"Let It Bleed To Death & Die Of Natural Causes," by Laura Jane Faulds ---> NOGOODFORME.COM

Monday , November 16, 2009

"Let It Bleed To Death & Die Of Natural Causes," by Laura Jane Faulds

john.lennon.paul.mccartney.tonight.show.1968.jpg
ABOVE: John Lennon & Paul McCartney on The Tonight Show, 1968. Things look a bit tense.

The Beatles, "The Night Before"-

1. LAURA JANE ON... ALTERNATIVES TO MAKING LEMONADE:

A smart one I thought of once is: "When life gives you lemons, make Lennon-ade", but- trust me- it means nothing.

When life gives you lemons, Baby Lemonade: life will. When life gives you lemons, drink fifty billion gallons of lemonade in twenty minutes, and then puke up the lemonade. When life gives you lemons, maybe you are allowed to have lemonade at lunch today? NO! No way, Dude. Who do you think you are? A person??? A person. Yeah okay maybe. Drink it, Loser, just today. NO! Okay. I decide: No.

When life gives you lemons, hoard them. Stash them in the zippered pocket of your purse. If people know you have lemons, they will think you are weird. When life gives you lemons, squeeze their juices into your eyes. When life gives you lemons, destroy them. What lemons? You have stuffed them into a plastic garbage bag and taken out the trash. Truly: there are none.

Peel the peels and look at the shapes. Maybe you can rip off the skin in one piece; that's something you're good at. Throwing the lemons at the wall. In real life, there are a lot worse of things than lemons. If a friend gave me a lemon, I'd say "Thanks! I could really use this." I would slice it into quadrants. Make a white wine spritzer? With lots of ice, and lemon juice.

When life gives you lemons, write the lemons down.

They are yellow. They are bad little moons.

2. FATHER & SUN & HOLY GHOST

My April forecast on astrologyzone.com predicted that April 15th, 2009 would be life-altering.

It is that morning and I have taken this to mean that the dude I have a dependency-crush on will call my telephone. April 15th of this year was a very cold April 15th. Put yourself back there: anorexia at its all-time loudest, punching me between (betwixt?) the jut shoulder blades like an annoying little bro on a car trip.

I went out, and forced myself to leave my phone upside-down on my bed, which is something I used to do if expecting an important call. If I didn't, I'd check it too much, wincing at the sight of No Missed Calls. That was unpleasant. I am obsessive.

April 15th was banal and I resented Susan Miller (the astrologer who runs astrologyzone.com) for getting me all worked up over nothing. Susan Miller, that dumb liar bitch. The white afternoon by Dark Horse and the fur stores. I was going to get drunk that night and was excited. I was going to be asked out on a date maybe. I wasn't. My heart fluttered, a paper crane in a dumpster under thunder. I looked at my legs in mirrors. My thighs were the size of most people's arms and they were beautiful and I miss them.

He never called. I cried, got drunk, I couldn't eat my rice. I was scared. I left the place where I was and, in a hurry, a stampede of myself, got in a cab to Dad's. I cried gulpy in the backseat, the windows fogged. I polluted it. I told my Dad the truth and the next day we went to therapy together,

And then there was this new life. The first round was two months that were scary but handle-able. Every day there was three meals written down on a legal pad and I ate them because I wanted the food and because there was no use arguing. I am an adult and I will not bang my fists on the floor over a "veggie spring roll." My Dad made up cute joke-names for the breakfasts and high-fived me after my first pasta. It was the sixth time I'd eaten pasta in three years; it amazed him how I knew. I still could tell you all of them, and all the times after, too. I remember food line-ups of days that have fallen away on every other note entirely.

My arms were ants. I was scared of myself. But my advantage was that my arms were so ants and my body was so scary that I could eat and think, What do I care? I was able to admit that five pounds would probably make me look less dying.

In June there will never be problems. June's the pick of the crop! It's a jukebox, and all the songs are my favourites; it doesn't matter what I do or which I choose, everything is always good. Baby Lemonade and I ran around, the sun tanned me fast and I became more relaxed about it (eating). I got into the habit of eating two large meals a day and it was right and sexy and worked for me. Someone's got a birthday comin' up just around the corner!

Yeah, me. On my birthday it was my champagne birthday and I turned 24. I wrote an article for nogoodforme.com about having anorexia and people told me I was strong. Here is a sentence from it:

"They" say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It just strikes me as really unnecessary, to think, that any person could ever need to be this strong.

Further proof that I am always stupider than I will be in a month from now.

Something happened in July.

I thought it was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. On paper it is too perfect. In my head, I did believe it was doomed to collapse, but with your stars in my eyes I shooed those gnats of thoughts away: that is negative thinking and that is bad and strong people like Laura Jane don't think downer crap like that. You just straighten up that back of yours and put a smile on that face of yours and you walk down that street and this will not fall apart! Silly you for thinking such a silly thought.

It fell apart.

That's what happened to me. You can see it in my eyes, you can see it in my hair. I've aged-

The grief, it grew me up.

3. WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU MUFFINS, FASTIDIOUSNESS CAN BE A DETRIMENT

The best time to eat a muffin would be 9:35 AM. I mean an apple. There is no muffin without an apple first. That is not something I am capable of doing: eating a muffin for breakfast without rounding it out with an apple. When I was a little girl, I once asked my mother "If you eat an apple, and then you eat a chocolate bar, isn't it the same as eating nothing?" and my mother said "No, it's like eating an apple, and then eating a chocolate bar," and I didn't understand how that could possibly be true. I feel as though, in life, apples undo the damage of everything else. An apple a day...

So it is 9:35 in the morning and my pillow is against the wall and my coffee is on the coffee table. I have washed my apple, and pasted the apple sticker to the left-front page of my notebook where the apple stickers go. I eat my apple and then I have to use the bathroom and wash my hands; there is no point in trying to not use the bathroom in between apple and muffin. I don't need to go to the bathroom, but either way, I'll convince myself I do, so I may as well just shut it up before it starts.

The muffin must stay in my tote bag, in the white wax-paper baggy it comes in, with the napkin, until it is time to eat it. I feel incapable of interacting with food unless I am eating it. I keep almost no food in my apartment right now, only apples. I am terrified of food.

I take off the muffin wrapper and put it in the baggy. I rip off the bottom of the muffin and I rip it into two pieces. I rip the top into three or four. I take the lid off my coffee. I eat the first piece of bottom-two in two bites. The first is without coffee and the second is with. You can't dip the entire world in your coffee, Laura Jane! I eat the rest of the muffin alternating between crispy bite and fluffy bite and crispy bite and fluffy bite. I make myself fill out certain numbers of crossword clues before I am able to take another bite.

4. INTRODUCTION TO "TRAGEDY VERSUS HILARIOUSNESS"

If everything in the world can be broken down into a "Blank Versus Blank", which they can- so much of my life today is "Body Versus Brain." I wrote in my notebook, "We are on two different pages," but really- what a beautiful day that would be. My body and my brain live in two different books, and one of them is on another continent, and it is locked into a lockbox and buried fifty feet below the Earth, and a man swallowed the key, and then he died, and his body was burned. The key has been incinerated.

"For me, the weight came on like that," she says, and snaps her fingers.

That's not how it's been for me. It's a slow burn, as long as hallways in my memory, which last a thousand years. Something happens, which should necessitate a happiness I can't poke holes in, but my body is my scapegoat. It exists, to help me ruin everything.

"This is the first time in three years I've been at a normal body weight!" I whine. This is tragic, and she is supposed to feel sorry for me.

"And that's something to be very, very proud of," she says.

"Oh yeah," I say. "I hadn't thought of that." Really- I hadn't!

It's funny. She is pleased.

5. LIFE GAVE ME STARBUCKS

There is the most amazing coffee shop in my neighbourhood, you wouldn't believe how close by- it's less than a cigarette away! The coffee is kind of burnt-tasting, but the ambiance? Oh my God. Unbeatable. Terrific. It's called "Starbucks Coffee." I am so in love with it.

There is a certain number of "A Thing I Eat"s; for no reason, I am scared to try new things. I will put the fear of God into an unknown meal. The 6 PM Panic Attack is known to hit around 6 PM; it's based around the general concept of "acting like 'deciding what to eat for dinner tonight' is equally stressful to 'deciding whether you have to kill your mother or your father'." Have you ever had a real panic attack? I hadn't, but then I had. My heartbeat pulses in my ears like a loser car's bass and in front of my eyes goes crazy like when I was a little kid and would press down really hard on them before bedtime. My Mother warned me not to, but it was worth it. It looked like galaxies. I like, you know, acid.

If I write down what I am eating in my notebook the night before, it functions as an antidote to the 6 PM Panic Attack.

I probably will not have to do this for the rest of my life. It's okay. Laura Jane.

Forever, "A Thing I Eat" is: 1 chocolate chip cookie and 1 oatmeal raisin, from Starbucks. I say "Same bag, Please," because two separate makes me feel like I'm really "pigging out". If the Starbucks person puts them in two separate on their own, it makes me feel like Starbucks Person thinks that two cookies should belong to two people, and that means the worst thing is wrong with me: I eat too much food.

But I really don't eat too much food, at all. I eat intelligently. And after I wrote that thing about muffins, I decided to stop eating muffins for awhile, because once I wrote it down and looked at it, I saw that eating muffins wasn't very fun anymore. These are real choices, that I can make.

I went to Starbucks last week once. More than once, but I mean this, this one time. Before I knew the words coming out of my mouth I realized I was saying ones meant to "fuck anorexia in the face", which is the name I call Making Good Choices. I asked for the two other kinds of cookies, ginger molasses and "the dark chocolate one", which I think is called "marble", but I'll be damned if I ever say "marble", that sounds so dumb to me. I liked either one of them less than the other two, but then I moved on with my life.

You, you and you. You will never understand, how infuriatingly difficult it can be, to do little things like that one. You have to live through a lot of tough days, months, of having bad things happen, of learning lessons, of slavery, all Those Things I Eat- and then, today: it's so easy.

__

Last Sunday, something unprecedentedly wonderful happened. At Starbucks, the holiday season begins on November 1st. The day the cups turn red.

Honestly, you guys: Fuck every other type of of cookie in the world besides Starbucks polar bear cookies. They are sugar cookies, and the frosting reminds me of condensed milk. The best part of the frosting is the Polar Bear's red scarf. I got it on my fingers and it looked like lipstick. You can't order two polar bear cookies, not for some dumb eating disorder reason, but because you do. You have to value the polar bear life gave you. The second polar bear would make the first polar bear worse, and what kind of hideous human being would do that? To a polar bear? To themselves?

It would be disrespectful, distasteful. Like listening to The White Album on shuffle.
__

A Starbucks polar bear cookie does not count as "A Thing I Eat"; it doesn't fit into those tired old mechanics. A Starbucks polar bear cookie is "a snack". They are off the record, and crazy, and novel, and new. It is hard for you to understand, I realize. But think: it has been more than a thousand days since I last ate a snack. They mean I am eating something I didn't write down.

In November, lemonade is purposeless.

6. JOHN LENNON & PAUL McCARTNEY

I come in through the back door at nine in the morning. I am yet to live a story that hasn't had a happy ending.

"Let It Bleed To Death & Die Of Natural Causes" has taken me two months to write, which is a very long time, for me, for one of these. It took me two months because two months is the amount of time it took for me to accept it- it- among other things.

Paul McCartney is going to be the Beatle who dies last, I promise you this. Everybody thinks it's going to be Ringo, but it's not. It's going to be Paul, because it has to be.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney will bookend Beatle Deaths. John Lennon and Paul McCartney will both win the Beatle Death Race, in the way that is best-suited to either one of them. It will be the happiest ending, to the beautiful Beatles who deserve it.

He would have wanted to die first. Life does not let these people settle.

__

My kitchen has black-and-white checkered floors. My house has crystal doorknobs. I am sitting at my new kitchen table eating a polar bear cookie and thinking about how Paul McCartney is going to be the Beatle who dies last- the most brilliant Beatles Opinion I've thought up yet! Life is so especially excellent, for people who love the Beatles.

I punctuate my cookie with an exclamatory Marlboro Light. I shake my head, and smile. I make a "tschk" noise, in disbelief. "John Lennon and Paul McCartney," I say, out loud.

My happy ending is that I finally love the Beatles again, like the way I used to, before that thing happened, the thing that happened in July.

That thing! It was a Beatles-related tragedy, which is a thing that should not exist. It made the Beatles get all weird for me! That was the worst part of all.

I don't care. It's now. I love the Beatles more.

7. INCIDENTALLY,

Often, I will wonder. Of you, and you, and you. I will wonder if you're wondering, of how I'm doing.

Well, here is your answer:

OKAY???

Tags: blank versus blank, eating disorder awareness, eating disorder recovery, I really love Starbucks, John Lennon, Laura loves the Beatles, lemons, November, Paul McCartney, polar bear cookies, Starbucks, Susan Miller Backlash, The James Joyce of Fashion Bloggers