Update
So, I haven’t updated this thing in, like, an eternity. I’ve continued to read it every day, and have occasionally commented here and there, but I haven’t actually written anything in a really, really long time. I decided a while ago that I would start posting regularly again, and I guess I’m finally taking the first step tonight. I’m hoping I can keep up with it and update frequently like I used to in college. Of course, I made this same claim last time I wrote something on here, and I didn’t follow through with it. I do have Microsoft Word on my computer again now, which I do think will help. That may sound weird, but I don’t like writing entries through the actual LJ site. If I want to write something long I prefer to be able to do it on Word. We’ll see what happens from here.
Anyway, I think I mentioned in my last entry that I got a job as a part-time bank teller. It’s fairly lame, but it made sense at the time, and still does to an extent, I suppose. My plans to go to grad school for writing in New York had just fallen through and I was spending all day in bed, as per usual, and everyone was insisting that I get a job. I saw the ad for this job and applied because it seemed like it would just be an easy, part-time thing (which it essentially is), and I figured with the economy being as poor as it is/was, it might take ages to find a “real” job, and I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to look. As it was, my mother had to basically drag me to the bank to fill out an application. I was very afraid of getting a job because I didn’t think I could handle it, even though the position I applied for was only fifteen hours a week, and the position I was hired for was twenty-five. It’s kind of sad, but I had really reached a point of essentially being nonfunctional that summer, so it felt overwhelming. I was spending up to twenty hours a day in bed and struggling to do things such as shower and brush my teeth. I really didn’t think I would stick with it, but, well, I’m still there over a year-and-a-half later.
This is good, of course, because I didn’t think I’d last a month, but this job was also meant to be a very temporary, in-between type of thing, and that hasn’t exactly been the case. There’s a whole lot to say about school and future plans and all of that, but even the idea of writing about it feels draining right now, so I’ll save it for another entry, I guess. Hmm, maybe this will actually force me to write another one after this and help me get back into the swing of things.
The job is OK-fairly boring, and it isn’t anything that interests me in the least, but it’s easy and causes little stress and once a day is over, it’s over; I never have to think or worry about it when I get home, in other words. This was something I always found difficult with school, the fact that, unless I was on break, I never really could escape it. I only spent so much time in class, of course, but there was always reading and studying to do and papers to write and whatnot, so I had to constantly worry about getting everything done and could never really just enjoy free time, because I always had something for school to do. I have to say that it’s been very, very nice to be free of that kind of thing. When I’m home I can do whatever I want without always having all of the things I need to finish for class still in the forefront of my mind, because those things simply don’t exist anymore. It feels like being free of a huge burden. When I was in school vacations and breaks felt like the biggest gift, not so much because I didn’t have to go to school, but more-so because I didn’t have to even think about school; there were no longer assignments and readings and exams and papers hanging over my head. Now it’s like that all of the time, and it’s amazing.
Anyway, while this job has never meant anything to me-it’s nothing I’m interested in, is unrelated to anything I want to do, and is dull-it’s given me a reason to get up every morning and shower and make myself look good and has forced me to interact with people on a daily basis. I have to say that working with customers all day has made me much more comfortable simply interacting with other people. It hasn’t done anything to improve my issues surrounding actual relationships or anything of real substance, but it’s made me much capable of simply talking with people, if that makes sense, and that’s been a very good thing. Plus, it often forced me out of my always-toxic mind, at least a little. Unfortunately, the job isn’t working out so well anymore, because my managers have just become too difficult to work with. I am constantly taken advantage of and mistreated. I was able to downplay it and more or less ignore it for a very long time, but I just can’t anymore. I find myself upset and angry so often now, and I cannot deal with anger; this is another thing I could write a whole entry about, so I won’t get into it all here. It just keeps building and building, and something happened a few weeks ago that really felt like the last straw. I never liked the job, but I never disliked it either. There wasn’t anything really good about it, but there also wasn’t anything really bad about it. It was good for me, and it isn’t good for me anymore. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this yet.
Other than the job, which isn’t much of anything, there hasn’t been much going on. I still live at home with Mom and Dad. Working as a bank teller twenty-five hours a week doesn’t pay the kind of money that could possibly allow me to get my own place; it simply wouldn’t be affordable even if I wanted to do it. This is OK, though, because I’m close with them and generally get along with them well, and it helps keep the loneliness at bay, at least to a degree. I was just so, so isolated throughout all of college-living alone, eating alone, walking everywhere alone, doing everything alone, barely ever talking to anyone. Being at home with my parents and working at the bank has forced this to change some, and I think that’s a good thing. My sister moved out and got an apartment with her boyfriend a few months ago, so now it’s just me and Mom and Dad. There’s a lot I could say about this, too, but since this seems to have become just a fact-by-fact update and is already getting long, I’ll also hold off on all of that.
Other things are still the same. Every day still feels like a struggle. I force myself to get up in the morning, go to work for five hours, and come home and go back to bed. It’s an improvement over how things were, but I still find myself spending so much of my free time there and cannot seem to change this. A big thing in therapy has been trying to form meaningful relationships-friendships, maybe even a boyfriend-but it’s essentially gone nowhere. There’s just so much there to work through, and sometimes I feel so hopeless. Sometimes I don’t even feel as though I would even want it for a number of reasons. It’s sad, to essentially have no friends, no real relationships outside of my parents. I mean, I’m twenty-five and they’re the only people I “hang out” with, so to speak. At times I find myself thinking of everything I’ve missed over the past years, and everything I do not have, but I don’t really let myself go to that place-it’s too upsetting, too devastating. When my mind wanders there, it’s dangerous, so I work very hard to prevent this. I’m twenty-five, I guess, but in so many ways I’m not. I veered off the path so drastically years ago and missed out on so much, and sometimes it feels like I’ll never get to a place where I can be at all caught up, at all “normal.” There was simply too much lost, and it can feel hopeless.
There’s always the ever-present anxiety, but I think I’ve learned to cope with it over the years to an extent. The depression is always just such a struggle, though. The constant feelings of just intense, deep, unshakable self-hatred…they seem to define my every thought, my every word, my every action. I don’t know how to change it. I cannot escape it. I even have horrible dreams all the type revolving around what a horrible person I am. Sometimes I experience episodes of pure hell and I don’t know what to do when they occur. I’m not sure what to call them-extreme emotional disregulation, intense agitation, crisis, instability? Something will trigger something in me that sends me completely over the edge-sadness, despair, fear, anger, and, above all else, self-hatred. It’s hard to predict when these episodes will occur or what will trigger them, but when they happen I become helpless. My thoughts simply spiral deeper and deeper and the self-hatred becomes out of control and I want to kill myself. I’ve never actually made an attempt, but sometimes I feel frightened afterwards by how close I come to doing this. I’m out of control, and it’s scary, and it feels like there’s nothing I can do. I usually engage in self-injury (cutting) to calm myself, although I know that’s obviously bad. Again, sometimes I scare myself; I’ve cut to the point of seeing fatty tissue without even feeling like I meant to do it. Thankfully these episodes aren’t super frequent, but they terrify me. I’m constantly afraid of one occurring at work, and I don’t know what I’d do. I’d have to leave. I know I’m very, very scary to watch when it happens (though I’m almost always able to isolate myself completely from everyone at these times), and I simply cannot stay calm, and it shows. I’ve been lucky so far, but it’s always a fear of mine.
Sorry to go off on a tangent there. I guess I just deal with things the best I can, although I don’t know how successful I am. I self-harm regularly but not frequently, if that makes sense. It almost always happens during those episodes, but I’ve learned to control the more “everyday” urges somewhat, so that I can usually keep myself from doing it over something upsetting or when I’m feeling certain negative things. I feel sad now over the number of scars I have, even though they’re in places that are easy to hide and no one really sees them. It’s unusual for me to do it more frequently than once every couple of weeks, and I can sometimes go several weeks. Never more than that, though, it seems. Still, I suppose it could be worse.
Of course, there’s that one big topic left to touch upon-the eating disorder. It’s been a bit up and down. When I graduated college I went off the high dose-Abilify that caused me such hell with my weight for so long, and actually did quite well for a good number of months. I think they were perhaps the best months I’ve ever had in terms of my ED during the whole nearly decade-long duration of it. My weight had gotten high at that point, in a way. I wasn’t overweight (I was even on the low end of normal, I suppose), and it wasn’t actually high, really, but it was by far the highest it had ever been, and it was a good deal higher than the goal weights that had been set for me by various treatment providers and facilities (and I really am not talking a few pounds here-I mean fifteen or twenty). The whole thing had been complete hell for a couple of years, but when I came off the Abilify and knew things were back in my control, that I would no longer gain and gain, that I could lose weight if I felt the need or desire-it was just such a relief. I felt like it was my body again, and I felt like I could eat somewhat normally and be OK, and that’s kind of what I did for a while. Well, it wasn’t really normal, but it was still good. I knew I could change my body if I wanted to, and I just stayed where I was for a while. I hated not being thin, but I’d also gotten used to it in a way. I obsessed about my body less, talked about my weight less in therapy, and spent less time reading about EDs, looking at websites related to EDs (and by that I don’t mean pro-ana websites, just to clarify), etc. I was still eating disordered, no doubt, but the grasp of the ED had loosened some, and it was a relief. (By the way, if we’re talking about topics I could write entire posts about, the whole business about the Abilify and all of the dishonesty that surrounded it and the lasting effects of that could perhaps take the cake,)
I wanted to get back to my set-point, but I knew with any weight loss, even weight loss that was OK, came danger, so I waited. About a year ago I decided to start dropping the excess pounds. I thought I could control it. I was wrong. It was disappointing that I got out of control, but I guess it wasn’t surprising. Anyway, long story short, it didn’t work. I lost what I “needed” to, and I kept going. I’m not at an extreme, super dangerous place with my weight, but I’ve taken it too far. I’m certainly below where I’m supposed to be. I haven’t had any super serious health problems and am not in medical crisis by any means, but there have been some issues. My blood pressure has dropped a lot. One day my blood work showed that my blood sugar was 45 (which is kind of pathetic), and I have fairly frequent blood sugar crashes if I’m not really careful about what and when I eat. I feel weak and tired and achy again. I’m disappointed by the hair loss that has happened in the past several months, and it won’t stop and it’s aggravating me, but of course I know the cause of it and that it’s in my hands. I love long hair, and I want long hair, but I can’t have long hair anymore, because it just gets crappy and looks dead and gross and stupid.
So, I’ve dug myself into a hole. I need to gain weight, and I need to eat more, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to focus on this. I still haven’t fallen full-force into the ED trap and mindset, but it’s harder to hold on. Before I was always set on losing as much weight as I could, always. People discussed ambivalence, and I parroted their words, but I was never actually ambivalent; I never had any intention or desire to maintain a healthy weight or to not reach the lowest weight I could. This time I felt that. Weight loss always provides a thrill, and I always want to go lower and lower, but I didn’t know that I really wanted to go back to a life that was completely about anorexia, a life spent in hospitals, a life spent thinking of nothing-nothing-outside of weight. I’d gotten a taste of freedom from that, however small, and a part of me wanted to cling to that. The idea of losing lots of weight, of having a relapse, and getting bad, was OK in the moment, but I knew I would not be able to stop it. I would not be able to get really sick, get help, get better, and stay that way. I would be stuck. I would get really sick, get help, get better, and get really sick again, and so on. It would become a complete trap, and I am trying to hold on to not wanting to fall back there, but the pull is so strong, and my desire to fight it is waning. I’ve gotten thinner, but I see myself as bigger despite knowing that’s irrational. I know I’m bony because I can feel it, but I can’t see it. I keep cutting things out of my diet-slowly, and in small ways-but again, and again, and again. I need to cling to the motivation to stop, but I fear I’ve passed the point of no return now, even though there really isn’t such a thing. It’s up to me. I can do it. I just have to really want to.
And that’s that. I go to therapy twice a week, and it’s helpful. I’m lucky I have a therapist I have a good relationship with and whom I’ve worked with for many years. I started seeing a new psychiatrist last summer, because my previous one decided to stop seeing private patients. (She works at Mass General Hospital.) She seems nice and competent, but meds have never done much of anything for me, and that continues to be the case. It seems almost silly now, trying this and that and then trying things again and again. People seem to have run out of options to try. In addition to Lamictal, I’m currently taking Lexapro and Wellbutrin for antidepressants. I’ve taken both of those before, years ago. If my options have been depleted to the point of trying the same things again, why are we bothering, really? I don’t know. I got a new PCP-an adult doctor, finally-who weighs me and checks my vitals and whatnot regularly. It was hard to switch because it was nearly impossible to find someone for adults who had experience with EDs. All the doctors I could find were for adolescents and didn’t see people my age, and it took a long time to find one who did. You’d think there would be more than one adult doctor with significant knowledge about eating disorders considering this is the Boston area and all…sheesh. I ended up finding someone, though. That’s about it.
I guess I just need to keep on trying to move forward, or at least trying not to move backwards. I had gotten to the point of doing nothing-absolutely nothing-when I started the job at the bank, but I’m working my way back to doing more things. It’s hard seeing as I don’t have many hobbies and have struggled with serious anhedonia for a long time, but I’m trying. About a year ago, I started reading at work-books of stories or essays, and I would read one story or essay over the course of a day. It eased me back into that. Fairly recently, I started reading at home, too-things like novels and memoirs this time. I just started the Hunger Games series, and I’m interested in reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Game of Thrones series as well. I play video games fairly regularly. I bought the anime series Magic Knight Rayearth on DVD and have been enjoying watching it. TV doesn’t interest me much, but watching it can be a decent way of passing time-I like The Middle and the Big Bang Theory, and Revenge has become my secret pleasure. These are all pretty basic, almost dumb things, but they are something. I just have to keep trying. What else can I do?
OK, so this is now obnoxiously long. Hopefully I’ll get back to updating frequently again so that I don’t end up in another position of having gone a long time without updating and then having to write something obnoxiously long. We’ll see. Here’s hoping.
Anyway, I think I mentioned in my last entry that I got a job as a part-time bank teller. It’s fairly lame, but it made sense at the time, and still does to an extent, I suppose. My plans to go to grad school for writing in New York had just fallen through and I was spending all day in bed, as per usual, and everyone was insisting that I get a job. I saw the ad for this job and applied because it seemed like it would just be an easy, part-time thing (which it essentially is), and I figured with the economy being as poor as it is/was, it might take ages to find a “real” job, and I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to look. As it was, my mother had to basically drag me to the bank to fill out an application. I was very afraid of getting a job because I didn’t think I could handle it, even though the position I applied for was only fifteen hours a week, and the position I was hired for was twenty-five. It’s kind of sad, but I had really reached a point of essentially being nonfunctional that summer, so it felt overwhelming. I was spending up to twenty hours a day in bed and struggling to do things such as shower and brush my teeth. I really didn’t think I would stick with it, but, well, I’m still there over a year-and-a-half later.
This is good, of course, because I didn’t think I’d last a month, but this job was also meant to be a very temporary, in-between type of thing, and that hasn’t exactly been the case. There’s a whole lot to say about school and future plans and all of that, but even the idea of writing about it feels draining right now, so I’ll save it for another entry, I guess. Hmm, maybe this will actually force me to write another one after this and help me get back into the swing of things.
The job is OK-fairly boring, and it isn’t anything that interests me in the least, but it’s easy and causes little stress and once a day is over, it’s over; I never have to think or worry about it when I get home, in other words. This was something I always found difficult with school, the fact that, unless I was on break, I never really could escape it. I only spent so much time in class, of course, but there was always reading and studying to do and papers to write and whatnot, so I had to constantly worry about getting everything done and could never really just enjoy free time, because I always had something for school to do. I have to say that it’s been very, very nice to be free of that kind of thing. When I’m home I can do whatever I want without always having all of the things I need to finish for class still in the forefront of my mind, because those things simply don’t exist anymore. It feels like being free of a huge burden. When I was in school vacations and breaks felt like the biggest gift, not so much because I didn’t have to go to school, but more-so because I didn’t have to even think about school; there were no longer assignments and readings and exams and papers hanging over my head. Now it’s like that all of the time, and it’s amazing.
Anyway, while this job has never meant anything to me-it’s nothing I’m interested in, is unrelated to anything I want to do, and is dull-it’s given me a reason to get up every morning and shower and make myself look good and has forced me to interact with people on a daily basis. I have to say that working with customers all day has made me much more comfortable simply interacting with other people. It hasn’t done anything to improve my issues surrounding actual relationships or anything of real substance, but it’s made me much capable of simply talking with people, if that makes sense, and that’s been a very good thing. Plus, it often forced me out of my always-toxic mind, at least a little. Unfortunately, the job isn’t working out so well anymore, because my managers have just become too difficult to work with. I am constantly taken advantage of and mistreated. I was able to downplay it and more or less ignore it for a very long time, but I just can’t anymore. I find myself upset and angry so often now, and I cannot deal with anger; this is another thing I could write a whole entry about, so I won’t get into it all here. It just keeps building and building, and something happened a few weeks ago that really felt like the last straw. I never liked the job, but I never disliked it either. There wasn’t anything really good about it, but there also wasn’t anything really bad about it. It was good for me, and it isn’t good for me anymore. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this yet.
Other than the job, which isn’t much of anything, there hasn’t been much going on. I still live at home with Mom and Dad. Working as a bank teller twenty-five hours a week doesn’t pay the kind of money that could possibly allow me to get my own place; it simply wouldn’t be affordable even if I wanted to do it. This is OK, though, because I’m close with them and generally get along with them well, and it helps keep the loneliness at bay, at least to a degree. I was just so, so isolated throughout all of college-living alone, eating alone, walking everywhere alone, doing everything alone, barely ever talking to anyone. Being at home with my parents and working at the bank has forced this to change some, and I think that’s a good thing. My sister moved out and got an apartment with her boyfriend a few months ago, so now it’s just me and Mom and Dad. There’s a lot I could say about this, too, but since this seems to have become just a fact-by-fact update and is already getting long, I’ll also hold off on all of that.
Other things are still the same. Every day still feels like a struggle. I force myself to get up in the morning, go to work for five hours, and come home and go back to bed. It’s an improvement over how things were, but I still find myself spending so much of my free time there and cannot seem to change this. A big thing in therapy has been trying to form meaningful relationships-friendships, maybe even a boyfriend-but it’s essentially gone nowhere. There’s just so much there to work through, and sometimes I feel so hopeless. Sometimes I don’t even feel as though I would even want it for a number of reasons. It’s sad, to essentially have no friends, no real relationships outside of my parents. I mean, I’m twenty-five and they’re the only people I “hang out” with, so to speak. At times I find myself thinking of everything I’ve missed over the past years, and everything I do not have, but I don’t really let myself go to that place-it’s too upsetting, too devastating. When my mind wanders there, it’s dangerous, so I work very hard to prevent this. I’m twenty-five, I guess, but in so many ways I’m not. I veered off the path so drastically years ago and missed out on so much, and sometimes it feels like I’ll never get to a place where I can be at all caught up, at all “normal.” There was simply too much lost, and it can feel hopeless.
There’s always the ever-present anxiety, but I think I’ve learned to cope with it over the years to an extent. The depression is always just such a struggle, though. The constant feelings of just intense, deep, unshakable self-hatred…they seem to define my every thought, my every word, my every action. I don’t know how to change it. I cannot escape it. I even have horrible dreams all the type revolving around what a horrible person I am. Sometimes I experience episodes of pure hell and I don’t know what to do when they occur. I’m not sure what to call them-extreme emotional disregulation, intense agitation, crisis, instability? Something will trigger something in me that sends me completely over the edge-sadness, despair, fear, anger, and, above all else, self-hatred. It’s hard to predict when these episodes will occur or what will trigger them, but when they happen I become helpless. My thoughts simply spiral deeper and deeper and the self-hatred becomes out of control and I want to kill myself. I’ve never actually made an attempt, but sometimes I feel frightened afterwards by how close I come to doing this. I’m out of control, and it’s scary, and it feels like there’s nothing I can do. I usually engage in self-injury (cutting) to calm myself, although I know that’s obviously bad. Again, sometimes I scare myself; I’ve cut to the point of seeing fatty tissue without even feeling like I meant to do it. Thankfully these episodes aren’t super frequent, but they terrify me. I’m constantly afraid of one occurring at work, and I don’t know what I’d do. I’d have to leave. I know I’m very, very scary to watch when it happens (though I’m almost always able to isolate myself completely from everyone at these times), and I simply cannot stay calm, and it shows. I’ve been lucky so far, but it’s always a fear of mine.
Sorry to go off on a tangent there. I guess I just deal with things the best I can, although I don’t know how successful I am. I self-harm regularly but not frequently, if that makes sense. It almost always happens during those episodes, but I’ve learned to control the more “everyday” urges somewhat, so that I can usually keep myself from doing it over something upsetting or when I’m feeling certain negative things. I feel sad now over the number of scars I have, even though they’re in places that are easy to hide and no one really sees them. It’s unusual for me to do it more frequently than once every couple of weeks, and I can sometimes go several weeks. Never more than that, though, it seems. Still, I suppose it could be worse.
Of course, there’s that one big topic left to touch upon-the eating disorder. It’s been a bit up and down. When I graduated college I went off the high dose-Abilify that caused me such hell with my weight for so long, and actually did quite well for a good number of months. I think they were perhaps the best months I’ve ever had in terms of my ED during the whole nearly decade-long duration of it. My weight had gotten high at that point, in a way. I wasn’t overweight (I was even on the low end of normal, I suppose), and it wasn’t actually high, really, but it was by far the highest it had ever been, and it was a good deal higher than the goal weights that had been set for me by various treatment providers and facilities (and I really am not talking a few pounds here-I mean fifteen or twenty). The whole thing had been complete hell for a couple of years, but when I came off the Abilify and knew things were back in my control, that I would no longer gain and gain, that I could lose weight if I felt the need or desire-it was just such a relief. I felt like it was my body again, and I felt like I could eat somewhat normally and be OK, and that’s kind of what I did for a while. Well, it wasn’t really normal, but it was still good. I knew I could change my body if I wanted to, and I just stayed where I was for a while. I hated not being thin, but I’d also gotten used to it in a way. I obsessed about my body less, talked about my weight less in therapy, and spent less time reading about EDs, looking at websites related to EDs (and by that I don’t mean pro-ana websites, just to clarify), etc. I was still eating disordered, no doubt, but the grasp of the ED had loosened some, and it was a relief. (By the way, if we’re talking about topics I could write entire posts about, the whole business about the Abilify and all of the dishonesty that surrounded it and the lasting effects of that could perhaps take the cake,)
I wanted to get back to my set-point, but I knew with any weight loss, even weight loss that was OK, came danger, so I waited. About a year ago I decided to start dropping the excess pounds. I thought I could control it. I was wrong. It was disappointing that I got out of control, but I guess it wasn’t surprising. Anyway, long story short, it didn’t work. I lost what I “needed” to, and I kept going. I’m not at an extreme, super dangerous place with my weight, but I’ve taken it too far. I’m certainly below where I’m supposed to be. I haven’t had any super serious health problems and am not in medical crisis by any means, but there have been some issues. My blood pressure has dropped a lot. One day my blood work showed that my blood sugar was 45 (which is kind of pathetic), and I have fairly frequent blood sugar crashes if I’m not really careful about what and when I eat. I feel weak and tired and achy again. I’m disappointed by the hair loss that has happened in the past several months, and it won’t stop and it’s aggravating me, but of course I know the cause of it and that it’s in my hands. I love long hair, and I want long hair, but I can’t have long hair anymore, because it just gets crappy and looks dead and gross and stupid.
So, I’ve dug myself into a hole. I need to gain weight, and I need to eat more, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to focus on this. I still haven’t fallen full-force into the ED trap and mindset, but it’s harder to hold on. Before I was always set on losing as much weight as I could, always. People discussed ambivalence, and I parroted their words, but I was never actually ambivalent; I never had any intention or desire to maintain a healthy weight or to not reach the lowest weight I could. This time I felt that. Weight loss always provides a thrill, and I always want to go lower and lower, but I didn’t know that I really wanted to go back to a life that was completely about anorexia, a life spent in hospitals, a life spent thinking of nothing-nothing-outside of weight. I’d gotten a taste of freedom from that, however small, and a part of me wanted to cling to that. The idea of losing lots of weight, of having a relapse, and getting bad, was OK in the moment, but I knew I would not be able to stop it. I would not be able to get really sick, get help, get better, and stay that way. I would be stuck. I would get really sick, get help, get better, and get really sick again, and so on. It would become a complete trap, and I am trying to hold on to not wanting to fall back there, but the pull is so strong, and my desire to fight it is waning. I’ve gotten thinner, but I see myself as bigger despite knowing that’s irrational. I know I’m bony because I can feel it, but I can’t see it. I keep cutting things out of my diet-slowly, and in small ways-but again, and again, and again. I need to cling to the motivation to stop, but I fear I’ve passed the point of no return now, even though there really isn’t such a thing. It’s up to me. I can do it. I just have to really want to.
And that’s that. I go to therapy twice a week, and it’s helpful. I’m lucky I have a therapist I have a good relationship with and whom I’ve worked with for many years. I started seeing a new psychiatrist last summer, because my previous one decided to stop seeing private patients. (She works at Mass General Hospital.) She seems nice and competent, but meds have never done much of anything for me, and that continues to be the case. It seems almost silly now, trying this and that and then trying things again and again. People seem to have run out of options to try. In addition to Lamictal, I’m currently taking Lexapro and Wellbutrin for antidepressants. I’ve taken both of those before, years ago. If my options have been depleted to the point of trying the same things again, why are we bothering, really? I don’t know. I got a new PCP-an adult doctor, finally-who weighs me and checks my vitals and whatnot regularly. It was hard to switch because it was nearly impossible to find someone for adults who had experience with EDs. All the doctors I could find were for adolescents and didn’t see people my age, and it took a long time to find one who did. You’d think there would be more than one adult doctor with significant knowledge about eating disorders considering this is the Boston area and all…sheesh. I ended up finding someone, though. That’s about it.
I guess I just need to keep on trying to move forward, or at least trying not to move backwards. I had gotten to the point of doing nothing-absolutely nothing-when I started the job at the bank, but I’m working my way back to doing more things. It’s hard seeing as I don’t have many hobbies and have struggled with serious anhedonia for a long time, but I’m trying. About a year ago, I started reading at work-books of stories or essays, and I would read one story or essay over the course of a day. It eased me back into that. Fairly recently, I started reading at home, too-things like novels and memoirs this time. I just started the Hunger Games series, and I’m interested in reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Game of Thrones series as well. I play video games fairly regularly. I bought the anime series Magic Knight Rayearth on DVD and have been enjoying watching it. TV doesn’t interest me much, but watching it can be a decent way of passing time-I like The Middle and the Big Bang Theory, and Revenge has become my secret pleasure. These are all pretty basic, almost dumb things, but they are something. I just have to keep trying. What else can I do?
OK, so this is now obnoxiously long. Hopefully I’ll get back to updating frequently again so that I don’t end up in another position of having gone a long time without updating and then having to write something obnoxiously long. We’ll see. Here’s hoping.