(no subject)
I've been MIA for a while. I think it's been at least a year now. I've decided it might be a good idea to get back to writing here, though. I'm not doing this in an attempt to reintegrate myself into the LJ community or anything--I had few followers to begin with, and I'm sure many of them have forgotten about me at this point--but because I just think it might be a good thing for me to do.
I suppose I should give some background as to what happened and where I've been for the last year. I think I last wrote in the early or middle part of last summer. Anyway, at some point pretty early on last summer I more or less stopped functioning altogether. Of course, this had been an escalating problem for some time--during my last couple of years of college I did only the bare minimum amount of work, which was incredibly out of character, and excessive sleeping had been a problem for a number of years--but it really reached its peak at that time. Many days I spent roughly twenty hours in bed, and much, if not most, of that time was spent sleeping. Between five or six and nine or ten at night were my out of bed hours, so to speak, but I always found myself at a complete loss as to what to do during that time. There was nothing to do. I couldn't write, and I couldn't even read. I tried reading my favorite Harry Potter book at one point because I thought that maybe would work, but I got to the end and just couldn't finish. I had a few new vidoe games, but I couldn't play them for more than a half-hour or so, and I've always loved video games. My parents bought me an Ipod nano and it remained in its package for months before I even opened it. Watching TV was just about intolerable. I'm essentially friendless, so going out with people wasn't an option.
OK, so you get the idea. Believe me, anhedonia is nothing new to me, as I can remember struggling with it in a major way as far back as the beginning of junior high school when I first became depressed. (It was actually one of the first symptoms of depression I experienced.) This was a new extreme, however. Naturally, I stopped funtioning in other ways as well. Showers became even more infrequent (and that's saying something). My goal was to brush my teeth even once a day, and flossing wasn't even given a thought. I didn't wash my face. My room became messier and messier, and I didn't do my laundry. Again, you get the idea.
I was supposed to be moving to New York in late August to start an MFA program for writing. I went out there with my parents once early in the summer to look at apartments, but never made any effort to prepare beyond that. My mother was scared about me moving anyway because she was afraid I would get really sick with my eating disorder and lose tons of weight, but it got to the point where no one could see how it could possibly work when I couldn't get out of bed each day. How could I do my own laundry, hold a job, go to class, shop for groceries, etc? People kept bringing it up and I said it would be fine, but I wasn't even making any effort to find a job or a place to live. I felt no motivation to do so. I didn't care. Money was an obstacle as well, as I would have to take out huge loans. It's not really that I chose not to go or that anyone else made that choice for me; it's just that the time came and I didn't have a job or an apartment or anything, so that was that.
Honestly, I wasn't upset. I had stopped caring about going some time ago. My parents said I had to get a job. My psychiatrist wanted to admit me to the psych ward. I didn't care about those things one way or the other. I made no effort to get a job. My mother heard about a part-time job at the the local bank, I said I would look into it, she said to call and make a resume, I said I would later, she said do it now, I said I'll do it tomorrow. Blah blah blah. She dragged me to the bank and I ended up with a job.
I was very scared at first. The job I applied for was fifteen hours a week--five on Thursday afternoons/evenings, five on Friday afternoons/evenings, and five on Saturday mornings. The job I was offered was twenty-five hours: Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 2:00. I didn't wan to take it, but I felt I didn't have a choice. I figured it didn't much matter because I wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks anyway.
I actually still have that job. It took a while to acclimate, but it worked out OK. Getting up in the morning went from hell to a challenge. Showering went from every three days to every day with a few blips. I wash my face and do my hair and floss my teeth. I talk with customers and I even come off as friendly. I never call out sick. In other words, I actually do it.
In intensive treatment I always considered therapeutic scheduling a load of BS. OK, I still kind of feel that way. I mean, I remain unsure as to how scheduling my weekend down to what I'm going to do every hour is going to make me all happy and healthy. I will admit, though, that I have to give having structure some credit. Being forced to go to work everyday gets me out of bed. Being forced to interact with people gives me a bit more normalcy in my life. It's something, even if it's only a little something and not always a particularly successful something, that gets me out of my goddamn head a little. And that's more important than anything.
And that's what I've been doing. It took a couple of months for me to feel up to doing basic things like updating this journal again, and then I felt overwhelmed because so much had happened and so much time had passed, so I couldn't get myself to do it. I figured I had to just bite the bullet at some point, though.
Now I'm planning my next step. I decided (and this was separate from not going to grad school and is a decision that I made later) that I don't think I want to get an MFA and have a career in writing. I don't do well in an academic environment, and I'd likely end up teaching. I want a job that I can leave when I go home, not one that will force me to constantly be doing all sorts of stuff ourside of work. I don't want to face constant deadlines and be under constant pressure. I like to write, but it wouldn't be a good career for me. I applied to MFA programs because I was set on going to graduate school. I liked writing and was good at it, so that's what I picked, but I never thought about it beyond that. I never considered if it was actually something I wanted to do for a career. I just knew going to grad school after college meant living away from home but not in a dorm or college housing, which meant I could lose as much weight as I wanted without my parents or a college health center staff interviening. That's what mattered. I simply chose the first grad program that came to mind.
I still don't know what I want to do. I have no interest in banking. I actually don't mind the job--it's boring as hell most of the time, but it's realtively easy and stress free. (I only work as a teller; I don't think I specified that.) I've been thinking of social work and nearly applied to MSW programs this past winter/spring, but I didn't have things ready in time. Obviously I have reservations about this. I mean, I know for sure that I would avoid doing anything with eating disorders like the plague; I know some people are actually drawn to that and that my experience might give me something extra to bring to the table, so to speak, but I know it would be a bad idea. Many people can go on the work with eating disordered individuals after recovering, but I don't think I'd be one of those people. Beyond that it gets tricky. I've considered this issue many times. I feel like the one good thing that has come from my own struggles is an increased ability to be empathetic. I'm not judgmental the way others are. I'd have to go into a lot of detail to really explain this, and I feel like it's extremely important, so I'll save that for another entry. I don't feel like I'd be triggered by people struggling with non-eating disored issues that are the same as mine as I would be by spending time with people with EDs. I have doubts, though. Is it a good idea, for me and for the people I might help? I really don't know, and I think about it a lot.
That said, you can do a lot with social work; mental health stuff is just a small fraction of it. That makes me think it still might be a good idea, although I still have reservations, although I won't get into it all now. I do think I'd like to help people. I'm considering getting a new job, one that is actually relevent to this, and applying this winter/spring for school. I'm worried that i might have to work full-time, though, and I don't know if I could handle it. I'd have to get my license, too, but that's a different story.
Anyway, that's what's been going on. Of course, that's just the surface stuff. What really matters is what's underneath. I'm not sure how I can explain what's been going on. I guess...I just feel like I'm at a loss right now. I feel like I've done everything I can and nothing has changed. I don't know what's left to do. I just don't know how much longer I can tolerate this.
I'm functioning more again. Sure, I still nap most afternoons after work, and I still have no social life, but it's a little better. I've been reading a bit in the last couple of months, and obviously the hygiene stuff's better, and, of course, I'm working. I just can't tolerate my own head, though. I just can't stand thinking, living, being. And I don't know what to do or how much longer I can take it.
I'm not sure how to even explain this. I could say I'm depressed, and I'm miserable, but that kind of just goes without saying. I just can't even stand my own mind anymore. I hate myself so, so much. It's not that I have bad self-esteem or anything, or that i thnk I'm fat or stupid or ugly. I'm skinny (more on that later), I'm probably even a little smarter than average, and I'm decently pretty. I'm very good at my job (although I guess I kind of should be because I'm way overqualified for it). It's not that type of thing. I just hate who I am. I just think I'm an awful, terrible person. It sounds stupid, and maybe it seems like I'm just saying that. I can't explain it. I don't think I can say this in a way that can truly capture how I feel. I just believe, honestly and truly and at my very core, that I am awful. I feel frustrated writing this because I know it's going to sound stupid to anyone who reads this, and I know I can't get across what I really mean. I just live with this self-hatred, self-hatred that isn't even based on any specific thing, and it seems to dictate almost everything I do, feel, and think.
I am completely isolated socially. I made no friends in college, and obviously I lost the small number of friends I had in high school years ago. Again, I'm not sure how to adequately get this across. because I feel like it's just one of those things people always say. The only significant relationships I have are with my parents and my therapist. I have hardly any relationship at all with my sister. We live in the same house and I go days without speaking with her. As I said, friendships are practically nonexistent. I have very little--mainly just a call or email here or there, and, honestly, that's only something that's improved a bit recently because a friend of mine decided to get back in touch with me (why I can't understand). I can speak with co-workers and customers and all sorts of people everywhere far easily than I ever could before, I guess because of my job, but nothing can ever go beyond the surface level. I'm afraid to have a relationship. I don't know if I even want a relationship. I don't know how to make a friend, how to be a friend. It would be selfish to want a relationship because I'd only end up hurting the person. It wouldn't be intentional, but it would happen, so it would be unfair of me to enter a relationship. I know myself, and I'd just hurt and mess the person up, and that would be the last thing I'd want to do. Maybe this is really just more of my selfishness speaking, though. Maybe I'm just afraid of getting hurt myself.
I just don't know what to do. My thoughts are so warped and distorted but I don't know how to escape them. The longer they stay like this, though, the worse they get. They feed off of themselves. I keep digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole and getting farther and farther from normalcy, but it doesn't even seem to be because of what I'm doing or the choices I'm making. It's justs because of how I'm thinking, but how do I stop that? How do I change it? Things have just gotten worse and worse over the years in my head and in my mind. I'm not talking about my eating disorder or cutting or social isolation; those things have their ups and downs, but that's not what I mean. My thoughts, my feelings, my way of seeing myself and everything around me has just become more and more wrong, and I don't know how to stop it from continuing.
Every morning before I wake up I have terrible dreams. They're not nightmares because they're not frightening, but they're awful. It can be a variety of things. Sometimes it involves physical punishment; people are beating me, pulling me limb from limb, slicing me open, setting me on fire. Sometimes it doesn't. The theme is always the same, though: I am horrible. That's the dream, people telling me how awful I am. They tell me all of the bad things I've done, and I try to apologize, but they won't listen, and then they tell me I've done things that I haven't even done, and I try to tell them that, but they won't listen. Over and over. I apologize and beg and plead for them to stop, but they won't. I can't escape my head even when I'm asleep. Not ever.
I live in constant fear of my parents giving up on me. I know they love me, though I don't know why. I know they like me and like to spend time with me. What I don't know, however, is how much longer they can live with me, how much longer they can watch me like this. They can only take so much hurt, and eventually they will have to leave. They won't be able to take it anymore. Then I will be alone, and once I've lost them I will know I have lost everyone, becaues they're all I have left. Perhaps that's what I'm waiting for, though. Perhaps I'm waiting for them to give up so I finally can, too.
I try to look towards the future, but what could I possibly see? I picture anything and everything: marriage, no marriage; kids, no kids; living here, living there; this job, that job. I picture things that are supposed to make people happy. I try to fantasize, but there are no fantisies. The simple fact is that no matter what happens, I will still have these thoughts and this mind, and, therefore, I cannot be happy.
And that's that. I don't know what to do. I try. I've managed to keep self-harming behavios to a minimum, although when it happens it tends to happen badly (more on that another time, perhaps). I go to work and do what I'm supposed to. I endure the terrible episodes when they come, the epsiodes when the self-hatred becomes intolerable, when rational thinking leaves completely, when I want to end it all. I do not end it all. I'm waiting for things to get better, and I'm willing to do what needs to be done to make them better. How long, though, should someone have to wait?
I guess that's what's happening now. There's the eating disorder, but I'm not sure what to say about it. It's different. I got off of Abilify a year ago, but by then it had made me gain a ton of weight . I tolerated it for months. It was awful, but I did it. I decided to lose a little, though. You know the story, and it's there, but it's different. It got out of hand, but it was more unintentional than it ever has been. I wanted to lose weight, and I tried to lose weight, but I was also well above what's normal for me. I wasn't sure that I wanted to go lower than I was supposed to, but it happened. I can't say it was out of my control--I chose to eat what I ate--but it was different. I wasn't dead-set on losing tons of weight. It wasn't a case of trying to get as low as I could, end of story. That's the way it's always been. I've never had any ambivalence about weight loss. Not before now.
The ED specialist I had sort of kicked me out in late October. She's an adolescent doctor, and I'm too old. For months I saw no one, and my mother became concerned. Eventually she brought me in to see my PCP to be weighed. My weight was down a lot, but I was still relatively OK. (Remember, I was well above my set-point.) A month later my weight was down more and was no longer OK. Threats were made and I started seeing a ED specialist for adults in June. I was glad to have lost weight, but there was that new ambivalence. I wasn't sure that I wanted to go back to where I'd been. I'd grown to tolerate my body more. I'd learned to stop looking at every girl I'd see and compare myself to her. I didn't spend nearly every waking hour thinking about food and weight. I added back what I'd cut out of my diet.
It hasn't worked, though. I've kept losing, and I'm surprised. I really think I'm eating enough. It seems like enough. Yeah, I know that means nothing coming from someone with a chronic eating disorder, but I'm really confused. I've starved myelf. I'm not starving myself. I'm not engaging in any other behaviors, and I have no real desire to. Maybe being on Abilify for years and having to cut my intake so drastically as a result really has altered my view of what's normal.
It's not so much that I'm trying to lose weight. I think maybe I just don't care enough to try to stop. I don't think being emaciated will make me happier; I no longer live with that delusion. Frankly, I don't think anything will make me happy, not even that. I don't want to end up back in eating disordered land, surrounded by people who cry over pieces of fruit and hide cheese in their socks and wail about how fat they are when they don't even weigh one hundred pounds. My mind is no longer there, and I don't want it to be there. Yet my body is bringing me there. I keep losing. My weight is too low. I can see and feel the bones. My pants don't fit; even the new pants I bought to replace the old ones that didn't fit are becoming too loose. My hair is falling out at a more alarming rate than usual, and my digestion is crappier than typical. I'm shaky and weak sometimes, and I thighs ache when I walk up the stairs. It's getting awkward and uncomfortable at work because of my weight and appearance. I'm an adult; they cannot force me into most types of treatment. Frankly, intensive treatment focused on eating disorders does me more harm than good. It always has. If I must be hospitalized or admitted to an inpatient unit there won't be anything I can do, though, and I know it's up to me to stop that, and I'm not stopping it. I don't want my mind to go back to where it was in terms of food and weight. I don't want to see myself as fat when I'm not. I don't want to be afraid of eating anything but a small number of things. Of course I value my weight and size more than I should. Of course my definition of thin is stricter than typical. My mind isn't where it used to be, though, not in terms of this. If I don't change things it might end up back there, so why am I so reluctant to do what I need to do?
I'm twenty-five-years-old now. My birthday was Thursday. I cannot think about this, though. I cannot think about what I have lost, about what might have been. I will feel sad, and I might even cry, and that I cannot tolerate. I am a coward, a coward who is so afraid of feelling sad or angry or upset that she has managed to warp her thinking so severely that it keeps her from feeling these things. Is it really better, though? If not, how do I undo it? Maybe I really cannot tolerate feeling these things. Maybe if I start feeling them I will not be able to stop.
I guess I've rambled enough. Again, I don't expect anyone to read this. I don't want anyone to feel obliged to keep up with my journal either. This was long and whiny and ranty and illogical and potentially triggering to others, so I guess it might not have been a good way to get back into things. Still, I think it was an important thing to do and a step in the right direction.
I suppose I should give some background as to what happened and where I've been for the last year. I think I last wrote in the early or middle part of last summer. Anyway, at some point pretty early on last summer I more or less stopped functioning altogether. Of course, this had been an escalating problem for some time--during my last couple of years of college I did only the bare minimum amount of work, which was incredibly out of character, and excessive sleeping had been a problem for a number of years--but it really reached its peak at that time. Many days I spent roughly twenty hours in bed, and much, if not most, of that time was spent sleeping. Between five or six and nine or ten at night were my out of bed hours, so to speak, but I always found myself at a complete loss as to what to do during that time. There was nothing to do. I couldn't write, and I couldn't even read. I tried reading my favorite Harry Potter book at one point because I thought that maybe would work, but I got to the end and just couldn't finish. I had a few new vidoe games, but I couldn't play them for more than a half-hour or so, and I've always loved video games. My parents bought me an Ipod nano and it remained in its package for months before I even opened it. Watching TV was just about intolerable. I'm essentially friendless, so going out with people wasn't an option.
OK, so you get the idea. Believe me, anhedonia is nothing new to me, as I can remember struggling with it in a major way as far back as the beginning of junior high school when I first became depressed. (It was actually one of the first symptoms of depression I experienced.) This was a new extreme, however. Naturally, I stopped funtioning in other ways as well. Showers became even more infrequent (and that's saying something). My goal was to brush my teeth even once a day, and flossing wasn't even given a thought. I didn't wash my face. My room became messier and messier, and I didn't do my laundry. Again, you get the idea.
I was supposed to be moving to New York in late August to start an MFA program for writing. I went out there with my parents once early in the summer to look at apartments, but never made any effort to prepare beyond that. My mother was scared about me moving anyway because she was afraid I would get really sick with my eating disorder and lose tons of weight, but it got to the point where no one could see how it could possibly work when I couldn't get out of bed each day. How could I do my own laundry, hold a job, go to class, shop for groceries, etc? People kept bringing it up and I said it would be fine, but I wasn't even making any effort to find a job or a place to live. I felt no motivation to do so. I didn't care. Money was an obstacle as well, as I would have to take out huge loans. It's not really that I chose not to go or that anyone else made that choice for me; it's just that the time came and I didn't have a job or an apartment or anything, so that was that.
Honestly, I wasn't upset. I had stopped caring about going some time ago. My parents said I had to get a job. My psychiatrist wanted to admit me to the psych ward. I didn't care about those things one way or the other. I made no effort to get a job. My mother heard about a part-time job at the the local bank, I said I would look into it, she said to call and make a resume, I said I would later, she said do it now, I said I'll do it tomorrow. Blah blah blah. She dragged me to the bank and I ended up with a job.
I was very scared at first. The job I applied for was fifteen hours a week--five on Thursday afternoons/evenings, five on Friday afternoons/evenings, and five on Saturday mornings. The job I was offered was twenty-five hours: Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 2:00. I didn't wan to take it, but I felt I didn't have a choice. I figured it didn't much matter because I wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks anyway.
I actually still have that job. It took a while to acclimate, but it worked out OK. Getting up in the morning went from hell to a challenge. Showering went from every three days to every day with a few blips. I wash my face and do my hair and floss my teeth. I talk with customers and I even come off as friendly. I never call out sick. In other words, I actually do it.
In intensive treatment I always considered therapeutic scheduling a load of BS. OK, I still kind of feel that way. I mean, I remain unsure as to how scheduling my weekend down to what I'm going to do every hour is going to make me all happy and healthy. I will admit, though, that I have to give having structure some credit. Being forced to go to work everyday gets me out of bed. Being forced to interact with people gives me a bit more normalcy in my life. It's something, even if it's only a little something and not always a particularly successful something, that gets me out of my goddamn head a little. And that's more important than anything.
And that's what I've been doing. It took a couple of months for me to feel up to doing basic things like updating this journal again, and then I felt overwhelmed because so much had happened and so much time had passed, so I couldn't get myself to do it. I figured I had to just bite the bullet at some point, though.
Now I'm planning my next step. I decided (and this was separate from not going to grad school and is a decision that I made later) that I don't think I want to get an MFA and have a career in writing. I don't do well in an academic environment, and I'd likely end up teaching. I want a job that I can leave when I go home, not one that will force me to constantly be doing all sorts of stuff ourside of work. I don't want to face constant deadlines and be under constant pressure. I like to write, but it wouldn't be a good career for me. I applied to MFA programs because I was set on going to graduate school. I liked writing and was good at it, so that's what I picked, but I never thought about it beyond that. I never considered if it was actually something I wanted to do for a career. I just knew going to grad school after college meant living away from home but not in a dorm or college housing, which meant I could lose as much weight as I wanted without my parents or a college health center staff interviening. That's what mattered. I simply chose the first grad program that came to mind.
I still don't know what I want to do. I have no interest in banking. I actually don't mind the job--it's boring as hell most of the time, but it's realtively easy and stress free. (I only work as a teller; I don't think I specified that.) I've been thinking of social work and nearly applied to MSW programs this past winter/spring, but I didn't have things ready in time. Obviously I have reservations about this. I mean, I know for sure that I would avoid doing anything with eating disorders like the plague; I know some people are actually drawn to that and that my experience might give me something extra to bring to the table, so to speak, but I know it would be a bad idea. Many people can go on the work with eating disordered individuals after recovering, but I don't think I'd be one of those people. Beyond that it gets tricky. I've considered this issue many times. I feel like the one good thing that has come from my own struggles is an increased ability to be empathetic. I'm not judgmental the way others are. I'd have to go into a lot of detail to really explain this, and I feel like it's extremely important, so I'll save that for another entry. I don't feel like I'd be triggered by people struggling with non-eating disored issues that are the same as mine as I would be by spending time with people with EDs. I have doubts, though. Is it a good idea, for me and for the people I might help? I really don't know, and I think about it a lot.
That said, you can do a lot with social work; mental health stuff is just a small fraction of it. That makes me think it still might be a good idea, although I still have reservations, although I won't get into it all now. I do think I'd like to help people. I'm considering getting a new job, one that is actually relevent to this, and applying this winter/spring for school. I'm worried that i might have to work full-time, though, and I don't know if I could handle it. I'd have to get my license, too, but that's a different story.
Anyway, that's what's been going on. Of course, that's just the surface stuff. What really matters is what's underneath. I'm not sure how I can explain what's been going on. I guess...I just feel like I'm at a loss right now. I feel like I've done everything I can and nothing has changed. I don't know what's left to do. I just don't know how much longer I can tolerate this.
I'm functioning more again. Sure, I still nap most afternoons after work, and I still have no social life, but it's a little better. I've been reading a bit in the last couple of months, and obviously the hygiene stuff's better, and, of course, I'm working. I just can't tolerate my own head, though. I just can't stand thinking, living, being. And I don't know what to do or how much longer I can take it.
I'm not sure how to even explain this. I could say I'm depressed, and I'm miserable, but that kind of just goes without saying. I just can't even stand my own mind anymore. I hate myself so, so much. It's not that I have bad self-esteem or anything, or that i thnk I'm fat or stupid or ugly. I'm skinny (more on that later), I'm probably even a little smarter than average, and I'm decently pretty. I'm very good at my job (although I guess I kind of should be because I'm way overqualified for it). It's not that type of thing. I just hate who I am. I just think I'm an awful, terrible person. It sounds stupid, and maybe it seems like I'm just saying that. I can't explain it. I don't think I can say this in a way that can truly capture how I feel. I just believe, honestly and truly and at my very core, that I am awful. I feel frustrated writing this because I know it's going to sound stupid to anyone who reads this, and I know I can't get across what I really mean. I just live with this self-hatred, self-hatred that isn't even based on any specific thing, and it seems to dictate almost everything I do, feel, and think.
I am completely isolated socially. I made no friends in college, and obviously I lost the small number of friends I had in high school years ago. Again, I'm not sure how to adequately get this across. because I feel like it's just one of those things people always say. The only significant relationships I have are with my parents and my therapist. I have hardly any relationship at all with my sister. We live in the same house and I go days without speaking with her. As I said, friendships are practically nonexistent. I have very little--mainly just a call or email here or there, and, honestly, that's only something that's improved a bit recently because a friend of mine decided to get back in touch with me (why I can't understand). I can speak with co-workers and customers and all sorts of people everywhere far easily than I ever could before, I guess because of my job, but nothing can ever go beyond the surface level. I'm afraid to have a relationship. I don't know if I even want a relationship. I don't know how to make a friend, how to be a friend. It would be selfish to want a relationship because I'd only end up hurting the person. It wouldn't be intentional, but it would happen, so it would be unfair of me to enter a relationship. I know myself, and I'd just hurt and mess the person up, and that would be the last thing I'd want to do. Maybe this is really just more of my selfishness speaking, though. Maybe I'm just afraid of getting hurt myself.
I just don't know what to do. My thoughts are so warped and distorted but I don't know how to escape them. The longer they stay like this, though, the worse they get. They feed off of themselves. I keep digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole and getting farther and farther from normalcy, but it doesn't even seem to be because of what I'm doing or the choices I'm making. It's justs because of how I'm thinking, but how do I stop that? How do I change it? Things have just gotten worse and worse over the years in my head and in my mind. I'm not talking about my eating disorder or cutting or social isolation; those things have their ups and downs, but that's not what I mean. My thoughts, my feelings, my way of seeing myself and everything around me has just become more and more wrong, and I don't know how to stop it from continuing.
Every morning before I wake up I have terrible dreams. They're not nightmares because they're not frightening, but they're awful. It can be a variety of things. Sometimes it involves physical punishment; people are beating me, pulling me limb from limb, slicing me open, setting me on fire. Sometimes it doesn't. The theme is always the same, though: I am horrible. That's the dream, people telling me how awful I am. They tell me all of the bad things I've done, and I try to apologize, but they won't listen, and then they tell me I've done things that I haven't even done, and I try to tell them that, but they won't listen. Over and over. I apologize and beg and plead for them to stop, but they won't. I can't escape my head even when I'm asleep. Not ever.
I live in constant fear of my parents giving up on me. I know they love me, though I don't know why. I know they like me and like to spend time with me. What I don't know, however, is how much longer they can live with me, how much longer they can watch me like this. They can only take so much hurt, and eventually they will have to leave. They won't be able to take it anymore. Then I will be alone, and once I've lost them I will know I have lost everyone, becaues they're all I have left. Perhaps that's what I'm waiting for, though. Perhaps I'm waiting for them to give up so I finally can, too.
I try to look towards the future, but what could I possibly see? I picture anything and everything: marriage, no marriage; kids, no kids; living here, living there; this job, that job. I picture things that are supposed to make people happy. I try to fantasize, but there are no fantisies. The simple fact is that no matter what happens, I will still have these thoughts and this mind, and, therefore, I cannot be happy.
And that's that. I don't know what to do. I try. I've managed to keep self-harming behavios to a minimum, although when it happens it tends to happen badly (more on that another time, perhaps). I go to work and do what I'm supposed to. I endure the terrible episodes when they come, the epsiodes when the self-hatred becomes intolerable, when rational thinking leaves completely, when I want to end it all. I do not end it all. I'm waiting for things to get better, and I'm willing to do what needs to be done to make them better. How long, though, should someone have to wait?
I guess that's what's happening now. There's the eating disorder, but I'm not sure what to say about it. It's different. I got off of Abilify a year ago, but by then it had made me gain a ton of weight . I tolerated it for months. It was awful, but I did it. I decided to lose a little, though. You know the story, and it's there, but it's different. It got out of hand, but it was more unintentional than it ever has been. I wanted to lose weight, and I tried to lose weight, but I was also well above what's normal for me. I wasn't sure that I wanted to go lower than I was supposed to, but it happened. I can't say it was out of my control--I chose to eat what I ate--but it was different. I wasn't dead-set on losing tons of weight. It wasn't a case of trying to get as low as I could, end of story. That's the way it's always been. I've never had any ambivalence about weight loss. Not before now.
The ED specialist I had sort of kicked me out in late October. She's an adolescent doctor, and I'm too old. For months I saw no one, and my mother became concerned. Eventually she brought me in to see my PCP to be weighed. My weight was down a lot, but I was still relatively OK. (Remember, I was well above my set-point.) A month later my weight was down more and was no longer OK. Threats were made and I started seeing a ED specialist for adults in June. I was glad to have lost weight, but there was that new ambivalence. I wasn't sure that I wanted to go back to where I'd been. I'd grown to tolerate my body more. I'd learned to stop looking at every girl I'd see and compare myself to her. I didn't spend nearly every waking hour thinking about food and weight. I added back what I'd cut out of my diet.
It hasn't worked, though. I've kept losing, and I'm surprised. I really think I'm eating enough. It seems like enough. Yeah, I know that means nothing coming from someone with a chronic eating disorder, but I'm really confused. I've starved myelf. I'm not starving myself. I'm not engaging in any other behaviors, and I have no real desire to. Maybe being on Abilify for years and having to cut my intake so drastically as a result really has altered my view of what's normal.
It's not so much that I'm trying to lose weight. I think maybe I just don't care enough to try to stop. I don't think being emaciated will make me happier; I no longer live with that delusion. Frankly, I don't think anything will make me happy, not even that. I don't want to end up back in eating disordered land, surrounded by people who cry over pieces of fruit and hide cheese in their socks and wail about how fat they are when they don't even weigh one hundred pounds. My mind is no longer there, and I don't want it to be there. Yet my body is bringing me there. I keep losing. My weight is too low. I can see and feel the bones. My pants don't fit; even the new pants I bought to replace the old ones that didn't fit are becoming too loose. My hair is falling out at a more alarming rate than usual, and my digestion is crappier than typical. I'm shaky and weak sometimes, and I thighs ache when I walk up the stairs. It's getting awkward and uncomfortable at work because of my weight and appearance. I'm an adult; they cannot force me into most types of treatment. Frankly, intensive treatment focused on eating disorders does me more harm than good. It always has. If I must be hospitalized or admitted to an inpatient unit there won't be anything I can do, though, and I know it's up to me to stop that, and I'm not stopping it. I don't want my mind to go back to where it was in terms of food and weight. I don't want to see myself as fat when I'm not. I don't want to be afraid of eating anything but a small number of things. Of course I value my weight and size more than I should. Of course my definition of thin is stricter than typical. My mind isn't where it used to be, though, not in terms of this. If I don't change things it might end up back there, so why am I so reluctant to do what I need to do?
I'm twenty-five-years-old now. My birthday was Thursday. I cannot think about this, though. I cannot think about what I have lost, about what might have been. I will feel sad, and I might even cry, and that I cannot tolerate. I am a coward, a coward who is so afraid of feelling sad or angry or upset that she has managed to warp her thinking so severely that it keeps her from feeling these things. Is it really better, though? If not, how do I undo it? Maybe I really cannot tolerate feeling these things. Maybe if I start feeling them I will not be able to stop.
I guess I've rambled enough. Again, I don't expect anyone to read this. I don't want anyone to feel obliged to keep up with my journal either. This was long and whiny and ranty and illogical and potentially triggering to others, so I guess it might not have been a good way to get back into things. Still, I think it was an important thing to do and a step in the right direction.