16 January
Personal Prompt: Set a timer for 10 minutes. What was the most challenging part of your day? If this is a challenge you have routinely, or one that may persist in the future, what can you do to make things easier?
The most challenging part of my day, is the same challenge I have every day – eat? or don’t eat? If I do eat – throw up? or don’t throw up?
Today I chose to eat. I’ve only thrown up a little bit. But the day’s not over, and I’m confident dinner will be flushed down the toilet soon.
As far as making things easier? Good grief, if only I had the answer to that. I’ve been working for two years with a psychologist and a psychiatrist and a wonderful GP and I’ve been to support groups and found good friends and shared my story and read, read, read, and written, written, written and still… I do the same stupid shit every day.
Why do I throw up? I ask myself this ALL THE TIME. But I know the answer… I don’t want food to stay inside me. While it’s in there – digesting and turning into nutrients and fat and waste – I feel uncomfortable and unhappy and like an abject failure. And when I throw up I also feel uncomfortable and unhappy and like an abject failure – but I also feel like a success at the same time. Like I have cleansed myself of the horror of food. And like next time will be different.
I am not so stupid as to think that that any of this is sensible or logical or healthy or in anyway sustainable… I know that my behaviours are probably escalating, not improving. I know what the end result is going to be if I can’t get my act together. And I do hope that recovery features sometime in my future. I really, really do. I’m just also terrified of crossing that bridge. If I could “do” recovery, without having to eat food, I’d have it nailed by now. But obviously that’s impossible. And not gonna happen!
The easiest way for me to avoid throwing up, is not to eat at all. Which is how I started restricting this year – for the first time in my life. And I confess I felt both horrified and thrilled to bits simultaneously at my ability to stop eating altogether. I am trying very hard not to go down that path again though – as I know what the end result will be and it will happen a lot quicker than if I just stick with throwing up. “Just”. Like it isn’t as big a deal… And maybe it isn’t? But it is a big deal… I know if one of my children or good friends was doing this to themselves I would be so upset for them. I would want to help them. But I also know – from my time sitting on this side of the fence – that it is up to me at the end of the day. I have to put food in my mouth. I have to choose what food goes in – and how much. And I have to keep it there.
So to answer the question succinctly, to make things easier, I should eat three nutritious meals per day and not throw them up…
Creative Prompt: Come up with a new episode of your favorite TV show. Make yourself the guest star.
I don’t watch tv. Very tricky for me to start in my own tv show, when I rarely watch it! I am instead, addicted to mucking around on my computer! So I’ll just change the creative prompt and tell you about my third means of numbing the life out of myself…
Firstly, there’s my eating disorder. That’s numbing – whether it’s binging, purging or restricting – it numbs.
Then there’s self-harm – which I feel I’m getting really good at not doing, so that’s a good thing! But it’s also numbing – emotionally.
But my third means of zoning out of life is the computer.
- I write – things like this!
- I chat to friends on messenger and whatsapp – some individual friends and some group chats.
- I email a lot.
- I surf facebook and instagram and pinterest.
- I sometimes do work on the computer.
- And – big confession time here – I do a lot of candy crush most days.
I’m up to level 1861 – not proud of that… And I managed to overtake every single one of my friends who were playing it.
But being slightly on the OCD scale (not officially… but I reckon I’d be there a little bit) now that I’ve started, I have to finish… And while I can’t yet see what the highest level actually is, I feel compelled to get there. I don’t even really enjoy playing it. But I have to get to “the end”.
Ridiculous… I really am insane…
