10 yes statements that are true for me:
Yes I listen to my eating disorder sometimes
Yes I wish I could be recovered
Yes I lack self confidence
Yes I am book smart, but not mind smart
Yes I love animals
Yes I am a worrier
Yes I believe in fate; I’m where I’m supposed to be right now
Yes my depression doesn’t mean I never laugh
Yes I love to bake
Yes I will get better
Feel free to carry on the 10 yes statements so everyone can learn more about each other 🙂
So, there are very few words beginning with x. I hope you all realised that the three x’s are kisses in the title! 😂
I type kisses to people in messages multiple times a day without really thinking about it. I obviously wouldn’t kiss all of those people in real life, but xxx has become a symbol of my care for others. I struggle with attachments in my life sometimes, and get caught up on whether or not their message has kisses/ emojis or whatever at the end. These are the silly things you worry about when you aren’t talking face to face…
I love that feeling of care I get when I see little kisses or emojis from my friends and family. I’m lucky I have people who care about me. Not sure why people would put their time and effort into caring about me, but they do…
When I first needed help from professionals I had to wait…. It was a looonng wait for somebody utterly insensitive and incompetent. The fact I had waited only fuelled my overall frustration. Since that time I’ve been waiting to be good enough to recover.
What am I waiting for? To stop eating altogether? To purge enough times for it to bad enough? To be a certain weight? To wear a certain item of clothing?
To win at eating disorder is to be 0. Size 0. 0 pounds. 0 calories… To be dead. I forget it’s an illness. Illnesses kill.
I actually made the effort to go with friends to a restaurant this evening. Normally I can’t be bothered, or I’m too stressed to go. I went. They all are loads while I ate a plain, grilled piece of chicken and drank water. It was pretty cool to just enjoy their company, but I did start to wonder if I could feel that way without the security and pleasure that I get from eating significantly less than those around me…
When it isn’t to do with my ED, I’m usually someone who takes opportunities and hates waiting, but with the voices in my mind it’s different.
I’m always going to be waiting because without dying I can’t be good enough.
I make some pretty hefty vows to myself sometimes, such as:
I will eat more tomorrow
I will never binge ever again
I will only eat x until x
I will do extra exercise everyday even when I’m dancing hours a day already
Yep. I have no sense of human limitations or kindness towards myself. I think the happiest people I know make vows to themselves that are flexible. Like I will eat more fruit this week than last week.
Eating disorders are rigid. Mine makes me feel that sticking to my vows is perfect and anything else is failure. Eating disorders are liars.
One of the most difficult aspects of mental illness is feeling misunderstood. Everybody has a set of feelings and symptoms unique to them, making it all too easy to feel alone with your struggles.
Personally, I hate articulating my thoughts or emotions aloud because I suck at it. I can write or type them okay, but ask me to open my mouth to another human being and you’re in trouble! The difficulty I have with speaking about things is one I imagine other people experience as well (and if you’re reading, hey there!), yet there’s another much larger problem: so many people have no clue about mental health problems anyway (a few do, this is a general point I’m making…)
How do we make people understand something they can’t see?! For me linking them to a Kati Morton video appropriate to the topic is a good one, as well as writing a letter or comparing it to something physical they have experienced themselves. To be honest though, there are some people who just won’t get it. Something I’m learning slowly is the acceptance of other people’s lack of understanding. It sucks. It’s unfair, but so is everything else in life!
Today I am grateful that I’m doing something I love at college everyday. If you’ve had a rough day, what are you grateful for?
I am a list-lover. I enjoy the satisfaction of seeing everything on the page and then crossing it off. The problem is that the list never seems to end..
One list gets bigger, eventually I have to write it out again in order to add new things where the crossed off tasks used to be. Some of my to do lists become a bit too ambitious, and so I’ve been finding ways to make my to do lists more effective!
1. 7 a day rule
No, I do not mean fruit and veg in case you wondered.. I heard that 7 was the maximum number of tasks one can expect to achieve in a day, and for me this is pretty accurate.
2. Make long term goals (eg. Recovery, or buying a house) on a separate list
I’ve found that if my daily or weekly to do lists are separate it eliminates those chunk of impossible to achieve overnight type things. I always used to find the same specific to dos left on my lists…
3. Small over big
Ever started something and stopped halfway through? Yep? Me too! My solution is to put things like “answer first two essay questions” on my to do list. Instead of expecting to write the whole essay, I set myself up to complete what I’ve set out to do.
4. Do you have any?
Xxx
“Some people quit due to slow progress, never grasping the fact that slow progress is still progress” anon
“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop” Confucius
Recovery is a pretty weighty word. It means so many things: physical health, mental health, freedom from my own mind.
There’s this idea that recovery would be this perfect life where everything is easy to handle, but in reality it isn’t that way. Recovery is choosing to change. Recovery is trying even when it’s difficult. Recovery begins when you hate where you are in that moment and vow to change. Recovery is asking for help.
Recovery doesn’t mean you are fixed.
I had a breakdown today. Everything in my mind was just so loud and so fast that I just stopped. I couldn’t move because I couldn’t take any more. My eating disorder wants me to succeed at getting thin. There’s a certain size in mind, with specific things that would prove to me I had achieved it. It seems foolproof, yet instead I feel like an unstable mess. I don’t feel small at all; I feel grossly chubby even when other people say I am actually thin.
I want to let go of my ed goal and just get on with life, but I simultaneously don’t want to be a quitter. I don’t want to almost “win” at my disorder’s aims, because then I would have given in.
On the surface all these words sound really superficial and ludicrous, but I’m just deeply insecure and feel like my life will lose any vague sense of control if I quit listening to my disorder. Underneath, I just want to be noticed and feel deserving of good things.
I put my hands up and admit it… I’m a planner. I like to know the time I’m leaving, how many calories my next snack will contain, if I locked the door just right, or what I’m going to do tomorrow evening.
Although my organisation is to an extreme, I think most people have a level of comfort in having habits and planning our life.
But what lies outside the rigidity? I can’t say I’m an expert at living life on the edge, but I am learning that doing things differently sometimes can be a good thing. I hope that recovery will give me more freedom to enjoy opportunities that I don’t even know are there.
anadancer 