A Shit Situation

[Trigger Warning: This post includes discussions of bowel movements and eating disorders.]

It’s April and I’m so sorry. I’d planned to write about getting my driver’s license (back in January) and trying to get back some semblance of fitness (back in February and ongoing), while simultaneously resolving – once and for all – my persistent intestinal issues. The last, however, has been winning.

Since I returned to Japan, I’ve had pooping problems. Likely due to a combination of stress and a diverse range of eating disorders, I simply stopped pooping. At first, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Then, the bloating started, triggered by eating or drinking. I remember cycling home near tears after a mouthful of an electrolyte drink made my guts expand to late term pregnancy levels, my skin and kit stretched to their respective limits. My intestines began to cramp as I navigated hills home and soon after that, I began to avoid cycling outside.

Not pregnant, just bloated.

Approximately ten years later, the battle continues. Tired of the Chinese medicine that usually worked but turned my farts into weapons of mass destruction, I pressed for something more pharmaceutical. Goofice, a new drug for people who cannot poop, seemed promising given the reviews that people temporarily touched death due to its laxative effects. I happily took the small pills home and popped two and waited. And waited. And waited. Though my doctor would later increase the dose to three pills, absolutely nothing happened.

Next was the notorious Linzess, known for triggering bouts of diarrhea lasting hours. Impressively, it worked somewhat consistently but required that I not leave my house for 6 to 7 hour blocks. I once took it at 6am in the hope that my bowels will be clear by my 2pm Muay Thai class. I was not so lucky and ended up running laps to the bathroom until the late afternoon. Though not a listed side effect, it also caused intense fatigue. I stopped taking it after realizing that a drug could, in fact, lower my already-quite-low quality of life. 

Between the drugs, I’ve tried a number of restrictive diets that taught me to avoid cruciferous vegetables and beans and probably bread, but not much else. Other vegetables appear to have no adverse effects until they do. I can’t tell if fruits help or hurt me. Fiber cereals and supplements tend to sit like a brick in my gut. Every other week, I debate the merits of trying the all meat, carnivore diet until some article or Reddit post makes me consider going vegan. In the meantime, I am living off Danone’s Bio Yogurt (Activia for those in the U.S.), while occasionally questioning whether dairy is an issue.

The worst part is that I look healthy, even like I could afford to lose a few kilos (potato chips do not appear to contribute to malicious bloat). One doctor bluntly told me to lose weight. Others tend to look at me, learn that I’m on an antidepressant, and conclude my issues are caused by the Japanese justification for everything: stress.

Because Japan, apparently, considers itself a very stressed country. There is the image of the overworked, Japanese salaryman and death from overwork has its own word. As an island country with an extremely homogenous culture where bullying is commonplace, even in the workplace, there seems to be an unstated understanding that conforming to social expectations combined with job responsibilities can lead to some pent-up stress. And that stress could reasonably be the reason behind sexually assaulting strangers, secretly recording customers in toilets, embezzlement, arson, and pedophilia. Why not, then, constant constipation?

Unfortunately, I tend to play right into the medical gaslighting by looking more stressed when the doctor mentions stress so now he can tell me that see, I am, in fact, stressed. In response, I quickly turn into Walter from The Big Lebowski when he overreacts to a bowling game, frantically telling doctors that I’m not stressed; actually, I’m less stressed than most people, in the most stressed way possible. I have not yet asked these doctors whether groping someone or stealing money would make me regular.

Considering the consequent depression and desperation, it’s probably a good thing I haven’t asked. When the bloating starts, any kind of exercise becomes impossible. Most of the time, I can jog slowly and lift weights in the morning if I don’t eat solid food, but anything in the afternoon is often not an option. With the Muay Thai gym opening from 2pm, I’ve battled with the guilt and frustration at not being able to go to class. Thus far, I haven’t molested anyone on public transportation due to stress, but it hasn’t been a happy time.

While my intestinal issues have bummed me out a lot this year, unlike my bodily waste, I finally managed to crawl most of the way out of the black hole of intestinal issues this past weekend. I have scrounged up some hope that maybe, if I don’t let it get me down, it’ll finally give up and go away. Or, that my new doctor will find something while excavating both ends of me later this month and I’ll have a tangible, treatable diagnosis. And if, by some chance, this is with me forever, I can still write and craft, laxatives exist, and this isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Although, I will reconsider that last statement if I have to permanently give up croissants.

A December Jalapeno

Late in July, I sprouted jalapeno seeds. Despite my tardiness in planting them and consequent general neglect, they managed to put on, first, flowers, then a handful of peppers. Though Tokyo winters are mild, I’d expected them to wither away by November, and was surprised by their apparent resolve to survive. A few weeks ago, accepting that they were determined to live – if only out of spite – I dragged them inside into slightly warmer temperatures.

I’ve felt like those jalapeno plants a lot this past decade, striving to thrive but not given the best circumstances to do so. I expected 2022 to be similar to the ten preceding years; the kind where I exit the year resigned that I’d remained stuck in the same place I found myself in 2021, with little hope that the coming year would be much better. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I was prepared to go through the motions again this year, for whatever it is I’m supposed to be living for.

For a year that started with lingering pandemic stagnation and the kind of apathy where I struggled to even mindlessly binge Netflix, 2022 ended on a surprising note. There was no big event, no “aha” moment where things clicked into place as movies and other forms of fiction may have you believe. Instead, it was a cohesion of little hopes and efforts, big support from a best friend of decades, and a lot of luck, snowballing into something to be optimistic about. For the first time in a long time, I’m ending the year feeling lucky, prepared to make 2023 a brighter one.

That’s not to say that the future will consist of easy coasting, but I feel secure – for maybe the first time in my life – that there will be a wheel to draft, a lead out when needed, and a spot when I’m struggling, that does not solely consist of an overburdened best friend. I also know that should I find myself out of luck, with a little help from friends, that I can find my way back to where I need to be. Which is essentially to say that at 39, my life is starting to feel like my own and that I’m not so horrified at where its headed.

As friends and motivational Instagram posts have reminded me, it’s always harder to hope. Giving up absolves one of any effort; it’s easy to surrender to a half-lived life. I concede that I’ve done the latter too much this decade, to the obvious dismay of friends who have attempted to smack sense into me while never failing to push and pull me up when I was down. To those of you who have been there, please accept my profuse apologies, eternal gratitude, and the promise that I will hope harder.

Thank you. I love you. And let’s go 2023!

Hot Water Dreams

I recently spent part of an overseas vacation engaging in a passive aggressive electronic exchange with Airbnb. What I originally imagined would be a relaxing, enjoyable pilgrimage back to the U.S. had turned into a first-world nightmare. The space in question was great; it was cozy, relatively private, and located in a safe, wealthy-looking neighborhood. The issue was the hot water in the shower lasted a mere sixty seconds per day. 

I raised the issue with the host, naively believing that this must be some kind of mistake. The second time I asked her about it, she told me that Southern California was under a drought advisory and that “we take short showers.”

 By this time, I had endured three days of showers that started semi-hot, then quickly cooled to the colder side of lukewarm by the time I reached for the bar of soap. In the grand scheme of things, it was a minor inconvenience, just uncomfortable enough to make me miserable. Of all the uncomfortable scenarios I had imagined could manifest during this trip, lack of hot water was not one of them. Plus, hadn’t my host implied that hot water was deliberately being throttled as a forcing mechanism to save on her water bill, at my expense? Had I actually paid her for that privilege?

As I fantasized about letting the “hot” water run for hours and googled the implied warranty of habitability to make sure that I wasn’t going off the reservation, I leaned back in bed with my half-washed hair and did the only thing I could do: I binge watched Hoarders to feel less alone in my lack of baseline utilities.

Hoarders, as always, delivered. My irritation gave way to a grudging admission that at least I had a functioning toilet. But while I normally used the show to redefine the words “cluttered” and “messy,” a woman clinging to impossible dreams caught my attention. Adamant about completing her late husband’s spacious dream home, she had instead filled it up as if to protect herself from the reality of the task and the inevitability of failure. Life and loved ones had made clear that this wasn’t a path that would lead to any kind of happiness, but she refused to accept that fact.

“That dream is the only thing I have,” she said at one point.

“But that’s what life is,” Dr. Tompkins said, “accepting the loss of things that could be.”

When I planned this trip, a stateside visit for the first time in three years, I’d imagined that coming back would feel like home. It’s the only place I could feel normal, I’d claimed, and I had no doubt that the transition from Tokyo to L.A., San Diego, and San Francisco, would be seamless. I’d feel comfortable because, if not for immigration laws, the U.S. was where I was supposed to be. It was where I was supposed to thrive.

Or, so I told myself as I looked fruitlessly for jobs, life, friends, and partners in Japan. I imagined that life stateside would be normal, that my ability to communicate in the same language and understand cultural norms would gift me with some measure of, if not success, contentment. I conjured up an imaginary life where, on balance, things were generally pretty good, a far contrast from the mild discomfort I experienced every day in Tokyo.

Two weeks and several cold showers later, I’ve discovered how uncomfortable things can be here. After three years away, I’d assumed that I’d arrive stateside with blinders and rose-colored glasses strong enough to mask all of the imperfections I’d encounter. Instead – blame it on the cold showers or the piles of human feces on San Francisco sidewalks – I found myself a little less enthused, a little more conscious of the fantastic nature of my imagined stateside life. While I’m currently better equipped to handle emotional discomfort and hurt, would I have arrived at this place in my life without being anchored in Tokyo? Even if everything had gone according to the plan I’d set out for myself, would I have ended up happy? Or would the ease of living where I’m most comfortable only have served to perpetuate bad emotional habits? 

Previously, I would have said that it would all have been positive, because everything in my life in Tokyo had been the opposite. I felt stuck, and therefore, increasingly left behind by my peers who weren’t encumbered by a foreign nationality. Declaring that it was due to being legally tethered to Japan was a coping mechanism; a way to tell myself that there was hope for me somewhere. That I wouldn’t have been a failure everywhere.

But after a pandemic and some extensive therapy, even that definition of myself seems to have worn itself out. The reality is that I’m only a failure according to the dreams I’d set out for myself years ago, when I was decidedly less informed about my own happiness. It’s true, and maybe always will be, that life would be easier for me stateside. But for the first time since I’ve moved back to Japan, I accepted that happiness isn’t confined to specific locations and that clinging to a stateside dream hasn’t made me any happier. That maybe I don’t need to be somewhere to be happy.

That said, once I landed in Tokyo, I questioned whether these thoughts had been fueled by the generously potent legal cannabis in California. There’s comfort and familiarity with staying in the past, to keep identifying with dreams on life support. But like that lady on hoarders who built walls of stuff around her to keep an expired dream alive, the past can ruin any chance of happiness in the present.

I’m ready to let go. But not, you know, of hot water in paid accommodations.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I’m back at the gym and I have no idea what I’m doing.

There’s a general point to each workout, but other than trying to avoid an expanding waistline, and my need to see other living humans in my peripheral vision, there’s no long-term goal or event I’m lifting for. My split jerk is finally looking halfway decent; yet, I’m not sure if I want to keep chasing the possibility of weightlifting competition.

A pandemic, plus a surge in cases of Covid-19 infections during the summer, temporarily kept me away from the gym. With life returning to an adjusted normal and gyms reasonably safe, the opportunity for safer competition is there. But somehow, the gloss has worn off.

Like The Clash song, I’ve never been very good at leaving. Boyfriends, sports, gyms; I always tend to stay a little too long. It once took my getting dumped three times by the same person before I realized that the relationship may have run its course. You’d think I’d have figured it out by the second time, but my unflagging optimism stubbornly claimed that our happier memories far outweighed the numerous red flags. Compounded by the urge to avoid the loss of time, money, emotions, love spent, I’ve clung to anchors while drowning.

Insecurity has had a lot to do with it, but cycling also set me up for failure in that regard, where feeling like you’re having a heart attack is a package deal with having fun. Although the sport taught me the importance of mental fortitude, there was a constant suggestion that my inability to be better at the sport was due to some lack of dedication. If I’d been committed enough, I thought, I’d be able to lose more weight, climb faster, pedal longer. In an effort to prove my love, I spent too many years chasing an arbitrary number on the scale while my relationship with food went from disordered to out of control. I still struggle with it and the digestive issues it has since created.

The fear also lingers. Lacking absurd strength for my size and weight, serious competition in weightlifting would necessitate a hard weight cut. I can’t definitively say that it would be worth it. It’s not just the risk of spiraling or ending up in a place where I am waiting – desperately and endlessly –  to be happy until I reach some goal weight or lose X number of kgs. With Covid having shrunk our social interactions to the exchange digital emojis, could I pass on a chance to touch, hug, and laugh with friends I haven’t physically seen in too long, because I’m training for a competition? The answer for me, right now, is no.

That said, my workouts continue to center around the snatch and the clean and jerk. Kettlebell movements, pull-ups, push-ups, and even the occasional jog have been added; which is to say that I’m doing CrossFit in slow motion. While I expected my step back from weightlifting to bring about some existential turmoil, it’s opened up the opportunities to fail spectacularly at some calisthenics movements. At times I struggle with how generally aimless my workouts currently are, but there’s a relief and a freedom in choosing not to do the things I’m supposed to do, to not feel the need to prove my love to anyone else.

Last week, I hobbled to the stretching area of the gym after I hit a front squat PR. I joined a few other people, outstretched or contorted on the foam mats, all of us trying to work out our individual kinks.

Sliding into Self-Sabotage

It’s been quiet around here lately.

With the pandemic still raging – despite the Japanese government’s assurances that everything is really ok, at least until the Olympics are over – I just haven’t been doing much. This means that the most exciting part of my day occurs every morning when my willpower to live gets sucked out from my buttchecks via a stone-cold toilet seat. I do have a warming toilet seat, but like coffee shops in Japan, it doesn’t appear to open for business until the late morning hours. 

That’s not to say that I’ve been doing nothing. As the days have blended into one long slog towards whenever we can physically interact without guilt, work had initially been a great distraction. Working was one activity that I could generally control and use to fill the time that I would otherwise spend over coffee with a friend. “If I can’t hang out with friends, I’ll just work,” I reasoned. I was making – and saving – money; I was being productive. It felt good.

Until it didn’t. The continued, year-long discouragement of social interaction translated into a self-imposed obligation to work all the time. On weekends, presented with more free time than I would have liked and hobbies that required thought, I chose to either work or stare blankly at my computer. I burnt myself out about four months ago but dealt with it by stuffing down feelings of guilt and stress with cookies and carbs. I clung to work because it seemed like the one thing that didn’t feel so fruitless. The general sense of loss of control was extrapolated in my mind to a complete loss of control over my circumstances. “Jesus, take the wheel,” my self-control said, and self-sabotage jumped into the driver’s seat.

Rather than enjoying my workouts, eating food that my GI system wouldn’t hate, or doing things that would keep me relatively sane, I either did nothing, ate junk food, or both. While I reasoned that the predictable weight gain had saved me the purchase of a weighted vest or a dip belt for pull ups, there was also the somber reality that my bottom half has become markedly heavier. And bigger. Cellulite, my personal red flag of weight gain I’m going to regret if I keep eating, has seemingly taken up permanent residence on my thighs. With one more thing to worry about, I ate more in response.

“But, the pandemic,” I’d say around a mouthful of donuts, when presented with the mental reminder that this wasn’t actually helping me in the long run. Besides, hadn’t my therapist advised me to “turn off” once in a while?

I understand that my behavior and logic – or lack thereof – requires a special blindness to accountability. The constant self-sabotage has essentially been a muted temper tantrum where I displaced the blame for my own actions because self-care is the harder thing to do. Instead of “turning off” from work, I checked myself out of all responsibility.

But like that one person who uses a second cousin’s in-law’s distant relative’s tragedy to garner sympathy, it’s a stretch to continue to use the pandemic as an excuse to be shitty to myself. Self-care and disconnecting can be exhausting and expensive (I’ve spent more money than I’d like to admit on books in the last two months) but at the very least, my eyebrows look better for it.

As usual, progress hasn’t been perfect. A key takeaway from this most recent period of self-sabotage has been that they really shouldn’t trust me to portion out chocolate bars. (When the entire thing is wrapped in one foil packet, do they really expect me to take some and put the rest back? And have you noticed how the foil is always very thin and rips, thus forcing you to take another portion…? And then another…and another…?) More important ones have been that I haven’t lost control of my entire life, that devouring books instead of chocolate is more effective when I need to get out of my own head, and that the urge to mindlessly snack indicates a need to de-stress.

 Which is to say, I’ll probably be busier going forward, but hopefully, I’ll be a less stressed person for it.

Half Doses of Happy

A couple weeks ago, I had the misfortune of being kicked off my SSRI.

It wasn’t intentional, although it was as a result of my decisions. My doctor’s office had informed me, late last month, that they would be closing for a week in late August for summer vacation. They handed me a slip of paper with their vacation dates printed onto them, so that I could remember. However, that did not mean that I took it into consideration when making future decisions. Within a minute of being handed that slip of paper, I promptly lost it somewhere in my bag.

Of course, I ran out of my month’s supply of Lexapro – an antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication – the exact week my doctor’s office was closed. I called around, emailed my therapist, but couldn’t find a doctor that would give me an emergency prescription. I started to sweat.

People will tell you different things about antidepressants, and that’s the scary part. Some people will say that medication simply reset their brains. Others that they’ll make you gain weight, your libido might die, your personality will change dramatically, or that your emotions will be numbed out. Further complicating the entire process is the fact that one SSRI may not work for one person or doses may have to be tweaked. The odds of success are essentially reduced to a coin toss. Unfortunately, when you’re clinically depressed, the last thing you want to hear is that the probability of troubleshooting your brain with a particular medication is about the same as your chances of passing the California bar exam.

In my case, I lucked out on Lexapro; it was like finding a skilled plumber that would ensure that the toilet bowl of my brain would function properly. Shit happens near daily, but Lexapro would help me flush it out and the side effects have been minimal.

When I miss a dose – something that’s inadvertently happened after a long day of travel – my anxiety creeps out of its cage. Like a clogged toilet, my thoughts start to recall past events while my anxiety threatens to silently overflow into usually-stable areas of my life. The whispered stuttering of an overwhelmed toilet tank becomes the back beat of my insecurity spiking to crazy. Without my metaphorical pharmaceutical toilet plunger, I turn into a reality TV villain. 

Welcome to anxiety.

Living with this version of myself for a week sounded implausible. By my estimation, I was also running low on goodwill; asking my friends to put up with me in this state was out of the question.  By some foresight that my current self appears incapable of, I found three Lexapro pills in a travel case. I had seven days until my doctor’s office opened; if I split my pills in half, I had a chance to not lose it completely.

It was rough. Even with a half dose, I experienced withdrawal symptoms. I initially gave myself anxiety over the impending tsunami of anxiety. Throughout the week, I experienced slight nausea and an upset stomach, a decreased ability to focus, general restlessness, and significant fatigue. Work was both a welcome distraction and a source of unjustified irritation. I started craving starchy carbs but that could be due to the fact that I didn’t have much of an appetite during the day. By Day 5, I noticed that my anxiety peaked at night and into the following morning, and as a result, talked myself into believing some crazy theories about my life and self-worth. At one point during the week, I came back from the gym after a night of too little sleep and a day of too little food and wept over the certainty that I’d done nothing useful with my life.

This, I thought, this is how people join cults and get into conspiracy theories.

By the time I began to accept my constant, semi-sad, nervousness, my doctor’s office reopened and I was able to refill my prescription. I’ve felt better since, though it took a day or two, which is awesome, because I’m currently PMSing. 

I’m sorry I’m like this.