Julie Chibbaro

Sometimes, food just feels good. Eating fills me up, not just physically, but emotionally as well. I was a fat kid, so I know this mental element of eating goes way back for me.

But I can't seem to remember people being so very fat back then. We were plump, rotund, stout. But obese? I can't really remember that being a problem.

What has changed? How can I write about it? I keep thinking I want to write about being a fat girl, and how that ruined my life, maybe as a way to reach other fat girls, so that together we can figure this out. What's going on? Why couldn't I control myself, and why can't we, men and women, boys and girls, control ourselves now?

We're so incredibly unhappy being fat, yet we can't stop eating. It's like we're crazy, like we're punching ourselves in the head saying 'oww, oww' but we still keep doing it. Of course, eating feels better than punching, yet we're doing that much damage to our bodies.

I keep thinking it's a question of caring about longevity. When you're fat, you don't really care about living a long time, so those warnings about health issues don't matter much. You don't look good, you don't feel good, maybe death isn't such a bad option. At least that's how I felt. Actually, death seemed very far away, and avoiding it seemed as easy as avoiding aliens from outer space.

Maybe the answer is to find happiness in things other than food. I think I started to lose weight when I found ways to act on my dreams, if that doesn't sound too cheesy. When I get stuck, when I'm waiting for someone else to do something, that's when I focus on food. Engaged in life, in activities that I love, I tend to forget about it.

So maybe that's the girl I can write about. Why does she eat? Why can't she stop? What can she remove or add to her life that will change her focus? What would she be like if her dreams came true?

Just thinking aloud here. As usual.

Me and Sami pigging out on pudding at the diner. Am I setting her up?

I spend a lot of time thinking. That's my job. Sometimes it's directed -- I think through a plot or story idea I might be considering -- and sometimes it's not -- I'm simply contemplating the shapes of people's lives, cause and effect, how folks are formed, what makes someone mean and another person kind.

In all this pondering, I recently came to a revelation. I believe, having lived forty something years (and the elders among us can dispute this), that my strongest emotions, those that made me wildest with grief or most ecstatic with joy, were ones I had as a teenager or young adult. Lots of things have happened to me as an adult (I would say I became an adult after about the age of 25), the death of my mother and sister, the marriage to the man of my dreams, the birth of my child, but those were all things I somehow instinctively knew how to process. Things that happened in my youth, sexual abuse, parental violence, the divorce of my parents (twice), the radical change in my body from girl to girl with breasts, my first love, these were all things I wasn't equipped to handle.

Because I didn't have the tools to understand what was going on around me, or happening inside me, my emotions tended to be extreme and extraordinary. I think, in a way, I'm still processing the emotions I had as a young person. The events of that time will forever shape me. That is why I keep returning to young people in my books, writing from their perspective. Because, in a way, I think if I can figure it out, even a little piece of the puzzle, the truth of hormones, the savageness of young love, maybe, just maybe I can help one reader through what to me are the strongest emotions they will ever have in their lives.

Surviving sisters in glasses.

I've decided to change the name of my blog. Not just the name, but the subject, as well. Not just the subject, but the limitations, too. This blog is going to be about anything I want. It's going to be about the history of glasses-wearing, about Dorothy Parker and the truth in her poem, "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses." I want to explore the present tense, and weird things from the past. I want to write about my 4-year-old girlchild, and her version of the pledge of allegiance, which they've taught her in school, and which goes, "One nation, in the visible . . . ." I want to remember and forget here, and I hope I can figure out how to upload pictures to make the journey more pleasant.

Today we have a guest blogger, Laura Zam. Laura is an award-winning writer and performer who has created five one-person plays. She has performed at the Woolly Mammoth Theater, Theater J, The Kennedy Center, and The National Theatre, among others. Using humor, Laura is currently working on a book about the aftermath of sexual abuse. She teaches creative people how to empower themselves and make a living doing what they love. Her website is www.laurazam.com

LAURA ZAM:


I have a hobby!

This is great because I’ve never had a hobby before. Historically, during my free time⎯in between job commitments⎯I’ve worked on my writing projects. To the outside eye, my writing probably appeared to be a hobby (it certainly looked that way to the IRS). But that was not the case, not to me. See, I was trying to make a career out of this. According to my dictionary, a hobby is “an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure.” No, writing was not done for pleasure. Writing was done so I could move ahead and seriously realize my dream life. This was not a hobby at all.

I am happy to report that my career has picked up. No longer am I carving out free time for my writing projects; I’m now doing them full-time. This means writing is my job. And like all jobs, it’s work. Don’t get me wrong. Writing has always been creative and fun, but like all work, it has also been part of a larger context of professional goals. And now, especially, writing is filled with deadlines and circumscribed by discipline: I basically work a 9 to 5 schedule. By the weekend, I definitely need a break.

You want to know a secret? A big advantage of doing a job that you love is that you get time off from it too! I’m talking about glorious Saturday and Sunday. No, wait, there’s all that cleaning to be done ⎯of house, clothes, car, and in-box. Begrudgingly, I’ve given Saturday over to that. That leaves Sundays when I absolutely must recharge. In the past, I’ve found a variety of lazy Sunday activities that don’t involve a computer or complicated sentences: long walks, going to the zoo with my hubby, brunching with friends. But everything changed last weekend when I discovered a hobby⎯multimedia collage!

Keep in mind what I said above: that a hobby is done purely for pleasure⎯ meaning only for one’s self. I mention this again because I have absolutely no talent when it comes to the visual arts. And that’s great.

See, what I’ve discovered in having a creative outlet with no aspirations attached⎯no expectations, no perfectionism, no skillful knowledge, no nothing⎯ is that this activity has a freedom that writing will never have for me. Might this alternative artistic play be necessary? Maybe it’s a way to strengthen connection to one’s muse, just like when couples go on vacation (leaving their ordinarily stressful lives together) so they can bond with each other anew. Yes, multimedia collage might just be a way for me to continuously rediscover my creativity lover.

I hope so because it’s fun, and I even made it functional, putting my collages in a book that also includes my goals and action steps for the year (OK, I can’t get too far away from my aspirations – so sue me).

If you’re looking for a fun way to reignite your creative spark, try an art form at which you suck. And if you find one that uses glitter glue, even better.