Waste

100 pageviews and climbing as of this weekend! Wow.  Considering I've literally only told one person about this, I'm pretty amazed.  I am also curious about you . . . 

This weekend was rough, as you can probably tell from my last post.  And that was just the beginning.  I am feeling completely slothful, gluttonous, selfish, unmotivated, and utterly wasteful.  Waste waste waste.  I am kept constant company by waste and shame.  The downward spiral has been slowly sneaking up on me, disguised by the brief highs and the weird positivity I referenced in an earlier post.  I have absolutely no desire to do even the smallest shred of work, activity, anything that could be considered an accomplishment.  It's been a long weekend, and I have managed to do NOTHING.  Well, I sure did eat a lot.  And had a couple of exceptionally unenjoyable purges.  And I'm caught up on practically every tv show on the air, past or present.

I have wasted time, so much time, and not just this weekend.  In the life of ED, I have spent so much time bingeing, planning to binge, talking myself into purging, avoiding the purge, and purging.  I've wasted so much money on food, on treatment, on medication.  I've wasted life, relationships, opportunities.  I've thrown so much down the toilet (metaphorically and literally) that I just can't bear to think about it sometimes.  The waste that has played partner-in-crime to ED over the past years is staggering.  I am acutely aware of just how much waste there is every time I get back into a healthy recovery lifestyle.  The time, especially, is what amazes me -- I always have so much of it!  What to do, what to do.  And it's always like there is a mental haze that lifts, and my energy levels skyrocket, and all of the sudden I'm cleaning my room, organizing my music, completing work that should have been done ages ago, making music, making jewellery, exercising, cooking, reading, and doing everything a normal (sans ED) me finds joy in.  But ED weighs me down, mentally and physically, and then weekends go by with hardly a movement from my bed.  The depths.  Of ED, of anxiety, of depression, of shame.

Here I sit, my throat raw from the purge, my work unfinished from sheer inability to convince my brain to function, my already dwindling bank account overdrawn from treat purchases, and my skin ashen, eyes red, dark circles, all from the stress of the purge and the vast amounts of grease, salt, and sugar I've been pouring into myself.  I am a mess.  And I don't even know how to describe the mental state.  I'm avoiding a purge.  Because I really want it to be my last purge.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with my therapist.  My last challenge was to get rid of the scale, which I've been quite successful with.  I know the next step is to say goodbye to the purge, and to do whatever it takes to make it happen (or not happen, I suppose).  I'm terrified.  I'm terrified of what it will take, I'm terrified of failure, I'm half terrified of success.  What if I give up the purge and the binge keeps happening?  ED has been such a huge part of me for so long that it's like ending a really important relationship.  Even though it's a completely unhealthy and detrimental relationship, it's still been a consuming one.  I don't know how to spend my time without ED, I don't know what to think about, I don't now how to make it through the evening, I don't know who I am.  At the same time, who I am has nothing to do with ED and I can't wait to get that little shit out of my life.  But right now he's in my brain and I cannot clearly see/remember who I am without him.

So off I go, to the bathroom, to tear at my throat and corrode my tooth enamel and burst the tiny vessels under my eyes and scrape my knuckles on my teeth and strain my back and stare at myself in the mirror with disgust and defeat and disappointment.  I want this to be the last one.  The fight is being sucked out of me and as the tears roll down my face I am terrified.  What if I fail.  And what if I don't.

dear weekend, I fall apart

Can of Pringles - original
Bag of Lays - wavy
Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar - king sized
Cadbury Toffe bits chocolate bar - king sized
Caramilk bar - king sized
Hershey's Cookies n' Creme bar
Bag of Nibs licorice - family size
Bag of Pull n' Peels licorice
Chinese food -- fried rice, chicken ball, spare rib
2 cans of pop -- diet grapefruit (sounds so lame, tastes so delicious)
Kraft Dinner made with sausage, peppers, and onions - heaping plate
Carrot cake batter - generous spoon licks
Cream cheese frosting - SO MUCH
Cookie dough - whole batch

Weekends are the worst.

may I have a wordle with you?

Ever heard of a Wordle? It's a cool site that takes any text and creates an interesting world cloud.  I linked my blog in, and this is the result.  The size of each word is relative to how often it appears.  Interesting food for thought.

this is why i fight

I had to turn around and write this while I'm high on the feeling (of happiness - too often a rare commodity), because I know I won't be able to fake it for a re-tell tomorrow.  Moods are a crazy thing.  I just finished posting "baby steps and horses," literally minutes ago, but I just have to share what happened between then and now.

It started with picking out clothes for work tomorrow.  Yeah, I am kind of a geek that way.  But it's amazing the time I can waste in the morning, just standing in front of the closet, trying to throw together some sort of presentable mash of an outfit.  I'm not a great morning person, and I already mentioned my ineptitude for punctuality.  I don't usually try on the clothes, but I wasn't sure this combo would work, so I put it on.  It sucked.  But I found a better option.  The mirror was kind, and the freshly-washed pants were surprisingly un-tight.   Cue a burst of joy!  Feeling high on joy, and a little risky, I decided to open the bottom drawer of pants and try on the pair I've been avoiding.  I'm in my medium weight range right now -- I have a whole wardrobe for smaller than my current size, and another one for larger.  (Perk/curse of being a fluctuater.)  These bottom-drawer pants are on the cusp of the smaller me, and most memories I have of wearing them are from weights lower than this.  But I went for it.  And they pulled up over my hips!  And then they buttoned without a fight!  And then my brain started singing "the pair of pants fit" to the tune of La Cucaracha.  So joyful I was, that I went a little wild and tried on a few more pairs!  I am currently wearing a pair of jeans that I haven't even bothered to look at in over a year, and my stomach isn't rolling dubiously over the sides!  I tried on a few pair that are too loose and I can now relegate to the pile of unwearables.  So long, fatpants.  

(Information you should probably know: I'm not a bone-thin bulimic with distorted body image issues. I'm a pretty short gal, and I've always been very curvacious.  Meaty, if you will.  My adult weight has been between 137 and 179.  Right now I'm flirting with low 150's.  I don't have much desire to drop below 140.  So when I say fatpants, I'm not referring to a size 3, I'm talking double-digits.)

It's a wonderful feeling of accomplishment, success, and most importantly, validation.  Any weight that I have lost has been in a healthy way, through proper eating and regular exercise.  The binge/purge only allows me to either maintain, or more likely, to gain.  I need to hold on to the feeling I have right now -- the pride, the joy, the hope -- because I know these pants are buttoned because I ate my veggies and did a little sweating.  Yes, it's been mixed with a lot of terrible behaviors, but I have to hold on to the positives.

And the last thing.  The reason that I'm up late tonight is because I'm trying on pants that fit!  I'm happily dancing around my room to a Mexican cockroach melody (refer to link), instead of bunched under the covers, finishing off the evening's binge, begrudging the inevitable purge.  I would much rather give my late nights to small pants and music than ED and a toilet.  When I'm tired tomorrow, I'll be much happier about it.

This feeling.  Right now.  This is why I fight.

baby steps and horses

"It starts off with my thinking about the food that I deny myself when I am dieting. This soon changes into a strong desire to eat. First of all it is a relief and a comfort to eat, and I feel quite high. But then I can’t stop, and I binge. I eat and eat frantically until I am absolutely full. Afterward I feel so guilty and angry with myself.”

                                    Dr. Christopher G. Fairburn
                                    Overcoming Binge Eating


Sometimes I read something and wonder if the author snatched the thoughts right out of my head.  This would be a prime example.  Bulimia is a pretty isolating thing, so it's nice to be reminded that there are many others out there who are having the same thoughts, struggles, and experiences.  I often feel so completely messed up in the head, with the constant anxious thoughts, and the endless battle between the ED thoughts, the voice of opposition (the "I want to be healthy" thoughts), and the false front (the lies I tell myself, the thought that goes into the front I build for other people).  It's a struggle.  I am exhausted at the end of every day.  It's a mental battle.  A full-on war, really.  I'm sooooooooo sick of fighting.


My most recent goal/challenge has been to put away the scale, and I am happy to report that I have been doing very well with that.  Better than I thought, really.  I feel a bit of freedom from the numbers.  The only thing working against it is that I am currently enrolled in a weight loss program (Simply for Life - prepaid until end of March).  I started in September, and at the beginning it was wonderful.  I had a renewed vigor for recovery, I very successfully cleaned up my eating habits, and I even lost quite a bit of the weight I had gained through extreme bingeing for long periods of time.  But then I gave in to the inevitability of a descent back into the gripping cycle of bulimia.  The above quote quite accurately describes a small part of the mental process.  So now I'm still practicing SFL by day, and ED by night.  I'm the superhero from hell.    The point I'm trying to get to is that I am committed to a weekly weigh-in (other things happen during the session but I'm making a scale-related point.  Well, trying to.  It's really hard to reel these thoughts in when there are so damn many of them).  I was planning to skip the weigh-in.  Not because I wanted to adhere to my no-scale mission.  I think a weekly weigh-in is very reasonable.  But because I was nervous that I would see a gain.  I would not handle that well.  Before my session, I jumped on the scale. I was surprised to see that I was actually down a bit.   So of course I was happy to get on the giant platform scale -- you know, the kind that doctors have, with all the metal sliders; the kind that makes you feel like a horse.  


I'm not sure how to interpret the weight loss, no matter how small.  Those of you who struggle with weight will understand that even the smallest loss means something, but even the smallest gain is devastating.  I think it's a positive reflection of getting rid of the scale.  I judge every day (without necessarily meaning to) based on the number I see on the morning or at the end of the day.  Bad number = bad day.  Bad mood, bad eating, purging, no exercise.  Perhaps I can deduce that by not weighing myself anymore, I am not as inclined to base my day on a feeling about a number, therefore less bad eating days are happening.  Or perhaps this is just a fluke, because I know very well what I've been eating, and in reality, it just means that I've been a better purger.  And that was hard to type.  I hate to even give the purge this victory, but mostly I hate to have to be honest about it.  The purge is so much more vicious about it's privacy.


Despite all of the struggles I continue to have, and the constant frustrations and negative thoughts, I am trying to hold onto the small step toward victory I have taken by removing the scale from my daily routine.  I am forcing myself to see it as an important element in the overall picture of recovery.  It's a step forward.  I'm scared that I will gain a ton of weight without the scale holding me accountable.  But at least for now I'll have a weekly check-in.  Maybe next time I can be brave enough to step on to the horseweigher without a safety pre-weigh?

Panic

Sometimes,

when my head is hung in shame

just above the rim, staring

at the mess of a fresh purge,

with guilt

with relief

with disgust

with satisfaction,

I hear footsteps coming down the hall.

Panic.

And then I realize,

it's just the sound of my heart

beating against my ears.