She looked at me
And the emptiness in her eyes was cruel to see
Then she turned away and said,
Once I loved, but love is dead
And I whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping

She said, I cannot cry
And I cannot give or feel or even try
And her voice was hard and cold
Then her sweet young face looked old
And I whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping

Through the endless days and nights
Could not help but wrap herself in sorrow (sorrow)
Through the endless days and nights
She waited for a shiny new tomorrow
Love was sleeping, sleeping

She looked at me
And her smiling tears were warm and sweet and free
And the moonlight kissed her eyes
As it mingled with our sighs
And she whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping
And she whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping
Only sleeping…

The Monkees – “Love is only Sleeping” – lyrics

Oh my, do the songs ever bring back memories of my youth. Think I first heard the songs on the hit show ‘The Monkeys’ – 1968 or so. That would have made me about my daughter’s age at the time. She heard a musak version of ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ at Walmart today and asked if it was an old song and if I knew it, cause she liked it.

God yes! Also begged my parents to buy one of their albums at the time, and I spent many an evening painting, playing with my barbies, dancing like a dervish, and indulging some pre-adolescent fantasies while listening to the songs. Wonder, was the spinning detox. There was quite a bit going on in my life at the time that was toxic, and I think spinning relieved some of the pressure, the anxiety and frustration. It also made me quite high.

Just found some Monkee songs on iTunes – Daily Nightly, Star Collector, The Door into Summer, Pleasant Valley Sunday, and Love is only Sleeping. I used to be able to walk and run back then. It was nothing for me to step outside and run in the yard. To skip rope if I wanted to. To dance like a dervish. How I miss that!

Crow of all things made a reappearance. Who’s Crow you ask? He’s just a black bird who spreads his wings to eclipse any light coming to me, cause he likes the way the light glints off his black feathers. The vain, conceited fowl!

Crow tells me I don’t deserve to walk. Haven’t walked well for 7 years now, so it’s just not meant to be, and I best give up trying.

Have you seen the episode on Angel, where Cordelia is being told by an evil ghost that she doesn’t deserve to live and should tie a noose around her neck and hang herself? The ghost plays on her insecurities, and Cordelia almost does hang herself.  

Have you ever heard of Winston Churchill’s Black Dog? http://www.mhsource.com/exclusive/chanceth0196.html

I can relate.

So I say, ‘Crow!, heh, it’s you again. You’ve probably been there for some time, but it’s only now I’m noticing you.’ I only notice him when he gets really bad. The last time was when I had a bout with anorexia, some 20 years ago.

About that bout, at first Crow was telling me that men hated women and their curves. So better lose those curves. Learned to drink lots of water, to substitute for breakfast and lunches. Ate hardly anything for supper. And thrilled to seeing my weight drop on the scale. But when I got down to 108 pounds, which I felt pretty good about, Crow was telling me that I didn’t deserve to eat. Other people might, but not me. Wasn’t I still being despised? 108 lbs wasn’t good enough.

So I got down to 103, which is quite an accomplishment for someone who stands 5’6″, and would have gone furthur, because Crow was becoming very insistent then. The thinner and hungrier I got, the more insistent. Deprivation. It was something I was all too familiar with. And Crow was telling me that I had been deprived all along because I wasn’t worthy, I was never worthy. Other people were, but not me. I didn’t deserve to eat.   

Anorexia is most certainly not just a body-image problem. At least, not when it becomes serious. Or at least it wasn’t for me. It was a battle with internal demons.

What snapped me out of it? Stopped menstruating, and found out if it continued for too long, I might not ever be able to conceive. And Crow left me for a time. 

Found the following on how anorexia starts, and Wolf and the person commenting have it pretty well nailed, for those of us not in modelling or some other profession where being waif-like thin is expected. It did start out for me as a rebellion as well, but one which backfired. Don’t think I would be true to my experience if I didn’t add that I’d been sexually abused from a very young age – starting at age 3. Don’t think it’s possible to go through an experience like that without acquiring some demons.

http://ana.makeupyourmind.nu/

As Wolf explains in The Beauty Myth, the disease often starts as an attempt to take control over the ideology with which society is trying to control them- and what better way to do it than by rejecting food with its ties to femininity? Many women enter anorexia by vowing to wrest control of their own bodies- by any means necessary- away from the outside forces of their parents, the media, and society at large. They accept the challenge presented to them by the waif-like models and actresses and one-up them by becoming so thin they are no longer sexually attractive. This does, in a sense, free them from the demands that they be beautiful and that they be responsible for the care and nurturing of others because they have made themselves much too frail for either.