If I haven't written much lately -- and I haven't -- it's because my life here has taken on something of a repetitive nature. I'm not bored, but even my struggles have a tinge of familiarity to them. Depression, I know you. Bad body image, check. Food struggles, little slips, I remember how it goes. I know this path because in some way I have been here before.
I had a routine before I came into treatment -- a routine of serial, self-inflicted abuse. Wake up, barely in time for daddy to pick me up for work, skipping breakfast entirely. Work itself was routine, taking call after call until the names and details blended together, and I felt numb and useless. After work I'd be drawn irresistably to the grocery store or a restaurant to pick up binge food. Binge followed binge, and then came the inevitable chore of finding a secluded bathroom where I'd purge until my stomach was empty and I was exhausted. I'd go home or to various appointments, then spend the evening secluded in my room while my roommates, who were dating each other, did their own activities, whether that be screaming at each other or flirting while making dinner. I'd go out for dinner and binge and purge more, or buy wine and drink until I fell asleep, only to dream restless dreams that woke me at two in the morning. I would binge and purge in the middle of the night, then sleep to wake up unrefreshed, dreading the cycle's beginning again.
The panicky thoughts of whether to not eat or binge and purge never stopped. Work thoughts, friend thoughts, family thoughts -- all were concurrent with a constant stream of abusive mental dialogue about food, my body, my depression. You suck, you piece of trash, you are a food-whore, disgusting and worthless, a complete failure, your life is meaningless, you should just give up -- over and over, interrupting what little life I had and destroying me from inside.
I dread going back to that, though in truth I still have not left it behind. The mind-chatter from the eating disorder is constant and steady, though some days not as loud. I am no longer so helplessly driven by it, but I fear that the semblance of order my life has taken is merely a byproduct of treatment. My mind is still very disordered, though my body is beginning to heal. I am slipping even here, fiddling with my meal plan, and it seems small but it isn't. Nothing is small when it's driven by an eating disorder mind set.
I am visiting home next weekend, and I am afraid. My new patterns are so shaky and formless. Can they stand up to the memories I will face as I go back to the place I left so sick? Facing home will be a true test of my recovery. So many places and people have a painful and shamelful significance for me. This is the bathroom where I purged so often, this is my therapist's office, this is the path I used to walk in the middle of the night to buy binge food, this is the grocery store I shoplifted food from, that's the restaurant I binged at and this is the one I was too terrified to try ... so many memories. Will the new pattern hold? How strong are the new thoughts, and how strong are the eating disordered ones? Am I brave enough, strong enough, willing enough to try something new? Or will I fall back on the comfort and familiar numbness of my disease?
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Falling
I woke up yesterday morning, and I was still in Arizona. I hate that some days, because it reminds me that I'm still sick, though I'm trying to get well. I woke up and remembered the thing I was trying to forget. I binged and purged in the early, early hours of the morning. I wanted to forget it, pretend it didn't happen and I didn't fall into my disease once again.
It had been about four weeks since I last did it. I was reaching my threshold of the longest time I've been without it, and the urges were getting stronger, stronger and louder. I don't understand why I gave in. I feel like a failure. I know it's not failing but it feels that way. it's hard for me to pick myself up after a fall like that. Extreme thinking tells me to just throw my recovery in the trash and do it again, and again, to wallow in my shame and misery and then numb it off with binging and purging. It tells me I'm a worthless failure, that my recovery is a lie.
I know this thinking is the real lie, but it's enticing nonetheless. It would be so easy to give up and listen again. I can't. I won't. I've come too far and I know too much of the truth to be happily, numbly blind again. I can pick myself up from this fall and begin again.
It had been about four weeks since I last did it. I was reaching my threshold of the longest time I've been without it, and the urges were getting stronger, stronger and louder. I don't understand why I gave in. I feel like a failure. I know it's not failing but it feels that way. it's hard for me to pick myself up after a fall like that. Extreme thinking tells me to just throw my recovery in the trash and do it again, and again, to wallow in my shame and misery and then numb it off with binging and purging. It tells me I'm a worthless failure, that my recovery is a lie.
I know this thinking is the real lie, but it's enticing nonetheless. It would be so easy to give up and listen again. I can't. I won't. I've come too far and I know too much of the truth to be happily, numbly blind again. I can pick myself up from this fall and begin again.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Relationship
Last night I went to an AA meeting with a few girls from the program. The topic was relationship, and made for a very insightful meeting. After dinner, we saw a late movie, just a chick flick really. Behind all the sex and cussing and cute comic dialogue the message I gleaned was this: If you're afraid of being hurt, try not to fall in love. Because love and relationships in general require feeling, and that includes pain.
After the movie, before which I drank far too much coffee, I was at home trying unsuccessfully to sleep. I had one of those 3 am epiphanies or something, at least my mind managed to connect the movie to AA and all I have begun to learn the past six or so years I've had or tried not to have an eating disorder. I realised that a relationship of any kind, with anyone, is a reflection of my relationship with myself. This could be why I'm not very good at them. For so long I've avoided, run from, hated myself. I really couldn't, and still sometimes can't, stand being me. Sometimes I'll avoid being friends with a certain person because they remind me so much of those parts of myself I dislike. This actually happened recently at the Capri. Sometimes someone reminds me of my own pain and I start acting codependent, wanting to save them. Other relationships are shallow, surfacy, what-are-you-doing-lately sorts, and I never get to know the actual person. We only talk about what we have in common or the simple easy topics because at least for my part, I'm afraid to reveal myself any more deeply. I have had very few deep relationships, in which each party feels and shares their inner world with the other. I have very rarely been truly known or truly known anyone. So perhaps it's no wonder that the movie left me, as is typical, feeling depressed and love-hungry and pessimistic. Whenever is love going to show up in my life like that?
Until I begin to have that deep knowing relationship with myself, I don't think any real love is possible. Until I allow myself to accept my flaws, how could I recognise and still accept the flaws in another person? Until I face my own hurts, what possible empathy or help can I offer to a fellow hurting human?
This was a depressing realisation at first, given that I don't really love or accept myself, and don't even know myself terribly well. I hardly know how to begin. The possibility of love, romantic or otherwise, felt very far off. But I think now that there must be hope, because of God. He doesn't have my flaws-- he can do what I can't. He can accept my broken, messed up, rebel heart and love it anyway. He knows me deeply and doesn't draw himself away or become codependent. He just loves, because he is love. He loves with all the range of feelings from anger to joy to pain, and doesn't stop loving for any one of them. So gradually, as I am loved and known, I can practice relationship with a perfect yet perfectly emotional being. As this happens, maybe I can begin to have that relationship with myself. And perhaps, if I let it, the deep relationships with other humans will be possible.
After the movie, before which I drank far too much coffee, I was at home trying unsuccessfully to sleep. I had one of those 3 am epiphanies or something, at least my mind managed to connect the movie to AA and all I have begun to learn the past six or so years I've had or tried not to have an eating disorder. I realised that a relationship of any kind, with anyone, is a reflection of my relationship with myself. This could be why I'm not very good at them. For so long I've avoided, run from, hated myself. I really couldn't, and still sometimes can't, stand being me. Sometimes I'll avoid being friends with a certain person because they remind me so much of those parts of myself I dislike. This actually happened recently at the Capri. Sometimes someone reminds me of my own pain and I start acting codependent, wanting to save them. Other relationships are shallow, surfacy, what-are-you-doing-lately sorts, and I never get to know the actual person. We only talk about what we have in common or the simple easy topics because at least for my part, I'm afraid to reveal myself any more deeply. I have had very few deep relationships, in which each party feels and shares their inner world with the other. I have very rarely been truly known or truly known anyone. So perhaps it's no wonder that the movie left me, as is typical, feeling depressed and love-hungry and pessimistic. Whenever is love going to show up in my life like that?
Until I begin to have that deep knowing relationship with myself, I don't think any real love is possible. Until I allow myself to accept my flaws, how could I recognise and still accept the flaws in another person? Until I face my own hurts, what possible empathy or help can I offer to a fellow hurting human?
This was a depressing realisation at first, given that I don't really love or accept myself, and don't even know myself terribly well. I hardly know how to begin. The possibility of love, romantic or otherwise, felt very far off. But I think now that there must be hope, because of God. He doesn't have my flaws-- he can do what I can't. He can accept my broken, messed up, rebel heart and love it anyway. He knows me deeply and doesn't draw himself away or become codependent. He just loves, because he is love. He loves with all the range of feelings from anger to joy to pain, and doesn't stop loving for any one of them. So gradually, as I am loved and known, I can practice relationship with a perfect yet perfectly emotional being. As this happens, maybe I can begin to have that relationship with myself. And perhaps, if I let it, the deep relationships with other humans will be possible.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Shopping
I went clothes shopping yesterday. For a normal person this can be stressful and depending on how the clothes look, even depressing. For me, with a newly acquired healthy body, it was devastating. Imagine not knowing exactly how much your body has grown in six weeks, and being confronted with a full length mirror in a dressing room, stripped down to your underwear with every new bulge hanging out for the mirror to mock. Then imagine not knowing what size clothes to pick, being used to the old body, and trying on item after item that was simply too tight in front of that same mirror. I haven't felt the same since.
I confess I have spent a lot of time critiquing myself in the mirror since I went shopping. Even when I'm not in front of the mirror I am hyper-aware of the flesh that wasn't there before, the way it clings to me in the most awkward of places, places I am horribly self-conscious about. To be honest, I miss my old, sick body. I'm not used to this one, and right now there are a lot of things I hate about it. I miss lying in bed, starving from having restricted all day or binged and purged, and feeling the flatness of my belly, the way the hipbones jut out, the fist size gap between my thighs. I felt uncomfortable then, but the thinness of my body comforted me. But even then, I wasn't enough. I could always be thinner, starve better, do better at work, relationships, money handling, you name it. I was always inadequate. I used to say I'd always be unhappy, so I might as well be skinny and unhappy than fat and unhappy.
It's hard to stay in recovery with such thoughts. I try to turn them around, now, but they always come back. The last thing I wanted to do after the shopping day was eat my lunch. I wanted badly to slip into my eating disorder. It promised to take the pain away, and make me skinny again. I know it's a complete lie, but tantalizing nonetheless. I forget all the horrible consequences the eating disorder brings, and I romanticize it and mourn its loss. But I know in my heart that going back is not what I want. It's only that it's going to take a while to get used to being healthy. Til then, maybe I don't need too many new clothes.
I confess I have spent a lot of time critiquing myself in the mirror since I went shopping. Even when I'm not in front of the mirror I am hyper-aware of the flesh that wasn't there before, the way it clings to me in the most awkward of places, places I am horribly self-conscious about. To be honest, I miss my old, sick body. I'm not used to this one, and right now there are a lot of things I hate about it. I miss lying in bed, starving from having restricted all day or binged and purged, and feeling the flatness of my belly, the way the hipbones jut out, the fist size gap between my thighs. I felt uncomfortable then, but the thinness of my body comforted me. But even then, I wasn't enough. I could always be thinner, starve better, do better at work, relationships, money handling, you name it. I was always inadequate. I used to say I'd always be unhappy, so I might as well be skinny and unhappy than fat and unhappy.
It's hard to stay in recovery with such thoughts. I try to turn them around, now, but they always come back. The last thing I wanted to do after the shopping day was eat my lunch. I wanted badly to slip into my eating disorder. It promised to take the pain away, and make me skinny again. I know it's a complete lie, but tantalizing nonetheless. I forget all the horrible consequences the eating disorder brings, and I romanticize it and mourn its loss. But I know in my heart that going back is not what I want. It's only that it's going to take a while to get used to being healthy. Til then, maybe I don't need too many new clothes.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Change
I'm not very good at change. It's something that brings up almost a visceral reaction in me, something I want to resist with all my energy. I used to think that I was flexible and I was fine going with the flow, but since starting treatment six years ago I have learned that is not the case. Small changes I can make without pain, like alterations to my schedule. External changes, changes in the environment or other people, I can handle. But changes in me? Ouch. Something inside of me screams when changing something about me, the way I think and operate and believe, becomes necessary.
Being in treatment demands change, an abrupt change of the daily addict's routine to a treatment routine, a change from so-called autonomy to following a treatment teams rules and recommendations. Recovering truly from an eating disorder requires even more. I am challenged here to change my very thoughts and beliefs, or at least entertain the idea that they may not be accurate. I am challenged to make long term changes to my schedule, my eating habits, my relationships and my living situation, any one of which may be unhealthy to leave as is and lead me into a relapse.
Case in point, and ever present in my mind, is following a meal plan. I am a self-identified meal plan rebel. I hate that meal plan passionately, and I want to eat when I want and what I want -- indicative of my rebellious lifestyle in general. Which is a problem, given that in my disorder I wanted either nothing at all or a whole grocery bagful and then some. The meal plan keeps me safe and regulated, but I feel so inhibited and controlled by its sensible regularity. I want excitement and thrills out of my eating experience (and I wonder if that's because I didn't allow myself any thrills from any other experience -- talk about ascetic!). But those thrills were unhealthy, and I am beginning reluctantly to accept that I am doomed to follow a meal plan for a while if I want to live a life of recovery. I am simply not capable of feeding myself following my own instincts right now. So every time I go to eat, I eat what is prescribed, and my little rebel whispers in my ear how unhappy it is all the while.
That's just an example, but the point is, it's hard to change, even if it's for the better. I am comfortable in my self-destructive patterns of eating. I am still more comfortable in my negative thinking. I've had it most of my life. But in order to have the rest of my life, I have to change, and as much as I protest and try to buck the saddle of change, God keeps gently laying it back on. A bad metaphor, but it works. Change is painful and uncomfortable, but a necessary part of a recovered life.
Being in treatment demands change, an abrupt change of the daily addict's routine to a treatment routine, a change from so-called autonomy to following a treatment teams rules and recommendations. Recovering truly from an eating disorder requires even more. I am challenged here to change my very thoughts and beliefs, or at least entertain the idea that they may not be accurate. I am challenged to make long term changes to my schedule, my eating habits, my relationships and my living situation, any one of which may be unhealthy to leave as is and lead me into a relapse.
Case in point, and ever present in my mind, is following a meal plan. I am a self-identified meal plan rebel. I hate that meal plan passionately, and I want to eat when I want and what I want -- indicative of my rebellious lifestyle in general. Which is a problem, given that in my disorder I wanted either nothing at all or a whole grocery bagful and then some. The meal plan keeps me safe and regulated, but I feel so inhibited and controlled by its sensible regularity. I want excitement and thrills out of my eating experience (and I wonder if that's because I didn't allow myself any thrills from any other experience -- talk about ascetic!). But those thrills were unhealthy, and I am beginning reluctantly to accept that I am doomed to follow a meal plan for a while if I want to live a life of recovery. I am simply not capable of feeding myself following my own instincts right now. So every time I go to eat, I eat what is prescribed, and my little rebel whispers in my ear how unhappy it is all the while.
That's just an example, but the point is, it's hard to change, even if it's for the better. I am comfortable in my self-destructive patterns of eating. I am still more comfortable in my negative thinking. I've had it most of my life. But in order to have the rest of my life, I have to change, and as much as I protest and try to buck the saddle of change, God keeps gently laying it back on. A bad metaphor, but it works. Change is painful and uncomfortable, but a necessary part of a recovered life.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Fears
"Fear not."
What a hard command that is for me. I am full of fear, especially now. I may be leaving treatment or stepping down to a lower level of care. I don't know for sure -- I'll find out more tomorrow -- but the uncertainty is driving me crazy. I'm so frightened. I don't feel ready at all. I've slipped several times, the last only a few days ago, and my recovery is fragile. I know what to do to get back on my feet, I know what I need to do to stay in recovery, but what I don't have is the experience of doing it.
I've relapsed so many times now that I don't care to count. I don't want to go back to the miserable eating disorder hell I came from, yet the disorder still has a steely grasp on my mind and heart, and part of me still longs for it. Things were miserable, but so simple with it. I didn't have to face all the spectrum of feelings. I didn't have to face myself, I didn't have to face life, temporarily. So the eating disorder calls me, every day. Binge, purge, restrict, it's ok, it's just one time, no one will catch you. Beat yourself up, call yourself a fat stupid ugly bitch, it's what you are. You don't deserve anything good, you failed piece of crap. Day in and day out, the voice in my head tells me it's gonna get me eventually, that I'm a failure and will never succeed. Not at recovery, not at life. It frightens me how strong the voice is still, and how much I still buy into it.
The other voices, faint in my head but present nonetheless, tell me I'm buying into lies. I am a valuable, precious child of God, redeemed and dearly loved, and with God I can make it in life and recovery. I believe these sometimes. I am afraid to believe them all the time, afraid of what that might mean if I did. Afraid of success, I think, as weird as that sounds. I'm used to and comfortable with failure. No one expects anything of a failure.
So here I am, caught in between the fear of my eating disorder and the fear of living life. Caught between fear of surrender and fear of the prison I already know in the eating disorder. I guess I have a choice to make. For now, I choose to live, and little by little surrender my fears to the only One who can truly handle them. It's hard, and in a few seconds I'll probably try to take them back, because I know them and they're weirdly comfortable. But for now, I just want to rest and let Him handle it. Fear is very tiring.
What a hard command that is for me. I am full of fear, especially now. I may be leaving treatment or stepping down to a lower level of care. I don't know for sure -- I'll find out more tomorrow -- but the uncertainty is driving me crazy. I'm so frightened. I don't feel ready at all. I've slipped several times, the last only a few days ago, and my recovery is fragile. I know what to do to get back on my feet, I know what I need to do to stay in recovery, but what I don't have is the experience of doing it.
I've relapsed so many times now that I don't care to count. I don't want to go back to the miserable eating disorder hell I came from, yet the disorder still has a steely grasp on my mind and heart, and part of me still longs for it. Things were miserable, but so simple with it. I didn't have to face all the spectrum of feelings. I didn't have to face myself, I didn't have to face life, temporarily. So the eating disorder calls me, every day. Binge, purge, restrict, it's ok, it's just one time, no one will catch you. Beat yourself up, call yourself a fat stupid ugly bitch, it's what you are. You don't deserve anything good, you failed piece of crap. Day in and day out, the voice in my head tells me it's gonna get me eventually, that I'm a failure and will never succeed. Not at recovery, not at life. It frightens me how strong the voice is still, and how much I still buy into it.
The other voices, faint in my head but present nonetheless, tell me I'm buying into lies. I am a valuable, precious child of God, redeemed and dearly loved, and with God I can make it in life and recovery. I believe these sometimes. I am afraid to believe them all the time, afraid of what that might mean if I did. Afraid of success, I think, as weird as that sounds. I'm used to and comfortable with failure. No one expects anything of a failure.
So here I am, caught in between the fear of my eating disorder and the fear of living life. Caught between fear of surrender and fear of the prison I already know in the eating disorder. I guess I have a choice to make. For now, I choose to live, and little by little surrender my fears to the only One who can truly handle them. It's hard, and in a few seconds I'll probably try to take them back, because I know them and they're weirdly comfortable. But for now, I just want to rest and let Him handle it. Fear is very tiring.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Year
I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. I only set myself up for failure and disappointment, expecting myself to keep them perfectly when nothing, in reality, is done perfectly. I believe in dreams, goals and hopes... but I hardly know what to hope for or dream of any longer.
The past six years in my eating disorder have been so other than what I thought my life would be. I find myself a little jaded about making any new plans. What if they all come crashing down, just like so many tries before? I get paralysed so often by fear of failure. It's scary for me to put my fragile little wishes for the future out there, knowing that I myself am the one who destroyed them before, knowing that it could happen again. So I hesitate. Dare I dream of a place of my own, school, a real career, travel, even love and friendship and happiness? I want to dream, and I want to be well, but how much is too much to ask? When asked in group what I wanted to be doing this time next year, I froze. I really was afraid to picture it, because what if it weren't that way and I disappointed myself again?
Don't get me wrong. I haven't given up hope by any means. I'm only saying that with a life like I've had these past years, and my recovery so fragile, my hopes and dreams must for now be very small. They have to be achievable, picturable. I hope that I won't purge tonight. I hope that I'll progress in treatment. I hope I can open my Bible a few times this week. Little steps, see, are all I can manage. As they say in AA, one day at a time. Maybe one hour or minute or meal. And maybe that's ok for now. The dreams will come.
The past six years in my eating disorder have been so other than what I thought my life would be. I find myself a little jaded about making any new plans. What if they all come crashing down, just like so many tries before? I get paralysed so often by fear of failure. It's scary for me to put my fragile little wishes for the future out there, knowing that I myself am the one who destroyed them before, knowing that it could happen again. So I hesitate. Dare I dream of a place of my own, school, a real career, travel, even love and friendship and happiness? I want to dream, and I want to be well, but how much is too much to ask? When asked in group what I wanted to be doing this time next year, I froze. I really was afraid to picture it, because what if it weren't that way and I disappointed myself again?
Don't get me wrong. I haven't given up hope by any means. I'm only saying that with a life like I've had these past years, and my recovery so fragile, my hopes and dreams must for now be very small. They have to be achievable, picturable. I hope that I won't purge tonight. I hope that I'll progress in treatment. I hope I can open my Bible a few times this week. Little steps, see, are all I can manage. As they say in AA, one day at a time. Maybe one hour or minute or meal. And maybe that's ok for now. The dreams will come.
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