To start at the beginning, click here.
For Part 4, click here.
I don't know exactly what I expected of my experience at a psychiatric hospital, but whatever it was, it was not what I got. Of course, the people there had no idea what to do with me. Eating disorders had just come over the horizon, understanding was limited, and there was almost no successful track record for treatment.
The first few days were spent settling in, talking to lots of different people, and participating in yet more psychological testing. Because I was 17 I was eventually put on the adolescent program, which was me and about half a dozen juvenile delinquents. We were put on a rewards system for good behavior and I racked up points like gangbusters. This was all well and good but I wasn't improving. If anything, I was continuing to lose weight. Enter: Behavior Modification.
Here was the idea. They would put me in a room by myself at the end of the hall with a view of a brick wall. They would take away everything I had, except clothing and my toothbrush. And then every time I gained half a pound, they would give me something back. Half a pound and I get back my hairdryer. Half a pound and I get back my brush. Half a pound and I get to eat in the dining room. But I couldn't do it. I was so far gone mentally, emotionally, physically, that the program offered no hope. I couldn't see how I would ever get out. It was prison.
After 3 weeks in the psychiatric hospital, I was worse off than before, my weight bottoming out at 82 lbs. Why, oh, why, oh, why couldn't I figure out why I was such a mess? Why was I so broken that not even the experts could fix me?
My mother decided that it was not working either and withdrew me, against medical advice. I was thrilled and convinced that now everything would get better.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
My Story, Part 4
To start at the beginning, click here.
For Part 3, click here.
My plan was working. Finally, I was doing something right. I did quit drinking. That right there allowed me to shave 5-7 lbs. off of my pudgy-to-me figure. And I did start studying. Well, at least I opened the books. And then I started to lose weight in earnest. And I got good at it. For the very first time in my life I was actually good at something. But no matter what I weighed, I wanted to weigh just a little bit less, just to have that buffer. Just to be safe.
By the fall of my junior year in high school I was down to about 95 lbs. I knew I had a problem. And so in October of 1980, exactly 5 years from my first visit to the psychologist, I went back.
This was 1980, however. The understanding of eating disorders was severely limited. This time I saw a psychiatrist. To be honest I cannot remember a single thing about it my appointments with him.
I can hardly remember a single thing about that entire year, which is a bummer because I made the best grades of my life. I had isolated myself socially and, considering I never ate, really didn't have the energy to do much anyway. It was the year that I learned all that Spanish vocabulary that I will never be able to recall. All that work for nothing, it seems.
One thing I do remember is how terribly I wanted to not be what I was. I didn't want to have Anorexia Nervosa. I didn't want to spend my days and hours and minutes worried about food and calories and pounds. I didn't want to be so alone and isolated and hollow. I didn't want the terror that I felt inside all the damn time.
One day, in English class, we watched a slide show of Dante's Inferno. There was a slide of a woodcut illustration. It was skeletons drowning in a lake of fire. And I saw those skeletons. And I saw me. But still, I couldn't stop.
Then came the day that Ronald Reagan was shot. I won't forget it. I walked in the door from school. There was all the hubbub on TV while my mother told me that I wouldn't be going to school the next day. I would be going to a psychiatric hospital.
For Part 3, click here.
My plan was working. Finally, I was doing something right. I did quit drinking. That right there allowed me to shave 5-7 lbs. off of my pudgy-to-me figure. And I did start studying. Well, at least I opened the books. And then I started to lose weight in earnest. And I got good at it. For the very first time in my life I was actually good at something. But no matter what I weighed, I wanted to weigh just a little bit less, just to have that buffer. Just to be safe.
By the fall of my junior year in high school I was down to about 95 lbs. I knew I had a problem. And so in October of 1980, exactly 5 years from my first visit to the psychologist, I went back.
This was 1980, however. The understanding of eating disorders was severely limited. This time I saw a psychiatrist. To be honest I cannot remember a single thing about it my appointments with him.
I can hardly remember a single thing about that entire year, which is a bummer because I made the best grades of my life. I had isolated myself socially and, considering I never ate, really didn't have the energy to do much anyway. It was the year that I learned all that Spanish vocabulary that I will never be able to recall. All that work for nothing, it seems.
One thing I do remember is how terribly I wanted to not be what I was. I didn't want to have Anorexia Nervosa. I didn't want to spend my days and hours and minutes worried about food and calories and pounds. I didn't want to be so alone and isolated and hollow. I didn't want the terror that I felt inside all the damn time.
One day, in English class, we watched a slide show of Dante's Inferno. There was a slide of a woodcut illustration. It was skeletons drowning in a lake of fire. And I saw those skeletons. And I saw me. But still, I couldn't stop.
Then came the day that Ronald Reagan was shot. I won't forget it. I walked in the door from school. There was all the hubbub on TV while my mother told me that I wouldn't be going to school the next day. I would be going to a psychiatric hospital.
My Story, Part 3
For Part 1, click here.
For Part 2, click here.
By 9th grade I was ready to come out of my good girl shell. I hated life and found that if I drank, it felt good for a while. My grades plummeted but I didn't care. Guys liked "dumb" girls, so I thought. Drinking became an every weekend activity.
New Year's Eve 1978, I fell in love. This guy told me he loved me, too. We would drink together and I would cry. After a month of my affections, he moved on to greener pastures. I was devestated.
Anybody who has ever had a broken teen heart knows the drama. I cried for months on end and wrote lots of really bad teenage-esque poetry. I had become somebody I didn't want to be but had no idea who I really was. On top of that, I had gained weight. Not a ton of weight, but more than I wanted and more than was deemed culturally appropriate by the going standards. In my eyes I was fat, depressed, and dumb.
I was never as popular as my sisters. My oldest sister was a cheerleader and homecoming queen. My other sister was also a cheerleader and on the homecoming queen court. My dream was to become a cheerleader, too. That would mean I was of value. I failed. Two years in a row I tried out and failed. In fact, I failed at just about everything I tried for. I felt worthless.
Toward the end of my sophomore year in high school I was disgusted by my life and decided to make a change. So I quit drinking, I started studying, and I decided to lose weight.
I was never as popular as my sisters. My oldest sister was a cheerleader and homecoming queen. My other sister was also a cheerleader and on the homecoming queen court. My dream was to become a cheerleader, too. That would mean I was of value. I failed. Two years in a row I tried out and failed. In fact, I failed at just about everything I tried for. I felt worthless.
Toward the end of my sophomore year in high school I was disgusted by my life and decided to make a change. So I quit drinking, I started studying, and I decided to lose weight.
My Story, Part 2
For Part 1, click here.
I grew up in a culture obsessed with thinness. I cannot remember a time when being thin was not the goal of my mother and every other female I knew. Being thin was the very definition of beauty. My mother herself had so much shame surrounding her body. I would watch as she did her exercises, which included slapping furiously at the adipose tissue on her thighs, as if she could beat it away by shear disgust.
Life had gone relatively smoothly for me since I had gotten off of the antidepressant at the end of 6th grade. I had grown 6 inches taller and come out of my pathetically shy shell a bit. I even had a boyfriend for a few months. But the glory days didn't last long.
The fall of 1977 started the long downhill into the pathetic years of adolescence. In October, just before my 14th birthday, I got the Grill of Shame, AKA braces. If I didn't feel ugly before, this did the trick.
A couple of weeks later my mother informed me that she and my father were divorcing after 31 years of marriage. At the time it didn't really phase me. I knew he had been gone a lot. I knew he had been unfaithful. And I never had had a close relationship with him. He had always frightened me.
Over the next few weeks I noticed various pieces of furniture from the house being moved to the garage. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving my sister and I drove into the driveway after school and the garage was empty. My father was gone.
There are times now that I cannot shake that awful sense of abandonment that I felt at that moment. Two days later, on Thanksgiving, my mother fell apart. She screamed and wept and fell to the floor as she realized that the life that she had with my father was over. He had left her for a much younger (and supposedly more beautiful) woman. Being the youngest of the four children, I just stood there helpless. Watching my world crumble.
The next day I started my first diet.
I grew up in a culture obsessed with thinness. I cannot remember a time when being thin was not the goal of my mother and every other female I knew. Being thin was the very definition of beauty. My mother herself had so much shame surrounding her body. I would watch as she did her exercises, which included slapping furiously at the adipose tissue on her thighs, as if she could beat it away by shear disgust.
Life had gone relatively smoothly for me since I had gotten off of the antidepressant at the end of 6th grade. I had grown 6 inches taller and come out of my pathetically shy shell a bit. I even had a boyfriend for a few months. But the glory days didn't last long.
The fall of 1977 started the long downhill into the pathetic years of adolescence. In October, just before my 14th birthday, I got the Grill of Shame, AKA braces. If I didn't feel ugly before, this did the trick.
A couple of weeks later my mother informed me that she and my father were divorcing after 31 years of marriage. At the time it didn't really phase me. I knew he had been gone a lot. I knew he had been unfaithful. And I never had had a close relationship with him. He had always frightened me.
Over the next few weeks I noticed various pieces of furniture from the house being moved to the garage. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving my sister and I drove into the driveway after school and the garage was empty. My father was gone.
There are times now that I cannot shake that awful sense of abandonment that I felt at that moment. Two days later, on Thanksgiving, my mother fell apart. She screamed and wept and fell to the floor as she realized that the life that she had with my father was over. He had left her for a much younger (and supposedly more beautiful) woman. Being the youngest of the four children, I just stood there helpless. Watching my world crumble.
The next day I started my first diet.
My Story, Part 1
I was always an incredibly sensitive and anxious kid. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t afraid and certain that something bad was going to happen. Images I saw on television were scorched into my mind. The quicksand on the Tarzan movie was waiting to suck me down when I hopped out of bed. The disease that took the girl in the song on the radio was just around the corner. I had all the symptoms. I didn’t know what they were, but I had them.
Then in the spring of 1975, I saw it. The last portion of a bad TV movie about a ship in the hands of the devil. Dead people came back to life possessed by Satan himself. I was terrified. Over the next few months I couldn’t get that out of my mind. Any sense of peace and safety that I had ever had (which was not much to begin with) was gone. It was up to me to keep myself safe and I really wasn’t up to the task.
I tried, though. I made up rules for my life. Rituals to protect me. Turn the light on and off 6 times and the devil would get me, but 7 times and I was safe. Certain numbers scared me to death. Every shadow meant I was toast.
I ceased to function and was finally sent to a psychologist. I never told anybody my fears. I didn’t know how to verbalize my horror. They did all sorts of testing and determined I was a mess because I was gifted but couldn’t function under stress and told the teacher to go easy on me. Then they put me on an antidepressant.
I suppose that I had a diagnosis. Depression? Anxiety? I have recently read that OCD was not even an official diagnosis back then and I doubt the professionals even knew of the mental gyrations and games I played to keep myself safe. (Interestingly enough, I have read that the average age of onset is 11 years old. I met with the psychologist the week before my 12th birthday.)
I tried, though. I made up rules for my life. Rituals to protect me. Turn the light on and off 6 times and the devil would get me, but 7 times and I was safe. Certain numbers scared me to death. Every shadow meant I was toast.
I ceased to function and was finally sent to a psychologist. I never told anybody my fears. I didn’t know how to verbalize my horror. They did all sorts of testing and determined I was a mess because I was gifted but couldn’t function under stress and told the teacher to go easy on me. Then they put me on an antidepressant.
I suppose that I had a diagnosis. Depression? Anxiety? I have recently read that OCD was not even an official diagnosis back then and I doubt the professionals even knew of the mental gyrations and games I played to keep myself safe. (Interestingly enough, I have read that the average age of onset is 11 years old. I met with the psychologist the week before my 12th birthday.)
The antidepressant worked and, after about 6 months, it seemed like I had grown out of my “problems.” If only…..
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Alone in the Middle
My husband's family has had property up on a lake in Northwestern Wisconsin for 70 years. And for the past couple of decades, every year or two, Matt and I have packed up the kids and driven 18 hours to spend a week or two in heaven. The lake is 1800 acres of clean, cold water and I love, more than anything, to be on or in that water.
A few years ago I took up the family challenge of swimming across the lake. It is about a mile across and just doesn't look that far. Now I love swimming and plugging along breast-stroke is about like walking to me, so swimming a mile across the lake really isn't that big of a deal.
The first time I swam across I apparently broke the family record. I am very active, but not terribly athletic (possessing the energy but not the coordination), and have always hated competitive sports. (The last thing a guilt magnet like myself needs is to be the reason her team lost.)
I truly believe that my record breaking swims across the lake have less to do with my athletic prowess than with my hyperactive and excessively vivid imagination. Left to my own devices, with upwards of 60 feet of water beneath my feet, my mind conjures up an amazing number and assortment of things that could be in the water with me. Giant muskies eye me with hungry eyes and hungrier stomachs and unnamed beasts, part octopus, part squid, part jellyfish, and part blob, reach up with their dangly tentacles to drag me down by my toes, never to be seen again. So I swim. I swim fast as fast as I can.
But I have noticed something in the swimming. When I first start out I seem to make incredible headway. With each stroke the shore disappears behind me at something barely short of a breakneck speed. But the closer I get to the middle, I can watch the shore and watch the shore and watch the shore and plug along til my limbs fall off and I don't seem to get anywhere. At all.
The first time I noticed this I started counting my strokes. Twenty strokes and then I can open my eyes. Check my place. Twenty more strokes. And twenty more. The only thing that told me that I just had to be moving a little was the fact that I could count my strokes. And eventually, a seemingly long eventually, the shore came close and each stroke made a huge difference and it seemed I was finally back again to breakneck speed, headed for the finish.
I know that it is all about perspective. My efforts only seemed to be doing something when I was close enough to clock my position against a near landscape. Out in the middle, the mile markers, so to speak, were few and far between. Even while swimming it feels, it seems, that I am just treading water. That is what it is like out in the middle.
That is where I am right now. Out in the middle. Mid-life. No wonder there is such a thing as a mid-life crisis. You get to a point and, well, life just seems to be treading water with no headway. No purpose.
My kids are all out of high school, mostly grown, and making their own way through young adulthood. My purpose has changed. My role has changed. Gone are the mile markers of my life: birth and development, school with each year a new grade and advancement, jobs, marriage, pregnancies and births and my children's own milestones, and grades in school. Gone are so many of the rhythms of life that were my gauge for most of the past 51 years. I am far away from shore now. I am treading water, so it seems.
In so many ways I feel all washed up. My body seems to hate me now. I look in the mirror and ask "who the hell is that?" Any attempt to improve intellectually would just be calling on brain cells that went AWOL years ago. I get distracted. Flustered. Forgetful. I look up the symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer's just in case.
This is the time of life where peers begin dying of natural causes. Last fall my high school class of 67 lost our first classmate. A heart attack took her in her sleep. Four months ago my high school boyfriend dropped dead. It just seems that in so many ways, this is the beginning of the end and there is little left ahead.
Yet, both grandmothers lived into their 90s and my own mother was 85 when she died. Given those genes, I have possibly 4 decades...40 years...left. It baffles and confuses me. I could be barely past the halfway point yet there seems no clear way forward. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
I just thought things would be so different by now. I thought I would be more confident. More competent. More sure of my future. More secure in my identity. I thought I would be smarter. Wiser. Better able to roll with the punches. I never dreamed I would reach this age and still get lonely on a Friday night.
Maybe everybody goes through this. Maybe this is what causes women to get face lifts and boob jobs and men to go running after young hotties with healthy libidos.
To be honest, I need to know if I am still of value. That my thoughts and words and work matter. I need to know that this stage of life matters. That the life God has brought me through matters. That I am not lost out here in the middle. And I am not alone.
That is where I am right now. Out in the middle. Mid-life. No wonder there is such a thing as a mid-life crisis. You get to a point and, well, life just seems to be treading water with no headway. No purpose.
My kids are all out of high school, mostly grown, and making their own way through young adulthood. My purpose has changed. My role has changed. Gone are the mile markers of my life: birth and development, school with each year a new grade and advancement, jobs, marriage, pregnancies and births and my children's own milestones, and grades in school. Gone are so many of the rhythms of life that were my gauge for most of the past 51 years. I am far away from shore now. I am treading water, so it seems.
In so many ways I feel all washed up. My body seems to hate me now. I look in the mirror and ask "who the hell is that?" Any attempt to improve intellectually would just be calling on brain cells that went AWOL years ago. I get distracted. Flustered. Forgetful. I look up the symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer's just in case.
This is the time of life where peers begin dying of natural causes. Last fall my high school class of 67 lost our first classmate. A heart attack took her in her sleep. Four months ago my high school boyfriend dropped dead. It just seems that in so many ways, this is the beginning of the end and there is little left ahead.
Yet, both grandmothers lived into their 90s and my own mother was 85 when she died. Given those genes, I have possibly 4 decades...40 years...left. It baffles and confuses me. I could be barely past the halfway point yet there seems no clear way forward. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
I just thought things would be so different by now. I thought I would be more confident. More competent. More sure of my future. More secure in my identity. I thought I would be smarter. Wiser. Better able to roll with the punches. I never dreamed I would reach this age and still get lonely on a Friday night.
Maybe everybody goes through this. Maybe this is what causes women to get face lifts and boob jobs and men to go running after young hotties with healthy libidos.
To be honest, I need to know if I am still of value. That my thoughts and words and work matter. I need to know that this stage of life matters. That the life God has brought me through matters. That I am not lost out here in the middle. And I am not alone.
Monday, September 28, 2015
Quilting Bees, Flat Tires, and the Presence of God
Long ago but not so far away I was invited to a quilting bee. Yeah, laugh. I did. I am not the most crafty of people on the planet and I did not grow up with those pioneering skills so popular among my corner of humanity. As I sat there among the women, most of whom were younger than me, I was shocked to find that I was the only person there who did not know what I was doing. There they sat, these competent women, chatting away with their nimble fingers, zipping needles through fabric as my stubs made feeble attempts to do a stitch here or there, with miserable results. I was baffled. How did they know how to do this? I asked.
"If you want to know how to do something you just learn, Ginny." There was impatience and exasperation and condescension in her voice. I wasn't trying to be whiny or complaining or pathetic. I was just curious. Did these women all grow up with quilting grandmas or something? I felt chastised and ashamed. It was up to me to make sure that I had the competence that was up to snuff.
For the record, a few months later I did teach myself how to quilt. Sort of. Of course the thing fell apart after I washed it but BY GOLLY, I had made a quilt with my own two hands, thank you very much. This time my bootstraps worked. I had (sort of) made it a few steps up the competence ladder.
Not so long ago and even less far away, I had a flat tire. I was alone and pulled into the gas station about 3 miles from home. I called my husband. I wanted so desperately to be competent. To know what to do. How to do it. But I wasn't so sure. He came to me. He stood there and patiently talked me through the entire process. I am sure that it didn't look so good to see a man just standing there, hands in pockets, while this 120 pound woman rolled (yes, literally, rolled) around on the pavement, wrestling a tire into place (it is harder than it looks) and we laughed at what the passers by must have thought.
But I wanted to learn. And he wanted me to learn. So he stood there. Protecting me from other cars. Patiently giving me instructions. So I could learn. So I could do. He did not leave my side until we were sure that the tire was securely in place. And I had learned a new skill.
Long. long ago and far, far away there was a man named Moses. God called him to go to Pharaoh. To talk to Pharaoh. Moses thought he couldn't do it. He didn't have the skill. But God went with him.
Paul Tripp, in his book New Morning Mercies, says it this way:
"If you want to know how to do something you just learn, Ginny." There was impatience and exasperation and condescension in her voice. I wasn't trying to be whiny or complaining or pathetic. I was just curious. Did these women all grow up with quilting grandmas or something? I felt chastised and ashamed. It was up to me to make sure that I had the competence that was up to snuff.
For the record, a few months later I did teach myself how to quilt. Sort of. Of course the thing fell apart after I washed it but BY GOLLY, I had made a quilt with my own two hands, thank you very much. This time my bootstraps worked. I had (sort of) made it a few steps up the competence ladder.
Not so long ago and even less far away, I had a flat tire. I was alone and pulled into the gas station about 3 miles from home. I called my husband. I wanted so desperately to be competent. To know what to do. How to do it. But I wasn't so sure. He came to me. He stood there and patiently talked me through the entire process. I am sure that it didn't look so good to see a man just standing there, hands in pockets, while this 120 pound woman rolled (yes, literally, rolled) around on the pavement, wrestling a tire into place (it is harder than it looks) and we laughed at what the passers by must have thought.
But I wanted to learn. And he wanted me to learn. So he stood there. Protecting me from other cars. Patiently giving me instructions. So I could learn. So I could do. He did not leave my side until we were sure that the tire was securely in place. And I had learned a new skill.
Long. long ago and far, far away there was a man named Moses. God called him to go to Pharaoh. To talk to Pharaoh. Moses thought he couldn't do it. He didn't have the skill. But God went with him.
Paul Tripp, in his book New Morning Mercies, says it this way:
This life-changing fact is that the God of glory and grace, who calls his people to do his will on earth, always goes with them as they obey his calling. He never sends them without going too. When he sends you, he doesn't give you a bunch of stuff to help you along the way. He always gives you himself because he is what you need and he alone can give you what is required.Life is hard. It is scary. We all face things that we are so totally unprepared for. But God does not tell us to just do it. To just pull ourselves up and dig up our own resources and figure it out for ourselves. Like my husband as I changed the tire, God is there with us. Standing over us. Protecting us. Giving us not only the instruction, but the very gift of his presence. In his economy, companionship trumps competence. And for that I am thankful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)