Things just happen...not always for a "reason"

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard someone say, "Things happen for a reason." Although this is a common way to explain otherwise inexplicable life events, I have a problem with this kind of thinking.

One, it is quite egocentric. If you think about it, everything that happens to you in life is somehow tangential to the lives of other people. To quote one of my favorite poets, John Donne, "No man is an island." So,
for example, if I say that the fact that I did not get into graduate school happened for a reason, I am essentially saying that everyone whose paths I crossed in the application process were there for the sole purpose of ensuring that I was not accepted...for a reason that has not yet revealed itself to me. Yet, it cannot be that we are all living lives that are happening for a fixed, unyielding "reason." There are just too many different agendas, some of which surely have to conflict at some point.


There is also a darker side to the school of predestined thought: Some people's lives end tragically and unfairly. I had anorexia and almost died, but I didn't--I got lucky. I know that there have been other young women my same age who did die from anorexia. So, although I am happy to hear when people survive some almost-fatal event, I am always frustrated to hear them say that it was for a "reason." I refuse to believe that people who survive or better than those who don't, or that the people who prematurely die had somehow outlived their purpose.


This is why I try to take what happens in life with an open heart and try to find the good in whatever path I am taking, but I do not believe that I have a destiny that has somehow been carved out for me.

"Right" vs. "Feels right"

I am a naturally anxious person and because of that, I struggle to say "yes" to things. Often, I can think of many more reasons why I should opt out of some activity than why I should opt in. But, when forced to make a decision, how can I sift through all of my self-defeating inclinations in order to answer truthfully as well as optimally?

I recently dealt with this phenomenon when I applied for a part-time hostessing job at a local restaurant and bar. Now, food service is a kind of employment that I never, never thought I would explore. I am shy, introverted, and uncomfortable around food and food services. However, my life has taken many unexpected turns of late, and several days ago I found myself applying to be a hostess.

This particular application was one that I completed somewhat hastily and indifferently on a particularly dreary afternoon last week. I have been worrying about *everyone* going back to school this month except for me, and while I think I will end up staying at the radio station for an ongoing internship, I still have plenty of time to get a part-time job. I am already so far off course from where I thought I would be this year that I have gotten less judicious in my job search. Most of the jobs to which I apply will reject me, I figure, so why not apply to any and all jobs to which I have a slim chance of acceptance? 

So, I sent out my hostessing application and did not expect to hear back from them. Only, I did. The next day.

This Saturday I interviewed at the restaurant, hoping to chalk it up to good experience and further inurement to almost inevitable rejection. It was over in about 10 minutes and I was left with the impression that the manager really did not like me. Plus, she emphasized the job's need for assertiveness and good stress-management, to which I immediately thought, "Yeah, that's not me." Only, I was wrong again because the next day I had a voicemail asking me to call back.

It was at this point that I finally froze.  Besides the fact that I had already decided I would not get the job, I did not even want it. It is minimum wage, two nights a week with hours that run until 1 am or so.  Although I do need money, the main reason I am looking for a job is so I can have something to do during the day that gets me out of the house and boosts my self-esteem a bit. I did not think that this job would accomplish any of my goals, so I decided I would not call back. I reasoned that if I had not gotten the job, the manager would have either said so in the voicemail or not called me in the first place. In the off-chance that she wanted me to call back just to say that I had not gotten the job--well, why would I do that? No, I decided, she wants to tell me that I got the job and I do not want it, so I will just not call back and she will easily find someone else.

Things did not go so smoothly, though, for my BF had something to say first.

"You should call back," he said. "You don't know what she's going to say, and you've already talked yourself out of it. You should give the job a chance at least."

But, I wanted to say, I have carefully--even agonizingly--thought over this, and I don't want to do it! And it will be worse if I agree to do the job and then decide a few days later that I want to quit!

Against my better judgment, I called back and within a few seconds the manager told me, "I would like to offer you the job."

I had been through this scenario in my head, and I was going to ask her for a few days to think it over. In my flustered state, however, I said, "Yes, absolutely!" (Personal observation: Often, the less I want to do something, the more convincingly enthusiastic I sound when I lie and say I want to do it. This is a problem.)

When I hung up the phone, I was shaking with nerves and frustration. Now I had created a mess for myself, and even worse, it was one that I had anticipated. I ended up letting the manager know that I did want the job later that day, which filled me with guilt and remorse, but the whole debacle has really gotten me thinking: How do I know if I am acting out of anxiety or from a place of careful reasoning?

When I told my BF that I did not want the job, before he told me to call back anyway, I felt sure that I had made a logical decision. Yet, he has seen me make illogical, or, rather, anxiety-induced decisions that I later regretted. I think that he wanted me to think it through in as non-emotional  a way as possible. Because I am aware of how self-defeating my anxiety can be, I decided to say "yes" and see if it felt right afterwards--or, at least, manageable.

In this instance, it turned out that I had already made the right decision for myself, but this is often not the case. Someday, I hope, I will be able to discern the "right" choice from the comfortable choice a little more easily. Until then, I have to double-check my gut.

The facebook question

Lately, I have been debating whether or not I should disable facebook. It is a game of vacillation that I am sure most of us have played at some point after joining the monolithic site. It really just comes down to this simple question: Does having facebook actually enable the development or maintenance of friendship?

For me, I think the answer is no. In the past month, three people that I have never met or heard of, and with whom I share no common friends, have friended me. I cannot tell you who these people are, how they found me, or what they decided was friend-worthy about me. Because I am not a facebook friend-purist, I accepted the friend requests, but I can promise you that I will never meet these people, and I will probably never even know why we are "friends."

For people that I already know, facebook does not help me maintain the bond of friendship. If you are really my friend, chances are that you will be able to contact me without writing on my "wall." It is likely that I will read a text sooner than I will check facebook. Or, how about sending me a good, old-fashioned email to stay in touch? Yes, it might take longer for you to write than a "what's up?" on my wall, but I can guarantee you that I will get to it as soon as I would a facebook message (if speed of transmittal is a concern), and a one-sentence, rhetorical question written in barely decipherable English on my wall does not a friendship make.

Then there is the mysterious phenomenon of facebook friending every person you have ever known from elementary school and on (and yes, I am guilty of this). Why do we feel an urge to "stay in touch" with people we knew only for a short while or people we will likely never see again--or even care to! I have the impression that we are, in general, unwilling or unable to rationalize the fact that just because you know what a person ate for a dinner, you are not necessarily "in the loop."  It is as if we equate quantity of vague, ubiquitous facebook statuses like "going to bed" and "waiting for the weekend" with quality of communication.

If these questions were only philosophically troubling, it is likely that I would not even consider leaving facebook. But, the fact is, facebook is beginning to depress me--or, rather, I find that after cruising the site, I feel depressed. I have been trying to figure out why, and I will offer some hypotheses, but I would be interested to hear some of your responses. Let me know if any of you have felt the same way.

One reason facebook may be bringing me down, I think, is that I have noted that many of my former classmates have been announcing engagements. Now, I thought a lot about this, and the reason that this makes me depressed is not because I too want to get married. I think that it is because I too would like something significant and congratulatory to include in one of my statuses. As it is, I feel that my achievements are meager and hardly worth commenting on. "I ate a new food today" or "I finally left the apartment in a last-ditch effort to dissipate an anxious and self-deprecating funk" just does not measure up with "I'm engaged to so and so!"

On this note, I think that facebook is inherently a competitive medium. People write little blurbs about themselves and keep others up to date with their latest goings on, but, in so doing, they are opening up their lives for comparison and competition. I am sure I am not the only one who has drawn conclusions about where I am in life versus where another person is in life from facebook profiles. And because we are safely sitting at our computers, we are free to inflate a little. So are other people. This just adds fuel to the competitive fire, and I am just not sure it's healthy.

This may have become more of a rant than I intended, but I think the facebook question is an interesting one, and I am sure that everyone has an opinion. So, chime in!

Finding my voice

Since my internship at the radio station is drawing to a close, my station manager asked me to do a write-up on what I have gained from my experience. I thought it would be nice to include it here (minus names of people and places, for privacy's sake), since it is applicable to an overall growth I have gained this summer:

When I began interning at X, I knew nothing about radio. I had just spent the last four years of my life getting a college degree in biology. After graduating in December, I had trouble finding a job that was relevant to my academic experiences. After a few months of luckless job-hunting, I expanded my search to opportunities outside of the scientific sphere. I applied to jobs and internships indiscriminately, hoping that I would get in somewhere. I applied for an internship at X. Less than a week later, I received an email from the Station Manager expressing interest in me. I was stunned, thinking that I would have to apologize for my lack of experience and inapplicable academic background.

Nothing of the sort happened. The Station Manager and the other people working at X welcomed me with open arms. It did not matter that I was inexperienced with broadcasting; all I needed to do was show up, eager and ready to learn. Surprisingly, I found that I grew comfortable with the methodology quite quickly. I discovered the immense satisfaction that stems from creating a news story, beginning to end. Not only could I give a voice to issues that I felt deserved airwave recognition, like the city’s first gay pride parade and the mysterious colony collapse disorder affecting the nation’s honeybees, but, in the process, I could find my own voice as well.

 I have always been shy. I struggle with talking to new people, both in person and on the phone. A big part of creating news stories, however, is interviewing. Although it was very difficult at first, I discovered that my shyness diminished after making numerous phone calls and conducting several in-studio interviews. Over and over, I was able to prove to myself that I can introduce myself to people I have never met and converse in a professional manner. In no small way, losing this anxiety has been life-changing for me.

I am now used to the sound of my own voice. Strange though it may sound, after hearing myself on-air several times, I realized that the way I actually sound is far more flattering than the way I sounded in my own head. Many of us lean towards self-deprecation when we imagine how we sound to others, I think. But listening to how I objectively sound improved my self-concept. I did not sound silly; I did not sound stupid. I sounded like a young woman who has something to say and who can say it in an eloquent and thoughtful way. I hope that I can take this lesson and apply it to the rest of my life, no matter what I end up doing.

Final lesson learned: Take every experience that comes your way. You never know where it will take you.

I am a little alarmed: where are the female role models?

After reading several novels recently in which all of the female protagonists faced sexism, abuse, and ageism, I have grown despondent about the status of women in fiction. I know, every good work of fiction needs adversity, but where are the novels in which women nonetheless persevere while maintaining positive self-images?

I did a Google search today, hoping to hunt down some uplifting, female-centered books. I did not find any. Everything in my search results related either to Christianity (nothing against books like this, but I was hoping for something non-religious) or to stories of women who eventually triumphed...but not before enduring traumatic life events.

So, then I decided to expand my search to non-fiction. I tried using words and phrases like "feminism" and "female role models." Getting the impression that the words  "feminism" and "hope" are mutually exclusive, I nonetheless searched for "hopeful feminism." My results included excerpts like, "the unhappy daughters of feminism," "let's put the fun back in feminism," and, my personal favorite, "feminism is dead." I did not find anything that made me feel hopeful.

At the beginning of this fruitless exercise, all I wanted was to read something that doesn't make me feel like I am screwed because I am women. I have enough self-loathing, self-defeating thoughts on that topic, so I didn't want to cram my head full of confirmatory readings. Now, however, I am wondering whether girls and women today have many good role models. The general consensus on Google, at least, seems to be that there is a lack (and therefore a need) for uplifting, positive messages for today's female population.

I hope that in the not-too-distant future, things will improve. While the messages of society were in no way wholly responsible for my ED, they did play an undeniable role in the development of my disorder. I firmly believe that any women who has an ED needs to expose herself to as many pro-female books, role models, and ideas as possible. The question is, where are they?

I'm back

Things are better than when I signed off a few months ago on a hiatus. Sorry that I dropped off the face of the earth-- I had a non-anorexia-related health scare that has since been resolved.

Some things have changed since I last wrote. I am living in a new apartment, enjoying the fact that I finally have a place I can call my own. The ghosts of the past that flitted palpably about my old house are gone, and, in fact, I am making quite an effort to stay healthy in my new place so that I do not create bad memories or set unhealthy precedents. I have noticed that the first few weeks of living in a new place unavoidably set the tone for the entire duration of my time there. If I were to restrict right now, for example, I would associate my new apartment with restricting, and it would be quite tricky to eat healthfully here. That is a major problem that I had living at my mother's house the first half of this year. I developed anorexia in that house, I almost died in that house, and I will forever feel slightly haunted in that house by my ED past.

Another thing that has changed is that I have grown to love interning at the radio station. I am actually becoming comfortable with calling people, scheduling interviews, recording myself--all things that make me anxious. I even participated in making a promo video for a pledge drive the station is having at the end of the month. I have always dreaded the thought of seeing myself on film. Mirrors are pretty testy, but there is nothing like seeing yourself in 3-D. I am proud to say that I did not engage in any ED behaviors after watching the video--a major accomplishment.

Some things are the same. I am still not making money, and I am still worried about finding a job. I have put out feelers at my internship to see if they might higher me after the summer is over, but it seems that they do not have the funds. It is public radio, I know, but I would love to be able to get a little bit of money for my effort. I am also still missing school. It makes me wistful to think of how I might have been going to graduate school this fall. School was and is the only thing about which I feel confident and accomplished. I know that it is of course not too late for me to go in the future, but because I do not have any solid plans now, it seems less like a reality.

I will try to write regularly again. Thanks to those who stuck with me! :)

Hiatus

Hey guys, I am going to take a break from blogging for a bit. I am going through some stuff that I don't feel like talking about just yet. I hope that you all will still be here when I'm ready to write again.

~Emma Kay

First days

The first day of something new is always hard. Today I started my internship at the local public radio station. My day was full of the ups and downs that accompany new experiences.

Last night, and most of yesterday, actually, was probably the worst. Knowing that an important, highly anticipated day is drawing near always makes me neurotic and anxious. I also did not sleep well last night, and the dream I was having right before I woke up involved having a random physical altercation with a guy on a bus. Needless to say, I was agitated even before I had fully opened my eyes this morning.

Today was not as bad as yesterday, which is absolutely always the way it goes. I know from experience that the anxiety that precedes a big event is worse than the anxiety that actually accompanies the event. I think that this is because my greatest anxieties stem from a fear of the unknown. What worries me most is an inability to  anticipate exactly how something will go. Today, for instance, I did not know until the day was over how long I would be at the radio station because I had been told that the hours would vary. This is the kind of thing that makes me batty, trust me. No schedule, organized and composed to a barely-human level of precision? I become unhinged.

Looking back over my day, though, I see that it was not so bad. And I can feel a LITTLE bit proud of myself. I learned a lot of new material and managed to follow instructions that were given in broadcasting lingo (definitions not provided). Heck, I even recorded myself and learned how to edit the audio. Trust me, it is a strange and humbling experience to listen to feedback of yourself talking in a sound-proofed recording studio. Let's just say that the voice inside my head does not sound like a 10-year-old girl.

I hope that, with enough practice, I will be able to face new experiences with calm, knowing that my anxieties are almost always unfounded. I also need to work on accepting that I cannot predict everything, and, sometimes, I just have to live and learn in the moment. Until then, I just have to get through the day-before panic attacks.

Anxiety

I have always been anxious person. I think that anxiety fed into my eating disorder, my eating disorder fed into my anxieties, and, before I knew it, fear had taken over my life. Part of my large-scale approach to ED recovery has been to tackle specific anxieties that I have. The other day, I started to wonder if maybe other ED sufferers have some of the same non-ED-related anxieties I do. In the past, I have gone out of my way to work around my anxieties and to keep them hidden from people I know. Part of it was because I thought I could not possibly add to my already-long list of publicly known anxieties, but part of it was because I thought I had some strange fears and that no one could possibly understand them. I am going to list some of the ones I that I have been embarrassed about here, so that if you share any of them, you can know you are not the only one!

1. Fear of driving

Even before I had my bad car wreck 5 years ago, I was anxious about driving. I did not get my license until I was 17, and that was only at my parents' urging. This has been such a huge anxiety for me that I have literally deprived myself of friends, jobs, and opportunities that required me to drive somewhere that made me uncomfortable. So, lately I have been taking on more driving, and my anxiety is actually diminishing. I think this particular anxiety will get better the more experience I take on.

2. Fear of spontaneous outings

If I am going to get together with other people, I have to know exactly how long the outing will last and exactly what we will do. I am not one for "hanging out."  Needless to say, this is not how most people operate, especially college students. My unwillingness to just allow things to unfold spontaneously has severely limited my ability to make friends. My new attitude is that if someone invites me to do something, I am just going to do it. I am hoping that, eventually, I will actually be able to enjoy hanging out with people.

3. Fear of sleeping somewhere besides my own bed

Ok, this one I have literally had as long as I can remember. I was not a child who liked having sleepovers. I even got anxious about sleeping in another bed when family came to visit. I am not quite sure how this anxiety originated, or why it has persisted so doggedly, but I certainly wish I could be more relaxed about sleeping in different beds. I am not sure how to fix this anxiety, as it has never gotten better, but I am hopeful that it will. In the mean time, I am not going to let this anxiety keep me from visiting friends or family.

If any of these anxieties resonate with you, I will include more later!

Possibly at rock-bottom

First of all, sorry, readers, for not posting as regularly as usual. I have been working on writing another piece this past week that has absorbed most of my creative energy.

Now, on to my current state: I am feeling very emotionally fragile. I have received an exorbitant amount of criticism this year. I need to write it all out as it follows in my head. The time line follows thusly:

1) I graduate from college in December, anticipating a brief vacation from school.
2) In January, I get a phone call from Drexel inviting me for an interview in mid-Feb. Yay!
3) Just before I leave for my interview in Philadelphia, I get an email from UCLA inviting me out for an interview. I am ecstatic. UCLA is my top choice. It represents everything I want for my future.
4) I go to my Drexel interview, and I feel like it goes really well. A week later, I get a call from the school saying that I am rejected. I am asked if I have any other interviews, I say yes, and then I am encouraged to "not feel like a loser" on my next interview. Wow, thanks.
5) A week later, I am off to my interview at my dream school. I am still a little stung by my recent rejection, but I am not letting it hold me back. UCLA pays to have my flown out to CA, and they pay for my meals and my room. Seems pretty promising.
6) I do a kick-ass job at UCLA. No kidding. I eat three meals a day around people I don't know, I navigate my way around campus (It's L.A. Think about that for a minute.), and I successfully complete 5 back-to-back faculty interviews. During my last interview, I meet my dream researcher, who studies anorexia. We really have a good rapport. Then, I am rushed back home to await UCLA's decision.
7) A week later, I get an rejection email. I ask for advice concerning my performance on what I could have done better. The response? "We cannot offer that kind of information to applicants." Ok, so I am not going to grad school, and I don't even know why. I email the anorexia researcher guy, but he really has no helpful advice, either.
8) I am hurting, but I apply feverishly to many, many jobs in town, I get rejected from all of them. Even Lucky Brand Jeans.
9) I move on to volunteer applications, hoping to just find something--anything--to do. I get zero responses.
10) Not willing to give up all hope, I try to reclaim old passions and interests. I begin to write again. I try picking up music. I go to hear my old fiddle teacher play. I ask for lessons. He says no.
11) Now, we have arrived at this week. I get weighed, and it is bad. My boyfriend leaves to go to a conference in Canada. I can't even text him. I am lonely, and I am stuck with my thoughts.

Well, thank you for humoring me throughout that lengthy whine-fest. I really needed to do that. I know that a pity-me attitude is not going to help me, but I have worked so hard in these past months to not give up, to keep on moving forward even when I see no reason to even try anymore. And, I feel that I just have been denied even a crumb of acceptance. I feel universally rejected. In fact, I am not sure that I can be scorned further without it just being a repeat of something that has recently happened. Can I sink any lower? Probably not.