Reason enough?

I was in ballet for a long time. I can confidently say that I enjoyed every one of those 15 years dancing with my younger sister, Ruthie and our best friend, Ashley. We must have haphazardly choreographed hundreds of our own dances as we cautiously spun and did leaps about the living rooms of our parents' houses. It never mattered if we actually knew what we were doing, or even if we were good at it or not. We had fun. I don't know if Ruthie or Ashley ever felt the intense body image pressure that most dancers face, but I know I did. While I never said anything back then, I always longed to look like a  "real ballerina." Despite knowing that I was a better dancer than some of the girls who had bodies like "real ballerinas," I knew deep inside that if you wanted to dance, you couldn't look like me. My body is perfect for the farm girl with the German heritage--solid and strong. There's nothing petite, delicate, or tiny about me. Therefore just loving to dance wasn't going to cut it. So, when high school was over, I never danced again. I loved it, but I knew that dancing was a sport not meant for girls with my body. I started running instead. I wasn't good at that, I never enjoyed it, and it was boring as crap. Trying to "like" it made me cringe.

Loving to dance was and is reason enough to do it...the same goes for being yourself, doing what makes you happy, and for living a life in celebration of abilities and strengths rather than in constantly striving to look or be "better" or "different."

Eating Disorder Awareness Week pisses me off. (Sorry, I know that's not a very eloquent way in which to speak, but it captures my sentiment) It's depressing and infuriating to me hearing grim facts and statistics about how we think that the way someone looks, or what size his or her body is, should determine his or her worth as a person...and people are literally DYING to fit a mold that they were never meant to fit! What good is it to be aware of how prevalent and misunderstood these disorders are if we still can't make them better? We try. While yes, there are some very successful treatment options, and people CAN and DO recover, the process is so long and painful that many people who suffer don't fully believe it can actually happen. True hope of having a normal life is rare in people who suffer with eating disorders. The messages are so pervasive, so deeply ingrained, and society reinforces unhealthy expectations that drive our behaviors! Many times, insurance runs out, doctors give up, therapists give up, and friends and families become worn down by how hard treatment becomes, and at best, most of us will settle for "as good as it's going to get." Nearly 20% won't even get to that point. I've watched far stronger and better people than myself lose their battles with these diseases.
That could have been my story, too, but for reasons I won't ever understand, I got a second, third, and probably a fourth chance. I was one of the lucky ones who got an opportunity to give recovery a chance, but  until a few months ago, I thought that I had to accept the "I guess this is as good as it's going to get" philosophy, too. While I was healthy, something was still missing. That "something" was the permission to actually do things that make me feel happy to have this body, my body. It is OK... not selfish, conceited, arrogant, or self-centered...to say that I am content just the way I am, and that I actually like it!

Having a week devoted to awareness of eating disorders doesn't cut it for me. I don't want to have to see people fight so hard to love themselves, or even just accept themselves. I don't want to raise awareness. I want to keep it from happening at all! No one deserves this. Can we just help people learn to love their bodies for the wonderful creations that they are already? Can we erase this picture of what we're SUPPOSED to look like?

One of my favorite movies, Take the Lead with Antonio Banderas contains a scene in which a high-school boy confesses to another student, "I guess I just wasn't made to dance."
"but...do you like to dance?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then you were made to dance."

Get it? I think that I am starting to understand. I don't care anymore if I look like I can dance or not. I can. I love it, and it is teaching me to be alive again. I was the kid who wore purple tights instead of pink ones and tied my ballet shoes on the outside because I liked the way the bows looked. It doesn't matter how we dance, or what the outside looks like. I think the only thing that matters is that we give our hearts the permission to dance our own little dance!

To those who think that you have to have sunshine in order to have happiness...consider the joy that can be discovered in dancing in the rain, jumping in the puddles, and letting the rain wash away all of those old rules that have kept you inside all these years!

Been there, done that

Body image is a tricky thing. Some people say that no one (eating disorder or not) really likes her/his body. Well, that sort of sucks. I'm not quite sure I am willing to buy into that.

To those of you who know me, what I just wrote may make you hit the floor. Well, your eyes aren't playing tricks. I said it. I think that's a cop-out. It's an excuse to accept feeling crappy about ourselves and save a reason to degrade ourselves. I know it is. I've done it. Something inside feels as if it has to hold on to that hatred so that there is justification for torture, mean words, and unkind thoughts. I don't know when or where that part of me went, but one thing is for sure- it is NOT welcome back. I've posted an eviction notice for it. There are "Wanted Dead or Alive" signs all over this town for that villain.

I looked into a full-length mirror today at school and had a realization.
I can't change one thing about myself and still be 100% me...because it's all connected. The parts of my body depend on the other parts to be just as they are in order to collectively be "me." I can't be myself if even just one part isn't as it is.

My body image has been awful since I was 8. I've hated my body my whole life. This has embodied itself in the form of a deadly eating disorder for the past 6 years. There was a point about a year ago, at which getting dressed was a 2-hour process that ended in tears EVERY day. I know what it feels like to loathe your body so intensely that you wish you were dead rather than look at the body you have. Yet, I still refuse to accept that I won't like my body...because today for a moment, I did.

Treatment providers have always told me to find one thing I like about myself or about my body and start there. Ok. Fine. I decided that I liked my height. I'm not super-tall, but I'm not short. I am 5'8" on a good day (aka, I'm not walking around hunched over like a troll) is a perfect height. So, today when I saw my 5'8" self, I turned sideways and thought, "ok, that looks like an average-sized butt for someone 5'8" tall." Then I started thinking about something. "Well, if I'm ok with my height, and that my butt is just right for that height...then I sort of have to be ok with my thighs and legs the way they are, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to support my height, or my tush....and if I had different arms, well, then I'd either look like a T-rex, or an ape. So, maybe this IS perfect?"

I stepped back and looked at the whole picture...yeah, taking away/changing even just one thing would make me not-Mandi-ish. Actually, this is me, and I'm ok with that. In fact, I really don't want to be anybody else. In order to be Mandi Degner, this is perfect. I don't mind it. In fact, yes. I sort of like it. I like my butt, and my height...and the strong legs that hold them up. It suits me and I promise to learn to give it the love of which I deprived it for so long. I can and will make up for lost time. Will you?

My choice.

It's been a few days since I've written anything. I know it doesn't matter, because I am likely the only one who reads my posts anyhow!

I thought I was born a pessimist. I've always worried about almost everything. I have lived in a perpetual state of anxiety for most of my life. Tonight I realized that I was actually anxious about not being anxious, and  how absolutely ridiculous that felt! I was questioning why I wasn't as freaked out about life as my peers.

I've just chosen not to worry. No, this doesn't mean I've become some sort of slacker, lazy, or passive kind of person. I'm still just as motivated and goal-driven as I have always been. I'm just choosing now to take the "freaking out" part OUT of that mix. It doesn't help anything. Seriously, if something bad is going to happen to me, it's going to happen whether I'm worrying about it or not. My worrying doesn't change what life holds for me. I can't add extra happiness to my life by worrying, just like I couldn't worry enough to keep bad things from happening to me in the past. I worried about them, but I couldn't change them. People still hurt me even though I was worrying about how to keep them from hurting me. What's going to happen, is going to happen. I am letting go of the need to feel anxious about living. In being anxious, I'm keeping myself from experiencing things to their full potential. Even when I let pain, anger, hurt, or sadness just happen as life unfolds, I feel more alive than I ever did when I was worried about how much things hurt or how much I was crying and when I would stop, etc. I'm too tired to worry anymore. I've spent 5 years worrying in an insane way about my body...and what have I learned? That there's really not a whole lot I can do about what my body does anyways. Most of it is just going to happen. No, that doesn't mean be careless. I respect my body, but I'm not worried about what it's going to do with the peanut butter toast I just ate at 11pm. Thank God I don't have to worry about that. I'm too tired to care about that anymore. I have better jobs for my neurons!

A Lesson from the Nut.

If you cannot tell what this is (don't worry, I didn't know at first glance either), the figure in the middle of this plank of wood is a walnut embedded into a piece of lumber. Think of it as a cross-section, a sideways slice of a tree (I'm not a biologist, botanist, or even an arborist so forgive my crude references)

When my dad showed me this piece of wood, he was excited. He said, "Mandi, you have to see this piece of wood. I'm going to do something special with it, I just don't know what yet."

Keeping in mind that my dad is a carpenter and woodworker by trade, and my life experiences don't include much of either of these two things, I honestly was not quite sure what this was. I do appreciate uniqueness and novelty being an artist of sorts, so I replied, "That looks really cool, Dad...Umm, what is that?" As I pointed to the embedded walnut.

"It's a walnut, Mandi!" He replied, as the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward and his blue eyes sparkled with mischief. I could almost see the snarky comment forming inside his head. "Don't you know what a walnut looks like, silly?" 

"Not when it's fossilized and sliced sideways like a cross-section of a human cadaver I don't! I eat walnuts and cook with them, I don't study them, ok?" I replied in my sassy, sarcastic, perpetual-teenager voice. (My dad and I frequently use sarcasm to communicate, this is nothing new)

"The walnut probably fell into the crux of the two trunk sections of the tree, oh probably 50 years ago, got stuck, and the tree just grew up around it and enveloped it. Then Ben (my younger brother) & I found it when we were planing the wood to use for the cabinets in Ben's house. I'm going to do something with it, like I said, just don't know what."

Being artistic and having a flare for designing unique pieces of art, I thought it was amazing. I started thinking about the amazing wooden artwork my father is capable of designing around this fossilized uniqueness. My dad is an incredibly gifted woodworker. As usual, I began chattering endlessly with my dad and soon forgot about the piece of wood. I didn't think about the silly thing again until insomnia struck last night and thumbing through my iPod for some relaxing music, I found the picture I'd snapped in the woodshop. Then my mind started churning with ideas, but then I started getting sleepy. I woke up knowing that there was something symbolic, and perhaps even metaphor-like about this oddity. There were a few dark metaphors that initially surfaced. Most of these describing the tragedy of the walnut's unfortunate, unlucky fall from the tree, into a dark crack, shriveling up, dying and becoming fossilized into a tree that ended up dying and falling in the woods left to rot. A year ago, I would have accepted that as a good metaphor. No way, not anymore, that seems too easy. Anyone could have ascertained that metaphor. In the past year, I've been given the time and grace to view life as an optimist, and it is the best gift I could have ever asked for. Funny thing is, I never asked.

Having spent the past several years in some really awful and dark places, terrified of even my own thoughts and/or shadow (this is no exaggeration, PTSD can reduce even the most sound, rational, intellectual knowledge to shreds of terror at even the slightest sounds or illusions), has taught me that when we want to give up and accept that things cannot get better, something within us knows that there is light...somewhere. At one point I was sick of fighting the PTSD, the eating disorder, and the pain and I resigned that it was hopeless and a waste of energy to keep fighting, but for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to give up either. I was stuck in a dark place, sort of like the walnut was stuck between the two sections of tree trunk. One night, a therapist told me, "Mandi, I'm not going to pretend you aren't hurt or sad, but you have a choice whether or not you believe it will last forever. You know somewhere inside that it can't stay this way. You know that it can't stay this dark forever. You know better than that, come on.'" She was right. It isn't, and it wasn't dark forever. Life is actually really beautiful, even if it hurts. So, this silly little walnut isn't about darkness or the "well, that sucks" -type of misfortune! It's about something far more vast--Beauty. It's about choosing what is beautiful and believing in potential. So, here is what I've learned:

Trees in and of themselves are beautiful, yet not a single tree looks exactly like another tree. We don't really point at trees and say, "that one is too fat. It's ugly. It doesn't deserve water, food, or light." That's ridiculous. So, why do we do it to each other? It sounds just as stupid when we say that to ourselves or to each other. We don't question a tree's deserving to stand where it is planted. So why do we question the space that either we ourselves occupy, or that is occupied by another. We were all "planted" where we were meant to be. We have a quiet and unspoken acceptance of the beauty in nature around us. Most of us can appreciate the beauty created by each individual tree that collectively creates forests and landscapes around us. Likewise, most of us cringe at the destruction of this beauty for the sake of enterprise or industrialization. We have all been taught that.  

As a part of this tree, this walnut was a piece of that beauty, too. It was just unseen for a bit, hiding safely in the crux of two trunks, away from birds and squirrels that would steal it. The tree kept it safe. Some things take time...sometimes a long time. I spent years struggling with self-doubt, self-hatred, painful memories, and difficult choices. I tried to "improve myself" only to make the same mistakes, and fall on my face, again and again. My 20's felt like an eternity. I was exhausted, sick, sad, and despairing. I don't remember a lot of those years. At 26, I didn't want anymore birthdays, I felt as if I was 95 already.

I just had to wait. Waiting has been dark at times, as I assume it was for that walnut. Waiting probably 50 years before it was ever seen! There comes a point when you know you can't give up, because people care too much, even if you don't...sort of like the tree growing up and around the walnut? Yeah, sounds pretty familiar to me. If you can't figure out why people care so much about you, stop trying to figure it out. You won't. Just rest in it. You're safe. Even when the rest of the tree was ripped from the ground, uprooted by a straight-line wind, lightening bolt, or decay, that little walnut was perfectly preserved. Likewise, I'm sure the fall from however-many-feet-up wasn't pleasant. It might get worse before it gets better for us, too. We're not promised an easy life. In fact, we're told quite the opposite. "In this world you will have troubles, but take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33 So, we wait. Sometimes we wait for a long time. I don't know how long that tree was down in the woods. The tree was dead, fallen, perhaps rotting in some places, and even that wasn't the end. Instead of picking any of the other upright trees, my brother and dad picked this one. Most of the tree is displayed in the beauty of artful woodworking in my brother and his wife's new home. Polished and perfectly sanded, chiseled, and constructed it will be loved and seen for many, many more years. Then there's that one piece, the one with the imperfection that the saw exposed. Unlike the rest of the wood, it was unfit for a cabinet door, but it's reserved carefully on an artist's woodworking bench, proudly displayed as a wonder of how nature operates, bragged about by a tender-hearted craftsman who is waiting for the "perfect project" to display its beauty. It's not hiding anymore. The unfortunate fall into a crack, has been realized for the beauty that it always has been.

No, life wasn't meant to be dark forever. For me, I can say that I have an idea about why it was so dark for so long. I had to let myself be ok with being stuck in-between the two trunks for awhile. Waiting is hard! I don't usually do it gracefully. I cry and I yell a lot. I throw fits and sometimes mean-spirited words and comments. It was ok to do that. Like the tree, my friends now were my friends then as well. They never left, I didn't fall any further than I needed to. I can look in the mirror and appreciate the imperfection and the beauty of that imperfection, bruises and scars and all. We all have some of this in our life. It's about how we choose to continue (or not continue) the story. Mine isn't over yet. I'm still like that piece of wood on the workbench...waiting and learning to become what and who I was meant to be all along. 

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning"

-Louis L'Amour

Hand sanitizer? No thanks..

I have a germ hubris. I should stop hugging people who have the plague, thinking that I won't get sick. The odds of me defying the basic laws of biology that govern the spread of infectious germs are stacked slightly against my faulty "out of sight out of mind" mentality. Rats. Guess I should have paid more attention in science classes.

Actually, I think I'm just too lazy to worry about one more thing like germs and sickness and stuff. I have enough irrational worries (accompanied by their own set of ridiculously ineffective means to alleviate those worries) to last me a lifetime, so I've just never had time to pay attention to germs.

Unfortunately, not even my good ol' farm-kid, German, Lutheran denial of the obvious is going to work this time. I've been sneezing all day...that's how it started the last time I had this bug. Sorry if you've hugged me in the last day or two. You're probably next on this list.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just my cat allergy being overly dramatic and I really won't get sick at all. Yes. Yes. That's it. It's nothing, I don't feel sick at all. I actually didn't even realize there was something going around.  Ah, this denial lifestyle dies hard, doesn't it? (Funny thing is, I wish this were an exaggeration. This whole thought process is completely plausable in my world...at least it used to be. Now I just make fun of it and get mean looks from people who try to pretend it's not true. Tee hee.)

A week of believing in the unfounded evidence...

This is what happens when you buy into everyone else's ideas of what you can or can't do because of your "choices" and the false accusations from a deep-seeded critical voice within:
You spend an entire week worrying about why you can't seem to come up with an idea for your semester project, frustrated that you aren't good enough or smart enough or know the right people to follow through with any of the ideas you may have brainstormed! Welcome to my past week....

I used to force myself to suck it up or get over it, but for some reason that wasn't going to work tonight. I couldn't be mean to myself like I used to do! I sat down and cried, sort of threw a little mini-temper tantrum on the floor next to my desk, and then I heard all those voices of expectations and that really mean self-critic. Lies. Unfounded, non-factual evidence of my "badness" and failures. About 5 minutes of crying later, it all seemed ok. I remembered it's ok not to "get it right away," you'll be ok. 10 minutes later, I miraculously had a topic that seemed workable.

Are you kidding me? I spent a week obsessing over this, and the reason I kept hitting a roadblock was that I was buying into the idea that I just couldn't do it? Wow. I guess negative self-talk is a powerful thing. I've taken it to heart for a long time. I almost gave up on this. Hmm, and all because I just let myself have my little tantrum without calling myself "stupid" for getting so upset...I'm so done with that. It hurts a lot less just to cry, and let it clear out all the lies.

It's not me that was the problem...it was believing that I was somehow "not good enough," by standards that fell short when it came time to back up their accusations. Funny how that works, I'm the one who thought I didn't measure up, but actually it was what I was believing that didn't measure up. Those false accusations couldn't withstand the test of truth and evidence. I win.

I'm not going anywhere...staying right here. Right now. And I can be have joy in my tears, I can be happy no matter what. I love this.