It’s been a long & winding road…

I stopped blogging awhile ago. I’m not sure why – just time had passed, I was busy, I was working on other things, and I was trying to write my blogs in my journal. But the issue is, so much of my recovery history is here. It’s here because I wanted to be public in a non-public way. I wanted my experience and pain to help even just one person. I wanted this disease to mean something.

To catch up – I’m older, duh, but not wiser. After a disastrous episode on Abilify where I gained 20 pounds in a month (and no, I’m not exaggerating), I was able to lose 10 but the last 10 have hung around. So I’m 10-15 over where my set point weight was. To look at it another way, I’m only 8 pounds less than I was when I started Weight Watchers because I didn’t fit in size 10 pants with Spanx. I’m not a 10 – still a 6 (I miss 2 & 4 but not 0), but shapewear when I’m not in jeans is my friend. I have a belly pooch I cannot lose, but my breasts look decent, and I think my face looks okay, but not as good as it did when I was at my old set point.

I am also “sober” since June 6, 2015 (my last purge) with AA. Nope, not an alcoholic, but a self-described anorexic/addict, my addiction being compulsive behaviors (eating, exercising, self-harm, self-abuse, and many different types of avoidance from running errands to calling people to video games, TV, and even reading). Addicted to reading? No. Addicted to avoiding. Addicted to hurting myself. Addicted to hating myself. Because I’m not addicted to alcohol, I only attend open meetings. Did you know that anyone can attend open meetings? And that each meeting is very different? I have a great and supportive home group that keeps me going. And one of the things I’ve learned is that when I don’t think I need a meeting, or I’m tired, or I don’t want to go = I need to go to a meeting. Even a crappy meeting is better than no meeting at all.

While I’m sober, I am not fully sober but my new sponsor says that’s ok. It’s ok because she gets it, as an anorexic/bulimic, depressive, alcoholic, drug addict, self-harmer. And I think I have issues! She lost so much because of her compulsions, but then again, so have I. I still self-harm, restrict, hate my body, etc. but I don’t purge, and that’s something.

I’m still married, although my husband is currently checked out of our marriage (i.e. we rarely talk about anything non-transactional, sex is rare if ever, and he’s asleep before I come to bed, and gone before I wake). I’m cutting him slack right now since MIL had a mental breakdown, complete with hallucinations and delirium, this past week. Still I miss him, and with feeling fat and hideous, I’ve been shopping around and flirting with men. I’m not sure I could bring myself to meet someone, let alone screw them, but I think about it. I really do.

I see my shrink once a week mostly because I can’t afford twice a week, and my nutritionist once a month, because she really doesn’t help me much but my insurance pays for it. She helps me come up with ideas to eat but I’m not on an eating plan. I just don’t skip meals. I skimp all of the time, especially as of late, because I am so disgusted with my body and my weight.

My work contract is up for renewal and I’m freaking out and avoiding. My dad is still dying, between his stage 4 melanoma and advanced dementia. My sibs are pretty much checked out of the whole dad-thing, but they think they aren’t. I’m behind on everything, am avoiding doing work right now, yadda yadda.

The hardest thing right now is that I was in a car accident three weeks ago and hurt my neck, shoulders, spine, and right arm even though it was pretty low-speed (I was rear-ended). So I have doctor’s visits, orthopedists, physical therapy, and constant pain. CONSTANT pain. I’m not supposed to lift, exercise, do yoga, walk the dog (he pulls and weighs 90 pounds), drive more than 20 mi… really do anything except be. By the end of the day I am in so much pain I have no choice but to take a vicodin, but I try to avoid that as much as possible. Being numb is not a good thing for me.

And of course, not exercising is aggravating my anorexia. And yet I dismiss my disease because I feel fat and am nowhere near a dangerous weight. My depression is – eh. I’m now on so many uppers it’s bizarre. I’ll do another post on the meds that I take and why – it’s hilarious.

I doubt I still have my followers, but if you are there, or you read this, please leave a little comment. This world is too scary and overwhelming to be in it alone.

The evils of disownership

My husband came downstairs after going to be to show me something. His brother was renting his family’s beach house. Correction – his brother was renting his beach house. Somewhere in the mix of all of the things my hubby and I have done to fail my mother-in-law,

An endless series of seconds and minutes

I eat, and the food sits like a rock in my stomach, and all I can think about is purging. Or cutting. Or cutting and purging and bruising and running and hurting myself in every way possible. But I’m working on it, I really am.

I am a fat old woman.

You are a fat old woman, she says as I look at myself in the mirror. Fat and stupid and careless. You don’t deserve to eat, she tells me as my stomach rumbles. It rumbles because I purged tonight. I took my kids to dinner

Goodbye house

I closed on my childhood home today. My family had lived there for nearly 40 years, and when I moved my dad into assisted living after he broke his leg almost two years ago, it was time to let it go. 2 years, you say? 

The bitch inside

I was leaving a long day of meetings, lost in the myriad of parking lots and unable to find my car, feeling like a total idiot, when I heard her again. You know her. She’s the one who nitpicks every thing I do, from how I dress, to what I said, to who I talked to, and to how much I ate. At that moment, she was berating me for having a glass of wine, eating chicken at lunch,

Guilt, motherhood, and mothering

I think it’s hilarious that I feel guilty over not posting on my ED blog. ED is all about guilt – at least for me.

Too loud, too big, too much, too intense, too me.

When I was about 8, I came home from school and complained to my mom about some of the kids who were teasing me. I’d just started a new school where I barely knew anyone, and I felt isolated and alone. My mother listened to me for a moment, and gave me two pieces of Mom-Wisdom that hit me at my core, because when you are 8 and your mom tells you something, She Must Be Right. She’s Mom. She’s a superhero. Listen closely to her Mom-Wisdom.

The perpetual cycle of shame

Long before I ever started therapy, I struggled with an overwhelming sense of shame.  On the surface, I was ashamed that I had to resort to purging to handle my issues with food, and that sometimes I had to hit or hurt myself to feel better.  I felt terrible and weak that I did these things, so much so that I only told one person about my self-harm, a then-BF I dated in college.  He later figured out the purging when we went to a mexican restaurant and I came back from the bathroom with a flushed face.  Ironically, he was angry that I had “wasted” the food (I didn’t – it was delicious, which is why I ate it and then purged it) and never expressed concern about my purging, or even how I’d been lying to him the entire time.  

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.