The third week I ached to be out of my body. I ached to be thin. I ached to run to the bathroom and purge the hundred some calories I ingested previously during lunch. This was the first time I was allowed to know my weight in 3 whole weeks. I cried the rest of the day I spent there. I cried on my way home. I cried as I walked up the stairs to my redwood colored front door. I cried the whole god damn night. I did not purge. I did not restrict. I did not binge. I just cried.

Week four I made friends and not the shallow “we need to hangout” but never do type of friends. The real, life-long, share your most personal demons with friends. We are still that close to this day. In process group they cried, I cried. They laughed, I laughed. It was the first time in that giant red brick building that I felt safe. I didn’t want to leave. In Bengali tradition family is a sacred aspect of their culture. When I think about my Bella Vita family, they are one of the most sacred aspects of my life. They knew me better than anybody. As I read the poem, Eight of Us Sleeping in One Room, by Ahmed, they are the first ones who come mind. He describes,

We breathe each other’s breaths.
Outside, the sound of a motorcycle
Refusing to start.
An old man and a child sit in the stairwell
And smoke a cigarette.
These walls are more than walls.
Even in sleep, we stay only here.

Ahmed’s home is his safe haven. He feels safe and secure there. He shares it with his family and they all are connected. The walls they share are “more than walls”, they are the fabric of their culture, lives, and tradition. My friends at the Bella Vita shared the same struggles, demons, and hardships as I did. Sitting in the walls of the giant red brick building became safe for me. The people I connected with were more than just casual friends. They understood me on a different level. We were one family, fighting against a disorder that defined us all for so long. The walls of the Bella Vita were not just walls to us. They were our home and our safe place.

The fifth week my dietician changed my life. It was a pivotal moment for my time spent at the Bella Vita. It was the week I began to try and more importantly to listen. My dietician was a badass, red haired, 10 year recovering anorexic. Her life mission was to was to change the stereotype placed upon individuals by mainstream media. The stereotype that in order to be beautiful, you have to be thin. She coached me on the influences placed in media around the world that manipulated people into wanting to loose weight. How in almost every tv show, movie, or commercial the actors/actresses were thin and drop-dead gorgeous. That reality was hardly ever shown in the media. That THEY were the ones influencing people to join fad diets that have absolutely no nutritional value in them. She told me that every individual is different. Every BODY is different. That difference does not equal inferiority. Fat did not equal less than. Beautiful did not equate to being thin. My obsession about losing weight was not really about losing weight.

My obsession about losing weight was not really about losing weight.

This took me a while to actually understand, but the more time I spent actually trying, listening, and engaging in the groups the more I understood. I was obsessed with numbers not because they meant I would be thinner, but because it meant I could control something in my life that was tangible. My emotions were overwhelming. I could not control them, so I began to control something I was able to: gaining or losing weight. Counting calories, purging, binging, or restricting. All behavior I was in control of. After this realization, things began to click into place. I spent 12 years of my life engaging in my eating disorder. Unaware, depressed, self-destructive, and completely numb to everything around me. I acted out of impulse. I created an addiction to my self-destructive behavior. It felt good to lose weight, not because I was getting thinner, but because I was finally in control of something in my life.

The rest of my time spent at the Bella Vita was the most real self-work I had ever done. I begun the journey of healing. Learning who I really was, what I valued and believed in, and how to deal with my emotions. My entire perception of life itself was completely transformed. I learned to radically accept my body, no matter the size of my waist. To value everything it did for me. I began to live for kindness, gratitude, love, and mostly importantly for myself. My relationship with my friends and family changed. They were positive, warm, and inviting. My life began to blossom like a wildflower. I began to write poetry again. I began to paint and sing and engage in positive activities that I enjoyed. I still cried, I still got angry, and even sometimes impulsive. The difference was, I able to handle it, able to process it. I was able to cope.
​
As I parted ways with the giant red brick building, my life truly began to bloom. I think now about my parting with the Bella Vita and think of Ahmed’s poem, Second Home. It reads:

It snowed four days ago
I don’t feel as cold
As I am supposed to.
I almost believe I am as strong as I need to be.
I come across a field
Wide enough to hold all
The letters I’ve written,
Even the ones I burned/

Ahmed is coming to terms with his identity, his home, his up-bring, and all the parts of himself that make him who is he. He explains it “snowed” but that he does not feel as “cold” as he is “supposed to”. In his earlier poem, 4 A.M., he was waiting for the snow to fall and openly walking out in the darkness. There has been a huge transition inside of him. He is able to confront the coldness of his life. He is strong enough to not feel the bitter sting of his winter's frost. He is proud of his Bengali ancestry, of his home, his family, and his life. Ahmed and I share this same victory.

The first day of my time in the Bella Vita I was not able to handle my darkness and the frost that accompanied it. I was not strong enough. I did not have the proper clothing to endure the winter of my life. Two years later, as I sit in this green and grey Starbucks Coffee shop, I have knitted the biggest, warmest coat. I have found the strength within myself to endure the darkness that used to be my life. I am a recovering binger/purger and I am proud to share my story. My identity is not defined by my eating disorder. I am made up of my accomplishments, strengths, dreams, hopes, values, and aspirations. 

I am strong.

I am resilient.

I am a survivor.

The giant red brick building is apart of my story, but it is not who I am.

Note from author:

​If you are struggling with an eating disorder please remember:
​
You are capable.
You have value. 
You are deserving of love, kindness, and help.
You can get better. 

Please visit the link below for support.

Cassie Wilson is a student, writer, and poet attending Pasadena City College. She says: "I enjoy drinking TAZO giant peach tea and listening to instrumental pop music while I create. I do not write to preach, I write to express." 

I walk through the doors of the green and grey Starbucks building exactly 4 miles away from my house. The barista asks me what I want. “Venti, hot, soy, peppermint mocha please", I somewhat stutter. We exchange nonchalant expressions as I hand the money to him. 10 minutes later, I’m sitting down, coffee beside me, a book in my hands: City of Rivers by Zubair Ahmed. I’m completely unaware of the voices echoing around me; the many conversations happening at the same shared table I occupy. Too engrossed with the work I don’t even hear my name called as I read an excerpt from the poem, 4 A.M:

You go outside,
Place your body
Deep inside the darkness
And wait for snow/

I imagine Zubair Ahmed, Bengali immigrant, his life rich in culture and tradition. His poetry filled with the experiences that shaped how he perceives the world. Ahmed describes an individual going outside in the “darkness” waiting for the snow. I begin to remember a time in my life where I placed myself in my own darkness. A time where I waited for the snow. Where I was so deep inside my own self-destructive nature that I just expected my downfall.

​Throughout my life my perspective has had many renovation processes. I’ve been carved out, filled up, carved out again and then left to pick up the pieces. The most prevalent life experience that has shaped how I perceive the world would have to be the 60 days I spent at the Bella Vita facility in Pasadena, CA.

I remember my first day. The giant red brick building that sat in front of me. It looked obscure and uninviting. Every inch of myself was telling me to turn around, drive back home and never look back. I puffed the last of my cigarette as I sat outside the building. I was hoping that some natural disaster happened in front of me. Anything to stop me from entering and talking about the unspeakable. I put the cigarette out, wiped the tears from my face, and entered the giant red brick building.

Most of the time somebody hears the word “eating disorder” and a picture of a tiny boned, fragile framed girl comes to mind. This was not the case for me, nor is this stereotype even remotely true. I was an overweight 19 year old when I first stepped inside the giant red brick building that made up the eating disorder facility that soon became my safe haven. A myriad of emotions flooded my body. I was scared, ashamed, and mostly pissed off. I did not believe I needed to be there. I missed my intake appointment the day prior and the facility called my mother. My god damn mother. I was past the point of annoyance. I wanted to scream: I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP! I spent the hour prior to my appointment driving down the street from my house, turning around, coming back home, and then leaving again, finally arriving into the grey small parking lot of the facility. Then, sitting in my car chain smoking cigarettes, while balling my eyes out. I did not want to do this, but something small inside me told me I had to try.

During my intake appointment I barely remember all the questions they asked me. I tried to focus but the surging pain of acid embodied my teeth, throat, and tongue. The words “bulimic” stung me to my core. They explained their treatment plan to me, but I wasn’t listening. I was planning and preparing for what I was about to endure. See, the thing about someone with an eating disorder is that control is the only thing that matters. My mind was obsessed with numbers: my weight, the calories I would intake throughout the day, the amounts of chews I took, and how many pounds I could lose. Much like Ahmed, everything in my life was routine. He illustrates in his poem: I Watch The Shadows of Birds Waking at Dawn to Pick the Worms Clean:

I know what the day holds--
Organizing bottles of fish oil on my shelves,
Feeding the spiders in my keyhole three poppy seeds,/
Children gather at the bus stops, their faces covered with black boxes.
/the students line up with their white shirts and khaki pants
Ready to write about the secret lives of sparrows.
/I will wait till night falls and I can’t see
The shadows of birds surrounding me.

Ahmed's life in Bangladesh was a fixed program. His culture spilled out in his day to day experiences. When he illustrates himself waiting until “night falls”, he is waiting for his moment of freedom. Similarly, I had felt prisoner to my surroundings. I knew exactly what my day would consist of: restricting, binging or purging. Ahmed felt trapped in his culture, just as I felt trapped in my eating disorder. I remember the intake was over before I even begun listening. All I knew was I would spend everyday in the facility from 10AM until 7PM, having every meal and snack there. FUCK was the only word I remember thinking of.

After my first week at the facility I recall wanting to desperately leave. My thoughts ran marathons in my head: Who are these people? Why am I here? Why should I trust them? I was resistant, cold, and unresponsive. The first meal I had with the group was terrifying. The diet tech observing the group explained to me that if I did not finish the food on my plate, I would have to drink an Ensure. It was a chocolate, chalky liquid that served as a meal replacement. The girl sitting next to me looked me dead in the eyes shaking her head. She leaned over and whispered, “You should eat the food. The Ensure is twice the amount of calories that your food is. So, it’s better to force feed yourself the meal.”

I ate every meal the entire 60 days I was there.

Week two my personal therapist asked me who I was. Those words confused me. I knew my age, my weight, the color of my skin, hair, and eyes. I knew where I went to school, what city I grew up in. I told her all of the above. She smiled and said, "Who you are is not where you are from or what you look like. I want to know your goals, values, and beliefs. That is who you are." That was the first time I realized how lost I was. In the poem, I Close My Eyes and Find Myself in the Exact Center of Dhakra, Ahmed feels that same confusion of identity. He explains,

Tell me why the sky is above
And not under our bodies.
/The world becomes transparent.
I don’t understand anything anymore--
The moon walking away from us
Because we’re discovering
Who we really are/

Ahmed is slowly figuring out who he is and what it means to be a Bengali.  He reminisces about the discoveries of his people and feels confused and lost. Just as I felt lost in this hour long therapy session of what if’s and who’s who. Ahmed and I shared a common goal: uncovering our true identities.

The third week I ached to be out of my body.

​Part Two is scheduled to post on Wednesday, October 17, 2018. ​Stay Tuned!

​If you want to read Ahmed's work please visit:

Cassie Wilson is from Burbank, California. She has a passion for poetry and a unrelenting love of writing. She is currently attending Pasadena City College, majoring in English. Cassie says, "my journal is my best friend and my pen my partner in crime."​​

The atmosphere that is introduced in the first stanza of Adrineh Arakelian’s poem, “Climate”is one that strikes a nostalgic chord in me.

It's pouring down, not quite
perpendicular to the ground.
The angle and velocity vary widely with
the sway of branches across the street.

The next stanza runs with the nostalgic note, while pitching into a sense of loneliness and the silence of rain. The only sound we hear is the electric heater. The question of memory brings a nostalgia of the speaker into the picture, of the “gulf coast storms”.

Perched in my attic room,
the drops on telephone wires
slightly elongate with gravity. I
hear humming from the electric heater,
oscillating at my feet. It's not even yet
October. Remember the gulf coast storms?

The speaker now wishes for rain. For “hard rain”, rain that is “downpours like a river crossing in the road”. The image of such a downpour is reminiscent of storms and of dangerous situations, but the speaker talks about this dangerous thing as something that they want to occur. They wish for this and long for it.

How I resent the consistency
of mists and drizzle.
How I want a hard rain,
fast-changing weather,
downpours like a river crossing in the road,
culverts an adult could crawl into.

In the fourth stanza, there is more reminiscence of the speaker about their memories. The feeling of nostalgia is quite potent at this point; the “tattooed” knuckles, the “Laughter / amidst large bellies”, and the “dancing” paint an image of family and happiness.

A drink in one hand,
a sweet face dancing with me.
That collection of souls draws
me like a magnet to metal.
B-O-R-N-T-O -R-U-N 
tattooed on their knuckles. Laughter
amidst large bellies, shaking and aching.

However, the happy tune drops with the mention of “a tragedy” that the speaker “followed” here. “Attention [is] turned to loss elsewhere” and the “tragedy” that was the reason of the speaker’s arrival is cast aside. The sense of loss in this stanza fit yet again into the nostalgia feeling that casts its shadow upon this poem.

I followed a tragedy there,
much later, after civilization, after
the post-disaster gold rush,
attention already turned to loss elsewhere.

Here, the mention of “Mardi Gras beads” creates the image of New Orleans and its famous Mardi Gras parade, but that is in the past, “from last year’s parade”. Leftover memories permeate the “branches of / majestic live oaks” and onto the “asphalt road”. The road appears to symbolize the road of thoughts, the trail that memories follow.

You can't stay after the crowd's gone.
There's left just the mess of
Mardi Gras beads from last year's parade,
hanging from the branches of
majestic live oaks, sun-bleached,
driven over, ground into the asphalt road.

And finally, the poem returns to the rain at the end. The nostalgia follows the rain and fills the namesake of the poem; the climate is the climate of the speaker’s mind and memory. Nostalgia is the aim and the “deluge” is the powerful rush of emotions that the speaker feels because of this.

The staggered roof shingles
glisten in the hard rain
giving the appearance of movement.
But they're stapled, stuck in place,
trying to keep the deluge at bay.

“Climate” is a poem that rings with both a sad and happy note of nostalgia that is hard to shake off. Both the rain and the lack thereof delve into the unconscious and psychological aspects of memory. But the “staggered roof shingles” hold strong and keep “the deluge at bay”, the deluge of rain that is both welcome and unwanted.

Tomoko is a student at UC Berkeley. She says "Rain is a symbol of nostalgia for me, personally. I love rain and I associate so many memories and find inspiration in rain and the weather. So, I was instantaneously drawn to Climate. 

by Joan Sullivan
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In the spring of 2000, I was invited to join a book club by a dear friend named Betty.  She told me that while watching her husband play soccer, she struck struck up a conversation with the spouse of another player who happened to be reading the same book she was.  They got to talking and comparing their interests.  Of course, the inevitable happened, and they decided to start a... book club?  Yep, that's right! 

Over the next few weeks, they invited other spouses of the soccer players and me...the only one who’s husband didn’t play soccer.  As Betty told me about her idea, I admitted that I wasn’t interested.  I was perfectly happy reading whatever books I wanted to read. Why would I want to read a book chosen by someone else?  For example, I loved reading biographies and historical fiction, and absorbed myself in The Tudors.  I especially loved Henry VIII.  I read almost every book I could find about him and his wives.  I couldn't get enough of the scandals, the outrage, the religious pomp and circumstance.  I certainly wasn’t sure I wanted to read some flimsy romantic “chick­ lit”, or  some heavy-­duty classic that I was forced to read in high school.  What would I get out of being a part of this book club?

Betty tried to convince me to meet the other women.  She told me I needed some time away from my hectic life, and that this wasn’t just an excuse to go out to dinner, but would enhance our reading experience.  In their 2015 article, "Why Book Clubs Matter". Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil and Deborah Vriend Van Duinen wrote that “having a reader identity means that our sons, daughters, students, partners, friends, and colleagues witness for themselves the pleasure that we find in reading”.

While the phrase “reader identity” was not known to my other self back in 2000, I did like the idea that my children would see me read more often, and would see that I took the time to value and discuss books and reading.

I relented, and told Betty I’d meet with the group.  We met at a big, noisy, Italian restaurant.  I was nervous as we squeezed ourselves into a naugahyde booth.  The music was so loud, we had to practically shout at each other. The lighting was dim, the walls were painted red, and the artwork on the walls were mostly funky, gold­-framed paintings of the pope, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren and your other most famous Italians. We began sharing our life stories at this dinner, talking about our favorite books while drinking cheap chianti and serving spaghetti family-style from the big platter in the center of the table.  A few of the members had newborn babies, and some had just become newlyweds, planning out their lives.

As a full-time office manager (and equally full-time mother and wife), I had to carve out time to read.  Before I met them, I assumed these women didn’t work outside the home and would lounge around for hours on their beautiful couches reading all afternoon.  Of course, none of that was true. These women were very busy and intelligent; they were teachers, counselors, artists, and businesswomen.  The more I learned about their lives and backgrounds, the more I became interested in hearing their points of view.  They were not like me. Our backgrounds were very different.  Still, we were able to listen to each other’s opinions respectfully...and with good humor!   I told Betty I would join this new book club.

As the months went on, I found that the way I absorb a story is very different than the others. Together, we read Trans­-Sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian, a book about a woman who falls in love with a man who later tells her that he’s decided to go through a sex change.  The book describes the transformation in their relationship, and in great detail, what happens during the operation.  Although I found it fascinating, other members had a very hard time reading it.  

Another book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom, I found contrived and sentimental.  I felt insulted as it tried to tug at my heartstrings, while other members fell in love with it.  Those conversations were the most entertaining and meaningful.  I was able to see something from a different point of view, from someone who, by then, I knew very well, cared for, and respected very much.

Now, eighteen years later, as we sit around a dinner table finishing up our meal, drinking our wine and feeling relaxed and uninhibited, the conversations become more animated...especially when we feel strongly about our opinions.  It is always a surprise to find myself not liking a book, only to change my mind completely after a book club meeting and a fiery discussion about the pros and cons of a character or plot line.

Our book choices are varied:  

• One member often chooses socially conscious biographies.  
• Another likes to read love stories.
• We take turns choosing a book, and the other members cannot influence the decision.
• We have to read the book in one month, and be prepared to discuss it at the end of the month (exceptions being winter holidays, when we’re allowed 2­3 days to finish).

Being a part of this book club not only increased the amount of reading I did, but also the variety of books I’ve read.  I’ve become a more insightful reader.  I can better recognize good writing and bad writing.

​In her article "Five Reasons to Join a Book Club"(click), Delia Lloyd says, “Some books need to be discussed”, but I find this to be true for all books.  For example, we can talk about the worst book we’ve read, and find some saving grace. ­ We all agreed Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays was simplistic and predictable, but the love he expressed for his father was heartwarming.  Then, we can talk about one of the best books we’ve read and still find flaws.  Like John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley: In Search of America, was beautiful and vivid, but maybe not always realistic.  

Being able to talk about a book you’ve read with a group of people who have also read the book helps you absorb more than just the words on the page.  You get to hear how other readers interpret a person’s identity, or the way a house is described, or other details in the book which might be up for interpretation. Now, when I read a book, not only do I think about whether it’s a good story and well written, I also think about my fellow book club members and try to figure out which ones will like it and which ones won’t.

After 18 years, 170 books, we continue to argue, laugh, and cry about books over dinner...and I can’t imagine anything better.

Joining this book club and getting to know these eight women has changed my life.

We have celebrated and supported each other through births, divorces, and deaths.

We’ve become our own village and it’s all because of our love of books.

Joan Sullivan is a guest blogger, and a sophomore at the University of LaVerne.
​