losing_weight jane it's been awhile. in the hospital, all food is pre-packaged, filled with chemicals and mass-cooked for patients and chronic hospital visitors. the hospital is a place you think of going for a few days - maybe you break your arm, maybe you need surgery, maybe you're giving birth. either that, or we think of the ones that have been there forever, the ones that will stay there forever. for the most part, though, the hospital is as transitory as an airport or hotel. you get your pass, you stay for a short amount of time, then you go home. my visit was two weeks. half a month. where did march go? i ask myself. i saw people come and go quickly. most were there for two weeks or so like myself, but chava had been there a month and a half, and mary had been there since at least october. she couldn't remember. the bell would go off in the morning at eight. i would lay in bed for a half hour or so and then go down to the day room in my pajamas to get breakfast. sometimes i would have cheerios, sometimes a banana, sometimes a slice of bread. sometimes nothing. the medication made me lose my appetite. after breakfast sometimes we would play scrabble. i only lost once. people didn't want to play with me anymore because they were spelling words like "rock" and "cat" and i was doing words like "vex" and "qat." there was a period of bored time where i would usually write or read "tuesdays with morrie" before groups started. i liked art group because there were so many options. the scratch paper was fun, but so were acrylics and watercolors. chava made a box out of popsicle sticks, and alex made a triceratops out of clay. he painted it with thin vertical red and blue stripes. it looked like it was wearing pajamas. some people would sit in the music room and listen to the hits from the 70s, and occasionally us artists would sing along to "we go together" or "more than a woman." stealer's wheel came on once. it made my day. we had to do two hours of groups each weekday, and one hour each on saturday and sunday. i always did more hours than i needed to, because the ward wasd a boring place. ty, the groups director, would come in while a group of us were watching some british comedy on tv and say, "i'm counting it!" we got hours for watching a movie together. we got a half-hour for playing ping pong. lunch came at 12:30 or 1. eric always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. it wasn't really that grilled, and the bread was soft with butter. its like they threw some cheese on buttered bread and tossed it in the microwave to nuke it for a minute. i usually just ate the spinach and part of a roll, trying to get anything into my rebellious stomach. after lunch sometimes there were more groups, nursing group was at 2:00 if you were on the list. nursing group was an oppurtunity for a group of patients to get together and talk about a specific issue, like medication or relapse prevention. i realized in the group about medication that i had no idea what i was taking or what it was doing to me. i was taking lexapro, nexium, ambien, and soemtimes they would give me ativan. i was a chemical pool. i felt nothing. visitor's hours were from 3:30 to 5. my mom would come and bring me snacks from the outside world, we would talk about the various characters in the ward, and the medication, and how i was feeling. we would talk about the family, and the weather, and when i got my hospital privileges from enough group hours, we would walk around the hospital, visiting the courtyard where everyone smoked. i still felt too sick to have a cigarette, but i felt my body crave one - maybe it would help, i thought. the first day she came she brought me african violets, and i tried to care for them, but by the time i left new york, there were only six blossoms left. dinner came at about 6:00. eggplant parmesan was the only edible thing on the menu. i ate the eggplant and left the parmesan. i ate some broccoli. anything i could force down. nausea has a way of making otherwise good food into the devil. i was so afraid of getting sick again that i would rather endure the pains of hunger than stick it out vomiting. i would blame my medications and refuse to take any of them. i would flip out and be put in the dreaded "quiet room." rather than face all that, i would eat what i could - sometimes that meant nothing at all. people would have visitors come after dinner, at 6:30. my mom would come back most of the time. she would tell me she visited the u.n. and how she has a love/hate relationship with new york. chava's dad would come and play ping pong with her. alex would have his wife and a few friends. everyone had to leave at 8:00. there were a few hours to kill after they left. some people would get hungry before bedtime and eat cereal. most of us would watch tv. on the mondays i was there, i had to fight josephine to watch 24. she was a batty old woman who mumbled about her acid reflux, and sat five inches away from the television. when i asked her if i could have the tv at 9:00, she said that's when raymond was on, don't you like raymond, everybody loves raymond...etc. usually the anticlimatic confrontation was not worth it and i would attempt to watch 24 on the small tv in the music room. lights out was at midnight, so usually i read and wrote and took an ambien at 10:30 or 11:00. i slept in a hospital gown and pajama pants. the blankets were thin but the room was a reasonable temperature. the air from the fan was stale and old. from the window i could see bellevue, and wondered what the crazies in there did all day. by the end of two weeks i had noticeable lost weight. i was pale and tired. i didn't want to leave. as soon as i was out in the real world, i had to make my own schedule, i had to pay for food, i had to worry about a budget. i had to pack up my apartment and ship it to arizona. i had no friends to help me. by the time i was discharged, my only friends in new york were from the hospital. i had disappeared for two weeks and nobody had contacted my parents. alex helped me get some suitcases down the three flights of stairs and into a cab. would i miss the weight that i had lost, the bags and bags of trash i threw away, the people i once called friends who were too wrapped up to notice my absence? the drinking buddies, the smoking buddies, the furniture, the dirt, the shoes, the papers...would i feel lighter, or would i feel there was something missing? would moving be cathartic or unnerving? would i be able to eat? only time could tell, but for one moment, i felt the freedom of discharge. i had no chains holding me back to this city, to anywhere really - my burden was lifted - for one moment 050418 ... unhinged i remember this; it's happened before. i didn't realize how drastic it was until people who hadn't seen me for months, like my aunts and uncles, said 'wow, you've been losing weight. what have you been doing?' it was when i was drinking and smoking so much that i had to remind myself to eat. i lost about two sizes that way. my clothes hung loosely on my body and i looked like a skeleton of myself. i remember replying 'oh, i don't eat anymore.' and she said to me 'oh, well, you look good.' when she should have said 'that's horrible. you need to eat.' but i still wasn't skinny enough for people to think i needed to eat. i looked 'good.' even though in every possible way i felt like shit. and reminding myself that i needed to eat only allowed me to add another thing to the list of things i couldn't do right. i have a coffee and cigarette diet again. my stomach doesn't like to digest anything else. i like the way my stomach feels when it's empty. anxiety has been eating holes in my life. i had gained all the weight back that i lost from subconsiously starving myself when i conciously decided to stop drinking and smoking and food was my only comfort. i'm losing weight again. anxiety and depression have been eating holes in my life. 050418 ... unhinged in a healthy way. lots of veggies, fiber, fruit. no meat, minimal saturated fats. exercise. i was just looking at pants in my closet too big to tie to my body even with a belt and thought 'i should get rid of those' 110104 ... unhinged (just one thing on the list of things i know how to do right now) 110104 ... h|s|g aim for health. and read. and read and read. do other animals "cook" their food? the literal definition of cook is to alter. as_if we knew better. food_is_information and we alter it and become confused and sick. 110104 ... unhinged losing hanging 131212 what's it to you? who go blather from