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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopia |
I'm often asked about common healthcare facets of our daily lives like diet and nutrition, which is baffling. Why? I kept a food diary way back in elementary school for a class project about healthy eating habits (which were turned in and graded by our six grade teacher) and by now, I can pull a book off of any available shelf to give you handsomely tailored advice, but that's not the problem, is it? No, like most of our typical societal woes, we suffer under the weight of other people's disorders because mental healthcare, like drug addiction, is kept in the closet like the deeply guarded dark secret we pretend it is. How can that be true, when so many people have diseases?
Most often, women are the ones who question me carefully about food and the body, looking for flaws in me that they see in themselves, through my careful presentation of information that defines my vocation (which is also my pleasure) to do so. I know it's because they have multiple afflictions, not least of which is centered around a serious brain disorder (or two, or three, or four). More curious to me is why they think they can solve any problems at all, rather than consistently questioning the good people around them, because they force us to serve as a mirror to their common dysfunctions and brain misfires.
I've tried talking young women through Anorexia Nervosa, bulimia, low self-esteem, Body Dysmorphic Disorder*, plus a few other pop culture terms that were so new to a master wordsmith like me, I had to ask for definitions to them, like "carbface" (reflecting trendy anti-carbohydrate beliefs) and "fathead": that's when a disordered person sees a fatter figure in the mirror than an accurate reflection of the self, made weirder because it was told to me by a deranged young woman who thinks of herself as a figurative artist. OK....that's really bad. I have to back away from social distortions of that magnitude because it crosses over into seriously professional expert care, and I don't have time to get a degree in every discipline on the planet just for your needs alone, though I suppose I could if I had the time.
These aren't the types of conversations that one can talk their way through. Why would you think anyone could? I can't speak magical words that are the equivalent of years of intensive medical care, though like any decent woman my age, I would cure you instantly if I could. Rather, I deliver my lifelong "prescriptions" for the Art of Living Well in sober tones that addicts loathe hearing: it's hard work combined with rigorous discipline and education.
For you? Add several prescriptions given to you by seriously qualified medical personnel, plus a team of healthcare experts to watch over you and your every move, you irresponsible immature jackass.
But that's actually the truth. In publishing, we try to modernize it to match your brain living in this time, though honestly, most of it's old information to us, carefully designed by the intellectual elite living in this century as thus: food is not new to humans, yo.
And so it was that I followed a very good and very strict training regime tied to my martial arts schedule, because I was raised as a young girl in a school of classical French Ballet taught by a former Rockette who danced at Radio City as a teenager, and I could have followed that path, too. Ditto with gymnastics, swimming, and any other sport I liked at the time. Could you do that? No? No kidding! And so I don't tell you that about me, because what would be the point? How would you benefit from my prowess in those areas when you don't have my body, brain, training, or skill sets? You wouldn't.
Same with my occasional and sometimes seasonal use of a certain "Fat Smash" diet (heavy on the home-prepared brown rice as a staple for the program's introductory phase), one so severe that the excellent physician who penned the book (and all the recipes in it) does it on t.v. for major network programs tied to weight loss and body conditioning as professional media content. Still not you? No kidding! I tracked my food intake, nutritional requirements, and exercise regimen through an online tool for years, with an app downloaded onto my smartphone for added convenience, next to an app that tells me what fresh fruits and vegetables are in season locally, so I can prepare gourmet meals of my own creation. Not you either? Huh...isn't that odd.
Of course it isn't! It isn't you or your life to lead. You have to figure it out like I did, through "trial and error" guided by my own expertise, but you don't have those facets, do you? Welcome to the Twin Arts of "Empathy" and "Perfection" that define my worlds in design and publishing. Feeling small in comparison? That's because you simply don't belong there. I do. Oprah once brilliantly said (more than once, as is common for those of us living our lives through the public media arts) that if the biggest problem you have today is that you have too much food to eat, then you don't have any real problems at all, because that's true. Hers aren't about food. She can buy and eat anything she wants. No, it wasn't food that greatly pained her as a young girl.
You did, with your gross inappropriateness through your continued untreated medical disorders, the same ones that led her male family member to transgress against her in the worst ways that a sick adult man can against a vulnerable young girl whose only crime was pleasing an older family member, as she was taught to do. You wronged her through your constant, continued neglect in this world. Not me.
* http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-related-conditions/body-dysmorphic-disorder-bdd
