Thanksgiving and Chaos

Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday. For all of us with eating disorders it is a day of high stress. The centrality of food on holidays makes them times of high anxiety and often little pleasure. The holidays are supposed to be joyous times but I often ask myself why do they have to be so much about food? Yes Thanksgiving celebrated the plentiful harvest and the friendship of early settlers and native americans but food does not need to be the center piece on the table so to speak. This year, as in the past, I have much to be grateful for: friends, family, my pets, my education and most importantly, the most recent addition to my circle, by boyfriend Dan. He has been the most amazing thing in my life for almost the past year and I don't know where I would be without him. While the Thanksgiving table may be piled high with turkey, potatoes, stuffing and more, while my mother may start a fight with me during dinner, I have him to fall back on. Though he could not be there for me physically this year he helped me through it with support from afar and by taking me out the day after. I may not be at my best for him yet as yesterday I just cried for a while in his arms. The knowledge that I have him there for me keeps me going. I may waver in my desire for recovery but he will always remind me why I am fighting for it. I know that ED is bad but He is all that I have known for so long. Now I have an alternative. It is hard making the choice to be healthy and I haven't quite got there yet but I am trying. I think I know now why ED decided to rear his head after three years in recovery, he sensed a new presence in my life on top of the fact that I am in my junior year of college and stressed beyond my mind. I need to take time for myself and I need to learn to relax, more importantly I need to learn to love and accept myself as he loves and accepts me.

I Just Don't Know

I am so confused right now. I don't know what I want anymore. I have been restricting and exercising. ED has gotten back in my head, I don't know if he ever left. I don't know if I want to give him up. I look in the mirror and I hate the person I see staring back at me. I just want to lose weight. I want to shrink down to the bone. I hate the excess of fat and flesh. A part of of me knows that this is unhealthy but I don't care. I just want ED to shut up. I am so sick of this. I don't know what to do anymore.

Why Now?

I have always known that my mind is a scary place. Lately I can get no peace. ED is holding my mind hostage. All I want to do is restrict and exercise. I feel like a totally different person. He is telling me to do whatever it takes to lose weight and I don't know how to fight. It has not been this bad for a long time which makes me wonder what has changed?

Right now my life is not bad. Yes there had been a lot of emotional difficulties recently. Friends in trouble, family issues, school stress but my life is finally starting to really come together. Perhaps ED sees that I am really leaving him behind and thus is trying to make his last stand. I have finally found the love of my life. My boyfriend and I are perfect for each other. He really loves me and has opened my eyes to how wonderful life really can be. He has shown me what unconditional love is and can be. My friends have been my family and loved me in the past but this is different. I want to spend the rest of my life with my boyfriend and he feels the same way. Why am I letting ED get in the way of that? Why am I letting him back in my when I've been doing really well over the past three or so years? I do not know why but I know that I need to find out and find out fast before I'm too far gone down a path that I will regret.

Bumps on the road

I have learned that the mirror lies. That love can conquer all if given the chance. That the scale is not my friend. That as much as ED tells me otherwise, I need to eat. 

I have been really struggling lately. ED has been fighting my recovery and doing really well. He has been coming between me and my boyfriend a lot lately. We've been having so many more fights. I can watch him take over and see the personality changes. This needs to stop now! I cannot keep living like this.

Failure

So often I feel like a total failure. A failure of a sister, a failure of a daughter, a failure of a friend and girlfriend. If I can't do it perfectly then I fail. I don't know when this sense of failure started. I know I can't have been born with it, so where did it come from? As a child I don't remember this feeling or the fear that I was not good enough.

I don't know when it started and I don't know why. I wish that I did so I could work on getting over this but nothing worthwhile in life comes easy so I will have to try to find another way to deal with these feelings. It makes sense the the pitfalls of perfectionism play a role in my feelings of failure. Closely tied to the feeling of failing is another well known emotion for me, guilt.

Failure, perfectionism and guilt are so interwoven that I do not always know where one starts and the other begins. I know that guilt can be good but too much is bad. Everything in moderation the saying goes. Yet I have to ask is there ever a moderate amount of perfectionism? -- But I am getting side tracked. Guilt permeates my life. I feel guilty for everything. Everything is my fault, or so I feel but that I one of the most self-centered beliefs I hold, another part of myself chimes in. Who am I to think that the whole world revolves around in such a way that everything bad that happens is caused by me? And so the cycle of guilt continues. I need to stop this cycle but I just don't know where to begin.

I look at my life and my feelings and everything and just feel so overwhelmed. Where do I start fixing myself? Where do I begin? How do I recognize what emotion I am feeling? SO many questions. I just get scared and don't want to deal with it. I run away and turn to ED because I know he will make things easier. With ED I can succeed. My success and failure is measured by the scale. It is tangible, clear cut. There is a solid answer to a solid question: did I lose weight, am I reaching that goal weight, am I working out? I run to ED because he is easy, he is known. There is certainty with ED that I have not found elsewhere. But I need to face facts and see ED for what he is. And I need not to be looking at life in terms of failure and success but look at it as something else. Failure is falling and staying down. I guess it's back to the basics, back to being a child because the little child learning to walk doesn't get discouraged when she falls but has her cry and then pushes herself right back up and tries again.