Sarah Silverman and Pete Holmes.

Great interview/conversation between between Sarah Silverman and Pete Holmes on You Made It Weird (one of my favourite podcasts).

Silverman discusses her recent hospital scare, and her mourning for the deaths of three people close to her (Harris Wittels, Garry Shandling and her mother). They talk about life, religion and some pretty existential stuff.

Sarah has also been open about her living with depression and needing medication to function.

From this podcast:

Depression - there's a certain aspect of it that's self-obsession. As soon as you decide to focus away from yourself and have empathy and understanding of others, that's when it can go away. It's not a selfless endeavor, it's self-obsessed. Sometimes I forget that others exist. If I can throw myself into others ... you don't become as obsessed with your downward spiral.

Myu desire to get me "outside of myself" is part of why I started volunteering with the dog shelter and the prisoner correspondence project. I needed to get the fuck out of my head, and feel useful. In my case, it has helped.

Depression is ironic in that way, that you're so overly sensitive and feeling of everything, but at the same time, all of that attention is so internalized that you end up being self-obsessed.

Don't ever call a depressed person self-obsessed though - it doesn't come from a place of self-congratulation. It's more about being unable to look away from what you think is an oncoming train wreck you'll be the victim of but you're also responsible for.

@smeagolsfree

I COULD go on a diet. But then again, I'm an accidentally conscious animal in a chaotic, infinitely expanding universe. So...hard pass

— kid gruesome (@smeagolsfree) February 24, 2016

Chronic pain, choice and the West Coast League of Lady Wrestlers.

*This personal essay is a guest post by a good friend of mine, c.*

Chronic pain, choice and the West Coast League of Lady Wrestlers

“I was surprised at how mobile you were given how you talk about your body”. Over the weekend I wrestled in the Garden City Smack Down with the West Coast League of Lady Wrestlers. I got on stage, swung a foam bat around, got picked up, got beat up, snarled, kicked, and screamed. It felt amazing.

When a loved one made that comment to me the morning after the match, I felt defensive. Did the physicality of my performance somehow mean that I was no longer living with chronic pain and the accompanying fear of re-injury? I felt like mobility was being prized above the fact that I was actually really strategic and smart about the moves I chose; practicing for hours at home how I could fall in staggered steps to reduce the impact on my body while still putting on an entertaining show; how I designed my character to have a bat in order to give her upper body more strength since I can’t punch, pick up, or push my opponent; and how we were so selective of the types of upper body impact we had in our match. But most of all, the comment, and so many other comments I hear regularly, underline the fact that living with invisible chronic pain is a constant battle of reaffirming my personal boundaries and having to justify the choices I make about my body.

Having a space in the ring to perform strength and physical power felt so damn good. These are two things I have not felt for a few years since I was injured. Embodying my character and throwing down with my (amazing) wrestling partner was a risk I wanted to take. It’s my choice to decide if, when and how I want to risk hurting my body, as it should be for everyone. But because I choose to risk pain today, it doesn’t mean my disability has disappeared. And it doesn’t mean I am open to being questioned about the decisions I make with my body. When I ask for help, or say no, it’s because I am choosing to conserve the little energy I have left, because I don’t have the capacity to deal with the physical and emotional pain at that moment. And if I choose to risk it, that is for me alone to decide.

I decided to participate in the West Coast League of Lady Wrestlers about a year ago, when I saw the Velvet City Rumble. When tickets went on sale the first thing I had to check on the event listing was if there was seating. I was worried about what kind of back support the chairs had, if I would be able to sit for the whole match, if I would block the people behind me when I had to get up every twenty minutes to stretch because the pain of sitting was too much. Sitting sucked, as it always did for the first two years after the accidents but the show inspired in me things I hadn’t felt since moving to Victoria from Montreal. At that moment, I decided I would wrestle in the next year’s rumble. I even thought of my character.

In 2014, two months into moving my entire life across the country, I severed several ligaments in my spine, resulting in debilitating pain in my neck, shoulder and thoracic area. A few months after that, I got whiplash, complicating my existing injury. The resulting pain meant that simple daily tasks like lifting the kettle, a frying pan, even brushing my teeth, was so painful, that I was forced to adapt every daily task, and rely on others around me for constant help. While I was avoiding the pain, I was also losing muscle mass. While the level of pain has slowly decreased over the years with countless hours (and dollars) of therapy, I have about 30% of the strength that someone with my build would have on average. The most physically demanding part of my match was holding my 1lb foam baseball bat in my right arm and dancing with it (yeah- the visual of this may sound silly but it was really tough in the ring!).

While I will likely never be able to carry a hiking pack again (a big part of my life pre-accident), and I can’t hold my partners hand on my right side, and I am working on adapting a bicycle so I can hopefully cycle again, I also live with a ton of physical abilities, and experience and participate in able-bodied privileges every day. My pains peak and recede depending on stress, and what I choose to engage in. For a lot of things, with the help of others, I experience life in a lot of the same ways as before the accidents.

My limited strength does mean that I am constantly asking others for help and saying “No I cant do that” and often repeating, “No, I really cant do that”. When those moments happen I am overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and shame because I feel that I am not participating equally in the tasks at hand. I have to remind myself that the world is a better place when we forget about over simplified notions of equality and rather focus on how we can each use our privileges, skills, and abilities to support one another when we can (or lifting that heavy thing up for someone else because you can) so that everyone has access to participate in whatever they want, in their own way, without judgment.

Asking for help is already really fucking hard. When I ask for help picking something up, if you’re able, just do it; referencing how mobile or strong I appeared on stage (or yesterday, or the week before) is hurtful and undermining because what I am hearing is “You chose to be in pain then why cant you chose to be in pain now?”. That is not your choice, it is mine, and mine alone.

Thanks to the West Coast League of Lady Wrestlers and my wrestling partner for all the heavy lifting and reminding me of the other parts of me that are really strong. 

Vain. Selfish. Cruel.

There are worse things in the world than being called fat. It's a descriptor that's often hurled as an insult, a catch-all meaning unattractive, sloppy, uncontrolled.

I take up too much space. My shoulders are thick. My thighs are thick. My bones are thick. I could never be slight. Never delicate. Never the femininity of lace and fragility.

It took deprivation, mania, and obsession in order to have a 140-pound body that was rejected nonetheless. So much work. A constant, all-consuming struggle to take up as little space as possible, but still be seen.

If I did everything right, there was a chance I would get what I wanted. There was a chance the parts of me that felt empty and broken could be filled with his temporary solace.

Maybe I'd feel more alive with his hand around my throat.

Maybe I'm not happy, but I could feel that comfort temporarily if it's pounded into me when I ask for it.

There's a galvanization, a resolved confidence that comes when you project it all onto another body. It's easier to call out the cracks.

It's easier to walk away from when it's someone else.

How deeply can you hide from yourself?

On a good day, I wonder if my mental illness isn't just the compacting of my gender and existentialism.

I still have to live here. In this body. A body I too-often resent. Then it grows ill and I see it for what it is, infinitely complex and fragile. Precarious health. Absurd illnesses. Waking up to a paralyzed face. Eye patch and straws for weeks. Waking up to vertigo. A topsy-turvy wild-ride you can't ground. These illnesses of the head and brain. Your true center, unhinged and untethered and yet your only means of communication to this place and these people.

And how can you look to the future? What dignity is there in aging if the world falls apart? How can I live with dignity when it's torn from me, penance for my existence here and now. And when I chose to hold onto myself, when I make choices and attempt at living values I can stand, there is always a price. Goodness is its own reward. A reward you give yourself when nobody cares to look.

And if this world is as bleak as it seems to me, how do others bare it so wholly? How can your glass be half-full, when mine is vinegar in a children's cup?

Why does kindness make me cry? Seeing the goodness in men is something I've given up on an infinite amount, over an endless cycle. Masculine self-worship through the ages. Penis flags and ceremonies. How does a man reject generations of his kind? Why do I expect so little of men? The smallest of kindnesses seems a shucking of his ancestors. Maybe there's hope in him, he held the door open. Maybe he's a radical, he's being kind to the staff. He hints to tearing the system down, by wearing a pink shirt.

I can't seem to think of my body without thinking of those who have judged it so harshly. There was a time when it was new to me, my fatness. Always chubby, but never worryingly so.

Then it was too much. 

I remember walking across the busy city street when I noticed you. I yelled your name and waved excitedly. You mother gasped audibly and looked at my body in horror. She did not look at my face or address me. She looked only at my full body. I remember the look so vividly. Abject disgust. I was ignorant to it then, but it's seared into my mind.

I'd gained so much weight over such a short time.

I remember one night, courting sleep in my basement bedroom, wishing my mother and her friend would settle. They were on their second bottle of wine and were talking loudly. My mother spoke of my body. This new body nobody recognized or understood. It was too big. She couldn't defend it. She had no excuses for my body. She lowered her tone as she said it disgusted her. She said this with shame, hoping for absolution.

It wouldn't be hurtful if it was met with my own anger. But it isn't. My body has stretched outwards, away from myself and into spaces it isn't meant to occupy. Muscles and organs are taxed. Its integrity is compromised. It is not wanted by those I should be courting. It is not courted. It is too soft. Too large. Too heavy. It is the cause of, and answer to, all of my medical problems. No matter the question, no matter the doctor, I'm too fat.

I was never a delicate flower. Always tall. Always thick. Meant for labor and battle. Nordic Viking blood. Hearty settler bodies. Fat was rare. Fat was necessary.

For my frame to be feminine it takes deprivation. It takes sorcery. Body hair removal. Much of it. My hair is deeply rooted. Follicles sprout two or three hairs at a time, happy to keep me warm. My features seem toddler-like,broad faced, large grin, round features. My chest is large, heavy. My only feminine inheritance. Tits. Who cares. They're in the way. They're not perky. They've grown to accommodate my weight gain, obscene and too much. The need to be contained.

It can be difficult to think of my body in new ways. The paths have been set. My only experience with thinness was attained through anorexia and bulimia. That's what it took, for a thick body to be acceptably less thick.

What would it take to get there through acceptable means?

And if I stopped eating, what then? What if I lift weight and lose some weight. Will I be any happier? Will I resent the ways in which I have to manipulate my body in this world in order to feel less hideous? What of romantic love? What comfort is there in knowing your attraction to me is based on a body I've raged with, seemingly endlessly.

Will sex be more accessible to me, if my body fits into certain spaces? Will I trust an easier?

What if with every pound lost all I really gain is bitterness?

And if I'm able to find ways in which to alter my relationship with my body, will that be enough?

What if my thick body wants to be thick and round. What if getting out of my circle and spheres means disordered thinking?

Arguably, it's all disordered thinking. Calorie counting. Obsessive working out. Hard lines. These choices are for one goal, and that goal is acceptable and aesthetically aligned with what is wanted, so it's an acceptable harshness.

Bulimia and anorexia are not healthy. They are worrisome. But in the meantime, I looked good. My disorder was not outwardly visible. It is now. This fatness cannot be ignored.

I am not an easy going person, it seems. Oddly enough, my only true pleasure these days is sitting with a dog and talking to it in a ridiculously detailed way, narrating our situation. Unloading a grocery bag and explaining my purchases. This is a can of beans. This is cellery. These are mushrooms. Smell this cheese. This is garlic. Smell this box of crackers. Tail wag. Giggle.

How is it parts of me are so heavy and the other parts so light? I gravitate towards the ridiculous, no doubt because of the weight of my nihilism. Is that so obvious though, really? An appreciation for the silly and the absurd might be a desperation for levity. It could also just be the biological imperative to laugh at farts.

It always comes back to my body. I don't know how to move forward through mine. I don't know how to readdress myself.

I do not know how to think of my body in a healthy way.

As soon as I became aware of my body, it was through what was wrong with it.

And as soon as I starting craving attention through my body it was quick to be humiliated.

How can anyone want me and my body?

How can I move away from ingrained shame?

There are worst things than being called fat. And of all the terms I would use to describe myself today, many of them I am proud of. I've worked hard on certain parts of myself. But for whatever reason, the most obvious, daily realities of being fat will always be my main signifier. They're also the most painful. Unpacking it all is as difficult as weight-loss. Do I need to run, lift and reflect in order to shed a pound? Is everything linked? Do my guts know how I feel about my self as a sexual being? Does my metabolism slow everytime I wish I were dead? What if my fat cells stick to me in order to keep my warm, and comforted? Do they not know they're smothering me?

There are worse things than being fat, but it doesn't always feel that way.

How I feel about people commenting on my body.

In general, don't talk to me about my body.

Lidia Yuknavitch's The Small Backs of Children.

Where are the borders of art? 

Where are the borders of a woman's body?
How unimaginable is one without the other?
When we think of violence, are we not aware, as women, of our place within the world of men?
The borders of our body, of our safe spaces, of hostile spaces?

I just finished reading The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch and I am re-committed to my impression of her as a fluid, visceral representation of what it is to write of art, trauma, violence and living a woman's experience.

I was floored when I read her memoir, The Chronology of Water. It's lead me here, to her novel, which kept me as enamored.

It's a novel, yes, but I feel as though the narrative of people and places is secondary to the passages that describe life so astutely. This book features a group of friends, all artists and creators, juxtaposed to a young girl in eastern Europe, orphaned by war and surviving through art, grit, and the persistence of young blood.

There are segments of her book that discuss art and experience, art as expression, as language, as reference point, as both anchor and catalyst. These sections created in me more questions. An infinite amount. Sometimes they fuse with and of the body, and gender and sexuality pour into her writing. Violence as commonplace, as a masculine language and threat. She has a similar juncture in violence, trauma, and women's bodies. One intrinsically stomped onto the other.

Our blood is all over this world.

Our greatest threat is so linked to us.

And of trauma, of death and loss and surviving the horrific, does our tongue split, now able to speak two languages? As if at different frequencies, two languages in parallel.

Yes I understand your desire for me to print this document, to do this grocery shopping, to celebrate this holiday, but do you understand that feeling, the deep rumble that comes from prolonged, wretched pain, where you become diluted by the incessancy of it, and become convinced your threshold makes you the undead, untouchable. Have you known that pain? No? Then we do not speak the same language. But yes, I do enjoy coffee. And yes, the weather has improved.

From page 69:

Who are we in moments of crisis or despair? Do we become deeper, truer selves, or life up and away from self, untethered from regular meanings like moths suddenly drawn toward heat or light? Are we better people when someone might  be dying, and if so, why? Are we weaker, or stronger? Are we beautiful, or abject? Serious, or cartoon? Do we secretly long for death to remind us we are alive?

This actually heavily links to the conversations I've been having with my best friend S regarding HBO's Westworld. There is an awful lot to unpack regarding the nature of trauma. If you have not watched Westworld - do not read anything about it! I went in blind and was able to discover and discuss things as I went and it's been very interesting!

Are our trauma's our cornerstones? 

I'd read something recently about the way in which trauma can root certain pathways in the brain, making it more difficult to adapt or change habits. Isn't this a scientific explanation for what we already know? How our wounds remind us, how old habits die hard? Aren't we creatures of narrative, of story? Isn't the story we hear most often our own?

Yuknavitch also has these really bodied moments, that represent those abstract experiences of being alive and sentient but not fully present in our culture and context. Detached. From page 93:

Then he thinks: love is an abstract word coming from a face hole.

I guess the only alienating bit to Lidia's novel is how it's populated by successful artists. Confident in their art. Monied. That's my alien experience. My unknown. Where art is a work, a calling, and not a form of communication and a way of being, of purging that is necessary.

Fuck fat loss / You do not exist to be used.

Just read Fuck Fat Loss, and “You Do Not Exist To Be Used”: Dismantling Ideas of Productivity in Life Purpose by Gillian Giles.

Both have complimentary narratives on the body.

From Fuck Fat Loss:

For me, actually loving my body has come to mean honoring those things that I don’t totally understand, and practicing lots of non-attachment to outcomes related to its size and shape. I actually trust my body to do it’s job (which is to keep me alive, not to make me attractive to people who only have one idea about what that word even means). I believe it when it tells me it’s hungry. I believe it when it tells me it’s tired. I believe it when it wants to move, and when it wants to rest. Okay- I try to. It’s not always easy! No one taught me how to do that, In fact, I’ve been taught the exact opposite for my entire life.
...
I have decided that my job isn’t to discipline my body, my job is to care for it, to safeguard it, to be generous and gentle with it, and to thank it for taking me through my days. It is not my enemy. My love for it is not conditional on it fitting into a certain pair of pants, moving at a certain speed, accomplishing a particular task.

Self-love and self-care have been actively germinating over the last several months. They're a work in progress. Her post eventually references chronic illness as a caveat to "trusting your body" since it's a different reality. In my case, I can't entirely trust my body since I'm reliant on medication. My mind is fragile, and it's a constant. 

Having the ability to listen to your body is a skill as well. Especially if part of you has willingly forged a disconnect, a valley of small cuts. 

From You Do Not Exist To Be Used:

Unfortunately, shame, stigma and isolation are all too common experiences for those unable to keep up with the expectations of productivity. 

From a young age we are taught that our bodies and our purpose is to produce within effective normative means. That in order to be something of worth, you must prove productivity. The ideology of productivity in life purpose extends far beyond the school system. Expectations of productivity range from being able to get out of bed on a bad day, reproduce children, ride a bike or be successful in an academic task. In failing to be useful, we are told we are not of value or valued as less than. It is these bodies that fail to meet social standards of productivity that are most often marginalized.

Within the economic and social landscape, the bifurcation of the normative abled bodied citizen and disabled one creates an assumption that a proper citizen is an able productive one, that the economic and social value of personhood is conflated with restrictive notions of productivity. The result of this binary is that the disabled body is rendered as other, less useful then simply as just less. 

It is the inherent ableism of society, of capitalism’s productivity, that teaches us that we must be of use, that we are tools to be used to produce and that our entirety our purpose is hinged on a framework of productivity.

These are themes I've been struggling with over the last few years, especially this year, as I've been unhappy with my 9 to 5 day job. 

Working creatively has been hard. On bad days I feel useless, and I don't feel good enough to be making a living off my my creativity or whatever skills I have.  I don't always have the wherewithal to be pushed. 

I've also not had a "good" creative job with a competitive salary for the last decade. Right now I am still living pay-check to pay-check. I live in my mother's basement to pay cheaper rent. On bad days I feel barely employable and incapable of "taking care of myself" since I can't afford 800$ a month rent and the costs of living on ones own. 

When friends ask for services, I do everything for free. Yes, to help, but also because asking for payment is uncomfortable and I am not comfortable equating a financial sum to the quality of my workmanship. 

What I do these days is make small things for Etsy, letting that shop and culture dictate whether or not it i interested in my work. I am passive to the situation. 

Productivity is a difficult marker to step away from. Today I received new postcards I designed. I packaged them. I photographed them for Etsy. I posted them on Etsy and on my portfolio website. I shared a photograph over Instagram. I felt productive, and felt I could take an afternoon nap without guilt. I earned that nap, through doing something.

I would assess my my work-life balance as pretty good. Where I take issue is with the capitalization of my work, and the value of my productivity. It's difficult to think about and find my place in. 

I look at people I use to be friends with, who make a lot of money and are very productive and business minded, and I often feel shame around being lazy and not having lived up to any kind of potential I may have had when I was young and had energy. 

Though this may have been more of a sore spot in the past, these days I'm quick to dismiss it, since it's a question of priorities. We do the best we can. We prioritize daily (whether consciously or not) and we just get through the day. 

Being critical of the way our bodies are relegated to tools for productivity is important, since we do not have to succumb to that framework for our own self-worth, but it is difficult to escape altogether since we do live in a capitalist system, we do need to work to live, to pay the bills and to take care of ourselves. 

I have to take care of myself. And I'm not especially good at it. 

Michael Pollan on food and cooking and eating.

Highly recommend Cooked on Netflix.



I happened to also come upon Michael Pollan's episode of The Passionate Eye last night which aired bits of his documentary In Defense of Food. I think it was an edited down version, since it was only a 60-minute episode. I'll try and find it in it's entirety.



It's just a really informative, healthy approach to food and eating, as well as cooking.

Eating is often a big source of anxiety and shame for me, so having an approach that centres around care could be transformative for me.

Shrill by Lindy West. (Part 1)

Go out and get it folks! Shrill by Lindy West!

I'm about half way through and it's great. It's funny and she's great, and she's able to clearly describe and explain all sorts of realities I relate to immensely (fat joke!).

Right now I just finished a chapter entitled Why Fat Lady So Mean to Baby Men? which is just on point. She talks about her experience with trolling and she refers to how she often re-posts their hateful tweets and comments "goo goo ga ga baby man," which is now my favourite insult when dealing with ridiculous man-whining/misogyny.

So I've got a new favourite insult, "goo goo ga ga baby man." Thank you @thelindywest - thank you very much.

— krimrat (@krimrat) August 16, 2016

She faved it!

Yay me! After reading her chapter on trolling and how much vitriol she puts up with, the least I could do is publicly acknowledge her work.

I'm going to write more about the book once I've read it fully.

I also don't want to just quote her incessantly, which I feel I would do, I just really recommend reading it.



There are segments of the book that speak to pretty heavy issues, and just correlate to some of the more shitty experiences I've had, as well as to some I'd like to mirror.

I think West is more confident, and more together than I am, but it's really nice to read something so close to my own experiences when it comes to my body, fat and shame.

See Part 2, here. 

This American Life: Tell Me I'm Fat.

This episode of This American Life, Tell Me I'm Fat, has been making the rounds on my social media pages. It was an emotional listen. A lot of my buddies who have been posting it have been posting it through a lens of feminism and body-shaming. To me, it's like, more of a nod. Yes, to a lot of the episode.

I am fat. I have been fat since the major depression of my early 20's, and though my weight fluctuates, I have been plus-sized since. I had eating disorders in order to sustain a +/- 140 pound body weight, and I'm not roughly twice that.

Over the last decade I've experience fat-shaming of all kinds. I've had strangers approach me with unsolicited weight-loss tips, I've been on the receiving end of sneers from both genders, and I have a few pointed anecdotes of encounters that upset me deeply.

There is such a thing as fatphobia. It is a fear, dislike or hatred for fat people, based on their being fat. I would argue gender and race compact that hatred. So, as a woman, I've read faces from women that told me they couldn't live if they were my size. That they plan on exercising twice as much, and infinitely more careful. I've seen the horror in their faces in a flicker. I've caught the eyes of men as they stared at my big boobs, or more often, not seen me at all. The eyes scan over the women in the area, who would they fuck, who can they ignore totally. Old. Old. Pregnant. Fat. Ding-ding, hot girl.

First, I recognise myself in most of everything said in the conversations with Lindy West and Roxanne Gay. Ira's introduction starts strong too:

... complete strangers walk up to you on the street and tell you to lose weight. They shoot you dirty looks when they see ice cream in your shopping cart. They talk down to you like you're stupid about nutrition and calories, as if pretty much every fat person has not been around the block 500 times on that one already.

So many stories of this. So many examples. Lindy talks about her experiences with a boss/friend who has a shitty attitude about fat people, that he does not see as discriminatory or bigoted. I especially liked her segment on seeing the fat-activist / fat fashion representation on Tumblr. 

Lindy West - I mean, this was just my favourite one of these fat acceptance blogs ( a Tumblr called, "hey, fat chick!"). It was just that. It was just bright, happy, funny, smiling people wearing cute outfits. It's just, you're so used to seeing fat people presented as sad and apologetic. 

Ira Glass - And what did this do to you? What it do to see that?

Lindy West - I remember feeling like my brain was changing shape. It just had never occurred to me that you could just decide that you were allowed to be happy and live as a--

Ira Glass - As a fat person.

Lindy West - Yeah, exactly.

Lindy sounds like someone I would identify as body positive. She seems to accept her fatness, and gives herself permission to live life. After eventually confronting her boss publicly on her blog, she describes what it's like to be a fat woman, the odd reality of being both invisible in some regards but hyper-visible in the most obvious of ways.

Something lurched awake inside of me. A lifetime of being talked down to about nutrition, being kept secret by men I was dating, being both invisible and too visible finally foamed up and spilled over.

She calls him out on a lot of what he says, though it doesn't seem to change any of his views. She adds:

You know what's shameful? A complete lack of empathy.

Which is so often the case with bigotry. Being unable to relate at all, with whoever it is you're signalling out. With fat people, it's the assumption that being fat if their fault, in a real, active way. There's this assumption that there are no extenuating circumstances, no excuses. It's equated with gluttony and sloth, laziness and disgust. You're born black. You're born gay. The assumption is you aren't born fat. Though some are! I was chubby my entire childhood. I still played on several sports teams and ate well. What propelled me into fatness was deep psychological pain and a disconnection from my body and life. But that's nobody's business really. I shouldn't have to justify my coping methods. Not when they're the only thing keeping me alive.

Ira also has a conversation with Roxanne Gay, whose experience with being fat is very different from West's. Her being a black woman places her on a lower echelon of the fat-pyramid, as does her degree of fatness.

Ira GlassYou draw a distinction among different kinds of fatness. Can I have you talk about that? 

Roxane Gay
Yeah, I mean, I think there are different kinds of fatness. There's the person who's maybe 20 pounds overweight, who's fine as they are. But if they want to lose weight, they just need to go on Slim Fast for a couple weeks or something. 

And then you have people who are-- I like to call them Lane Bryant fat, which means they can still buy clothes at Lane Bryant, which goes up to 28 in size. And they're the ones I find that are often the strongest cheerleaders of, this is who I am, and, you have to take me as I am and respect me because of my body not despite it. And I admire that a great deal. But I think it's easier to feel that way when you have multiple places where you can buy clothes and feel pretty and move through the world.

Ira Glass
And you noted, Lindy is what you call Lane Bryant fat. She told me she was a size 22. 

Roxane Gay
Yeah, I mean, and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I just mean she has access to spaces that people like me do not. 

Ira Glass
Because what's your situation? 

Roxane Gay
There's another level. I mean, then there's when you're super morbidly obese, where you can't really even find stores that can accommodate you. You don't fit in any public spaces, like movie theaters, public bathrooms, so on and so forth. 

Ira Glass
Is the official name of what you are morbidly obese? That's the medical term? 

Roxane Gay
No, the medical term is super morbidly obese.

Ira Glass
It's so mean. 

Roxane Gay
Yes, it is. It's mean. It's dehumanizing. 

Ira Glass
How much weight would you have to lose to be Lane Bryant fat? 

Roxane Gay
200 pounds.

This episode does not even go into the medicalization of fat bodies. Experiences accessing care when you're fat is a landmine. Everything is blamed on your being fat. Fatphobia in doctor's offices is real. A good friend of mine has called me countless times crying because of the atrocious experiences she's had with various specialists because of her weight. She went vegan and did a juice cleanse once, trying to get as healthy as she could, and her sudden weight loss was then used to describe her as being unstable - there is no correct way to have a body. Everything we do is suspect.

I hope you take the time to listen to the episode yourself. My overview here does it a great disservice. Act Two features stories by Elna Baker that really hit close to home, especially in the raw dialogue she has with her new husband. 

I've ordered West's Shrill, and also pre-ordered Hunger by Gay.

I have stories of my own. Many. I don't know if here and now is where to divulge all of it, but I'll write on it in the future. It's worth flushing out. Expanding on.

Exercises to "bust" your depression.

I don't love the title to this. It's click-batey. I get that it's the joke, but it bugs me.

Depression-Busting Exercise Tips For People Too Depressed To Exercise by Sarah Kurchak. 

Her piece is good though. She talks about the infuriating reality of being told to exercise when you're going through a depression.

When it comes to having a mental illness, the G.I. Joe doctrine is meaningless: Knowing what will help you isn't close to half the battle. It’s a tenth of the battle, at best. Most people with depression are already aware—often too aware—of all the things we could or should be doing to combat our condition. But where the well-meaning mentally healthy person sees a straightforward progression toward improvement, we see the paradox: yes, if we could do those things, it might help our depression, but not being able to do those things is a major part of being depressed.

I think neurotypical people just don't get that. How ambition and energy just evaporate. It takes all of your energy to just do the most "routine" of things.

When you’re depressed (you're navigating) a labyrinth of garbage fires fuelled by physical and mental exhaustion, self-loathing, defeat, and frustration.

Well, balls. This is me right now. I'm going to bed at 9 pm and am just exhausted most of the day. One of the pieces pull quotes just got it and fucking nailed it to the wall.

If you’re staying alive, you’re already doing the hardest workout imaginable.

Preach.

Getting bodied.

This is not just a reason to post a Beyoncé video.




... though you should watch this immediately because Beyoncé­.

What does my body actually look like? by Amy Stephenson is really well written. There's a lot of it I recognize myself in. It's just a great snippet of what it's like to think about your body all the time.

Never the "Pretty Girl" by Carlyn Hill kind of hit the nail on the head for a lot of us, I think. There are pretty girls, and then there's everyone else. It's just a different life experience. Cue the Ani DiFranco song.

‘I Felt Both And Neither’: Reflections On The Gender Binary by Naseem Jamnia is another great piece to end this triptych. Gender representation has always been a weird one for me personally, as has sexuality, the way I'm read is not how I would identify, and the way I identify does not mesh well (I feel) with my sexuality.

Bodies and identity are on a spectrum. And the looser we allow those definitions to be, the happier we'll all be (I think, I mean I don't know a ton about happiness, lol). 

Can we just "golden-girls-it" now?

This weekend was a good one.

I took Friday off to head over to a friend's office. She has her own design studio and has a corner dedicated to photography. She has experience as a photographer, and she gave a couple of hours to a friend and I to try and get some decent head-shots for Linkedin and for website use.

She actually rents her office space above a restaurant owned and operated by a former classmate of ours, so we all ended up having lunch, and people started calling people and we ended up having dinner and drink at her loft later on.

It was just nice seeing everyone, and being unexpectedly social.

Saturday I had a dinner party planned for three good friends of mine. Two of which had never met. So it was just a really nice time, filled with chat and giggles and a new 2 month old baby who cooed a lot.

It really reinvigorated me. It can be so nice, being surrounded by friends. It can take a lot of energy out of me, but it was nice.

There were high points and low points during both events, since it seems like everyone is doing really well, and getting their shit together, and I'm not. I'm still struggling. I find that very difficult. Comparison makes a terribly view of the world, I know, but I couldn't help but feel like the limping party.

I know that the way I feel about my body is something that affects me negatively daily, but I'm not sure how to move forward. I want to be pro-active, but I have so little energy.

Why is having a body so difficult for me?

Misophonia.

An article over on Motherboard had me reading up on Misophonia.

Misophonia is described as being a hatred of sound, specifically in this case the sound of other people's mouths. I can relate to this, since I absolutely detest the sound of someone chewing gum, especially if they have a lot of saliva in their mouth. Sucking teeth, sucking face, or a dog licking itself can all drive me nuts, and have me feeling in characteristically rage-y.

But is it a disorder?

The article itself says that there's a "lack of scientific consensus on whether or not misophonia is an actual psychological disorder" or just a "shared annoyance." The article quotes Arjan Schröder, a psychiatrist at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam:

... for the people that come here, the symptoms are so severe that they are clearly suffering. They can't eat together with others, sleep in the same room, or even go to work. Misophonia has so much effect on them, that they start avoiding places. And that only makes it worse. 

It usually starts around 13 or 14, when most psychiatric disorders start occurring. It occurs in families, so there's probably also a genetic component. And finally, it's a problem in which a connection is made between a neutral sound and an aversive emotion. It's a conditioning process: if you're in a problematic situation regularly enough, and start avoiding that situation, it gets worse and worse.

I don't think I'm living with Misophonia, I think I have a real intense pet peeve that gives me rage and makes me want to scratch out my own ears and tell the person they're the fucking worst thing to ever happen to me. 

Then again maybe I am somewhere on the spectrum.

It's my body.

Sometimes I have to own it. Source.

Friending your body.

Source.

Dreading the number.

These days I've not been feeling great.
Trying to stay positive. I don't plan on weighing myself, but I thought this gif was nice.
Gif by Juulbirdx but her blog seems down.Via.

Taking care of a body I've been killing in my mind.

I had shitty experience this morning. While walking to work I got told I was tub of lard who looked pregnant. It's been a while since I've been harassed on the street. I'll get snide looks every once in a while, but being actually yelled at is rare. I think the last time that happened it was a car-full of teenage boys who yelled at me to get liposuction.

Granted when I was thinner and more traditionally attractive I'd get cat called, but it wasn't so aggressive and angry. It was a different kind of harassment. I didn't feel the hatred in their tone. I felt their disrespect and misogyny, but not their hatred of me.

 

I'm already in a bit of a depressive pass these days. It's been 2-3 days already. His comments didn't push me further along, they can of just absorbed into me. I mean, my mind goes off in all sorts of direction.

It's clearly gendered, it's always males who feel they have the right, and the need to tell me I'm fat and it bothers them. I guess, if I were thin, and more appropriately attractive, they'd then yell at me to smile, or say something crude and sexually suggestive. That happens too.

I'm just at such a weird fork in the road these days. I feel stuck about my physical health. I go through spurts of having energy and wanting to properly take care of myself, but then I go through hard times and all I wanna do is die.

How can I commit to clean eating and exercise when I struggle daily with feelings of detachment and hopelessness?

The friends I have who are physically healthy work out a lot, and eat really well, and are super excited about life! I am not super excited about life!

And because I have a history rooted in an eating disorder, I have trouble approaching health and weight-loss from a moderate place. I end up wanting to go "all in" or being overly hard on myself.

For me to be a size 7-8 I was bulimic and exercising nearly daily!

Now, as things are, if I eat well, and exercise lightly, I feel better and less bloated, but I don't lose weight.

So, if I change my diet to be stricter, and exercise more, I might loose a bit of weight, or I might not at all. My mind then has this desire to become more militant, and my internal monologue tells myself that well, "you're just going to have to eat really little."

I'm sure my natural weight is still chubby. But I also have no idea. I haven't had a healthy body for over a decade.

I feel like there's a layer of stubbornness built into my fat. It's not being rounder. I think I could live being chubby and not thin. It's not about being thin.

I can be happy and round.

But, I would like to be able to fit into standard clothing sizes. I would like to be able to exercise regularly to curb my anxiety and depression, and to feel better about myself. Right now I avoid exercise classes because I'm so out of shape, and I'm embarrassed and uncomfortable. I would like to be able to be physically more comfortable (going up stairs, movie theatre seating, certain restaurant or bar benches or stools).

I'd like to know that when I go to the doctor, the first thing out of their mouth won't be about my weight. Studies have shown that fat women are often discriminated against in the medical community. But the same thing goes for the academic community and the job market. On average we make 10,000$ less than a thin counterpart. We're assumed to be lazy. I'm not fun to look at.

I'd like to put fat shaming and fat phobia out of my mind. I mean, in the case of fat phobia and homophobia, any time I've encountered it personally or seen it, it's never phobic like arachnophobia, where folks are scared, it's aggressive, hostile, mean spirited and sometimes just vitriol. I've not encountered violence personally yet, but I've been afraid countless times.

I also believe that fat-activism is important, and that the research regarding fat health is increasingly present and positive. My relationship with fat-activism is strained. I do 100% support the cause, but personally I have a lot of shame and self-hatred regarding my body. I'm trying to remedy that, but it's a process. It's not coming naturally to me.

The commitment needed to lose a significant amount of weight takes commitment to yourself and to your future. Things I'm struggling with. I have so much trouble looking forward to my life.

.

You won't be as sad, but you'll gain weight, which will make you sad.

Scientific American has an article on psychiatric drugs and their relation to weight gain. The article says it isn't unusual to gain 20 to 35 pounds over a year or so. It goes on to say:

Depression itself, however, is linked with an increased risk of becoming obese, according to a 2010 analysis that included more than 58,000 people. The reverse holds true as well, the study found; obese people are more likely to suffer from depression. As a result, “it is easy to misattribute the weight gain to a medicine when, in fact, it may largely be related to the illness being treated,” cautions Richard Shelton, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

I'm not in a good place this week. I feel bloated and swollen and just exhausted. I have a good week and walk a lot and do some yoga and eat well, and then something happens and I just feel like shit physically and it all feels like work that doesn't actually translate to feeling better.

I feel sick. I feel like there's something wrong with my physically, on top of the emotional pain.

Yesterday I got home and my brain was just so fuzzy. I felt like I was listening to two people talk at the same time. I was overwhelmed. My mother saw it in my face. I was in a similar state Tuesday night too, which she mentioned. I just said, "I feel fuzzy, and weird," while tapping on my forehead.

I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday (the appointment had been cancelled and moved twice over this summer). I've now been on the new medication since early June, so I need to re-visit that with him. I took the day off, so I can sleep in and then drive there. It'll make my week shorter.

Not having any vacation this summer is also getting me down. I need a break. I want to shut down for a few days. I want fresh air and quiet.

I want to go to there:

Depressed! Incensed! Inflamed!

My buddy J sent me an article about the link between inflammation and depression. The article is pretty revolutionary for me. The article over on Feel Guide, New Research Discovers That Depression Is An Allergic Reaction To Inflammation points to, well, you can probably tell by the title of the article. They kind of let the cat out of the bag while announcing, "We're letting this cat out of this bag!"

The article also re-directs to the following articles:

Depression May Be Caused by Inflammation over on Nova. Nova's Tim De Chant
 starts by contextualizing inflammation and depression.

Inflammation is our immune system’s natural response to injuries, infections, or foreign compounds. When triggered, the body pumps various cells and proteins to the site through the blood stream, including cytokines, a class of proteins that facilitate inter-cellular communication. It also happens that people suffering from depression are loaded with cytokines. Which has some scientists thinking that depression may be a side effect of inflammation.

Is Your Diet Making You Anxious or Depressed? over at Kripalu points to inflammation as a key ingredient to well-being, and fingers processed food as a major culprit to said inflammation and anxiety.

Could Depression Actually Be Nothing More Than an Allergic Reaction? over at Vice:

The thesis is simple: Everyone feels like shit when they're sick. That ennui we feel when we're unwell—listlessness, lack of enthusiasm, troubled sleep, tearfulness, and a general feeling of wading through tar—is apparently known among psychologists as "sickness behavior." Our bodies are pretty intelligent, see—they behave this way so that we stop, lie still, and let our system fight whatever infection of virus has us croaking for Gatorade on the couch. 

These kinds of emotional responses are also typical of depression, though. So, scientists are asking: If sick people feel and act a lot like depressed people, might there be a link?

The majority of the heavy lifting was done by Caroline Williams in Is depression a kind of allergic reaction? over at The Guardian UK. She quotes George Slavich, a clinical psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles early on:

"I don’t even talk about it as a psychiatric condition any more,” he says. “It does involve psychology, but it also involves equal parts of biology and physical health.”

This could absolutely change the way depression is treated. The following bit was especially poignant for me:

Add this to the fact that stress, particularly the kind that follows social rejection or loneliness, also causes inflammation, and it starts to look as if depression is a kind of allergy to modern life – which might explain its spiralling prevalence all over the world as we increasingly eat, sloth and isolate ourselves into a state of chronic inflammation.

I've often thought of depression as an allergy to modern life.  Especially when paired with anxiety. It seems generations are increasingly depressed and anxious. This is no doubt correlated to something.

Though some in these articles focus on inflammation as a body-based reaction, there's still the issue of diet that can't be ignored:

A diet rich in trans fats and sugar has been shown to promote inflammation, while a healthy one full of fruit, veg and oily fish helps keep it at bay. Obesity is another risk factor, probably because body fat, particularly around the belly, stores large quantities of cytokines.

This speaks to me, my being fat, and my less than stellar diet. It doesn't paint a whole picture though. I've also gone through period of being very healthy and being terribly depressed.

The good news is that the few clinical trials done so far have found that adding anti-inflammatory medicines to antidepressants not only improves symptoms, it also increases the proportion of people who respond to treatment, although more trials will be needed to confirm this. There is also some evidence that omega 3and curcumin, an extract of the spice turmeric, might have similar effects. Both are available over the counter and might be worth a try, although as an add-on to any prescribed treatment – there’s definitely not enough evidence to use them as a replacement.

This will be interesting to discuss with my Dr. I'm going to mail him a copy of the article (snail mail because he's at a weird old-school office! What fun!).

I think the most promising bit of all this (other than my projecting to a future where I'm not in so much psychological pain) is that Carine Pariante, a psychiatrist from Kings College London estimates we're 5 to 10 years away from a blood test that could measure inflammation in depressed folks. This could help so many people, so easily.

There's more to it, we'll know more eventually - if there's such thing as a cure, does it make it easier to hang on? I think so.