Food, a history

I'll start in the middle. Or more like close to now, which is not the end. My colitis was back in my life like a raging volcano of pain and disaster a few years ago--2011. Though I got diagnosed when I was eleven, it had been mostly quiescent since then. It wasn't something that I managed and it wasn't something I thought about much--the liver transplant and the infertility were the big health experiences in my life. Colitis was mostly forgotten. I went to El Salvador the summer of 2011 and came back with what I thought was an inhospitable gut bacteria. It stuck around though and turned out to be a huge colitis flare. Which comes with abdominal pain, to the point of doubling over or lying on the floor of the bathroom weeping and begging for anything else to happen. Vomiting as though I had food poisoning. Blood in places you don't want or expect blood to be.

I made an appointment with my lovely and amazing friend Christine. We had met at my favorite coffee shop, Piccino. Introduced by Brian, the barista. A word that does not even begin to describe the role he played in my life. Both of these people deserve posts of their own.  Anyway, Christine was my morning coffee gift and she was also an acupuncturist. Still is. She specializes in fertility and we'd talked about my coming to see her some day. When I went it was with the goal of calming down the inflammation in my body, getting the colitis under control with a longer term goal of preparing me to get pregnant. Among other things she put me on what we called my inner circle diet. It consisted of broth, chicken, avocado, bananas, rice and lamb. Maybe one or two more things but I've blocked some of it out. The idea was to calm everything down inside of me and then slowly start introducing things to see what my body reacted to.

I went into a rage. A grief, rage tornado. Not at the thought of doing it--this was my dear, trusted friend who was trying to help me take care of myself. At the actuality of doing it. One day I had to walk out of the office and walk around downtown Oakland, trying to get myself together because the hunger and emptiness and overall rawness of emotion I was feeling made me want to tear my skin off. All from the act of feeding myself a banana chip--which was probably pushing it anyway because I'm not sure that type of processed banana counted as inner circle. Putting my diet under such tight control seriously pushed me over the edge. 

Being hungry made me feel panicky. It made me feel out of control. I also felt like Christine was doing this to me. When I'd eat something I shouldn't, I felt like I was messing up. That I should hide it from Christine. Because I was also at a time in my life when I was working to be as authentic and honest as possible, I recognized that desire to hide as a cue to actually tell on myself.

Do you see the language there? None of it is about me feeling like I was taking care of myself. None of it felt good or loving towards my one precious body that had been through so much. I was doing it because someone told me to and because I didn't want to get in trouble. For the record, neither Christine the friend nor Christine the acupuncturist would ever tell me or treat me like I was in trouble. This was all me.