Category: EDs

Should I fast for Lent if I have a history of EDs?, Part Two

February 13th, 2026

And now it’s almost Lent again, and, as always when a penitential season comes around, I am once again asking myself: what should I, as someone with a long history of EDs, do about the whole fasting thing?

I addressed this in a previous post, the tl;dr of which is: most people say that, if you have an ED, you shouldn’t fast from food, but find a different way to fast; to which the voice in my head replies: why? Isn’t it wimpy for me, as someone who struggled for 15+ years but is currently physically fine and in maintenance mode, to claim exemption from fasting? Isn’t that cheating? Wouldn’t the great ascetic saints, the ones who subsisted off Holy Communion alone, scoff at me? Wouldn’t the desert fathers laugh and roll their eyes? “My poor wittle mental health!, fasting might hurt my feewings!, I don’t wike myself, wah wah 🥺”, isn’t that pathetic of me?

(And for the record, as I’m sure anyone with an ED will understand: the voice in my head is only this critical with me — it is not talking about you (it’s like, “other people are allowed to exist, eat, feel, and be vulnerable, but NOT you!!, it’s lame and gross when you do it!”, etc., etc.; we’re all familiar with its double standard, aren’t we?). So I’m not making fun of anyone else, or calling anyone else pathetic — just narrating my own little weird mental process, which maybe some of you can relate to. If you have an ED history, I do NOT think that YOU should fast from food — you are obviously exempt. It’s only me who’s the fat pathetic loser, according to the inner voice.)

So: I’m always wondering: should I fast or no? Am I being hard on myself, or being too soft? What do I do??

Thankfully, I heard a really great sermon on Lenten practices recently, which shed some light on the matter. So here I am to write a follow-up to the post linked above, and to hopefully put this Question That Keeps Me Up At Night to rest once and for all.

In his sermon, this priest clarified some things about Lenten practices. For most of you Catholic readers, these will probably not be news, but I am an idiot and a bad Catholic who needs things boiled down to the basics and spelled out and at like a fourth grade reading level, so for me it was groundbreaking. I had never heard it explained this succinctly before.

Penance and mortification: both are things we resolve to do during Lent. Up until now, I’ve had a pretty nebulous idea of what these were. I thought that they were the same thing, essentially, and tbh never considered that that might not be true.

But actually, if I understood this priest correctly, there are differences between “penance” and “mortification.” The former is a work that we do to atone for past sins. The latter is a discomfort or inconvenience that we voluntarily take on in order to fight ongoing sin/temptation — to counteract a disordered tendency in our current life.

And he went on to explain that, to really have a fruitful Lent, we should practice these in a targeted, specific way, unique to our own personal situation. It’s not just “oh, I’m a sinner so I’ll give up sugar to make myself uncomfortable.” Lent is not about just being uncomfortable for the sake of being uncomfortable. It’s about removing obstacles to God’s grace. Which means that it’s much more useful if we look at our unique sins, imperfections, and bad habits, and tailor our Lenten practices to work against those.

Wow! No one had ever explained it to me like this before. W/r/t Lent, I’d always just been told “prayer, fasting, almsgiving.” Which is obviously good advice. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are things we should do more of, especially during Lent. But, this priest explained in his sermon, for maximum spiritual benefit, each individual should practice them in an intentional, specific, targeted way.

I’m just a stupid layperson, so what do I know, but: I feel like that’s a really important addendum.

It’s not necessarily a great idea to just tell everyone, in general: “you should fast.” Because what if someone is breastfeeding, or has a history of EDs (it’s me, I am both), or something else like that. “Just fast” is not good advice for that person. Similarly, “just give alms” might not be the best advice for someone with no money to give. Obviously we are all obligated to give money, but “just give more” isn’t always an option for everyone. Some people have to find other ways to be charitable. Humans are messy creatures and life is weird. So it’s complicated sometimes.

Which is why I asked in my previous post: what should someone in my situation do for Lent?

Thanks to this good priest, I see now that our penances and mortifications not only may, but should be tailored to our unique spiritual state, our unique weaknesses.

Maybe not every mortification is equally spiritually beneficial for every person. Someone who struggles with sloth might want to try waking up early and being productive every morning; someone who struggles to sit still in silence and solitude might want to schedule a block of quiet prayer time daily.

Fasting from food is a good practice for someone who has trouble practicing self-control with food. But if someone has the opposite problem, and has trouble letting go of control around food — well, it probably wouldn’t be spiritually beneficial for that person to fast from food, would it?

Which is not to say that I personally intend never to fast from food again. One day when I’m not pregnant or nursing, I look forward to fasting from food in some kind of way (a part of me looks forward to it a little too eagerly, if we’re being honest). But as it is right now, nursing a baby who has a sensitive gut, while also trying to sort of normalize after pregnancy, my diet and body image and mental health are such a touchy balancing act, which I am managing very carefully by only eating safe things at safe times — it’s just a real precarious tower of cards situation, right now — that I wonder if fasting from food just isn’t the wisest idea.

So what will I do then? Well, that will require me to look at myself and my life and figure it out.

But I’m glad that I can stop stressing about this particular question — at least, for this Lent. You’ll probably catch me yakking about it again come Advent.
Am I even a real person?: thoughts on veganism, Catholicism, parenting, & ED recovery

December 31st, 2025

Daily writing prompt
What are your feelings about eating meat?
View all responses

My personal thoughts on eating meat? Oh man. It’s such a complicated question, as are all food-related issues for someone with ED history. My stance on meat has changed so many times, in my thirty-six years. At this point I’m an herbivore who understands carnivores and kinda wishes she could be one. I’m also an accidentally, circumstantially militant vegan with an intentionally, philosophically militant vegan living inside me, whom I can unleash at will when the time feels right. I don’t know what I even identify as, or how to explain it. Where do I even begin!

1. ED-Fueled Vegetarianism

I guess a reasonable place to start would be the beginning of my vegetarianism — although, I don’t actually remember when that officially was. I kind of became one by accident, and then decided to make it official. The ED came first. I stopped eating pretty much anything, and then realized at some point that I’d become vegetarian (none of my safe foods happened to be meat), and I happily assumed that identity because (a) it was an excuse to say ‘no’ to food, much of the time, and (b) it made me feel morally unimpeachable, as if my weirdness about food was actually some noble and unselfish thing (it was not).

But so I was vegetarian as a teenager and into my twenties, on and off. My occasional attempts at “recovery,” when forced upon me, coincided with brief forays into meat-eating, as I was often advised not to enforce any hard “food rules” for the sake of my mental health. I had mixed feelings about that. For me eating meat was always a performative thing for myself, like “ha ha, look at me, I’m having a steak, I don’t care anymore!” Invisible middle fingers to the voices in my head. Needless to say, it wasn’t sustainable.

I think I briefly attempted veganism my junior or senior year of high school, simply out of curiosity; but I found it too demanding then, because dairy is something I’ve always really liked. It was, in fact, a cup of Fage Total with honey that finally swayed me from veganism back then. (Fage is, without question, the best Greek yogurt out there. I dunno what they do to make it so much better than other Greek yogurt; it’s like a different food entirely. No, I’m not being paid to say this.)

Anyway, about four years after that, I was sick of food freedom and its resulting fatness, and once again on a super restrictive diet and, lo and behold, decided to go vegan again. You see the pattern. I was very serious about it now, and really enjoyed it, and it became a huge part of my identity: reading the philosophy, supporting organizations like PETA, all of it. This phase lasted for a while, went away, and made a resurgence after my second child was born in 2021, then went away again. I can take it out of the box and put it on when I want to, then pack it back up.

2. The Dormant Angry Vegan

It’s interesting in retrospect to see how I was (and am) able to look at this belief system from the outside, having no particular emotional connection to it (sure I liked animals, who doesn’t?, but, I’ve never been an “animal lover” per se, nor a hippie nor an environmentalist, and it wasn’t like I’d ever had some heartbreaking, life-changing epiphany about the cruelty in the meat industry or whatever), and just think to myself on some level: “why yes, I think I could happily become a radical animal rights activist. That sounds logically sound and also kinda fun and cool; let’s do it!” And I did really believe it, all that PETA stuff. I read and loved “Animal Liberation” by Peter Singer and “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer. I did (and still do) find factory farms deeply appalling and depressing. I truly did get triggered and irritated by people who ate meat. I really did think it was simply an inexcusably ignorant thing to do, and that no meat-eater could ever really call themselves a good person. I completely believed that. (I feel differently about meat-eaters now; more on that later.)

I could step into this identity, but then, I could just turn it off at will. When I got bored of it, or needed a change in my food lifestyle for whatever reason. Which tells me that I could still do that at any time, if I chose to; if I decide to devote the mental energy to it. Vegan Mith still exists, in there, and if I feed her with vegan literature and vegan content, she will grow stronger. I very well might do this at some point in the future, but right now, I just feel a bit too maxed out, between raising little kids, managing the family meal plan and food budget, and trying to be a good Catholic — in which world it’s very uncommon, btw, and even frowned upon to be vegetarian.

I do think that if more Catholics were vegetarian/vegan, I’d probably let Vegan Mith rise to the surface again. Or if my husband, or anyone around me, were veggie. But no one in my life is veggie, so Vegan Mith doesn’t get a lot of stimulation or encouragement, and just lies dormant.

Which shows me something kind of interesting about myself. Apparently it’s true that either (a) my convictions are so feeble that I don’t bother living by them unless it’s amusing or others around me agree with it, or (b) I’m just a fundamentally weak person with few, if any, real convictions.

3. Accidentally Radical WFPB

These days, for the sake of convenience and comfort, I’ve mostly just been plain old vegetarian: the kind who will eat eggs but not fish or any other animal. And even this is not because of any moral convictions, really. It’s just that meat is gross to me, after so many years meatless. I actually kinda wish that I could stomach meat, because more protein would probably be good for me (protein is the hottest trend in nutrition right now! I remember when I was young, it was all about fresh produce, whole grains, and low fat/fat free dairy products; wild how the tides turn). But it’s just gross to me. And at this stage in my life, I simply don’t care to devote too much mental energy to the morality of my diet — which, after surviving decades ruled by a crippling obsession with exactly that, is actually kind of refreshing. So I guess I don’t really care that I don’t care.

But here’s the funny thing. As of writing this post, at age 36, I’ve accidentally become vegan again, and a more strict one than ever before, although not for the animals this time; for an entirely different reason.

My fourth child, who’s five months old and exclusively breastfed, has a sensitive gut. (I strongly suspect it’s because of the IV antibiotics they gave me during labor.) He can’t tolerate it when I consume dairy, egg, (hello again, veganism), soy, or even corn. And soy and corn are in literally everything, it seems! Virtually every processed food item on the grocery store shelves contains soy or corn ingredients. Did you know that? Even things like the ascorbic acid they put in juice to add vitamins, or the chemicals in imitation vanilla extract, or the added vitamins in breakfast cereal or almondmilk, ALL come from freaking corn!

A normal person would probably give up breastfeeding at this point, but not I. (I’ve fed formula before, for unfortunate medical reasons, and loathed everything about it, ugh; the stink, the infinite bottles to wash, the ridiculously high prices, the constipated babies, the having to get up out of bed go downstairs and prep a bottle at 3AM, and worst of all the constant anxiety about the very real threat of factory contamination — I don’t know how you formula moms do it. Nursing is so much easier.) So, for nearly a month now, I’ve been on the cleanest diet I’ve ever been on in my life. I literally only drink water and consume whole foods with straight-out-of-nature ingredients that I can identify and pronounce. And my baby’s gut is doing much better (thanks also to Smidge probiotics, which are expensive but totally worth the price, and once again no I’m not getting paid for this).

Is it hard? For me, not really. I actually love it. The only hard thing for me to give up was almondmilk. But actually, it’s made my life a lot easier, socially speaking. I hate eating in social settings, and hate being offered food, because one layover habit from the years and years of ED is that I prefer to stick with my “safe” foods. And now, I have an excuse! I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that, and for once it’s not that I’m just neurotic — my baby has a sensitive stomach! Tbh I’m kinda dreading my baby turning one (the age when most doctors say these intolerances tend to go away). Because then I’ll have to start pretending to be normal in food situations again.

And here’s the other funny thing about all this. Eating a completely whole foods plant based diet, with zero “processed” ingredients — it feels amazing! I’ve been doing it for about a month now, and I kid you not, I feel lighter on my feet, more energetic, less bloated, more alert, more generally positive — just more in touch with my body or whatever, as lame as that sounds. Even though I’ve been vegan before, I’ve never been completely whole foods vegan before without any processed ingredients. (I’ve always loved my nondairy milks and coffee creamers, cereals, boxed crackers, my Violife cheeses, my tofu and flavored sparkling water and all that fun stuff.) Now, I suddenly see why some people out there are so strict about avoiding processed foods. It really does make you feel better!

All of which makes me feel Vegan Mith gaining strength again. Gaining life, like Mariah Carey as November draws to a close.

4. Catholicism, Kids, and Carnivores

But, being Vegan Mith kind of puts me at odds with my religious community. Traditional Catholics are meat eaters. They’re homesteaders and “live off the land” farmers who raise and slaughter their own meat. I don’t think I could ever do that — I may not be an “animal lover” per se, I’m a bit too indoorsy for that, but I do hate to see animals suffering, and am kind of a softie about it. TradCaths are conservatives and old-fashioned types. In the TradCath world, eating organic, home-grown meat is the healthiest thing for your body. (It’s frustrating how nutrition advice is so different depending on whom you ask; I’ve seriously started to believe that everyone’s body is just different, and nutrition science is not universal.) In the TradCath world, vegetarianism/veganism is for liberals and prissies and hippies and government pawns.

And, you know what? I get it. I can see where they’re coming from. I’m no longer a Peter Singer stan; I do believe that humans are superior to animals (2011 Mith would think I’m a speciesist loser, lol), and that we have dominion over animals. And I do think it seems to check out that raising your own livestock on your own land and slaughtering them yourselves seems like a wholesome and healthy way to live. I’m sure all that protein is great for you. Logically, that sounds perfectly good to me. Which is why I’m no longer the kind of vegan who thinks all carnivores are ignorant, self-deceiving liars. I can see how, philosophically, meat-eating is not only permissible but even good, as long as you’re doing so as ethically as you can.

The other thing that’s changed my POV on carnivores is raising kids. I’m a mom of four kids five and under. And up until this year, I’ve raised my kids vegetarian. But recently I’ve softened their vegetarianism, and feed them meat sometimes; why?

A couple of reasons: (1), my husband is a meat eater, and if I make food that he likes, but the kids can’t eat it, that means I need to make two dinners. I’ve tried for years only cooking vegetarian, but my husband was never really satisfied, and always ended up sneaking out for fast food, so we ended up just spending more money on food than we should have been spending, and it was frustrating. I’m done trying to convert my husband to vegetarianism. I’ve decided to just accept that he is who he is, with food, and tbh it’s kind of a beautiful thing that he doesn’t overthink about it so much, like I do.

And (2), trying to manage four kids is hard. Together, they act like little dervishes, much of the time: a noisy little stampede of small humans, rampaging around my house. It’s incredibly difficult at church. It’s generally true that kids are calmer and better behaved when their bellies are full. And protein does fill you up faster. If I can get my kids to eat a bit of turkey or ham and actually fill up and simmer down and be satisfied, that’s better for all of us than just constant carb and cheese snacks around the clock. They’re so picky that, at this point, I’ll just feed them whatever I can to try and get them to fill up on something that’s not sugar.

However, if I decide to let Vegan Mith out of her cage, and let myself live by vegan principles again… guess I’ll have to figure something else out. Apparently I can choose to have convictions or not to have them. Which leads me to ask myself sometimes: am I even a real person?

5. In Conclusion

All of this to say, it’s a complicated issue; for me, anyway. I could happily be a militant angry vegan, if my circumstances allowed; I could happily be carnivore, if I didn’t mind the way meat made me feel physically. Which perhaps says more about me than it does about the issue. I guess I’m just a flake.

I welcome your comments on any of this, so please do chime in if you have strong feelings or any kind of reaction to this whole issue.
“Cankles.”

December 4th, 2025

Daily writing prompt
What is one thing you would change about yourself?
View all responses

Just one?! But, as someone with AVPD, there are so many! I could easily make this into a Top 10 post, and have indeed written out such lists before, so I know from experience that that would just get depressing. So, I’ll try to keep this one concise and relevant.

As a Catholic, my answer should be: if I could change one thing about myself, it would be my sinful nature, my tendency to try and please myself rather than God. And that would indeed be a good answer.

But if I am being honest, which, isn’t that what this stupid blog is for?: there are probably other things that I’d be more excited to change about myself.

I’d like to change my economic status, obviously. The number in my bank account. Wouldn’t we all? That’s a big one. But even this is probably not the number one thing I’d like to change about myself, in like a magic genie type scenario.

As a sober alcoholic, I’d kinda love to magically gain the ability to drink in moderation. Even more than sudden financial wealth, this idea appeals to me. Because in some ways, drinking was a really cool and fun thing, and I think it’d be cool to have this superpower: to be able to drink socially. To go wine tasting at the scenic vineyards with some friends. To do a toast on holidays. To be able to have a glass or two to unwind, without it turning into a daily habit and a life-altering obsession. It’s funny: this all sounds very nice in theory, in a very vague, distant, hypothetical way, like the concept of being able to fly or read minds; but, again, to be perfectly honest: I have zero desire to actually drink in moderation. What’s even the point, lol? With my brain, it would be unsatisfying, and just leave me wanting more. So, I would probably not choose this, either.

What if I could just get rid of the AVPD? This might be the thing I’d change about myself. To have the ability to connect to others and relate to them and befriend them like a normal person. I’d be sorely tempted to choose this. And if I were younger, still in my teens or twenties, this is surely what I would choose.

But, honestly… maybe not that important to me, anymore. I’m lucky that I managed to get married and have a family and build a good life even with the AVPD. Sure it’d be a lot easier without this handicap, but, I dunno, I guess I’m used to it by now. As you know if you’ve read my little autobiographical bit about AVPD, my life is actually pretty pleasant and manageable most of the time, these days. It’s only really maybe once or twice a week that I painfully feel my AVPD symptoms; its little day-to-day manifestations are not too bad to live with, not anymore.

So I don’t think I’d choose that either.

Sometimes I think I’d like to change my whole personality, to make myself less of an INTJ and more of like an ISFP or something. I’d like to be more of a sensor type rather than an intuitive: perhaps tidier, more crafty, a better cook, a better dresser, more grounded in reality overall. And I’d like to be more of a “feeler” and less of a “thinker;” to be warmer, more feminine, and more approachable. All of these would be great assets in my life as a wife and mom.

But, personality type isn’t the number one thing I’d change about myself, either.

So what is? Would I make myself smarter? You all know I have a ton of emotional baggage about the whole “intelligence” thing, lol. Would I make myself a better writer? A publishable writer!? Or eliminate my inconvenient fear or bees and wasps? Would I exchange my awful, scraggly type 3 curls for a full head of thick, shiny straight hair? Erase all of my ugly tattoos, perhaps? Or, make myself like classical and highbrow indie music instead of the shitty stuff that I like to listen to? Of all the many things I hate about myself, which one would I actually change, given the chance?

The answer is pretty anticlimactic. The answer is: legs. I would like to have nice-looking legs.

“But Mith,” you might be exclaiming, “just lose weight and exercise and get some sun!” If only it were that simple. See, I’m actually a perfectly normal size right now, with a BMI that’s perfectly average. I have, in the past, been an underweight exercise addict and have been diagnosed with anorexia and bulimia, but even when I was extremely skinny, it was like my legs didn’t get the memo. They stayed thick and solid. Even as a bony little twig I had the legs of a much heavier person. Shapeless, sturdy, pasty “Irish” legs, with no definition whatsoever to the calf. Sometimes I’ve wondered if I have a medical condition, but no; I kinda wish I did, so that I could get treatment. But unfortunately I don’t have any pain or any other symptoms; just hideous legs.

(And as for “just get some sun”: sure, I could, I guess, but that would require going out in shorts or less, which I will not; and besides, my pale skin would not tan, it would just burn, then peel off to reveal a slightly darker shade of pale. I know this from experience. So, lightly-roasted bratwursts instead of raw ones from the fridge. Whoop-dee-do.)

I’m not sure what this says about me, that of all the many things I hate about myself, many of them with good reason, the one that bothers me the most is my legs. Why does it even matter that much, since I can (and do) simply cover up with maxi skirts and/or tall boots? I’m Catholic, so would try to dress modestly anyway, even if I had nice legs. And my husband, i.e. the only person whose opinion of my attractiveness matters, claims that he isn’t bothered by the legs (although I think he’s just being nice, for some reason; haven’t yet figured out his ulterior motives). And, as I mentioned, the legs don’t hurt or anything. They function perfectly well. Probably better than average, in fact! Best believe I’ve never twisted or sprained, let alone broken, an ankle. I’m way too sturdy for that.

So why is this so important to me? And what does it say about me that it is so important?

Probably you could draw out of all this some statement about the insidious toxicity of beauty standards, the cruel pervasiveness of diet culture in modern America. For me, a pretty average white millennial female, being perceived as thin and attractive is evidently more important than happiness, financial security, intelligence, or even my religion (!?). What is wrong with the society that formed me? Or is it just a natural, human thing, this senseless desire to be desirable? Who knows.

Probably it has something to do with the fact that I’ve hated my legs for longer than I’ve cared about money or religion, long before I hated my personality or started to show real symptoms of a personality disorder. My first clear memory of hating my legs was in first grade, so approximately age six or seven. I was on the school bus one morning sitting next to my friend (who was, perhaps interestingly, a boy), and for no reason this friend was telling me how disgustingly wide were the thighs of this other girl in our class. Her thighs were “this big,” he said, with abject horror, holding his hands up a certain distance apart; and I, true to form, chuckled in mild agreement while looking at that distance and then down at my own lap and realizing that my thighs were that exact same width, if not wider. The next memory is associated with a certain photo taken of me in the third grade, and it continues.

However, I already knew, before age seven, that my legs were weird and bad. I’m not sure why. No one ever told me so, not that I can remember. I guess it just came from comparing myself to other girls in my classes. Already in kindergarten you become aware that skinny = desirable, smaller = better. This hatred of fat is probably, nay, surely, so deeply ingrained in my psyche that I will never be free of it. And I’m not special. I daresay it’s the same for almost all of us.

Which is kind of dumb, isn’t it? It seems like sturdy legs are actually a very practical thing to have, from like a survival/evolutionary standpoint.

But that’s the thing. Skinny little delicate legs make you more vulnerable, more in need of protection and care. Make you easier to pick up and throw around. That’s what men like. The older I get, and the more I learn about how straight men actually feel about women and the way their brains work (just naturally, it’s not their fault; however, some men learn to master it, and others apparently do not), the more grossed out I am by the male gaze. But so anyway this is what we women want to appeal to. We want to appear like we need care and protection and someone to be the boss of us. All of which just points to the larger truth that we humans all are vulnerable and weak and need someone (i.e. God) to be the boss of us and take care of us.

So yeah, there’s a reason why skinniness is attractive. A very beautiful reason. Beauty is beauty because it reminds us of Truth. I get that. Maybe that’s why I so deeply loathe appearing so sturdy and stolid. It feels like a lie, a blatant contradiction to one of the most essential truths about me, about anyone. Or something. Or maybe it’s just that my legs look like bratwursts, and that is objectively freaking gross.
TOP 10: Words of advice to my past self

September 15th, 2025

Daily writing prompt
Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.
View all responses

Funny you should ask, WordPress. This week was my birthday, so I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older and the advice that I wish I could give to my younger self. There is quite a lot of it, so this prompt will also be a Top 10. This was supposed to be silly and fun, but to my unpleasant surprise I actually experienced Feelings while writing this, ugh.

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Dear Adolescent Mith: a few words of advice from your future self:

12. Stop it with the sketchpads. Seriously. Get over yourself; you’re not an artist. At the very least, stop bringing your drawing stuff to school. Don’t carry all those papers around. That’s going to get you in trouble and embarrass you. Just keep your little pictures, your little scribblings, inside your head where they, and you, are safe. I mean this in the nicest way possible: no one cares about them anyway, and carrying them around does not make you look mysterious or cool.

11. Don’t let fear keep you away from things you want to do. Sometimes the people-y aspect of a thing can make it so scary/unpleasant that you will forget that you actually do want to do that thing. Like, going to the barn is hard, because you don’t fit in, there’s social pressure, and fear of doing something wrong or getting snapped at. Also, horses are kinda scary. But you love horses, and will later wish you’d never quit, and will long for another chance to learn to ride, like the one you had then. You must learn the difference between something you really want to do and something you feel like you want to do.

10. Don’t get tattoos. It sounds so cool now, I get it, but listen: you will regret it. It will, at some point, just make you look old and sloppy and cheap. And you may not comprehend this now, but there actually will come a day when you don’t want to look sloppy and cheap.

9. Learn some skills. I know it sucks, because your teacher has an attitude and, being the friendless loser in class with no one to be your partner, you got randomly lumped into a group with those two jock guys who like to goof off – but, please, try to pay attention in home ec. Learn on your own, as well. Learn how to cook actual meals (not just salads and saltine crackers and shit). Learn how to mend clothes, how to knit and crochet, how to iron, how to actually clean a house, how to garden, how to decorate; learn about first aid and natural remedies. Pretend it’s the olden days. One day you will wish you knew how to do these things, but you will no longer have any time.

8. Stop doing things you don’t want to do. Following up from #11: ask yourself: do I really want to be doing this particular extracurricular activity? Why am I wasting all my electives on band class when I don’t even want to be in band? Do I want to play this musical instrument? Do I want to be in this school play? Or am I doing it because my teacher tells me I’m good at it and I’m afraid of disappointing them? Newsflash: people do not care about you that much. Gym class? Skip it. Just leave. Just walk out of the building and go hide in the woods behind the school like you always fantasize about doing. So what!! It’s public school, child. It doesn’t matter that much. No one’s going to kill you for skipping this stupid class. Sure, there are some things that you have to do, like go to school in general – but you don’t have to do it perfectly.

7. Stay close to your sister. Don’t let dumb shit get in the way of that friendship.

6. There are worse things to be than fat, believe it or not. And it’s not true that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Being skinny is not going to fix you. You’d be happier and enjoy your limited time more if you just said “fuck it” and let yourself be a little fat. I know you don’t believe it when anyone else tells you that, so take it from me, since I am you.

5. It’s ok to be uncomfortable; in fact, to an extent, it is good to be uncomfortable; comfort is a lie. I mean psychological discomfort. Drinking will ease psychological discomfort temporarily, but it will fuck up your life majorly because you will be living inside of what is, basically, a lie. If I had to give you some advice right now about drinking, it would be: try it once, if you must, and see what it does to you, and then set it aside, knowing that that feeling is a lie and leads nowhere. Stop wallowing in self-pity and learn about the value of actual self-denial. (I’m not talking about going on a diet – what I mean is, denying the part of yourself that says drinking and dieting are necessary. Yes, it is hard.) It is better to live in the truth, i.e. the fact that life is uncomfortable. I hope this makes sense.

4. Save money and, for goodness sake, stay out of debt. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but guess what: the future actually does exist! And you exist in it! The choices that you make now will have a permanent effect on our life. Do me a favor and save some of that money you earned at your job instead of blowing it on candles and magazines and treats. Save that money from your grandfather instead of blowing it on vacations. Don’t keep taking out massive loans for school and trusting in this whimsical idea that “you’ll pay them off once you have a job” without having any idea what that job actually will be.

3. On that note, don’t chase your “dream.” If you must go to college (which, I don’t think you must), major in chemistry. You were good at that in high school, remember? You liked it! But you let things scare you off from that field of study, and decided it was best to Follow Your Heart. Don’t do that. Know thyself: you are an INTJ, you are designed to work in the sciences. You’re not a writer or an artist – you just like to indulge in your imagination because it’s fun, but hey!, you can still do that in your free time while making money as a research scientist or something like that. All that junk you’re told about following your heart and chasing your dreams – I’m sorry, but it is BS. At least, for you it is, because your “dream” is just a will-o’-the-wisp. Trust me, I have your best interests at heart here.

2. Forget about boys. Take heed: it is neither good nor necessary to date boys at this point, or do anything else with them. You scoff at those who save themselves for marriage, but set aside your prejudices and think about it, if you’re so “smart.” Dating boys will not validate you. It will not make you cool, it will not make you worthwhile, it will not make you more interesting or more of a real person or more of a real girl or any of that junk that you believe. You will not be missing out on some crucial element of life by not dating boys as a teenager. Seriously, just stay away from them, unless they want to (and I know you’ll laugh at this) protect your purity and become your husband. Your poor decisions will cause you a good deal of, and I do not use this word lightly, trauma, which will make things difficult long into your future. I know it’s not your fault; you were just a dumb kid out there in an ugly world, never taught otherwise, so I try not to hold it against you.

1. Go to church. Yeah, I know how you feel about that. You think you’re really smart, don’t you? Here’s what I wish you would do: remember that teacher in high school, the Philosophy/English teacher that you loved so much, whom you adored and who was something of a hero for you, but you just couldn’t get your head around the fact that she was Roman Catholic? Like, how could she be so smart and wise and cool but also religious?? Go to her after class sometime and ask her about it. Or, that nice Catholic kid in your class, the one whom everyone likes because he’s so humble and good and kind to every single person that he meets? Even you?! Ask him about it sometime. I dare you. Just try it.

I know you surely think future you has gone bat-shit crazy, reading this, but listen: I’m still you. We are the same person. The weirdest thing about getting older, is, you’re still exactly the same person, just with more experience. Old people are not a different species. You don’t graduate from youth and become someone else. Things just keep happening, one after the other, and it feels like your body gets older but you don’t. It’s actually really bizarre. So take my word for it. Go to church. Your parents aren’t right about everything.
TOP 10: Music as Medicine

September 11th, 2025

As you know if you read this blog, I’m very worried about what kind of music is okay to listen to. And I worry a lot about why I like the kind of music that I do, what it does for me, et cetera.

I’ve found that, in most cases, I like to listen to bad music simply because it lifts my mood; it makes me feel less unhappy. Pausing to listen to a stupid song can sometimes allow me to then resume my daily duties with renewed energy and a more cheerful outlook. It’s a little bit intoxicating, maybe, like some kind of mood-lifting medication.

So then is it okay to listen to bad songs in like a medicinal way? To help myself out of a bad state of mind? I know that good ends do not justify bad means; but how bad are the means, if they don’t tempt me to sin? If they’re just a bit of unserious fun? Is levity always sinful? Can sinful songs be listened to in an unserious way?

I haven’t figured all of this out yet, obviously. But, this train of thought did lead me back to some of the songs that, historically, I’ve used therapeutically, to kind of help drag myself out of the depths of an intensely negative mental place. Also, being currently nine weeks postpartum, my brain’s been… not exactly in a super negative place, but just a really weird and erratic place (as you may have observed if you saw my most recent Rant, lol), so, I’ve been leaning on my music habit a bit more than I do when it’s at peak function.

All of which has inspired me to make another Top Ten for you. Not all of these songs are “bad” – in fact some of these are actually good, I think! See, my taste in music doesn’t completely suck. However, be advised that a lot of these songs are Bad, NSFW, and probably not good to listen to under normal circumstances.

Although all of these songs have a therapeutic affect on me, I probably wouldn’t put them all on a single playlist. For example, I’d have to be in very different moods to listen to 17 and 10, vs. something like 13 or 9; very different moods for 16 or 14 vs. 15 or 3. Some of these are for when you’re at rock bottom and want nothing to do with the world (17, 10, 7, 6, 5, 2, 1), others are for when you’re kind of just struggling with an annoying intrusive feeling (14, 13, 12, 3, 1) or recovering from a cringey interaction or misunderstanding (16, 13, 11, 8, 4). Some songs are better for combating the ED thoughts (17, 14, 9, 7, 6, 5, 2), while some are better for when AvPD symptoms are especially uncomfortable (16, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1). A few of these, like 1, 2, 5, or 6, could be used just about anytime; songs like that are such a blessing.

For fun, because I’m someone who enjoys a bit of synesthesia, I’m including the color that each song has for me.

Without further ado:

17. Monument by Mirah. Once upon a time in ED group therapy, one of the girls in the group made a mix CD for all of us (this was in like 2008 when CDs were still a thing). And this song was on the mix CD. It’s the only song I’ve ever heard that, imo, seems to deal directly with the topic of ED recovery. It’s a really pretty little song that feels like a friend talking to you; its color, for me, is mauve, kind of a dusty purplish raspberry.

16. Blind To You by Collie Buddz. Discovered this one during a short-lived reggae fusion phase that I had in summer ‘14, and it got me through some uncomfortable days at my job! This one’s definitely the yellow-orange of Kraft macaroni and cheese.

15. Smothered by Spineshank. There is indeed a time and place for nu metal. I’ve been into this song since eighth grade, and its cathartic power has not weakened in twenty-odd years. To me, this is dark bottle green or hunter green.

14. Roll It Gal by Alison Hinds. Picture, if you will, a creepy, sullen, stick-thin, deathly pale girl in a black jacket, gray jeans, and black leather ankle boots haphazardly striped with an excess of steel zippers, skulking down the sidewalk of a picturesque, historic Southern college campus, death-glaring straight ahead as if oblivious to everyone around her… while listening to this song on her headphones. This was me in 2011. This song is bright teal-green.

13. Go Crazy by Megan Thee Stallion (ft. Big Sean and 2 Chainz). “Why I gotta prove myself to bitches that I’m better than?” That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Megan certainly does not. This song is red, a bright purplish red.

12. Back Up by Dej Loaf (coincidentally, also ft. Big Sean). “I’m very antisocial, social network ain’t my motion.” Right?! This is another one that I’d blast in my car on the way home from a shitty day at work, after a client or coworker had pissed me off. Definitely dark teal-blue.

11. See The Light by Ghost. As you know if you frequent this blog, I have mixed feelings about this band. I used to be a superfan, but now avoid them as a rule, because they’re extremely blasphemous, which is unfortunate, because Tobias is such a good songwriter and performer, and some of their songs sound really good and are extremely satisfying when you’re in a certain mood. Lyrically this one is pretty vague, so I think one can still listen to it in good conscience, although it’s questionable. Its color is dark gold to me.

10. Disaster in a Halo by Ours. Of all the songs on this list, this one’s been with me the longest. The album Precious came out in 2002, and that’s when I got into it. As serious and sad as this song is, I have one memory of it that still makes me lol every time: at some point during my early teen years, I was watching a recording of a live performance of this song on the TV in my family’s living room, absolutely rapt because it was like some special footage that had just come out on DVD or something (this was before YouTube); and in the middle of it, my dad walks through the room, pauses, listens for a moment, and then goes: “huh! I guess nothing matters to that guy.” His sarcasm is so dry it still sometimes goes over my head, and he’s been my dad for 36 years. Anyway, this song is a combination of light ochre brown and grayish sky blue.

9. Say So by Migos. I used to crank this one when I was at odds with anyone in my life. “I know a real bitch, she say that it’s a fake world/ And she don’t surround herself by none of you fake girls.” Also I love that they describe cellulite as “sexy” in this song; thank you for that. Sometimes, this one could get me through a “fat” moment or day. This song is dark red to me, like burgundy or a dark brick red.

8. The Flute Song by Russ. “People are shady as fuck, I keep to myself, but I feel the energy though” — that always made me feel better about being the resident creepy weirdo wherever I went, about not having any friends; as if being socially inept were badass. It still works for me tbh. This one is a dark cerulean blue.

7. The Worst Things Beautiful by Ours. This song was kind of a literal Godsend for me. I first heard it on the car radio as I was driving home from the aforementioned ED group therapy one evening. I still remember exactly where I was. And listening to it, I was like: “isn’t that Jimmy?!” because at this point I’d been a serious fan of his for about seven years (which doesn’t seem that long at all to me now, but at that point it was over a third of my life), and I’d known he’d been working on a new album but had no idea when it would be out. And then this song just randomly came on the radio. It sounded so different from his older stuff, a whole new perspective from him; but just as good; the lyrics spoke to me very much at the time. Like most of his songs, this one is also in shades of golden-brown and blue.

6. Poem by Taproot. I was listening to this one when I was a tortured angsty seventh grader, and still love it just the same. Why doesn’t mainstream rock sound this good anymore? This is like the most validating song for when you feel like shit. It’s angry but also reassuring. For some reason it’s purple to me, kind of an eggplant purple; I think because it was track six on the first mix CD I ever made for myself, and the number six is indisputably purple (perhaps this is subconsciously why I ended up putting it at #6 on this list).

5. Überlin by REM. There’s been times when all I could do was lie there listening to this song on repeat. I swear, it has the most comforting chorus ever written for secular pop music. “I will make it through the day and then the day becomes the night/ I will make it through the night.” Sometimes I still play this song, or hum it to myself, or even just think about it when I need to remember that this too shall pass. This song for me is orange.

4. IDFWU by Big Sean (ft. E-40). Ok but why is Big Sean on this list three times?! I guess he just has that kind of attitude. This is THE song for when someone’s behavior is getting under your skin. It’s very yellow to me.

3. Due by MSI. (I used to be so into this band! Listening to them now gives me violent flashbacks to college – like, I can freaking smell the place, wow.) According to YouTube comments, I’m far from the only one who has a certain reaction to this song: it hits just right when you’re miserable, it strikes just the right nerve. Like #2 and #1, it expresses frustration so purely and precisely. Like if you want to kick someone, just listen to this song instead. It’s a lot of dark blues and bright greens in this one.

2. Superman’s Dead by Our Lady Peace. Something about Raine Maida’s songwriting and singing cuts me all the way to the bone, idk what it is. There’s this urgency to what he’s singing. And sincerity. And just the way it opens – “do you worry that you’re not liked/ how long till you break” I mean, dang, ok. Is it just me, or do you also feel very seen and understood by this song? I can listen to it endlessly. I put this in spot #2 but it’s really a tie for #1. Like many of their songs, this one is intensely blue to me.

1. Cirice by Ghost. I’ve talked in a different Top 10 list already about how much I love this song and how it helped me survive a rough patch. So I won’t go on and on now. Similar to #2, this song makes you feel like he’s seeing into your soul and validating everything there that you hide from the world. Dark red, for this one, I mean obviously – you probably don’t even have to experience synesthesia yourself to know that this one sounds blood red.
Beat you to it: a post about intelligence

September 7th, 2025

ETA: this was written in an almost-uninterrupted stream of consciousness at like 5am, at eight weeks postpartum. So, my head was not really screwed all the way on. Looking back on this, it’s hyperbolic at times, and awfully melodramatic, but I still kind of like it, and think it’s kinda funny, so I’m leaving it up.

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I’ve rated this post PG13 for bad language, sorry. Also, it contains Spoilers for the shows Succession and The Curse.

Intelligence: what is it? Whatever it is, it is something that has been on my mind a lot in the past few weeks, as it has come to my attention that I am Not Very Smart. In fact, I strongly suspect that I may in fact be a Fucking Idiot.

I write this not to beg you, kind reader, to make me feel better. “Oh sure you’re smart, Mith! You’re not an idiot!” No, really. I am an Idiot, and I can no longer be convinced otherwise.

So why do I write this? Why do I feel so compelled to post a public confession of my Fucking Idiocy on the internet?

I think it’s because I want to beat you to it.

I’ve been really painfully self-conscious, lately, about how clumsy and awkward and dopey and inarticulate I am: always bumbling around like a big pale dumb goopy-eyed farm animal, mumbling incoherent things. And even more self-conscious about trying to converse with other humans who are Smart – who are like bona-fide actually extremely impressively Smart. Their smartness can’t help but shine a harsh light right through my fake-smartness, right through to my undeniable stupidity. Everywhere, anymore, I feel my stupidity. Constantly, I’m convinced that everyone around me is noticing it, and getting irritated and impatient, and thinking to themselves: “what a fucking idiot!”

Formerly, I used to take solace in the notion that, although I sucked at talking, I was more articulate in writing – that at least in that medium I could get a point across. That, dumb as I may seem irl, I did have actual ideas that I could express.

But then. But then!, I come here, and read over the junk that I’ve posted on this silly little blog, or talk to someone who’s actually smart, or look back over my communications with other humans, and realize that I’m fucking stupid in writing, too. In fact, I’ve come to rather hate almost everything I’ve posted on this stupid blog, as I always come to hate pretty much anything I’ve written within six months to a year of writing it.

So why keep blogging then? Why keep posting shit online, if I’m honestly truly aware that it’s all Fucking Stupid? – Your guess is as good as mine! Probably better! I already told you I’m an idiot, you think I can figure these things out?! LOL.

No, I think I do it because, as I explored in a recent post, I am somewhat starved for human connection and understanding, and this is my way of “screaming into the void,” if you will, of looking for a listening ear without being so bold as to directly approach individual humans and try to actually become friends with them. Trying to make myself heard, or understood. Tossing my stupid little message in a bottle out to sea. No one ever reads this shit! But, I guess I get some kind of little kick out of the idea that someone out there could. It’s not impossible.

And but so the point is I care about you, reader, and what you think of me. And being aware that I’m Fucking Stupid, and afraid that you will see my stupidness and think to yourself, irritated, “what a fucking idiot!”, I feel this great urgency to Beat You To It.

I’ve always had this urge, it seems. I want to beat everyone to it. I’ve been told I’m slightly (or maybe more than slightly) paranoid, because I’m acutely aware that people around me hate me. My husband and mother have always told me this is just my imagination, but they are wrong. I know that people around me do hate me (as they should; I’m a Fucking Idiot, and generally an unpleasant person). And so, in some kind of self-defense mechanism I guess, I chose to hate myself first. Because at least if I beat them to it, it’s kind of like I’m vaccinated. I’ve already got the hatred running through my veins, so yours can’t hurt me as badly!

“Mith, your writing sucks. Idk why you’re posting this shit online.” HAHA, I KNOW RIGHT! Beat you to it!! See? It works. Now that I’ve written this, I don’t have to worry about whether the shit that I post is intelligent or not. I’ve given myself a pass.

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When I was growing up, I always saw Stupidity as a cardinal sin. Possibly the worst thing that someone could be, along with fat.

Being Smart was important. I always knew that. And I knew that I was one of the Smart ones. I’m not sure when I realized that, but it was before kindergarten; I entered into human consciousness with an awareness that I was Smart. My parents had always told me I was smart, so much smarter than my peers! When I complained of feeling different and alienated from my peers, I was told it was because I was so much smarter than they were. And therein I built my little home, my little identity. “At Least I’m Smart.” My teachers all said I was Smart. I was in the Gifted Program. It was easy for me to get good grades without even trying. I even looked down on those who were Not Smart. I may be painfully awkward, but at least I was Smart.

I also believed that I was Good At Art. Always: “Mith, you’re such a good artist! Your drawings are so good!” Spoiler alert: they were not. I was okay at best. Yet I persisted, all through high school and into college, at trying to pretend I was an Artist. But then I ended up at art school, and saw what actual artists were like, and realized that I was not that at all. So the whole Artist thing went down the toilet.

Oh well. At least I was still Good At Writing. Wasn’t I? This particular delusion persisted up until after college, when all my attempts at publishing my shit failed, and even my old school friends I was still in touch with, who had formerly told me, with great enthusiasm, that my writing was “SO GOOD!” – these were no longer interested in reading it; and as it turned out, the best I could do was a stupid shitty WordPress blog that no one reads, except for me, and every time I read it I cringe because even I can see how bad I fucking suck!

So what else did I have? Was I still pretty? At some point, I guess around eighth or ninth grade when I started dieting and wearing makeup, I’d become aware that I was Pretty. People told me that I was, and I could see now that it was true. I had a naturally pretty face. Being Pretty was very important. Mind you, I was neither “attractive” nor “hot”, but just “pretty.” The difference really matters. All those hot girls in my class who got lots of male attention? I may not be as well-liked as them, but at least I was Pretty! I may contribute nothing to a conversation, but at least I’m nice to look at! And that was enough; it was important, it was absolutely crucial that I maintain that Prettiness at all costs, which urgency fueled the ED that was active until I was almost thirty. The ED has, at this point, mostly retreated into retirement, because, at some point in the last six years I became No Longer Pretty. I guess I am old now. And a mom. I decided to trade skinniness for having children, which is better and more meaningful and fulfilling. So now, I am old and heavy and lumpy. I quit dressing up and wearing make-up like I did when I was obsessed with being pretty; I gave up on the whole Pretty thing. And that was okay, honestly; I was happier without it, even though I sometimes missed it.

Not a good artist, not a good writer, no longer pretty. But at least I was still smart, right? AT LEAST I’M STILL SMART, RIGHT??

Ha!!

I think I began to realize that I was a Fucking Idiot when I started working as a dog groomer. I was fresh out of college. I’d graduated with honors and all that shit. Academics came easy to me. I’d always believed that, with my brain, I could do basically any job I wanted. Problem was, I didn’t really want to do anything. I felt rather paralyzed. I ended up working in the retail world, and found myself in the grooming salon of a big-box pet supply store. This is not the kind of place where Smart People really work. The people who work in grooming salons are typically not the kind of people who were in the Gifted Program in elementary school or Phi Beta Kappa in college. I was smart; surely I’d pick up this skill easily and swiftly.

Wrong again! It quickly became clear that I did not have a knack for this job. I tried, I really did try, but despite my best efforts I was, on my best days, adequate, and on my worst days, a hazard. I did the job for like seven years, but I was simply not good at it.

What a blow to my self-esteem. These coworkers, whom back in school I would have been Smarter Than, were absolutely showing me up. These people, who probably weren’t even in any AP classes and didn’t even go to college, were way more capable than I was. The dogs liked them better, the clients liked them better, they were less irritable, their dogs were done faster and looked better, and they had fewer safety incidents. What the fuck even was intelligence, anyway, I began to wonder? If these people can function so much better in the world and accomplish tasks so much better than I can, then what the fuck does it matter even if I am smart?

What does Smart even mean, anyway? That I read books? That I have intelligent hobbies and interests? That I make good decisions? That I can solve problems quickly? That I can understand stuff? That I have a high IQ, for whatever the fuck that is worth?

Reading books: nah, I barely do that anymore. Yeah, I used to like to read when I was a kid. Who didn’t? I like to pretend I’m still a book lover, because I want to be. The truth is, I don’t read nearly as much as actual smart people do. Yeah, I love Infinite Jest and have read it on my own three or four times, but I don’t fucking understand it; I’m not one of those IJ experts who can tell you all about the book and has all kinds of theories about it; I simply enjoy the way DFW writes, it’s fun for me to read. I find it, for lack of a better word, very “entertaining” (iykyk) (see, dropping that little reference made me feel so smart, for a second there).

I don’t read hard books. I struggle with the writings of the Saints. I couldn’t get through St. Augustine’s Confessions. I couldn’t get through St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua. I can barely read scripture. If it’s the New American translation, I can manage, but my church uses the Douay-Rheims translation, and most of the time I’ll read a passage and then be like “?? what did I just read?” So yeah. I actually don’t do well with difficult books. And I feel bad for only reading easy books. So every trip to the library is a guilt trip. So, at this point in my life, I really don’t make time for reading. In my spare time I watch TV with my husband, or look at the internet, or write shit for this stupid blog.

Intelligent hobbies and interests? I don’t have any of those. Yeah, I like crosswords, but I’m not any good at them. I don’t like doing crafts because I’m clumsy. I don’t like gardening because I don’t like being uncomfortable. I don’t like good music because it’s boring. Lil Wayne is one of my favorite artists, and I unironically love such songs as “Swing” by Savage and “What It Is” by Doechii (ft. Kodak Black). I lol at such childish internet inanities as “what the hellyante” and “deadass.” Et cetera, et cetera. I like to sit, loaf, daydream, eat snacks, and watch TV. I like some anime and manga (even though it’s a love-hate relationship because I’m aware how juvenile and bad it is). I don’t like cooking, and frankly suck at it, despite how badly I’d like to be a good cook; and I suck at keeping the house, because I’m lazy and scatterbrained and don’t have an eye for decorating. Being unable to do things I need or want to do – that’s a pretty good definition of stupidity, IMO.

Good decisions and problem-solving? Yeah right! Then why did I end up an alcoholic, 80k in debt, working in retail at a job that I sucked at.

Understanding stuff? Not me, lol. I’m actually the slowest person I know. Watching movies or TV with my husband, I’m constantly having to ask him to explain to me what the fuck is happening. In conversation with people I don’t know that well, there’s like this delayed processing thing that my brain does. The little wheel spinning and a buffering screen. I don’t know what the heck people are saying. I need to like pause and think about it. But I get panicky and end up babbling like a buffoon and talking really fast because I’m afraid of appearing slow, which just makes it worse. Try talking to me about any “smart” topic, and watch me glaze right the fuck over like a donut and just stare at you as if I understand, which I do not.

Want to know a funny story about how fucking dumb I am? When my husband and I were watching The Curse, at that scene in the beginning of the last episode when Asher starts floating up towards the ceiling, and he and his wife realize what’s going on, that he’s floating away, and they frantically start talking like “wtf is going on,” talking about what might be causing him to float away and how to get him down – was it the air pressure in the room? Did the wife need to just go open a door or something? – you know what my dumb self did, while watching this scene? I’m not making this up: confused, I turn and look my husband right in the face and go: “Can that really happen?” Deadass.

High IQ? Actually, I do have a somewhat high IQ, believe it or not. It was tested a couple years ago when I had a psych evaluation and got my AVPD diagnosis. I can’t remember the number; it’s not like “holy cow, genius” level, but my therapist kept emphasizing that it was Really High and I was Really Smart. But literally so what? Like, I don’t understand what that number really measures, in concrete terms, and how it’s supposed to make me Smart in practice – because all of the empirical evidence actually suggests the exact opposite: that I am a Fucking Idiot.

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Being stupid is bad enough. But being stupid and thinking that you’re smart? That’s a million times worse. I guess that is why I’m writing this. Because I care what you think about me, reader. And I want to show you, kind reader, that at least I’m not that bad! At least I know I’m a fucking idiot! Does that redeem me, just a little bit, in your eyes??

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I think this might be one reason why my favorite character in the show Succession (which, btw, I did not understand, but still enjoyed) was Roman. You may remember that Roman, the youngest Roy child, was the only one of the four who seemed to really struggle with being a Rich Asshole. He was born into a family of Rich Assholes, for whom being extremely rich and an asshole were like the most important things in the world. Roman, however, was not naturally inclined to be like that. Sure, he tried. He did asshole things, sometimes the most assholeish things, to try and fit in and be an asshole like his siblings. But what he was really inclined to, by nature, was theater. He wanted to write plays. But he’d basically suppressed that, because his family scoffed at it, and instead he told himself that what he really wanted to be was a Rich Asshole. Remember the scene before Logan’s funeral? Roman kept looking in the mirror and telling himself that he was like his dad, but it was so heartbreakingly obvious that he was not.

I can relate to this so much. In my family of origin, it was extremely important to be Smart. I was always praised for being smart. My parents are smart, and my older sister is extremely smart – she reads a ton, listens to smart music, has cool intelligent hobbies, understands people and situations, says witty things, and functions very gracefully in society. So, I think maybe, from my youth, I’ve tried very hard to wear this whole “smart” identity, even though it didn’t fit. I’ve tried so hard to fill the “Smart” shoes, to convince others and myself that I am really Smart. But it’s a lie. The shoes do not fit. My big stupid feet keep busting out.

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It’s okay though. I’m a mom now, and thankfully, you don’t need to be smart to be a good mom. Sure, as a homeschooling mom, it would help if I were smart. But, the full-enrollment home study curriculum that we use spells out everything I need to teach, day by day, and provides access to real teachers who grade tests and stuff for us. So I don’t need to be smart to be a homeschooling mom. Or a good mom at all. To be a good mom, I’m pretty sure that one must only be loving and virtuous. Obviously I love my kids – that’s easy to do, and the love I have for my kids is infinitely more than worth all the brain cells and downtime that I’ve lost through parenting – but, am I virtuous enough?

Perhaps this whole revelation of my great stupidity is God’s way of helping me grow in humility. To become more virtuous. Maybe this is Him stripping away all of the junk and lies from my sense of myself, so that I can begin to learn to form my identity in Him alone. – Or maybe this is all just me trying to assign some kind of greater “meaning” to the fact that I’m a fucking idiot, to make myself feel better.

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So there you have it. And what do you know! Even this post is poorly-written. Don’t bother telling me it’s pathetic – I beat you to it! See? It works again! And yet, I will post this anyway. I guess I continue to post this shit in hopes that someone might stumble upon it – might catch my little message in a bottle, open it up and go “hm, why yes, Mith, you are kinda fucking stupid, but, you know what, I can see a little glimmer of something through the stupidity – I can see what you’re trying to do, and actually, it’s not so bad!”
Why Would You Say That?

April 23rd, 2025

Why would you comment on a complete stranger’s food choices?

This is a pet peeve of mine. I guess it’s a layover from my eating disorder days. I’m really self-conscious about food and eating. As you may know if you read this blog, I don’t like to be seen or touched while eating, or asked about my food, even by my close family members; I even feel self-conscious about the cashier handling and checking out my groceries at the grocery store. Everything feels like a criticism, and every word and glance seems to me to be a very-thinly-veiled “you’re fat.”

In fact, I have a long history of overreacting, sometimes disastrously, to remarks about food. One time, when I was a senior in high school and in the early days of recovery from a severe restriction phase, working on gaining weight, this got me in some of the most mortifying trouble of my life. Story time!

The nutritionist that I was working with had prescribed me a snack every 2-3 hours, and I was following this plan diligently, even when I was at my part-time job as a cashier at a grocery store. Eating so often tended to upset my stomach, which was not used to normal quantities of food, so, I’d also munch on strips of crystallized ginger to settle my stomach, often while standing at the cash register, in between customers. Well, one time, a lady who was a regular customer came up to my register, and, seeing me wrapping up a snack and setting it discreetly away on the shelf under my register, responded to my friendly hi, how are you with an annoyed, even accusatory: “You’re always eating!!!”

Which, as you can imagine, absolutely got under my skin, as someone recovering physically but mentally still very sick with an ED. What my brain heard, when she said that, was: “who the hell do you think you are, you fat fucking loser? You’re sickening to even look at! Look at your fat face chewing! Your jowls all ajiggle! You seriously think your stupid loser ass deserves to just eat snacks all the time? You giant fucking fatass? You think you deserve to take up space on earth?? Go die in a hole, you disgusting waste of oxygen!”

Thems was fighting words, for sure. But did I lash out at her? Nope. Did I do anything at all? Nope. Instead, my whiny pathetic ass just politely chuckled, rang up her groceries, then went out to my car and phoned the Rant Line: a now-defunct (I wonder why, lol) phone line in the local weekly free newspaper, which people could call and scream into a voicemail box about things around town that pissed them off, such as idiots in traffic or off-leash dogs at the park or whatever, and the juiciest Rants would then be printed in the back page of this paper each week.

Well, I pretty obviously named the grocery store I worked at (which was an established and well-respected boutique store, not a chain); so, even though the newspaper blanked out all but the first letter of each word in the name, it was extremely obvious to any local person which store I was talking about. And, without naming her, but still managing to be pretty specific, I ranted pretty furiously at this customer (who, btw, spent a ton of money at this store on the regular), calling her some pretty hateful names, if I remember correctly. (If this lady ever happens to see this blog post: I’m sorry, I take it all back.)

Well, the day after the newspaper printed, I went into work, oblivious, unsuspecting, smiling and waving at my coworkers, and was met with a complete kerfluffle. The week’s Rant was the talk of the store. Everyone was in shock! “Have you seen it?!” “OMG, do you know who did it?!” “Whoever it was is gonna get so fired!” Worst of all, “[Store manager’s name] is so mad!”

Words cannot describe the sheer terror and humiliation and misery that I experienced that day, lol. Obviously I was at fault, there. I should have known better. I don’t know what I was expecting, or why I thought it would be okay to leave such an obvious and specific Rant about this lady. I guess I was just blind with rage, lol.

I somehow survived that four-hour shift, but have no memory of how. I was physically ill, shaking, sick to my stomach. Not even for fear of losing the job. I just hate getting in trouble, hate other people knowing that I have this ugly side. That night, I confessed to my supervisor and manager in the office, and they kindly seemed to understand, and did not fire me, but said that I was a good employee otherwise so I was allowed to stay as long as I didn’t do that again.

Yes, I was at fault, completely; but still: “you’re always eating”? Why would you say something like that to someone?

Anyway, that was one of the first times this oversensitivity led to disaster in my life. The next time that I can remember, it was less mortifying – actually pretty funny, in retrospect.

I was a freshman in college, and well into what I now refer to as my “revenge fat” phase, by that point. I had gained a lot of weight in recovery with that nutritionist I mentioned (whose methods, I think, were questionable, but that’s another story). Now, I was away at college and had lost touch with her, but was still fat, and doing my best to cope with this fatness by trying to convince myself that I was okay with it, which I very much was not. I was pretty much the chubbiest girl on campus (this was a campus full of skinny rich kids), which did not help with the feelings of alienation that I was already experiencing as one of the only weird/alt kids, and one of the only poor kids, and one of the only non-“Greek” kids, at that school. So, I’d often bury my feelings in food. I’d go to the dining hall alone with a book or a crossword and get these massive, heaping bowls of breakfast cereal. One time, I was carrying my tray, laden with my bowl that was absolutely overflowing with granola and Cracklin’ Oat Bran and all manner of delicious breakfasty carbs, when one of the dining hall employees walked by me going the opposite direction, and commented casually: “That’s a lot of cereal.”

Which, it absolutely was! But, being me, I dissolved into an absolute crisis over this, lol. In fact, it was one of the events that triggered my subsequent descent into another long, intense restricting/purging phase and the loss of about half my body weight.

Yes, it was a lot of cereal! And by this point you may be thinking that I’m simply crazy (which is not untrue). But still: honestly: why would you say that to someone you don’t know? Seriously, why would you think that’s an okay thing to do? And what’s even the point?

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Those two events were, respectively, seventeen and fifteen years ago. I like to think that I’ve matured somewhat since then, and developed a little bit of a thicker skin. I still don’t like to be seen eating, or asked about what I’m eating – but, if it’s someone I know and love, I’ll just bristle a bit and quickly get over it.

But just the other day, at a local grocery store, I had an encounter that kind of dredged some of these old thoughts and feelings up again.

I was with my three-year-old daughter, buying bananas. We had just quickly run into the store for bananas, while my other daughter was at ballet class and my son was home with his dad; we were out of bananas, which is a food that we go through a lot of, because they are cheap and healthy and everyone in the family likes them. Because there are five of us (plus the one currently in my belly), and we go through so many, I was like: hmm, better grab a few extra bananas. I chose one bunch that had five bananas, then a second, smaller bunch that had three. Because I was only shopping for bananas, and nothing else, I didn’t have a basket, but just carried the bananas in my folded arm while holding my daughter’s hand with my other hand. And as I was standing there in the produce section with my daughter, holding exactly eight bananas, some random lady walks by us in a hurry and goes: “You must really like bananas!”

Um… excuse me? Yeah? So what? Why do you feel the need to point that out? I don’t even know you, and we’re both busy, like, you’re not even a cashier here or anything, like, you have nothing to do with me or my eight bananas; why would you think that’s necessary to say, or even worth the energy that it would take to open your mouth and expel the oxygen and flap your little tongue to utter those words? To a complete stranger? How is it going to serve you, or me, or anyone?! Are you high?! I mean, if I’d had a cart full of like 30+ bananas, then I’d kind of understand. But this? “You must really like bananas”?! I just don’t understand it!

Why would you say that?! Yes, I am a weird person, but my own reactions aside: why would any of these people say any of these things?! Truly, truly, I cannot begin to understand what it must be like to possess the sort of brain that thinks you should just comment on a stranger’s food.

Can anyone out there enlighten me? Perhaps someone reading this is the sort of person who says such things to people. Please! I beseech thee: I’d love to understand your rationale. What goes through your head, when you comment on a complete stranger’s food choices? Do you think you are helping them in some way? Are you trying to be friendly? Do you just have literally zero control over what words come out of your mouth as you’re moving around in the world? I’m genuinely, sincerely curious.

I didn’t say anything, to the banana lady. I just kind of chuckled in shock, as I typically do when a stranger says anything to me. I wasn’t even that triggered or offended –even if the Rant Line still existed, I wouldn’t have called it – I mean, bananas are a pretty benign thing to like, aren’t they? It would have been a totally different thing, if she’d said “you must really like chocolate pudding,” or something. But bananas? It was honestly just so weird and strange, is all.

Maybe it’s that I live in the South, where people seem to like to make small talk with strangers, and assume we’re all, like, “neighborly” or whatever. Maybe, with my AvPD, I should move to NYC or Boston or some other big city, where people will just ignore me and leave me the heck alone. Although, I probably wouldn’t thrive in such a cutthroat, fast-paced environment like that, either, haha. I’m just not cut out for human society, it’s true.

But, as I keep saying: even if I didn’t have a weird, baggage-laden reaction to comments about food – even then, why is it something worth commenting on? I just don’t understand. I can kind of understand commenting on a stranger’s clothes or hair, especially if it really merits comment – like, “oh, wow, your hair is so pretty” or “wow, your hair’s really purple” or “I love that dress” or “where did you get that shirt?”, those are all fine.

I can even kind of understand a snide remark about someone’s appearance, if they seem to be asking for it. Like, that stuffy older gentleman who, walking by, sarcastically told me and my high school BFF “wow, you two just look great” when we were parading around in public in broad daylight in fishnets and miniskirts and crop tops, just for kicks. We were definitely asking for it. Or, the random kid at college who asked me, at my work study job, while I was ringing up his bagel sandwich: “what, did you lose a fight with a stapler?” because I had a pierced eyebrow (and was one of the only people, maybe the only person, on that campus with visible non-ear piercings). Or when strangers comment on my tattoos, to this day, even though I hate that. In all of these cases, I was/am asking for it, by dressing in a way that deserves to be made fun of. Social norms exist for a reason. If you can’t handle getting made fun of, then don’t dress weird.

So I can understand these types of comments from strangers. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand commenting on a total stranger’s food. What purpose does it serve? It’s not social. It’s not going to help anyone. It’s just completely random. Do some people really not filter their thoughts at all? Is it just me, or is this completely unhinged psychopath behavior? Can someone enlighten me? Please! Broaden my perspective here. I would love to understand.

Don’t people stop to think, in this woke day and age when we have “awareness” of every condition under the sun, that food can be a sensitive subject for some people? And even if not, even if they’re completely ignorant about food intolerances or neurodiversity or eating disorders: why? Why, what is the point? Or, are you fully aware and you’re just trying to start beef? What are you trying to accomplish?

In conclusion: I’ll ask one last time: why?? Why, why, why would you comment on a complete stranger’s food? Seriously – why would you? This is truly more mystifying to me than the meaning of life, than the width and breadth of outer space. Someone, please! Please, if you can, explain. Why, just why, would you comment on a complete stranger’s food?
Stop Commenting On Pregnant Women’s Bodies

April 7th, 2025

Let’s stop commenting on people’s body size. Pregnant or not.

As a mom who’s currently 26 weeks and change with my fourth baby, this has become a serious pet peeve of mine. You wouldn’t comment on a woman’s body size in casual conversation if she’s not pregnant (unless you’re a complete asshole); so why do we assume it’s okay to do to a pregnant lady?

The comment I get most frequently – from strangers, acquaintances, and even from doctors and midwives, who you would think would know better – is: “You’re barely showing! You’re so small! You’re tiny!” And, I hate that shit. I don’t know if these people think they’re giving me a compliment, but I wish they’d just stop.

I hate being told I’m tiny and barely showing, because it makes me self-conscious about my general, non-pregnant body size. When someone says “you’re tiny,” what I hear is, “you’re such a fat fucking tank of a person that your body hides the entire pregnancy inside its great bulk, and we can’t even tell, like, compared to a normal, attractive, stick-thin mom with an actual waistline, who would already have a round visible bump at like 8 weeks along.”

(Which, is actually not even true of me. Objectively, I’m a medium-sized person with a very “normal” BMI (not that the BMI scale is at all meaningful w/r/t a person’s health or appearance – it’s definitely not, in fact it’s BS, but that’s a rant for another day). I unfortunately just have the sort of wide, sturdy body frame that carries babies really comfortably. Big hands, big feet, no waist, thick ankles: built like a freaking tree trunk. But, on the plus side, I never get serious back pain or groin pain or swelling or anything like that, during pregnancy, and have worked out daily, with relative ease, right up until delivery, every single time. I’ve never needed a pregnancy pillow for my bed or a support band for my belly. I also don’t get stretch marks at all, and bounce back to my normal size pretty much immediately after birth every time. So, you win some, you lose some.)

It’s also triggering because, for many years, I never knew if I’d be able to get pregnant, and always dreamed of being visibly pregnant, so that people would look at me and know. I wanted to need a pregnancy pillow and a support band; I wanted to complain about back pain. And in reality I pretty much don’t get to have that experience – which, I’m lucky that this is the thing I get to complain about; I ended up having no trouble conceiving or giving birth, unlike many women out there, and in the grand scheme of things this is not that big a deal; but, it definitely makes me feel like less of a mom, less of a pregnant woman, less of a woman in general, when people say “you’re due so soon?! But you’re barely showing, I never would have guessed!”

Maybe these people really mean well, with the “you’re barely showing” comments, and it’s just my ED history piping up, making me take their words the wrong way. But even if that’s the case, I don’t think that makes it appropriate at all to comment on someone’s body size.

And I’ve been guilty of this myself, in the past. I hate that. I remember, back before I ever had kids of my own, a coworker of mine was pregnant, and all of us at the salon, including myself, were constantly playfully teasing her like “oh my gosh, you’re huge! You’re only in the second trimester?! Are you sure it’s not twins? How could you possibly get any bigger?!” and other such horrible, insensitive nonsense. I wish I could go back in time and smack myself, and apologize to that poor girl, who was having a hard enough time already.

But then, a couple years later, I had my first pregnancy, and quickly realized how awful it is that suddenly everyone in the world thinks it’s okay to shamelessly judge your body, out loud, in public, as if you’re on freaking America’s Next Top Model or something. It’s hard enough being a female and a mom, in this world. Leave pregnant ladies alone.

The rules are pretty simple. I will spell it out in two steps. If you see a woman who looks pregnant, step one is: don’t assume that she is pregnant! No matter how obvious it seems! She might have painful inflammation, or bloat, or a tumor. You truly do not know. Don’t assume, and don’t ask. Step two is: once she tells you that she is pregnant, there is only one (1) acceptable thing that you can say about her physical appearance, and that is: “you look great!”

Never comment on someone’s body size. This includes complimenting someone’s weight loss. Never compliment someone for losing weight. This is another rule that everyone should live by. I can’t tell you how horrible it was for me, during the days of my active ED, for people to tell me: “wow, you’re so skinny! I wish I looked like you.” “Wow, you’ve really lost weight!” “You’re so lucky you’re skinny.” That absolutely fucked me up, when I was in the thick of it. Even a friendly, innocuous-seeming “congrats, you’ve lost weight, you look great” can make a person think to themselves: “oh, so I looked awful before?” It really feeds a disordered mindset. Also, a person might be losing weight due to depression, a personal crisis, or cancer. You don’t know. Just don’t comment on someone’s body size.

Even if you think you’re giving a compliment and it’s not about weight loss – just don’t comment on someone’s body size! “You’re so thin, I wish I looked like you:” that person might be super insecure about their small body, maybe they were picked on for it as a kid, or maybe they’re very sick. “You’re so pretty, your body is perfect:” that would easily make someone feel objectified, to know that people are looking at their body and rating it on some weird scale. Or worry that if they change anything or gain a single pound or age a few years, they won’t be “perfect” anymore. Just don’t comment on someone’s body size. It’s simple.

“But Mith,” you might be arguing: “not everyone is as oversensitive and paranoid as you are! Most people in the world are normal, and can take a compliment or a benign remark without it causing a whole mental breakdown.”

Maybe so, but I daresay even normies are vulnerable to developing an eating disorder or exercise addiction, if they hear these kinds of comments enough. And even normies would probably be pretty bothered if someone complimented their weight loss and it was the result of their going through a nasty divorce, or losing a loved one, or undergoing major surgery. And, even if “most people” wouldn’t be bothered, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to just disregard that lesser percentage of people who would be injured by such comments. You don’t know if you’re dealing with someone who has an ED or any kind of mental/emotional baggage about their body. If you’re a decent person, you don’t want to risk harming someone.

And it’s not even hard to do. I’m not asking you to do any mental gymnastics or make any great allowances when it comes to interacting with pregnant women. I’m not asking you to go out of your way. It literally requires no additional mental or physical effort on your behalf to simply not comment on someone’s body size or shape.

In conclusion: I will say it again: just don’t comment on someone’s body! It’s seriously not that hard! Thanks for reading.
The Most Confident Person I’ve Ever Known

March 15th, 2025

Daily writing prompt
Who is the most confident person you know?
View all responses

How am I really to know who is the most confident person I’ve ever known? Someone might feign confidence, and appear super confident, but secretly feel insecure and just not talk about it, because perhaps they are insecure about the insecurity itself.

However, I know who is the most confident-seeming person I’ve ever met. I met her my first semester at my first college, and gravitated toward her, because she had what the kids these days call “main character energy.” She was not only very outspoken, fearless, funny, and confident (making her relatively easy for my AvPD to be around, compared to other people), but also on the “quirky/artsy” side, as was I; and this was at a snooty little private university that was a veritable Sahara Desert, in terms of quirkiness/artsyness. So I, who have always been insecure, was trying hard to find some other weirdish people to associate with.

There’s this false stereotype about confidence that it makes you cocky, that you go around like you’re God’s gift to humanity and think everyone should bow to you. Similarly, there’s a false stereotype about humility, that it makes you think of yourself as a piece of shit and makes you too timid to ever speak up. In fact, confidence and humility can coexist beautifully, which is what this girl showed me just by being herself.

By humble, I mean that she was totally aware of who she was, and she owned it. She was a nerd, and a chubby girl (and not even trying to change that; she ate whatever she liked, as if she were totally immune to diet culture; she would just openly describe herself as “fat” and not even bat an eye or expect someone to coddle or reassure her about it), who liked some gross foods (like, the processed deli meat slices with the chunks of American cheese mixed right into the meat – to my absolute horror, she used to keep this in the mini-fridge in our suite, when we were suite-mates sophomore year, without even concealing it in a plastic grocery bag or anything, the way I would do with shame-foods), and had some lowbrow hobbies (like video gaming, which she would do in the common room of our suite with the blinds pulled down, even on a beautiful sunny fall day when clearly a morally-upright person was obligated to be outside in nature, exercising); but was she ashamed of any of these? Not in the slightest. She socialized. She shared herself with people. She expressed emotions with ease, from anger/irritation to sadness to delight to anything in between. She could enjoy movies and stories about thin, beautiful characters without being devastated that she was not thinner or more beautiful than them. She spoke to other, thinner people like they were her equals. She wasn’t afraid of them.

It was a beautiful, fascinating, and, to me at the time, horrible thing to behold.

I was, in those days, in the thick of my ED, restricting heavily, underweight, and super stressed (as I always have been, and continue to be, 15 years later) about not being good enough. So watching this girl be so comfortable in her own skin made me positively sick: sick because how dare anyone be okay with being fat and nerdy! Those were cardinal sins! And sick with envy, because why couldn’t I ever be so comfortable with myself? How did she do it? What was her secret?

In the early days, freshman year, my socially awkward ass glommed right onto her, because her big personality and the way she could carry a conversation made her easy to be around. (Also, tbh, my ED was always appeased when it was in the company of people who were bigger than myself; so she made me comfortable on several levels.) I followed her around; I became friends with some of the people she was friends with. Sophomore year, she and another girl, the third member of what I thought of as our little trio, invited me to join them in sharing a suite with a fourth girl (who was around so little that I barely remember her). It sounded like a good arrangement. I had my own bedroom, as did the mystery girl, while my two friends, who were always closer to each other than I was to either of them, shared a bedroom; and we all shared a common room with a kitchenette and bathroom. It should have been a great year!

But I was really sick that year. And when sick, I shut down and shut people out. My suitemates had brought a large TV to set up in the common room, which pissed me off, because obviously worthy, deserving people only read great literature or made art for fun; only fat losers would need a big TV, and I didn’t want to be a fat loser; how dare they be so shameless about it! And it pissed me off even more when they would invite a whole crowd of annoying friends (actually, this was a great group of really cool individuals: the campus weirdos, i.e. pretty much the only eight to ten kids on campus who weren’t involved in Greek Life; there was this little inherited joke, that we few were members of the elite “ΓΔΙ”, Gamma Delta Iota, i.e. “G**damn Independent,” lol; in the very early days, before I sank so deeply into my sickness and horribleness, I actually enjoyed and was proud to belong to this crowd of friends) over to the common area late into the night to play noisy video games on this stupid TV, such as Rock Band. Only a cardboard-thin wall divided my pillow from that stupid plastic drumset that they’d pound away on late into the night. Be a decent human, I thought bitterly! Learn to play the real drums, if you want to drum something! Losers! And they’d play the same annoying songs over and over! To this day, “Float On” by Modest Mouse gets me triggered AF.

I was just so irritated. I’d get irritated by my suitemates’ sanitary products, disposed of in our shared bathroom trash can. How vile, how bodily, how shameless! How dare they have the nerve to menstruate! Of course, I never voiced any of these hateful thoughts or complained about the noise or the smells or anything. I just cast passive-aggressive stares at them when passing through on my way to or from the bathroom, and all the while sank deeper and deeper into my bitter little stew, and isolated as much as I could, never joining them anymore, no matter how often they invited me.

But even though I was a terrible person and a terrible friend, my suite-mates tried to take care of me and look out for me. One night in the common area of our suite, they and a couple of the friends from down the hall had a little intervention on me. We think you have an eating disorder, they said. I was so mortified that I don’t remember how I reacted – stiffly, coldly, brushing them off, probably – but in my head, I was like: yeah, no shit! I’ve had it for like seven years, leave me alone about it, you’re just making it worse! I gave everyone in that circle an even colder shoulder, after that.

That must have been in the spring. Earlier in the year, I had signed on to rent an apartment with the two friends, the following year: a really nice little apartment just across the street from our dormitory. I’d toured the place with them, met the landlords, even cut a check for the deposit and signed the lease. But at this point, living with these girls any longer had become simply unthinkable. So I did a shitty thing. I dropped out of the lease agreement at the last minute, forcing them to have to scramble for a third roommate. I found an efficiency apartment a short bike ride away from campus, and signed the lease by myself. Finally: for junior year, a place to drink and puke and starve and rot in privacy, unbothered by concerned friends.

That girl and I stayed loosely in touch – she and the other friend never expressed any hard feelings, about me breaking the lease, or any of it, and we were still on pleasant terms, if we crossed paths on campus – but, we were not really friends anymore. After I had my little crisis and dropped out of that school, two-thirds of the way through junior year, we were still connected on Facebook; but I eventually deleted her, as well as all of my other connections from that university, and since that point, I don’t know what became of her or how she’s doing.

Of course, I did sorrowfully Google-stalk her a couple times. I think she got married, at some point, to the guy she was dating there at school: a fellow nerd and a gamer, a big quiet but funny guy, a year or two our senior. I think I saw she had a LinkedIn profile and a decent-sounding career. No surprise there. Nothing ever seemed to hold her back from doing things she wanted to do. She was crafty, good with her hands, brainy, productive (even though she enjoyed loafing on the couch with video games, she also had a lot of cool hobbies, like fashion design, theater, reading, and some kind of needlework if I remember correctly, and she was a member of various clubs), and never seemed to struggle with self-promotion or teamwork. Wherever she is these days, I’m willing to bet she’s thriving in her work life.

And I hope she’s doing well. I remember her as a genuinely honest, humble, and, yes, incredibly confident person, who made other people feel more comfortable in their own skins just by being around her. She was neither cocky nor boastful nor full of herself, nor was she ooey-gooey nice or kind or especially charitable or saintly or anything; she was just thoroughly, unapologetically herself. Many times over the years since we’ve lost touch, I’ve thought of her and contemplated her wisdom and told myself: I should try to emulate her; I should make that a goal, just for today. Be more like her, I tell myself. I always fall short, and will probably never really have her confidence; but, what a rare person, what an exceptional specimen of humanity, what a role model. I wonder sometimes if maybe that is what a saint is: not someone who follows all the rules perfectly, but someone who is really, thoroughly, shamelessly the person that God made them to be, gross feelings and gross habits and all.

Of course, I guess it is possible that she was never that confident at all. Maybe she was actually really insecure on the inside. We can never really know another person, can we? Maybe she had social anxiety or hated her body, and was just better at faking it, at putting on a brave face, than I ever was. I was never lucky enough to know her that well, I realize in retrospect; I was just a leech, looking for some positive energy to feed on because I had none of my own. I wish that sometimes there were some way I could apologize to her for the way that I was back then – but, true to form, I remain too ashamed.
Should I fast for Lent if I have a history of EDs?

January 26th, 2025

I’m not here to quote the Catechism or any authority on this, since, as far as I have been able to tell, there is no authoritative advice on this particular question – if there were, I wouldn’t be here writing this speculative little blog post, would I?

I know that those with physical health concerns are exempt from fasting, so, obviously, if you’re in early ED recovery and were underweight and are actively trying to restore weight, definitely don’t fast. But what about those of us who have been physically healthy for a while?

For those who aren’t aware (although, I’m assuming that, if you clicked on this post, you probably have some familiarity with EDs), an ED is not the type of problem that once you’re eating well again, you’re fine. It’s like an addiction in that it is very much a mental/emotional problem, and it is permanent, it stays with you your whole life, and “being in recovery” is always an ongoing, active process. You have to choose it every day. Even those who are doing really well are always at risk of relapse. Also, just because someone looks healthy on the outside does not mean they are healthy. Many, many people with terrible, life-ruining EDs might actually be normal-sized or heavy. Hope that clears up any potential misunderstandings.

Lent will be here soon, and so I am once again asking myself: what is a person in recovery from an ED supposed to do?

(I should specify here: someone with a history of ED who, like me, is not yet very advanced in the spiritual life. If you’re super advanced spiritually, to the point where worldly concerns no longer seriously bother you at all, and the ED stuff no longer has any kind of hold on your mind (except, maybe, in the form of fleeting temptation), then this whole post probably doesn’t apply to you. I’m talking about those of us who are still in what St. Teresa of Avila would call the first two to three Mansions of the soul – those of us who are still at all bothered by things of the world. St. Teresa compares these worldly concerns to rodents, snakes, and vermin that sneak in the doors of the Mansion. I feel like, for someone in these outer rooms, it’s probably not a good idea to pick up these vermin and play with them and try to befriend them — which is, basically, what fasting from food when you have a history of ED actually constitutes.)

You may think it’s a simple answer: just don’t fast from food. Find some other way to fast, such as from caffeine, alcohol, social media, online shopping, or what have you. This seems to be the prevailing opinion in online Catholic places I’ve visited.

However, I’m not sure if the great saints would agree. I’m thinking of such saints as Augustine, Basil the Great, and John Chrysostom, who stressed the importance of subjugating the flesh rather than being subject to it – referring to food and hunger, not to anything else. I can’t help but wonder if these great saints would think it’s a lazy cop-out on our behalf to say that we can’t fast because it affects our mental health adversely.

Throughout history, you see great saints who barely ate anything at all, or fasted on bread and water only, and who nevertheless were healthy and well and thrived until very old age. Look at the monks on Mt. Athos, always strictly fasting, yet some of the healthiest people on earth! So, doesn’t that prove that it’s just weak and lame of us, to claim that we can’t fast because it would “harm our emotional health?” I feel like, by playing this card, we out ourselves as just pampered, wimpy 21st century Westerners with no real problems.

Of course, you might argue that, well, fasting, in our case, could likely put us in a state of mind that’s vulnerable to relapse, and if that happens, then our physical health would suffer too, which perhaps feels less wimpy than complaining about our feelings. But, for counterpoint, see previous paragraph. We shouldn’t worry so much about our physical health, right, because the great saints have shown us that, if we truly fast for God, He won’t let it actually harm us.

But therein lies the problem, I think. Is someone with an ED even capable of fasting for God? I kind of don’t think so. I know in my case, whenever I even think about restricting food, it lights up the “yes, weight loss!” and/or the “I will be so perfect!” centers in my brain, out of which practically nothing good ever proceeds. I imagine it’s the same for anyone who’s had a serious or long-lasting ED. It seems impossible for us to fast without it being selfish (which an ED very much is, essentially). Even if we think we’re doing it for God, we’re probably actually getting some addictive, ego-pleasing little hit out of it. Heck, I think even if we yielded control to someone else, did it someone else’s way, let someone else prescribe us a specific plan with exact instructions what to eat and what not to, it would still light up all those disordered centers in our brains, because we would follow instructions the best, following the instructions would make us morally unimpeachable, etc. These processes are immediate, emotional reactions, not a conscious thought process that we can choose to interrupt.

I guess we could, with constant effort, work on fasting while also working on overcoming this disordered connection. But let’s be real, if fixing that broken connection were actually possible, EDs wouldn’t be such a cruelly persistent problem. As I said earlier, there is no cure. And the mental burden placed on an ED recoverer trying to fast, could be likened to that of a bona fide alcoholic trying to practice drinking in moderation. It simply does not work. Alcohol in any quantity is bad for the alcoholic.

So does it follow that restricting food, to any degree, is always bad for an ED recoverer?

I’m not sure. From my own experience, I know that, at times, as a recovered person, I realize how much physically better I feel when I eat lightly and get some exercise. Not even in a way that’s related to my size (not consciously, anyway); I simply feel physically better, and realizing that, as a recovered person, is a very liberating feeling, because it’s like, hey, I can eat salads and drink water without it being sad and disordered! I can actually choose between light and heavy foods according to my preferences! How novel!

But, at the same time, I’ve realized I have to be really careful when I feel that feeling. Feeling healthy and feather-light is super addictive to me, and pretty soon, if I’m not careful, there’s a law set in stone, and it’s all raw veg all day long whether I like it or not, and this becomes really hard to break out of.

So, is restricting always bad for someone with an ED? No, and yes. It’s slippery.

That’s why I think mandatory fasting from food for a predetermined length of time, is probably a bad idea for anyone with a history of serious ED. Our brains are broken. We just can’t fast like normies can.

But then what are we supposed to do for Lent? Should we just give up social media? That’s a good one, but IMO it doesn’t subjugate the flesh the same way fasting from food does (we who have been chronic restricters are already masters at subjugating the flesh that way, frankly; if you have ever been diagnosed with anorexia, suffice it to say that you’ve already earned an A+ in not yielding to the whims of your stomach). Should we perhaps give up a particular food or kind of food, and replace it with something equally nourishing that we enjoy less? Like, in my case, I might consider replacing my nightly chocolate protein smoothie with, like, a bowl of plain scrambled eggs, or something?

But tbh even the thought of that is lighting up my ED centers again. “Yes, I will be so good, I can do without pleasure!” “I can be so pure!” “I will only consume healthy proteins, I will cut out so much sugar!” To someone who’s never had an ED, these probably sound like great and healthy thoughts – but, if you’re prone to EDs, you get why they are not.

So, I’m inclined to think that any kind of “food law” is a bad idea, for us. We have something of an allergy to food laws.

One of my best, and hardest, Lenten fasts was actually the year I made myself sit down to eat meals with my family three times a day, hahaha. Normally I hate eating meals, and prefer quick, solitary snacks at random times throughout the day, staying pretty hungry until my one “large snack” right before bed. (Don’t talk to me about how unhealthy this pattern is, I already know. Trust me, I’ve spent decades trying to figure out how to manage food in my life, and I finally have a sustainable system that works decently well for me, so I’m not gonna fuck with it.) That Lent was really challenging, especially at first.

But honestly I don’t know if I’d repeat it, because I realized after the fact that any dietary law change like that kind of screws with my head, like, I found myself expecting to lose weight or achieve some higher level of perfection or familial bliss or something, like I’d win some Great Mom award for being so wholesome (“Look at me, I always make sure my family sits down to eat together three times a day, get on my level!”); and, like, I became slightly neurotic and puritanical about it, getting twitchy if my kids were out somewhere and I had to eat alone. It just didn’t feel entirely Lenten, that way, but more like a personal improvement exercise (not necessarily a bad thing, and perhaps I should try it again, but not as a Lenten fast). Self-improvement is not supposed to be the point of Lent at all.

And that’s the thing. It’s not even that fasting is bad for an ED recoverer’s health. It’s that, coming from us, fasting is not a good sacrifice for God.

So what will I do for Lent, then? I must find some way to subjugate the flesh without imposing food laws. Cold showers? Yikes, maybe. Exercise? Risky, as exercise addiction is a very real part of ED for many of us, including me. Waking up early? Extra chores? Yikes, might be a good idea. Will have to give it some prayerful consideration.

“But wait, Mith,” you may be saying, “you say no food laws, but aren’t you a vegetarian?”

I am, indeed, seven days a week. But at this point I’m literally vegetarian out of personal taste. I spent so many years avoiding meat for ethical/ED reasons, that I have developed an aversion to it; nowadays I simply find meat gross. I honestly wish I could go back to eating it, because I struggle with protein intake (see my post about my shitty hair). But when I eat meat I can’t get past the idea that I’m chewing on a carcass, that my stomach has become a graveyard, and it gives me the major ick. Although, I’m not a hardass about it, like, when I was pregnant with my son and randomly craved meat, I honored that and ate what I was craving (Arby’s roast beef sandwiches, and, a real nostalgia flavor for me, Fischer’s pickled bologna).

So would the great saints tell me I’m a wimp, for claiming exemption from fasting? Maybe. But they didn’t live in 21st century America, where EDs are a serious epidemic, so they probably wouldn’t understand. It’s a different world these days. New environments breed new diseases. I’m sure they understand now in Heaven.

After all, there’s nothing great about fasting in and of itself. Just like any suffering, it only has value if you do it for love of God. Which ED folks cannot. So, if we can find other ways to subjugate our flesh for love of God, I don’t know if God will really care that we did it some other way instead of by restricting food. He might even prefer that. At least, I hope so.

ETA: Part Two of this post is now available here!
TOP 10: Most Memorable Sweet Treats of Mith’s Life

January 7th, 2025

This one doesn’t need much of a prelude. I love sweets; always have. As a kid, I always wanted chocolate with every meal, even breakfast, nay, especially breakfast (chocolate chip waffles! chocolate chip muffins! chocolate Pop-Tarts, especially raw out of the wrapper!). I’d ask for “dessert” after every lunch and dinner, even if that was just a couple of Hershey Kisses or Oreos to dip in milk (chef’s kiss). Ah, the childlike innocence of enjoying chocolate without any fear of weight gain, back before your eating disorder moved in. We’ll never get that back.

Because of all that, I have had a complicated relationship with sweet treats for pretty much all of my adult life, as most women do I guess. But, the cool part is, all those years of going without any and all “bad foods” as a rule, gave me this cool ability to actually enjoy food more in theory than in practice, most of the time: I spent so much time ogling and lusting after forbidden foods, that it became a whole hobby, more deeply psychologically engaging and satisfying than simply eating those foods had ever been. It’s probably why I enjoy watching baking shows, looking at cookbooks and still lifes, and writing about food, so much to this day – much more than actually making or eating it, even now that I’m pretty well “recovered” and no longer afraid to eat a cookie or some fro-yo here and there, depending on my mental state and the time of day.

So, the following sweet treats are ones that I’ve imprinted in my memory so I can enjoy them in my brain any time I want:

11. The Pecan Pie on the special Thanksgiving menu at this lodge/hotel dining room in the mountains, where I sometimes went for weekend getaways with my family as a child. This was the first time I ever had pecan pie, which is the quintessential holiday pie, and it made quite the impression; I was at an age where I was getting slightly more adventurous with food, but hadn’t yet hit puberty and started to overanalyze it. Hence, I took a slice of pecan pie from the buffet. And, how perfect it was. I’ve only tried to make pecan pie once since, and it fell very short. This pie is the only thing that I remember about that Thanksgiving.

10. The Dairy Queen Moolatté, mocha flavor. There was a DQ in the town where I went to high school, and the absolute best moment of my weekday as a HS senior was leaving school, driving into town in my own car, and going to get a Moolatté with my own money. This was also during my first “revenge ugly” phase, so I was not only avoiding looking at calories, I was all but trying to gain weight. I spent way too much of my paycheck on those stupid Moolattés.

9. This boozy sundae at a fancy little downtown bar in the city where I went to college, a place that specialized in dessert cocktails. This ice cream sundae came in a chocolate bowl, and was soaked in like three or four different boozy sauces. I only went to this bar one time (it was not my typical style, I was more of a “$5 wine out of a Styrofoam cup alone in my parked car” type of girl), it was on a date, and I don’t remember much at all of the date or the guy, but I do remember the sundae and its chocolate bowl. I don’t drink alcohol anymore, but if I did, it just might be worth the eight-hour drive to get this sundae one more time.

8. The Subway chocolate chip cookie. Right?? This is just about a perfect, classic chocolate chip cookie, enough said.

7. The Coconut Macaroons at the bakery of the grocery store where I had my first job. This was a small boutique grocery specializing in imported/international foods, and they had an awesome deli and bakery. The almond macaroons were great, too, but the coconut ones stand out more in my memory. They were big and fat and round and dipped in dark chocolate; this was the first time I ever loved coconut.

6. Peanut Butter Cup Fudge, a recipe that made the rounds in my family long ago, which my cousin and I, who were the same age and good friends at the time, both loved. It had a layer of chocolate fudge and a layer of peanut butter fudge. Simple, but perfect. Peanut butter and chocolate is the undisputed best flavor combo of all time.

5. The chocolate chip cookie at Chick Fil A. Even better than the Subway one, because it’s thicker and holds its structure when you bite it. I’ve tried a couple of copycat recipes, and they were okay, but not the real deal. If anyone knows of a really good copycat recipe, send it my way, please and thank you. As a vegetarian, I don’t eat anything else off the CFA menu, except their Diet Lemonade, which I have been known to put away by the gallon.

4. The White Chocolate Cranberry Macadamia cookie at that same grocery store bakery as #7. This is such a perfect combination of flavors and textures: tart/chewy, sweet/buttery, and salty/crunchy all at once. A true masterpiece. It’s like a song. I’ve tried to make them at home over the years, but nothing rivals those big, chewy, bakery-fresh ones in my memory.

3. Sweet Frog. The key to Sweet Frog-maxxing is, you get both peanut butter and chocolate yogurts, then pile on pretty much all of the chocolate-themed and nut-themed toppings (especially the cookie dough bites and the chocolate caramel cups), and then whipped creme and chocolate sauce. My husband and I, before we had kids, used to live close enough to walk to Sweet Frog, and we did so fairly often, so, it’s a really lovely memory for me. And it tastes even better knowing that it’s a Christian company.

2. My Mom’s homemade fudge that she used to make when I was a kid. Just basic, simple chocolate fudge. My mom never added nuts (because when I was a kid I liked things plain and smooth, nothing crunchy – like, my favorite candy bar was a Hershey milk chocolate). For my 10th birthday, I brought a batch of this fudge to school, and for a day I was actually popular, and my teacher begged my mom for the recipe, which made me feel great.

And finally:

1. The brownie at this ice cream shop in my city growing up (coincidentally, right across the street from the little grocery store, the one with the awesome bakery, where I would eventually become a cashier). I was introduced to their brownie in what must have been 1998 or ‘99 by a friend of mine in elementary school who raved about it, and I didn’t believe it could really be all that great, until one day when she got a chance to prove it: I was hanging out at her house, and her parents took us to this place, which was near her Dad’s work, and bought us each one of the famous brownies. They came in these tall clear plastic cups and were served with a spoon, because they were absolutely swimming in hot fudge sauce, so the brownies got all soft and mushy, almost pudding-like. So rich, it was impossible to finish the whole thing in one go, but, what an unforgettable chocolate marvel that was. Tragically, the shop appears to have shut down during covid. “It exists now…only in my memory,” which, tbh is probably better anyway.
Is it ok to be ugly?

December 30th, 2024

Are we morally obligated to look good? This question has bothered me since basically the onset of puberty/my ED (which both occurred, unsurprisingly, at the same exact time), and continues to bother me now, twenty-odd years later, as I am seriously considering chopping all my hair off.

I chopped all my hair off once before, in like 2015 it must have been, around the time I started trying to get sober and read the novel “Dietland” and basically really leaned into this kind of “fuck societal beauty standards,” “imma do me” philosophy, which was super freeing. However, short hair looked awful on me. At work, I was constantly getting mistaken for a dude (it didn’t help that I have a deepish voice, big hands, and a flat chest). I looked terrible, like, seriously, and after a few months, when I got into a relationship (the same guy who was crazy enough to date (and then propose to) my unstable ass was also crazy enough to find me “attractive” even with super short hair, or so he claims; I still don’t buy it) and started wanting to look nice again, I couldn’t wait for the hair to grow back in. I vowed never to chop it all off again!

So why am I wanting to do it again, a decade later? Because: I had three kids in three years, and postpartum hair loss has done a real number on me, like, it’s bad, I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think my hair volume has decreased by at least 70%. It’s a tragedy; it looks terrible; I don’t have the time, energy, or funds to “take care” of it (I’ve always been a simple girl w/r/t hair care: just shampoo, conditioner, and maybe a leave-in conditioner – too much hair product gives me the ick, I hate gels and aerosol sprays and anything that makes my hair feel like it’s got stuff in it; and this routine worked fine for the first thirty-one years of my life). So, my hair sucks, it’s getting worse, I am powerless to do anything practical about it, and every time I see it, touch it, or think about it, this mess that is stuck to my head, it causes me great emotional distress; which means, as far as I can tell, my options are either wrap it up or chop it off. I worry about wrapping it, frankly, because I am white and I’m afraid I’ll get accused of cultural appropriation and/or mistaken for a cancer patient. So, chop it off, then?

But is that even okay to do? In my faith community, women don’t cut their hair short. Not because we believe it’s a sin, it’s just a cultural norm. Short hairstyles on women only became popular for Western women in the 20th century, along with some forms of immodest dress; in a way, bobs and pixies were I guess like an expression of “rebellion against the patriarchy,” which attitude is very much not in keeping with my faith. Women are expected to present as feminine and men as masculine (which also means that long hair on men is frowned upon, which, suffice it to say I have a few feelings about as well, lol). So, if I chop my hair off, I’ll probably get some funny looks, and people will probably judge me. It’s not like I can go to Mass wearing a t-shirt that says “it’s not a political statement, it’s postpartum hair loss,” lol.

But obviously if a woman has to chop her hair for medical reasons, that’s different, right? But, if I still have a choice (as in, my head is not bald with patches of hair, it’s still covered in hair, just very very thinly), am I not morally obligated to choose the option that will look nicer and more feminine?

.

In the Catholic world, we take Beauty very seriously. The Beautiful is right up there with the Good and the True. Beauty reminds us of God. Furthermore, Catholics are very “bodily.” We believe that the body and its senses are, basically, good. We are not a soul trapped in a meat prison (despite my frequent jokes about my meat prison or, as I like to call it, meat tank – “not a tradwife, but a tread wife,” that’s me) – our soul and body are inextricable. We are both, and our bodies will be resurrected in the next life (which is why we are not cool with cremation). This “bodiliness” is also why we like our feast days, our outward signs and symbols, our beautiful ornate churches, and all that. God made us physical creatures with the capacity to experience pleasure and appreciate beauty!

As such, we have a duty to take care of ourselves. After all, our bodies are “temples of the Holy Spirit,” so we ought to dress and act like it. St. Francis de Sales says in “Introduction to the Devout Life” that his advice to his spiritual advisees is to always be the best-dressed, but most simply and inconspicuously dressed, person in the room. I.e., we should strive at all times to be clean, groomed, tidy, sensible, pleasing to the eye without being immodest or showy.

In this same vein, in the contemporary world of Catholic influencers and social media, you’ll often see discussions/reels addressing the subject of whether spouses are obligated to stay in good physical shape for their partner. (Which, in this era of “body positivity” and anti-diet culture, is pretty controversial.) And the consensus is: yes, they are: it is your duty, as a spouse, to make yourself as attractive as possible for your spouse. (This goes both ways, before you go accusing anyone of sexism.)

Which is not at all to say “you should marry someone solely for their appearance” or “if they put on weight, you can emotionally abuse or even divorce them” – those are definitely not the Catholic way. The point is, marriage is just as much physical as it is spiritual, therefore as spouses we have a responsibility to maintain that aspect of our marriage. If your partner doesn’t make an effort to take care of themselves, not only is that not good for them personally, it’s not good for their spouse either. “The two become one flesh,” etc.

Obviously, spouses have a special obligation to take care of and look after each other, to consider each other’s preferences. But even non-married people have a responsibility to take care of themselves and look presentable. (And this is not saying that people with better genes are morally superior. What you’re born with has no moral weight; it’s what you choose to do with it. A naturally gorgeous, skinny woman who doesn’t wash or groom herself and goes out in sweats and a t-shirt is failing, while a naturally homely, chubby woman who styles her hair, cleans herself up, and puts on a nice outfit, is succeeding.) This, as far as I have gleaned, is the Catholic POV on physical appearance and self-care.

Now, for me, and probably for a lot of women of my generation, and perhaps women in general (but I think especially those of us who came of age in the era of the Special K Diet and America’s Next Top Model, and had it ingrained into our young minds that thin and beautiful = superior), this can be a huge turn-off. Everything in us might hear “you have a moral obligation to be pretty” and, as a trauma response, retaliate with great violence and anger. “Oh no you don’t! I’ma stop you right there, don’t even try that one on me! I did my time in that hellscape, and I’m still healing from my trauma! You know what, I ain’t morally obligated to look good for anyone, my body is my business and my business only!!” If, like me, you ever went through a “revenge ugliness” phase (I’ve had a couple), you certainly get it.

Revenge ugliness is still something I have an inclination for. In fact, I probably let this inclination get the better of me, more often than not (it’s why my entire wardrobe looks like oversized trash bags). Like many of us who wrestled for many years with an ED and are tired, I am over the pressure to look sexy and appealing. I also hate the sensation of tight-fitting clothes – so many years of being so painfully body-conscious have made it so that I cannot relax in a fitted top. It gives me the ick. (This is also, apparently, not uncommon among women with ED history or body image issues.) We just don’t want to be perceived at all (also at play here, in my case, are the AvPD and my desire to dress modestly – although, if I’m being honest, my trash bag maxi skirts are only 20% for “modesty” and 80% to conceal my most hated feature, my hideous legs). So, revenge ugliness: just leave me alone to rot in my trash bag.

I felt the same about my super short hair, when I had it. It felt liberating. There’s something really comforting about revenge ugliness: setting oneself free from the male gaze. Back when I used to be really thin, wear makeup, and dress more prettily, I used to get more attention, more kindness, more interest, more acknowledgement in public spaces. It’s kind of cool to know that, if I cared, I could change people’s perception of me, but I don’t, so, it’s like a nice cloak of invisibility. It’s like opting out of this cruel game that all women are thrust into from the onset of puberty, whether they want to play or not.

But: revenge ugliness is not a Godly attitude to have. The Godly attitude would be, I guess, an honest appraisal of one’s naturally good and less-good features, and dressing accordingly, in a way that is modest, aesthetically pleasing, and demonstrates that you have some respect for yourself, your neighbors, and your daily life. So, for me, probably not trash bags and a buzz cut.

But: does God expect me to make myself that uncomfortable, just for the sake of being aesthetically pleasing? Does He expect me to just suck it up and deal with the emotional and even physical discomfort of living with my hideous thinning, scraggly hair, because at least the length is somewhat “feminine?” Does He expect me, as a married person, to exchange my oversized baggy tops for something snug and cute that gives me the major sensory ick, just because it would be more ladylike and my husband would prefer it?

I’m not sure about that. I think God expects us to do the best we can with what we’ve got. Psychological and emotional baggage is part of “what we’ve got.” Maybe I wasn’t born with this baggage, but it’s become a part of me, and now it is among the factors that I must take into consideration when deciding how to present myself. I think, if dressing a certain way is significantly uncomfortable for a person, they probably aren’t expected to dress that way (with some exceptions, of course, like, if someone is super uncomfortable wearing anything more modest than underwear, they should probably seek psychiatric treatment, as there are certain rules that simply must be observed: for example, women have to wear long dresses and cover their heads in church, whether they are comfortable or not – however, there are such a variety of headcoverings and materials to choose from that realistically everyone can find something that agrees with them). As long as we’re not being disrespectful and/or violating some basic societal convention, we probably have some leeway in how exactly we choose to dress. Especially under extenuating circumstances: if you’re sick, or just had a baby, or disabled and unable to keep up with self-care. God only expects us to do the best we can with what we’ve got.

So, maybe the trash bags can stay, as long as they’re clean and tidy and wrinkle-free.

But, would chopping all my hair off constitute a violation of societal convention? Would it be disrespectful? Would I be prioritizing a selfish desire (for comfort, for my own pleasure and relief) over my duty (to look feminine, to respect my husband’s preferences (because, come on, every straight man prefers long hair))?

Believe me! If I could have long hair, I would. I don’t want to rebel against the patriarchy. My hair is a travesty, at this point, and it’s not a thing of “beauty” by any stretch of the imagination — but would it be even worse if it were shorter? I’m on the fence.

Well, damn. I was hoping that writing all this out might help clarify the best course of action, but alas. I still can’t tell if the desire to chop is the old “revenge ugliness” urge coming up again, or if I honestly think it’d be for the best given my circumstances. — Or maybe just a little bit of revenge ugliness is acceptable, within certain parameters?