Every Picture...

... tells a story, right?

Right.

Seeing as I am having great difficulty in communicating some of the ways in which my head is dealing with the treatment here in the unit, I figured that perhaps I could use some pictures. 
Cop out?
Perhaps. But at least it's something; and something is better than nothing. 



When I came into this treatment centre, my sister (the anorexic one) sent me this bracelet. If you look closely, you'll see that the simple piece of thread is tied to a charm depicting a little bird. 
I haven't taken it off since I put it on. For me, the bird is representative of hope and freedom.

I think one of the hardest things in recovery is holding on to hope. Right now, despite my weight being up to 40.1 kilograms, I can't ever imagine being about to shake this illness off. 

But I have to hope.
I need it in my spinal fluid. I literally need it to strengthen my backbone. 
I need it to give me the strength to keep going. 
I need it like the world needs a horizon. My world needs a horizon. I think it's a need that every human being has. 
Trouble begins when the horizon isn't visible.

Hope?

For Dear Life

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.

Sad

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.

New Year

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

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.

Projection

Feeling as I do right now, it is neither wise nor advisable to be writing here. However, I need to say something in order to puncture my own silence and thus make it a little easier to come back when my words are going to come out bearing some semblance of order.

Sometimes it feels as though I am surrounded by a force field that will only allow people to get within a certain radius. Any closer, and they become a risk. One which I find so frightening.

Yet, it's not others who are the risk... It is me. It is the way I will feel or react. It is the terrible prospect that I will accept something that should be unacceptable.

My therapist (unaffectionately referred to as 'the woman') feels miles and miles away from me, particuarly when we are sitting in the same room.
Today somebody told me that it is not she who is far away, it's me.

Projection - The name of this phenomenon.
I feel something so strongly that I imagine that the therapist is feeling that way. (Please correct me if I'm wrong)
So, because I am bent double with the frustration at my own attitude ad behvoiurs, I assume that it is in fact HER feeling the frustration and anger.

If I feel that she can't ever help me and that she feels at a loss as to what to do with me, then, the theory of projection propounds that it is in fact, ME who is feeling those things about myself, not her.

So.

I'm in a difficult situation.

Does projection rule out the possibility that perhaps she really DOESN'T know how to help me? Does it mean that there is no longer such a thing as an objective reality?

I am ovewhelmed by both my options.

1. To keep going to see her.

2. To give up.

Both seems to lead to the same barren place.

The End.

I dont think I will ever see my therapist again.

I feel utterly hopeless and just cannot see any point in anything.

This is not what people want to read. I'm aware of that.
In one sense, I'm angry with myself for appearing to be so lame. In another, I'm furious with the world for wanting me to live behind such a convincing act, wearing the mask with the fixed grin when the insides pulse with black and bloody clots.

Behind the mask, I'm on the offensive. I'm reactive.
If someone seems frustrated or angry with me, despite the fact that logic tells me that it may just be my perception, I will turn to the blade for punishment.
Why?
Because I will hurt me more than you could ever hurt me.
And
I am the only person who has the right to abuse me.
My mantra from days when i was a lot more ill than I am now.
Tonight I want to wear my skin as red gingham.
Claw at the silent, unfeeling flesh until it screams in long red streaks and white subcutaneous fat.

Platitudes, positive mental attitides, slogans, cliches, cognitive challenges, kindness, gentle words, listening, empathy...
They amount to nothing.

In the face of their own hopelessness, people meet despair. In the face of another's, people find anger and disgust.

My walls, bejewelled wth cut glass, crowned with razor wire, offer poor protection against the ghosts of shame and disgust who swoop to whisper that nobody knows and nobody will ever know.

Hopelessness, My Disease.

I'd been psyching myself up to write something positive, or at the very least, poetic, but tonight I am faced with the profoundly disquieting aftermath of a Friday evening therapy session and it feels a though a storm has raged through my being and left me for dead.

I wish I had words to describe the despair that lies on the inside.
The depths of it are indescribable.
Hopelessness. And it is absolute.

My therapist sat and talked and the more she spoke the further I away I moved.
In the end, her words became a meaningless blur of sound.
I sat in pitch darkness, frozen, staring at the wall and counting.
It felt as if I was counting to save my life; to save myself from shattering; to save something from falling so far that it would never be able to get up again.

Inside of me is a death that is too old and too tired to be turned to life.

Depressing? Yes. Perhaps that is what this is.
I think depression has become such a part of me in the last fifteen years, that I no longer recognise it as being a seperate entity.
Depression is like a tree which grows INTO and incorporates any immoveable object in the path of its growth. It is entwined in me and it is so numb and so normal that I can no longer identify it.