Breaking Down the Labyrinth

For me, Pesach prep is a bit like everything else--the anticipation is nearly always worse than the reality. For weeks, I am an anxious mess as I stare down the monstrous amounts of cleaning and cooking I need to do, and then the actual day comes, and I wake up at 7 am, bang it out, and am done by 3 pm. I do recognize that in this one particular instance, living alone in a small city apartment is a blessing, because the cleaning is manageable and I am cooking for one. Bottom line--I'm officially Kosher L'Pesach with time left in the afternoon to do some writing, so I feel pretty accomplished. The OU would probably find fault with a few things, but lately I've found fault with a few of their things, so I guess that makes us even.

Despite all the frenzy (or perhaps partly because of it; it's such a classic cultural ritual), I really enjoy Pesach. I appreciate that it forces me to do things differently--staying up late, eating different foods, etc. But what I really love doing during this holiday, especially in the days leading up to it, is thinking about freedom and what it means for me, personally.

In the conventional sense, I have never been an unfree person. I had the good fortune to be born in the United States to a middle-class family who never needed to worry about money. Though I'm in a religious minority in this country, I'm also in the racial majority, which has bestowed upon me benefits I would be remiss not to mention. I have never been tied down to unfavorable circumstances by debt, and though my finances do not afford me every option, I have enough decent options that I can build a good life for myself. In short, I have been very, very lucky, both as an accident of birth and as the result of planning and hard work.

But there has always been something that has bound me. In childhood, it was OCD; I could not go to bed without making two trips around my bedroom to touch certain objects, and my stuffed animals had to be arranged just so on my bed or it physically didn't feel right. I played endless games of "magical thinking," telling myself that I would do well on a test if I could throw a small object in the air and catch it with one hand three times in a row, three times (also, I loved the number 3). If I was out for a walk and stepped on a manhole cover with one foot, I had to step on it with the other foot, as well. I was never sure what, exactly, would happen if I didn't adhere to these rituals, but I had a firm (if vague) sense that it would be "something bad."

In college, some of those compulsions lessened because I was physically removed from the environment where they took place (my childhood bedroom), but that was okay because I found something better: compulsive exercise and obsessive dieting. Anorexia was the ultimate ritual. Every morning, at the same hour every day, I went to the gym. I did the same machines, in the same order, for the same amounts of time (or a little more, but never a little less). I ran the same distance every day (or a little longer, but never a little shorter). It was mind-numbingly boring, but OMG THE ENDORPHINS. Then, there was eating. I ate at the same times every day, picking from the same narrow variety of foods, counting out numbers of things to make sure my intake was exactly the same as the day before (or a little less, but never a little more). Of course, I had rituals WITH food, too--precise methods of eating from which I could not deviate. By the middle of freshman year, I had come up with a system that I had fully mastered. It did not occur to me that the system had mastered me.


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I recently read a book of memoirs called, Abandon Me, by an author named Melissa Febos. I actually don't think I can adequately describe this book or its effect on me, except to say that it is, hands down, the most powerful memoir I have ever read. I got it from the library and it was a "speed read" so there were no renewals, and on the day I had to return it I went to my local bookstore and bought my own copy, even though it just came out and is only in hardcover, and I have a somewhat strict (if informal) policy against paying "extra" for hardcover books. But this book, I needed to own, and immediately.

My favorite essay is the one called, "Labyrinths," in which Melissa outlines her own addiction to heroin and her recovery from it, as well as her brother's battle with bipolar disorder. The title of the essay is a reference to the 1986 movie, "Labyrinth," in which a teenage girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly) wishes for her baby brother to disappear--and then he does; he gets taken away by Jareth, the Goblin King (played by David Bowie), who stores the baby in a castle in the center of a labyrinth. Sarah has 13 hours to solve the labyrinth and rescue her brother.

Sarah enters the labyrinth and begins to run. She falls into many distracting traps designed to throw her off course; in actuality, like all labyrinths, it is only one path and will inevitably lead to the center, so all Sarah needs to do is follow it. But, as Melissa Febos writes:

Throughout the film Jareth tries to convince her that the labyrinth is too difficult to solve. He drugs her. He sends creatures to mislead her. He promises her that happiness is in succumbing to his fantasy and abandoning her quest to solve the labyrinth.

"I ask for so little," he pleads. "Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want."

When I read that, I thought of how similar Jareth's voice sounded to that of my eating disorder. When I fell into anorexia's labyrinth, my list of "everything I wanted" was simple: I wanted to fill the empty space within me. Anorexia promised me that if I allowed it to rule me, it would fulfill my wish by simply erasing my need altogether. And so, I gave in. The labyrinth seemed too complicated, the center too elusive, and so I allowed myself to be swallowed up. The truth is that I didn't even know I was trapped--I still felt like I was in control.

Recognizing the structural layout of my labyrinth was the key to its undoing. Once I knew that the voice of my captor was lying, that I would never be free unless I broke down the walls myself, I started to come back to life. But there were so many distractions. I had to learn to recognize my own anxieties and compulsions for what they were, and to be in tune to the mental and physical cues that signaled I was starting to give in to the eating disorder. Let me say: it was a complicated f*cking labyrinth. But I used my tools: I went to treatment, I participated in therapy, I took my medication. And I found the center, where my self was waiting.

My favorite excerpt from Melissa's essay is in the picture below:

I love it because this is the key to everything, this realization that our addictions, our obsessive and compulsive belief systems, are nothing more than captors trying to take away our power. They will promise us everything, but leave us with nothing. The truth is that we hold the power. The minute we even entertain the idea that we might not have to listen, the labyrinth weakens a little bit. And as soon as we are willing to say the word, "No," even if we just whisper it, that is the moment that we start to get back our freedom. The labyrinth cannot withstand a lack of worship, and when we refuse to fear it any longer, it will begin to crumble.

Sometimes, it can seem tempting to go back to the labyrinth, with its small enclosed spaces and clear boundaries. But it will never again be as satisfying as it once was, because it will have lost its luster. Every time I went back to anorexia after my first round of treatment, I found that I had too much knowledge for it to stick for long--I knew what I was doing, I recognized the irrationalities, and I knew what I should be doing instead. More importantly, I understood what my eating disorder had taken from me, and was still taking from me, and that made me angry. The day I decided that I was simply tired of this particular labyrinth, that it held nothing of value for me anymore, was the day I left treatment and never went back.

Putting my life back together and growing into a functional adult has been a lot of work; it isn't always fun and sometimes makes me cry. But since I left the labyrinth, my life has never again felt as empty as it did when I was held captive by the eating disorder that promised to fill me. I make my own choices, now. I have space for relationships, I have energy and passion for a demanding profession, and I actually have emotions, which are quite possibly the most wondrous part of the whole operation.

Freedom is everything.

And so, my Pesach wish for each of us is that we recognize the labyrinths that hold us captive, and that we start to deconstruct them, brick by brick. Freedom is out there, and in it our true selves are waiting, as they have always been.

Hishtadlut

Wow...it has been a long time since I last wrote!  It seems I completely missed writing about Pesach this year--and actually missed the entire month of April--due to G.L.C (General Life Craziness). What can I say?  It happens.  Good thing Pesach Sheni is around the corner!

But lest you think that I've been slacking off, I'm going to tell you a bit about what I've been doing, and I'm going to be a bit more specific than in past posts because I feel like there's no way to tell this story otherwise.

First, the background:  I was an active kid who played several different sports during grade school, but once I got to college, exercise morphed into something completely unhealthy.  Like, I actually can't think of one way in which the benefits outweighed the enormous cost to me physically and mentally. When I started working on recovery, I had to quit exercising completely, and I stayed away from it for probably around three years before I tried it again.  It did not go well.  So, for the past 6 or so years, I've abstained from "purposeful exercise" (that is, exercise done for the purpose of exercising), and have relied solely on "incidental exercise" (such as walking to and from places, etc).

But this past year, I started to feel deeply an intense desire to try exercising again, but the wanting felt different to me--I didn't want to exercise to lose weight or burn calories; instead, I wanted to feel stronger and healthier in my body.  I wanted to feel like my body was powerful.  My team and I talked about how I would do it differently this time around:  no numbers, no pushing for a certain time, no using any technology to record distance, heart rate, or calories burned. I wouldn't do it every day. I would not force myself to exercise outside in bad weather.  No gyms.  I wouldn't make myself eat less on days when I did not exercise.  And on and on.  Finally, we agreed on a plan. The only remaining obstacle was, I needed to gain some weight.

Not a lot of weight, but enough to give myself a cushion and to support my body in being more active, and also to help me stay recovery-focused mentally. Objectively, it seemed like something I should have been able to accomplish in a little over a month.  After all, I'm in solid recovery. I knew why I needed to gain weight, and I was in favor of it.  I had a goal that I really wanted to reach.  How hard could this be?

Hard.

What I predicted would take me two months ended up taking four, and not because I wasn't trying.  I tried really, really hard.  For anyone who has ever had to gain weight, you know what it's like--eating past the point of fullness, eating when your'e not hungry, etc.  It's completely unpleasant.  But what's even MORE unpleasant is doing all those things, and then getting weighed and hearing, "Your weight is stable." For a while, I heard this nearly every week, and let me tell you, there was a lot of crying involved.  A lot of crying, a lot of frustration, and a lot of fear. I was already doing everything I could do. What if I just wasn't able to reach this goal?  What if it never happened for me?

When I first set my goal, I shared it with a good friend, someone who I knew would support me but also wouldn't ask me about it unless I brought it up first (if you don't have one, find yourself a friend like this).  One day, after a particularly disappointing doctor's appointment, I called this friend and shared with her my frustration and my fear.  She listened and gave encouragement, and then said, "You know, hishtadlut."

I said, "What's that?"

She explained that hishtadlut means putting in maximum effort and not giving up until you reach your goal.  I looked it up after our conversation and found that even when a person thinks that all the hishtadlut in the world won't achieve his or her goal, that person is still obligated to try.  In other words, pessimism is allowed, but giving up is not.

Sometimes, when I'm in the headspace of, "This feels IMPOSSIBLE," hearing someone say, "Just keep trying," feels invalidating.  But when my friend explained the meaning of hishtadlut, it felt different, I think because it felt like my problem was common enough that there was an actual name for how to handle it.  And the more I thought about hishtadlut, the more I realized that I really had only two options:  quit, or push ahead.  If I continued to put in all my effort, I had a chance at reaching my goal.  But if I gave up, there was no way it was happening.  So what else could I do, really, but keep trying?

And here's the thing:  it worked.

I met my goal.  Today was my first day of exercising, and it felt great--physically, but also mentally, because I knew I had worked really hard for this.  It was hishtadlut that got me there.

Whatever your recovery goals, know that sometimes the only way is the long way...but maximum effort does pay off.  It's not magic--it's something anyone can do.  But there's no giving up.  You deserve to feel the satisfaction and elation that comes with reaching your goal, so stick with hishtadlut--that's what will get you there.
 

Gevurah

As I previously explained, we are currently in the middle of counting the Omer, an opportunity for self-refinement that is simply too good to pass up. Since this is the second week of the Omer period, I am going to begin this blog series by focusing on the sefirah (Divine attribute) of Week Two: Gevurah.

I've seen gevurah translated as both "discipline" and "restraint," and either way, it is a concept with which I'm intimately familiar. Anorexia was gevurah run amok: the positive discipline associated with healthy eating and regular exercise snowballed into a painfully restrictive diet and grueling daily workout sessions; the wisdom of establishing boundaries in relationships gave way to the impenetrable wall I erected between myself and anyone who tried to come near; the prudence of not allowing myself to buy everything I wanted evolved into denying myself even the smallest purchases, such as a cup of coffee or a movie ticket. My eating disorder was all about gevurah in its most punishing form. Recovery has become an exercise in taking my affinity for gevurah and turning it into an tool for positive growth.

What does mean for me? Well, for one thing, it means being less of a people-pleaser and being more honest with my praise and criticism. It means understanding that I do not need to earn people's friendship by giving them whatever they want. At various times, it has meant adhering to a meal plan and treating food as medicine in order to get my body to a place where it is healthy. It means being honest about when I make mistakes and doing whatever clean-up is necessary, without letting that turn into an excuse to punish myself mercilessly.

I would imagine that all of us in recovery can relate to needing to figure out how to keep gevurah in balance. Whether our eating disorders were about having too much restraint or too little, recovery is about discovering how to set limits in a way that is self-protective but not self-stifling. As we work our way through this week of the Omer, I hope we can all find ways of experiencing the positive power of gevurah in our relationships with ourselves, and with others.