Both Roads Taken

Another sleepless night so far.  The anxiety has mostly lessened since my previous post,  but the sleepless nights continue despite medication.  Psychiatrist gave me a new med to try, but it gives me an unrelenting headache the next day, and it also causes weight gain, so I won't use it anymore.  I've gone back to my previous sleep med, but it isn't working.  It's our lot in life.

I purged twice today.  I can't remember the last time I purged.  I'm not sure why I engaged in this behavior.  Maybe I know.  Maybe I don't.  Who cares?  All I know is I think about food constantly.  Continually.  Non stop.  Without letup.  And it is ENOUGH!!

When is the next time I can eat?  What will I eat?  How many calories will it have?  How will it taste?  What will Husband think if he sees me eat?  How can I hide it?  Now that I've eaten, when is the next time I can eat?

OR THESE THOUGHTS

How can I refrain from eating?  What activity can I do next time I'm hungry instead of eating?  How will I feel?  What will I do if I eat anyway?  How many squats do I need to do to burn off the calories?  How many calories am I NOT burning by sitting on the couch?  What can I do to jumpstart my weight loss?

The list of questions go on and on and on.

One of us mentioned before how the eating disorder is a safety net, a way to get out of being an adult, and/or taking responsibility, a way to keep us child-like, but it is so much more.

Put the ED behaviors aside, the eating disorder and body image thoughts themselves can not be curbed.  They are incessant and do not exist as a safety net.  They do not protect; they do not shelter; they do not comfort.

They plague us.  They are compulsive, urgent, and overwhelming, and I do not know how to break them.  I am threatened by their existence.  We are at their mercy, and I can not be responsible for their actions.

Bottom line is we are out of control from both sides.  And while the eating disorder in and of itself may be insurance, the thoughts are not.  They are menacing and commence our feelings and behaviors.

We are reminded of the end of a poem written by Robert Frost entitled "The Road Not Taken."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Just like the narrator says, we are choosing the road less traveled, and I know it will make all the difference.  It has before.

Amen.

 

Call me a poet.  What can I say?

Anxiety's Amusement

Once upon a time there was a paradox called Missing in Sight whose anxiety was so rampant and uncontrolled that ten minutes after waking on Saturday morning,  she took her usual cocktail of a Clonazepam and a muscle relaxer to chase the anxiety away.  Meanwhile, she felt she was going insane.  She would hit her head with her hand repeatedly to chase away the crazies.  When that didn't work, the wall took the brunt of her head.

Soon her medicine assumed her, and she went to sleep for about an hour.  When she woke, the same anxiety was expectantly waiting for her, licking its lips, eager to pounce on her.  She tried to think of other ways to deal with the misery, but to no avail.  She couldn't concentrate, so she wasn't able to read or color.  She had taken medications that left her tired and drained, so she couldn't take her dog for a walk.  She couldn't be still, so watching t.v. or a movie wasn't an option.  

She felt if she could just cry then she might be able to calm down, but a tear could not be found.

Once again, she took more medication to put her to sleep so she would not have to deal with the anxiety.  This time she slept a little longer, but when the meds wore off and she woke to reality, the monster of anxiety woke with her, and she could not escape the roar of its meanness.

She tried to last it out.  She thought maybe if she put on her favorite movie then she could endure the panic; however, the movie turned rancid to her eyes.  She did not know why, but she could not tolerate her best movie.

All this while, Husband was home, but he was asleep off and on.  He didn't know what to do for Missing in Sight.  She suggested to him that he go to the store and buy beer because she knew it would take the edge off.  So off he went.

While he was gone, she took round three of meds, but this time she tripled the dosage.  The possibility of accidentally overdosing broached her mind, but she could not comprehend what this actually meant.  Childlike, she only wanted the anxiety to go away, away, away.  So she swallowed the pills and fell asleep.

Husband eventually came home with the beer and later woke her to tell her goodbye.  It was mid-afternoon, and he had to leave for work.

She fell back asleep for another hour, and when she woke she was all alone in the early evening hours.   Stunningly, it seemed her anxiety had lessened.  Her breath found its way back to her chest, the butterflies in her stomach shushed, and her heart quit slamming between her thoracic walls.  The hurricane of anxiety had weakened to a small thunderstorm.  The beer did not seemed to be needed now.

She tried to do relaxing tricks that she could not do earlier in order to keep the angst away: color; music; movies; dog.  However, she could not get rid of the residual anxiety.

She decided to drink a beer.  Then another.  And another.  She thought all the meds she had taken over the course of the day would have left her system by that time, and nothing bad, whatever that might be, would happen.

She fell asleep again.  Or more accurately, passed out.  One knows not how long she would have slept if not for the hallucinations of voices and noises that kept waking her from what felt like vivid but aggravating dreams.  

So, half awake but completely drunk, over-medicated, and anxiety's amusement, she stumbled off to bed, and fell face first into the blackness of the night, anticipating in her dreams of the anxiety that would startle her awake the very next morning.

White Knuckles

I am dissociative.  My brain is foggy, and I can't think.  My head has a far-away ache.  There is chaos living inside that I cannot describe would I even be allowed.

I'm a little bit hungry, but feeling empty is keeping me calm even though I'm coming off the rails and in over my head.

There is so much to say, but I don't know what it is.  The tears are scurrying behind my eyes and the rallying cry to keep "it" away from me is called.  I have not enough focus for this post.  I am zigzagging like a ping pong ball in my brain, and there are chinks in my thoughts disrupting its lineage.

What I would say if I could is that I need a hug, I need a hug, I need a hug.  I need the safe touch of someone who cares, who understands, who would let me cry on a shoulder.

No sooner do I write that then Tina gets angry.  I grow so tired of her indignation.  So much of the time it feels directed towards me.  A few tears slipped by her, and they started to make me feel better, but then she wiped the tears away and cut me off.  What started out as nascent feelings of clarity and lucidity give way to being blank again.

I don't know how I'll get through the night.  I'm trying to stay away from pills that will serve to dull the ache of unrevealed pieces and to find other ways to ground myself.  It's not going so well.

I started by going through my entire collection of iTunes music and deleted hundreds of songs I don't remember buying and greatly dislike.  Where did they come from?

My dog Maybelline is here with me, softly sleeping, and unaware of the turmoil in which I languish.  They say dogs are intuitive to human suffering.  Not her.  She is as blank as I am.

I'm tired of being blank.

Thus, I surrender to the meds that whisk me away to where it doesn't hurt as much to be vacant, and into the numbness I sink willingly and gracefully.

Getting Schooled on my Failures

Today has been a difficult day for us.  In the region where we live, the students have already gone back to school, and all my teacher friends are posting their unabashed optimism and excitement for the new school year.

I feel left out.

I feel like a failure.

I feel grossly incompetent.

I still castigate myself on why I failed as a teacher.  Husband asked me last night if it had not been for my eating disorder, would I still be teaching.  I responded that my eating disorder would have made sure I wasn't teaching or working in any manner for that fact.  And so it would be.  My inability to cope with life would have energized my eating disorder, regardless of the type of employment, and made working a fright and an impossibility.

I do think I have some skills as a teacher.  I am caring, outgoing, and understand my content matter and how to convey it to students; however,  I am not by any appearance skilled in handling stress, chaos, or anxiety.  My eating disorder and dissociation came between me and teaching,  and teaching will forever lay at my feet in the throes of death.

So today is long and disturbing.  I'm paralyzed by the memories of my own inadequacies and deficiencies.  I can not move; I can not breath; I can not speak.  I wish I were teaching, but even at my best, I know unequivocally I was never good enough.

Big Fat Lies

It's been a few years since I've been on here.  Don't really know what I've been up to except teaching high school and going off to treatment.

Tonight I was looking at the very first entry in an incomplete journal book, beginning date of 10-15-2008.  I was in residential treatment at the time.

There was a line written in that entry that I found poignant as I reviewed it.  It read: My eating disorder cares more about me than I do about myself.  

Nine years later, that's probably still true.

On the opposite page of the journal entry, I was responding to the assigned question: If I can't be the weight I want, then . . .

So last night I looked at the "what's", and here is what I discovered and evaluated to see if the fears I hd written have come true because currently, according to my treatment team, I'm at a healthy weight.

At first glance, I was surprised that it didn't seem these fears had come true.  Then I thought and wrote more, and here's what I found.

First fear: 

My first fear of not being anorexic is that I would gain too much weight and lose any self control.  I feel I definitely live in that fear and reality day and night.  We are in a dryer, spinning and tumbling around in our fear with no escape signs or promises of it ever stopping, not matter what weight we are.

Second fear:  The second fears is that if I gained the weight back I would be average, not special, droll, inferior.  Reality or fear?  REALITY.

Other fears that came true were not feeling that sense of emptiness and weightlessness you find when you are skinny.  *I should probably write more on why being empty in invisible is important.*

The fears that didn't necessarily come true but at the same time did not go away are about people caring for me.  I don't really feel cared for, but I can acknowledge that I have made some connections.  Whether they'd grieve if I'd die, I know not.

Another fear I can't write about with authority is the fear that I'll be dirty, fat, and shameful from the abuse. I don't feel as . . . I don't know.  Do I feel dirty since I gained all my weight back?  My first answer is no.  I am truly blank and non descriptive.  I don't carry around any feelings, but others do, and they feel dirty and shameful, but I honestly don't know if weighing 80lbs would put that feeling away.  I think it's worse at being this size because some are more active, but we'll always feel fat, dirty, and ashamed, regardless of our weight.

Deja Vu Times Two

I wrote the piece below in April of 1995.  I am posting it today because it still defines my existence.  The writing is about how it is so hard to be hopeful because there is always something to strip me of that comfort.

I concede today I choose to live my days clouded with negativity, but Therapist does not understand why I refuse to give in to the fallacy of hope and positive thinking.  I’ve been in places before where I felt hopeful, optimistic, and encouraged, but I am ALWAYS, sooner or later, brought back to where I was born: into negativity, failure, and the drive to die.  The roller coaster ride takes too much out of me, and I need to remain where I am safest: dead.  I refuse to play the silly game of pretending I can handle life and then plummeting into misery when I am proven wrong.  It’s for my own protection.  It was back in 1995, and it still is today.

Drops of salt water are

Purged from shallow, dim sockets

Where the windows of life have closed

Their grave blinds and solemn curtains.

The myth of happiness is exposed,

Rotted, decayed, corroded:

Infested with maggots of agony surfeiting and gorging

On the generous failures of its host.

The charade of myself:

Successful, intelligent, creative

Crumbles, disintegrates, putrefies

Underneath brutal microscopic inspection.

The illusion of hope, the facade of faith,

Beckons and pleads for my desolated soul to trust,

Taunting and mocking every ache, every pang.

Invading despondence with

Bedeviling strength and determination,

Demanding the impending and imminent spiral descent

More dangerous and inclement.

Face down in despair, life becomes a bleached white hell.

A flaming bouquet of numbing, frosty torment

Searing, searing, searing

My thickly charred crust till I can no longer pretend it doesn’t hurt.

Pain echoes out of the abyss,

Convening the proprietor of suicide

Who compassionately erases the color of misery from us sufferers of life,

And holds out the only comfort that hoards

NO illusion, NO myth, NO charade:

The warm, blue peace of death.

Boom!

It’s not that easy.  It’s not that easy.  It’s not that easy.

I will not make it this time.  I am burrowing a hole for myself, digging my own grave.  Only this time, people in my professional life are handing me the shovel and watching me sink. 

I’ve discovered my problem . . . at least one of them.  I hate myself.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  I should just stop it then, shouldn’t I?  I should stop hating myself.

It’s not that easy.

The roots of my hatred extend beyond time, and no amount of remediation will allow me to transcend the wickedness I deserve.

Oh, if you only knew how it rocks me . . . devastates me.  I am good for nothing . . .but I wish I were good for something more . . . more than abuse.

I try as hard, as hard, as hard as I can, and it still isn’t good enough.  I still at the end of the day am me: profoundly defective.

And damn it to hell if no one believes me.  I KNOW it.  I LIVE it every day.  And I’m tired of suffering.  I’m so, so tired of suffering.  God be with me, I’m so tired of suffering.

It’s so bad.  I really can’t take it anymore.  I can’t continue to hold on by the web of a spider. 

It’s such a heavy, magnificent weight that rests on my back.  And I’m plunging to the bottom and I implore you not hold me back.  Let me sink.  Let me die.  Let me not know this misery anymore. 

There are no happy songs in my head.  No hopeful words exist. No suggestions or subliminal messages you give me to pretend everything will work out.

It’ so, so over.

I can’t believe it when you tell me I’m good, and you won’t believe me when I tell you I’m bad.

Oh my god, I need a hug . . . and a bullet. 

Boom!

Postmortem Revival

She has returned . . . a former, archaic version of myself that I had ignorantly believed I would never need again. Her revival has not been so subtle, and she has reprised her role as the destructor of my life, the tamer of hope, and the inventor of all necessity to be alone.

She brings with her every negative thought she has collected over this life, constantly reminding me of my baseness and worthlessness. And I, needing her to get me through every elongated second, believe every nasty comment she purports about me. Because God knows every time I've ever had a positive thought about myself it has been burned to ash by someone else's reality.

The promise of hope is lost. Every cut, every purge, every drink, every missed meal bears her fingerprints and her assurance that only she can bring comfort.

I know the significance of her resurrection. Coming back to life will lead to my death. But I've been living dead too long to count now, and I don't mind letting go. In fact, I've asked for it, which is why she's come.

I do not have the luxury of turning her away this time. I can't do this on my own, and I have no one else to scatter away the tears that collect daily on my face.

And there is nothing anyone can do to help me. No amount of attention, intervention, or abandonment can affect me. I am in this alone, as I've always been.  If I don't bow out of life now, I will be expelled out later, and there is no coming back in anyone's space from that. There will not even be a shadow of a woman to trace through the day.

I would like to confess it doesn't hurt anymore, but, in truth, it isn't decent how deeply I ache.

I wear wounds that would give you nightmares.

Surrender

My words fail me, like every other part of me does.

I wish I could, but I can not. 

 I want to quit, cease to exist, give up, but there is something in me that makes me keep going, 

No matter how low I go, I can not let go. 

I wish this part of me to die.  I would like to enjoy giving up.

All arrows point to how worthless I am.  Clearly there is something in me missing, something deficient.  It’s hard to live always sub-standard.  

Others can accomplish what I can not.  And all I want to do is let go.

Maybe one day I will show them.  Maybe I will not be as strong as they assume.  Maybe I will break instead of constantly bending.  I’m certainly due.

I’m so tired at every turn.  Exhausted.

I can not imagine how this will be worth it.  

I can not imagine anything other than letting go. 

I can not imagine any other way out.

They will treat this, I know, as a fever in my head, coming and going, but it is not.

And I know they’ll never know, and that is the saddest thing to ever know.   

But I know, and that’s all I need to know.

Never mind, but please hear everything I can not say

Memories Denied

I disappear under the collapse of the padded walls in which I am mentally locked. I seem to have spectacularly careened off the solid road of recovery and engaged in behaviors that have sent me back to being someone emotionally unstable. Barely making it, I am now suffocating with the awareness of all the frivolous attempts at a sane life I've perpetrated, like so many lies spilling from my unselective mouth.

At the beginning of my summer break, I decided to begin writing my memoir. I set myself up for failure. It seems to write a memoir one needs memories and be able to recall experiences. I know nothing of the life this woman lived, and the parts have died and taken their memories and experiences with them. I have “assumed” knowledge, but I can not provide first-hand experiences of life in or out of that house.

I've been reading books on how to write a memoir, and there are writing activities provided to aid in the writer's process. One of the activities from Sue William Silverman in Fearless Confessions is a series of fill-in-the-blank sentences to help the writer to begin to submerge him- or herself in “particular moments of time.” I struggled immensely with these simple, evocative sentences. Take a look at a couple of the suggested sentences.

• When I was ten, I smelled __________ outside my bedroom window.
• The item of clothing I recall most vividly from childhood is _________.
• The noise that scared me the most growing up was ________.

When I try to complete them, I go completely blank. I have no answers. I can't even come close to anything resembling an idea. If I can't recall basic memories and details of childhood, how can I write a whole book dedicated to the most poignant moments of my life.

And I hate to fail at this, too. Writing this memoir is supposed to be symbolic of making it through hell and living to tell about it, and hopefully someone reading it down the road can say, “I wasn't alone”. I don't want to give up, but is the struggle worth it? Do I even want the memories and feelings I need to write this book?

This whole scenario, front and back, inside and out, is derailing me.

And this just feels like an underscore to the emptiness, depersonalization, and lack of self I feel. Not being able to write this memoir just proves I don't really exist, and maybe I never have.

Not As We

Nobody lives here anymore. Poke and stir the ashes of yesterday's consumption, you will not find me . . . and they have been missing for a while.

There were signs it was happening. My soul became painfully still and quiet. I couldn't locate myself in the expanding vacuum. I fell . . . lost with no identity, no way to get home. Voices often went missing in silence. Regardless of frantic searches, they were never recovered. Without their presence, I was perpetually absent. I did not realize how much I needed them until they were gone, and my fading shadow discovered it was too late.

With the only feeling the dead have, I grieve for my parts and how they once gave me life.

But I will rise from the ashes, only to be forced to die all over again tomorrow.

Just me, not as we.

Downgrading the War to a Battle

I'm off my medication. Read with caution.

It began this morning. What a struggle! Didn't know what to do. Do we follow through with our plans with Husband and go to Water Park? Or do we kick back at home with Husband and watch movies, play with our dogs, and listen to music? I stayed home where it was mentally safe. The pro-recovery action would have been to go to Water Park, absorb some Vitamin D, and relax. But the other side of me didn't know if we would have the strength to go through with it.

Since then, we've become a bawling mess, chugging beers, and eating candy Klonopin. In hindsight, Water Park was a better choice, but I don't know we were capable of it today, which is why it is hard to beat myself up for not going to Water Park. Only a few internals were capable of going, which meant the rest of the crew would struggle and be unhappy.

A subsequent war ensued between us that I recognized as one occurring often,, and it left me feeling sorry and sympathetic.

What I discovered this morning is that the “recovery” side is warring with the “I don't know what the fuck to do now” side, but it really isn't a war at all. Everyone is trying to do what's best, but that looks like different things.

We are all trying to cope. Sometimes one side knows what to do, and sometimes the other side still isn't able to find the pulse in the day; however, it seems more of a conjoined effort to get through the day in the best way possible as each member knows best. Who could argue with that?

We have made some good choices lately, Therapist be damned. We went to dinner with a colleague Friday night. Spent Saturday at Theme-Park when we just wanted to stay home where it was “safe”. Sunday, the anxiety was so personified and formidable, we went on a 28 mile bike ride to exhaust ourselves so we would be too tired for anxiety and panic attacks (still had the attacks, but, hey, the thought counts.)

In other words, we've tried to do the right thing in respects getting by.

But there are days like today when the “recovery thing” is impossible. We are tethered to pain killers, Klonopin, and alcohol. We didn't start the day that way. We had every honorable intention. But then we see a whole day in front of us and there are too many hours in the day to endure, to stave off the impending insanity, and we just can't face it. We can't legitimately fill the hours and we don't have the energy to pretend recovery.

But I finally recognize the beauty in the mechanism of coping: at least we aren't all trying to kill each other anymore and demand our needs be met over others. We are a system that is trying to muddle through as best as we can.

True, our good intentions can have damaging consequences, and we will deal with that in probably another ten years. But for now, there is a relief and a sense of peace NEVER known that we are all on the same page just trying to make it through each crazy day.

I've learned in teaching high school that when my students misbehave and act out it is because they are trying to communicate to me something they can't or won't verbally say. I believe that is what we are doing: acting out to communicate our inability to adapt. 

Days like today, when we can't seem to make it to the life we are meant to live, I am being taught that my members need something. I don't always know what it is, but I am trying to honor it, trying to push them where appropriate, and finding the need to ease off when it is too overwhelming.

And I know later I will hate myself and probably wrestle with panic attacks, weep uncontrollably, and be one drive short of the mental hospital, but for now, we will hold our breath, not blink our eyes, and try to preserve the tenuous calmness of not hating each other so damned much.

What is a survivor?

They're foolish games, but let's call it a tie. I fought the matches, razors, and Klonopin; I won. I fought the alcohol. It won. Tie game.

I'm dissociative as hell tonight and can not be responsible for what arbitrary, random commentaries come out of her mouth. She should come with a "Do not disturb" label and a warning sign that reads “Do not feed the animals”. I wish she were illegal. She makes me feel bad.

I am on my own. There is no one to pull me out of this. I truly feel I am forced to do this on my own, and I can't fucking do it. We've regressed. We have a hug deficiency. We are children needing to be gently scooped off the ground and nourished and comforted.

My body has been on absolute fire with anxiety and despair. I hate myself. It's hard to love myself when I live in the corner of the dark ceiling of a child who witnesses . . . . I'm reminded of it everyday. Those times feel like they get closer, but they never materialize. But I know, I know, I know the storm is coming. It's a build up. And I wonder if things were really allowed to come to true awareness and float to the surface I might find relief like a release, because all the pressure has been let go. It's building, it's building, it's building. Like a pressure cooker. And if I could just face it I might feel peace for once . . . and forgiveness. But for now, I'm in the child's dark room, hovering above her bed, watching the damage she denies, watching her be hurt irreparably , scattered, tossed, strewn like jagged parts discarded along the way. Leaving me the adult tossing about on violent, angry waters who only want death.

And here is the point: when can a victim say she survived? When does one become a survivor and leave behind the image of a victim? Is it on her death bed when she can say she survived? Does she have to reach a certain age to claim victory? Can she randomly declare one day she is a survivor? How many tests and trials does she have to go through to be declared a survivor?

Maybe that's my problem. Maybe I still identify myself as a victim.

The very definition of a survivor is a person who survives alive after an event in which others have died. How many people really die from abuse? Sure, it makes us wish we were dead, and it may kill parts of us, but not many physically die. So how does one become a survivor?

I survive myself every day – despite my best intentions to destroy myself. Right now it satisfies me to hurt myself because I know it is what the girl in the dark room who lives in the ceiling hovering above the bed deserves.

I need a hug. I need a hug. I need a hug.

I hurt. I hurt. I hurt.

Help me. Help me. Help me.

I'm fading, fadin, fad . . .