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 

Seven minutes

T says that it takes seven minutes for the urge to pass.  Seven minutes.  I look at the clock, 9:14 and I think all I have to do is make it to 9:21 and I will be ok.  Like a computer, my mind starts to analyze the possibilities, every stream, every branch to look for an opportunity.  I could go for a run but it would take me more than seven minutes to get ready and the wet heavy fog that is pervading the city today is not what I want to run in.  I could run but it is late at night and if I get attacked then my love would know and I would have to go to the hospital and People would know, and that cannot be.  A minute ticks by, and the anxiety in my stomach grows.  I can feel every bite, every calorie, every fat gram that I ate in my perfectly reasonable and healthy meal but to my haunted stomach, it does not feel reasonable or healthy.  It feels foreign and the urge rises up within me and I need to find other options.

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?