I have spent a few weeks now reflecting on where I am at right now, what my day to day looks like and achievements, challenges etc… all the things that flood in with the start of the new year.
Life cannot be measured arbitrarily, for it would be just reduced to just words which don’t necessarily fully represent the myriad experience of the human condition. However, as far as communication goes, I think getting information across would need some arbritary system in place.
I don’t think anyone presents themselves as a whole or finite product, and I mean that in the best way possible. Limiting full expression of yourself not only does a disservice to your past and present, but it is practically impossible to enforce stagnation on something that in its nature is ever-moving.
One thing that I am still in the process of is acknowledging that all life experience thus far has existed and will live on in memory and place. Pain is painful for a reason, but likewise with all other emotions. The past is inherently just a bunch of timestamps collated into one chronologically, which in its most innocent form isn’t sentient. The past is activated into something more visceral, resulting in a memory being formed. All thanks to the human brain - the most affective and affected ‘thing’ to exist, ever. And we all own one. Fun !!
The mid winter crisis
With the mid winter blues comes a lot of staying at home, trying to get through each day, finding your feet more frequently throughout the dark skies dawning upon the constellations of yellow lights from windows down each road. And subsequently, a lot of rummaging the brain, reflecting on memories stored deep into the psyche. It’s crazy what the winter can do.
When it comes down to *those* moments of existential (lack of a better term) reflection, each motion of ‘unlocking’ different situations and circumstances leads me to fall into quite a few rabbit holes. However this year was a little different, as I noticed the heavy melancholy that waxes in every year was not fully there. I think these past few years have been dominated by two long withstanding events, but one took precedence over the other which was a new feeling. These two events are by context polar opposites, yet my experiences in both have been the most prevalent shaping factors thus far.
The two pretty life changing events are architecture and my eating disorder.
Now, from a general stance there really is no correlation between the two. One is educational, one is a raging mental illness. The former generates income, a career, new connections, new knowledge and wisdom; the latter takes all that away and shrinks you to a shell of yourself.
However upon this said reflection I couldn’t help but notice that when thinking about all those brain-body connections both have made me feel over time, both felt not too dissimilar.
I took this as an opportunity to get curious, to sit down and examine this odd relationship that feels dysfunctional but at the same time like an enduring connection.
The red chair and the second hand
This time 3 years ago, I was sitting on my assigned red chair, waiting to be called for AM snack at the eating disorder day unit. It all seemed so silly to me - I am 19, I will not let anyone tell me to eat two custard creams, and then fill in my food and mood diary about how I felt eating it. It felt so frivolous, I felt small and almost infantilised. The quote ’nothing changes if nothing changes’ on the whiteboard stared at me, in despair.
I was in such a state of denial about how bad my anorexia had gotten. Rationally, I knew that two biscuits was nothing, it was just ‘two biscuits’. As simple as that. Everyone else would even pair it with a cup of tea with milk, or follow up a nice dinner with a couple from the pantry.
However as I saw the second hand quickly reaching the top of the clock I went into a panicked frenzy. I just cannot have TWO BISCUITS. That is too much. There are too many ‘parts’ to it, not to mention the mental calculator of macros switching on in my head, dictating whether I am even allowed to consume these calories.
The sobbing upon reaching the custard creams began. Nothing new, it was a pretty solid part of my daily routine. Every morning I would be presented with a snack, and it would follow up with an argument or refusal. I think I took Groundhog Day to another plane. Theoretically, I knew that if ‘nothing changes, nothing changes’ and that this snack will only nourish me, and help me get on the path of recovery from this horrible eating disorder, out of the captivity of endless hospital appointments, arguments, absolute mental madness. But when it came to action I just could not bring myself to realise all the affirmations I was told at home and in the consultation rooms.
Theoretical and empirical methods are objectively proven to be different. Theory generates one framework of data, whereas some hypotheses require empirical means of testing to find results. In this case, theoretical systems were just not working. I would feel a spark in motivation and energy, but that would be channeled wrongly when it came to actually facing the fear. In this case, biscuits*.
*(I am using biscuits as a representation of all the other food I had great judgement and fear over, just to make it easier).
My eating disorder was the thing I was best at. I knew it was devastating my family, destroying me, but I just could not stop. I was too deep in to turn things around, because that would be an even greater feat than continuing the slow suicide.
The Magna Carta (my version)
It would come to the end of the day, a long day of food restriction, self-isolation, tears and fears, but I would still write all my motivations to get better and to start making steps in recovery.
Go to architecture school.
Travel to Iceland, Norway, Amsterdam and Japan.
To be in the present moment, to not drift into my thoughts
To have a good amount of energy to do literally anything and everything
To join in on days out with family or friends
to fall in love and be loved romantically
Spontaneity with food and activities
To not be so rigid
To be able to watch movies with my family
To really feel the music that I love
Feel emotions again
To get my goddamn period back and feel like a woman
To feel the warm fuzzy happiness when good things happen
To be able to celebrate the smallest things
To be able to sleep
Actually be able to eat the food I want and not check supermarket and restaurant websites 24/7
No more brain fog, able to concentrate
No more lying
Able to have alcohol again with friends
To be able to party
Watching sunsets with my best friends
To literally just feel like a human
To wear the clothes that I want
To be open to changes in situations and circumstances
So I am flexible around food, able to eat whatever whenever
Can eat in front of people easily
So that I don’t get triggered so easily, I am less fragile to external words and comments
to not be so bloody cold all the time
laugh and smile, and feel true happiness
so that i dont spiral down into a massive creative block
so that my mood is stable, if not much better
to genuinely feel gratitude
so that my days aren’t revolved around food
travelling and holidays wont be awful
clothes can fit me again
to make memories around food, not make worse associations
for architecture.
to help others.
This is one of those motivations lists straight from a diary I kept in early 2021. They were long, sometimes 3 pages long. Yet the next morning I would wake up and refuse all food in sight, and continue to engage in the same old maladaptive routines and rituals, only lengthen my time in a hospital setting and feel hopeless all day.
I was brimming with hope and motivation but it felt so unbelievably far from reach, all because of those biscuits. Again, I am not saying that two biscuits were the sole fault, but those bloody custard creams did in fact create some sort of strengthening feeling within me one rainy Friday in late March 2021.
Fix the environment in which a plant grows. Or you can set out to design it
One notion that endured, however, was my long set sight on architecture. It was a constant means of drive, a companion to me in its own right. I filled out many goals sheets when coming up with reasons to recover in therapy sessions, and the words my hand would write before I could even think would be ‘ARCHITECTURE” - in capitals specifically, to see if my brain would finally get the hint.
Later that day AM snack was a success. You would be happy to know that there were 2 fewer biscuits in the tin. Lol.
I can feel the world spinning again, but I find it dizzying
Fast forward to last year. I had at this point achieved the thing I kept affirming from the start of my recovery - architecture school. The walk up from Kings Cross station to Granary Square felt like something from a dream, one dream that I did repeatedly have when at the worst of my illness. Now it was mine, and I found myself waking up to walk the route to study the subject I only saw on beige sheets of paper under ‘ANOREXIA RECOVERY - GOAL SETTING’.
I think that the similarity in feeling comes in the prospect of intrinsic drive.
This intrinsic drive is so easily intercepted by cognitive dissonance, and in this interception comes fear, shame, doubt and distrust in self. This was the case when I struggled to achieve completing my meals and snacks.
As designers and students of design, the discourse around creative block and wavering motivation is not unheard of in any sphere. What feels so isolating is equally a collective, and even connecting experience, with a reassurance that ‘we’re all in this together’. As architecture students we feel those bursts of inspiration and energy take over each and every bit of us, our neurone get fired up, all the brain cells are dancing when you find yourself breaking through to a new idea, where everything just ‘makes sense’.
Then we get a pencil and our sketchbook and just before the pencil touches the page… it’s all gone. You feel this lump in your throat, and suddenly you feel your brain clear out all the cache. Talk about convenience.
This mental chronology was ever so prevalent in the very beginning of my eating disorder recovery.
The Curious case of the dog… in the summer time
What’s quite interesting is that as I am writing this, I can see this curiosity that I’ve experienced in the bulk of recovery, to bridge the gap between motivation and commitment, thought and action, in architecture.
One thing I had to come to accept in the day unit was that life is so, so messy. Eating will be messy, relationships will be all over the place. After being frozen in a terribly rigid, scared state of mind for almost a decade, it was like I was growing up again, but 20 years later. And now post day unit came experiences of deep emotions toward other people, feeling your heart pace and subsequently ache harder than ever before, stomach churn that you feel it in every bone, and to simultaneously show up in places you don’t feel like you could actually be a part of - chaos.
But past this mess, past the trials and tribulations that living in can bring, I can genuinely say that planting that one seedling back in 2021 is one of the main reasons why I am in the place I’m in today. There have been a few instances where I’ve noticed the proverbial ‘reaping of the seeds sown’.
Model making was kind of a shift. The connection between hand and a very hyperactive, very anxious brain showed me that there are ways I can start to challenge the control I felt the anorexia have over me. When I experienced the anxious energy ridicule my ability to hold the harnesses of my emotions, the mechanism of ‘hand to pencil, pencil to paper, feel the pencil on the paper, now repeat’ seemed to quieten the unbearable eating disorder thoughts.
For some time, I found that I could almost travel back in time and experience this sense of euphoria when seeing something I’m putting my heart and soul into reflect well. The design process and allowing myself to innovate a new world unlocked old memories of when I was younger making playgrounds, houses and theme parks out of a4 printer paper, and kind of reminding me that wow this is a full circle moment. I am feeling so unbelievably fulfilled right now, and this full circle is showing me that through it all, this deep, passionate, crazy love I have for architecture, art and making has never disappeared. It was just dormant and overridden by the heavy raincloud that was the eating disorder. I managed to develop a channel where the energy could flow down. And with this new channel being carved into my daily routine, I thought that perhaps I would find a way to face sadness, heartbreak and low mood.
When I am unable to show up for myself and my mental state, my developing love for architecture acts as a point of accountability for me. It’s hard to externalise commitment when you feel you’re not fully there, but this adoration I have for the discipline has proven a few times to comfort me.
The feeling after completing a portfolio. It is in essence a celebration of thought processes, academic and emotional maturity (well at least for me it is). For someone who has dogmatically shamed her thoughts due to the plaguing of anorexia at a young age, this was quite a refreshing realisation.
I guess it only took the two biscuits to unlock this curious mind. Now I look back at that list of reasons to recover from 3 years ago and with time, a lot of that it has been realised. Well firstly I am in my dream school, studying the discipline that I’ve dreamed of, a dream that has never shied away from me even when I tried to push it away. Letting curiosity and a degree of trust in myself managed to pan out in some ways; that if I ‘just do the next right thing’ I might get somewhere. Ambivalence and commitment are incongruous together, but they can co-exist.
I’m going to go grab 2 custard creams now. :)
written on 11.02.2024
