Now that I’m a post-grad…

I “graduated” IOP two weeks ago. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal (very few people graduate – they either move down, or move out/quit). There was a rock ceremony which sounds silly but it was very humbling, hearing people I thought I barely knew say wonderful things about me. Afterwards, I felt like celebrating, only I didn’t know who would understand why I’d want to celebrate. So I drove home, stopping for a hot fudge 

The ins and outs of IOP

IOP has been a strange experience, not at all what I expected. Yes, there were waifs and overweight people in the same room, although the bingers had their own program, so it was just Anas, Mias, and everyone in between. But people come and go in a flash – some are there for weeks, others drop in and out. Often it’s just me and one other person, or just me.

Glimpses of light

Recovery is weird.  I expected it to be two steps forward, one step back – but always moving forward.  After all, I’m doing the work – I’m seeing my therapist every week, my nutritionist most weeks, my psychiatrist every 3 months.  I take my meds for sleep, my meds for depression, my meds for anxiety, my vitamins for my deficiencies.  I’m trying not to overwhelm myself, taking time for myself, exercising more frequently, getting sunlight, writing in my journal, trying to stick to my meal plans… What else is there?  Did I cover all of the mandatory “recovery bases?”

So I’m on target, on track – right?  All should be good with the world as I battle my demons.  I feel like I’m Lara Croft, fighting off some giant serpent.  But instead of slaying my dragons, I stumble.  I have days where I can’t think about anything other than purging.  I have days where I feel high because I forgot to eat and I think – wow, this is amazing!  I can not eat and feel fantastic!  Of course I feel like I’m going to pass out, but at least I’m thin!  Woohoo!  And I have days where I pull over in my car and cut my arm in nice neat slashes so it looks like I fell and skinned my arm and no one except T will know.  If I tell her.  

The two-step shuffle, and how I started counting triscuits

When I tried to think of a name for this blog, I thought about various denigrating names for recovery, but then dismissed them as rather one-sided.  After all, I’m hoping recovery is a good thing.  At least, everyone tells me it is, and that it’s worth the hell I’m currently in.  I came up with the blog name when I realized that I’d gotten to the point one afternoon before going out to run errands when I had to pack a lunch bag with various “safe” foods so that I would eat something moderately decent so I could avoid the freaking-out-from-hunger-but-there’s-nothing-safe drama, and as I’m picking foods that my dietician and I had agreed on, I sat there counting Triscuits and wondering if a broken Triscuit counted as half or a third of one cracker.  In a way, it was brilliant.  I had come up with my own one-question quiz to see if you have an eating disorder:

Question:  Have you ever spent twenty minutes debating whether a broken tasteless cracker should be rounded up to the nearest whole cracker?