Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Health

Let’s talk more about health in general

Let’s talk more about health in general. Here is yesterday’s post filled with ranting and ravings about life in general. Despite my best intentions, I went off the rails as usual. Let me try to focus on the point I want to make. Which is that family dysfunction sucks. No, wait! That’s not the point I was trying to make. My point was that it’s hard to tackle health/diet without slipping back into thinking about the eating disordered thinking that my mother has exhibited all her life.

I’m trying to be healthier withouth becoming disordered. I have not been able to do this all my life, so what makes me thinkk that I can do it now?

I think it because I have fifteen years of Taiji under my belt. I think it because I still am thankful to my body for carrying me through my medical crisis–something I should not have survived. Here’s something that many people don’t know; it’s better to be ten pounds overweight than underweight if you suffer a medical crisis. I knew this before my own medical crisis, and it’s something I tell people whenever I can. I feel like a broken record, and most people don’t want to listen. It is so engrained in us that being fat is the worst thing in the world, many people can’t fathom that maybe it’s not true.

I remember several decades ago, I was listening to NPR (or MPR. I’m pretty sure it was NPR, though), and they had a doctor on. She was saying that as you got older, you should GAIN weight, not lose it. Partly for the reason I already said (it cushions your body if anything happens to it), but also for other reasons. Which I don’t quite remember. This reason, though, is the one that stuck in my head. That it’s better to gain weight as you get older to cushion your organs in case something really bad happens to them.

Anyway. I don’t like being fat. I am being truthful in saying that while I can still appreciate what my body has done for me, I don’t like how it looks. There are several reasons for that which I’m not going to get into at this moment. I’ve done it so many times in the past and that, while relevant, is not the point of this post.

I’m trying, yet again, to be healthier without falling into the trap of only carrying about being fat. I’m doing things like walking on the hour when I remember (as I mentioned yesterday). I’m trying to be more consistent with my fruits and veggies, and I think this is a good start.


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More talking about my health in general

In yesterday’s post, I was talking planning on talking about health in general, but I quickly derailed myself to talking about family dysfunction instead. It’s related to health, though, so  I don’t feel completely bad about it. Let’s face it–family dysfunction is baked into so many things, I could unpack it forever. I’m also still ignoring *waves at the world around me* everything because I have to figure out how to deal with it in a not rage-inducing way.

In yesterday’s post, my intent was to talk about eating more healthily and doing things to better my health in general. That’s not the way it went, but that was my intent. Instead, I went on a rant about how my mother made me feel like shit about my body from thet time of seven and sent me down a very dark and painful path because of her obsession with how the ideal girl/woman should look like.

It got so bad that after my last visit to Taiwan (gotta update my passport ASAP, just a side thought), I had to put my foot down and tell my mother that she could not mention my health ever  again. I had forbade her from talking about my weight at some point, which meant she just changed from talking about my weight to talking about my health–but she meant my weight.

How do I know? Well, first of all, I know her very well. Secondly, when I was in college and anorexic, my junior counselors called her in to talk to her about it. They did it out of good intentions, but it was not a good thing for them to do. Why? Because it embarrassed the hell out of her, and she gets nasty when she’s shown up. Not in the any typical way, but in underhanded, manipulative, guiltt-induucing ways.

I remember my mother sitting there with her face sour. I could tell she was upset–at me. Not for being anorexic and bulimic, but for making it look like she was a bad mother.

Did she have anything to say about me being anorexic and bulimic? No. Did she have any concern to show about my health? No. In fact, the only time she ever said anything about me when I was skinny was during my second dance with anorexia. She looked at me for several long seconds and then said, “Your waist is tinier than mine.” She said it with such hate and jealousy, I internally recoiled.

This is how I know that her concern abouut my health is bullshit. If she were really concerned about my health, she would be worried that my thighs didn’t touch, and I could not make it up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath. Do you want to know how distorted her thinking was on the subject? Before I went to college, I used to blast my boombox (yes, I’m that old) and dance on the living room floor for hours as my exercise. My mother once said, “Should you be doing that? I’m worried that the floor will collapse.”


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Let’s talk about health in general

Let’s talk about health in general. It’s the broader category under which martial arts fall, and  it’s not something I talk about much. It’s something I’ve been thinking about more, and I want to get in better shape.

This is tricky because I have a life-long history of eating disorders. It started when I wsa seven and my mother put me on my first diet. My cultural lineage is Taiwanese, and they are even worse with weight-based shaming than America (at least they were when my parents were children/young adults). In addition, my mother had a mother who was obsessed with girls being skinny and pretty–basically being decoration. Which was grimly ironic because my grandmother was nott like that at all. She was not decorative or just sitting around limply doing her womanly duty.

She was the first woman to graduate from a certain college in Japan (can’t remember which one), and she was the first woman to be the equivalent of a senator in her prefecture. Yes, she had eight children, but she didn’t like being home with them. In other words, she didn’t walk the walk when it came to her talking the talk.

By the way, this is the same with my mother. She has a litany of things she thinks a woman should be, but she doesn’t like any of them herself. When I was a kid,  Iused to think she was a bad cook. I didn’t really think too deeply about it until much later. Then I realized that she had the problem of a husband who refused to eat anything other than Taiwanese food (when he was actually home) and two kids who only ate American food. Preferably burgers and pizza.

My mother was into clean eating before it was a thing. She made my brother and I clean our plates and gave us the hoary old line, “There are starving kids in Africa.” It didn’t make sense to me, even at the time. That’s bad for them, but how is my eating or not eating my food going to help with that?

My mother was a mass of contradiction when it came to food. As an Asian mother, her impulse was to stuff us silly. But because of her body/food issues, that was followed up with her commenting on how fat I was. I’m not exaggerating. She told me when I was seven that I would be so pretty (ugh. That’s another dysfunction that she espoused since I was little–a girl was supposed to be decorative and pleasing to the eye. Especially the male eye) if I wasn’t fat.

At seven.

Let me tell you, that’s a guaranteed way to put someone down the path to an eating disorder or seven. I dealt with anorexia and bulimia in college, and then overeating/compulsive eating afterwards. I still deal with the lattar and–oh, the former went into my mid-twenties. I used my obsessive nature to be the best anorexic I could be (even though I did not phrase it that way), and I did it so well.


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How dementia ruins everything, part two

I know that I can only change myself. I mention that because I’ve been musing about family and getting frustrated with my parents. Different reasons for each one, but frustration just the same. I don’t bring any of it to my father because he can’t help how he is (dementia), and it’s just how he was before, but worse. Actually, that’s the hardest part. He’s hitting me in all my sensitive spots, but I have to just remind myself that he’s not himself. But he is. But he isn’t. Before I get to that, here’s yesterday’s post.

Here’s the problem. My father before his dementia was a selfish, or rather, self-absorbed person who never thought of anyone else. He was also deeply sexist and said sexist shit to me all the time. Here are some brief examples. He was always scolding me for not putting on a jacket when he was cold. He never asked if were cold, which I rarely was. Now, one of the things he asks about often is the weather. And he gets stuck in the loop of being concerned that I’m cold.

In general, he doesn’t think women can do anything for themselves. Or rather, that’s what he tells himself even while my mother does everything around the house. This was even before his dementia, by the way. He’s been like this all my life. I know it’s a self-protective mechanism, but it’s so ugly and distasteful.

Fortunately, the explicit sexist shit does not show up, but it does rear its ugly head in sly ways. Such as, him repeatedly asking me how I get places. He knows (or knew) that I drive, but he has somehow forgotten that. To be fair, I can’t say that’s for sure a sexist thing, but it certainly feels like it. Also, his harping on my health might be because of the medical crisis, but I have a hunch it’s more a neg than anything else.

That’s the problem with my father–past behavior has shown me not to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know who he was in the past, and it’s hard not to apply that to the present. But he’s not resonsible in the present for…how do I put this? He’s not of sound mind (dunno about body). So he’s not trying to be offensive on purpose, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a quick flash of ‘not this shit again’.

However. The cruelty of the dementia has far outranked the impatience I feel when he hits one of my buttons. It’s really sad what’s happening to him and since I only talk to him for five minutes (at most ten) at a time, I can deal with the bullshit that comes with it.


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The cruelty of dementia only intensifies

I intended to write a post about dementia, which I still will. However, today on Ask A Manager, there was a post from a man who is in the same industry as his well-known (and well-loved) father. The letter writer (LW) is estranged from his father, and he wrote in because they are both up for prominent awards in different categories. People seem to assume they’re in entertainment, which does make sense. Anyway, the LW did not want to take any pics with his father (which he feared the organizers would want for marketing/promo reasons), and he wanted a diplomatic way to tell the organizers that he didn’t want to be seated at a table with his father, either. I learned in the comments that Angelina Jolie’s children are speaking out about how awful Brad Pitt is (some are his biological children and some are not). I am not surprised by it, but it just brought out a feeling of profound sadness as did reading the comments.

So many people with abusive parents with whom they were either estranged or low-contact. In a weird way, it was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one. Also, to see a steady stream of ‘it’s not your problem’ as to the question about what to do in this situation (in response to managing the father’s emotions or other people’s reactions to the situation.

It’s hard. It’s isolating. It’s lonely. Having very dysfunctional parents, I mean. In my case, it’s tempered by the fact that my father has dementia–which is just getting worse by the day. I talk to my parents on the average of once every other week or so, but during the trying times, my mom has been known to call me several days in a row.

I have accepted that I am her therapist/emotional support person. I do what I can to not let it bring me down, but I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that I heave a small sigh of weariness as soon as I hear her voice. Not to mention a constriction in my chest. I have to put up a shield as best I can and not let it get to me too much.

Side note: I gave up on my parents being parents to me a long time ago. I never expected it from my father because he has never been a good parent. In fact, I would say he hasn’t been a parent at all except monetarily. He once hounded me to know if I was grateful for the money he had spent on me/given to me, and  I was in a very rebellious state at the time (mid-twenties), full of seething resentment over so many things. I was so very angry, and I was not having any of his shit. This is me saynig that I was a brat at the time .I will fully acknowledge that I was not at my best.

However, with his next line, he destroyed any illusion that he wanted to be my father. Or rather, that he knew what being a father meant. He looked at me with such hatred in his eyes and said, “Why should I love you then?”

And with that, I saw him for who he really was. There was no way to hide the man behind the curtain any longer. I mean, I knew before then that he did not love me and that he never really wanted to be a father, but it was unspoken and merely felt. See, in our family, we don’t say that shit out loud.


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Differing vantage points

I’ve been talking about family dysfunction and abuse in general. It’s difficult to talk about because in order to have a conversation about something, you need  a common starting point. You have to have agreed upon boundaries as to what the conversation will entail. In discussing families and abuse, the person listening has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of such things happening.

It makes such a difference. If you are someone from a  happy and well-adjusted family who does not have any friends who have dysfunctional families, then that person, let’s call them Alex, may not be able to understand where I’m coming from. In the last post, I talked about how my mother has no boundaries, and what’s more, she feels that it’s her right as a mother to meddle with my brother and my relationship. I’ll get back to her later. For now, though, I want to talk about my father.

I have a story I tell about my father to indicate his narcissim. It’s the one about when I was a kid, I never got cold. We found out when I was a teenager that I had hyperthyroidism (Graves’ disease). That was why I never got cold. My father would say, “Put on a coat because I’m cold.” People either didn’t get what I was trying to emphasize (“Why are you mad at your parent for caring if you’re cold?”) or said I should do it to placate my father.

The first is vastly more common, and they don’t read/hear what I’m actually saying. My father doesn’t say, “Put on a coat because it’s cold.” He said, “Put on a a coat because I’m cold.” Meaning, beacuse he’s cold. Not beacuse I’m cold. It never occurred to him that I would feel differently than he would.

In addition, he came up with a different narartive of his own as to what happened. He said that he would tell me to put on a coat, and I would refuse because he didn’t ask nicely. That I wanted him to say ‘please’. That’s certainly possible that I threw that out there because knowing him, he probably ordered me to put on a coat rather than ask. However, that was never the main reason. The main reason was because I wasn’t fucking cold!


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Dyfunction dysfunction, what’s your function?

One thing rarely talked about when discussing abuse is how coping mechanisms that have been developed to deal with the abuse are faulty in healthy situations. It’s something that comes up on Ask A Manager on a regular basis because she talks about how being in a toxic work environment can warp you to what is ok and what isn’t. The wildest example I can think of is the letter writer who bit a coworker and in the update, said it was considered ok by her colleagues because the guy is a jerk. The LW’s conclusion was that people with normal jobs found them boring and hated it, so, yeah, her work environment was toxic, but, hey, at least it was interesting. Many commenters pointed out that the LW was getting warped by the toxic environment.

I bring this up because abuse does the same. In the last post, I mentioned that I was resigned to managing my parents because they weren’t going to change. The way I deal with them, though, is not something that would work well with healthy people. Basically, I just placate them and get through a conversation as painlessly as possible. I keep it as surface-y as possible as well. The goal is to not say anything of importance unless I absolutely have to.

You can imagine how this would not work well with people I actually want to be close to. You can’t shine off a friend and expect them to be happy about it. A true friend, I mean. Not just an acquaintance. When the tragedy happened in February, I told my close friends about it. I was devastated and needed the comfort/support. I would not think about holding back with them, which is the normal and healthy way to deal with it.

The longer you’ve been in an abusive situation, the harder it is to recalibrate your thinking. I am low-contact with my parents, but it’s still enough contact to keep me off balance. I have a shield up around them that I can’t afford to let done. Explaining that to other people is futile.

I’ve said it before, but it’s a matter of context. For people who have loving parents, it’s nearly impossible to imagine parents who don’t love their children. Or rather, it might be imaginable, but it’s not something that can be understood if you haven’t been in the situation. Like anything else that is the outlier, really.


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The family dysfunction don’t stop

I have mourned my entire life for the loss of a sense of family. Or rather, since I realized that my family was so fucked up. It started when I was in my twenties, but I was more intent on fighting against it back then. I was angry as fuck, and I didn’t know how to properly express it. Everything up to that point was a lie or told with such spin, it migcht as well be a lie. I was extremely angry at God (with a G) in my twenties, in part because of those lies. And by extension, at my parents, though that was not safe to voice.

Yesterday, I talked about the consequences of a lifetime of family dysfunction, and I want to explore it further today.

I feel like we all have definitive moments in which we can decide to change the way we are–or not. I hasten to add that most people don’t grab those moments by the horn–me included. It’s a fact of life that it takes a lot to consciously make a change. And, more importantly, to keep it up. I made the choice to try out Taiji over twenty years ago. My first teacher was a horror show, and I gave up after close to a year. I didn’t try again for several years. When I did, I hated it at first (as I did during my first try at it0. Why did I stick it out? Because I’m stubborn and because I needed something to back up my swagger.

Another time was when I moved to the East Bay to attend grad school for a year. That was a bad decision in retrospect, but at least I got something out of it. Would I have done it if I had the chance to make the choice over again? No. Life doesn’t work that way, though.

Side note: My brother has said more than once that he had no regrets–meaning he would not change anything about his life. I get the reason why (it’s made him who he is and he’s where he is today because of it), but I could not disagree more. I have so many regrets about my life, and I would have changed them in a heartbeat.

My parents, though, have not changed hardly at all in all the time I’ve known them. Well, not in a positive way, anyway. If anything, they are more conservative now than ever, and they are acting as if they were in the 1970s. It does not surprise me, but it makes me cringe. Fortunately, I do not have to be around them in public because I would just not deal with it well.


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How deep is the dysfunction

One of the hardest things about knowing people who are deeply flawed is that it’s difficult to convey the flaws without sounding unhinged. Because other people don’t have the proper context to absorb what you are telling them. For example, I had a horrible personal tragedy in February of last year. I told my friends and selected members of my family, but I most emphatically did not tell my parents. Why? Because I knew they would make it all about them and not about me. How did I know this? Because this is what they’ve done all my life.

I finally told them in July or August. That was enough time for me to gather the inner resources needed to deal with my parents. The next time my mother brought it up, I was able to tell her the news. I told her it had been several months, but she still reacted as if I had punched her in the face. She asked why I hadn’t told her earlier and sounded so hurt. That’s normal. I don’t blame her for that reaction. But, then, I told her she did not need to tell my father and probably shouldn’t because it would just upset him. And, selfishly, if he was upset, it would mean that he would pass the upset to me. We hung up and not five minutes later, she called back. She had told my father and he was extremely upset.

He dumped his upset all over me and then said that we should pray together. I can’t tell him I don’t pray because he would not understand it so I said that he could pray. He gave the phone to my mother and insisted that she pray right then and there on the phone. My brain disconnected as my mother prayed and I went to my safe place in my mind so I wouldn’t either explode at my mother or slam the phone down in rage.

Back story: I don’t pray. I am not a Christian and have not been one for decades. I don’t believe in prayer and I still have some bitterness over the whole thing. In general, if people don’t shove it in my face then I’m fine with it. This was shoving it in my face and it was for them, not me. My mother knows I don’t pray and yet, she did it anyway because my father wanted it.

Speculation: My mother told my father in part so she could pray at me. She knows I don’t pray, but she doesn’t like it. She has claimed that she could not lie to my father, but this wasn’t even lying. She simply had to keep her damn mouth shut–which she can’t/won’t do. As I was listening to my mother pray, I was completely numb. It’s not an ideal way of dealing with the situation, but it was the least-harmful.

I told K about it, and she could not believe it. She admitted that when I told her I had put off telling my mother about my tragedy, she (K) thought I was being…not hyperbolic, but exaggerating or overreacting. Not in a negative way, but more that she wanted to think my mother would be a reasonable human being about it. K added, “But you were right.”

Yeah, I was. Because I know my mother. In fact, her resoponse was actually more muted than I had expected. But, a few weeks later, my brother told me that my mother had called him and told him to check in on me because of the tragedy. My mother said I said it happened a month ago. Which, I did not. I didn’t tell her it was in February, but I did say several months. My mother hears what she wants to hear.


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Where I draw my line (accepting differences)

Yesterday, I was talking about a post on Ask A Manager that talked about how to deal with a man at a convention who was annoying/harrassing several attendants of the con. I meandered hither and yon and never addressed the first person who said it was ableist to ban someone because of their disability.

It’s interesting to me how much energy is given in defending autistic white cis boys/men and how little into doing the same for non-male people with autism. Mainly girls, but also nonbinary/genderqueer/agender people. I think the third category is completely ignored as is almost always the case. But with autistic girls, they are not afforded the same benefit of the doubt.

First of all, many are not even diagnosed. If they act out in the stereotypical male autistic way (stimming, shouting, melting down, etc.), they are more likely to be reprimanded or punished for it. I’m grossly simplifying matters, of course, but I’m not wrong, either. It’s that way with many things that are considered typical male behavior (including ADHD).

That gender issue is the reason I never even consider that I had autism, but I’ve talked about that elsewhere. Back to the post.

The commenters were pretty good at dissecting the one comment about Alex potentially being banned for his disability (versus being banned for his behavior). If anything, he was given more leeway because he was neuroatypical as the past committees tried to find ways to accommodate that.

Side note: I think one of the best suggestions was to have a code of conduct that could work for everyone. Someone else added that there should be a specific notice about sexual harassment. Several people suggested the code of conduct, which I appreciated. But those who were saying that there should be specific rules for Alex were off-base, I think. If it’s a very small fandom then perhaps you can have rules per person, but it quickly gets ungainly.

The sceond defense of Alex was that it’s not up to neurotypicals to decide if a neuroatypical perosn’s behavior is weird or not. I agree when it comes to behavior that does not directly affect the neurotypical person such as stimming, not looking someone in the eye, etc. However, when it comes to interactions, yes, the person being interacted upon gets to decide how much they want–especially in personal interaction (as opposed to work).

Side note: It’s the same when people say that you should date all races. That it’s racist not to. Well, the latter is true, but as a person of color, I do not want someone to date me out of guilt or obligation. I have had a few white women espouse this belief, and, uh, no thanks. I don’t need your pity date, thank you very much. I don’t want to date someone who is not eagerly wanting to date me!


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