To Blog Anew or Not To Blog Anew...?

That is my question. Well... I've already started a new blog... It's different. Less personal. More hopeful. Not about me... about encouraging others who are recovering... I don't know where that leaves me here. I feel ashamed of my self-centred ramblings here. And yet... It seems like such a lot to just walk away from. 
 My weight is dropping and my mind is hurtling into the no man's land that sits between life and death. It is achingly desperate that my words can fly the banner of freedom, but my mouth won't be filled with the nourishment it needs. I am afraid that in a few months, my voice will be all there is. An empty echo. 
Heard but not seen.

A Trajectory Towards Death and Why an Anorexic Can't Bake Gingerbread Hearts

The guy who manages my care here is philosophical as he draws a continuous line through my weight chart. He looks grim faced as he states it is a trajectory towards death. He coins a new phrase, 'the line of decline' and jokes that he will be using that one in the next staff meeting. 
Despite his laughter, I know that he longs for my recovery almost as much as a member of my own family. He has known my parents, my sister (and latterly, me) for seventeen years now. He is as dedicated to wiping out eating disorders as any serious contract killer and although he is has vast acres of experience, his seemingly endless ability to maintain some small glimmer of hope (comments about trajectories not withstanding) never ceases to amaze me. Perhaps it's just that he's missed his vocation as an actor, but he always seems to take me seriously. I just can't count the times when I swear blind that I'll beat it this week; that I'll allow myself to eat a little more; that next weigh in will be different...  I mean it, by the way. My words, when I speak them, are never hollow promises. And yet, week in, week out, I stare disbelievingly at the scales thinking that they can't be right. Not possibly.
Even I would stop believing me.

He has talked to me about going into the day unit. Or back into inpatient for a spell.
I refuse.
He bides his time. 

I have the very best of intentions.

Which brings me to Gingerbread Hearts, which I think I will make for a family friend who is going through a hell I can't imagine.
Simple gesture, right?
Or it is until I think I'll make a batch and have a couple as my allocated snack.

I'll just make them a teensy bit more healthy... No harm in that. 'NORMAL' people do that all the time... It's NORMAL to cut down on the sugar. 
And so I substitute sugar for stewed apple.
I'm sure that it's NORMAL to reduce the fat. I can think of friends who aren't anorexic and THEY would cut down on the butter. Right?
Of course they would. It's NORMAL nowadays. In this health conscious, nutritionally aware age, people ALWAYS use lower fat options.
And so I substitute some of the fat for stewed apple.

Don't try this at home. 

Compromise is the name of the game. 
Trouble is, an anorexic ends up compromising on everything. Trimming off edges until there's nothing left. 
An analogy so apt that it aches.

Words Don't Come Easily

Somewhere in me there is a very very deep, dark space where my voice can't reach.
Pressed against the walls of that space are fragments of words, feathered, dried and bound like wheat sheaves.

For days, I've been sitting with these bundles pulsing painfully, making my chest hurt if I so much as dare to throw a glance inside... Causing a dry ache in my gut if, even for a second, I allow myself to try and pick through the rubble of broken sentences and separated syllables.

The number of times I have sat down to try to write something out of me... only to find that my brain slides, unable to even begin sorting through the pile of death that leaves me feeling so full and yet, so achingly empty.

I've wanted to come here and scream onto the screen. I've wanted to let words fall out on the virtual page with virtual thudding and crashing noise.

If only type could howl.

It all sounds a bit much, I daresay, and yet, melodrama makes me nauseous.

I think it is probably fairly bad depression.
That and the eating problem, disorder even. (Chaos, more like).

So.


A list seems a good approach.

(Can I just say, I never wanted this blog to be like this.
I wanted it to be dispassionate, cynical even.
I wanted it to have the gall to be a little wise sometimes.
I wanted to offer insight into mental health problems, without actually sounding like I really had any...)

On with the list...

• I realised something about my emetophobia that I'm not read to write about. And it may be nothing anyway, but it's been on my mind so it's going on the list.


• I'm most of the way through a two week therapy break, which I thought I really didn't care about.


• My eating 'problem' has been like an instrument of torture. It feels relentless and desperate.


• I am genuinely questioning how long my heart will tolerate the hammering from hours of intense cardio exercise with no food in me.


• I am just no sure how to make all this end
  

There's a lot more but it is pressed flat against walls and squeezed tight into corners that I can't reach.

Therapy Break Over

In the instant that I reached for the unreachable branch, my arms shuddered and muscles tore down the blades.
Knives seared through my neck and my shoulders and I let go and fell to the black sea.
The unbending branch, stark against the whitened cliff edge, continued to point spindle fingers West, as if reaching for the orange sun favouring the far horizon.

Generally people seem to be upset when therapy breaks appear and I can understand that.
I can understand the feeling of isolation. The dread at having to face things alone. The thought that, even if you do talk, you won't be heard for the duration of the break.
I understand all those things though I haven't really felt them over the past fortnight.
Neither have I experienced the profound sense of relief that a minority of people express at the idea of having a break.
In fact, I didn't really think about it too much.
Not very much.

I suppose it is in keeping with most things in my life.
I feel the aftermath more than the event.
As I sat outside her house this afternoon, I didn't want to go in.

Fifty minutes.
What do you say after two weeks? There's nothing at all there.
It felt... pointless.
Empty, but ironically because it felt so full of nothingness.
Inexplicably angry.


I wanted to kick out as I left.

"Yes... an OK holiday"
"No, I didn't feel much about my sister".
"Yes I spent a lot of time at the gym".
"No people at work didn't make any more comments about my weight today".
"Yes New Year's Eve was positive"

I lost my voice today. More, there just didn't seem any point in using it.

All wires and no plug.

She was positive about a part of the holiday I'd managed well.
It felt as though she only wanted to hear good things.
I only gave her good things.

It's a waste of time.
I can't even be honest with myself here, let alone with her there.
I feel like giving up.
I am unreasonably angry that she couldn't see what I couldn't show.
I'm too scared to even begin to think what it is that i couldn't show.

In that room, there was nothing in me today that could be expressed with words.

Is this normal after a therapy break?

My Cage.

I'm so tired.
Not just lack-of-sleep tired.

Soul tired.


Sometimes depression feels like an extra limb growing out of me; grotesque and oversized. Not something that could escape my notice.
More often though, depression becomes so innate that it is barely distinguishable.
It coats my insides in a death mist that slows my senses, blots my feelings and leaves me feeling little more than an empty shell.
I am a container of a hidden fog of gas so noxious, so insidious, that I can no longer recognise my edges. Perhaps then, that is partly why I need to be able to see and feel each rib; why I need to be small enough for me to hold.


A sense of desperation claws at the arid valleys of emptiness inside me.

On my 33rd birthday, I weighed 6 stone 8 pounds.
Less than I weighed when I was 13.


I'm trapped in a wire cage and, when I dare to look at the space inviting the unknown, I become so afraid and feel so broken, I dare not fly through it.
I'm left clinging to the perch, with an energy I can't sustain, in a very foggy, very frightening cage.



I'm so so so upset that I have let panic win today.

I'm sad enough to taste salt tonight.