Just as I don't fit in with my biological family, neither did I with Western yogis or with my fellow creative writing majors back at San Francisco State University... you see, I was happy to be Iranian-Danish-Icelandic-raised-between-Spain-and-the-US-and-yes-were-you-to-ask-me-where-I'm-from-that-is-the-exact-answer-you'd-get-from-me whereas my fellow mostly-Caucasian-American-yogis seemed to truly believe they were Indian, acting out and speaking the wrongful stereotypes of said culture, head-bopping-hands-in-prayer-in-front-of-their-chests-gratuitous-Namaste-muttering-constantly-plastered-smiles-on-their-faces-fools-that-they-were, as they shed away their true selves with the acquisition of the skill that is the teaching of Ashtanga Yoga and thus straying from the very yogic path, of looking within, that they were supposedly on...

Not me... though it needs to be said that such constant gazing at said metaphorical mirror is not the healthiest of all things either and could use a tinge of illusion here and there every so often... but yeah... no shakin'-boppin'-smilin'-prayin'-Namaste-uttering-I-shall-allow-all-to-walk-all-over-me-as-I-play-the-part-of-self-sacrificing-compassionate-sage-of-a-yogi shit from me... because I am flawed and definitely no know-it-all... because though an Ashtanga Yoga teacher I am a student first and foremost... because I have lived a life of repression that resulted in intense fear fueled by a childhood replete with abuse where a requisite to survival was a plastic smile on my face in order to make it through yet another day... because after a lifetime of stepping on my own head I just cannot do that anymore and so...

Irritate me and it will show in my face... say something ridiculously stupid or ignorant and I will let you know what I think of that in no uncertain terms that it will leave you wishing you had used your damn brain before leaving your diarrhea of the mouth unchecked... take advantage of me and be met with either a kick in the nuts or a raving-full-force-Miz-B rant tailormade for you and delivered straight to your face by yours truly... be a sexist-condescending-violent-feel-free-to-add-to-the-list-what-you-will jackass and I just might punch you though-I-would-rather-not-because-I-really-am-not-one-to-fight-and-being-quite-small-would-easily-get-my-ass-kicked but yeah, I might punch you nevertheless... attend one of my classes and a simple hello shall be your greeting, and if you are open to it I do love a good conversation indeed, but if you expect a frozen-smiled-vacuous-looking-repeatedly-bowing-riddle-spewing-new-agey me to greet you then you've come to the wrong place... I am who I am with yogi thrown into the mix and either you like it or you don't because bottomline, I am damn good at what I do and there is no need for a sideshow thank you very much...

Try telling that to the black-threads-wearin'-chain-smokin'-tortured-apathetic-misery-spewin' fools... who in an attempt to swallow their insecurity with a tortured-artist-suffering-for-their-art-and-writing-only-through-darkness-and-pain mask that convinced only themselves that that was indeed what they were whilst as a result they failed at truly writing, which-is-what-they-were-there-for-in-the-first-place-dammit, so intent were they on the characters they were playing... who allowed for themselves to be nothing more than simple novelty act sideshows for an amused-and-often-bored-though-quite-glad-I-didn't-fit-in-because-then-what-would-that-say-about-me me...

Jay played up his labels of ADD and ADHD quite well and struggled to be the poster boy for his version of the neurotic Jew stereotype as he cursed and laughed and cried and nervously flitted about, the permanent fixture of a cigarette in place behind his ear, with bits of Yiddish flying about in a world of blind peers who were too focused on their own one-man acts to notice his flamboyant attention-craving efforts... Kevin refused to understand and loudly denounced the unfortunate professor who stifled his creative license by limiting him, nay chaining him down, to a world where no word could match up to the standard that was this nonexistent percinnamon he so desperately held on to... Lisa screamed her work out loud hoping that the noise generated would make up for the mediocrity of her words... Farnaz did her damndest to appear exotic in her representation of an American-Iranian woman, gypsy costume in place, wooing many a foreign dick and pathetically amusing many an actual Iranian with her identity crisis spurred on by the words she lacked to make the grade... Clark, the-sitar-playing-Iranian-music-and-culture-loving-writer-to-be-who-focused-his-intense-brooding-gaze-and-obsessive-interest-on-partly-Iranian-me-making-me-and-Loverboy-the-recipients-of-many-an-invite-to-dinner-with-the-catch-that-since-he-lived-with-his-parents-it-would-need-to-be-held-at-our-place-but-he-would-supply-the-food-ummm-whatever-and-no-it-never-happened-because-he-mostly-wanted-to-study-us-and-our-ways, ranted against The New Yorker and declared that if the shit printed in its pages was embraced and actually published that he would be a writer dammit all, he would!

Yeah, I didn't play into those roles well but neither did I try to... the irony of it all lay in the fact that I could indeed only write when in the grips of one of my myriad panic attacks spurred on by the overpowering negative voices that fueled my anorexia and though truly tortured, no one was any wiser to it all because truly tortured people do not show it off and whether it is obvious or not, they just are... tortured...

People saw thin and within minutes of meeting me revealed all and I would know everything there was to know of their dietary and exercise habits without ever having asked. The joke was on them because pssst... that body you liked so much? It was starving goddammit so what the fuck were you doing hailing it, praising it and placing your insecurities and secrets at its feet? And here's a tidbit... most unusually thin people, no matter how healthy, strong-willed, with it and happy they may seem to be, hold a deep, dark and painful secret no one is meant to see... maybe not even them. Take it from me.

At our yoga teacher training graduation Natascha mingled,laughed and drank with the best of them, downing drink after drink and even ordering a luscious chocolate cake for dessert. Everyone was more than happy to embrace her words of damn malaria I had as a child made me so thin! If only I could for the life of me gain some weight! Yeah... ha, ha, ha, laugh, laugh, laugh, chitter, chatter, mingle, mangle and with that she diverted all eyes away from the fact that she only played with and mushed her food and never a bite did she take from any of it, least of all her chocolate dessert. Disappearing into her bones, she need not have been anorexic for no one could see her anyway. Never mind the fact that she was so thin that the veins on her legs literally bulged out. Never mind that her ribs stuck out and that she was so painfully emaciated that I was afraid, truly afraid to look at her. Never mind that exhaustion would overtake her in the middle of practice, leaving her breathless in a discipline that would be void without breath, as she ran outside to chainsmoke the remainder of the time away. No, never mind all that... but I saw Natascha when no one else could and I knew her pain well yet I could not risk helping her because once an anorexic always an anorexic and though I no longer starved myself, deep down, a sick and twisted part of me hated Natascha for being thinner than me and itched to prove to her that my body could be even thinner than hers... and so I moved on, away from the Caucasian-Indian-wannabe yogis and away from Natascha who dangerously fed the hunger that was, is and forever shall be my now-thankfully-dormant disease...

I made friends with many a professor, one of whom hopped over to Spain to celebrate my marriage to Loverboy many years ago and whose best friend, yet another professor, helped me through the pain and anger that came with being a rape victim's sister stuck in a household where the mother told said then-12-year-old rape victim to forget such a thing ever happened to her and at one point even spat on the little girl, who-did-not-look-so-little-and-neither-would-you-had-you-gotten-breasts-at-the-age-of-five-and-your-period-at-the-age-of-seven, when she, lacking words acted out in anger and pain and frustration at a world where she was victimized and the police hinted that due to said early development she had asked for her violation...

But I digress...

Yeah, even in professorville there were stereotypes to be lived up to. Mike, the abovementioned country-hopping Anthropology professor shed his Mr-Indiana-Jones-type bravado he apishly displayed in class, which rendered him the coolest of all professors as he had many a drink and dinner with groups of impressionable students wanting in with Mr-there-ain't-no-crazy-thing-I-won't-do-and-no-adventure-I-will-run-away-from-and-just-watch-how-I-sporadically-will-not-show-up-to-class-simply-because-the-mood-so-struck-me-so-there-cause-FUCK-YEAH-I'm-a-bad-ass, when he veered towards extravagant-cigar-smoking-pate-eating-expensive-wine-drinking-cheap-flamenco-tourist-show-performing nights at my Uncle O's tourist resort of all places and shunned any and all invites to partake in cliff-jumping-water-fountain-drinking-countryside-exploring-native-mingling-real-and-raw-flamenco-watching adventures. Although later he did confess to being torn between his 25-year-old-lover-of-his-50-some-odd-year-old-self and the idea of leaving it all to become a monk.

He didn't become a monk.

Dr. Zimbalist, brilliant-in-his-own-right-as-the-research-paper-writing-fanatic-of-conspiracy-theory-read-between-the-lines-and-look-for-double-meaning-and-hidden-agendas-in-advertising self that he was, was quite the method actor and went so far as to heighten his performance with declarations that the heart attack he suffered was due to some form of a medical conspiracy against his very being masterminded by his physician and man was he lucky to be alive! Professor P, and only because I cannot for the life of me remember her name, had it in for me, a poetry major doing well in her heavily-laden-research-writing-point-proving Shakespearean class, and dropped my A to an A- bringing my 4.0 GPA down to a 3.98...

... yeah, my OCDish-recovering-from-anorexia-though-not-quite-there-yet-emotionally-fragile-because-I-was-pregnant-and-didn't-know-it self shattered at the downgrade and truly believing that with the exhaustion that came with the pregnancy and teaching yoga I simply could not have made it through to the finish, 7 courses shy that I was from graduating, I left and never looked back, leaving the finish line behind. Loverboy is right... I could have made it through by normal terms though in my mind making it through entailed with flying colors, ahead of the class, 4.0 GPA regained and intact and no, I could not have held that up pregnant, as a new mother or ever again for that matter and...

... having to face a possible me-as-a-mediocre-student scenario was unacceptable, so attached was I to the overachiever's mask you see... but no, no regrets.

You know, we look to get lost in each other's masks. We need these labels to identify who we are. Miz BoheMia... mother, wife, yoga teacher, suffering-perfectionist-yet-working-hard-to-eradicate-the-suffering-and-reduce-the-perfectionism, recovered/forever-recovering anorexic with a secret life of ranting, raving and oh, add to that poet wannabe... who is she without the labels?

I don't know if I have an answer for I am one guilty of being blissfully lost in this illusion called me but I do know this... blessed am I to have had the good fortune to try on so many masks for between masks, I caught glimpses of myself, bare and vulnerable, along the way and once you see that, this self in front of the mirror, masks in hand, there is no turning back and so here you have me, as close to a maskless me that I can be, save for the one made of the pseudonym that is Miz BoheMia...

... and as we, residents of the land o' BoheMia, currently face the reality of a bank account soon to be hungrier than I ever was once upon a time not too long ago, courtesy of a wild adventure-gone-wrong-but-not-really-as-it-is-all-a-part-of-a-larger-more-intricate-and-fabulous-plan-that-has-yet-to-show-its-true-face called Spain, I know that the delusional illusions that were these now shed masks were not in vain as I find myself laughing with hope when once I would have cried out in despair. And that makes for a good day if ever anything did!