A dingy little window in

I'm having a Bad Day.

Yesterday was supposed to be my first appointment with my new therapist through the UCD counselling center. I've already done my intake and everything but because of spring break and some trip or other the therapist had last week yesterday was the earliest we could schedule an appointment. When the alarm went off at 8:30 I looked it over, thought about how desperately I wanted to sleep, and disabled the alarm.

Lora called me later that day and left a message since I looked at the phone, saw who it was, and ignored the call. In the gentle, unaccusatory therapist tone, she said how her schedule had me down for ten and it was now noon and she wondered where I was. She made sure to preface any sort of admonishment with an, "I know we haven't talked for a few weeks, so I'm sure you must have forgotten or something came up." Yeah, my anorexia came up. And it says it doesn't want any more therapy.

I woke up around 12:45, meaning I should have gotten my first meal around one. I finally decided to prepare something around 2:30. According to the clock on my cell phone it is now 2:51 and my two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and glass of milk are barely touched.

Every time I pick the first sandwich up for a nip (bite wouldn't be accurate today) I think about the list of "behaviors" I'm engaging in... Small bites, check. Excessive chewing, check. Eating in order, check. I've got a couple of sandwich rituals which aren't on EDC's list but those certainly fall under the behaviors category for me, too. Eat in a spiral until the crust is gone, avoiding any actual bread content if humanly possible. Once completed, eat back and forth from top to bottom. Rest sandwich on the back of the hand instead of holding it.

One of the few big annoyances I found at EDC was their list of behaviors, complimented by a thoroughly unhelpful list of ways to counteract those behaviors. Instead of taking miniscule bites, take normal bites. Instead of chewing too much, only chew necessary number of times before swallowing. Vary order of foods instead of eating safe foods first. Etc.

I feel like it's been forever that I've been doing this damn recovery thing. I'm bored with food and eating. I feel like I eat the same things over and over and even if I vary the way it's presented it's still the same basic food. Really, there are only so many choices. I don't know whether it's worse that I've been maintaining or worse that I'm supposed to be gaining weight... Every time I go in to see the nutritionist she does her little blind weigh-in with the somehow muted old scale, purses her lips and tells me that I'm not losing weight but I'm really not gaining it either. Really, though I feel like my body has exploded from its acceptable confines, I'm only about back to my pre-relapse-that-put-me-in-the-hospital weight.

As always, one of the biggest things holding me in check is the fear of financial detriment. I've got such a tenuous grasp on finances right now and if I start to hard-core relapse again my quality of work will be down, my energy and hours will be down, my medical expenses will be up. Aside from that, so much has been invested in my treatment over the last few months that it feels like a betrayal of the basest kind to just jump back in to my eating disorder.

Has it really only been two and a half months since I started up again with recovery? Crap. And I'm supposed to stick with this thing for the rest of my freaking life?

I miss the excitement of dying. That sounds ridiculous and counter-intuitive but it's true. As boring as starvation is, there is still a strong element of danger and thrill at the fact that I'm a few inches from death at any given moment. For one thing, when there's no food in my system I'm basically living off whatever adrenaline I can muster to get me on my feet. I don't know why it feels like such a testament to the will to be able to say, "I'm starving myself to death but I'm not going to actually die! Just you watch!" but it does. I guess in its own way self-imposed starvation is a David Blaine type of performance art.

3:06 and I'm almost halfway through sandwich number one.

My head hurts. I miss feeling invincible by being able to go without anything resembling food all day, for several days or weeks or whatever. Now I start to get tetchy and dizzy after maybe two hours. I feel weak, depending on food like this. I'm disgusted with myself for making this lunch in the first place and, moreover, for eating it despite all my convictions to the contrary.

Every time someone at work tells me they're proud of me I alternately want to sob or punch them in the face. I don't look "good". I don't look "better". Can't they see that I'm betraying myself to the weakness of 'health'? Why can't they understand the power and beauty of starvation? Why do they look at me like I'm crazy when I say that no, I'm really not happy with how my body is changing? The worst part of it all is that my metabolism is so revved since it's in organ repair mode that I have to eat twice as often and significantly more than normal, healthy people, so all these coworkers who knew I was going in for treatment for my anorexia now look at me eating a meal or large snack every two hours and think I must have been faking. Every time we make eye contact their expressions say, how can you possibly be anorexic if you eat so damn much?

It seems like all I do is grocery shop and eat. And then go back to work to earn more money for more groceries.

I saw Annie last week as I was leaving EDC from the nutritionist's, and she looks awful. My heart broke for her but I was insanely jealous at the same time. Erin and Crystal and I had dinner together at Red Lobster a few nights ago, the first time Erin and I have seen each other since we were in program together... It felt like all we did was watch the other one eat to see who had more and who ate faster and who showed better "self control". I desperately miss all my friends from EDC but what I'd been afraid would happen is exactly what's taking place: our biggest connection to each other was the program and now that we're out the bonds are broken.

Recovery is a bitch.

Is she alive? Or is this just an April Fool's prank...

Why has it been so hard to write? I don't know. Primarily, life lately has been work, work, work, work, AAAAH WORK WORK WORK!!! It's amazing what six weeks out of work will do to your financial stability, even with outside help. Actually, at this moment I'm having a mild freak out because our paychecks just came and they were (combined) a couple hundred less than I was expecting.

How do I begin describing life at present?

I miss the security of program, for one thing. I'd never been able to fathom Munchaussen before spending so much time under the care of others but now the appeal is pretty easy to recognize. If for no other reason than I didn't have to worry about planning, purchasing, and preparing each of my six meals a day the idea of PHP has a somewhat dream-like quality. I've probably said this a thousand times already but I had completely forgotten how damn expensive it is to eat as much as a normal person is supposed to (and then some, in my case). I honestly used to see food as a sort of guilty commodity, purchased only when my basest animal impulses could no longer be ignored. It's still hard to not look at the hundreds of dollars I spend as frivolous expenditures. I'm late on my car payment and will have to be a few days later still because I have no groceries left in the cupboard. One example among many.

Another struggle is that I'm once again facing the feeling of being absolutely bored with eating. I suppose that when one consumes as much as I do on as little a budget as I have it may be an inevitable thing... Or perhaps I'm short on recipes and ideas. (Hint, hint, dear readers! Lolz.) Or, as a third option, maybe I'm just weird. Either way, it's to the point that I open up fridge and cabinet and just stare at it all with distaste despite the hunger I'm feeling again now. My current staples are chicken, rice, potatoes, PBJ, cheese, yogurt, milk, and ritz crackers. Factor those out to six meals a day, every day, and it gets highly repetitive.

Okay, technically I probably shouldn't say six meals. It's three meals, three snacks. However, the snacks to me seem like meals... They've given me a snack list to choose from, and it'll have options like: 1 yogurt, one slice bread, two tblsp peanut butter or two servings fruit, 1 1/2 c. cottage cheese, one serving cereal. These, to me, are more than 'snacks'. When I think 'snack' I think a handful of crackers or a yogurt or a serving of fruit... Not this AND this AND this.

On the happy side of things, I am really working at this thing with an intensity and seriousness previously unseen. Crystal even admitted that I'm surprising her and surpassing the expectations she had for me and EDCD. Not that she was expecting me to fail or whatever, just that she hadn't anticipated I'd really try to get healthy and not just less sick.

Because I am who I am, artsy fartsy crap is a big part of this. We just purchased a dining room table and chairs a couple days ago (yay craigslist, fifty bucks for all!) and Crystal had the idea to turn it into a really recovery-oriented project... Since the dining room table is the main battleground for healing and all that schmaltz, she had the idea to collage over the top of it with encouraging images and words and such. I'd already stated from the get-go that I wanted to make the table all crazy and bohemian and absolutely insane looking but Crystal really gave it a direction.

Haven't started on the table yet but I started work on a couple of chairs yesterday... One I'm just painting and haven't got much direction on yet, but the other I've taken a bunch of my 'sick' jeans and cut them to pieces which I'm wrapping and gluing to the chair. It's pretty freaking awesome, much neater than the haphazard picture it suggests. Very Soho/Greenwich Village/Dupont/Eastern Market/San Fran/etc. I'll post pictures and progress pics as things come along. ^.^

Speaking of sick clothes, the things that fit are falling away slowly but surely. It's getting so that I hate going into my closet to pick something out... Much easier to keep one or two outfits readily accessible to avoid any possibility of pulling something on only to realize it fits like Spandex. I'm holding out for a while as the weather gets warmer, though, both to hopefully help stabilize moolah and wait to purchase clothes that will last me the season instead of a few remaining weeks or months. Mostly I alternate between work uniform and sweatpants.

Despite this, I'm still not gaining the way EDCD wants. I can tell my body is changing and am royally freaked out by it but whenever I go in to meet with the nutritionist she purses her lips a little and asks what I'd be willing to add to my meal plan. I'm not losing, she'll say after the blind weigh-in, but I'm really not gaining, either. Apparently I have the metabolism of a hummingbird.

The nutritionist's comments about my not gaining aren't enough to thwart mirror melt-downs on a regular basis. Any lingering BDD seems magnified now that my body actually is changing. Depending on the moment I'll be in tears because I think I've surpassed the girth of an aircraft carrier or because I see no change and think I'm a failure at recovery and shouldn't be bothering. There appears to be no win. Pulling on too-tight clothes which fit yesterday is not in the least helpful. Similarly, the day I pulled on a pair of jeans and realized they stayed up without a belt now caused one of the worst relapse-y days yet.

Well, I need to go find food for the day. I've yet to put something in... But then again I didn't get up until 1:30. (Restaurant closer schedule.) Blaaaah food. Why is something so banal such a complex, pain in the ass issue? I may never figure that one out.

Love and hope to all y'all. I'll try to be less negligent in the future!

A weeebsite, a weeeebsite!

Hey hey hey!

Oh, so much excitement... Squee!

Yesterday was my last official day in program. I'm gradumacated! Hopefully as I start to slide back in to real life I'll start dutifully recording my experiences in the partial hospitalization program, reporting on my epiphanes and heart-wrenching confrontations and whateverthehell else... For now, I'm STILL on my back with the flu. And on Nyquil. Nyquil is not very conducive to writing long, musing, introspective tracts.

However, an exciting bit of news is that I just officially put up the first Novare Project website prototype!!!!! Being the computer genius I am it only took me three days to figure out how to actually publish the site once I'd finished creating it. Go me. It's still quite raw and bare-bones, but you can order shirts more easily and directly than through Etsy, as well as being able to see the new designs that I've got all purtied up! I want to say there are two completely new designs and I've made a couple of modifications to the old ones. So, please, go take a look!

I HAVE A DOMAIN NOW!!!! MWAHAHAHAAAA.

http://www.thenovareproject.com

There is where you will find me and all the other interesting bits of crap. Yay!

Naptime now... Nyquil make me goofy.

Blather.

Sorry for the lack of posts... I'm at a constant level of baseline panic as the days until inpatient narrow to hours. It's making things really difficult at home, at work, online. My words are all stunted as my fingers freeze in anxiety and... whatever else I'm too freaked out to think to say right now. I'm treating Crystal and my friends horribly, snapping and mouthing off way more than is even usual. I can't concentrate at work for perhaps obvious reasons.

All I can think about is how scared I am to do this, how badly I want to back out, how desperate I am to be healthy. I obsess over every detail of the things I'll miss about my anorexia. This obsession makes me think I 'like' my eating disorder a lot better than I know I do... But there are still many things I'm going to miss about it. It's strange how integral grieving is to recovering from an eating disorder.

That's all I can think to say right now, guys, I'm sorry. I'm sure that once this thing actually starts I'll be so much calmer and better able to function... I know from experience that nine and a half times out of ten the dread is so much more insufferable than the event itself.

To expound upon earlier thoughts...verbosely.

Ex post facto, as is so often the case, I'm thinking yesterday's post may have been made a bit rashly. By which of course I mean that yesterday I was basically freaking the f-k out and somehow had the misfortune of getting my fingers onto a keyboard, thereby spilling a noxious pile of disjointed, jumbled, frenetic words. Contrary to popular belief the best writing is made with a level head, not one stressed and emotionally charged.

My initial shock at the Drs' assessment of my case is still pretty much the same as ever. I still fail to understand how I need inpatient care; to some extent, I'm still questioning whether or not my level of health or illness requires something so extreme as intensive outpatient. Okay, that's a bit of a lie: I know I could do with some outpatient treatment. But inpatient still does seem over the top.

However, since yesterday's phone call with Drs Roberts and ...a woman whose name I forgot... the general consensus among friends and relations seems to be that inpatient care might not be such a bad thing for me.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.

For the reasons I listed yesterday, I still believe myself to be in a fairly healthy place. Particularly when I compare myself today to myself two years ago (or even one year ago), today's self looks a world healthier than I was previously. Water and hundred calorie fasts are no longer a routine thing for me. For that matter, I haven't intentionally fasted in quite some time. My periods are regular, my fatigue has lessened; although labs haven't been run for me in well over a year my body feels like everything is working well. When I eat, I don't do well making sure my meals are healthy and ballanced and supplying all necessary nutrition, but neither are they comprised solely of high fiber vegetables and...more vegetables.

My question about what health should look like that proves I'm so far from it still stands. I'm beginning to ask myself if the main reason I think I'm healthy is that I'm comparing myself to a prior, sicker version of myself - not to a normal, healthy standard of existence. Granted, I'm much healthier than I used to be. My life is not in immediate danger from any starvation consequences. But does that mean that I'm to the standard of health that is the goal of recovery? If not, how far away am I really?

Following are my principal objections to the partial hospitalization program:

-FINANCES. Call me a jew if you will, but worries about finances are still the number one concern about this program.
-->Aside from the fact that the program itself will likely cost far more than EIOP, it will be an eleven hour a day, seven day a week commitment. This, simply and unavoidably, will not allow for me to work. Even if I were able to get my work to allow me to come in at 8 each night to help close, that would leave me with a potential for six hours sleep per night. Therapy is hard work in and of itself, even a one or two hour session once a week. Realistically, there is no way I'd be able to go from eleven hours of therapy to four hours of work to six hours of sleep to start over again.
-->Crystal and I work hard to meet the bills each month as it is. She's going to have a much tougher course load this semester, meaning she'll have to work less. If I'm completely out of work (or even on a greatly diminished schedule) there is no way we'd be able to make ends meet. (Although, as Crystal pointed out, our food budget will go down since the center'd be feeding me five times a day. Somehow this seems ironic.)

-Triggers. This may seem silly at first glance, but think about it this way... It's been a long time since I was fully immersed in my disorder, seeking out thin pics, thinking about eating and not eating constantly, obsessing about the possibility of breathing in calories or the calories contained in chapstick.
-->Visually, I'm afraid that being in an inpatient facility would present me with a whole lot of girls who are seriously ill. I'm not to a place yet where this seems unattractive to me - contrarily, it'd definitely make me extremely jealous.
-->Verbally, I know that many girls get some of their best tricks from staying inpatient for a while. I know that this does depend some on 'you get out what you put in', but that doesn't mean there won't be tons of conversation about how to tongue pills or wipe butter off on your slacks or slip food into sleeves/purse/shoes. Even if I'm seriously trying not to pay attention to this, it is probably going to be triggering to be surrounded by it.
-->PHP feels to me like I'd be re-devoting my life to my eating disorder. Crystal says this is stupid and she's probably right, but... Like I said, it's been a long time since I was thinking ED thoughts every second of the day and to jump into such a rigid, complete schedule of treatment feels like I'd be backsliding. Crystal pointed out that it'd be devoting twenty-four hours of my day to recovery thoughts, not anorexic ones, but in my head it doesn't feel that way.

-Perhaps most stupid of all my concerns, I'm terrified to go into the PHP program because I feel like I'd have absolutely no control over...anything. Myself, my time, my recovery. (When I told this to Crystal she shrieked, "EXACTLY!!!" But.. Meh.) I suppose some part of me feels like recovery is a way to teach me self control in a healthy way, and therefore I want to retain control over the recovery process. I feel like I'd be okay with three days a week because then most of my time would still be my own, like I'd have certain time devoted to therapy and the rest of the time devoted to whatever else I felt needed to be done.

Even the times I have been inpatient before, I never relinquished control. Granted, I was in a really worthless facility, but while inpatient I found ways to skip meals, self-injure, avoid any participation in group activities; hell, when I was finally fed up with inpatient I found a way to lie so completely and extensively that I got them to release me long before they should have.

I feel as though, historically speaking, every time I've let go and done as I was told by people who cared about me, it only made things worse. Why should I give up my life to total strangers?

Sigh.

So there's where things stand. I suppose nothing will really be known for certain until I talk to them again and then set up the actual intake exam. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Does... not... compute...

As I mentioned recently, I've gotten to a place that I'm seriously pursuing recovery. For myself, no one else, I want to be healthy and experience what life healthy looks like. To this end, I did some research into area treatment centers and finally contacted the Eating Disorders Center at Denver, since its programs seemed to offer best what I was looking for. Yesterday, I got my first call back from them. I spoke with one of the doctors over the phone, doing a basic clinical assessment thingy, then discussing the extended intensive outpatient program they offer.

My biggest concern was that they'd say I was too healthy for the program and should probably look into just weekly outpatient therapy or perhaps some of the group programs. After all, I've been maintaining pretty well, I eat on a daily basis, I don't really count calories at all anymore, and on and on and on. From my perspective (and historically speaking, given my case), I feel like I'm pretty much recovered. I just need help to get there all the way.

About an hour ago I had another call from them, this time a conference call between the assessment clinician and the EIOP program head. My initial response was a sinking, oh crap, feeling. They said they'd been discussing my case and given what Dr. Roberts and I had talked about yesterday, they didn't feel the EIOP program is going to be appropriate for me. Damnit. I knew that was going to happen. Crap.

What I didn't in a thousand years see coming was that they said the EIOP won't be enough for me.

They think I need to do the partial hospitalization program. Sdsogiherh?? Geh?? The program is seven days a week, eleven hours a day. I'm not sure how many weeks long it is.

How the hell do they think I need that level of care? Crystal agrees. Wtf?? I can't even get this to enter my schema. I really, honestly, truly, cannot understand what they are saying. I was sure I'd get turned away for being too healthy, not get told I needed partial inpatient!

Reasons I think I'm healthy:
-I've got a good fifteen, twenty pounds on my low weight. I've been maintaining this pretty well for the last year or so.
-I eat every day, usually twice, sometimes with a snack. When I'm hungry, I detect that, respond to it, and don't ignore it.
-I drink regular soda now. I drink 2% milk. I even eat red meat again! I eat butter, cheese, pasta, all those horrible horrible evils I wouldn't allow to enter my lips.
-I've even eaten McDonald's more than once in the past year. For the longest time I wouldn't even set foot on the premises of a McD's for fear that I'd somehow breathe in the calories. And now I've eaten it! Willingly!
-I eat Chipotle. On a regular basis. (And I always get extra sour cream on my burrito, and I like it!)
-I don't visit pro-ana trigger sites nearly as frequently as I used to. I'm no longer a member of the ana elitist comms. I'm not a member of any pro-ED comms, for that matter.
-Did I mention I eat pasta? And cheesecake? And butter? And that I can enjoy them?
-And that I don't calorie count? (Usually..)

What is health supposed to look like that I'm so far from it? I haven't been amennhorhaeic in a good year and a half, and even then my menses were only irregular, even when I was clinically emaciated. I don't exercise obsessively, I don't purge, I don't abuse laxatives anymore, I eat salad dressing... I cannot understand this. I seriously cannot get it to enter my head. I can't wrap my mind around it.

Am I really still so crazy?

Aside from that whole level of cognitive dissonance, let's just stop to look at some logistics right now.

HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO AFFORD A PARTIAL HOSPITALIZATION PROGRAM.

I've talked to my family and my dad has said he will help pay for the EIOP, which is incredible and the only way I'd be able to afford to do that in the first place. And with that, I'd still be working full-time so that I could afford rent and loans and bills and crap. I wouldn't be able to work if I was in the hospital eleven hours a day! And I wouldn't be able to afford to live if I wasn't working!

I'm really in an effing pickle here, bitches. First, do I really need this? And second, if I do, how the hell can I pull it off?!?

All I want for Christmas

The title of course is misleading: the following subject is not the only thing I want for Christmas. In fact, there are quite a few things that I'd love to get for Christmas (not the least of which is financial stability, but that's a whole different kettle of fish). However, this next item is something which I've been thinking about increasingly over the last month or two and am now trying earnestly to obtain.

If you're reading this entry chances are you've read some of those preceeding it as well. This being the assumed case, you've probably caught on to the fact that my eating has not been nearly as good as it could be lately. A big thing I've been noticing is that even though I'm eating at least a meal a day and am trying to at least eat something when I'm hungry, I may be doing the actions but mentally I'm deteriorating again. Distorted body image has been again growing more distorted, obsessive thoughts more obsessive, calorie counting once again almost an unconscious act.

And all that makes it sound like it had ever totally gone away in the first place.

I've never once willingly addressed my eating issues in therapy. This may sound surprising, considering I've been in and out of therapy since I was seventeen, but if you think about all the other issues I've got to deal with (depression, DID, etc) and then take into account that I haven't wanted to talk about my eating... Well, it's been easy enough to steer conversation into other areas that I'd rather deal with. Perhaps that's one fault with the therapy styles so far used with me: it's been way too easy to just change the subject when I don't want to talk about or address something. But now I'm really sick of it.

The therapist I've seen recently (Chris) has next to no experience treating eating disorders. Aside from that, she only sees clients once every other week. Out of all the therapy I've done, the only time that was really intensely helpful was when I saw someone twice a week. Once a week was pretty much just enough to keep me from getting worse, but I didn't see a whole lot of improvement.

All these considerations in mind, I've decided (and have talked this over with my psychiatrist, who agrees) that intensive outpatient would probably be a really good idea for me at this point. After looking into it some, I've found a treatment center in Denver which appears to have a really good program, great treatment team, and should hopefully be able to work with my insurance. It's through the Eating Disorder Center of Denver. (Fitting name?)

The program I'm most interested in is their Extended Intensive Outpatient Program. It's twelve weeks, three nights a week, four hours a night. You work with a nutritionist, psychiatrist, therapists, etc... Dinner is eaten together with group therapy immediately following. There are a lot of the things you'd pretty much expect with an outpatient program... Group, one-on-ones, body image workshops, art therapy, etc. But, from what I've read on the site, it sounds like they've got a really solid program set up.

The center offers three different levels of care: inpatient, EIOP, and a weekly group follow-up thing. I'm sure that I don't need inpatient care (for one, I'm not in a serious enough place medically) and the last sounds like it really wouldn't offer enough. Sooo I've sent an e-mail asking for more information about the program and admissions procedure. Mostly I need to know about the cost and how much my insurance would cover...

...Well, I think that's actually about all I meant to discuss. At least, I can't really think of anything else... I'll keep you informed as I find out more and if/when there's anything else major to report about this. Cross your fingers!