Exhale: A Different Approach to Post Abortion Counseling

Exhale. To expel. To emerge. To breathe. 

On a recent podcast by Fully Engaged Feminism, Laura interviews one of the founders of Exhale, an organization dedicated to post abortion counseling. The group’s mission doesn’t stem from polarized politics nor is their plight a guise for other intentions. Simply, it’s to give voice, to give heart, and to give a listening ear. They consider themselves Pro-Voice.

Aspen Baker briefly chronicles her experience post abortion. She found few counseling options, and those that did exist were tied to Christian organizations, which also were Pro-Life. At the other end of the spectrum was a feminist movement more concerned with establishing reproductive rights than providing outreach to women. Neither side seemed suitable to help her with the torrid of thoughts and emotions that consumed her, and because of that, she found several other women in the same position and decided to create a space where women and men could have an outlet to discuss life after the choice.

Aspen’s feelings may be misinterpreted by a biased eye, regardless of political affiliation. Imagine being a woman entering a medical center who has mulled over this decision, the choices, the variables in her life. Analyzing every minute detail, every scenario, and no matter the final decision, there is no concrete conclusion, no definitive closure regardless of the choice made. Each option entails a path of emotional and psychological effects, of some form of struggle or sacrifice. In the particular choice of abortion, it is quite common for a woman to walk the premises with a number of abortion protestors mere feet away. Voices calling that she can still be saved, it isn’t too late for the soul. They hold signs with images of fetuses, words succinct but sharp: immoral, hell, death, murder. Is this the Christian death row? To call each woman out as murderer? What stone do they have the right to cast? 

Then it is these same people, these same beliefs, that stand at the exit with sudden open arms. They speak of trauma, of sin, of forgiveness. These words of compassion coming from the same people that spewed vicious slurs. It isn’t a welcoming feeling for many women who have had an abortion. Something seems innately off, wrong, about the two -faced act. But often times, it is only these groups that offer any form of counseling, whether or not their political and religious intentions are made clear, if it is the only option, then some women would rather have a biased shoulder to lean on than none at all.

On the other side are groups who have fought for the reproductive freedom of women, and sometimes associate the vocalizing of post abortion effects as siding with Pro-Life attributes. The focus has been on establishing the law, but the voices and stories that catalyzed the revolution have gone mute. Unheard by many ears of the feminist movement because any sign of emotion signifies the opposite of their purpose, of their vision, of what they represent and are striving to achieve. 

Sometimes gray is the worst place to be, stuck in shades of white and black, and all there is is a fog. These are many women, no side hears their voice, their stories. Either there is no respect of the choice made or no respect for the feelings and thoughts that come later. So, Exhale was created as a space to remedy that void. To exist in the gray with those women, taking no political side but as they call, Pro-Voice. Let these women be heard. It isn’t about law, or right or wrong, or saving face. It is a sacred space of experience. 

In the end, there are no parties, no sides, no politics. At heart is the voice of a woman that many ears are deaf to. Listen and you will hear…

Am I not your sister? Your mother? Your daughter? 

Do not forsake love that binds. Do you not see how my heart weeps? 

Love. Please, oh please, just love me. I need compassion and a comforting embrace. 

Do not wipe away these tears. They are the words of my soul.

No judgement calls. I am no murderer.

Look into these eyes and you will see.

Am I not your sister? Your mother? Your daughter?

Shadow Woman

Melancholia. A jaundice soul. I am reminded of the shadow woman from the Yellow Wallpaper. In the daytime, she is a mere invisible rustle, but at night, she manifests. Rampant, chaotic, distressed. She flees, but from what because, after all, she is at wall and paper, no escape. No escape.

This is what it feels. Tonight, I listened to a podcast by APM: Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett entitled The Soul in Depression. It confronts the stigma of depression, its poor contextual meaning, and how the voices of those touched by depression seem to go unheard. This is a subject plaguing my mind as of late. For several weeks, I’ve been taking an anti-anxiety medication. After some psychological and emotional episodes and confrontations at work, I felt I had two choices: quit or start seeing a psychiatrist. Though the first option almost was triumphant, as in I removed all personal possessions from my desk, had a serious, emotional conversation with my boss, and then left for a ‘personal’ day, having no backup plan, job, or sufficient savings to quit…I am, for now, stuck and eventually returned to my cubicle. But I haven’t put back up any pictures or returned personal keepsakes. I prefer to leave my desk barren. I have one foot out the door and there is no intention of going back. 

I chose a doctor based on my insurance’s list, and found myself sitting before a tall, lanky man whose shoes somehow seemed too big. But later I determined that wasn’t the case, it’s just the way he positions them, at times turning them towards each other when he begins an impassioned tangent, or how one dangles like a weight is dragging the toe down. He scribbles on yellow paper, and in my mind, I joked privately that he was likely drawing cartoons or sketching out a reverie. Though, I knew he was outlining my family history, my relationships with relatives, and my history with anxiety. At the end of the first meeting he asked if I had any questions. Yes, but not about me…do you ever see a therapist? And he laughed, amused by the query. “On occasion. I wouldn’t trust me if I didn’t.” His candidness and honesty from that one question was the only reason I decided to go back. 

So, for the time being, I’ve chosen to be put on medication. The doctor left it up to me. But the struggle over this decision has raised awareness of my own prejudice against psychological medications, the people who take them, and my skewed yet fully valid reasons for wanting to evade chemical manipulation. I had an intense anxiety about taking an anti-anxiety drug. 

My greatest fear is how this would effect me creatively. If I tamper with how I am innately, then how could that not alter a part of me that seems so heavily rooted in my shifted emotional state, perception of the world, etc. No matter the benefits, I will never sacrifice that. And a part of me feels that the sedation of people through medication is in essence slaughtering thousands of potential artists. This is a heavy bias. I openly admit that, and there are people who oppose this idea as well. Indeed, it isn’t necessarily fair to think that being an artist entails suffering, depression, running the emotional and psychological gambit, but it’s hard not to see a correlation when reading up in the lives of some of the world’s most famous artists regardless of their medium of choice. 

Another issue was that in deciding to take medication, I would undoubtedly have to confront that something is wrong. And I am not comfortable with acknowledging this yet. 

I have had relatively intense anxiety most of my life. The first incidence I can recall was soon after my parents divorced. I was six or seven and suddenly found that I could no longer stay composed in class. One second I was fine, and then an onslaught of feeling overwhelming, separate, anxious, it’d be difficult to breathe, and then I’d be sitting at my desk crying. Teachers had no idea what to do. I’d have to hear my father’s or mother’s voice, or have one of them come up to school just to hold me for several minutes, soothe me. Halfway through the school year, I was moved into a split grade class with several other students. And though I should have been distracted by the challenge of learning material from my grade level and the one above me, I could only stay calm if I looked at a picture of my mother that I kept in my desk. Anytime I’d start to sense those strained emotions, I’d just have to concentrate on her image, and after several minutes, I’d be fine. 

But even at home, my anxiety problems grew worse. I could no longer sleep in my bedroom for fear that if I was away from my parents that something would happen to them. I’d have nightmares of them dying in fires, crying out for help and I could do nothing because I was outside the flames. If left alone in my bedroom, it wouldn’t be long before I was screaming, crying out. And no matter how much they tried to be firm, to keep me in my own bed even with direct orders from our family counselor, I would always find myself at their bedside. The one time my mother locked me out, I pounded on her door for hours, crying, screaming how horrible she was and all I needed was for her to be with me so I’d know she was safe. I don’t remember if I finally fell asleep at her door or the couch, but I know I didn’t return to my bed. And this was how my life was for a few years, until my mother’s death. After she died, I never had problems sleeping in my room or staying at school. But those years of intense anxiety left a deep scar, and though I would fight back anxious feelings if they arose, I always wondered if working through it was enough. 

For the past two years, levels of anxiety equivalent to the magnitude I felt as a child have reemerged. The heart of it stemming from a detrimental relationship that helped propel me into the throws of an existential crisis whose edge I had been teetering on for some time. And the addition of accepting a position at a job I didn’t desire and don’t enjoy just contributed to feelings of shame, failure, anger, struggle, fear, and a great sense of Lost. 

Everything of the person I had been before that critical point seemed to evaporate. And what I was left with was the shadow woman. In the midst of an emotional hurricane, unable to sift through emotions, feel focused in heart, soul, and thought, I was a raw nerve. And all I wanted was to be alone, to cry, to be held. 

But, there is a side of depression and the emotions entailed that goes unnoticed by those never experiencing it. In actuality, this state is often the deluge of emotion, an inability to dam gates to keep it in, and though in a state of such darkness, it is also a period of intense feeling. And for the first time in my life, I was experiencing Feeling, it was so pungent to every sense that it was the overabundance of emotions that crippled me. I had become hypersensitive to not only my emotions, but to others’ as well. 

For that reason, I found myself on the verge of panic attacks in public or at work. To be so acutely in tuned with emotions is difficult to articulate. But to stand in an aisle with several people around and feel simultaneously frustration, joy, confusion, sadness…to be assaulted by an array of feeling at the same time just paralyzed me. It’d be difficult to breathe; I’d start wheezing lightly, and that tightening around my chest like my heart was in a vice, all I could do when this happened was flee. And on a few occasions, I left my cart or items and just left the store as fast as I could. But if this happens at work, I just can’t walkout and come back when I feel balanced or calm again. Instead, I’d have to cry in my car on lunch break or claim to be searching for an old file or document that was held in a locked storage room just so I know no one would seem me in such a state. But then strained work relationships with coworkers, bosses, and the stress of not only doing my job but fixing others’ mistakes, checking behind others was and is the dominant reasons for my dissatisfaction with my job. After my first session, I realized that almost the entire office is on a medication or self medicates through other means. I finally saw that I wasn’t necessarily innately crazy, but this job seems to have that effect on many of the people in it and talking with others outside the store I work at, medication or high levels of alcohol consumption are a bit of the norm for those in my field. 

So, my final decision is to get out. I decided that medication is short term, that I will not have my life be ‘tolerable’ with the help of a pill, but that I must recognize that on a deeper level I am troubled by not doing something I love to the point that it is destructive to me in many ways. But the podcast brought to light the awareness that came through this period of great pain for me, and how now on the other end, I see how beneficial it is to Feel, to be hyperaware of the state of others emotionally. It is that shadow woman that finally came into form, like a veil lifted, to find that in her was a light, a strength. That perhaps what I had perceived as distressed, as chaotic, was not the nature of her at all. Because it seems she is much more free than I had been. Wild and untamed, she feels, she sees, she fights to understand even when it might break her because that is Life, and in that is beauty, in that is spirit and spiritual. 

And I think of the woman, tearing down the yellow wallpaper, trying to free the shadow woman though in reality, she was freeing herself.

Herstory

I’ll keep this brief…go vote.  

Ok, I should elaborate more. There’s a photography contest called Name Your Dream Assignment, which seems to be legit. And the award is more than any photographer could ask for, $50,000 to pursue your dream project. The top 20 with the most votes will go on to a final judging by professionals, where the winner will be chosen. No matter who is awarded the prize in the end, I hope the images captured and the journey trekked will be a compelling visual narrative for all communities. Below is the link to my idea, but I also suggest perusing others as you can vote for multiple people (just not more than once for the same idea). 

Herstory

International Women’s Day

 I believe this is the first year of organized events in Charleston to celebrate International Women’s Day, and I’m excited to say I get to be a part of it. This Sunday, at the Circular Congregational Church, there will be an afternoon filled with art, lectures, singing, and much more. All of which is by the efforts and creative minds of an eclectic group of women, whose lineages span the globe, and whose lives are enriched with experience and unique perspective. 

On display will be several images from my series The Elements: Earth. Six women covered in potting soil, personifying a complex element that in its own existence has mimicked that of women’s history or vice versa. The Womb to much of life, violated due to greed and lust for power, raped of its resources, yet survives and forever changes, never letting us forget its strength and plight. 

Two other photographers will also be displaying work: Stacy Pearsall, well known for her military photography, and Mikayla Mackaness, a photojournalist and light seeker whose images are pungently emotive and imbued with Life. The latter, is a great friend and teacher, who without which I may not have ever trekked down the photographic journey that began just over a year ago. 

A detail of the afternoon’s events can be found at the blog for Project Speak Up. The organizers are Leah Suarez and Alice Keeney, both talented artists and extraordinary activists of art, cultures, communities, and women. And as a last ’shout out,’ the events are also in coordination with the College of Charleston’s Women and Gender Studies Program (which happens to be what I minored in at CofC and is an awesome program!).  

I hope everyone can come enjoy the art, music, and great conversations. Oh, but no boys allowed…just kidding.

In the Land of Shiva: Part XIII

We rose with the sun in search of the holiest site in Sikhism. And I relished the plush green carpet beneath my feet, the Western showers, hot water pouring down, a four star hotel for the same price as a Motel 8 room in the States. It was luxury.

Not the same can be said for the taxi driver we reserved for the weekend. I discovered his bed was the backseat of the taxi, likely a quick face and ear wash with cold water in a bathroom nearby. He packed no change of clothes, np overnight bag for our two day journey, only his thinning button up shirt, pants, and a Punjabi music cassette that we’d listen to for over 5 hours that weekend. I thought it odd to memorize excerpts of a song in a language I didn’t speak, words whose meaning I failed to grasp. 

He left us in a parking lot. Melancholy buildings loomed around, Indian men’s eyes stared at these six Western women huddled together, whispering concerns, debating direction to step. The driver just waived for us to walk away, and hesitantly, we complied. But after five minutes, the same decrepit structures and eyes with different faces remained. It felt like post war Europe invaded with immigrants, and we panicked, racing back to the lot. Taxi and driver gone. Shit. Abandoned in Amritsar. 

We decided to retrace our steps thinking perhaps we didn’t go far enough. But nothing fit, nothing made sense. We were in search of a building of gold, but we were encompassed by forgotten structures, their facades faded and subdued. It would be like finding Eden within the bounds of a wasteland. 

After a ten minute walk and rounding a corner, we came to see this was indeed the case. Red and silver streamers glimmered in the morning light, a party at the edge of disaster. An immaculate structure encircled the Golden Temple, a threshold to be crossed, separating sacred from profane. 

Beneath a tent, we slipped off our shoes and handed them over in exchange for a chip. Within the tiled ground were basins of water. Slowly walking through, washing my feet of impurities so as not to taint holy ground. As I climbed the steps, a sliver of gold began to appear. At the top, all was revealed, a temple of gold that almost seemed to be floating on water. How the rising sun warmed its walls with light, causing it to radiate. 

At the sight of it, Haylee cried. Others wanted a moment of silent meditation. And I was in a state of horrific concern. Never would I share my thoughts at that precise moment with them, even with Jaye, nor with another when I returned home in the weeks to come. Before me was a building that invoked awe. That awoke the numinous and compelled people to to their knees, to prayer, to tears. But inside me, before that great temple, was a terrifying silence, a void of emotive fervor. So scared was I of this absent emotion that I almost broke down and wept. And the source of my tears would have been misinterpreted drastically.

The hallow state I felt then haunted me for so long after that day. I thought myself soul sick. How could a student of religions, so passionate about this discourse, feel nothing before one of the greatest temples in the world? And how could others that knew nothing of Sikhism, little of this temple, of its significance to Sikhs, could be struck so powerfully just at the sight of its walls? I evaded ruminating on this for months, fearing what I may unearth about myself in the process. I blamed it on the sickness waking from dormancy in my belly, the nausea and pepto chewables I ate like candy. Yes, it was illness, dehydration, a sick state of being that ruined my encounter with the Golden Temple. I knew this to be a lie, but I willed myself to believe it until the day I realized what had happened to me that day. A revelation that came almost an entire year later.

At the doors of the temple, sound changes. No longer can the ears distinguish between sounds. All there is is a series of voices, prayers, a chorus of bodies without a conductor to guide them. Men and women stand with eyes closed, hands pressed together all the while their mouths move. No room for air between brother and sister, feel the sweat of another, their breath upon your back. And the deeper inside the abyss of bodies, the sound rises, the mind hears nothing but hundreds of voices in indecipherable tongues and all that I can see is the center, the reason for bowed heads, and prostrations, tears and prayers. Roped off is three men and the sacred text, the eternal prophet of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib. 

Standing but several feet away, I am pushed, jostled, shoved away by pilgrims earnestly reaching towards the sacred heart of their being. Rupees are being tossed in, crumpled bills, meager coin change. Dozens on their knees, arms stretched towards men who hold folded orange fabric. These are blessed, to be worn by men upon their brow, but only if the right number of rupees fall to the ground. So many palms open, waiting to be filled. 

I am entranced. Paralyzed by so much before me. My eyes attempt to take it all in, I want to remember it all. And the voices make it difficult to focus. I see the intricate craftsmanship of its underbelly, vivid paints on all its walls, blues, oranges, whites, and the reflected light from its gold walls cascades inside. I cannot move, cannot dismiss these prostrating bodies, their prayers, the smell of their skin, the reading of scripture, too much in this place lives, too much to segregate in the mind. And then I feel my sickness rising, the heat of too many bodies causing my body to concede. Now I pray a silent prayer, “Don’t throw up in their sacred space. Do not throw up in their sacred space.” 

And I’m chanting this over and over in my head. Trying to inch my way towards the closest open space, a bit of air and perhaps I’ll be okay. And then I feel a quick slap across my head, then another. I turn to find an old woman, hair white and face pruned, berating me in Hindi. She slaps the side of my head again, and I jerk away from her, think her mad. But then she smacks her own head, and I realize my grave error. In the midst of my fixation and illness, my headscarf had slipped off, exposing my dark brown hair, a naked head before something so holy. I am horrified, and quickly adjust my scarf, tuck back my hair. All the while I’m apologizing in a language no one around me knows. Long ago was I separated from the others, now alone to face my gaffe. I’m inching away, giving a half bow, the only Hindi word I can think of is Namaste, no use in this context. But I think myself forgiven, for she laughed at me, then went back to her prayer. I managed not to vomit on sacred ground, but brandishing an uncovered head just may trump illness.

The experience and exertion of the morning had drained my energy. I was so tired that all I yearned for was the small cot and window air conditioning that awaited me back at the hotel. My belly and soul were soured, and I just wanted to retreat back to seclusion.

A year later, I once again confronted the void I felt at the sight of the temple. It was an issue I kept analyzing for months, wondering the extent of the illness in my soul. But one day, I realized why it had been such. In Religious Studies, it is said that one sees religion one of two ways: from the top down or from the bottom up. Those focused on the top are usually fixated with god(s), philosophy, abstractions, manifestations of the sacred, symbols, and so on. But those that start at the bottom likely never raise their head enough to even see the sky. The bottom is the people. The focus on the ritual, the internalizing of beliefs, the manifestation of religion in thoughts, speech, action, the union of spirituality and religion with a person, a community, a people.

Since the day I devoted myself to the study of religions, I have been a practitioner of from the bottom up. It is within the lives and stories of the people that I seek religion and spirituality, abstractions do little to entice and engage me, as is the same with gods and philosophy. I felt nothing at the sight of the temple, but was greatly overwhelmed within its walls, engulfed by hundreds of devotees. I sought to etch into my mind the images of praying, prostrating, puja, the smells, all I touched, the sensuality and spirituality that saturated that space.  It took so long for me to see, to realize, what truly invoked me, but the day that I finally understood this gave me insight I had lacked even into my own being.

Ideas

I’ve been in need of some introspective time. No tele or person to distract me. It is in isolation that the ideas come to fruition, flesh out in my imagination before the struggle of manifesting it in prose or image.

Sluggishly, I’m beginning the early stages of a series on the dark side of fairytales. I want the images to be a bit gothic, a bit Tim Burton-esque, slight underexposure with an enticing shock of isolated color and light. My first venture will include Little Red Riding Hood and Alice in Wonderland. This artistic project, however, involves greater dedication and preplanning. I am but at the wardrobe phase, and so much is left to pluck from the mind to make this a reality.

I want two series with Feminist themes (no surprise there). The first I originally called it the Abandoned Bride series, but then thought, no, that is not right, it is actually the Runaway Bride series. For this, I envision desaturated images, cliffs, beaches, vast plains, lands or waters of open space. Tattered dresses being torn from bodies, washing away in the ocean, left to hang on tree limbs, an identity shed, a future left to her own will. 

The second series I want to deal with Female Identity. This idea initially struck me when I saw an image of a pregnant woman under water, but her head was out of the frame, cut off so-to-speak. Though this wasn’t a favored image by the photographer, I adored it for my own skewed reasons. I thought what an intriguing portrayal of identity, and the odd fact that there is simultaneously an identity but not since the face of this woman is missing. And this is what I want, a series of faceless silhouettes who manage to tell the story of a person seen but also unseen. But to do this in a provocative way, I haven’t quite fleshed out.

Playing on an aspect of the Female Identity concept, I’ve been a bit obsessed with how other parts of the body reveal the nature of a person. Fingers, feet, stance, posture, and so on. I want an entire array of images that only reveal an isolated portion of a person’s body and how that alone can expose the soul of a person.

And my last photographic idea is Shadowplay. Typically, an eye is drawn to the lightest part of a photo, aka where the actual light hits. But I want to find a way to reverse that. To somehow make light the background and bring shadow to the foreground, perhaps by making light’s purpose change. By making it outline a shadow in a way that brings shadow to life, to form, to…something. This is another idea that remains a bit vague, more so in how to properly execute it. 

There are a handful of writing ideas as well. I may take back up my creative writing for a bit in order to potentially submit to a couple of contests coming up. But we’ll see. I’ve never done well dividing my creative energy, but perhaps a switch will offer unseen benefits. Besides, it is not my intention to choose either writing or photography. I want both. I just don’t want to be a jack of all trades but master of none.

Opposition to Prop 8

I almost stayed home. At my computer, editing away, I had already grown tired. Up early, two shoots complete, I just wanted to relax until Klash that evening. But something in me wrenched. Get up. Go. Take the camera. And I fought it with poor excuse. Then the mind turns on me with such scathing words to the self. Fake! Words and no action! What are your reasons? A quick look at the clock, fifteen minutes until gathering at Liberty Square, I grab my camera naked without its bag, and hop into the car to drive Downtown.

How glad I am for my blunt truthed mind. To be a part of a day, of a march, of a moment with those strangers who were really just my close friends in guise. Even without introduction, is each not still my brother, my sister, my friend, a reflection of me? And how potent it was.

“Gay, straight, black or white, we deserve equal rights…” and we march. Signs held high, a Southern born snake flag that boasts Don’t Tread on Me. We march. Young, experienced, white, black, male, female, straight, gay. This is my brother. This is my sister. This is my friend. This is my lover. In their eyes I see ALL. How can I not but love?

And we march. Horns honking in agreement. Slurs declaring us godless people. Some get out of passenger seats and join us. These are the voices of the unrested, of the diligent, of the hopeful. Open your eyes and ears. Hear our words. Extend an empathetical thought to try and understand. It’s quite simple. One sign said it all…The Gay Agenda: 1. Equality 2. See item one.

This is America rising. Rise up before it’s too late.

Persepolis

I first heard this word from a woman in admissions at the Art Institute, who in her earnest speech to convince me to attend, diverted to more interesting topics. In my last meeting with her, we spoke of art, religion, travel, and Persepolis.

Again, I was reacquainted with this when a friend informed me he was in process of reading it. So, finally, Friday night I found myself succumbing to a Starbucks craving, and while walking around I stumbled upon it, swept it up, and purchased it. But it wouldn’t be until Saturday night with a dead internet that I would turn the first page, and I closed it 2/3 through to finally sleep.

Simplification entails a beauty and genius that is often unnoticed. It is never how long the story can be, but how well it is crafted, whittled down to necessity, an enlivened finesse. Any writer will tell you that a simple sentence can inflict great agony upon the mind and hand. Because nothing should be wasted, no word without purpose. I find that one can tell when a writer has become successful because the books become more obese, the editing hand lax due from a freedom reaped from sales and profit. In my Theories of Religion course, I went through a phase where I thought many articles were unwarranted, and began leaving many out of my essays. One day, I went to my professor’s small office with hovering book cases and stacks of papers to retrieve an essay. He asked what was wrong with me, my writing was leaving out words, it seemed odd to him. I explained I thought some articles were frivolous, but I couldn’t quite win him over. In the end he told me the paper deserved an A-, but at the time, CofC’s grading system hadn’t incorporated a minus system. So he decided to give me a B+ rather than an A. I would have rather he omitted his reasonings for my grade.

In regards to mastering simplicity, Persepolis is a delightful example, but in a method I’m not accustomed to. It is a biography of a woman who grew up in Iran during the Islamic revolution and Iraq war, but her words are accompanied by comic strips. The merging of nonfiction with art is a fine marriage in this case. Only the words needed are provided, and all else is conveyed within the black and white sketches, shades of dichotomy that can prove quite powerful in particular moments. A face half shadowed can be poignant and rattle the nerves.

But, what I adore the most is the woman herself, Marjane. She is blunt, abrupt, careless, intelligent, crass, vulgar, revolutionary, passionate, rebellious, sensual, prude, lost, and found. All within circumstances that many will never know.

It reveals a flip-side perspective on various issues. The methodologies and goals of the Islamic regime seemed unsurprisingly similar to Christian extremist in the U.S. And if anyone wants to know why my heart is greatly filled with joy by our nation’s President-elect, it is because it restored my faith in the people of this nation, that they do not desire the road a conservative party has paved for years and with each step, has worked towards stripping citizens of rights. I hope in my lifetime I do not find myself living to see a Christian regime usurp the government and people’s rights like the theocracy Marjane witnessed and lived with.

And Marjane is critical of it all. When asked why she doesn’t like wearing a headscarf, she replies that if hair was meant to stir such passion within men, that Allah would have surely made everyone bald. The wit and insightful rejoinder made me burst in laughter, practically applauding while covered in my sheets.

But I also recommend this book because it does give a perspective of Westerners that needs to be seen. In Persepolis, Westerners are the foreigners, the exotic other, and the actions of these people reveal much about European and U.S. cultures. It deconstructs the sense of familiar one has with his or her own culture to view it as an outsider would.

This novel makes one think…and how a mind deserves to be shaken.

Changes

…That title sort of sounds like a bad puberty education film that fifth graders would watch, but that’s not what this post is about.

It’s actually about health. A healthy life, in all its definitions. The patterns of healthy living in my life are like a bad calculus equation curve, extreme ups and downs.

Most of my childhood I was overweight, or at least thought I was. No one expects an eleven year old girl to have hips and C-cup breasts, but I did. Therefore, the comparison between my peers at the time and myself could only equate to me being overweight and unhealthy. Had I just maintained my habits and eating styles from my teen years, then the weight I was then would actually be the healthy weight I need to be at today.

I was never taught to maintain that weight. I was taught that even then I was heavy. Label it baby fat, curves, chubby, what have you, I was considered this as a young teen weighing 125lbs. In middle school and well into high school, I ran in either the mornings or at night, would lift weights 2-3 times a week, and kept a detailed food log of everything I consumed and counted my caloric intake with the help of several food charts. I was likely one of the healthiest people I knew without realizing it. My meals consisted mostly of fruits, whole wheat grains, fish, Greek salads, and lean meats. The majority was either fresh food needing no preparation or I cooked at home. I was so health minded that I even helped friends with exercise and meal plans, kept a binder filled with torn magazine pages with a myriad of exercises, and never went more than two days without some form of physical exertion.

However, this was only half of the equation. I was living this way not to be healthy but to not become fatter than I already believed myself to be. The self esteem I fostered in high school was never derived from my appearance. The personal esteem I held for myself was truly isolated to academic and creative aspects of my being. So what went so wrong when I was actually living a pretty healthy life?

First, I believed myself to be fat and not beautiful. And this idea was never externally opposed by people in my life. At sixteen, my father bought me diet pills and said I should take them to help the fat burn off my body. Since the age of twelve, I’ve gone through cycles of bulimia. Finding myself spending months binging, purging, being obsessive about everything I consume. Thoughts turn into meal preparations only. What combination of foods would yield the lowest calories, how many calories did I have left for the day, once lunch was figured out then I moved on to dinner. If I exceeded the daily caloric limit, then the overage was subtracted from the next day’s allotment. This went on until I was about eighteen. But though I’m not active in an eating disorder, that doesn’t mean those thoughts vanish altogether, that I don’t find myself thinking about reverting back to that behavior. But eating disorders are closely tied to psychological and emotional states. When I find myself under great stress are the moments this starts to appeal to me the most.

Along with all this, I dated men that were well suited for my bad habits. One boyfriend never hesitated to comment in my food selections. Once even grabbing the side of my stomach and making some horrid comment. This fed into my belief that I was trying to overcome something, that if I could only get this under control that life would be better. I remember a good friend of mine saying that if I had ended up taller, or rather the average height for American women, that I would have been one of the most beautiful girls in our class (and I added probably one of the most slutty as well). But even to this day, that is a comment I recall, because if I had been 5′5 at 125lbs, surely life would have been wonderful, or so I thought. And since I couldn’t alter my height, I could at least alter my weight.

College changed everything, inside and out. I fell tragically, madly in love with a man that never made me feel anything but beautiful. Suddenly, having wide hips, an ass, large breasts was acceptable, not just acceptable but embraced! It was almost like culture shock really, that’s the only thing I can compare it to. And feeling so safe with him, feeling attractive, made all the difference in the world. It gave me a confidence I didn’t know I could have about myself.

But being in love, feeling loved, not only caused my bad habits to cease. The healthy aspects of my life became neglected because the reasons for being healthy had been rooted in distorted concepts anyway. So, I stopped exercising. I stopped caring about what I ate. Between school, work, and love, I didn’t have time for such things. The fifteen months I was with him, I gained almost 20lbs. After we broke up, I never returned to any of my previous habits, and focused more on school since I needed to elevate a below par GPA. By the time I graduated, I had gained another 15lbs. So, in four years, I gained 35lbs. A complete disregard for my health and well being. And as another consequence, the positive changes in my self esteem and self image deteriorated drastically.

This is why I prefer to be unseen. I make excuses for it, and now I have a camera to hide behind, which makes my insecurities so much easier to hide. And the truth is, I’m equally scared of who I’d be if I changed. Odd, no? And likely the worst part of all of this is my utter surprise when I discover someone is attracted to me because in my mind I don’t see it, I don’t understand it.

But these poor habits, this perception of me, is becoming a great hindrance in many ways. To become what I desire to be, I cannot be a woman of absent confidence. I have no excuses to not care about myself. I have no children, spouse, or too busy of a life that this can’t be a priority. I no longer want to hide behind myself.

So, I’m starting small. No more soda, regular or diet, period. Breakfast will be yogurt with something a bit crunchy added to it (the smooth almost liquid texture of yogurt bothers my tongue. It feels so wrong to me. Someone recommended I think grape seed. Granola has too many calories). I can’t eradicate eating out, not with my schedule and lifestyle, but I can go without anything fried or of white starches. In fact, I’m not a fan of most carbs; I can easily go without pastas and breads if needed. They just don’t appeal to me as much. So, it officially begins tomorrow. It would probably help to make a grocery store run as well before I botch up this new beginning.

Oh…and a random but final aside…I hate that people assume that non-skinny people don’t like to do activities. If I had friends that could afford or go kayaking, canoing, rock climbing, hiking trails, I’d be so down for doing any of that. I just don’t want to do it alone.

Undefined

Ideas without a home.

At least until college. Before I sat in a cold room on campus and found this woman before me I had only heard of. So nonlinear. Her words like a stream of consciousness, perhaps a mild form of possession. Pacing across the room, taking her glass off to point with them towards air, as if she truly saw without them, then a dash to the board to scribble a word, a fragment…

I never knew what to write down. Originally, I tried to write it all. But by the second course with her, I stopped making notes on the regular. Often I wrote down only the epiphanies she stumbled upon in her discourse, or my own that had been jostled awake by her words. Never before her, never before in my life, had I heard the word Feminism…how strange to make it 19 years without so many thoughts, so many emotions, finding a home, becoming defined.

Sophomore year in high school, I had written a short story. A mother must survive, work outside the home in a weapons factory during World War II while her husband fights. Upon his return, she’s forced to quit her job at the factory, no need for such things anymore, he is home. Through the eyes of her daughter it is seen. Her mother won’t cook, smokes cigarettes in the kitchen, won’t even wear her stockings, and she cries so much, she has grown more silent. And father is angry, fights with her, but she remains stoic, unyielding, she won’t work for him anymore. I don’t recall the ending, but it wasn’t happy, I don’t write tidy conclusions for fuzzy hearted people.

My teacher was perplexed by the story. She didn’t get it. “So, what?” she said to me. The mother had to quit her job, that wouldn’t cause her behavior. But I stood by my story, my characters, yes, it would. I couldn’t explain it to her. I didn’t understand it fully myself. I just knew within me, in my mind, my writings, this woman would have found something, something in her, and having it taken away, she would be unassuaged, she would refuse to return to life as it once was. But I didn’t have the words. My thoughts did not yet know their origin.

I do not know how I thought this way, surely something had to have influenced me, but I can never pinpoint it in my life. To say it was innate would make me suspicious, make me wonder about my character. And my memories are fragmented, I forget so much of myself. What woman am I to be?

This week I thought about marriage. Realized, confirmed to myself, I would never take another’s last name. Most people I know think this odd. Co-workers I see almost daily find it tacky. Why marry and not take a new last name? It’s like saying you don’t want him. I say, then how much does he want me if he wouldn’t think to take mine, or better yet, know I need not a name, but only him. I think why do I need his last name when I already have my own?

And now I’m smiling. I love that thought. I’ll say it again, “Why do I need his last name when I already have my own?” It is.