"Contemplation Group"

This afternoon is the first day of a Group at the hospital. The group is "Contemplation". Contemplating recovery I guess...

I'm semi-dreading going because I have to take public transit 1.5 hours to the hospital in the bitter cold (it's snowing right now), then sit for 1.5 hours in the group then transit back home 1.5 hours. All in all, a 4.5 hour commitment. Of course the same old anxiety-provoking thoughts are flooding my head - Will I be the fattest one there? Will I have anything to say, will people judge me? But I'm not going to back out of it. It's only 4 Wednesdays and I know I could use the support. I just wish I felt deserving of support. Thin enough to be cared about. Will I ever feel deserving? I need to constantly prove that I'm worth worrying about or worth the space I occupy.

I overcame a huge challenge last night! I went to a food blogger meet-up and survived! I was invited to this event through my baking blog: ButtercreamBarbie. It was a huge challenge for me to go since I would be surrounded by food and food-loving people, but I also knew it would be fun getting to meet other local food bloggers. It was also exciting to be invited and "recognized" as one of the small number of people (20) invited. I've had my baking blog for 1.5 years now and I've made some great friends online. Anyways, the meet involved appies, a cooking demo, a hands-on cooking class and then dinner where we ate what we had just made in the class. OMG... I had to keep trying to stay calm especially when I saw how much butter and oil the chef kept adding to the pan.

The dish we cooked: Free Range Chicken Breast, Mushroom Risotto and Pomegranate Sauce



My heart was pounding as dinner-time rolled around. I managed to push the food around my plate and resort to all those old ED tricks of making it look like you ate. Then I took the rest to go and said I had to leave to pick up my son. I use this excuse more often than I would like to admit in order to not eat or to get out of things I don't want to do. Overall, I'm glad I went and it was nice to put faces to names of bloggers and to learn some cooking tips from a professional. Maybe one day I will be able to enjoy the taste of the food too, not just the appearance of the plated dish.

Annoyingly nosy church-goers

It really annoys me how NOSY church people can be. They have good intentions, but NOSY IS STILL NOSY! I haven't been attending church for a while now and it largely has to do with people poking around in my business and 'praying for me' and 'discussing [my] illness' behind my back (AKA Gossiping about me).

I helped out volunteering to work at the coffee bar at the church's Fall Fair a few weeks ago and I guess my so-called-thinness made it obvious that I have a problem. My mom is a private person and doesn't talk about my ED to anybody at church, yet today someone gave my mom a book called "Starved" by Mercy Ministries. It makes me feel slightly violated or like my privacy has been intruded upon. Just by my appearance people are making assumptions about me and they feel like they have the right to offer their 2 cents. Yes, they are right about the ED thing, but there could be other reasons for someone being thin, right? It could be a metabolic disorder, cancer, some other disease... not necessarily an eD. i guess that is why I'm so irked by their well-meaning prying eyes. If I wanted to share my inner turmoil, I would.

They want to reach out to me but instead they are pushing my further away and make me want to hide myself even more. Sometimes I think my mind is getting more and more warped as the days go by. I feel like the world is twisting and tilting and it's harder and harder to be around people. I wish I could let things slide off me like water off a duck's back, but instead I obsess and ruminate and self-destruct.

Nobody to be accountable to

I feel so abandoned. My T is now off until at least the end of November if not longer. Family/personal reasons that will be divulged to us when she returns. I am flailing. My safety net is crumbling. I usually am pretty good at pushing things down beneath the surface and "forgetting", but I couldn't shake the fear that overwhelmed me today when I realized just how alone I am right now and how incapable I feel.

In the past week my weight has dropped quickly. Without my T around to get on my case to keep up my weekly bloodwork, I am avoiding the lab. I'm pushing the boundaries - like a child - trying to see what i can get away with. Lately I eat something with the intention of keeping it down but panic sets in and I find myself bent over a toilet bowl. It's almost second nature, triggered by any feeling of fullness.

I'm dealing with much too much right now. My son is acting out at preschool, being destructive and not listening and it's getting out of control. I don't have the energy or the knowledge of how to deal with this. He also hates going to his father's house. HATE is not an exaggeration either. I'm thinking of taking him to a child psyc. because he gets so anxious about it... he also refuses to talk about what he does there, etc. His daycare has also told me how concerned they are and they even call me at home, after hours, to discuss what's going on. I am in over my head with nobody to turn to either.

I am being pulled in every which way. My work is starting to slip. This is the one area that has always been sacred to me, but even that is slipping away. What have I become? This is not the life I enveisioned for myself. Where is the little girl I once was, the little girl with dreams and hopes and a twinkle in her eye. I lost her so long ago. I would never have guessed that at 26 I would be such a train wreck. This is not the path I thought I would be on. I thought I would somehow "outgrow" the Anorexia I guess. I was so naive. Now I realize that if I don't do something to change it, I will be like then in 10, 20, 30 years. But I don't know how to change. I am too scared. I'm a fucking wimp.

This song expresses what I cannot.

Somewhere in Between, by Lifehouse:

Losing sleep over this
No I can't
And now I cannot stop pacing
Give me a few hours
I'll have this all sorted out
If my mind would just stop racing

Cause I cannot stand still
Can't be this unsturdy
This cannot be happening

This is over my head
But underneath my feet
Cause by tomoroow morning I'll have this thing beat
And everything will be back to the way that it was
I wish that it was just that easy.

Robotic

I have forgotton what it is like to feel something real. I have lost the ability to connect my thoughts to my feeling. To turn on some sad music and cry until my chest hurts and my eyes are puffy and swollen. But these days I feel nothing. I try to feel but then the feelings feel fake. I don't trust my own judgements then my BPD tendencies kick in and flood me with doubt.

My T says that my body just doesn't have the energy for emotion right now. It's an adaptation to starvation in order to conserve energy. But this leaves me feeling like a robot. I don't even know if I can feel love anymore. I know logically that I "LOVE" my son, but I don't truly know the feeling of love. I'm a robot whose inner workings need to be tuned up every so often - I want someone to push my "Reset" button and give me clean slate, a new start. I fantasize about moving away where nobody knows me and starting all over again.