Trundling along.

Tonight I am home alone. All of my housemates have gone out, and so I am enjoying the bliss that is getting some time alone. I love working with other people. I love having people around, but there comes a point where I just want to be alone. They don’t really understand it but I don’t care, as this is simply the way I am. Having time to myself gives me a breather from some of the more annoying housemates, which, when you have quite a lot of problems of your own as it is, feels like a miracle! I try to be tolerant and patient with others, but it is not always easy to hold back from going crazy when you are struggling physically and emotionally and then get provoked by complete ignorance and selfishness. (Some of them are absolutely lovely people. but sadly not all of them!)

Anyways, my college week has been pretty good. Everyday I am grateful for being in a place where I get to do what I love all day. 🙂 It is only one week until the half term holiday though, and the looming thought of adjusting to being at home again for a few days is creeping up on me. My exercise addiction is really getting on top of me too. Any moment I am sitting makes me feel like a failure, and so i find myself constantly jiggling or getting up and doing anything I can think of to keep me on my feet! 

Night for now…

 

Alone time :)

Although it does sometimes cross my mind that a 19 year old shouldn’t relish chances to be antisocial, I do love being by myself! I have some incredible friends, and spending time with them when we are all in the same city at the same time is something I look forward to massively, but when I’ve arrived home afterward, I like nothing more than hearing my parents say “we’re off to bed now. Night”

In bulimic phases that meant a chance to binge and purge, and at the moment, it is a chance to exercise and/or eat what I have left of my restricted calorie allowance.

It is quiet. It is calm. I love it.

Being left alone

I often long for my 5 housemates go to out, so that I don’t have to see anyone and worry they think I’m fat. “If they go out, you can cook alone, eat alone, everything will be perfect” is what the voice tells me…

This past weeks has blown that theory out the water. As I’m so rarely alone, my habitual state is to be planning and calculating when I can take food from the cupboard/ cook/ eat and not be seen, so being alone somehow just makes me binge (or what feels like bingeing as it has reached around double my normal amount) Even if my binge amount would be considered normal to others i FEEL out of control during these episodes.. 😦

In a way it makes sense: I subconsciously don’t know when I will be able to eat without the rushing and on edge feeling of there being 5 others in the house, so there’s probably some biological trigger for my body to store food while it can. What doesn’t help is that I am stressed anyway, so my reaction to eating is to immediately try to throw up & when that fails exercise obsessively and take laxatives. I am so frustrated that living with 5 others makes my relationship with food more difficult AND that when they are gone food stuff is almost worst. 

When we are all in the house I want them to be gone, but now they have gone and this has happened, I am afraid of being alone in the house. So what if a short period of eating more can’t scientifically change how fat you look? Cos it feels shit anyway. I feel like a child… confused and scared, but nobody can protect me from myself. I am the one who has these thoughts and reacts to them, but I feel powerless to stop them. I wish somebody else could stop everything for me.

Quiet and comfortable :)

I know that free time is usually spent by socialising for people my age, but I like to use quite a bit of mine to also have time to be quiet and comfortable. When I am by myself, I don’t have to be afraid that others are staring at me, or think I’m fat.. I don’t have to feel out of place. 

This evening I have had that + my daytime hours were packed with seeing friends… good combo!

I do kinda hate that my mental illness makes it hard for me to feel normal, but a little time doing as I please, without the pressure that being around people can cause me, is soooo good.

 

“I want to be in a corner where nobody can see me”

The title is actually a quote of myself when I am having a bad day. The longing to be out of anybody else’s view is overwhelming, because sometimes I just feel like a total failure for not being thin enough for people to think I am thin. Ridiculous right? I also think that bad days make me want to have time to let my eating disorder be in charge: to plan food meticulously, to eat exactly what I am allowed, to examine every inch of/ avoid looking at my body (mood depending).

Every now and again, I allow myself to give in and spend some time shut away, but I just wish I had more control over these feelings, so that there weren’t days when I seem unable to be in front of anybody comfortably.

I need to be thinner. I need to be strong for dancing. I want to be less depressed. I want to do normal things- like eat out. I want too many things at once that don’t go together..

Being alone with my brain

At the end of the day, I like nothing more than being able to be by myself. Sometimes this is a good way to unwind and chill out, but mostly it just becomes time for the other voice in my head to take over. For some reason I relish in this time I have to “be alone with it.” How weird and messed up is that?!

Despite everything negative that it brings on me, there is still the little bit of control, comfort and “supportive friend” that it gives me. I know that  it is more of a bully in reality, as most of the time my issues with food stop me doing things or make me physically incapable of doing things, yet here I am… planning meals… thinking about which bones I can see more today… again.

Eating Disorder Criteria

I’m sure there are a million and 1 posts about this, but I just felt like putting my opinion out there. Now I have settled into what I am calling a “comfortable” phase of my restrictive disorder, I am looking back on the past few years and trying to work out what the technical name for it all would be…

At the time of my diagnosis my disorder was “Atypical” purely because my weight had gone a little above the anorexia criteria due to bulimic behaviour springing from nowhere as a result of the stress of getting and waiting for treatment. Essentially I have gone between these two states of feeling terrified of food and then feeling compelled to eat without really being aware, and subsequently purging, taking laxatives and obsessively exercising.

If someone were to try and stick a label on me now, I think it would be difficult. As not all the separate phases have been significant in length. Right now I’m in an anorexic phase and have been for a long while, but who knows when that is going to change.

The criteria are too black and white in my opinion, considering how grey and undefined it feels to be the disordered person. Everybody has different thought patterns etc, even if they have the same diagnosis and it just seems to me that eating disorders only get worse when somebody is turned away and told they do not have a problem because of some minute and unimportant detail. Surely, if you weigh 2 pounds over the  cut off but are having your life disabled by a fear of food, fat and numerous physical complaints you do still have a problem? What if you purge but not frequently enough? The EDNOS category is one that often makes people feel “not sick enough” and almost encourages them into further trouble in pursuit of having their problem validated.

I don’t know… just been thinking a lot lately about what makes me different to someone who is obsessively dieting and lets themselves eat chocolate every now and again! For me I have concluded it is the exaggerated version of dieting psychology and the extreme physical feelings (tiredness, stomach pain, coldness etc) and that when I do eat outside my safe foods, it is never acceptable and I am NEVER able to move on without engaging in compensatory, unhealthy behaviours.

Hopefully the diagnostic criteria will place more attention on the feelings and thoughts of the person and not just stare at non negotiable facts.