Today is my day

PHP - Day 2

I've got about twenty minutes before lunch, so let's see what sort of an entry I can shape here... By the time I left yesterday, I was too overwhelmed and reeling to make sense of anything that had happened or form a cohesive entry, so I didn't bother trying. Today I've not got much time, but I'll give it a shot.

The rooms and halls are rapidly, gratefully, growing familiar to me. Each face is no longer a complete stranger - I've eaten meals with them, seen them cry, heard them expose quiet fears and secret hopes. It's amazing how a program like this can bond you together so quickly... I mean, for nothing more than sheer numbers, you're spending a good eleven hours together each day, eating all your meals together, and when not doing that, engaging in deep, serious, heartfelt conversation. I guess it'd bond any group quickly.

....God, that was about the shmaltziest thing I've ever written. I'm gagging on the saccharine.

I'm in our little breakroom/cubby/coat room, on the computer (duh) while Courtney and Erica perch on facing couches behind me. My group let out a little early, which is why I have this long break; half the patients are still in a different group. (Aggravatingly enough, the sack which has my chapstick is in that closed room with all of the others. It's driving me batshit.)

My morning's been a little scatter-brained, as I took the light rail for the first time today and it took quite a bit longer than I'd anticipated... I got here a half hour late, right as breakfast was about to start. I ate %100 of my breakfast, even though I seriously didn't think there was any way I'd be able to do it... A cup and a half of raisin bran, a cup of milk, and one carton of yogurt. It was more of a breakfast than I've eaten (barring special occasion brunches) in years. But I did it!

As an interjected aside on meals, we prepare our own breakfasts but have lists from which to choose things. Everything has to be portioned out, left in the cup measures for the millieu therapists to verify, before we can eat. Lunch and dinner are brought to us pre-prepared and pre-portioned; all we have to do is reheat them and select a fruit and a drink. I successfully ate %100 of my dinner last night, too, but yesterday's lunch (my first meal at the center) was a lot harder than I'd anticipated. I uncovered the plate to find half of it mounded in pasta, the other half portioned by a chicken breast and some mixed vegetables. Those I was fine with. Pasta... Not so bueno. I only managed about %75 of that meal, and ended it in tears unable to choke down another noodle because I was so overwhelmed and ashamed and fearful.

Back to today.

After breakfast, I was bundled off into a cap to St. Somebody-or-other's Presbyterian Hospital for labs. Normally they would have done them yesterday, I was told, but since it was MLK Jr day the offices were closed. My arm got stabbed, I oozed three vials, I pissed in a cup, and all was well. I meet with the doctor this afternoon to discuss the lab results.

When I got back, I went in for the last fifteen minutes or so of group. The title of today's entry came from that: we talked about how making the distinction between our own thoughts and desires and those of the eating disorder can make a huge difference. One girl, Stephanie, mentioned her wedding day and how she was pretty much free from the disorder for just that one day. When asked why, she answered, "Well, I guess because I just woke up that morning and said, this is MY day - not my eating disorder's."

That kinda resonated with me. We also talked about eating disorder-imposed "deadlines" (lose this much by this date, eat this little by tonight, do this many crunches in this amounth of time) and how they never can be met, only expanded. When one deadline arrives, none of the qualifiers seem to make it good enough and there's just another, harder one put in place.

That made me think about the fact that claiming the day as my own, purposing to be more present-minded, can help both those aspects: if I'm in the present, deadlines lose importance, and if the day belongs to me and not the disorder, its demands mean nothing anyway.

Aaaand have to go in for lunch now.

I'll see if I can update again later; otherwise, peace!