This post is mostly in reponse to this post: Thank you for your honesty. I truly want people to be honest in their comments and I want people to be supportive. sometimes support means being brutally honest, but as usual, it's not WHAT you say, it's HOW you say it. I know that I am a less than stellar mother (I wholly admit that I'm a terrible mom!) and a not so great person overall. Maybe an ED is a really selfish disorder and maybe that makes ME really selfish too.
Sometimes I secretly wish I didn't have a son. I'm willing to give him to anyone who wants to watch him for a few hours of freedom. I look forward to work because I get some AWAY time from him. I do feel terrible for feeling this way, but I'm going to be honest. There's no use lying or pretending. I feel how I feel.
Don't get me wrong, I love him to bits and I'm blessed to have such a loving and wonderful boy, but I'm under no delusions that any of this is healthy for him. The incredible push and pull between me and my mother, the intense fighting we engage in does not create a healthy environment. My son asked me the other day, "why does grandma hate you?" It's toxic.
I am not brave enough to kill myself and I'm not sure enough that I truly want to die. Some days I feel like that's the answer to everything but other days I can see a glimmer of light. It's days like those that flicker through my mind, behind my eyelids when I contemplate truly ending it all. I am so fucking indecisive that I can't even decide to die. I guess there are SOME positives to being indecisive. If I were a more impulsive person I would be dead by now. Instead, I live in a semi-alive/semi-dead state of constantly toeing the line between being dead and alive.
I'm afraid of walking this line for the next 40 years, if I live that long. I have no social life, I have no energy, but I'm not "sick enough" to be institutionalized. I'm close, but not quite. This has gotta be the worst place I've ever been. At least if I were "sick enough" I could resign myself to living in a hospital for a good long time, thus abdicating me of all responsibility. I might finally feel free. I'm a fucking mess in the head but I'm "high functioning" which often works against me.
Regardless of how sick you are, or how detached you are from life, or even how bad of a mother you could be, I think it's impossible not to see that you are a good person and you're just trapped. I get the feeling that the reason you're stuck in this limbo between healthy and not, is because you're strong. If you weren't you would be locked up in the hospital, I think. We feel like we're strong enough to fight an ED on our own. I'm pretty sure that anyone out there with an ED thinks that at some point. I'm pretty sure that in order to have an ED you have to be a determined person from the get-go. It's that determination that helps us not eat when we're hungry, and that same determination that makes us think we can take this on and beat it all by ourselves every time we're faced with the option of treatment. In the long run, I think that no matter how you do it, you have to realize that you can't beat it on your own. Most people who get better have to reach out for help, either to doctors, family and friends who will no doubt involve doctors, therapists, or even some higher power as in the 12-step program.
ReplyDeleteI also think it's ridiculous to say you aren't providing your son with some "ideal" environment in which to grow. It sounds like your family is supportive and caring, and if you didn't let them share a role in Zach's upbringing and life, then maybe it could be an argument. You seem to be fully aware that your ED holds you back sometimes, or that you need a break sometimes, and you've arranged for the proper care in the meantime. People who are bad parents just seem to say f*** it I'll go get messed up and let the kid deal. It doesn't strike me as though you've ever done this, or would ever do this.
And it is also nuts to say you're addicted to being sick. I'm pretty sure you don't sit around thinking of new ways to get sick -- you're already stuck that way for now. Being sick comes along with the addiction. And, really, if I had to make a guess, it sounds like in your case maybe being sick is just a way to show people how you feel and that you need help. The only thing here that doesn't entirely make sense to me is that when people try to help you... back to the previous paragraph, you don't want help, you want to do it on your own.
I guess the first step to truly getting better, is probably accepting that you have to surrender control and let someone else step in and help. I guess what an outsider doesn't get here, is that every situation is different and sometimes accepting that step takes the longest (just ask someone in AA). I know you'll get there someday, and for now, baby steps seem perfectly reasonable.
xoxo ((hugs))
Anon 1 here!
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to comment properly and I will come back. However, can i just say how brave and real you are in talking about the feelings you have about your son. How you love him but sometimes wish you didn't have him. It takes great courage to speak this stuff. I just wanted to make a comment that stated how un-shameful it is to post this and important to acknowledge these feelings. Something here feels much more real than your other posts. I think if other people will engage with you here and ask a bit more to help you explore what it is you truly want right now then you may get something valuable from it
I just have to throw my 2 cents in here and say that i do not believe that a mother's love for her child cannot "cure" her eating disorder.
ReplyDeleteBack before i had kids and I was in treatment with women who did, I thought "what's wrong with them! They have kids! If I had a child my eating disorder would be over. Period. You just cant do that stuff when you have children." But then I had my girls and unfortunately I still struggle. I feel alot of guilt over this. I think, how can I engage in these behaviors that could possibly take me out of their lives? I think that others judge me, too. But I just think, they dont know me. they dont know my heart. I love my children more than anything. But it's not a matter of love. Eating disorders (and other mental illnesses) are complex diseases that are extremely hard to cure.
But that doesn't mean that you just give up. Don't give up on yourself! As long as you are alive, there is hope :)
im agreeing with lisalisa. i thought all my problems with food would go away when i was pregnant.. it sadly did not and actually got worse as the years have gone on.
ReplyDeletei think you do want to get better for your son, to be there for him, so he does not grow up without you- even if you are struggling, it means you are still fighting to live for him- and when he is older, that will be worth more to him than to come home one day and find you gone.
my mother and i famously do not get along and its very stressful right now because i am too living with my parents. i try to stay out of the way, but sometimes it just doesnt work.
as far as reaching out and getting help? i'll be blunt, its crazy to think you might be able to win this battle by *yourself*(and i mean without the help of doctors, hospitals, therapy, etc..). do whatever it takes to make it- seriously. the greater the obstacle, the greater the glory in overcoming it.
I certainly do not think having children and one's love for them can cure or even necessarily improve one's ED, if this is what you meant by and not what it suggests
ReplyDelete" i do not believe that a mother's love for her child cannot "cure" her eating disorder."
But I think you take on a responsibility when you have a child to do your utmost to keep them safe and well and give them the best foundations you can in life. I cannot sit here and judge your parenting skills, Tia. I cannot say you are a bad mother because I do not know you and only see what you put on your blog. I could not fairly judge you on that. However, you do seem to care that you can't be there for him properly because of your ED, which would suggest you're not a bad mother, but you're too sick to be there for him.
I'm glad you say you're not "brave enough" to kill yourself, though I would say you are killing yourself it;s just that it is a more ambivalent way of doing so. I'm not sure it;s about being brave as opposed to certain that that is what you want. And i think that;s what you struggle with (like most of us) is that total lack of certainty in a world without an ED consuming every minute, thought and action.
I would bet my life that if this were to come true:
"At least if I were "sick enough" I could resign myself to living in a hospital for a good long time, thus abdicating me of all responsibility. I might finally feel free"
you would not feel free. You would not feel more worthy.You would not likely be seen and heard and understood either. You may feel written off and hopeless and trapped. Other people making decisions for you has it's appeal but when it actually happens (as I think you experienced) it begins to feel unbearable pretty quickly. I've been in this place and I didn't feel free. I felt more alone than ever, less connected to the world and less like people wanted to know or understand. i didn't feel supported and cared for though I was long term hospitalized and so felt worse because no one else was going to help me as surely being in hospital means all that is being taken care of? Nope.
You have to reach a place inside you whereby you are willing to do what you have very little desire to do. You have to look the future in the face and see yourself 5, 10years down the line having either died (and what that leaves behind) or you still doing this with god knows what awful complications, or just the mere feel of this way of living. Is it worth it? Is all this really worth it?
Or is it worth trying to find a way forward for you and your family?
is there anyway you and your mother could have some family therapy?
anon1
You are so lucky to have a child. All of you here who write and have children are so blessed. I am 44 and have been battling anorexia for years. I finally became weight-restored last year, but I was still on the thin side and I had a miscarriage in January, which caused me to spiral into a relapse so bad I'm going to Renfrew in a few days for treatment.
ReplyDeleteThis was my last chance to have a child. Once I return from Renfrew, I will be 45 within a few weeks and the likelihood of me having a child is nil to none. No, I didn't think a child would save me or fix my ED. But I will never have the chance to be a mother; no adoption agency will touch me with my history of anorexia.
Get better and give your son a childhood worth remembering! Do anything it takes! Anorexia has taken the dream of motherhood away from me; don't let it take what you have away from you.