BLURGH.

Today has been very very up, and then really upsetting 😦 

My biggest hate is that most people do not understand eating disorders or what good nutrition is. People have almost no idea what goes in their mouths, or how they judge what others eat and being around such people is hard. A lot of the time we are having fun, enjoying each others company and working hard at school… Annoyingly, some stupid comments were made tonight, and even though I don’t think they were intended to be harmful, I am broken. 

How I will get up tomorrow and do what I have to do, I don’t know. I just hope that people don’t see me as the chubby, horrible person I feel right now.

Don’t even know what I’m thinking..

In a perfect world, a family would be like the 2 parents, 2 children and dog that small children draw outside a perfectly symmetrical house, where it is always summer and the flowers are pretty. In reality however this is not how it goes…

I do feel lucky to have both parents who support me, but our relationships are kinda tense and awkward. I phase in and out of being normal, then being weird with one; with the other it is always a case of wishing they weren’t around :S Hopefully being away for a while (starting tomorrow) might make it easier. Who knows!

Can you ever win?

Lately, nothing I do is enough. I mean it has always been this way, but the feeling getting is stronger, i’m sure of it. I keep telling myself that when I move house I will take a little time to get into the swing of a new life and then go to a doctor. The goal of when I am “allowed” to go keeps moving tho. What on earth am I supposed to do? 

Right now I am too tired and feeling too emotional about all the goodbyes to do anything, yet I can’t let myself sit down yet.. I hate it when this happens.

One day I would love to be free of the obsession and the lack of freedom my control of food gives me, but I never want to be out of control of my body. I have stay on top of everything and be thin: simple.

Comfortable and scared at once?!

Today I have worked out why everything feels so weird lately: I am terrified and excited about the changes that are coming, while simultaneously at a comfortable point in my eating problems. I have (mostly) conquered anxiety. and am slightly less depressed more of the time… Basically this small amount of increased “control” is making me feel kinda stable despite the fact that I am not (in terms of myself or my life.)

I am completely confused and just wish I could know where I stand, as some days I can clearly see I have a problem; on others I feel like my routines and habits are all ok, sensible even. It is only in the face of negativity and stress that I can see what other people must see all the time, yet at the same time, I am certain most people don’t understand or believe my issues exist/ are at the level they are. How weird is that?!

Am I a strong person or is my eating disorder voice a strong person? I don’t think I know…. All I can say is that the advice, patience and care I have been fortunate to receive from a small amount of those around me  is keeping me hanging on.

 

Worrying

There is never a time in life when there is nothing to worry about. I am learning that this is just a fact, but how you deal with worry is what is important. 

Right now, a lot of things are very scary and very unknown; in fact I am beyond terrified. I want to know what is going to happen and to feel in control of it all 😦 The only thing I CAN do is to take one day at a time…

Habits

As time goes on I come to notice more and more about when and why I take control over food and exercise. Today for example, I begun to feel stressed about the countless tasks I need to fit into this week. My first thought was to plan my food for tomorrow, do an extra hour of walking and then make a list of what I need from the supermarket.

Apart from being a substitute for accomplishing the actual tasks I have to do, it served no purpose other than making me obsessive and more worried!

So then I asked myself why  do I bother? Well, of course the answer was that being thin means having an external display of my control AND making my body small enough to a) be a dancer and b) allow me to disappear quite literally when things seem tough.

To be honest, I have arrived at a worryingly comfortable level with my problems: I can be more assertive and calm about some aspects, but then use those new found skills to exert more power over food and set myself more and more goals when in a less positive mind frame. As usual I can’t really figure out where my head is at, so hopefully I am doing enough to get to where I want my body, while also learning and understanding more about myself and my disorder, so that when I do decide to commit fully to changing I know what I am facing.

Exercise (and a rant about being misunderstood!)

Walking is something I now have a love/hate relationship with. As I write, I am marching rigidly in the same patch of he kitchen I always do. If someone were to stop me from doing this I would literally go crazy and never eat again. The idea of not having moved enough in a day is one I can barely comprehend, because it is too painful and scary. I might be tired and still have an hour and a half to go tonight, but not doing it would be far, far worse.

Lately I am also becoming more and more frustrated at people’s general lack of understanding about what anxiety and eating disorders are about. I hate the fact that lots of people assume they can accurately guess your mental state without any evidence at all; just because I made myself laugh at a sarcastic comment does not mean I am not depressed or on the brink of panic.

I wish that society stopped having this fixation on eating disorders being about the body. Sure, I focus on it 24/7, but the underlying issue is that I feel lost, or frightened or sad or insecure etc…For me, it is a way of concentrating and handling extreme emotions, and sometimes a way of crying out for help when I have no words to explain why I need it.

I’m not saying that I’m perfect and everybody else is dumb or wrong (actually if I were to list my flaws I would be here for waaaaay too long), but I do know that accepting the present and trusting that everything happens for a reason is essential. Despite everything I am proud to say that I have a driven attitude in the face of despair and anybody who thinks my life is any less imperfect than theirs because of my outward (often false) happiness is WRONG. Very few people I know are able to put themselves in my shoes, where food, body shape and insecurity dominate pretty much everything and sometimes I want a break from pretending I am ok. It is hard to admit that because my ed wants me to shut up and get on with it, but I gotta say that the general attitude toward problems like mine are far from helpful.

I am really exhausted, so tomorrow’s plan is to eat much less so that I can sleep a little more. Here goes nothing….

What’s meant to be will always find a way. – Trisha Yearwood

Shutting the door

Today, at around 7 pm, I went upstairs and shut the door. For a good few hours I allowed the tears, panic and thoughts of wishing I was dead to flood in. I have simply had enough. I hate never knowing whether I will reach whatever goal it is I have set myself on the day I want to, or feeling like my life is out of control. It is scary and I can’t run away, so I chose to stay still and hope for the day not to end. Tomorrow means I have less time.

Being happy on the outside is an aim I have almost all of the time (I mean why would I want to have a conversation with my family about it? They can’t help; in fact it would probably make it worse so what is the point!) The disorder voice in my brain thinks it is brilliant when other people stop questioning my behaviour or mood and leave me alone, but a piece of me wishes that people could truly understand exactly how complicated and upsetting life can be when you are in this situation.

I always feel guilty when others say things like “oh but there are children in the world starving to death” because I know that, and I wish that deserving people like them could have better lives. However, the world is how it is, and what I do does not effect the circumstances of someone thousands of miles away! Such comments can sometimes make me feel conceited and vain, yet I know that deep down my worry is a lot more intellectual than just wanting to look nice. Some of it is so confusing that I can’t really articulate it all, and so the willing to starve and get thinner appeals as a double whammy:
1. So that I can be thinner and feel nicer about myself
2. As an external demonstration of the state that is on the inside

In order to pick myself out of the ‘wanting to die’ hole, I used the best method I have been given: writing. I scribbled down as much as I could get out of my head, made an ordered plan of what I want to achieve and when, and made myself think of some positive points to remind myself of (just as I have been told to do before…) Now I am walking for the fourth hour today.

Exhausted and apprehensive, as always, about whether or not I will fail with food and exercise tomorrow, I am going to go and do something else…

Am i going crazy?!

I keep on thinking over the last few years and feeling pleased at the things I have been able to do, like deal with some food related challenges, learn to better control anxiety, have more control over depression etc… All of those things are connected to, and only in existance because of the eating disorder, so am I getting better (in some form!) without eating any more?!

I think it would be wrong to say I have achieved nothing, because I know that I am mentally not the same person… But my thoughts about weight, food and my body are all the same, if not even stronger. Some things that I have worked on are improving, but I’m still deliberately aiming to lose weight.

I must be moving forward or backward, and I appear to be going one way in terms of “side effect problems” and the other way in terms of the actual food bit. Who knows!