Surviving

Well heres to my new years goal. I'm not quite sure why i hate the word resolution maybe because when i think of it i think of not following through. goals were super helpful in treatment. no matter how small the goal when i accomplished it, it felt as though a little bit of my eating disorder was being chipped away. this year i am going to try to write more. i say it every year, but i suppose even just posting this i have written more than i did last year.

tims at work all day and I've been laying in bed watching indie films all day. i decided it was time to try to write. i feel like the longer i go without writing the harder it seems its going to be to say something. i was on pinterest and came across this quote

" You survived the abuse. You're going to survive the recovery."

i pulled out my journal and wanted to write the old fashioned way with pen and paper. well here goes....

I do believe you "will survive" in the very literal way, you will not die directly from it. but then there comes self destruction. trauma stays imprinted in ever fiber of your being. everything can freak you out. hearing a name spoken in public, a smell, a car, a look on someones face, pretty much anything. i suppose everyone has somewhat of a choice about how they handle, but for me it definitely did not feel that way for me, i wanted to disappear. i wanted to hide, i wanted everything to just go away, but it would not. no matter how much i stuffed it down, it was there knocking, kicking doors down to get in. i had to face it head on and at the time it definitely did not feel like healing. it felt like ripping stitches out one at a time with nothing to numb things out anymore. i often wonder if experiencing the trauma or if the nasty oozing scabs it leaves behind are worse? i honestly don't know. i do know, however that facing it makes it feel better. you can heal. it definitely does not feel like its happening in the moment. in the moment it feels aweful, like the worst self inflicted pain. i came to the realization that maybe self inflicted pain that may lead to healing has to be better than the self inflicting pain that i used for years and almost killed me. i can't say when things got better, but i know when i look back to even three years ago, things are so much better. not perfect, but better. i still get triggered, i still get anxious, but now i live not just survive.

Velveteen Rabbit

I know I know I always say that im going to blog once a week, twice a month blah blah blah! Well in my defense I was in school. Im pretty sure my last post was during winter break. My time has been taken up with work and writing paper after paper and doing math problem after math problem. Oh yea and tring to not totally neglect my husband who is also now in school and works 50 hours a week. I pretty much don’t know how he does it. I also had some work stuff going on and am now at a new store and im actually soooooo much happier.

            Now here I am sitting in a coffee shop eavesdropping on Tim and his professor go over his business plan for the residential treatment program we hope to one day open and run. I’m still in awe at the fact that we are here now in Portland. I’ve never felt more at home than I do now. Now we have come to the end of our school year and it is such a good feeling.

            We spent the entire weekend working on papers and projects for finals. Stayed up until midnight last night and got up at eight this morning. I finally finished revising my ten-page research paper, printed it out, put it in my folder, and burst into tears. I hadn’t realized that this was the first time in the past eight years that I have finished an entire school year of college. Let alone without failing, I’ve actually gotten straight A’s. I’ve never passed a college class ever.

            I was sitting on the couch balling my eyes out when I remembered an excerpt from a book a former therapist used to read at the end of a treatment day. Particularly one where everyone did a lot of “strong work.” From the Velveteen Rabbit,

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

            It made me realize that this is what being real is. Real is being able to work and go to school and get good grades. It’s being able to function. Its going through something at work that causes everything inside of you to want to restrict your food and be sick so you could take a medical leave and not deal, but not. It’s standing your ground and advocating for yourself because you believe that you are worth it. It’s feeling so overwhelmed with your school and work load that you want to just stay underneath the covers and not go to class, but you put on your pink sweatpants and go. It’s forcing myself to eat when I’m not hungry because I know it’s easy for me to just forget to eat when I’m stressed and just spiral downward.

            Being real is going to hurt its inevitable. I feel like hurt in general is inevitable its either going to hurt being real or its going to hurt being engulfed in the flames of an eating disorder. So I choose to hurt in the way that can be turned into good. I choose to take my experiences with hurt and push through school to become a therapist. I choose to help people through my hurt.

            Just like the quote says at the end “..you cant be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” I have come across so many people who don’t understand. Mostly just out of ignorance. Out of it not making sense in their head how I can’t just stop, can’t pray it away, and can’t control it. My disease is not a choice, but recovery is. People have the choice to love me in spite of everything. To acknowledge the fact that they 100% do not understand it, but they will be there anyways. They don’t understand how one day I can eat a piece of pizza and be fine and another can send me into a tailspin. How I can be talking and laughing and see someone I perceive to be smaller than me and I retreat into myself without a word. How I can want to hang out everyday for months and then all I want to do is stay inside under the covers.

            I have had friends who are just this. I have friends who have watched documentaries, read books, researched online, still don’t get it and think im like a freakin unicorn and love and support me anyways. There have also been people who have chosen to not deal with it, and honestly it’s for the best. If you can’t be there for me then don’t. Trust me if its completely excruciating being in my own body sometimes I cant imagine what it’s like dealing with me on the outside with no inner dialogue to go along with my actions.

            Now that I’ve rambled on for far too long and I’m not actually sure if I made any sense im not going to go back and read this before I post it because I may become to critical and edit things that aren’t my truth so oh well here it goes. Once again I will say now I will have time to write more regularly, but who knows Greys Anatomy may take up all of my free time and I may let it.

Moments.

     How many of us really pay attention and remember single, significant, life changing moments. I feel like sometimes we are too preoccupied with other things to really actually pay attention. Im sure we remember big moments, graduations, weddings, births of children, but what about the little ones? Do you remember them? Sometimes they are the most amazing moments of your life and sometimes they are the hardest. On my journey i have come to realize that however hard they are they are both equally important. When someone asks the question what started your eating disorder I'm like hmmm "how much time you got?" Its all made up of moments that lead to one great big thing.
     I started thinking about this last week when i was having a hard time, my yearly depression started a little late this year, its usually around Christmas time,so i decided to start reading crazy love again. it was the first snow storm that we experienced here in Portland and couldn't go anywhere, so the hubs and i were gonna go journal in the lobby of our apartment that has huge windows so we could watch the snow. We had to look for his journal since he hadn't used it since we moved here and when he found it he started reading old entries from when he first got it. He had gotten it when we first met and were friends. he started reading me entries talking about how he felt about me from the very beginning, different times we hung out, our first kiss etc.
     All of this got me thinking of all of the moments we've had together, when he told me he had feelings for me, the moment i knew i loved him, the moment i knew he was my future husband, when he proposed, first piece of furniture we bought, first apartment, first fight in that apartment, how blessed we have been and how God has provided for us in everything. These are all things that i don't think about on a regular basis but it sure is a good reminder when I'm having a bad day. To think of all of the things that i have to be grateful for.
     Flash forward to today, i had the whole day off and i was itching to write but i had absolutely no idea what about. I started to think about all of the moments of my eating disorder. The first moment i decided to skip a meal, meals, a day. The moment i decided to hurt myself, take pills, drink, sleep with somebody. As well as the flip side, moment i decided i didn't have to starve myself, i didn't have to hurt myself, take this, sleep with them. The moment i decided i wanted recovery, to become a therapist, work with those with eating disorders, moment i became a Christian, got baptized, met my husband.
     For me everything came around full circle, well maybe not a circle, there were definitely sometimes that it felt like my old self was fighting with my new. Actually what am i talking about that happens every day. Sometimes the old wins, sometimes the new, and sometimes its a mix of the two. All i know is that it has all served a purpose and thinking about it every so often serves a purpose. If i was completely unaware of when i first started restricting i probably wouldn't be able to figure out what purpose restricting was serving me at the time.
     As sad as it is to say my eating disorder and other behaviors did serve a purpose for me for a time. Most of the time it felt like it was protecting me which was of course a lie, but thats how it truly felt. my real life at the time was so scary, messy, dysfunctional, harmful, that my behaviors kept everything, everyone at a distance so i could just be alone and silence my head, that wasn't actually silenced because instead of people yelling my eating disorder was. I of course could never win but in my heart of hearts it felt like it was working. Now that i am able to recognize these moments i am able to learn to cope with them without my behaviors. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. I have a feeling that if i didn't have the moments i may still be stuck, and to me thats the worst place to be i would rather take a few steps back and then forward than to be stagnant.

0 is a size….not what you think.

     I know i know its been entirely too long since I've written. I've missed it and there have been many different contributing factors. Partly school, partly up and moving to a new state, partly insecurity. probably more of the later than i would like to admit. Nonetheless I'm back with something that actually happens more than it should. peoples inability to respect and have tact when it comes to mental illness and more specifically eating disorders. I was scrolling through my social media when i noticed that an article had resurfaced that i had actually not seen when it had originally happened. Urban Outfitters back in 2010 made a shirt with the words "eat less" on them. More recently they produced a shirt with the word "depression" printed over and over again on it.
     In 2010 when the first shirt came out Sophia Bush (Brooke from One Tree Hill, yup i was absolutely obsessed with the show and had a folder filled with hundreds of quote GIFS) spoke out in boycott of a shirt being sold that promoted eating disorders. Now two things really stuck out to me and got my wheels turning, well actually spinning because lets face it my mind runs so fast with stuff like that, that it seems as if all of my thoughts are a movie on x40 fast forward. One was also outrage that someone, no people, a corporation could produce something that could have a deadly effect. The other had to do with the pictures that the article used, on one side was a girl wearing the "eat less" shirt the other was Sophia wearing a shirt that said "0 is not a size".
     Now this really hit home with me because i remember where it was from. In the show One Tree Hill  her character was a fashion designer and in an effort to promote healthy body image at the end of one of her fashion shows she walked the runway in this "0 is not a size" shirt. I remember all of the news articles and people wanting to purchase this shirt. I also specifically remember my mental and physical state when watching this episode. I was on the edge.
     I want to preface this by saying that while it was all done in good intentions and as one in recovery from an eating disorder i can definitely appreciate it, however it is not the truth in a lot of cases. 0 is a size. It exists, it is produced, it is sold. Some people are naturally a size 0 and they should never feel, or be made to feel bad for it, ever. Just as no one on the opposite end of the spectrum ever should. Now that being said, as someone with an eating disorder size 0 can be absolutely maddening. So i will continue to tell you what it was and what it is for me.
     While watching this episode on tv some years ago a was in a bit of limbo i had been to treatment, i wanted recovery but i wanted nothing to do with gaining any sort of weight (besides what was necessary for getting me out of treatment of course). i remember watching it and thinking "You go Glen  CoCo!" then on the other had having a sense of pride that i in fact was a size 0. Of course it wasn't my fault it wasn't my fault because i was one of the ones that was "naturally" a size 0. After all i was following my meal plan i had maintained my weight for a year. However i was nowhere close to what i needed to be, i was simply surviving not thriving. I was allowed to stay on the lowest end of my weight range without having complications as possible. Which i obviously tested by making sure that i stayed exactly a pound or two less than that.
     There definitely was a time that i was naturally a size 0 growing up unfortunately i stunted my growth when my body started to become womanly, so i have no idea at what point it went from natural to sick. My guess is my sophomore year of high school. For years size 0 to me meant being pure, being clean which i felt like i needed after my traumas when i was little. It also meant disappearing yet being strong at the same time. I was always supposed to be strong when i was little, never cry, never show weakness. To me size 0 signified that strength not the weakness that i was dying to show.
     Now 8 years into my recovery i know what it really was. I can look back and know what i wanted it to be what i was so desperately trying to say with it, but it actually wasn't any of those things. For me now it still even kind of hurts to think of what it truly was and my pride kicks in because to this day i still say that i don't think that my eating disorder was "that bad" or other have been way sicker than me.
     For me looking back now size 0 was a lot of sadness. It was depression. It was anxiety. It was fear. it was anger. It was hurt. it was heart palpitations. It was being cold all the time.It was self harm. It was self medicating. It was hair falling out. It was a seizure. It was dizziness. It was emptiness. It made me a liar. It made me bitter. It strained my relationships. It didn't allow me to trust. It was waking up on the bathroom floor. It was neglect of boundaries and self care. It was abusive relationships. It was endless hours in treatment. It was sitting at a table for an hour crying over a piece of pizza i didt want to eat. It was hell. It was not glamorous. It did not make me strong. It did not make me disappear. It did not make the pain go away. It did not make the flashback stop. It didn't stop the dreams. It didn't do anything to help it only hurt.
     To this day its hard to not be a size 0. which may be unbelievable after what i just explained it to be like. To this day there is still two sides the side that wants nothing to do with it. The side that wants to be healthy, a good wife, a good friend, a good student, a good therapist. Then there is the side that wishes i could have size 0 without any of the side effects. That tells myself oh it wasn't THAT bad. You can have a sick body, but a healthy mind easy peasy…..pssshhhh sike. As much i wish it were true it just never will be. Im blessed to have to support and the help that i have. Im blessed to know that I've maintained a weight that before would have had me spinning in a state of anxiety and self harm.
     Now back to how damaging a shirt like this or anything else can be damaging. A few years ago something like this would have sparked somewhat of self pride for me. Pre treatment i would have said "see not that bad not that serious" however this is not the case. People die. Some people don't get a second chance or even a first chance like i did. Theres nothing like the feeling of being in a group in treatment talking about whether or not you want recovery and having someone come in and say that a former patient just died. It makes things really freaking real. So please know that while some companies have no shame when it comes to this kind of thing weather it be for a profit or ignorance it is simply not ok.

Its been too long

     Wow really cant believe how long its been since my last post. with school and all of the other life changes going on it felt like maybe a couple of months. I logged on and my last post was from December!! Then for a couple of days i put it off because i didnt know what to write about and then i remembered that i usually dont ever know until i start typing.
     So i suppose i could start from the beginning. After my stay in residential in Oregon i realized how much i love it out there. I got back to California and it didnt feel like home anymore, which wasnt at all that surprising seeing as ive never really felt like ive belonged anywhere. Ive always sort of felt like i was floating around aimlessly trying to figure things out but never quite did. Anyways it is like a completely different foreign world outside of California.
     The biggest difference i had first noticed was that people are not so stinking image crazy as they are in California. Im sure every place has these sorts of people but as a whole it is a lot stinking less. In my webbed mind that is my eating disorder you have no idea how amazing it feels. I am probably alot more sensitive to things of the sort of thing than the average person. I am extremely guilty of comparing myself to others and sometimes allowing it to ruin my whole day as well as putting it in my mind that they are doing the same to me. To this day i still cant wear a tight t-shirt in public without thinking that every person i walk by is thinking "I cant believe she left the house like that, she is far too large!" My body image is still extremely morphed although it is still very hard for me to admit because it feels like my reality.
     ANYWAYS, long story short oregon feels like home california feels like a place i am currently staying in. When i came back from rainrock i was extremely sad and homesick for a place that wasnt actually my home. My husband loves California and everything about it so anytime i would mention leaving in the year following treatment he wanted nothing to do with it. Then one October day we were eating at an indian place across from our apartment and it came up again and he seemed more into it. I kept the discussion going a t home and proposed that maybe we could go up when we were out of debt. He agreed! Then i thought hmmmmm we could get out of debt really quickly if we didnt have to pay rent! So i proposed that we move in with my mom for a year pay off debt save money and then GO! He agreed. Our lease was to be up the following april.
     So skip ahead we have been living with my mom for about three month now, which has actually been really nice. She just underwent a double mastectomy with some complications and it has been comforting to see her everyday knowing that besides my husbands family, she is the only family that i have really. Tim and I made a trip to Portland to see my very good friend graduate with her MSW (Masters in Social Work) which was amazing and emotional knowing that my goal is to go to the same school, same program, same degree. So as of now we are waiting for a Toyota dealership to call Tim for a job, but the latest we will be leaving is next may, june.

*quick update, I got an A in my first class going back to school. With all of my times in treatment and my eating disorder ruling my life my transcript looks a bit like this...F F D C- W W W I D.....you get the picture. so now i know what i am capable when i am healthier and taking care of myself. My Best Friend/Sister moved to Pittsburgh and got engaged! I greatly miss going to get Pho and Thai and venting to eachother, but now i look forward to our 2.5 hour phone convos and wedding planning! I had a bit of a lapse with my eating disorder where again i wasnt taking my meds cause thats always a smart idea...not! But that will probably be my next post. And newest update. Even if no one reads this it is extremely therapeutic so i need to try to not let 7 months go by without my fingers brushing these keys.


   

Ive gone for too long living like I'm not alive.

Emotions are a tricky thing, at least for me they are anyway. Considering the way that I was raised it’s not very shocking, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I have always known that I am a very emotional person, but only in the comfort of my own home by myself. I’m very factual and situational. Even when talking to my best friends about a situation that hurt me I can recount a situation verbatim and give all of the details of the back and forth. Of course however, I leave out the part about me crawling in to bed and crying myself to sleep. Crying is weakness and emotion is useless was the broken record in my home from the time I was born till my parents divorce. So now that I am working hard in therapy to change all of this, it is now the most frustrating thing I have ever dealt with.

In EMDR I have been working on trying to emote and being able to admit to all of the different forms of abuse that I have suffered in my life. Something that I always shrug off and label as “normal” because it has been all I have ever known. One of the hardest that I can’t wrap my head around, happened in kindergarten. As a child I had severe anxiety as well as separation anxiety pertaining to my parents. If I couldn’t see them in ballet class I would freak out, starting school and being away from them was a nightmare. I cried every single day I’m pretty sure for the entirety of the year.

To my dad this was unacceptable. There was no crying in baseball, or kindergarten in my situation. Tears were the outcome of blood and or broken bones. The term “ill give you a reason to cry” was used often. The threats began shortly after the year started. He would ask the teacher everyday if I cried and if I did was to be whipped when I got home. We lived by my school so we would often walk home and I remember trying so hard to keep my five year old self from crying because I didn’t want to be hit even more than I was about to be. My entire childhood my dad used a belt to erase any form of emotion that he didn’t like or didn’t approve of.

To me this was normal a punishment I deserved for being weak, for seeking attention, for not being a self sufficient five year old like all other five year olds are. I remember walking around target seeing a child cry and thinking what a weak little human, while also wondering why their cries were met with hugs and not belts. This seemed so completely upside down to me.

This with all of the other abuse that I have dealt with in my life I have always chalked it up to something that I did. My inherent flaw of not being good enough, being needy, being weak. Is something you deserve really abuse? No. Not in my unhealthy mind at least. That is why now that I am trying to change all of this. A lot of times it is so incredibly hard to wrap my head around. Literally the only thing that has helped me has been to think of someone doing to my future child what was done to me. When I think about it I feel angry. Which for me is my go to emotion. Someone hurts me I’m angry.

When I actually let myself start to feel those things I start to freak out as if it is never going to stop. I already deal with depression so why would I do that to myself. Well I know from experience that it usually gets worse before it gets better. When I think about all of the things that my emotion or lack there of has kept me from I just want to kick it in the face. In high school people thought I was mean or stuck up because of the lack of emotion on my face, I’ve been put on tissue restriction in treatment more times than I can count, not to mention what I know I am missing out on in relationships by not being able to do this.

The times in treatment that I have actually been able to fully open up and be vulnerable with my peers have been some of the most enlightening and blessed moments of my life and I can’t wait to experience this in my current friendships with some of the most amazing people I have ever met in my life. This is why I go week after week to therapy and EMDR. Why I deal with the depression that comes after, and the slips in my eating disorder that happens on a regular basis because that is my go to. Why I challenge myself to let myself cry at the end of breaking dawn part two every time I see it! Most of all to allow myself to be completely open with the one person besides my mom who loves me unconditionally, who gets me, who allows me to be me flaws and all my husband. Its scary but its worth it. 

Never too late

“For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

            I’ve spent a lot, actually probably too much time feeling sorry for myself and my situation. If only I didn’t have an eating disorder, if only I didn’t struggle with mental illness, I would where most people my age are, graduated from college, a good job doing what they love. With all of that who is to say i cant start right now? I could either spend more years feeling sorry for myself or I could go and start now. Sure I will be a lot older than most people who are settling into their careers, but at least I wont be doing what im doing now for the rest of my life.

            I often write off my time recovering from my eating disorder as time wasted, when in fact I think it is quite the opposite. It’s the hardest thing I have ever done. Everyone has their own path and their own struggles in life and in particular while going through school. I had to pause and basically save my life. I know now that there is no way that I could complete school in the state I was in while completely enveloped in my eating disorder.

            Recovery is freaking hard. Endless hours of therapy, groups, nutrition, blood sweat and tears basically. All that after the physical pain of re-feeding. Facing things that for years I used my eating disorder to cope with. Like a lot of people who have dealt with something similar, I have a completely different outlook on life. I appreciate things more, and put up with a lot less. I look back on the years that I spent wasting time partying and being involved in unhealthy relationships and realize that although I feel far behind some in a lot of ways I may be ahead of others in some.

            So basically I have an amazing husband who loves and supports me. Amazing friends who do the same. I have realized that this is exactly where God wants me and how he wanted it to happen. I have a fire inside of me to help others with eating disorders like never before and am now even more motivated to get my masters degree from Portland State. I now have the courage to minor in writing and put out a book. The judgmental voices in my head have quieted enough for me to say, I’m doing it anyway.

            As hard as it has been I wouldn’t take anything back for even a second