Could you change it if you wanted ...

I'm in the least lonely place, sitting alone, at a table for 10. It could be 180 calories, maybe 120, that I'm drinking. A girl with wild curls just sat down across from me. I never drank coffee until last year because its magical powers didn't find me until then. Calories and I aren't enemies, not friends, but I accept them for they don't haunt my days and nights like they have. Oh, the girl with curls has a friend sitting next to her now. I feel like a dinosaur when I'm around young people and their wireless everything...but, I don't understand how the music goes wireless-ly to my ears from my phone, so, I'll stick with my headphones until I do. 


We went ahead and got married 12 days ago, my husband and I. Interestingly enough, I can't tolerate wearing contacts and my blue tortoise shell frames didn't go with my dress. So, I went without both and hoped I didn't run into our beautifully decorated arbor on my way to wedded bliss. All evening, I saw shadows of waving hands and happy faces (I think?) but unless someone walked directly up to me, I hadn't the slightest who they were. I wore a big, fat, half-sober smile all night just in case I missed a wave. We had the best time and didn't realize how many people loved us....enough to go all the way to Siloam Springs, Arkansas and eat our Giraffe cake and watch our first dachshund prelude my dad and I's entrance. I'm prone to creating and later illustrating anxiety when in situations surrounded by large number of folks. I mean, really, who isn't? I started panicking after making it down the isle because I instantly knew I couldn't talk to everyone. Oh, then, Mike's dinner spilled on his handsome new suit...before pictures. 

Now, I have two more people sitting at my table for 10. The girl laughs and the guy is tapping his feet before he jumps up to retrieve his coffee--black, no sugar, he also wears a cardigan with elbow patches. 

I pass by a stop light each day that grows grass around it in order for people to sit who are holding signs asking for help. It's next to a Hardees and Harps grocery store and my mom really loved both those places. Today, I made a U turn to go around this light so I could get a better look at the man holding up a broken piece of cardboard. It's really what makes me need to sit down and re-create the calmness I had before I saw him. . why I am sitting here writing. 

"I have some ideas!" The girl says to the guy with the elbow patches on his cardigan. I had to turn my acoustic playlist up before I started over indulging in her big ideas and forget to tell you about mine. .

Five years ago, I was at a horribly rainy Razorback football game with some friends, scheming ways to get out of staying. Unbeknownst to me, at that time, I would find my escape when my mother called me, panic upon her. She needed to tell that as soon as I got home, I needed to call her so she could explain what had happened. Fast forward because the minor details involve me being angry, rude, and impatient with my mother. 

John Mayer writes, sings, and plays most of my "favorite songs". One that I play loud in my ears (from my wired headphones) often is called, "In The Blood". 

. . . How much of my mother has my mother left in me?
..........How much of my love will be insane to some degree?
. . . . . . . And what about this feeling that I'm never good enough?
.................Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood

When my mom went to rehab few months or so after they released me from my 4 months of tortured "treatment" (eating disorders go to treatment drugs go to rehab, I dunno), she had this counselor who thought of me as satan (or so I decided). As I best recall, I went to visit mom on a Wednesday afternoon. As a real neat surprise (laughing), I was stopped at the door and told I had to meet with my mom's counselor before I could see her. It was summer time and I had on a giant t shirt and shorts because I didn't trust clothing labels and felt I was actually much larger than scales, other people, etc reported. Okay, I had been busy dreaming about the baked potato, spray butter, broccoli with ketchup crown I was going to pick apart and enjoy after this treacherous visit. But then, I had to push back this potato date further and still I struggle with other people getting in the way of my meal times (forgive me). 

There's a man who frequents this place (as do I) and has all of his belongs next to him, pulling on a single roller bag. He just got a refill on his dragon fruit tea. I wonder when the last time was he had a solid conversation with another person? I hope it was earlier today. You know, we were created to fulfill relationships.... healthy ones, maybe even destructive ones. Where would you be without those bad ones that taught you who you were and what you stood for? I'd be so far gone, promise that. Fall apart, then you can come back as everything you needed.

I use both sides of my brain all day long (so do you) and have to categorize how I develop my ideas for written order. I get tangled up in my ideas I guess. 

Sitting down in this crummy counselor's office was not on my calendar and I already knew I didn't care for this fella. My mom just "loved working with him" which meant she had manipulated him into believing she was "fine" and wasn't really an alcoholic. Which, is what happens when you are still comfortable with your addiction. I'll attest. I ended up letting this guy temporarily destroy me with his intervention of choice (ignorance, if you will). "If you could get control of yourself and start eating, your mother wouldn't be struggling with her depression as she is."

cue the tears, cue the body shaming, cue the destruction and take away that longed for baked potato date. 

(depression, not alcoholism, not both)

When I got home and called my mom, after that rainy football game, she didn't answer. Not until the next day did I ever hear from her. You know why? She had been locked in her own damn shed by her erroneous boyfriend who had stolen her phone and most definitely haulted any contact with her to me. I found her in her back yard, drunk, exhausted, but happy to see me. I never got the full details of what happened on so many of these occasions with him until she had found a week of sobriety months later. We had to get out phone  numbers changed and she got a restraining order (which did nothing for her) to keep this monster away from her and I. Weeks later, he showed up in his now forgotten red truck and I ran out of her house (in a towel, mad as hell) and he swiftly drove off. That's what he always did. He ran away and came back. Just like the alcohol. Always coming back in our lives. 

The guy with the cardboard. He didn't have a red truck, only a sign and a look I'd like to forget. Even with my glasses on, I mistakenly saw him for the old, wretched boyfriend. My heart melted past my diaphragm and only started beating again when I was past Hardees and my thoughts were safe. My mom was safe. I was safe. What was I going to say to him if it was, indeed, the boyfriend. Would I start screaming, shouting, crying, having a complete and colorful meltdown? I don't know. Would I close my eyes (and stop my car) and pray for strength to protect my freedom (jail would not suit me) and find courage to move on? From my anger, resent, fear, sadness...the things no one welcomes. 


Would I change the way I think if I wanted?

Would you?

I think so. I believe so. 

It's only fair to figure out what holds us back and find out how to march throughout, over it, and beyond it. 


Because as terribly sickening and hard as these things (so called, things) are....

you (and your thoughts) 
are
completely
up
to
you


Now it's only the guy in the elbow-patched cardigan sitting nearby.

 I'm feeling less likely to skip my dinner and more likely to add cheese to whatever I eat. 

Thank God for destructiveness that creates space inside you for happiness (and potatoes),


Cortney Sisco (formerly Ellis)

P.S Courtney Garrett Photography out of Fayetteville, Arkansas took our wedding photos......and she's perfect. 

:)

Protection from evil spirits and bride stealing....

In the early 80's, there was a girl (who was my mom) and a guy (may dad) and they decided to get married. The girl went to JC Penny's and bought a long, cream dress with long-sleeved laced corset top. The guy picked out a suit he probably already owned and found a tie to match. 

In my mom's parent's living room, there stood a preacher, my mom with a small bouquet of flowers, and my dad, hoping the ceremony would end as quickly as possible. 

When I was a little girl, I loved browsing through  my mom's closet, especially when I reached the back, home to her formal dresses. I was always so impressed by the texture, the length, and the detail on two particular dresses. When I was in trouble, my best hiding spot was in the back of the closet, close behind those dresses. I don't recall ever being found when hiding with those dresses, one time, even waking up after a long hiatus of hiding from punishment and not being found.

When my sweet fiance put this gorgeous ring on my finger, little did I know what all would come with our engagement. Dress shopping,wedding cake tasting, flower searching. All of it only things I've dreamed of, hoped for. 

My mom told me a few details about her wedding, but, mostly just told me that she hoped I would wear a big, fancy dress. That my family would get along well enough to all be around each other during the ceremony. That it would be a special day. 

Now that I'm engaged, I find myself missing my mom, needing my mom, in a different way than I ever have. I guess tradition tells us that this is a time a mom and daughter can form another special bond. In the last several weeks, instead of enjoying the planning, the engagement, I have mourned the fact that I don't have my mom and I am completely alone in this stage of my life (even though i'm not). Bad mood, irritable, just not fun to be around..

I decided to spend some time figuring out why/how/whats of weddings to re-gain some control and make this whole wedding planning business fun..and not a constant punch-in-the-stomach reminder of not having my mom around to help me do everything...."right". 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 


Ancient Egyptians, clustered in the fertile lands along the Nile, collected flowers in their travels and venerated the local lotus. The symbolic lotus appears widely in Egyptian art and may have been a wedding decoration. Marriages were simple, civil agreements then, and archaeological discoveries show only that Egyptian brides carried thyme and garlic as a shield against evil spirits.

Brides carried sheaths of wheat, a statement of and supplication for fertility. Those hand-tied stalks were often embellished with other grains, branches of fruiting or nut trees, anything to signal abundance and foretell happiness, good fortune and lots of children.

A custom from the Tudor period -- 1485 to 1603, within the Elizabethan Age -- was a feature of wedding receptions called the "kissing knot." This is a ball of blossums, sometimes studded with greenery, suspended over the bride-and-groom's section of the head table. Kissing knots hold the same mystique and custom as sprigs of mistletoe  tacked over doorways - the lucky couple who comes together under them is entitled to a kiss. In the case of the wedding knot, the flowers are a reminder of romance and the promise of a long and faithful marriage.

Ever wonder why bridesmaids are often asked to wear matching dresses to support the bride during the processional? Me, too. I found some interesting info on Southernliving.com and it went like this:

 "It wasn't always to ensure the bride stood out, while her best pals donned over-priced, never-to-be-worn-again gowns. Quite the opposite, as bridesmaids originally wore similar dresses to the bride to confuse her exes and outsmart evil spirits. That way, the evil spirits wouldn't know which woman in the group was getting married."

As far as bridesmaid duty, in early Roman times, bridesmaids would line up to form somewhat of a protective shield while walking the bride to the groom's village. The group of women, who were similarly dressed, were expected to intervene if any vengeful paramours tried to hurt the bride or steal her dowry. 

And you know the tradition of preserving the top tier of the wedding cake for the couple to save for their first anniversary?  Did you know that saving the cake was also tied to having a baby?.....

 Way back when, people assumed  that the bride would have a baby within a year. The idea of saving the top the half of cake was so the newlyweds wouldn’t have to buy a celebratory dessert to announce the pregnancy or birth.

I've decided to break some rules. To make my (our, sorry Mike) wedding with its own traditions. Queen Elizabeth wore a red wedding dress instead of white. Maybe i'll wear yellow. Maybe not.
 However, instead of letting myself sit alone and wonder "would planning a wedding with me make my mom feel more loved by me? would she feel loved enough to get the help she needed? would we have developed the relationship I begged fate to bring us?" I'm going to celebrate that someone wants to spend his life with me (and my dogs) and be grateful for the ladies in my life who can/will/do all this "mom" stuff. 

Of course, we'll listen to the Eagles at our wedding, because, my mom would request that...every, single, time. 

Every night
I'm lying in bed
Holdin' you close in my dreams
Thinkin' about all the things that we said
And comin' apart at the seams
We try to talk it over
But the words come out too rough
I know you were tryin'
To give me the best of your love

-Eagles, The Best of My Love

Not together; but getting there. Still.

Last year, I packed my Birkenstocks, rain gear, retainers, and all the wrong clothing (because international weather woahs) and went to Poland and Germany. I have a liking towards split-second decision making. When I am folding laundry, I often times look at the map on wall to my left and catch a glimpse of the countries that home the people I met on that trip. . .

Australia, floating on my map brings me to my friend who walked through Auschwitz-Birkenau with me and said my shared thoughts, but with the most pleasant accent. I had been robbed the morning before and didn’t make the time to get money to buy breakfast in Krakow, so, I left for the journey with no food or money. Sometimes I do stupid things like that with the unconscious suggestion that I can go a day without eating.  On the two hour trip back to Krakow, I sat next to my new friend and evidently drooled over his apple and not Subway sandwich long enough for him to force them over to me. What do you even talk about with someone who you met at a tour of a concentration camp? Kangaroos, koalas, and whether or not Americans really drink purple soda.

The young Polish tour guide who walked us through the death camp stood right beside me and told us what happened to the vast majority of babies born in Auschwitz. As if a rehearsed speech, she described to us so many horrific scenes, things you struggle to believe to be fact. While standing next to 3 level bunk "bed", we were told how the SS (Schutzstaffel--Nazi military) roughly delivered human babies of prisoner's and immediately drowned them. In whatever bucket available, forcing the new mother to watch. Two people, the Australian and I, not knowing even each other’s last names, experiencing this unimaginable nature of the human condition, of the depths of despair, the history of mankind. 

Silently panicking on my first night in Berlin, I sat in a tiny red chair in the lobby of my hostel (Circus Hostel, wonderful place) and hadn’t a clue how I was going to interpret my map to locate a place to eat dinner. Stomach demanding I find food, I walked up to a girl checking in and asked her if she wanted to go eat with me. “Yes!” siiiiiigh of relief.  She was in college, and was going to meet up with her boyfriend in London later that week. She laughed at the way I talked but liked that I took pictures of the flowers on the streets.

The two girls from the UK who were 21 and traveling Europe before graduate school. We met some other English speakers and went on a tour of Berlin together the next day. All roaming the streets together, taking pictures at Big Ben, enjoying the togetherness of English-speaking company. How refreshing to sit at a table with people from 5 different countries, traveling independently, and have an understanding for each of our individual need to travel the world. No "why would you travel alone? Isn't it lonely?" But instead, "what country will you travel to next?"

 The girl from France who looked identical to one of my best friends here. She said I looked like an American cheerleader who dated jocks. She told me she liked to go out to clubs until 4 A.M. and dance with her girlfriends. I liked her. I hope I see her again. 

My newfound friend from Columbia who told me all about her dad’s new wife, the one who is pregnant with a new baby, 23 years her junior. Her and I walked through a cemetery that was parallel to a row of remains of the Berlin Wall. I took pictures of the head stones and flowers and she didn't think I was weird; she pointed out better shots, no time line, no reason to hurry. The fear she had about the president of the United States changing the peace treaties with her country. She bought postcards, I bought stationary. She laughed when I had to run ahead to take pictures of German dachshunds. She is just who you want to meet one day when traveling alone in Berlin.


I made a new friend a few months ago. She's from here, from America. She's ten years behind me chronologically, but so similar, still. Before we met, we already knew so much about each other. I was miles ahead of her journey, but on the same path, we shared similar stops. Of course she had on a baggy sweat shirt that swallowed her entirely. Black coffee, drinking it with confidence as those beans don’t create energy by means of calories.

When I was in third grade, I spent so many days crying while trying to figure out the complexity that was long division. It was impossible, pointless, and entirely out of my reach. I watched the other kids (especially my genius best friend) worry-free faces as they worked the problems on their work sheets. I had tear spots on my papers because I just could not get it.

My new friend, she wore jeans, baggy and covered with those frayed holes. She couldn’t sit still. Fidgeting with her straw. “Can I ask you a question?” followed by, “were you scared to gain weight? Did it feel impossible? Do you think recovery is a real thing?”

As I would sit across from her, drinking 150 calories of flavored latte, I wondered if the people who tried to help me during my darkest days felt like I did right then. She was Confused. Scared. Emotional. Alone. I felt the same in regards to the distance her eating disorder created between us.
 Some call it survivor’s remorse. The feeling of “why me”, do I deserve this freedom from the chains that completely held me down most of my life? Offering her suggestions and then seeing her blank stares as they bounced off of her right back at me. “It feels impossible." And I know that feeling...so deeply I know it. It doesn’t seem real.. because misery, misery will find you when you eat 3 meals and then sit. You are surrounded by the vulnerability, the loneliness, the fear of the unknown. Never did I see myself as someone who spoke of "recovery". I never believed in it; why would I? I didn't know what it meant, where to look for it, or how to accept it. 

But. I’ve been working towards recovery from an eating disorder since I jumped on a life boat and checked myself into another treatment center. Hundreds and hundreds of my days spent in a hospital and treatment centers. I decided I live or I die and I wanted desperately to find out how to live. Eating things like bulgur wheat, squash pizza, and morning glory muffins. Learning that my eating disorder was something my mind created to keep me alive. Because when you aren’t old enough to understand trauma, your body memorizes it and keeps bringing it up by way of disordered everything. Your body, it never forgets.  In order to survive, our homeostatic bod creates a strategy. Without knowing it, your brain has been re-wired. Control becomes a way of life. Establishing control over anything, especially your own damn body, is how it keeps keepin’ on.

After my mom died, I ran quickly back to an abusive relationship and hoped for completeness in the return of its chaos. I pushed away family, friends and the frontal lobe of my brain (you know, rational decision making). I got lost in the whirlwind of disorder and dysfunction. I didn’t know how to live anymore. I realized my attempts at actually “recovering” had been incomplete. I hadn’t been able to rationalize recovery.  I was too scared to let go. I needed the control the eating disorder provided me. I needed self-destruction. It fueled me.

My new friend is sick. She knows it. She is scared of who she even is without her eating disorder. She’s 21 and scared of what everyone will say about her when they find out she isn’t just skinny. She’s starving herself to death in order to try and stay alive.

Like many other times, we recently sat across from each other at our favorite coffee shop. I start the conversation about anything I can grasp on to that isn’t her eating disorder. I want to find her, first. When you share your life with a mental illness, it’s crucial to find you first (so, dig if you must, but don’t forget about you). This time, I couldn’t. All I could do was try to stop my tears from falling down my face. My friend checked herself in to treatment last week. The reality of treatment for an eating disorder is gruesome and terrifying. Spending months at a time surrounded by professionals who are paid to discuss your trauma, your underneath-it-all pain. She can do it. She will do it because she won’t be alone.

“If you don’t change your mind, you will never change anything”, said Winston Churchill. We all wander around this world wondering who, if anyone understands our specific pain. Questioning our ability to ever really be “okay”…we compare our joys and fears as if hoping to reach a conclusion. We all have such a tremendous amount to offer and give to one another, but, we get stuck in our own heads; hoping to keep our heads above sometimes murky water. When we stop to listen/see, it’s unbelievable how alike we all are. We have the same needs, wants and so on and so forth. But, what’s even more unbelievable is how different we all are: how unique each of us is and how important that makes us. Spend time getting to know yourself enough to tell your story and be proud of it. To use it as a life raft for someone starting at square one of the struggle you have stumbled through and over.  We were created to be connected. To share our stories and ideas and mystery meat sandwiches. We all have something to say that matters.

So…. Say it. Do it.

Cortney