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GET BACK ON THE BIKE

Oh man. I am Struggling today. Struggling with a capital S and so incredibly tempted to give up. Give up on ever finding any type of recovery. Give up on therapy and just accept binging, purging and restricting as my normal. I am my own worst enemy. I’ve learned all the keys and steps and lifestyle changes. The insanity remains. I know all the buzzwords and metaphors:

My Mighty Month: March Week One

The Mighty are running monthly self-confidence challenges all year. I religiously did the daily writing in January. Was too exhausted to do whatever the February challenge was! But I’m going to drop in late and start the March Challenge. The week one task is:
Make a list of your top five strengths. If you aren’t sure what your strengths are, ask a friend or family member. You can also take the VIA (Values in Action) Survey of Character Strengths.

GROGGY

I have Restless Legs Syndrome.
I rarely talk about it. It sounds like a benign and trivial condition everyone experiences at some stage. To some extent that is true, but my restless legs are severe and chronic.
And normally extremely well managed.
Like most problems, there are people who have it much worse. While I have a lot of associated nerve pain, if I take regular medication it’s fine. I rarely notice it and when I do it’s not too bad. In that aspect of my life, I found a little pocket of normality.

NURTURED

We’re born to be nurtured.
Unlike most of the animal kingdom, little humans begin life utterly dependent on their caregivers. In a perfect world, we’re raised by loving and caring parents supported by their whole community – it takes a village to raise a child. Perfection is a rare commodity.

FAILURE ISN’T A FEELING & FEELINGS AREN’T FACTS

Food tastes like failure.
I don’t savour beautiful textures and flavours. I never mindfully and sensuously nibble delicacies, inhaling aromas and luxuriating in the tantalising sensations on my tastebuds. When I eat, I scoff food down like a starving woman fighting a horde of ravenous dogs, scratching around for the last morsel on a carcass. Washed down with guilt and loathing and fear, and an overwhelming sense of failure – I’ve done it again. I’ve eaten food I didn’t want, in a manner I didn’t like. I’ve failed myself. Food tastes like failure. Day in and day out – I eat failure or I don’t eat at all.
And that failure is an emotion so powerful it’s almost tangible – I could reach out and touch it. Food tastes like failure and failure is a feeling.
But that’s a lie.

STRATEGIES

Despondency.
It’s an unpleasant feeling.
I’m currently wallowing around in misery, feeling sorry for myself but struggling to find the willingness to be willing to make the required changes to my behaviours. I’ve acquired all the necessary knowledge, tools and support networks. Still I wallow. Still I perpetuate the lifetime habits that I both loathe and cling to like a drowning woman.

VOICES

There’s a war in my head. Some days it gets so loud in there, it gives me a headache. A real one.
The voice nattering incessantly in my ear is not a healthy voice. It’s a familiar one. It feels like a safe one. But that voice is an expert manipulator, liar and thief.
There’s another little voice in the dark – the voice of reason and wisdom, sense and sensibility – but that voice is weak and timid. It has never learned to stand up to the manipulator.

WEARY

Today I want to sleep.
I want to go to sleep and never wake up. To luxuriate in the endless bliss of nothingness. I want to be free from physical pain. Free from exhaustion. I don’t want to feel worried or anxious or guilty or afraid. I don’t want to be fat and old and lost and weary. I just want to rest. To slip into eternal, blissful rest.

PLEASE LIKE ME

I can’t know for sure how anxiety manifests for other people – and to be honest, it’s only in recent months I acknowledged I have my own manifestations – but apparently, I have anxiety. With a capital A. As I’m currently feeling extremely anxious, now is a good time to put thoughts and observations down on “paper” …

FULL FUNCTION

And if as a society, we nurtured those in the earlier stages of illness, perhaps those “high functioning” addicts and depressives, those people with hidden and invisible mental illness, would feel okay about acknowledging their issues much earlier on. Because the earlier the problem is tackled, the better the outcome.

REASONS

My psychologist talked about recovery, and I said (amongst other things), what’s in it for me? Which sounds appallingly self-interested – because it is! But it is the crux of my recovery issue. Everything I do in my life, is for other people – even my recovery. And without having intrinsic reasons to travel this rocky road, it is nigh on impossible to keep trudging along.

31 January

Personal Prompt: List five goals you’d like to accomplish next month. Develop a short strategy that will make each goal a reality.
Creative Prompt: You’ve been commissioned to create a statue for your hometown. Describe the statue.

WAR OF THE WORDS

In recent days, I have become entangled in numerous written altercations. Not attacks on me – but I have been made privy to conversations that have left people in my world feeling professionally or personally maligned. And it left me thinking how powerful the written word is, how easily misunderstood the written word is, and how dangerous it can be.