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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
It never fails to shock when you wake up in the morning to find death sitting on the side of your bed, waiting for its subliminal whisperings to wake you.
Refusing to so much as glance at the intruder, I got up and went through my Sunday 'to do' list.
Number one, buy salad stuff for lunches... Number two, bake brownies for colleagues' birthdays tomorrow... Number three, mark kids' work... Number four, gym... Number five...
Still ignoring the cloak of darkness, I shower and find my way downstairs, chattering about Jamie Oliver and brightly listing ingredients, envisioning birthday brownies in cheery homemade boxes, red with white polka dots.
It'll be alright, I tell myself. Just keep moving. It'll pass.
Two days later, as I sit in the doctors' surgery, I wonder if it would have somehow all been okay if I'd made it to Tescos to buy what I needed.
"Back in a bit", I said, trying to ignore the back breaking heaviness and the winter chill as I grab my bag.
I never made it to the front door.
Instead, I half crawled up the stairs into my bedroom, where I sank down against the radiator, slumped in a dazed stupor wondering if there was anyone in the world who I could call to for help.
I didn't realise I couldn't move until I tried when I heard mum coming upstairs. neither did I realise that I was crying quite uncontrollably.
I've since been signed off work for a month (which I won't take) and had a week off work.
Unusually (for me), rather than the time off being detrimental, it has actually helped and I am feeling better than I did.
My folks (my poor folks) have been amazingly supportive, desperately worried and willing support me in almost anything that I think might help.
In desperate depression, I scoured the web looking for a hotel I could stay in just to get a break. The darkness worsened as my inability to make any decisions left me feeling increasingly despondent and hopeless. I figured that I would probably just spend the whole time binging and purging anyway.
I've ended up booking a week in a sort of retreat centre that I stumbled upon.
I have no idea how it will be, or whether I'll last the week. I leave tomorrow.
Certainly, last week, I was far too unwell to go anywhere.
There's no internet where I'm going so I will have to rely on my phone to check here or to post anything.
It's a risk, in some ways... I don't feel as though I am 'safe' with myself at the moment. Tonight's TWO binge and purge sessions show that.
The Woman was very concerned when I saw her last Monday.
She made me go to the doctor (saying that if I didn't, SHE would). She also gave me her mobile and made me communicate things during the week.
I was terrified by this new step.
This morning’s appointment with the Eating Disorders team was terrifying but I won't go into it at the moment. Suffice to say, they expect me to start full time treatment with them when they get up and running at the end of February.
I fought a surge of hysteria as they told me about eating two meals a day under their supervision.
...Alanis appears to state rather than question, which is probably just as well given that her definition of 'irony' sometimes (some lines) seems to be a little dubious (at best).
Semantic inaccuracies aside, she has an incredible voice (and tons of attitude) but the reason why I quote h
er right now, is
that I hear that line playing in my mind as I contemplate posting that today, the mind - cloaking darkness that has more or less disabled me since Saturday, was shot through with a narrow laser beam somewhere high above me.
And I've been like a drowning body who, in the last swelling, slipping moments, finds an air hole in the thick ceiling of ice above.
I haven't even been to work.
Can you imagine? Because I can't.
Today I walked around Ikea buying plates and bowls and other pointless porcelain vessels.
I want to move to my own place.
And all the time the Alanis song was playing.
My ray of light beamed from the numbers on the scales.
Isn't it ironic.
The lower I go, the higher I get.
And, I'm walking around Ikea investing in a future that I am doing my damnedest to end before it has the chance to begin.
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?
If Anorexia is a faceless figure in an old black and white horror, then deceit is the dark cloak wrapped around the shadowed form.
As a fourteen year old, I watched as this graveyard figure misted around the sister I adored, breathing lies and cunning into the mouth of her soul.
When she spoke, it was with a new voice; a voice of distrust, defence and guile.
I hated the dainty steps of deception that I heard moving so quietly along the upstairs landing; from bedroom to bathroom; from sink to window, from hand to mouth to toothbrush. I hated watching the cloak pass over her - through her, each time stealing away a piece of the sibling I loved more than myself.
Lately though, I too have taken breath from the figure. I understand now, that same desperation, which shakes the pounding heart, and will go to such lengths to protect and disguise the disgusting truths of an anorexic existence.
Fingers pushing against the wall of my throat, I heave and retch, praying to keep silent.
My dad knocks on the door and asks to be let in.
I am washing the last of it down the basin, frantic, talking all the time.
I let him in.
"What were you doing just then, with your door locked?"
I search in corners furthest from the truth.
It must be feasible. It must be shameful.
"Oh..."
I can't bear the look in his eyes.
"I was... weighing myself".
I manage to whisper,
"sorry".
He wraps me in his arms to comfort my despair.
"Oh love... " Words of comfort pump shame around my body. "It'll all be okay... Just as long as you're not secretly drinking or making yourself sick"
A couple of days ago, a similar scenario. This time, I'm sure he knows.
Eyes watering, throat burning, nose running.
I was washing my hands.
Honest.
***
Not only does Anorexia make liars out of its prey; it is, IN ITSELF, a lie.
It's a throat grabbing, heart stopping, life sucking LIE.
And although one part of me knows that this lie is fundamental to the discovery, diagnosis and medical definition of this disorder, another part cannot possibly disbelieve the truth of what I see and feel.
It doesn't matter that that 'truth' is a distortion.
It doesn't matter that it may be a deception.
What matters is that no matter what the scales say, the truth is, it's never small enough.
Somehow, the monster had fallen asleep in the overlooked shadows of the cave.
And the cave, in it's way, had forgotten the echoes of it's clawing and shrieking; forgotten even the heavy thuds of the desperate turning as it tore deeper at the gashes of its matted flesh.
The cave fast forgot and its rock surface smoothed soft.
In the Friday floodlight, the cave prayed for dimmer light as the monster stirred.
"You're censoring a lot", said The Woman - (not a question, you'll notice).
Despite offering a full English breakfast, Christmas film, popcorn and a Christmas Quiz, we never get a huge amount of kids in on the last day of term. In fact, at particular times of the year our attendance often becomes a real issue.
The kids we DO get in are often either those who might be classed as our more 'phobic' kids, who are too anxious to attend a mainstream secondary school, and those kids for whom home life is just so chaotic that they prefer the safety and security offered by the unit.
(Our very disaffected ones tend to be off mugging people at the first possible opportunity).
I'm digressing.
Over the last 18 months, one of my girls has faced particularly horrendous traumas. As her form tutor, I have had regular sessions with her just to offer support, listening and as much care as is possible within obvious boundaries.
As the last day of term wore on, this student grew increasingly impatient.
Unable to watch the film, she wandered from teacher to teacher, talking about anything and everything. I watched as I sat drawing "Christmassy" things with some of the young people.
I remembered how I had been struck by her reluctance to leave us for the summer... and also how badly her behaviour, her health and her attitude had deteriorated after that 6 week break.
Having a place of safety in the midst of utter turmoil is not just important, it's essential.
It's somewhere familiar, when so often, the world is overwhelming and frightening. It's somewhere predictable, where it's not necessary to walk on egg shells in case something or someone explodes. It's somewhere that nurtures rather than competes with or abuses.
And, perhaps most importantly for a small number, it is a place which will stay safe, stay familiar, stay concerned and stay THERE despite all the railing and kicking and yelling.
(The parallels are obvious...)
For some, coping when the place which holds them together suddenly isn't there for a fortnight (or much longer), is a painful and terrifying concept, which can result in a sense of hopelessness and self destruction.
Before she left, on impulse I ran to fetch the tiny doodle I had been doing.
It was of a small, silver angel.
Pressing it into her hand, I told her that the angel was going to stay with her over the Christmas holiday and that it would bring her back safe and sound.
"Does it matter if t
he angel comes back with me or not?"
(Instinctive reaction = Fear. Will I have to look after it?)
No, I told her. Even if it disappeared, it would still be watching over her and looking after her, but it was a secret. Not everyone had an angel. (And to be fair, a number of the kids would have used it as a roach for a spliff as soon as they got past the front door!!!)
You may well be asking where on earth all this is going... and you'd be right, because I haven't thought it out very well and as a result, it's a very convoluted way of saying something probably quite simple.
In a recent comment, JSS picked up that I had made some progress in being comforted by The Woman's concern before the therapy break.
It occurred to me as I typed the last post, that in some strange way, her insistence that she wrote down her email address (which I did point out was on the Internet) was an angel that she put in my palm. It wasn't about using it, it was about knowing that somehow, although my one place of safety was disappearing from my view, it was still there. It IS still there.
For a person caught in a trap, the knowledge that someone is coming back for them, may offer them enough courage to hang onto life for an extra minute.
For the teenage girl forced to live with someone who ruined her childhood, maybe the thought that an angel hears her cries, is enough to make her feel heard until we can.
And for me, maybe merely having the option of communicating, is enough to remind me that she would still hear me.
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'? )
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