“Life is too short to be uncomfortable”

Those are the wise words of one Miss Meghan Tonjes. If you don’t know her, then I’m sad for you, but it’s ok because I’m here now 😂

Meghan is a youtuber, singer/songwriter and also has an amazingly funny podcast called Adventures in Roommating. She is extremely honest about her body and food issues and she started #bootyrevolution and posts pics of her booty when she is having a positive body image day. I respect her for her talents, her confidence and her truthfulness. Click the link to watch the video I quoted in the title 🙂 

Life is too short; wear a crop top  
If you have struggled with your weight, your confidence, societal pressure to be a certain way, are in ed recovery or have ever felt ashamed of your body, then you should watch the video, because Meghan hits the nail on the head: life is just too short. 

Xoxo

Z is for ?

Ah shit. I couldn’t think of any words that mean anything I want to write about beginning with z!

Instead I will write about coming to the end the alphabet. I’ve actually really liked having something to guide my posts and make me post more often. I’ve found it mentally helpful to blurt out some thoughts of an evening! I want to carry on writing on a schedule, but I haven’t decided what yet! 

If you enjoyed anything in particular, then let me know 🙂

Xx

I’ll do it tomorrow…

You mustn’t allow yourself to go back to the ed clinic until you weigh less, or you only eat x calories a day, or you waist measure x cms.

I will eat better tomorrow.

I will do more exercise tomorrow.

I will be kind to myself tomorrow.

The past few years seem to have gone in a blur of plans to make things right; plans that are never carried out. I can’t count the number of times that I have quit therapy part way through, or refused help because of my refusal to be weighed. This one ginormous hurdle has dominated me and kept the grip of my eating disorder grow tighter.

The idea of another human being knowing and monitoring my weight fills me with utter dread. Even when I was being weighed regularly in the past, it never seemed to get easier. Then, months of cancelling doctors appointment followed and made way for the fear to grow. It has now been around 2 years since I last allowed somebody to weigh me.

In those two years, I have moved out of home, made new friends in a new city, found a new doctor, been having CBT therapy, and overdosed twice. In many ways I have had two years of very exciting opportunities, and also managed to convince some people that my recovery is going well. I think that I have become better at exhibiting “normal” behaviour, while continuing to be disordered and destructive when alone. My disorder has certainly changed- but not really for better or worse- it’s just different now because my whole life is different than when it all started god knows how many years ago!

Today has been emotional because my cbt ends very soon. The next stage is that my gp and therapist want me referred to the eating disorder service in my local area. From past experience with the ed clinic back at home, I know you can’t have the treatment without allowing them to monitor your weight. Puts me in a sticky spot….

I have been avoiding this for years, and I know that is massive sign of my disorder in itself, and I know that I’m going to have to do it to get better. But I also know that the last I was weighed, I took an overdose and researched suicide methods when the drugs didn’t kill me. Putting myself in that same situation is asking for that awful reaction all over again and I wonder if it’s really worth all the distress?

Then, there’s this little part of me that has been desperate to have somebody else take charge of my eating disorder, as that seems like a futile goal for me to do myself, and I also know that being taken on by the service would reduce my doubt over the severity of my illness. I think I’m going to say yes.

Oh god help me.

Bulimia.

I feel more embarrassed about my bulimic behaviour than my anorexic ones, so tonight I just wanted to use my blog to be honest about what bulimia does to me.

When my eating disorder began it was purely anorexic. Eventually I had my first binge (during my first bout of therapy when I was trying to eat more, and I just couldn’t stop. I realised how much I had deprived myself of.)

This single experience made me more guilty than any, so I purged. Throwing up wasn’t enough, and so I stayed up to exercise for 4 hours that night. I chose to fast the next day, which ended with another binge, another purge, another night spent exercising.

Getting stuck in the binge/ purge cycle happened so quickly that I didn’t know what hit me.

My gag reflex is pretty crappy, and I often found I couldn’t be sick however hard I tried. Over exercising and laxatives then became my crux. I didn’t ever want to be sitting down during the day and literally moved as much as possible. I lived like this for months on end and have never felt more depressed and anxious.

Instead of admitting I had developed another eating disorder, I chose to stay in denial and be relived to have been discharged from treatment due to my returning to a healthy bmi.

Nowadays, my eating disorder is even more cemented, but thankfully the bulimia morphed itself back into anorexia. I know that isn’t really something to be pleased about, but when I have “anorexic binges” now (eating in a way that feels like binging, but does not amount to a binge amount or even a normal amount) I cannot cope with the emotional ups and downs. I would rather feel a bit down all the time than suffer the yo-yo and secrecy of bulimia.

Most people in my life know about my anorexia, so I don’t have to be so secret. My family know I am old enough to make my own decisions. They want me to get better, but they have given up arguing with me. In these circumstances I can be “openly” anorexic (although the ed still seems to make me lie from time to time), but not openly bulimic. Frankly, it just reinforces all the ed crap about feeling empty and perfect…

Being anorexic and not being the lowest weight I’ve ever been..

I have been thinner than I am now. I have had worse physical symptoms than I have now, but my lifestyle is also different now which means that sometimes my present physical symptoms have a greater effect on me.

Having been both underweight bmi and healthy bmi during the last few years, I can honestly say that my weight does not change my mindset very noticeably. Whether or not I act on my ed thoughts is a matter of how I feel- and to be honest, sometimes I felt more depressed when gaining weight to recover than I did at my lowest.

Weight wise, I am presently between my lowest and “normal” body weights. I have steadily lost over the past months, after a horrendous “recovery phase”, which was actually the development of bulimia (not that I really told anyone that.) The bulimia subsided on its own, due to massive changes in my life causing me to feel compelled to restrict again. Now my anorexic thoughts and behaviours are dominant, but who bloody knows when that might change?!

Everything that I have experienced has really been making me analyse my own mindset recently. In some ways, I am a far stronger person than I was nearer the beginning of my eating disorder, yet I am also much more disordered at the same time: I am more entrenched in my thought and behaviour patterns, my attachment of lowering body weight and being happy is even stronger, and my worry and depression can be much more brutal than it was. 

At the start, it was a constant underlying worry and sadness, whereas now, the sadness and extreme anxiety symptoms come in bursts (perhaps half the days of the week) and are much more powerful. Instead of feeling quite on edge all the time, I feel somewhat on edge most of the time and frequently feel so unbelievably anxious and/or sad that I can’t form a sentence, or move, or even quite workout what it is that has tipped me over the edge.

My weight might not be the lowest or highest it has been, but how I feel and behave is as extreme as it ever has been at either of those points. I am heading towards the lowest, but my mental state is already there. My disorder isn’t worse, or better. It is just different. But I’m different, in a different place, with different people, in a different living situation… I guess that no eating disorder ever repeats itself, it just kinda moulds along with you unless you are one of the minority that recover. Out of the “death, developing another ed, or recovery” options, I seem to have only done the new ed thing… not really the best outcome, but I will recover when I’m supposed to. I am always learning more about myself because I of my eating disorder, so maybe I just haven’t learned whatever it is that fate has decided I’m supposed to yet…

Today feels ok.

When I get to the end of the day and come to blogging, or reading, or lying in bed thinking, I always kinda summarise the day… you know, has it been good or sad or terrible etc.

Today was ok. This has been determined by how organised and controlled food stuff was and how negtaively I felt about my body. These days, other worries are solely expressed through my ed feelings or behaviours, which is why that is all my summary entailed. I suppose it is sad that my whole life gets whittled down to how I felt about eating and whether or not I felt fat. 😦

I don’t feel sorry for myself as such, but I don’t feel like things are going too great for me either. I’m trying to remind myself that having this illness isn’t my fault, but that’s quite difficult when it feels like it most definitely is! It’s ME that pushes people away, it’s ME that snaps and feels awkward with my family, it’s ME that persists in being obsessive and it’s ME who is up right now in order to exercise.

So yeh..trying to be positive, but “ok” was the best I could do.

I don’t know my own body….?!

I look, obsess, analyse at it all the time, yet my perception of myself is constantly questioned by those around me. I feel my bones, I take every measurement I can, I perpetually compare myself to people, and so it is hard to believe that the view of my body I have created in my mind is wrong….

I have a notebook which I write in multiple times a day, in order to track food, body measurements and exercise etc.. it is my obsession. This evening I have got a new notebook and I have started writing in it (old one was full) which is what has got me looking back and thinking about how my body has changed.

Emotion-wise, today has been pretty rough. I was sat with my family in the pub for lunch. Nobody was making me eat, but my incredible hunger was fighting with my ed. I wanted to eat, but at the same time I wanted to stay empty. The hunger made me unable to think properly and the social eating scenario made me anxious before I even thought about maybe trying to eat something. I ran out and had a panic attack, then walked down the road with tears streaming down my face. I felt angry for not fighting the ed and eating- like I had let myself down, and I also felt hugely upset that my ed controls me so much. A lot of the time I’m able to imagine that I am in control of it, as I avoid so many situations which challenge its “rules.” It’s one thing when it leaves me feeling a state, but today was worse because my parents and siblings just had to sit there with me unable to form a sentence before I ran out. I just feel stupid I guess.

I don’t want a casual lunch with my family to be an impossible task; however I don’t want to confront the issues that make it one until I have justified it by losing more weight. A few months ago I was proud of myself for being able to understand and articulate my problems, but I don’t seem to be able to go any further than it. If I’m not doing anything positive with that knowledge then what the hell is the point?

I really couldn’t say whether or not I want to get better. Ambivalent isn’t even the word- as I know every ed sufferer feels that at times- I am just so utterly lost.

Going on a diet.. or not.

I know a few people that are currently dieting and it got me thinking about one of my biggest fears about being recovered: what if I can never lose weight again?

I believe that once you have had an eating disorder, the thought patterns will still be in your mind, so surely any attempt to control food intake or decrease body fat would trigger those patterns. I am afraid that if/when recovered I will be unable to place limiations on my diet without falling back into being extremely obsessive about it.

This isn’t some crazy worry I have manufactured in the disordered part of my brain in order to let it continue by the way! A friend of mine has had an ed, became a little too heavy, tried to diet years later and relapsed. This is just one of many reasons I have for wanting my body to reach an “acceptably” (to me) low weight before I permit myself to engage fully with changing. Right now I’m toying in the middle, by challenging some things while allowing other things to get worse…

The more time goes on, the more important it is that people notice my eating disorder, which is twisted, since I feel pretty uncomfortable when they actually mention it! But I’ve had a tonne of time on my hands the last few hours and I’ve come to the conclusion that this want reflects the increased inner anxiety and stress, and so if they notice, I’m no longer carrying this pile of crap in my brain alone. (Just a theory, not too sure…)

Tomorrow is a fast day and I just can’t wait to feel empty. I just want to get to this end point weight wise so everything can be normal again. I know it isn’t that black and white, but if it were that is what I’d whittle it down too. Ah too stressful.

Slow and steady wins the race..

That was the advice I got given today, and I guess it is right.

My problem is that while I am always getting better at being articulate and open about my issues, the disorder is still there. I am still fixated on food and weight control as a way of controlling my body and my life in general. I am always fearful of others thinking I have gained weight when I go home/ come back for a new term, and so lose more to try to prevent people from commenting. A big part of me wants to be ill forever, and there are very few moments when I am 100% determined to be recovered. I am fighting a constant battle against myself, in a place where most people don’t have a clue anything is going on.

Today I was more tired, more cold & more stuck in my own head than usual (I’ve eaten 1200 calories less than what I need to maintain, which the disorder bit of my brain is over the moon about….) and so I couldn’t stop worrying when I thought someone had seen me eat something that I’d never tell anybody I’d eaten usually.

Part of me feels so silly for speaking to them and explaining that I was so guilty that I spat it out anyway, but saying the words “I can’t eat things like that because I’m afraid of becoming fatter or being perceived as greedy” made me feel like I’ve reminded them that I am empty and clean of horrible food that could ruin all of my control. I obviously realise that they don’t think like me and therefore don’t care, but I do.

Since moving here, I have had 4 bulimic “incidents” during which I have binged and purged, but those 4 days aside, I have been my usual anorexia obsessive control freak about food. I know that nobody here will ever fully understand what it is like to have an eating problem, but sometimes I just have to say the crazy things in my head, just so they stop whirring around my brain for a while. It can be hard,no, it IS hard. Even when I’m writing on here, where nobody even knows me personally, I am keeping secrets. That’s what ED’s do best: hide.

 

You know you have a messed up mind when a bit of you wants to be in hospital.

I know more than one person who has been hospitalised because of their eating disorder. For one of those people the inpatient time was only 2 weeks long. I don’t know what happened to initiate them going into hospital, but I just keep thinking that a fortnight is really not long at all, so maybe I would feel better if that happened to me…

I feel like an absolute idiot for even having the tiniest wish to go into hospital, but I can’t deny that it is there, and so I am writing to get it out. 

I have thought about this for a long time, and on days when I feel very low, having the validation of my disorder by being in hospital seems so appealing. Realistically speaking, I don’t want my life to be put on hold,.yet sometimes that is what I want more than anything else in the world. Sometimes everything just feels too much and I sit in a heap on the floor unable to do anything.

The “dream” would be to be fully eating disordered and function normally- obviously not an option- so when my issues are really getting in the way of my life, I feel like if I could finally hit the bottom of my ed then I could come back out of it and get on with being normal… The thing is, there is no bottom. There is always I way I feel I could be sicker, thinner, more depressed etc. There will always be somebody worse than me.

I guess part of my current worry, is that I am in a relatively new environment, full of people that mostly do not understand anything about any kind of mental,illness at all, and so it feels necessary and like it would be an “achievement” to prove to them that I really do have an eating disorder. 

Right now I am also waiting for one very, very important letter, which will probably determine what I’m doing for the next few years. I know that I will get this just before the end of the month. With that in mind, my focus is on hoping that it will say what I want to, so that I can relax knowing that my future is sorted out for a while. 

Once I read that letter (and if it is the outcome I hope for) then I will feel like I don’t need to keep holding things together, as I have been for the last months. If that pressure is relieved then I can relax a little.

The day I get that letter is also the day that I go home for Easter- busy time hey!? I have quite a long holiday and all I can think about is getting noticeably thinner for the new term.

Reading this all back just makes me feel silly. I know how bad it is to think like this, but right now there is so much pressure in my life that I can’t stop it. I WANT it there. I WANT to be eating disordered. I can’t let go of it now because it is the only thing I am holding on to.

If I get good news in that letter AND I lose lots over Easter, then I will tell my therapist I need the more intensive treatment option. Sorry to anyone who is reading all this non-nonsensical babbling, but hey, I wrote this to be a place to figure things out, and I have: I am as messed up as ever, I wish I weren’t, but right now I feel that I need and want to be. however much I want to get on with being normal.