A festive reunion

"Try again," Ed ordered and I stumbled back into the bathroom. He was over for dinner: 6 pieces of toast, organic mac & cheese, rice and beans, apples, string cheese, anything we could find. But our meal was much less appetizing spilling into the bowl of my tiolet, half digested.

It was hard, it hurt. Tears clumped on my eyelashes. But Ed was back and furiously taking his vengeance for my straying behaviors over the past few weeks. I should have known better than to act like that. I should have known Ed would come back in a rage, digusted with me. And he had every right to be.

What is this "middle ground" my nutritionist speaks of? There is no middle ground with Ed. It has always been all or nothing. That, I know, will never change. It doesn't matter what crazy number diet plan my nutritionist puts me on or how strong my own personal desire is to take back control, he always creeps back into my life in one form or the other.

I had never imagined myself battling with the other Ed. I was smarter than that. I knew better than to ruin my body that way. And mostly, I didn't think I would ever build up the courage to experiment with diet tactics of the impulsive. But, not surprisingly, I was at that point of overwhelming frustration and just plain anger at myself, my parents, my doctors, everyone.

And so, I found myself crouched over the tiolet bowl with Ed screaming in my mind about how awful a person I was for sneaking back into the cupboard to grab that second...third...fourth protein bar.

You've lost it, he laughed, I never thought you would give up your precious control. I'm very disappointed, Megan. I reached down my throat again, perhaps trying to find what little self worth I had left. Instead, all that came up were the remnants of mac & cheese...organic...but Ed didn't care.

I will take back that control, I vowed, and I returned to the cupboard even more a slave.

Missed.

I love abusive relationships. They exhaust me, scare me, make me crave more.

But no one else seems to understand or share my enthusiasm for an innocent challenge. At times, I desperately miss the comforts that Ed brought to my life. I miss the control that he allowed me. They say, "What control? He was controlling you!" It never felt that way with Ed, and I still don't agree.

Ed was a defining part of my life and something I could hold on to when everything else around me seemed to be falling apart. He was always there with me offering his criticism-but only to make me a better person, to urge me to be the best I could possibly be. But now that push for excellence and control has been ripped away from me and I'm left scrambling to find a way to keep my sanity.

Don't they realize that I am doing this all for everyone else but myself? Don't they realize that I don't want this at all, that I was so much happier before they intervened?

I want my old life back, the life that I had control of. All I have left is resentment toward the ones that forced me down this path. They forced me away from Ed and, in turn, the life I had wanted. Now, I've changed enough for them. I have become the person they wanted to see me become the entire time. They're satisfied, so now they have left me alone to fight the worst of the battle so far, the part they probably never realized I would sink to.

Should I binge tonight...or starve?

Courtship

"Hello, I'm Master Evans," the dark haired, middle-aged man said, wiry glasses shielding two innocent enough looking eyes.

Master?, I thought, Where are we, Korea? And I shook the hand of the man who would introduce me to hell.

The day I joined Desert Sun Tae Kwon Do, the course of my life changed in a way...in many ways. It was during my time there that I experienced real pain for the first time. Never before had I felt the burn of a workout even days later. It was my first true taste of endorphins. And I was hooked.

Practicing the art of Tae Kwon Do not only pulled me in with its adrenaline rush, but also the new sense of discipline it forced on me. When I stepped onto the mat in the studio I was no longer just a simpleminded girl, I turned into a "robot" (as I would tell myself) eating up every word that jumped from Master Evan's mouth.

"What you do in here will make everything else in your life better," he would say, and we would listen. I idolized him for the wisdom and skill I could only wish to acquire someday. Because of this he was such an influence on my way of thinking. Whatever Master Evans said was truth. Period.

There were times when one of the younger students wasn't working hard enough to the satisfaction of Master Evans. "What did you eat today? Lucky Charms for breakfast?" he would pry.

"Do you know what that does to your brain? Sugar, sugar, sugar," he continued purposely embarassing the child-purposely trying to change his behavior through ridicule. And even this I ate up.

Lucky Charms: off my list, I made note, No way am I ever going to get caught having eaten such a breakfast.

"What kind of push ups are those, Captain Crunch?" he would jab at another innocent child and my list of "evil" foods began to grow.

"Have you been drinking soda?" he would accuse at times.

"Diet, sir... " the exhausted student responded and we were flooded with reasons why one must, at all costs, avoid the evil "diet" foods.

"Sugar replacements..."

"...holes in your brain..."

"...worse than the real poison..."

He went on and on, and I was dizzy with excitement. He was telling me the secrets to eating healthy and having control over my body, right? He especially emphasized the power of exercising intensely to maintain a fit body.

"Do you know what happens to women when they turn 35?" and he would make a gesture with his hands and arms pretending to jiggle imaginary fat hanging under his bicep and we would make sure to do all of our push ups exactly right-or else that imaginary fat would find a way to become a real nightmare.

All of the many things I heard from Master Evans, I took to heart. Little did I know, the "advice" I was being fed was merely Ed working his charms and the excitement I felt was just me falling for it all. The lies had begun and the seeds had been planted.

Limited

“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed to the world turned out to be a mask…with nothing beneath it?” -Jodi Picoult


Maybe perfect doesn't exist at all. Perhaps it is just like infinity: a mere theory, never proven, never reached, but still idealized by many who can only wish to explore its expansive possibilities. It acts more as a safety net to fall back on when the unexplainable occurs. It is beyond anyone's grasp of comprehension or potential. We were never meant to reach it.

Forever yours...

Random, I know, but in the midst of "recovery" and one of my frequent moments of total despair, almost ready to give up, I decided to write a letter to Ed.

Dear Ed,

Why do you insist on latching on to me-sucking away at any quality my life has left-for as long as possible? Why do you continue to torment me and whisper lies to me with every glance into a mirror? Lies...you live through them-through irrational media and harsh judgment. You flourish in a misguided world of impossible expectations and always try to drag me down into its chaos.
You tell me how imperfect I am, how much better I could be with your guidance. You had me in your grasp, your unforgiving chokehold. You made me your slave and I followed you. I hung on to your every lie and you convinced me that I would be good enough if only I stayed "strong." In reality you were tearing me apart, making me weaker every day.
Nothing is ever good enough for you. No lack of eating or intense work out will ever suffice. And especially not me. I will never be able to live up to your "idealist" standards yet you continue to tease me with ideas and images beckoning me to listen to you once more. You don't like that I've proven you wrong in so many ways already, that I'm learning to break out of your suffocating grip. I am finally realizing how abusive and illogical this has been.
Why are you trying to tell me what's best for me? You know nothing of how a real woman- a healthy woman- is supposed to look. You know nothing of health, nothing of reality. All you know is anguish.

-Megan

And there it was. Crafting Ed into more of a separate being helped me not only by providing something other than myself to blame for slipping into such a mental state but also by morphing the ever present voice in my head into an overbearing, control hungry man making the desire to beat him down even more elevated. If I refuse to be involved in an abusive relationship with an actual guy than I will definitely not tolerate one with my own "Ed".

Welcome :]

I figure that I could use this blog to pursue two different ventures which I currently hold quite dear to me. One being half my journalism grade-which I suppose will bring down my striving-to-be-a-4.8-but-not-quite G.P.A. anyway and the other is to provide a comforting, understanding voice for those many teenage girls across the country struggling with emotional insecurities and pressures brought on by an unforgiving society. I feel so passionately about such a topic because I happen to be one of those girls caught up in the impossibly expectant and irrational nature of modern America.

I know it is not entirely fair for me to hold my high school accountable for the psychological anguish that has plagued me for the past, oh, three years or so. But I cannot help but recognize the innumerable triggers present throughout my history with Clark. I can only assume they can be found in many other high schools throughout the nation and that is enough for me to be concerned for the well-being of thousands of other teens like myself.

Clark, like at least some other high schools I'm sure, flaunts a rather impressive population of National Merit/AP scholar qualifying, straight A earning, overly over-achieving students. And it flaunts them with the upmost pride and encouragement-along with a hefty burden of ever higher expectations. This, in turn, has created an environment of constant competition between already accomplished students to exceed that level of expectation and stand out as "hard-working" or "talented".

The pressure builds to be the best in everything: academics, SATs, sports, and of course looks for many teen girls. This, coupled with outside pressures from our modern, narrow-minded society for women to look and act in specific ways, puts extreme stress on high school as well as college age girls. No one can be perfect but anyone can desperately try to be.

The pressure to balance being, in almost all aspects, perfect can take a toll on any young woman's quality of life and can become a consuming reality for so many like it had become for me. Fortunately, it has now turned into inspiration for me to reach out to others at risk and perhaps a new innovative way to rebel against society's most cherished, distinctive characteristic: judgment.