So. I know there's been a lot of this going around online lately - people announcing that they're going into treatment or just out of it or whatever - and I found a post that Alexis, Surfacing After Silence, made regarding this really important and true - that treatment's been treated almost like...it's cool, or something. And that's not where I'm coming from. That said, this is my experience at the moment. A few posts ago I mentioned that my parents had sort of confronted me, saying they really didn't think waiting to get my drivers license was smart right now. I thought more and more about it and that little knowing self inside of me started to reluctantly agree. So I called the treatment facility and asked if they'd ever worked it out - since a license is a requirement for the transition house - for someone to get their license while there.
The answer was, usually, no - but we don't think you should wait because the most important thing is your health, which isn't good, and we'll work that out when the time comes. We won't screw you over, we'll figure it out with you. And we want you to call the administrative office and arrange for admission now.
So I panicked a little bit, but I did what I've mentally prepared myself to do - I listened to the professionals, and when I called the office they said they could arrange for me to come in this week and that they thought I should take that spot.
So the woman emailed me the papers and told me to call my doctor's office first thing in the morning to go get a physical and some tests done STAT. I have a catch-up assessment (since I was there last year they have my history and just need to know what's been going on since I left) tomorrow afternoon. I will not be able to go back to my apartment before I'm admitted, and since I'm moving to Southern California, that means I'm done living in the Bay Area. Which is scary and sad. I'm going to have to go in without saying "goodbye" to my friends, but I will go and visit after treatment...and truthfully I'll probably be much more myself at that point, and more of a joy to be around. I haven't been "here" in awhile anyway.
I'm really scared. After all of this I made a few phone calls - to my therapist at home, who I've been having phone sessions with - to my good friend who lives in the area near the facility and has been really supportive - and to my sponsor. I took a bath. I started to become unexpectedly agitated with no concrete reason as to why.
I'm scared. I'm nervous. I'm grieving. This disorder - as ugly a companion as it has been - is what I've had in my moments of loneliness. I want out, and I fear leaving it behind, and I fear that I won't be able to leave it behind. But I have come to the end of my line again. It feels different than it has in the past and I know that regardless of whether or not I recover, this is the last opportunity I will have at treatment, at least for some time. I hope it's the last time because I hope I get better. I don't harbor any illusion that I'll recover in the months I spend there but I do believe that it can be my springboard to getting into recovery.
I don't know what else to say. I could make you a list of all of the ways my body's falling apart, or the horror that has been the last year, the last few months. I could take pictures of my body and post them and claim it's a goodbye to anorexia, I could tell you about the size of my binges or what effects purging has had.
But I'm not going to. I didn't know how detailed I would be about the horrors of my disorder in this blog, and I'm realizing now that I'm probably not going to be detailed about them at all. If I recover, or get into recovery, you can take my word for it - it'll be proof that recovery is possible. But all I can offer right now is to myself. I want badly to help myself so that I can offer more to others but I have a feeling if I try to become some sort of spokesperson it will be energy displaced.
I plan on sharing about some of the obstacles that come up for me, but only in relation to how I'm dealing with them and overcoming them.
Now keep your fingers crossed for me that tomorrow and the next few days go smoothly, hah, there's a lot that could go wrong logistically.
Goodnight friends.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Nervewracking and a huge relief at the same time: After thinking a little more about what my parents said the other day - about how they really think I need to go sooner and figure out my driver's license stuff later - I called the facility I'll be going to to inquire about how possible it would be for me to get my license while I'm there (just because it's a requirement for transitional living). They know me already since I was there last year before insurance pulled. Anyway, I spoke with someone there and she said she really doesn't much like the idea of me driving at the moment anyway and that she'd talk to the clinical director and get back to me, but that she thinks they're going to just tell me to go ahead and get on the waiting list and come in now instead of waiting, that we'll figure it out once I'm there.
Which could mean me getting on the waiting list (which is pretty short at the moment I believe - a week or two) as soon as...today, or tomorrow. It all depends on when they get back to me but I do trust them. I trust their clinical judgement, and I trust that they'll help me figure things out logistically, and quite frankly I trust their judgement on what's best for me right now more than I trust my own. It's hard for me to let go of controlling things, it really is, but that's part of the point of this. My best thinking has gotten me to this bad state I'm in.
And man it's nervewracking. Part of me - the "eating disorder voice" part - feels (stupidly) too fat and ugly for treatment. How's this for logic - one of the unfortunate effects of my ED has been that my glands are consistently swollen enough to make my face look very different, and I feel like that makes me look fatter, so I have this nervousness that people will think I'm fat because of it. SUCH eating disordered bullshit, the better part of me fully knows that, but it doesn't make it FEEL any less real.
Anyway, I definitely will not let the sick thoughts dictate what I do now. I have fought hard to get help and I'm going to get it, I am going to use it, and I'm not going to cater to a disease anymore. I know a lot of people personify these disorders - "My eating disorder is telling me to..." - and I don't, but I do see the value in separating it from oneself and regarding the thoughts as belonging to the disease somehow. Personifying it seems a little odd to me (though if it helps you I totally encourage you to do it - anything that helps!) because I feel like it gives it more power. Something I really liked that one of the therapists told me in treatment last year was this: You are stronger than the eating disorder, because it's a part of you. Because you created it. Therefore you absolutely have the power to fight it and triumph.
So it's an illness and the thoughts and beliefs that ensue are certainly intrusive, but I do not have to act in accordance with them. And I have to find it within myself to refuse to do so. IT is a disease and I am a person. What's more valuable? (Hint: the one that's alive :-P).
I'm nervous. I'm so nervous. I don't know why I didn't just tell the woman over the phone I'd just get on the waiting list now, since that's basically what she said they were going to tell me to do.
Okay wow, so I just made some phone calls and talked to them and we're working things out for me to be admitted in the next few days. Fuck.
This is a really good thing, though. Crap.
Which could mean me getting on the waiting list (which is pretty short at the moment I believe - a week or two) as soon as...today, or tomorrow. It all depends on when they get back to me but I do trust them. I trust their clinical judgement, and I trust that they'll help me figure things out logistically, and quite frankly I trust their judgement on what's best for me right now more than I trust my own. It's hard for me to let go of controlling things, it really is, but that's part of the point of this. My best thinking has gotten me to this bad state I'm in.
And man it's nervewracking. Part of me - the "eating disorder voice" part - feels (stupidly) too fat and ugly for treatment. How's this for logic - one of the unfortunate effects of my ED has been that my glands are consistently swollen enough to make my face look very different, and I feel like that makes me look fatter, so I have this nervousness that people will think I'm fat because of it. SUCH eating disordered bullshit, the better part of me fully knows that, but it doesn't make it FEEL any less real.
Anyway, I definitely will not let the sick thoughts dictate what I do now. I have fought hard to get help and I'm going to get it, I am going to use it, and I'm not going to cater to a disease anymore. I know a lot of people personify these disorders - "My eating disorder is telling me to..." - and I don't, but I do see the value in separating it from oneself and regarding the thoughts as belonging to the disease somehow. Personifying it seems a little odd to me (though if it helps you I totally encourage you to do it - anything that helps!) because I feel like it gives it more power. Something I really liked that one of the therapists told me in treatment last year was this: You are stronger than the eating disorder, because it's a part of you. Because you created it. Therefore you absolutely have the power to fight it and triumph.
So it's an illness and the thoughts and beliefs that ensue are certainly intrusive, but I do not have to act in accordance with them. And I have to find it within myself to refuse to do so. IT is a disease and I am a person. What's more valuable? (Hint: the one that's alive :-P).
I'm nervous. I'm so nervous. I don't know why I didn't just tell the woman over the phone I'd just get on the waiting list now, since that's basically what she said they were going to tell me to do.
Okay wow, so I just made some phone calls and talked to them and we're working things out for me to be admitted in the next few days. Fuck.
This is a really good thing, though. Crap.
Desire to Recover
Hey blogworld.
I feel weird posting right now because there's something I've been meaning to send to a friend and I'm embarassed to show my face online. Friend - I PROMISE YOU I am going to get that video to you in the morning. I know I said I'd do it this afternoon and when I send it to you I will explain why it's taken me so long.
That said...it is, as I've come to call them, a "ridiculous hour of morning" yet again as it almost always is when I engage online. There are less than noble reasons for this. Hell, let's be real here - I binge and purge all night long. That's "where I'm at" right now. And it's 4:30 in the morning and I'm just getting to my current, probably less-than-helpful-for-sleep "before bed" routine, which includes being online.
/end preamble. I was thinking today about desire - specifically the desire to recover, the desire to get better. I think there's a lot of value in that desire, because it's reasonable to assume that if it's not present a person will not act on it, right? I didn't realize just how much I will probably be referencing the things I've learned in my 12 step program in this blog and please bear with me because this is tricky due to the anonymous nature of 12 step. So I won't be naming my program, and I'll have to be careful when writing about it. Now - the program I have been in since I was 17 years old states that the only requirement for membership is "the desire to stop". There's no other prerequisite and I respect that very much. You don't have to be intelligent, or pretty, or even nice or respectful because the common mission is to help people - all people who want help - find relief from active addiction.
Desire is a good starting point. The thing is, I think, with eating disorders and addiction that desire wavers. It's not reliable 100% of the time. When things get tough, it may dwindle or appear to evaporate for a period of time.
I absolutely have the desire to find freedom from my eating disorder. I long for it. I suffer intensely and have been greatly compromised in many ways. Eating disorders are ILLNESSES - real, whole mental illnesses. I and many others are SICK with this thing. It is not an easy thing to recover from and I think that is largely due to the fear that sometimes/often trumps that desire to be well. (Sidenote - another concept I was introduced to thanks to 12 step is "Spiritual Opposites" - as in love/hate, dishonesty/honesty, and so on. A good friend of mine has said before that she believes fear's spiritual opposite is love - which is confusing at first but after some thought I grew to find that startlingly insightful and kind of brilliant. Think about it.)
A funny thing about desire is that a person can have multiple, conflicting ones - the desire to be well versus the desire to remain eating disordered (or the desire to not give up certain things about the eating disorder)...I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm trying to segway into how I was feeling earlier today.
I was feeling sad because I wanted to not-give-a-crap about food. I wanted to be able to enjoy what I was eating and not worry about what I was going to "do" about it or if I was going to do anything about it or how many calories were in it or how I'd hide what I was doing if I did anything about it or what it would do to my body if I did nothing about it, and blahblahblahfuckingblah, on and on and on...I felt so trapped that I almost started crying. There's absolutely an element of personal responsibility here that I'm struggling with, but please be aware that I can see that it is there. Right now things are kind of a complicated mess - my therapist insists it has a lot to do with malnourishment/starvation - but what it's ultimately going to come down to is altering my behavior, right? That's another thing 12 step places heavy emphasis on, is ACTION. Taking actual actions and/or not taking certain actions.
Anyway, later - an hour or so ago - I was browsing a recovered person's facebook page. She's pretty public about her recovery and I think she's awesome. I was looking through her photos and realizing that wow, this woman is in so many ways the embodiment of who I want to be "when I'm in recovery/recovered". She's able to appreciate so many of the things I sense I'd appreciate and like, too, if my every waking moment weren't riddled with this thing. She likes poetry, literature, coffee and tea, cats, music, academia, crafts, politics...and going through her albums I felt a familiar pang of longing. A longing to, for the love of god, start actually living the life I've fantasized about creating for myself and filling it with the things I dream about. I really want that.
Oy. I couldn't tell you if I really believe in my bones that any of this is possible for me, but I have been trying to have faith in the people who have recovered who say that they doubted it, too, and that it damn well was. Trying to believe the tons of people who also thought they were the exception to the rule but discovered they weren't that I'm not an exception, either.
It's hard. Things are really ugly right now. One foot in front of the other, I guess - read a little and go to sleep.
I feel weird posting right now because there's something I've been meaning to send to a friend and I'm embarassed to show my face online. Friend - I PROMISE YOU I am going to get that video to you in the morning. I know I said I'd do it this afternoon and when I send it to you I will explain why it's taken me so long.
That said...it is, as I've come to call them, a "ridiculous hour of morning" yet again as it almost always is when I engage online. There are less than noble reasons for this. Hell, let's be real here - I binge and purge all night long. That's "where I'm at" right now. And it's 4:30 in the morning and I'm just getting to my current, probably less-than-helpful-for-sleep "before bed" routine, which includes being online.
/end preamble. I was thinking today about desire - specifically the desire to recover, the desire to get better. I think there's a lot of value in that desire, because it's reasonable to assume that if it's not present a person will not act on it, right? I didn't realize just how much I will probably be referencing the things I've learned in my 12 step program in this blog and please bear with me because this is tricky due to the anonymous nature of 12 step. So I won't be naming my program, and I'll have to be careful when writing about it. Now - the program I have been in since I was 17 years old states that the only requirement for membership is "the desire to stop". There's no other prerequisite and I respect that very much. You don't have to be intelligent, or pretty, or even nice or respectful because the common mission is to help people - all people who want help - find relief from active addiction.
Desire is a good starting point. The thing is, I think, with eating disorders and addiction that desire wavers. It's not reliable 100% of the time. When things get tough, it may dwindle or appear to evaporate for a period of time.
I absolutely have the desire to find freedom from my eating disorder. I long for it. I suffer intensely and have been greatly compromised in many ways. Eating disorders are ILLNESSES - real, whole mental illnesses. I and many others are SICK with this thing. It is not an easy thing to recover from and I think that is largely due to the fear that sometimes/often trumps that desire to be well. (Sidenote - another concept I was introduced to thanks to 12 step is "Spiritual Opposites" - as in love/hate, dishonesty/honesty, and so on. A good friend of mine has said before that she believes fear's spiritual opposite is love - which is confusing at first but after some thought I grew to find that startlingly insightful and kind of brilliant. Think about it.)
A funny thing about desire is that a person can have multiple, conflicting ones - the desire to be well versus the desire to remain eating disordered (or the desire to not give up certain things about the eating disorder)...I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm trying to segway into how I was feeling earlier today.
I was feeling sad because I wanted to not-give-a-crap about food. I wanted to be able to enjoy what I was eating and not worry about what I was going to "do" about it or if I was going to do anything about it or how many calories were in it or how I'd hide what I was doing if I did anything about it or what it would do to my body if I did nothing about it, and blahblahblahfuckingblah, on and on and on...I felt so trapped that I almost started crying. There's absolutely an element of personal responsibility here that I'm struggling with, but please be aware that I can see that it is there. Right now things are kind of a complicated mess - my therapist insists it has a lot to do with malnourishment/starvation - but what it's ultimately going to come down to is altering my behavior, right? That's another thing 12 step places heavy emphasis on, is ACTION. Taking actual actions and/or not taking certain actions.
Anyway, later - an hour or so ago - I was browsing a recovered person's facebook page. She's pretty public about her recovery and I think she's awesome. I was looking through her photos and realizing that wow, this woman is in so many ways the embodiment of who I want to be "when I'm in recovery/recovered". She's able to appreciate so many of the things I sense I'd appreciate and like, too, if my every waking moment weren't riddled with this thing. She likes poetry, literature, coffee and tea, cats, music, academia, crafts, politics...and going through her albums I felt a familiar pang of longing. A longing to, for the love of god, start actually living the life I've fantasized about creating for myself and filling it with the things I dream about. I really want that.
Oy. I couldn't tell you if I really believe in my bones that any of this is possible for me, but I have been trying to have faith in the people who have recovered who say that they doubted it, too, and that it damn well was. Trying to believe the tons of people who also thought they were the exception to the rule but discovered they weren't that I'm not an exception, either.
It's hard. Things are really ugly right now. One foot in front of the other, I guess - read a little and go to sleep.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Reservations and Doubt
Before I write about reservations and doubts, I want to process something that happened with my parents this evening. It's been a long while since I've lived in the same space as them for any extended period of time, and these last couple of months have reminded me of why. They've also reminded me of how much I love, appreciate and respect both my mother and father, but there are valid, healthy reasons for me not choosing to live with them. However I know that I am not currently able to consistently appreciate the magnitude of the favor they've done and are doing me in allowing me to stay here with them for the time being - what they have to live with is disgusting, terrifying, and I imagine that for a parent it is also pretty heart wrenching. It's understandable that they lose it pretty frequently and that there's as much tension as there is.
I have a sort of "main" safe food currently - safe food meaning food I am comfortable with and keep down. I won't name it. But I have to leave the house to get it and I do, once a day; my dad drives me to a little nearby town, a popular college town called Chapel Hill, and I go there and I eat it. It's a cold food and because it's been really cold weather wise lately I've sometimes opted to go buy it and then get back in the heated car and go wherever my parents are going (to the recycling place where my dad sorts and disposes of our recycling, to Lowe's, wherever). Tonight I did that and we went to this store where I got some candy, also, and ate that in the car on the way home. I then took a bath and honestly, I purged it. When I went downstairs, my dad spoke to me in a really angry tone of voice and said "Sofia, we need to talk" - he and my mom are pretty freaked out, I guess they think I'm not keeping that safe food down anymore on a regular basis - which means they are under the impression that I'm keeping nothing or next to nothing down. He told me this and didn't believe me when I stated otherwise.
Then my mom said maybe I should go into treatment now. They told me that they're worried I'm getting worse and that I'll die if I wait the few weeks (while getting my driver's license) to go. I reacted really defensively - I said that it's true that I'm in bad shape but I AM keeping that food down goddamnit and blahblahblah...I tried to reassure them as best I could and concluded aloud that I would be going ahead with getting my license before going to treatment, because there's no guarantee that I could learn to drive and get my license while in treatment. I've had a lot of bad experiences with step down plans falling through, with treatment plans in general falling through (due to insurance, mostly) and this time I've really been working very hard to assure myself that it's much less likely to happen. I think that transitional living is a very important piece, I am giving up my apartment before I go, and I really don't want something to happen and end up without a place to live and unable to do the step down following treatment. I'm a little traumatized from how hard I fought to get and stay in recovery last time and how hard I fell.
We agreed that I wouldn't go to the bathroom for an hour or whatever after getting home from the place I get my safe food. And yeah, I feel like an idiot - look at me, an adult, with my dad telling me when I can and can't go to the bathroom. Honestly if I wanted to I could totally disregard his insistance of this but I am trying to respect the fact that my parents are very afraid and be as courteous as I can.
I have to admit, I'm tired. Sometimes I get really scared at how bad things are. Sometimes I worry that I won't live long enough to get myself there, that something disastrous will happen (a heart attack, esophageal rupture, whatever) - and those are fairly valid concerns because I've had issues in the recent past with both my heart and esophageal tears, as well as a number of other things. I'm seeing a doctor very frequently here but I don't particularly trust her judgement (she doesn't take my resting heart rate, doesn't order my blood work [which keeps tabs on important things like electrolytes and kidney function] in a timely manner)...I don't THINK I'll die or have something fatal happen, but who the hell knows? I'm sicker than some, not as sick as others, and eating disorders don't discriminate. Some people die without warning. Many people, really. And I'm making a sincere effort in some ways to decrease the amount I'm engaging in certain behaviors and increase my intake calorically, but clearly I'm not doing either enough to make much of a difference for my overall state of health and this is one of the main reasons why treatment has been deemed necessary - not because I'm special or more important or deserving of help than anyone else, but because my behaviors are affecting my health in a measurable, dangerous way at a rapid pace.
That said, of course a part of me would like to just get my name on the waiting list and go in sooner than later (meaning in a week or ten days as opposed to three or four weeks). But then there's that part of me that knows it would be ideal for me to go in with my driver's license - without that additional possible complication and source of anxiety. I think they are right, my parents, I think I need to push myself even harder to be proactive about my health in the interim and if I am unable to do so I may need to disregard the fact that I don't yet have my license and get on that list. I'm going to give myself a few days and re-evaluate, I think. The whole thing brought to light yet again just how profoundly this is affecting my family. I can't or opt not to think about it for longer than short periods at a time because it's painful and I don't know how productive it is or that I can do much about it (they're going to be scared because this is scary), but it brought it to mind.
Moving on...
I have spent quite a lot of time in a 12 step program, going to meetings, working the steps. I will not name the particular program I was in but it was not for eating disorders, though I did try my hand at lumping my eating disorder in with my overall disease of addiction - in some ways I found the parallel and application very helpful, and in others I did not.
That's not what I'm writing to address, though. One of the things I learned about in my program was the concept of reservations about recovery, and how important it was to identify and address them - the phrase from the book we used was something to the effect of reservations "reserving a place in our program for relapse". "Our program" in that context meaning one's personal program of recovery, their work. A "reservation" in this context is something that holds you back emotionally or mentally from recovering - it can be a fear, a thought, it can be perfectly based in reality or not. This IS something that I think could be helpful for me to think about now, before treatment, to identify and begin to sort through my reservations. Now, doubt I think is something that can go hand in hand with reservations but is in my opinion separate somehow...for me, doubt feeds some of my reservations. Self doubt for me mainly manifests in feeling like I'm...incapable, which is a big thing for me not just in terms of recovering but in terms of living (and maybe that's more intwined than I'll get into right now anyway). So there's SELF doubt and then there's OTHERS doubt. Having had this disease for some time there've been a lot of people who love me who have watched me "fail" at recovery many times and so I face "others doubt", as well, which can be discouraging and feed into self doubt. "Others doubt", however, I have very little control over - I can do work to manage and work through self doubt.
Am I making sense here? I think I am. I was doing a little more thought about how I want to utilize this blog and what I want to do with it, and I thought that if I am willing and able to be very open in an appropriate way, and I do manage to get into recovery and then recover, sharing the steps I take in a detailed manner could possibly be helpful for other people as well as for me. Again, only time will tell if I actually keep up with this, but it's an idea.
On to reservations...
My Current Reservations regarding recovery, and thoughts/counters I can believe:
Salut for now.
I have a sort of "main" safe food currently - safe food meaning food I am comfortable with and keep down. I won't name it. But I have to leave the house to get it and I do, once a day; my dad drives me to a little nearby town, a popular college town called Chapel Hill, and I go there and I eat it. It's a cold food and because it's been really cold weather wise lately I've sometimes opted to go buy it and then get back in the heated car and go wherever my parents are going (to the recycling place where my dad sorts and disposes of our recycling, to Lowe's, wherever). Tonight I did that and we went to this store where I got some candy, also, and ate that in the car on the way home. I then took a bath and honestly, I purged it. When I went downstairs, my dad spoke to me in a really angry tone of voice and said "Sofia, we need to talk" - he and my mom are pretty freaked out, I guess they think I'm not keeping that safe food down anymore on a regular basis - which means they are under the impression that I'm keeping nothing or next to nothing down. He told me this and didn't believe me when I stated otherwise.
Then my mom said maybe I should go into treatment now. They told me that they're worried I'm getting worse and that I'll die if I wait the few weeks (while getting my driver's license) to go. I reacted really defensively - I said that it's true that I'm in bad shape but I AM keeping that food down goddamnit and blahblahblah...I tried to reassure them as best I could and concluded aloud that I would be going ahead with getting my license before going to treatment, because there's no guarantee that I could learn to drive and get my license while in treatment. I've had a lot of bad experiences with step down plans falling through, with treatment plans in general falling through (due to insurance, mostly) and this time I've really been working very hard to assure myself that it's much less likely to happen. I think that transitional living is a very important piece, I am giving up my apartment before I go, and I really don't want something to happen and end up without a place to live and unable to do the step down following treatment. I'm a little traumatized from how hard I fought to get and stay in recovery last time and how hard I fell.
We agreed that I wouldn't go to the bathroom for an hour or whatever after getting home from the place I get my safe food. And yeah, I feel like an idiot - look at me, an adult, with my dad telling me when I can and can't go to the bathroom. Honestly if I wanted to I could totally disregard his insistance of this but I am trying to respect the fact that my parents are very afraid and be as courteous as I can.
I have to admit, I'm tired. Sometimes I get really scared at how bad things are. Sometimes I worry that I won't live long enough to get myself there, that something disastrous will happen (a heart attack, esophageal rupture, whatever) - and those are fairly valid concerns because I've had issues in the recent past with both my heart and esophageal tears, as well as a number of other things. I'm seeing a doctor very frequently here but I don't particularly trust her judgement (she doesn't take my resting heart rate, doesn't order my blood work [which keeps tabs on important things like electrolytes and kidney function] in a timely manner)...I don't THINK I'll die or have something fatal happen, but who the hell knows? I'm sicker than some, not as sick as others, and eating disorders don't discriminate. Some people die without warning. Many people, really. And I'm making a sincere effort in some ways to decrease the amount I'm engaging in certain behaviors and increase my intake calorically, but clearly I'm not doing either enough to make much of a difference for my overall state of health and this is one of the main reasons why treatment has been deemed necessary - not because I'm special or more important or deserving of help than anyone else, but because my behaviors are affecting my health in a measurable, dangerous way at a rapid pace.
That said, of course a part of me would like to just get my name on the waiting list and go in sooner than later (meaning in a week or ten days as opposed to three or four weeks). But then there's that part of me that knows it would be ideal for me to go in with my driver's license - without that additional possible complication and source of anxiety. I think they are right, my parents, I think I need to push myself even harder to be proactive about my health in the interim and if I am unable to do so I may need to disregard the fact that I don't yet have my license and get on that list. I'm going to give myself a few days and re-evaluate, I think. The whole thing brought to light yet again just how profoundly this is affecting my family. I can't or opt not to think about it for longer than short periods at a time because it's painful and I don't know how productive it is or that I can do much about it (they're going to be scared because this is scary), but it brought it to mind.
Moving on...
I have spent quite a lot of time in a 12 step program, going to meetings, working the steps. I will not name the particular program I was in but it was not for eating disorders, though I did try my hand at lumping my eating disorder in with my overall disease of addiction - in some ways I found the parallel and application very helpful, and in others I did not.
That's not what I'm writing to address, though. One of the things I learned about in my program was the concept of reservations about recovery, and how important it was to identify and address them - the phrase from the book we used was something to the effect of reservations "reserving a place in our program for relapse". "Our program" in that context meaning one's personal program of recovery, their work. A "reservation" in this context is something that holds you back emotionally or mentally from recovering - it can be a fear, a thought, it can be perfectly based in reality or not. This IS something that I think could be helpful for me to think about now, before treatment, to identify and begin to sort through my reservations. Now, doubt I think is something that can go hand in hand with reservations but is in my opinion separate somehow...for me, doubt feeds some of my reservations. Self doubt for me mainly manifests in feeling like I'm...incapable, which is a big thing for me not just in terms of recovering but in terms of living (and maybe that's more intwined than I'll get into right now anyway). So there's SELF doubt and then there's OTHERS doubt. Having had this disease for some time there've been a lot of people who love me who have watched me "fail" at recovery many times and so I face "others doubt", as well, which can be discouraging and feed into self doubt. "Others doubt", however, I have very little control over - I can do work to manage and work through self doubt.
Am I making sense here? I think I am. I was doing a little more thought about how I want to utilize this blog and what I want to do with it, and I thought that if I am willing and able to be very open in an appropriate way, and I do manage to get into recovery and then recover, sharing the steps I take in a detailed manner could possibly be helpful for other people as well as for me. Again, only time will tell if I actually keep up with this, but it's an idea.
On to reservations...
My Current Reservations regarding recovery, and thoughts/counters I can believe:
- Weight. (Of course.) I have shitty body image and I "feel fat" most of the time NOW, so how will I tolerate giving up the control around my weight? In my case, recovery means gaining weight to begin with, and then unconditionally tolerating whatever my body decides to do when I am eating in a manner that is conducive to my health and well being. I have this sense somehow that I'm not worthy if I'm at a higher weight, and also currently hold the belief that I
amlook revolting at higher weights. Also, I feel like I don't look my weight and how am I supposed to tolerate gaining __ number of pounds if it's all going to just make me look really big? I'm very nervous also because the last time I gained weight it was very oddly distributed - now this I have been told by professionals and by people who have recovered passes, and there are biologically based reasons for why this happens. Unfortunately, I never did give my body the time to redistribute. - I like food too much and will not be able to control what/how much I eat, and I'll end up overweight.
- [this is a reservation about even going into treatment] - I'll be the fattest one there, after all of this fuss with fund raising and stuff people are going to expect me to be "sicker" and think I'm dumb.
- There is no purpose or meaning to life. I will not be able to find anything concrete that I consistently feel is worth living for, especially without my ED as a vice.
- I have depression, and when I do not have my ED as a distraction/have it quelling my emotions I become incredibly depressed with such a force that it feels totally intolerable.
- Relationships - I
amfeel that I am socially inept and won't be able to make friends, and without my ED I will feel lonely all of the time. - I
'mfeel incapable of handling life's everyday adult responsibilities.
- Oh weight. Weight weight weight. It's true that I am concerned with my appearance to a degree, but this obsession with weight is in a lot of ways not actually about the weight. I am aware that it is going to be incredibly difficult to tolerate gaining weight and that for probably a very long time afterward I will feel extreme discomfort around it...I'm told body dissatisfaction is often the first thing to come with an eating disorder and the last thing to go, but I'm also told that if you really wait through it without messing with it, it passes eventually or at least gets better. I'll also probably find some relief by NOT weighing myself - which of course will also most likely provoke extreme anxiety but I do need to be willing to do whatever I can to ensure that my recovery happens, so that I can live and enjoy life. I am not a person who attaches the worth of others to their weight, so why the double standard? I would like to live in accordance with my values. Also, if letting go of my weight means that I can eventually recover and be a good example and help to others who suffer from these life sucking diseases, it will be worth more to me. That much I know. I will also have and seek a fair amount of support in the moments where I freak out. This obsession with a number and with my appearance keeps me completely unavailable to others emotionally and spiritually. It holds me back in so many ways. Weight will have to be something I take on a day to day, possibly moment to moment basis, but others have done it who were just as obsessed and riddled with fear as I am.
- Ah...this one's hard. I've always loved food and hated food for its effects on my weight when I didn't have purging as a "tool" to manage it. This reservation/fear is somewhat based in reality because the last time I went through refeeding I DID gain weight incredibly quickly and gained a good amount above what my dietician suspected my set point might be...recently I wrote back and forth with a woman who is awesome and in recovery, and she said the same happened with her - and she didn't even struggle much with binging, her symptoms were primarily anorexic. But she said that this is really common in the refeeding stage, especially if you aren't in a structured environment, because when the body comes out of starving it not only wants to hold on to everything and make good use of it (and it's confused by it) but the MIND also needs to be reassured that it isn't temporary, that it isn't all just going to stop one day, this new experience of being nourished. She said that she gained (from an emaciated weight) to an almost overweight by medical definition weight at first and that no one said a damn thing because the truth was they were all just glad she was alive, because her weight does not define her...and because after all she had done abusing her body, it was her turn to be patient with it. She went on to say that her body dropped back down to its set point. It's notable that SOME of the reason at least probably that I have such a love affair with food is born from being malnourished, and that once the sense of urgency is gone and I am more properly nourished I may not feel this way about it anymore. Now, I believe that there are a lot of emotional reasons I use food also, and I'll have to learn to cope with my emotions differently and thankfully I am lucky enough to be going into treatment where the professionals who are trained in treating people with this issue will help me learn to differentiate between physical and emotional hunger and help me to practice applying that. There have been times in my life when I was not malnourished and did not feel so urgently in love with food. I can have that again.
- EVERYONE thinks they're going to be the "fattest one" in treatment. It's common, and it's usually bullshit. However even if it were true it wouldn't mean I was any less sick or needed help any less and I value my life enough to risk that being true and go into treatment anyway.
- As far as meaning and purpose in life, I've never been in recovery long enough to really give myself a chance to remain functional long enough to explore it, to reconnect with or create new passions. I THINK about it a lot, but I suspect that this particular thing might require action and fumbling around a bit in the dark, experimentation. I will have faith in the things that those who have recovered before me tell me - that there is indeed meaning. When I have thought about this extensively in the past I have always acknowledged that I don't believe in any ultimate meaning or truth - in any god to devote my life for - and what I had concluded was that each person's reasons for living are different, as each person cares about different things to different degrees. It's personal. The thing I always thought I valued most, so far in life, are the people I love and unbarred human connection. I have also had other strong passions in the past that I never explored very fully, but some of them included: singing, writing, playing musical instruments...and so on.
- I do have depression. Malnourishment probably exacerbates this. I will seek support and help in learning to manage depression daily, and come up with a way of living and coping skills that help. Staying in the eating disorder may make me completely numb to it, but it also actually keeps my life a hell of a lot more depressing than it might be if I tried living without it. I know that some things have helped with my depression in the past, including medications as well as exploring my passions and ways of expressing myself.
- Simple: my eating disorder keeps me at a distance and unavailable. It may feel like a protective shield, and it may fill the space when I'm alone, but it is not the solution. I may be lonely and awkward for some time but I will have support. I am very loved as has been demonstrated in a variety of ways both recently and in the past, and if I am honest and open, other human beings will relate.
- Well hell, of course I don't feel like an adult. I haven't LIVED like one. I've had this disorder since childhood...and I'll have to do a lot of maturing and growing up, but it doesn't have to be impossible.
Salut for now.
Where I'm At
Well I guess I decided to jump in sooner than I thought :-P
Ah, really it's 1:30 AM and I am not ready for sleep, but also need something to occupy myself and could use the space to relay what's going on with me at the moment, to vent a little if you will, and after writing out that introduction-esque post I went to get some water and take my medication and questioned myself: how open am I going to be in this blog about what's going on with me NOW? Now, when I'm very unwell? How much do I want to reveal? Will people judge me? Will it come across as "bragging" about my level of illness, or will it be what I intend it to - an honest portrayal of where I'm currently at - my building ground? Should I even start writing this damn thing or should I put it off until I'm in recovery?
I haven't answered these questions for myself yet but I will say that I think there's something to witnessing transformation in a person. I think there ARE reasons to share some of the details of daily existence with an eating disorder, pre-recovery. And I am a person who is extremely fearful of judgement, but I also have very honest, solid intentions to turn things around. So I think that, for now at least, I'm going to go ahead and be fairly open about what's going on now.
Which is this: for the last several months I've been staying with my parents. I live in Northern California, and they live in North Carolina. I came out here because my health was declining, I had been hospitalized twice in a three week span, and I was so depressed and nonfunctional I thought I might lose my mind if I stayed in my little apartment all by myself. I was isolating heavily, starving, and binging and purging like crazy. And to be terribly honest I'm still doing all of these things, but being out here has been beneficial in the following ways:
1. My parents are aware of my current state of being medically compromised, and if something had gone wrong or does go wrong, they will be here to help.
2. Being around my parents, as dysfunctional a unit as we can often be, has been helpful in lessening my depression and despite how overwhelming I know it is for THEM at times to have me around, it has helped lessen my feelings of trying to figure all of this out by myself.
3. In the time I have been here I've been able to sit down with my parents and have some important conversations about what I currently need and how they can help, and they have been in many ways very understanding, loving, and willing. We have come up with a plan and I believe they are more aware of my situation and more invested in being involved in my recovery than they have been in the past.
4. At home I was having trouble doing things like getting to the pharmacy to fill my prescriptions, which are pretty important, as I don't have a car and have been physically compromised - here my dad drives me to my doctor's appointments and to the pharmacy and elsewhere.
Certainly it's a temporary solution and I don't intend to rely on my parents so heavily for much longer, but at the moment it's necessary and it's kept me alive and as sane as possible given the circumstances.
So. I've been staying with my parents. This time last year, I was in a similar place eating disorder wise; very sick and about to go into treatment. I did go into treatment, and it WAS different than other times had been. I was very willing, I was doing the work, and I was benefiting from the care I was receiving. Unfortunately I went in in bad shape and due to some major issues with my insurance company I was discharged abruptly - still quite malnourished and in the beginning stages of refeeding (which is problematic when you struggle with binging and purging to the degree that I do). It's a long, drawn out story, but I tried my very best and I didn't sink immediately but I did ultimately end up relapsing completely. The odds were heavily stacked against me and I have accepted what happened.
I'm overwhelmed even thinking about how to try to sum up the rest of it and I'm pretty tired of talking about it...well, because my insurance company's actions were pretty outrageous and I was directed to an attorney who decided to work with me, but believed that in order to win an appeal that I needed to be able to return to treatment and stay there while the appeal took place. She's really good. She's never lost, etcetera etcetera. The problem with that is how incredibly expensive treatment is and my family lacking the financial resources for this. My dad decided to take what he could from his retirement, but it alone wouldn't be enough to supplement the duration of an appeal, so after some thought and desperation I began fund raising. A LOT of people have been helping me and I've been very lucky in that it's been quite successful. With a few recent developments I feel confident enough to go into treatment in the coming weeks.
Before I can do so, though, because I think it's quite important I pre plan for the transition following treatment to be as smooth as possible (after all - treatment's a great starting point, but I'm going to need to maintain the progress I make afterward in the "real world") and because I and my treatment team have decided transitional living could be a very helpful piece of this, I have a couple of last things to take care of before I can put my name on the waiting list to go. These things are:
1. Giving my 30 days notice with my apartment (my dad, bless his heart, is going to take care of putting my things into storage), and
2. Getting my driver's license (which is required for the transition house at this particular facility).
It's been really hard for me to just...function, really, so it's been interesting trying to get these things in order. Finally on Friday, after taking the test for the second time, I passed - so I have my learning permit now, and this coming week I'll be starting driving lessons. I have to admit I'm sort of nervous to be *driving* but I'm going to do my best to be as safe about it as possible - i.e. making sure my blood sugar is level by eating something beforehand, and so on. I am hoping that after 2-3 weeks of a lot of lessons coupled with my dad's teaching me, I'll get a good enough handle on driving to take the test and pass. And I'll be giving my 30 days notice in probably about a week or so depending on how quickly I get a handle on driving (I do need to go home before I go into treatment to get some things and it's kind of a big deal for me to be moving away - I have a lot of people that I love very much in the Bay Area, where I live, and I want to say goodbye if possible, though I'm sure I'll visit them as much as I can).
Whew. I feel like I needed to get that background out there before I could move on to anything else. So there's a picture of where I'm currently at as far as what's going on in general - but to bring you here with me into this moment: I just spent about 25 minutes running around the house, out of my mind with cold, looking for the heated blanket. I found it a couple of weeks ago but didn't have the extension that you plug into the wall to actually make it heat up, and after I asked my mom about it she found it and gave it to me. Of course on the coldest night of the year so far (27 degrees outside - yeah, in North Carolina), once I have the cord, I can't find the goddamn thing. I get so cold sometimes now that it hurts, so cold my brain stops working, so cold I want to cry. When I finally located the blanket, it was on my sleeping father. He wasn't using it as a heated blanket though, just as regular one, and by this point I was completely bundled up in sweats and wearing several layers and still panicking because I felt so goddamn cold...so I got a nice quilt, and woke him up to trade.
Did I feel bad waking my dad up? Absolutely. Did I feel like I had much of a choice? No. I can't explain for the life of me this kind of cold. It's one of the unfortunate effects of being anorexic. And it was either spend all night in a bathtub filled with scorching hot water, or the heated blanket.
Oy vey, now it's 2:15 and I meant to take my sleeping medication by 2:00. Fuck. I've been trying really hard to regulate my sleep pattern - another unfortunate, less glaringly obvious area that can be serious affected by an eating disorder. One of my good friends, who also has an eating disorder, makes youtube videos about it. She was talking a little bit in one of her recent videos about all of the seemingly "little" areas of a person's life that are affected that no one ever really thinks about (or that it's easy for the sufferer to overlook because they aren't imminent or life threatening), and I thought she was spot on. There are SO many things that get shoved to the side because you get so used to them, and some of them really aren't "little things" - from a 'normal person''s perspective, when I take the time to step back and take a look at it, some of them are probably downright abnormal to an almost freaky degree. My friend cleverly refers to these things as "not having been in the bulimia brochure". I like that. This? This insanity inducing cold? Definitely wasn't in the brochure.
And here I find myself now procrastinating taking my sleeping medication (oh hell, I'll take it right now and make sure to only write for another few minutes - done) waiting for this blanket to heat up some more...typing out this blog entry, always doing something (usually on the computer) because...ah, it's hard to put words to...because I fear the space of just being. The emptiness, the silence - that terrifies me. It's one of the reasons I binge and purge, I think.
And after I stop writing this I'll try to read. That's a love of mine, reading - though it's another thing that having an eating disorder has made more difficult for me, because concentrating is hard. But I've been making an effort recently to read because I need some healthier escape, because it allows me to get out of my own head, and because I love stories. I kicked off my starting-to-read-again mission with "The Haunting", a short novel by Shirley Jackson, (That's another thing I used to love - not just stories, but scary stories. This also applies to horror movies.) and now I've moved on to "Crooked Little Heart" by one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott (it's the first I've read of her fiction - she writes a lot of nonfiction as well and I've read a few of those).
ANYway, I'll read until I can barely keep my eyes open because I just can't sit with me. I think that's something that might be helpful to start trying to practice? Or maybe not? Ah, who cares. Whenever I think about this crap I realize I'm just incompetant in so many ways at the moment - it's a scary awareness, that you're just a little too far gone to really trust yourself or take yourself very seriously - and I try to focus on the tangible facts: get the driver's license. Do that first.
Well, I'm afraid if I keep writing and my sleeping pill kicks in that I might start to not make much sense, so I'm going to go now. What a long entry, oy.
Ah, really it's 1:30 AM and I am not ready for sleep, but also need something to occupy myself and could use the space to relay what's going on with me at the moment, to vent a little if you will, and after writing out that introduction-esque post I went to get some water and take my medication and questioned myself: how open am I going to be in this blog about what's going on with me NOW? Now, when I'm very unwell? How much do I want to reveal? Will people judge me? Will it come across as "bragging" about my level of illness, or will it be what I intend it to - an honest portrayal of where I'm currently at - my building ground? Should I even start writing this damn thing or should I put it off until I'm in recovery?
I haven't answered these questions for myself yet but I will say that I think there's something to witnessing transformation in a person. I think there ARE reasons to share some of the details of daily existence with an eating disorder, pre-recovery. And I am a person who is extremely fearful of judgement, but I also have very honest, solid intentions to turn things around. So I think that, for now at least, I'm going to go ahead and be fairly open about what's going on now.
Which is this: for the last several months I've been staying with my parents. I live in Northern California, and they live in North Carolina. I came out here because my health was declining, I had been hospitalized twice in a three week span, and I was so depressed and nonfunctional I thought I might lose my mind if I stayed in my little apartment all by myself. I was isolating heavily, starving, and binging and purging like crazy. And to be terribly honest I'm still doing all of these things, but being out here has been beneficial in the following ways:
1. My parents are aware of my current state of being medically compromised, and if something had gone wrong or does go wrong, they will be here to help.
2. Being around my parents, as dysfunctional a unit as we can often be, has been helpful in lessening my depression and despite how overwhelming I know it is for THEM at times to have me around, it has helped lessen my feelings of trying to figure all of this out by myself.
3. In the time I have been here I've been able to sit down with my parents and have some important conversations about what I currently need and how they can help, and they have been in many ways very understanding, loving, and willing. We have come up with a plan and I believe they are more aware of my situation and more invested in being involved in my recovery than they have been in the past.
4. At home I was having trouble doing things like getting to the pharmacy to fill my prescriptions, which are pretty important, as I don't have a car and have been physically compromised - here my dad drives me to my doctor's appointments and to the pharmacy and elsewhere.
Certainly it's a temporary solution and I don't intend to rely on my parents so heavily for much longer, but at the moment it's necessary and it's kept me alive and as sane as possible given the circumstances.
So. I've been staying with my parents. This time last year, I was in a similar place eating disorder wise; very sick and about to go into treatment. I did go into treatment, and it WAS different than other times had been. I was very willing, I was doing the work, and I was benefiting from the care I was receiving. Unfortunately I went in in bad shape and due to some major issues with my insurance company I was discharged abruptly - still quite malnourished and in the beginning stages of refeeding (which is problematic when you struggle with binging and purging to the degree that I do). It's a long, drawn out story, but I tried my very best and I didn't sink immediately but I did ultimately end up relapsing completely. The odds were heavily stacked against me and I have accepted what happened.
I'm overwhelmed even thinking about how to try to sum up the rest of it and I'm pretty tired of talking about it...well, because my insurance company's actions were pretty outrageous and I was directed to an attorney who decided to work with me, but believed that in order to win an appeal that I needed to be able to return to treatment and stay there while the appeal took place. She's really good. She's never lost, etcetera etcetera. The problem with that is how incredibly expensive treatment is and my family lacking the financial resources for this. My dad decided to take what he could from his retirement, but it alone wouldn't be enough to supplement the duration of an appeal, so after some thought and desperation I began fund raising. A LOT of people have been helping me and I've been very lucky in that it's been quite successful. With a few recent developments I feel confident enough to go into treatment in the coming weeks.
Before I can do so, though, because I think it's quite important I pre plan for the transition following treatment to be as smooth as possible (after all - treatment's a great starting point, but I'm going to need to maintain the progress I make afterward in the "real world") and because I and my treatment team have decided transitional living could be a very helpful piece of this, I have a couple of last things to take care of before I can put my name on the waiting list to go. These things are:
1. Giving my 30 days notice with my apartment (my dad, bless his heart, is going to take care of putting my things into storage), and
2. Getting my driver's license (which is required for the transition house at this particular facility).
It's been really hard for me to just...function, really, so it's been interesting trying to get these things in order. Finally on Friday, after taking the test for the second time, I passed - so I have my learning permit now, and this coming week I'll be starting driving lessons. I have to admit I'm sort of nervous to be *driving* but I'm going to do my best to be as safe about it as possible - i.e. making sure my blood sugar is level by eating something beforehand, and so on. I am hoping that after 2-3 weeks of a lot of lessons coupled with my dad's teaching me, I'll get a good enough handle on driving to take the test and pass. And I'll be giving my 30 days notice in probably about a week or so depending on how quickly I get a handle on driving (I do need to go home before I go into treatment to get some things and it's kind of a big deal for me to be moving away - I have a lot of people that I love very much in the Bay Area, where I live, and I want to say goodbye if possible, though I'm sure I'll visit them as much as I can).
Whew. I feel like I needed to get that background out there before I could move on to anything else. So there's a picture of where I'm currently at as far as what's going on in general - but to bring you here with me into this moment: I just spent about 25 minutes running around the house, out of my mind with cold, looking for the heated blanket. I found it a couple of weeks ago but didn't have the extension that you plug into the wall to actually make it heat up, and after I asked my mom about it she found it and gave it to me. Of course on the coldest night of the year so far (27 degrees outside - yeah, in North Carolina), once I have the cord, I can't find the goddamn thing. I get so cold sometimes now that it hurts, so cold my brain stops working, so cold I want to cry. When I finally located the blanket, it was on my sleeping father. He wasn't using it as a heated blanket though, just as regular one, and by this point I was completely bundled up in sweats and wearing several layers and still panicking because I felt so goddamn cold...so I got a nice quilt, and woke him up to trade.
Did I feel bad waking my dad up? Absolutely. Did I feel like I had much of a choice? No. I can't explain for the life of me this kind of cold. It's one of the unfortunate effects of being anorexic. And it was either spend all night in a bathtub filled with scorching hot water, or the heated blanket.
Oy vey, now it's 2:15 and I meant to take my sleeping medication by 2:00. Fuck. I've been trying really hard to regulate my sleep pattern - another unfortunate, less glaringly obvious area that can be serious affected by an eating disorder. One of my good friends, who also has an eating disorder, makes youtube videos about it. She was talking a little bit in one of her recent videos about all of the seemingly "little" areas of a person's life that are affected that no one ever really thinks about (or that it's easy for the sufferer to overlook because they aren't imminent or life threatening), and I thought she was spot on. There are SO many things that get shoved to the side because you get so used to them, and some of them really aren't "little things" - from a 'normal person''s perspective, when I take the time to step back and take a look at it, some of them are probably downright abnormal to an almost freaky degree. My friend cleverly refers to these things as "not having been in the bulimia brochure". I like that. This? This insanity inducing cold? Definitely wasn't in the brochure.
And here I find myself now procrastinating taking my sleeping medication (oh hell, I'll take it right now and make sure to only write for another few minutes - done) waiting for this blanket to heat up some more...typing out this blog entry, always doing something (usually on the computer) because...ah, it's hard to put words to...because I fear the space of just being. The emptiness, the silence - that terrifies me. It's one of the reasons I binge and purge, I think.
And after I stop writing this I'll try to read. That's a love of mine, reading - though it's another thing that having an eating disorder has made more difficult for me, because concentrating is hard. But I've been making an effort recently to read because I need some healthier escape, because it allows me to get out of my own head, and because I love stories. I kicked off my starting-to-read-again mission with "The Haunting", a short novel by Shirley Jackson, (That's another thing I used to love - not just stories, but scary stories. This also applies to horror movies.) and now I've moved on to "Crooked Little Heart" by one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott (it's the first I've read of her fiction - she writes a lot of nonfiction as well and I've read a few of those).
ANYway, I'll read until I can barely keep my eyes open because I just can't sit with me. I think that's something that might be helpful to start trying to practice? Or maybe not? Ah, who cares. Whenever I think about this crap I realize I'm just incompetant in so many ways at the moment - it's a scary awareness, that you're just a little too far gone to really trust yourself or take yourself very seriously - and I try to focus on the tangible facts: get the driver's license. Do that first.
Well, I'm afraid if I keep writing and my sleeping pill kicks in that I might start to not make much sense, so I'm going to go now. What a long entry, oy.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Hello to the World of Blogging
In the last few months, I've come across several blogs focused on eating disorder recovery that I've found both comforting and helpful. I really enjoy Surfacing After Silence, to name one - I find her insightful and very honest, without judgement...and that ability - to be honest without judgement - appears to be one that can be useful when recovering from these illnesses. I've noted it again and again in people I've known (or known of) to have recovered fully.
I'll be clear: at the moment, I'm not recovered or in recovery. That's my goal, but I'm not there yet. I'll also state here and now that this particular blog entry and possibly the coming ones may not be very well organized. I imagine they may at times mirror my current cognitive defecits and I'm almost certain I'll leave a lot out, because sometimes it's overwhelming to try to put to words what I'm thinking or feeling. But for a number of reasons I've decided to start this blog now...and I hope that it will help me in providing me a place to organize my thoughts in this regard (my recovery) and funnel them into one space.
So hello world of blogging! My name is Sofia. I'm twenty one years old, and I've struggled with disordered eating (which, of course, morphed into a full blown eating disorder) for approximately twelve years now. It's taken various forms and for the purposes of this first post the details are unimportant.
In a few weeks, I'll be going into treatment for what I hope will be the last time. I don't think that formal inpatient or residential treatment is the only way that a person with an eating disorder can recover (in fact I've seen some people who were very ill recover without), but I do think that it can be very helpful, and in my opinion is currently appropriate and necessary for me. It's been a long, viscious road and after some thought I decided, this time, to put everything that I have into making "this time" different - utilizing any and all resources I think could help me. Which is why I've made the decision to step down in the levels of care as gradually as possible and available to me; I intend to step down from the residential level of care into transitional living, and then move to the area near the facility I'll be going into, as they offer alumni support groups and there's a pretty amazing network of recovered or in recovery alumni in the area. It's a big step for me. I don't like change, and I'm scared. I'm afraid I might fail, and there's a lot on the line - financially and otherwise. By the same token I'm excited because I have caught glimpses of what it could mean to recover, to be in recovery...and it seems to be an entirely different world than the one I've been (not) living in while actively ill. I'm excited and terrified to discover and create a new life for myself.
My intentions for this blog are to be open and honest even and possibly especially when I'm unsure of myself. If I believe in the power of anything it's the power of honesty.
That's all, for now. Let's see if I actually keep up with this blogging thing.
I'll be clear: at the moment, I'm not recovered or in recovery. That's my goal, but I'm not there yet. I'll also state here and now that this particular blog entry and possibly the coming ones may not be very well organized. I imagine they may at times mirror my current cognitive defecits and I'm almost certain I'll leave a lot out, because sometimes it's overwhelming to try to put to words what I'm thinking or feeling. But for a number of reasons I've decided to start this blog now...and I hope that it will help me in providing me a place to organize my thoughts in this regard (my recovery) and funnel them into one space.
So hello world of blogging! My name is Sofia. I'm twenty one years old, and I've struggled with disordered eating (which, of course, morphed into a full blown eating disorder) for approximately twelve years now. It's taken various forms and for the purposes of this first post the details are unimportant.
In a few weeks, I'll be going into treatment for what I hope will be the last time. I don't think that formal inpatient or residential treatment is the only way that a person with an eating disorder can recover (in fact I've seen some people who were very ill recover without), but I do think that it can be very helpful, and in my opinion is currently appropriate and necessary for me. It's been a long, viscious road and after some thought I decided, this time, to put everything that I have into making "this time" different - utilizing any and all resources I think could help me. Which is why I've made the decision to step down in the levels of care as gradually as possible and available to me; I intend to step down from the residential level of care into transitional living, and then move to the area near the facility I'll be going into, as they offer alumni support groups and there's a pretty amazing network of recovered or in recovery alumni in the area. It's a big step for me. I don't like change, and I'm scared. I'm afraid I might fail, and there's a lot on the line - financially and otherwise. By the same token I'm excited because I have caught glimpses of what it could mean to recover, to be in recovery...and it seems to be an entirely different world than the one I've been (not) living in while actively ill. I'm excited and terrified to discover and create a new life for myself.
My intentions for this blog are to be open and honest even and possibly especially when I'm unsure of myself. If I believe in the power of anything it's the power of honesty.
That's all, for now. Let's see if I actually keep up with this blogging thing.
Love After Love, by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
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