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.

Silent Screams

Things are quiet, but they're not. There’s not much to talk about, but there’s so much to say. I haven’t been posting or taking photos of my food because the words aren’t there and neither is the food.

The eating disorder is a little bit louder these days, and I’m having a hard time with my food.

A dichotomy is growing inside: those who are pro life and those who are pro eating disorder.

The recovery voice is still speaking, alerting us there is life worth living outside of an eating disorder. I listen closely, praying she is right. She says there are things in life worth living for. She reminds us of school. We start back in August and she reminds us of the trouble we will face if we are still engaging in eating disorder behaviors. She tells of the good times we can have in our class if we aren’t focused on food and weight.

She reminds us of other things we want: laughter, friendships, teaching kids, exercise. She speaks of attaining things we don’t know we even want yet.

But there is the other side of me that can only speak the language of eating disorders. A lonely, broken, sad girl who relies on the eating disorder to say everything she cannot say. If she could, she would say that she’s scared, that bad men come and find her. She would say she’s hurt. She would say she feels lonely and no one would help her then. She would say there is nowhere else to hide, that she is not safe. She would say she wants someone to help her. She would like someone to notice her.

Her sadness gives birth to my tears. I don’t know where to go from here or what next to say. Hopefully, this is enough for now. The lonely, broken, sad girl is feeling her tears.

A curvy woman

The drama of this past weekend has subsided a little.

I met with Dietician today and explained to her how I felt I couldn’t trust her because she was making me fat. When she weighed me, my weight had maintained over the past month, so she may not be making me as fat as I feel she is.

An area we talked about was the subject of curves on a woman. I said to her I felt I was gaining weight primarily in my hips and thighs and she asked me what was wrong with having curves. When she asked this of me I sensed a great stirring inside my system. Then I heard a voice cry, “We don’t want curves!” I immediately recognized this voice when I heard her and when she gave me images of an eleven year old girl playing at the house of someone that would hurt her.

This is one of the members/alter/part that has the eating disorder. I am so frightened of her and what she has to tell me that I hardly want to think of it.

I don't know what to do with this.

Oops! I did it again...(Trigger Warning for ED talk)

Oops…I did it again. I binged and purged today.

I won’t lie; I felt better afterward. All my anxiety had been lifted, and I felt clean.

It all started this morning when I went shopping for a swimsuit and a dress. I took six dresses, 3 swimsuits, and what little self-esteem I had into the dressing room. I thought there was a conspiracy with the dresses to accentuate every ounce of fat on me. The swimsuits were even more malicious. Nothing fit like I thought it would. And I then I realized why; I was used to seeing myself with smaller eyes. I was used to trying on clothes for a smaller frame. When I looked in the fitting room mirror, I didn’t recognize the body staring back at me. I wasn’t prepared for the insult.

Coming out of the dressing room I felt as if I had been wearing blinders all these months, and they had finally come off. I was finally able to see myself for the size I really am. It was as if this past year I had bought into a lie. Everyone has been telling me I’m at an appropriate, healthy weight. And I started to believe it. I feel like such a fool. How could I not know what size I am? And I am wary of Dietician now. I trusted her not to make me fat. And now I’m the very thing I feared.

So after shopping I dejectedly came home, upset over my weight. I needed to eat lunch, but I was too tired to fix a meal and I wanted to restrict anyway; I decided to make myself a smoothie. The smoothie was good, but it didn’t satisfy me. So I nibbled on something else, then something else, and then another something else, never feeling satisfied. Then Husband went and took a nap and all of a sudden I realized what I could do: I could purge and he would never know. And so I did…and I finally felt satisfied.

I don’t know how I feel about it. I can’t say I’m sorry for it. I should have done the next right thing and eaten my afternoon snack, my dinner, and my bedtime snack. But I didn’t.

There’s a lot going on inside of me. I know we should use our words, not our symptoms, to express how we feel; I don’t know how I feel, so my symptoms will have to speak for me.

Oh, no! She didn't!!

It can happen so quickly. One comment can shoot you right down out of the sky. That happened to me today at the gym. I was down stairs lifting weights, feeling pretty good, and a woman that I see there on a regular basis came up to me and proceeds to tell me that, according to her, she thinks I look much healthier now. She says for a while I had been too thin and looked peaked and sickly. Yes, she says, I look much better now.

I realize she meant to pay me a compliment and how could she know that I’m recovering from an eating disorder. However, even with knowing this, I suddenly felt fat and ugly and disgusting. There are some things you should never say to someone with an eating disorder, and that includes commenting on weight and appearance.

It surprised me just how much her comments affected me. I immediately started thinking I was gaining weight which made me depressed. What an irrational conclusion based on an innocent comment! But my thoughts didn’t get any better. My knee jerk reaction was to over exercise and to start restricting to lose weight again. But I did neither. I exercised my two hours, had snack on the elliptical machine, and left. And in spite of my feelings, I adhered to my meal plan for dinner. Dinner is never easy, as it is the last meal of the day, but tonight’s dinner was incredibly hard. But I did it.

Recently I have been feeling good about my recovery. I’ve kept on my meal plan, been attending my EDA (Eating Disorders Anonymous) meetings, and stayed off the scale. But even now, hours after the comment, I feel like a failure. All my successes pale in comparison to the reminder that I’m not as skinny as I used to be. It’s amazing the power that even an innocent comment can yield over someone.

There’s a saying that goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I’m in hell because of her good intentions. I hope this will pass soon and let me start feeling good about my recovery again.

I’ve listed a few web-sites that list the dos and don’ts of what to say to those with an eating disorder. They are really insightful and helpful to friends and family of someone with an eating disorder.

http://www.angelfire.com/bc/peacelovehope/rules.html

http://www.mirror-mirror.org/applove.htm

http://www.something-fishy.org/helping/whatyoucando.php

http://hubpages.com/hub/Top_Ten_Worst_Things

The beast

On a housekeeping note, I want to thank Paul, cbtish, Shades of Ivory, and Grace for their comments. I know I haven't responded to them and for that I'm sorry. Your support and insight means a lot.

It's been a long, hard, bad day. I am restless and feel like I'm going out of my mind. I don't know why I'm about to write this shit. I am not in my right mind.

The beast is awake again and I can do nothing about it. It's the eating disorder behavior. I've always been one to exercise. I started when I was sixteen, almost twenty years ago. I have never been moderate about exercise. It's always been nothing or too much. Though some would argue I was average size, the past few months I didn't exercise because I felt I was fat and didn't want to feel my body moving through space. It sickened me. But then I lost a few pounds and that got the ball rolling and woke the angry eating disorder. Now, I exercise a lot.

My thoughts have become obsessive. I am constantly worrying about food and questioning what I've eaten. Should I have eaten the veggie burger? Did I pour too much cereal? Will I be fatter after I ate that one cookie?

I realize why the beast is awake again. In therapy we are talking about some pretty difficult subjects and its given rise to the parts of me that hold the eating disorder. They think we're fat, unsafe, and vulnerable. She wants to starve me until I'm invisible. They want to starve the pain out. They want to be and feel empty so they can feel nothing.

I don't want to tell Therapist about these things. First of all, I don't want people asking me about my food or exercise. It's nobody's effing business. We want to be left alone to do what we need to do in order to be safe.

That gets said but then there is a strong part of me that doesn't want to go down the self destructive road we've been on before. We can't keep silent over what we're doing to ourselves. We need to not keep it secret about our obsessive thoughts and over-exercising.

But then there's the voice that says "Fuck that. We'll do whatever the hell we want."

I'm not strong enough for this.

It didn't take long for the beast to wake up. Previously, my slides into the eating disorder behavior had been slow. But this time the beast went from 0 to 60 before I knew what was happening. Now I'm conflicted. There are two sides to this. There is the part that wants the eating disorder and wants to lose weight no matter what the cost. Then there is the rational part that knows it is self-destructive behavior and knows it's avoidance.

Doesn't matter. The eating disorder side always wins. I try and think how I've been able to maintain my weight this long and I don't have an answer. Maybe avoidance really is good. If we avoid talking about our history then the eating disorder will not be needed.

I really don't know where to go with all this. It's just one of the many things driving me crazy.