Comfort and Comfort Zone

Lately I've been thinking about my comfort zone and how far food is from that zone. There are certain rules that I have to follow and that is my comfort zone. The funny thing is that my comfort zone does not give me comfort. I cannot get comfort from anything it seems. I am in constant fear. I just want to relax and be happy. I cannot be happy with my eating disorder by my side. So why is it so hard to give up my eating disorder? I want to give up Ana but I don't at the same time. My head is just so full of ... stuff. It never shuts up. I cannot focus. I cannot think clearly. I can't really say anything else right now.

Holding On and Holding Back

"We all cling to the past, and because we cling to the past, we become unavailable to the present." - Unknown

As anyone who has been reading this recently knows that I have been struggling. I don't know if I am stuck in the past, I guess I am. I am stuck in the past with my eating disorder. It, he, she seems to have taken on a life of her, his, its own. Ana, as I have been calling her lately, and I have become really close. She's been coming between me and my friends and my boyfriend. Ana stands next to me holding onto me as I walk to class, take a shower, whatever I do. Criticizing me and pointing out all my flaws. Lose more weight she tells me, lose more weight and you will be beautiful, perfect, everyone will love you. Am I clinging to her or is she clinging to me? I really don't know which one it is. Maybe both. I just know that whatever it is I feel like I'm moving backwards into the past. I don't know what to do. I mean I know what I need to do but I don't know what to do. I just want things to be simple but life is never simple and I need to stop clinging to the past.

Drink Me

In Alice in Wonderland she drinks the potion that shrinks her. I was reading Alice in Wonderland last night before bed and thinking about this. What is this obsession with shrinking and growing? Why does everyone want to be so small? Why do I want to be so small? Why do I want to disappear so badly that I am willing to starve myself to do so? I do not understand it. I just want to be happy. ED says that I can be happy if I lose weight I will be happy, but I know he's a liar. I know that he is a liar and yet I listen, why do I listen? Why do I believe him? I don't want to believe him. I don't want to do what he says and yet I do. Life is waiting for me and ED is standing between me and life. So what do I do? Well for starters I put together my team. I get a nutritionist, contact school nutritionist on to-do list; I see a therapist, contacted and seeing; I contact and see my psychiatrist, done; I see my doctor at home, also done; and I see up weigh-ins at school, again on to-do list. Okay so I have my team in place but ED has called for back up. He's go his favorite weapon, the Scale, which I can't seem to give up yet. Then he's got Ms. Perfectionist, Mr. Self-Doubt, Ms. Depression and a whole crew of others. It's a battle between the two teams and what are we fighting over? My life. So that little bottle that says "Drink Me," well I started drinking it. Now I have to ask myself if I am willing to put the bottle down and take a bite of the cake that says "Eat Me" and honestly I do not know which way it will go right now.

I want to do my best. I want to fight. I am trying. I want to live my life and be happy. Life is waiting for me and I and want to live it. I don't want be like this but the anxiety of eating is so bad. I hate how I feel even without eating but when I eat it is even worse. I look at myself in the mirror and hate every inch of my body. I need to learn to stop being so critical but how? I guess I should cover the mirrors in my room but it's so hard because I know how much ED loves the mirror. I want to return to recovery this year. I want to make this year different from last year. Life is going to be different. I am going to be different. I am. I am I am.

It's hard to be positive when negativity surrounds you

Well I really wanted to post a positive entry tonight but with the blow up recently exhibited between my mother and my brother any positivity I had has disappeared. Today I had two appointments, doctor and psychiatrist. My medications have been adjusted to hopefully help me sleep and help with eating. Who knows if it will work. I have been losing hope for recovery and looking at that light at the end of the tunnel as an oncoming train for quite a bit now and being home hasn't helped. I do not know if it is neurons but today I have just been in a really really bad mood. I feel completely down and depressed. I am tired and I just don't seem to care about anything. I had breakfast but didn't keep that down very well. I had to have lunch because my mom and I went out and again did not keep that down very well and then I had dinner and guess what, didn't keep that down very well either. My emotions are all over the place and my anxiety makes it difficult to keep food down. I look at myself and I hate what I see. The urge to cut has been growing stronger but I have been able to resist it so far. I know I am hurting those who love me but I just can't seem to get this thing under control and my family is not making it easy. I just feel like curling up in a ball and crying. I want to hide from the world and never come out of my hole. Tomorrow we are going down to New Jersey to see my grandmother who is 99 years old and weighs less than that. I know that it is messed up but the fact that her weight is in the 70s makes me want to lose weight even more. I don't know what I am going to do down there. I don't know what I am going to say or how I'm going to act. We will be staying in her house which is not lived in and currently has no heat. When we go to visit her we eat the food they serve at the nursing home which we order and half the time they give us something different and so that sends my anxiety up. I know I am not doing well and I know that this will get worse but I can't seem to muster the ability to care. I feel like I have just given up on life. I don't care about much. I know this is the depression talking and I do not feel this way all the time but tonight I am at a really low point and I don't feel like I can really express it to anyone. There is too much drama going on at home and my boyfriend is worried enough.

This trip to see my grandmother is a disaster waiting to happen. I feel like I am watching one of those movies where you know that behind that door is a murder or some other disaster is coming but am completely unable to do anything about it. I hate this feeling. I hate being like this but that's how things are. Nothing changes with my family. I just have to accept that and stop expecting things to change because it's just not going to happen. I am done. I am just done with this shit. I really wanted to try to be positive tonight but I just can't and the fact that I tried and circumstances beyond my control had such an effect sucks. I am going to stop there because I just can't take it anymore. Tea or hot chocolate may help a bit and will be tried but I don't have much hope.

Family Dynamics

As a child I was always eager to jump into life and get wet and messy. I loved making mud pies and dancing in the rain. Thunderstorms were my favorite. I loved to feel the rain drops coming down and soaking my shirt. Life was full and satisfying. I was an innocent child, as most are, and I knew little of cruelty and pain but as I grew I saw more of the world and a darker side of life. Looking back I could not understand that it was abuse at the time but the times when my mother would spank me using "The Stick" was not normal. The time she slapped me across the face for "being sassy" was not right. I know that I blamed myself for these reactions of hers but they were not my fault. When my therapist first started talking about abuse I brushed it off as irrelevant and inaccurate but the more I look back the clearer the pattern emerges. Now this pattern was in part due to the generation gaps between my mother and my generation because she came from the "spare the rod spoil the child" time and to her I was indeed a spoiled child. My mother was always the one to get angry and yell or hit or punish in some way and so my relationship with my parents became dichotomous so that my mother was the "bad" parent and my dad the "good" one. Being at home for break has given me time to think about this and really look at the way my parents react to things. Christmas was a total disaster as I have mentioned already and it was interesting to see how it was my mother who did the slamming of the doors and walking out while my dad sat calmly by and watched. I feel like my dad has always been a watcher. He never really got involved in the dirty side of parenting when misbehavior or punishment was concerned. I know that my parents love me and want what is best for me they just cannot show it. My mother is very dramatic and I get a lot of my personality from her but my practice of internalization comes from my father. Seeing the two play their parts and interact can tell me a lot about myself, yet it is often difficult to sit back and watch the fights because like my father the watcher, I am also the mediator.

My dad does watch but at some point he will jump in and try to resolve the issue even if it only ends up in more yelling and unpleasantness. I am the same way. I hate fights. They make me anxious and scared and I just want them to stop. Yet the mediator never really ends up satisfied or happy in our family, partly because of the two main arguers, my mother and my brother. The two of them could fight or argue or debate until the end of time and neither would budge from his or her point of view. When the two of them are home the tension in the house is so palpable it permeates the atmosphere, making everyone on edge. I feel like whenever I am home I have to walk on eggshells and watch what I say as if there is a bomb ready to be set off by the wrong movement or word. In this setting it is no wonder that I am struggling. Yet the struggle started before I came home.

Even though the struggling did start before I came home for the holidays I was struggling this summer and perhaps that laid the foundation for the path I am on now. With my brother living at home and farming on my parents land a fight was sure to break out daily. The animosity left over from the summer lingers and taints any interaction between my brother and my parents. All I know is that the atmosphere in this house is toxic and has been for a long time. I wish that there was some way to change it but my mother and I, despite our similarities, cannot get alone for extended periods of time. My dad and I are okay because neither of us like fighting. My brother and I did not get along for most of my childhood. In fact he was somewhat of a bully to me when I was younger but we have grown closer over the years, however there are things that will always divide us and keep us from becoming really close. It's sad when I think about my family and how I cannot really get close or talk to any of them about the deeper things. Religion is nixed because I am pagan and they are Catholic and my general interests provide enough of a chasm to prevent and real connection from being formed. ED did not help. My eating disorder took advantage of an already broken system and severed all ties that I could have with my family members. Lies came between us, just as the lies that I told as a child to protect my developing identity left my parents stunned when I finally stopped acting like the child they wanted. I would like to try to get closer to my family but the years of pain and hurt I have suffered at their hands makes me very hesitant to crack that door open and let them in.

I never felt able to rely on my family for support so I built another family of friends instead. But now that I am in college and my friends from my childhood have gone in different directions and so I feel like my family has fallen apart and THAT may be why ED is stepping up his game and able to have such power over me and that is what I need to work on this semester, building my family at school, a safe and stable family from whom I can seek support and love and support and love in turn. Without this I will fail to get better and just keep getting worse. Now that I know one important key step towards recovery I have to have the strength and courage to put myself out there and maybe fall a few times and get hurt but pick myself back up and try again. I have already had multiple bad experiences with friends in college so I need to find a new strategy. I don't know how I will do it right now but I have to think of a way of connecting with people or I won't make it. I can do this and I will do this. I just have to keep reminding myself of those two facts.