longing to be whole

I dreamed that I was sick again. I dreamed that I was restricting like I used to. The problem is that I haven't been restricting so my body doesn't feel sick. In my dream it was the anorexia that every eating disorder longs for, the one that allows the control and euphoria of restricting while still having the feelings of being healthy. It was the lie that orange always promised, "You can be different. You can restrict and not get sick."

A lie is a lie, but for a moment it was a familiar lie that beckoned to me to try again. It was a lie that reassured me that it could be different. The dream came at a time of body loathing. It was a dream that made the idea of anorexia sound good for a moment. Maybe more than a moment. 

I have had to be extremely vigilant this week to maintain recovery. Illness sounds alluring; stress, a packed schedule, and an upset stomach have made it difficult to battle the allure. And yet I have battled. I have fought to remember where I have come from. I have fought to remember the pain when my family hugged me. I have fought to remember that healthy is entirely better. 

To this point, I can say I've fought well. I have had meals that would have been easy to skip because no one but me would have known. Now to continue fighting for my recovery. How I long to be completely whole. How I long for the day when those thoughts don't creep in. Though I don't know if that day will ever actually arrive, I will continue to fight as I hope for it.

NEDA week and comparing my journey

I've wanted to write for a while now.  I've just been so tired and when faced with the option of curling up in bed next to my husband and sleeping or turning on the computer and organizing my thoughts into words....well, comfy bed seems to win more often lately.  Last week was a struggle for me.  I was already struggling a little but NEDA week is hard for me.

 It is a week that makes me think I was never really THAT sick.  I hear the stories of people who nearly died and I think well, I didn't nearly die.  Until my husband speaks that strange kind of logic that says, "Um, you did almost die.  You were intending to commit suicide."  And I think about so many of my friends who have spent time in in-patient care and think but I wasn't sick enough for in-patient.  I hear how someone restricted to x amount of calories and the competitive voice of orange reminds me that I was x amount of calories more than that person.

My brain, or rather my disease, argues with everything its got to say I wasn't ever really sick. I don't have the physical scars that some have. I knew how to take care of my self inflicted burns and cuts so that they wouldn't scar and people wouldn't have reason to think I was sick.  My body doesn't carry evidence of the hell it has been through so I try to downplay that it really has been through hell.

Isn't that the battle of the eating disorder though?  There is ALWAYS going to be someone out there who is sicker than you, which will always play through your head to insist you aren't sick because you aren't as sick as ______.  As long as the comparison game continues in my mind, I will never be free from the belief that I wasn't sick enough.  And I've come to realize that as long as I compete mentally to have been sick enough to validate my illness, NEDA week will always be difficult for me.

It's great to educate.  I went to a meeting of about 50 women the other day and this group of women were having a biggest loser competition.  They were standing on the scale before breakfast and giving out prizes for the most % lost. I wanted to grab the mic and tell them that in a group that big, I would be shocked if they didn't have at least one woman who has struggled with some variation of an eating disorder.  I wanted to educate them about NEDA.  I love the purpose of the week.  And I also, for my own recovery, avoided the computer radically last week.

For this time in life, my recovery depends on me not comparing my journey to someone else's journey. For this season of my recovery, I will focus on choosing the next right thing and worry less about comparing my illness to someone else's illness.  Recovering together is amazing, it is great to have friends who just know and understand.  Recovering together is not however meant to be a comparison.  Comparison is a trap, and not one I can afford to get caught in.

A picture of recovery

These kinds of decisions are what keep me recovering. It may seem small but I chose the waffle because it's what I wanted. The voices in my head told me to avoid the waffle and have my peanut butter and jelly on an apple instead. I was able to push past the guilt of eating frozen waffles and enjoy (mostly) my breakfast that my brain tried to convince me wasn't safe. Staying consistent with the healthy choice in these situations is what keeps propelling me forward in recovery instead of letting the tiny choices prime me for relapse.

anniversaries and healing

Today I want to celebrate a little bit.  It's an anniversary for me but not one most people would celebrate so just bear with me a little while I explain.  On this day 3 years ago relapse hit full force.  Typically one doesn't remember the day things started going south but I do.  I had been allowing disordered thoughts, actions, and habits for more than a year but then something snapped.  July 24, 2010 I drove to the airport to pick up a friend and suddenly every single calorie in my drink attacked my brain.

I panicked and restricted.  I restricted severely.  I exercised until my body collapsed.  It wasn't pretty.  It was among the darkest times of my life.  So why on earth would I want to celebrate the anniversary of the day relapse became official?  Well, because I don't remember the date that I started recovery.  I can celebrate today because I can clearly see how different my life is now than it was on this day 3 years ago.

That is part one of this post.  Where I was then.  And now for where I am today.  

I recently did something brave, something really brave.  Something I thought was a gift for my husband but turned out being a gift for myself as well.  I did a boudoir photo shoot for Hubby's birthday.  This is the 3rd time that I have purchased a package, and the first time that I finally had the courage to actually use it. I just have never been able to convince myself that my body is beautiful enough to take pictures of it.

In a random and quick burst of bravery I called and made the appointment.  Somehow I made myself  show up for the photo shoot.  I'm not particularly modest but I am uncomfortable in my skin.  How on earth that happens I don't know.  My hesitation wasn't about posing in my underware, it was about not liking my body. I'm not really sure if that makes sense but it does in my head.

It was a different experience than I could have even imagined.  It was actually fun.  It was empowering.  I felt pretty even in my own skin!  I didn't tell Hubby I were I was going.  I didn't even tell him after I had done it.  For two weeks I kept the secret.  Finally the day of the consultation I had a friend watch the kids, told Hubby I had a surprise for his birthday and drove him to the photographers.

He was SHOCKED.  He was amazed.  He loved all of it.  And then I was able to finally tell him what had happened to me through the experience.  I was able to tell him how I thought I was giving him a gift but how I had been able to relax and be ok  with my body during the shoot.  I told him how healing this experience had been for me.  I don't know if I can even fully express the healing this brought to my soul.  And at that moment he informed me that I was the best gift I could have ever given him.  The gift wasn't the pictures, the gift was me.  The gift was seeing me smile.  The gift was watching me begin to heal.

uninsurable

My insurance agent made a mistake and didn't switch my bank account on my life insurance when we changed banks.  He switched it for my car and home insurance, he didn't get the life insurance policy switched.  It lapsed, I realized, I panicked.  He told me reinstating it  was easy, just fill out these forms.

I fill out said forms which ask  questions about physical and mental health within the last 5 years.  Well, you can't lie, that is insurance fraud, and I do have things on my medical record that weren't there when I first got my policy.  Things like an eating disorder and a stay in the mental hospital.  Things like suicidal ideations, Major Depressive Disorder, anxiety, and PTSD. 

Apparently insurance doesn't like those things.  They asked more questions.  I answered them.  Yesterday I received the letter stating that my request for policy reinstatement was denied.  I have no life insurance anymore.  I am not insurable anymore.  And I lost my coverage all because of a clerical error.

I have a myriad of emotions about it.  The first was anger.  And let's be honest, I'm still pretty hot about it.  I felt a little bit of overwhelm.  And I also feel a bit like Marshall in the episode of How I Met Your Mother when he is imagining bears jumping out at him in NYC and attacking him.  Ok, so that last one makes me laugh so at least when I feel the pit in my stomach growing I can switch gears and laugh for a moment.

One more thing that this eating disorder has taken from me, insurability.  I don't know if I'm most angry at my agent for the error, at myself for not catching it sooner, or at Orange for stealing one more thing from me.  I'm going to get better.  I'm going to prove them wrong. 

And now I need to take a deep breath, finish getting ready for work and take this day one step at a time.  I will trust myself to my Creator, both physically and emotionally.  He sees it all and He is here with me, even here, even without insurance.

recovery or recovering

Today I feel like I am "doing recovery" rather than recovering.  I think you have to have experienced recovery in some form for that to fully make sense.  I am tired.  But I'm tired because I'm depressed not because I haven't gotten enough sleep.

Yesterday, once again, I begged God to heal me.  I promised Him the world, just make this heaviness go away.  PLEASE!  Instead He filled my ride to work with songs about trusting God even through the pain, songs about how His love doesn't fail us even through the dark times, songs of reassurance but no songs of healing.

So once again, with a heavy heart, I am asked to trust what I cannot feel.  And I do.  And I will.  Even if the heaviness never leaves, He is God and He is good.

I saw this on Facebook last week.  I have to share it because it is true.

Yeah, I really am glad.  I'm glad you're here still.  I'm even glad I'm here still.  Keep pressing on.  Keep hanging on.  Keep doing recovery even when you feel like you are doing recovery not recovering.  Keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Keep doing the next right thing.  And next year we can all gather around each other and be glad that we are still here. 

7 almonds a.k.a. screw the new health class

I swear that if I hear one more person tell me that you can only eat 7 almonds for your liver to function properly, that I will scream!  If I hear one more conversation in the lunch room about sugar grams, fat grams, appropriate forms of protien, I may pull out all of my hair! But hey, at least I could make bald a new fashion statement, right? 

I think that for the next 6 weeks of this stupid health class I will be enjoying lunch anywhere but the lunchroom!  Sitting at my desk with my oatmeal and facebook suddenly seems like the best option EVER.  I want to scream at the top of my lungs.  I want to tell people that sometimes there is such a thing as "too healthy".  I want them to know that sometimes people like me take knowledge of health and distort it and use it as a weapon against my body instead of a tool to help my body.

I still read labels.  I still refuse certain ingrediants.  And I also am trying really hard to balance that with moderation.  You know, the kind of moderation that says it is ok if someone brings in cookies to work to have one in spite of the fact that there is no label for me to read.  The kind of moderation that that knows that homemade veggie lasagna is still a healthy option, even though it has noodles in it.  The kind of moderation that has lacked in my life for a while now.

For the record, work is very orange enabling right now.  I could count my almonds like they recommend, or I could trust that my nutritionist knows what she is talking about when she tells me that 1/4 cup is a serving and to not measure or count but instead trust my intuition.  My health depends on trusting my nutritionist right now and not letting other voices interfere with the plan that she has laid out for me.  That is so much easier to say than to do.

Even If....

My new favorite song Even If by Kutless......

Last week was hard.  Really, REALLY hard.  I've decided that suicidal thoughts come in many forms.  I've had days of actively wanting to kill myself.  Last week I didn't want to actually kill myself but I just wanted to die.  My friend had a time similar this week.  She didn't want to kill herself but wished that someone else would kill her.  And it is all suicidal ideations whether it is wanting to kill myself, wanting to die or wanting someone else to take your life.  And it is scary. 

It is scary to fantasize about dying.  Even when I am in a good place I still wonder what it would be like to die.  Even when I am loving my life and not overwhelmed with depression, I still wonder what would happen if I took the entire bottle of pills.  I still think about it, maybe not all the time, but regularly. 

Last week I heard this song for the first time.  It is truly what I believe.  This song has moved my heart.  If my healing never comes, if I struggle with depression, suicidal ideation, and eating disorders for the rest of my life, it won't change WHO  God is.  He is still good, even if my healing never comes.

truth and humor

There is far too much going on in my brain.  Hubby often tells me that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.  So I guess tonight the elephant in my brain will be tackled one subject at a time. 

I read an interesting statement on my daily calendar earlier this month that has stuck with me. 

"When we are lost, when we are homeless, 

when we've spent years separated from who we are,

threats of failed hearts or joint pressure don't move us.

Dying does not frighten those who are already half dead."

Ganeen Roth

And there it is, the words I have been trying to verbalize for ages of why knowing that an ed is killing you doesn't make the behaviors stop.  It is because you are already half dead.  We know heart attacks happen, kidneys fail, bodies shut down and yet it isn't enough.  Why?  Because dying isn't enough to scare someone who is half dead.  To be quite honest, living is way scarier than dying when you are already half dead.

And now for a funny picture to deliver a truth that I am trying desperately to internalize.  You can thank one of my Facebook friends for this......

Swearing at Orange

It is amazing how a habit can suddenly become a trigger, a rule, a stumbling block.  I typically have the same thing for breakfast.  There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest ones:
~taste --> yum
~time --> quick
~cost--> cheap

It is also approved by my nutritionist.  It is safe, doesn't produce guilt.  It is easy to fix and easy to eat. Hmmm, did anyone catch how orange that reason of "safe" sounds?  I never had until this morning.

My body wanted something different than my usual and my mind actually recoiled.  I wanted eggs.  I had a full out, swearing battle with the voice in my head.  Suddenly my normal breakfast felt like a "have to".  I was shocked at the intensity of the argument in my head.  I was shocked that eggs didn't feel safe to me.  I was shocked that I felt that it had to be my normal breakfast or nothing at all.

I finally told orange to f*** off and made the eggs.  Then I had to tell her to f*** off again in order to allow myself to eat them.  It was a victory, I made and ate what my body wanted.  It was also a shocking realization of how much power that voice still holds.  It was a sobering awareness that recovery is still a lot of work, even when I am stable.  And it was encouraging to know that I have the strength to stand up to that voice now.  Eight months ago, I didn't.

Bliss

               

Bliss is the days when I can ENJOY chocolate and peanut butter without a single guilty thought, without once thinking about my thighs, without once worrying what someone else would think if they saw me, without analyzing, without fear. 

That is my definition of bliss.  It happens from time to time now, and I like it :)

End

                          
I want nothing more than to be able to say "The End" on this blog.  Not that I don't love you all, I do.  But I don't love that I have a need to write this blog.  I want to say "The End" to the eating disorder.

I wonder sometimes if there will ever be a real end and I don't really think so.  Not that there won't be an end to the disease, because I don't believe that, but that there won't be an end to the affect it has had on my life.  My life has been forever altered.

I believe in full recovery, I have to.  I have to believe in hope and healing.  Otherwise I'm just a girl walking along waiting for the next relapse.  I believe there will be an end to the eating disorder.  But I don't believe there will ever be an end to the journey.  Life is a journey, not a destination.  I'll never be "there" until I'm dead.

As much as I long for the end, I am grateful for the journey.  I am grateful for the dear friends I have met through the journey.  I am grateful for the healing and refining that has happened in my own life.  And most of all, I'm grateful for the fact that my openness and honesty has opened doors to help others walk through this journey.

I'm not there yet.  I wouldn't consider myself recovered yet.  It isn't the end of the eating disorder.....yet.  But I am on the path to freedom.  I am on the road to the end of the disease.  But there won't ever be an end to the journey, to the ways this has affected my life, to the way I allow God to use it in my life and in the lives of others.

Now

                         
Living in the here and now is hard.  I want to run and hide a lot of the time.  But I don't, usually.  Living NOW is the key to living recovery.  I can't change the past.  Living there only brings more misery.  I can't control the future, living there brings more anxiety.  But I can live now, today, right this moment.

Staying present during pain is the hardest part of living here and now.  I'm learning, I'm getting better at it though.  As I stay present, as I feel in the now, the pain gets easier and easier to handle.  I never thought I'd live to see the day when I could do that, to live now.  The more I practice it, the easier it gets.

Perfect

                                  
I'm struggling with doing this challenge right now.  And oddly enough, it has much to do with this word.  Perfect.  I wanted so badly to do this right but I got tired, I went out with friends, I spent time with my family and then I realized that I wasn't doing this challenge perfectly.  I cannot keep up.  I even started out behind.

I'm at this strange place in recovery.  I am angry with myself for not being able to blog every single day to a new word.  And yet, I realize, maybe for the first time in my life, that the reason I haven't kept up is that I am actually LIVING my life.  I'm going to concerts with girl friends, I'm tucking my kids into bed, I'm having sex with my husband, I'm getting to bed early enough to be productive at work.  I'm living instead of hiding on my blog.  And that is ok, good even.

Not to say that blogging is bad.  It isn't.  I love my little spot in the world where I can just be, no matter what it is that I need to be.  This is therapeutic for me.  But I can't let it control me either.  I nearly gave up on this challenge.  I had intended to since I'm so far behind.  Then I saw the word perfect today.  I strive so hard for perfection that I was about to quit rather than be less than perfect. 

The dream of perfection is a hard one to leave behind.  I wish I could tell you that every day I just accept myself and all of my imperfections.  I wish that I could tell you that I am always, or even usually, as willing to love living and be able to accept imperfection as well as I just did two paragraphs ago.  Sadly, that is not the case.

I'm learning to live again.  But giving up perfection is still hard.  Acknowledging my limitations is still difficult.  I still think that the physical laws of nature should apply to others but not me.  I still think sometimes that perfection is achievable.  The important part in it all though is that I'm making progress.  I'm learning to accept myself, slowly but surely.  I'm learning to live.  I am learning that perfection is not realistic.  I am learning that I am enough, exactly how I am.

And I'm grateful for those lessons though sometimes overwhelmed and scared by them.

Power

This post really devoured me.  When I saw the word was power, everything inside of me recoiled.  And like that, with one word, I am now two days behind instead of one.

To me, power was what was used against me.  "If you don't do what I say the police officer in my family will tie you up naked on the swingset and leave you there."  "If you don't do what I say, first I'll beat you up and then he'll beat you up."  Power, in the form of sheer force, was how my attackers subdued me.

To me, power was what was far too often abused.  Power was the church telling me that my depression wasn't real but rather an indication of the sin in my life.  Power was the religious force of the day that used to tell me that I was not good enough, nor would I ever be good enough for the church or for God.

Power was what stole from me.  Power stole my innocence.  Power stole my voice.  Power stole my identity.  Power stole my desire for living.  Power stole my control.  And when power stole my control, orange came along by my side and gave me control again.

I gave MY power away to my eating disorder.  I let her abuse me just as much as other power had abused me.  Even as I have been recovering, I still saw power as a bad thing.  It has always meant the abuse of power. How could I blog about something so evil as power?

I had to read everyone else describing power in a positive light to have insight that I have never had before.  I suddenly realized that I have power, and it isn't bad or evil.  I have the power to recover.  I have the power to use my voice.  I have the power to live my life, not the life someone else dreams for me. 

Thanks Blogosphere.  Until I had to think about power, about how the word itself made everything in me pull back, I would have never realized what an important word it really is.  If I hadn't heard my friends talking about power as a good thing, I may not have stopped to really think about power and the true role it plays in my life.

thoughts from a recovery plateau

I have so much to say.  I wish I could sort it all out so I could say it all.  My brain has been a jumbled mess lately.  I've been forgetting to return calls and my thoughts just tumble over each other in no particular order. I feel like my brain looks like those pictures I posted of my house.

 I find myself both fighting for and against recovery at the same time.  I'm not (usually) intentionally trying to sabotage my recovery and yet I find that I keep getting in the way of my recovery at the same time.  Someday I will reach a point where I can eat intuitively.  I'm definitely not there yet.  I struggle when I feel full but I know I haven't had enough.  My appetite has been rather weak lately.

My taste buds are off.  Few foods actually taste right to me right now.  I actually don't like the taste of most food right now, even some of my favorites.  Thankfully peanut butter is still something I can enjoy so I've been eating spoonfuls of peanut butter when I know I need more to eat.  It is hard to eat when you nearly always really feel full and food has lost its flavor appeal.

I hate this place.  I want to be healthy because I'm actually (mostly) enjoying living again.  And though I know I want to recover more than I want to indulge in my addiction, the addiction still somehow works its magic and causes me to submit-sometimes subconsciously.  There have been more than a few evenings in the past few weeks that I have eaten out of decision rather than desire.  I'm not getting worse, but right now I'm not getting better either.  I have hit a crazy plateau.  Being somewhere in the middle aggravates me more than words can say.  I want to be better or sick, not in the STUCK in the middle!

I feel rather hypocritical that I have a healthy view of food when I think of others but not when I think of me.  When I'm talking with someone else I can see how food is not the enemy.  When I'm dealing with me, however, it's a different story entirely.  I'm so tired of seeing food as the enemy or at best seeing it as a necessary evil.  I so want to enjoy food the way that I expect others to.

And so, at this point of recovery plateau I must live by the immortal words of Dory.....

"Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming."