Reality checked

"Do you actually want to recover?"

That's one of the very first questions that my best friend from treatment asked me in our hour and a half conversation Wednesday night when I first began to tell her that I was struggling.  Not what's going on, but "Do you want to recover?"  We talked through a lot on the phone that night.  About what my behaviors have been, what my thoughts are, what my expectations of going home for treatment were.  And she reality checked everything. 

I've been fighting the idea of going home for a few weeks now, mainly because I don't think that things are that bad.  Denial is something that is fairly common among eating disorder patients.  It sounds something like this for me: 

• Everyone diets, so what I'm doing isn't bad. 
• I know what an eating disorder is, and I DO NOT have one. 
• What I’m doing is no big deal. 
• There's nothing wrong with me physically and I'm still very high functioning academically, so obviously, I am not sick. 
• I'm still eating food, so this isn't restricting.
• I'm not thin enough or skinny enough to have an eating disorder.
• I’ll just lose weight until I am X pounds and then I’ll stop.
• I am in complete control, and I could stop if I chose to do so.
• Things aren't as bad as they were in high school, so I'm obviously not relapsing. 

Denial. 

The sicker I became, the more the excuses seemed real and the more my brain believed them.  I went from eating two meals a day to only one to not taking my meds to restricting even more and limiting myself to under X calories a day to throwing up what little I was eating to abusing diet pills to obsessing over weight.  And I still thought that I was fine because I hadn't seen any physical weight loss.  

Then I went home this past weekend and when saying goodbye to a friend's mom who knows about my struggles with ED and depression, she said that I needed to "Stop losing weight."  
"What?"  
"You've lost a lot of weight since I saw you last in September." 

Even in that moment, it was hard to believe her.  The next day, I got dressed for church in an outfit that I had worn less than a month ago.  I couldn't keep my pants up and my shirt was so baggy... ugh.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring a nice belt home because I didn't think that I would need one, since these pants fit a month ago, they were still going to fit.  

Luckily for me, my brother had left a nice belt at home. And at first, I completely freaked out when I realized that was going to be my only option.  My brother has always been skinnier than me.  Always.  So there was absolutely no way that his belt was going to fit me... even at the very last notch.  But I put it on because I was running late for church and had no other options.  I held my breath while I put it on his belt... It didn't just barely fit.  It fit like any of my belts do.  

Had I really lost that much weight? No.  I couldn't have.  I don't see it, so obviously it can't be true.  This belt is probably just too big for Jacob, which is why he left it at home instead of taking it with him.  

But it still bothered me.  The whole weekend bothered me--exchanges with my parents, with my friend's mom, with how my clothes fit on Sunday, with my brother's belt.  And when I got back to school on Sunday night, I checked my weight, hoping to ease the dissonance in my mind.  

Numbers don't lie.  They showed that I was X pounds under my "ideal weight range," according to my growth curve (my treatment team at home doesn't use BMI to determine ideal weight ranges because of reasons stated here). 

I started to think that maybe I had a problem.  Maybe I needed to go home and get help... but it wasn't that bad yet.  I was still in control.

Monday night I was attempting to study for an exam and had a major depressive episode.  And Tuesday I ended up talking to Dean Cole and we decided that maybe it would be best for me to go home and get some help.  I called my team on Wednesday, trying to reach Katie, mainly, because I like her best (yes, I have favorites...) but was unsuccessful.  Then Annie called me.  I was scared, and I wanted to talk with her, wanted her to make me feel better and tell me that I was right and didn't need any more help and definitely didn't need to go home.  

She called me out on all of my bullshit.  She told me that I was sick, that I needed help, that I was sicker than I was able to understand.  She told me that my idea of going home for a few days or a week was just complete bullshit--I wasn't going to recover that way.  Maybe I would be able to keep things in check for another month or so, but I was just going to relapse again and again until I spent serious time working towards recovery.  

I gave her every excuse to not work toward recovery, and each time she told me, 'Yeah, I totally get that, but here's why you're wrong...'  I talked to her about school and how I was scared that I wouldn't be able to return next semester if I went home for serious treatment.  Her response was that was good, that I'm not going to recover in college--no one can. That I should take the year off and reach full recovery... Something that terrifies me very, very much.  We talked about maybe going to rehab (different from inpatient), so that I could work intensively on my recovery and not have the added stress of being at home.  (Not to mention that it may increase the likelihood of me being able to return to Gettysburg in the Spring).

She reminded me that I am very much diluting the quality of my life and that since she has recovered, she's been able to enjoy things like pizza multiple times a week and ice cream and all the foods that I am terrified to eat right now.  And now that she's comfortable with her body, she can do all sorts of things she never would have before.  She also reminded me that I am killing myself.  

I hung up the phone with her feeling like someone had just punched me in the face.  But also convinced that whether I recover or not is completely up to me and that I need to put the effort in and work my ass off in treatment so I can get better and get back to my life.

Friends and Triggers.

"Sorry for creeping, but I also just read your post before that from the wedding. It made me cry. I haven't seen you much lately--I didn't know how rough of a time you had been having recently :( I love you so much, you are a wonderful person! You will overcome this. There WILL be a time when you will be able to look at things without seeing them through your eating disorder, I just know it. Hearing about your experiences is painful, and it makes me angry at this disorder for affecting you and hurting you, as silly of a stance as that may be :( I'm sorry I can't truly relate to everything that you have to face in order to keep healing and recovering, but I will always care. I may be relatively helpless for the most part, but I'm here for you."

Amanda and I last year.

I received this message from one of my very best college friends, who has been a lifesaver for the past year and a half, after I shared with her my post about my dislike of Halloween and my insecurities that come with this holiday. I dissolved into tears instantly. Just seeing her "get it." Seeing her understand and just accept my anorexia for what it is--a disease. Something that I cannot control as hard as I try. It's a rare moment.

It's very rare that I find these people. It is very rare that I get this reaction. Most of the time, what I hear from the general population of my friends is an apology, some awkwardly phrased questions about it, and then a topic change. And then there's the people who tell me that I should just pray about it. Or the ones who say they don't understand because they think I'm beautiful... Because that's all that eating disorders are about.

I've actually gotten a lot of flack today for disliking Halloween. Some people get it and others don't. I actually had a conversation with one of my other friends about it today. She told me that Halloween isn't all about food. It's conversations like this that remind me just how consumed I am and just how much the general population does not understand about eating disorders.

And as I'm starting to finally convince myself to give this very unclear, terrifying and unfinished route of healing a try, I know that I'm going to need friends. More than ever. But what sucks is that my anorexia has destroyed so many of my relationships this year. I am more isolated than I have been in a long, long time. Or at least, I feel that way.

But then there's also the idea that people don't understand exactly how hard this is. They don't understand how eating disorders work. And normally, I would sit down and take the time to teach them. To teach them how to support me, how to talk about it with me, how the whole thing works, but I am just so tired of it right now. I'm at the point where I just want people to understand it all and just know. I don't want to have to teach them. I don't want to have to explain it.

I want people to react like Amanda and be angry at the disorder for all that it's taken from me and how it's hurting me. I want people to listen and not see me as crazy. I want people to understand that I need them to walk through this with me--to be patient with me on bad days, to push me forward, to celebrate the small victories like eating a snack or having a meal with someone or getting out of bed in the morning. I want these people on my side, supporting me in this. Because I can't do this alone.

I was at the grocery store a couple days ago with the second friend I mentioned, C, and another girl, M. The other girl had (and in my opinion still does) struggled with anorexia previously and knew about my current struggle with it. I figured that she would get it. But we're at the grocery store and she makes a comment about not wanting to get something because it's "not healthy." The other girl encourages her to put it back, while I encourage her to get it if she wants it. She decides to put it back. C tells me that M is trying to lose weight and she's only trying to support M. I say something about how M doesn't need to lose more weight and it isn't healthy for her, mainly from an eating disorder stand point. This event was just triggering for me. But that coupled with the fact that M continues to talk about weight and how much she wants to lose and throw around numbers and tell me about how she hasn't eaten... when she knows that I'm not in a good place. She personally had an eating disorder and knows how to talk about them. She told me that she wants to help support me through this. But she is triggering to be around.

I had another friend who I spoke with recently about Halloween and skimpy costumes and body comparison and she responded to me that she understood and that I wasn't alone because she did it too. And then she said, "They're all so skinny... It's gross." And I don't know why that statement made me so uncomfortable... maybe because I had just finished the conversation with my other friend and was frustrated with her not understanding. But in my mind, I thought, if she thinks that the girls who I am, for lack of a better word, idolizing are gross, then what does she think of me? Does she think I'm gross for wanting that?

Lately I've found it so hard to just go through normal life without being triggered by something. Whether it's in class and we're talking about the physiological and brain basis of feeding or in another class talking about weight bias. Or in my apartment and my roommate is talking about what she's eaten that day. Or I'm walking somewhere and see a girl running on the sidewalk.

I've forgotten how hard this all is. How alone I feel in this. How misunderstood I feel.

It's frustrating when people don't understand, when I finally get up the courage to talk about it and people aren't understanding and don't seem willing to learn. It just perpetuates the shame that I feel and the secrecy that I hold around my eating disorder. And how much harder this makes recovery.

Why recovery is necessary: So I can have the strength and energy to teach others the facts about eating disorders and how they can support a loved one recovering from one and so I can not be triggered by the littlest things.

Roommate.

“Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic - seeing the car just as it hits you.” 

(Augusten Burroughs)

Today, my new roommate moved in.  It's a big change.  I had just gotten used to spending the days by myself without Megan or anyone else in my room.  I had gotten used to being lonely.  

I was used to the late nights and late mornings. 

To an empty bed and an empty desk. 

To being able to walk around my room naked.

And now I have to share it again. 

With a stranger. 

This is scary.  

Honestly, what if she doesn't like me? 

What if I'm not a good roommate? 

What if I don't like her? 

What if she's not a good roommate? 

What if we fight? 

I don't even know her and I agreed to let her move in with me.

But I agreed.  I based my decision on my gut.  On how I felt after that first meeting.  And my gut is usually right.  This is just a change. 

A change of lifestyle. 

A change of living. 

A change of pace. 

Change is good. 

It makes us strong.

Breathe.  Pray.  Trust. 

God knows what He's doing. 

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 

(Lao Tzu)

Flashback.

Just a little something that I wrote while I was awake at 4am this morning.
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Everything was fuzzy.  Like the radio station is slightly out of range fuzzy or the tv antenna isn’t quite receiving the signal fuzzy.  And everything was moving.  I don’t mean the people.  I mean the ground, the bleachers, me.  I was moving.  I was moving and I wasn’t aware that I was moving.  I had stopped as soon as I got to my seat.  Or at least, I thought I did.

Someone was calling my name.  It sounded familiar, but distant.  Kind of like a dream.  I didn’t think that it was real at first; I thought that it was all in my head.  Until…

Until that voice was in my ear, screaming my name, begging me to answer it.  Asking me repeatedly if I was okay.  I think I mutter a weak ‘yes,’ or at least attempted to do so.

Everything was spinning, blurry.  Music was playing.  People were staring.  I was confused.  The notes, they sounded so familiar to me and I tried to figure out what they were, and then I was falling.

The closest stable object to me was China.  I grabbed onto her arm and lowered myself to sit on the bleacher.  She sat next to me, looking at me with her big, concerned eyes that I was so familiar with.  And then the voice was back.  Questioning.

Yes, I was okay.  Yes, I had eaten more than the meal before the game.  Yes, I didn’t need to go talk to a band director and go home.  No, I wasn’t dizzy; I only stood up too fast this one time.  I was fine, promise.

But what she didn’t know was that I had only eaten once in the past two days and that was the ‘meal’ right before we headed to rehearsal.  Or that I’d spent the ten minutes right before rehearsal in the bathroom throwing up.  She didn’t know that my mother had been asking questions, bringing up accusations, telling me I wasn’t eating enough.  And she definitely didn’t know that I was extremely tired and dizzy and in pain.

My heart was beating loudly in my ears.  Crazy loud.  So loud that I was absolutely positive that everyone in our 218 member band could hear it.  I candidly took my pulse.  Fast.  Entirely too fast.  And extremely erratic.  This wasn’t good, I thought.

That’s the last thing I remember.

I was suddenly sitting on a chair in the band room.  I wasn’t entirely sure how I had gotten there.  But since only China was around, I figured that it must not have been because I passed out.  Thank goodness.  People couldn’t know my secret.

He sat down across from me, the teacher.  He looked at me.  I looked at him.  It was sufficiently awkward.  Words came out of his mouth, but I couldn’t hear them over the heartbeat in my ears.  He looked concerned.  China looked worried.  I tried harder to focus.  But everything was spinning and blurry and I didn’t know how I got there.

I mumbled something about needing a drink of water.  They both nodded.  They watched as I stood up, attempted to take a step forward and almost fainted.

I had an eating disorder.
It was obvious.
To them.

It would never be obvious to me.

Reflection of the Day.

Today I had one of those days where I just wanted to scream and cry and then go to sleep.  Or where I really just wanted to get hit by a bus... not die, but get hit by one and wake up in the hospital.

Yeah.  It was a long day.

I dealt with friend drama, with my eating disorder, with being angry at my mother, with life, with everything.  And after this kind of crappy day, I really just wanted to sleep.

But of course, I can't do that.  I go to college, remember?  I have homework.

So I decided to go work out.
And I did, after my night lecture.

Now let's pause here for one quick moment and think about the implications of me working out.  It's not something I do on a regular basis.  In fact, the only times that I have ever worked out in my life are when my eating disorder was the worst or I was super stressed.

So the fact that I worked out tonight implies lots of things.  First, that I'm currently in eating disordered mindset and not trying to be healthy.  Which means that I haven't really eaten today.  Or lately, really.  Which means that my vitals are crap right now.  Which means that I've been told that I'm not allowed to work out.

Second, this implies that my stress level was un-chartable.  That I was just feeling things and needed to get them out via some form of physical activity.

Luckily for me, I have a friend who was more than willing to go with me.  Not luckily for me, she also struggles with body image and had a sub-clinical eating disorder in high school.

Well.
I didn't run until I passed out.
I limited myself to half an hour of running because I had a friend with me.

But here's the thing: anorexia makes me not want to listen to the voice of reason inside of my head.  It makes me upset that it's even there and it makes me feel crazy because I can't think/function/act normally.  Anorexia takes the good and turns it into the bad.  It takes the counsel of wise women, like my nutritionist, and ignores it.  It takes the friends and turns them into enemies.

And I'm sick of it.
Literally just sick of it.

I wake up every day wanting to fight.
And I fall asleep wanting to give up.
This is not okay.

It's not okay because it's not who I am.  It's not who I was meant to be and it's not good for me.  That voice of reason, the good, the counsel of those wiser than me, the friends--those are all things that I need.  That anorexia has taken from me.

It's taken my life.

How much more of it will it consume before I cease to exist at all?

Giving up is not an option.
I can't change the world if I'm dead.

Struggling.

Why is it that when we struggle, we are so ashamed to let other people know about it? 
Why is it that we have such a fear of failure?
Why is it that it is so easy to lie and to shut down when we struggle? 

Today, I was having dinner with a very wonderful sister.  And one of the first questions out of her mouth was:  "How are you?" 

I'm okay.

That was such a lie. 

She knew it.  I knew it.  God knew it. 

But here's the thing, even when she asked me about something very close to the thing I was struggling with, I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth about what's been going on in my life. 

Because the truth is scary.

It's so much easier to hide from the pain.  To take a pill to make me numb and not have to work this all out.  To hide from people so that they won't notice that I'm not okay.  To comfort someone else, when it's you who needs the comforting. 

Let's be honest here: 

Life is hard.  And it hurts.  And gosh darn it, we need each other. 

But living authentically, saying what is in our hearts, what is paining us, what we are struggling with, it sucks. 

Because what if that means I'm failing? 

What if that means you won't love me? 

What if that means that I'm not who you want me to be? 

But here's the thing about eating disorders and depression: 

Your recovery grows in proportion to your level of honesty and communication with those around you who love you.

There are no secrets in recovery. 

And there should be no secrets between sisters.

Especially when you know that they will only continue to love you.

So here goes nothing. 

I'm struggling. 

I'm struggling with my depression and eating disorder. 

I'm struggling with being around people and being social. 

I'm struggling with asking for help. 

I'm struggling with admitting to myself that I may still need help.  

I'm struggling with the idea of Jesus. 

I'm struggling with shame. 

I'm struggling with my view of myself. 

I'm struggling with my view of others. 

And I'm hurting. 

So very much. 

There's this voice in my head that tells me that I need to have this together right now. That I either need to have all of this together or that I need to allow myself to completely relapse into the point of not functioning so that it would be more acceptable that I am struggling. 

What kind of twisted thinking is this? 

Friends, I'm struggling and I'm hurting. 

I need you to know that. 

And I need you to know that I'm struggling to reach out and tell you that.  

That I don't know how to say those words to you.  

That I don't know how to say that I need Jesus, that I don't know how to say that I'm failing, that I don't know how to be okay. 

And somehow, this all has to be okay with me. 

I have to make peace with the fact that I struggle and will continue to struggle. 

I have to learn how to not be ashamed of being that girl who is in a continual fight with herself and her demons. 

Will I stop feeling this way? 

Will I ever stop struggling? 

I don't have the answers. 

I just have to keep walking through this mess. 

To keep struggling. 

And maybe, just maybe, this will all one day be a distant memory. 

One can always hope.