky for us, there are lots of them out there. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe people will be glad we asked. Maybe someone will say, "I've been sitting here for months watching you drown, just waiting for you to ask for a life preserver. I'm glad you finally did." Maybe someone will even say, "Wow, you need that? I do too. Maybe we can help each other."

In the interest of starting off strong, here I go: Friends, will you help me take this challenge?

Maybe Buttons Were Made to be Pushed

I love being a teacher. I especially love being an English teacher. I get to explain language to children every day. I get to introduce narrative prose, persuasive writing, and poetry to young minds. I get to guide kids on the path to proper grammar, solid spelling, and the nuances of sentence structure. I get to be present for innumerable "aha moments." There's nothing better than that.

Not all of my job is punctuation and Longfellow, though. A surprising amount of my time is taken up with the social, emotional, and familial challenges of my students. Here's a little secret: teachers are 50% educators, 50% social workers. We have to mediate peer conflicts. We have to bolster self-esteem. Sometimes we have to help our kids cope with their difficult, unfair, chaotic lives.

I have a student right now whose personal challenges mirror my own when I was her age. I see myself in her struggle. I hear her talk, watch her cry, and I see my 5th grade self in all of her pain and confusion. She makes me remember. It hurts. I have a hard time balancing my professional obligations with my personal connections. I ache. I want to wrap her up in my arms and insist to her that someday it will be okay. In doing so, I'm wrapping up my younger self and insisting the same. She is who I was. She hurts like I hurt. She's scared like I was scared. She's at risk for the same things I was: depression, self-harm, eating disorders. She'll face things I shied away from: drugs, alcohol, boys. She sits on the very same precipice I did almost two decades ago.

I can't help but project my own life onto her. I can't help but think, "No, stop! Just pause for a minute. I know how you feel. No, really. I KNOW. But hang on. Keep going. Do that homework, even though you've got a thousand things going on at home. Read that book even though the noise in your house is almost unbearable. Keep your head down. Believe in your own strength. You can rise above this. You WILL rise above this. But you mustn't give up." I don't know if I'm talking to her or to the child me.

But does it matter? Maybe the reason this child is in my life is to push those buttons. Maybe this child is in my life because we both need to heal and to breathe. Maybe she's been placed in my care because no one in the world knows her story better than I do. Yes, it brings up difficult memories. Yes, I want to run from it. But I also have the gift of time, of hindsight, of victory. I'm largely at peace now. I've learned to forgive. I've learned to understand, and to accept what can't be understood. I've cultivated a beautiful, productive, joyful life. She can too, and I know this with certainty, because I was her.

The next time you encounter a person who pushes all your buttons, I invite you to get introspective. It wouldn't have such a profound impact if it didn't hit a deep nerve. What about this person reminds you of something? How do you relate to him/her? What do you have to learn? More importantly, what do you have to teach? Because in the end, that's what our life experiences allow us to do. Teach. Show the next generation that it will be okay. That they are not alone. When our buttons are pushed, we must determine what we have to give. That's what makes our survival worthwhile.

What Recovery Is (and What It Isn't)

I love AA meetings and the people who attend them. I have never had an alcohol or drug problem, but I still feel more at home in a 12-step circle in a dusty church basement than I do almost anywhere else. If I had to pinpoint the origin of my love affair with this community of revolutionaries, it would be in a dusty church basement (where else?) in Wickenburg, AZ. My eating disorder rehab center offered transportation to the meeting, and since I didn't have anything better to do in the middle of the desert, I tagged along one morning. I squeezed in between an old, gray-haired biker in a do-rag and an older, grayer-haired cowboy complete with hat and spurs. ("And you felt at home there?!" I'm getting to it.) I nervously introduced myself, "Hi, I'm Cassie, and I'm an addict." The words felt awkward leaving my mouth. That wasn't really true, was it? I wasn't an alcoholic, wasn't hooked on drugs like those other people. The more I considered it, though, the more I realized how true the statement was. I was an addict, hopelessly dependent upon self-starvation to dull the pain of life. As the folks in that basement read from the Big Book and shared their experiences, I nodded and thought, over and over and over, "I've been there." Their pain was my pain. Our poisons may have been different, but our ailments were identical.

There's another thing I love about my friends in AA. They're never "recovered." They keep going back, keep returning to those church basements, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. After I had settled in to the Wickenburg AA, I got familiar with some of the regulars. Over the coffee maker one morning I asked one of the old cowboys why he stuck with it after over 20 years of sobriety. "Kid," he told me with his hand on my shoulder, "if I quit coming, I'll die." It was as simple as that. My pal, and tens of thousands of his comrades, understood an absolute about recovery from addiction: You work it, or it doesn't work.

Someone asked me recently if I think it's really possible for everyone to recover from addiction. The caretaker in me wanted to rush forward and insist, "Of course it is! There's always hope! No one is too far gone!" The realist in me (downer that she is) was much more cautious. I ended up telling my friend the truth as gently as I could: "I think anyone who makes up her mind to recover, and keeps making up her mind every single day, can stay sober, no matter how long or how severely they'd been down the hole. Some people just won't make up their minds, and in the time it takes before they finally come around, the damage can grow too great." I know that's not the most optimistic analysis, but I think it's the honest one.

At the end of the day, no matter how many thousands of stories I've heard in AA and in eating disorder treatment, I can only refer to my own story with any certainty. And this is what I know. Recovery isn't going away to rehab for a month or two and coming home fixed. Recovery isn't finding God and instantly abandoning all your vices (though the finding God part can be a really big asset). Recovery isn't quitting cold turkey because your loved ones ask you to. Recovery isn't a one-shot deal, it isn't neat and tidy, and it doesn't come in a bottle or a doctor's office or your dream job.

Recovery is the choice we make every single day to suit up and show up. It's the thousands of mundane choices we make daily that bring us closer to the life we want, and further from the life we had. It's being willing to sit through the discomfort, the cravings, the ache of loneliness and the fire of rage and the crushing emptiness of sadness, reminding ourselves that this too shall pass. Recovery is seeking out the people who will lift us up, and avoiding the people who will pull us down. Recovery is a state of perpetual motion. Like my cowboy friend observed, if we quit coming, we die.

Self-Sabotage (or, How to Get Out of Your Own Way)

My dreams are coming true. My classroom, the interior design equivalent of my personality, is ready to accept my apprentices. My carefully-constructed lesson plans map out a (hopefully) captivating journey through the English language. My eldest son, who will count himself as one of my students, is expecting great things. I will be teaching what I crave more than oxygen: words. Serendipity, you might say.

"You're too fat," the gremlin whispers. "You need to be the thinnest teacher. You're obviously not talented enough to be a great educator, so the least you can do is be the smallest one." Damn. What? Why this? Why now? I've worked my ass off to put my disease behind me. I have 18 months of solid, honest recovery under my belt. I've set goals, reached them, and set new ones. I'm happy. I'm healthy. Life is good. So what the hell? "Just a few pounds," the demon croons, "to make everyone else a little jealous. 'How does she do it?' they'll ask. 'A teacher, a mom, a wife, a student, and still so thin? She's superhuman!' You know you want it," she entices. And damn if I don't buy it. But there's a real benefit to having some recovery mileage under my belt. I can play the tape forward.

Say I acquiesce to my anorexic compulsion. Say I cut back on my food, slim down a little. Suddenly I'm obsessing. It's not my students I'm thinking about, it's my weight. I can't concentrate on engaging lessons and social/emotional development, I'm too busy calculating calories. I lose a few more pounds. My jeans hang off my pelvic bones, and that feels great, but I'm tired. So, so tired. I fall asleep when I'm supposed to be grading papers. I'm irritable and snap at my coworkers. I'm cold. My heart resumes its arrhythmic two-step and I wonder if I'll make it through the day. My students will wonder what's wrong with me. My friends will shake their heads in disappointment. My family will just cry.

OR.

I resist the temptation. I defy the gremlin and insist that I am destined for far greater things than skinniness. I follow my meal plan, eating as much as I ought to when I ought to every single day. I have energy. I'm focused. I stay attuned to my students' intellectual and emotional needs. I create innovative lessons, usually in advance but sometimes on the fly, that key my kids in to the brilliant universe of language. I feel good. I can push through the fatigue, but I can also acknowledge when rest is more valuable than work. I smile, and I mean it. I collaborate. I inspire. I live.

So as I sit on the precipice of my life's ambition, I have a choice. Heed the demon and crumble, or resist and fly. There are children who need to learn how powerful words can be. I can teach them. That's a lot more meaningful than sliding into a pair of size 0 jeans.

Write to Life

Bill W. was an incurable alcoholic, until he got better. With another drunk, Dr. Bob, Bill W. would indeed overcome alcoholism and go on to found Alcoholics Anonymous. In their recovery bible, The Big Book, Bill writes, “The dark past is the greatest possession you have – the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.” Bill W. and Dr. Bob made an astonishing discovery as they rebuilt their lives: by helping others get sober, they could maintain their own vitality. I want to follow their lead and help suffering people find peace and meaning the way I did: by writing.

Writing was my earliest form of therapy. I still have a scrap of scribble-covered paper from kindergarten that reads, “im sad and i want my gram and i dont like peepl.” I knew, even then, that there were feelings inside me that could be dangerous if left to smolder. My mind was a pressure cooker and language was its safety valve. When I moved away from my beloved grandmother, writing helped me feel connected. When my parents’ marriage exploded like an atom bomb, writing was my bunker. When I fell down the rabbit hole of anorexia, writing helped me stumble my way back into life. It wasn’t the act of writing itself that was my salvation; it was the distilled, uncensored, primal honesty of it. I took my suffering, held it in my hand, turned it over and examined it closely, then gave it to the page. I want to help others do the same.

One of my literary heroines is Anne Frank. In her Diary of a Young Girl, which she penned while hiding from the Nazis, she observed, “The nicest part is being able to write down all my feelings; otherwise, I might suffocate.” That simple remark gave me an idea: What if I can share the gift of writing with people who are suffocating? What if I can help them find their voices, help them breathe again? People in pain have often been told to buck up, look on the bright side, or don’t say anything if you have nothing nice to say. Eventually many did just that; they shut up, not only outwardly but inwardly as well. They sought some substitute outlet for their agony, in bottles and needles and pills and food. Those things didn’t work, because they didn’t allow the afflicted to do what they most desperately needed to do: tell the truth.

I want to give people permission to tell their stories of longing and heartache and fear and rage. I want to develop a workshop in which people struggling with all manners of addictions or illnesses can still their minds, observe their thoughts and emotions, and write until their hurt subsides. By partnering with counselors, social workers, and clergy, I will put in place a framework of clinical support for people as they navigate their past and current trauma.

Each session of the workshop will begin with a meditation exercise in order to quiet the mind. I will then present a thought or question as a prompt. One prompt might be, “Think of yourself at six years old. Where is home? What does it look, smell, and sound like? Who shares it with you? How does it feel to be there?” After the writing is complete, participants will be invited to share their writing, describe what came up for them during the process, and offer one another encouragement and solidarity. Each session will delve a little deeper, poke a little harder than the one before it. It’s not meant to be easy. Nothing worth doing ever is.

My own road to recovery was an excruciating one full of missteps and regressions and hopelessness. I believed for a long time that I was simply too fractured to ever piece myself back together. But I kept writing. I kept telling the truth, even if some days it was only a few words. “Got up today. It hurt.” I wrote until I eventually came alive again, resuscitated by my own honesty. Like Bill W. and Dr. Bob, I understand the gift I’ve been given and my responsibility to share it with people who still suffer. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of this reciprocity, “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” How beautiful indeed that by holding a hand out to lift another we can keep upright ourselves.

The Next Generation

It's no secret to my friends, my family, and the readers of this blog that I've been through a lot in my few decades on our planet. I've seen things and endured things that don't bear repeating. I've struggled, I've floundered, I've survived, I've overcome. I've packed a lot of living into 30 years. I spend most of my time these days feeling grateful and doing my best to translate my experiences into meaningful contributions to the world around me. I've climbed back out of the rabbit hole.

Recently I've been confronted with a distressing fact: there's a whole new generation going through the thick of the ugly. Kids who don't have the benefit of perspective or hindsight are facing challenges we old folk never knew. My 10-year old son, a wickedly smart, startlingly insightful, hypersensitive, anxiety-ridden kiddo, is mired in an internet-fueled crisis. Some of his peers exposed him to a website full of content about violence, self-harm, and suicide. He panicked. He didn't want to get his friends into trouble, but he also intuitively knew things were dangerous. He came to me (thank God) and shared his fears. He cried. He admitted his own lack of confidence, his anger, his confusion. He drew pictures depicting the traumatic images he witnessed. He asked me why things like that exist.

I put my mom pants on and calmed him down, did my best to reassure him, and praised him for coming to me. Inwardly, though, I shriveled up. Every nerve in my body shrieked in painful memory. I had always assumed that my past hurts were uniquely mine; that the crippling loneliness and anguish I felt as an adolescent were exclusive to me. The situation in which my son found himself proved to me that bewilderment, isolation, and despair are achingly common in children. That's a stinging reality to face.

Part of me wanted to shut down and run away. Too many reminders, too much raw emotion. A bigger part, the mama bear part, knew that hiding wasn't an option. I laid my soul bare to my son. I told him about the times in my life I've felt inadequate, scared, unloved, corrupted. I told him that I've had negative thoughts that kept me awake at night. I told him that I've been in situations that I couldn't make sense of, and how distressing that was. I told him how I kept going anyway. How I asked for help. How I kept the faith that things would get better. How things DID get better. I hugged him tightly and told him how much I love him. That was all I could do.

There's a whole new crop of humans ready to make their debut in the world. We owe it to them to be vulnerable and to expose our own imperfections. To expose our own humanity. Only then will they be prepared to acknowledge and accept the tumult that will inevitably grow inside of them. Only then will they feel confident to face their trials head-on, secure in the awareness that victory over struggle has been achieved and will be achieved again.

Wings

Wings

Birds hold the sky.
They occupy a world above our own, awake to the insignificance of ground and gravity.
Starlings and robins and sparrows dominate the air
on wings of paper.
Hollow bones fragile as reeds in October. Vulnerable like china in the hands of a child.
Tiny, insubstantial creatures, birds.
Tiny, insubstantial creatures fashioned to command the heavens.

The Long Road to Goodbye

I've been agitated lately. Restless. I've had that crawling-out-of-my-skin sensation pretty consistently. In response, that old familiar temptation has slunk out from the shadows: "Just lose a little weight, you'll feel better." The voice grew loud enough to set off my alarm bells. I brought my concerns to my therapist, and she posed a fairly basic question. "What feeling does losing weight give you that you aren't getting from another source?" "Euphoria," I replied immediately. Pure, unparalleled elation. What came up for me next was nothing short of an epiphany.

I was addicted to anorexia the way some people are addicted to drugs. Loose clothing, sharp angles and a shrinking number on the scale gave me the same visceral ecstasy that others get from a hit of cocaine or heroin. Nothing I've ever experienced comes close to the rapture of that sensation. The realization that I made when I responded to my therapist was this: If I choose to remain in recovery, I will never experience that euphoria again. Never. Choosing to live my life healthy and free of addiction also means choosing to turn my back on the most pleasurable feeling I have ever had.

The more I considered this - with a mix of horror and stinging sadness - the more it made sense. Why else would I have relapsed so many times, returned to anorexia even in the face of overwhelming evidence of its destruction? "Just one little taste," I'd lie to myself, "just to take the edge off." As anyone who has ever struggled with addiction knows, there's no such thing as one little taste. I wondered for a moment why this realization took so long to materialize (after all, I've been in recovery for over a year), but I understand that as well. I think my brain knew back then that I wouldn't have been able to commit to recovery if I was fully aware of the sacrifice. Only now, having proven to myself that I can be successful, am I able to come to terms with what I have given up.

I asked my therapist if it's okay to feel as sad as I do. If it's appropriate or normal to grieve the loss of something that aggressively tried to kill me. She assured me that it is okay, and encouraged me to say a proper farewell. I need the closure. I need to acknowledge and accept that I will never again know the intoxicating madness that anorexia gave me. I have chosen to change direction, to walk a new path, to embrace an unpredictable future that will bring all sorts of joys and pains. I have chosen to leave behind the disease that took so much from me but also made me the resilient, ambitious, hopeful woman I am now. It's time to say goodbye, to close the door, so that I may turn my attention to the rest of my life.

Reflections on a Year In Recovery (If I Can Do It, Anyone Can)

I got a phone call last week from the Eating Recovery Center in Denver, CO. Pam, the friendly alumni coordinator, reminded me that it had been a year since my discharge. She congratulated me and asked how I was doing. "I'm doing really well," I told her. And I spoke the truth.

"I'm doing really well" was the truth. The actual TRUTH. I meant it. It wasn't the flat-out lie it has been so many times before. It wasn't crippling denial. It wasn't the diversion from my anorexic life I've attempted more often than I care to admit. I actually AM doing really well.

A year in recovery. Barring pregnancy and nursing (which gave me a necessary reprieve from eating disordered behaviors but didn't represent meaningful change), I have never gone this long without relying on my obsessive/compulsive need to be thin. I eat what I need to eat every day. I see my therapist weekly. I see my dietitian monthly. I visit my cardiologist and medical doctor when needed. I go clothes shopping and grocery shopping. I work. I engage in meaningful relationships with my husband, my children, my extended family, my friends. I do yoga and take walks and I avoid the gym like the plague. I go out to lunch with people on low carb/gluten free/no fat/no foods that are brown diets and I still eat what I need to eat in order to thrive. My body is the same size it was when I came home from Denver. I wear the same clothes and follow the same meal plan. I have neither exploded into obesity nor withered back into my old sick body. I have simply sustained health. Wow.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and as Pam reminded me, I can count myself as a success story. A SURVIVAL story. After 17 years (seventeen. Holy shit.) years of bondage, I live free of my oppressor. It's an astonishing and humbling feat. But it hasn't been easy.

I don't want this to be another post extolling the virtues and joys of recovery. While my year in remission from anorexia has given me countless experiences for which to be immeasurably thankful, it has been hard. Not "I don't feel like doing the laundry today" hard. Really, really, really difficult. I have made many mistakes. I have plain old fucked up. I have said things that have hurt people I love deeply. I have dropped the ball a few times. I have been selfish. I have stood in a department store and thought, "If I fit into a size _ I'll kill myself." I have sat in restaurants and passed over things that sounded really yummy because they were too scary. I have faced life challenges that gave me every reason to dive back into my disorder: medical problems, relationship drama, plain old overwhelming stress. I have gazed into the mirror and marveled at how dramatically my body has changed.

But I kept on going. I had those negative thoughts (I'm so fat, I'm disgusting, I'm a failure), recognized them as poisonous lies, and kept on eating. I went on the best family vacation of my life, a vacation during which I was able to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste amazing things with the people I love most, and actually create memories. I faced my fears, set boundaries that needed to be set, and spoke my peace. I apologized when I did wrong and asked for forgiveness. I forgave myself. I recognized my own humanity and saw the humanity around me. I bought clothes that fit, not clothes that would fit when I lost more weight. I hugged my husband and let him hold me, hold my body with all its curves. I cuddled my children. I got a puppy, a delightful little creature who couldn't give a flying fuck what my dress size is.

My point is this: I am living recovery. It's not easy; in fact, sometimes it's downright agonizing. I actually have to feel all that nasty stuff I spent almost two decades avoiding. But it's worth it. Those feelings? Fear, pain, guilt, loneliness, anger, shame? They serve a purpose. When I'm able to acknowledge them and ride them out, I end up better for having done so. I learn. I grow. I wake up every day excited for what lies ahead. I no longer wake to the suffocating dread of what the scale will say when I step upon it. Scale? Screw that shit, it's my doctor's job to keep track of my weight, not mine. I no longer face every meal with the sense of impending dread usually reserved for a visit to the oncologist. I am living free. You can too. But first you must face the thing that scares you most. The only way out is through. I can't wait to see you on the other side.