Not okay in my own skin

Thighs that rub together and look chunky in tights. That feeling of a bra digging into flesh on my sides. Clothes hanging to my bloated stomach that has suddenly become a lot more prominent than it was. A face that is round and sides that are square, not narrow. Thicker. Wider. Bigger. Heavier.

And it’s all my fault.

That’s how I feel right now. I’m confused. Because I still don’t my allow myself many pure carbs, I rarely have sweets or chocolate. I can’t remember the last time I ate a slice of cake but hey, I’m fine. Not. I blame myself because I have stupid greedy habits, like needing mints or sugar free hard boiled herbals to calm anxiety about getting ill. I have jars of dried fruits that I pick at and I drink two hot chocolates a night out of habit and fear of being hungry over night (hangover from strict anorexia) and I don’t rub, I don’t exercise regularly and I hate myself for it.

It occurred to me at the till in a shop the other day - when a white chocolate kitKat caught my eye. Not only would I not buy it, ever. But that there is often FEWER calories in my evening meal than that chocolate bar. Really. This was something I was going to write down like a friend suggested to make a stock take of anorexic habits - that’s one. Fear of snacks other than fruit or controlled popcorns or seeds.

I can’t explain the disgust I have for myself for eating the bits I do without measuring. The dried fruits, the booze or the extra spoonful of cereal. I just want to Bin it all. I realise this is anorexia. I just don’t actually think I have the tools to accept this is okay.

I shouldn’t have seen the scales the other day. They’re playing on my mind. I don’t know how I’ve eaten the same and gained 3kg - unless it’s the booze, mints and lack of exercise - in which case my overwhelming instinct is to STOP The extra eating and actually move more again. I say I don’t like skeletal, I don’t. I just don’t like being this size either.

(Un)comfortably Numb

There are a few things swirling through my head this morning and I need to get them out: 

1) I feel UNCOMFORTABLE in my skin today, clothes are digging in, they feel tighter, It feels like I have to hide my body, I body checked and 'feel' like a 'barrel' and bloated.

2) I feel UNCOMFORTABLE not being able to identify how I feel.

3) Everything feels a little NUMB.

*Yes, feelings are not facts, blah blah. I know this. 

As for the numbness. My best friend and I were trying to get our heads around this one over coffee yesterday morning. We're both on headmeds, and know that can make a difference to this. In taking out the high anxiety or low mood, they leave us both feeling a little middle-ground, a little, well numb. I can see why they're not always given to people recovering from anorexia though, as for every time they take the edge of anxiety - they take the edge of any motivation to see the NEED to eat more, exercise less or keep myself in 'check' with the lessons recovery taught me. 

But this numbness bothers me - and comforts me at the same time.

Reality is that to me, I am being lazy and greedy recently. I've exercised a lot less, not been for a run for more than two months, I've spent more time at home, doing things like watching TV or pottering around. This feels uncomfortable, but I struggle to find the motivation to put on my trainers or go out.

Don't gasp in horror or shock, it's obvious, but I still track calories more than I possibly should do. Recently, I've been more relaxed about seeing the total at the end of the day rise. A good thing you say? In my head it still isn't. Most people would tell me that I don't consume enough per-day, but in all honesty, I hate a) that it's a high as it is - but I don't know why? b) I honestly feel like I am a secret eater, because my weight isn't going down and c) I assume the secret eating 'tops up' and takes me to RDA. I wish sometimes I could just blurt out how much I eat, what I eat, my weight blah, because it would stop the hypothesise of others'. Yes, I still feel like this five years on. 

"But it's good that you put on weight" said the best friend yesterday...well, it STILL doesn't feel like that to me. It feels like, NOTHING. Numb. I don't want to lose, or gain or think about it. So I block it out. Probably not helpful, but what is? I guess it's helpful that I don't ACTUALLY know what I weigh - I stopped my monthly weigh-ins in November, so of by accident, sort of because I don't like seeing it go up. I am not in a dangerous BMI, I am not overweight. I give and shit and don't care at the same time. 

Many of you know that I went back for a few sessions at the EDU, well they've written suggesting that I DONT need the services, and need to decide my next move if anxiety is the issue. The private therapist I was seeing through my employer can't see me anymore - you only get 6 sessions. The general talking therapies counsellor told me I was too complex (it's how I ended up back at EDU). But the thing is, I can't be arse with any of it, because things are sort of comfortable.

But what niggles at me is that they're sort of comfortable, because they're comfortably numb.

Why ARE you here Sarah?

When you have NO idea why you're sat back in the chair of a therapy room of the eating disorders unit, that's not what one wants to hear. My initial thoughts were "because I am a me-me who wants the attention and loves her fake anorexia..." 

Yes, really. Second thought was "I don't know." followed soon after by "...you tell me..." 

I certainly have no idea, that's for sure. Yes, I haven't gained the weight they initially wanted me to. Yes, I still have rules that could be seen as anorexic. No I don't like my body. Yes I do count calories...and no, I don't know why I am here.

What do you want to do? What goals have you got? What do you hope to achieve by coming back?

I DON'T KNOW. 

What makes it MORE confusing and the thoughts I am left with after my second session with Dr K. (the 'new' Mrs W/Dr B) is that SHE doesn't think I need to be there. She thinks I am 'recovered' enough and she thinks my coping strategies are healthy enough for me to live like this FOREVER.

It makes me want to cancel my referral and just keep on dealing with my shit in my own way. Why? Because I don't have any goals. I am not going to kid myself that 'hitting a target weight' is going to be one of my goals. I will not go hop, skip and jumping down the unit corridor motivated to gain weight. I just can't see it. Not is a destructive way, I am not losing, nor bothered about losing. I just really have not got the motivation to do that.

When people ask me, therapist, friends and family, "don't you want to be able to eat X or do Y or believe Z"....well no, I don't really care too much for XY or Z to be honest with you.  I have never enjoyed food, it's since the day dot for me, been functional. I am not a 'foodie' and never will be. 

What I do wish I could work on is believing that I am okay, that I am not ugly or annoying or not good enough. I wish I believed that I don't need to micro-control every part of my life. But more than anything my goal is to know my goals I guess. 

Shaking Up and Breaking Up

For someone who doesn't do very well with change, I seem to be shaking up and breaking up left right and centre at the moment. 

I have been in my very own home for a month now already. People are right though, buying a house is one of the most stressful things I've ever done. But my gosh, when I turn the key and sit on my huge chaise sofa, it's nice and comforting to know it's all mine.

That's shake up No.1. The second is my recovery.

I went back to the EDU for the follow up to my review session a fortnight ago. Another go on the scales. I didn't like that at all. It messed with my month system of weighing in the same place, at the same place that I've had going since I was discharged. Despite not wanting to lose weight and actually wanting to get better - It stabs like a knife when its a different weight to 'my weight' and higher, at that. But I guess the fact the number bothered me, and the controls around the scales, is proof enough that I need what's coming next.

I am now on a longggg waiting list for another dose of  therapy. This time CBT-E. For four years I never worked to a specific type of treatment. The service itself admits that my emergency admission in 2011 meant I never really got the care I needed, and sort of made-do-and-mended with a range of different approaches.

I got the choice of CAT or CBT-E. I actually wanted to opt for CAT, but I was told the latter would be me best chance of kicking anorexia for good. It's going to be a wait and a half now. Time for me to get into a better place on my own so it's not too much of a shock to the system with calorie increases and challenges when I start up.

I am OVER the swallowing my pride stage. I need to do what I need to do to be freed, completely this time. I am stuck in that bid in the middle, Jenni Shaefer calls it 'Almost Anorexic' I think. Holding on to an unhealthy relationship with food. Letting rules and behaviours I was once a slave to still affect me. The thought of gaining weight still stresses me out, even if eating doesn't. But it's more about the fear of 'shaking up' my routine that bothers me.

So, the breaking up bit? Well, after I year, I decide I needed to break up with C. It wasn't working for me anymore. As good as things were, I found myself torn between so many things, I couldn't add therapy in there too. I need to focus on me again. I need to be free to listen to my head, and not feel more guilt about not being a good-enough girlfriend. I will miss his company, of course. I feel guilty for breaking up with him - but at the end of the day. I need to be authentic. I haven't chosen anorexia over a relationship. I have chosen me.

So, in a way, the shake up and break up actually leads to me making up with myself. Good deal that.

Life goes on, and so does exploring recovery.

Isn't it funny how life just goes on, how arriving in a new place, doesn't make the old one disappear? However much we try to stop the world moving sometimes and scream "let me get off!", it just keeps ticking over. That's, as they say. life. 

When I was at my most ill, life stopped. Halted. That 'anorexic mixtape' stuck on loop, over and over and over again, with no respite, the same thing over and over. Treading water, every day, terrified to swim either way.

But one thing that's helping me move from being in treatment, to living life away from life at the eating disorders clinic, is just trying really hard to not call myself recovered, or in recovery, or an 'anorexia survivor'. Just trying to move on with life, explore my new skills now I've finished the swim.

I'm learning to accept recovery is never probably going to have the end point and golden beaches I once dreamt of reaching. The place where it all made sense and life was, well, dare I say perfect, sorted and fixed. It was a mirage I thought I saw in the confusion of anorexia and during the four year swim I've just made to get here.  

This came up in an interview I did with a magazine this afternoon. I was asked to describe where I am at now with anorexia. Am I still in recovery, or have I recovered? It's the first time I've spoken to someone new about my experience since discharge, and I didn't know what to say. In some ways, I HAVE recovered from anorexia, I've recovered my BMI, I've recovered my life, I've recovered my career. I no longer have full-blown clinical anorexia. But have I set up camp here?

Sort of, I've found my plot. But in saying that, I'm suggesting that I have totally overcome anorexia. Out the other side, reached that recovery cove I once referred to. I may have out swam the sharks, I may have reached the other side of the recovery ocean, But it doesn't mean I'm settled here.

Now is where I perhaps rest my arms and legs a little after almost drowning and the epic swim that was treatment. Now is where I start to explore the new place I am in, walk along the shore a little. Now is the time to use the survival skills I've been taught by Dr. B, Mrs. W, Ms F. and others - and make my own way here.

After all, explorers don't land in new places and have a ready made camp, do they? It's about arriving on new shores and using the skills picked up along the way to carve a new life. And this is where life, and my recovery is now. Not over, just me, my life, moving on in a new place. 

One of the quotes my recovery tattoo relates to is apt here too.

Farewell, it's been emotional. But I'm not.

Almost four years after being shipped back to my home town under the cloud of confusion of the deadly downfall into my eating disorder, I'm here. I've reached the eve of my farewell to the hospital that's helped me save my life. 

I had no idea it would take so long, after all, back then I didn't even believe that I was ill at all, let alone be as ill as I was. Four years ago my eating disorder had swallowed my entire life. I was desperate, trapped, holding on to something I thought was the answer to all my worries, problems and desires all wrapped into one. Oh, how wrong I was. 

It's been a rocky road, like anyone who's recovered from anorexia will understand - and anyone who's supported a friend or family though recovery will recall. It makes my head spin to sit here tonight to try and sum it up, it's almost impossible, so I won't really begin. It's been horrible, painful, agonising, confusing, amazing, eye opening, exhilarating and extremely emotional. And everything in between. 

Although on the eve of my discharge from the unit, I'm feeling anything BUT emotional about it. 

I always thought I'd be feeling like I understood myself at this point, like I'd really hit a milestone, that discharge would be like a dissertation or something. Like I'd get a big tick, a mark, feedback on how I'd performed. That I could call it a success. Complete. But it's not like that.

My appointment is actually before work tomorrow, I'll probably go, be asked how I've been during my three months without treatment (I've done okay actually) I'll ask lots of questions, be asked lots too - and not really know how to answer. Then that will be that I guess, 

To be honest, I feel guilty about not being as upset or emotional about not seeing them again. My gosh, when Mrs W left, I was an emotional wreck. but I guess that's the whole point, back then my life was my eating disorder, then my life was my recovery and now that level of emotion has gone from the process. 

Life has sort of been cross fading from the last four years into my future. 

I was always told I would begin to use the tools I've been taught by my team on my own eventually. I never believed them. But now it's starting to make sense. The more I use them, the better skilled I'll become at getting through life, carving my own way. There is a sense deep down that the reason I'm not nervous about moving on is because I don't think my use of these tools have REALLY been tested yet - so I don't really know how I will react. But I will live and learn how to soon enough I guess.

I know that I've not had to deal with weight gain on my own yet, I still don't eat the foods I find challenging very often. I know that I avoid stressful food situations and need to be in control of most of my meals. But as a friend said to me earlier today, I am aware of my behaviour, and know what I am doing and where the line is. And he's right. I fully understand when the tools need to be used. It's only when I step through the next entrance, only when I walk this path that I'll learn how to use them like a pro. 

So, whether tomorrow ends up being an emotional affair or not, it will finally be farewell. A door closing on that chapter of my life. That much I know.