An Addictive Offering

Upon arriving back from my break while at work today, I happened upon this little treasure on my desk:

Yes. A ciggy with a match casually stuck in it.  Of course.  Because finding this on your desk is totally natural.
Who left me this little gem? And WHY?

So, my friends, after puzzling over it for awhile, and wondering dubiously if it was a doobie rather than a ciggy, what did I do with this cancer stick?

a.) Smoke it. A little curiosity never killed anyone.
b.) Tuck it behind my ear to look cool.
c.) Track down the culprit, ask them if they were nursing a secret struggle with chain smoking, and tell them to BE STRONG.
or
d.) Wonder if someone is trying to give me another addiction because my brilliance as an un-addicted person is that of A THOUSAND SUNS and blinds them with my majesty. Jealous betches.

Partaking of the Fruit in the Garden of Brieden

Welcome to my life:

Yours truly: coming along swimmingly. I am at a healthy body weight for the first time since August of 2005, and trying desperately to get used to it. I still work at [Unidentified] Insurance Company, devour books, hate cooking, and give myself a mani/pedi every Thursday afternoon. I’m working on exploring other variables to the complicated This is Brie equation, while simultaneously nipping the THIS IS ME LOOK AT ME I’M BRIE I HAVE AN EATING DISORDER! HOLLER! equation in the butt. Parenthetically, I was about to say “nipping the THIS IS ME LOOK AT ME I’M BRIE I HAVE AN EATING DISORDER! HOLLER! equation in the BUD, but that would have implied that I was putting an end to the problem before it really, you know, BLOOMED, and that would have been a big fat nasty LIESIES because this problem has budded and bloomed and thrived and then died and then budded and become re-born and bloomed all over again, for, like, many a moon. My oh my I have cultivated quite the garden. End parentheses.

I’m so confuzzled from my parentheses rant. If you got through that paragraph without getting dumber, I congratulate you. Heartily.

I’m doing really awesome in therapy. And I can talk about this because it really doesn’t even have much to do with my ED. Honestly – I’m finally doing work that’s been needing to get done for a long time, ED or not. I’ve put in quite the commitment to therapy and dietary and group therapy, and am there four times/week, so it is indeed quite the time suck, but something obviously must be working, so I’m not going to question it, but rather THANK IT, for giving me back my life and my sanity and some semblance of normalcy. If “normal” and “Brie” can ever be in the same sentence, that is.

Brandon: Big B is doing quite well. He got a job – all thanks to his mad skills and my amazing friend K and Blogxygen – and thinks it’ll be a good fit for him. He works at [Unidentified] Computer Technology Place, and, at the moment, since the whole job is new to him, feels like a little Nemo with a retarded fin in a big big big vast ocean. HOWEVA the pay is good, the insurance even better, PLUS they give us a free Costco membership, so how can we really be complaining? He’s still slaving away in school and hopes to get his degree by the end of next year. I sometimes feel faint when I think of all the time he still has left, and I’m like BE STILL MY SOUL, patience is a virtue, blah blah blah yakkity schmakkity. AT ANY RATE I love Husband and am proud of him for how hard he works. He’s a trooper and I love his little retarded fin. One of these days he’ll be higher on the food chain, and hopefully earning a meatier (pun intended) salary.

What is with me today? This post is weirder, if that’s possible, than most.

Cade: My mini man is doing so well, guys. You’d love him – I need to post pics soon so you can see how much my guy has grown! He is obsessed with Iron Man and pretend-shooting anything that moves. Or doesn't.  He’s, like, full-time potty trained, but you need to watch it because he’ll go alllllll day without pizzling if you let him – he still HATES the urinating and will avoid it at all costs. He still has those sadly hopeful gray/blue eyes, framed with long lashes and that dimple in his left cheek that just melts my heart. He’s almost 4 now – can you believe I have a 4 year old?!? And he’s big and growing and learning so fast. I’m excited to be enrolling him in preschool in the Fall to see him develop a bit more socially, which is where he still seems to be lacking skillzzz. My boy is NOT a people person. But don’t judge.

The fat cats: Bobbi and Hairy are doing well, and getting fatter. HONESTLY YOU GUYS I don’t know how they are…I don’t overfeed them – I’d never do that to them! – but yet they still get curvier and butter-ballier as the days go by. Sometimes I wake up at night, hearing snoring, and kick Big B (HARD) only to realize that it’s Bobbi, down at the foot of the bed, snoring away like some freaking cave troll or something. I think the fat is starting to suffocate her lungs, or something. And Hairy’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You know how I love to think of dirty nick names for her, or whisper sweet nothings in her ear? The other day I came up with what is sure to be a classic, forever remembered in the annals of Breivik Family History: “Oh Hairy,” I said, breathlessly, with wide eyes and an open heart, “I’m so smitten with your tittens.” Cue Hairy purring to a crescendo and Brandon muttering racist cat insults under his breath…

I bet you REALLY wanted to know all this, huh?

If I Could, I Would I Would I Would

If I could somehow chuck financial obligations, time, and practicalities into the garbage, I would…

FINISH COLLEGE. 25 is the new high school graduate; it’s not too late yo. I’d dazzle my professors with my writing skillzz and my mediocre math abilities. I’d figure out finally how to multiply fourth grade fractions. (Do you multiply straight across or go kitty corner?) I’d pursue publishing and edit the shiz out of some future NY Times Bestsellers…after writing my own, of course…

HIRE AN IN-HOUSE DIETICIAN/CHEF. Most would hire their own personal chef to cook scrumptious healthy meals a la Biggest Loser Style, but I’d go the exact opposite and make sure I was getting plenty of maple donuts and taquitos. One thing I’m learning as I’m maintaining a healthy weight (according to BMI charts) is that Big Brie has to eat BIG amounts, and I’d like to have a personal dietish keeping me on my toes – unless I gain too much weight and being on my toes would break them under the weight of my cankles. Or something.

GET A POOL. Every summer I seriously spend (hold on lemme do the math – if I can) about $500 on admission to the pool, new swimsuits, Diet Coke and maple donuts and chocolate licorice and taquitos and Vitamin Water and pool toys and beach towels and flip flops and electric razors and pedicures. All of that to tan my bulbous bod in public. Wouldn’t it be much better to do so in private? That way I could get some rest from sucking in the tum tum (but really it works my core so holler for that) and I wouldn’t have to be paranoid C was peeing in the pool water because REALLY we know everyone does and a little piss and chlorine never hurt anyone right? Also I think having my own pool would make me cool. I am no longer in jr. high but the latter sentence is FACTUAL anyway. So, moral of the story: invest in a pool and invest in, like, MY HAPPINESS AND EMOTIONAL FORTITUDE IN A BATHING SUIT.

PROCURE AN IPAD. What would I do with it you ask? Use it as a coaster! Paint my nails on it! Use it is a backscratcher! See if it sinks or floats! Because, after all, what else would you do with it? (seriously.)

Ah, me. …Time to come back to reality and eat my banana and 10 pretzels for afternoon snack. But sometimes it does the mind good to dream the impossible dream, to carpe a little diem, you know? What would thou doest, my hizumble readers, if you had all the money and time in the world? Make a statue in your honor? (I would out of rock hard hotness!) Buy the patent to, like, lamps? Patronize the arts or inner city thugs? What a fun fixer upper project that would be!

Do gush forth. Leave a comment accordingly.

I Like my Brie Plain, Please

I’m…back? Have you been crying LARGE TEARS OF SUPERFLUOUS SAD in my absence?

Maybe?

It’s funny. (Well, not really, but, you know, it’s a term.) I’ve had a hundred million people ask me why I’ve given up blogging. And it’s always prefaced with… “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, or if it’s too personal, but…”

…But but BUT guess what peepcicles? It’s not too personal! I promise there’s no big or special reason I quit blogging, there’s no drama about why I took the hiatus. I’m mildly interested in the fact I seem to be important enough that there are some pretty wild rumors going around on why I stopped. But truth of the matter is…

I've changed.
And Blogxygen wasn’t.
So in order to keep Blogxygen alive and well and breathing, it needs to change with me.

Like I said to my brother in an email today, and I verily quoeth, “…and yeah, my blog wasn't just about my ED, but my struggle and recovery from it was definitely a piece of that, and I think I'll try to omit some of that and focus not so much on who I was, but who I want to become. So when Blogxygen is re-born it'll be a little different...but hopefully better!” (Why do I always feel like an eager beaver when I exclamate?) (Seriously. This is a legit question.)

So there it is. My ED was my life, you guys, seriously, for a decade. Since 199freaking9. I restricted, I starved, I went into the hospital countless times and IP treatment almost as much. I ranted, I raved, I almost died. I wrote about it I dreamt about it I lived and breathedandimmersedmyselfinit. I was a living, walking eating disorder – that was solely my identity – or – I was a 180 degree difference – I was a livingwalkingbreathingRECOVEREDANOREXIC. And I don’t want to be that either. I don’t want to be Brie the Anorexic, but I also don’t want to be Brie the Recovered Anorexic. I like my name plain; just Brie, please. Labels can lick my right butt cheek.

It’s time for me, on my bloggy, to not focus so much on who I was…but who I want to be. Whatever the H bomb that may be. But I’m pretty jazzed to figure that out, for realsies.

I’m excited to share that with you, if you’ll let me. Whaddya say?