Halt

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.

Corm Before The Storm

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.

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

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...

Balance? What's that?

I have binged.


It could have been worse I guess... I could have eaten forever.

I COULD have eaten hundreds and hundreds of chocolates.

I hae put on a pound and because of that, tonight I have felt as though it's all pointless.

It's all or nothing with me.

Black and white.

On or off.

Solid ground or thin air.



I hate this feeling. The sensation of being too big for my body; the feelings of loss... and paradoxically, of gain.



I haven't written lately. Partly because I have just been too busy, and partly because, although there has barely been a day when I haven't wanted to put something down, I have felt unable to give sound to the internal metal clashing of swords drawn to kill.

Unable to give sound to the clenching and wailing and writhing of the child trapped in my rib-boned cell.

Unable to give sound to the throat choking tears, which flow rapidly down hidden cheeks, brushed away with the backs of hasty, humiliated hands.


My therapist recogises the fact that I can't take much in... I can't allow much to touch me.

I'm just learning this.

When I find words, I'll try to work it out a little more.