Bored

I don't know what to do with myself. I slept in until 3pm today, I feel disgusting. My fingers and legs are swollen with water, I feel bloated, etc. I haven't eaten anything today and yet I feel so full I want to purge. But even *I* know it would be stupid to purge black coffee and diet pop. I feel so disgusting.

I'm bored, I don't know to do with my time. I've exhausted surfing the internet, I've done a bunch of crossword puzzles today already, I don't feel like reading (makes me too tired and makes me fall asleep). It's only 9:30 PM right now. I have lots more hours to go before bedtime but this only depresses me. I have no purpose in life. Boredom leads to trouble in my world. Because I start looking for ways to fill the time. Unhealthy ways. This is stupid stupid stupid.

at a loss.

I am at a loss as to what to do.
It's so tiring to keep fighting ed all day long and at night go on auto-pilot and screw up any small successes i might have had during the day.
the past month i have not been updating here because all i have to show for the past time is a string of failures.

I have resigned myself (temporarily I hope) to the fact that ed rules. After IP I fought hard. Really, truly hard. I hung onto drinking Boost daily for a good long time. And then it eroded away little by little and as my body lost strength, so did my ability to fight for health.

The rest of my life has been going downhill too: restructuring at work, custody stuff, housing stuff, friendships and relationships. I have very little going for me right now. At least work, my job, used to keep me going and keep me motivated. However, now nothing seems to be able to penetrate my numbness.

Life is messy

When you recover from an eating disorder, stopping the behaviour is just the beginning. It’s only when you’re truly healthy that you realize how much damage it has done to your life. You might have isolated yourself from everyone around you, derailed various aspects of your life (work, education), screwed up your health, etc. You probably have absolutely no idea of how to deal with stress other than by using that behaviour – and suddenly you are facing a huge amount of stress, stripped bare of your resources. There are the practicalities of life to sort out and relationships to repair, pain to live with, anxiety or depression to stave off.

It’s really fucking hard being stuck in the middle and wondering if a) things will ever get better and b) if you can survive until they do without going crazy. Sometimes the ed seems like the lesser of two evils.

I keep coming back to the question - is this really worth the effort? My health is better, in that I’m not going to collapse any time soon. But my mind and my life are a lot messier.

Realizing how stuck I am

I feel scared and tired and alone. I don't think this is depression talking . I'm too disconnected from my emotions to feel depressed or sad or anything. I think I'm just realizing the hole I've dug for myself, looking up, and wondering how on earth I will ever find the strength to climb out.

Everything is contingent upon something else. Work is linked to where I live which is linked to Zach's daycare which is linked to being too sick and insecure to take a leap of faith and do long-term treatment. There are too many things that I cannot abandon in order to go for a longer treatment stay. If i leave my job for treatment how will I pay for daycare, ongoing expenses, etc.

I stay stuck on this hamster wheel. What I want more than anything else is to move out. Away from my mother. I think that once I do that, it will be easier to make other changes. But it's also a risk medically. I feel sooo stuck.

"Every day is exactly the same"

I don't see an end to this. I haven't been updating because my life is so boring and so pointless. It becomes a really sad existence when the only things that stand out are your hospital admissions. I have started referencing my life in relation to hospitalizations rather dates. Ex. Between hospitalization 3 and 4, I did such and such. The deeper I get, the stupider I feel for still chasing this path and the harder it gets to put a stop to it. I actually feel relieved amidst the fear when I'm nearing a hospital admission. The relief comes from the respite I get from myself. Save me from me. Even if it's just for a couple of weeks.

Yes, it's really hard suddenly being faced with a meal plan in the hospital, but at the same time I finally get to hand the reigns over to someone else and "allow" myself to eat because the decision is no longer on my shoulders alone. But I can't live the rest of my life with someone watching over my every meal in order for me to eat it... it just doesn't work that way, yet the way things are going, those are the only times my mind lets go a little of the control, because the control is literally taken away from you.

I'm keeping down 1 Boost a day (yay!) but no food. Even a food that is the same number of calories as the Boost is too scary. Logic has completely lost its place in my ED'd mind. Weight is slowly dropping, nothing drastic, but enough to keep my ed happy. as long as it's not the same or higher, i'm OK with a slow weight loss right now. My body needs the rest.

These lyrics by Nine Inch Nails speak volumes about where I'm at right now:

"I believe I can see the future
Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
But then again
That might have been a dream
I think I used to have a voice
Now I never make a sound
I just do what I've been told
I really don't want them to come around

Every day is exactly the same
There is no love here and there is no pain
Every day is exactly the same"
-NIN

Anonymous Comments

This is a comment I just received on my baking blog a few minutes ago. My blog is Buttercreambarbie and the comment was made on my post from yesterday found here:
Panna Cotta & Florentines.

"You're an anorectic.. you actually eat the shit you bake? LOL what a fat ass."

Of course the person commenting was Anonymous. I thought I would be more upset, but the only thing running through my mind is this: Some people are so stupid!

The Early ED Days

When this ED first started, years and years ago, the comments I got (about how thin, how frail, how tiny) used to give me such a high. I lived for those comments and they fuelled my obsession with dieting and weight loss. Urging me to go further, to see what they would say. Even the negative comments like the classic, "You're so thin, go eat a sandwich!", made me feel proud and accomplished.

Fast forward 17 years to today. Yes, a small part of me does still feel that pride when I hear any such comment, but not to the extent as it did previously. It mostly just reminds me of how trapped I am in this identity that maybe that's all people see when they look at me. I've lost my personality, my passion, and consequently, most of my friends.

I ran out of sick time from work and I still have to pay for daycare and other expenses, so ... here I am back at work. I want to do some kind of long-term treatment program at some point, but today I'm actually doing OK. I'm trying so hard to stick to drinking [diabetic, lower calorie] Boost. Food is way too scary. Boost is a nice, neat package, pre-measured and consistenly portioned. I'm avoiding real food for the meantime, trying to find that line between eating enough to keep going but not so much that i cross the "must purge now" line. I feel really hopeful. Genuinely hopeful this time. :)

Freedom = Trouble

I had honest-to-god 100% good intentions to stay on track with my meal plan during my long (4hr) pass on the weekend. Then the moment I got out of the hospital, I fucked up. I purged. It was as though my brain clicked into "habit" mode and it was a train-wreck heading for disaster. I thought I could do this. I really believed in myself.

On the ward I was doing so well. Under controlled, supervised conditions, I can do this. With freedom comes fear. Everything slipped through my fingers like sand all within moments.

In the middle

I am ambivalent in every aspect of my life. I equally desire two polar opposite things with the same amount of passion. And therefore, I stay stuck in one place - this terrible middle ground. In this place you don't know where you're going and the time seem to repeat itself year after year.

My mind can come up with strong arguments for both sides of an issue. So strong that I end up not knowing what I really want because I can rationalize and justify anything but there is none of my feeling/intuition behind those arguments. I don't know how to connect logic with emotion.

This time in the hospital I feel a slight mental shift. I have a small grain of sensation that I *could* do this. Maybe, just maybe I want it enough to TRY.

But I'm as afraid to succeed as I am to fail.

Weigh Day

It was weigh day.
Let's just say there were a lot of unhappy campers.
I'm kinda 50-50 on it. My weight went up quite a bit (FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS) but my meal plan is not going to be increased from the basic/intro meal plan because my weight went up ie. my metabolism is shot to hell (RELIEVED NOT TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH MORE FOOD).

It makes me wonder if I ever do recover, if I'll never be able to eat a normal amt of food because of the damage to my metabolism.

It was extremely difficult to get through meals yesterday with the weight gain in the back of my mind as well as witnessing the other people struggling so hard at the table as a result of the weigh in. Some people who had been eating almost all their meals began replacing 100% of the meal, not taking a single bite off their tray. It was so hard to watch, but I do not fault anyone. Every person has their own struggle and their own timeline. I just feel guilty for eating 50% of my meal when someone else is eating 0%. Even if they are replacing with Boost.