I’VE BEEN QUIET
It bothers me when I don’t write in my blog. Not because I think my writing is doing anyone a public service, but because this forum is my outlet for internal rumination. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s internal rumination.
I HAVE A LOT GOING ON IN MY LIFE AND IT ISN’T ALL EASY
I’m still trying to come to terms with the estrangement of someone I love dearly. I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact I took an overdose. I’m still learning to accept the repercussions. I’m still saddened by my temperamental Achilles and afraid my cathartic pastime of walking out in nature is done and dusted.
And more recently, I’m distressed at the rapid decline of my elderly father’s health. For a few weeks, it looked like his demise was imminent, but with magic potions from the treating doctors, and calling upon much prayer from my church and friends, he has turned a corner and made a miraculous recovery. He is still in the palliative care ward but there is now optimism about the possibility of him returning home to see out his days. How wonderful that will be.
With all that going on it would be so easy to slip back into old coping mechanisms – eating too much, eating nothing at all, purging, exercising and scoffing laxatives. Or using self-harm, obsessive gaming on my phone, or scoffing handfuls of pills to sleep my days away. Anything to shift the focus from important things to numbing away my life.
I HAVE DONE NONE OF THESE THINGS
I want to. Every day I fight the urge to eat vanilla slices and down a handful of pills to numb away the fears that run through my head. But every day I remind myself I’ve had six months of strong recovery with very few relapses and each day I get through makes me stronger than the last. So I plough on through.
It’s not perfect. Sometimes I eat an extra piece of toast because I’m extra tired. I take a valium most days to manage the overwhelming anxiety that threatens to crush me. But I do everything out in the open and with full awareness. This is a difficult time for me and sometimes I’m making difficult decisions – about myself or about others. But there’s one thing I don’t want to lose during this time, and that is my sanity.
I had my first breakdown in 2016 and while there were many contributing factors, the overwhelming trauma that stuck in my head was the cascade of deaths I’d been surrounded by for a few years. My life has been death-free for a couple of years but watching my father’s inevitable demise triggers the fear that everyone else will die too. That the cascade of deaths will begin again.
It is taking a lot of my hard-earned DBT skills to remind myself to stay in the moment and to let go of irrational fears that have no basis in fact. I don’t get this right much of the time, to be honest. Most of my days are spent in fear of the phone call that tells me the next bad news. I have hated phones since I was a teenager for that very reason.
BAD NEWS ALWAYS ARRIVES VIA TELEPHONE
But good news comes that way too. All news in fact comes via the telephone. It does for me at any rate. The doctors and social workers at the hospital care not just for my dad, but for the family members too. And they check in with me to see how I’m doing. I have a lovely support network of friends and family who also send me messages or catch up for coffee to allow a debrief. It’s all fine and dandy for me to write, but sometimes another point of view is needed to bounce ideas off.
I may not have been blogging for some weeks but I have been journaling my little heart out. Most days I write a silent letter to a beloved friend who is no longer in my life and that helps release the emotional turmoil that lives in my head. I have learned that turmoil will always be there, but I don’t have to numb away the pain. I can quite simply let it wash over and through me and then it goes away. Just like my psychologist has been telling me for years.
RECOVERY IS A TRICKY THING
I’m not just recovering from an eating disorder. I’m recovering from all the associated maladaptive behaviours for depression and anxiety. I’m learning to live with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I’m learning to age and grow bigger in a society that celebrates youth and getting smaller. For me, recovery is another word for acceptance. When I accept who I am and what I have – right now – I stay on track to make healthy decisions. When I fight reality and invest my happiness in future what-ifs, maybes and useless fucking wishes, then I stay stuck in a cycle of self-hatred.
I’m breaking that cycle and moving forward. It’s not easy and it’s not perfect – but I’m moving in the right direction.
