POEM: What Did I Do To Deserve This?

I don't know what's brought this overwhelming feeling of not being 'enough' on tonight. My head is full of negativity, frustration, anger, sadness and regret. 

I don't know if its forgetting about how much my life has rewound itself over the last 12 months in moments of happiness shopping earlier, then suddenly remembering what was going on in my life. Whether walking around Selfridges put me in 'dreamer mode', then stepping through the front door of my parent's house brought me right back down to earth with a thud, or what? Anyway, I can't get it out in 'journal words' so I got it out in a poem..

What Did I Do?

What did I do to deserve this?

To have to feel this pain?

Why did I have to mess up this life?

And have to start again.

This illness has broken what I was.

Stolen my brain and bruised my soul

It’s eaten me away, while I starved,

And made me much less than whole.

I thought I was braver than this,

Could cope and prove them wrong,

However I felt and whatever I showed

Wasn’t I meant to be strong?

I’ve proved that I’m weaker than most,

Too many worries, shouts and screams,

When life should have been more real,

Sarah was too busy lost in dreams.

I wanted to shut her up,

My aim was to be the best,

I wanted to stop comparing

And soar above the rest.

I thought I could fix it all,

But I ended up making it worse,

I aimed too high, fell from the sky,

And put my life in reverse.

Now why does it have to be so hard?

Require me to be so tough?

When at times like this I feel

When nothing’s ever enough?

Enough of feeling so empty,

And enough of feeling so low

Fed up of feeling useless

Not Enough, with so far to go.

I feel like an intruder,

In a home that’s no longer mine,

I try so hard to keep the peace

And pretend that everything’s fine.

It’s hard to look in the mirror

And accept life for what it’s become,

So empty, starved, so hollow and thin,

No prospects and feeling so numb.

No end date, finish line or plan,

Nothing lined up and nowhere to go,

Just living to live with life standing still,

Not even knowing what I know.

Not knowing how I feel,

Not knowing how to cope,

Not knowing where I am going,

Just trying to keep some hope.

Its times like now I remember,

That the imperfection crushes me,

It eats away at my body

I just wish that they could see.

I just want to be okay,

To be fixed, back on track,

To be out of here, have a fuller life,

I just want Sarah back. 

Bella Reminds Me Of Someone..?

....dying, weak, pale and skeletal, being eaten from the inside by a demon?

As a Twilight fan I queued for my midnight screening last night of Breaking Dawn Part 1. Those of you who have read the book and now seen the film will know the story. Bella finds she is pregnant with Edward's child/vampire/immortal featus after having sex on their honeymoon on the Isle of Esmee.

A 'being' inside of her, sucking the life out of her, making her weak, killing her. Her resistance to help from the people who love her, her determination to let 'it' control her and her unwillingness to listen to those around her, as they have to watch her slowly dying as a result.

For anyone else suffering with or attempting recovering from Anorexia Nervosa will probably agree, it all sounds very familiar.

Scenes from the film, showing Bella becoming thinner, more emaciated, weaker and less coherent really, really hit home for me, it shocked me and has been playing on my mind since.

As I was sat counting my days' calories, wondering if I looked greedy or fat trying 3 pick and mix sweets, as I worried about tomorrow and the day after on my meal plans, got anxious about seeing what I was seeing and as my session at the clinic earlier that day sunk in, I realised that what Bella and Edwards unborn 'child' was doing to her, is what Ana is doing to me.

The scenes were really hard to watch. It was hard to watch her becoming weaker and more skeletal. The pain in Edward and Jacob's eyes as they watched the girl they loved dying from her determination to keep hold of something that was killing her. Seeing her lying on a hospital bed, too weak to move.

Watching her get in to the bath, her spine and shoulder blades showing, her collar bone prominent, was a little too close to home for me. It shocked me and reminded me of what I have to look at in the mirror every day at the moment. It reminded me of how much damage I have done to my body in my quest for perfection. Bella didn't look beautiful in that scene nor did she represent life. She didn't look perfect. She looked ill, weak and she represented death.

I thought of all the girls who have already lost their lives to anorexia, all the girls who were so determined to keep hold of Ana, striving for Ana's perfect, those who listened to her for too long, lost their lives striving for comfort from something or someone who was ultimately sucking the life out of them. 

It choked me.

It also reminded me that it could be me, it could be any of the Recovery Warriors I look to for support and those I hope I give support to, it could be the girls who go to the clinic I go to, the girls who are IP, those who are OP, the women who suffer with AN their whole lives. It could be me.

The thing is, Bella has Edward to catch her last breath, he could help her with his venom, give her immortality. Save her. What I need to remember, and what I hope other people striving for recovery remember, is that we don't have Edward Cullen to save us.

We just have our own courage, strength and the support of our therapists, dieticians, friends and family to make sure our inner demon doesn't kill us.

Keep strong and listen to the people standing around, watching the life being pulled from us and remember how hard it was to watch Bella lying, dying. I will.

POEM: It's Always Been You

A poem I have written recently about accepting how long I've heard Ana, how long I have be a slave to our 'friendship' and about being AWARE of her voice, as a way of separating myself from her. 

It’s you, it’s always been you

Inside my brain

Making me compare

Causing my pain

The frustration inside

The signs

The symptoms

The thoughts

It's you isn't it?

That makes me compare

That tells me I'm know good

That knife in the back

I thought you understood

The guilt

The shame

The food

The blame

It's always been you

Hearing your voice

Listening

That's not new.

The way you attack

Your plan for me

You waited so long

For them to see.

My need for perfection

My desire for control

Your need for power

My weakened soul

My dreams and life

You rip in two

And to Think I believed

And put my trust in you

Pasta Maths...

So, like the creature of habit that I am...I have been having a specific pasta from a specific supermarket since I started eating pasta again, mainly because it seemed to be the lowest calorie and it was small tiny (made for children type) pasta so it took me longer to eat and looked like more.

Today I went to buy it – and before I picked it up I looked at the calorie content of the other wholemeal pasta and it was LOADS higher and stood there with both in my hands I wondered why.

It turn out the reason to blame is the burden of my anorexic life. Cooked vs Dry weight calorie information.

I think it is because on other pasta it is the dry weight and the one I have is the cooked weight, but I have been basing my calories on the DRY weight of the one I brought. So, basically this made me FREAK out whilst I was in the supermarket and then whilst I was walking to the bus the maths was going round and round in my head. I was desperately trying to figure out if I was right or not. I couldn’t let it go; I couldn’t stop wondering if I had totally overeaten EVERY time I have had pasta. I was ANGRY with myself for making a mistake, misreading the calorie rules, the instructions written in front of me. How could I be so stupid NOT to know the numbers?

< Cue Ana starting her usual "You are SUCH an IDIOT" song.>  

Those measurements and numbers really got to me there and then walking down the street; “so 50g dry weight would equal 100g cooked weight and 100g cooked weight would be 100 calories and other pasta dry weight 100g equals 300 calories so…..” and on and on. Then it turned into “and that means this pasta is MORE or less than the others anyway.” I suppose that fact made Ana feel a bit better. But I have NO idea of working it out and no idea how much I have actually consumed. 

Do the numbers in the pasta I've already had matter?

Then I stopped. (literally) It suddenly occurred to me that EVEN if I have eaten ten times more than I thought, or just twice as much, it hasn't made me instantly fat. I haven’t gained lots of weight because I didn't know the exact calorie content, I haven’t ballooned from not knowing exact numbers and I need to learn from this that the numbers DON’T matter, do they?

What I need to do now is FORGET the calories in that meal, forget the numbers related to the pasta. I have been happy with my portion size, measured in a little cup to the same point each time, so why change it. My initial thought was, “well next time I have pasta, I will weigh the same portion size dry and then weigh it cooked” so I can work it out. 

But what will I achieve by doing that? It would only allow Ana to criticize me for the meals I have ALREADY eaten (and enjoyed) and allow her to dictate how much pasta I’d have to sacrifice to keep the calories in the meal to what I THOUGHT they were. But the thing is, I probably still need to INCREASE the portion of pasta I have, and really, this proves that the numbers can go wrong, they aren’t always accurate and they don’t matter as much as Ana makes me believe.

Plus, I really do love pasta! Shh, don’t tell Ana! 

Anorexic or Healthy?

A page from my journal as a reminder...