Tears Behind The Smile - A Journey Through Therapy

News Flash

2012-02-06T23:13:00.000Z

I hate it that my main reason for blogging right now is that I feel under some kind of pressure to write something. My life seems to be full of 'shoulds' which are generally, profoundly unhelpful in terms of trying to reduce anxiety rather than maintain it.

I'm taking 200mg of Pregabalin right now but apart from a noticeably calmer initial phase, it seems to have made little difference.
This being said, it is perhaps worth noting that my anxiety might be much worse without it.

"God grant me a peace
beyond Pregabalin" ... I prayed the other morning.

and I wait.

*** Breaking news***

I have convinced my consultant and Dr Death that I would be better if I could return to work!
And so... ladies and gentlemen
(drum roll)
... after a year...
...
...
I am allowed a PART TIME phased return and
the most incredible thing
is that my bosses
have agreed
to make my contract part time
at least until September.

They didn't have to.
They could have got rid of me.
They could have put me under nasty 'capability' conditions
especially as Dr Death's prognosis is incredibly negative, predicting the usual doom and gloom and failure to sustain and manage and recover and, and, and
all the miserable misery that he just LOVES to pile into his letters.

Can I defy his predictions?

I have reached one major conclusion about recovery from Anorexia.

In order to recover, you have to act like a 'normal' person.

Even now I hear the horrified screams of '...there's no such thing as 'normal'.
But there bloody well is where eating disorders are concerned.

In order to recover, one must pretend to be normal, which means that a)they must force themselves to cook and eat as if they do not suffer from their condition.
b) They must behave in such a way that, if being observed, nobody would notice anything markedly strange or different about their eating habits.

Totally impossible?
Well.
We shall see.

Tonight I ate what I was served.
Every mouthful hurt.
I smiled and chatted and ached and imploded.

Recovery is like being helped into a bed by people who have no idea that the mattress is packed full of upturned needles.

Blue Monday

2012-01-18T09:18:00.000Z

Incredible.
It's nothing short of incredible.
And I, the biggest cynic regarding all things 'Pseudo Science', am pushed towards AWE by the fact that, until I overheard a conversation in a local supermarket, I had no idea it was 'Blue Monday', or that such a phenomena existed.

It's practically against my religion to expand on such things, such is the level of distrust (and possibly even... disgust) of anything vaguely pseudo scientific. In this case however, I'll make an exception.

I woke early on Monday morning to find Anorexia squatting at my bedside bed, waiting patiently for a clamour of stupefying chants to fully penetrate every square centimetre of my being.

Flatly refusing to succumb to the temptations offered, I ran through my normal routine and ate my porridge and apple, pleasantly distracted by Chris Evans and a large general knowledge crossword.

By midday however, the Anorexia had stepped up it's game and I, like a swatted-at wasp, zipped from cupboard to fridge to freezer to cupboard to fridge to freezer, unable to make a decision about food, furious at myself for being hungry and confused by the sums and figures coursing through my head.
And so I have nothing.
Or bits of food.
Or nothing.
Or bits.
And I don't know anymore.

I end up kneeling against my bed, hands pressed against my eyes, thinking of nothing at all.
Because that's the only way I can find comfort in a pain that is almost physical.
Ripped apart. Visceral pain.

Later, in a paler shade of darkness, I forced myself to drive down to the supermarket, where I stumbled round in a malnourished daze.

"They say it's the worst day of the year today", the man said to the woman as he patted her back sympathetically.

Hopeful for something, ANYTHING, to explain the day, I googled it.
To find this.

The date for ‘the most depressing day of the year’ was first identified by Cliff Arnall, formerly of Cardiff University, marking the symbolic time in January when people suffer from a series of combined depressive effects.

His date was devised using the following mathematical formula:

The model was broken down using six immediately identifiable factors; weather (W), debt (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failing our new year’s resolutions (Q), low motivational levels (M) and the feeling of a need to take action (Na).

The formula calculates that Monday 16th January 2012 is the worst day of the year, when the Christmas glow has faded away, New Year’s resolutions have been broken, cold Winter weather has set in and credit card bills will be landing on doormats across the land – whilst the January pay-cheque is still some way away.

The formula started a chain of events which led to the designation of ‘Blue Monday’ – the third monday of January.

Believe it or not... But it was certainly my worst day in a very long time.

Dear Alanis...

2012-01-06T10:45:00.000Z

... If you think finding a black fly in your Chardonnay is ironic...

... try suffering from Anorexia Nervosa, an illness which is, ultimately, all about having 'control', and waking up to find that the future of your teaching career, your chances of going back to your job, rely solely on the words of two men who barely know you.

Now THAT'S ironic.

(I never got the black fly thing anyway)

Christmas: The Good, The Bad and The... Miracle...

2011-12-25T10:07:00.000Z

Every year I am struck by the potential that Christmas has for being, in Dickens' words, the very "best of times and the worst of times".
Whilst my natural inner cynic appreciates the odd bah humbug (and my mind's eye smiles affectionately as it casts over little blueprints of those I recall as I write), I cannot help but to be somehow drawn by the magic and sparkle that fans of Christmas sprinkle so liberally around the Western world.
As the festive season unravels, the dreariness of Winter is peeled further and further back as twinkling warmth unfolds and rests over the all too familiar landscapes in our lives.
Strings of lights glow warm on trees and houses, and people nod more; smile more; allow more.
Displays hark back to richly coloured illustrations of rosy cheeked, Victorian children gathered around candlelit fir trees.
And the world is in soft focus, with a gentle sepia overlay.

Until,
that is,
you turn on the news to hear about more bombs, more earthquakes, more famine, more drought, more human suffering than can be held in one heart.
And that's just the stuff on the radio.
Then there are all those that you know who are facing their first, second, third (and on..) Christmas without loved ones; grief gnawing away at brave faces, determined to make it bearable.
There are the many (so, so many) for whom the contrast of the magical Christmas atmosphere only serves to bring the agony of their own personal pain into unbearably sharp focus. Grief made more raw, bitterness more acid, longing more weighty, loneliness more solitary, and heavy sadness more piercing.
I don't want to be a party pooper... I can actually be the life and soul of one given half a chance, but perhaps because I've been there myself, I can't help but feel like writing a miserable letter to Slade as the line "everybody's having fun" streams from the radio

And then there is the real meaning of it all.
Which we miss, so easily... Lost amid the bright gold curling ribbon and the strewn wrapping and the glossy metallic bows and gift tags.
How did we manage to turn it into something so loud that it can drown the cry of a newborn?

If you are the sort who believes in the miracle of Christmas, as am I, you'll probably agree that sometimes it's hard to remember that all the gifts and the glitz aren't really a celebration of US at all.
It's really all about the fact that a child was given to the world. Divine, and yet human.
No. I can't get my head round it either.

Today is a hard day for anorexics too. Food and drink dictate the day.

This year I asked God for a miracle for Christmas.
Or should I say, ANOTHER miracle.
I asked him to take the illness away.

Miracles do happen.
There is much evidence to show that they have always happened.
Without wanting to sound ham, I do believe.
I will wait.

Wishing anyone who passes here a merry Christmas, full of the warmth of meaning.
And if you are one of the struggling, I wish you peace and hope you can somehow take heart from the fact that it's a couple of days out of so many. And they are more painful, so much more. But you will survive them and the rawness will be soothed. I promise.
Take heart.

It's twins...

2011-12-14T23:45:00.002Z

Possibly because of Belgium and ridiculous EU rulings about the shapes and sizes of fruit and veg... Siamese tomatoes are in short supply...

... so it was worth a photo

!!!

It's My Party...

2011-12-06T23:40:00.001Z

... and I'll cry if I want to.

Okay so No Party and No Tears, but it IS my birthday...
...and whilst it's been nice in many, many ways, I've struggled to keep my smile in place.
On two unguarded occasions it slid off my chin, provoking the observation that I looked sad.
It's important to me that they don't think I'm sad today.
The pain is more painful for those who watch.

My weight moved up by point seven of a kilo last week.
I can't begin to describe the misery that this small gain has caused, or the battle which has ensued.
Yet, I know I have to kill this Anorexia.
I know it even as I skip manically; as I push my body up on breaking arms; as I reach a breathless forty on my knee - to - elbow jumps, and as I crunch unforgiven coccyx on the hard floor.
I know it as I push each coveted mouthful past guarded lips, willing myself to swallow, to allow, to stay.
Each grind of my teeth, a perfectly synchronised nod and shake.
A simultaneous, stereophonic yes and no.

In all my wildest nightmares, I never once imagined that my birthday this year would be spent trying to claw my way out of Anorexia.

I hope against all hope that next year, the narrative will be very different.

Update

2011-11-24T23:14:00.000Z

To my addled, heavy - saddled mind, the increasing pressure to write a blog post has borne a wormish hole through my head and I can't sleep properly until I have, at least, been here and written some words.

I don't even think it matters what they are any more; just so long as I break the silence.

What follows is a week's worth of situations I have seen myself in:

I've been scooped and planed and smeared with gel for an ultrasound on my liver, which continues to register stupidly high ALTS in a determined display of disapproval.

I attended a weigh in appointment at the unit, which revealed another small drop in my weight. Again, I was told I was unable to 'do' this and that I needed to be back in the treatment centre.

Again I refused, knowing that they have no real grounds for threats whilst my weight is above 31.7kg / 5 stone / 69 lb... Today it stands at 34.0kg. I am incredulous (again and again and again) at the way this illness can CONVINCE me that I have put on at least 3 pounds every week. I can even SEE it.

Or not.

I saw The Woman, having completely forgotten to attend last week's session.

She has noted that lately I seem unable to allow myself a 'whole' of anything. I can't allow a whole packet of cereal, a whole apple, a whole sweet, and (judging by a regular pattern of totally unintentional lateness) a 'whole' session of therapy. (She doesn't appear to 'DO' "unintentional". Apparently (assume cynical tone) apparently its all to do with the unconscious mind.

Needless to say, my failure to even show up for a session was duly interpreted in the light of such analytical theory rather than the more truthful fact that I'm fairly malnourished and my brain isn't quite functioning as it should be.

The Woman has continued to be my place of safety.

Today we discussed Something Very Difficult (very briefly). I let it slide across me rather than through me.

We both know it was enough for now.

Tomorrow I am going away for the weekend with two friends.

We've rented a little cottage very cheaply and though I have questioned whether I can possibly enjoy a break from my safe but painful routine, I am now quite excited by the idea that I am doing something 'normal', with normal people, in a normal situation.

Normality is an underrated state, in my opinion.

Words being available, I will make some attempt at relaying just how successful I am in my attempt to join this fleeting dance with something outside of my world of body and battle.

Wish me luck.

Ode To Honesty

2011-11-15T11:13:00.000Z

Fragrant cotton
Sun-bleached soul
Death black scorpion
Sting in its tail.

Note To Self #1
All those pretty fables about the warm glow of Doing The Right Thing?
It's all a vicious lie!

(Particularly when it costs over two thousand pounds!)

Autumn - The Side Effects

2011-11-05T11:22:00.000Z

A Post In Pieces

2011-10-20T21:50:00.000+01:00

Again and again I stare into a murky pool of muddled metaphor and ill fitting adjectives in an attempt to find something powerful enough to describe the chaos of trying to recover from Anorexia Nervosa.

Plucking tangled fronds of slime gripped sentences that have no visible beginnings or ends... Dark words that, lifted lightwards, slide and slip heavily back into mud, resisting context and order.
Somewhere, there's a likeness between this 'independent' agony of being unable to adequately express the agony, and the quandary of being desperate to recover whilst being unable to physically complete the actions necessary for recovery to take place.
Re-feeding... This 'process' a mouth-less creature, starved to its skeleton, placed before a piece of fresh, tender meat. Driven mad by the hunger, its endless pacing surrounds the meal, carving circles in the earth.

I hold a license to eat but find my mouth has been stitched up.

Enough metaphors.
I did warn you...

For those interested, these are the facts:

Although I'm not in the unit anymore, I attend fortnightly reviews / weigh ins with the head consultant, a fantastically dedicated man with whom I have a very good rapport.

The aim is to move my weight up by following a strict meal plan.

The consultant's recommendation is that I return to the unit. I steadfastly refuse to do this. If you had to sit in a circle and discuss how you feel about your weight day in, day out for over nineteen weeks, so would you.

I am managing to maintain a steady weight, although at 34.6kgs, it is still very low.

My current BMI is 14.1.

My ALT levels continue to be much higher than they should be. Doctors are monitoring it carefully. The nurse at my local surgery does weekly ECGs and takes enough of my blood for us to consider each other as friends.

I had planned to return to work at the beginning of next half term. Occupational Health, my consultant and my bosses have told me this will not be possible.

Importantly, I continue to see The Woman.

The little house in the woods is my safest place and she is a worn piece of warm, brown leather with all the woody comfort smells of autumn fog and fir and fires.

She has been the one constant in the chaos, and although my financial situation reduces my time with her to once a week, this feels plenty enough balm for a mind addled from trying to win a battle which bleeds deeply, no matter which side wins.

I keep reading my flashcards (see Recovery Resources page).

The mantras are clear and loud at the start of each day but seem to wane as the hours pass. Towards the evening, I can barely hear a whisper.

It appears that the coherence and volume of these positive statements, corresponds with the amount of food I have inside me.

Declaration at Dusk.

2011-10-07T22:10:00.001+01:00

Still the battle rages,

And though the field dark red,

Rather now the agony,

Than live already dead.

So 'til the foe is silent,

Ignoring pleas of aching limb,

Through soul's dark night of madness

My heavy sword shall swing.

***

I'm fighting so hard that the mental exhaustion of the constant clash of thoughts, matches, even outweighs, the physical exhaustion of the eating disorder.

At times, the swords swing so fast that I can't recognise whether it is me, or the Anorexia, who has won the round.

Two things I know for sure: It hurts like hell

and

it doesn't stop for a minute in any waking hour.

I want...

2011-09-13T22:08:00.000+01:00

I want my life back.
No matter how bad things were, nothing, NOTHING can be as bad as Anorexia.

My weight remains in limbo, my mind in hell.
I am unable to complete tasks I attempt as my brain is just too addled.

I have started taking Pregabalin, despite the fear that its most common side effect is weight gain.
I don't care anymore.
I just want the illness to go.

I wish that I could be put to sleep whilst my weight is restored.

It occurs to me that I haven't written about The Woman lately.
I have so much to say.
So many words in a swirling vortex - half formed ideas dance purple shadows in front of my closed eyelids in the early hours.
I resolve to write posts about the nature of Anorexia and my understanding of its relationship with anxiety and depression.
I swear I'll reply to friends, blog friends and world friends, whose words and caring constantly brush soft against my bruises.
And yet, come the morning, I haven't got the mental energy.
It's all I can do just to force the bran through my lips.

I want to go back to work.
I want to live again.
I want to eat without feeling like I'm sinning.
I want to live outside of hell.

I want to ignore the old parental adage that whispers that 'I want doesn't get'.

Graffiti That Grabbed Me

2011-09-07T11:13:00.000+01:00

Taking a shortcut down a small alley the other day, I came across this message stencilled on a wall.

Ignoring the somewhat sinister effect of the dripping paint... the message itself brought a little flame of hopefulness in the midst of all the dark.

"You're Gonna Be Okay".

The feather-gentle sinking into reassurance. A warm blanket round the shoulders of a shaking crash victim.

Reckon we could all do with hearing that phrase sometimes.

Hits From Reality

2011-08-25T09:34:00.007+01:00

Things have been pretty awful. (An oxymoronic phrase if ever you saw one)

Two weeks ago I began frantically re-feeding after dutifully attending a routine fortnightly 'weigh in' at the unit, where they have insisted on monitoring me.

I hadn't quite realised how horrific I looked until I faced the concrete reality of the much feared scales. I hadn't really SEEN my sunken sockets and protruding cheek bones.

My weight had dropped below the 5 stone (70 pounds) mark again.

They told me I had a week to turn it around or... hospitalisation.

Despite my subsequent weight gain, later blood results showed that my liver had gone into crisis with ALT levels soaring.

Last Friday was a fairly terrifying of panic stricken phonecalls from the unit, my GP and the hospital. By early evening, I was sitting in A&E whilst too kind doctors apologetically eased needles into swollen veins.

No wonder I weighed light on the scales.

I wondered if they were going to bleed me dry.

Following three days of sterile corridors and needles and bleeping machines and spidery graphs and the clinging smell of industrial disinfectant and linoleum, they were satisfied that my levels had dropped and that the alarming elevation in ALTS was either due to the effects of prolonged starvation or to the delicate process of re-feeding.

I haven't been able to think straight for a while.

I'm still struggling to order my thoughts and to complete even the smallest of tasks. The painting was one thing I managed to finish, and now this blog post is another, although I haven't got the emotional strength to write about the things I want to; things that swirl in frenetic streaks through my mind, clamouring and clambering over my sleep.

There is no rest...

Enough now.

Paint For Peace

2011-08-16T15:40:00.005+01:00

I CHOOSE LIFE

Life Outside...

2011-08-08T22:53:00.004+01:00

I want to be honest.

Although nothing in me will tolerate the conditions of returning to the unit, I am, quite frankly, finding it very hard to manage the process of re-feeding.

It's tough going from the moment I wake up.

Impossible not to compromise on the calories I'm supposed to be having.

My weight is down to 5 stone, BMI 13 point something... maybe less.

I'm going to do a meal plan for tomorrow so I don't wake up and torture myself in the middle of the night with it all.

When in doubt...

2011-07-29T16:07:00.002+01:00

... make an owl.

Fascinating Trivia

2011-07-17T16:46:00.011+01:00

When I attended a review meeting at the unit this week, I caught up with some of the lovely girls from my group.

One of them asked me what I was doing with my days and it got me thinking...

Because my weight has dropped a little, I am finding concentration very difficult. I am also spending vast amounts of time walking about, an anorexic 'behaviour' really.

Anyway, what follows is a list of some random information.

Currently reading: How The Light Gets In - A fantastic first novel by M.J Hyland who creates a complex and fascinating protagonist, a young exchange student whose troubled life leaves her desperate to both 'fit in' and 'escape' almost simultaneously.

A Purpose Driven Life (Rick Warren). My spiritual reading being almost zilch over the past year, I decided that the title of this popular book sounded like something the doctor might order. The two and a half chapters I've read so far, have confirmed this instinct.

Being True To Life (David Richo) - A random find on a rickety table outside a secondhand bookshop last weekend. The whole purpose of this book is to inspire the reader to write poetry. Flicking through, I was instantly captivated by the lines:

I'm too depressed
To write a poem
Yet here it is

Simple. Brilliant. Truth.

So far, I've only read the introduction.

Currently Listening To: The Avett Brothers - I And Love And You - Loving this album at the moment!

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues -Quirky, choral, undoubtedly indebted to Simon and Garfunkel for inspired melodies.

Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More - What an Album!

Anything country, as per usual really.

Currently Watching: T.V series, The Apprentice (even though I hate Alan Sugar and the absolute unbridled arrogance of the contestants!)

Film - Mystic River, which I turned off halfway through cos my attention span is short right now.

Currently coveting: The Canon 430D SLR camera, although I have also looked at the Canon SX30 IS. I am passionate about photography and would love to take it up as a proper hobby. However, I am reluctant to 'rush' into anything at the moment and these cameras are very expensive.

Currently Enjoying Eating: Tesco Goulash Hearty Soup This is one very good low calorie meal if you halve it and add the odd new potato and salad! (Not that I should be doing low cal in a big way but...)

Currently Creating: Felt Flowers (er... yeah... I'm not sure either but hey... I have some time to spare between the hours of 4 and 6 most mornings).

My Recovery Project Scrapbook is still looking sparse (but not quite as sparse as my recovery itself - ho ho ho, tounge in cheek, hurts a bit to laug, etc etc...). I'm trying to complete a page about scales and numbers.

And there you have it. An assortment of trivia.

Anyone want to share in a similar fashion? Feel free to reply in comments.

Bombshell

2011-07-07T15:48:00.005+01:00

At around midday yesterday, unit staff announced the decision to reintroduce two much dreaded 'high energy' supplements into my meal plan.

The room around me blurred and whitened as my mind whirled into the shadow flecked vortex of spinning panic and dissociation.

Today I sit in relative calm.

The pain and the panic whirl around me but not within.

I discharged myself from the unit.

I'm not entirely sure how I will manage

but

failure is even less of an option that it was last week or the week before.

So:

The work of rebuilding continues.

A lot tougher and a little lonelier, but it continues nonetheless.

At the moment I am shuffling through rubble, feeling little more than dazed as I survey the extent of the wreckage and try to keep breathing through the swirling fusion of chalky dust and stone.

Er... About that "lighter note"...

2011-06-26T16:25:00.003+01:00

... In all honesty, I find it significantly easier to write 'lighter note posts' when I am lighter in a more literal sense.

When I last posted I had taken almost two weeks away from the unit. One week on a trip down to the Cornish coast and a few days 'thinking time' to decide whether or not I was able to truely commit to treatment.
In that relatively short amount of time, I somehow managed to 'achieve' a comforting weight loss of four pounds (approx 2kg). Thus, with my BMI safely hovering around 14, I felt able to be a little more relaxed.
In the end though, the misery of the rapid increase in restrictive eating and the anxiety caused by the fact that I felt like a fugitive, aided my decision to return to the unit to continue the treatment.

After a couple of weeks of fairly intensive 'refeeding' (ugh! So much 'treatment lingo') Thursday's 'weigh in' revealed that my BMI is back up to 14.5. My tears though, were relatively shortlived as somehow, my brain appears to experience some miraculous kind of backlash against the anorexic desire to sabotage any weight gain through intense exercise.
For reasons possibly only known to God himself, despite the panic of being faced with jacket - potato - with - tuna - mayo lunches, and margarine sandwiches with hummus, I seem to have managed to maintain a fairly determined, positive attitude towards the concept of recovery for the remainder of the week. In fact, in another attempt at taking steps towards defeating this twisted illness, I handed in my pair of scales on Friday. As I passed them to one of my favourite staff members, I felt as though I was holding my hand against a hot iron.

The burn hasn't cooled yet and if anything, I know it will become even hotter tomorrow morning as 'weigh in' approaches.
I can only hope that time will afford some healing.

And on a lighter note...

2011-06-18T11:47:00.000+01:00

... the sight of a pile of these made me grin as I stood in Topshop last week...

...And The Dream Of Being Special

2011-06-04T00:31:00.000+01:00

Every now and then, I read something that is so searingly honest that reading it feels like pressing on a fracture.

I recently came across one such piece of writing and thought I'd share an extract of it here.

...And The Dream Of Being Someone Special

And in the summer sunshine
You believed the things they told you
For it's part of being little
And the trust is right inside you
Like a ball of summer sunshine
In the middle of your body
And you think that it will never
Fade away
But as the days go flying
You are troubled by the shadows
In the hearts and hands and faces
Of the people you had trusted
When they promised you the sunshine
For you hear the winter now
In what they say
And the dream of being special floats away
And the whole damn thing looks so grey.

Adrian Plass
Clearing Away The Rubbish

One Balloon At A Time

2011-05-26T09:36:00.005+01:00

A girl floats above the earth, looking down at the ground with a mixture of longing and terror.
She is frightened of SO MANY THINGS.
Things that are UNNAMEABLE because to speak them may bring them into being.
To name them all would be exhausting.
And besides, some of the fear doesn't have a name.
It's just there. Just because.

The girl is kept suspended by a big bunch of balloons.
Each balloon has something written on it. Some element of her illness and of the fear which may lie behind it.
The balloons keep her safe. They keep her looking at the world without quite being in it/ part of it.

A Christian lady I met on a course I recently attended had this in her head as she prayed for me.
She told me that God was handing me a pair of scissors and that he was gently encouraging me to cut just one string...
She told me that I'd still have the other balloons so I wouldn't plummet to earth.

I thought about this a lot.
It reminded me of British graffiti artist, Banksy, and his brilliant image of the little girl holding the balloons.

Yesterday I drove into the unit turning the picture over in my head.
At lunchtime, I took the scissors and cut the balloon with the word 'Jacket Potato' on it.

It sounds absurd... but my fear of carbs is just one in a long list of foods which is holding me in this illness.

I should note here that, as promised, cutting the string attached to that particular balloon, has not made me fall to the ground, a puddle of flesh.
It caused huge fear afterwards, but I'm still very much suspended.

For now, I'm still fairly 'safe'.

I do know though, that I must work hard to seriously challenge this illness.
And that the best way to do it is to use the scissors.

Just one balloon at a time.

Words...

2011-05-15T10:56:00.004+01:00

... don't come easily.

One of the (very many) unpleasant side effects of anorexia and the re-feeding process is constipation.

I know.

Not something that makes an attractive reading experience.

Nevertheless, a rather uncomfortable reality for me right now.

(One I deserve, no doubt)

I mention this because, as I try to sit down (which requires an untold degree of discipline given that standing up burns more calories) and write something, ANYTHING, about how things are looking for me (or... inside me) at the moment, the medical definition of the word 'impacted', paints pictures in my head.

The ever reliable Websters Dictionary defines the term as:

1 a : blocked by material (as feces) that is firmly packed or wedgedin position impacted colon>
b : wedged or lodged in a bodily passage impacted mass of feces>impacted fetus in the birth canal>
2 : characterized by broken ends of bone driven together impacted fracture>
3 of a tooth : wedged between the jawbone and another toothimpacted wisdom tooth>

... And all three of these seem to perfectly describe my current mental, emotional and spiritual state.

I feel the agony of the growing mass, bulging and folding against the walls of my mind. I feel the acrid sting of sobs, pushing painfully against the base of my throat and the heavy, heavy blur of words that won't attach to each other, trapped as they are, in the indistinct, impacted shit.

My communication channels been impacted for weeks now.

A Day in Life at The Unit. Part 2

2011-05-02T00:16:00.004+01:00

The state of neglect that has befallen this particular pocket of cyberspace is indicative of some of the trauma and some of the inexplicable sense of exhaustion that follows the experience of being cooped up in the unit day in, day out.

By the time I get home in the evening (having first run frantically around a range of supermarkets / shops / country lanes in an attempt to 1)get some sort of exercise and 2)create some sort of sense of separation between my life as a recovering anorexic and my life as a human being) all I really want to do is disappear into a protective shell.

At the moment, I'm thanking God (and Kate and William, of course) for the second three day week; thus a break from the intense goldfish bowl environment of the unit. However, I know that come Tuesday, the brief period of reprieve is over and there can be no avoidance of further weight gain.
With no exercise, supervised feeding of high fat foods and the addition of an obligatory three hundred calorie 'Fortisip' drink, the gain is inevitable.

I could write about the splits in my mind; the constant warring thoughts; the terror of the terrible losses that grow as I gain... but it's too soul destroying to even think about right now.

I am ruled by absolute fear.

I'm afraid that I will gain weight and lose the sense of safety that I worked so long and so hard for.
I'm afraid that I will lose weight and be forced to include another bloody Fortisip in my diet.

I'm afraid that I will be on this refeeding thing forever, yet I'm frightened that I might start piling on weight at a ridiculous rate.

I'm afraid that I might not be able to get over this hideous illness and I'll never enjoy food again, but I'm scared by the physiological responses to refeeding which make me hungry much of the time and less able to resist food.

I want to get better
but i don't want to put on weight.

It feels like a no win situation.

And I feel like a hamster, stuck on a wheel that won't stop turning, so I can't stop running, so it won't stop turning, so I can't stop running... and on it goes.

A Day in Life at The Unit. Part 1

2011-04-10T21:34:00.005+01:00

Thank you all for continuing to support my journey on the roller. I guess it's quiet right now.

Or rather, the screams are stifled much of the time.

I'm very tired and lacking in energy.

Re-feeding is an incredibly upsetting experience and I'm already dreading tomorrow (a 'weigh' day in case I haven't put on enough weight and have to face the prospect of even more food being added to my meals or snack times in the unit.

In keeping with the desperately 'split' nature of Anorexia, I am equally dreading the possibility that I may have put weight ON.

However, I write this after a day where I feel as though I have barely had a moment without stuffing some artificially sweetened / low fat / low - as - I - can - get - away - with foodstuff down my gullet. (And yes, technically speaking my meal plan is supposed to exclude all such products but hey, it's the weekend.)

I have actually put on a few pounds. This, a response to last week's blood results indicating the fact that my liver, heart and kidneys are struggling; my white blood cells are decreasing and my protein intake is way too low.

How this should be happening now, at a point where my diet is more varied than it has been for months, seems to beggar belief but my doctor explained that there is often a bit of a 'lag' with these things.

The guy who runs the program we follow at the unit (who, for reasons I will explain at some point, I will henceforth refer to as 'The Godfather') offered me the option of potassium supplements or 2 bananas a day.

Needless to say, the bananas are not a feature of my new heart-sustaining regime.

So.

Tomorrow is tough before it has begun.

Although that's not exactly positive thinking and I understand that I should possibly reframe that thought in a CBTish kind of way.

Still.

Here's how it's going to look on a purely practical level.

I'll get up early, shower and make myself look as 'well' as I possibly can without looking like one of those orange make up ladies behind the Max Factor / Elizabeth Arden counters at Debenhams.

I'll chop an apple or small pear into small slices and eat it painstakingly slowly regardless of whether I am early or late (and despite panicking that I am, in fact, the latter).

I'll blare my way through the beautiful countryside at a speed which is as far above the limit as the car in front will allow (OK... so I know this is not a good way of doing things but I have a weird obsession with never allowing myself to be too late), twitching and 'dancing' as much as I can to burn off calories.

Arriving on time, or even half an hour early, I'll drive around looking for a non existent parking space until I am about 5 minutes late.

Getting into the unit, I'll sign in and go through to find the girls I've grown to love so much.

It's Monday and the anxiety of the weigh in is thickly palpable. I'll dig out 'Sticker of the Week' and they'll all choose a cute, puffy animal sticker which they will either wear or stick on the new week's food diary. Some of us crowd around two clipboards, one of which contains a table headed 'Lunch' and the other 'Snacks'. We have a selection to choose from for the day. Girls will wander in and out as we take it in turns to go to the weighing room where one of the lovelier clinicians awaits our blustered, flustered entrance.

Once this procedure is over, The Godfather calls us to sit around in the circle and we check in and talk about our weight. No specifics. Just whether it's up or down and our feelings around it.

The group are then invited to feedback.

This goes on all morning until snack time at 10.30 and continues until lunchtime at 12.15.

Sitting around 2 tables, each with a hawk eyed member of staff, we swallow our food with varying degrees of cheer.

We are well bonded.

We are there because we want to get better. Sort of.

But there is rarely a meal where someone doesn't sit, tears running down tortured face, as the sandwich appears to be more threatening than usual.

I'll stop here because I'm so tired and I haven't been sleeping too well lately.

Hitting Critical.

2011-03-26T22:31:00.005Z

So.

I've been found out.

Big time.

The unit I have been attending for treatment for the last four weeks demand regular ECGs and blood tests.

Although I have been complying with their re feeding stuff when I'm there, outside of the unit I have been over compensating to such a great extent that this week I weighed less than when I started.

I have been cheating their scales very well up until a spot weigh on Friday.

At about half past seven on Wednesday evening I missed a call from a doctor who left a message asking me to phone back to confirm that I was being followed up by the ED unit.

My most recent ECG showed that my pulse was under 40.

I know my weight has been under 5 stone for some time and has dropped significantly.

I have been informed that if my weight does not increase this weekend then more energy will be packed into me during the day and I may well face hospitalisation.

The terror of the situation has driven me to eat like I haven't eaten for a long time. And yes, the food is lovely but the torture and the panic and pain

of re-feeding is almost overwhelming.

The pain of the swelling in my hands woke me at five thirty this morning.

My feet are purple.

My body aches.

I am drained beyond belief.

Shattered.

Until now, I have managed to maintain such composure within the group.

They value my support but I have not been able to be truly honest with them or accept any real support from them.

The Woman suggests that this is all defence, denial even.

I know she is right.

I have never been so grateful for her.

Clocks go forward tonight and, one hour earlier, tomorrow

brings the fresh prospect of sunshine and an endless stream of food to make me feel more swollen, bloated and out of control.

I have been strapped into a rollercoaster which has jerked forward unsteadily and set off to a slow roll.

The screeching and grinding of the steel on the old metal tracks is drowning out my shouts as I try to tell them I want to get off.

Please.

Excuse me?

Can you stop it..? Please. I need to get off. I changed my mind I want to get off stop Please PLEASE LET ME OFF.

Being Here

2011-03-13T22:47:00.003Z

I've made countless attempts to write a post here which might somehow capture the absolute rollercoaster of a journey I've been on in the last fortnight at the Eating Disorders Unit.

So far, all such efforts have been thwarted by a complete sense of overwhelming exhaustion when I try to string more than a few words together.

Suffice to say that the experience of being stuffed full of food at far too regular intervals between 10 and 4, has been almost intolerable and I have to admit, I have tried to cheat wherever possible.

I am like the naughty schoolgirls that I so often have to teach.

Only, I'm far more fragmented in many ways.

The rest of the time is spent in the group... doing group everything.

This has proved to be an interesting experience inasmuch as the strength of bonding occuring within the group and the incredible sense of love I have felt for these girls.

Overall, despite the feeding (and because they are new to open and therefore have not set up properly yet - and so no evening meals yet) I have lost weight.

Mainly this is muscle wastage. I can no longer run or even jog.

Climbing stairs is difficult.

I will write when I have more energy.

I'm sorry that I haven't kept up with other blogs lately.

It's all very, very tiring and overwhelming.

Right now...

2011-03-03T22:19:00.003Z

I'm in hell.

I can't say more than that.

The Difficulty Of Getting Something Down...

2011-02-26T22:02:00.005Z

... is partly due to my inability to find words apt enough to describe the way I feel. This is compounded and made considerably more difficult by the fact that the feelings surrounding the food issues which occupy my mind much of the time, are not only in constant conflict with one another, but also shift precariously from a mode of total freeze over, to a frenetic clamoring of overwhelming proportions and volume.

Add to this the tide of lethargy that ebbs away at the desire to even attempt to find a voice, and the contrasting sense of compulsion to never sit still (thus burning calories almost constantly) and you have the ingredients for a pretty hit and miss blog.

Due to a binge session which my body won't allow me to purge, no matter how far my fingers get down my throat, I am battling the urge to just tear my stomach open and pull the food out by some twisted, self performed C-section type thing...

Nice.

I am, as of next week, beginning a program of re-feeding at a new Eating Disorders Unit.

The terror I feel is pretty much indescribable, but the backlash against the inevitable weight gain has been drastic.

I never knew my weight could drop so fast once past a certain weight.

I now fall into the "critical" category with a BMI that puts me at very high risk.

With a body that is so weak and painful, I find it almost unbelievable that I STILL fear gaining weight... I don't know if I will ever understand how on earth my thinking has become SO WARPED, so disillusioned, that death seems to be the ever-so-slightly preferable option over watching the numbers on the scales increase.

At this point though, understanding hardly matters and in reality, the agony of my family is my greatest concern.

A part of me is looking for recovery, still trying to cling to hope, desperate for balance and normality.

I've bought SELF HELP books on eating disorders for goodness sakes.

I'm not a self help book person. In fact, generally, the trite, over simplified advice given in them, kills me... that or the fact that an equal number of books which profess to improve you, your life, relationships, memory, income, confidence, whatever, are written by people who learned to write alliterative lists of rehashed proverbs.

Moving on.

Reflecting today, I realised that this blog is less and less 'A Journey Through Therapy' and has (excuse the pun) been devoured by my eating disorder.

It seems that, for the time being, it will now centre around the struggles of 'recovery' (albeit, merely a notional reality for me).

With all this in mind, I apologise to anyone who has been misled with regards to the content herein.

I have considered starting another, more appropriately titled space, but realised one blog was hard enough to manage. The Woman still wants to see me weekly, if this is possible and so I will still be charting aspects of what goes on in The Little House In The Woods.

I guess in some ways, I will be examining the effects of both CBT and psychoanalytic therapy and just how effective and useful they are for me, and perhaps, for others in similar situations.

For Dear Life

2011-02-17T23:23:00.006Z

A small platform stands high above the trees. My feet are squashed on the square and I wobble and bend into, and against, the varying winds in my effort not to fall.

I am frightened to even breathe.

I look up and see blurred lines in the distance but I am too scared to focus on anything other than staying balanced.

Those lines are the date of my treatment in the unit and they hang somewhere a space and a half away from me. I try to look up at them, to adjust my vision. If i try to brace myself I'm scared I'll tense up too much and topple.

For the time being, I can only look directly at the scales I stand on, hardly daring to breathe in the precarious safety of the diminishing numbers.

Somewhere in my mind, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that weight gain is going to be inevitable.

Two friends gave me this stone earlier in the week.

I've been holding onto it at night, hoping that somehow, it will sink beneath the surface of my skin.

The battle seems endless and hope is something that I know I need more than any other weapon in my armory right now.

Quiet

2011-02-13T13:27:00.005Z

My silence does not reflect a lack of happening.

Rather it is me sitting very, very still in a vain effort to just hold on to the dream-tilting floor on which I appear to be crumpled.

No longer able to work out, I have experienced an incredibly rapid, not to mention painful, wasting of my muscles.

Despite the plummeting scales, pulse rate, metabolism, body temperature and capillary refill times, my 'rational'/natural sense of alarm is still usurped by this absurd illness' desperation to lay waste to my physical form.

The Eating Disorders Team insist on weekly meetings, blood tests and ECGs and have become increasingly forthright in demanding my attendance and compliance with their requests.

I stumbled out of Friday's meeting in the horror glare of full beam headlights, my autonomy waved in front of me like an over exposed photo.

I commence full time treatment in their new unit in the first week of March. Failure to comply will result in the section route.

One of the primary focuses of the treatment is re-feeding.

I suspect that you have to be half bloody mad yourself before you can begin to understand the absolute frozen terror which lies in thick sheets at the bottom of my stomach.

Where I've Been

2011-02-05T22:52:00.010Z

The place I was staying was incredibly beautiful, and from a spiritual and emotional perspective, was exactly what I most needed.

Even my room was called 'Peace'.

It was a retreat in the true sense of the world and for five days, I didn't have to answer to, look out for or 'live up to' anyone.

During the days, I took myself off for long walks along miles of deserted coastline. The chill wind cut across my skin as I bent and straightened picking shells off the sand, making me feel more alive than I have for weeks. On two of the days, a harsh February sun lit the beaches and the reedy sand grasses so deeply that it took my breath away.

In my early teens I fell in love with Byron's poetry and although not necessarily understanding it all, I would experience something not unlike agony as I tried to hold the weight of his beauty-laden words.

I later discovered Shelley, Keats, Longfellow and the other romantics and went through a period where I appreciated little else in the way of literature.

As I walked along, I recalled Byron's lines from one of his epic works, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."

I learned these lines because they resonated at a level far deeper than I myself ever found words for. Here he expresses the universal sense of 'rapture' at the awesome beauty of the natural world, and somehow captures man's longing to, be a part of something outside the bounds of society, to transcend the material world of mankind and be a part of something divine.

I had moments where I felt this in the core of my soul.

I include some pictures I took, some more artistic than others.

Physically, I lost weight and my muscles ache endlessly as they. quite obviously, waste.

Spiritually, hands have cupped around dying embers and gentle breath has deepened their glow. I am unsure how long it will last, but I am taking time to focus on being creative as a way of trying to nurture this.

The Woman was careful with her relief when I saw her on Friday.

I realise I look bad.

I have a lot of catching up to do on other blogs. Please bear with me.

Halt

2011-01-30T22:53:00.002Z

It never fails to shock when you wake up in the morning to find death sitting on the side of your bed, waiting for its subliminal whisperings to wake you.

Refusing to so much as glance at the intruder, I got up and went through my Sunday 'to do' list.

Number one, buy salad stuff for lunches... Number two, bake brownies for colleagues' birthdays tomorrow... Number three, mark kids' work... Number four, gym... Number five...

Still ignoring the cloak of darkness, I shower and find my way downstairs, chattering about Jamie Oliver and brightly listing ingredients, envisioning birthday brownies in cheery homemade boxes, red with white polka dots.

It'll be alright, I tell myself. Just keep moving. It'll pass.

Two days later, as I sit in the doctors' surgery, I wonder if it would have somehow all been okay if I'd made it to Tescos to buy what I needed.

"Back in a bit", I said, trying to ignore the back breaking heaviness and the winter chill as I grab my bag.

I never made it to the front door.

Instead, I half crawled up the stairs into my bedroom, where I sank down against the radiator, slumped in a dazed stupor wondering if there was anyone in the world who I could call to for help.

I didn't realise I couldn't move until I tried when I heard mum coming upstairs. neither did I realise that I was crying quite uncontrollably.

I've since been signed off work for a month (which I won't take) and had a week off work.

Unusually (for me), rather than the time off being detrimental, it has actually helped and I am feeling better than I did.

My folks (my poor folks) have been amazingly supportive, desperately worried and willing support me in almost anything that I think might help.

In desperate depression, I scoured the web looking for a hotel I could stay in just to get a break. The darkness worsened as my inability to make any decisions left me feeling increasingly despondent and hopeless. I figured that I would probably just spend the whole time binging and purging anyway.

I've ended up booking a week in a sort of retreat centre that I stumbled upon.

I have no idea how it will be, or whether I'll last the week. I leave tomorrow.

Certainly, last week, I was far too unwell to go anywhere.

There's no internet where I'm going so I will have to rely on my phone to check here or to post anything.

It's a risk, in some ways... I don't feel as though I am 'safe' with myself at the moment. Tonight's TWO binge and purge sessions show that.

The Woman was very concerned when I saw her last Monday.

She made me go to the doctor (saying that if I didn't, SHE would). She also gave me her mobile and made me communicate things during the week.

I was terrified by this new step.

This morning’s appointment with the Eating Disorders team was terrifying but I won't go into it at the moment. Suffice to say, they expect me to start full time treatment with them when they get up and running at the end of February.

I fought a surge of hysteria as they told me about eating two meals a day under their supervision.

I can't imagine being able to.

After this, The Woman was a warm blanket.

Halt

2011-01-30T22:26:00.013Z

Alanis Eat Yer Heart Out

2011-01-26T23:38:00.004Z

"Isn't it ironic"...

...Alanis appears to state rather than question, which is probably just as well given that her definition of 'irony' sometimes (some lines) seems to be a little dubious (at best).

Semantic inaccuracies aside, she has an incredible voice (and tons of attitude) but the reason why I quote h

er right now, is

that I hear that line playing in my mind as I contemplate posting that today, the mind - cloaking darkness that has more or less disabled me since Saturday, was shot through with a narrow laser beam somewhere high above me.

And I've been like a drowning body who, in the last swelling, slipping moments, finds an air hole in the thick ceiling of ice above.

I haven't even been to work.

Can you imagine? Because I can't.

Today I walked around Ikea buying plates and bowls and other pointless porcelain vessels.

I want to move to my own place.

And all the time the Alanis song was playing.

My ray of light beamed from the numbers on the scales.

Isn't it ironic.

The lower I go, the higher I get.

And, I'm walking around Ikea investing in a future that I am doing my damnedest to end before it has the chance to begin.

Now, Alanis?

THAT'S irony

Sad

2011-01-22T22:49:00.003Z

It's true.

I'm sad.

Actually, 'sad' doesn't really 'fit'... It's just the closest I can get.

I've wanted to write here but have been unable to find the voice / words.

Tonight I'm bad.

I've never binged like I have tonight.

I've been purging for an hour and still feel nowhere near empty.

I don't know how to cope.

Since my last post, I've been threatened with inpatient treatment and forced to have blood tests and ECGs.

I feel a mixture of horror and relief that the funding for inpatient treatment has been cut. I've been 'summoned' for treatment in a day clinic which opens in March.

I'm not sure I will make it that long.

My weight is an all time low.

Work have told me they will hold my job for me if I go away for any period of recovery.

I know I can't 'succeed' here.

I need to go away.

Half of me fantasises about a Greek island for a couple of months.

Half of me believes I will have die like this.

I need to get away but don't have a safe place to go TO.

Where in the world can I go to try and get better?

I'm desperate and frightened.

I've never been this lost.

Lies, Damned Lies....

2011-01-14T00:56:00.000Z

... and Anorexia.

If Anorexia is a faceless figure in an old black and white horror, then deceit is the dark cloak wrapped around the shadowed form.

As a fourteen year old, I watched as this graveyard figure misted around the sister I adored, breathing lies and cunning into the mouth of her soul.

When she spoke, it was with a new voice; a voice of distrust, defence and guile.

I hated the dainty steps of deception that I heard moving so quietly along the upstairs landing; from bedroom to bathroom; from sink to window, from hand to mouth to toothbrush. I hated watching the cloak pass over her - through her, each time stealing away a piece of the sibling I loved more than myself.

Lately though, I too have taken breath from the figure. I understand now, that same desperation, which shakes the pounding heart, and will go to such lengths to protect and disguise the disgusting truths of an anorexic existence.

Fingers pushing against the wall of my throat, I heave and retch, praying to keep silent.

My dad knocks on the door and asks to be let in.

I am washing the last of it down the basin, frantic, talking all the time.

I let him in.

"What were you doing just then, with your door locked?"

I search in corners furthest from the truth.

It must be feasible. It must be shameful.

"Oh..."

I can't bear the look in his eyes.

"I was... weighing myself".

I manage to whisper,

"sorry".

He wraps me in his arms to comfort my despair.

"Oh love... " Words of comfort pump shame around my body. "It'll all be okay... Just as long as you're not secretly drinking or making yourself sick"

A couple of days ago, a similar scenario. This time, I'm sure he knows.

Eyes watering, throat burning, nose running.

I was washing my hands.

Honest.

***

Not only does Anorexia make liars out of its prey; it is, IN ITSELF, a lie.

It's a throat grabbing, heart stopping, life sucking LIE.

And although one part of me knows that this lie is fundamental to the discovery, diagnosis and medical definition of this disorder, another part cannot possibly disbelieve the truth of what I see and feel.

It doesn't matter that that 'truth' is a distortion.

It doesn't matter that it may be a deception.

What matters is that no matter what the scales say, the truth is, it's never small enough.

Sucked in.

Therapy - The Return

2011-01-09T22:32:00.003Z

Somehow, the monster had fallen asleep in the overlooked shadows of the cave.

And the cave, in it's way, had forgotten the echoes of it's clawing and shrieking; forgotten even the heavy thuds of the desperate turning as it tore deeper at the gashes of its matted flesh.

The cave fast forgot and its rock surface smoothed soft.

In the Friday floodlight, the cave prayed for dimmer light as the monster stirred.

"You're censoring a lot", said The Woman - (not a question, you'll notice).

I nod dumbly. Then I jest, "Just taking it easy".

Really though, I'm afraid to wake something up.

Need.

My worst enemy.

Need breeds need.

Therapy Breaks, Angels and Emails

2011-01-04T23:09:00.007Z

Despite offering a full English breakfast, Christmas film, popcorn and a Christmas Quiz, we never get a huge amount of kids in on the last day of term. In fact, at particular times of the year our attendance often becomes a real issue.

The kids we DO get in are often either those who might be classed as our more 'phobic' kids, who are too anxious to attend a mainstream secondary school, and those kids for whom home life is just so chaotic that they prefer the safety and security offered by the unit.

(Our very disaffected ones tend to be off mugging people at the first possible opportunity).

I'm digressing.

Over the last 18 months, one of my girls has faced particularly horrendous traumas. As her form tutor, I have had regular sessions with her just to offer support, listening and as much care as is possible within obvious boundaries.

As the last day of term wore on, this student grew increasingly impatient.

Unable to watch the film, she wandered from teacher to teacher, talking about anything and everything. I watched as I sat drawing "Christmassy" things with some of the young people.

I remembered how I had been struck by her reluctance to leave us for the summer... and also how badly her behaviour, her health and her attitude had deteriorated after that 6 week break.

Having a place of safety in the midst of utter turmoil is not just important, it's essential.

It's somewhere familiar, when so often, the world is overwhelming and frightening. It's somewhere predictable, where it's not necessary to walk on egg shells in case something or someone explodes. It's somewhere that nurtures rather than competes with or abuses.

And, perhaps most importantly for a small number, it is a place which will stay safe, stay familiar, stay concerned and stay THERE despite all the railing and kicking and yelling.

(The parallels are obvious...)

For some, coping when the place which holds them together suddenly isn't there for a fortnight (or much longer), is a painful and terrifying concept, which can result in a sense of hopelessness and self destruction.

Before she left, on impulse I ran to fetch the tiny doodle I had been doing.

It was of a small, silver angel.

Pressing it into her hand, I told her that the angel was going to stay with her over the Christmas holiday and that it would bring her back safe and sound.

"Does it matter if t

he angel comes back with me or not?"

(Instinctive reaction = Fear. Will I have to look after it?)

No, I told her. Even if it disappeared, it would still be watching over her and looking after her, but it was a secret. Not everyone had an angel. (And to be fair, a number of the kids would have used it as a roach for a spliff as soon as they got past the front door!!!)

You may well be asking where on earth all this is going... and you'd be right, because I haven't thought it out very well and as a result, it's a very convoluted way of saying something probably quite simple.

In a recent comment, JSS picked up that I had made some progress in being comforted by The Woman's concern before the therapy break.

It occurred to me as I typed the last post, that in some strange way, her insistence that she wrote down her email address (which I did point out was on the Internet) was an angel that she put in my palm. It wasn't about using it, it was about knowing that somehow, although my one place of safety was disappearing from my view, it was still there. It IS still there.

For a person caught in a trap, the knowledge that someone is coming back for them, may offer them enough courage to hang onto life for an extra minute.

For the teenage girl forced to live with someone who ruined her childhood, maybe the thought that an angel hears her cries, is enough to make her feel heard until we can.

And for me, maybe merely having the option of communicating, is enough to remind me that she would still hear me.

Let's hope so.

New Year

2011-01-01T23:03:00.006Z

If I had less alcoholic tendencies, I'd have stood a better chance of enjoying the first day of 2011. Sadly though, in characteristic pathetic and humiliating style, I was unable to withstand the temptation of hitting the bottle too hard at a party last night.

My body is not a happy one.

I suppose it could be seen as a fitting way to end a year where my mind and my body have been in almost constant conflict. A year of internal chaos.

Perhaps the battle can be added to the fact that I'm 1) very hungover and 2) half bloody starved, as possible reasons for why I begin this year feeling too weak to even get up today.

Unspoken words lie like bricks inside me. To actually write them would be exhausting.

Therapy breaks often leave me in a sort of blogging limbo, although this one hasn't been too bad.

I was comforted that the woman didn't seem to want to leave me. She even made sure I had her email, although I think she knew I'd never use it.

Boundaries keep me safe, even if they also keep me in isolation.

I feel as though I should probably have all sorts of resolutions but in all honesty, I feel too tired and, rather embarrassingly, too hopeless.

It's been tough enough resisting the urge to entitle this post: Same Shit, Different Year.

(Does anyone else remember that trend where nearly every cynical, smart ass person they knew had a tshirt which declared 'Same shit, different day'? )

For those Who Know It's Christmas Time

2010-12-24T08:31:00.005Z

Christmas Eve. 6.44 am.

I've been awake for hours. It's minus six out and I've been lying very still, hands tucked under my pillow to stop the chill.

I've been trying to pretend I'm sleeping. If I pretend perhaps it will really happen.

There's a whole other post in there somewhere, but it's not for today.

Finally I tiptoe out of bed and pull back the curtains.

I catch my breath, startled afresh by the stark beauty of the winter world.

Evergreen branches bow, weighted by heavy snow. The folds of thick coated earth gleam darkly in the midnight hues; The earth is dark blue and black and every shade between.

The neighbour's lights glow orange against the blues and I can't resist opening the window to take a postcard shot.

The cold Christmas air seems to shiver with silent expectation. The heaviness of the snowfall muffles even the sounds of nature itself and I am quieted by beauty.

I light a candle and place it on the windowsill before getting back into bed.

On the radio, the Band Aid hit plays and for the billionth time, I think about those who DO know it's Christmas.

Not in a way which disregards the starving: those afflicted by disease, drought, extreme poverty. That song was for them, and thank goodness for Geldoff and his incredible dedication to the cause.

But I can't help of think of those for whom the knowledge that it is Christmas, brings none of the excitement or seasonal cheer; none of the hope or expectation that glows around us, warming like a father hug; none of the childlike joy that pervades despite having shed the skin of youth.

For some, all that makes us glow, serves as a cutting reminder of what they have lost: loved ones, people suffering with terminal illness, the elderly, the lonely, so many.

I light my Christmas candle for those who have gritted their teeth and closed their eyes in the hope that they can make it through today and tomorrow. For those whose darkness feels even deeper next to the (often superficial) brightness of Christmas.

I pray (in honesty, without much hope) that the true magic of Christmas may be known in hearts that feel desperation and dread at this time of year.

(And yes, it's an almost impossible time for those with eating disorders, so I guess I don't get off Christmas lightly either... but I'm thankful that I'm loved today and I'm thankful that I'm not alone.)

Happy Christmas readers.

My prayer extends to ALL of you.

Apologia

2010-12-22T00:19:00.011Z

Sometimes I have something I want to say but I can't find the energy to piece the words together. It's been like that for days now, and I'm now expending more energy on NOT writing than I would otherwise do in making the attempt.

So here goes.

My Blog...

When I first entered the blog sphere, it was as a teacher in search of colourful or comical images which I could use to liven up worksheets and teaching resources I was

creating.

A Google Image search for "mountain" may link to a post about somebody's holiday; somebody's love of climbing; advice on mountaineering equipment; an obsession with Everest;

somebody's personal obstacles or victories; the view from somebody's back garden...

I loved it that, just for one moment in time, I could dip into another world, culture, mind, heart. It felt like a privilege to glimpse the world through the eyes of someone I would never know and I loved the bizarre juxtaposition (and I'm sorry to use such a word but I can't think of another) of intimacy and anonymity offered by a blog.

I didn't realise that blogs could be 'followed' by strangers who may become friends in the virtual world. I didn't have a clue that there was a relational aspect to them, and I certainly never dreamed that anyone would sustain interest in anything I wrote.

The notion of blogging became attractive because so much of what I feel and experience feels as though it belongs to a part of me that couldn't be shown to others. A part of me that is too dark, too honest, too pained, too tired... too something.

A diary was too risky. I've kept them before. Dangerous things, diaries. You end up lying half the time... just in case...

I liked the idea that some random person, sitting, standing, lying anywhere on earth, in an office, classroom, lounge, hut, hospital, cafe, bedroom, could hear my voice.

Just for a moment in time.

And that's all this blog was.

A glimpse. A raised eyebrow every now and then. A sound bite.

I like it that I am not 'known' and yet can be heard

I admit to struggling with the fact that not only do some followers feel that they know me, but they have also come to 'care'.

Intimacy is an itchy jumper.

As I type, I am inwardly howling with frustration at sounding so ungrateful.

I have appreciated your words. I have come to care too.

*wince*

The split in me hurts. I am torn by wanting care and wanting to yell at everyone to stay away from me.

Before disappearing into sleep, I should probably conclude by saying that this blog is not about anyone apart from me (yes, it's a very selfish blog).

Anything posted here is an expression of something I am feeling or thinking about. It will have been posted either because of a drive to somehow put it 'outside' of me, or because of an urge to 'create' words for it.

I have no need to be understood or cared about here. I'm not looking for anything other than a little space, on a vast web, where I can be heard without being known.

Intimate and Anonymous.

I will remember, next time I need to exemplify an oxymoron.

Safety in Numbers

2010-12-12T23:23:00.003Z

No Way Out

2010-12-04T22:29:00.005Z

Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a blowtorch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep there's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Can you help me remember how to smile?
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded?
Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just a-drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

And everything seems cut and dried
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughing at the rain
A little out of touch, a little insane
It's just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Runaway train, never coming back
Runaway train, tearing up the track
Runaway train, burning in my veins

Therapy Today

2010-11-29T23:51:00.002Z

Here's my session in words I can only just manage.

Arms and legs crossed.

My leg is twitching restlessly (angrily?)

She is "disappointed" to see me in this space after a positive Friday session where, having starved for a week, I was on a high.

I am worried by the word she uses.

Desperation claws at my insides, screaming that she will never understand.

She asks what I will do when the purging is no longer enough.

I tell her I will begin draining the blood from my body.

She tells me that my body will replenish it.

I don't mention that I am picturing my femoral artery.

I try to resist the urge to look at the clock as she talks.

Her words are like little woodpeckers on the side of my head.

Christmas?

She wants me to think about Christmas?

Did I not explain that two days without work leaves me reaching for death? What will stand between us for two WEEKS?

She reminds me that she won't be able to see me on my birthday (which she is not aware of) and I wonder if it is significant that it's the only day she has had to cancel.

That's all I can say for now.

Just To Say...

2010-11-22T23:58:00.009Z

Mostly at a loss for words, I haven't been here much lately, and although a part of me has longed to express something, I confess that I have sought the freedom of release in mediums less healthy than language.

However, so as not to completely abandon my blog, I am stopping by to throw a few words at it before I attempt sleep tonight.

What follows is a list of whatever pops into my head in the next few minutes. Bear with me. It's late, I'm tired and my head is a bit all over the place after a very mixed weekend.

I managed to join old housemates for a night on Saturday. We sang, danced on the sofa, took photos, went to a Moroccan, drank Mojitos (and some horrible purple concoction involving Vodka and Curacao), laughed and reminisced. I felt loved, lonely, terrified, happy and accepted.
Therapy has been just as much of a mixed bag. On Friday The Woman asked me if I needed to get to a hospital. She was worried and I knew why. I think i might have been worried too but I don't remember.
My binge and purge sessions have become more frequent and more violent.
Despite my general "avoid-like-the-plague" maxim regarding hospitals, I recently ended up in A&E because my weight got too low and my heart didn't like it. It gave me a fright... I also ended up in A&E with a colleague and her daughter, who had taken an OD. (Did I mention those things here before?
I have been spending a bit of time with a couple who I used to know a lifetime ago. They have been painfully kind to me and I am struggling to accept anything that they offer. I'm very confused and very upset about this but I won't say more than that at the moment.
I have been thinking about God and how I can ever really be a Christian.
I've discovered that Tesco Finest Turkey breast steaks have less calories than a hell of a lot of other foods and because it's 'meat', it looks as though I am eating a little more normally, thus making other people happy.
I will acknowledge here (for the first time) that I do think my drinking is a tiny bit of a problem sometimes.
I have organised a lot of stuff which has gone well at work lately. It's been nothing short of pure joy seeing the kids get a kick out of doing some of the activities and actually feeling a sense of belonging and worth.
I'm tired and tomorrow is another gym day. Sigh.

Purge

2010-11-15T23:31:00.004Z

My fingers
reach down
my throat,
push back
and I heave
and surge
and spew again and again
and
again
my fingers
reach down
my throat.

I wish
the pain
would fall out
this way
or
weighted words
unspoken expulsion
from hot heart pounding darkness.

Desperation

is flecked with orange

tomato skin.

One Day...

2010-11-08T00:29:00.006Z

//

I follow the night
Can't stand the light.
When will I begin
To live again?

One day I'll fly away
Leave all this to yesterday
What more will your love do for me?
When will love be through with me?

Why live life from dream to dream?
And dread the day when dreaming ends.

One day I'll fly away
leave all this to yesterday
Why live life from dream to dream
And dread the day when dreaming ends.

One day I'll fly away
Fly
Fly
Away

Eloi... Eloi...

2010-11-01T00:36:00.003Z

A few years ago, my sister was rushed from the ED clinic to the nearest hospital. Tubed all over, doctors and nurses desperately attempted to find veins that hadn't collapsed in order to save her from the effects of starvation.

Three and a half stone, barely conscious.

My paper souled parents, wrung out from the tortured grief, sat helpless at her bedside.

I don't recall much about that week, but I can't forget Dad's voice down the phone line, a dreadful effort at bravery from a man so broken.

"She's not expected to make it through the night".

Empty, I put the phone down and went to tell my youngest sister.

For that week, for all of us, life just stopped.

Another thing I can't forget, is that for long periods of time, all I could do was to lie, curled up very small, with Bear pressed in tight to my stomach, listening to Bebo Norman's CD, 'Between the Dreaming and the Coming True'.

I literally hung on to the lyrics of the songs on that album; lyrics that, at less hopeless times, I may have branded 'trite'.

Desperation changes the way we hear things. It changes how we hold things, and, which things we hold.

This week these words have echoed repeatedly through the desperate, aching tunnels of my mind.

"God my God
I cry out
your beloved needs you now".

It's Official

2010-10-27T22:45:00.012+01:00

The trembling walk across the flagstones.

I'm fashionably late.

I don't realise at the time, but the man in the thick designer glasses and the understated floral shirt, watches from somewhere within the brick hexagon and says to his (note scribbling) trainee, "Ah. Here comes a skinny person. This must be her".

This man, I've met him before. About sixteen years ago.
I almost want to gag at the memory of a tortured, teenage me; hunched, shaking in the back of dad's car after a one off meeting with this man, my sister's consultant, in the unit where she was incarcerated.

I remember he was kind to me.
Finally: someone who wanted to know how it was for a sibling.
Muscles held taut in my gut, I clamp my jaw; frightened his listening will force a desperate stream of projectile grief.

My mother, dressed in the small laughter of middle class embarrassment, rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue.
Stupid daughter... Doesn't know WHAT she's saying..! As if WE ever lived in denial..! As if WE would ever overlook such a thing! OF COURSE we knew what was happening! OF COURSE we knew ALL ALONG!

Choking on the words forced back down my throat, I shook all the way home.
Shook as dad glanced apologetically in the rearview mirror.
Shook as dad worriedly concurred that PERHAPS it WAS possible that I had known, long before them, the reality of my sister's terrible death wish.

I didn't recognise the man, even as I tried to remember something concrete about the session we had had all those years ago.

I would never have dreamed I would end up in front of him again. And certainly not for this reason.

*****
At the end of today's assessment: the words, "Anorexia Nervosa".

Every syllable ricocheted off the wall of my chest.

How can I know and yet not know?

"You believe me? You take me seriously?"

I am frightened and shocked and ashamed and relieved and disgusted.

The question is not, whether I believe you, he says. The question is whether you can believe yourself and take this illness seriously.

Again. Bullets.

I'm not well.

I knew that.

I need another assessment appointment. We haven't quite covered everything.

We haven't?
God.

Worst thing?

I double booked it for the woman's appointment next Monday.
THAT'S how screwed my mind was.

Now what?

Before I leave, he comments on the dryness of my hands. Says he noticed as we met and shook hands.
He noticed that? What kind of person IS this?
He suggests creams.
I admit I am frightened of absorbing calories through my skin.
"Not possible", he persuades.
I nod, gritting my teeth and flashing untrusting smile.

"Ok", I lie. "I'll start using cream on the splits".
(I have eczema)
Next he'll tell me vitamins can't make you put on weight, but they can. I read up on water soluble and fat soluble vitamins. I know my stuff.

"I'm seeing ..... (my sister's name...)... this afternoon..."
Something in me freezes over
"I won't tell her I've seen you of course... confidentiality and all that..." He tails off.

"I have no idea what she thinks or feels", I offer, lamely because I am at a loss.
He looks at me, studied, careful.
"I think she's been very worried about you". Somehow, his hand is stretched out to me.
"I think she's been very jealous of me", I sink my teeth into his hand and bite down hard. "Jealous that she's in hospital and I'm not"...

He laughs (uneasily?). Blood drips from my mouth...

"...That's the only reason she gives a toss".

I walk away, my throat and eyes stinging and swelling; the metallic taste on my bottom lip.

He hates me. he hates me. He hates me.
He loves her. He loves her. He loves her.

I want to wring my own neck as I get into the car.
Maybe her neck too.

It's eleven o'clock.

The sun shines bright and I need to do a number of very bad things to get through the despair of the day.

I do all of them but still, thirteen or so hours later, I am sinking.

Corm Before The Storm

2010-10-25T22:14:00.012+01:00

Beautiful Cornwall.

The unexpected warmth of the late October sun; the flat, brilliantly clear light; the depth of blue... This is a place I'd really love to live someday.
My friends have been great. True friends. No terrible questions. Just simple observations and a couple of honest conversations, which in all fairness, is a lot more than I have had with most people in recent months.

I hadn't meant to eat or drink tonight, yet having succumbed to the call of alcohol, I've given in to both. I feel absolute despair right now.
I'm sure I must weigh so much.
I will never go away again without my scales.

Tomorrow I drive home and in some ways, I dread all that is waiting for me.
I wish I never needed anything but oxygen again.

Things I Haven't Said

2010-10-24T23:20:00.003+01:00

I'm on half term, which I have been dreading because I don't operate well outside of my routine, particularly at the moment.
In desperation, I recently phoned the local eating disorders consultant (who has had dealings with my sister for years). I have an appointment on Wednesday.
I'm petrified that I won't be taken seriously if I attend on Wednesday, and I'm petrified that I will.
I ended up in hospital on Thursday after a complete physical and mental meltdown. I'm ok but still very frightnened. 'Anxiety' isn't a satisfactory explanation for the crazy heart stuff I've had going on.
Old friends I am staying with say I look very ill. I am perplexed by this as I have put on a couple of pounds over the last few days. I feel ridiculously big.
I want to get better but I am desperate to lose weight. The two things are directly contrary to each other.
I'm tired and feel a bit hopeless, despite looking forward to tomorrow's lone sojourn to St Ives.

Balancing Act

2010-10-23T00:28:00.001+01:00

Free Up Your Mind. Then Let Me Know How You Did It.

2010-10-13T23:11:00.006+01:00

It's (not very much) like having the jaw of a steel toothed trap clamped on my bare foot.

It's nightfall in the jungle and I'm faced with the decision to either stay still in the hope that help will come; or to wrench my foot out of the trap (thereby risk bleeding to death) and try to find my own way to help.

Either way I'll probably lose my foot.

Is it more painful to suffer the slings and arrows of my wretched attempts to express some of the incomprehensible stuff I am feeling right now, or is it better to just carry it in silence.

Either way it feels like hell.

I've been lost since the session on Monday.

Faced with her, somewhat glib sounding, recommendation that I "change", I eventually found that I couldn't even be bothered to speak.

What I had been TRYING to do in response to the 'change' suggestion, was to establish HOW exactly, i should go about doing such a thing when, I feel little more than total despair.

"It's not despair", she states. "People in despair don't have the energy to argue"

"Right", I say, simultaneously wondering if I am 'all people' and also thinking (wryly)that she clearly doesn't know that she is talking to someone who can do two and a half hour long cardio workout at the end of a working day, on 4 small tomatoes and some lettuce.

Don't tell me about energy and despair.

So. What do I do, I ask.

How can I change.

"It's not something that you DO"

(and I roll my inner eyes because this is beginning to sound like I'm asking a rather pretentious self styled mytic to tell me what I should do to find a pot of gold)

"It's about freeing up your mind"

Oh GREAT. I AM talking to one of the above. Excuse me? Did you see where my therapist went..?

So.

Freeing up my mind.

That's what I need to do.

Free it from the rigid reign of control.

Who would have thought it were that easy?

Being a teacher, you fast learn the need to be a little creative with your questioning in order to appeal to the understanding of such a range of pupils.

In the hope of getting a more practical, directive type of response I ask,

"If I were you and you were me, what's the first thing you'd do after the session?"

(Please note, in order to "change")

Her helpful response?

"Scream".

Throughout the latter part of the session, that's just what I thought I might do (albeit involuntarily)if I could manage to crawl to my car, but when I did, everything felt a bit unreal and big.

I drove most of the way home, pulled up in a layby, and played a word scramble game on my phone. That's what I do if things get too much.

Chilled to the bone and blank in the pending darkness, I played game after game, absorbed in the obsessive need to beat my point score each time.

I didn't move untiil two hours later.

I'm dreading Friday.

I don't want to go back but I don't want her to think I'm being childish.

Pride probably isn't a great reason to go to therapy.

I've been desperate again today.

Alone in the house again tonight, I ate a small amount and then expelled as much as my gag reflex would allow.

In the last few hours though, I've gone and stuffed it up by eating sweets.

I can't change until I manage to change the desire to be thinner.

HOW do you change a desire THAT strong?

Answers on a postcard...

Bloody Therapy

2010-10-11T23:28:00.006+01:00

To The Woman,

This hurts me more than it hurts you.

(I hope you feel it though)

Crashing In (On Me)

2010-10-09T18:27:00.008+01:00

Words fly round my head at an alarming speed and yet hardly any of them connect.
The words play childish games, taunting me with their dance then darting away when I try to pin them down.
My thoughts often do that too.

Like a child watching a horror film, Monday saw me sitting in the little house in the woods, hands pressed hard against my eyes in the vain attempt to stem the flow of sobbed tears.
Why?
It's an effort to remember and as I type, I'm trying to get hold of a solid memory...
(5 minute pause)
I can't remember anything other than the sense of absolute despair that had been building silently in me. I had tried to keep it under control; tried to keep it away from The Woman; tried to ignore the feeling that I had been feeling as though I had run out of things to talk about in therapy; as thought there was nothing left for me; as though things would never get better than living with the dull ache of nothingness which sometimes curls me to crisp.

The weekend before had been complicated.
I felt left.

"We'll get you through this", The Woman's words were spoken soothingly but they sawed through the numb layer of post-emotional outburst and, without warning, prompted the unspoken question: 'Through to what? Through to the more 'stable' state of dull pain?'

I didn't make work on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I gave in to the desperate cravings for alcohol. I drank and ate junk. In a frenzied panic I stuck my fingers a far down my throat as I could.
Twelve times.
I'm emetophobic.

Yesterday evening, The Woman shocked me by talking about codes of ethics and professional responsibility.
She wants me to see a psychiatrist.

From seeming not to want to acknowledge my 'illness' (re, eating) to being suddenly deadly serious. Emphasis on DEADly. It's a hell of a leap that she seems to have taken.

'Great', I think. 'NOW she gets concerned'.
Apparently, she DOES take me very seriously.
VERY.

I thought she didn't believe me.
I thought she's been wanting to dump me.

Apparently not.

She says she won't ever dump me. I'll have to be the one to end it.
I don't believe her.
Give it time.

I'm split. Again. Split right through. Not in a balanced way though.

The split is between my knowing that I am ill and my knowing that I am making it all up. It's all in my head. None of this is real.
I'm too big. My body is playing weird tricks on me. I should be smaller. It's re-distributing the weight... Spreading it around so as to make me look larger than I should.

I want to apologise for this inelegant post.
I want to apologise for nearly everything.

The Woman promised that she couldn't contact my doctor unless she thought I was suicidal.
I thought, "thank God I haven't told you more about the way I'm feeling".

Thin

2010-10-05T23:55:00.003+01:00

Every part of me is screaming to be thinner.
I don't understand what has happened to me.
This can't be me. I'm not like this.
I'm the together one. I'm the sound one. I'm the refuge where others take shelter during the storms.

Physician heal thyself

said a colleague who was expressing concern at my weight loss.

How? I wanted to ask.

Sometimes I don't even believe that I have an eating problem. That's probably another post though.

Left

2010-10-04T00:09:00.007+01:00

I can only feel the cold wind of despair as it howls through me. I am left gasping, winded by the force of the blasts.
It's not depression. It's despair.
It's the claws of hopelessness tearing at hidden flesh.
It's the mouth of disgust sucking marrow from my bones.
And I am left with nothing.
Nothing then
nothing now
nothing in the when.

Ahead, a black hole
Behind, a sheer drop.

Despair affords me no rope
with which to hang
on to hope, or choke
this demon.

It's been a steep weekend and I haven't got it in me to explain why.

I've eaten badly, drunk hungrily and driven frantically.

If you feel disgusted by my negativity, I can bet you a thousand wishes that you can't even begin to reach the levels that I have.
I have tried positive self talk, prayer, gratitude, acceptance, reprimand, reframing, reinterpretation, re everything.
I've counted my blessings, immersed myself in thoughts of those less fortunate.
I know I don't count on the scale.

I hate myself all the more for that fact that I have no excuse for my despair.

And can I tell the woman?
I don't want to see her tomorrow.
She expects me to have had a good weekend (as did I). The fact that I feel this hollow is shameful. I feel like a disobedient child.
I have let her down.
Somehow I must be choosing misery.
I am a disgrace.

Memorial

2010-09-29T00:00:00.003+01:00

I have to admit that my blood ran a little colder as I drove back to the gym and heard this report on the radio...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100928/tuk-eating-disorder-victims-are-remember-45dbed5.html

I guess it is silly to get worried. After all, my choice right?

But the girl who died was six and a half stone.

I have fallen below six that there's nobody to scrutinise me.

My fear of a heart attack doesn't seem quite as strong as my horrible determination to lose weight.
Until I'm alone in the dead of the night, that is.
Then the fear of death at least matches the will to risk it.

OFSTED

2010-09-24T23:11:00.000+01:00

It's never ideal when your Wednesday feels like a Friday and your Thursday, a Monday.

As hinted at in my last post, the main reason that the week has felt much longer than the four days it has contained thus far, is that the 'brown letter' (nowadays, 'the brown phonecall') arrived on Monday lunchtime announcing the imminent arrival of an OFSTED inspector. When I say imminent... I mean he would be darkening our doorstep in precisely twenty one hours time.

Twenty one DAYS may offer enough time, twenty one hours however, is barely enough time to get off the toilet after receiving the terrible news.

For the benefit of my sweet blog pal abroadermark, the name OFSTED is to teachers, what the name Voldemort is to Hogwarts.

Sadly, OFSTED, is not just a figment of an incredibly well utilised imagination.

The fear inspiring acronym stands for: Office For Standards in Education. I won't go into it in too much depth because it all becomes slightly political and I'm not really that way inclined! However, whether they are ultimately beneficial or detrimental, the organisation exists and, when inspecting your school, stress and anxiety levels go through the roof and people begin to behave in an extraordinary manner.

I suppose in some ways, OFSTED can bring out the very worst and the very best.

They have the power to close you down if your school or unit fail. And it does happen. Which may well be a good thing in many cases.

Happily, we passed. And not just with a 'satisfactory', but with a 'good'.

My individual lesson received a 'good with outstanding features'.

I was amazed because I had felt it went badly.

I was nervous and felt that my questioning reflected my nerves.

The relief is hard to put into words.

I think it is the first time in eight years that I have considered that perhaps, I judge my teaching too harshly. Perhaps my bosses and colleagues haven't been lying to me all along.

The idea made me want to cut when I first had it. But I didn't.

I have lost weight but tonight I have binged on chocolate and jelly beans. I have two weeks coming up where I won't have to answer to anyone so I will be able to eat or starve as I please.

I can't wait.

I'm so sorry I am behind in reading people's blogs. I hope to catch up this weekend.

I've written a lot more than I meant to but wanted to answer the OFSTED question and I should probably mention therapy, which, at the moment, is quite like as series of very expensive chats. I'm trying to work out whether this is partly her ploy to drop me.

If I thought she wouldn't want to make light of it, I'd tell her how it is for me. Not that I haven't tried, just that I feel that she doesn't want to know it.
It's far easier to concentrate on all things joyful.

Very Hungry, Very Harrassed and Vaguely Hysterical

2010-09-20T23:42:00.010+01:00

I'll be brief.

If you are one who is not acquainted with the fear-inspiring acronym 'OFSTED', then you might not understand why I simultaneously battled urges to laugh, cry and crap when I was told at midday that we were being inspected tomorrow.
My lesson will be hit.

Food. A pear, an apple, some lettuce, 5 baby tomatoes and... an endless chain of chocolates and boiled sweets. I could cry. It comes after a fairly restrained weekend where I worked out so hard on both days).
I ALWAYS have to go and sabotage my own efforts.

My dad appears to be so disgusted with my "serious illness" that he has barely spoken to me since Friday. Although I have no right, I feel hurt.

(Did I just admit that?)

Therapy. I really just wanted to get back to work for the evening.
We talked about something which has disappeared into the grey. All I can remember is sitting and wondering how I could change the subject without her realising. (Cos you've got to be clever to get away with something like that with a therapist).

Oh. And we talked about how an ED can stop you (one) going mad. And how a psychotic, perverted teenager, who I am teaching at the moment, suddenly (and completely randomly) said a word that made my blood run cold.
An unusual historical name that my (ill, and, quite possibly equally psychotic and... I don't want to say 'perverted' because she's not... Not in a sexual way anyway) sister had a strange obsession with.

Bed. I changed my bed earlier, figuring that if it's gonna be a sleepless night, it might as well be a sleepless night in clean sheets.
How's that for forward planning.

Maybe tomorrow won't come?

I HAVE taught a few arsonists in the past... It's possible that in the event of tomorrow, the unit I work in might be less of a building than it was..? Perhaps?

Perhaps not.

This Little Piggy Went To Therapy.

2010-09-13T22:51:00.003+01:00

It's been a pretty bad few days.

I paused as I wondered how I could possibly put this across to The Woman who sat, eyes cast down quietly, waiting for me to be ready.

I started with the weekend, which, FYI, I drank my way through.

I lost time on both evenings. I explained that on Saturday it was as though someone pressed the 'pause' button at around eleven thirty in the evening and neglected to press it again until around four in the morning.
What happened in those four and a half hours is anyone's guess. My guess is that I fell through a portal of the whisky kind.

My memory is bad enough, but add alcohol and I no longer exist at all.

The Woman listens to the story far too kindly.
My"pre emptive strike," she reflects.
"No. It's all my own stupid fault," I kick at a wall in my mind.
"Interesting word, 'fault'" she returns, and I break my toe against the wall.

Doesn't she want me to take responsibility for my actions? Hate me. Go on. Be disgusted. Tell me I'm pathetic.

(I'm suddenly very tired as I try to recall something from the session today. Another blank. Swiss cheese has nothing on my memory).

I told her about the dreams I had last night. She interprets them to be sexual. Apparently my unconscious mind is leading us to roads that need to be travelled down; roads which I am frightened of.

I wondered if she is actually a direct descendant of Freud.

Ok. So I'm part jesting, but twenty six cuts later, I can afford a little humour.

The desperation and despair that I have felt over the past three days have, at times, blown through me with a strength that has left me bent double.

i didn't make the gym once and as a consequence, combined with the calories I have consumed in alcohol, I managed to put on two pounds. Today I have barely lived a minute without sucking a piece of chocolate. It's compulsive.
Tonight I stood on the scales, hands over my face, registering the higher numbers through the gaps between my fingers.
I wanted to take a wood plane to my thighs.
A double edged blade had to suffice.

Normally a safe haven for my mind, even my workspace was invaded by the swooshing compulsion to lock myself in the second floor toilet and shred my skin with the scissors.
And all of this because of the desperation at not being able to stay in control of my body.
I need to be small enough to feel all my bones and yet, pathetically, I am sabotaging my own attempts to get thinner. More than that, I am actually putting ON weight again.

In a fit of frustration at this absurd part of myself, i declared that I could just 'give it all up'. I could eat normally again. i could just stop all this nonsense and eat.
The words even sounded hollow to me, but I carried on asserting it because a part of me wants to feel that it really could be that simple.

The Woman explains so gently, "it's a manifestation of your distress... BLANK BLANK BLANK... the extreme self loathing... BLANK BLANK...."

She goes on but I've shut my eyes and I'm holding my insides so tight against her words because her kindness is making my breath ache and my eyes sting and I can't let go, i just can't.

"Shutting me out?".

I don't know and I can't answer because loosening one part of me is all it will take for everything to split and fall apart.

I can't remember what she said then, but the pressure of her kindness leaves bruises around my eyes.

Today as I left the little house in the woods, I carried the heavy sense that I had spoken too much.
I have that same feeling about this post.

Please Sir... Can I Have Some More (Time)?

2010-09-07T22:09:00.009+01:00

Four times a week I put myself through a pretty rigorous workout at the gym. Part of my routine is to run at least two miles (for 'run' read 'sprint') on the treadmill.
Being familiar with this torturous piece of equipment, I understand how it has evolved as a common metaphor to denote the state of travelling on a seemingly relentless path or journey, exerting effort yet not really getting anywhere.

MY reason for thinking about treadmills at this moment in time is not however, to illustrate the tedium of routine (although, when it comes to forcing myself to exercise to the point of near collapse, there IS that) but to reinforce my sense of having literally hit the ground running.

As with most people, returning to work after a long summer holiday is a shock to the system.
I hit the ground running last week, and I haven't stopped to even catch my breath since.
It really has been like landing on a treadmill which is already moving at ten miles per hour... Which is a horribly convoluted way of explaining why I haven't been here or on anyone else's blog.
I have burned the candle at both ends only to find that the candle hasn't been long enough.

Talk about mixing metaphors.

So.
A brief update.

With the return of work comes the return of my routine. It has been something of relief, although to describe it as such seems to infer the presence of a somewhat masochistic streak.

My weight, which (to my distress) had gone up (mainly to please my family) has now gone down again. This is largely due to the fact that my folks have been away on a holiday.
They return tomorrow and so, I write with a certain amount of dread at the return of 'the watchers'.

Following a two week break, I had my first therapy session on Monday.
I had no feeling about it as I drove to the little house in the woods. I have barely missed her. Perhaps because I couldn't afford to.

The session seemed to last for at least forever and at one point, I wondered if she had forgotten the time and gone into another session.
Apparently not.
Whilst she has been on holiday I have been utterly self contained and yet, whilst detailing my weekend (part of which was spent being a carer to my - very heavily medicated - sister) I had to stop talking as I was unexpectedly overwhelmed by horrible, strangled tears caught in my throat.
Embarrassed I assured her I was fine and that I hadn't been at all upset about it.
She wondered whether I had been ok because I hadn't allowed myself to experience it until I was back in therapy.
(I wondered whether there was an argument for the fact that I don't feel bad until I have therapy and therefore, the whole thing is actually making me worse).
Hmm.
Something to ponder anyway.

Aside from that, I found myself looking at The Woman's familiar, tan colour shoes (which I'm sure I've never really liked before) and feeling a sudden mixture of relief, familiarity and comfort.
Odd, I know. (I did wonder if I'd gone totally, barking mad)
Guess it shows how much time I must spend looking at her feet! <--- (As I write this observation, I am reminded of a line from one of Byron's poems - possibly 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' - which refers to people walking with their eyes cast down, thinking "thoughts which dare not glow".
Another 'hmmm' moment, perhaps.)

Don't s'pose you've got anything...

2010-08-31T12:56:00.000+01:00

...calorie free?

All Time Low

2010-08-24T23:43:00.000+01:00

Sometimes song lyrics filter into our awareness and hook into something that we feel or think.
I guess I'm not alone in this experience as I know it's something that has, in itself, been sung about in the "strumming my pain with his fingers" song... Y'know the one... (Frustratingly, I can only think of The Fugees - with their irritating 'one time' spin on it- though I first knew the original version by __________fill in the blank_____).
THAT song tells of someone's shock and disbelief at hearing a young boy singing their "whole life with his words". The narrator (do songs HAVE narrators?) feels that his or her secret pain has been exposed, as though the boy has opened up her letters and "read each one aloud".
Interesting that the song expresses a sense of the agony that can come from being 'known' in an intimate way, of being revealed. The narrator prays that the boy will finish, suggesting that it is absolutely unbearable.
I wonder if the agony was in being known or in being faced with his/her own pain.
Perhaps a mixture.

I digress. I actually wanted to write about the very opposite reaction to the one I've just discussed.

I wasn't listening to the radio I had on as I was driving today but somehow the words of a song I've never heard, pushed their way into my head.
As lyrics sometimes do (and despite the fact I'm not completely sold on the song as a whole) they made something in me feel a little bit heard and understood and realised.
It's odd how a part of you can suddenly and unexpectedly be given a voice through a medium which has no knowledge of your existence, let alone experience.
I guess it's a testimony to the human condition and to the fact that in ways we don't necessarily ever get to experience wholly, we are never quite alone.

Praying won't do it
Hating won't do it
Drinking won't do it
Fighting won't knock you out
Of my head

Hiding won't hide it
Smiling won't hide it
Like I ain't tried it
Everyone's tried it now
And failed somehow

So when you gonna let me
When you gonna let me out - Out

And if you know
How do you get up from an all time low
I'm in pieces
Seems like peace is
The only thing I'll never know
How do you get up
Get up

‘Cos driving won't do it
Flying won't do it
Denying won't do it
Crying won't drown it out

Not really a song of hope or anything, but there may be something ever so slightly comforting in hearing another pose the questions that you have so often asked in the dead of night.

Disappearing Acts

2010-08-20T22:49:00.007+01:00

Sharp, scagged fingernails of feeling trace swirling spirals through the inner fog. I feel the nails drag and pierce as they move across old, unseen wounds and I stare, in search of clarity, or discovery. But even as I look, the lines begin to blur and bulge, just like the clean cut of an aeroplane's path across the blue.
And it blurs and spreads into unfeeling mist.

I so often have the sensation of not being able to see something as soon as I look at it directly.
I remember in the early 1990s when 3 dimensional optical illusion posters were all the rage. Teenagers' bedroom walls would be covered with large bits of glossy paper covered in very repetitive, computer generated, patterns made up of tiny strokes of colour.
The pattern (called a Stereogram) was cleverly designed so that it contained an image which could only be seen when focused on in a particular way. Sort of modern man's answer to impressionism. Van Gogh meets Mac.

I used to find that in order to see the hidden images, I had to train my eyes to be looking beyond the poster; I almost had to DEfocus on the image.
The minute I mastered the 'defocusing' technique (actually known as 'parallel viewing'), the hidden delights of the poster were revealed. However, the minute I tried to sustain the image and look at it more clearly, it would disintegrate into a million, seemingly random, coloured particles again.

That's me in therapy.

I so often have the sense that, in order to glimpse something through the fog of dissociation and disintegration, I have to be glancing at it from an unusual angle. A sidelong look from the very outer edge of a very defocused eye.
The minute I try to keep what I've glimpsed, it slides into the mist of unfeeling and 'unremembering'.

That happened a few times in therapy today.

What also happened is very hard to write about.
I suppose because it requires a greater degree of honesty, explanation (and therefore energy) and recall than I feel able to muster.
Even as I type, it's somehow on the very tip of my memory but I can't quite catch it.

Whatever. As I left the little house in the woods, I hit my steering wheel enough to bruise the heel of my palm.
I wanted to shout.
In the room I had wanted to put my fingers in my ears. I spent the entire session with my hands on front of my face.
I didn't want to be seen.

We now have a two week therapy break.
That too has slipped into the unfeeling fog.

What hasn't is the fact that I have put on weight and I have eaten bits of chocolate almost all day long.
It would be nigh on impossible for me to explain the horror I feel at submitting to the cravings when I haven't done my exercise and I weigh more than I have for quite a while.

The levels of desperation and despair are way beyond anything words could contain.

I have replied to comments on my last post if you feel like having a look.

Anorexia's Footsteps

2010-08-15T00:15:00.009+01:00

A small, blue child stands in the grey playground; back turned from her playmates; tiny hands pressed tight against her eyes as she chants numbers in a voice higher than it is loud.

Behind her, a group of dishevelled children move with silent, exaggerated care; the thrill of tension bursting from concentrated rosebud lips and then, delicious screams as the blue child swings round, sudden and bellowing and the clenched stealth and stillness break, pouring a cool white rush of pure delight over each small face, even as they fight to keep the tension in their form.

Grandmother's Footsteps.

The aim of the game was for the players to manage to creep up behind the person who is 'it' without being seen to be moving. 'It' could turn around at any point and the other players would have to instantly freeze. Those who were still moving when 'it' turned around were immediately sent back to the starting line.

Why am I writing about an old playground favourite?

You may well ask.

And quite simply, it is what came to mind when a despairing loved one asked me how on earth it got to this point.

Perhaps Anorexia's approach is different for an adolescent or college student, perhaps it walks with a different gait, I can't really speak for others. I can barely even trace its steps towards me, but I know that it approached from behind and I know that each time I turn to look at it, it freezes, closes its eyes and holds its breath. I have somehow become aware that by staring at it, it can disappear. It's an ugly, shapeshifting beast that easily poses as the smallest giggling schoolgirl until you turn away, reassured.

For a 31 year old woman, Anorexia began as a wonderfully refreshing experience of exercising after giving up smoking. It's steps were light, triumphant and exciting. Continuing to feel healthy, my body began to tone up and I lost a few pounds.

It doesn't hurt to cut out a few foods in the name of being healthy, right?

Less bread, less cheese, less meat, less pasta.

Next time I checked behind me, Anorexia was a few steps closer and although a part of me knew it, another part didn't really believe it would be interested in me. I was too old for that sort of thing. I was too 'sensible', too grounded, too self aware.

I turned my back.

No red meat. Only a few mouthfuls of pasta or rice. No bread. No cheese.

I swung round. Anorexia froze. I couldn't tell if it had moved or not.

No meat. No carbs. No dairy.

Low calorie fish, salad leaves, fruit and water.

And where once I thought 6 stone would never be possible, now I dream of 5 and a half.

And Anorexia is playing. Oh definitely. It's creeping now and it's not bothering to freeze and I'm not bothering to turn my back.

Its steps, so quiet and so disguised at the start, are heavy and quite careless.

I can't stop them in their tracks by turning around. I can't make the fearless freeze.

Now my mind is full of the footprints and although I know tracks can be covered over, I'm not sure how and so the game has become a dance. My shapeshifting partner, both a close friend and a worst enemy, simultaneously giving and stealing life. One day its steps bring elation, the next, bottomless despair. One day I dance with fluid grace, the next with lead-soled boots.

One thing I do know is that in reality, Anorexia Nervosa is about as much of a game as Russian Roulette.It has a higher incidence of death than any other mental illness and has clamied countless lives over the years.

Its power is frightening and once it's in the game, many end up playing for their lives.

It's About Time...

2010-08-10T23:29:00.004+01:00

... that I quit being a chicken and actually wrote something that someone might read (as opposed to small, scrawled phrases in old notebooks; and tense, over-inked lines etching some sort of representation of the way a part of me might be feeling).

So. An update, then.

The holiday.
I won't say too much. Best not to.
I flew back 5 days early.
Panic I guess.

I've had to sit very tight.
I'm desperate at having put on 5 pounds.
It feels as though I am have gone into an extreme place of desperation.

The cave within which I dwell is a dark and lonely place to be.
Unless you have had an eating disorder, I don't think you could ever understand the waves of complete hysteria lapping at my hunched body.
I am terrified.

I realise this post is profoundly lacking in anything positive but in all honesty, right now, I am desperate enough to take drastic measures.

You can't hear me but if you could, you'd hear my insides gasping and retching and groaning with the horror of having to eat and not exercise.
My stomach is swollen, bloated, distended.
I haven't had my period, AGAIN.
I am in constant pain on my right hand side (my liver I suspect) - so much so that it gets hard to stand up straight.
Despite the fact that it's not particularly warm, I wake up every night absolutely drenched in sweat. Night sweats? I'm thinking this MUST be to do with my oestrogen levels? My hormones? Does my body think that amenorrhea means the menopause?

Nobody knows.

Anyone for Valium..?

2010-07-28T22:51:00.003+01:00

Tomorrow I fly.
Sounds good huh?

Hmm.

It would be if I wasn't a)severely emetophobic,
b)prone to bad panic attacks
and
c) flying alone.

A negative way of viewing it all, I agree...

Positive things are that a) I go armed with a month's worth of Diazepam
b) I haven't dared to book a flight to go abroad for over 2 years
and
c) ... er.... I'm scraping the barrel here... c is........... Ok. There is no C. I'm scared. No two ways about it.

The other thing that I haven't mentioned is that a little bit of this holiday is about trying to get a little bit better and put on a bit of weight.
That's the promise I've made to my family and to myself.
Problem is, only a PART of me wants that.

What I would really like, is for a ceasefire. Just for a couple of weeks.
And yet... without all the frenetic exercise and the discipline and the anxiety and the scales... How can there be peace?

I'll attempt to write more.

Today in Therapy...

2010-07-19T22:42:00.003+01:00

... there was the woman and about four different me's...
Most prominent was the side that wants me to get smaller and smaller until I am nothing but a canvas of skin stretched tight over a bone frame. In direct oppostion was another part which, feeling the weary ache of that frame, just can't face the intense ferocity of the strict regime the other demands.

I am going on holiday in ten days. In that time, I will miss over 16 hours of intense cardio exercise. Weight gain is inevitable.

I'm split into different parts and although I could say more, right now I feel too sad and confused.

Dear Everyone...

2010-07-12T23:26:00.004+01:00

... Although I'm not really up for saying too much, I do want to say that I've been quite... touched (*wince*) by the fact that you guys seem to be here regardless of the crap that I come out with.
I don't expect you to be and I don't mind if you're not, but it has hit me a bit and I want to say thank you, even while extending my arms to keep a distance.

It is difficult to put my thoughts out; partly because I risk being met with revulsion and scorn and partly because my mind is so full at the moment that any thoughts I have are packed too tight to breathe. It feels as though my thoughts are crammed into too small a space. Some are hunched over, defeated by silence and age whilst others feel cocooned in fragile threads, unrealised, stunted by the lack of space or daring.

Therapy has been different over the last two weeks or so. The woman sounded very pleased when she pointed out that I have been more 'well' when we have talked.
She noted the correlation between my sitting in the chair (I said I didn't want to lie down anymore) and my well part being more prominent.

My reaction is split.

I prefer to sit. I feel much more in control. The 'work' part of me comes more naturally and I am able to think more logically.
However, I don't think that she realises that the reason I have been 'well' is actually because another part of me has become increasingly UNwell.
I'm well in one part because in another, I'm abiding by stringent rules in order to have almost complete control over my body.
I'm at my lowest weight and at one point this week, I actually thought that I had cracked it.

"Well blow me down! I've finally taught myself not to need anything".

That's what I thought.

It's not true of course.
Tonight I have eaten a lot of chocolate but it feels manageable because I know I will starve and then work out for hours tomorrow and I'll lose it.

Pathetic?
Go ahead.
Pour out the scorn.

But it's working for me, for now.

My biggest problem is the parts thing... If this was a different part writing, it'd be telling you about the dread and fear. It'd be telling you about how it is to live like a hamster in a cage, running frantically on a wheel that it's forgotten how to get off.

I'm split y'see.
Split right down the middle.

Anyone got a zip?

Shhhh...

2010-07-11T13:13:00.001+01:00

Sit very still and it won't sting you.

In My Defence

2010-07-02T21:46:00.006+01:00

I'm not going to even begin to try to analyse the 'whys' in terms of why I feel the urge to somehow protect and defend myself; mainly because I want to continue dwelling safely within the confines of the (disturbingly teenage) brick walls across which, the slogan, "you will never hurt me as much as I can hurt me" is emblazoned in dripping, white spray paint. Did I mention how safe it is here? No? Well then... allow me to explain that when I am here, nothing and no one can touch me. Even if they could cut my skin I wouldn't feel it.

In therapy today I discovered that the reason I binge (an, oh God, I'm still in the midst of a two day, non stop binge) may be similar to one of the reasons I cut. (And yes, I know you feel disgust).

It is just another attempt to do something physical in order to somehow correct / comfort / smother what is at heart, emotional

When it feels like the emotional pain is unbearable, I attempt to put it on my skin... to literally, put it on the outside of me.

When it feels as though the inner emptiness will make me implode, I attempt to physically fill the abyss.

I might be talking crap (yeah... I know. what's new?) but it's something that was discussed this evening.

Another thing was the theme of 'explosion' being the main feature of my recurrent dreams right now.

"Except," she said, "you don't EXplode, you IMplode"

"Yeah" I agree. "Yeah. Nobody would see anything had happened"

"No. All the debris is on your inside"

I thought about the blackened landscape and almost mentioned (and then thought better of it) the countless little deaths I have died and the piles of little corpses that I contain.

What am I saying? How is this a defence?

Well... you might well ask.

As per usual, I seem to have strayed from the path...

It is important to me that you guys (those reading) know that, although you may think me the number one favourite for winning the "Little Miss Can't Appreciate The Blessings She Has Cos She Is So Busy Being A Pitiful Misery Award 2010", in real life (and by that I mean, anywhere except the world of cyber - and the woman's room , which is almost as unreal) I am fully functioning, well respected young lady who you would have to be exceptionally sneaky to catch without a smile or a quip.

Part of the reason I made this space is because there is little or no space for this level of honesty in my real life. The position I hold at work, the responsibility I have for others, the fear of disgust... all contribute towards making it near impossible to show any of the stuff I write about here.

As I explained in a response to ABM, I have two very separate parts with this stuff. The first is covered in long spikes and says, 'if you don't like it, get lost'. It's an angry part that wants to lash out at you, but will instead, tear deeply into flesh that cannot be seen.

The other part of me recoils, disgusted at myself, horrified that I am daring to write, revolted by the fact that anyone would read here and say ANYTHING other than, 'WS you are a vile, Godless, self obsessed, self centred, selfish, miserable, ingrate worthy only of disgust'.

I am frightened of this response and yet, I think I deserve it. I'm angry before you say it, and yet I know it is true. In short, nobody who reads here will EVER feel the same degree of disgust towards me as I do.

I HATE the person I am on the inside.

This person you hear here.

It's a big part of the problem because, whilst nobody knows I'm like this, I am, and whilst I am, I can never be known.

I realise that people can see an issue with my weight, but I can fool them as soon as I open my mouth. Nobody who hears me sounding SO sound minded and wise would ever believe I have a disorder.

Trust me, if you KNEW me, I'd have you fooled too.

So, don't go thinking that I am some pathetic, hapless, little creature who you could slap some sense into.

You wouldn't ever see the need for that if you didn't read here.

A response too long to post

2010-06-30T00:22:00.002+01:00

Hmmm
I'm not entirely sure what to say... or whether to say how I feel or not...

Firstly,

Wanda - Thank you. I have been thinking about you and wondering how you are. xxx

abroadermark - The first thing that struck me was how down you sounded in your initial response. I did wonder whether you were being a bit sarcastic too... but perhaps not.
If you really are feeling that low then I'm so sorry. Why are you an 'idiot?' You certainly sound a LONG way from being an idiot to me...
In terms of what you say about looking for 'whys' being the stupidest thing you can do... Well, in all honesty, I completely understand how you reach that conclusion... I swing from holding that opinion and then holding the opinion that jss writes about.
I guess that ultimately, I want answers. Some people do and some don't. Some people aren't bothered by the fact they don't have an understanding of the reasons why, others are plagued by the need to know... the need to make peace with something through reaching an understanding,even if on a purely academic level.
For some it's one more struggle they could do without, for others it's the only way they can put something to rest.
Again, I would add that I swing between these two poles. I think many of us do at various points in our journey.
I don't know whether it's a stupid thing to do. Often it seems to intensify the pain and I'm caught in a web of 'do I, don't I?' and then the feeling of guilt descends... the awful 'what about all the orphans?' scenario.
I don't know.
It all makes me despise myself but no more than I would anyway so... Nothing to lose perhaps.
Anyhow abroadermark, I digress.
I'm sorry to hear you sounding so low and upset and wonder what inspired such despair. I get the impression that you might find it hard to write about it on your blog (hence your coming here...) I'm not sure about the misery thing though... That made me feel a bit... unsure... It makes me want to defend myself and then it makes me a bit... Well... Why should I need to defend myself? It's MY blog and I can be miserable if I like... But I can't y'see. Not without struggling with horrible guilt.
Do you know that I found it so so painful to be so honest about how bad I was feeling that I set up ANOTHER blog for the 'really bad' posts? Even after writing so much here I still wince at comments that I suspect come from people who are actually thinking, 'oh just shut UP you whinging, whining b*tch'.
So.
That is a very long reply. Sorry! Summarising never was a gift of mine...

Andrea - Thank you. Perhaps that is the best any of us can do really.

jss - It's so nice to hear you. Really.
Something you said is actually quite important to me.... and the more I read it, the more I'm struck by it.
You said that eating disorders must have whys and unless we find them we will
" spend our lives trying to overcome by sheer force of will, which leaves us utterly depleted, or worse we sink further into the addiction."
Partly because of the hurt I'm causing and partly because I hate living in this cage, I have made a decision to 'get better' over my summer holiday.
It is only just starting to occur to me that it may not actually be a very realistic thing to say. I'm not sure that I can just do it by 'force of will'. And yet, there is a part of me that insists on not accepting that this is something 'real'.
You comment about the ed having something to do with my sister almost stung. Not in a bad way jss, just in the way that you get when someone has thought about something for you... Care can hurt sometimes can't it.
I guess it might be something to do with her. I just don't know what.
I do wonder about certain things but I don't dare to put them into words yet. I'm not sure how much I understand and how much is just rubbish.
I know that you understand the agony of watching someone you love destroy themselves.
I'm so sorry that you have such an acute understanding but, thank you for sharing it with me. x

abroadermark - I AM listening to you and thinking that you sound like you are hurting..?
Please feel free to express what you think. Each of us has that right and the right to disagree.
x

EDs in adulthood

2010-06-28T23:12:00.006+01:00

It's a strange thing to develop an eating disorder in your thirties without having had too much of an issue in the years prior to this.
I've waded through thousands of Google pages in an attempt to find articles about late onset anorexia and bulimia. I suppose because I was hoping that someone far more knowledgeable than me could offer me a piece of jigsaw that I don't have. I was hoping to find a few sentences that would make sense of the jumbled, misshapen blobs of bewildered guesses that occasionally float between my cornea and the mirror of anorexic truth.

Most of the articles documenting episodes of anorexia in later life are actually about the recurrence of an eating disorder which the patient has suffered from as a young person. Easier to understand a relapse than an illness that comes from out of the blue.

So, what then, is going on if there is no SERIOUS tendency towards this illness until a person is in their early thirties?
What is going on there?

I'm possibly as lost as anyone else when it comes to understanding this.
I have sketchy ideas (at best) that when pursued, completely fragment and disintegrate and at once become impossible and absurd.

I haven't been here too much of late. Not for lack of wanting to write; more for not being able to find the energy.

I have a lot to say but very few words to speak with.
Please forgive me if I am not responding as much as I should be.

Loser

2010-06-21T22:50:00.000+01:00

On The Other Side.

2010-06-16T22:54:00.010+01:00

"...But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
Sometimes the wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens
later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation...
...I have infinite faith in the craft of surgery, but no surgeon can heal the kind of wound that divides two brothers (siblings)"

Abraham Verghese

Cutting For Stone

As I am having huge problems finding words at the moment I have resorted to using those of others.

This resonated as I read it the other day.

There's not a lot out there which acknowledges the impact of damage between siblings.

I remember in the early days of my sister's anorexia, when the wound of her violent and total rejection was still so, so raw and my flesh unaccustomed to the pain, searching high and low for books about anorexic siblings.

All I found was a reasonable amount of literature on 'Helping Your Child Eat' or 'Coping With An Anorexic Child'. That kind of thing.

A good few years ago, I figured that one day I might have found the healing and the balance I needed to help me write a book about anorexia with siblings in mind. I thought that somehow, I would be able to look on the years of loss with the glow of gentle understanding borne of the twisting grief of watching the slow suicide of a sister I loved with everything I had.

It would be called, "On the Other Side" in reference to a range of recurring nightmares I had for the first ten of the seventeen years of her illness. The dreams were all variations on the same theme... I was always stuck on the other side of the shatterproof, soundproofed window as she was mugged, the other side of the pond as she was buried in the mudslide, the other side of the turquoise lagoon as she drowned.

And the feelings are indescribable and yet, so many of us are familiar with the extraordinary pain of watching those who we love the most, kill themselves slowly and painfully, whether that be through eating disorders, drug addiction, alcohol dependency or just very, very poor life choices.

Not to minimise the angst of those who are compelled towards death by the strength of their addictions, but I honestly believe, and I'll speak only for myself in an attempt to avoid sweeping generalisations... I honestly believe that it is more painful to watch someone you love in agony than it is to be in agony yourself.

The Other Side exists for all of us at some point in our lives, but rarely to the degree that it does when it is the absurd chaos and torment of severe mental health problems and addiction that tear a family apart.

No surgeon can heal the wound that divides two sisters. If I could find one who did, I'd sell everything I ever had.

Welcome To Hell...

2010-06-13T12:11:00.007+01:00

...It's where I have been since Friday's therapy session.

I've scoured Google Images. Searched all the most horrible words I can think of in, a vain attempt to find a picture that captures even a tendril of the mass of ... mass of what? I don't even have the vocab for it... the mass of whatever it is that lies throbbing and bleeding inside.

It's a mass of hot, white unknowns which twist in me; sometimes surging in violent, murderous ire, sometimes burning slow and orange. Other times the mass is suddenly pain in a cold, black ache.

It's all to do with the hell that is an eating disorder.
The aftermath of a purgeless binge.
The clawing desperation to tear huge chunks of flesh from my body just to weigh less.
It's the pathetic despair of facing a future with nothing better than this.
It's the dull agony of depression.

I'm screaming but the screaming isn't a sound. It's the absence of sound. It's the silence that becomes an unbearable pressure on ears that ring, desperate for noise, desperate to be freed from oppressive quiet.

Therapy must have really been huge in Friday, right?

You'd think.

You'd think there would be some profound reason for the fact that I've spent the weekend under duvet, trying to stem the bleeding from my finger which ended up getting the raw deal from the double edged blade.

All it was, so far as I can work out, was that the woman didn't really seem to understand.

I'm stuck for words to explain and my head is screaming at me to stop typing this. Such resistance.

The woman suggested that when I have my own place (I'm trying to buy a house) it will be easier for me and my eating disorder (my need for control) will die down.
She said that many people just found a weight they could live with and then got on with living.
She mentioned the gym and said maybe I'd just enjoy the healthy exercise. She talked about food and suggested that I would find a balance.

(My face is threatening to collapse as I type)

Okay so I have typed and deleted in circles for five minutes so I'll just be done with it now.

I heard her say that
your life will be a struggle forever
your ED will never really go away.
and it all basically amounts to
this is the best that you can hope for

...and the words of an old favourite ring in my ears, as they so often do when death feels the best chocolate in the box...

"and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep"

(K. Rogers. The Gambler)

I predict a heart attack.
Or diabetes.

And
I found this which, I suppose, isn't too bad a representation when it's all said and done.

Writing About Therapy.

2010-06-04T23:55:00.005+01:00

Aside from the obvious prerequisite that one can actually recall something about a therapy session, I've discovered that writing about therapy makes at least two demands on a person.
The first is that the victim (did I just say 'victim'? Obviously, I meant 'client') is able to find words for what he or she is experiencing or has, in the past, experienced, and the second is that he or she has the guts to engage with some of the things that are being looked at.
Suffice to say, I've not really had much of either lately. More to the point, as a previous post explained, dissociation has made the act of recalling sessions somewhat impossible.

Today I was grateful not to be continuing in the same vein as last Monday's session, which, predictably (some might even say, conveniently) , my little chicken mind can't remember at this very moment in time.
We did however, end up talking about school days and white knuckle bus journeys and terror and little girls who cried in the mirror because they held so much hatred for the image that stared back at them.

We've been talking lately about the parts and, she has also thrown in the term, 'splits'.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of 'splits' (gleaned from a friend and a little bit of surf power) is that they are very similar to parts except that they are formed at a younger age and have to do with the inability to recognise that good and bad can exist alongside each other. So for instance, in my case, I may glorify someone, unable to see the 'bad' that they may have done because a part of me that contains memories of anyhing negative about the person is split off.
I might be SO wrong here. In all honesty, the woman may have explained but I can't remember, let alone get my head around the concept so...

Sometimes I wonder whether therapy is actually unhealthy...

I remember the days when a "split" was a spliced banana draped in velvet chocolate with sprinkles that were bad for my eczema; when "parts" were things like arms and legs and ears, and "dissociation" meant 'to quit hanging about with'... or... actually, a word that wouldn't even have been in my vocabulary.

Okay. I know I would still have been terrified that the mind thing is early onset Alzheimer's, and I know that I would still have been in pain... I know it's not a simple as all that... But still...

Still.

Words From The Den

2010-05-31T09:12:00.007+01:00

As happens so often, I go to write some replies to the people who have left such kind comments here and I am unable to even begin.
"Why is that?" I ask myself.
"Well", replies a more Knowing Self, "that would be because you feel overwhelmed by the things that have been said and the fact that you don't deserve anyone to hear you. Thus replying seems to acknowledge that you are worth commenting ON".
"Ahhh" says my Wondering Self. And then a small "oh".

It's not just replying either.
It's writing full stop.
In my last post, I optimistically resolved to write more in order to stop throwing mountains of cash into the dissociative void.
As you can see, THAT went well.

On the subject of therapy (and given the subheading on this blog, I guess it should be) it has been... a little bit like curling up inside a den of very hungry lions who haven't yet sniffed me out.
I realise that I am here, admitting something that feels so risky that I WINCE as I type. Is it possible that the couch, in that little cottage in the woods, has become an object of safety?
It has been a year since I began therapy, so I guess it's about time that I started to feel like I can trust that place, at least a tiny bit.
Committing that thought to 'paper' (albeit virtual paper) feels terrifying. Perhaps because I am afraid that I can't take it back when suddenly, it all becomes so unsafe again. And it does... Sometimes the lions look at me with glazed eyes which could realise me at any given moment.
It's a risk and I stay curled, very small and for the time being at least, safe.

************ Having just written this, I read back and find that what I HAVEN'T written about is what I would really LIKE to find words the for and yet, as usual, I have tiptoed around lions.

If I live long enough, one day I'll fight them **************

Is It All In My Head? Dissociation v Reality

2010-05-25T08:15:00.001+01:00

Dissociation, like depression, has a wardrobe full of different outfits.

It can appear smoothly, draped in a fine mist of white muslin, allowing a hazy, overexposed world to blur before your eyes.

Other times it can rock up dressed in an altogether more jazzy little number, a more textured material with large purpley grey blotches which grow and intensify as you look at them.

Occasionally it can make quite a dramatic entrance wearing a dark, kaleidoscopic cloak which wraps around the edges of your eyes, warping distance, making things zoom in and out. Making the world a computer game. Those cars racing you... they're not real... Nothing is really real.

Sometimes dissociation involves sound... an indistinct blurring of a voice with the silence of the space it falls into... The words take a sudden dive before they reach your ears... Sometimes the letter blends that make up the words don't even get to you in the right order. Syllables stretch into each other, yawning languidly into each others' beginnings and endings and beginnings until there are no gaps in sound, just distant, fluctuating tones.

And then there are things that I fail to understand.

I ALWAYS thought I had an atrocious memory. I remember so very little about being young. Whole trips, events, months, years don't exist in my mind. Somewhere in me lies a terror filled conviction that I am in the early stages of Alzheimer's... Early onset... It seems an inescapable fate, given that it's both my long and short term memory that is an issue.

I often run upstairs to get something and by the time I'm up there, it's gone... I have conversations and stop mid sentence, unable to complete what I've been saying.

I go to ask my boss something, tap on the door, say hello and then.... then nothing. (And NO, I'm not anxious around my boss. We're good friends).

Recently, my family recalled a trip to a cousin's christening. We'd stayed the night before in a pub and I had apparently become hysterical with fear upon entering the place. Something about some drunk men in the bar...

"You must remember! You were about eleven! I was only six and I remember it!"

The nerves in my leg have all gone dead and though I watch the skin dent under their fingertips, I can't feel them pressing down on it.

That's what listening to stories of my childhood is sometimes like.

According to the woman, and to others who seem to know, my memory loss is dissociation. It's indicative of 'something'. It 'says a lot'. Really? I can't believe this. It's sounding too strange and I know, after all, that I just have a terrible memory compared to my sisters.

But I don't remember a lot of sessions either. Whole therapy sessions aren't there the next day. Someone pointed out that I pay too much to be forgetting everything. Hence my new resolve to write, despite resistance.

This post is too long but I wanted to include a song by a man I'm sure I could love (if only for his voice).

It's called In My Head and it's a question that tortures me.

Something sometimes happens in therapy where I find myself asking if anything I feel really exists... I suddenly doubt that the pain and the desperation is real... I doubt that I am even telling he truth... I don't know whether anything I feel exists in reality. I beg the woman to consider that I might be making it up... that it might all be in my head. I don't want to waste her time. I don't want her to believe me if my feelings aren't even real.

I'll leave Mr Sean Mullins to explain the rest.

Is it all in my head? Is it all in my head? Could everything be alright
without me knowing?

Is it all just a game? Where everything stays the same? Is it all in my
head?