The Unintentional Almost-Bikini Wax

I have this pair of jeans I like a lot. So much so that I wore holes through them at the inner thigh (those of you who, ahem, have a bit of junk in the trunk - or at least the thighs - may have also experienced similar travesties). But I didn't want to get rid of the jeans, so I decided to patch them. Woo hoo! Problem solved! Except I don't like to iron. Hey, no biggie - I have some press-on patches here in the closet - no need for ironing, just trim to the right size, remove the backing, and you can fix your item in an instant! Yay!

Well, guess what? If you wear holes through your jeans the first time in certain areas, the patches placed in said certain areas may also rub. They may rub loose. They may rub loose and then ADHERE TO YOUR INNER THIGHS. You may not notice this until you try to remove said jeans to use the facilities, and suddenly feel as if you've ripped a bandaid off of a rather tender area.

Ouch. 

40 Going on 12

When I was 12, I used to tell myself that when I was 40, I would eat whatever I wanted and get as fat as I wanted because by then nobody would care what I looked like anyway. Apparently 40 was either the oldest age I could imagine, or, more likely, the youngest age at which I thought I'd be able to get away with it.

Did other kids think this way at 12? I have no idea. I would guess not. Maybe it was my way of dealing with the increasing pressure to be thin and beautiful that was making itself apparent as I muddled my way through middle school. I certainly didn't fit the ideal. My mom was painfully aware of that, as well, and she began the first of many attempts to manage my weight (well, the first one of which I was cognizant, at any rate). I was sent to see the dietician at the local hospital, who put me on my first (of what would become many) calorie-restricted diet. I followed it pretty well, being the people-pleaser that I am, although I also remember becoming aware that I COULD still eat that ham and cheese from Hardee's, as long as I didn't eat much of anything else that day. Oh well. I lost some weight and other people seemed happy.

(By the way, I don't blame my mom any more. She was fighting a far larger battle than she knew, with this compulsive eating/food addiction demon of mine, and I know she just wanted what was best for me and for me to be happy with myself.)

So I think that's why this fantasy must have first popped into my head at that time of finding a way to escape the pressure and the feelings of not being good enough. Those feelings followed me all the way through adolescence into adulthood, however. Through countless attempts at Weight Watchers, through crash dieting, and even through a brief but nasty dance with bulimia in college.

During those attempts, I would usually lose some weight. I would usually start garnering attention from boys, then men. Imagine that! And slowly - but surely, most surely - I would put all the weight back on. Or sometimes quickly: a 20 pound Weight Watchers loss in 11th grade was followed by a 30 pound gain as a senior in high school. A 40 pound drop in college, again through less-than-stellar eating behaviors and over-exercising, came back on fairly quickly the following year, as I gorged my way across campus and back into the size 20 jeans.

And it never ends. It never ends.

I turned 40 this year. I laughed as I recounted that 12-year-old fantasy to some friends, dismissing it as such. But over the past few months, I've gotten to wondering about it. IS that longing somehow playing itself out in my current life? Because I've gained back the 20 pounds I lost last year, plus a few more. And I find myself feeling rebellious and angry. I don't want to have to deal with this anymore. I don't want to have to worry about what I eat anymore. I don't want to have to care. I just want to bury myself in the food and be happy there.

Of course in reality I wouldn't be happy there, either. Oh, I would be for the half an hour or so that the food highs last, but then even if I managed to give up the guilt and self-loathing cycle that inevitably follows, I'd still be dealing with the physical realities of overeating. I already am, with all this extra weight and my droopy Batwing arms and aching knees. I don't like how I look in pictures (unless I can control the angle and hide that chin - thank you, iPhone camera). I can't do all the things I want to anymore, physically speaking, and age is now making itself felt alongside the ever-present weight reality.

The brain is a curious thing, isn't it? Because for as long as I can remember I have felt I at least OUGHT to be trying to lose weight and be fit, even if I weren't succeeding. I still do mostly feel that way. But at odd times, since I turned 40 in March, I've had that 12 year old whispering in my ear: "You don't need to exercise so much anymore. You're 40. No one expects you to." And, "It's O.K. to take the elevator at the library instead of the stairs. You have an achy knee, and besides, you're 40. It doesn't matter anymore what others think." Even, "Who cares if you haven't washed your hair in a few days? You're 40. Nobody's looking at you anymore anyway."

Excuse me? What kind of twisted thinking is that?

It's what's going on in this brain of mine, that's what. I'm rebellious and angry, and now battling the "It doesn't matter anymore!" devil sitting on my shoulder.  And frankly it's left me feeling like crap. Maybe even depressed. I feel like I haven't got a grip this fall, like I'm never doing what I'm supposed to be doing, not accomplishing what I'm expected to accomplish, not caring about things I used to care about. All I want to do is sleep. And eat. And sleep. Is that not the hallmark of depression?

So where to from here? Do I have to keep fighting the fight? Do I have to keep battling myself on these issues? I'm so tired. I'm so tired of it. Why can't I be a "normal" person when it comes to food? That 12 year old is pretty pissed off that 40 has come, but freedom from food and body obsession hasn't. And she's still telling me, "Give in. It doesn't matter any more. Give in. No one cares."

But they do. My husband does. Not only does he prefer a freshly showered wife, but surely a somewhat smaller, fitter one would be appreciated, as well. At least one who puts some effort into it. My friends and family do - not because they need me to be a certain size, but because they want me healthy and happy. My kids do. They may not care what I look like, but I'm pretty sure they want me around for a while. And also happy. And they need me to be a better role model for them when it comes to this stuff.

I'm trying. My son mentioned this week that the kids at school had made comments about his weight, and I went off on how he's a bigger-built kid and will ALWAYS be bigger and even weigh more than the other kids, because of the size and density of his bones - something I wish someone had explained to me before I was 20. And I said what matters most is that he eats healthfully in good portions and exercises regularly - and whatever his body size is he can leave up to God. Hopefully repeating that often while encouraging said habits will keep my kids from the poisonous self-talk that permeates my brain. And maybe I'll even come to believe it.

Where to from here? I don't know. I don't know. If I did, I wouldn't blog about it repeatedly. Do *I* care anymore? I don't know. That 12 year old me can be awfully loud. She's still mad about being forced on a diet, and I'm still mad today to be dealing with this issue constantly, day in and day out.

It's been all I can do this fall to stay on this gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free diet that we've adopted to see if it helps my son (and me). Even then, I've cheated at least once a week. But apparently that inner child, that spoiled little brat who wants no restrictions EVER, has just not been able to accept and act on the idea that I should be careful about what I'm eating even when limiting certain categories, because it's been a lot of potato chips and gummy bears these past two months.

I've been eating poorly. I haven't exercised hardly at all. I haven't written more on my book. I'm sure all of those are contributing to my great feelings of self-dissatisfaction as of late. Is it true depression? I don't know. I don't know. But I'm sad. Sad. And not sure how to dig myself out of this pit yet.

The 12 year old says, "That's O.K. You don't have the knees for digging anymore, anyway. You're 40."

Could someone please tell her to shut up?

Repeat Ad Nauseum.

Reading back through this blog, several themes jump out at me. Food. Anxiety. Writing. Guilt. Food. Kids. Anxiety. Weight. Worry. Anxiety.

These are the themes of my life. I'd like to write a new chapter, start over in a new book whose message is Courage. Hope. Confidence. Enthusiasm. Willingness. Confidence. Action. Writing.

But for now, I'm stuck in this chapter. And I have writer's block. How DO you effectively change the patterns of your life? How does one push past comfort into courage, inertia into action, anxiety into a willingness to challenge oneself? For me it's as if those are separated by a large gulf between two cliffs, the kind into which Wile E. Coyote was always falling down.

On the other hand, Mr. Coyote always got back up to chase the Road Runner another day. Falling down into fear doesn't have to be permanent. Ironically I've heard myself lately telling several friends who are going through tough times that "Feelings aren't facts." And they aren't. Yet I let them rule my life as if they were.

I promised myself I would work on my book this fall. I don't think I've touched it in over a month. I don't fully know why. Except that fear and anxiety are still lurking around the corner - that feeling of some big Boogie Monster standing over my shoulder with long, pointy teeth, laughing a purple laugh and exclaiming, "YOU? You can't write a book! That's for REAL authors. You're just a housewife with no official writing training. What makes you think YOU can write?"

And even though I tell myself over and over again, write it for me, write it as if you don't care if anyone else ever reads it, much less likes it, I balk. I chide myself, "Write the story I like, without regard as to whether or not anyone else ever thinks it's any good." And yet the pages go unwritten. I've thrown myself into Regency "research", pinning tons of images on Pinterest relating to Regency themes, watching Regency shows, ordering Regency books. Of course I haven't read them, much less sketched out my own Regency stories. It's far less scary to throw myself into the prep rather than the execution.

It's a theme of my life. Big ideas, big desires, big fears. It's much easier to stay in my comfort zone. My little bubble. The anxiety demons don't get me here as often. But I also don't get much done in here.

So, as a very small 'Kiss off!' gesture to the demons today, I wrote a blog post. In haste. Without editing. Or really coherence. It's just me vomiting feelings on the page, but it's more writing than I've done in weeks. Aside from those Facebook statuses which, while often amusing to myself and apparently to others, really don't comprise novel material.

Today, blogger. Tomorrow, Mr. Darcy? Perhaps. Perhaps.

Votes Like Jagger

Dinnertime at the Tjaden household on Election Day Eve:

Me: "Brett, you should have voted for Romney, because you've got 3 freeloaders sitting right here around you at the table!"
Brett: "That's not what Jesus taught us - we don't kick the less fortunate to the curb."
Jeff: "Unless they look like Mick Jagger!"

Can I just say I nearly fell off my chair laughing? Thank you, son, for injecting Kesha lyrics into the evening's political conversation...

And it wasn't even good.

Slippery slope. Yesterday I let myself eat Chinese food because a) I was really, really craving it, and b) I wanted to see if it affected me (because of the wheat and the MSG). I didn't notice anything major. Except today - today I've been super-cravy! And I haven't given a HOOT about avoiding gluten and dairy and all that stuff. I ate a bite of a cheeseburger at Costco. And tonight? Tonight I had such a strong craving for pizza as I was driving home from picking up a ladder from a friend that when I stopped at Sheetz for gas, I went in and bought 2 pieces. From Sheetz. I wanted it from Vito's - excellent pizza there - but bought it from Sheetz and ate it furtively because I knew I shouldn't be eating it at all. And guess what?

It wasn't even good. It wasn't good AT ALL.

Of course I finished eating it. Of course I'm wondering if I'm going to pay for it tonight with stomach issues.

But I have my answer regarding yesterday: SOMETHING triggered me. I don't know if it was the MSG and the wheat, or just the fact that I was like "What the heck" yesterday and continued that today... but it's not good! Not good!

True experimentation is coming up in a couple of months, when as a family we add eggs back in, then dairy, then eventually gluten. Of course B and E have been eating it here and there. And I manage to go about a week or a week and a half and then seem to cave and have something glutinous (last Friday it was chocolate and breadsticks). But THIS had cheese. And it wasn't good. And I feel bad. (Guilty bad, yes - but also just bad. I have a headache. I'm tired. So I'm thinking, yeah, maybe it's the wheat and dairy!)

I wish I could be a normal person with food. Even when I'm off this stuff I can find other junk. What would it be like to be normal with food? It's unlikely I'll ever know. But I guess it's still good to try to separate out what is psychological in terms of this food crap, and what is biological in terms of reactions to foods. Right?

And also - if I'm going to indulge in something, go for the good stuff. GET the Vito's pizza, not the Sheetz schlock. If I'm going to have chocolate, get a Milka bar, not a Hostess Ding Dong. Make it worth it.

Now if I could just figure out how to give up the potato chips and Hot Tamales. Geez.

Gluten for Punishment

So I did a little gluten experiment today (read: Binge City). Here's what I discovered: this morning I ate a Kit Kat and a Little Debbie ho ho thing. Neither tasted very good, although yes, I still managed to choke them down. An hour or so later I was dead tired. Now granted, I'm tired today anyway from staying up until 11:30 and not taking a nap, but this was whole body-eyes drooping tired. Related? Perhaps. This evening for some reason I wanted more - I guess the cravings set in, plus I was curious to see if something I really wanted that wasn't a sweet would taste better. So I got some Pizza Hut breadsticks with marinara sauce from Target. Normally I LOVE these - scrumptious bready perfection. Tonight? They tasted 'off'. The sauce tasted very salty and not sweet like I remembered, and the bread was just O.K. While roaming around Target after eating them, I felt slightly congested, and wondered if I felt that way before and if that were perhaps why the breadsticks didn't taste fantastic. By the time I got to Martin's 20 minutes later to pick up a few groceries, I had a sinusy headache. I figured "in for a penny, in for a pound," and decided to do some further testing by eating two of my favorite things from their bakery: a Boston creme donut and a strawberry cream cheese croissant. The croissant was the ONLY thing that tasted pretty good, but even IT had a much more artificial taste than I ever remembered before. I kind of craved more stuff, but by that point I think it was because I was so disappointed that some of these things I'd been fantasizing about didn't live up to the memory.

Now I'm home. Headache is a little better but still there. Still feel a bit sinusy. Still feel kind of tired, but not as much as this morning. But it's enough to make me think the wheat increased some of those things. Worst of all, the foods didn't taste good! Or maybe that's best of all. Maybe that will help me accept that wheat DOES seem to give me some physical symptoms, and I'll be able to stay away from it. Thinking about doing that forever makes me feel really freaky, so I won't promise that (hello, I've broken down about once every week or so since we started this back at the beginning of September anyway). Obviously I CAN eat it without dying. But if I continue, I know what will happen - I'll get right back up to the binge levels of before, I'll be a LOT more tired, and will have more frequent headaches. Just this amount showed me that.

Of course it's NOT as if I'm eating cleanly and healthfully even sans gluten and dairy and eggs. So that's the next step - if I embrace having to avoid most of those foods (and I haven't fully tested eggs or dairy, although I guess they were also in the foods I ate today), then the next goal is to expand my eating horizons and include much more healthy food than my current fairly steady diet of Hot Tamales, gummy bears, potato chips, and deli roast beef.

What can I say? I excel at finding the crappy food and at bingeing, even when on a restricted diet. But tomorrow I will stay away from gluten/dairy/eggs again. I will. Because I think even in spite of the junk I'm still eating, I feel better and have more consistent energy levels than when I'm downing the gluten like a glutton.

Yes, that was a terrible joke. I blame the donut.

Grief.

Did you daydream when you were young of the children you would have when you grew up? Did you have fun imagining what they would be like and fantasize what great things they would accomplish? Maybe you hoped to raise a political activist, or the next Olympic champion, or an award-winning novelist. Maybe a lawyer or a doctor seemed like a good addition to your family.

I thought about what my kids would be like, too. Oh, not in great detail - I didn't often get much beyond the fact that I wanted two kids - a boy and a girl - and I would name them Nicholas and Felicity. Mostly I spent time imaging what they wouldn't be - fat like me. They'd be good at sports and popular and brilliant. Of course.

Those fantasies become more concrete when you actually get pregnant. Nine months you have to dream about your new little one - how perfect they will be. You're sure they'll get daddy's math ability and your gift with language. You want them to be kind and generous and happy. You want to give them everything you can. O.K., at least that's what I assume you want(ed), because it's what I want(ed).

When reality doesn't dovetail nicely with that fantasy, it can be traumatic. As we age, we learn so much more about what could go wrong. We hear about kids with cancer, we know people whose children have Down syndrome, we see children struggling with cerebral palsy or ADHD or what have you. Or do we? I am not even sure if I noticed that when I was in my 20's. I do now.

When our son was born, we were over the moon. But it quickly became a nightmare of my post-partum depression and anxiety coupled with a screaming infant who never slept, who had reflux, who was difficult to soothe, and who robbed us of the joy and peace we thought was coming. Don't get me wrong - we loved him fiercely then, we love him fiercely now, but it was a wake up call.

Yes, most new parents get that same call. This parenting stuff is SO much harder than we ever expected. Many of us gain newfound appreciation of our own parents and what they did for us. I sure did. But even from the start, it seemed as if Jeff was wired differently. Well, at the time I'm not sure we knew much better, because he was our first-born. But why did other parents seem to take to parenthood so easily? How come other babies seemed happy and content, slept in their strollers, slept through the night, and ours didn't?

In truth of course there were a lot of happy moments with Jeff as a baby. There are always lots of happy moments with him. But the hard moments came and came often. I could give more examples, but I won't.

When he was 4, the preschool noted he didn't always make good eye contact. What could that mean, Brett and I wondered - was he autistic? We had wondered that occasionally at other points based on his behavior, but were always reassured that wasn't the case.

When he was 5, he started sniffing and clearing his throat. Repeatedly. All the time. After umpteen trips to various ENTs, a chest exam, and all sorts of stuff like that, a developmental pediatrician confirmed what our own family doctor had begun to suspect: Tourette's. The same pediatrician, by the time Jeff was 7, added to that diagnosis an Asperger's diagnosis. Mild, she said. High-functioning. Whatever that meant.

I, the dutiful mom with academic training, bought a zillion books on Tourette's and Asperger syndrome. I read one or two on each topic. I carried and carry the guilt around of not having read them all, of not doing more to educate myself and know know know all there is to know, not trying more things, not doing....but after a while it's overwhelming. It's exhausting. It's terrifying and disheartening, and when your kid seems to mostly be doing O.K., it's easy to avoid it.

And he's mostly been O.K. Or at least I've been able to convince myself of that. I can give lots of examples of things he is and isn't doing. But I won't.

Because the truth is, I managed to convince myself for years of the short descriptions we've given to others and used for Jeff himself to understand what he's "got". We've said Tourette's just means his brain sends out extra signals to his body, so he has tics. And sometimes it means he's more emotional. Asperger's just means he's slightly less socially adept and maybe takes things too literally.  No big deal, right? And up until now, it hasn't been. I haven't cared that he's not the star athlete or doesn't have a kajillion friends, because he's been doing fine in school. Because he's smart.

And there falls my last fantasy, the one I've held on to more than any other. It was easy to let go of the idea of having the football captain or class heartthrob. I never was one of those things anyway. But I've always been smart. Always excelled in school. Always known, even in the midst of all my other self-doubts, that my brain is something upon which I've been able to rely. I can write fairly eloquently. I have strengths in smarts. My husband is brilliant. His memory astounds me, his vast knowledge set across a variety of topics amazes me. So wasn't it natural to assume, rather arrogantly I guess, that our kids would fare as well academically as we had? That they would excel, our little brilliant offspring?

This is not to say Jefferson isn't smart. He is. But he is struggling in school. Granted, this is the first year of middle school, and the first quarter at that. I know some things are likely to improve. But it has been so, so hard to watch him struggle and fail. He's flunked tests. He's disorganized and scatter-brained. Explaining concepts over and over again in different ways doesn't always seem to get the message through to him. We can tell him repeatedly, "Bring your homework notebook to every class. Write down right away what the homework is as the teacher is writing it. Bring the homework notebook home." But it often doesn't make it home. Sometimes he scribbles homework on a loose sheet of paper, which is better than not writing anything down at all, but what he does write often isn't complete. We discover after the fact that he had stuff due, that he had quizzes in class.

I'm doing my best to help him stay on top of it. Oh, who am I kidding? I'm doing my best to stay on top of it for him, as is my husband. We're in contact with the teachers and coming up with helps. We have our first conferences on Friday. We'll see what happens. In truth he's not doing poorly across the board, not at all - but his grades are lower than they ever have been. And in working with him, it's obvious that he's struggling with the learning. It doesn't come easily. His reading comprehension in particular is low, and to a mom who LOVES reading and books and excels in these areas, it's tough on me.

And here's the thing. I've picked up my books again. I promised the teachers I would read my book on academic success for kids with AS, and on teaching kids with TS. I'm not even done with the first one, and I'm catatonic. O.K., yes, maybe that's a little strong. But all I want to do is sleep. And eat. And deny.

Because the book is painting a broader picture of how much his AS wiring really affects him across the board. Of just how many things are affected by his different wiring, and how difficult school and learning may be because of it. I know the TS book will say the same. And so I can't nonchalantly shrug it off anymore, even as we try to get family and peers to do the same.

Lots of times you hear reference to Aspies as "little professors." As brilliant. Gifted. And I'm not even saying Jeff is or isn't, but it's been easy for my smarts-loving brain to latch on to that - to hold onto it as other fantasies about what he may or may not be have crumbled. I've had to watch my athletic, sports-loving husband accept that his boy is not the same way, but through that all I guess I was telling myself "At least he's smart. He'll excel academically. His parents both did."

And again, I feel compelled out of guilt to say he IS smart. Because he IS. But it's not translating into school success this year, and I find myself freaking out that it never will. If it's this bad in 6th grade, what can high school possibly be like? College? How can he do well in college if he is constantly losing stuff and can't stay organized without his mommy's help?

Yes, this is only 6th grade. He's only 11. I know logically, through maturing and yes, through lots of help from us, he will get better. But I don't know anymore whether or not he will be great academically. And I have to let go of that fantasy that he will, because it's not fair to him to put that pressure on him. I know that intellectually. I know even if he gets Cs instead of As he's still a great kid and it doesn't mean he can't be successful in life, blah blah blah.

But oh my heart aches for him. At how hard all of this is. His tics have been terrible - partly, I believe, because of the anxiety this school year has brought. And his other struggles are becoming more apparent.

I have 1/3 of the AS book to go and all of the TS one. And I know now why I've been avoiding them for so long, even as a responsible mother I know I owe it to him to read as much as I can.

Because they fill me with grief. They fill me with grief. I am grieving again over the loss of the son I thought I would have, and grieving for the pain and struggles and suffering he still faces from these two brain wiring issues.

Why him? Life is hard enough as it is. Why does HE have to face this? God, give ME the tics. Give ME the faulty wiring. Because it's hard enough to grow up as a relatively neurotypical person; he doesn't need extra crap thrown his way. But he's got it. He's got it.

Yes. I'm grateful he doesn't have cancer. I'm grateful he doesn't have something far more debilitating. I'm grateful he's alive and with us and the delightful kid he is (most of the time :)).

But this week? I am grieving. I feel so heavy. My heart aches. I've cried on several different mornings, once for about an hour. I don't want to go out. I want to eat crappy food. I want to sleep and sleep more.

Because it's a deep grief.

I need to get over it. I need to snap out of it. I need to focus on all the positives (and there are many). But this week it just feels too hard. Watching him slap himself in the head and take successive tries to get a sentence out, watching him not "get it" after multiple explanations and examples of a scientific principle, I just want to weep for him.

He is my beloved, he is my son.

And it's a deep grief.