I went to my parents’ house over Memorial Day weekend to purge the time capsule that is my childhood room.  One of the gems I picked up is this photo from my junior prom.  When I showed it to a good friend yesterday, he asked if it was my sister.

Nope, that’s me.  Age 16.  That’s my long-time high school boyfriend.  Elisa describes as my outfit as the intersection of drag queen and uberjew.  My taste in girl clothes has always run a little to the dragfabulous - if you’re going to perform, why not do it all the way?

Last Monday, I got home to find my back door hanging open, door frame shattered - someone had broken in, and I wasn’t sure if they were still there or not. Deep dread took root - I immediately returned to the sidewalk and called 911. The cops came, cleared the house, and took me on a quick tour to see what had been taken. And while very little was actually stolen - sorry folks, no Xbox or plasma TV in this family - they went through EVERYTHING. Every single drawer in our bedroom was dumped out; they went through our closets, took the cushions off the couch, pawed through our photographs. Ugh.

So all week, I’ve been feeling shaky, crazy, violated - there’s something really unique about trying to decide whether to pick your underwear up and put it away, wash it in hot water, or throw it out and start over. Last night, I was having a hard time getting to sleep, and my mind wandered to an odd summer 10 years ago. In college, I spent 18 months living in and running houses owned by the Brown Association for Cooperative Housing. This experience was amazing and inspiring - nearly 50 students responsible for everything from household maintenance (purchased a new boiler and new roof at age 19) to planning menus and cooking meals. But keeping the houses full in the summer was a critical part of the organizations’ financial solvency, and sometimes a challenge. One summer we had an interesting house mate: a Trinidadian steel drum professor whose wife had kicked him out for running around on her. He was desperate for housing, we were desperate for a rent check, and a match was made.

This gentleman had major physical limitations due to childhood polio, and once he latched on to me as the “landlady”, he was constantly calling me to help him put up curtains, move furniture, etc. Always generous, he would try to pay me for my time with joints - he smoked more pot than any college student I’ve seen before or since, and we had some serious hippies in the house. But he also taught me the secret of using blueing crystals to wash out the bad spirits from a space that’s being moved into, or that’s been tainted with bad juju. You put just enough blueing in to turn the water pail blue, then scrub out each corner of each room with this purifying water, to bring peace to any tormented spirits and to the home. I’ve had a square of blueing tucked into my stuff, moving around with it for 10 years, but never using it. Maybe it’s the secret I need to clear my head.

I know, it’s the oldest line in the book. I worked for an HIV hotline for years, and our most frequent questions started with, “I’ve got this friend who might have [insert symptom or risk behavior here]. Should they be worried about [symptom or disease]?” But I mean it this time. I’ve got a friend who is obsessed with her scale. OBSESSED. I didn’t realize how bad the problem was until I got simultaneous IMs from her and her girlfriend today:

F: “Will you hold my scale?”

N: “Take [her] scale from her the next time you are there. She is weighing herself every day and is getting upset with the daily fluctuations.”

Oy. Our cultural obsession with weight makes us forget about health, how we feel, etc., and hang our whole sense of self on whatever that digital readout says. And isn’t body image the ultimate question of perspective? How we see ourselves impacts how we present ourselves to others, how we believe we deserve to be treated, how much self-love we can tap into. Otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people lose their minds when their weight is mentioned. Like my friend, they forget about their overall quality of life and zero in on the one little number.

I’m not really into telling people what to do, but I do function as group conscience in my chosen family, helping folks stick to their guns when they don’t trust their own self-control. Looks like I’ve got a new scale.