"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.

Burdened

I'm out of control.
There was a time when I could not purge. My body refused to bring anything up. Then little by little, I learned.
I used to be proud of my newly acquired skill. I used to feel accomplished when I made myself throw up.
Now I cannot stop. The decision is made for me - purge because you CAN.
There's a terrible guilt that eats away at me, screaming at me, telling me, GET RID OF IT. YOU MUST! YOU CAN! IF YOU DON'T YOU ARE WORTHLESS.

It's haunting me and following me. The urge doesn't let me keep anything down except for candy. [Because candy doesn't make me *feel* full. Thank god for that or my blood sugar would be sooo low.] My throat is perpetually sore and my mouth is so dry.

I honestly don't know what to do. Every day I wake up with the best of intentions, promising myself that TODAY I will not give in. And by tht end of the day, I have failed again. I'm only just getting to bed now - 2:17 AM. Then I will wake up and hope for the best all over again. I'm so fucking tired... of this...

The Lab

Just a little thing that bugs me. The lab for weekly bloodwork.
I already feel self-conscious going in there every week, amongst all the geriatric patients.

Usually the staff are really nice and they recognize me and we chit-chat, but there was this new girl working at the front counter. She had to check all my info and in doing so, she said loudly, "so these results are going to the eating disorders clinic at x hospital?" Well of course all the heads turn to check me out - the real life anorexic - and I immediately feel self conscious and not thin enough. I wish it wouldn't matter what others thoght. I'm afraid they'd look and think: well she's too fat to have an ed.

I haven't been around the past week - was in hospital just getting blood sugars and lytes back in check. But I hope to be around and post more often. Xoxo.

Therapy-less

I got a call from my T's office yesterday, the day before my appointment, saying that something has come up and she has to cancel all appointments for the next 2-3 weeks.

Part of me is happy for the break from therapy but the other part of me is freaking out. The longest I've ever been without treatment is 3 weeks, so this is pushing it for me. I've been a mental wreck. I'm pretty close to giving up and no longer fighting against the ED. Nothing works. Maybe something like Mercy Ministries... I dunno... in the mean time I will just hang on here, like on the "razor's edge" as one doc put it.

I have some extra nutritionist and doctor's appointments scheduled in during that time so at least I'm meeting with SOMEONE - not totally dangling on my own and left to my own devices. They don't trust me. I don't trust me either.

Feeling a void

This is going to sound so clichéd but it's the truth.
I feel like I need something. There is a deep void that I need to fill in my life. I don't know what I need to fill it ot why it's there. I don't even think about it every day, but when I'm left with my own thoughts for any length of time, my mind starts drifting towards this void.

I've gotta stop comparing myself at x time to the same time last year. Especially during the fall/thanksgiving/christmas I tend to reflect upon where I was last year, my weight and ED compared to last year, how STUCK I am. And every year I get more and more depressed about it because it just means another year has gone by and I'm still stuck.

I find it strange how the more you starve, the more ACTIVE your brain gets obsessing over everything (food and non food related). I would expect the brain to slow down but mine doesn't. It runs me round and round in circles faster and faster, freewheeling.

My T says the ultimate goal is to learn to manage your own anxiety without relying on external sources. Is that even possible? How can you not react to things going on around you and things people say/do, etc. I cannot fathom this "goal". We don't live in a vacuum, there are external things in life that will cause anxiety to go up and down... How can I separate myself from the external? Maybe THAT's why people go into meditation. To find that inner nirvana. Dammit, I can't even sit still long enough for a 1 hr yoga class.

Anorexic "noise"

Just wanted to share:

This might seem painfully obvious to some of you, but it helped me understand things better. The gist of the article is that recovery from an eating disorder makes the brain "noisier." When a person with anorexia eats, they experience high anxiety, thought disturbance, and "noise." The noisy AN brain has layers of noise. The longer the anorexic delays eating, the lower the noise gets. Recovery doesn't mean that the noise goes away, it means you understand it and manage it better. To some extent, you get used to the noise. (Laura Hill from the Center for Balanced Living)

The noise is at its worst just as you reach a healthy weight [hence me being freaked out and losing the weight ASAP]. I have never been able to tolerate the distress. However, apparently if you can ride it out for long enough, it lessens. The noise goes away little by little. It all boils down to a timing difference between when your body reaches a healthy weight and your brain catches up.

This stretch of time is the most challenging. To the general public, you look healthy and "normal" but inside you are still stuck in deep anorexic thinking. This is when despair can take over. The noise is worse than ever and yet everyone thinks you're "fine." At this point I always feel like a phony, like I'm screaming beneath glass. That everyone will leave me now that I'm "fine".

No more pretty boxes

I don't know WTF is going on with my head.
All of a sudden, I'm sliding, fast.
All those little things I noticed before (pushing meals later and later, eating candy instead of real food, become more ritualistic and obsessive in general)... I was right about them being 'a sign' of bad things to come.

I am so ashamed, for the past 2 days I've rushed out "to do errands" on my coffee breaks to go puke in the washrooms at our neighboring facilities. I have completely elimiated eating breakfast and lunch now and the little amount that I do let myself eat at 3pm... that's what I've been purging on my coffee breaks. Today I used the handicapped washroom in the senior's centre building for god's sake. I have never been one to purge on work time before. It used to be a strictly evening or late night thing, but now all my pretty little boxes that I used to compartmentalize my life in are falling apart. Blending together. Becoming one big mess.

Then I return to my desk after splashing water on my face, wiping away the smeared eyeliner and rubbing some strongly scented body lotion on my hands. Pretending that my heart isn't pounding in my throat, my legs aren't feeling shaky and that everything is just peachy. I feel like this monster is stronger than ever. Instead of making it shrink, IP made it worse.

I'm being switched over to the "Complex Care" clinic for my treatment at the hospital now. It was so nice to have a little break from the weekly bloodwork, but now I'm back on that train again. I still feel so full. I am paranoid now. I can feel the cottage cheese sitting like a rock in my stomach now, even though I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. I cannot afford to have the edema come back. Once that happens, I go beserk and everything just goes downhill that much faster. Thank god I'm still edema free... but for how long. I'm pushing my luck.

I NEED my life to stay separated in compartments so that I can be a good worker at work, a good mom to Zach when I'm with him and ONLY FALL APART when time allows. After everybody's gone to bed and I have no further responsibilites. But now I can't separate things. I'm scared.