I've Always Been Drawn To

Something Is Missing: That's As Close As I Can Come To Naming The Sensation, An Awareness Of Missed Or Thwarted Connections, Or Of A Great Hollowness Left Where Something Lovely And Solid Used To Be. ...there Is Something Fundamentally Insatiable About Being Human, As Though We Come Into The World With A Kind Of Built-in Tension Between The Experience Of Being Hungry, Which Is A Condition Of Striving And Yearning, And The Experience Of Being Fed, Which May Offer Temporary Satisfaction But Always Gives Way To New Strivings, New Yearnings.

Trying To Describe The Process Of Becoming An Alcoholic Is Like Trying To Describe Air. It's Too Big And Mysterious And Pervasive To Be Defined. Alcohol Is Everywhere In Your Life, Omnipresent, And You're Both Aware And Unaware Of It Almost All The Time, All You Know Is You'd Die Without It, And There Is No Simple Reason Why This Happens, No Single Moment, No Physiological Event That Pushes A Heavy Drinker Across A Concrete Line Into Alcoholism. It's A Slow, Gradual, Insidious, Elusive Becoming.

I'm Still Prone To Periods Of Isolation, Still More Fearful Of The World Out There And More Averse To Pleasure And Risk Than I'd Like To Be; I Still Direct More Energy Toward Controlling And Minimizing Appetites Than Toward Indulging Them.

Mastery Over The Body - Its Impulses, Its Needs, Its Size - Is Paramount; To Lose Control Is To Risk Beauty, And To Risk Beauty Is To Risk Desirability, And To Risk Desirability Is To Risk Entitlement To Sexuality And Love And Self-esteem.

Anorexia Is A Response To Cultural Images Of The Female Body - Waiflike, Angular - That Both Capitulates To The Ideal And Also Mocks It, Strips Away All The Ancillary Signs Of Sexuality, Strips Away Breasts And Hips And Butt And Leaves In Their Place A Garish Caricature, A Cruel Cartoon Of Flesh And Bone.