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.

Multiple Confessions

It's so hard to write when your hands are shaking...

Perhaps as long as the science of psychology has been around, people have prescribed art and writing assignments as ways of healing damaged minds. I've always used my writing to help me cope with painful emotional and mental difficulties that have come up throughout my life. Especially lately, as I've been preparing to re-enter therapy for real and seriously this time, I've been increasingly aware of the fact that I can neither be fair to you, as readers, nor fair to myself without being completely honest in this blog.

It isn't fair to YOU because you've come to read a truthful, raw, sincere blog. It isn't fair not to give you the complete picture, to skate over aspects of my life which I'm too frightened to discuss. For one thing, it may well leave you lost since you'll only be getting fractured glimpses. Beyond that this incomplete, bullet-style relation is boring, if nothing else. It's all the reasons for which I hate abridged books... and yet that's what I'm doing to my blog, for fear of the consequences of honesty.

Granted, whoever first said honesty was the best policy must have led a pretty damned sheltered existence at best. Complete honesty is only an occasionally wise move, subject to factors variable and diverse as the audience and the weather. I'm not endorsing a life lived entirely in lies, but discretionary disclosure and carefully tainted perspectives can still get you out of a hell of a lot of trouble. How many thousands of people would have survived over the years had they only told a small lie when pressed by the man with the sword?

So now you see a bit of the dilemma I face. Honesty for the sake of true, quality writing? Honesty for the sake of my recovery?

Lies for the sake of face, humiliation, security, friends...family?

As I've known since the first of my livejournals to this, my most recent and current blog, there are more than faceless strangers reading the words I type. Even through those periods in my life when I've tried to hide my words, I knew that if someone really wanted to, they'd find a way to read them (and often did). I'm sure of many who read this and suspect many more, ranging from lovers to best friends to siblings and parents, uncles and aunts and therapists, cousins, former teachers, coworkers, casual acquaintances, schoolmates, god knows whom else. That's a whole lot of an audience. I've now way of knowing if they read daily or when the fancy hits them, if they care about me as a person or find this an interesting read. I've had people find my blog by googling random subjects or being referred from and recommended by well-known sites.

...All that makes this blog seem a lot more impressive than it is, and the stakes much higher than they are.

In the end it boils down to me being aware that the confession I want to make is controversial even in some of the best of academic and psychiatric circles. Media portrayals, which adore any slightly comical, novel idea, love to misconstrue the realities of it to fit into their needs, to the detriment of anyone trying to come out about their situation. Popular opinion loves to snatch quickly at what they understand, add a liberal helping of speculation, a portion of doubt and ridicule, and a heaping of false facts and gossip to everything they hear and see.

All these things said, I wish to discuss a couple more disclaimers before continuing.

To my friends: please comment with your support, but don't do so without being informed. While this is an entry about something I'm frightened to reveal, I'm actually quite happy with it in many ways. It's not nearly as shameful as outsiders think. It's complicated, yes, and can be quite embarrassing, awkward, even dangerous, but this is neither a death sentence nor a mark of disability. Just an aspect of who I am.

To my family: you are the biggest reason I've hesitated; not gonna lie. Your religious views in particular make this an especially complicated thing to discuss because as much as you learn and are willing to research, many churches remain way behind the times on psychiatric issues, leaving you in an unfortunate position of being subtly or blatantly misinformed and not aware of it. I ask you now to show me the respect of not talking to me about this until I give you the okay. I encourage you to learn more; if you want, I'm happy to recommend books and websites and Crystal probably can show you even more resources than I can. But please, don't send me a long letter/email/phone call telling me you're praying for me and recommending resources of your own and encouraging me to talk to a pastor and that you understand/have answers etc, etc. Please don't be offended, but I don't want your resources. This is something I've been aware of for years, and I've done tons of research on my own. I've talked to doctors with specialties and degrees you probably don't know exist. Especially when I lived in DC I went to institutes with 'National' in front of the title to make sure I could get the best care possible.

...God, that makes it sound like I'm dying! Okay. Before I go any farther and make you think I've got some rare, bizarre brain dementia or fungus or am infested by sentient, parasitic slugs (Animorphs, anyone?), let me state first and foremost that aside from any previously mentioned health issues, I am fine. There is NOTHING organically or physiologically or otherwise physically wrong with me. This is completely mental, and even then I hesitate to use the common nomenclature 'disorder'.

My name is Tina Malament. I'm twenty-almost-one years old. I'm a waitress. I have major depressive disorder, anorexia nervosa, obsessive compulsive tendencies, various other diagnoses....

And dissociative identity disorder.

Commonly misinformed, many people call it multiple personality disorder (which is an outdated term).

I don't have a good side and an evil side. (Please do me the courtesy of not relegating me to a coin or a comic book villain!) I'm not demon possessed. I'm not bipolar, I don't alternate between highs and lows born from a chemical imballance.

To clarify on my pet peeve, I DON'T HAVE F-ING SCHIZOPHRENIA! I don't hear voices the way you might think; I don't have a false perception of reality or hallucinations or a savior complex. Dissociative Identity Disorder (hereby: DID) is often portrayed/labelled in mass media events as schizophrenia. See also: Heroes, Me, Myself, and Irene, Fight Club, etc. Some of those have elements of DID which are pretty accurate.... Others are completely bullshit off the mark. (Actually, I really liked a lot of the way it was portrayed in Heroes, beyond the artistic licenses taken... The way she looked when switching personalities and the way she described the amnesia are pretty good. Fight Club, on the other hand, sucked. Great movie, but sucked.)

If you've seen/read Sybill, you should know that I have no desire to be hypnotized and integrated. It would probably not help, for one thing. That book, while seen as a sort of media authority on DID, is roughly fifty years out of date when it comes to the actual assessment and treatment of the disorder.

Yes, I have more than one 'personality part'. They're called alters. Yes, they have names, genders, age ranges, complete memories and life histories and very diverse opinions on life, the universe, and everything. Some of them often appear more harmful than others; some are sweet, some tend to be very angry, some exist for very specific purposes and can seem simplistic because of this. Many are good at things which I'm bad at, or vice versa. We have different opinions about freaking everything, speak differently, have different typing and spelling errors, different tastes in foods, even different health problems. We hold our body differently depending on who's out. We like different clothes and colors and activities.

Probably you'll get introduced to everybody as they see fit. Several have already written the entries in this blog; you may or may not have noticed when writing styles shift, vocabularies and sentence styles vary. Maybe you'll notice now that you're looking for it; who knows. Maybe when you expect someone to be a single, cohesive person it's harder to realize when they aren't.

I think we're going to cut it off now. That's probably enough to think about for one day, right?

Here are a couple of websites for you to look at since we barely covered the basics of what DID is... We've been over it so many times with so many people that it gets really tiresome to discuss after a while, particularly when there are so many valuable resources on the internet!
--->Merck - fairly awesome for overview purposes, except for the treatment goals part.
--->Religious perspectives and misperceptions answered. Sort of.
--->Surprisingly good FAQ section on a random AOL-sponsored information site.
--->The Significant Others' Guide to coping with DID

Oh yeah, one final thing... Please, please, do me a personal favor and DO NOT go to wikipedia for information about this. Their entry on the subject was so inflammatory and ill-informed that it made me write a nasty letter to wikipedia about it and create an account so that I could try to go in and edit the entry. (Which I never got done, but still, I worked on it. The entry is so riddled with error that it needs to be completely rewritten and we haven't had the energy for it.)

Shannon, thank you for all the support you've given us since we told you. Probably if you hadn't taken the news so well we wouldn't be able to come out here and now... (Are you proud?)

Readers... We now humbly await your thoughts.

For those who so love to complain about the infrequent updates

Shannon, this one's for you. :-P

It's come to my attention that my picture(s?) may be circulating the nets, specifically certain livejournal comms, as thinspiration. ...No, screw it, no, I don't want to write this update right now. I'm too tired and still way too conflicted about this issue to think it through clearly. I guess, can I leave the subject with the words 'cognitive dissonance'? Because that epitomizes and summarizes how I'm feeling right now. I feel guilty, hypocritical, flattered, guilty again, jealous and triggered by the thought of my own image as thinspo. It's doing quite a work on my head.

The rest of my body is sunburned.

The rest of my thoughts are tired.

And all of me is going to bed now...

Incurable cases?

It Gets Better - Jenni Schaeffer

This is my personal inspiration for today, which I thought I'd share with all of you. After actively fighting this disorder for almost a year and a half (as opposed to passively, which constitutes the latter half of my life) I often feel like I should be well now. I should be eating regularly, enjoying it, maintaining or gaining weight --- especially not losing and not caring, or finding vicious celebrity gossip 'thinspiring'.

I do miss being under a hundred. I miss being dizzy all day. I miss the bruises all along every ill-padded bone. I miss regular self-injury. My eating disorder has been nothing but abusive, spiteful, manipulative, selfish, ruinous, and yet perhaps I will always miss it.

Lately, you've been watching me relapse to some extent. Perhaps it's not been much of an active relapse, but I've still not been doing a whole lot to fight it too hard. The past few weeks have been the sort wherein eating somehow feels like an exhaustive, distasteful chore whose purpose is obscure and value inconclusive.

Today I'm trying to reinforce the understanding that it is okay to relapse. Probably this is not the statement most professionals would want me to be saying, but be realistic here. Relapse will happen. I'm not saying it is okay to embrace it. I'm saying it's okay for it to happen. It is okay to accept bad days along with good.

What's not okay is to welcome it, engage with it, actively pursue it and see how bad it can get. Today I'm trying to look at my life and say, all right. I've been having some bad times lately. My eating has not been what it should be and my attempts to thwart it haven't been up to par. Now that I understand this, I can accept it as something which happens from time to time instead of beating myself up about it for being the worst recoverer ever. I can acknowledge the bad and try to pick myself up again instead of saying, crap, I failed again, I must just not be cut out for this health thing. I can let the relapse be what it is and then let it go.

One thing Jenni wrote in her article in particular stood out to me: her realization that the belief she held about being too ill to recover was false. I remember many, many journal entries along those lines and can now realize that even in the midst of a bad spell I'm still able to see how far I've come toward health and that I'm still moving toward it even despite a two steps forward one back progression.

I still often feel that this disorder may always be with me. But I know now that it does not and will not always control me. I AM NOT TOO SICK TO GET BETTER!!! I was not the sickest, I was not the least sick, but I AM getting better in spite of everything!

Be encouraged!!! You probably feel like a hopeless case. Like no matter how many people say they understand, they really, truly don't. They can't see inside you and realize what a horrible, twisted, incurable creature you are. Like I'm full of sh-t for saying that I know what you're feeling. I won't claim to be all-knowing or all-answer-ful. But I will say that I have felt that before. Sometimes I've felt that my core evil was so warped and disgusting and pervasive as to be a tangible force. I've felt that it defined every part of my being so inextricably that all I would ever be able to be was worthless.

So not true.

Please, please don't listen to the lies this disorder tells you. It tells you you are worthless because it makes you easier to control. Would a person who highly valued and loved herself be as easily inclined to destroy herself as one who thought she were worthless? It's all a power scheme. A vicious and effective one, but only a scheme.

It is possible to break from this disorder and grasp the health that seems so impossible.

A Bizarre Turn of Events

After a few hours thought and cross-referencing, I've decided that this is indeed legitimate and, as such, warrants an entry. On first encountering this bit of celeb gossip on a friend's livejournal page I really didn't believe this thing was true. It's just so out there, so ridiculous and offensive and insane that I didn't think it could possibly be anything but spiteful, manufactured, grab-for-attention rumours.

And then... I found it referenced on MSNBC. Gossip rags and celeb tabloids I can overlook. MSNBC on the other hand is a pretty reliable source.

Apparently, Ms Nicole Richie threw a Memorial Day party over the weekend. Her e-mail invite to friends somehow got leaked to the press and is now causing a big stir... Reason being?

My fellow Americans its that time of year
To celebrate our country by drinking massive amounts of beer
Let's stand together as one, live the American dream
Take shots, pass out, & wake up with our pants ripped open at the seems
Let's glorify this day in your sluttiest tops and your tightest pair of tsubi jeans
Even though we have no f----g clue what Memorial Day really means!!

There will be a scale at the front door. No girls over 100 pounds allowed in. Start starving yourself now. See you all then!!!

Can you see why I thought this fake?

Part of the reason I've hesitated so many hours before writing this is that I have no idea how to respond to it. It's just so bizarrely over-the-top offensive. Just... Damn. Her rep (and she herself, in interviews) claims it was a joke, that she's 'not a serious person' and people shouldn't take her as such. At the same time, her friend Mischa Barton collapsed at the party and had to be hospitalized (apparently from a bad mix of antibiotics and too much liquor...? That's what they're claiming, anyway). A psychologist from one of the tabloids theorized it's her way of acting out; a big giant f you! to recovery.

This whole thing just sickens me. How to respond to something so obscene? Nicole Richie is to recovery what Mel Gibson is to racial tolerance, it would seem.... God. Maybe after I've slept on this I'll have something more helpful to say but right now I'm left looking for answers as much as the next person.

Thoughts on this? Anyone? They would be greatly appreciated.

Sources:
Monsters And Critics
MSNBC
EntertainmentWise

The search for a cure

My fingers can barely lift themselves from one key to the next tonight. Washing my hair seemed like too much effort, with all the lifting of the arms and the scrubbing of the fingers. My entire body is dead weight.

After a couple phone calls from the new therapist, Patti, last week, I've begun again the search for a new therapist. She felt that it would be good for me to look more for someone who could provide better continuity of care since the CU Denver counselling center takes frequent, long breaks during the semester periods, as well as the fact that since the therapists there are interns they switch out regularly.

Another factor is that they ARE interns there... To be honest, I got the feeling that she was a bit overwhelmed by my needy crazyness (as therapists so often have been when dealing with me). She mentioned that it'd probably be best to find someone more experienced. To me, this means, "Holy hell, kid. You're a nutjob. Go find someone with a doctorate and roughly twenty-five years dealing with clinical crazies and maybe they can handle you." I'm sure that's not the exact translation, but it's close.

All that said, yesterday was intake number one of god knows how many. I really liked this therapist, though I don't think she's the right one, either, unfortunately. Her name is Shelley, she's an LCSW (licensed clinical social worker), been in practice since 1989.

That last bit is a big plus for her - many of the docs I've seen in the past haven't been in practice all that long. I like that she's experienced. On the other hand, though, (and this is a big reason I think it may not be the right fit) her experience does not lie where I need it to. I forgot to ask exactly what her areas of expertise are, but I gathered enough to know that she has not dealt much at all with dissociative disorders and has only had a couple of cases of eating disorders. Both these are rather major issues. In the case of eating disorders, the clients she did have were both well in to their recovery stages. While I think I'm well on my way, Crystal isn't so sure - and I've learned that she frequently has better judgment about my mental status than I do. Particularly lately it's been rather clear that I'm not as recovered as I seem to think I am, as I've been losing weight and eating less and caring less about the fact that I'm eating less.

Really, as much as I liked her as a person, appreciated her method and felt comfortable with her, she did not have enough qualifications treatment-wise, I think. The biggest positive things about meeting with her were things like feeling comfortable talking to her, not feeling threatened by her or condescended to, feeling like I was truly listened to and taken seriously. These indicate that she's definitely a good therapist but don't necessarily say anything about whether she's the right therapist. Follow?

She, like every other brain doctor who spends five minutes talking to me, seemed deeply concerned and quite adamant that I get back on meds as soon as humanly possible. Ironically enough, only when I'm having a saner day can I see the logic behind this. I still struggle with the concept of medication. It feels like a crutch, a fake cure, a symptoms-masking treatment that does nothing to actually cure. It feels somehow, in some not-easily-explained fashion, like the easy way out when I should be able to work my way out. Do not pass Go! Do not collect that two hundred dollars, hippie! You march your ass through each of those spaces and figure it out the HARD way. ....Aand the reasoning itself makes only about as much sense as that poorly planned metaphor.

There's an organization called Aurora Mental Health which I've thought about trying and which Shelley strongly recommends. She used to be on the board there and says they could find a way to help hook me up with medication until my insurance coverage resumes in August. Additionally, they've got a broad base of experience and knowledge for all things crazy, so chances are good that they could match me up with the right doc. So they're my next stop on the mental health errands...

Haha, don't you love how my coherence dissipates the longer I write and the tireder I get? Yes, tireder, you heard me punks. I've got to be at work again in less than twelve hours now. Perhaps next entry will come sooner than the ridiculous break this last has been... Sorry, readers.

This is Frasier Crane, wishing you all a good day and good mental health.

...insert witty title here...

I suppose I'm so obsessed with watching Frida because it in many ways feels like I'm watching my own life played out. Except that she's a lot older, the pain is more physical than mental, her anger is more outwardly directed than inward, and she had about five million times the talent I have. If I could have that much potential for the creation of beauty... I mean, damn. I'm more or less all right with words but my fingers lack any skill with a brush or pen. Sigh.

Force-feeding myself is getting a little easier. I can't say the depression is easing or the appetite increasing but I'm adapting to it a bit more readily, I suppose, and making sure to feed myself is gradually becoming a habit. It's so ridiculous, after all these years fighting my hunger, denying it's there, refusing to acknowledge it, I can barely recognize it at all. I can finally see the face of Hunger but can't recognize it.

Something I've noticed here is that Colorado seems to have an enormously disproportionate number of underweight women. Perhaps it's that Maryland is one of the 'fattest states' in the nation (which is true) and I'm accustomed to being The Skinny Freak, but it is truly heartbreaking to see so many women around me starving. What once would be a serious trigger is now something of a reverse; I get so upset witnessing their suffering that I want to prove I can overcome it. Even from a purely visual standpoint, the constant bombardment with fashionable emaciation repulses me as I can see how unappealing it is. The lanugo, the bones and bruises, the skin sagging and prematurely aged. I want to be sexy. I want my hands to stop shaking, freezing all the time, looking like they belong to someone twice my age.

I can't count how many times a day I'll witness girls bone-checking while staring at the dessert case, chewing gum like their lives depend on it, clearly terrified of so many calories surrounding them. How many times I'm asked for the nutrition facts in a certain dessert. (I know most of them but, thank god, we are honestly not supposed to tell.) More than once, women with bloodshot eyes and sores around their mouths have ordered cheesecake to go and I've wanted more than anything to refuse it to them. Or at the least, beg them not to do with it what I'm sure will be done. I'm usually trying to hide that I'm crying as I toss forks and napkins into the bags.

If I could afford enough medication to numb myself out, I'd go for it. Beyond depression these days, it's like I just can't handle the heartbreak of the world. Numbing me out might be more like ballancing me at this point. Everything sets me off. I have to stop myself, constantly, from saying something to all these girls. (As if I have any idea what to say, anyway. Please eat? I know you're hurting but it's not worth it? Are there ANY right words for a situation like that?)

At the same time, it's so impossible to fight against the non-hunger. Why force myself to eat when I'm not hungry? Shouldn't I be grateful? Shouldn't I feel lucky? It's to the point that I'll go all day and realize sometime around bedtime that I had nothing, or a banana, or a piece of bread. The old bruises are showing up along my spine and back hipbones. I'd gotten used to having warm hands and feet but so much for that. My body is again covered in lanugo, or at least, more covered than it typically is... Gah.

I wish I could afford to go inpatient. I need a break, some hard-core internal work to sort things through once and for all.

No. No, it really makes no sense. Don't try to understand.

Oh sigh. I've had two full days completley at my disposal, no requirements, all the time in the world to update, and I've had absolutely no energy or mental willpower. Hell, I haven't even done much cleaning to speak of, and that's normally my first objective for every free day on the schedule. I don't know what's to fault for this lethargy and, unfortunately, attempts to force myself out of it have thus far failed.

I wanted to put a clip from last night's South Park in here but unfortunately the Internet Police have really cracked down on pirated copyright material, quite significantly spoiling all my fun. For the run down, last night Cartman was his usual little bastardly self and through a complicated run of events got Butters' parents convinced he was gay. And he got sent to de-gayification camp. And it was awesome. Tag line for the camp? 'You can pray the gay away!'

Every couple minutes at gay camp you'd hear a gunshot as another camper killed himself.

I love it when South Park gets bitchy and preachy.

...I've been a real snark today, I'm sorry. I don't know what it is or where it's come from anymore than I can put a tag on this laziness. Probably the two are related as whenever I feel unproductive it leads to feelings of worthlessness which in turn make me rude and cat scratchy toward all near me.

There are many things happening around the homestead which are relevant toward my blog theme and which I'd like to discuss but wouldn't be fair to the members of the household to do so. The old personal space line must be respected inasmuch as I'd go apeshit for someone to write such things about me.

Have I mentioned lately that I can't maintain a train of thought long enough to finish a sentence today...

GOD.

This is the best I can squeeze out. My brain hurts. I need to make dinner because I'm losing weight again even though I don't mean to. But perhaps I do on some level. That's the gnarly thing about recovery; I feel ugly and skinny but ugly and fat at the same time. I'm hungry and food porn a lot these days but the thought of eating makes me nauseous. I'm indecisive about any and all food-related decisions. Food, food, food, godamn food.

I'm constantly stressing about cars, medication, psychiatric treatment, taxes, cars, finances, cars, food, work, writing, everything. Maybe the external lethargy is a Girl, Interrupted type example of velocity vs. viscosity... I need to be back on the mood stabilizers I hate so much and can't afford, anyway. Maybe I need to try a different prescription.

MANIA CAN ANYONE SAY MANIC EPISODE I'M LOSING IIITTTTT.

In other news, Siri! I got your package and I loved it. Listened to the CD first thing and it was awesome. I'll make you a mix and write you a letter the moment my thoughts can slow to match the speed of my handwriting.

Haircuts and Mannequins

I get the feeling that all my entries are merely old rants rehashed. Anyone? Anyone? Yeah.

In other news, I got my hair done! This is not a big deal for normal people, but I'm crazy... And aside from that, I haven't cut my hair in like three years. Because people totally suck and wouldn't shut up about my eating habits I was feeling really ugly and disgusting by the end of the day.

Why does everyone who sees a morsel of food enter my mouth feel the need to comment on it?!? I got a mini pizza and a salad for lunch and was so hungry I charged through the salad in like ten minutes... Immediately all coworkers in the vicinity, even my manager, started jibing about how much I was eating, how either I was going to balloon or else must be purging what I eat. I HATE EVERYONE. Actually, after I'd had half the pizza and couldn't stand any more of it I lost it. Said something to the effect of, "Look, you have no right commenting about my eating habits. You have no idea about my history, you don't know if maybe I do have food issues, if maybe I was hospitalized three times last year. So back the f- off."

I wouldn't recommend that as the most polite, poised way of handling situations like that, but it did work.

When I got off early from work I wandered around the mall for a while, talked on the phone to Crystal some, saw all the mannequins in the windows and cried like a lameass, and wandered more. I've been thinking about getting my hair cut for a while now and got the idea to use my extra time to go to the salon. It was actually a really good decision.

I'm of the opinion that few things feel so good as getting your hair done. I mean seriously, isn't it just awesome to have someone play with your hair? And then the shampoo-y thingy and the little shower head thingy all sheurhohgshhhh, it's just awesome.

Watching her go snip, snip, snip as six inches of my hair fell to the floor was extremely unnerving, though.

...Mmkay, I was going to conclude with a picture but can't seem to find my bluetooth device (so that I can get said picture from my phone to the comp) sooo... Yeah.

In conclusion, yay haircuts. It was an awesome way to feel better physically, get some innocent compliments (is saying nice things about your client's hair part of the job description?), and feel better about myself without doing something crazy or triggery. I think everyone should go get their hairstyled just for the hell of it. Yep.

Reply to a reader

An interesting comment was left here yesterday... It was anonymous, no e-mail, no name, so in order to reply to it I'm going to do so here. Readers, should you feel I'm out of line or agree with the commenter or have something to say about this whole business, please chime in. Feedback rules.

I've been following your blog for a while now, and here's a thought: instead of trying to find someone or something (modern society, religion, Hollywood, etc.) to take the blame for those entrapped in an ED, why not invest your energy into helping others like you did when you started your t-shirt project?

...Maybe I'm not making myself clear or perhaps you're misunderstanding me, but I don't think I EVER said society, religion, media, or any other entity was responsible for the eating disorder epidemic. In fact, if I've misstated myself in such a gruesomely inaccurate way I owe everyone who may ever have read this blog an enormous apology.

Eating disorders are in NO WAY the fault of an outside source. Eating disorders are a mental illness. That means that something at some point in time went wrong inside my (for instance) brain, causing me to distort the way I perceive myself mentally and physically. Additionally, that switch made it so that the standards I hold for beauty, health, perfection, and self-worth are warped into a nasty misrepresentation of reality. Normal people don't look at a drastically underweight model and think, wow! she's gorgeous! I should starve myself so I can look like her! No. There has to already be something wrong with that person's thinking to cause looking at someone emaciated to seem desirable.

Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing someone underweight, tired, but otherwise still acceptable and beautiful in the eyes of god and others, my mind takes all those features and twists them around into something disgusting. Either I see someone emaciated and sallow like a holocaust caricature, hair stringy and face a mask of dark hollows and ugliness, or I see someone puffy and jiggly and gluttonous whom I loathe for what I perceive to be greed and a total lack of self-control. For the first person, I hate her for abusing her body and being a hypocrite.

I cannot look in the mirror and see myself as others see me. I cannot think about myself and be proud of my achievements or my strides toward health without being overwhelmed by the thousand little things for which I hate myself.

That is what an eating disorder is. It's why it's called a disorder - the natural order of my thinking about my self and my body somehow got thrown out of whack. There is no logic driving an eating disorder. I'm not driven by a desire to look like a media image or modern societal pressures or a religious motivation for punishment. The reason I do discuss those things so frequently is that they DO have a part to play in EDs. Plus, I keep this blog as much for informative purposes as helping others. In fact, it helps and comforts me to see advances being made culturally and hear others comment on media and religion in a way that challenges ideals I might hold toward them.

While those things in NO WAY cause EDs, they undeniably contribute.
--> TV, magazines, etc, provide an abundance of visual triggers as they put underweight women forth as a positive examples of beauty and achievement.
--> Society embraces those images and translates the messages into something that, to an eating disordered mind, sounds like, "Unless you are emaciated, you are a failure and everyone hates you."
--> Religion - specifically the Christian religion - messes with our heads because there is so much emphasis on human failings and the need to put to death pride and sin. For someone who already hates him/herself and feels they are the completely worthless scum, this can literally cause suicidality. It can lead to forms of self-injury as a way to punish the self for any minor transgression. Eating disorders became the most rampant in any era and culture but our current one in the middle ages when Christianity took over Europe, because to starve oneself showed such great self-discipline and commitment to the faith. Oh! To love god so much that one didn't need to eat! Do you have ANY idea how many saints got their sainthood by starving to death??
...Breathe. Breathing. Okay. Point being. Religion is a HUGE contributing factor in many, many cases. It's why you hear of so many girls coming down with these disorders who are daughters of pastors and religious families, good, stable family, middle-class Americans. Religion.

Also, one more thing on that. Crystal pointed out that I need to balance this, because Christianity is not all bad. My experiences may have been, which is why I am so ranty about it, but many women also are helped by religion, even rescued by it. Many religious communities embrace women suffering from EDs and help them, encourage them, comfort them. They are understanding and nurturing and the wonderful safety that sufferers need.

The reason I tend to be so strongly negative toward Christianity is that I come from a background which was catalyst and even direct encouragement for many of my issues. I suffered too many years of being told panic disorder was my fault, depression was my fault, and anorexia was my vanity. Except not that nicely. I experienced nothing but pain at the hands of Christians who thought they were helping and, as such, am really bitter toward the religion. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on this subject. I just speak from personal experience.

Returning to main point: Being able to live and function healthfully as a member of society as it stands means that I, and others with EDs, have to learn to reallign our thinking toward these pressures so we can cope with them despite our messed up brains.

You are undeniably correct when you say our society is screwed up it's perspective on beauty (thin is in), but please don't throw the baby out of the bath water.

...I love the misstatement of that colloquialism. Otherwise, I think I covered this above.

A few screwed up people shouldn't be considered representative of the majority.

Agreed. Most assuredly agreed. But I still don't see what that has to do with any of the points I've been trying to make... I haven't made any attacks on celebrities or Christians (yes, I attack many dogmatic standards. That is DIFFERENT.) or teachers or whomever. I'm attacking what is already spoken of in a general, amorphous sense: beliefs and standards. It has little or nothing to do with "a few screwed up people".

I'm sure there are probably one or two whacko's at your place of business (Cheesecake Factory?), but it would be quite unjust to label you and your co-workers as whacko's based on the character of just a few.

Not to go into this much, but... You could probably label us all crazy, actually.

That's MY rant and I'm sticking to it. Now, go forth and do something good for yourself and for someone else today!

Well, you may not like it, but I feel that I just did something good for myself and others here. Sorry.

As a final note, I'd like to point out that this blog was not started with any mission statement saying it was going to be just encouragement for fellow sufferers. My goal has been as much to educate as to help - the t'shirts are information, not just personal statement.

And aside from that? It's also my journal in many ways. I write about what I'm thinking about. When I'm going through rough spells, it's not as cheery. When I'm pissed off it reflects that.

Yes, I want to help other girls. They are on my heart twenty-four hours a day. I start crying multiple times throughout the day when I see some girl walk by with a scar from an NG tube or dark hollows under her cheekbones or sores around her mouth. It tears me apart. I want more than anything to just take all that pain away from them, even onto myself if I could.

Speaking honestly about eating disorders, how they feel, what they do, and why they're happening, seems to me like a help for those girls. EDs are extraordinarily shameful and surrounded by stigma and misperceptions. Few people know any more about EDs than what they see on the news or the skinny girls they run into now and then. Education is helpful because if you actually know facts about what this is and what causes it you know better how to help and encourage.

Empowerment is help. Putting to death misperceptions is help. Education is help.

There are more ways for me to help girls with eating disorders than just a little note of encouragement every day. I'm trying to do all that I can, however I can, and will keep on doing so as long as I'm able.

The sleepy, confusing thoughts of an overworked chica

God, it's going to be hard to think of something to write tonight... I woke, dressed, went to work... worked... and now, thirteen hours later, am back in bed where I started the day. >.< Eeeew. It feels like I've been awake quite a bit longer than I have - in actuality, it's just that I worked ten of the past thirteen hours and therefore am completely exhausted. Blah blah workedy work.

The only thing I can really say about today that has a vague sort of merit is that it often strikes me, working in the bakery of a Cheesecake Factory, both how far I've come and how ironic my choice of work is. (Most awkwardly worded sentence ever. I'm too tired to fix it.)

It's sickening how many total strangers harrass me about my weight on any given shift. I'll never get used to it. The strange, somewhat comforting thing is that finally, at least a little, it's starting to become a galling irritation instead of a starve-me-purge-me-something-anything trigger. I can't deny that it still hurts and pokes every time someone cracks a joke about how impossible it must be for me to work where I do and stay skinny (on my bitterest days I have been known to shoot back a rude, anorexic remark, but I'd not recommend that course of action to anyone). It still makes me bone check and run for a mirror when overweight, middle-aged individuals tell me that haha, enjoy it while you can, you won't be skinny for very long!

...My mind is rabbit trailing tonight. All my life I've heard comments like that: enjoy it while it lasts. I was a wiry newborn and I stayed that way whether starving or not. It's how my body is built, I guess. I've got a small, long frame and a high metabolism. And yet relatives, friends, total strangers have always felt it their duty to inform me that if I don't shape up my eating habits I will wake up one morning to find I've ballooned. Working where I do, I eat like crap. I had nibbles of pizza, cheesecake, fries, and a sandwich today. And I'm terrified that I'll wake up to find that obese young woman all my friends and coworkers warn me of.

In the end, what does it matter??? Why is it such a big deal if I'm skinny or average or overweight? Perfect doesn't exist; I'll always be off by a pound or a pants size should I be fifty pounds or five hundred. If I've gotten anything from therapy it's that I need to learn to be content with myself as I am, right now, as I was made to be. Why can't others be content with me as I am? That's the strange thing.

God, I'm making absolutely no sense. I'm falling asleep on the keyboard, here, and I'm afraid to say a whole lot since it takes a little consciousness to censor highly triggering material. Thoughts in the raw should remain where they are. ...That doesn't make sense either...

I'm opening cashier tomorrow, so I'm going to end this and go to sleep. Maybe someone can glean a coherent thought from this. :-P

Peace to you all. Mmmwah!