SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

As I sit here in my new skinny, high-waist jeans I hear the words "you cut out this food and then that and I'm going to sign up for a marathon." And my pants get tighter and my anxiety higher.

I just barely am ok with letting go this holiday. Maybe because I'm writing I'm actually not ok with it. Ya actually my ED (I'm really trying to separate the disease from me and my thoughts) is so fucking pissed at the idea that I did what I did and I can't do anything about it now. The damage is done. And I am sitting here uncomfortably with the consequences. I want to rip myself apart verbally and physically. How could I live under this illusion that I would be ok with eating seconds? Butter on everything? Having a drink every night? Idiot. Now look what you've done. You've stepped out of line and now you'll pay for defying me.

Recovery and the work I'm doing never stops--or well it shouldn't if I want to make progress. Yes I had more than two cookies a day and yes I didn't work out once and yes I sat with the thoughts and the uncomfortability for the last week of it all thinking I was somehow pushing forward in my recovery but I feel like the biggest fucking failure now. I want so badly to workout non-stop, to cut calories to show all of you people that talk of diets and exercise how it's really done. But if I let up now and give in I'll only let it win and have gone through all of that for no reason.

God I wish none of this fucking mattered. But it does. It feels like it really fucking does.

All of this anger and hate comes from me overhearing a conversation. My simple morning turned upside down.

I am frustrated that life is like this for me. That I am not further in recovery. And I am also just fucking bitter that I'm so uncomfortable all the time. Before I was with therapists to talk to, dietitians, girls and guys just like me that understood. Now I am seemingly alone. Stuck in my head and these fucking jeans and this environment that's full of people throwing out their regrets, calorie counts, diets and distorted view of the word healthy.

Sometimes I believe I am not the one with a problem but the rest of you are. The way you define healthy, the way 'cleansing' is seen as healthy even though it's essentially anorexia, how you post photoshopped pictures of models on your pintrest to push yourself further in your workout and publicly shame yourself for eating too much food. AND I'M THE ONE WITH A PROBLEM? I'm just trying to get my five grains a day and workout to relieve stress. But nothing around me supports this idea of moderation, enjoyment and pride in our bodies for the way they are.

I'm so fucking sick of having to work so hard to try to be normal in a world that doesn't know what normal is.

I usually like to end on a positive note. To end concisely. But I'm going to leave this open and uncomfortable. I'm going to sit with my anger and feel it.  Because as much as I fucking hate it it's ok to be uncomfortable.

Slice

Energy surges through my heart
Slicing it open
My stomach fills with fear
I'm bare
Air dances in my rib cage
Fear of the possibility of failure
Fear of the possibility of success
Dare I look down
Dare I face it
Face me
This naked vulnerable small scared
Blink open
I see my heart working
Surreal it's happening right now life
I'm so aware
Heart beats my faith has no choice but to leap
No
I want to close off
Put myself back together
But the air is refreshing
I can breathe
Is this what living feels like?

Work Was Better: No April Fools

I'm really hungry and want to eat my snack.
I just got home.
I'm really exhausted.
Two more days of nonstop then I get a break.

Work was way more chill today--ahem I was way more chill today.
I finished on time with a bit extra to audit my writing.
To chat with people.
To eat lunch.
To be my recovery self.
To decorate my space.

I figured out that I wasn't receiving any emails.
So that's why I felt like no one cared...I couldn't see anything anyone was sending.
Doh.

My coworker but mostly friend asked me how my day yesterday was, that meant so much that she would even think to ask and care about the answer. She then lent her support.

I walked around in the sunshine by the water before treatment.
Saw a car covered in post it notes.
But mostly in GAP whose clothes fit me better than anyones.
I got some spandex pants---er leggings..why didn't I just say leggings? that will be grand for football season. BOOM.

Was on time for treatment.
I got the best cat picture from my friend which as I'm typing this I realize I left in the kitchen damn it.

Dinner was hard. I could hear the girls in PHP and I could hear eating disorders and I could  hear things that annoyed me. I tried focusing on my new table my new support but they were so loud at the other table. I worked through it but it wasn't as smooth as I'd have liked. Progress not perfection.

I did however find out how epic a pulled pork sandwich is. YES.

I wish I had more time for me right now.
I feel rushed to relax.
I am mad that I don't have more than a half hour or so until I have to try to go to bed.
To do this over again.
And yet I must reframe.
I am happy. In this moment. No in this person that I am. In my life. I am happy.

I am doing it. I am slowly messily but surely meshing recovery with the real world and figuring out what on earth life is and can look like.

Wah Work. I Don't Wanna.

I want to purge. 
The anxiety of returning to work has my stomach sick. 
Breathe. 
Remember to breathe. 
In through the nose out through the mouth. Again. Again.
I slowly release and immediately gasp for air.
I feel like I'm drowning--I am drowning. 
Swallowed up by worry and frozen with fear from the unknown.
Anxiety rocks my heart against my rib cage. 
The breath comes from my chest shallow, light.  
I'm outside myself. I can't calm down. 
Just calm down.
This goes on for minutes.
I don't know where I am or where I was or what I was doing. 

Then I'm brought back by the beat of Ultra 2014 streaming live into my headphones.
The steady heart of the music. 
I close my eyes and I'm back there, only two years ago.
When I was at my first ever music festival, UMF 2012.  
I'm a too skinny, scared, 24 year old, anorexic, bulimic me.
And somehow in that mix I began to find room for hope.

I felt it in the crowd. In the music. In the lights. The air. My breath. My body.
It was pulsing in the night.
I was completely sober and yet in those hours where the lights flashed and the beats crashed I was high.
Elated.
Anew.
Different.
Light.
Real and yet surreal.
In a happier, gentler world I never knew.

"You'll never fly if you're too scared of the height."

I was scared to go to Ultra back then.
And now I am scared to go back to work.
This is my second time coming out of a treatment center, trying to take those next crucial steps towards living a life without an eating disorder.

I am scared to fail, I am scared to succeed, I am scared to leave 'my home'.

And yet I went to UMF and I was so far out of my comfort zone. I was submersed in a world that while it was new and scary and foreign it was warm, it was love. People respected themselves, those around them, the air radiated love, positive energy.

There was a seed planted for the recovery life I am living today in those three days because I did something I feared.

Now I face my fears every day when I eat lunch, when I do not workout, when I talk about my trauma and when I ask for help.

And each time I am rewarded with a little more strength, a little more peace and a little more life.

The music quiets and the beat gets ready for a drop, my heart flutters and tears come to my eyes.

I smile to myself.

I close my eyes and picture myself next to the old me and take her hand and we sing the words together 

"Freedom ain't free it's a long road"

And she tells me it's ok to take this leap of faith.

"If you never say goodbye."

And now I am here and I am calm and I am ready for what tomorrow holds because I know there is a power out there, an energy that will help carry me through it as it did two years ago and as it will for the rest of the years to come.

Proud of Myself.

I want to tell my parents how well I’m doing-but they are too busy.

Ah I did it already. Just that quickly. Condemned them and myself in one sentence.

To see both sides of the coin they probably have no idea why I keep calling and actually are busy. But not ‘too busy for me’ as that sentence above inferred.

But honestly I don’t think they’d get it anyway.

It being the magnitude of what I’m about to say.

I don’t think any of you normal people would get it anyway.

Which makes me belittle my accomplishments and makes me minimize my struggles.

And even though I know how powerful the urge to binge is and how I can’t stop until I purge. Even though I know at times it’s impossible to sit still during a meeting. Even though I find myself involuntarily clawing at my thighs when I’m nervous. Even though my heart stops and stomach drops when I see rice and beans inside a burrito I’m supposed to eat. Even though all of the challenges I go through each day are so real, I do not know what they look like to a normie.

This hinders my recovery.

But at the same time I know there’s no clear-cut solution either.

So you could get educated.

You could be my boyfriend (not really there’s only one of him and he’s doing a fine job) and be right there with me every step of the way. And hear the pain in my voice, see the tears in my eyes, feel my heart race and listen to my daily stories from treatment. And start to examine your own life and see where addiction and struggles paralyzes you. And you could begin to relate.

Or, as I fear, you could get your idea about what I go through from what the media tells you.

You could hear the jokes about girls who stick their fingers down their throats and ‘manorexia’. You could see the tabloids that tell actresses one minute they are too fat and the next that they are disgustingly skinny. You could read the magazines that bold words like “detox” “healthy” “sexy” and show you images of women who have been modified and managed. You could read an uplifting story about a singer who struggled got help in a treatment center in Malibu and is better now. She has a foundation in her name. Yay.

But that does not tell you what it is like to have an eating disorder. It does not tell you what that girl had to go through, what she had to face, what her past was like, how she is still fighting to this day.

I so badly want to know what you think of me and my struggle. More often than I expect you people surprise me. You make me feel ok. You make me feel less alone. Less of a freak.

As I said I do not know what you think of eating disorders, but I guess I need to say this for myself, that this is hard.

This is fighting every instinct in my body. It’s like doing your morning routine at night.

Get home from work and shower, makeup, breakfast, coffee and off to work.

Every bone in your body is saying no this isn’t right. This doesn’t make sense and you try to get ready for bed but everyone keeps telling you the recovery focused way is to get ready for work.

It doesn’t seem to make sense so at first you don’t want to do it. But then slowly you try it. Every time you reach for your dinner you’re given pancakes when you want steak. When it’s wine you want it’s coffee. When you want to wash your face you have to put your makeup on. When you want to go bed it’s off to your commute.

It’s backwards, it doesn’t seem to make sense and it goes against everything you’ve ever done so religiously.

THAT is what it’s like to break eating disorder habits.

I have a way I have lived my life for so long. I have thoughts, rules, mantras that were normal were my routine and now I’m told to do the opposite. And every bone in my body and my brain are screaming at me to do one thing while my heart is telling me another.

It is so fucking hard.

So this is why I am so proud of myself for not bailing on my friend when I woke up late and couldn’t put on makeup.

For not skipping breakfast.

For eating all of my lunch.

For going cake tasting—CAKE TASTING!

For not forcing myself to the gym.

For getting stools for my kitchen so I can eat normally.

For calling friends when I need help.

For looking my friend in the eye and telling her the menu was overwhelming me.

For trying on pants at the store and not crying.

And for having the guts to publicly tell you these little things that you could easily do daily are huge accomplishments in getting my life back. And I am so proud of myself.

Fucking Hamster.

I feel like life is getting away from me and no matter how busy I am and how hard I seem to work nothing ever gets done. And I'm never getting anywhere while people get promotions, have kids, buy houses, travel.
 I feel like I'm working my ass off in treatment but there's nothing to show for it. I'm back on the same fucking page as the rest of you humans. The ones who don't have this issue, the ones who weren't slowly killing themselves. Ok now I can function in society. It took so much fucking work to get here and NOW NOW I have to work even more?
There's this huge looming reality of work and I will have to be back there in 16 fucking days. I hate my work environment. I hate the pay well lack thereof especially with my medical bills that are never ending. I hate how they treat me. It's a depressing. Anxiety provoking. Miserable fucking place and I don't want to go back. It's a big part of the reason why I'm back in treatment in the first place.
And where do I find the fucking time to try and find work when I'm in treatment full time now then I go back to work full time and on top of that do treatment after work?
And people say-I am one of those people-that it will all work out. But no, I am an exception to that rule. It works out for other people. I have been stuck in that place for 2.5 years almost. Not one promotion, no pay change, no position change, NOTHING. Everyone else has gone upgraded something. I have had boyfriends and friends who luck out with a friend who knows someone, a dad who is high up, craigslist miracle. No not me not ever. I have tried I always try I try so fucking hard and I never get a damn thing.
And no i don't want to count my blessings. I have an eating disorder. I have been suffering from anxiety, depression and a mix of bulimia anorexia for over 12 years. I have never had enough money. School never came easy to me. I have had issues with alcohol dependency. I have been abused. I have had other shit I don't want to tell you guys happen. I had a issues at home. I have had a hard fucking life and I want a fucking break because I feel I have never fucking gotten one. So there.
And yes I know it could be worse but it could be a lot of fucks better.
I've updated my stupid linked in so many times. I've talked to countless recruiters who i've had to follow up with. I've gotten opinions on my resume. I've craigslisted. I've networked. I've failed.
I've done nothing but fail. I feel so much anxiety and anger and I don't know what to do with it. I feel like i'm a hamster in that wheel thing or a cartoon character running in the air -- working hard getting nowhere. Helpless. Hopeless. I feel so trapped.