Some might argue that a stomach is not a thought. Let me explain. Last night, I ate too much. This is not unusual for me, especially in times of transition or stress. But the amount I ate last night and the way my stomach felt during and afterward brought back painful memories of when I was single, lived alone, and counted dinner (eaten alone) as a primary pleasure.
Since meeting and marrying my husband 3 years ago, I’ve eaten dinner alone only a handful of times. In the beginning, I longed for a night alone to eat freely again—to not worry about bad breath, bloating, gassiness, etc.—even as I was grateful to be forced out of my bad eating habits. After a year, I grudgingly came to prefer my husband's company during dinner. Now, I almost always prefer his company. Do you understand how big a win this is, for me and for my marriage?

Lately, though, my husband has been traveling for work, leaving me with nights alone. I’ve found myself reverting to my old habits, spending all week planning what I’ll eat the nights he’s gone, which combination of tastes, flavors, and textures, combined with which television show or movie, will create the perfect alchemy for bliss.

Last night, after my husband left for Nashville, I took my tray to the couch, tuned in to Queer Eye, and started out slowly. Look how slowly and thoughtfully I'm eating, I congratulated myself. After slowly and thoughtfully eating almost an entire container of hummus with vegetables and pita chips, I slowly and thoughtfully ate an entire container of dates, filling each with almond butter (meaning I ate probably 1/3 of the jar of almond butter). And then I slowly and thoughtfully ate half of a container of "asian snacks," those hard, shiny shapes (twists, balls, flowers, half-moons) made primarily of rice, gluten, sugar, and salt.

I don't know enough about what other people eat to know if that amount of food seems excessive. My family always joked about how much we ate, especially after most of us became vegan. My father, especially, ate like me—like each meal was his last. When my husband eats just one serving of pork, potatoes, and salad, he declares himself stuffed. How ludicrous, I think. How can one serving ever be enough?

This is what I know: after the hummus, I wasn't hungry, but I wanted to watch at least one more episode of Queer Eye and hadn't had anything sweet yet. I know that about halfway through the dates, I felt the fullness heavy in my gut, but the show wasn't over, and dates and almond butter, after all, are healthy. I know that after the dates, my stomach hurt, and I knew it was foolish to even think of eating more food—but by then I'd already begun a third episode, and watching TV is a waste if you’re not doing something else, and wasn’t this binge a way to both celebrate my aloneness and comfort myself in it?  

I finished the evening with a painful and swollen stomach, a feeling that, combined with my shame and regret, lasted well into the next day.

Still, I would argue that this is not a stomach problem or a food problem. It's a thought problem. It's been a thought problem for decades, since I was a teenager. The thoughts: memories, rationalizations, scoldings, obsessions. Thoughts create anxiety, an emotion that keeps me from feeling other emotions—loneliness, sadness—too deeply.

Attempts at Diagnosis

My thought pattern could be associated with 'orthorexia,' the eating disorder of being overly anxious about eating only healthy food. But the 'symptoms of orthorexia' list from the National Eating Disorders Association does not include overeating healthy food as a way to make up for not eating junk food.  Orthorexia aligns more with anorexia in that you eat less and less as you cut out food groups you deem unhealthy. I’m the opposite, eating more and more of the few remaining food groups I haven’t cut out.

When I was in my 30s, I briefly considered attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings, but their mission of weight loss wasn’t what I needed, and a skinny person showing up to sit in a circle with fat people wouldn't go over so well. Overweight friends, coworkers, and even strangers have commented on my thinness so often, dealing snark under the guise of compliments, that I didn't want to invite more envy and hate.

And so for many years I felt stuck with my overeating, angry with myself for being so weak, for having no willpower. I’d rack myself with guilt but still overeat, always at night, always (and necessarily) accompanied by television, and then fast the next day until my stomach felt normal again, usually around lunchtime. I’d full-out binge on Friday and Saturday evenings, my reward for a week of work. The post-binge fasting didn't feel like punishment; it felt like healing.

Some readers might point out here that my eating pattern sounds bulimic, but if so, I’d argue it’s in such a mild form that it’s undiagnosable. I never make myself vomit (or desire to); I don’t go on fad diets; I don’t steal or hoard food; I don’t constantly check in the mirror for flaws; I’m not overly concerned about my body weight; I have regular and normal periods; I am, despite being chronically tired, mostly strong and healthy, with healthy nails and hair and skin. I rarely get sick. 

So for a long time, I had what looked like a borderline eating disorder that didn't fit into any known category and wasn't serious enough to warrant medical or psychiatric attention. I'd lament to my parents--I ate too much again last night; have to fast today!—but my health-conscious parents believed that fasting could cure anything, and I remained at an enviously stable and thin 120 lbs. for years.

Overall, it's been hard to convince people I have a problem or that it might be worth taking seriously. And while my eating habits have certainly stabilized over the past few years, that desire to binge alone with TV lurks too close for comfort. My husband tries to be understanding, but he's a recovering alcoholic. From his point of view, I might eat too much food sometimes, but it's food—and mostly fairly healthy food at that. What's the problem? Get over yourself. (He doesn't say that to me. I say it to myself.)

A therapist once tried to convince me I have obsessive-compulsive disorder. When I read the book she gave me and returned with a long list of reasons why I didn’t fit the diagnosis, she laughed gently as if the list-making itself were proof. The book heavily emphasized the ritualized compulsions (checking, hoarding, cleaning, making everything symmetrical) people engage in to distract themselves from obsessions (repeated, unwelcome thoughts, often about sex and violence). The compulsions take up hours of time (washing hands, cleaning the same room for hours, for example) and cause great distress. This doesn’t describe me at all, I argued. I can be picky about cleanliness and order in my own home, but I don’t spend hours cleaning; I can get nervous about whether I’ve turned off the stove, but a quick double-check eases my fears. I don’t have a loop of sexual or murderous thoughts running through my brain.

I agreed to see a psychiatrist for further testing. The test didn’t yield significant results, but this doctor seemed determined to assure me that I suffered from OCD. She asked if I picked at my fingers because the jagged edges of skin bothered me, and when I said yes, she nodded sagely and prescribed medication. I took it for a couple of years, and it seemed to ease my food obsessions somewhat, but I quit after growing increasingly nervous about the chemicals and frustrated with how it deadened everything: my ability to cry, my ability to get excited, my libido.

When I told the psychiatrist I wanted to wean off the drug, she snapped at me, some sarcastic comment about foolish people who want to quit medication, and even though I could see that her anger was about something bigger than me, I took it as an excuse to never see her again.

It’s New, It’s Cool, It’s RAAD

As the years passed, I grew more convinced that I didn’t have OCD: anxiety, yes; eccentricities, yes; but not OCD. It wasn’t until I started writing this blog post about my seemingly unique style of eating/thought disorder that it hit me like an epiphany: maybe this is OCD. Holy crap. Do I have OCD? It’s not an OCD described on websites for treatment centers or on television shows, and it’s not a severe OCD. It’s subtle, so subtle that I’m still not sure I should call it OCD. Maybe it’s more like a fraternal twin of OCD.

In fact, if I had to make up a diagnosis for myself, I’d say I have Rules Activated Anxiety Disorder. This kind of OCD--RAAD!—manifests as an obsession with rules: rules I make for myself based on years of observation about how people and society work, and rules other people make for me. I take all rules seriously, even those I think are stupid (I think most of them are stupid), but the most important rules have to do with my quest for perfection. If I’m to be perfect and to make everyone happy, these are the rules I need to follow.  If I don’t want my urges (food, sex, buying things) to spin out of control, I must follow these rules. If I don’t want to get too wound up about things, whether with excitement or anticipation or anxiety or anger or sadness, I must follow these rules. If I don’t want to get in trouble (with neighbors, cops, the township, authority figures), I must follow these rules.

Rules also help me avoid decisions (often, with the rules, only one path of action is possible) and avoid work (the rules are in service of efficiency; with ultimate efficiency, I’ll have more time to do what I want).  Rules, ironically, create the very space I crave to “let loose,” to “rebel.” In this way, they let me stay a child, flaunting the parent-voice’s rules even as I rely on them to keep me safe. Rules make me feel safe in other ways, too. They keep me under control. They help me know how to get along in different environments. When I’m in a new place or situation, I can’t relax until I know what the rules are. (Although I can’t relax after knowing the rules, either, because I’m worried I won’t follow them just right. I’m one of those people who gets called aside for further examination at security checkpoints; I look nervous. I probably look guilty, too.)
Guilt lies just beneath the surface of everything I do; almost every moment, the questions, “Is this what I should be doing right now?” and “Am I doing this right?” persist in my consciousness, a constant distraction.

I don’t spend hours acting out compulsions, but I do spend a lot of time trying to keep myself from acting compulsively (after all, a perfect person doesn’t act on her compulsions—a perfect person doesn’t have OCD or any form of it). For example, dog hair on the furniture triggers profound anxiety, but I don’t want to be a person who has to vaccuum every day (who has time for that?)—so I cycle through the hair-triggered anxiety and anger repeatedly, trying to stay calm but dreading how hard and time-consuming it will be to vaccuum everything, and in the end probably cause myself more stress than if I just gave in and vaccuumed compulsively.

Also, I spend a lot of energy trying not to appear anxious to others, trying to pretend that the things that bother me don’t bother me so I won’t have to reveal how strangely demanding I am. Because if people saw my inner workings, what makes me spin and worry and rage, they would trip over themselves trying to get away from me. Rules help me avoid this danger.   
My ideal self, as I’ve defined her for years, is in perfect health, is strong and flexible, is a perfect environmental steward, is much loved by everyone she meets, is a perfect wife, sister, daughter, stepmother, dogmother, friend, employee, neighbor, acquaintance. She is able, every single goddamned day, to achieve the perfect balance of mental/emotional/physical/spiritual, of work and play, of self and other. She is, every day, productive and happy and creative and energetic. She knows exactly what to do and say in every situation. She is never wasteful of time, money, or resources.

This is what I know: My rules are nothing more than figments of my imagination, illusions that perpetuate the illusion that I can be this ideal self instead of being who I am. Does it matter that I know this? Not so far.  

The Rules

• Don’t waste (time, money, resources, opportunities).
• Don’t hurt any person or animal’s feelings.
• Clean up your own messes (material, emotional, physical).
• Don’t bother anybody.
• Be productive every day.
• If you enjoy something, limit it (food, genre fiction, reddit porn, shoes, peanut butter, sleep, television, nice clothes).
• Keep your mind and body healthy and attractive.

These rules are but general categories for longs lists of sub-rules. A few of the longest rule-sets are those for eating, driving, and interacting with others. (And let’s not even get into the rules about being a good wife and stepmother—they’ll be their own essay someday soon, I’m sure.) These things cause great anxiety in my life. My rules about health, eating, efficiency, and time management create the perfect storm for binging. Don’t eat unhealthy food. Don’t overeat. Don’t watch too much TV. Don’t waste time—multitask when possible.

My brain works hard to take these rules and manipulate them into a reason for indulgence. It’s okay to indulge sometimes, especially if you’ve worked hard. It’s okay to indulge in food if it’s healthy. It’s okay to watch TV if you’re eating at the same time—efficient multi-tasking!

If I could stay emotionally uninvolved, these rules—and my loopholes—might work for me. After all, I could simply turn off the TV when I start to feel full. But the rules feed my anger, rebellion, anxiety, and guilt even as I cling to them. Knowing I’ll likely break or misapply the rules sparks all of these emotional reactions even before I start eating, and once I sense myself starting to overeat, I give up. I break the rules, feeling the power of my rebellion, the pain and guilt of my disobedience, and the shame of my lack of willpower, all at once. In short, eating can be a fraught experience. 

Some rules for eating:

• Don’t indulge at breakfast and lunch. Save indulgences until after dinner, and then in this order: dinner, something sweet, something salty & crunchy.
• Don’t eat too much sugar or salt.
• Don’t eat much meat or dairy.
• Don’t drink anything but herbal tea and water.
• Don’t throw out food. It’s better to eat food you’re not hungry for than to waste it.
• Don’t overeat, unless you’re trying to eat all the food that will go bad if you don’t eat it right away.
• Eat only fruit in the morning—it’s better for your digestion.
• If you have a peanut butter Lara Bar at lunch and plan to put peanut butter in your banana smoothie at night, don’t have a peanut butter sandwich as a snack.
• Don’t eat too late at night.
• Don’t eat until you’ve cleaned up the kitchen.
• Don’t spend too much money on food.
• If you haven’t exercised in some way, don’t eat as much.

Some rules for driving (aside from the actual rules of driving):

• Achieve full speed (5-10 mph over speed limit is preferable) before merging onto a highway.
• To be in the left lane, you must be driving at least 10 mph over the speed limit.
• Don’t cut in front of anyone or pull out in front of them. Learn how to gauge the speed of oncoming cars so you don’t force people to slow down for you.
• If someone cuts in front of you, tail them closely for a few minutes so they know they annoyed you. Then, back off. Safety first!
• If someone is driving really slowly, drive closer to them than you normally would (approx one car’s length back) to alert them that they are being stupid.
• If you’re in a 45 mph work zone, don’t go 45 mph if everyone in front of you is going 55 mph. Keep up with traffic.
• Pay attention to the traffic pattern BEFORE it’s your turn at the 3- or 4-way stop sign so you’ll know when it’s your turn.
• Always drive as fast as you feel comfortable driving and as traffic allows. The only point of driving is to arrive somewhere. Get there!
• Don’t fly past a long line of cars when you know the right lane is closed ahead and that you’ll have to merge (i.e., Don’t be an asshole. Wait your turn.) (Note: This rule causes confusion and anxiety when these new-fangled traffic signs tell you to “use both lanes to merge point.” If the sign says to use both lanes but everyone is using one, you’ll LOOK like a jerk if you stay in the second lane and get in front of everyone. In this case, remember that signs can’t get upset with you. People can.)
• Watch the traffic light so that you’re prepared to move when it turns green. Remember that people behind you want to make it through, too.
• If traffic in the left lane is slow and someone speeds past you in the right lane and tries to cut in front of you, DON’T LET HER. You’ll have to tail the car in front of you pretty closely, but that’s better than letting someone cut in line.

Some rules for interacting with people:

• Acknowledge strangers with a polite half-smile. No need to look them in the eye. Whatever you do, don’t just ignore someone who is walking past you. That might hurt their feelings.

• Don’t cut people off unless you have an actual appointment or deadline. Don’t cut them off just because you’re tired of listening to them, even if they’ve been talking non-stop for 30+ minutes.
• Ask follow-up questions, even if you’re tired of listening and wish you could get a chance to talk. You’re good at follow-up questions. Follow-up questions show that you’re listening and geniunely interested in the other person (even if you aren’t).
• Never make someone feel like you aren’t hanging on their every word. Never make someone feel like you’d rather be somewhere else.
• Always smile when you can tell someone expects you to smile.
• Always laugh when you can tell someone expects you to laugh.
• Always respond immediately when you can tell someone expects you to respond immediately.
• Always respond to a personal email within 24 hours. Always respond to a text within 5-10 minutes. Be the last person to text in an exchange, even if it’s just to send a “thumbs up” or smiley face. This will ensure that you don’t hurt the other person’s feelings, in case they were expecting a response.
• Never, ever make anyone wait.

This is just the beginning. I have rules for clothes shopping, showering, cleaning, calling my mother, gift-giving, tipping, writing, meditating, and more. As stated earlier, I break my own rules often. They make me angry. (You could even argue that I use the rules as an excuse to be angry.)  But when I break them, the guilt and anxiety that result can feel at times debilitating.

Rules wreak havoc with a daily schedule. I keep telling myself it’s okay to deviate from the ideal order of tasks, that it’s better to “go with the flow.” But what if the flow takes me to a place far, far away from my to-do list?

Conflict rises when following one rule means I have to break another. For example, when someone is talking my ear off, wasting my time, do I cut her off so I can get on with my day, even though it may hurt her feelings?

Anger rises when other people don’t follow my rules. When my stepkids don’t clean up their toothpaste spatters, when dog owners don’t pick up the poop, when people throw their empty beer cans into the stream or grass on the side of the road, it triggers depths of rage that would probably have given me multiple stomach ulcers by now if I didn’t eat as healthfully as I do. But I can’t confront my stepkids or anyone else without risking hurting their feelings.

Interestingly, as my belief systems and spirituality shift, new ideals replace the old, and I feel them with just as much pressure. For example, I’m starting to believe that my ideal self is not someone who never hurts anyone’s feelings but someone who isn’t afraid to hurt people’s feelings. So now, instead of feeling guilty when I might have hurt someone’s feelings, I’m starting to feel guilty when I’m too cowardly to risk hurting someone’s feelings. RAAD is all about guilt, and guilt will find a way.

Trying to follow these rules means that I need routine. When I do things basically the same way all the time, I know where the risks of breaking rules arise and how to avoid them. We all have routines, but a routine becomes a symptom of RAAD when the thought of changing your routine makes you nervous or defensive (but this is the BEST way to do it, why can’t everyone see that?? Etc.)

That said, RAAD is different from OCD in that the messes in other people’s houses don’t bother me. In fact, I feel a sense of relief and comfort in a mess that is not mine to clean up or live in. I feel like I can relax and not worry about making or being a mess myself when messes don’t bother the person whose house I’m in.

That said, some people live in such states of mess that it makes me suspect they’re depressed. A certain level of mess suggests a giving up on life, the messy mental state spilling out and perpetuating a cycle of stress and disorder. I suspect that people who live messy lives in messy houses would, in most cases, be happier and calmer if they lived more simply and cleanly.

A Quick Summary

How I feel about rules:

• I hate them.
• They make me feel safe.

How I feel when I break the rules:

• Reckless
• Excited
• Rebellious
• Guilty
• Angry at myself but also angry at the rules for being so strict

Who makes the rules**:

• The critical voices in my head, based on…
• God
• Parents
• My Christian background
• Cultural notions of etiquette
• Cultural notions of grooming
• Cultural notions of attractiveness
• Cultural notions of femininity
• Cultural notions of “a meaningful life”
• Government
• Well-meaning people
• Science (or alternative science)
• Doctors (or alternative health practitioners)
• Self-help books

**Note: Part of having RAAD is this desire to find authorities to tell me what to do--I don't feel competent to be my own adult and set my own rules. At the same time, part of the point of finding an outside authority is so that I have something to rebel against. It's almost as if I feel more comfortable being a rebellious child than a mature adult. 
​
Consequences of breaking rules:

• People won’t like me
• People won’t admire me
• God won’t love me
• Men won’t think I’m attractive
• I’ll get cancer
• I’ll get fat
• I won’t do anything with my life
• Most of all, GUILT: that feeling that I am always, somehow, in the wrong

Consequences of RAAD:

• A very limited life, as you eliminate all activities, people, venues, etc., that have too many rules to make the effort worthwhile. For example, even though I think I’d enjoy counseling, the prospect of navigating all of the rules of application to a Master’s program, the testing, the interviews, the number of people to impress—and then the professors to please, the rules about classes and credits, all of the stress of academia—and then the steps and rules involved in certification and employment and insurance, etc. All of that just to sit in a room and talk to someone. Why even bother?

A smaller example: I don’t use Facebook often because its unspoken rules (or, rather, the rules I make up to apply to its use) are too demanding. Rules like, “Make sure you ‘like’ all of your friends’ posts or at least rotate your likes equally between your friends” conflict with, “Don’t add to the notifications FB will give these friends, possibly causing them stress.” Another rule: “Don’t add your comment if the post already has 10+ comments.” Also, “Make sure you read others’ comments first so you don’t replicate them.”  Also, “Don’t start commenting on someone’s posts if you’ve ignored them to this point. I.e., have a consistent social media persona.” And scads more.

• Regularly hurting your friends’ feelings because you’re too anxious to call them on their birthdays or comment on their Facebook posts or ask them to lunch or “bother” them in other ways.  
• As a result of the previous consequences, loneliness.
• A great and terrible anger running beneath your surface niceness (after all, you spend every minute trying to make sure you attend to your rules for being a good friend, wife, stepmother, dogmother, aunt, daughter, niece, sister, etc., and the least you deserve in exchange for that is some consideration—and some reciprocity, some effort to make YOU feel good and to make YOUR life easier, too). This anger scares you. It makes you wonder if there’s anyone or anything you genuinely like in this world.
• Inability to express yourself freely, which leads eventually to a deadening of all feeling.

What NOT not to do if someone you love has RAAD:

• Tell them, in an impatient tone, to relax.
• Tell them, in an annoyed tone, to calm down.
• Tell them, in a patronizing tone, to lighten up.
• Tell them, in a mocking tone, to not take themselves so seriously.
• Make fun of their worries. (For caveat, see ** below.)
• Call them a worry-wart or a sad sack or a kill-joy or a party-crasher.

What TO do if someone you love has RAAD:

• If you’re up for it, listen to their lists of fears. If you take their fears seriously, chances are they’ll realize, as they talk with you, that their fears aren’t that important after all. If they’re still upset, say, “I’m sorry you’re feeling so upset. What can I do to help?” If they request something you don’t want to provide (highly unlikely, since they want to bother people as little as possible), just calmly and nonjudgmentally say, “I’m sorry, but I can’t ____. Is there another way I can help?”
• If you’re NOT up for listening to their litany of worries, simply say, without sarcasm or anger, “I’m sorry, but right now I’m feeling vulnerable—and when I feel this way, hearing your worries makes me feel anxious and unhappy. Is it okay if just give you a hug instead? Maybe we can talk later when I’m feeling better.”
• **Don’t be afraid to attempt humor to lighten the mood. Be careful, though. Humor can do wonders to help the RAAD person relax, but it can easily backfire if your loved one detects any note of impatience, frustration, or biting sarcasm.
• If your RAAD loved one is pressuring you to follow rules that you don’t want to follow, simply say, kindly and nonjudgmentally, “I can see that this rule matters to you, and I appreciate that. But following this rule will make me feel trapped. Is there a way we can compromise?”

 
Note: your response might vary depending on location. If you’re at home when this happens, the above response will suffice. If you’re in a public place that has a posted or otherwise obvious set of rules, and you’re trying to break one of these rules (thus causing great stress to your loved one), it might be wise to set aside your rule-breaking desires temporarily and return alone at a later time to break the rules you want to break.

RAAD people have a tendency to try to make everyone around them follow their rules—even RAAD children can have this power. We don’t feel completely safe and in control unless everyone is on board with our plan. We’re sorry about this. As much as it pains us to say it, we want to remind you that you do not have to live under our thumbs. All you have to do is communicate clearly and kindly about what you are willing and not willing to do. If we react with great anger or despair at your obstinance, try not to take it personally. Remember that the emotional explosion you are witnessing is driven by tremendous fear—and that it will be followed by debilitating guilt and shame. Remember that the rules we want everyone to follow are not truly our own; they were created by critical voices in our head that tell us we need the rules in order to survive.

You can help alleviate our suffering by remaining calm, compassionate, and loving. You can be open to and encouraging of compromise. You can remind us that we don’t have to be perfect. We need to know that we can trust you with our worries and fears, that we will not be demeaned or mocked for them; we need to know that our attempts to explain our reasoning will be met with genuine interest and openness. We need to understand that even if you might not agree to follow all of our rules, you get how important they are to us and are willing to do what you can to help us without compromising your own sanity or comfort. We need to know that you are not going to compromise your own sanity or comfort because we are terrified that we are too much to handle and that you will stop loving us.

Important note: Just because your partner asks you repeatedly to pick up after yourself or help with cleaning does NOT mean she or he has RAAD. It might just mean that you’re a slob, in which case step it up! Be a true partner in your lives together.

Can RAAD be Cured?
Great question! My therapist would tell me to tell those rule-making voices in my head to fuck off. All of this anxiety and guilt are fake anxiety and fake guilt, covers for something deeper and more troubling. Rules fill my head so that I don’t have to face the emptiness the rules crowd out.

I know emptiness would be good for me. I know that if I let myself it experience even briefly, I would realize that it’s not something to dread but to bask in. Allowing my mind to be still, to turn my attention away from the rules and toward the vast empty space that lies behind them, would probably teach me a lot about myself and about life.

Thinking about how great this emptiness would be makes me want to create rules for pursuing it, rules that will surely help me get there more efficiently and safely. Meditate in this way, visualizing this image, for this long, at this time of day, etc.
And I wonder why I’m so tired all the time.

I don’t know if I can conclude anything here. In fact, now that I’ve defined myself so thoroughly, the definition/diagnosis feels inaccurate. It feels like it describes an old self, or at least a self that is passing away in its influence even as it still grips me from time to time. I suppose I should be happy or relieved to find that even after such an examination, I elude definition. But eluding definition is not very neat or clean now, is it?

Here’s what I know. I know that the key to life, for me, is to relax. I know that the key is NOT creating more rules to help combat the rules I already have. I know that, for me, the key is NOT medication. I know I’ll be essentially “cured” when I can confidently, consistently reject guilt and fear and move forward without worrying about the mistakes I’ll make or about what people will think. But I also know that creating that new version of my ideal, perfect self—the self who doesn’t struggle with RAAD—is not the answer, either. So maybe the answer, for now, is to be who I am and try my best to counter the rules with detachment and humor. In other words, be who I am, but lightly. 

Meaning does not exist until someone starts to look for it. ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

My next hair appointment is in a week. I’ve been growing out my hair for about 6 months now, and the frustration has built to a point of such urgency that I think about my hair length all day: every time I look in the mirror, every time I talk to someone and imagine what they’re thinking about my hair, every time I go to bed and lie awake mentally listing pros and cons of cutting it.    

The Question: Should I cut it all off or stay the course?

The Answer: There is no right or wrong answer.

Why I’m Writing This 9-Page Essay: Because there is most definitely a right answer, and by God I will discover it.

Opening Argument: Almost everyone I know loves my hair short. I like it short.

Opening Rebuttal: During a recess in 3rd grade, I looked at the glass doors of the school building and saw my reflection. The timing was perfect, my head tilted back and turned to the side, and a long, wavy, richly blonde-brown mane of hair falling down my back. That image of myself and that glorious hair has enamored me since, despite the changes to my face, despite the changes to my hair, despite the many less flattering images of myself in pictures and reflections since.

 (I’m a white American 44-year old straight ciswoman with fairly thick, wavy hair that tends toward frizzy curl in the back and flatness in the front. Untreated, my hair color is a dead-mouse-brownish-gray. Treated, it’s blonde with pinkish tones.

I had shoulder-length or longer hair, mostly, until my 40s. Then, at 41, I cut it all off, saying goodbye to an old life and beginning a new one that included a relationship with a man who loved short hair and whom I’d marry a year later. I’d gone short once before in my 20s but have cut up or hidden all of the pictures from that time.  It was a Walmart salon special, and I could have done better if I’d cut my hair myself, with my eyes closed. But I didn’t know that at the time. I trusted the evidence: short hair would never work for me.

I moved through my 30s with a fairly stable look. Long, minimally styled hair that looked great immediately after the salon appointment but unkempt and lumpy for the next two months. Not one to waste money on styling products or time on blow-drying, I kept my routine cheap and simple: wash and condition, air dry, brush, then either wear it down or pull it back in a barrette or ponytail. I didn’t particularly like my hair but didn’t know what else to do with it.

My first move toward change came when I bought a pink wig. I bought it on a whim, thinking it would be fun to wear around the house, and I loved it. Cut in a short bob with bangs, it transformed my face. It made me look chic and sassy and bold. I never wore it out of the house, but I wished I could. A few months later, high on new love and feeling reckless, I took the wig to my stylist and asked for the same cut.  She gave me exactly what I asked for, but alas, it looked ghastly.  It served its purpose, though, because it left me nowhere to go but shorter. A week later, I returned to the salon with this picture of Charlize Theron and emerged a short-hair convert. ​
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“In order to have long hair you have to have your needs in life taken care of.” ~ TIME magazine

It was so easy. SO easy. It seemed that my hair was made to be short. It’s thick wavy texture meant that, with a great cut, it held whatever style I fingered it into, with just a little help from a styling product I splurged on. My hair looked good every day with no more than a minute of effort. My fiance loved it, and my friends raved. I felt edgy and fierce. I no longer felt like a naïve country girl when I went to a wedding, a restaurant, the grocery store. [Side story: I went on a date once with a smooth, urbane graduate student from Trinidad who asked me if I was Amish. I could tell he meant to insult, and even though I knew his critique was more about my demeanor than my style, it made me self-conscious about my plain long hair, pulled back in a barrette that night.]

I loved the cutting process itself: the weight falling off, the sound of the scissors, the feel of the razor on my neck. It turned out that I liked the shape of my head.

After a year, I started trying different styles that required some growing out. I tried a very mild faux-hawk style, which I liked. I tried letting the top grow even longer and bleaching it all white, then dying it a light pink. I loved it all.
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Why wouldn’t I keep this amazing hairstsyle forever? Several reasons: 1) dreams about long hair, 2) restlessness, and 3) repeated glimpses of my profile in the mirror. 

 “Hair grows back, everyone always says, and it’s true, but it takes a long time, and there are certain things one should not attempt just because the fallout is temporary […]. I’d include on this list hacking off all your hair when you lack both the cheekbones and the chutzpah to waltz out into the world unadorned.” New York Times

Fashion pundits would say I don’t have the face for short hair. My nose is too big, my eyes too close-set, my chin and mouth too soft. I have neither cheekbones nor chutzpah.

I loved my short hair when I looked at myself head-on or with my head turned back over my shoulder. I avoided using a second mirror to examine my profile because I’ve never liked my profile, and I didn’t want to face (haha) what would surely be a heart-sinking truth. But my hairstylist always insisted on showing me a 360-degree view, and over time, that view began to gnaw at me.

Plus, not everyone loved my hair short. My 9-yr-old niece didn’t say anything, but I could see in her eyes that she didn’t think I was pretty anymore. My mom and sister were polite but reserved.

I began to miss the feeling of a brush pulling at my hair, of my hair blowing freely in the wind (even though I also loved not having hair in my face on windy days or getting hair into my eyes and mouth at night).

I’d argue that if I had chutzpah, neither cheekbones nor profiles nor other people’s opinions would matter. But my chutzpah, much like the pink wig, shows up only in moments when I’m alone, when no one can see it. I began to feel like my bold hair cut was a lie, that I shouldn’t have a hair cut I couldn’t back up with attitude.

“But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering.” I Corinthians 11:15,  NKJV

​There’s nothing worse than having a haircut that requires a sense of personal power to pull off and not having that power. Then the hair looks less like an expression of boldness and more like someone took a razor to your head to punish you.

Punishment haircuts have been a thing for men, women, and children now and through ages past. Kids who disobey their parents, wayward girls who run away from convents, men who desert the battlefield, Circe in Game of Thrones—we seem to know that the best way to humiliate a person is to cut their hair, especially when it goes against the cultural norms for their sex, age group, and time.

A woman from my yoga class got her long hair cut super-short, and I almost recoiled when I saw her; she looked plucked. Do people think I look plucked? I wondered.  

Sometimes I’d wake up and look in the mirror and wish for covering—long hair would soften the punishing effect of dark circles under my eyes, of splotchy or pallid skin, the way I looked on the bad days.

Long hair would also provide covering during the following activities:

• Crying (Is this why men don’t like to cry? Because they have no hair to hide the redness and swelling?)
• Eating (no hair to hide the bulge of food-filled cheek and jowl)
• Vigorous exercise (the things that happen to the face when it’s straining…)
• Swimming (might as well be bald, the way wet hair plasters to the head)

“’Inferences and judgments about a person’s morality, sexual orientation, political persuasion, religious sentiments and, in some cultures, socio-economic status,’ [scholar Deborah Pergement] notes, ‘can sometimes be surmised by seeing a particular hairstyle.’” TIME magazine

After that first short cut, I wished the people I had known before (particularly the ex-boyfriends) could see the new me. “This is the true me,” would have been the message. “Bold, unconventional, daring—see what you missed out on?” Later, I wished that the people who had known me only with short hair could see it long. I wanted to show people pictures of myself with long hair, as if to say, “This me, the one with long hair, is who I truly am.”

Who is a long-haired woman? She is passionate, wild, laissez-faire, au naturel, spontaneous, free-wheeling, artistic, self-expressive. She is a mother goddess, environmentalist, animal and nature lover; she isn’t afraid of a mess.    

Who is a short-haired woman? She is bold, confident, powerful, stylish, smart, organized, efficient, witty, cerebral. She speaks her mind clearly and articulately, keeps her head, is androgynously sexy.     

Who do I want to be? All of the above

My actual self: Values financial prudence (cringes at the cost of hair care, for example). Believes that real beauty is natural beauty but feels ugly next to women who wear makeup and have product-perfect hair. My real self paints her toenails, admires them for a few days, and then removes the polish in a sudden conviction that her nails can’t breath under the chemical veneer. She believes in local, organic, environmentally sustainable products but rarely shops at the farmers’ market because it forces her to talk to people and doesn’t fit easily into her weekly meal plan. She loves yoga but not enough to chant or learn Sansrkit. Health-conscious and not a little OCD, she’s 90% vegan and 10% pasture-raised, grass-fed, free-range meat, even though she has to try hard not to think about the word “flesh” when she’s eating it. She doesn’t put a lot of time into her appearance, in both a boastful way and an insecure, depressed way. She tends toward depression. She doesn’t want to stand out even though she desperately wants to stand out. She shaves her legs but not her pubic hair. She likes to cut, prune, shorten, clean out—hair, essays, plants, clothes, books. She avoids plucking or trimming her eyebrows for fear she’ll remove them completely in an OCD frenzy. And yet she sometimes envies other people’s overgrown yards, cluttered houses, messy lives—they seem so much more real than hers. She feels like she’s spent most of her life waiting—for things, for events, for people, for hair to grow—and yet she is quiveringly impatient. She wants to be a long, lean, sexy, outdoorsey, ponytail and cut-off jeans type of woman. Or she wants to be a short-haired, sassy, punk-androgynous, subversive type of woman. An astrologer told her, after reading her natal chart, “You’re two people.” “Thank you,” she replied.

Things I could be with short hair:

• An assassin
• A monk
• A hacker
• A lion trainer

Things I could be with long hair:

• A princess
• A cowgirl
• A hippie
• A yogini

​But wait, you’re thinking. Why can’t you be any or all of those things regardless of your hairstyle? Also, do you even know anything about computers or lions?

According to a UK hair clinic, hair grows in three phases: anagen, catagen, and telogen. In the anagen phase, the hair grows about ½ an inch every four weeks; this lasts about 2-7 years (the time is determined largely by genetics). In the catagen phase (1-2 weeks), growth slows as the hair prepares itself for the next phase. During the telogen phase (3-4 months), the hair rests, and older hairs will shed to allow for new growth. Obviously, each hair follicle goes through the stages at its own pace so that we always (hopefully) maintain a full head of hair. Given the above, the maximum length hair can grow in an anagen phase is 18-30 inches.

My hair seems to grow about a half inch every 6 weeks. If my anagen phase lasts the maximum of 7 years, my hair will have grown about 30 inches by the time I’m 51, putting it about 2-3 inches above the small of my back. To get to my target length—let’s say 20-25 inches, to account for wave—will take about 4½ to 6 years. That’s assuming I remain healthy, that my hair maintains its current growth rate, and that my hair isn’t damaged enough to break before it reaches full length.

I might be able to increase the growth rate to ½ inch a month or more by taking supplements like collagen or Hawaiian spirulina, in which case I could reach my target length in 3-4 years, hopefully before age catches up with me.

The part of me that loves a challenge is clamoring to take it on. My OCD loves numbers and calculations, loves planning for optimal health. It tries to tell me that not taking on this challenge will make me a quitter, will prove that I’m weak-willed and morally shallow. This isn’t just about beauty—it’s about courage and fortitude! it will say.

That voice has always been hard for me to resist. It sounds like God, and I want to prove to it that I am worthy, even though I always fail to live up to its standards.

But I also know that following that voice exhausts me. It gnaws and needles, gnaws and needles, to the point that I usually avoid long-term challenges. It’s why I write essays and poems instead of novels. It’s why I don’t cook gourmet meals; it’s why I will never run a marathon, even though that voice wants me to do all of those things, tells me that I am a failure for my inability to commit. 

​“Short hair has become a symbol of being a lesbian, and many lesbians with long hair have felt pressured to cut theirs when they come out.” NCBI

“Men should not look feminine and women should not look masculine! The unisex look is an abomination to the Lord.” True Discipleship

A word on defining myself as “straight”: I am straight in that I’ve never had or sought a lesbian encounter and have always been attracted to men. I was uncomfortable knowing that my short hair would lead some strangers to question my sexuality. Sometimes people at the market where I worked for awhile called me “boy” or “young man.” To have the cornerstone of my identity misread felt both embarrassing and a tiny bit liberating. Part of me enjoyed the sheepish surprise on their face when they saw me up close, but still…I began to wear mascara every day and wondered whether it was finally time to pierce my ears.
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At home, though, I sometimes liked the sexy androgyny of having short hair and wearing a t-shirt and jeans, maybe because I knew my husband liked it, too. Short hair spurred my imagination. Looking like a boy, it was easier to imagine what it would be like to be attracted to a woman. I could imagine that it might be a nice feeling to kiss a woman or touch her skin. I could imagine the fun of playing the man in a sexual encounter. I could imagine being turned on if my husband wore lacy panties, for example, and I had a strap-on. Would my imagination have taken such turns if I hadn’t cut my hair so short? Do I care? 

I cut my hair short at a time when I was embarking on several major life changes all at once. Within the span of two years, I fell in love, moved in with my boyfriend and his two kids (who were with us 3 nights a week), quit my teaching job, bought a house with my boyfriend, moved to that new town, quit my market job, got a new full-time job running a tutoring center, got married (at 3 separate celebrations), quit that job, started eating animal products after being vegan for 20 years, got a new dog, started part-time editing/writing work from home, wondered almost every month if I was pregnant, and cut off all of my hair.  
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So maybe my drive to grow out my hair is partly a drive to return to the self I feel like I lost along the way. And I did lose her, understandably. She changed in some ways she needed to change, but she also repressed much of herself for the sake of her marriage and her new role as stepmother. Part of me wants to have long hair again because it feels like symbolic way to bring the old Cindy into the new Cindy’s life, to not lose her again. And the thing is: it feels like it’s working, like my selves are aligning as my hair gets longer. Surely this is a case of correlation being confused with causation. Surely the cause is more likely all of the therapy, journaling, meditating, and reading, along with the natural growth that occurs as my husband and stepkids and I all get used to our new lives as a family. Right?

​My interpretation: In the past, you thought more about your work than about your hair. Now, you’re all caught up in this indecision, but don’t forget that no matter what you decide, you’ll change your mind. You’re easily bored. Case in point: You can’t stay interested in a job more than a year or two, you rearrange furniture frequently, and you love the the excitement of going into a salon and coming out with a different look. 
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A deeper interpretation: Hair is not the problem here. The problem is that you feel lost in your life. You are trying to manage your own time, to write, to study, to start a Reiki and Tarot practice, and it’s going slowly, in fits and starts or not at all. A haircut offers stimulation—something new and exciting—but that excitement will soon fade, and you may find yourself wanting long hair again. Your ego is using your hair as a way to distract you from your real work: creative self-expression for the purpose of healing and connection. 

​I ask people, “Do you like my hair better long or short?” It turns out that most people are not, for some reason, as invested in my hair length as I am. Aside from one friend who expresses her adamant preference for short hair whenever I see her,  “I like it both ways,” is the usual answer. 

My father preferred long hair. But he preferred it the way my husband prefers short hair: indiscriminately. I wanted to say to my father—and now to say to my husband—“Look at me, at my face, at its contours, its profile—do you think short hair flatters THIS face, THIS figure?” 

My husband came home from work yesterday and kissed me. “You look nice today,” he said.

“Don’t confuse me,” I said.

My husband’s advice: If you have any doubts, don’t cut it yet. But I know he prefers it short. In the end, how much will I be able to discount his opinion?

The day before yesterday, my neighbor saw me and said, “Your hair’s getting long!”

“Yes,” I said, “but I might decide to cut it all off again soon.”

“Well it’s super-cute right now,” she said.

“Thanks!” I said. ARGGH!!! I thought.
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When other people fail, I turn to pictures, poring over the pictures of myself with long hair and short hair, separating into piles the good pictures from the bad and then counting how many of each are with short v. long hair. But that’s not a fair method; I have fewer short-hair pictures to choose from. And the long-hair pictures I like now are pictures that I didn’t like before, when I had long hair. 

It all goes back to 3rd grade and the fantasy that with long hair I have a chance at beauty that I don’t have with short hair. If gloriously long hair falls around my face, hiding the flaws in just the right way, my face will appear, in flashes, exquisite.
What would it mean to give up the hope of being beautiful? What if I finally accept what mirrors and pictures have told me all along—that my adult face and hair do not and never will meet traditional standards of beauty? My face is soft in the wrong places, bold in the wrong places. It’s not symmetrical. My hair is not glossy and smooth, falling in ringlets down my back.
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The women in my life who read this will rush to reassure me, “Oh, but you’re beautiful!” To which I will say, I know. Thank you. But I’m not asking for compliments and reassurance. I’m ready, finally, for honesty. I want to accept who I am and this face I have. When I’m gone, my loved ones aren’t going to say, “We miss her, but we wish her nose had been smaller.” They’re going to miss me for who I was, for the body I chose to inhabit in this lifetime. Not because it was pretty or not pretty, but because it was me. 

We’re getting down to the wire here. Hair appointment in 2 days. Yesterday, I was still experiencing drastic swings, almost hourly, in what I thought I’d “decided.” But then the exhaustion finally hit: an exhaustion I earned by writing this essay, by staying for so long with these conflicting thoughts.  

And in the silence brought on by exhaustion, the still, small voice emerged. This is what it said: maybe you don’t want long or short hair. Maybe you want to stay where you are, at this stage that can both stress and charm you. You like how your hair curls softly around your face in a way that neither hides nor overly exposes it. And the awkward days? It’s not pretty, but the wildness and unpredictability of it, the way it wings out from the sides of your head at different trajectories, sort of appeals to you.

Why did I have to write an essay before this option occurred to me? Because a) my thoughts were too overpowering to allow a different voice to be heard; b) I tend to dwell more on the past and on the future than on the present, and c) it didn't seem appropriate--permissible--to like a hair style that didn't look good every day, that might take people aback, put them in a position of not knowing what to say. I shouldn't make anyone uncomfortable, and isn't it my responsibility to "work with what I have," to make myself as beautiful as I can be?   

How liberating it is to forget responsibility and pay attention to how I feel, to honor that feeling even it doesn't result in a rational or beautiful solution. Still, I feel some sadness. It's hard to disappoint the people who wanted something different for me. But for now, I'm willing to live with that. And good grief, people: it's just hair. 

I decided to add these pictures after writing the essay, and something interesting happened as I collected them. I saw that my hair is okay long, it's okay with bangs, it's okay short, pink, and blonde. I like all of these pictures of myself, even the terrible one, 3rd in the top row (the pink wig cut). And here's the thing: I didn't used to like them. I do now. Pretty neat, right?

​blog.superstitionreview.asu.edu/2016/07/30/guest-post-cynthia-clem-yoga-self-publishing-and-the-importance-of-ignoring-your-thoughts/

Having discovered only recently that I could download games like Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, and Crossy Road to my phone for FREE, I’ve spent hours (hours!) swiping cards and tapping animals across busy streets. Spider Solitaire was the most addictive. I love putting things in order, so it makes sense that I’d want to play the game excessively during a time in my life that felt full of disorder, with the move, the job search, the uncertain future. Still, I managed to limit my Spider Solitaire time to the bathroom, using it in place of making lists of things to do or groceries to buy. Occasionally I’d slip, my hand reaching for my phone while I watched another episode of Marvel: Agents of Shield or when I crawled into bed at night, promising myself to stop after one more game. But looking back, my draw toward Spider Solitaire was well within the bounds of normal. I could set it down and move on without a profound sense of loss.

Truthfully, I had begun to find it boring. I won too many times, and my senses had grown weary of the monotonous black-and-white color scheme and the fake sounds of cards slapping against each other or whooshing into a pile.

I’ve known about Candy Crush since I joined Facebook many years ago and was immediately baffled and annoyed by the influx of requests to play it. But Max plays it, and observing from a distance the bright candy colors and hearing the sound palette of crunches, pings, bursts, and the deep, sexy voice of positive reinforcement (“Sweet!” “Divine!” “Tasty!” “Sugar Crush!”)—well, it was like witnessing the birth of a star after staring at a plain blue sky. Or like what I imagine an acid trip to reveal—colors, sounds, visions unlike anything in this material plane.

And it’s free. I love free things. So now, after a mere week, I’m up to level 47 or so, and I can’t stop. I stop when I have to: when my battery runs low, when my eyes weigh heavy with exhaustion, or when the game itself stops me because I’ve failed a level too many times in a row. But I do not want to stop. Or rather, I want to stop, I wish I could stop, but I’m afraid of the silence that will follow.

“I can’t stop playing!” I half-joked to Max, while I crushed candies in bed instead of thoughtfully and lovingly releasing the day to calm myself for sleep.

“Darling, darling, sweetheart whom I love so much…” he began.

“I don’t like the sound of this,” I said.

He knelt on the bed next to me, grasped my shoulders, and shook them. “You can do Whatever. You. Want,” he said, “How many times do I have to tell you this?? You can do whatever you want. Do what makes you happy.” 

I am highly skeptical of this viewpoint for several reasons.

a)      Does Candy Crush make me happy? Yes, it’s delightful, and yes, I look forward to playing it, and yes, it helps ease the sometimes awkward transition of figuring out how to live with the person I love without having to make every moment we’re together about us. But happiness? Does happiness usually have an undercurrent of guilt and fear that I’ve lost control? Is happiness wanting to slide the quilt’s squares forward and sideways to create rows of three or more? Last night, during my dream of people killing each other, I saw, overlaying the scene as if in another dimension, the Candy Crush board, people shifting and wiping themselves out in rows.

b)      Serious people--spiritual people—do not play silly games to distract themselves from their thoughts. Instead, they allow the dark thoughts to rise so that they can sit with them, acknowledge them, and then let them go.

c)       Won’t engaging in worthwhile activities make me happier in the long run?

“Being serious about life is a major strategy of the separated self, which recognizes its own seriousness as necessary to maintain its separation.” ~A Course of Love

“There might be many practical reasons to cite for your happiness’ demise, but in the loneliness that comes with its loss you will wonder, at least briefly, why the choice for practicality needed to be made. Yet if the separated self can look back and see that it chose being right over being happy, it will congratulate itself despite its unhappiness and say, ‘I did the right thing.’ It will see itself as victor over the foolish dreams of happiness and say how glad it is that it came to its sense before it was too late.” ~A Course of Love

There’s nothing like taking quotes out of context to support one’s own vices, but it’s quite true that my main goal in life has been to be both right and good, and that when I make a choice for duty—a choice that supports my daily list of ‘shoulds’—I feel proud and righteous, and have probably mistaken both feelings for happiness.

The other night, Max and I watched a documentary of Alan Watts, the philosopher and writer who spoke so eloquently about Taoist teachings. The documentary showed a contemplative, kind, gently funny man walking in the woods, practicing calligraphy, making traditional Chinese tea; if I didn’t know better, I would assume he lived his whole life this way, so centered and spiritual that only the most dedicated could follow in his path. But Alan Watts died of complications of alcoholism. I wish the documentary had included that. I want to know how Watts drank (in secret?), what he felt like when he drank (guilty?), and whether he felt his drinking compromised his spirituality. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Taoist teacher Gia-fu Feng, a friend of Alan Watts.

You’ve mentioned Alan Watts several times and I know that you’ve been with him when he was teaching. What was he like to be with?

You see Alan Watts was very creative. When he drinks he’s very clever. He was in a class, you know, at night time, he was all drunk. But his lectures were never boring. He was a tremendous entertainer. He said, “I’m an entertainer, I’m no Buddhist philosopher.”

Alan Watts actually died from alcohol, didn’t he?

Oh yeah. At that time he drank whisky by the bottle.

But how could that tie in with the Tao?

That’s from the Tao! The fact that he drank is totally in tune with the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove-his utter disregard for convention. One of the sages, a famous poet called Liu Ling, had a servant who followed him carrying a jug of wine and a spade. In this way he always had some wine to drink and his servant would be ready to bury him if he dropped dead during a drinking bout! It’s in the Tao. So Alan Watts’ drinking is quite Taoistic.

I’m not at all sure I agree that alcoholism can be Taoistic or that Alan Watts didn’t drink to avoid something about himself on some level, but it makes me wonder: if a vice is embraced and relished without guilt or self-hatred, would it look and feel different from addiction? In other words, if I reframe my obsession with Candy Crush as a Taoistic disregard for convention, will I feel better? (Yes.) If I play without guilt (instead of with the usual battle between guilt and a rebellion against guilt), will I tire of it more quickly? Let’s find out.