I had an old short story-like piece I wrote awhile ago kicking around, and the comment from my last post (and from Dan-o) prompted me to bring it back and brush off the dust. I've tried to reincorporate it into my statement to give a more personal slant to what it is I'm trying to do with my life, but this might just be a little too much catharsis for one week!
There's too much going on this week is what's the problem; I knew this would get me into trouble in the beginning of September, and it's all starting to catch up. I started filling in my day planner using pencil just to save myself the trouble, and the improvement has only been marginal. Housing also took away half my savings a few days ago, which probably contributes to the feeling that everybody's scrabbling for a pound of flesh from yours truly.
In truth, I'm just aggravated I can't manage that French "r" sound with the back of my throat. I can double-tongue on saxophone, but I can't get that rolling growl. I must have scared a few pedestrians while practicing on my way to classes and Gage yesterday.
***
The Wellness Centre at the University of British Columbia occupies a small corner of the Student Union Building basement, and vies for the attention of hungry students alongside a travel agency and hair salon. By the end of my second year, I had grown very familiar with this corridor, and was grateful to the crush of people that hid my constant pacing past the Centre’s doors. The busy lunch hour meant no one saw me pause outside, or see Anne urge me to keep walking. It was true that I had seen almost all the pamphlets lining the yellow walls before, on orientation day where the papers are turned into paper airplanes by uninterested first-year students; two years later, Anne still held the same disdain for nutritional guides, tips for good study habits, and the consequences of healthy relationships. She held herself – and me – above these petty concerns.
The two peer educators inside, waiting in their ring of plastic chairs, thought otherwise. I did, as well. Without Anne’s consent, I had signed both of us up for a nutrition workshop that was advertised in my residence, and she took this betrayal as badly as I feared. In the guise of an extrovert, she apologized for our tardiness while sitting down flamboyantly, and exuded the aura of just another sophomore hoping to keep the “freshman fifteen” at bay for another year. Her outrageous personality chattered on with meaningless comments and grandiose remarks while she did her best to pretend as though she were not the reason we were here, or the one trying to hide her embarrassment at being accused of needing help dealing with food. I was familiar with this behaviour – almost polar opposite to my own – and our constant companionship meant I knew enough to wait for this outburst to wither. She controlled the situation, and I merely sat at attention.
In the meantime, the presentation had progressed through the four food groups, dangerous diets, and we approached the end of the hour. Anne smirked, knowing escape was imminent and another emotional victory was within her grasp; I merely waited for the next slide to be slipped onto the projectors, and for it to say what I could not.
The slide did appear. Anne stiffened in her seat, and fell mercifully silent. I read the title on the screen, and saw the words I had been playing with delicately in the back of my mind. Anorexia nervosa. I couldn’t see her or hear her, but I felt Anne squirm. She hated her full, ugly name, and no one had ever called her that to her face.
Not many people know that I battled with disordered eating. I keep that part of my life private if only to save others from recalling the stereotypes associated with depression and anorexia; I cannot compete with violent media images of skeletal young women subject to hospitalization, heavy medication, force feeding and suicide watches, even if I never came close to any of these in reality. Nothing appears in my medical record beyond a drop in body weight over a few months, not even enough to make me underweight according to the corpus of medical literature, but those few months were enough to rewrite my status in society for life. All of a sudden, I had to consider how schools, prospective employers, family and friends would receive me in the aftermath of a mental illness.
Though I maintained the quality of my academic work and even increased my activities in the community, my thinner body betrayed me. I have never felt so objectified, as my body became the focus of others instead of me, the person. Whether through concern or praise, comments about me invariably were comments about my bodily appearance, and it seemed impossible to leave anorexia behind; even when the disease was gone for good, its stigma was here to stay. Through my frustration, I realized my body was engaging in a dialogue with the society it was immersed in, and I resolved to become an active participant in that exchange.
No one should have to face discrimination because of an irrelevant disability or ailment, and I feel that I have a personal investment in strengthening and enforcing the rights of people in those positions. As I already have an academic interest in critical legal theory – my graduating essay focuses on the use of speech-act theory in Canadian law, specifically with regards to the same-sex marriage debate – I see a legal education at _____ as a way to further my interest in critical theory, see how critical theories are deployed in the guise of the law, and gain the skills I need to confront inequity first-hand as a lawyer.
I may not have known that I would want to devote my life to the practice of law until a year ago, but I believe that all my experiences since then have directed me towards anti-discrimination work. My experience with disordered eating has left only a few pieces of evidence that still exist today: a few pairs of too-tight jeans, some photographs, and a strong desire to work in the field of human rights. We all have just one body in which to live, and I see no reason as to why we should be unduly tied to its limitations.
There's too much going on this week is what's the problem; I knew this would get me into trouble in the beginning of September, and it's all starting to catch up. I started filling in my day planner using pencil just to save myself the trouble, and the improvement has only been marginal. Housing also took away half my savings a few days ago, which probably contributes to the feeling that everybody's scrabbling for a pound of flesh from yours truly.
In truth, I'm just aggravated I can't manage that French "r" sound with the back of my throat. I can double-tongue on saxophone, but I can't get that rolling growl. I must have scared a few pedestrians while practicing on my way to classes and Gage yesterday.
***
The Wellness Centre at the University of British Columbia occupies a small corner of the Student Union Building basement, and vies for the attention of hungry students alongside a travel agency and hair salon. By the end of my second year, I had grown very familiar with this corridor, and was grateful to the crush of people that hid my constant pacing past the Centre’s doors. The busy lunch hour meant no one saw me pause outside, or see Anne urge me to keep walking. It was true that I had seen almost all the pamphlets lining the yellow walls before, on orientation day where the papers are turned into paper airplanes by uninterested first-year students; two years later, Anne still held the same disdain for nutritional guides, tips for good study habits, and the consequences of healthy relationships. She held herself – and me – above these petty concerns.
The two peer educators inside, waiting in their ring of plastic chairs, thought otherwise. I did, as well. Without Anne’s consent, I had signed both of us up for a nutrition workshop that was advertised in my residence, and she took this betrayal as badly as I feared. In the guise of an extrovert, she apologized for our tardiness while sitting down flamboyantly, and exuded the aura of just another sophomore hoping to keep the “freshman fifteen” at bay for another year. Her outrageous personality chattered on with meaningless comments and grandiose remarks while she did her best to pretend as though she were not the reason we were here, or the one trying to hide her embarrassment at being accused of needing help dealing with food. I was familiar with this behaviour – almost polar opposite to my own – and our constant companionship meant I knew enough to wait for this outburst to wither. She controlled the situation, and I merely sat at attention.
In the meantime, the presentation had progressed through the four food groups, dangerous diets, and we approached the end of the hour. Anne smirked, knowing escape was imminent and another emotional victory was within her grasp; I merely waited for the next slide to be slipped onto the projectors, and for it to say what I could not.
The slide did appear. Anne stiffened in her seat, and fell mercifully silent. I read the title on the screen, and saw the words I had been playing with delicately in the back of my mind. Anorexia nervosa. I couldn’t see her or hear her, but I felt Anne squirm. She hated her full, ugly name, and no one had ever called her that to her face.
Not many people know that I battled with disordered eating. I keep that part of my life private if only to save others from recalling the stereotypes associated with depression and anorexia; I cannot compete with violent media images of skeletal young women subject to hospitalization, heavy medication, force feeding and suicide watches, even if I never came close to any of these in reality. Nothing appears in my medical record beyond a drop in body weight over a few months, not even enough to make me underweight according to the corpus of medical literature, but those few months were enough to rewrite my status in society for life. All of a sudden, I had to consider how schools, prospective employers, family and friends would receive me in the aftermath of a mental illness.
Though I maintained the quality of my academic work and even increased my activities in the community, my thinner body betrayed me. I have never felt so objectified, as my body became the focus of others instead of me, the person. Whether through concern or praise, comments about me invariably were comments about my bodily appearance, and it seemed impossible to leave anorexia behind; even when the disease was gone for good, its stigma was here to stay. Through my frustration, I realized my body was engaging in a dialogue with the society it was immersed in, and I resolved to become an active participant in that exchange.
No one should have to face discrimination because of an irrelevant disability or ailment, and I feel that I have a personal investment in strengthening and enforcing the rights of people in those positions. As I already have an academic interest in critical legal theory – my graduating essay focuses on the use of speech-act theory in Canadian law, specifically with regards to the same-sex marriage debate – I see a legal education at _____ as a way to further my interest in critical theory, see how critical theories are deployed in the guise of the law, and gain the skills I need to confront inequity first-hand as a lawyer.
I may not have known that I would want to devote my life to the practice of law until a year ago, but I believe that all my experiences since then have directed me towards anti-discrimination work. My experience with disordered eating has left only a few pieces of evidence that still exist today: a few pairs of too-tight jeans, some photographs, and a strong desire to work in the field of human rights. We all have just one body in which to live, and I see no reason as to why we should be unduly tied to its limitations.
