Angry

I am apparently an angry person. I didn't really know, but this is what I'm told.
Anger has never been an OK emotion for me to feel. I'm terrified of explosive anger, and the seething silence that comes before it. I hate conflict. It scares me, stresses me out and exhausts me emotionally. Most of my life I've held in anger, told myself I didn't have a right to feel it, told myself it was wrong and dangerous to express it or even have it. If I am angry, I go silent until I can't handle it anymore, and then I hurt myself or act in a rebellious way. My anger rarely comes out straight, in a healthy way.
Today I've been feeling depressed, and recently I've broken some rules. My therapist told me that these are both symptoms of suppressed anger. I wonder who or what I'm angry about. I wonder why I'm hurting so much inside, wny I want to hurt myself or rebel and hurt some one else's emotions before they can get to me. I think some of the answers I know, but I'm afraid to own them, afraid to really allow myself to be straight-up mad even if it doesn't make sense. In my mind I have to have a really legitimate reason to be upset. If the person didn't mean to hurt me, do I still have cause to be mad? I struggle with that question, because many of my hurts come from well-intentioned people. Many of my resentments are at circumstances, myself, or even God. What do I do with that?
Is there a should about anger? I've always thought there was, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's no such thing as a right to be angry. Maybe if you're hurt you're hurt. Can you have feelings for what seems like silly reasons, or does everything have to make logical sense?

Body

Do you know what it is to hate your body? To loathe its every bulge and bump, to be constantly thinking about its flaws? To be so consumed with disgust that the idea of even saying, not even meaning, a positive affirmation like "I am beautiful" seems nigh impossible? To look at magazine pictures of beautiful women with a longing despair, knowing that you'll never, ever measure up to that perfection, albeit airbrushed beyond reality? To link your self-worth to your looks so closely that when one is low, the other is automatically abysmal? To berate yourself for thinking a good thought about your body once in a while?
I am there right now. The bad body image days come and go, but lately they've been more on the coming side of things. My belly is so full of food. I can't breathe. I am flabby all over; I need to work out and build some muscle. I am putting on weight in all the wrong places. Today I put on my jeans and they were tight. I was demoralised. They weren't that way when I came here three weeks ago; I needed a belt. I take to wearing loose layers of clothing to hide my stomach, which is no longer flat, even when I lie down. I feel distended, gross, unattractive, unloveable. I tell myself, despairingly, no one will ever want me or be attracted to me when I look this way. I will be alone for the rest of my life, miserable and ugly and fat.
It's like I have a giant magnifying glass on certain body parts distorting all I see and I can never get rid of it. I am told I have body dysmorphia, that I am not seeing reality and that I am really not as hugely fat as I think I am. I don't believe it, most days. They tell me my spirit, my personality, all that's on the inside, matter more than my crazy disproportionate body. Many days I have a hard time believing that too. They tell my my body will adjust, things will be more comfortable and the weight will eventually distribute normally. I don't trust this. Most of all I don't trust my body. I want my control back. I want to control my weight and how my body looks, in the vain hope that I can someday at least be indifferent to it.
Underneath I suspect I am wrong. Maybe I've been brainwashed by a body-focused culture. Maybe my self-worth will be low no matter how small my size. But I cling to my wrongness like an overgrown baby to a pacifier. I'm used to it and in a weird way, I'm comfortable hating my body. It gives one something to focus on. If only my body were this, then everything in my life would sort itself out. It's a lie, but so tantalizing a lie it is! It simplifies everything and prevents me from focusing on what lies beneath my (oh so reviled) body.

Christmas

Christmas is bittersweet in treatment. It has been a day full of emotional ups and downs for me. The staff have tried to make the holiday special, with games, little gifts and special food, but there is an underlying current of sadness. I miss home. As I opened my gifts from home I imagined my family opening the gifts I had wrapped for them weeks before when I left. As we had group, ate our meals and played games, I imagined what my family and friends would be doing that very moment. Would they be eating, napping, playing with new toys, would they be grumpy or happy? My thoughts are not in the present moment, and in some ways all I can do is simply make it through the day without breaking down.
What does the holiday means when what it meant most to me is altered or taken away? I feel empty, wondering what's left when I'm away from my family, and I can't even engage in my eating disorder to comfort and numb myself. The superficial falls away and I am left with the bare bones of the Christmas spirit. It's something like... like love and hope, a promise of new meaning in life, something like peace and joy, deep and unshakeable. It's a simple miracle, it's God becoming a baby so that he could live among us and carry our burdens for us. I need a simple miracle now. I need to be able to hope, to have faith. I need to be able to trust that I am here for a reason at this hardest of times, and to surrender my own agenda for God's. Do I have that ability? I waver between a glimpse of these things and the hopelessness of depression and cynicism. I'm almost afraid to be happy.

Isolation

I am an isolative person. My tendency is to keep myself and my thoughts to myself, to not conncet with people on more than a superficial level. Alone is my zone of comfort, the state I have found myself in most of my life. When I was little I isolated in an imaginary world made of books and characters in my own head, letting only a select few into it with me. I am afraid to let people in to my world even now, fearing what they may think of me, fearing rejection and connection both. If I don't ever let you in, you can't hurt me. If I don't make the effort to reach out, then I stay comfortable. But I also stay lonely. And I am lonely now, here at treatment.
At the same time as I withdraw from people in fear, I long for deep and meaningful connection. I think everyone at some level wants to be known, accepted, and heard. I've just spent much of my life denying that truth for myself, thinking I was ok on my own. It isn't really true. I am alone, and I have myself to blame. I push people away and they get tired of trying to reach out to me when they constantly get a negative response. I didn't know for a long time that I put up such a wall. Many times it's just my automatic reaction. Something in me says not to get vulnerable, not to reach out, to stay safe and superficial, living alone in a bubble.
God made people not to be alone, I have heard. He made them for relationships, with others and himself. I'm not in that sort of relationship with him now, nor many others. I don't mean to minimize the friendships I do have. They are all dear to my heart. Yet my greatest fear, to be known and to know deeply, is also one of my longings, and it is not yet fulfilled. I am paralysed by the prospect of approaching relationship -- I freeze, hide, and the wall goes up. It's my MO, so to speak.
So today when I met with members of my treatment team and they challenged me to approach each of my peers and ask them three questions, I freaked out. I don't want to do it. Since it's a challenge, it can be refused but it looks bad if I do. It says to them that I am not ready to surrender. I don't want to give that impression out, but I'm not sure if I'm ok with letting go of my isolation. As lonely as I am ... well, this is what I know.

Quiet

Today was a very laid back quiet day. We only had one group, as one of the techs who usually works Saturdays and will lead a group was on vacation. Lucky woman. Quiet days are the hardest in some ways. I have too much time on my hands, too much time to think. Why is it so hard to be still? I feel I must always be busy and productive or I am not moving forward. Especially here, at the treatment facility, to which my family pays for me to go get help. Am I recovering on a daily basis? I don't know.
Maybe that's too much to ask. Life itself ebbs and flows, with times when nothing seems to get done and nothing seems to happen. I'm afraid, here, to be ok with it. For so long I have been not a human being, but a "human doing". I borrow the phrase but the meaning is this: that I've been performing for someone, whether it be God, my family, peers or others, or even myself, for so long that I don't know how to let myself just ... just be. It's hard for me to let go of the idea that I have to accomplish something worthwhile in order to be worthwhile. And mind you, the definition of worthwhile changes. What was enough yesterday may not be enough today. I end up in a constant flutter of "am I doing enough yet?" or rather, "am I enough yet?"
I am told I don't need to think this way, because in God's eyes I am enough, just as I am. And this is the hardest concept for me. For Him I feel the need to perform as well, and I berate myself for not being a good Christian, reading my bible and praying and being close with Him. I've actually been running from Him, so to speak, so I whip myself another lash for that. The truth I suspect is that He is waiting for me to come to Him just as I am, all broken up inside and hurting, and I am waiting for me to be a little better before I do so ... yet I can't wait much longer at an impasse. I feel driven toward Him, almost against my will. In these quiet days it is easier to feel the pull, relentlessly tugging at me to just talk to Him a little, even though fear, at this point, still holds me back.

Identity

Yesterday we had a restaurant outing. It causes anxiety for a lot of people because the portions aren't defined, you have to eat intuitively, and on top of all that you have to eat something someone else has prepared with god-knows-what ingredients. I wasn't terribly anxious myself. When I eat out I am with friends, and I am more focused for once on the conversation rather than the food. It's almost a relief to have an excuse to tell the eating disorder, I can't use you because I'm with someone else. So for me, in spite of the anxiety the outing went well.

After that we went to the park and had an experiential group about connection. We were required to talk about ourselves to another person, with another observing, using only "I am" statements. I am a daughter, I am an eating disordered person, I am creative, etc...It was difficult to talk about myself that much. We talked for maybe five minutes straight, and I struggled to find statements I could use. It makes me realize now that not only do I not like to talk about myself, I don't even know who that self is most of the time.
Identity is a big issue for me in my eating disorder recovery. Who am I without my disorder? I don't know. I've been struggling with this for six years, and before that I was just a kid, identity not fully formed yet. When I didn't know what to do, I did my eating disorder behavior. It was my vocation, my occupation, my life. Now it's going to go, and I have very little idea of who the person is who will emerge to take the place of Katrina the bulimic/anorectic. I don't even know if I will like her. Who is me? I don't know, and it scares me to pieces.

I'm addicted to food-control

It has been over a week that I've been at Rosewood Capri for treatment for my eating disorder. The first week was literally like coming out of a dream, a nightmare if you will. I was exhausted, barely able to function for the first several days. Before I went in I was binging and purging the binges every day, and restricting my food intake pretty heavily. From that I have been plunged into the world of "normal" eating -- following a meal plan that requires three meals and three snacks a day. It was a shock I expected, but a shock nonetheless to my body and my mind even more.
For someone who has a deep-seated but illogical belief that if she eats normally she'll balloon to blimp size in a matter of hours, it is extremely difficult to eat that often. For the "normie", you eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full, overeat or eat for emotional reasons some days and eat less other days because you're tired or sick or just too busy. For me it's different. I didn't eat when I was hungry until I was ravenous, then I binged and threw it all up... I ate for emotional reasons, didn't eat for emotional reasons. Food was no longer just food. It had the power, not to nourish because I didn't feel I deserved nourishing, but the power to numb and control feelings. I couldn't stop without help. I was addicted, still am addicted, to the emotional perks of doing this insane behavior.