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Sunday, January 9, 2011

My First Book Review - Unberable Lightness



I got the iPad for Christmas and it has made me the avid reader that I used to be again.  It is such a great feeling to read a book! I really love books about people's lives and their experiences more than anything else.  The first book I read on the iPad was Portia de Rossi's Unbearable Lightness.  I have never ever struggled with an eating disorder but I do have a huge passion and love for food so it really interested me.  I was blown away by this book.  I literally could not put it down from the first sentence, it just sucked me into her psyche and her warped sense of herself and her world and her food.  I think many people would not equate having a full blown eating disorder to being something like a crack addict or an alcoholic but that is the feeling I was left with in my gut after I finished this book.  From the time she woke up, to the time she went to sleep, to her dreams, every single thought was about food and lack-thereof, and weight, and diet, and exercise and fat and thin.  It has to be how an addict of drugs feels about getting their next fix, it's like it's an entirely different entity from their body - it is all they can see around them and feel with in them.  It is all they care about at the end of the day.  There is one part of the book were Portia eats 60 calories of gum, and has a complete freak out attack and has to start running in the middle of a parking lot with ongoing traffic and people, like a crazy person to burn off the 60 calories she ingested.  I could feel the intensity as she described it, as she was running up a flights of stairs, two at a time in platform heels, up and down up and down, it almost made me feet bleed.  She was consuming no more than 300 calories a day and thinking it was normal, and thinking that being 82 lbs was normal.  She literally, and she will attest to this, was crazy.  It was more than a full blown eating disorder, it was a complete mental craziness that had taken over her body, a lot of which had to do with her also having to hide the fact that she was a lesbian.  I took away a lot from this book and even though I clearly don't know Portia, I am glad she found her peace, and she found her happiness and she finally found someone that just loved her for her and everything she is (that was something she really yearned for in the book, someone to just love HER.)  I think in a sense everyone has a story and everyone can use healing, so this is a book really for anyone to read.  And I suggest you all do!

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