Stale Rules

As I continue to work on my book, I am expanding, editing, deleting and rewriting some past blogs. This comes from an old post:   Rules for Playing but is the new and improved 2.0 version!

Without rules, we are like children without a bedtime, running wild, secretly seeking some structure.  Even as damaging as some of my early tractates were, they were still rules, allowing for direction and order.  So as I build my own adult life, I look around me and realize that for the first time, there is no one authority figure dictating my choices or outlining their worldview for me to subscribe to.

In the past decade as I’ve moved from state to state and job to job, I sought new teachers wherever I went. Instead of sifting through their lessons and deciding which parts I agree with and which parts I’ll choose to let slip through my fingers, I simply nod and smile, grateful for my new guidebook. It’s much simpler this way. No need to think for myself, no agonizing debates about values and morals, no uncertainty about what to say, what to think, or what to do. The fatal flaw came when I eventually moved: moved on, moved away, moved back and was left floundering, a mess of competing rules from different schools of thought. 

As a freshman in St. Louis, I discovered the thrill of breaking old rules, staying up until 3 am on my co-ed dorm floor, running to class in flannel pants, and the entertainment of drawing with sharpies upon the cheeks of passed out floor-mates after beer bong contests.  WashU was a wet campus, allowing freshman to drink on university grounds, and so I arrived at the party without having to leave my single room.  Some of the rules were familiar: Attend class.  Be smart.  Get A’s.  Find a niche to Shine.  The rest of the lingo and culture we learned in College 101: WILD means a day off of class, drinking beginning at 10 am, a day-long college sponsored concert standing for ‘Walk In Lie Down’.  ‘The Quad’ is the best place for flag Frisbee.  RA’s will join the 2 am floor dance if you invite them.  Best friends forgo sleep the night before thanksgiving break and commiserate on the dramas of going home.  Sleep is optional at all times.  Caffeine is more essential than air. 

 Banished from my dream college, I trudged to Crystal City, MO for yet another residential program.  In a bankrupt lottery winner’s mansion, I became the patient rules were based on.  A new center trying to cater to the individual and preach unconditional love despite destructive actions, I gave them a run for their money.  The endless diet coke supply became 2 a day.  Equal packets were doled out in multiples of 5 rather than the 200 I was using.  Molly Mcbutter could only be used as a topping, not a side dish, as was imitation vanilla, cinnamon, and mustard.  Walks were now monitored lest purging was the aim.  I learned to value movement over words and invest in art scribbles over childhood analysis.  I heard the staffing whispers of being stuck, unsure how to cure my tendency to crash every time I stepped out their front doors.  Rule #1: there must be a reason for sickness.  There must be a missing piece that will explain all.  Rule #2: Treatment centers are businesses looking for a profit.  Rule #3: Having an anorexic child in a treatment center across the country doesn’t qualify you to open your own program.  Rule #4: Actions are trusted more than declarations.  Body memories are not to be disputed.  Rule #5: Programs can ravage a family and induce rather than cure sickness. Rule #6: Professionals can be horribly wrong.  Rule #7: Professionals aren’t always Professional.

             In Buffalo Gap, Texas, the standard was confrontation and voicing your anger, one day at a time and tough love. I moved out of the residential center and tacked up pictures in the doublewide trailer nee halfway house, greeting the neighboring buffalo, Bob, for my morning walks.  I filled my days with group lessons on identity and anger. I’m Lauren: anorexic, bulimic, obsessive compulsive, sufferer of anxiety and depression, co-dependent, love avoidant, and survivor of emotional abuse. And then braced myself for the inevitable rash of confrontations.  Lauren, I feel anger when you purge behind the bushes and I would need or like for you to get with the program or get out.  Lauren, I feel anger when you sneak more than 2 Splenda packets at breakfast, and I would need or like for you to get honest.  Lauren, I feel anger when you skip your butter at dinner and I would need or like for you to follow the rules.  I clenched my jaw with stone cold eyes and vowed no seeable response, acting like I couldn’t care less as my best revenge.  Rather than using the peer pressure as a motivator to take steps toward recovery, I garnered my fury as fuel for increased deceptiveness and honed my manipulative talents.

 We had a lingo out in middle-of-nowhere Texas, fluent in 12-step clichés and tough love.  ‘Trying is lying.” “No is a complete sentence.” “Everything after ‘but’ is bullshit.”  For a girl who skittered away from frustration and spent a childhood sweeping up hurt feelings after my brother’s illegal angry displays, I learned to join in the cacophony of confrontations and found a home in our ramshackle trailer house.  The rules were clear, laid down by BMW speeding Queen, ex-pill addict, covered with spikes unless you became one of the chosen few, which I did.  Straight shooting and crass with manicured toes, Cindy had little patience for clients wasting her time, and led anger groups that ended with foam bats beating pillows and anorexic twigs tapping into years of stifled rage as they wrestled with her, often winning, to ‘get it all out’. 

The Written Rules: A meeting a day.  Read your big book every day.  Pray daily.  Eat 3 meals a day, no white flour or sugar.  No snacking in between meals.  Work the 12-step program.  No purging.  No binging.  No drinking.  No drugs.  No cutting.  No isolating.  No gambling.  No raging.  No sex.  No over-exercising.  Attend all groups.  The Other Rules: The 12-step program is the only way to get better.  You must find a higher power if you will recover.  We know what’s best for you, so before making any decisions, bring it to group for ‘feedback’.  Staying close to the treatment center is the only way you’ll (Lauren and other frequent flyers) ever reach any semblance of recovery.  Blunt truth is always the best option.  Any action that steps over normal limits gets labeled as addiction, leaving me with no acquaintances that didn’t need some 12-step program.  Years later, it sounds cultish and crazy, but this coddle-free corner worked for me at the time.  I became one of the inner circle, a yearlong patient twice, both times moving to buffalo gap once I finished or was kicked out of the program. 

In psychology graduate school, the outlook was that of dysfunction, healing.  We learned how to soothe client’s wounds after making sure that our own scabs had stopped oozing.  I found a cohort of wounded healers, classmates drawn to the profession of sickness with sob stories seeping out of their baggage in the hall. Back in Arizona, I learned that family is a unit that stands together and falls together, that love has no limits but can also bring a family to its knees.  The guidelines were clear: keep breathing, if not for yourself then for us. Living out of guilt was my default position, and when I tried to quit, the Rule Makers forced my hand.

Shipped off to Malibu, I learned independence, feminism while still performing the people-pleasing dance.  There were all of the familiar rules: no cell phones, iPods, and novels not pre-approved.  30-minute meals with Ensure to make up the difference.  Exercise must be earned and groups were mandatory.  Within these, I managed to carve out space to breathe, encouraged to pen my own rules for life, but after a lifetime of institutions, I simply looked to my adored therapist and adopted hers.  I flipped from ‘worst patient ever’ to ‘star patient’ and each identity came with clear-cut mandates. I might have found space to ponder my life view, but I excelled at Hero Client, miracle story complete with vows of a bigger life and bread pudding for dessert.  I knew what I believed only by the reflection from others, and culled together opinions on politics, love, career, and life without ever having a unique thought.

In west LA, in my own apartment, there are no rules written on the chalkboard, no mindset that I can put my finger, dictating values and opinions. Being an obsessive order craver, I decide to make my own rules.  Some are old, some have been taught, and some are only applicable for today. The beauty of authoring your own constitution is that you get to add amendments at any moment without a majority vote.

For my own rules, see RULES FOR PLAYING but these sum it up pretty nicely!

For no good reason

Tucked amidst the ‘wrong side of the bed’ days, gray weeks, and ‘bang your head against the wall’ moments, are those days where minutes flow easily tinged with joy.

It’s one of those days where nothing is particularly good or exciting, no big plans or special celebrations, but simply a morning spent smiling.  I wish I could figure out what makes the difference – wish I were in on the secret, could bottle up my contentedness, and reproduce the simple joy when the world is rubbing me raw. But rather than analyze the whys and hows, rather than squander the day making lists of possible factors: good night sleep, entertaining phone chat with new friend, baby tomatoes beginning to grow...and I’m reigning my obsessiveness in....done.... really.

Rather than make lists, I feel like I should do something. Be out; enjoy the happiness, live life to the fullest. And that’s just a recipe for an abrupt end to my peace of mind, because now there’s pressure to have the ‘best day’ or do something great – like New Year’s Eve plans or Valentine’s Day.

And really, there’s nothing pressing to run off to – no crucial errands or important business to take care. It’s not a beach day or warm enough to frolic in the park.  But even so, I have to train myself to sit still, not to fill the seconds with cleaning and re-cleaning, organizing, errands, and lists – not to be scared of space stretched ahead, and to recognize that perhaps the sweet balance of the day sneaks in only when I’m still long enough for it to catch me.

So I’m just going to enjoy it, without stress to maximize or pressure to achieve.  I’ll write and I’ll work, I’ll putter under fresh mint blooms and curl up with a warm puppy and a book.  I’ll go about my normal day.  And there’s the beauty – sometimes the best days are just the normal, ho-hum days, the blessings that only occur in the absence of crisis. 

Leaving behind the reasons and wishes to capture and save, I wish you all a normal day of smiling over nothing and that sense that it’s “A Good to be Alive” day.

Exactly what I was looking for

It never ceases to amaze me as the unexpected teacher arrives, when the words swirl into my heart, freshly brewed as exactly the message I need to hear.  I’m always surprised when my sour first impression fills with sweetness and I’m reminded again how book covers rarely capture the story’s poetry. 


I was rushing, later than I planned, panicking over a missed self-imposed arrival time.  I was late for a petty reason I abhor – can’t decide what to wear – and then my inability to walk away from unwashed dishes or the bathroom floor that all of a sudden demanded immediate swiffering. Stupid.  And when I’m late, anxiety sets in, even in the absence of consequences; simply the act of rushing becomes my pavlovian panic bell.  I’m trying to practice deep breathing as I hike up seven flights of stairs, not knowing that the Rosh Hashanah services I’m searching for are on the second floor.  Note: Should really include floor number on direction sign instead of merely “Stairs to services”. 

I find a seat, saving one for my even later friend, and close my eyes, trying to find a width for prayer, for calmness to open a connection for spirituality.  But after 20 minutes in a sparsely filled women’s section of dry chanting and mumbled Hebrew, I’m inching towards the door. To the background of the shofar, I wondered what I was expecting?  I don’t belong to a shul, and no place ever seems to have the right ingredients of passion, holiness, music, meaning, familiarity and community to deliver the warm “Lauren” specialty I crave.  No service is going to deliver instant fulfillment, light bulb moments flashing by the second.  I keep my tush in my chair and try to locate my own door to spirituality.  But then I followed the trail of congregants into an ‘alternative class’ and while fighting the ‘bad Jew’ guilt of opting for lecture over services; I shifted in the hard plastic chairs and found what I was looking for. 

With humor and the casual manner of a young Rabbi, this man captured my attention and spoke with an honesty that struck me deep into the place of stirring change and motivating action.  He made the day come alive, brought G-d into this Day of Judgment, and handed me old lessons rewrapped to fit the missing pieces in my life today.  He spoke of pausing to take stock, and the gift of a Judgment that withholds decrees for another ten days.  He made it personal, telling tales of his own neurotic craziness and how he wants turn to G-d before the crisis and not only once disaster has brought him to his knees. 

There was more during the hour I listened; more lessons I wish I could have jotted down, knowing that there were too many jewels lacing his words and that they would blend and fade by the time I got home.  I forced myself to simply be, to stop taking stock myself, to wait until later to ponder the places in my life that need renovating, the lessons that I still haven’t learned.  But the catch phrase that keeping bouncing between my brain, even two days later, is this: Are you willing to be ‘woken up’ no matter what?  Even if it means suffering and pain, loss and tears?  This was why I came to services that day.  This is what I needed to hear – again.  This is the lesson that burrows between my routines and widens the doorways of holiness.  It’s time to wake up –no matter how many fears and scrapes that journey may hold. With gratitude, I head home, eyes wide open, opting for a contemplative afternoon at the park rather than mindless errands that all can wait.  I head home blessed with the next week to sift through my prior days and pull out the weeds by the root.  I know that the motivation will dissipate and pearls of wisdom will get lost in the shuffle.  I still find myself distracted with moving and organizing just hours later, and remind myself that change still counts even in small increments. 

But the teacher arrived, and I was in my seat.  In a room full of strangers, I was among community as I found exactly what I was looking for.