After Anorexia

I'm going through a bit of a rough patch, thinking wise.

I'm trying to deal with my flatmate who is seriously anorexic. I feel so helpless and at the same time pissed off that I am trying to help and it's not getting through. I know that's inevitable, but a part of me really thought that I could be useful in that way, but I'm not.

It hits home how far away I am from my own illness. I've had a tough time with depression related binging and weight gain, to the point that I am now quite overweight, but even that doesn't bother me in the way that it would at one time. For most of my life I whole-heartedly believed that being thin was the only thing in the world worth caring about and that being fat meant being weak and disgusting. Losing weight was the only thing I would ever be good at, the only thing I would ever achieve, the only way I would feel accopmplishment or contentment or pride.

Now I don't feel those things, of course I would like to drop the excess weight and be healthy again, but for me that's not something I want to happen dramatically and quickly. I'm happy enough to try and reduce the binging behaviours, get more active now I feel motivated to do stuff and let time and nature take over. I've thought about diets a lot and have come to the conclusion that they're not an option for me. I'm not willing to do something drastic that is going to give me a short-term result, I want this to be for the rest of my life, to get healthy and back into shape for keeps, and that means not losing a huge amount of weight or not eating enough or counting caloires. Just healthy choices and exercise that are part of my life, not the whole, sole purpose of it. I have a genuine love for food, for going out with friends to eat and going to the supermarket. But it's no longer an obbsession. It's not something that I really think about. I don't feel guilty about eating.

I accept that I've had a shit few months that have taken a toll on my weight but I'm not willing to invest all of myself into changing that. I feel better when I eat right, whether that's making sure I eat enough or not binging. I don't feel any pleasure in eating less or throwing up or binging. I don't want those things in my life. Trying to get back on track after this latest bout of depression has made me all the more determinded to make the most of life, and to make the most of myself. I feel like I've got a bit of myself back and there's no way that I'd give that up 'to be thin'.

I don't even feel like the same girl I was when I was anorexic. I've remoulded my entire appearence way beyond size and weight. Different hair, different make-up, different clothes, tattoos, piercings, dye.. Everything has been reconstruced and most of the time I am happy with what I've built. I have ugly days, bad hair days, but I'm more confident with the way that I look and take a lot more time looking after myself than I ever did when I was skeletal. I am more attractive. I'm not saying that I feel attractive but that I can see the difference in my non-size related appearence and that it looks a million times better now than it did a few years ago.

This weekend marked five years since I got out of the Eating Disorder Unit.

For a long time I didn't have any real sense of what things were like back then, mainly names and places and a fuckload of numbers and weights and calories. Recently I have started to remember things as they were, not through that horrible nostalgic haze where you're convinced that everything was better then, but how things truly were. I think this is mainly where I'm struggling;

These memories are mine, I know that, but at the same time they're not. I have burnt things and shredded things until nothing was left, so how can I reconnect to that life that I've delibrately and painfully destroyed.

It scares me to remember all those near death experiances. Prehaps that sounds melodramtic, maybe it is, but I can remember those moments of not being able breathe or stand or walk. Remembering how my Dad used to come into my room all through the night to check I still had a pulse, how I'd pretend to be asleep but really listening to them making endless phonecalls to the psychiatrist or my sisters or just arguing or crying.

It no longer matters about numbers, what I weighed or what I ate. I no longer look back and see it through those terms. I see everything else, and the everything else hurts like fuck.

I am a different person, if not wholly recovered from food/weight demons, they're still there, but in terms of anorexia and low weight and restriction, I'm a different person.

The trouble is, there's a living, breathing, moving version of that girl sleeping in the next room, and being around her makes me feel vulnerable and desprately sad. I know that I could wake her up and talk to her like I'm talking now, but I know that it wouldn't make any difference, it wouldn't make her stop, and I'm not coping all that well with that knowledge.

I've not really mentioned this before but I've been 'actively working' on recovery for self-harm. By that I mean, I do genuinely want to stop, willing to agree with what DBT bang on about 'how dangerous it is' and to accept that I'm primarily in this therpy to reduce self-harming behavious, or atleast that is the goal as far as I understand it. To be honest I had given up the idea that I would go for a long period of time without self-harming because to my mind I had already 'failed at recovery' and relapsed after long periods of time of not doing it at all, the last of these periods had been over three years and I genuinely thought that it would be something I never did again.

Since Spring 2008 I've not really thrown myself into 'sobriety' because I of the fear that it was a part of me that I would never lose 'forever' and between that time and recent months the extent and severity got dangerous and out of control.

It's been nearly a month since I last SI'ed...

I'm completely fine and untriggered until I read/hear about other people's self-harm. I want to reply and help people but I just can't deal with the feelings I get when I hear of people getting x amount of stitches or any of that crap. I know deep down that it doesn't mean anything, it means fuck all the amount of physical damage, and I know that I've come within milimetres of losing the use of my arm and had some seriously close calls, but I just feel like my struggles are pathetic and 'superficial' compared to everybody else's. I hate having that feeling, I despise myself for it, and then I get urges.

Avoiding it works, but it doesn't work all the time and if I'm going to seriously recover I need to learn to live with the fact that other people are still going to be self-harming.

I did it with anorexia, I very rarely feel jealous or triggered when I hear of the extent of other people's eating disorder, mostly I feel sad for them and for the girl I used to be.

I know that it's possible to get past this. I know that it gets easier with time.

I just hate the loathing that I feel after making all of these compaisons because what does it matter? What does it prove?


Nothing at all.

So why do I do it in the first place...

I'm upset and pissed off and stressed out of my head, completely overwhelmed by everything to do wih the future, I am not in the right frame of mind to make good choices, to do the right thing, to seriously consider my future, yet life is fucking relentless and deaf to such protests. Uni told me that I wouldn't have to let them know what I wanted to do about next year until April but I got a letter saying that they needed to know by the end of this week. And I don't know what to do or what I want or the fucking point in anything.

It's had a massive fucking impact on my mental health, which ironically was starting to improve a little because I didn't have all this fucking stress. I had the most awful, fucked up flashback a couple of nights ago, I won't go in detail because it was just.... Horrific. I don't want to go outside. I don't want to get up. I don't want to talk to anyone. I haven't cut in a few weeks and it's suddenly all I can think about again. I can't fucking breath from the dead weight on my chest...

Maybe it's got nothing to do with the future... Maybe it's because I found out that he's engaged and planning to have a baby and I am just so angry and resentful. I must have been the one to do something wrong because I'm the one that's been left in a state and he gets babies and weddings and love... I've always been terrified that one day it won't be enough for me to just sit back and watch his life grow into something wonderful, that one day I will snap and hunt him down and burn his life to ashes. I don't want to be angry. I want to be passed it. In every conceivable fucking way I WANT TO BE PASSED IT. I don't want it to hurt anymore. I don't want it to bleed into my sleep anymore. I just want to forget the whole thing but now that's impossible, with my psychiatrist knowing and rape crisis/counselling and everything, I have to fucking face up to things. I genuinely did want to do that, I sill do mostly, I am just so fucking exhausted.

I came here to drink milk and kick ass... and I've just finished my milk.

"Some people swallow the universe like a pil; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Okay, I've had a couple of days to process what happened the meeting, or more accurately why I walked out as an emotional wreck.
To be honest I think I was actually more upset and angry about the whole life goals and bangering me about what I'm going to do in Oct in regards to uni. I just got overwhelmed y'know, because I've only just started to feel better and now my head feels overcrowded with information and decsions that I don't feel strong enough to make, or that I'm in a good frame of mind to make good choices. I know that even if I commit to something right now I can change my mind later... It's just too much, too soon, and ever since I've taken time out I've been really insecure about what I want from it and where my life is going, so when someone tells you to stop drifting and makes choices it just makes me feel a Hell of a lot worse, because I know that I'm drifting and I don't like it, and I would never have took time out from university if I didn't really, really need it because going to uni was what I really wanted from life ever since the ED stopped me from going when I was eighteen. I guess a part of it is not having that drive anymore, because my ED doesn't stop me from doing anything, and it's hard to have the same goals as I did back then even if they're positive.

I know that I can sort the other stuff out and be blunt with them when I need to be because it's what I've always had to do, it's never been easy. The thing I don't like is being lied about and being told that I'd said something when I didn't. I know that's a bit over the top because let's face it, in the mental health game it's inevitable that people are going to talk about you when you're not there and I guess I should be used to it by now but it's still something that I hate. It just makes me out to be a liar, and then I think people will think I'm manipulating them, and it's the whole BPD headfuck that I just can't cope with. The main problem is I've read too much about it, and most of it has made me seriously hate myself, and I think it's that that makes me angry and fustrated because I don't feel like I deserve to have some of the conotations that are associated with it. I think I have such a problem dealing with the negatative comments/articles/etc is that because when I'm 'well' I am independent and adventerous and socialable and passionate and have a real, genuine love of life, and I want people to see me as that and that I have a good personality and I'm a good, decent person rather than a fucked up, terrible one. Personality is such a huge thing, and to go around thinking that you have a 'bad personality' is a really unpleasent experiance. I *know* that it is a mental health disorder, I *know* that a lot of bad shit is written by people that don't have a clue what it's like, but despite that I still get incredibly upset thinking that there is something fundamentally 'broken' with who I am.

I'm over it now, chilled out a bit and tried not to worry about it so much, but at the time everything is so fucking INTENSE, everything feels like the worst possible feeling in the world and I react to it in a way that I know isn't healthy. But at the same time, I know that there are times when all that stuff would have lead to self-harming, and if I'm not doing that then things do tend to overspil a bit (okay, a lot)so whilst at the time it is genuinely awful, if I cope with it by ranting and raving instead of cutting, then that's enough and overall makes me feel better about myself and more 'healthy' and competant. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm perfectly healthy and rational, but I do realise that I'm much better at coping with stuff that I used to be, even if at the time I feel like I can't.

I feel kind of guilty that I rang up and cancelled rape counselling, now it will be ten times harder to go back, I guess I have to though, in the end. I was so exhausted after Tuesday that I just didn't want to get up at all, let alone go outside. It's stupid though because I know deep down that cancelling one weeks leads to another and another and another... I give up too easiy. Although I don't really see myself as giving up. I guess I just didn't want another (emotionally) rough day. Next week I will have no excuses not to go and I WILL go and maybe not lie about why I didn't go yesterday. Well, I don't lie exactly, but I do tend to use my migraine attacks as a cover story for not something that I feel anxious about or uncomfortable with. 'Oh, sorry, I can't go out with you right now because my brain is exploding'

It's bad and I will stop doing it at some point. Or atleast, start attending everything I should so I don't need an excuse in the first place. Novel idea, that, girl, why didn't you think of it before?

Let Down

“How often my fear and ambivalence are rooted in what somebody else may think. But I need not present my actions, my words, myself for somebody else's approval. And basing my decisions on somebody else's approval or making my own approval contingent on somebody else's only postpones what I really want.”

- Jan Denise

I really don't know what to do. I thought that things were getting better and that people were listening to me but apparantly I as wrong about that.

The CPN/CMHT that I have just got involved with in Leicester talked to my care-co back home who basically told them that I'd said I wanted to complete DBT and that I was entitled to any support over here because of that. I am beyond pissed off. I've never, ever cried in front of a professional before... The last time I saw my care-co she said that it was possible to only get help in one place but that it was ultimately upto me which place I decided to go with. Then they all have a nice little chat behind my back, blatantly lie and say that I'd chosen DBT and now it's like.... Nothing. I'm not going to have any support for over a month and the only support it looks like I will get is occupational stuff, which is okay, but how are you meant to do that without some help. I've spent the last couple of weeks weighing up my options and eventually deciding that I wanted to drop DBT and move over to here but now that choice has been made for me, or atleast now that if I say something else it's going to look like I'm changing my mind all the time, when I never even made it (or atleast told them) what I wanted to do in the first place.

Also, the CPN here is pretty much telling me to 'sort my life out' and decide what to do over university and that I need life goals and ambition which is all very well and good but I don't feel like I'm quite in that frame of mind right now. I also have huge problems with life goals because I don't know what I want, I never really had any idea growing up and I still don't, but being told all this stuff and being overwhelmed by it has really set me back by a huge amount. I was starting to feel better and feeling that things were sortng themselves out but I feel like I've been left to do it all by myself, and to be honest I want to completely cut lose from everything and everyone because I just can't take the constant disappointment, especially as time I really thought things were going to be okay.

This is the fucking BPD crap all over again, the 'you just have a bad attitude' crap, try harder crap, pull yourself together crap, you're not worth our time crap.

They just don't seem to get how fucking hard it is for me to have all these connections to people back home, how I don't want to go home every fucking week to just end up feeling a million times worse. I hate everything about it. I hate the professionals. I hate the attitude I'm treated with. And now it's like it's infected things over here and I just can't bear it. I want to rage at people but all I do is cry pathetically and fail to assert myself.

I don't expect a magic wand, but I did expect to be able to make that choice for myself and not have someone jump in and do it for me.

No-one listens to me. No-one sees me. I'm not even a person to them just this fucked up personality disorder. I completely understand why so many people who get treated like this kill themselves. That's not a suicidal threat, I have no intention of killing myself and if I did it would not be a reaction to people dicking me around. It's just such a kick in the teeth to be told one thing and then something else happening. Or to agonise over a desicion only to have it taken away from you. It just seems to happen again and again and again.

What I am scared of is completely losing control of my anger or losing my voice. I don't know which would be worse. I don't want to be the kind of person that sits back and takes shit that they don't deserve. The problem is I don't trust myself and easily convince myself that I do deserve to be fucked around and not helped/supported and I just know that, ultimately, my voice isn't worth anything anyway.

Maybe I would be better off without any of them, maybe it's just not worth the constant struggle to be heard...

Stars, hold your fire!

"It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation."
- Sherlock Holmes

I'm really, really struggling to keep things in perspective right now, my mood has suddenly started shooting off up and I'm starting to lose myself a little bit in the happy haze. I feel good, great, positive, full of life, but I feel so much more anxious and stressed out and exhausted because of it. I'm not sleeping great but I've gone past the point of being tired and now I'm just fucking wired and hypersenstive and alert, which considering I was already anxious as fuck isn't great. I feel like I need to reign myself in a bit, stop making so many plans, slow down, but at the same time I don't want to fall right back down into feeling shit all the time. I just.can't.relax. I want to go off and do all of these exciting things but I still can't get out of the flat or hold a conversation with someone most days without freaking out. Noises, crowds, people, etc etc etc. It's a bit of a sick joke, really, the depression lifts and anxiety kicks you in the teeth.

Ultimatum

"This indecision’s bugging me

If you don’t want me, set me free."

- The Clash

The latest chapter to the on-going saga that is dialectal bloody behavioural therapy...

Okay, so, basically I was on the waiting list for DBT (at home) for quite a long time so by the time I got a place I had started uni, my old care-co and consultant made a sort of two place care plan so that I could access a psychiatrist/support at Leicester.

Now I have a new care-co (because the old one got suspended) is saying that I can’t get help from two different mental health teams, and that if I continue to access more support/CMHT in Leicester, I will lose access to the services back home, which include DBT. If I get this CMHT support here, then I have to choose between that and DBT/home services.

I am actually pretty riled that they’ve gone back on something that was agreed before I came to uni. I know that I have no understanding into the intricate workings of the NHS, whether this is about funding or lack of people. But I genuinely feel like they’ve pulled some kind of stunt on me, after a year of it being okay, just to get a reaction. When I was so ill at the end of last year I couldn’t make it back home for DBT they really piled on the pressure and didn’t understand the fact that you can be so ill you can’t get out... Eventually I was pushed so far I literally broke down in tears, after saying I did want to continue but was finding the getting there difficult, and them insisting that it wasn’t a ‘good enough excuse’. They pushed me to that place and I made that commitment to try to attend every session, even if it meant spending more time at home which they know I find difficult, and now a short few weeks later they’ve changed their tune and it’s a bit like jumping through hoops just to get kicked in the teeth. I know that sounds completely melodramatic and that I haven’t done a great job at articulating it but...

I really like my psychiatrist here at Leicester, I feel like I’ve built up a good relationship with her, she was the first professional I ever told about the post-trauma struggles and I definitely feel listened to and ‘understood’ which I know sounds pathetic but it really does make a difference to me. I have the rape crisis support/counselling set up here, although admittedly I’ve only been twice, but it’s something that I feel if I drop now it will be impossibly difficult to take up again, I’d rather have it there already, if that makes sense. I should hear back from the CMHT assessment the start of next week to see what they can offer and if they want to take me on. Everything just feels.... easier here. I feel in control of my own mental health because I’m dealing with it, instead of passing the buck to my parents and having them take control, and that’s something that I really don’t want to give up, it’s hard being independent but for me it’s definitely worthwhile and generally makes me feel better about myself. I also have huge issues with the services back home, I feel that they treated me appallingly over the summer, pushed the relationship with my parents to breaking point, Carol obviously got suspended for malpractice (although I was not the one that filed a complaint, I had pretty much exactly the same relationship/problem with her as the person that did complain had had) it’s like the trust has completely gone and I just don’t want anything more to do with them.

If it comes down to it I will have to pick Leicester, because it’s easier and I go away from appointments feeling better rather than a piece of shit, but I really genuinely do want to complete DBT, for the same reasons you said, I don’t want to quit after all this time and effort has been invested into it, I feel like if I couldn’t carry on then I would have that niggling feeling that I’d not done something right... Obviously there are the implications on paper, but if fully transfer my care to Leicester they will know the reasons why I had to give up and it would be really unfair of them to hold it against me.

I really don’t know what I’m going to do except keep my cool and try like Hell to not be reactive and out of control when it comes to dealing with them again.

Leicester wins hands down, but as much as I’ve bitched about DBT I really don’t want to leave it as a job unfinished or turn into another ‘failure’. I just really don’t understand why they can’t see things from my point of view. Obviously I need the most help and support where I am living (Leicester) but I’ve started something and I feel like it’s a bit of a bitch to not be able to complete it.