Beach, bikini, body.

The lifeguard stands at Long Island's Jones Beach are ten feet high, but at the age of five or six I would have told you they stretched as tall as skyscrapers. I can remember sitting in one during a particularly sweltering summer day when I became separated from my family and was waited to be rescued. I can still remember the panic that lodged in my chest, the stomach-lurching view of the sand beneath me, the relief I felt when I was found.

I grew up about twenty minutes from the beach, in a modest apartment in Queens, and spent many summers building sandcastles and jumping waves and collecting shells and eating tuna salad sandwiches on tattered beach blankets. I got peeling sunburns and so many freckles that my camp counselor nicknamed me Spot. I also wore one-piece swimsuits that always rode up my butt, but I didn't care. I was just too busy, you see, chasing my cousins and looking for my shovel and ducking greasy applications of sunscreen to worry about silly things like swimsuits. I adored those afternoons at the beach. I adored them in a way I adored a Happy Meal or a new Barbie doll. That's what beaches are when you're young and innocent and free: places of total happiness.

But as I got older, Jones Beach became something different. Once I entered puberty, and my body filled out with curves that were as unwelcome as a splotchy birthmark on your face, I was seized with the terror of removing my cover-up and exposing my body to the beach goers around me - specifically, other girls my age. They wore string bikinis and Ray Bans and the glossy sheen of Ban De Soleil. They were confident, and chic, and splayed their long limbs on beach towels their moms bought at Benetton. Where I once splashed and played, I began to cower and flinch. I spent a lot of time in those days trying to apologize for my body. My legs were too squat. My stomach was too round. My butt was too defiantly a butt, a round thing that protruded where I wanted it to lie flat. I remember the agonizing dilemma of whether I would keep my tee shirt on once I dove into the ocean. Doing so was as good as admitting that my body deserved to be covered up, as if even I knew it was too flawed to be exposed to the public.

And so I hid as best as I could. I stopped going to the beach altogether. I made excuses when my mom planned outings. There were no sand castles for me, no sunscreen to apply, no tuna salad sandwiches to eat. And no swimsuits to wear.

I don't live near Jones Beach anymore. Actually, there isn't a beach anywhere near my house. But there are neighborhood pools, where I accompany my kids for long afternoons of swimming. It is at these pools where I sit, fixated on the women around me, wondering how my body compares to theirs. Could I wear a bikini like the woman next to me has on? Do I dare expose my thighs, my stomach?  What about a skirted tankini, meant to conceal that fleshy upper thigh area all women seem to despise? It seems that donning one is the same as hiding in my tee shirt - an admission that I have something worth hiding.

I wish I could go to the pool and just swim. I wish I could relax, and enjoy the breeze rustling my hair, and the sweet summertime scent of coconut SPF. But I just don't know how. I don't know how to enjoy being in my skin without those nagging voices in my head berating me. I don't know how to exorcise that screech that my body is just not good enough. Perhaps I never will. It's a tough thing, this learning to accept my body just as it is, and to stop comparing it to those around me.

On embarrassment

The pre-teen years are a bitch.

My daughter has recently crashed into this world of unpredictable mood swings, melodramatic apologies and promises, abrupt changes to her body and friendship drama. Do you remember your pre-teen years? I think they're almost harder to witness than they were to endure. Handling  my daughter's behavior triggers all the confusing feelings I had as a pre-teen, when I was hormonal and moody and generally impossible to be around. At thirteen I had perfected the art of the perfect door slam, the kind that rattles windows and makes you jump and ends with a satisfyingly boom. I wondered why my body was sprouting hair in places hair has never been. I suddenly needed to wear a bra. It pinched and made me feel like I was being strangled. I whined and complained and moped and OH MY GOD IF YOU DON'T BUY ME GUESS JEANS I AM GOING TO DIE, LIKE SERIOUSLY DIE, AND THEN IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT WAAH WAAH WAAH I HATE YOU.

I remember my mom was angry at me. A lot. We fought and cried and apologized and fought again. I was her little girl and her snarly teenage daughter all at the same time. And now my own daughter is the same, saving her allowance for stuffed animals one moment and wearing deodorant and hiding in her room the next.

Last month she came home from school crying, inconsolable and withdrawn. I asked her what had happened.

"Maddie isn't my friend anymore," she wept.
"What happened?"
"She said I was bossy and told EVERYONE, Mom. So now I have no friends."
"Wow," I replied. "That's awful."

We were silent. I didn't know what to say.

"I'm so embarrassed," she confessed, in a small, quiet voice. She looked down, studying her feet.

I might not be an expert on the wild ways of pre-teen behavior, but embarrassment I get. I've felt embarrassed over bad haircuts, early outfit photos on this blog, bad decisions I've made and even worse behavior I tolerated from people. And I especially feel embarrassed now that my marriage has fallen apart. I've developed this weird habit of telling close friends and family the truth of why we're splitting up. I don't know why I do this. The messy details and terrible mistakes I've made certainly aren't anyone else's business. But I share them anyway. And then I feel embarrassed afterwards.

I read an article in Psychology Today about embarrassment. According to recent research, revealing embarrassment is nothing to be ashamed of, and in certain ways it might even benefit us. Part of what makes embarrassment so embarrassing is the fact that it’s a dead giveaway of a private internal state. Feelings we would rather not display for all to see become obvious. But being transparent isn't such a bad thing. Sociologists argue that embarrassment reveals that a person cares about others and values relationships. In other words, it's a way of saying, "I feel bad for messing up, and I want to do better next time because this relationship matters to me." Furthermore, people who feel and display more embarrassment will not only behave in a more trustworthy and pro-social manner, but will also elicit more trust and cooperation from others.

So embarrassment? Not so bad. Being embarrassed about the dissolution of my marriage just means I care about my relationship with my husband and want to do better, despite the fact that we're getting divorced. My daughter's embarrassment with friends proves her regret for her behavior and sadness for letting her friend down. Of course, as a pre-teen, she's not yet able to understand that. But I do.

And I won't feel embarrassed for being embarrassed anymore.

Therapy, and the pursuit of happiness.

 Last week I made my return to therapy. Although the circumstances between my husband and I demand it, the mere thought of being back in counseling makes me twitch. I am no stranger to the therapist's couch. I started going as a teenager, when my parents were proceeding with their own divorce and signs of my eating disorder started to crank up. My early experiences weren't exactly positive. I was belligerent, and caustic, and occasionally hostile. I answered questions monosyllabically. I watched the clock and counted the ceiling tiles and made grandiose bargains with my mom that I would do anything, ANYTHING, instead of going to the therapist, such as all household chores - including cleaning my brother's room, which smelled like sweat socks and hormones and stale Dr. Pepper festering in Big Gulp cups.

I remember my first therapist. She had bad hair. Really, really bad hair, the kind bleached to a jaundiced shade of yellow and shellacked into place with Aqua Net. She wore a lot of scarves and her office smelled like patchouli. I called her Herr Doktor.

We sat. She took notes.

"What are you writing?"I asked.
"Notes."
"Well, thank you," I said, voice dripping with disdain. "Notes on what?"
"Observations."
"Observations of me?" I screeched.
 She stopped writing and looked at me.
 "Is it important to you, how people observe you?"
"Not particularly," I said, which was a bald-faced lie. 
"Elise," she began.
"MY NAME IS ELISSA. ELISSA. GET IT RIGHT, YOU MORON."
 "Does is  upset you that I mispronounced your name?"
I started at her blankly.
She kept writing.

I studied my cuticles.

It wasn't until I was in treatment for anorexia that I warmed up to therapy. In the beginning of my stay I didn't have the strength to avoid communicating with my assigned therapist. In treatment, you see a therapist four to five times a week, whether you like it or not. You sit in endless group therapy sessions. You do "homework," assignments dictated by your therapist on subjects such as what staying in your eating disorder causes you to lose. You cry a lot, and journal, and get good and angry, and make bargains to get out, and occasionally toss your dinner across the dining room table. But eventually you relent, either because you'll do anything to get out or genuinely want to get better.

I wanted to get better.

So I talked. And talked, and talked, and talked. I talked about my mother. I talked about my husband. I talked about my father. I talked about my dreams. I talked about food, and how I hated it. I talked about my body, and how I hated it. I talked until my throat was sore and didn't think I had anything else to talk about, until I went to my next session and discovered I had a lot more to talk about.

After I left treatment I saw a therapist for awhile, until I relocated from Des Moines to Dallas and decided I had "graduated" from therapy. Mind you, I came to this decision completely on my own. I crowed to my husband that I was cured. I didn't need therapy anymore. I was Over It.

And now I find myself clutching a Kleenex box on a therapist's couch. Even worse, I'm being given eerily similar homework assignments to the ones I had in treatment. This week I had to make a list of things that I want, that will make me happy, with no regard to the wants of my husband, family and  friends. I'm finding this to be a lot harder to do than it sounds. Perhaps it's because I can't even ask my husband to change the station on the radio without worrying that he won't like the music I select, and then get angry at me, and then stop speaking to me. So I say nothing, and sit there feeling guilty for even thinking about changing the station in the first place.

How can I figure out what makes me happy when I can't even change the radio station?

I wonder if I'm the only one struggling to determine what I want. A simple Google search on the pursuit of happiness reveals over nineteen million results. That means millions of people are offering advice and asking the same questions I am. Honestly, it isn't realistic for me to even consider a life path without regard to the needs of my children. But really, what do I want for my own happiness? If I could do anything, and live anywhere, and make my home look exactly as I dream it to, and work anywhere, and do anything for fun? What the hell do I want, anyway?

It's a little daunting to think about.

For today, I'm not thinking about the big things. I've decided on sushi for lunch.  And new green capris with a chambray shirt for tomorrow's outfit. And New Girl on TV tonight. Because, for now, those are the things that I know will make me happy.

It's a start.