On The Rack

Tortured by his enemies, a film I once watched showed a man tied between two posts which were then gradually pulled apart, thus ripping his whole body in half.

Nice start huh?

Thought I'd jump in headfirst before I got cold and ran out on the balls of my feet.

Medieval England practised "Stretching" as a form of torture on a hideous frame known as 'the rack'. It was often used to punish or to extract information from a victim.

I'm not great at history, but even the narcoleptic kid wakes up for the part of the lesson where the teacher tells about torture methods.

It's that morbid fascination thing.

Not to sound too melodramatic, but the image of someone being pulled apart has floated around my head over the past couple of days.

I feel as though parts of me are engaged in a game of "tug of war", and while that conjures up images of happily exhausted, muddy heaps of people who have engaged in the battle of the rope, for me, it feels as though my two teams, who are unfortunately, both inside me, are actually going to rip me in half.

It's a tug of war with a hell of a lot at stake and another part of me watches with some degree of horror as the stubborn struggle between me and me reaches a ridiculous intensity.

On one end of the rope, Desperation pulls me towards the gym to work my body into a frenzied, sweating, mechanical state where I no longer feel anything except a physical exhaustion and a terrible desperation to deplete my body in a any which way.

On the other end, Depression pushes me down, won't let me move, pulls my energy away from me so I have to step further back to retrieve it.

And as they pull, I am torn.

Desperation to lose weight is screaming in my ears.

"You must be in control".

"You only have this".

"If you allow yourself an inch, you'll be sure to take miles and miles and it'll be unstoppable".

Depression whispers,

"Don't bother".

"What's the point?"

"Nothing matters".

Yet another part, cries at the pain of being torn so violently. It feels as though I am on a rack.

I end up in the gym but the inside is weary and tired from the fight.

It would seem that I am able to cope when depression is not begging me to stop and when I am winning what I know is an unhealthy battle against my weight. Which is absurd!

This is not how it's meant to go, surely?

I suppose that when you are on a rack, if the force is only pulling you in one direction, it ceases to be torture.

The lesser of the two evils (in terms of short term outcomes) is the force which drives me to starve and exercise.

It's when that force is opposed by the dreadful weight of depression that it becomes so painful.

Christmas - The Best and The Worst

Polarity
is the word that springs to mind.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

I'm not a huge Dickens fan but this is one of my favourites.


Christmas can be a time of magic where, without even realising it, a mysterious sense of wonder can seep into even the heaviest heart, piping the edges of dead dreams and hopes with fine,spider-spun, incandescent threads.
Childlike innocence, a longing for something greater than 'us', the sudden warmth in a stranger touched by 'Christmas spirit', the unfamiliar sense of community... Christmas holds people, just for a brief, flickering moment, in a warm palm of purity, goodness and equality.
Gone are the British class boundaries and the pretensions and graces.
Just for a moment, we are bought together by an affinity that may only be described as supernatural.

All this said, Christmas can be the very worst of times.
Nothing blows colder than the wind of grief, loss and loneliness experienced by those who suffer at this time of year.
Many of us have been there. Standing outside the beautifully adorned windows of houses which glow golden Christmas light and sparkle with velvet laughter and heavy blanket heat.
Nothing like being on the other side of the pane, with the cold ache of despair that cannot be touched by the warmth you are surrounded by.

The cold isolation is felt all the more as you gaze at the dancing flames you cannot feel.

Christmas is a mix for most.
A time when the temperature is rarely consistent.

For those who can stay warm, I wish you a wonderful, peaceful, hopeful Christmas.

For those who have a little more trouble with the thermostat... or those who are cannot even make it past a front door, I pray that you would find the strength to hold on, hold out for the next day when it may not feel much warmer, but at least the "lack of" will not be so acutely emphasised.
I pray that you can hang in there for the aftermath when Christmas has passed and the pain is not highlighted so acutely.

I don't mean for this to be a depressing post.

I just want to acknowledge the two sides to this season and to reach out to those who are feeling despair.
You are not alone.

Circling at One Thousand Feet

It's ironic that as I sit down once again, to tackle the subject of eating disorders, and in particular, anorexia, I have an image of me circling my subject like a very hungry animal circles a potential feed; warily and full of tentative, watchful suspicion that what is being circled might suddenly retaliate with a defensive blow from a place which went unnoticed.

This topic. I'm afraid it has the potential to do that.

I have written a fair bit about my sister. In fact, there are a few posts here about her and although it is not easy to write about, it's more because of my sense of hopelessness around making others understand than any deep pain at the memories of the experiences.
In fact, if anything, I have very few memories and the ones I do have are almost totally devoid of any feeling.
Giant pools of nothingness swill and wash around my insides much of the time. I feel that underneath everything... under all the angst and the pain and the upset, there is nothing.
Just an empty, black void.

Hopping out of that void for a minute, it's fair to say I have been circling my own feed for a while now.
I've burnt a lot of calories with my circling.

I don't expect understanding.
In fact, if anything, I expect to be met with the same level of horror and disgust that I feel about myself.

Having such an intimate knowledge of what it is to have to stand by and watch a loved one scream and twist in an unreachable cage, shredding themselves against the razor bars, you'd think that:

1. I would have more common sense and


2. I would never be as selfish as to inflict it on those who are already so broken.

But no.
It seems that I lack the ability to apply the logic I am such close friends with and that I am clearly so completely wrapped up in myself, that I care very little that others will suffer.

I have developed an eating problem.

I don't want to call it Anorexia because that is what my sister has suffered from for over half of her years on earth, and any similarities between us disappeared long ago.
It also just feels fundamentally wrong to be "anorexic".
I'm just not LIKE that.
It's not me.
I'm not the type.

And... at any given moment, I feel in grave danger of all my control slipping away from me. In other words, I don't know if I can keep up the starvation, the denial, the ferocity of the exercise regime BUT if I even think about going easier on myself, I will be unable to stop the gorging and the uncontollable binging that will follow.

I recognise that wht I have just written lacks balance.

It is a problem I can't find an answer to.

I need extreme lack.

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.

Distorted Perceptions?

Most people with an eating disorder have a skewed perception of their body.

I know this. Better even than most.

I remember walking through town a few years back as my sister explained to me that a Size 8 COULD be fat.
I remember the hot, white anger, tempered by my mind curling around her words, desperately trying to grasp for an understanding, some logic.
I remember it as one of the many, many moments where I felt that my ribcage was a small, cold, metal box holding a bomb.

I've talked a lot about my sister's illness but haven't particularly been able to talk about what has happened to me.

Although it feels like strange and frightening territory, it is perhaps possible, that when I see myself, I don't see what others see. Or at least, different parts of me see differet things.

In therapy we have been, quite gently, picking up the notion of having different parts.
My parts don't communicate with each other, which I'm told, is a bit of an issue.

I realised this week, that my different parts all have something very different invested in starvation...
This would explain why I can't work it out and why my understanding fluctuates between fine, morning mist and a blanket of thick, inpeneterable fog.
Diffeeent parts have different reasons and I can't even access some of them.

It's possible that I even have parts that I don't know.

Imagine.

I'm torn between thinking this is absurd, illogical psychobabble

and

the possibiity that, in trusting my therapist, there is something more... something other... some chance that what I am now is not all I ever will be.

I'm Not Alone?

Lots of things to write but I'll go with what the blog is meant to be about.

Therapy

It felt like I had been swallowing liquefied lead when I crawled into the little house in the woods yesterday evening. Hot lead that cooled in my chest and solidified in my gut. Heavy and cold.


Her words were bars of golden light that I allowed to my hands to touch, even to hold and bring to my lips.
And in that trembling daring, the light I think, sort of met me in a deeper place and in my chest at least, has dissipated some of the darkness.

I dared.
I must remember that when I dare, it pays off.

I wanted to leave some of the gold here. A reminder of what it could be if I can just lower the fence a little. And it occurs to me as I type, perhaps I don't even need to take the fence down. Maybe I just need to hop over it for very small amounts of time.
Kind of like the process of desensitising.

I can't remember big chunks of what was said in the session but what I do remember is her saying that I was a battleground and that it wasn't my fault.
Music.
Is it really not?
I challenged her. "I must be choosing this. I must be".
The parts of you are not communicating as they should be.
You have become the punitive adult. It has become you.

How do I stop it?

We are working with that now.
WE are.
WE will do this together.

I can't really remember ever feeling anything but alone. Not because my parents didn't try to calm my fears. Not because I couldn't ever tell anyone how frightened I was. Just because I have always felt that nobody can ever really be there or understand.
I have never thought that 'we' was... Well... 'We' has never been. Not for any dramatic reason. Just because nobody could be there.

I gave her the What Ifs.
I told her she would never be there.
I was thinking of the nights in pain, the moments where I hold the blade, the lonely, head curling times where I am frozen.

I dared to tell her she would never be enough.
I think I thought she would back away.

She told me she would be there. Even if it meant more sessions during the week. She said she wouldn't leave me and would try, to the best of her ability, not to let me down.
But, she said, it relies a lot on trusting me.

I'm not good with trust.

No. You're not but that's because for whatever reason, nobody has been able to be there and cope with the pain.

Oh.

Last night I struggled with her. Not in her house but in my head. Hmm... Yes. Crazy indeed.
I continued arguing long after I left.
But I was fighting with golden light which had already, somehow, seeped in.


This morning, for the first time ever, I feel like perhaps, if I was going to take a risk... maybe it would be WE and not just I.

I feel scared by what I just typed. Scared that I have allowed words to fall out and when I 'come round' to logic, I'll want to stuff them back in.

But.

I'm trying to take some risks.
Staying safe hasn't been working out too well.

Sadness

Careful crimson smile
Hiding sepia sadness
Hot tears streak my soul

The Child Part

Alright.
Now.
Bear with me.

I need to issue some kind of disclaimer which states that the information that follows and the fact that the concept has been mentioned at all, does not in any way imply that the author accepts or acknowledges the existence of such a thing.

Then, in one completely paradoxical swoop, I will contradict my own disclaimer by saying that I know perfectly well that this is a part of me somehow... I am just terrified by the disgust that I feel it may be met with.

Get on with it right?

Sorry.
Fear gets in the way.

So.
My therapist in all her glorious wisdom reminds me over and over again that I have a number of very seperate and very distinct 'selves'.
I am beginning to see how this is really quite true. The filing cabinet seems to have more than two drawers, or there are, at least, sub sections in each drawer.

This post is itself a child, tentatively and stumblingly clinging to the walker as it steps on soft, unused feet.
The ideas we talked about in therapy this week are little prisms, just about an arms length away from me and I tremble as I reach to just brush one with the very tips of my fingernails; hoping that the infintisimal fraction of contact will be just enough to edge the prism into a line of sunlight.

The title of the post acknowledges the topic I am not daring to comment on.
I'll come back to it if I can reach...

And in other news....

Lately I have needed to sit very quietly, with my knees, encircled by my arms, pulled tight into my chest.
I'd give an update of therapy but my eyelids seem to have suddeunly been overwhelmed by uncontrollable graitational forces.

Perhaps tomorrow.

This week I have:
Accidentally order a pair of very expensive Caterpiller boots off Amazon.
Been shocked by a huge hornbeam tree falling down across the garden
in the high winds.
Drunk Ginger wine every night.
Bought a (bargain price) nice bottle of whisky in ASDA
Eaten a lot of sweets and chocolate.
Not slept very well.
Cut myself in a very superficial and controlled way.
Worn a vest everyday because the heating at work has gone bust.
Taught 3 new kids.
Been to the dentist and been told I will need to have surgery on my
gum in the future.
Been to book club.
Seen a friend who has been living abroad for 2 years.
Been asked out to dinner by a guy in the gym. (Not my type, sadly)
Been very stressed at work.

Hollow

Anger has burned through me and left a black, hollow space of silent ash and dust.

It's a story I won't be able to tell.

Silence is heavy but safer.

If I could place a pillow over the hurt, I would suffocate it. Sit on it until it stopped moving.

I hate it that I sound this pathetic right now. I disgust myself.

Kindness Like Water

The other day my therapist said she didn't know whether to wrap me in cotton wool or bubble wrap to keep me safe.
I was fuming and something inside me tried to crawl to the furthest corner of my insides; a frantic retreat from her kindness.
Images of barbed wire piercing bubble wrap flashed through my mind, followed by the most vivid recollection of this scene from The Wizard of Oz.

At first I thought it was my therapist. Nice...
But no.
The witch is something in me and the water is kindness and VALIDATION.

If I let it soak me, I think I will melt.

Positive, you may think, given that the witch is after all, The Wicked Witch Of The West. But, truth be told, that part of me is desperately frightened of being melted.

Being heard is harder to swallow than being dismissed.
I find more pain in the kindness.

A watery war is being fought inside me somewhere. I don't want it to touch the wicked witch of the west, and yet I know that the witch is the villain of the piece.

Razors and Release.

I have so many words but feel overwhelmed at the idea of trying to piece them together. They swell and tumble, a disparate wave of words and feeling. The wave itself a spectrum of sensation, utterly numb at the base, raw at the breaking crest.

If I could somehow figure out what is going on to cause this level of desperation I might have a hope in hell of controlling it.
These last few days, well... weeks really... I have been fighting (and, shamefully, frequently losing) a battle against the urges and the desires I have to hurt myself in whatever way I can.
Yes.
Self harm.
Controversial. Taboo. Disgusting. Shameful. Painful. Desperate.
And yet, comforting. Releasing. Soothing. Calming. Cleansing.

A paradox and a half.

There are so many different perspectives on self harm that it's hard to keep up.
"Attention seeking" is the label that is possibly the most damning and the most hurtful to those who have to exert such incredible control by resisting the urge to just let rip on themselves. Instead they have to confine the screaming of their stories to such small areas of the body, the most hidden parts.

Tonight, just as many nights this week and the week before that, I stand on the brink of my own desperation to destroy. I fight from a part whose objections I repeatedly overrule, even as it reminds me and warns me of the physical pain I will be faced with when I trample over its defeated form in the rush to reach the razor.

People self harm for a wide variety of reasons and certainly, nowadays with the youth heavily influenced by 'emo' culture and the like, it is quite common; a disturbing trend borne, it would seem, out of a search for identity. Whatever happened to clothing being the defining feature in "teen stereotypes"? It's no defined by the number and depth of the cuts on a wrist.
I digress.
For me as an adult, it's primarily either a release of anger, a punishment if I feel let down, a purging of feelings that I can't hold in, or a response to uncontainable self hatred.

True, I started cutting as a teenager. I was fourteen and unable to speak about the fact that my sister was starving herself to death. Faced with the reactionless faces of my parents, the point blank denials that anything was wrong, and the stinging discipline that met she who dared to contradict; the pain started to spill out in secret ways using a different language. A language of pain which doesn't need to be heard to bring relief, only to be spoken.

At first, it wasn't as good as being able to talk to a grown up, but it made the clamour inside me quieter, and came to be far more effective, and practical, than needing anyone.

Great, you think.
So...
That was THEN. This is NOW.
My past is not my present.

And yet, something died in me back then that I miss in my present.
It wasn't my sister, although I no longer know her, so in some ways, perhaps she was the greatest loss of all. But something in me died and I can't revive it.
Maybe that is what therapy is for. To resurrect what is dead.

I am ashamed to admit that my mind feels invaded with fantasies of what I will do to hurt myself.
Goodness knows if you knew me in real life you wouldn't see a shadow of a ghost of a trace of the truth that I am someone who would ever imagine such fantasies, let alone indulge them.

I sound vaguely like a psycho but you'll just have to take my word for it that I'm the smiley girl you pass on the way to work. I'm your kid's favourite teacher. I'm the one who you come to when you need someone to listen and understand. I'm the one who you can count on to write a list of your problems and work out how you can tackle them in a way that feels manageable and is realistic.

It defies my own understanding then, that that same smiley, logical, responsible empathic, problem solver who is relied on by so many can be so consumed by such a desperate desire to violate her own body.
I'll spare you the details.

Cottage In The Woods

Yes. It's quite true!
My therapist lives in a cottage in the woods.
It really is like something out of a Hans Christian Anderson tale!

I suppose it could be symbolic, although I have never thought it to be before writng it here.

By six o'clock on these evenings, the grey dark has already been draped around the woods and the blackened trees tower, sinister, hoodless figures of forboding. The smell of damp, rotten leaves and lichen is comforting in the cold, and as I step out of the car a heavy, woody, quiet muffles in my ears.

The lines of the cottage have the blurred glow of the aura on the edge of a flame. Pumpkin light seeps from therapy room window.



There is space here for metaphors to bound like excited kids on an autumn forest walk but, I have to say, the golden light that draws a part of me into that room often feels like a trap and, once inside, I am frequently faced with a darkness and fear much greater than a night alone in a cold fingered forest.

That's the story of the little cottage in the woods.

And yes. There is a magic about it somehow, despite (or perhaps, in part, because of) the plunging fear that accompanies and enshrouds the place.

Back To The Matter In Hand...

Therapy.

Well.

My session today was markedly more positive than the previous sessions...
It's not that a great beam of light shone into my disordered and chaotic cabinet.

No.

More that I allowed myself
to dare
to try
to be
just a tiny
little
bit
less
well defended than I have at other times.
(Yes - that sentence was intentionally convoluted... Somehow I want it to demonstrate just a fraction of the fear I feel at daring to get close to anything that might lie beneath the barbed wire spiral in which I have wrapped myself).

Anyway, it's about time that I bought a little light to the darkness that has been my blog over the last however many ("too many!", you cry) posts.

I drove away from her little cottage in the woods thinking that I must remember this session as one where I gave her something to work with, rather than waiting for her to wave a wand over my unspoken pain.
I thought that it would feel very risky to allow myself to do that too much.
But that I must remember the time that I did.

The word "allow" is one of the most frightening words outside of my vocabulary.