jennfrank.

then heaven is, too

(content note: descriptions of food, eating, and illness)

Wow, this person is amazing at journaling, and also very disciplined at maintaining a writing practice!! Linked above is their rumination on self-differentiation, beginning with Sartre's own explanation of "hell is other people"—which Sartre himself felt was widely, critically misconstrued:

I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because ... when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves ... we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else's judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else's judgment enters.

Back when Twin Peaks: The Return was first airing on Showtime, I turned to Ted and shouted in my best Gordon Cole voice, "If Hell is other people...!" and without missing a beat, Ted shouted back in an even better Gordon Cole voice, "then Heaven! is! too!" and I'd never been more in love with my husband. And as I get healthier and more differentiated as an individual, and as my friends do the same, I find their company to be, not draining, but restorative and nourishing and constructive. We go to lunch or dinner and...

"Nourishing," hmm, that's such an interesting word. I keep coming back to it. I recently drew this Tarot card,

which is an illustration, by Yoshi Yoshitani for their Tarot of the Divine, of the fable The Wife and the Condor. In it, the condor tricks his new wife into moving into his family home at the top of a mountain. For the wife, though, the mountaintop climate is harsh and cold. She pleads with her gigantic bird husband that she needs a coat or blanket—but he doesn't understand, because he himself is not cold. She physically deteriorates because she cannot eat what the condor and his mother eat.

For me, this emotional and spiritual metaphor about not fitting in is also literal. I have gastroparesis (a mechanical motility disease), and I have an ultra restrictive diet as a result, where I can't digest nuts or seeds or cellulose or fruit pith or whole grains or whatever. I've continually noticed that it's only with my most loving and supportive friends that I'm always able to eat (literally, not metaphorically...). My friends aren't obvious about it, either. They send me the menu in advance and go "how does this place look?" I always notice, and I don't take it for granted. I'm not saying I want or need my loved ones to become gastroparesis experts—"don't even try, I've got it, I'll eat around things"—but good god, one of my friends was cooking one night, a whole production, and she juiced and strained celery because she knew I couldn't digest celery but she wanted me to still experience the essence of celery. I cried because I could taste it, I could taste the celery juice.

And this is so, so different from the way some people are, where they seem skeptical or outraged if you can't polish off a whole plate like everyone else is doing? A plate of rocks, and everyone is mad at you because you can't ingest them, that's what Sartre meant by hell.

What is a supportive environment? What is a community where its members can be nourished and thrive? I can't answer this; I don't even know what I need.

It's a bit scary, really, to realize that despite having spent more time with myself now than ever before, I often feel more uncertain than ever when it comes to making judgments of the self.

Recently I was thinking, god, I guess I'm healthier emotionally than I've ever been, but I'm also so much more aware of that health's fragility?? Just before my lowest I probably felt untouchable and magnificent—because I could feel and perceive nothing—and now I feel very anxious and porous, aware of how easy it would be to slip into old habits. But I'm also very resolute about spending measured time alone and deliberate time with others, figuring out what belongs on my own plate.