Dilemmas

Two major issues on my mind right now, and I could certainly use some advice, thoughts, and/or criticism

1) Heather has been dating this guy named Mike for almost 6 months, and every time she asks if I want to meet him I find some excuse to avoid the introduction. By now she knows that I'm having issues but I haven't been completely honest with her as to what they are exactly. I TOLD her that I'm feeling socially phobic and anxious about meeting new people. The TRUTH is that I'm fat and ugly right now and I don't want to be seen. I haven't told this to anyone because I know how they'll respond. "Eliza, that is silly. Mike is interested in Heather, not you." That's fine, I know that! It's not like I want to be with him. Far from it. As someone who has never been emotionally stable or mature enough to stick with a guy for longer than a week, I have no desire to test the waters right now. But the thing is... and I'M JUST BEING HONEST because my blog is the only place for complete honesty... the thing is, I want him to want me.

Kill me. Just kill me now. I'm selfish and small. Well, selfish and large actually but my point is that I'm aware this is ridiculous thinking. You see, I'm the type of girl who goes in and out of attractiveness. It's almost scary. Sometimes I'm super cute and I know it so I flaunt it, and other times I'm fat and puffy and I look like a rodent so I just hide away and diet until I'm attractive again. It's how I function!

Anyways, he's coming over for dinner tonight to meet the family, and I made plans to be MIA. I'm going to see Despicable Me with my friend Amy. Heather is a little disappointed but I did promise to meet him before I go to Michigan in August so at least there's a deadline for it.

2) Not as pressing or urgent as the first matter but certainly one that I have been deliberating over. While our tenant, Margie was away in Spain for a few weeks she asked me to water her plants and pay her bills as they came. Her plants only needed watering twice the whole time she was away, and I really only mailed like three checks for her. She said she would pay me for the "work" and today left an envelope with a check for a hundred dollars and fifty dollar bill. I know this is too much but I sort of want to keep it. I'm also thinking that maybe the reason she split up the payment into a check and bill was so that I could have the chance to refuse some it if I wanted. But then Heather thinks that maybe she was just being courteous... not knowing whether I would want cash or a check so she gave me both just in case.

ARghh!!! I feel like I am living in a Jane Austen novel only without the romance and funny old people.

Oh happy day?

Now that I have a job during the week that actually involves me DOING SOMETHING during the day, it makes the weekends that much more confusing and directionless. I literally woke up this morning and felt afraid of all the time I was going to have on my hands today. I can't count how many weekends have turned into binge festivals because I wasn't prepared for lack of structure in my day. So today, even though I didn't have a schedule made up (like Marci advises) I was armed to the teeth with skills. After breakfast I left the house immediately to kick the soccer ball around in the park with little sister Rachel, and then throughout the day I just found little errands to run and tasks to keep myself busy. Went to the New England Mobile Book Fair with my mom which is practically the most engrossing store ever. Books are delivered straight to this warehouse from the publishing companies, and organized by publisher as opposed to author. All these amazing new books are ridiculously low priced. I bought a bunch. So shopping and reading occupied a great deal of my time today.

I also went to the gym this afternoon for the first time in like... weeks. Going to the gym is another binge trigger because I get super hungry afterwards but at the same time feel guilty for wanting extra food. I usually end up giving in and having a snack, then feeling horrible about it and bingeing to numb away the guilt.

I am not going to get complacent just because I had a successful Saturday though. Every time something good happens and I brag about it, the next day usually involves lots of ice cream and Nutella with a spoon.

Epiphany

Today I took a shower, and as I was walking into my room with a towel on I saw her in a full length mirror. I use the pronoun because at first I literally did not recognize her. I felt like I was seeing myself for the first time since I came home in December. I mean ACTUALLY SEEING my body. It was horrifying. Up until now I've just seen numbers on a scale and complained about them, never actually facing the reality... I am large again.

I didn't cry, although I got that lumpy strangled feeling that often precedes crying. I just sort of sat and shook. I remembered being thin, I remembered fitting into my clothes, I remembered compliments and being pretty. It was painful. Like no way out painful. I was so mortified I didn't even scramble to find a coping mechanism. This next part is like a scene from a movie: I started digging through my desk drawers frantically throwing papers and stickies over my shoulder in search of my journal from when I was in program. I figured I must have written something in there that could provide a way out or some sort of explanation for whatever was happening. And then I found it scribbled in towards the end! Right next to my doodle of wheel of cheese! I learned a great deal during my stint in eating disorder recovery program a couple months ago, and I would hasten to say that the most useful piece of information I left with is not a skill, which is nice, so you don't have to practice it. It's a fact. It's a fun fact! And I would like to share it with the world. If you are already aware of the fact then please keep in to yourself. I like to pretend that I know things first. It is as follows: Intense or unpleasant emotions, no matter how unbearable or scary they may feel in the moment, cannot be physically sustained by the body or mind for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. Isn't that wonderful? The best part is, it's not a mantra or an inspirational quote that might carry different meanings for different people in different situations. It is a biological fact. It is evolutionary fact. In fact, human beings would not be as advanced as they are today if this fact weren't true. Think about it... how on earth would our species remain extant if an emotion or a terrible thought just persisted forever? Self-preservation is ingrained into our DNA!

Sure enough about ten minutes later I remembered who I was and where I am. I'm Eliza, just in a bigger vessel. It sucks to look this way and tomorrow I might feel the suckage again but you know what? Eating disorders suck.

Not everything is permanent though.


DISCLAIMER: This fact is in no way intended to minimize or make light of your painful feelings. Take the loss of a loved one for example. Couldn't one argue that if a mother sees her children murdered before her own eyes she might never be entirely whole or happy again? Totally. But the truth is that grief comes in waves. No one has ever cried and mourned constantly and forever without stopping. We all have an emotional baseline that must be returned to at some point or we simply could not be.

Okay I'm done. Hopefully that made sense. I was putting away all my tests and quizzes from that BU class I took and it put me in an anthropological mood.

Ugh- what I've become

Just got an e-mail from my nutritionist, wanting to check in and see how things have been going since our final appointment last week. Marci is so sweet. I wish I could fold her up and bring her along to NY with me in the fall. Anyways, she found a few possible replacements for herself next year... one of them looks very promising indeed. Her name is Stacey and she has a practice on Madison Avenue. She sounds a little fancy for me but you know what? Marci was a little fancy too and sometimes fancy is better. Certainly better than judgmental and bullying... two characteristics which my therapist seems to have been trained by.

There is something wrong with my lungs again. I felt a lot of wheezing in New Hampshire and now it has sort of morphed into a flemmy cough accompanied by the most terrifyingly choked up, gnarly demon voice. It has to get better by itself though because I absolutely REFUSE to go the doctor. I've gained a solid ten pounds since my check-up last month so there is simply no way I will allow the current weight to appear on my medical chart. I'm sorry, this is an incredibly vain and cowardly thing to say but you know what? This is my blog and I'll say what I want. (I also just realized I tend to preface a lot of my statements with the rhetorical question, "...but you know what?" This is silly and I think it makes me sound too defensive so I'll try to work on that).

I didn't really binge today. I was still full from greasy Chinese yesterday when I woke up this morning, so all I had for breakfast was a light coffee frappe on my way to work. I skipped morning snack... had a PB sandwich and a nectarine for lunch, then came home and promptly fell asleep for two hours. When I woke up I ate a bunch of Sun Chips and Smartfood popcorn. It felt a little bingey, but I don't feel sick right now so, calorically, it probably wasn't a binge.

I'm definitely stuck in a food rut though. BINGE EATING ASIDE, I haven't really been putting in the effort to try and eat healthy foods or exercise. Examples... I haven't eaten a vegetable in three weeks. Any and all sandwiches I've eaten recently have been on white bread. I've begun opting for breakfast cereals like Honey Bunches of Oats and Panda Puffs instead of Oatmeal and fruit like I used too. Little things like those you know? And for real, I'm not just focusing on how my weight plays into this whole thing it just shows more self-respect when I opt for nutritious food and lately I haven't been caring enough about myself to try. This is not to say that white bread or yummy cereals and chips are bad foods, it's just that it's come to the point where I've stopped putting care and consideration into what I'm eating and THAT is bad.

My plan of action (because you know I always have one) is to make a list of healthy foods that I enjoy, and then make it a point to buy them and have them around the house. I'm off to make of list of them right now!

The apocalypse?

99 HELLISH DEGREES AND NO END IN SIGHT. I REFUSE TO LEAVE THE HOUSE. All I want to do is putz around on my laptop and watch reruns of The Office. I also wouldn't mind ordering a giant cheese pizza for dinner... just as long as I don't have to eat it outside or leave the house to go pick it up.

Today was the first of camp at the summer program where I'm working. It feels weird calling it camp though... it's a kindergarten classroom setting and the program is sort of designed for kids who either have learning disabilities and need a school-like environment to help them stay on track with stuff over the summer... or regular kids who don't have learning disabilities but whose parent's just don't have a ton of money because the tuition is really cheap.

Anyways, we have an adorable group of kids this year- about 16 of them, all around four and five years old. This one girl named Chrysanthe, she's super cute but at lunch would not stop singing Baby by Justin Beiber so to distract her I asked what her plans were for after camp today. She says, "My uncle is picking me up. I'm going to the park with my uncle! We're going to play in the park! It's going to be so romantic!" I was slightly weirded out by this comment but later on she also used the word romantic to describe the temperature outside... and her shoelaces.

I made a bunch of copies of the diary cards we used when I was in program. We had to fill one out for every day. It has a box for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the three snacks you're supposed to eat every day... you fill in the amount of exchanges it calls for on the meal plan, then you fill in the amount of exchanges you actually ate at that meal. There's a before and after hunger scale for each allotted meal or snack, and then a chart where you check off any behaviors used around the meal (binge, purge, restrict, diet pills, exercise). If you didn't have a behavior but had an urge, you rate the urge on a scale of intensity from 1 to 5 and then write how you felt and how you dealt with it. I want to start filling these out again because I just wrapped things up with my nutritionist so I feel like I need to keep super close tabs on my eating. I'll start doing that tomorrow.

IT'S SO FREAKING HOT!!!!!!!!!

I hate my cousin Heather. And my therapist.

I love my cousin Heather. I love her to freaking pieces, but sharing my room with her is sort of like sharing my room with an old lady. She gets cold far too easily. It was almost 100 degrees today so I think I'm entitled to have the air conditioning on as I fall asleep. After all, it is MY ROOM. And wouldn't you say it's easier for her to bundle up if she's cold than for me to bundle down if I'm hot? I mean, she can put on layers but I can't peel off my skin. She's being really nice about it and not being overly fussy but obviously now I feel guilty for freezing her ass off.

Oh I'm home by the way. New Hampshire was fun and I love going up north. Tomorrow I start my summer job as an aide at one of the local summer programs for tiny children. It should be fun. I hope the teacher whose class I'm assigned to isn't a cranky witch like last year. That made me miserable. So I'm a little anxious tonight and binged as a result.

I don't care what my therapist says, but I am absolutely positive that environment has everything to do with my ED behaviors. HOME = BINGE EATING and SCHOOL = RESTRICTION. I'm not sure what this weekend away counted as... I was very successful in managing my urges. It was empowering being out of the house and away from the triggers, you know? I literally have a different behavior for every environment. Food takes on new meanings in new places. My therapist thinks that it's not so much the environment but the mind set. I say that's crap and she should find a different profession, like a meter maid. I bet she'd totally get off on punishing people for not putting enough quarters in. That's the kind of person she is. But anywhoodily, the point is that now since I've discovered that environment is responsible for the bingeing, I just need to make sure I stay out of the house as much as possible. This may be difficult... since I never really leave the house... BUT ONWARD I MUST PRESS IN THE QUEST TO VANQUISH THE BINGE MONSTER AND BECOME THIN AGAIN!

Back from NH. Happy July!

Hello everyone! As this is my first post of the month allow me to congratulate you all on making it to July. I feel a certain sense of accomplishment and pride every time another month goes by. Is this depressing?

Despite the date that appears on this post, and even though I'm typing this two days later, the actual words are being written on 6/3/10 at 10:15 p.m., in New Hampshire. I don't have a computer handy, and even if I did I doubt I'd get wireless so I'm scribbling this entry in my sister's composition notebook because it's the only paper I can find.

4th of July weekend at my great aunt's summer house in Sandwich, NH is a tradition since my Dad's parents died years ago. They lived in a neighboring town not far from here- in the most heartbreakingly beauitful house that my dad even designed part of for them. That house is essentially gone now. All of my grandparent's furniture and artwork that they'd collected from traveling all over the world has been auctioned off. The house is being leased to strangers, and now the only time we see the house itself is when we're driving through town on our way to the 4th of July parade every year. BUT ANYWAYS; yesterday I hiked up Mt. Whiteface with my Dad, brother, and Heather. We camped overnight at the top and then woke up at the crack of dawn to journey back down. It was ridiculous and terrifying and I'm not sure if I'll do it again but altogether I think our bravery and sense of adventure is laudable so well done us. I would go into further detail about the adventure (pooping in the woods, hearing scratching and whispering outside our tent in the middle of the night, etc...) but this is a blog primarily about my eating disorder, not my mediocre camping and survival skills.

I told myself that July would be my fresh start month food-wise, that I'd quit bingeing, exercise every day, and limit my daily intake enough to lose all this weight before going back to school in two months. Generally so far so good. No major binges since June 30th, 5 hour trek up a mountain counts as my exersize for the week, but general food intake has been a little larger than I'd like. I've been doing this thing the past few days where I start eating a lot of food, and then stop myself before it turns into a fully fledged binge. Example: Day before yesterday I had a bowl of honey bunches of oats with milk for breakfast and it was so yummy I had three more big bowls. Not exactly enough to qualify as a binge FOR ME, but definitely more than the breakfast on my meal plan. Then today, I felt urgey so I started mindlessly munching on tortilla chips and ate about 5 cookies before thinking to myself, "Hold it, girlfriend. The nearest grocery store is a twenty five minute drive into town and there are five other people in this house who need chips and cookies as well." It felt scary stopping in the middle of what my ED had sort of decided should be a binge. For about ten minutes I was floundering helplessly in the deep end of my anxieties, wishing more than anything I knew how to qualify or define what I'd just done. Mini binge? Momentary lapse of self-control? Normalized big snack in response to physical hunger? It sucked- the not knowing. But after about ten minutes I noticed that I wasn't dying of hunger, nor was my stomach stretching out uncomfortably over my shorts. I felt physically comfortable so I ran with that feeling and carried on with the day. If I'm being 100% honest I restricted quite a fair bit around dinner to make up for it though so we'll award 1 point to the ED for compensating and 1 point to Eliza for white-knuckling it in the grey area.