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.

Wow, what nonsense

Good god, can't I be healthy yet? Breathing.... Oh how I miss it.

I've worked a little on the website and still hope to have it up by Monday but I'm on hiatus from site work for now. Because my brain is on hiatus from me. PROFOUND.

Ummm...

Crap, I really have absolutely no idea what I want to say. I have this big compulsion to write blog entries, quite probably because I can't speak, but the thoughts to create those entries are just not anywhere to be found. So I think I'll go back to bed.

This has been the most pointless entry ever, courtesy of me.

Quick way to purchase t'shirts!

At long last, I've found a site builder which is free and can actually be fathomed by my feeble, flu-addled brain. (Go figure, I get over the stomach bug to come down with full blown influenza or something really damn like it.) I was supposed to have my graduation from PHP today but because I'm so ill we've had to reschedule my last two days in program for Monday and Tuesday.

Sooo I've got the whole weekend left bare to work on a website! A new shipment of t'shirts arrived and I've finalized work on two new designs, revamped a couple of the old ones, and, damn! I'm especially happy with the new shirts.

Also, eating disorder awareness week is coming up incredibly soon! (By which I mean Monday, I think.) I hope to have the site up and running with all the new designs and ordering options ready to go by the start of ED Awareness.

Take care! I'm off to find my lungs... they went flying out somewhere in the course of this update.

Very brief update

I've got about two minutes before breakfast starts, but a lot of drama has been happening which I should update you all on... So, bullet style.

-Daniel came home a couple weeks ago, strung out on something, totally irate and irascible. We had a big conflict, in which he outright refused to pay back any of the four months' utilities that he owes me, as well as to pay this month's rent. Talked to the office and, despite a bunch of different points in our lease, they insisted that if Daniel didn't pay Crystal and I were responsible for it and they were going to proceed with eviction if we didn't come up with the money. I scrounged and got together the $560 which Daniel owed, between rent and late fees. We have less than a hundred left in our account, but at least we're not getting evicted.

-Last month, as a birthday present to Crystal, I put unlimited text messaging on our cell phones. When I got the bill a week ago, it was almost three hundred dollars because it didn't reflect that the change had been made. I got in contact with them, because the salesman had assured me the plan would be enacted that day and backdated twenty-four hours as well. According to a TMobile customer service rep, the guy lied to me. According to customer service dude, the charges are valid because our billing cycle ended that day and, as such, no change could be enacted until the next cycle. So now I have to find out a way to come up with $276.

-I haven't even LOOKED at utility bills this month.

-I'm beginning my last week in program. This means I've still got about two weeks before I get back to work.

-Daniel is refusing to move out, but also refusing to pay. Again violating points in the lease, the office refuses to do anything, saying it's a "roomate problem and therefore a personal settlement". Which is bull. He's on the lease, and the lease states we're responsible jointly AND singly. We're trying to find a new roommate because how the hell are we going to pay next month's rent? But we can't move someone in because Daniel won't leave.

-For a bunch of reasons I don't have time to discuss, terminating the lease is really impractical right now and we really have no option but to stick it out until june.


Blah, breakfast. Got to run.

100th post!

--Day Eight--

This has been a helluva lot harder than I anticipated, which is primarily responsible for my lack of updates. Every day I resolve to blog/journal more, because the last thing I want to do is end this and look back knowing I have no record of it, but every day the emotional and mental strain leave me so exhausted that I can't even think of writing an entry. You'd think that having been in therapy as long as I have I would have better anticipated the labor involved in eleven hours a day, seven days a week.

Speaking of, I've only got about five minutes for this entry before another group starts.

My moods are all over the place through the course of a day. I feel like all my nerves are constantly on the surface here... I may be doing fine one minute but then something comes up in group or session or meal and it's as though someone's broken through my calm as easily as the skin which covers scalded milk. Often, my primary emotions are anxiety and disorientation, as even after a week I can't get the hang of what comes next or whose names are whose.

Meredith is my primary therapist, and I love her already. We've only had three sessions (God, that few?), one Mondays, one Thursdays, and I've been doing my best to dive right in, covering the basics as quickly and openly as possible, so that we could start actually working on some of the issues which have brought me here. My primary care physician is Dr Ross, medical physician Dr Rooney, and psychiatrist Dr Christensen. I love all but one of them, with whom I had a really bad conflict last Thursday and for which I've still not forgiven her. April is my dietician, Stephanie is my so-far best friend here, and there are about 4359879487221 bajillion other millieu therapists who lead groups and I can't for the life of me remember all their freaking names. (Oh yeah, and there's Pam, family therapist, Trish, program director, Shae, interview and initial coordinator, Ricky, financial lady, Laura, art therapist, Sue, psychodrama.... Seriously, SO MANY PEOPLE.)

Crap, group's getting started. I really will do my best to be less negligent!

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!

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.

Where things stand

Well, I never thought it'd actually happen, but... Unless something weird and sudden comes up, I start PHP Monday morning.

The assessment went really well this morning. I loved everyone whom I met at the center, and their facilities were pretty awesome. I was expecting them to have their own building(s), but they're actually just on the tenth floor of a big, fancy executive complex thingy. I think they have pretty much the entire tenth floor of the building, though, as their offices certainly weren't cramped.

I met a few of the girls who will be in PHP with me, although sort of indirectly. Since PHP runs seven days a week, they were obviously there for their standard treatment days and I ran into a few of them on session breaks. The place was really laid back and the girls seemed nice; the extent of our conversation was nonetheless limited to sympathetic smiles.

.... Kinda running out of things to say. I'm still a bit overwhelmed by all this, particularly in light of the fact that it's actually going to happen. Hypothetical PHP stays are scary but still easier to handle than real ones.

As a slight aside and final note, I cried today for the first time in any therapy session to ever have taken place over the past five, six years of outpatient care.