Gosh... and other things

Well it's been a while. I suppose when I am at my most poorly I choose to stop communicating. And the shame of gaining weight has played a big part. I have gained half a stone and it is mainly because my sister's wedding was last weekend, and for the past few months I have been incredibly anxious about the whole thing. We don't get on particularly well and she has quite strong opinions of me, mainly that I am an attention seeker who causes drama at any opportunity. And ruins all social occasions. And is unpredictable and a liability. She basically rang me a week before the wedding and shouted abuse down the phone, warning me to behave or otherwise not turn up. Difficult.

In the end we cleared the air somewhat and I stayed impeccably behaved and sober, acted like a sane human being and made my parents proud. Also covered my scars for the sake of argument. A stressful experience. All I can say is that I hope she never gets divorced because I cannot take another wedding!

In other news, not much. The stress of the wedding and my intermittent drinking has led to massive binges. I have spent a couple of months literally bingeing day and night, sometimes up to 15,000 calories a day. I have given myself ulcers in my throat and on my tonsils, as well as where my teeth meet my lips. I have been dizzy and exhausted, pathetically so. Crying over the toilet bowl, pleading with myself to stop so that I no longer have to endure the torture of it all.

Since the wedding I have managed to get a grip and calm down slightly. I haven't exactly been wonderful food-wise but I haven't binged. Standing on the scale does nothing to help, and I have taken to wearing support shorts under my clothes to minimise my fatness. Part of the reason for returning to this blog is to make myself accountable once again for what I do to myself and to help me to be aware of the triggers behind my behaviours.

I will write more soon. Right now I am struggling with my stomach after eating a huge amount of sweets, but I will not vomit. Sugar is all I have eaten today. Tomorrow I will try again.

Au revoir for now my friends x

Just Keep Swimming

I have decided that, for now, I shall keep numbers on my blog to a minimum.

I would never consciously want to trigger others by posting my weight or how much I've eaten.

I am having a hard time understanding my ED right now and my relationship to it.

I went a long time as severely anorexic from when I was around 18-20. Certainly, I had an eating disorder much younger but this was the most acute phase, medically. I was, at one point, given days to live. I wasn't allowed to go IP because their insurance wouldn't cover me. They called me a 'walking death wish'. So obviously my choice then was go into a medical ward for an NG and refeeding, then on to IP. OR, do something about it myself.

I guess I freaked, decided to eat, tried hard... gained weight.

Eventually, though, I let it slide out of control and before I knew it I was bulimic. Full blown, B/P sometimes 7 times a day. EXHAUSTED. At the higher end of my weight range and DOUBLE my low weight.

Well, obviously...it's been a long, hard road back to normality.

For the last couple of years I have managed to stabilise myself to the point where I have eaten normally and had fewer and fewer periods of B/P. My weight was in a healthy range...I guess I considered myself more or less 'recovered'.

Only, here's the thing. Honestly, I see myself slipping sometimes. More and more restriction, less bingeing (great!) but more obsessional, ED related thoughts and behaviour. I have lost weight, yes. But this is usually a cyclical thing. Normally I lose, then I B/P for a few months, then I lose...you get the idea.

This time, well what I'm saying is that I think I just have to keep myself in check. My BMI is just about normal, I look healthy according to everyone around me, I don't look underweight or anything. I just want to check my behaviours now before I let myself go too far down a dangerous road.

I don't want to start comprimising my life again just for the sake of a few pounds.

Luckily I'm not in that dark place, and I know I often feel like going down that road. These days though I have seen how beautiful and amazing life is when you actually FEEL it and LIVE it for real. And I can't ever let myself slip too far. I guess it's a matter of life or death.


Well my day was good. I had physio, I had a meeting with an outreach lady, I'm planning on going back to the gym and am starting hydro again soon. So, yes, a good day.

It's been damn tough though. I have had many opportunities to go to the shop on our street and buy drink. I've come close. But I have the power these days to talk myself down to reality and convince myself that I am SO MUCH BETTER OFF without it.

And of course I am.

I forgot how ravenous alcohol makes me...all last night and today I've been STARVING despite eating a ton of food. No wonder I lost weight when I gave up my late night drunken binges.

So, the plan for tomorrow...have a laugh at my own expense with my new exercise DVD (I just got the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred). Bit scared of it to be honest because I'm a wimp when it comes to exercise! I'm pathetically weak at the moment and that's the worst for my joint condition. So I'm going to kick my own butt tomorrow! Wish me luck!

One last word: Do any of you have a question you'd like to ask me about my life? If so comment and I'll respond, and ask you one back. A little getting to know you...getting to know me...

Love to you all x

SO? I HEAR YOU ASK

I thought that for once, as promised, instead of trudging through my dreadfully boring day-to-day existence, I will explain some of how I came to be in this position...FLASHBACK ALERT!

Think back to the year 1999... I was at the tender age of fifteen. The same year that I started having the dreaded 'curse' each month, or there abouts. I also started stressing more and more about why I was unpopular, chubby, ugly...you know the sort of banter that goes on in a pubescent girl's head.

I was ALWAYS an anxious kid. Everything made me freak out. These neuroses came from my mother, I swear. Silly things like we had to dry our hands before touching light switches so we didn't get a shock, we had to use a separate pan to boil eggs because the shells released deadly toxins....I really don't know how I didn't just sit in a corner and shake like a nervous wreck.

So how does that relate to my teenage troubles? I guess it just meant that I was very on edge and terribly self-conscious. Because I was constantly criticised and rejected at home, I felt like my entire circle of peers was doing the same. Of course it didn't help that I was murderously bullied.

Actually, the worst bullying incident I remember happened when I started college (age 17). Our college was across the road from a park, and sometimes we would skip class to go hang out there. Now, a gang of my supposed 'friends' thought it would be a great idea to torture me by wrapping me head to toe in duct tape, put me on the roundabout and leave me there to rot. As you can imagine, it was a pitiful sight and I have NEVER been so mortified in my life, considering these people who called themselves friends never bothered to come back. God, I cringe even thinking about how hard it was to hold back the tears while the only friend that stayed around pushed herself to me in her wheelchair and untied me. I feel so embarrassed even writing that story out....but it goes a way to explaining how alone and pathetic I was in my teenage years. Insecurity sure is a curse.

Anyway...back to school days. I got in with a bunch of kids who, like me, were pretty messed up about the world and how it had treated them. I had always 'hurt' myself for attention as a kid, without realising what it really meant. I would scratch myself or pour hot water on my arms so mummy and daddy would take notice and make me better. I would pretend to be ill ALL the time so I didn't have to go to school, and succeeded to the extent that in the year of my GCSEs my attendance was 30% and I was taking taxies to and from school. Anxiety riddled wasn't the word.

So yeh, I guess I knew from a young age that physical pain takes away the hurt inside and gets you love and attention from people who rarely give you what you need. I think this may have been a phase if I wasn't in said group of misfits. There were the abused kids, the bitter-alcoholic-single-parented kids, the poor kids. And I got really big time sucked in to their ways. Pretty much all of us had some kind of ED or were self-harming.

I remember the first time I seriously did it for real. I had contemplated it for months, agonised over it, wanted it to help for me like it did for my friends. So I took a compass and carved lines into my arms. I guess at the time it felt good. It took away some of the hurt and abandonment and deep, aching loneliness that a mucked up teenager goes through.

I'll leave the cutting there for now...don't want too many freak outs at once!

But I guess I should say that the summer of that year, before my final year in school, I was SO anxious (repeat pattern of 8 year old kid) that I couldn't swallow and I lost a ton of weight. When I went back to school in the autumn I was suddenly liked MUCH more. I guess being the fat kid really does suck.

Problem was, even though I had better friendships, I was still messed up at home every night and I guess I had already begun a cycle of starving myself and using physical pain to block out how hopeless I felt.

Cue Prozac, the cure-all for depressed kids, right? Well. Not really in my case but I took it faithfully. Still do.

I guess with all this mess around me I decided the one thing I would NEVER do is get fat. So I freaked out over my weight, dropped out of college and concentrated on my weight loss full time. Sad, hey?

Needless to say by the winter of 2003 I was down to around 68lb (pretty near dead) and was given days to live.

Now bear in mind that my loving parents had not mentioned ONE WORD to me about how terrible I looked, how I never ate, how when I wore 4 layers of clothing I was still a bag of bones.

I guess they stuck their heads WAY in that sandpit.

In a fit of craziness I prayed, and it came to me that if I didn't leave I would die. I remember being crawled in a ball on my bedroom floor sobbing because the pain my stomach was SO bad. I was GREY. It was scary, really scary. My hair was falling out in clumps, my periods had stopped, I had lanugo on my body. I had scars and bruises all over my back from obsessively exercising in my room.

I will still never forget how absolutely near death I was. I was so weak I could barely walk, let alone DO anything. Any movement made me exhausted. Like, the deep down, aching, painful tiredness like when you've just trekked all day and night in the snow. And did I mention the cold? Blue nails, blue lips...white fingers.

Enough. Back to my crazy escape - I packed my bags and flew to Australia to stay with my Aunt.

I will never forget the awful look of sadness on my father's face at the airport. He knew how sick I was, deep down, he just didn't know how to express it. His eyes told me he thought I'd die trying, I'd never come home...


This feels very convoluted and is pretty draining so I will pick up where I left off next time... at Heathrow waiting to board a Boeing 747 Singapore Airlines flight to Perth.

More memories...

I wanted to post a little of what my life was like a year ago. I think a snapshot of my progress may go a little way to understanding where I am at on my journey.

Last August I entered a detox facility for drug and alcohol abuse. I was, by that point, drinking a litre of vodka a day. Now, bearing in mind I was also abusing benzos, I was in a bad way. I had a stomach ulcer, my liver hurt ALL the time, I was a terrible ashen shade of grey. In the months preceding this inpatient treatment I had pretty much sunk into the depths of depravity. I had been hospitalised numerous times because of my drinking and because of the terrible damage I inflicted on myself whilst intoxicated.

By damage, I mean the awful physical trauma I inflicted on myself. I have deliberately self harmed for many years, but last year it was so out of control that I was having the police and ambulance out regularly. I have cut through veins, muscle, had a skin graft for third degree burns, broken my hand, given myself concussion...to name but a few instances.

I shall of course go into the reasons WHY at some point. Now is not the time.

I guess I knew, deep down, that I needed help. And yet I couldn't take responsibility for myself and turn things around. Ultimately it was the threat of losing my beloved partner and dog for the sake of my next drink that saw me finally giving in and getting clean.

Since stopping drinking I have had a few, rare lapses. I have not self harmed once sober since last summer. Yet, the last incidence of drinking almost killed me. I have nearly died on several occasions, but this was a CLOSE call. I had been sober for months, then had two days of major drinking on top of a cocktail of sedatives. Ultimately my OH was out and I cut very badly, through the muscle in my wrist. I must have passed out because the next thing I remember was waking in resus, having lost three pints of blood and nearly dying. Needless to say I was in hospital for a week, too weak to stand. I survived. My relationship almost didn't. But we are, miraculously, still together. He is my rock. He has been my inspiration and motivation to change. Hence the reason for this blog...

In the past year the trend has been leaning towards positive, affirming behaviours. I have been making small steps towards a healthy future. Yes, I'm still bulimic. But I am a RECOVERING alcoholic, and a RECOVERING self harmer. I am in full control of my actions and accept the responsibilty and consequences that come from making bad choices.

When I left rehab, I felt like a newborn baby. I had to relearn how to FEEL. How to cry, how to be sad, how to express myself through language and emotion. I had covered up my true self for so long that for months all I felt was an intense, deep feeling of sadness in the pit of me, almost as though someone was physically wrenching my heart apart. Finally, that awful distressing fog has lifted and I can say that I feel free from the despair that has been my life for so long.

I guess then my aim now is abstinence. From alcohol, from self-destruction, from thinking that I am not worth it. Because I know that, through this journey, I have learnt to embrace myself and respect who I am, regardless of how I am perceived in the world. This self acceptance has been the key to freeing my soul, yet it has been immensely difficult. I just continue, daily, to put one foot in front of the other and focus on the ever brighter light at the end of the tunnel.

My goal for the immediate future is to keep control over my eating and my weight so that I abstain from abusing food to cover my emotions. This is ultimately my last demon, and yet at the same time it is my biggest, the most deeply ingrained, almost to the point that I would feel, still, lost without it as my security blanket. This is what I need to work on. Letting go of that control that I fade, so that when I eat I can do so guilt free. I know it is self-hate, shame and guilt that drive the binges. Thus I must continue to respect and accept my body and soul.

Easier said than done?! Let's keep trying, hey?

SOME THOUGHTS

I have been reading through blogs endlessly for the last couple of days, having been laid up with hip trouble.

One I have particularly enjoyed is http://www.recoverydiscovery.wordpress.com.

I think reading her blog has made me realise one vital thing: that I never allow myself to sit in a space where I 'maintain' my weight. I am always either losing (i.e. restricting) or gaining (i.e. bingeing). I guess the revelation is that I am either rigidly in control or totally out of control. Perhaps it's time to search for the middle ground, some kind of balance. An equilibrium between the two.

I think for so long my fear of maintenance has been that I have no idea how much food to eat to stay there, and that often I am attempting to maintain an unrealistic weight, meaning I still feel empty on the amount of food it takes to remain there, which of course leads to bingeing. It's either the euphoria of restriction or the utter despair of bingeing and purging.

Here's to the quest for the middle ground!