As a child I was very dreamy and playful. Life was full of light and laughter for me. I made tons of friends everywhere I went. I grew up with Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Chinese persons, Vietnamese persons, Brazilians, Cubans, Russians, Italians, Mexicans, and many more. My life was always diverse and interesting. I was always intent on having fun and learning more, and helping more. My mother always tells me stories about how I used to give away my shoes to someone who didn't have any, or how I stood up for my friend who was being bullied, giving the bully some taste of his own medicine. I was a very sensitive child but by no means a quiet one. I was also the problem child out of my family. I was impulsive, passionate, and could be quite a defiant handful. My mother has always understood this energy and my need to express. My father on the other hand, tended to and still tends to stifle that energy of mine.
The vibrant energy that I radiated was not taken away until I had to move to Iowa to live with my father. I did not like leaving my mother. I loved my mother, I was her baby girl. And I left her all alone to be swallowed by a black hole. I would not have gone if she had not told me to, but I did. And as soon as I was in Iowa there were immediate obligations for me to tend to so I forgot my pain for awhile. I went to school and like a good girl got all A's.
Coming into the 7th grade I was considered the the most popular, prettiest, and smartest girl in my class. I was in the gifted and talented class, picked for honor choir and honor band, involved in Odessy of the Mind, invovled in sports (softball, basketball, soccer, volleyball), in the Talent Show for singing, and of course still an all A student. I also went to church and Sunday School every service and was involved in the church's youth program.
This time in my life appeared to everybody as sunshine and rose petals, yet I was dying inside. I was suffocating and choking on all of the expectations and conditions being shoved down my throat. No more than a year before it had been publicly known that I was going to be moving out to Arizona to live with my mother. I missed her so much and couldn't wait to hop on that plane and fly into my mother's arms. Everything was planned, everything was going so well....until.....my father and the Frizzell gang started circling around me like vultures, picking at every piece of me, crowding in on me, invading every part of me. They would not hear one word of what I had to say or of what I wanted. My father was so damn sure that he knew what was right for me. He couldn't have been more wrong!
I did not get to go to Arizona, instead I had to call my mother and tell her that I would not be coming. And NEVER in my life has there ever been anything more hurtful and more cruel that I have had to do. I was just a child and my father used me against my mother and even worse myself! And what for? To protect himself from pain.
It was this event that put me at his feet and made me his puppet. I was defenseless against his wants and desires, and how he should have me be. It was this event that has been the root of so much of my misery. Going back to my 7th grade year I was acting out the role of my father's perfect daughter. Smiling at everybody with the pain of the world resting in my stomach. It was during this time that my bulimic self made it's presence known. And it would be that year that this imagined world of my father's would fall to pieces.
After the phone call with my mother she had banged on the walls and asked the Universe what she must do. And she got her answer by deciding that if our father would not let us go, she would come to us. My mother made her way from Arizona back to the town of her childhood in Iowa, giving up all stability she had worked for in the process. We planned with our mother in private as it was very evident to both my sister and I that our father was not going to let us go anywhere. Well he found out, and he found out by going through my personal journal. He reacted by taking us unwillingly to Omaha, Nebraska. He did not let us call or tell anybody where we were going. After two days away from school and with no contact we came back. He thought that he was no longer in danger of us leaving. But on that coming Sunday we sneaked out of the back door of the church into a car that my mother was waiting for us in. And with only the clothes on our back we fled that horrible place. After this incident my father disowned me and my sister for quite sometime and the Frizzell family treated us like we were bad aliens, except for my Grandpa Charlie.
Now in a new town I was taking it all in. The boys were a lot more hormonal. In my 1 1/2 years at that school in Seymour I had guy teachers and every other guy in that school hitting on me. It really got to the point where it was disgusting and harrassing. On top of all the male hormonal problems in this place the communities are made up of mostly snobby gossiping people. Your whole reputation and all of the privileges you get are based on your family name not actually on who you are and what you do. The pressure I felt in this place was only double. And the second half of my eighth grade year was one of my worst bulimic times. Just the same as up in Charter Oak during my 7th grade year, in Seymour people had all the same expectations of me and more. I was even more popular, more pretty, and more relied upon. Everybody always wanted my help with something, the boys would not stop touching me, the Frizzells would not stop nagging, everybody was taking my attention and my bulimia was my only release for all my frustration, my anger, my sadness. There was no room for me. And every bit of criticism that came blowing my way was only doubled by my own, all directed on to myself of course. It got sooo bad that I was crying every morning on the way to school and I could hardly make it through the nights. I knew that something had to change, so I decided to homeschool and spend my time getting to know myself and more importantly help myself.
Something I've learned in these last few years is that I have to be there for me. Support from other people is always a good thing, but unfortunately not always available. And if nobody else was going to heal the very hurt and desparate little child inside of me I was going to have to do it.
Coming home was the best decision I made for myself. Starting off on my road to recovery was not easy, and you think at first that it will be easy, that you can change your eating habits at the touch of a button. This is definitely not so. It has taken three years of realizations, revelations, and a lot of soul searching to get me to the point that I'm at now. But I always remind myself that every little snail step I've made over these years has kept me from dying and has brought me to healing. Every little drop of water makes the ocean.
I have had some very trying times, but never ever did I want to die. I just wanted relief, but relief is not something easily given. Patience does not grow in a person unless there is turbulence. I had to allow for my feelings to be felt, and I had to express these feelings. I was holding in my feelings like the lava in a volcano, every feeling just waiting to erupt. And so my first breakthrough was the idea that it is okay to feel. The feelings caused in me by other people, situations, and environments, regardless of intent, were still my feelings. Something I love so much about the Chinese is how much they put on honoring life and things in life. I learned how to honor my feelings, and recognize their presence.
Since then my relationship with my father has improved somewhat. He still stifles me, but I am much more able to establish my own individual ground and express the way I feel. I am going to be moving in less than 2 1/2 months to Phoenix, AZ. That fact is something that gives me inspiration everyday, and I think the space between my father and I will give us some persepctive and time to think about things. More important is that I need the time and I have got to go. Iowa has taught me a lot of hard learned lessons and almost broke my stability of mind.
You know, something I have had plenty enough of since I started schooling at home was a lot of time. And a long time ago in another time and another place my mother had told me that someday I would come face to face with God, it would be only me and the Universe. The day it happened I was sitting in the kitchen, as I had done so many times before, and I heard the never-ending tick tock of the clock echoing in my mind, I had never felt so alone. I was sitting so quietly, not making a sound, yet I was so desparate inside, I was raging at the emptiness of this room and this world. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, over and over and over. I was on the verge of losing my mind in this still place. But....I did not break. No, on the contrary, I met God. It took some time, but it was getting lost in time that allowed me to meet the Universe, to meet the presence of this other world meshed into this mundane one. I found out that I was not alone. I found the love and solace I was so desparately looking for in the silence, in the stillness. There was someone who came to soothe my nerves and calm my heart, and to whisper in my ear that it would be okay. "It will be okay" were the magic words I had been waiting to hear. I knew before that everything would be okay, but I guess I lost my conviction, and after that day nothing can break my spirit. I always have absolute faith now. I have faith in myself, in this world, and the next. Those words were whispered into my mind, into my heart, and into my soul; now I carry with me the knowing that it will all be okay. Moments are always fleeting, life here on earth is always passing. Now I live right here and right now. I am not living through my past, and I am not playing out my tomorrow, I reside in today. I reside in the minute, the next step in front of me.
In this moment by moment living I have found so much more happiness, so much less worry, and so much more relaxtion. I don't know exactly when it was, but somewhere growing up I forgot how to relax. I was in a constant state of tension, always dancing on my toes. And the mask, yes the mask, never entirely came off (even in the most relaxed of situations). An enormous part of my recovery has had to do with learning to be myself again and to take care of myself, protect myself. My sister gave me a big green light in this area. She is a lot like my father. She worries excessively, nitpicks about small stuff, and is always critical. During the big eating disorder talk with her and my mother she wasn't exactly being helpful, but she did say something that has given me so much self empowerment. She said something that was hurtful, and I told her not to say that because it causes a bad behavior in me. And she said, "Joanna, if I ever say something that hurts your feelings, tell me about it, get mad at me, don't let me walk all over you." That was so liberating!!! And coming from her, that means a lot. So now I tell people about it if they hurt my feelings, I let them know when they are pushing me too far. This has all been part of setting personal boudaries again, and learning how to assert myself when someone is invading these boudaries. I have been able to find the balance again. Now that scales are always swaying from one side to the other, but in the middle I can keep my balance through the swaying and tides. Balance is actually knowing how to adjust without falling. There will always be turbulence. The Buddhists say that all life is suffering. In Buddhism there is surrender to the ways of the world, you let go of what you cannot control. And the only thing you can actually control is yourself. You have to find the balance within yourself, it cannot be found anywhere else. I understand now that people will do what they think they have to do, and the world will continue to challenge you and push you. And I will take every challenge and ride the waves of change so that I may better undestand myself, my fellow humans, and the entire Universe.
One thing I can tell you for sure is that I will never leave myself again. I know of self-love, self-respect, self-knowing, self-acceptance, and self-esteem (faith in myself). I believe in the mothership theory which says: If you can't save the mothership, you can't save her sailors either. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else. If you don't help yourself, you can't help anybody else. I learned about this from a brilliant lawyer in New York when I was only four years old. I've remembered it all this time, and only began to understand it about a year and half ago. Now I feel for myself, I take care of myself, and I protect myself. I have a responsibility towards myself, and if I am not fulfilling that responsibility I cannot fulfill my responsibility to anybody else and I should not be trying to. I had to put me first, my well-being, my health, my life.
I have been bulimia free for 20 days now. I basically just stopped after 5 years of ongoing bulimia. I had known for some months that the time was coming for my weakening bulimia to end. In January and then turning into February I began to strongly feel the pull towards the last step. And on February 21st I let go entirely, it had served it's purpose and now I took the reigns. February 22nd I talked to my mother and sister, and since then eating, relaxing, and excercising have been fun and leisurely activities. I enjoy my food and pay attention to my satisfaction, my sister and I take walks in the field, and all three of us love to have family days at home. We cook, talk, laugh, discuss, watch movies, dance, sing, laugh some more, and do all sorts of fun stuff. I am truly grateful for all of the blessings that I recieve. I am just happy to be alive, with people I love, and to be myself again. My approach to life is to experience where I am now. I am not in a race to somewhere or something. I see no reason for me to get uptight and worry about the coming of tomorrow. Having had an eating disorder and having overcome it, and all the things I learned in the process has brought a lot more meaning and purpose to my life. I once heard a song that said, "It dosen't matter if your early, it dosen't matter if your late." The singer was referring to death and going home (afterworld). I also read the same thing in a book about the otherside by Silvia Browne. And it really struck a chord with me. I realized that there was no reason for me to stress and worry all the time. Life is not a race. I'm not trying to beat time, actually time is on my side. I take the time to think, reflect, laugh, experience, share, listen, and really be aware of what's going on and pay attention to what is right in front of me.
The next step in my journey of life is moving to Arizona where I am going to be a student of Alternative Medicine, we'll see where that takes me when I get there. The three things I am concentrating on in my life now and will continue to are healing expression, humanitarian expression, and artistic expression. I have a need to help people feel better and take care of. I have a need to help people live better and understand more about humanity. And I have a need to express myself. These are the things that my heart and whole being tells me I need to do. And I follow myself now. I listen to my heart, my intuition, my instincts, my good judgement, and my incredible insight. I have found what true success is. It is knowing who you are, being who you are, and loving who you are!
I Love You All Always and Forever,
Joanna Sue Frizzell
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