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Friday, June 27th, 2008
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10:23 am - A Complilation of Bridget Vreeland
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Bridget Vreeland, although a fictional character, is one of my heroes in life. I know I'll never manage to be a carbon copy of her; after all, she's 5'10", Caucasian, blonde, hooks up boys like fish and is hella good at soccer, but I just looove her personality, the way she deals with shit in life, and her lifestyle. So here are some parts about her collected from the Sisterhood series (because I'm a creepy, crazy fictional-person stalker like that):
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"Bee had changed so much in the last year, but a few things had stayed the same. Most people, including Lena herself, backed away when they sensed some out-of-control emotion. Bee went right out to meet it."
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"If a person hadn't seen Bee in a year, they might not have recognized her sitting there. She wasn't blond and she wasn't thin and she wasn't moving. She had tried to dye her hair really dark, but the dye she'd used had barely conquered the famous yellow struggling underneath. Bee was normally so thin and muscled that the fifteen or so pounds she'd gained over the winter and spring sat heavily and obviously on her arms and legs and torso."
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"'I think about the person I used to be, and she seems so far away. She walked fast, I walk slow. She stayed up late and got up early, I sleep.'"
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"'Do I want to?' Bee thought about the words carefully. Some people (like Tibby, for instance) tended to listen in a muffled, sheltered way. Bee was the opposite."
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"Bee would have ordered a huge bowl of spaghetti. She wouldn't care if she had noodles hanging out of her mouth like tentacles. Bee didn't subscribe to the list of acceptable date foods."
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"She banged on the door a little harder than she'd meant to. She needed to keep it moving. 'Come on, comon on,' she mumbled to herself. She heard footsteps. She shook out her hands to keep the blood flowing."
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"It was that Bridget had been thin and striking and outgoing, and, of course, she'd had the hair."
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"Greta had breakfast waiting for her. Juice and whole-wheat toast with butter and jam, just the way she liked it. She had mentioned that in passing a few days before, and Greta had had it all set up the next day."
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"Burgess won 1-0. The guys on the team and their friends and all their pretty groupies went out to celebrate, and Bridget went home to her boardinghouse alone. But she was too ramped up to stay in her room, so she dug her running shoes out of the bottom of her suitcase. She hadn't used them in months. She put them on and stepped outside.
She ran straight down Market Street all the way to the river. She remembered the pretty, overgrown path that ran alongside it. The place with the arrowheads. On the far side of the river she saw the ancient, broken-down oak trees giving shelter to hardy weeds and climbers at the expense of their own failing branches.
She'd run so many miles in her life, her body seemed to welcome the exercise. On the other hand, it started to complain after only a mile or so in the July heat. She felt all the extra weight on her hips and shoulders and arms. It wrecked her stride and it wrecked her breathing.
Her mind flashed to the Traveling Pants. Just this morning she'd sent them on their way. She hadn't even worn them. She felt angry at herself, and it made her run faster and farther. And the longer she ran, the more she felt like she was carrying a burden and she wanted it off."
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"She wasn't so crazy about te brown anymore, but she didn't want to risk blowing her cover, either, so she dug a baseball cap out from a pile of dirty clothes and put it on her head. Voila. As a fashion statement, it wasn't much."
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"On Saturday, Bridget went for a run in the morning before the soccer game. She'd gotten up to four miles. Slow ones, but still. When she arrived at the field, she was sweaty and sticky, but happy in the way only running could make her happy."
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"Her body needed to be in motion. She was a voracious person."
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"Billy practically accosted Bridget on her way to the hardware store, where she was going to buy parts to fix Greta's refrigerator door. She was now paying her seventy-five dollars a week to Greta and was busy vanquishing every disobedient thing on the property -- the weeds in the lawn, the wobbly coffee table, the peeling paint at the back of the house. Bridget was in her running clothes, her hair was stuffed into a scarf, and her mood was giddy because she'd been thinking about Lena."
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"Friday night Bridget ran almost seven miles, all the way to the bend in the river where Billy's old house sat. Maybe he still lived there.
Her body was changing, she could feel it. She wasn't totally back to normal, but she was most of the way there. Her legs and her stomach were getting muscular and strong again. Her hair was blond again. Running by herself, she took off her baseball cap, which felt like a relief. SHe let her hair breathe in the warm evening air.
She stopped by Greta's to pick up her ball and went straight to the soccer field. It had become a ritual for her, kicking around by herself at night in the three patches of light.
'Gilda!'
She turned around and saw Billy coming toward her. He was probably on his way to a party where all the girls enjoyed crushes from all the boys.
'Hi,' she said, out of breath, glad she'd remembered to put her baseball cap back on her head."
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"She noticed he was looking at her legs. She might not be a beauty, but she knew her legs were getting nice again. They were toned and tan from running for five weeks straight, not to mention her nightly soccer workout. He didn't looked spooked and he didn't look grateful."
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"She felt panicked, like she had to keep moving. She burst through the side door and out into the yard. She heard Grandma's voice calling behind her, but she couldn't focus on it. She kept walking.
She walked through the needling rain for blocks down to the river and then walked straight alongside it, on her familiar path. Walking didn't feel fast enough, so she started running. The river was up, lapping against its sides. She felt tears dribbling from her eyes, mixing with and disappearing in the rain."
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"She ran and ran, and when she couldn't run anymore, she fell on the ground and let it catch her."
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"Sometime before sunrise, Bridget picked herself up and walked back home. She let herself in the side door and numbly walked up the steps to the bathroom. She took a long, blasting hot shower, wrapped herself in a towel, took a comb from her shelf, and walked down to the kitchen. She poured a big glass of water and sat at the table in the dark."
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"Bridget needed a run. A long, fast one. For days she'd been hanging close to the house, padding around in Greta's slippers and letting Grandma make her lemonade and rub her back. She'd gone a long time without a mother.
Usually when she slept twelve hours at night it meant she was falling apart, but these nights, with her quiet dreams, she felt as if she were remaking herself, putting herself together.
She washed her hair vigorously, four times in a row, watching the last of the faint brown dye go down the drain. Then she put on her running shoes.
The air was a little cooler than usual, and her breath settled into an easy rhythm right away. Her body felt light and wonderful, as if she'd cast of a very heavy, very dark blanket.
The river was still extra full from the day and night of storms. Her feet slipped a little on the muddy parts of the path, but she slowed down without breaking her stride. She could have run a million miles today, but she decided to turn back once she was five miles out. The trees were so lush and thick they drooped heavily over the river's edge. Big-leafed magnolias towered to the sky. A thick coat of moss seemed to cover every boulder and rock."
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"'You look...' He considered her. 'The same too,' he decided.
'Funny how that is,' she said, feeling giddy."
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"When Bridget got home from running one afternoon, there was a package waiting for her. She ripped it open instantly, standing at the kitchen table.
The Pants! They'd come back to her. With a clanging in her chest, she tore up the stairs, stripped off her running clothes, and jumped into the shower. You weren't allowed to wash the Pants. She wasn't crazy enough to try them on just after she'd run ten miles on an August day in Alabama. (16 k!!!! That's FORTY LAPS AROUND THE TRACK!)
She dried herself, put on underwear, and took up the Pants. Please fit, she begged them. She pulled them up and closed them in one fluid motion. Ahhhh. They felt so good. She did a victory lap around the attic. She ran downstairs and outside and did a victory lap around the house. 'Yay!' she shouted to the sky, because it felt so good to feel good again."
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"Bridget rose and rose until she was up in the clouds. She could afford to be generous. She assisted Rusty. She assisted Gary Lee. She assisted Billy twice. She set up the plays and doled them out like Christmas presents until the game was tied, the shouts of protest from the opposing team grew deafening, and the last minute began ticking away. Then she took the last goal for herself. She'd never said she was Mother Teresa."
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"Bridget was never careful, so she said what she was thinking. 'You know what, Grandma, if I didn't have three friends I loved, I would stay here with you. This feels like home now.'"
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"She liked herself enough again to feel like she deserved it.
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But she wondered. Did she really want that? Hadn't she had enough boys look at her that way? Would she partly hate him if he changed the way he liked her because she was pretty and blond?"
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"In a flash of wonderment she saw firm, continuous ground under her feet, stretching from back then to right now and on and on as far as her eyes could take her."
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| Thursday, June 26th, 2008
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9:06 pm - This entry is full of
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I am sooo sick and tired about obsessing/talking/discussing my problems with food. The more I talk about it, the more obsessed I become about it, and it's just a vicious cycle going 'round and 'round and 'round. I hate it! I'm going to put a stop to it, right here, right now, today. From now on I will NO LONGER let my life revolve around something as trivial as FOOD! Yes, I know it's important; it's nourishment for our bodies, but I sooo dearly miss those days when I was young and skinny and never worried about food. I ate what I wanted and didn't eat what I didn't want, ate when I was hungry, stopped when I was full, and I was a healthy, vibrant, carefree thing! I want to go back to THOSE days... when food was not an issue. It ISN'T the issue, I'm just MAKING it seem bigger than it really is, making a mountain out of a molehill, by constantly thinking and thinking about it. In reality, everything can be so simple. I've got to embrace the saying, "Everything in moderation." From now on, I'm no longer going to deprive myself of my favorite foods, even if they are unhealthy. I say, SCREW IT. It's not like I eat Twinkies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If I want to have some Post Banana Nut cereal for breakfast, well by GOLLY I shall have it! If I want a croissant with butter, well then why not? It's not the unhealthy foods that lead to health problems; it's the excessive CONSUMPTION of these foods that lead to the real problems.
Which is why I've decided to reintroduce myself to my favorite foods! After I return from London, I'm going to hit up Carrefour and buy pastries, cookies, peanut butter, and cereals! I figure it's much better to eat moderate amounts of the food I want to eat each and every day, than force myself to go for weeks or days resisting the temptations of cookies, ice cream, pastries, etc., and then have myself binge for days and days afterwards. It's not good! and I'm sick of binging! I'm sick of that guilty feeling that I get whenever I catch myself eating those "bad, bad, fatty fat" foods... and these guilty feelings just get worse and worse and I just end up eating and eating and eating! Not good! Not good at all!
It's gonna be TOUGH for me to control myself, to force myself to really enjoy every morsel, every mouthful of food once I buy all the cereal, the cookies, etc. It's gonna be REAAAAL hard not to just want to stuff everything in my mouth in a huge food orgy... but I've gotta practice. I've gotta slowly ease myself back into accepting that it's OK to eat junk food, that it doesn't make me unhealthy. I've got to STOP LIVING UP TO other people's expectations of me being a "health nut" just 'cause I exercise and eat salads for lunch! I don't have to be a "health nut" if I don't wanna. I can eat junk food. I'm not afraid of showing the world I can eat junk food!
So THIS is what has been bothering me all along. This "expectation." I should've figured it out earlier... now I know why I've been binging so much, wanting to eat so much bad food these days. It's because I already feel the pressure of being "a perfect, healthy person" instead of a normal teenager. It's the pressure that's doing me in, the pressure that I can't accept. I shoulda known. Now I know. And hopefully now I know, I can break free of that pressure. Other people may try to label me, categorize me, think they know me, but I don't have to conform to ANYONE'S idea of me. I can say, "I like salads. But I also love pastries, chocolate, and cereal." I can say, "I love the feeling of sweating like a pig, of running, of working out, of feeling my muscles being tone and firm, but I also love lying in bed like a slob, doing nothing, reading, just reading all day long."
I am who I want to be and can't nobody put any goddamn fucking label on ME. I can't be put into a box. I'm a multifaceted human being, with flaws, and those flaws are what makes me goddamn BEAUTIFUL. Not just outside, but inside... a beautiful, beautiful glow that comes from the power of being CONFIDENT, being ACCEPTING of my beauty and also my flaws, and knowing that those cracks in the system don't break me, they MAKE me.
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5:05 pm
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A quick breakdown of all the things that I've eaten today, just to see the extraordinary amount of calories I've consumed:
1 small packet of sweetened walnuts
5? 6? pecans
2 ounces of roasted almonds
4 squares of dark chocolate
1/2 cup of unsweetened dark soy milk
1/2 cup of sweetened dark soy milk
2 cups of low-fat, aloe vera yogurt
2 slices of rye toast
1 serving of olive oil
1 slice of reduced-fat cheese
4 tea-time snacks
1 apple
1 bowl of assorted bean and rice porridge
Some cucumber
Chunks of watermelon
1 small mango
1/4 cup white rice
Stewed beef, lots
Stewed carrot
Edamame beans
Bitter gourd, other veggies
Duck stock soup
Duck
1 square dark chocolate
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8:54 am
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At this point, I've really no words to say. I'm really, really angry at myself right now. I woke up at around 4:30 this morning and just went insane with the breakfast. I think I ate more than 1500 calories for that one meal alone. Nuts, soy milk, bread, cheese, yogurt, chocolate... I just ate, without thinking, without reason, without any logical explanation for why. I just ATE.
I honestly don't know what's wrong with me. Do I feel emotionally empty? No, not really. It's not like I'm going through some stressful times. I mean, it's the FUCKING holidays, for fuck's sakes. So why am I still messing up, as if I've got loads of exam papers and assignments due the next day? I really don't know. Well, this is a big buster... and it forces me to wonder the essential question: WHY?
Thank goodness I'm not a quitter. I know I've messed up big time today (imagine! I've eaten, in one meal, all the calories that I could've eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, AND snacks!). I know this, but I'm NOT going to quit. I think it's amazing how I keep messing up, time after time, yet there's this ONE PART of me that just won't give up! It's like pure denial. It's like one part of my body is dragging along, already out of energy, already on the brink of giving up, and then there's this amazing, other side of me that's like a five-year-old child, stubborn as a mule, who won't stop until she gets what she wants, even if she has to deal with a sloth, a lazyass, a nilly-willy person like ME. I honestly don't KNOW what's keeping me going, making me want to try again and again and again, even if I fail again and again and again.
There's just something, something like idiocy, something like pure, unabashed foolishness, that keeps me chugging along. And tomorrow is a new day... and today... not even today is too late to be saved! If I'm really, really careful about what I eat for the rest of today and NOT give in to peer pressure, I may just manage to come out of this whole ordeal, kind of unscathed. After all, it's not like I've REALLY busted a gut and eaten one pound's worth of calories already. So. There's still hope, even today.
And as for tomorrow... well, we'll see what it shall bring, won't we? I'm thinking of skipping breakfast and lunch tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. I did it yesterday, so I know I'll be able to do it again if I really need to. Although, I know I'm hurting my body by doing all this crap to it. By starving it for one day, then stuffing it, then starving it, then stuffing it. I must be hurting my body SOMEWHAT, right? Or no? I dunno. I'm so confused.
All I know is, as I'm sitting here typing away right now, I feel like utter crap. I feel like a fat, disgusting pile of slob shit. That's seriously what I feel like. Dejected, fat, ready to give up... the worst thing is, I look in the mirror and I think I see some of the weight that I've lost over the past months. And it's just amazing, how I could have done SOOO well over the past half a year, and then all it takes is two weeks into the holidays for me to simply crumble and return to my old ways. You start to wonder, what was keeping me going in that half a year? What's missing now in my life that's caused me to fall apart, lose all the habits that I've managed to develop?
What I need now is sheer willpower, sheer guts, to bring me back on track again. it's never too late to be what you could've been, and I believe that now more than ever. I have to. I need to. I know I can get back on track, I just have to be strong and not lazy about it!!!!!!!
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| Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
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7:37 pm
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Although I'm sorely tempted to not go and buy dark chocolate today because I've spent waaay too much money these days, I'm NOT going to back out on a promise that I've made myself. It can be OK for other people to retract promises they made to me, but I will NEVER, from this day forward, let myself down on my own promises, ever!
So tonight... after watching So You Think You Can Dance, I'm going down to 7-Eleven and buying myself a delicious dark bar of chocolate! :) Because I've been a GOOD girl today. Get this -- I ate an apple for breakfast, plus I went to the gym, then I ate some veggies for lunch, plus I was good and didn't eat ANY popcorn during the movie with Ingrid and Lyd, and for dinner I ate a reasonable amount of food. :) So I've been good! And I'm so glad.
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11:12 am
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So far so good.
Last night I slept upside down, with my head at the foot of my bed and my feet on my pillow. A very unique experience, I must say, and it helped me sleep till half past eight this morning. I woke up, stomach grumbling, and grabbed an apple. Very satisfying! Then I read some more Amy Tan (all in all I must say I'm slightly disappointed in her book thus far, The Joy Luck Club... her ignorance appalls me), then went off to the gym for a good, long, 50-minutes on the StairMaster! Woohoo! Reading a Sino-Jap fashion magazine really helped... in fact I really want to buy the magazine for myself someday...it's got quite a lot of good clothes and such.
Anyway, turns out I'm not meeting Ingrid and Lyd until 2:30 today so danger averted! Now I'll just have to pick at the lunch that my ayi will prepare for me and basically not eat anything... tres tres good.
It's raining... again. :( All this gloom-and-doom weather is really quite... well... for lack of a better word, depressing.
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| Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
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11:02 pm
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I've got a brilliant idea. I'm going to start indulging in something EVERY DAY. I think this will lessen my chances of binging. Each day, I'm going to SAVOR and INDULGE in the rich, smooth, bittersweetness of really good, really dark chocolate. Two squares each day. Tomorrow night, if I've managed to stick with my plan for the whole day, I will go buy a bar of really good dark chocolate, eat two squares before bed, and store it in my night table. Each night I will break off two delicious, dark, bittersweet squares and enjoy the real flavors of real food. Mmmmmm.
Also I figured that I desperately need to do something to keep me occupied over the summer or else I'm seriously gonna be binging like, all summer long. Next time I catch myself indulging in something I'll stop and ask myself and answer myself truthfully: "Why am I eating this? What will I feel like after eating it? Will it make me feel terrible, guilty, fat, disgusting? Will I be able to stop eating this item after one or two bites or will I feel obliged to finish the whole thing? Am I really hungry, physically hungry, or just eating to fill in an emotional void that I'm not facing courageously, truthfully?"
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