The Art of Dramatic Living

Many of my posts are spontaneous. I think of something I want to write about, I happen to have access to the tools I need and I write. I was planning on writing something else today about my disintegrated organization and priority system and the re-imagining of a new system, but that excitement will have to wait.

I’ve written about my body image issues before. Links to those posts are here:

Body Image, Eating and Creativity

Perfection is Death

This is another one of those, but different.

I read a horrible story yesterday and the sadness and ickiness and anger it generated is sticking with me for some reason. It was a story about a young woman who I went to college with. She was beautiful, lots of fun and, I thought, a little eccentric – but exciting. She was fun to hang around with. I remember walking downtown with her to get some TCBY and she carried a parasol – not an umbrella – a parasol. Her name was Margaret Trigg and she died in Bellevue in 2004.

Here’s her story: The Perfect Margaret Trigg: The performance artist and sitcom actress would do anything to be a star, including making herself her own lethal science project.

The story frightens me because is wakes up that part of me that can only be called self-loathing. It brings up a lot of anger about the industry that is “showbiz”. And it reminds me why I gave up on my acting career when I was 29. I couldn’t handle it. The industry took something I loved and turned it into a commodities market in which I had no place.

I have been brewing this post for quite awhile and, frankly, I’ve been avoiding it. I want to say from the get-go that this will probably not be the only post on this topic because there is so much to explore. I also want to tell you that I am not an expert on eating disorders or body dysmorphia, but I am experienced. I’m experienced because I live with a skewed body image every day. I’m experienced because I have used food all my life as a substance to stuff down my feelings, desires and self-expression.

I think any form of creative expression is an act of exposure.