hi peeps, if you have landed on this blog, go check out no-its-betty, because I’m not active on this one anymore but unfortunately they will be forever connected and likes will show up as running-on-plants.
I think I might revive this blog to write down some thoughts. I don’t know if I’ll stick to it for the entire year, but right now I feel like I just need to write stuff down, and this seems like the perfect place to do it.
I landed in Portland, Oregon almost exactly 48 hours ago. The goodbyes were awful, but it got a lot better once I boarded the plane. Someone from the university picked me up, so it was a hassle-free ride to my new home. I’m staying with a family I found over air bnb, and they aren’t home this weekend, which means I’ve been on my own the entire time… which is actually really nice. But I am so looking forward to meeting them tomorrow! I walked around the town yesterday, did a small bit of grocery shopping and took everything in.
It’s hard to describe how exactly I felt, because everything was a bit overwhelming. Nothing seemed real, like I was in a movie or something. But thankfully I felt a lot better when I woke up this morning. I’m getting used to the look outside my window. Earlier I managed to cook some pasta without burning down the kitchen (it’s the small things in life). I never thought it would be this weird to use someone else’s (American) kitchen, and I feel a bit like I’m 11 years old again and have to figure out how to cook all over again. But hey, baby steps, right?
I’m trying to maintain as much contact with the people at home as possible, because it’s what keeps me sane right now. I never imagined that it would be this… hard is the wrong word… this weird to come here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m super excited and thankful for this opportunity and everything, but it’s a whole lot more to take in than I expected. But since it’s already gotten better in the last couple of hours, I’m not too worried about that. Just have to get used to a new daily routine, that’s all.
I’m heading out to buy some more groceries now, and I’ll probably spend tonight working on my term papers (for uni back home), and hopefully making some progress on them. Sorry if this post seemed a bit all over the place, I just had to write this all down somewhere.
Thanks for reading this, I hope you’re having a splendid day <3
I don’t know when I first realised that I could eat whatever I want and then vomit it out, the knowledge was stunning and soon everyone loved me more; my mother, my friends, the men in the streets. Beauty is a strange place, a road sign in the distance that you never actually reach. The term bulimia in greek means ‘ravenous hunger’ and I was starving. It’s incredible how long your body can last on nothing until you lose everything.
Bulimia is a secret that rots your teeth, burst the blood vessels in your eyes and intimidates anyone that could ever dare to love you. You despise your own body and the irony of that is very cruel. Every single thing of joy, was corrupted by my illness. Music was used only to hide the sounds of my retching, film, to satiate the hunger when I had taken twelve diet pills and could not feel the tips of my fingers. That whole part of my life is almost a myth, I was twenty years old, killing myself and not one person noticed. I knew the consequences, I was already experiencing some - the enamel of my teeth abandoning me, my periods disappearing, my body just hurting all the time.
I learnt how to lie with a beautiful skill, the careful calculation of how long after eating with your loved ones that you must excuse yourself to go to the bathroom before the food starts to digest. How to flush the toilet repeatedly or run the tap to hide the sounds, taking off all your clothes because the vomit always splashes back. How to hide the bleeding gums, the bloody nose, the bloating of face. I did nothing else, but gently manipulate everyone that cared about me.
Then, a hammam in Marrakech, I watched the women walk around partially naked, the soft swell of belly, the thighs and hips, flesh being scrubbed and oiled and steamed, a woman with hips as wide as mine, with the same thickness in thighs, the same dimples on the small of back, same waist, navel, skin so carefully soft and human that I was afraid to look. Why did I hate my body when hers was the same and I could not stop looking.
Essentially, if our secrets are secrets because we are told to be ashamed, then we must share them. There is no shame in being sad or struggling or trying to heal. We are all desperate, depraved and sacred. We are all terrible and brillIant. I can list all the things that can make a girl want to escape her own body (re: patriarchy). But I’d rather list all the things that make me want to stay in my body, and adorn it like a home, rub oils into my skin, tell it how sorry I am for trying to leave, for trying to hurt it into submission.
Eating disorders don’t disappear, many have no idea that there is something wrong with the way they are hungry, with they way that they eat. That they exercise until they cannot move, that there is always a new diet, that the scales are the first thing to touch your body in the morning. We live in a world where the worst thing a woman could be is at peace with her body. We are obsessed with destroying, controlling and colonising everything, even our own bodies. I’m interested in kindness.
My name is Warsan Shire and I survived bulimia and I have absolutely no shame.
‘It took me Twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don’t have that kinda time to convince somebody else’ - Daniel Franzese
