i MUST do better

I went down for a ten minute nap at 1o am. Not the smartest thing to do since I had to be at Shish's office by 11 and it takes a good twenty minutes and I had yet to shower. But it was really with the best of intentions that I'd wake up at 10:20 at the latest and make it on time. At 10:35 I was still in bed and figured I'd just call in and ask for an afternoon appointment since I'm usually the 2 pm slot. Except she was booked. And I chose sleep. But then the part of me that wants recovery said, "Erin if you don't get out of this fucking bed right now and show up to your appointment you're going to have one shitty day." So I called her back and said I'd see her at 11. I still had time...Except in the two minutes that I contemplated starting my day someone else STOLE my hour. I was pretty pissed at myself really for just completely ruining my day.

Can I say that I have so much work to do for work...and job applications to fill out...and money problems...and UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That it all just makes me want to go right back to bed.

I must have really taken a break from the binging because I had almost forgotten the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach that comes along with the disorder. Oh my gosh! It was almost unbearable. I felt so completely bloated and stuffed and it just felt like if I scratched my skin that I would burst at the seams and would start oozing out. Lovely, huh?

So I've spent the past two days binging and trying to recover. Clearly I'm going through the ringer because I purposely did not purge and now my body is punishing me. However, I still managed to be quite productive yesterday (which is what I'm most proud of). I applied for five jobs and while I already concede that it's not a full day's work...it came as quite a triumph seeing as how the thought of looking through the classifieds section on Tuesday sent me into crazy binge mode. Thank God that anxiety has passed.

I'm really really tired right now though. I only got about six hours of sleep (half my regular amount) because I had to take Jay off to school which meant getting him up and in the shower and dressed and fed. (And I coaxed him into doing five addition problems before school which I thought would warm him up for the day academically.) We'll see how well that worked this afternoon. I was really glad that he spent the night because we got to spend a lot of time together and the kid is just too darn funny and cute.

I wish I could take a nap but I have some homework to finish up before I go see Shish. I was looking forward to today all week but now that I'm feeling sick and tired I'm afraid it's going to be another one of those sessions. Last night I really had the urge to binge. I mean it was crazy because my stomach felt just awful and yet the only thing I could think of was food. I considered sticking my keys in a bucket of cold water and freezing it...so that when I get the urge, I can't actually get in the car to leave. Oh man...I need a prayer

panicked

i had a week of no binges. more than a week of no purges. and last night i binged and damnit i hate when it's like this. i don't know why it happened. but i just feel so shaky. i just feel so completely out of sync (not like i was ever in sync) but everything feels like it's happening at FAST pace and im not moving at all and it's so scary.

i need a job. the anxiety of looking at positions that either require a MASTER'S degree or high school diploma...drives me fucking crazy. i swear, i really love this area, but it's either or. there's never an in between. we have a really high population here of educated people. So my whole experience of finding something im interested in finds me WAY too qualified or THERES NO FUCKING WAY. its exhausting. its frustrating. its scary as fuck. its intimidating. its daunting. and when you're literally BROKE...it makes you consider doing shit u never thought youd end up doing.

so i binged. go figure. and i dont feel right. like im really trying NOT to binge RIGHT now so i tried sticking my face in ice cold water...literally a bowl full of ice water TEN times for TEN seconds and while it felt good doing it after say the fourth time. right now my blood is just

i can't calm down. i think i need a purge. and here's when it's crazy. right here, right now. where im actually really really really trying NOT to binge. im gonna take a shower and then walk the dogs and then get out of the house. but all of that is just avoiding it...i want this feeling to pass. DAMNIT DAMNIT DAMNIT im so scared because i know it could be over if i just give in...do an all out binge/purge fest. but im also kind of interested to see..what will happen? what if it passes and I don't have to depend on the food? how LONG will it last? how long will i feel like crawling out of my skin. like RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE. when will the images of sticking a barrel in my mouth stop popping up in my head. why am i sooo fucking terrified of living my life?

How come one day life can be really okay? How is it that I can have a good week and then wake up literally afraid to get up? How does the prompting event for a binge really get to a point where it's just WAKING UP. I'm going to try to do some stuff right now to ride this urge out.

feels like a storm is coming (like a real storm...not more drama in my life)

Off the top of my head the past few days have been really good. I've been eating regularly (or however I define it to be). But eating so much that I feel it's too much (although I know it isn't) and I haven't binged in a while. I think it's been a week although I'll have to check my logs to verify that. Either way I'm psyched. I cannot remember the last time I purged or binged (and I really think the last B was in Tennessee).

Friday I hung out with one of the girls from my dbt skills class. :) I know! Isn't that insane? Because for like two weeks I was convinced that they hated me and thought I was so fat and disgusting and it just GOES TO SHOW how I can misinterpret any old little thing. I was soooo wrong about the situation when I thought I was absolutely right. I can't have enough of those moments it seems, but at least this time I felt so much better knowing I was mistaken. I went over to her apartment to help her pack and we talked and I really enjoyed myself. I ate lunch before I headed over because I don't think we're allowed to eat around each other. I know we're not allowed to engage in any behaviors (which technically means restricting) so we parted ways at dinner time. We took her dog on a nice little walk right after an afternoon shower and it just felt good to hang out with someone who knows and understands and also know that yeah, there are more things to life than this. We could talk about the ed and group and therapists and food and alcohol and drugs and then we could leave it alone and go elsewhere and it just felt natural. Anyway, I came home and ate dinner and something really really upsetting happened!

My checking and savings account literally had less than $1.00. I didn't understand how something like that could happen especially since I'm not expecting a paycheck for THREE weeks. The situation got a little better. LITTLE. For some reason sometimes my bank always holds more (I think that's what happens why I purchase gas anyways) than it needs to and later redeposits the money back. Either way I was frantic. Sad. Scared. I have two therapy sessions next week and need money to pay for that. I also need money to do a few other things and change was just not going to cut it. The really good thing about it though: it finally kicked my ass into gear. Not that I didn't need money before (because I certainly did) but I literally started making plans to start selling stuff.

Like my guitar. And old cell phone. And clarinet. And CLOTHES that I had hoped to wear again. And so many books. And then for some reason I just couldn't sell that stuff. I mean if I absolutely have to do it to make ends meet I will...but I went out on a limb and responded to a cr@igslist poster who needed a babysitter this afternoon. Thankfully the lady called me yesterday afternoon and (I totally sent references and wrote a lot about myself) said I had the job. For now...crisis averted. A little breathing room. I almost halfway considered waiting tables but honestly, it's just not something I can afford to do. I cannot handle stress well which means I'd be putting myself in the worst possible situation with LOADS of food. The babysitting worked out fine. The two kids were a handful (cursing! at four and five years old!) I had to wake up at 8 o'clock in the morning (well before my usual noon) but I felt really productive. I was making money, having fun with the kids, dealing with real life situations and although yeah, I felt a little overwhelmed and nervous and scared and tired and frustrated when they wouldn't listen to me AT ALL -- I got out of the house. It felt good to spend six hours doing work. It felt even BETTER to be paid more than we originally agreed upon.

The only part of the day that I literally thought I wouldn't make it is when the four year old girl pushed her white tricycle down the driveway hill into my CAR! I just celebrated my ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY with my car on Saturday. And now there's this L-O-N-G mark across the bumper. A mixture of the pant coming off my car and the white paint coming off her bike. Not pretty. I seriously wanted to hurt that little girl. But I told myself...assess the damage (nothing I could personally do at that moment to fix my beloved bumper) and just be glad that's the worst thing that's happened to the car in a year. I'm still angry. But dude I did not binge. And I freaking could have sent those kids to their rooms and ate the HOUSE.

Needless to say I'm pooped. I have plenty of dbt homework to do post Desper@ate and oh! I wrote a letter to Shish. I'm taking it in on Thursday. It's four pages so I won't paste the whole thing, just the major ish...I have really missed you guys. And I hope everyone had a good weekend. Filled with rest and love and acceptance and fun times. I'm off to catch up on some much needed rest.

a rather dull Thursday with Shish

I was pretty blank today with Shish. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because food wise I've been having an okay time. I guess I should have mentioned that I feel this pull towards restriction. But even that didn't seem worth putting out there when the only thing she would say is act counter to the eating disorder. Which is what I did. I came home and made a big salad. And then ate some ravioli and felt fine. I'm still fine more than 90 minutes later. I really hate those sessions where it's not me just being plain rude and difficult but where I honestly don't know what to say. And I think today she wanted me to have an agenda but I just sort of get into these periods where I don't care what we talk about as long as it doesn't have me screaming and yelling from the room. It's good to have low key sessions every once in a while I know (but it's also a waste of both of our times and my money).

I'm also unsure of what I can actually talk about with her. And I know at this point in therapy (and with her leaving in less than six weeks) it's ridiculous to say that but this is an eating disorder clinic. Most stuff is usually about food and family issues and emotion regulation. I don't have a burning desire to talk about Jack...but I did throw it out there for her to catch. Or rather I threw myself out there hoping she would catch me. And it's not a problem problem, but there are a lot of things that I've written to her over the course of the past seven months that we've never talked about. And they're all really hard things to talk about and so in a sense I'm more than thrilled about it. But I can just see how much I have progressed by opening up and talking about stuff that's going on in my life currently that I do think it would be important to go back and drudge through the past (just a bit). I already know that's not her style and that she do it but I don't feel comfortable bringing it up. And I think she is pretty much allowing me to control the ball right now because I can't imagine she would want to go there with me. I mean no one would want to do that. I completely shut down. I'm completely a bitch when we discuss things that are off limits. I'm mute. I'm not someone even my dearest friends would want to be around.

I have the usual homework so I think that for next week I'll just write out an agenda and make sure I at least bring something to the table that I want to cover with her before we make this transition to the new T. But I don't know, sometimes I just feel like I can't say things to her even with the list. Like today, I mentioned applying for a job to teach at the Friend's school but that I was afraid of not getting an interview or the job. The prospect of being rejected is enough to paralyze me and I'm also petrified of making yet another (law school) mistake. And the only thing Shish could say is, "Well, why wouldn't they hire you?" It's comforting to hear in that moment and I know she's being 100% sincere. But I don't think she knows what it's like to doubt yourself so much that you really need someone to TELL you what to do. I mean, this is how I got into this situation with law school, but it's because I couldn't make the decision on my own. I can't decide for myself what's okay to eat and so I'm really following this meal plan here (or at least trying to and telling myself that as long as I do not deviate I am not allowed to binge). I feel like I've lost all power and control over my life. It's so simple to only get up out of bed to go to group or therapy when you feel like...nothing.

And the strange part about all of this is...I'm actually feeling really good. I'm not wallowing in despair or crying or angry or upset. This is just something I've come to accept. I just have a funny feeling that this is not what self-acceptance is supposed to be about.

trying to get used to this life again

It's been pretty difficult adjusting back to my normal everyday life. Honestly, I'm doing quite well coping with the fact that I was surrounded by best friends and complete acceptance and pure love for four days. I've been talking on the phone with my friends a little bit more than regularly and we made plans to meet up again in August. I did however learn that BEST removed me from her friends on F@cebook. That was pretty shocking. We had always talked about how that's the true test of friendship. Even during a really big fight we may have removed one another from MySp@ce but never the book. So glad that I was with friends because I wasn't able to dwell on it or even be upset.

So what's so hard? FOOD. Of course. I ate very well last weekend. Three meals a day. Dessert. Snacks. When they ate, I ate. Sometimes I had cake for breakfast. Other times beer. A couple of times I had fruit. It felt really good to already have my food rules in place for those times we went out to a restaurant (TWICE a day!!!) because it limited my options to vegetarian meals only. Which was perfect!!! Sometimes I only had like two choices and it meant that I couldn't agonize about what to eat (and also make some very healthy choices!) So that felt really good.

Now that I'm back though I've been craving sugar. I think it's because the graduation cake was just so freaking good!!! I mean the four of us devoured that cake like none other. I also indulged in PIZZA (a complete NO NO) and I really want to restrict. But my body apparently LOVED the food intake this weekend and is letting me know all the time that it wants food. Spread out across the day. More than fruits and veggies. It wants soup and pasta and cake! and...I guess it just wants variety. But in moderation.

And now for the funny/sad/really sad story. My mother has always been really sensitive about her weight. She's a size two right now and while not to put all her business out there she's more than half a century years old. She's given birth to two daughters and with the first one who was nearly full term she didn't even break 100 pounds. So she walks in the house after walking the dogs and my sister says, "You look fat." Something you don't say to ANYone, right? But most certainly not our mother who always asks if something makes her look fat (even though most people know that a size two could NeVeR ever be fat). I'm not sure why my sister did it. But them my mom got really sad and was like well you could stand to lose twenty pounds yourself! And then they started playing the game (how much weight they needed to lose and where...) and clearly I'm sitting in the room. And it was like the big white elephant. Or big brown elephant. Anyways...clearly my sister wanted to go there and you could tell my mom was really uncomfortable and praying to God that my sister did not turn to tell me how much weight I could stand to lose. Thankfully she didn't. But they didn't need too. It finally got up 40 lbs with my sister (which would make her look emaciated as hell). So if she needs to lose that much...what would put me under a 100 lbs.

That was never even my goal. That was never even something I wanted. And I still don't. But dear God is my mother really like this? Someone who knows her daughter suffers from an eating disorder but still so completely selfish that she asks all the time if she's fat. If I think she should eat 1 piece of chocolate (size of a kiss that is) and then plays the how much do I need to lose in order to get to double digits game. I don't even know what the word for what she and my sister are...but I must say I'm very proud of myself for not letting that effect of binging and purging.

how driving through a mountain can actually inspire you to keep pushing right on through til you get to the other side.

The past three days have been absolutely amazing. Abso-freaking-lutely! My dear roommate from college and bestest friend has graduated from law school in the top ten of her class. She actually had the 6th highest gpa (but there were 4 people ranked number one). How AMAZING is that? She's brilliant. Hard working. Beautiful. And a wonderful friend. I'm so happy for her.

So I drove over to Tennessee after meeting with Shish on Thursday and for the life of me I cannot remember what we actually talked about. I know I committed to doing a few things before every single binge over the next week (which I really couldn't focus on while with friends and alcohol and pizza floating around the place) but I'll recommit myself for the next three days. I also vaguely agreeing that I need to physically distance myself from my sister for a while as a means of self protection. I had a pretty hard time doing the diaphragmatic breathing in last week's skills class and again with Shish so we worked on that. Now it almost seems like a waste of time but I must just be blocking something out because I do remember that I completely destroyed the camisole I was wearing during that hour. I literally started pulling the strings out and focusing all my attention on ripping the shirt into pieces because I was so angry and tense. How very awkward.

The ride through the mountains was beautiful and scary as hell. I have never actually driven through and on mountains for such an extended period of time. Literally 3.5 hours. I worked in Charlottesville for the summer and so I saw the mountains from a distance but never actually had to go down the winding roads with huge yellow signs that said CAUTION: ROCKS SLIDE. Talk about anxiety. Now add rain. Three dozen tractor trailer trucks. And everyone zooming past me at 60 miles per hour (while I was safely doing 45) because the other caution sign said safest speed 50 miles per hour! I was not prepared and I was highly tense and I felt like crying and my ears were popping and we were going up hill then down hill and I will never make that drive again. And yet when I remembered to breathe (I had the Sedona method playing the entire way to K-ville) I could focus my attention on the beautiful scenery. I was literally in awe of how it all works. The earth. How it was even possible for me to drive through the mountains. How the trees managed to grow so high. It was just one of those rare moments when I had nothing else on my mind but how mind blowing life is (well, I also had surviving the maze on my mind).

My other roommate flew into town and we headed to the mall to build a be@r for our graduate. I really loved making that bear and I've been thinking about what to give Shish when she leaves and I think I'll make her a bear too! They're too cute. Then we headed to the university library and spent two hours making a scrapbook of never before seen pictures from college and a few pictures I hijacked from our friend's facebook page. She thought that was hilarious. I had promised myself before hand that I wanted to have as normal of a weekend as possible. I wanted to escape my eating disorder (more for my friends than myself). Four days. Of just pretending (which I know isn't the smartest thing to do...pretending I don't have a problem with food when I clearly do) but I just didn't want to look back on the weekend and regret anything. The wonderful think about doing the scrapbook before we even headed over to our friend's apartment was that I got to look at just how few pictures there were of me from four different camera sources. I was always the one who jumped to take the picture (even when other people who weren't roommates were around) because I felt so self-conscious. I have absolutely no idea how I look to other people. Seriously. I feel fat. I feel ugly. I can't be objective about these things. But when I see myself on film then there's hardcore proof of it. What I see in the picture is what everyone else sees as well. There's no denying that. So I have always made it a point to make a really stupid face or do something completely off the walls in pictures to draw attention to that (rather than my body). Or I just flat out refuse.

This weekend seeing the abundance of pictures we had (and how few of me there were) I decided to be apart of the captured memories for my friends but I still did a lot of the crazy (& drunk) poses. I felt it was a compromise. I still felt completely uncomfortable and everything else but I knew I would kick myself in the ass if I wasn't present in every moment. And technically at the graduation and graduation dinner I took normal pictures like everyone else. I can actually look at those pictures too and see how beautiful my dress was and how pretty I looked that night. And it's just really sad because the whole night I felt fat and I just wanted to LEAVE and the pictures turned out great.

The first night we got completely trashed at my friend's apartment and around 1 am after taking six shots of grey goose and chasing them with reisling we ended up at a pizza parlor where I started dancing to the music playing only in my head and split my favorite pants. The pants I have not fit since SENIOR year of college three years ago. And it was quite shocking to my friends because the pants actually didn't fit. They were too big. And they couldn't understand how pants that are too big can split right down the ass and through the thigh can split under those circumstances. Needless to say I didn't even remember going to the pizza parlor and I didn't realize my pants were split until the following afternoon. Nor do I remember being picked up by one of my friends and carried to the bathroom multiple times. Like I said...an amazing weekend.

The following day we actually went out to a club (and I promise I'm getting to recovery centered stuff here) and I was feeling pretty sad. Actually I felt ashamed. I felt stupid. I felt like a loser. I felt like I was going nothing with my life. I felt even worse for thinking all that while at the club celebrating my roommate's accomplishments. And then I felt fat. And then everything made sense. Why I don't have a boyfriend. Why I suck at life. And so on and so forth. It basically stemmed from the fact that everyone at the graduation dinner asked me what I was doing with my life. And I said "taking a break." And I know they don't know my circumstances. None of the adults have any idea of how miserable I was in law school or that I have an eating disorder or that I think I may have the most fucked up family east of the Mississippi. But saying nothing just made me feel like nothing. And because I didn't address those feelings and thoughts immediately they resurfaced after the first shot (of grey goose) and I was sitting at the bar completely silent on the verge of tears (and seriously scaring my friends who had no idea what was going on in my head). It took me a good twenty minutes to get it together but I did some diaphragmatic breathing and actually thought about what WISE MIND would say. At the bar. In a dance club. With my friends surrounding me. I just needed to escape and think about how to effectively handle the situation and be present for my friends. Nothing about the future of my professional life could be determined at 2 am and so it made no sense to ruin the rare opportunity I had to get faded with my best friends. I literally had to pick up shot glasses on the bar and envision them being all the hurt and embarrassment and disappointment (and everything else) and just DROP it. Let it go.

I told myself if I felt like going back and picking all that stuff up later and handling it, I certainly could. After six drops...a few more minutes of breathing and coming clean to my friends about why I seemed completely absent-- I really let it go. In fact, I told them that I didn't even need to talk about it. I had let it go. I was back and ready to party. It wasn't easy. Those feelings didn't want to be dropped. I'm so used to holding on to all these negative feelings and thoughts that I literally have to tell myself to LET THEM GO. I had to force myself to go out on the dance floor (completely self conscious and all) and then I practiced being in the moment. Thinking only of dancing. Other thoughts came into my head and I acknowledged them and went right back to focusing all my attention on the music. By the end of the night I felt fabulous. I really did. And I think all those m@nhatten apples had only a little to do with it.

My roommates and I talked until nearly dawn that night and they both agreed that I like being...well I can't remember the word they used. But apparently someone who does like discomfort and pain and sadness and all that stuff. Something that Shish has alluded to as well. Only once. But after I had a really successful day with the food plan and then never even tried it again. She thought it was interesting that I felt happy and proud with the outcome of the experiment and then went right back to my same old routine and didn't even think about repeating it because maybe I like the chaos and drama that comes along with having an eating disorder. I disagreed. And I disagree with my friends. I don't like ANY of it. But I do see how I completely downplayed the fact I am technically employed and I did volunteer for one of the democratic presidential nominees and I do spend a lot of time caring for my nephews. And yet, I said I was unemployed. Taking a break. Doing nothing with my life.

i.e. Making the situation worse by not truly acknowledging the reality. Not seeing the good but going right into the darkness and pain and disorder (and I have NO idea why I do that!)

I have a big day ahead of me. I really want to do some things to try to turn around how I feel about my existence. First by accepting it. That it's truly okay simply because it is. And then changing a few things each day to see if that makes me feel any better about myself. I also have so much dbt homework to catch up on before tomorrow's class. I've missed you all so much and I promise I'll catch up AFTER I check some things off my to-do list. As wonderful as this past weekend was...I'm actually glad to be back. I want to set up a routine and make some real changes in my life. First things first though, and that means I have to work on this eating disorder. It was wonderful to pretend (or try to pretend) for a weekend that I'm like all my friends, but it'll be even better to actually live a lifestyle that doesn't involve an eating disorder.