Sunday, 31 December 2017

Old Reflections, New Resolutions

And here we are: The final day of 2017! It feels like just yesterday I was blogging my 2017 New Year's Resolutions. Now comes the time to reflect on 2017, a year of immense growth and confusion.

I'm not sure what to make of this year to be honest. It felt like a fragmented year: A year where little bits of everything happened, and everything amounted to the lessons I was destined to learn. I'm not sure if that makes perfect sense, but it felt like a year where everything happened. I learned so much in 365 days.

2017 taught me to be selfish. Selfish with my time, my heart, my feelings, my mind, and most importantly, myself. In the past I spent too much time feeling sorry for myself and the things I couldn’t change, wishing for things I didn’t have, and begging for people who did not deserve me. 

In 2017 I held myself through heartbreak and pain, and emerged like a lotus flower. I lost people I thought I couldn’t live without, but I also met extraordinary people at UCT who helped me through my anxiety and fear. I forged the most beautiful connections and friendships, and made amazing memories along the way. I listened to extraordinary voices and learned things. I pushed myself into new work opportunities through 20 Model Management and Exclusive Books. I changed my environment by restyling my room into a peaceful and loving sanctuary.

I achieved things I never knew possible:
  • Matric with six distinctions, an A aggregate, and top 10 in my year
  • A scholarship to university
  • My learner’s license
  • 100 Days Of Courage👸🏽
  • A job
  • A modeling contract
  • My hard work in first year paid off through my stellar end of year results
I’ve grown immensely, but I’ve also regressed: I’ve been vulnerable and terrified in my anorexia relapse... But I have also strengthened my mind and body in my intense desire for recovery and life. I have learned to treat myself as a first priority, and to feel my feet on the floor without asking someone if they are there.

2018 is my year to be happy again. To be Sarah-Kate, truly, madly, and freely. My 20th year will be the happiest I’ve ever been, God willing.

 Next year, I hope I can learn to heal to restoration. I hope my body will blossom and be free of fear. I hope I can sustain the art of mindfulness. I hope my relationship with myself flourishes.

 2018 will be MY year. My year of health, recovery, happiness, good vibes, blessings, hard work, love, and growth. Thank you for the memories, the lessons, the heartaches, and the blessings 2017.



XO


Thursday, 7 December 2017

All I Want For Christmas

All I want for Christmas is to become the person I deserve. 

I want to give myself the love, compassion, affirmation, and respect that I so desire and crave from everyone else. I want to be the first person I want to see in the morning, as I am, not the person I want to be inside my head. I want to hold myself in-between the crisp white sheets and fall deeply in love with the softness of my hair, the warmth of my skin, the softness of my touch, and the wriggling of my legs. I want to see beyond my flaws into the corners of my soul, and fill these spaces with light and warmth. I want to see myself as a whole human being living a life for herself first, not for other people. I want to have the kind of love for myself that makes me indestructible. I want to be empowered by my body. I want to nurse it and nourish it so that I can climb higher, swim further, and run faster. I don't want to treat it as a prison. I want to experience all that I can in this one precious life I have been granted. 

All I want for Christmas is to stop being afraid of growth, and let go of my need to be in control of everything in order to make it perfect. I have not been able to live fully and love freely because I am so scared of admitting that I need things: People, food, and rest. I somehow feel like needing things makes me weak. That is why I push myself to the edge: To starvation, dehydration, and exhaustion. When I am walking on these tightropes, I feel like I am independent, strong, and belonging to no one. That is why my eating disorder makes me feel empowered in the most distorted way. Anorexia needs nothing and no one. She makes me feel like the ice queen of my own deserted frozen kingdom. But in that process, it makes me more dependent than ever before. I become dependent on numbers to tell me my worth, on the mirror to show me who I am, on medication to get me out of bed, and on doctors and psychologists to make me human again. I don't want to live a life of dependency. That sort of life doesn't fit in with where I am now. I want to be an adult. I want my parents to trust me. I am nineteen years old and my mother has to beg me to eat. My friends text and call me almost everyday to see if I am okay. Everyone is constantly worried about me. I don't want to be the friend left behind anymore. I don't want to be the one everyone always worries about. I truly believe myself to be a responsible and trustworthy person capable of living a life of freedom, power, and adventure. But right now, I cannot live that life, and people don't trust that I will be able to handle such a life. I want people to trust me. I want people to look at me and say, "You see her? She was in a really bad space once upon a time. But look at her now: Healthy, full, beautiful, and whole. She rose above into a new life. And she has never been happier." 

All I want for Christmas is for people to see me as happy and whole and healthy. I want to eat so that my body feels energized and full. I want to be able to eat what I want if I want to eat it. I want to be able to eat at whatever time of day I want. I want to stop defining myself by the number on the scale. I want to be able to be okay with whatever form my body decides to take. If I get a little chubbier, I want to be okay with that. If I go up a dress size, I want to be okay with that. I just want to be able to live. That is all. I want to be able to eat and not care. I want my body to be free. I don't want to police myself with hatred and force. I just want to be able to validate myself as a person in time and space, and be okay with who that person is. I want to be able to see myself as more than a body. I want to be able to feel my feet on the ground, and feel my heart beat in my chest, and know that I do not need the validation of someone else to solidify my existence. I want to be whole as I am. 

All I want for Christmas is to be able to eat without caring about calories, carbs, fat, sugar, and weight. I just want to have a free body and mind. I want the freedom of not giving a damn about what form my body takes. Because I want my mind to be strong enough in the knowledge that beauty is not worn on the skin, but sewn in the heart. I want to believe wholeheartedly that whatever my body does is what it will do, but that what I look like does not define me. My mind, my thoughts, how I treat myself, how I treat others, how I chase my dreams, how I fulfill my goals, how I reach for my own happiness, how I embrace life, how I rise above adversities, how I nourish myself, and how I see beauty beyond the surface- THAT is what defines me. My body is merely a single part of my whole experience. The current fear I have about it getting bigger, changing, becoming healthy, and receiving energy and nourishment speaks to a deep sense of self-hatred and insecurity that I have. 

All I want for Christmas is to love myself. I just want to feel peace in my heart. I want to love my body for all that it is. I want to embrace it, however it decides to grow and mature. The reason why I find it so difficult to nourish and nurture myself is because I don't believe I am worthy of it. I've also said that I am constantly seeking validation from other people that I exist. My sense of self is shattered, and I no longer see myself as a person living and worthy of love and respect. I can give so much to other people, but leave so little for myself. I punish myself in unspeakable ways which is where my eating disorder manifests from. There is an entrenched and moulding fear in my subconscious about the future, growing up, becoming bigger and older, and the uncontrollable nature of what my life will become.

All I want for Christmas is to cultivate beautiful thoughts around life, food, and my sense of self. These beautiful thoughts will assist in my eating disorder recovery, and in turn help my body grow naturally and peacefully into a body that matches these thoughts. My body right now: Starving, exhausted, dehydrated, bony, empty, hollow, and void of life, currently reflects my thoughts. The body I have now is an external manifestation of all I feel I deserve. My body now reflects my internal processes of how little self love and respect I have for myself. How little I love the body I will have forever, and how much I punish and bully myself because that is all I can do for myself. 

All I want for Christmas is a loving mind. I want to think freely, love fully, breathe deeply, give selflessly, and treat life as the miracle that it is. Teetering on the edge gives me a thrill, but it will never give me the joy I will receive if I open my heart to the heartache, happiness, and head-spinning confusion that life offers. I need my thoughts to become purified. Once that happens, my body will follow suit. It will become an outward manifestation of the inner peace I so desire. And when that happens, I won't care what I look like. I will no longer chase the bones in my shoulders, chest, and back. I will instead be grateful for the body that reflects all the love and patience I have with myself and my journey. Then and only then will I be truly and wholly beautiful. 

That is all I want for Christmas.


XO

Wednesday, 8 November 2017

Reflecting On Time and Place: A University Essay

If you're as tired as I am, then you'll know how stressful the silly season can be. Along with final exams and the scramble for extra cash comes the Christmas rush and yule tide spirit. Don't get me wrong, I adore Christmas and the holiday season as much as the next 5'8ft elf, but the madness that overcomes ordinary people during this period of festivities is enough to make me want to skip Carols By Candlelight, avoid the shops at all costs, disappear off the Internet grid, and lock myself in my room with my fairy lights, The Holiday, and some Take-A-Lot specials. And to the people who are groaning silently and saying, "Pipe down Sarah, it's only November..."  We all know what you will be getting in your stocking this year.

But I digress... For my English literature course, which happens to be one of my majors, we had to write a reflective piece about a time of day or a place. I decided to combine the two, and write about the 1pm to 2pm at UCT, which is known as meridian. This is the middle of the working day when students can take a break and have lunch. I recently got feedback for my essay, and to my amazement and total pride, I got a First, which is 75%! In university, especially in English literature for a reflective assignment, it is extremely difficult to get an A-grade, so I was bursting with excitement and happiness that a reflective piece based on my own experiences with no academic sources or referencing could harness a First!

I have decided to share my precious piece with you. It was one of the most personal pieces of academic writing I have ever written, so please treat it with care. And finally, I hope you enjoy!

Choosing between two directions at one

The prick of a needle is something I no longer convulse at after having been for innumerable blood tests as a child.  I will not, however, ever be able to withstand the bile-stirring and flatulence-inducing turpentine that rips through my body when the clock licks one in the afternoon.  One in the afternoon is when the air gets thick with carbon dioxide as people spill from the cracks and crevices they were confined to for forty-five minutes of REM-inducing lectures.  One in the afternoon feels like slipping your hand into a sink of murky dishwater to pull out the plug, only to brush across half of your supper as it slides like oil off your submerged plate.  One in the afternoon is the prequel to an eternity spent rotting and bubbling underground like a stew nobody wants to eat.  One in the afternoon at the University of Cape Town is meridian.

Majority of my time in meridian is spent perching with the club-footed starlings on Jameson stairs for an hour, allowing my thoughts to permeate the air so that the idle chatter around me becomes less of a scattered ambience, and more of a white noise.  I watch as the students around me buzz and swarm in hives of social cohesion, and try and piece together their lives.  Meridian is the best time to observe people in a natural environment, and it often provides me with a sense of calm in an otherwise chaotic world.  While I am observing people, I am in control of their narrative:  They become vessels through which I can solidify my thoughts, and mould them into characters with interesting pasts and scandalous futures.  I can make them into the people I want them to be in other universes.  I can create the perfect person:  Someone without the flaws, mistakes, and bad habits that I see so regularly within myself.  I paint their storylines on their clothes, fashion them a new face, an exotic name, and a lifestyle.  I give them the qualities I wish I had.  I give them the families I wish I grew up with.  These people become my dolls to play with, and become new eyes through which I can explore the world with.  I control their direction because I am their puppet master.  I am an all-seeing, untouchable presence when I am at the top of Jameson stairs.

Sometimes, however, my thoughts cannot be heard with all the noise that surrounds it:  The laughter, the shouting, the talking, the singing, the movement, the dancing, the running, the fighting, the kissing, the screaming, the jumping, the crying, it all becomes too much.  It fills my head so my mouth cannot speak.  It fills my sinuses so that my eyes drown.  It rattles my body so that I shake with overwhelming fear and anxiety.  I scream above it, but it comes out as a whisper.  I try to stand up, I try to run away, I try to reach out my hand for help, but I cannot move.  I am stuck.  Trapped.  My body begins to harden into the granite, and I can hear the ringing of absolute silence drumming in my ears.  As I continue to harden, my eyes mist over until they cannot move.  They stay fixed on the horizon, not quite seeing anything, aching for someone to break the mist that hangs like a sheet of glass over them.  When the metamorphosis is complete, I have become one with the stairs.  I am a right-angled granite figure positioned to stare out into the abyss for eternity, not feeling anything.  Yet somewhere inside me lies the power to move.  Surely if I am the stairs, I have a sense of direction, and can follow it.  If I am one with the stairs, I can take direction of my journey, and continue moving forward into a more comfortable and stimulating place.  The only thing holding me back, the one thing keeping me from breaking my suit of granite and emerging like Excalibur, is fear.  Fear of what the world will look like when I emerge.  Fear of the responsibilities I will have to assume when I am human again.  Fear of people not noticing I was gone.  Fear of people treating me differently after having disappeared.  Fear of what it means to be a functioning human again.  My anxiety takes the form of a granite statue infused with Jameson stairs:  Too scared to move, and too frozen to speak.

On other days during meridian, my thoughts mirror the claws of the starlings: Mangled and broken.  This is when I am slow.  I become the food in the murky dishwater.  Submerged, wasting, and useless.  Where am I going?  Why am I here?  When will it be enough?  Questions I don’t know the answers to throb inside my head.  I become tired.  Too tired to answer them.  Not because my thoughts are trapped.  But because my lips are dumb.  My thoughts crumble to ashes.  They scatter, free.  But they leave me behind.  Empty and numb.  Lost behind a cloud stuck between two mountain peaks.  I stare out into No man’s land.  And feel nothing.  Soulless bodies surround me.  No narrative comes to mind.  Everything feels so out of reach.  Almost as though the distance between myself and the human world has increased.   I say goodbye.  It feels like I have no means of returning.  The stairs underneath me start to lift into the sky as easily as a broken spider web.  I am carried away, floating high above the ground into the vast blue atmosphere.  Here it is an extension of No man’s land.  There is nothing to see.  Nothing to feel.  No one to pretend around.  Here I can breathe.  Here I can cry.  I could not do that on the ground.  I had to be happy on the ground.  I had to fill my mouth with words, make plans, and move my arms and legs to the beat of everyone else’s music on the ground.  I do not have to do that here.  Here I am alone, and it is quiet.  I can make my own noise.  I can hurl words into the silence.  I can scream tears into the darkness.  I can claw at the air, and not be afraid.  This is what my depression looks like.  I can wonder far, think terrible thoughts, and imagine wicked deeds.  When I am alone in my head, I can be free.

Stairs carry with them a sense of certainty.  They present you with two options:  To ascend, or to descend.   Stairs are confident in that regard.  No matter what anyone says about stairs, no matter their opinions about the practicality or functionality of stairs, the stairs themselves know that at the end of the day, they will go up, or they will go down.  This is a sense of confidence and certainty that I lack in my own life that becomes clear to me during meridian.  I yearn to be as confident in myself and my future as the stairs are about how they ascend and descend.  On most days when I am alone and ruminating during meridian, it feels as though I have no sense of direction.  I cannot imagine myself growing up.  I feel as though I am stuck in the body I inhabit, and that this body will never grow, or become more than what it is right now.  I feel stuck in the present.  I see no way forward for myself.  Sometimes I think about my future wedding, but I see myself as a prepubescent bride with a wedding dress drooping at the chest, and sagging at the back.  When I imagine my family in the future, I see myself as not being strong enough to carry my baby in my arms.  I simply cannot think progressively about myself, and it terrifies me.  What does this say about the way I think about myself and my own abilities?  It must reflect how little faith I have in my dreams, and how I imagine myself moving forward into the future.

Being stuck in the present is another thought that is deeply disturbing to me.  If anything, the present should be the most exciting space to be in.  It is a space of infinite possibilities:  You may have been planning to go up the stairs, but in the present moment where you find yourself, you may decide not to go up the stairs, and turn around in another direction.  The present is the moment when you define yourself by the directions you choose to follow.  Perhaps this is what I am afraid of.  Perhaps I am afraid of making such concrete decisions, and am wary of people watching me as I take my steps, as I watch them.  I see this too in the way that I feel too afraid to stand up during meridian, because I am filled with the fear of what will happen when I stand up, and who will see me stand up.  This fear is what ultimately holds me back from running up or down the stairs.  Instead, I choose to sit, actively in observation, and passively in thought, while everyone else takes their steps into their futures.

One in the afternoon on campus stirs very disturbing and convoluted feelings for me.  These are feelings that involve intense extrapolation, which often render me feeling anxious or depressed.  During these moments, everything inside and around me feels stagnant.  It feels as though the present cannot move forward while I am sitting on the stairs, because while I am on the stairs, I am not moving.  I see everyone else around me moving forward, but I remain where I am.  The stairs feel a shift in the lack of movement, and open feelings for me that cause me to think critically about where I am heading, what my next movement will be, and where my future will take me.  The stairs know that while I continue to remain seated, I will never achieve anything.  All I will continue to experience is the feelings of uncertainty and insecurity that will keep me tied down.  The stairs remind me that everything in life involves the decision of direction, and which direction you take determines where you will go.  Everyone has to make these decisions every day, and these decisions determine what doors will open when we reach them.  

At the moment, I am too scared to consider these decisions.  I remain in my comfortable seated position, and allow the people around me to navigate the stairs as I watch them.  But if I am going to be an influential and successful person in this world, I have to take the stairs.  I have to knock on doors, trip up a few times, get my hands dirty on the banister, bump into rude strangers, and feel the breathlessness in my lungs after one too many flights.  I have to allow myself to let these feelings in.  I have to raise my feet off the ground, one at a time, as I take control of the direction of my own life.  I will not be infused with the granite.  I will not take the form of a club-footed starling.  My feet need to assume the power of the granite they are stuck to, and carry me with full confidence in whatever direction I decide to take.  This will not be achieved in one hour on campus, but I will become sure-footed, one step at a time.


XO

Tuesday, 24 October 2017

Being and Becoming Gendered: A University Essay

One of the many blessings/opportunities I have taken advantage of at UCT is becoming a Gender Studies student. After ten weeks into the course, I can honestly say that Gender Studies should be taught at every single high school in South Africa. The lessons and application are so current to our everyday lives, and are necessary to open up questions and debates about how and why the world revolves so heavily around the idea of a gender binary. It also stirs questions, and amazing discussions, about what happens to those who fall outside of the gender binary, and how we have made a social construct into something so concrete that it is used to oppress and manipulate people into believing that they must behave, think, and act a certain way. I could carry on forever. This course has me by the balls.

You are about to read my first essay I wrote for this course. It required me to account for how I have experienced being and becoming gendered in my own life. I hope you enjoy! Here we go:
Congratulations! It's a g-GENDER!
An exploration into the minefield of femininity and heteronormative culture

 “A girl should be two things: Classy and fabulous.” – Coco Chanel

Gender is the set of socially produced differences between masculinity and femininity (Holmes, 2007). It is a social construct used to divide humans based on appearance, mannerisms, body features, and sexual orientation. My own exploration of my femininity, and what it means for me to be a millennial woman, has been stressful in many ways: A certain responsibility falls on me to be aware of how my gender consciously influences my privilege, actions, what roles I assume, what activities I choose to partake in, and many other things. It is almost as though I was born into this world with terms and conditions that came with the gender thrust upon me, and if I do not adhere to them, I will be considered rebellious, deviant, and problematic for challenging a system built on a binary with no room for deviation. In other ways, exploring my femininity as a millennial woman has been an eye-opening experience: I am now more in tune with why I act, think, and behave the way I do. I have become more aware of the immense impact that a social construct such as gender has on me. I find it fascinating that such a small part of my identity has been able to determine so many of my life choices. This essay will take the form of a brief journey into how I understand myself as a young, feminine being, how I came to be confused and lost in what I felt and did as a result of my gender, and how I plan on using the discoveries I made to better myself and the people around me regarding their opinions and attitudes towards femininity in the future.

I, admittedly, am guilty of gender-based assumptions. I never questioned why I made these assumptions so easily and without contest, nor considered them to be assumptions. I was raised without any awareness of gender being an arbitrary construction, so I never had the skill to interrogate what I took for granted about the people around me. As a new student of Gender Studies, I am preparing myself to hone such skills from my lecturers, fellow students, readings, and tutorials. A responsibility falls on me to implement these skills in my everyday life, as well as to educate others to question what our institutions teach us about gender, to make the familiar strange, and question why our society is structured the way it is.  

 I now understand that gender rests on a spectrum that does not limit itself to two confining categories. Western ideologies that make gender a rigid social system where dual-sexuality cannot be facilitated need to be interrogated to understand why I think the way I do about myself, as well as the judgements I make about the people around me (Amadiume, 1987). Gender, if we must continue to use the term, must be understood as a fluid experience. It cannot continue to shape our assumptions about people, because the stereotypes and limitations of gender that we rely on to understand people need to fall away. In this way, we will become a more compassionate and humanitarian society.

Extrapolating my feelings around gender is very difficult for me. I think that one of the reasons why few people are open to debate and discuss gender as a social construct is because we as humans seek logical explanations about the world. Gender answers questions about bodily, personality, and social differences between two distinct groups of human beings. It allows us to operate in an organized manner because of the strict specifications of the two groups. It makes life into a systematic way of living, as opposed to a free, fluid experience.

My first kiss was with a girl. I identify as heterosexual, but at the time I didn’t attach the kiss to any romantic affiliation, nor did I question my sexuality. I became ever more surrounded by women as I went to an all-girls primary school and high school, and became entranced at the beauty of the female body and mind.  It was then I began to question my sexuality. The thought that I could be lesbian terrified me. I was raised an Anglican Christian, went to a Christian high school where we attended chapel and Eucharist, and was taught by the church that homosexuality is a sin. I overheard a conversation between two people who said, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Alan and Steve. Being gay is a perversion of God’s plan.” Because of the influence of my school, church, religion, and friends, the idea that a gendered woman was only meant to be with a gendered man became entrenched in my mind. I became accustomed to the idea that heterosexuality was the norm, and that experimenting with my femininity and sexuality, as well as existing fluidly, would condemn me to public and divine ridicule. The institutions I was in had influenced my understanding of gender, and what it meant to be a young woman. Being attracted to men and being a gendered woman became symbiotic to me at such a tender age.

 After this indoctrination of the heteronormativity of heterosexual relationships, I cast my mind back to that innocent kiss with my friend. I began to question if I was lesbian, and if so, would God send me to hell? I thought that even though my first kiss was at a young age, it was with a girl and not a boy, the way hegemonic heteronormative relationships should manifest as the 'correct' way of being intimate with another person. I, however, had been intimate with a girl from a young age. And since it was kiss with a girl, that surely meant that I was a lesbian. I instantly started panicking, fearing for my life. What would I tell my family? My friends? What would my church think? I began to fear that I would never be able to get married or be myself in public, because everyone would tease me for being lesbian. I became so afraid that I did not tell anyone about the kiss, I did not explore my feelings about what the kiss meant, nor did I confide in anyone about my confusion about my sexuality. I grew up with a sense of fear and hesitation towards becoming involved with the opposite sex, because I was terrified it would confirm the questions and doubts I had about whether or not I was lesbian.

 I know today that I am heterosexual, and I am sad to say that that calms me down considerably. That is not to say I would be ashamed to be lesbian, but rather that the sense of privilege that comes with being heterosexual makes me feel secure. This sense of security is stripped away when you are homosexual, and is something you have to fight against your whole life, despite the fact that who you are is not illegal or wrong. It makes me severely frustrated that people who deviate from the socially constructed heteronormative standards of being straight and being attracted to the opposite sex are even considered 'deviants' simply because they fall outside of a binary that does not exist naturally.  Who they are is not deviant or other. This is why I fervently believe in the emphasis of gender as a fluid experience, because little girls should not be praying fiercely at night with tears streaming down their eyes, begging God to make them normal.  

 "Normal."

Reflecting on being and becoming gendered makes me feel uncomfortable at times, because I am forced to confront the unfair and unsubstantiated assumptions I make daily about myself and others. Indeed, we interact with people according to their gender, and cannot think of them as neutral, because the world operates around gender distinction (Holmes, 2007). The way I interact with myself because of being gendered often makes me feel trapped in my own body. I am constantly aware of how young women ought to present themselves to appear desirable and respected. Consequently, I feel like my actions and behaviour are not my own. Instead, they are influenced by societal pressure dictating to me what a person gendered as a woman should be.

I have been molded to sit perfectly upright, hands folded, and legs crossed in the presence of a man, because this is deemed ladylike and respectable behaviour from a woman. It exhausts me that I must fight to earn the same respect a man is granted simply by the gender society has given him. Who am I not to be respected? Who is society to tell me my breasts and what is between my legs determines how I should act, and thus how I will be received? It angers me deeply that I must behave in a certain way to achieve the respect a man receives in this world, simply because we have organized gender to allocate all societal power to gendered males. It frustrates me that a force greater than myself, the patriarchy, has a stronger hold on me than I have on myself: No matter how much I respect myself, and how much I invest in my self-esteem, confidence, and achievements, if I do not behave as a respectable, desirable woman by patriarchal standards, I am not worthy of the attention, praise, and power a gendered man is born with. Being gendered has become a process of being jailed in my own body and entrapped by my femininity, forever condemned to be less than my male counterpart.

Being gendered as a woman has, however, influenced me in good ways too. Through social media I have become increasingly aware of how unjust the power balance is in the patriarchal system. I am learning to question why we have allowed a social construct to divide us into superior and inferior groups, and to debate these issues and discrepancies. Through Gender Studies, I will become more educated and equipped to fight the patriarchy, and empower myself as a millennial woman. I am also becoming empowered through learning about the struggles of women throughout history to earn their rights in a male-dominated society. I am hoping that I may use these skills to educate my future daughters on how being gendered can both imprison and free you. It can build identity, and give a sense of conviction and strength as you explore what it means to be a woman.

I have revised the introductory quote to suit contemporary gender debates:

“A girl should be two things: Who she wants, and what she wants.”

I am determined to move forward into the future with my understanding of gender as a fluid experience. Gender can no longer be seen as a holding cell for the body to move no more than two steps in. A social construct cannot be justified as the reason why people are alienated, bullied, beaten, oppressed, and stripped of power. A certain responsibility falls on all people to educate themselves on how their gender influences their privilege, regardless of the fact that none of us asked for it. Societal divide based an imbalance of power, and inferiorities between people cannot continue to be corroborated by the forces of nature, the nature of our gender, or gender roles, because these are all socially constructed ideas. Moving forward, we need to emphasize gender as an unnatural construct, not something that imprisons us and dooms us to privilege and oppressive roles. However, I do stand by my femininity and my journey in this life as a woman. I will no longer allow my gender, and the assumptions that come with it, to imprison me. I want to exist in this world fluidly, without terms and conditions.

Reference list

Amadiume, I. (1987). Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Zed Books.

Holmes, M. (2007). What is Gender? Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore: Sage Publications.

I hope you enjoyed this essay! Let me know your thoughts and comments, if you have any.


Enjoy your week, and stay safe.

XO

Sunday, 10 September 2017

Under The Weight Of Living

*TRIGGER WARNING: Eating disorder (anorexia nervosa), relapsing, restrictive eating habits*

Two years ago, I published Revealing Who A Is in which I opened my heart to the world, and let everyone in to the horrors of my eating disorder. It saddens my heart and soul to know that it is 2017, and the illness that plagued my life is still finding ways to ruin my family, my friends, and my body. To know that I am relapsing, losing weight, struggling with self-love and body image even after all of the therapy and growth I have been through makes me want to give up altogether. I am so tired of this battle, this war in my head between wanting to revive the old me and submitting to Ana.

Recovering from an illness into which you have relapsed requires a degree of honesty with yourself. Honesty about your habits, thoughts, emotions, and self-depricating behaviour. Last night it hit me that I have not been truly honest with myself. Yes, I want to recover, and yes, I want my life to be free from inhibitions, illness, and Ana's voice. But I haven't always been behaving in ways that support this.

I have been hiding food, starving myself, refusing meals, lying about my mental state, hiding from my friends, compulsively weighing myself, going to bed hungry, and waking up dizzy. My ED voice has relished and thrived in these habits. Every time I take a bite of food, I feel myself swelling with all of the weight I'm gaining. I feel like the body I wake up with in the morning looks different to the one I fall asleep with at night. The way I see myself is so distorted that I actually have no idea what I look like. I don't see how much weight I've lost. I have been experiencing symptoms such as dizziness, exhaustion, shaking, aching muscles, dehydration, breathlessness, heart palpitations, and concentration difficulties. In those moments, it feels like Ana is saying to me, "Yes baby! Come to mama!"


But the real me knows that this isn't normal.


I know that these symptoms are exactly the same to the ones I experienced when I was first diagnosed. And that is terrifying. I know that my body is acting out against me starving it of its life sustaining food. But my eating disorder voice convinces me that these are good things: It means that I am gaining control over my body, and learning to manipulate it to survive in the most extreme conditions. In a way, it makes me feel invincible, untouchable. That is so messed up. How can starving my mind and body, and making myself sick to the point of hospitalization make me feel more powerful than when I am eating, healthy, and working towards my future? That is the ultimate power and terror of this disorder. It feeds you the cruelest of lies, and twists your mind into a filter through which it can strain out the truth, and morph your body into its own creation.

There is so much I want to do in this life, and so much I want to be. I want to walk down the aisle towards the man I love. I want to be a mommy. I want to bake brownies and order pizza with my children, and actually eat it with them. And then I want to lay on the couch in the sun with our full bellies until we fall asleep. I don't want to have to eat a separate, lighter, greener meal to them, or be hospitalized, because "mommy has trouble eating." I want to run with my puppies in my garden. I want to design my future house. I want to open my own practice as a clinical psychologist. I want to travel to exotic locations. I want to learn how to surf, how to skate, how to speak a new language, I want to explore art museums and galleries, I want to row down rivers, I want to fall asleep under a meteor shower, I want to swim under waterfalls, I want to camp in the desert, I want to sail across oceans, I want to hike all the mountains, I want to meet so many more people, I want to act, I want to go to a music festival, I want to work for Habitat For Humanity, I want to build a school, I want to work with children in underprivileged communities, I want to drive across Africa, I want to fly in a helicopter, I want to experience everything all at once, I want love that knocks me flying off my feet, I want to live until my heart cannot take it anymore.

But, there is one thing in my life that is stuck with me, but has no place in any of my future hopes and dreams:

My eating disorder.

It is the one thing, the one anxiety, the one monster, preventing me from living my fullest life. It is inhibiting me from soaring, kicking off my shoes, and from being the Sarah-Kate that the world needs, and that I was born to be. It says to me, "This world is so dangerous. Why put yourself in situations that are so out of your control when you can stay here, small, silent, and be totally in control of everything?" It soothes my anxiety by letting me obsess and nitpick over my body, my food intake, and my thoughts.

That is why I need to take that control, and use my skills of organization, determination, and dedication to control my eating disorder instead of letting it control me. I am setting up goals so that I can live the life I know I have the potential to live. I am creating an eating plan that will gradually increase so that I can build my relationship with food, have regular meals, and gain weight to become healthier and stronger. I am going to see my psychologist regularly, and journal more often, in order to empty my mind and heart from all of the feelings I usually keep compressed in the corners of my mind. I am going to eat in front of people more, even on campus, in order to prove to myself that no one is actually gawking at me when I eat. People, in fact, actually look at me more when I don't eat, because it's more noticeable and odd when everyone around me is eating, and I haven't eaten in front of them for a week. That is when they truly look at me. If I start eating more in front of people, not only will my mind and body grow stronger, but my relationship with my family and friends will strengthen too because we can bond, laugh, and chat over food, and they will be less worried about my mental health.

While everyone is going to be toning, priming, and losing weight for summer, I am going to have to be gaining weight, eating more, and watching my body get bigger. This terrifies me, and it breaks my heart. But I have to remind myself that this isn't an unhealthy process right now. In fact, I need to do this. Because I am severely underweight, and because my eating disorder has such a terrifyingly strong hold on my thoughts and behaviour, I need to gain weight in order to strengthen my mind and body to fight against Ana, and prepare my body for all of the adventures the future has in store.

I need to gain weight. I need to want to gain weight. I know that it isn't normal that I feel uncomfortable eating in front of people, and that it is no longer a conscious reaction that I don't eat on campus (it just happens). As I said before, when I look at myself, I don't see all the weight I've lost, and how much my body is suffering. All I see is how much weight I can stand to lose. I keep a ledger in my head of all the food I have eaten during the day, and I repeat it during lectures, while studying, listening to music, and before I fall asleep. It soothes me, it forms a coping mechanism for the chaos and disorder in my brain, and it also helps me determine what I am allowed to eat for my next meal. I no longer eat based on natural instincts and messages from my body. I only eat enough to keep me going, and only eat what my eating disorder voice allows me to.

I can already feel that this is going to be so painful for me. Having to eat normal portions of food and eat in front of people is going to be so difficult. I can see the nights ahead of crying in my sleep, aching for Ana to come back and help me gain control. Sitting and watching the skin on my tummy, legs, and arms expand is going to be so horrible. Watching myself move in the shower with a normal amount of body fat is going to hurt. But I need to remember that the space I am in right now, if it continues, is going to hurt me even more. In fact, if I do gain weight as I need to, I will actually look more normal, not overweight as I think I will look. Because my body is so deprived, if I gain weight, I will start to look like my normal self. I need to remind myself that the habits that my eating disorder voice dictates to me are not healthy, and they will not stop until they have taken my life. I need to be constantly aware that my family is worried about me, and that if this continues into my adulthood, I will never be trusted enough to be independent and free as I hope to be.

I need to remember that right now, I am critically underweight, my legs can barely hold me, my tummy growls with the force of an entire herd of animals, and my arms are always tired and weak. This is truly what is not normal, and not the process of gaining weight and regulating my body temperature and fat ratios. My body as it looks right now with my sagging skin and protruding bones is not normal, not what I am going to become if I gain weight. I need to gain weight, and get over the fears and nightmares I have about growing up, my body changing, and my proportions getting bigger. Because I have such terrible fears around my body changing that I would rather see myself get smaller and sicker than bolder and faster. If I am going to be a mother, clinical psychologist, friend, wife, and so much more in my future, then I can't continue to entertain my ED voice.

Now is the time. This space will serve as a space of growth and maturity. I am committing to myself, in writing. I will work on strengthening my relationship with food. I will not hide myself from the world. I will not shrink myself anymore. I will talk to my body, listen to it, and ask it why it is so afraid of gaining weight, getting bigger, and moving into the future. I will sit with myself while my body changes, no matter how terrified I may be, and know that every kilogram, every centimetre, every mouthful, is an act of immense courage. It may not be skydiving or swimming with sharks, but it is my courage. I earned it. And I will keep my dreams alive. I will wear that white dress. I will have my baby. I will roll around like a kid with my puppy. And I will be successful, powerful, and strong. Unapologetically moving my body into the future in whatever form it decides to take. I will not manipulate it, push it, or silence it. I will not allow Ana to crush my dreams. I will be the writer of my own destiny, unafraid of my demons, and staring challenges down.


Nothing worth fighting for in this life was ever obtained easily. It is up to me now. I know, I truly truly know, that there is something wrong with me. I know that I am in trouble. I know that I am relapsing into an illness that will take my life if I do not fight back. I know that I am critically underweight. I know that I have such distorted thinking around what I look like to the point that I am currently relapsing, and still think that I can stand to lose more weight. I know that the space I am in now will hurt me more than the space I will be in if I gain weight. I know that my fears around my body changing, getting bigger, and gaining weight are distorted and worrying, but the only way I will grow and flourish and become independent is if I sit down with these feelings, and try and understand what they are trying to tell me. Once I understand what they are trying to say, then I will be able to make peace with the fact that my body will change in time, that gaining weight is a normal process, and that food will never try to ruin me, but rather push me into the future.

The burning and hurtful tears that flowed when I started writing this have turned into tears of hope for my future, although I must admit, there is fear too. But all that fear means is that I have a lot of work to do, and that I am going to emerge stronger than I've ever been once I've confronted them.

I will be the hero of my own story.


I will save myself.

I will conquer this monster.


I will slay my demons.


I will build my own castle.


I will write my own story.


I will be victorious.


And I will never stop growing.






XO
Copyright © 2014 Sarah-Kate Says