A Day in Life at The Unit. Part 2

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.

Hitting Critical.

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.

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.

Screaming Silently

*****Trigger warning for anyone struggling with self harm - sorry*****

Thin pink lines, lips clamped tight
Bile burns my throat, bubbling
blisters swell, threaten
to burst

but swallow

swallow down the acrid glob
of howling unheard, stifling
child's screams, fighting
to erupt

but press

press balled fists into the sting
of salted eye skin, swelling
and cresting with each new wave
of gasps

but cut

cut red mouths, open lines
to scream unheard, unknown
my legs, a shrieking gingham cloth,
to hear

but hide.

hide.

My Sister - Anorexia.

I've been looking at some stuff to try to help me make sense of what is going on... I suppose in some ways I want to give a part of me a voice without having to go through the agony of trying to find the words.
I feel like I have spent a lifetime doing that in some respects. Music... I have spent my whole life looking for a song that will somehow sing me... There's no such thing of course.
"Write your own then", I hear you say. But, it's not like I haven't tried. It's just that words slip into obscurity when I try to gather them.

Anyway.


Anorexia.
There's not a lot I don't know about it.
I've sat and watched it devour my sister for over seventeen years.
I've watched it's grotesque form gnaw at her from the inside out and then superimpose itself onto her once beautiful body.
I've watched her scream into her bones as they become more and more hollow. Her shoulders, a branch from which the rest of her hangs.
I've seen her eyes sink deeper, the cage of bones around her cheeks protruding sharply, her chin just a point. I've watched her face become a skull, her skin stretched like canvas.
I've showered in the bath blocked by chunks of her broken hair.
I've cleaned my teeth in the washbasin blocked by the food she used to have to eat.
I've existed next to her tortured screaming and ranting. Her desperate sobbing. Her silent streaming tears.
I've watched her punching and kicking my parents as she has been dragged screaming into ambulances and cars to take her to hospital.
I've turned from her retching as she pulls out NG tubes and rips out cannula's.

I've watched her turn into someone I no longer know.
I have loved her as I thought I could never love anyone and I have hated her and longed to beat and bruise every inch of her fragile body.
And all this...
All this doesn't even begin to describe anything.

What I am left with however, is absolutely nothing.

I don't feel a thing for her.
Not a thing.
3 stone or 7, I don't feel anything... except maybe, a sort of brokenness somewhere too deep to mend.

So.
Given all this.
I should know better.
But apparently, I don't.

I started this post because I found an article I wanted to write about.
I wanted to explain something about myself that I feel is almost incomprehensible.
My sister is relevant but it is my own recent struggle I was going to write about.

Perhaps another time though.

I'll leave it at, 'there isn't much I don't know about anorexia'.
Just for now.

Kindness Hurts

Sometimes it feels as though my outside has been sanded and planed and I am left, without skin. A raw, weeping, pink sub-epidermal layer exposed to grit and wind.

Come too close and the flesh blisters and bubbles as if scrubbed in a citrus bath.
Show kindness and I scream silently as my seeping surface is burned by your care.
Touch me and your hands are as salt rubbing and thrusting into bloody gashes, down to the bone.

I have been skinned alive.

Kindness scaulds me. I can hardly bear it.
At times it is like torture.

And yet, some part of me wants kindness and is so frightened of being met with disgust or anger. So afraid, that I wrap barbed wire and cut glass tight around my skin and aim to let your care bounce off before it can find its way in.
Because if, for one minute, I let it soothe me, you will gouge it out, snatch it away and I will feel worse for having had and lost than never having had at all.

It is better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all? Maybe
But never better to have been loved and lost than never to have been loved at all.

I am meant to love unconditionally, without restraint, without SELF.
Ugh.
I love. I care. I hold. I touch. I tend.
But do it to me and I run.

Negative I know.
To do uplifting would be to be the same in this place as I am to all those I live and work with and THAT defeats the object.
Apologies all the same.

The Language of Pain II

The hidden parts of my legs are often covered in small red mouths screaming.

Nobody hears but it sometimes it helps for my body to scream when the rest of me is in silent pain.

If you are reading this thinking I'm a nutcase, you're wrong.

I'm your friend, your neighbour, the smiley person at the checkout, your kid's favourite teacher, your librarian, your sister, your colleague.

You'd never know because I am so ashamed. I could never explain to you that sometimes I am so full of hatred for myself that I need to hurt. Or that I am angry and hurt at something someone has done /said but for some reason, the only way I can release it is to slice myself up. Or that sometimes I am so depressed that I need to feel something... or that there are times when the pain inside becomes unbearable and I have to put it on the outside.

I could never tell you that. And so it stays as my secret.

My body screams under my clothes as I smile at you and shake your hand.

It screams as I nod politely at your conversation.

It screams as I laugh about your weekend.

It screams as I ask how you are.

This is also the language of pain. A different form.