Lingerie or Less

I have been thinking about doing a few autobiographical, and personal story type posts here for a long time.  I know I often mention my past experiences and mental health struggles, but there are some stories from my past in particular that I think have shaped me, and according to any listeners so far, can be quite entertaining.

I mean, how many more times can I talk about post holiday depression/blues (such as here, here and here)?  Yes, I still struggle with that, but as of the last couple days it's been much better.  Main reasons? Well, for starters I got out of bed and started my day with oatmeal, milled flax seed, crumbled walnuts, organic berries and almond milk- as opposed to SUGAR!!! and the 2nd reason I am coming out of the post holiday depression is you! My reader's. My audience.  This therapy feels just as good for me even if it's via diary/journal as well, even if no one else reads it. It's incredibly therapeutic and I've been writing my life down in some form or another since 4th grade.  but this blogging has been a new and amazing experience, and I really want to thank all of you who read and follow along.

Moving on.  I want to make this brief as possible.  I know you all have big plans for tonight's NYE celebrations, and if they aren't big plans, I'm pretty certain reading a novella sized blog post by me isn't on your agenda.  There are many details I will leave out, that some of you may already know about, but I will fill the rest of you in later.  Today I just want to focus on the fact that my PIC (partner in crime), best friend, and husband are celebrating an entire decade together! And one of our most major first memories was the New Years Eve (MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY!) party at the Playboy Mansion in 2007! We have just passed the finish line of a decade together and look forward to decades more, obviously, but I'll continue my story.

It was New Years Eve, the magic moment when we crossed over from the year 2007, which is the year we met, into 2008, the year I hoped would be ground shaking, earth shattering, mind blowing full of love! Awww! Puppy Love...  So at midnight, balloons fell from the ceiling of the party tent on to the dance floor, Three 6 Mafia was performing on the intimate stage, and among all the party revelers and naked women- Eddie said something to me I couldn't understand. Or maybe I just couldn't believe it. The coincidence! I was going to say the exact same thing!

"What?!"

"I love you!"

"You love me?"

"I LOVE YOU"

Well I loved him too. He took the words right from my mouth and then pressed his lips to that same mouth and we did that dance-giggle-while kissing thing.  Fantastic!

WAIT. Before you think I'm here just to write this reminiscent love story, that's not what this is. It's a story, but we've all fallen in love. Right? Right. I want to spill the beans on the crazy, emotional, and mental shit that was happening at this very same time in the background. 

It was on Thanksgiving of 2007 that Eddie told me that he wanted to invite me to the Playboy Mansion for the New Years Eve party and to stay there in LA visiting with his family.  For those of you who don't know, Eddie's sister was living at the Playboy Mansion at the time as a girlfriend of Hugh Hefner and was also staring in the hit reality show on the E! channel, "The Girls Next Door".  I found out who his sister was and that she was on the show when Eddie and first started talking, but I never thought I would go to the Playboy Mansion.  With his deployments in Iraq, being stationed state side at Fort Bragg North Carolina, and my living in Michigan, it just didn't seem viable.  Luckily, Eddie received a month of R&R leave after a particularly terrible tour in Iraq.  He had just suffered the loss of 7 men in one tragic accident and the remainder of his deployment was depressing to say the least with so many of his brothers now absent.  His family is from and all lived at the time in California.  His two sisters both lived in LA and his parents lived on some property in the valley, about 4 hours or so north of LA.

I have never been to California, and LA was the quintessential ultimate place to visit as a mid-western girl stuck in the snow.  It was a very, very bad winter that year as well.  On top of the radical winter weather,  I was working the most horrible red-eye shift in the restaurant business.  It was at a hotel on the beach, in the dead of winter, in a town known as being a tourist destination during the summer, for the BEACH. Yes, business was dead slow. On top of that, I had the dreaded early morning shift and had to be there at 5am. I'm really not complaining though, as this was a time when America was on the cusp of a financial breakdown, and Michigan would be hit HARD by the failing automobile industry.  Even as a college graduate, a food service job was the best I could hope for.  

At the time, I was living back home and had an amazing "princess bedroom" in the upstairs part of my Nanny's house. I dubbed it the princess room when I was a child because of the ornate floral wallpaper, Victorian decor, shabby chic furniture, and it all combined into a cozy slanted roofed room with large handmade builtin drawers along a wall next to a closet and a gigantic antique silk rug that covered the entire wooden floor. To save money while I finished school and waited for Eddie to get out of the Army, this situation was perfect and I never would have guessed I moved back "home" at age 23 after moving out at age 18 uttering good riddance and thinking I was bad ass. HA! No. I was dating a Airborne Ranger (think special forces training and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes into combat. Now that's bad ass!) (sorry ahead of time Eddie, because I know writing that just embarrassed you!)

I've written here before about my battles with body image and eating disorders.  At this time of my life when Eddie and I started dating, I was taking better care of myself and I definitely wasn't obsessing over my weight like I had used too. I went from weighing myself multiple times a day to not weighing myself at all, knowing it would be like a trigger for me to compete with the numbers on the scale all over again.  Unfortunately, my obsession with the weight, scales, and it's numbers was replaced with the mirror and clothing size. 

So, I was living back in my small and scenic home town and so was able to go on a lot of walks to the beach and down the pier, and even just the neighborhoods were comfortable to roam alone.  Hiking the massive sand dunes that lined that particular area of Lake Michigan was a great work out as well.  Man, I miss that! (I mean, seriously) Since my recovery from bulimia and purging, food was getting easier to digest, but I still wasn't consuming my day's worth of calories for the energy I was putting out.

Anyway, so I needed to know the dress code for the party I would be attending with my honey in approximately 1 month and the invitation said "lingerie or less".  I NEEDED LINGERIE TO WEAR. WHAT?! This information kick started a whirlwind adventure of lingerie shopping, dieting, taking long walks in the snow at night during blizzards because being cold "burned more calories".  You get the point. At this time I felt immense pressure to look "good enough" for Eddie at the mansion while surrounded by the world's prettiest girls.  I was only 23, so you can imagine how warped my brain was on my expectations.  Also, I wasn't even the type of girl to wear skimpy Halloween costumes or enjoy purchasing and wearing lingerie, so I was completely clueless. 

Luckily, Eddie's sister Bridget was extremely helpful and helped pass information and pictures back and fourth between Eddie and I in the weeks before and I had decided on a white pleated baby doll/negligee, with gold straps, a nude colored full bottomed underwear (my butt WAS showing under the lingerie, and I wasn't ready to go all thong and butt cheeks. ahem. either am I now I suppose) It was finished off with a pair of retro looking adorable gold sequined heels that brought a nostalgic 1940's era look when combined with Eddie's Army dress uniform.  

I still remember having Bridget take this photo for us because I liked the contrast in the footwear and what it represented. She snapped a photo and then instructed me to "kick one foot back" and ooh la la this turned out so cute.  She was, and still is, the master at all posing perfectly for any type of photograph.

Approximately a week or so before my departure to California, I was flying out the day after Christmas, I was working at above mentioned not so glamorous job when I began to feel a rotten feeling in my stomach and felt clammy and scared as if I was about to die.  No really, the feeling of stomach hurting, sweating, and then feeling imminent death occurred in rapid succession. I had never felt that way before. I tried to brush it off, but then I felt my heart pounding.  I was standing around and not doing anything that rendered a pulsing heart rate.  I tried to shake it off still and take deep breaths.  I remember Kanye West's The New Workout Plan was playing loudly in kitchen of the restaurant.  That beat was awesome. and I love that song.  but, during a panic attack, this beat does not help.  

This was it. I really thought I WAS DYING. *if any of you have suffered panic attacks, you know exactly what I mean, if you haven't, please consider yourself lucky.  It normally takes many ER visits, heart ultrasounds, ekg's, and weeks of being wired up to a 24/7 halter monitor like a robot with electrodes attached to a beeper on your belt, in order to rule out any heart health related issues before you get your official diagnoses.  You have anxiety and then some. You have panic disorder.* and if you don't have health insurance like I sure as hell didn't at the time, an ambulance drive from your job to the nearest hospital across the drawbridge was NOT cheap.  I clearly remember my manager asking me before he dialed 911, "are you SURE??".  YES I WAS FUCKING SURE. I really thought I was dying and he was just verifying that I was willing to get a giant hospital bill for a trip to the ER that everyone around me seemed to know exactly what it was for, EXCEPT ME.  

To the more experienced eye, the symptoms of a psychological event were all there. Everyone knew I was dieting, OK, starving, pretty severely to feel like I was prepared for this event.  I was popping diet pills like candy.  I was working out multiple times per day on a diet consisting of cucumber slices and water.  I know, I know. It was stupid.  Though I had been dabbling in anorexia since I was 16 or so, adding the diet pills with extra caffeine and the nervousness of my upcoming trip was a perfect mixture for this bleach bunny blonde Michigan girl to go tits up and into the psych ward.  

I took the expensive ride to the ER, found out my heart was fine, but tests relieved I was anemic and my potassium levels were so low that I got a lecture from the doctor about Karen Carpenter and how she died from heart failure for same chronic issues, potassium and electrolyte imbalance.  I didn't have to go to the psych ward, thankfully.  I had understood what had happened, and no I wasn't skeletal looking which I must emphasize as I always do, you don't need to look underweight in order to ruin your organs, your health or to die from disordered eating. My Mom picked me up at the hospital after purchasing some bananas and other much needed nutrients and spent the rest of the day napping with me on the couch.  Mom to the rescue!

My Christmas went smoothly and my family and I gathered around the TV to watch the premier episode of "Girls Next Door: Patriot Dames" which was filmed months earlier when Eddie made a quick visit back to the USA and visited his family in California, and then of course, flew to Michigan to see me!  Watching the episode of the show seemed like a fun way to show people who haven't met him yet who he is and what he looked like before I left to fly out and see my love again.  

My time in California was an incredible experience.  Eddie's family could not have been more welcoming or nicer.  I even felt welcomed by the all the girls, the staff of the mansion, and felt I had earned the approval of Hef himself when we lined up at his bedroom door before making our way down the famous staircase to flashbulbs and oohs and aahhhs from the crowd, all dressed up, er dressed down maybe, for the New Year's Eve party.  

I can't help but think that the girls in the background look a little jealous ;)

We stayed at the mansion for several nights and I saw so many amazing things and met so many amazing people.  We went on picturesque hikes in the Hollywood hills, where I must confess getting my heart rate up still made me nervous after my panic attack event, but I knew it was in my head and I was on the mend.  I took part in every meal, being sure to fill up on the fruits and veggies realized what I already kinda knew.  Eating a healthy lower calorie diet while going for all these hikes, in LA and at home, was working out just fine for me as far as staying in shape and looking good. I didn't need to starve myself or pop diet pills from GNC.  

family time in the "game room"

So that's as brief as I could make this story! Still pretty long though! Thanks for reading- and for sort of being here in spirit with Eddie and I while we celebrate the New Year and reminisce.  Especially about our first NYE together, 10 years ago tonight!