Tales from the visits with Mother-In-Law

I went out of town for a few days.  Not a vacation.  More like looking after recently widowed Mother-In-Law.  I love her dearly, but she came back with me for a week, and I'm already nervous.  My dissociation has heightened to an unmeasurable degree.  I don't play nicely with others, and I don't want to share my apartment with her.  I couldn't even begin to write until I heavily medicated myself and put myself into a sleep.

I don't think it's Mother-In-Law.  I think my new apartment has been created as a place of comfort, and I don't even like sharing it with Husband.   He doesn't appreciate it at all. Which is another story entirely.  As soon as I got home and saw him I felt my skin crawl and the chaos in my head began.  Someone doesn't like him and steals from me.  If I don't resolve life with him I don't think there will be a marriage much longer.  He's got less than a year now to show signs he's willing to participate in change with me.

But my happiest times lately are when I get up, have coffee, slowly wake up, work around the apartment, read, take Maybelline for a walk, and continue my day however.

The cutting has subsided, but I crave burning myself.  Being watched by Mother-In-Law 24/7 and taking care of her in return has left little opportunity to comfort myself.  But I think of burning.  I know what I will do.  I crave it.  I imagine and fantasize about it.

I stuck pretty much to my weight loss plan while I was gone.  I weigh in tomorrow, hating what the scale says, hating what it doesn't.

I absolutely don't want to see Therapist for our session tomorrow.  I'm afraid it will be a let-down session, that there will be no true communication, partly me to blame.  The defenses are already being erected early, anticipating on what he might want to discuss.  It will be a waste if he bull shits the first thirty minutes and then tries to raise delicate issues.  If Therapist is going to bring up shit, he should bring it up quickly.  I don't want to wait there wondering when the other shoe will drop.

All in all, except for dissociative episode tonight, I'd say I'm doing well.  It's nice to be able to say that.

I can probably thing of one second of my life where I felt free, not tied down by the rules and laws of whatever vice I am about to give to. I look at the girls in my dining hall at school and none "look" like they cut, burn, or have an eating disorder. I'm sorry, but I feel that our addictions put us in a special category where you have this 6th sense about other people. I search the walls of my campus and see no one like me. I certainly don't see anything off the chain like me and D.I.D.

Not that I'm anything special or atypical from the next mixed up person. What I'm trying to say is.....i don't know.

I did have a major let down in my behavior. I probably would feel better about myself if I had gotten out of the house today, but I set myself up for failure by isolating, and the outcome wasn't healthy.

I go tomorrow to terminate my relationship with my therapist. The drive is too far, I'm getting no where with her, she always ASSumes to know with whom she is talking.

I like her because she has gone above and beyond the call of duty. As a T she is great. Makes me less hopeful b/c she was recommended to it. I don't know.

What does the blogging find important and special about therapists? Have you found The One?

A picture is worth a thousand hateful, ugly words

I'm sitting here dissociating like hell. I feel them right behind my eyes. Heaven help me. I hope this post makes sense.

When I was importing my photos to my computer, I saw some my husband, D. had taken of me before and after I went into residential treatment. I almost gagged. There is a marked difference and if anything in the world could make me feel even fatter, it's those damn pictures. I didn't erase them. D. didn't want me to. He thought the pre-residential treatment photos would motivate me to stay on the right track and fight the eatng disorder. All it did was make me buy a scale and diet pills.

I journaled about it and would like to say it made me feel better, but it didn't. I've always felt that being at an average weight made me fat, average, worthless and ugly, but it also made me feel dirty and unclean. Those feeling started at eleven when I developed my eating disorder. It also coincides with more trauma. Anything in my mouth became disgusting and invasive. I don't know how to get over that or help the member who holds those feelings about food.

In addition, seeing the current photos of myself made me reel with disgust. I saw through the eyes of the camera lense how disfigured I look from self-harm. Disgust is the only word. I could see the fresh scars of twelve cigarette burns on my left arm as well as more recent second degree burns with a lighter on my writst. I didn't realize it looked so bad.

The old me would try to hide my scars. I can see people staring at my arm and wrist when I'm out in public, but if I hide my scars that just perpetuates the shame. I don't want to feel any worse about myself than I do.

I remember being at a water park and standing in line. There was a girl of about age 10 or eleven and she was with her father and they were staing in front of me. She turned around and looked at me and my scars and wouldn't turn away. I made a flippant comment to D, my husband, about people minding their own business and not staring at people. Then she asked her father what was wrong with me, how did I get like this. I was so pissed off. I really wanted to say something to the father who didn't raise his daughter to not stare at people with "deformities." I wondered if she stared at people in wheel chairs or where missing limbs or had other things about them that were different. I will never, ever, ever forget that girl or how small and ugly she made me feel.

So pictures are worth a thousand words. They can reveal happy times or times you'd rather forget. They capture moments in time, some you want to embrace and some you want to never remember again. Unfortunately, this experience with my photos has made me camera shy, and I guess that means I'm ashamed of myself; one of the worst feelings in the world.