(Un)healthy
The idea (and execution) of health is confusing at best, astoundingly ableist at worst.
I miss macarons. I miss a very specific kind of them. They weren’t the best I have had, not the most creative in terms of flavour, but, they kept me alive.
My memory of food is rather binary. Not as likes and dislikes, unhealthy and healthy, but as sustenance and torture. Everything was torture. The humiliation, the pain, the fear of impending pain, and most of all, the unpredictability of it all.
Macarons didn’t let me survive all the time. But they kept me alive, enough of the time.
Recently I had a conversation with someone (let’s call them grandpa friend, they are a health freak, very weird creatures I tell you. Health freaks that is, not specifically grandpa- well, never mind). A few things stuck to me. One of the things was, “if it was me, I would have honestly thought you needed time to adjust.” This was in relation to my diet.
Surprisingly enough, it was not the first time I had heard that. It was a confrontation, a mirroring of my very own voice in 2019 (and well into 2020 actually), the very beginning.
One of the things that I had to learn is to listen to my body. It’s fascinating how little of that we are taught to do. We distill large, intricate concepts into ableist catch phrases like, “mind over matter.” The memory of my parents, my teachers saying that about exercise, about scoliosis pain, headaches, it stuck to me. It was drilled into the way I functioned. Phrases like, “if I can do it, so can you.”
It erases nuance like ability, mobility, pain. Even the very nuance of the capriciousness of a chronic illness like Achalasia. It is not only the inability to swallow, it is also chest pain after you swallow, it is also accumulated exhaustion, constant anxiety.
There is a balance, a perfect balance to it that changes, every single day. The balance of just hungry enough, just full enough. The balance of just empty enough in terms of water (and liquids). Of just tired enough. And with chronic illness, the worry is not if you have exerted yourself enough for the day, it is if you have rested enough by that you feel the least amount of symptoms. And rest, that is the hardest. You never feel well rested.
Most of all, this is different for every single chronically ill person, irrespective of them having the same (or same combination of) illness(es). This is always the part people get stuck on, able bodied and non-able bodied.
The first few things that went out of my diet, all types of fast food. I didn’t really like them very much, not that much of a heartbreak. Cold water. Hot water helped with swallowing (in the very beginning that is). That was a little bit of a heart break. My reaction to cold water was rather mild in the beginning. Later, I was unable to swallow cold water on its own. Well, I could not swallow water without pain as well by the end of 2019.
I began to notice that wheat products were the hardest to swallow. My all types of bread loving soul was crushed. Even then, I didn’t give up on them, I never did, never will. It is still the hardest to swallow, even after surgery. Then came spice. My Indian soul, south Indian spice eating soul that hated sweet things, that had wanted spicy peanut chutney and idli instead of the rich Indian sweets for every big and small occasion was… it felt like a betrayal. A gut wrenching betrayal of my body to the person I was, to the person I was raised as, to the person I am.
Then came vegetables, and fruits, the raw ones. Especially the green leafy ones. They were sharp, scratchy and made me hurl as soon as they entered my oesophagus. Did I like vegetables…. . That’s a hard “it’s complicated.” Did I hate the fact that my choice was taken away from me in terms of me liking vegetables or not for the sole grouchy childish reason of liking them or not, yes. I did notice that if they were cooked, softer than they were when they were just boiled, I could still eat them, it was hard, but I could.
I found kichidi then. Not the kind of kichidi that is eaten when one is sick. The rich kichidi that is made in my house. Rich with spices, with vegetables, pulses. Mild, but still spicy. Like hell I was going to let go of things that I liked, even if it hurt and humiliated me.
That’s when I slowly discovered that sweet is easier to swallow. Very specific kinds of them. And during very specific times. (Looking at you sponge cakes. My soul hurts every time I look at them, and icing cream. God’s fucking curse on Achalasians).
There was this place I got nachos from. That’s when I learnt that my body hated cheese, not in a lactose intolerant way, more in a “it irritates my oesophagus” way. That’s also when I learnt that I loved vegetables, if they were not cooked the way they are in Indian cuisine, rich with spices. Chinese cuisine, the spice, the way they cook, I couldn’t eat it anymore. That’s when I discovered Vietnamese cuisine, Japanese, Korean. The only one that I could sustain is Vietnamese. The way they cooked the meat and vegetables in their soupy dishes was soft, easier to swallow. The spices mild, savoury. I found a new liking for savoury things.
During my internship I used to make myself breakfast on the days I went to the museum. Scrambled eggs and bread. Tried eating it, couldn’t. Would try swallowing a spoon or two of ice cream, it went down, with great pain. That’s how I sustained myself. Had the tiniest amount of energy to try again during lunch.
On the last day of living in Singapore, I was living in a hotel. They had this beautiful eatery a few streets down the road. I had seen them package their nachos once. It looked beautiful. Rich with vegetables, and raw spices. It smelt so good. I knew I couldn’t eat it. As a back up, I got two chocolate lava cakes, with two scoops of ice cream.
I was right, I couldn’t eat it. Because I had disrespected my body in such a way, I couldn’t even eat the thing that I was sustaining myself on by the end of it.
That was perhaps when I learnt that healthy had many definitions. And the many definitions often ignored ability and mobility, illness, pain.
Sometime in august of 2020, I needed something to ground me. Something that my body could do that would empower me. I did yoga, basics, a quarter of what I do now. 10 days, 10 beautiful days before I fell sick. I had a flare up that lasted an entire month and a half. Barely able to eat anything. The chest pain, even the faint memory of it sends shock waves through my system. I wasn’t supposed to be doing exercise during that time. I was barely getting any calories into my system to be expending it on activity that was an add on to my basics of surviving, which in itself I was barely able to do.
I was adamant though. Even then I tried again. It didn’t end well.
During that time (over those two years), I had lost about 24 kgs. I had gotten so many compliments, told I looked healthier. Told that they wished they had achalasia because then they would also be as thin as I was. Told that I wasn’t trying hard enough.
After surgery I learnt that eating right and knowledge of how much and what type of exercise is necessary is a privilege. Ability in itself is a privilege, but let’s not go there. Not all know what eating right feels like or can look like (and that it can include sweets). What minimum exercise requirements for an adult are. What minimum exercise requirements for someone like me are. The knowledge in itself is a privilege. Holding steady on that knowledge especially in a chaotic social media landscape where every single person is constantly contradicting each other in terms of healthy lifestyle with a very heavy ableist overtone and undertone, it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is. Are people promoting healthy eating habits or just another eating disorder? Are people promoting daily exercise for everyone, or just able bodied people?
When I had started exercising after surgery, I had to learn what my threshold was. I learnt what the weekly requirements for exercise were for the average human. Tried finding the average requirements for someone with a chronic illness would be, could not. So I overexercised. A lot. I learnt through my pain level. I learn that there was a moving scale. A certain amount of exercise that really helped me with my pain, with my mood. If I exceeded that, I would end up with a flare up. Sometimes my body could handle only about 10 minutes for that day. Other times, it could handle two hours. It was a moving scale, an unpredictable moving scale that needed a lot more experience than the amount I had right now. I had learn that my body was the thing I needed to listen to. That my body wasn’t lazy, it was trying, very hard and I needed to learn to respect it. Give it space, kindness, grace. I couldn’t just wait for it to adjust, I would have to learn to find a middle ground with it. I needed to lose my stubbornness, my idea of how my body is supposed to work and actually listen to the way it is working.
To ignore the fitness influencers on my feed. Well, all able bodied people in general, friends and strangers. To ignore their words when it comes to lifestyle, what to eat, exercise, all of that stuff. They drive me absolutely crazy. It’s the arrogance. Their arrogance lies in the assumption that they can do it any better than I (or any non-able bodied and their loved ones) did. The assumption that they will survive it in ways that are better than I did. Their arrogance lies in the assumption that they would survive it at all, however “healthy” they are.
