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baratrongirl · 4 years

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Occult Blood and other Seitanic Nightmares

I have mentioned recently on Ao3 and Discord that I have been having Serious Health Issues lately.

To begin the story of my health breaking down, I want to show you a picture:

And you're like, "OK H-L, what the hell's that?"

THOSE are "sticky vegan spare ribs" made of seitan, which is pretty much pure wheat gluten.

Before eating said sticky vegan spare ribs, I did not believe that I had any problems with wheat gluten. I know several people with c[o]eliac disease, and I'm aware of a few others who can't eat gluten due to auto-immune conditions, but I did not think I was one of them. I've had a foul digestive system for years but had been mostly keeping it under control by avoiding dairy, eggs, animal protein in general, and eating a very large number of prebiotics and probiotics. Gluten? Didn't think that was a problem at all.

Profound TMI and potential triggers below the cut.

Cue the next morning, when I woke up with really bad cramping in my large intestine and as much blood as if I'd been having a period, only coming from what doctors refer to as my "back passage". Holy crap.

Well. So. I continued to have diarrhoea throughout the trip, came home and rang the GP surgery. At the time the coronavirus outbreak was just ramping up, so the GP I spoke to was basically telling me "it probably isn't cancer if you've only had it the once, call back in a few months if it continues." I never thought it might be cancer, but I was pretty worried about coeliac disease.

So from March around to June, I have been having diarrhoea between 2 and 5+ times a day. Sometimes explosive. Sometimes very painful. Got to 4th June and decided it had been "a few months" and I needed medical attention. Spoke to a GP in a telephone appointment, who took it all very seriously and ordered a bunch of blood tests and a stool sample.

The initial blood tests for c[o]eliac disease - IgA-TGA and IgG-TGA came back "negative", but I haven't seen the actual numbers. Also, according to both a very comprehensive review article and MayoClinic recommendations, these tests are negative in around 8% of people who do turn out to have coeliac disease.

In the meantime another GP reviewed the results and decided I should produce some more stool samples, one to be cultured to test what bacteria I have in my intestines, and the other a FIT test for occult blood. Which sounds awesome, but it just means hidden blood in your poo. That came back positive, which means that I have hit the "you might have cancer" target and been referred urgently to Gastroenterology under the Rapid Referral Scheme.

It's only about a 10% chance of being cancer, and I'm not even worried about that. I'm pretty young for bowel cancer. I've been trying to explain to people how even if it was cancer, I'm less afraid of a nice solid tumour in Stage 1 that hasn't had the chance to break off and metastasise than I am of a lifelong horrible inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn's. I know that might sound really weird, but I'm aware of how "cancer" isn't a single illness, it all depends on the specific gene mutation that you have, and the word alone doesn't trigger me. I know several people who have had cancers found early and they're fine now.

I'm not even afraid of the colonoscopy which is booked for Wednesday. I seem to know a startlingly large number of people who have had to have one well before the age of 50, for one reason or another. What I'm distressed by is the fact I can't eat normal food from Sunday round to Tuesday, and then have to starve myself from 1pm on Tuesday, and then take medication to make the world fall out of my bottom. Twice. I already have the world falling out of my bottom on a regular basis - or at least I did, see below - and it's horrendous.

In other news I decided that I didn't care what the blood tests said, I was going to stop eating gluten and see if it made any difference. So I've cut out everything which contains wheat, barley, spelt, or gluten, though some of the things in my diet still "may contain traces of gluten". Since there isn't any need to go all the way gluten-free until I have some sort of medical proof that gluten is the problem, right? Except... I've gone from diarrhoea 2-5+ times PER DAY to having 2 episodes of diarrhoea in the past NINE DAYS. That's pretty conclusive, right?

Yesterday I woke up again with really bad cramping in my large intestine and more blood in my poo. It's probably from an injury from having had so much explosive diarrhoea, but from the position of the cramping over the top of my belly, I don't think it's anything up my bum but a lot further round. Today I woke up from one of those anxiety dreams about teeth falling out. Usually I can stave those off when I've been to the dentist within the last 6 months and determined that my teeth and gums are doing okay, but not today... So I'm distressed, anxious, and my tummy hurts.

Honestly, I really believe that I have either coeliac disease or non-coeliac gluten intolerance. The part where I stopped eating gluten and the problem almost completely went away seems telling, to me. I'm very aware of the psychosomatic effect and how a person can "believe" something that isn't true, get well from a placebo treatment or whatever. But I don't think my intestines could do that?

In the meantime, I am stressed beyond belief about the next few days. All I can eat is bland white carbohydrates, tofu, milk, yogurt without bits, fruit juice without bits, lemon sorbet, and a very small number of vegetables/fruit. I am very much a food-oriented person and it's already distressing that I may well have to stop eating gluten for life, without all the other nonsense in this temporary diet.

By the way, being a person with a rather sick sense of humour, it will actually HELP if you make "up the bum" jokes. I'd definitely prefer it to "I'm praying for you", which makes me angry at the best of times.

#digestive disorders #intestines #celiac #tw: blood #tw: poop #gluten #probably not cancer #colonoscopy #yay #tmi #so much tmi

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coll2mitts · 4 years

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#88 Tommy (1975)

The Who’s well-loved 1969 rock opera album Tommy has been adapted for the screen, and is almost the furthest thing from a feel-good picture that you can get. Who knew that the sound of childhood trauma could be so goddamn catchy?

When I was a young girl, my father would play the album Tommy, he really liked the band. Tommy was one of those albums I played on repeat when I was elementary school-aged. My dad had copied the album to a cassette, and me and my yellow Walkman would head to the bus stop every morning blasting “The Acid Queen”. I’ve mentioned before I was an obnoxious kid, and one memory that has unfortunately stuck with me for like 25 years is this guy on the bus asking my sister to tell me to stop singing out loud to “Pinball Wizard” because it was annoying. I sunk into my seat as if he had punched me straight in the gut.

Being young, my understanding of the plot was pretty basic, and oh boy, the movie translation of this was um... I was not prepared for the ride I had boarded. Even as someone who is unbelievably familiar with the source material, this was a rough watch.

Tommy begins during World War 2, and England is getting bombed by Nazis. Tommy’s mom and dad are on their honeymoon, and when they return, Tommy’s father is sent off to war and is presumably killed in action. Tommy is born on V.E. Day and never knows his biological father. His mother (Ann-Margret) hooks up with a dude she met on vacation, Uncle Frank, and when Tommy’s father returns unannounced 6 years later, her lover kills him by hitting him with a lamp. Dude lived through a plane crash, and its the bedside lamp that finally gets him. Tommy witnesses the murder, and Uncle Frank and his mom plead with him not to tell anybody. The trauma of this event triggers psychosomatic deafness and blindness in Tommy. His parents are understandably concerned about him, even though they are the whole reason this happened in the first place.

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His mom is weirdly fixated with his salvation, and takes Tommy to church to see if a supremely uncharismatic Eric Clapton and statue of Marilyn Monroe can heal him. The congregation, in a very classy move that is not at all disparaging to Marilyn Monroe’s legacy, downs alcohol and prescription medication as communion. The healing goes about as well as expected.

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After this, his Uncle Frank takes Tommy to a prostitute, who drugs and presumably rapes him, thinking it might snap him out of it. When that doesn’t work, his parents then leave him with one babysitter that beats and tortures him, and another that sexually molests him, so... fun times. My notes perfectly illustrate how glad I was to watch this series of events unfold.

Realizing Tommy can entertain himself just by looking in a mirror, his parents get loaded on the couch, leaving him alone to wander out of the house. He stumbles upon a pinball machine in a junkyard. His parents discover he’s really fucking good at it, and introduce him into the very financially lucrative world of pinball competitions.

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My favorite scene in this movie is watching Elton John play a keyboard attached to a pinball machine while wearing the largest shoes I’ve ever seen on a human. They hinder his movement so much he can only point with his left arm over and over again to show his enthusiasm. When Tommy wins the Pinball championship, a pack of Waldos haul away Elton’s defeated body.

Now that Tommy’s family is rolling in dough, his parents buy a mansion and a yacht, and Ann-Margret tries to bury her guilt surrounding Tommy’s condition through retail therapy, and literally smothering her grief with chocolate pudding.

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I swear to god, Ann-Margret is the only person who actually knew what kind of movie she was filming. She’s crazed, dramatic, and her voice is so fucking awesome (unlike some of the other actors they cast...). Still, the disservice of making her swim in a sea of baked beans... which, FUN FACT: sent her into the ER because part of the broken champagne bottle rocketed out of the television when they were pelting bubbles at her and cut her hand large enough that she needed 27 stitches to close it. She came back to film the next day because she is a fucking queen.

Tommy’s parents take him to Jack Nicholson putting on an haughty accent to see if he can fix Tommy, and all he succeeds in doing is putting the moves on Ann-Margret. She takes Tommy back to the house and dances him into the mirror, which sets him free to swim and run shirtless across the country without shoes on.

It’s around this point of the movie that I realize Ann-Margret and I have *a thing* for young Roger Daltrey, and I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.

Seriously, she’s only like 3 years older than him and she’s supposed to be playing his mother. The film industry is so fucked up.

Tommy tells his mother than she needs to relinquish all her material possessions, baptizes her in the ocean, and forms his own pinball-based religion. His followers treat him like a messiah, looking for him to provide the path to salvation. He invites them onto his compound, puts his child molester Uncle Ernie in charge of a bunch of children, and Uncle Frank in charge of recruitment and merchandising.

His campers are fairly pissed they’re being milked for every dime they have, but Tommy is all, “I haven’t handed out my syllabus yet, wait until you hear what the curriculum is going to be!” When they discover it’s about turning off all distractions and only playing pinball, his congregation are all like, “Fuck that!” and riot, murdering both of Tommy’s parents. Now that his oppressors are dead, Tommy is truly free. He runs through literal fire, jumps into a lake in jeans, and climbs a slippery waterfall AND a mountain in bare feet, making me wonder what kind of insurance they had on this picture that they allowed Roger Daltrey to do all of that and hang glide into a sea of bikers. The 1970s were an unencumbered time.

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I watched several interviews with Peter Townshend to understand where the idea of this rock opera came about, and holy shit, this story is just based in his own traumatic childhood experiences. From his perspective, after WW2, the people in England who had lived with the constant fear of sudden death internalized all of their associated trauma. They had children they weren’t emotionally equip to parent, leaving them to be vulnerable to people who wanted to exploit them.

Tommy’s constant plea in the movie was to be seen and heard by those who were supposed to protect and care for him, only for them to be ignorant to the affect their negligence was having on him. Tommy tries to save other broken people who need to feel safe, only for them to revolt, take the only family he’s ever known away from him, and abandon him. This is an unbelievably depressing movie, and the fact it resonated with so many people, I just... I don’t know how to process that, because it’s heartbreaking.

So, yeah, this movie is weird as shit, but it does try to impart that people who are exposed to repeated stressful events will only hurt themselves and those around them if they try to repress those experiences. I’m not sure the movie effectively communicated what The Who was trying to convey in the original album, however. I think the message is overshadowed by the strong aesthetic.

I suffered with intense anxiety as a child (still do, although I have mechanisms now as an adult to help manage it) and my parents didn’t know what the fuck to do with me. I would say 90% of the time they’d treat my anxiety like I was personally trying to inconvenience them, and the other 10% they’d make fun of me for it. So there I’d be, trying to hide my anxiety attacks and feeling like I was going to die (or if I was lucky, just vomit) because they’d get angry or tell me to suck it up if they knew what was going on. I did not have a happy childhood. I, like Tommy, just wanted them to understand me and show any amount of compassion. However, watching this movie, I somehow did not find myself relating to his story at all. I was too distracted by Marilyn Monroe-dressed nuns, a 2-story tall Elton John, child abuse and molestation played off as a joke, and Ann-Margret drowning in bean syrup that I completely missed the intention. I also think 1970s religious movements had a tendency to be rather exploitative, and I have listened to far too many My Favorite Murders to not see Tommy’s fans and think, “You’re in a cult, call your dad.” It’s hard to be automatically empathetic to the abused when they lead others to be victimized by their abusers.

I would 1000% recommend Tommy the album. This movie is worth a watch if you like The Who, but even as someone who loves the original music, I’m probably not going to put it in my constant rotation.

That concludes rock band movie musical week! The orchestra nerd inside of me is excited to move on to Carmen Jones next.

#unwarranted opinion #100 best musical movies of all time rotten tomatoes

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wordssometimesfail · 5 years

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Textual Reddie & Queer!Eddie: A Masterpost

So I’ve been planning on doing something like this for a while, but it had fallen to the wayside until @skinks and I started talking about Reddie again, and my weak little heart was rekindled.

Speaking of reKINDLEd (ehh? Ehhhhh?), my Kindle copy of IT is full of highlighted textual support of unresolved Reddie feelings, and a queer reading of Eddie specifically. And lo, a disjointed essay-type meta was birthed. This fucker’s about to get long, so if you’re interested, dive on under the cut – but be forewarned, there are massive spoilers for the book and (probably) Chapter 2 below!

(Seriously, cannot emphasize the MASSIVE SPOILERS enough. If you don’t know what happens and you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read this.)

As a very general disclaimer, I am not going to be including everything that I highlighted. There is a fuckton, including a lot of small moments of Richie and Eddie interacting that don’t showcase anything other than their closeness. I’ll be paring it down here to moments that prove a larger theme, and some standout cuteness. With that said, IT is a 1,300-page behemoth, and it’s definitely possible that I skipped over something. If you know of anything significant that I missed, feel free to reblog with additions.

Note: I will be using terrible, half-assed MLA citations for this. Pagination is from my Kindle copy of the novel. All quotes will be italicized to help differentiate them visually from my points (if something was italicized in the original text, it’ll be unitalicized here). Unless otherwise stated, all bolded emphasis is mine. “--” will be used in place of em-dashes, “/” will be used to denote paragraph breaks.

PART I – ASTHMA

“When Eddie’s nervous he reaches for his aspirator.” (King 372)

It doesn’t get much more explicit than this. We’re told in no uncertain terms that Eddie’s psychosomatic asthma is rooted in nervousness, in things that make him scared and uncomfortable. The trigger for this particular explanation is being overwhelmed by the age and significance of Boston, but in an earlier scene:

“These shoes no longer looked just right... but he supposed they would do for where he was going. And for whatever he might have to do when he got there. Maybe Richie Tozier would-- / But then the blackness threatened and he felt his throat beginning to close up.” (King 112)

This is Eddie’s first on-page asthma attack. It hits him the first time we see him as an adult, having just received his call from Mike to return to Derry. And yet it’s the thought of Richie, not It or Derry, that makes Eddie nervous enough to need his aspirator. Notably, the thought goes unfinished. We don’t know, nor do we ever find out in explicit terms, what Eddie thought Richie Tozier would.

Of course, asthma is the most prominent symptom of Eddie’s hypochondria, so the attacks crop up often in the text. The most interesting of these attacks for our purposes (other than Eddie becoming nervous at the thought of Richie) is the following:

“‘The first of the ‘new murders’ [...] began on the Main Street Bridge and ended underneath it. The victim was a gay and rather childlike man named Adrian Mellon. He had a bad case of asthma.’ / Eddie’s hand stole out and touched the side of his aspirator.” (King 646)

Mike (speaking) tells the gang about the death of Adrian Mellon, and takes care to note three things about him: he was gay, he was childlike, and he had asthma. The connection between Eddie and Adrian is drawn quickly and obviously as Eddie reaches for his aspirator, seemingly out of reflex - but what we can also infer here is that this is making Eddie nervous. He could be nervous because a man with asthma was just killed by It, and he, too, is a man with asthma. He could also be nervous because the parallel that Mike and the prose have none-too-subtly drawn between Eddie and Adrian implies that they have more in common than a respiratory problem. But what?

PART II – EDDIE/ADRIAN

“[The other Losers] are being called--I know that much. Each murder in this new cycle has been a call.” (King 1116)

Mike writes this in the fourth interlude, referring to the way that It’s murders 27 years later all seem to be calling out to the Losers’ Club. By drawing a parallel between Eddie and Adrian through their asthma, King leads us to believe that Adrian’s murder specifically called to Eddie. He also leads us to consider how else they might be linked.

Adrian is virtually Eddie’s opposite. He’s out and proud and in a loving, unstrained relationship. He flirts openly with other men, teases his aggressors, and, to contrast with the neurotic and nervous Eddie:

“‘He didn’t have much in the way of protective coloration. He was one of those fools who think things really are going to turn out all right.’” (King 27)

His openness, however, is what gets him killed. While being harassed by some homophobes, Adrian teases and antagonizes them, and the next time they see him they assault him and unwittingly gift him, half-dead, to Pennywise.

It especially kills me that Adrian’s asthma is not significantly mentioned in his chapter. He makes a comment to his boyfriend that the “air’s better” (King 36) in Derry, which could imply that he has had less problems since he moved there, but the word “asthma” is never used. It’s not relevant to his story, and it’s not brought up until King has to draw a parallel between Adrian and Eddie. Because it’s not relevant to Adrian’s story, the connection that King draws between them feels almost half-assed and weak, until one considers their contrasting personalities and contrasting happinesses in their respective relationships. Along that same line of thinking, the implications of having Eddie directly paralleled by a gay man killed for being gay cast a suspicious light on Eddie’s presumed straightness.

If we accept that Eddie and Adrian are linked, that Adrian’s murder was a specific call to Eddie, then it goes without saying that there is a strong implication here that Eddie is closeted. He is being contrasted with an out gay man who fears no consequence for being out in a small, violent, hateful town. Eddie’s neuroses and fixation on his psychosomatic asthma are contrasted with a man who hadn’t a care in the world - not even his (presumably) real physical condition. The fear and self-hate that dogged Eddie his whole life never bothered Adrian Mellon, until it killed him.

If we accept that Eddie and Adrian are linked, and what that implies, then we can infer that Adrian is what Eddie could have been, were he happy, open, and out - and what happens to Adrian is the exact kind of thing that may have kept poor, terrified Eddie in the closet.

PART III – SEX, QUEERNESS, AND SELF-LOATHING

So, I think we all remember the leper scene--creepy in the 2017 movie, even creepier in the novel. One notable book-only detail is that the leper “[offers] to give Eddie a blowjob for a quarter” (King 400) in addition to chasing him around and being generally disgusting.

“Come back here, kid, the hoarse voice whispered. I’ll blow you for free. Come back here! / No, Eddie moaned at it. Please, go away, I don’t want to think about that.” (King 394)

Eddie is immediately terrified by the mere thought of getting a blowjob, of being touched by someone diseased, of being touched by a man. He doesn’t even want to think about it... and then the question becomes, does he not want to think about sex with the leper, or sex at all? Regardless, it seems pretty normal for an eleven-year-old boy to be scared of a blowjob from a strange adult with open sores on his face. But there is, of course, more to unpack here.

Another difference between book and film comes when Eddie recounts the tale to Richie and Bill...:

“‘He didn’t have leprosy, you dummy,’ Richie said. “He had [syphilis].’ / […] / ‘It’s a disease you get from fucking,’ Richie said. ‘You know about fucking, don’t you, Eds?’ / ‘Sure,’ Eddie said. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.” (King 400)

All of a sudden Eddie isn’t just afraid of disease, but of a sexually transmitted disease. Pennywise’s angle on Eddie is a big fuck-off combo of decay and sex--specifically gay sex. Not only is the “leper” a man offering him sexual favours, but Bill is quick to point out that men can get syphilis from “another g-g-guy if they’re kwuh-kwuh-queer" (King 402). Queerness and gay sex are therefore lumped in with Eddie’s fear of the “leper” from word go.

Since he’s a pre-pubescent child (in that same scene, Eddie recalls trying to masturbate and nothing happening), Eddie’s disinterest in and general apprehension towards sex makes sense without bringing the element of internalized homophobia into the mix. But this is my post, I can do what I want, and Stephen King already brought it into the mix for me.

Eddie is frightened by the thought of queer sex at another notable point in the novel as well, when he recalls a vignette from his and the Losers’ past:

“Patrick Hockstetter was down [in the Barrens]. Before It took him Beverly saw him doing something bad. It made her laugh but she knew it was bad. Something to do with Henry Bowers, wasn’t it? Yes, I think so. And-- / [Eddie] turned away suddenly and started back toward the abandoned depot, not wanting to look down into the Barrens anymore, not liking the thoughts they conjured up. He wanted to be home with Myra.” (King 720)

Myra, for those who haven’t read the novel, is Eddie’s wife. If you’re one of those people (or even if you haven’t read it in a while), you might also be wondering what exactly Patrick Hockstetter did to Henry Bowers in the Barrens that made Eddie balk and suddenly crave his wife’s company. Well, my friends, Patrick tried to give Henry Bowers a blowjob. Eddie has to turn away from the mere thought of two men (well, boys) engaging in a sex act. He has to return to his wife, the implication here being that she is there to shield him from queerness, from queer sex.

And the scene between Patrick and Henry, which we do see later from Bev’s point of view, is extremely telling as to why Eddie has to turn away. Henry gets violent and angry when Patrick propositions him, just like Adrian Mellon’s assailants got violent and angry, just like Eddie’s own mother gets defensive and cruel at the thought of a pair of (unconfirmed) gay men in their town with a nicer house than hers:

“‘Any two men who bother keeping a house so nice must be queers,’ Eddie’s mother had once said in a disgruntled sort of way, and Eddie hadn’t dared ask for clarification.” (King 712)

Eddie here is afraid to even question the root of his mother’s assumptions, or the very fact of her prejudice. Questioning, experimentation, being openly anything other than straight in Derry only earns you bile and violence from the rest of the town, and Eddie knows this. Why would anyone come out? How could they? Isn’t it better to just turn away and leave the thought unfinished?

And it is explicit that Eddie feels somehow wrong and incomplete, in addition to his general aversion to all things queer and sexual. At one point, compounding himself and the homeless “leper”, Eddie has an internal monologue that ends as follows:

“I got me a disease that’s eating me up. My skin’s cracking open, my teeth are falling out, and you know what? I can feel myself turning bad like an apple that’s going soft. I can feel it happening, eating from the inside to the out, eating, eating, eating me.” (King 405)

By conflating himself with the “leper”, Eddie makes the disease his own. He makes his fear of the “leper” falling apart a fear he has about himself. He fears something within himself, something rotten, turning him “bad” - bad like offering a blowjob to Henry Bowers in the Barrens. It’s a literal fear of disease, to be sure, but that sense of being rotten to the core, being bad on the inside in a way you cannot change, also feels like an apt metaphor for internalized homophobia in light of the subtextual queerness of the rest of Eddie’s fear. And especially in light of another scene in which he feels inferior, rotten, wrong:

“Simply reaching for the cubes of bread [at communion] became an act which required courage, and he always feared an electrical shock... or worse, that the bread would suddenly change color in his hand, become a blood-clot, and a disembodied Voice would begin to thunder in the church: Not worthy! Not worthy! Damned to Hell! Damned to Hell!” (King 1247)

We will absolutely come back to the fact that Eddie uses Voice with a capital V, but for now let’s focus on the rest of the scene. Eddie’s fear of being damned and unworthy is rooted in a story his Sunday School teacher told him, about a boy who blasphemed. Even as a small child, he has anxiety about his existence or behaviour cursing him – making him diseased, or turning bread into blood. And, of course, for the purposes of this reading, we can’t ignore the fact that queerness and American Christianity don’t typically go hand-in-hand. This compounded with the suggestion that he is rotten from the inside out suggests that Eddie has some reason to think he has blasphemed – and his persistent association with queerness suggests that this reason may be the knowledge or suspicion that he isn’t straight.

Eddie’s worries even follow him into adulthood:

“Get off it, Eds, Richie’s voice seemed to whisper. You ain’t solid at all […].” (King 715)

I included this quote because it reinforces my point about Eddie not feeling whole or right within himself. It’s not quite time for the Reddie part of this meta, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Richie is nowhere in this scene and has absolutely nothing to do with it, and still it’s his voice that voices Eddie’s subconscious fears about not being “solid”. Again, I will be going into this in more detail later. First, there’s one more element of this queer reading of Eddie that needs to be tackled.

PART IV – THIS ONE QUOTE GETS TO BE ITS OWN PART BECAUSE MY GOD

Most of you are probably familiar with Anthony Perkins, even if you don’t know you are – if you’ve ever been exposed to Psycho, either by watching it or through pop-cultural osmosis, you'll know him as Norman Bates. You also may or may not know that he was famously closeted. He reportedly only had relationships with men until he met and married Berinthia Berenson in his early 40s, and never came out during his lifetime. (Obviously one’s sexual history doesn’t necessarily determine one’s sexuality, but most sources I can find suggest that he was gay, not bisexual.)

Now, if you read Eddie Kaspbrak as gay, this may sound somewhat familiar. Married a woman, never came out, horror icon, it’s all there. But why do I bring it up? Well, because of this:

“Eddie--it was weird but true--had grown up to look quite a little bit like Anthony Perkins.” (King 628)

On its own, it’s a seemingly innocuous, if oddly specific, pop-cultural reference. Nothing to write home about. Compounded with everything else we know about Eddie, and everything else I’ve covered above? It’s telling as balls. King could have simply described Eddie, as he does immediately after this line, but he takes the time to compare a character repeatedly associated with queerness and sexual repression to a closeted gay man who eventually married a woman.

(Note: admittedly, IT would’ve been written in the early-mid 80s, at which point Perkins was not officially known to be gay, but according to my father there were plenty of rumours. He was, additionally, known as a repressed, shy “mama’s boy” who was made nervous by female attention. Sound like anyone else we know?)

PART V – REDDIE

And now for the main event.

If I unpack every individual piece of Reddie goodness to the degree that I’ve unpacked Eddie himself, we’ll be here for another 2,500 words. So, I’m only going to hit three major points:

PART VA – CLOSENESS

Richie is all over Eddie. He frequently pinches Eddie’s cheeks, calls him cute, and is all-around physically and verbally affectionate with him. Some notable examples:

“Richie […] pinched Eddie’s cheek. / ‘Don’t do that! I hate it when you do that, Richie.’ / ‘Ah, you love it, Eds,’ Richie said, and beamed at him.” (King 384-85)

This is their first on-page interaction, mind you. This moment sets the stage for the rest of their relationship.

“Richie jumped to his feet a second time and pinched Eddie’s cheek. ‘Cute, cute, cute!’ Richie exclaimed.” (King 390)

“‘[My aunts] all pinch my cheek and tell me how much I’ve grown,’ Eddie said. / ‘That’s cause they know how cute you are, Eds--just like me. I saw what a cutie you were the first time I met you.’” (King 446-47)

Listen. Do you think I’ll ever get over this? Do you think I can move on, knowing that this exists? Richie teases everyone, but he only ever uses “cute” for Eddie.

“‘Take it easy, Eds,’ Richie soothed, and leaned toward him. / ‘Don’t call me Eds and don’t you dare pinch my cheek!’ [Eddie] cried, rounding on Richie. ‘You know I hate that! I always hated it!’ / Richie recoiled, blinking.” (King 668)

This scene takes place when they’re adults, and I love it for a number of reasons – the easy return to form for both of them, Richie genuinely trying to comfort Eddie, and Richie’s surprise at being snapped at. My heart goes out to the man.

“‘I hate it when you call me Eds.’ / ‘I know,’ Richie said, hugging him tightly, ‘but somebody has to toughen you up, Eds. When you stop leading the sheltered igs-zistence of a child and grow up, you gonna, Ah say, Ah say you gonna find out life ain’t always this easy, boy!’ / Eddie began to shriek with laughter.” (King 1334)

There are quite a few scenes where they make each other laugh, but this one is my personal favourite.

And the cherry on top:

“[Richie] slapped Eddie’s can.” (King 1322)

The context of this is less than shippy (they’re squeezing through a tight passageway, Richie is behind Eddie and needs him to move forward), but there are few ships that can say that party A has canonically smacked party B’s ass, and I think we should appreciate that more as a fandom.

There’s also a strong element of protectiveness – Richie is very protective of Eddie in a way that Eddie’s mother isn’t. He genuinely pays attention to Eddie’s needs and tries to do right by him:

“It was Richie and Bev who went to Eddie. […] Richie dug his aspirator out of his pocket. ‘Bite on this, Eddie,’ he said, and Eddie took a hitching, gasping breath as Richie pulled the trigger.” (King 903)

“Richie heard Eddie cough twice […] and then fall silent again. He shouldn’t be down here, he thought […].” (King 968)

“...Eddie [agreed to follow Bill into the sewers] last. / ‘I don’t think so, Eddie,’ Richie said. ‘Your arm’s not, you know, looking too cool.’” (King 1251)

“Richie turned Bill toward him, looked at him as you would look at a man who is hopelessly raving. ‘Bill, we have to take care of Eddie. We have to get a tourniquet on him, get him out of here.’” (King 1396)

Hey fun fact? Fun fucking fact, Eddie’s already dead in this scene and Richie knows that.

On a cheerier note, and to add one last dimension to Eddie and Richie’s closeness, Richie is the only person with whom we see Eddie intentionally swapping spit/germs (outside of ritualistic bloodletting). Not only does Richie use Eddie’s aspirator at one point, but there’s also this scene:

“‘I can carry [the Parcheesi board],’ Eddie said, a little out of breath. ‘How about a lick on your Rocket?’ / ‘Your mom wouldn’t approve, Eddie,’ Richie said sadly. […] ‘[…] Ah say you kin get germs eatin after someone else!’ / ‘I’ll chance it,’ Eddie said. / Reluctantly, Richie held his Rocket up to Eddie’s mouth... and snatched it away quickly as soon as Eddie had gotten in a couple of moderately serious licks.” (King 1243)

The obvious humour of this scene aside (poor Richie, having to share), the fact that hypochondriac Mama’s boy Eddie doesn’t mind Richie’s germs in particular is both sweet and interesting. The imagery here, of Eddie licking Richie’s Rocket despite his mother’s disapproval (compounded with the pre-established association between Eddie and blowjobs) is just... interesting, to say the least. As is the fact that I totally stole this scene and reversed the roles for the sake of a fic that I would like to pimp as a reward for making it this far into this monstrosity. It has a happy ending, don’t worry.

What does all of this put together signify? Richie and Eddie are close. They clearly love each other as friends, and the almost flirtatious touching, cute-calling, teasing, protectiveness, and Rocket-licking can also all signify the beginnings of something else as well. If nothing else, it’s fun, sweet fic fodder.

PART VB – THE VOICE (WITH A CAPITAL V)

This is one of my favourite details. Eddie thinks of all the Losers from time to time, but Richie is straight-up one of the voices in his head. Richie refers to his impressions and characters as Voices with a capital V, and Very often, Eddie will think in them. He’ll hear jokes in them, Pennywise will taunt him with them, he’ll hear the very criticism and hate that he fears hurled back at him in Voices. Right from the start:

“‘Had any good chucks lately, Eds?’ [Eddie] says out loud, and laughs again.” (King 374)

As he drives to Derry, Eddie is already laughing and delighting in the thought of his friends (specifically Bill and Richie) and the way they used to be. Later in the same scene:

“‘Sure, kid, EV-ery day,’ he says in a Richie Tozier Voice, and laughs again.” (King 376)

King quickly establishes that Richie’s Voices are a source of joy for Eddie, and that Richie himself is one of the Losers that Eddie is most looking forward to seeing. Indeed, in several scenes (including one of the ones quoted above), we see Eddie laughing at or with Richie when he does his Voices, both in the present and the past. But Eddie’s love of the Voices gets twisted by his own subconscious fears – I mentioned earlier that it is a Voice with a capital V that tells Eddie that he’s damned to Hell during his imaginary blood-communion. And it’s Richie’s voice that reminds Eddie that he’s not “solid”, to cap off a scene where he literally runs away from thoughts of queerness and sex. Eddie’s fear of himself becomes conflated with the Voices in a way that suggests his fear is of Richie, of Richie’s hatred, contempt, and dismissal. He is afraid that Richie sees him as unworthy, damned, unsolid. He is afraid that Richie sees the thing that’s eating him from the inside out.

Eddie wants to be home with Myra. It’s easier to keep Richie and his Voices in his head than to risk what they would (--) do if they saw all of Eddie clearly.

PART VC – EDS & EDDIE’S DEATH

Yes, we all know and love “Eds”. We love Richie being a little shit, we love Eddie being his tsundere self, and we love that Eddie canonically has a soft spot for the nickname:

“Man, he had hated it when Richie called him Eds... but he had sort of liked it, too.” (King 374)

We also love (or hate) that “Eds” factors into Eddie and Richie’s final exchange in the novel:

“But there was something else [Eddie] had to say [before he died]. / ‘Richie,’ he whispered. / ‘What?’ Richie was down on his hands and knees, staring at him desperately. / ‘Don’t call me Eds,’ he said, and smiled. He raised his left hand slowly and touched Richie’s cheek. Richie was crying. ‘You know I... I...’ Eddie closed his eyes, thinking how to finish, and while he was still thinking it over he died.” (King 1386)

(A.k.a. the scene that nearly made me throw my Kindle across the room.)

This ties into a broader theme with Eddie that I only began noticing when I started compiling my notes for this meta – his thoughts, when connected to other men, queerness, or sex, often go unfinished. He cuts them off before they stray somewhere that makes him nervous (the thought of Richie giving him an asthma attack), before they stray anywhere at all (the memory of Patrick and Henry making him yearn for Myra, not wanting to think about blowjobs), or before they even become thoughts (not daring to question his mother’s homophobic comments). And here, when he has to say one thing before he dies, when he’s finally allowing himself to conclude a sentimental, intimate thought that he doesn’t even know how to word... he’s cut off one last time.

And we don’t know what he was going to say. We can speculate, we can infer, but we don’t know, just as we will never know what “Richie Tozier would”.

Richie Tozier seems to know, though. When he realizes they’ll have to leave Eddie’s body behind, he kisses Eddie’s cheek (just as Eddie touched his in his final moments, and in contrast to the way he used to pinch them) and...:

“Richie got up and turned toward the door. ‘Fuck you, Bitch!’ he cried suddenly, and kicked the door shut with his foot. It made a solid chukking sound as it closed and latched. / ‘Why’d you do that?’ Beverly asked. / ‘I don’t know,’ Richie said, but he knew well enough.” (King 1427)

Richie’s shutting the door on Pennywise and the sewers and the whole horrible tragedy of it all, yes. But he’s also furious with the grief of losing Eddie, and shutting the door that will now forever separate Eddie’s final resting place from the hole where he died. Bev’s question allows Richie to do just what Eddie did, too – keep it quiet, cut it off, not acknowledge what he’s avoiding or what he’s just lost. Still, he knows well enough.

PART VI – CONCLUSION

I don’t know for sure that King intended for Eddie to be closeted, but I think he did. He’s gone on the record that he believes in leaving stuff like this for the reader to figure out. There are a lot of scenes, a lot of small moments, that suggest that Eddie is gay, and while many of them make sense without that reading, the entirety of the picture they paint does not. I’m partial to Reddie, and as I’ve demonstrated above, I believe there is a lot of textual evidence to support the theory that they had feelings for each other. Eddie’s death alone, and the fact that the last thing he had to say needed to be addressed to Richie while Eddie held his face in his hands, is... a LOT. But I’ll be honest – my loyalty is to queer!Eddie on its own.

If Eddie Kaspbrak is gay, then his story is ten times more heartbreaking. It’s a story of fear, not just of the supernatural but of the very real hatred and pain he would have faced being openly gay in Derry. It’s a story of fearing that something inside of him was rotten and sick and sinful, and that one of his closest friends in the world thought so too. It’s a story of self-loathing. And it’s a story without an end, because Eddie could never let himself think of how to finish admitting what he needed to admit to himself. The truth was lost in asthma attacks, in Myra, in death. In that sense, it’s fitting that King never explicitly stated that Eddie was gay, if that was indeed his intent – it's one more thing we’ll never know for sure, because Eddie couldn’t bring himself to tell us.

THAT BEING SAID. My loyalty is to queer!Eddie. Which means that my loyalty is to making this shit better, exploring and dissecting the hell out of it, and fixing it. Give Eddie Kaspbrak the ending he deserved! Let him finish his thoughts! Take these quotes, draw inspiration from them, and let’s all cling to each other in preparation for Chapter 2.

#it stephen king #stephen king's it #reddie #eddie kaspbrak #gay eddie kaspbrak #it meta #reddie meta #Aaliya writes #I have been working on this... for a long time #please tell me what you think and what I've missed #unless what you think is that eddie isn't gay because why are you here then #why did you read this #who are you

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jonliveblogs · 5 years

Photo

“You never take my psychosomatic conditions seriously.”

One-one, what, and I say this with all due respect, the fuck?

#one one #the crystal car #train104 #infinity train liveblog #infinity train #jon liveblogs #everything

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elphenfan · 5 years

Text

Christmas fireside fluff for lijahlover

Merry December, everyone! :) A gift snippet for lijahlover, who wanted some Christmas fireside fluff. I hope I’ve delivered but who knows? :)

John groaned as he shifted in his seat. It was a groan born as much of pain as weariness, his body having taken quite the beating in the latest case, one they’d only finished that evening. Christmas Eve.

It was late by the time they’d gotten home, the journey not helped in any way by the seeming flood of people everywhere and even Sherlock’s supernatural ability to get a cab not up to the task, and the flat had been dark and, quite frankly, chilly bordering on downright cold.

When they’d finally made it, the doctor had just about gotten his coat off and made it to his chair, worn out from the case, the trek home and a half-formed argument with Sherlock about how it really wasn’t on for him to disguise himself as someone’s long-lost relative when he’d deduced their history and had still decided to proceed with it.

That it had turned out well in the end was quite beside the point, it really was, no, seriously, Sherlock, I mean it. I’m done arguing with you right now.

The argument and the consequent silence hadn’t stopped him continuing to hold onto the glove-covered bony hand as he always did on their way home, however, and neither had the consulting detective made any attempt to pull away, either.

Sherlock had disappeared into the bedroom once they’d gone through the door. John hadn’t minded, far more focused on just making it out of his coat and shoes and into a seated position; with the chase, the brawl and the walk home in the cold, his shoulder was bothering him, and, psychosomatic or not, his leg wasn’t above making its miserable self known.

He’d told himself he’d just sit there for a moment or two. Then he’d get up and see what Sherlock was up to. That or he’d go directly for the bathroom and take a nice, hot shower…or just get into bed straight away and not wake until noon.

But it was Christmas Day tomorrow, and…they had plans…did they have plans? He felt sure that…but maybe…

He was asleep before he’d finished the thought and long before Sherlock emerged back into the living room, in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

It didn’t take him long to spot John, nor the way he was sitting that was in no way conducive to his aches and bruises. If he kept that up for much longer, he would have trouble moving about when he woke, not to mention the pain he’d be in.

That wouldn’t do. Sherlock had plans for his boyfriend for the night and next few days, and he’d rushed to finish this case so that both he and John wouldn’t be tied up with anything to spoil it.

That and disliking seeing his doctor in pain, too. Obviously.

He stood and contemplated for a moment or two. Then he smiled.

That’d work.

He was warm. Warm in that fuzzy, cosy way that made you think you’d been covered in how your mind insisted cumulus clouds and mounds of snow ought to feel.

His covers didn’t usually make him feel warm like that but maybe he was just extra tired, and his body convinced him that it was the case to get him to stay asleep.

No, wait, hang on. He hadn’t fallen asleep in bed, had he? No, he’d never gotten that far. His chair shouldn’t feel this comfortable. Nor should he feel this warm when the flat was cold.

Waking up further, he noticed that though he was sitting, it wasn’t in a chair and the warmth he was feeling came from three disparate sources; a thick, soft blanket, one he didn’t remember they owned, covered his front, the heat of a blazing fire played on his back, his bare back, and he was sitting on and against a warm, bony yet soft, and extremely familiar body, his head resting against a shoulder.

He looked up, blinking in a concerted effort to wake up the rest of the way.

“Sherlock?” he mumbled as he surfaced.

“Who else would it be?”

“Not something I’d like to con…contemplate right now, thank you.”

He bit the bullet and rubbed at his eyes, waking up hopefully enough to deal with the other man’s shenanigans. “Why are we here? On the floor, I mean, or rug, whatever. Without clothes, too.”

“Your underwear is still on.”

“Forest, trees, Sherlock, and you didn’t answer my question.”

“You needed to warm up.”

As though that explained everything. It didn’t.

“So, the only obvious solution to that was not to put me to bed, draw me a bath or even just throw a blanket over me where I sat? You had to get me out of the chair, strip me, and yourself, get the fire going and place the both of us in front of it covered in blankets? How does that make any sort of sense?”

Sherlock wasn’t bothered by the outburst. He wasn’t even pouting. Instead, he was smiling. A smile that was both endearing and infuriating.

“You were in pain, you were tired, and you were cold. Putting you to bed would’ve solved the coldness and tiredness but not the pain. While putting you in tub would alleviate both pain and cold, the risk of falling asleep is greatly increased in males over – “

Yeah, yeah, okay, fine, I get it,” John grumbled.

He would have to admit that, despite his protests and his grumbling, that he was both warm and comfortable, practically snuggled up against his boyfriend in front of a roaring fire. He even got, once he thought about it, why they were in their underwear; conduction of heat was greatly improved when there weren’t many layers of clothes in the way.

Still, though…he couldn’t quite quell the feeling that the consulting detective had an ulterior motive. Not a sinister one, mind, but something that he ought to keep in mind.

Then again, when didn’t he? If no harm was meant, perhaps he should just leave it be.

Cupid bow lips came down to claim his own in a soft kiss, one which he was more than happy to return.

You do feel better, though.”

To others it would’ve sounded like a confident statement of fact, but John had known Sherlock long enough and had paid enough attention to hear inflections in the baritone voice and there was a soupçon of hesitation and questioning in there.

“I do, actually, yes.” He leaned up for another kiss. “Thank you, love.”

“You’re welcome.”

They stayed like that for a moment or two. Then John started to get up. Or rather, he made the attempt. He didn’t get very far, though, before Sherlock pulled him back down.

“Sherlock, let go.” He tried again, with the same results.

“No.”

“Sherlock, I appreciate what you did. Really, I do. But I’m still tired and we’ve got somewhere to be tomorrow, so I need some sleep.”

“No.”

“Sherlock.”

“No, we don’t have anywhere to be. I cancelled it.”

“What – you can’t just do that, you idiot! We promised we’d be there.”

“They accepted my reason without question and wished us a merry Christmas.”

John narrowed his eyes. “Why don’t I believe that for even a fraction of a second?”

“I can show you the text, if you refuse to trust me. I told her we hadn’t seen each other in weeks and wanted to make up for it on Christmas.”

“That’s a lie.”

Sherlock shrugged the shoulder John wasn’t half-leaning against. “A truth with modifications. We haven’t seen much of each other in the last fortnight, you’ll have to admit.”

That was true enough. With the extra shifts at the clinic for John – who’d taken them as much to be sure he got Christmas off as for the extra money to spoil his boyfriend a little – and Sherlock having the rare instance of two cases being equally interesting and so instead of doing one or the other, he’d done both at the same time, they really hadn’t had much time together.

Regardless, I still need sleep.”

You did fine just now.”

“Are…,” John asked, his expression one of smiling disbelief, “are you really saying that you want me to…what? Kip in your lap in front of the fire?”

“Not in my lap.”

“Oh, alright, then. Problem solved, no remaining issue whatsoever!” He would’ve said more but then he got a proper look at Sherlock’s expression and the words died in his throat.

Sherlock was…he was just trying to be considerate. And sweet. And romantic, too, probably, in that uniquely Sherlockian way.

And to be honest, there was something alluring about sleeping in front of the fire and then waking up on Christmas morning like that, together. It would probably also be hell on his abused body and the fire was sure to die down before they woke.

Still…the idea had merits and even it hadn’t, how could he say no in a situation like this?

“One condition,” he said, watching Sherlock as his ears metaphorically perked up, even though he’d never admit it.

“Yes?”

“You find every blanket, duvet, and pillow that we own and bring it here. I’ll put some more wood on the fire and maybe find that bottle of mulled wine I bought earlier, provided you haven’t used in some sort of experiment or other.”

Sherlock frowned. “What do we need wine for?”

John smiled, his eyes sparkling, and not just because of the firelight reflecting in them. Then he leaned up for a kiss, one he deepened, licking his way in and then around, caressing what he could reach.

“You figure that one out,” he whispered when he pulled away. “I’m sure you can come up with an idea or two.”

With that, he did get up then held out a hand to help Sherlock up, too. The bastard grinned, ignoring the hand, got to his feet easily and, more annoyingly, gracefully.

Then he leaned forward and stole another kiss. “I’m looking forward to it.”

One would have to give Sherlock that with a task to do with the proper motivation behind it, he didn’t do things by half.

Every single piece of warm, soft thing in the flat had been found and arranged in front of the fire, furniture moved out of the way to make room.

John couldn’t deny that with it all gathered, quite artfully so, it looked beyond comforting and inviting. It no longer seemed even a remotely farfetched or ill-advised to sleep like this.

In one hand, he held the bottle of mulled wine, sworn to not have been tampered with by the brunet, and in the other, he had two wineglasses. Just in case they’d need them.

Of course, it certainly didn’t detract from the scenario that there was one lithe, gorgeous body reclining on one arm on top of the makeshift bed, looking like a bloody cover model, the warm light from the fire playing over pale skin in patterns of heated gold.

It would be jealousy-inducing if it wasn’t so bloody hot and alluring. Well, that and the knowledge that it was a body only being offered to him mitigated it greatly, too.

If this was his Christmas present, he certainly wouldn’t complain.

He couldn’t help it; he felt his boxers get rather uncomfortably tight at the sight, something which didn’t escape pale eyes, as he could see them travel down his body, stopping at a rather tell-tale angle.

If asked, he’d have expected to get a smirk at that, possibly raised eyebrows. Certainly a comment on the baser needs of humanity, even if it was accompanied by a lustful look; Sherlock wasn’t above indulging in the more carnal side of their relationship, even if it didn’t occur quite as often as John might’ve wished for. It occurred more often than he’d expected, that was for sure.

What he hadn’t quite expected was the intensity of the hunger in them, or the effect on him.

“Get over here,” Sherlock almost growled.

Well, how could he refuse?

I could’ve written more and I know it’s likely cliffhanger-y but it wasn’t meant to be long and I knew it’d spiral otherwise. :)

#johnlock #johnlock snippet #johnlock christmas story #christmas fluff #fanfic #lijahlover #fireside fluff #snippet #gift fic #gift snippet

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dhominis · 5 years

Text

Complaining about me having Food Issues. This is vaguely whiny and has way too many details and wow I’m gonna regret posting it!

Also, caveat: this is a vent post, but pretty much everything in my life is amazingly good right now and I am so lucky. Not representative of my broader brainstate.

Advice welcomed. “This part sounds stupid and distorted-thinking-y” especially welcomed.

CW: If there’s anything health or food/weight-related you want to avoid you should probably not open the readmore; the post consists mostly of detailed discussion of Things That Look Like An Eating Disorder.

The last half of 2018 was bad for me; it culminated in me dropping out of college and finally moving away from my parents (like, half a continent away), and things are weirdly better now. I am happy and healthy-adjacent and resolving Personal Problems that have been insoluble for most of my life.

(The home environment was not conducive to proper emotional development.)

Almost every part of it has been strangely easy. Getting an apartment, getting a job, managing money, catching up on the Normal Young Adult social skills. It feels like I’ve just got more cognitive resources to devote to life, now.

...The only thing that hasn’t become easy is food.

I don’t get hungry often enough, and when I do experience hunger, it doesn’t motivate me to eat (I’ve been describing this as essentially pain asymbolia but for hunger). I also just don’t enjoy eating -- intellectually I can recognize when food tastes good, but it’s still unpleasant to eat it. (Not an anhedonia thing! Other pleasant stimuli are far more enjoyable than they were a few months ago and life is amazing.)

There also are a lot of gastrointestinal symptoms -- nausea and pain, et cetera. They have been present at a low level for a while but worsen when I don’t maintain a relatively stable caloric intake. (I can’t eat because I am in pain! I am justified in not eating! Never mind that eating causes significant pain specifically because I haven’t eaten in a few days.)

Inflammatory and celiac markers are normal, IBS could explain part of it but not really the upper GI tract symptoms. It is maybe plausible that this is an autonomic thing? I already have a lot of autonomic dysfunction things and sometimes people with my connective tissue problems have weird gut motility. (Incomplete listing of symptoms I get that are plausibly gut-dysmotility-related: passive regurgitation and GERD and cramping and diarrhea and upper GI pain and vomiting and postprandial nausea/fullness and occasional difficulty swallowing and other things I am forgetting about right now.)

It also is plausible that at least some of this is psychosomatic -- stress sometimes seems to make it worse -- but the broader cluster hasn’t always coincided with periods of emotional stress. The first time the symptoms interfered with my ability to eat was during one of the happiest and most low-stress parts of my life, and it definitely preceded the Food Doesn’t Feel Good problem. (And autonomic dysfunction worsens with stress too.) Although it maybe helped condition me not to want to eat, since eating causes a grab-bag of annoying symptoms.

(the most accurate diagnosis probably is “neurotic-intellectual with-ill-defined-GI-problems syndrome”)

Having food in my stomach feels bad and wrong in a way that is not about the physical pain. (Meal replacement shakes and protein powders mostly fix this but are not financially feasible, are often incredibly low-calorie, and also if I’m mostly doing liquid calories I get worse physical symptoms when I do solid food.)

The maladaptive food behaviors have been present on and off for most of my life, and the GI symptoms have been a thing since like... early 2018?, but last semester was the first time I’d consistently gone for months with an energy deficit; I’ve had a lifelong tendency to not do well with eating but never to this extent. But this was -- there were some weeks when I ate maybe four meals, some two- or three-day periods when I didn’t eat.

Predictably I lost weight. (Weight loss is not good! I like having energy stores and muscle mass and also being able to sit on the floor without my ass hurting.) I lost enough weight that my doctor got really worried; I was not overweight and am edging down towards the lower end of the reasonable range. She was definitely worried in the context of physical symptoms, but I suspect that if I had presented the cause of the weight loss slightly differently, she would have been worried about the psych component. It’s stupid too. I do not want to lose weight! I want to have enough energy to do shit without dipping into fat stores!

Also last semester: vomiting. The postprandial nausea occasionally has been bad enough that it makes me vomit. (I have a supply of ondansetron and this is no longer an issue.) More frequently the postprandial nausea is bad enough that I can’t tolerate it, it’s a constant reminder that there is food where it should not be, and I induce vomiting. I haven’t done this since I moved out, but I have really really wanted to. Ondansetron helps here too but not completely. Or I don’t have nausea, but there is food in my stomach and this feels really unpleasant and, well, there’s one thing that’ll fix it right away (plus give me a nice adrenaline rush).

Solutions: ondansetron; don’t go to the bathroom for a while after I eat; if eating at home, try to do meals when my roommates are home so I can’t vomit because they’d hear it; distract myself until I don’t feel horribly full.

(Which takes a while, sometimes. Maybe too long. I have vomited basically undigested food a few hours after a meal. Not sure whether that’s abnormal, and if it is it’s really plausible that I did this to myself by not eating enough. Gastric emptying is not my strong suit?)

...Going days without eating because I just don’t want to. Weight loss. Defective hunger response. Being exhausted and not having the energy to eat. Hiding this from people, too; I had told people about the physical symptoms but not the fundamental aversion to eating, not the going days without eating. Conscious displays: mixing coconut cream into tea, here, I am eating, this is eating, I am making an effort, it is not my fault. And a refusal to reduce physical activity. I generally ate only dinner, if that, but still spent my breaks between classes pacing around campus. Even though I knew I shouldn’t. (Sometimes I justified this as an attempt to maintain muscle mass. That is patently stupid and honestly I could have just done some squats if that was my real goal. I didn’t have a real goal. The closest thing I had to a goal was -- keep moving.)

This guide from a SSC reader convinced me to treat my eating problems like a thing that is actually bad, not like “oh my stomach hurts if I eat so I’ll just not do that.” (Also took it more seriously after I started having difficulty resisting the urge to vomit.) But, uh. It’s scarily familiar. I am trying really hard to eat enough.

I’d hoped that getting out of the supremely stressful situation would help with the eating problems. To some extent it has -- I’ve been able to force myself to eat every day, there’ve been only one or two days per week where I’ve skipped one meal, I haven’t vomited since I left. As of three weeks ago I hadn’t had substantial further weight loss. Eating still is difficult to an extent that I can’t really understand, and it’s difficult when nothing else is. Finding an apartment was easy. Getting a job was easy. Work has been fun and easy and amazing. But pretty much every meal has been a struggle, I’ve been having to force-feed myself, I’ve felt more distress about putting food in my body than about anything else since I left home.

If it doesn’t settle down soon it’ll be pretty tiring. I am concerned that this level of effort is not sustainable.

And... I need to buy a scale. (Spending money is not a skill I have. I don’t like it and I don’t want to do it. Even on food and transportation. So I pretty regularly walk several miles instead of taking the damn bus, and if I forget to bring lunch I just won’t eat at work.) I suspect that I’ve started losing weight again, in large part because my physical activity is way up and I am really busy. Also I underestimate how many calories I need. I am young and physically active and hormonally male and it’s not reasonable to expect e.g. three 500-kcal meals and a snack to let me maintain weight, let alone gain it. It feels like I am eating so much and this probably isn’t true.

(Tracking caloric intake has historically been a bad idea, because my brain doesn’t do effortful things well, and there’s an observer effect: if I have to expend the necessary effort to write down what I ate, I will probably just not eat the thing so I don’t have to expend the effort. This was true even back when I liked eating.)

I don’t know. It might get better -- I’m putting a lot of effort into it but it’s reasonable that the eating problems aren’t resolving in the month and a half since I left home. Everything else has gotten substantially better and the food issues are only lagging by comparison. I am young and impatient. Also, I’ve gone from [regularly going days without eating, vomiting after I eat, losing a lot of weight really fast] to not doing any of that; this is a huge success and I am complaining about it not being completely solved within a month and a half!

In another month and a half I’ll have health insurance. If it hasn’t improved more by then, I’ll try to find a therapist. (Three months of having Significant Food Issues when not in a horribly stressful environment absolutely is enough to justify spending money on the copay.)

...I am worried it’ll get worse and I won’t notice or I’ll try to hide it. I am worried that it won’t get better and I’ll consider getting therapy and then not be able to stomach (pun intended!) the $20 copay, because even though I am financially secure enough for that not to be an issue, it’s twenty dollars and I don’t spend money on things. I am worried that it won’t get worse but it also won’t get better and I’ll have to spend the next several decades hating food and intensely wanting to vomit for like an hour after every meal.

(There are safeguards and I probably will not hide symptoms getting worse. I am pretty confident I can make myself find a therapist. I’ve had this problem for only six or seven months and most of that was under circumstances that extremely will not continue and I’ve gotten way better at handling it and it is way too early to be worried about this lasting indefinitely.)

Eh, I don’t know. I am handling it, I am taking steps to handle it. It sucks but I’m not concerned about my ability to handle and/or fix things that suck. Life’s awesome. Worst-case scenario is I just have to spend stupid amounts of money on meal-replacement drinks and get all my calories that way.

The best-case scenario, according to my brain: a doctor prescribes meal-replacement drinks and I get adequate nutrition and don’t have to eat solid food and also don’t have to pay for it. This would be really nice! I recognize that it’s not exactly great that I see this as the best-case scenario. A more reasonable best-case scenario: I figure out how to enjoy or at least not actively hate eating, and then I just do that like a normal person.

it’ll be fine even if it kind of sucks short-term

#cw eating disorder #cw disordered eating #cw vomiting #cw health problems #cw weight #cw me being neurotic #just heed the CWs; it's a vent post #personal #news from meatspace #original post #long post

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