I'm too tired

for words. so here is an abbreviated version.

I took my "daughter" to school today. Came home. Didn't feel like working out. I'm starting to get too fatigued for it. I slept until 3:30, when my husband came home. I watched POTC2 and drugged myself into oblivion. I spoke with someone on my treatment team who said I had left her a message; no memory of that. i told her how hopeless i felt. i'm scared of this hopelessness. it was the kind of depression and hopelessness and suicidal ideation that wound me in the hospital the first time. but i am ashamed of myself and that makes me all the more hopeless. from february to november i was in treatment. how could i still be suffering like this?

moving on...

Had dinner with husband tonight. purged it. no surprise. i feel gross and fat and dirty and scummy.

i go to the dr's tomorrow to get an epidural for my herniated disc. i have to be there at 8:00 am. i hope it works this time. i am so tired of back pain. i've had it for ten years and multiple procedures.

i'm so tired of pain, period.

Where we go to die

This is not been a good day. It's consisted of one of four things: eating, purging, sleeping, or cutting. Maybe I should throw in crying and feeling gravely sad. I've tried to hold back on this blog as much as I could because I didn't want readers to think all I did was whine or bitch and moan. I don't care anymore. I really feel desperate and need to get back to what I was, a woman who didn't abuse food, who was making progress with her trauma work, and didn't feel sad all the time. I remember telling my T. at the res. tx. center it was the first time I had ever felt hope. How sad. 34 years of life and it's the first time I've felt hope.

And here I am, not sure how to feel about myself because I want to die. I really want to die. Should I be mad at myself or should I have compassion. How should I feel?

I'm so empty. For the first time in the world I crave living, I crave trying to graduate school and not caring if I get an A or a B. But I've been dying inside and I don't know how to iterate that to others that I'm not okay.

I feel that I don't have the help I need. I have no nutritionist, a psycho-iatrist that doesn't know two cents about me but prescribes heavy drugs, and a therapist that leaves at least me wondering if he knows how to handle the gaggle of us. I, Tina, feel we are lost and there is no hope for me, the littles, or the others.

Black Katherine- I told everyone this would happen. You can't escape your destiny. And no matter how many times you hide in the FUCKING CLOSET!!!!! you will be found. Death is the only answer to our problems.

Victoria - Everyone is crying for help. Everyone feels lost and alone. No one can pull it together. And I'm flat. The turmoil has sucked my words and music from me. Angie and I are on a time schedule. We have school in August. We have to make sure everyone is functional so that we can attend.

enough

A hopeless serenade

I give myself permission tonight to whine, moan, bitch, complain, or to indulge in any other outburst needed. So many emotions and I can't escape not one. The day started out as usual. I took my god-children to school, although I was exhausted. What I would have given to have just a few more minutes in bed. Nevertheless, I took C. and O. to middle school, stopped and got coffee, and we to therapy. After therapy, I stopped off for a workout. I did more than usual: 95 minutes of cardio. I was ecstatic because it totalled 1,000 calories, and I was to return later in the day with D., my husban for a fourty minute workout. I don't know what it is about exercise but it always makes me depressed. I thought exercise was supposed to give you a rush of endorphins and make you feel good. It doesn't for me.

After my workout, I came home, showered, and got ready to see the psychiatrist. I hate psychiatrist. How can they know enough about me in less than fifteen minutes to prescribe serious mind-altering drugs? I don't get it. This was only the second time I'd seen him. I like him as well as possible. When I finished and got my drugs, I came home famished. I had still only allowed myself 300 calories for the day and had burned 1,000 working out, so mentally I was pleased with myself.

However, I can't boast that I'm happy with what I'm doing. I want recovery. I really, really do. I want to uncover my past, communicate on a friendly basis with my alters, and eat normally while being skinny.

I feel as if I'm going off track. After the psycho-iatrist, I came home and rested with the dogs, waiting for D. to get off work so we could go work out. What I didn't know is that he has meetings every Tuesday for six week to help maintain his credits as a teacher. He teaches Special Education for 3-5 graders. So no workout. I didn't feel like going by myself. So I waited until 5:30 and made a restricted dinner and here I am typing away my anxieties because I feel so guilty, anxious, and remorseful that I ate food. I am mad at myself for being such a damn pig. So my calorie count today is 780, and even though I safely worked that off on the eliptical machine, I'm whigging out because I feel it too much.

This line of thinking is so incongruent with recovery, which is what I really want. All the hospitalizations before and the residential treatment, I was only halfway motivated. Now, I feel like a warrior and I want to get better. I don't want to be sick. I don't want to dissociate or be fragmented. I want to be around food and not have the panic attack I had tonight.

I'm getting worse and it's to the point the E.D. is controlling me, not the other way around. I had to do an extra five minutes on the eliptical in case I was lazy and didn't push myself hard enough. I had to burn 50 extra calories in case the machine miscalculated my caloric output. I can't sleep at night anymore. I wake up frequently, and, when I do manage to sleep, I dream of food and being able to eat it. I downloaded a calorie counter onto my Blackberry.

I've fallen from grace.

But I know I can get back. I don't want my "daughters" to see me this way. They are very intuned into what I eat, how I eat, and what I look like.

More than anything, I want to work on the trauma pieces, but I don't know how. To be honest, I almost feel like I'm doing it alone. The system doesn't know how to work on the memories with R., our therapist. I speak at least for myself, and a few other alters, that working on the trauma right now is key. When we worked on trauma in residential tx. we experienced a VERY abbreviated moment in time when weight didn't matter as much and we felt more free. That tells me it is possible.

But we've been feeling very hopeless lately. Our lives can not be like this forever. It's back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Maybe that's not true. The "forth" has only ever been a pretense.

The bell jar is descending. Hopelessness is finding its way home. I recognize them all too well. I am going back to school in August and I really want to be ready. If I'm not...

I guess I'm done whining and complaining. I just want to get better. I've had an eating disorder for twenty-three years. I know it's not going to go away easily. It will take hard work; work that I havn't vested yet. And I know that working with the alters is going to be difficult. I'm scared that we won't be able to do the work with out current T. that we did in res. tx. All the more reasons to feel hopeless.

But we're ready now. And we have till August to get to a point where we can function at school.

Black Katherine is coming alive with her "told you so" attitude. She's not full of malice. She's just depressed and dripping her hopelessness onto us. I feel like screaming because I feel like we're not being heard. We need help fast or we won't make it.

Okay. So we whined, bitched, complained, and moaned. For all good reasons. We're ready, ready, ready. We just don't know for what, but it better be soon.

Discussing dissociation

I found a blog from a trauma therapist called "Discussing Dissociation" and found a lot of great information on it. I most liked her idea on creating an internal scrapbook for alters to get to know one another in a more creative context. Also, as I looked around her site, she has so much good information that I thought it would be helpful for a lot of people to explore. Take a look. Hope it helps. Take care.

Lengths to getting better.

What a weekend! It was filled with errands, sleep, and taking my god-daughters to a movie and shopping. We had assignments by our T. to complete and haven't been as productive as we would have liked; nevertheless, we did do some journaling, which was part of our instruction. Another assignment was to let Tina, one of our members, make chocolate chip cookies. We came close, even got the ingredients together. That was as far as we made it with that. We left the ingredients out so Tina can make the cookies for tomorrow. We didn't get a work out in on Saturday, so being behind a day in calories meant we had to put the cookies off until we could safely get an extra work out in.

We've been thinking about how we ended our previous blog. The topic of the lengths we will go to to get better came up and is rather pertinent considering the lapse that has happened since leaving treatment. What are we willing to give up in order to get better?

The question firsts needs to be asked do we want to get better. The answer is yes, especially with the dissociation. Not meaning that we want to get rid of our members. But there are times when we are switching constantly and it gives me a raging, intolerable headache. The switching and shifting is disconcerting, confusing, and most of all, unsettling. There is every reason in the world to want to get better. But the food issues come in. Most anorexics agree, even the ones on the road to recovery, that there is a sliver inside somewhere that starving oneself creates a sense of safety. Getting attention, having people who formerly didn't notice you start to care, and being sick is a plus in having this disorder. Growing up, the only time we got attention from the birth mother was when we were sick. The only time we get attention now is when we are sick.

Back to the point: what are we willing to give up, what lengths will we go to to get better? Certain areas of our life have to be explored and let go before we can even get close to wanting to let go of the eating disorder. I don't think it even possible to let go of the E.D. until some exploration is done into the reason we dissociate and the trauma we've gone through and blocked off.

For some of us, food is dirty and equated to abuse. Eating most things is reminiscent to the sexual abuse. Starving ourselves makes us clean and pure inside. One of our assignments is to find ways to feel clean about ourselves without depriving ourselves of food. Much thought has gone into this. There are three ways we use to cleanse us. Starvation, over exercise, and showers. We shower and scrub like we've just been victimized. The skin is red and raw.

I've no idea of any other avenues to avail that will produce the same cleansing effect, because it has become like a chemical release inside. It's like the release of endorphins. What else could give us that rush? Shopping, cooking, playing with the dogs, cleaning the house, watching a movie? Cleaning the house might help, but I can't think of anything else to make me feel clean about myself so that I don't want to starve or exercise or damage myself in any other way.

If members could let go of their secrets and share their memories with each other then perhaps we might not feel so dirty inside that emptiness is the only answer. Towards the end in res. tx. it got easier to access memories, but I don't know how to do that without res. tx. Sure, I have a therapist, but there's a missing link. Yes, I trust my therapist. The alters agree that they do as well; so, why can't we access the memories like we did before.

What comes first: giving up the memories or giving up the anorexia? The anorexia makes me feel clean, but so would dealing with the memories that tainted me to begin with. I remember towards the end of residential treatment after dealing with a painful memory that my weight wasn't as important as it had been. Processing the memories and feelings were more helpful. That feeling didn't last long, but if I kept at it and worked with the trauma it might make the anorexia less important. I wouldn't need it for safety.

But I can't force alters to give up their memories and secrets. They know I'm scared witless. I don't know how to cross that bridge. I say I'm ready to deal with it. I stuck with the painful feelings in treatment during session and didn't run from it, but I don't know how to access the memories and feelings now that I'm in the real world. I'm quite confused.

I would go to any length possible to get ready of the dirty, shamed feelings. It takes starving myself and exercising for at least 60 minutes everyday to feel clean. I have to be empty, weightless and hollow to be clean, pure and
unpolluted. I would give it up yesterday if I only knew how. Anorexia is necessary in making myself feel that I'm not degraded, trashy, and worthless. I'm so done feeling that way; I just don't know how to give it up.

I know I shouldn't have this episode because it sabotages my chances of recovery, but I purchased an episode of a t.v. show named "Intervention" and downloaded it to my iPod. It is about a woman named Emily who was anorexic, at least at the time. I identified with what she said about not eating and then exercising and showering and feeling empty and clean after that. She said it was the best feeling in the world, and I totally agree with her.

Anorexia is going to be very difficult to give up. I have to find something that will give me that same pure, clean, and spotless feeling. I just don't know what it is or where to find it. I also wish my members would be more forthcoming in sharing their trauma experiences. Without that, I don't know if we'll ever make it past the tight rope of death that we walk every day.