Here I am, seated at the sofa feeling lazy as fuck. Finding every excuse not to do my school work.
My excuse is the weather. It’s snowing and maybe if I check all the weather apps enough there will be a snow day! No classes, yeah!!!
The detail is that I am the teacher! No, not teacher, the professor!
Yes, I teach 2D Design Monday mornings at a local community college and now a student is texting me!
Yes, again! I do give my cell phone number to my students and tell them to text me!
You see, I consider myself an interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and researcher.
This means that I don’t believe that learning happens for 15 weeks from 9 to 12:50 on Mondays, with a 20 min break. Learning happens any time, all the time and takes a long time. So I share my cell with my students and tell them text me.
Now back to the student’s text.
The student texted me asking about her grade. I make it available online every week and somehow hers is lower than she expected.
I text her back saying it is probably because I haven’t updated the grades yet. I tell her I’m feeling lazy but she is motivating me to update the grades.
What I don’t tell her is the reason why I am feeling lazy.
I had sugar! Lot’s of sugar and I usually control my sugar intake so my body is crashed!
I have eating disorder. I think I always had.
As a child I hated eating but sugar had always had an impact on me. Dessert was the reward for eating real food. I could have been a Pavlov poster child. I guess I can still be a granny poster child since I can’t finish a meal without some kind of sweet as reward after.
I am a great learner
Sweets were, are my drug of choice. Creamy, with different textures. No occasion needed.
I have ADHD so even though I was always roundish, I was never really morbid obese but I could have been because I had no boundaries!
I remember a break up where I cried listening to music and ate two full cakes with ice cream in a three-day period. The caveat was that I can’t stay still so listening to music meant dancing. So I ate cake and danced…
I hide to eat. I stole food. Not really food sweets. At my best friends Claudia and Patricia – twins house there was always chocolate wafer cookies, sandwich cookies, and boy I ate them.
I taught kindergarten and pre k for several years and I ate all the children’s left over cookies and fancy yogurts.
But growing up and even in my early twenties I didn’t know I stole sweets or hide to eat them. I guess stealing made me believe that I didn’t eat the sweets.
Although the feeling after eating stolen sweets is like of bad sex with a stranger. Something like the excitement of the exchange mixed with the loss of time, energy and dignity.
The first time I became aware that I had a serious problem was when I youngest son, who at the time was around 3 years old found me eating under the dinning room table and asked. Mum what are you doing there. It made no sense to him and his understanding of the absurdity of the situation made me feel younger and more immature than him. The learning. I learned something that I knew my whole life but I didn’t know. So after that situation I started to work on myself to eat my junk at least in front of them.
Although it took me another 25 years to be able to really eat desserts/sweets in front of strangers.
One way I found around eating in public but still being in my cocoon was to eat when I was driving. So five or six years after the under the table incident, I was driving from Mount Kisco to Ossining. I had gone to Mt Kisco to get some very special before picking up my kids from school. Like a very special éclair. Or better several eclairs! So I buy a dozen and I am eating them all in the car, one after the other, and after the other, when the last one falls on the floor of the car. Note that the road is very winding. Claudia panics. The last one!!! NOOOO.
What is the obvious thing to do?
Take my eyes off the road, and go look for the eclair on the floor.
Did I say the road was very winding?
Yes, it was very winding and I lost control of the car!
I’m here so you know the outcome was OK. My guardian angels were on vigil and nothing happened to me, the car, to other cars, or the éclair (the 1 min rule was extended) and I was able to eat it. Nothing happened but everything happened. The sickness of the situation, the thought of nobody picking my kids up because of the 12th éclair on the floor and the fact that nonetheless I ate it – miss OCD eat it, was another priceless learning moment.
Houston, Claudia has a problem!! What to do?
I went and looked for solutions and found the Overeaters Anonymous. I did the 12 steps, and drove all over Westchester to attend meetings and was able to gain knowledge and understanding over my eating. But forgiving yourself is a hard and slow learning… it does not happen because we want to happen, just like with students.
The funny thing is that earlier, just before my student texted me I had spoken to my middle sister, who also has eating disorder, actually the three sisters have. I was motivating her to be gentle to herself. I told her not to worry much about any excess she had committed with food after all was thanksgiving. but to just write her food down on an app we share.
Hypocrite I tell myself!
I was half comatose because I had eaten two lemon bars and a pint of chocolate banana pudding the day before and beating myself up for the pleasure of eating the junk, for the regrets of abusing my body, for feeling sick by the sugar “hangover.” In the middle of hating myself there I was attempting to motivate my student, encouraging her to be gentle with herself but I still can’t be gentle with myself. In that moment I realize the learning that started two decades ago, because of my sister, is still being processed and developed but at least I have the awareness now that I need to be gentle with my own learning process.
And so I get out of the sofa, get my laptop and start grading my student.