Tomorrow is my birthday. I hope no one insists on taking pictures. I don't want to remember this repulsive body I am in. Not this year. I think I was literally 20 lbs lighter on my birthday last year.
I feel like when I am healthy, I am a nobody. I have nothing to offer. I blend into the background. My self esteem plummets. I wonder why I ever thought that recovery would be worth it. I toyed with the idea and did the work of gaining some weight back, but I have yet to reap the rewards. All I have gotten is more unhappy. My mood is really low and I am feeling more helpless than ever. At least when I was very underweight I could use that as soothing mechanism. Now that is gone too.
My weight now is not in the danger zone but my edema is almost as bad as when I was at my lowest weight. I don't understand! I have been doing things right (eating better but still purging) and gaining weight. I have been eating protein… I shouldn't have edema, right? Especially not to this horrible degree. This is fucking with my mind. On top of being close to a healthy weight (fat fat fat!!!) my ankles and calves are swollen with water, making them look even fatter. Pitting edema. Disgusting. I can poke my finger in 1/2" deep into my calf and it leaves an indent. I can feel the water squishing under my skin.
I don't want to see anybody. My clothes actually "fit" me again and are not hanging off. I hate my body. I hate myself. All this weight is stuck around my stomach right now since it hasn't had a chance to redistribute itself yet. Ha! And I don't plan on giving it a chance to do that. The past few months I have been trying to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. I've been tolerating the body hatred, telling myself that I will get used to it, that the pros of recovery outweigh the cons, that I CAN deal with this. But it is too much. I can't deal with feeling this shitty, this ugly, this FAT!!! All this weight has got to come off.
I am reaching that frenetic, high anxiety level and I'm ready to throw in the towel and head down the ED road again. Just a little bit.
Being healthier has not made one single difference in my life. I am still impatient with my son, I still think he deserves a way better mother. I want to cry when I think of how much time I have lost in raising him. All the years that he has wanted mommy there, mommy to play with him, mommy to be a real mommy. And how I have failed him and continue to fail him. Even with the xtra weight on me, I am still a zombie. He loves me so so so much and his face is filled with hope time and time again, that maybe this time I will play with him and devote 100% of my attention to him. But I can't. My mind is always pulled in so many directions: Weight, Food, Applying for jobs, Home Renos, Boyfriend. The guilt I feel is immeasurable. His sweet little face and unconditional love. I didn't earn that love. He loves me because I am his mother, but all I have done is literally given birth to him. I'm ashamed of the rest of my inferior mothering skills. I want to be better, but in all honesty, I don't have a fucking clue how to. I often wonder why I was given a child. I don't deserve a child like him. The easy route out would be to starve. Then nobody would expect anything of me. I would have an excuse for being a zombie-mom. But if I am healthy, I have no such excuse. Cop-out…
To end this depressing post, I will finish by talking about the one positive aspect in my life. Things are going well with my bf. I have been able to share everything with him (he even knows about b/p, which I have barely shared with anyone in real life!). He is so sweet and his personality is just what I need to keep me grounded. Thankfully I have managed not to go BPD-crazy with him. Whenever we see each other the time flies by and I get a glimpse of what it is like to be genuinely happy. But even this positive thing has a flip-side. He lives in a different country. The hoops we would have to jump through if we eventually decided to be together… it could take years. I am afraid to invest more of myself into this relationship. I want to know where he sees things going but it's only been a few months, so I don't want to jump the gun either. I'm trying to be brave but protect myself at the same time. <3
You are not fat. For what it's worth I truly think you are beautiful. I hope one day you will see that T. xoxo
ReplyDeletePlease, please don't give up on recovery. It does get better. It just takes a while for the symptoms of recovery to go away. I'm feeling the same thing - I am about 25 pounds heavier than I was last May, and part of me wants to go back to that. But there is no life in that. The only way out is to push through, and eventually you will look back on this and be glad you stuck with it!
ReplyDeleteYou can do it! Many of us believe in you!!!
{{{Hugs}}}
Your posts make me feel so sad for you.
ReplyDeleteFirst, you are surely not fat. You were a freaking skeleton before. It was not attractive. It was not cute. It was painful to see. You looked like death.
Is that what you want?? (I seriously ask wanting an answer.)
DO YOU WANT RECOVERY?
Why does recovery only mean "fat" to you? You're still purging. Who cares if you put on some weight? You're very much NOT IN RECOVERY, so don't even try to say that you are and it sucks. No, your eating disorder is what sucks!
Sorry to be harsh but you need it. I'm not trying to make you feel worse, 'cause I see you feeling awful already. I just want you to understand that what you're doing now is NOT recovery.
Are you seeing a treatment team or seeing anyone? If not, why??
You feel bad about being a bad mother. Your son needs you to be healthy. It is not too late to change and be the mother he needs. He needs his mom. You can't be fully there while you are engaged in your ED in any way, shape, or form.
I'm sorry you are obsessed with looking like a skeleton and feel that it's the only thing you had going for you, because that's really twisted. And untrue.
If you want to continue to be miserable, just keep engaging in your behaviors. You're a bright girl Tia. Come on.
I'm so sorry to hear you going through this... but like Angela says, it will all be for the best and it WILL get better. I feel like a terrible person telling you these things because I can't seem to reach a weight that is 'normal' myself, but I did gain a LOT and I remember how awful it was. Although my life is constantly plagued with wondering whether or not my ED is gone and I am meant to be this size, or if I subconsciously don't eat enough because of some fear of fat that I'm not even fully aware of, I can tell you that regardless of if you're technically 'recovered' living without being trapped by the ED is worth it. I've thought for years that you and I might have just about the same body type, and for that reason I think that if you kept doing what you are doing your edema would fade with time (and you'd look/feel/be skinnier) and the initial weight gain would probably slow and maybe you'd even lose a pound or two once your body reaches equilibrium. I think that the initial weight gain is enough to make anyone panic -- and that's normal because I can't think of anyone, ED or not, who wouldn't be alarmed by gaining that much. Similarly, living with bad edema sucks. If I were to guess, I would suppose that those two things alone might be enough to make it hard to be in a good mood and be happy with your life. But those things will go away with time and things will get better.
ReplyDeleteI'm also terribly sorry I forgot to wish you happy b-day, whether via email, fb, whatever. I was out of town in Wisconsin from last Thursday through the 24th, and we don't have internet there. My iPhone doesn't even get signal unless I drive into town (15-20min away) so I completely forgot! I hope you had a good day though!! I don't know if I've seen a recent pic of you (though I've seen a few of Zach and WOW he is growing!!) but, anyway, I'm 100% positive that you are gorgeous :) Though hopefully if you don't want pictures taken no one forced you to go through that on your b-day!
Please take care and stay strong!! Sending lots of ((hugs)) your way!
Kris, I don't know you but your comment left sort of a bitter taste w/ me...
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't sound like you are recovered. I'm not saying you're not working on recovery (I don't know what you're doing). You did state that you're still underweight and maybe not where your body would be if you let go of control. Everyone is different and yeah, I believe that people with EDs can be at the lower end of their range to be OK, but not everyone. It seems like you're resisting that, and maybe also encouraging Tia to do the same. And implying that she could/should lose a few lbs...am I misinterpreting what you're saying?
Just rubbed me the wrong way.
Oh wow, I don't usually come back to comments, but I'm glad I did. I would never suggest that Tia lose any weight... what I meant was that, for me, after my body reached equilibrium I lost, I think, about 2lbs from the initial weight gain. For me, that made recovery a lot easier because it showed that I wasn't going to spiral out of control in an upwards fashion (appealed to the ED part of me at the time). Since then, my weight has fluctuated with regular ups and downs -- I think that's normal? (Assuming it isn't huge gains or losses.)
ReplyDeleteLike you say, I question my recovery at times because I am at the lower end of my range, sometimes a bit below. I seem to be an odd one though, because I don't really control (count calories, weigh regularly, any of that) my weight to be at this size. For me, I seem to need to really work if I want to weigh more -- but it was not like that when I first recovered, which is what I wanted to convey, because the initial stages after recovery are different from the long-term. I really don't believe that there is a magic number that makes people better and I think that being healthy is the key. It was very hard for me to see that at first though, and a reminder that everyone's body will reach equilibrium at some point was, I guess, the message I was trying to get across -- although I must have done a rather poor job of it!
Kris, thanks for coming back and explaining!
ReplyDelete