Finally and undoubtedly I feel grateful for my life.

March 18, 2011.

Me and my Cool Friend Fern

vowed that from this day forward
we’d refrain from puking
in our mouths
or in the toilet.


A day or two later
Fern called me
In desperation.

I was eating

an obscene amount of cantaloupe.


“Get over here,”
she said.
“I need you.”

So I went to her house
in Saint Henri
and hung out with Fern
and her emotionally fragile dogs
who drooled and farted
as Fern and I 
ate our favourite versions
of non-hazardous
green and brown foods.


I remember falling asleep

on the fresh clean white sheets

of her king's sized bed

with the television on,
the dogs snoring,
and Fern downstairs
sipping hot beverages
and perfecting
her next great advertising pitch.


By the time
it was morning
I think I had
a cold sore.


Day One,
Day Two,
Day Thirty-Three.


Day One Hundred and Seventeen.

One Year and Twenty-Nine Daysé

Four Years and Eighty-Six Days.
March 18, 2017.


Sometimes I find myself
waiting for my prize.


I guess the prize
is no more vomit.


Though every now and then I still vomit in my head
and instead of at the sun
upon the world,
my eyes keep looking at the wall.


Once I had a therapist
who thought I seemed to struggle
with life's less exciting moments
such as putting on
my pyjamas.


This does not seem
to be true
anymore
even if
I'm still me
and still here.


Emotional Digestion
is not always Spectacular,
but I love
to put on my pyjamas.
And usually,
once or twice a week,
I have the pleasant thought
that finally
and undoubtedly
I feel grateful for my life.

The End.

I love
to put on
my pyjamas.
These pyjamas
are for sale.



Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go

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Why I am like Oprah.
What does it mean to be well
Mythological Unconditional Love

God Box

Thursday, February 19, 2015

On Tuesday, I translated three sentences about barley.

With its varying hues, the barley gives this dish a two-toned appearance. This colouring is due to the fact that the hulls are still wrapped around some of the grains. This dish makes a wonderful accompaniment to chicken, fish, or pork.

On Thursday, I translated a letter for a bank that is firing all its employees and switching to automated machines.

In 2009, I drew my body in the shape of a small gingerbread man. I drew a circle in the throat area and inside the circle, I wrote green. My old psychologist Dr. Henderson used to teach me how to colour code my day. Pink meant happy. Orange was average. Okay or mediocre but not horrendous. Green equalled shitty. While she was explaining the code to me, she used smelly markers on her big chart paper. As I went through the day, I was supposed to rate my mood. Whenever there was food or eating disorder symptoms, I would automatically say that it was green, even though sometimes puking something tasty into your mouth felt soothing. Other times, it was just disgusting and it made me feel ashamed. My fear for you, Dr. Henderson said, is that the eating disorder will continue to insert green into moments that would otherwise be pink or orange. She explained that it was important to leave room in your life for orange moments. Sometimes life is just orange, she said. Not terrible or catastrophic, but also not spectacular. You don’t need to let the eating disorder add green and make it bad. This makes her sound dumb, but she was actually quite a good psychologist.

The gingerbread man with green in his throat

I always felt pressured to rate my eating disorder times as green and unpleasant and terrible. Except that the vomit wasn’t always particularly unpleasant. Sometimes it felt better than faking it. More honest. The insides matched the outsides.

Dr. Henderson told me that eating disorder or not, I would probably always be a fairly anxious person. I found this news to be remarkably disappointing. I had the vision that once I stopped puking in my mouth, I would transform into someone exquisitely calm. Someone who remains impressively unphased by life’s whims. A Chill Chick. Alas, this is not quite me.

Back when I tried to do the twelve steps for overcoming alcoholism in attempts to overcome my eating disorder, I made a God Box. It was in the shape of a long rectangle. I covered it with sheets of paper which I decorated with splatters of pink, yellow and purple paint. Maybe there were also other colours. Naomi, my friend and roommate at the time, called it the Allah Box. We wanted to be inclusive of all religions and cultures. Probably we were also being a little bit obnoxious. The Allah Box was for putting all your problems and worries into. I wrote down my problems on small square sheets of paper, folded them in half and slid them through the rectangular slot on the top of the Allah Box.

The A.A. people recommend writing all your character defects down. You can make a list or write them down on small squares of paper, and put them in your God slash Allah Box, or throw them in the Lachine Canal. I think I tried all of these things. I have a list of all the character defects I put in the God Box and on a list and in the Lachine Canal. It is not that interesting. I think I got a bunch of my character defects from the sample list on the A.A. website. Oh well.

Erica’s List of Character Defects

Easily discouraged                                                   resentments

Give up easily                     tendency to create drama

Hypochondria                                   disorganization                                        prejudice

         Perfectionism                                        distractedness

                         INTOLERANCE                                     selfishness

Judgementalness                          carelessness                                        jaded facetious skeptical

Pride                  greed            seeing the negative all the time

Defects isn’t the kindest word.

Before I left Montreal to live with the Boatman in Halifax, I gave the Allah Box to Simon.  Even though we didn’t get along that well, Simon kept the Allah Box until January 4^th. Then he jumped off a building and died. Maybe it wasn’t very nice to give someone a box filled with my character defects.

On my bedside table, there is a dusty lamp that doesn’t work. There’s something wrong with the plug, and perhaps also the lightbulb. Not sure. The Boatman and I are terrible at following through with stuff like that. We could spend the rest of our lives looking after shit like that. Lightbulb after plug after leaky shower head.

The End.

I Let Go
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor

Simon Girard 1979-2015

Recycling Day
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