Tag Archives: journey

In response to all your kind words… :)

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Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to write comments on my posts- especially in the last couple of weeks. A lot of uncertainty in my general life has led me to feel a need to take even more control over my eating disoder. In some ways this is good because it has made me think long and hard about recovery; it has also made me realise that whatever the outcome of my upcoming therapy appointment, it will be a long wait (as usual) until anything drastic changes to what I’m currently having therapy-wise.

I have reached the conclusion that if you aren’t getting better, you are getting worse in some way. Every day that I allow my disorder to continue I’m making it a little more engrained in my behaviour and thinking. But the thing is I know I am not ready to change everything- maybe I never will be, but I hope to build the courage to jump in anyway! While I work relentlessly to be able to do x,y,z that my ed stops me doing now, I am counteracting that with creating stricter exercise and food plans.

After all the supportive comments I have made a decision:

I am not going to try too hard to do anything in either a positive or negative direction. If I try to recover in an unstructured way I will end up in a horrific bulimic phase like I did when my therapy stopped in the past. On the other hand, I don’t want to encourage myself to get sicker. If that happens anyway, then it will be a more gradual thing, which is more manageable (in my head.) If I am really honest with myself, things have been going on a gradual downer for a very, very long time, and as this  is unlikely to change, so I don’t need to pressure myself more than I already do in order to be sick enough to get treatment.

When the assessment for ed specific help comes around I will simply go in and be open about what has happened. Plus, I know how long the wait is for this kind of thing so I’m likely to be worse than I presently am by that point anyway.

I do believe I have the determination and self awareness to overcome my illness. I do believe that I can one day reach a place in my life where I can wake up and not be dominated by negativity about my body and food. I do believe that getting to that will be incredibly difficult, but when the chance to have more intense therapy than I presently have comes I will be able to do it. I believe that nobody can do this alone and so I will not expect that of myself- I will do what I can to be as positive as possible until the wait is over.

My blog is about being truthful and as nice as it would be for me to post all about how much I want to recover and how I’m going to wake up tomorrow and fight it, that would be a lie. For once I am proud of my ability to be both realistic and have a sense of optmism: I can’t fix it this second, but when I have access to the help required I can and will get better.

Friendship :)

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“Friends are the most important ingredient in the recipe of life.”

Being home for the holidays means that I have finally had the chance to see my closest friends in the flesh again! Facebook, skype etc are brilliant, but nothing beats them actually being there 🙂

I am lucky enough to have some of the most amazing friends. Having moved into a student household, I now know that quite a lot of other people my age do not have the same bonds with people back home as I do. There are about 15 people who have all been a shoulder to cry on throughout this whole ed, anxiety, depressed mess, and I will always be so grateful to every single one of them.

Out of those, there are some who have been particularly incredible at being there for me. These are people who I could and have phoned in the early hours, who have calmed me in a panic attack over the phone, or who have provided me with an unexpected way of letting things out. The people who have literally spent hours listening to me in a hysterical state, or while analysing my own thoughts, or while having an ed vs me argument out loud, are the most fantastic people in the world.

As well as being amazing listeners and some of the most calm and supportive friends in the world, these are also people who are absolutely hilarious! I have known some of them longer than others, but I have bucketfuls of memories with all of them- some going back to childhood. The amount of words that can’t be said without bringing on the giggles and all the random stories of crazy things that have happened are thoughts I treasure every single day.

Since I began to use food as a coping mechanism and focus all my worry and self doubt onto my body there have been many days when I have woken up feeling like a waste of space. I often feel hopeless, too emotional to do anything, anxious, angry or utterly confused…

the friendships I have are sometimes the only reason worth getting up in the morning. ❤

 

My conscience is fighting my disorder.

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Inside my mind at the moment there is a contest. I continue to be disordered, but I continue to want to be “normal”at the same time. I am unable to decide what I want to have happened by the end of the holidays: do I want to be tons thinner, or do I want to go back to where I am studying and say that I’ve done well to hold things stable for a while?

I have thought about it A LOT… and I don’t know.

I suppose that trying to decide the outcome is somewhat convoluted anyway, because ed’s will take their own path in the end, but still, I just wish I could be 100% comfortable with one of the options. The only problem I see with accepting my disordered behaviour and allowing it to continue, is that I feel so bad about how much I worry and hurt others. Following that trail of thought, I would be a selfish person if I didn’t fight for stability and recovery, right? But then I am not currently willing to let go of my ed. I’ve read other people’s posts about reaching a lower target weight and then gaining it back and starting again, and I too feel like I cannot permit myself to be fully recovered until it is “justified.” I know that is illogical, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore..

“Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.”

Jeremy Taylor

Emotional.

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“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

The quote is from one of my favourite books in the whole world. I hope that one day I can be someone who struggled but won the battle. Right now that seems unimaginable, especially as being home with my parents makes my behaviours worse than ever. I’m in the house where it all started, with the people who I would shout at or ignore for coming in the kitchen when I was there. I don’t have a go at them any more  but that makes it worse for me, because I end up taking out those difficult emotions on myself.

On the upside, I love not having to rush in the holidays. It makes me a bit calmer.. just still nervous waiting for an important letter.

 

I’m home.

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As planned, I am home for the holidays. After an organisation screw up (not my own) I didn’t get any news like I hoped for on Thursday, so I’M STILL WAITING.

Part of me is enjoying being home, catching up with people, being in a quiet (ish) house etc… but at the same time it is hard. I feel like everyone is constantly judging my current body to what they thought of my body when I saw them three months ago. It is so confusing (as I’ve blogged about before) that I am so distressed by my ed, yet a bit of me is strongly determined to get sicker.

Wanting to be physically fit for my current training AND get thinner can’t logically be a realistic combination, or can it? No, it can’t, I know that deep down. Thing is, I can’t help but hear that voice in my head that says I would lazy for not restricting and exercising, and that I must do my very best to have both, and that if I end up breaking down then atleast people will have confirmation that I don’t make up my disorder.

The fact I have been, and am still contemplating how ill is “good enough” for me stop is probably a ginormous sign that I am presently not well, but of course, it is not enough. I am so aware of my ed patterns, the stages of depression and anxiety I experience, and what is actually a healthy diet, but it doesn’t seem to matter. My ed thoughts make me so extremely worried about everything that I am too afraid to change. What also doesn’t help, is that I began this academic year with new people, in a new city at a healthy weight. That period of being ok on the outside (thank you weight gain from binge/purge NOT) just made me feel even worse on the inside, so I have gradually lost weight since I started. Those that I live with see me everyday and are therefore notice my physical change less. I am desperate to prove to them I really do have a problem.

They already know. We have talked about it. They have seen me very upset about it at times…. but like everything, that isn’t enough. I don’t want them to think I’m a fraud, despite the fact that having an ed is only seen as important to the disordered…

 

So happy, so stressed, so angry, so scared, so excited… and all in the space of a day!!

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To sum it up, today (and this week actually) has been quite a mixture! From receiving really exciting news, to feeling terrified about the coming week, to feeling in and out of control with food, it has all been going on this week!

At the moment, I just want everything to be steady whether that entails endless food/ exercise calculations or list making or whatever, all my little plans have to go PERFECTLY. When they don’t, I seem unable to hold myself together emotionally and some form of punishment follows.

Right now it is quarter past midnight and I am marching in place, where I will be for the next 4 hours.

On Monday I have a really busy schedule and so tomorrow just has to go to plan: I must reach the bottom of my to do list, I must do all my planned exercises exactly, and I must eat an acceptable number of calories (restriction-wise) in order to feel prepared for it. Reading this all back makes me realise that my mental calmness shouldn’t come from controlling my life like this, but it does and I can’t change that when I have some really important stuff going on at the moment.

I never find myself wishing life was easier; I always find myself wishing that I could have more control and be thinner, never feel like I have food in me, never run out of time to do things.

 

“That’s the best I’ve heard you”

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Today in singing class, the teacher told me it was the best he’d ever heard me sing, and whatever I was thinking about emotionally really came through. He told me to hang on to that feeling and use it when I perform. 

He doesn’t know I have an eating disorder. He also didn’t notice me have a panic attack during the class. 

When I was singing I was focusing on a single point in front of me as if it were a personification of all the paranoia, the food thoughts, the body dissatisfaction that I have. Although it was genuinely an emotionally challenging performance, it was AMAZING. I love the moments when I feel so involved in what I’m doing that I’m not thinking about the future. When you think about it, humans are always thinking ahead & there would be no such thing as worry if we didn’t do this all the time…

This week has been (as usual) both hard and fun: some days have been so enjoyable, but I’ve been so physically tired, cold and stressed other days. Weekend time now though. To wake up and feel properly rested would be like Christmas come very early!

Tomorrow is a scary day.

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Tomorrow I have an assessment. I might get offered CBT. I have waited 3 months for this appointment. Why does a bit of me not want to go?

Sometimes I can imagine how awesome it would be to eat a proper diet, eat with others, enjoy food, stop suffering from anxiety and depression… but in my mental images of all of these, I am thin. 

Someone who I follow posted a link to “what a ballerina eats” and as a training dancer I was relieved and overjoyed to see that maintaining low body weight AND  good muscle mass is possible while actually eating properly! But of course, my body would take a while to get used to a maintenance amount. I am scared,,, very, very scared.

In my ideal of the upcoming months of my life, this is what would happen:
-I reach a weight that balances my wish to be small, but one that does not make my ed freak out
-I become more relaxed- both generally and around food
-I continue my training
-I go though with the CBT and the ed support group

I just don’t know if the above is possible. If it isn’t, then I don’t want to get better. I can’t be big, but I also can’t spend the rest of my life like this. As much as I find it nearly impossible to not associate my identity with my eating disorder, I do want to be able to do some of the things that I can’t do now… 

I wonder which way I will go…