A New Chapter Starts

Tonight was my last night of treatment. It came fast and was kind of a surprise. I had been feeling like treatment wasn't really helping me but was just adding one more thing on my list of things to do. With classes winding down and the summer approaching I just didn't see how treatment two nights a week for 4-5 weeks was going to be helpful. Now I am working with my outpatient team and we will see what happens. ED is still very much in my head. I am fighting him constantly. Not only that but my anxiety and inability to sleep have compounded my problems and made it that much more difficult to fight. I am feeling tire and discouraged. I am unhappy with where my weight is at and I feel gross. I am trying to move forward with recovery but it is so hard. Every step forward seems to be accompanied by several steps back. I am lonely and that loneliness is making me turn more and more to my eating disorder for comfort and safety. I know that ED can provide neither of those things but knowing that and believing/feeling that are two different things. After therapy last week I was able to look at the eating disordered part of myself and really look past the behaviors. What I saw surprised me. I saw the same scared, lonely, timid young woman that always stares me back in the mirror. I saw someone who just wanted to be comforted and happy. Someone looking for companionship. My eating disorder has given me that and continues to provide those things but I have to learn how to let that part of me provide those aspects in a healthy way.

There are so many sayings and so many words of wisdom that people spout at times like these. I know that the path I am traveling has been traveled before by many women but we each take a different way. I need to forge my way through this. As Robert Frost says "I [choose] the path less traveled." I am on my own journey to recovery and I have to believe I will make it there alive or else I am fighting for nothing. I need to do this. I need to find the motivation to keep going even when I feel like giving in and giving up.

Treatment, Meal Plans, and Weights Oh My

Three things that I find terrifying. Do you think that Dorthy, Scarecrow and the Tinman thought they would really come across a lion, tiger or bear? What we fear says a lot about who we are and how we deal with that fear even more. For a while now I  have been in treatment at Walden first in the php program now in iop. Lately I have been asking myself is this really helping me and I do not think it is. However I know that I have to really examine this question and figure out if I am running from treatment because I do not want to get better or if there really is nothing worth going there for. Now I have done a lot of DBT work in various places for various reasons and Walden is heavy with the DBT. I am spending about 80 minutes on a bus round trip to spend three hours in treatment on something that I could teach a course in and while it is good to get the support of peers and staff I do not think this is what I need. Yes I'm scared of recovery, my meal plan, gaining the weight I need to regain but these are all things I am working on and taking baby steps. I know that this is a disease that kills and I am working on taking a step or two back and really looking at what is going on within me. However this is not something I can do at Walden. This is something I can do with my therapist and something I want to do with her and have begun doing. My life is crazy right now and there is lots going on but I am learning to take breaks, to say no and to find out what it is that I want to do. I'd say that's a pretty big first step.

This is MY life

This is my life. I guess someone who reads this blog contact residential life at my school to inform them of my self-harm problems. Not that I don't appreciate the fact that whoever you are, you care but it would have been nice to talk to me first. Anyway I don't particularly want to dwell on that.

Life has been crazy and ED/Ana has been really happy and excited. I am trying to fight as hard as I can but it is SOOO hard. I am so tired of fighting all the time. Sometimes I just want to give in just to have some peace but it's not real peace. Why does this have to be so hard?! I hate how I feel. I hate the voices arguing in my head like world war three is happening in there. I want to be skinny. People say that I am skinny, too skinny. But I can't see it. I cannot see it and I wish I could. I wish this constant anxiety would relent for just a few minutes, seconds even. I am sick of feeling so alone and scared. ED/Ana tells me I'm not alone, that I have them but they make me feel even more alone. I know what I need to do and I am trying to do it but it is so hard to eat. I want my life back. And yet I don't. I want to be free. And yet I don't. I am constantly torn in two. I hate this so much. I don't want to go back into treatment but I feel like I am going to be forced back. I am so confused and tired. I just want this all to be over and for me to get back to my life. Goddess help me please.

It's been a while and I'm still falling

I haven't written here in a while. I've been really busy with school, work and my boyfriend came to visit this weekend. As great as it was to see him and as supportive as he is, I still feel like I am wavering in my desire for recovery. I know it's an uphill battle and it is not easy but why does it have to be so HARD? I am feeling so tired all the time. I know that part of that is because of ED/Ana but part of it comes from fighting. I am tired of fighting. I know that I need to keep fighting and I will but some days I just feel like I need a break. If those tempting days where I need and take the break become too many then I know that I will be right back where I was and have to struggle all over again and that it will be even harder this time. I know it is okay to make mistakes but I also know that I do not have much wiggle room with this because I will be kicked out of school if I cannot get this under control which just makes the stress that much greater. I want a break. I want to just not think about food, calories and numbers. I hate numbers. I hate them so much. Why am I allowing numbers to rule my life? I do not understand why this is happening again. If I cannot understand how can anyone else understand? It just feels so hopeless. Is this how my life will be from now on? Never knowing when I may relapse? I don't want that. I want to have a life. I want to be free from these feelings. I am just having a tough time now but the storm will pass. I have to believe that. I have to believe that I can do this because the other option is not acceptable.

One step forward, Two steps back

Struggling to get my eating disorder under control has stirred up my other demon, self-harm. Now I have neither under control and I'm fighting both constantly. I feel completely unstable. At least while I was in my eating disorder state I had the other under control. I feel completely ungrounded, like I'm floating in darkness, lost and insecure. The depression is back. I can feel it in my mind, body and soul. This thing taking over and I no longer recognize the person I have been since entering recovery a bit over three years ago. I'm scared by what I know I am capable of. I feel like screaming but I can't find my voice and so I scream in the only way I know how, lashing out against myself. I isolate and hide so that no one knows what is going on. Long sleeve shirts cover up cuts and bones. I don't know why this is all rushing back now. It's like I'm back where I was four years ago. What lesson do I need to learn this time? What has brought me back to this place of darkness and despair? How do I escape the same fate that befell me last time?