Bombshell

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"...

... 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...

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

...And The Dream Of Being Special

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

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...

... 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

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

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.

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.

Being Here

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...

I'm in hell.

I can't say more than that.

The Difficulty Of Getting Something Down...

... 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

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

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

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.