Shame Discussion

Tomorrow I am the discussion leader for the EDA group that I attend and I am an active member of. I have chosen the topic of shame to try and help my group get to a deeper level of thought. I am not sure we have ever discussed shame in a meaningful way...it's always about the shame over having an eating disorder and not why we have shame to begin with. In my head it's more that the shame came first and then the eating disorder was a way to cope with those feelings of inadequacies which turned into control and perfection. It's a distraction from all the uncomfortable feelings we have and in turn channel to our bodies and food.

I admit that I am struggling with how to talk about this, so I grabbed a few quotes and the definition of shame and threw together a handout including those and then came up with a cycle chart to also hand out. The top chart is the healthy version of self-esteem and coping: (you'll probably have to click on the chart to read it)

This chart shows the unhealthy version of self-esteem and in turn the feelings of shame:

I have considered how I will present this in relation to myself and it's difficult to determine which historical facts of my past to divulge. How much do I say? How little? The safe items are that I was a gymnast who was forced to compete at an early age, I will say that my parents were often angry and projected all their feelings on to me and my behavior which made me feel responsible and controlling of their emotions, which inevitably was a set up in which I was made to feel badly, and I will surely broach the topic of abuse. But what is something that everyone in that room can feel connected to? What can everyone relate to and how can I set it up to keep them on task? I don't find it helpful for people to keep pushing on the whole "I feel shame because my eating disorder makes me feel sick and helpless". I hope people can step outside of their little boxes and thing before the ED and what led them to feel so much shame and hatred of themselves that led them to their ED.

I think I am going to ask my group to think of these questions:

1. What feelings are so intolerable that you'll do anything to get away from them?
2. Are your feelings of inadequacy self-determined or from messages that you received?
3. Who determines the validity of the messages now?
4. What is the value of mistakes made in life?

And we'll see how it goes....

Children's Pt One.

When: 1991
Where: Children's Hospital Psychiatric Unit

I was admitted at the age of eight. How the hell an eight year old manages to be admitted to a psychiatric facility and be sent back to live with their parents still amazes me. It shouldn't really, how many times does a person have to be failed in order to understand that the system sucks to recognize that they didn't have a chance in hell? I remember most of this time as if I were watching a movie so I cannot gauge how accurate it is, but I did read bits and pieces of my progress notes from this time and as much as I can tell my recollection tends to be fairly accurate.

I was admitted for many reasons however the primary concern of my treating physician was that I was malnourished, and after admission a ton of other reasons kept me on that unit for a little over two months. I was weighed upon admission with the dangerously low weight of 38lbs and the average for an 8 year old is 61lbs. My heart was beating very slowly and due to a heart attack a few weeks prior I was considered medically unstable. I had also attempted suicide a month and half before all of this and had plans to attempt again. I had not yet learned the ropes of mental health professionals at this young age and due to my attachment disorder I would confide in almost anyone that paid attention to me. The following is a recollection of events during my stay.

I was presented at intake very early in the morning and I remember smelling breakfast and feeling terribly nauseous. My court appointed guardian signed me in for evaluation as my father and I waited in dark green chairs that were too high for my feet to touch the ground. My father, dressed in his working Navy uniform sat next to me reading a magazine. I perched on my chair to reach over and spin the silver eagle above the four gold stripes. He swatted my hand away and suggested I read too.

"Daddy, why do we have to stay here?"
"Because everyone is worried about you." he says not looking up from his reading.
"Why worry?"
"You won't eat."
"But Daddy I'm just not hungry!"
"You are telling fibs. Just sit still and wait. Besides, it's fun here."

I shifted in my chair and picked at the flowers on the tops of my black mary janes. Daddy had dressed me up special for today which was unusual. He had picked out a pastel pink skirt that had some strange design around the ruffle. I remember that the ruffle was scratchy against my legs. He had me put on a white shirt with a large collar that also had disturbingly uncomfortable lace around the collar and then put on a black sweater. He told me the sweater helped to hide my chicken bones. My Dad usually told me not to wear dresses or skirts because I'd scratch up my knees playing and I assumed that because of his clothing instruction there would be no playing where we were going.

"Sir, we are ready to see Tempy now." said a lovely looking woman in green scrubs.

My guardian came over and held out her hand to me. I looked at my Dad and he winked at me. He stood up and shook the hand of the nurse as they moved towards a locked door.

"Be a good girl Tempy, I'll be back later after work." he said as he walked towards the moving glass doors. He didn't look back at me as I stood in a state of confusion. Not at any time was I informed that I would be left in this place without my Daddy. I opened my mouth to protest but remembered that protesting was not a part of 'being good', so I looked up at my guardian and she smiled. Her perfume was loud and her hair always stayed in place. I didn't trust her for shit but her hand was warm and my Daddy was gone. We followed the green scrub lady down a long hallway that had murals of colorful things on the walls. She swiped her card at a door and we entered. It was a big room with two small tables that were just my size and there were lots of colored plastic boxes with blocks and crayons lined up against the walls. My guardian led me to one of the tables and sat me in a chair. She put some paper in front of me with some markers and told me I could draw and that she'd be right back.

The room was bright and it seemed like it should be a friendly place but I was not convinced. I had no interest in drawing so I scanned the room looking for a way out. There was only one door, two windows and a gigantic mirror. I got up too fast and felt dizzy as I worked my way towards the door with the ground spinning under me. I touched the cold metal handle and pulled down but nothing happened. It was locked. I walked over towards the window but it was too high up and didn't appear to be a window like at home. I resigned to being trapped in happy-land and sat down on the floor next to a large stuffed bear that I judged as entirely too happy to be trapped in this dumb room. I curled up into a ball and only moved to kick the bear that was too close to me. The door clicked and opened. In walked a nurse with pink pants and a top with tweety bird all over it.

"Hi Tempy! I'm Rita and I am going to be your own special nurse today! How about you and me leave here and go visit your room?" she said way too enthusiastically.

Something about 'special nurse' made me feel uneasy so I didn't budge. I just looked at her feet wishing I had more energy to run out of the room. She moved towards me slowly and kind of hunched over I suppose to try to get some eye contact out of me. When she was about 3 feet away she stopped and sat down in front of me with her legs crossed.

"It's probably scary to be here. But I can promise you that we are only here to help you. There are lots of other kids here too and you'll get to meet them soon. There is even another little girl here that is your age and I bet she will love to have someone here to play with. Now, why don't you and me go take a look around?"

At this point I was feeling very threatened and wild. I wanted a way out of this place and it didn't matter how. I was thinking crazy thoughts about harming myself so that my Daddy would come back to rescue me. I decided the smart way to get a chance to run was to pretend to follow this nurse lady and once I got the chance I'd run the other way. I stood up with her and she took my hand as we headed out. As we turned the corner out of the room I took off in the opposite direction as fast as I could, I hit one door and it was locked so I practically bounced off and headed in another direction. Rita was following pretty closely and suddenly there were three or four versions of Rita boxing me in. All of a sudden I was on the floor with what seemed like hundred of hands on me, on pair had my arms, another had my legs and various other hands were on my head or shoving me into a burrito like mat. I twisted and turned but there was no moving inside this thing which I would later learn is the modern version of a straight jacket. In one swift movement I was in the air. Apparently this apparatus had handles! I was carried through some doors into a small room with padded walls, literally. I was face down on the floor and still fighting to free a hand or leg or anything. No one was talking to me really, just to each other. They eventually cleared out and I was left with Rita. She wiped my forehead with a cool cloth and spoke to me for a few minutes in a quiet and calming voice. I was begining to like her.

After my little stunt I was placed on the lowest level of observation possible. I was stripped of my clothes and made to wear a thin gown with little pink and blue dots all over it. I was kept in the padded room and only Rita stayed with me, well she was there during most of the day and then some woman that barely spoke english sat with me at night. A few big scary doctors came to visit my cell, er, uh, my room the first day. They looked at me, asked me stupid questions and left. A young guy came in and poked me for blood which he was suprised that I didn't seem to care much about and then eventually I was allowed to have a bouncy ball, a coloring book and some DULL crayons. I had decided at some point that talking was for babies and I was refusing to speak so Rita talked...a lot. She told me about her little boy and her dogs, she told me about some museum and then read a couple of books. She prompted me over and over but I refused.

At lunchtime some girl brought in a bright yellow tray. It had peanut butter and jelly, a cup of jello and a juicebox. I was repulsed by this tray of food happiness and I wanted to be as far away from it as possible. I could smell the peanut butter and it was turning my stomach so I quickly scooted to the corner in a ball and hid my face. Rita talked about how the food would make me strong and healthy and pushed it towards me. I recoiled and begin to hit my head on the wall. I had hit my head for many years until the point of knocking myself out. It was my way to escape from my insanity and it worked. In seconds her hands were between me and the way which sent me into a spiral of panic. The progress notes mentioned this episode and that is when I was placed in a helmet. The food was removed and so was Rita. I was so worn down by this point that I must have drifted to sleep...with my dumb helmet on.

I woke up to the sound of the door and I adjusted my eyes to the new light from the window. It must have been much later in the day. A young woman walked in and she seemed different from the rest of the people that had invaded my tiny quarters previously. She had on grey pants and wore a black sweater, her neck held in place a string of badges that clinked when she moved. Her hair was held up in a loose pony-tail and she was wearing tennis shoes. She didn't move close to me, she just shut the door while still facing me and sat down. She had a cloth bag with her that I couldn't make out it's contents.

"Hey sleepy head, how are you today?"
I didn't answer.
"I am going to take a guess and say that today hasn't been so great. I am sorry you are having a bad day."
Again, no response.
"My name is Dr. Fields, but since I call you by your first name you can call me Dianne."
I was more curious about her bag than her name and I was stretching to peek at it. I was wondering if it had more helmet like items or if there was anything more interesting in it.
"You see my bag? Would you like to see what's inside?"
That could be a dangerous question and I raced to figure out if it would be a good thing or a bad thing. Sensing my hesitation she opened it and out came a black and white pound puppy, some glittery stickers, a laminated chart, a small brown box ,CandyLand and a couple of tinker toy like items. She held up the pound puppy and told me I could have him if I agreed to answer three whole questions.

"Tempy, can you tell me why you think you are here?" she asked nicely.

I contemplated my options and settled on answering for the prize dog.

"My Daddy says it's cus I am sick and won't eat. My guardian says it's a bad thing to want to be dead and I think no one wants me. So I got stuck here." I say without a breath.

"Hmm. Can you tell me why you won't eat anything?"

"Food is bad when it gets inside and it makes you so big you can't move and it makes you sick and makes people not want you and then you have to go away with bad people or just because you want it bad things happen." again with no breath. I was SO close to having that dog.

"Ok. I see. Now, one last one and the doggie is yours. Do you want to hurt yourself?"

Ahhhh, tricky question. I thought I had the perfect answer.
"No, I don't want to hurt myself. I want to be dead."

And then the dog was tossed in my direction. I scooped him up and petted him. My first present in a long time! Diane told me about the chart she had with her that I was supposed to eat things to get stickers on my chart to earn rewards. I would also get stickers for other things like talking and going to the bathroom. She talked some more about unimportant things trying to get me to participate. She tossed a ball back and forth with me and then she said she had to go but that she would be back again tomorrow.

Dinner eventually came and I eventually dumped the tray in a folded blanket. The dark came and I was tired again. My dog and the crayons were boring. I took to trying to scratch the alphabet on my arm which only landed me in some ridiculous mittens. I received a shot shortly after that which made my eyelids heavy and my body difficult to move. I retreated in my head to a place that I constructed the details of every night which I believe led me to sleep.

The next day I was informed of the 'rules' and the consequences of breaking the rules. I also was told about how I would earn my way out of the tiny room into the day area where I was told were toys and other kids. Breakfast and lunch came and went with me refusing both. Dianne came back just as she said she would, only this time she had a bag of carrots with her. She talked about the carrots being good for me and how they couldn't make me get big. She told me how eating them would give me a positive consequence of having the mittens taken off. I told her they were poison. After many go arounds of this conversation she told me that if I refused them it would mean that I would have to have tube put in my nose to feed me. She got up and a guy nurse came in. She said I would have to have the tube put in then. I didn't care at that point because the door was open. Mister Nurse and Dianne took me into a room with a stretcher and he told me nicely what was going to happen. I really didn't quite grasp the consequences of this tube thing and figured it was just like every other medical procedure I had done. I didn't fight the gagging as it went down and as he taped it to my face I just sat there staring at the door which was now blocked by a young blonde nurse. We moved rooms and I had an x-ray done. Then it was back to the tiny room.

I sat still as a pole with a bag of greyish brown stuff was attached to my tube. Dianne sat down with me again and asked me how I felt. I said that I was tired. She again said she would be back the next day. I laid down with my dog and went back to sleep. I woke up later with a weird and slightly painful swelling in my tummy. As I sat up slowly I recognized that feeling, and it meant I was full!!!!! There was POISON in my tummy! What the hell??????? I paniced and stood up looking for evidence of being force fed. Nothing was in my room but me, the pole and the damn dog. I remember frantically pacing in the room but being trapped by this damn thing in my nose attached to the pole. A nurse came in and asked me to sit back down. I did but when I did I looked at the bag on the pole and it was nearly empty. I did the math and realized that bag of stuff was the heavy feeling in my stomach. My mittens were off and I pulled that tube out as fast as I could which led to a lot of shrieking and 'hands on' by the nurse.

This time I was led back to the stretcher room against my will with mittens and helmet on. They held me down as they re-inserted the tube and took the x-ray. I lay in my tiny room in the safety coat and cried for hours until another shot led to another sleep-ful night. Dianne came to me early the next day and sat next to me, actually touching me while I was subdued in my burrito bitter at the world. My tummy felt as if it would explode. She placed my displaced dog next to my head against my cheek.

"Tempy, sweetheart, we are trying to help you get better. We think you are a wonderful little girl and we want to help you be strong so you can do everything you want to do. Can you help me help you?"
I turned my head away from her.
"If you will keep the tube in, I can let your arms out sweetie."
"I DON'T want my tummy full!!!! I just don't! Please take the bad stuff out! PLEASE???"
"Sweetie, the stuff in your belly isn't bad, it's just food to make you strong and your heart beat and your brain think. It won't hurt you. I promise."
"You just want me big and easy. You want me to be bad!"
"I don't think you are bad at all. I think you are sweet and kind and just afraid. Now, if I let your arms out will you please keep the tube in just so we can talk?" She turned off the pump on the pole and unhooked the tube.
"See, no more food going in. It's just the tube in your nose ok?"
I shook my head at her olive branch and she unleashed me. I sat up and felt my heart beat hard. I touched my swollen belly and felt ashamed and invaded. I wanted to throw up and I moved my fingers to my mouth because at that point I didn't care how messy it was and only that I wanted it out. Dianne moved her hands more quickly than I gave her credit for. She held my hands in hers and I knew I was defeated. I began to cry and sink into myself and she pulled me and the rest of my body from the burrito on to her lap and hugged me as I cried.

Life couldn't be much worse at this point, here I was wearing a dumb helmet, dressing in a polka dot gown with an invader in my nose. But at that point, I had nothing left to fight and Dianne felt warm and safe and I never wanted her to leave me. I was attached.

A vicious Cycle.

It looks like November outside today. Cool and dreary, the way you would expect November to look. It's the first one this season.

I only have about 20 minutes before I need to leave for work so this will be shorter than I'd like for the subject matter. I had a conversation with Bravehearts last night in which I was advising her about nutrition and exercise. I felt productive and like finally all this treatment around my eating disorder at least was helping someone. I acknowledged the fact out loud that I was following my meal plan and have the intention to be good about it until at least after the holidays. I told her that it was important to do this because I needed my body to be taken care of so that I could handle the stress of the season with ALL my strength. I meant what I said. Now today is a completely different day. My opinion has changed. I got my winter clothes from my friends house and washed them all last night. Today I was excited that I had tons of clothes to choose from to wear to work and even though I wasn't going to wear 2 pairs of the pants I had washed I decided to try them on. I was sickened by the way they fit. They fit me, but they do not fit me the way they did the last time I wore them which was 2 years ago. (my clothes last year were in bags in an attic and I didn't bother to find them)

I am PISSED that they fit me right and that they are not too big. It makes me wonder how big I actually am because I know what I looked like in those photos and I was in my opinion large. So I struggle with what to do with my food. I have this crazy idea to restrict like crazy but I know I'll suck at it because I have been working hard at listening to my body the past several weeks and I have gotten into a routine again with eating.

So I thought about it some more and wondered why it is that I think restricting would be difficult for me and I concluded that I LIKE food. I like to reward myself with food. Food and emotion and consequence or reward is so freaking enmeshed that I can't have a feeling without it being about food. Hate myself? Ok, no food. Proud of myself? Ok, you can have dinner. Go all day without eating? Ok, you can indulge in something when you get home. Angry? Don't eat. Sad? Don't eat. But then I do ok, and I eat regularly and suddenly I realize I have to make drastic compensations for all this eating which leads me to a decision NOT to eat, and then I fight eating and end up going nuts with eating and feel guilty and start all over.

Today I feel fat. So from this feeling I have decided to punish myself and begin some ridiculous restricting cycle. Because I must be thin for Christmas. That'll make me feel better right?

You don't Have to.

"And you don't have to live this way anymore
No, they're telling you to stay
And you can't give them what you give anymore
And it's ok
It's ok"

Great song by Peter Bradley Adams called "Ohio". When I first listened to him by recommendation of Therapist I thought it was awful because I had decided it was a stone's throw away from a genre of music I am not so thrilled about. But I listened to it without the lyrics in front of me and his voice is soothing and now I LOVE it.

Therapy lately has been kicking my ass in a big way. She has been talking to one part in particular on a regular basis and it's screwing things up internally. This part is in the adolescent range but sometimes very mature and other times extremely regressed. A lot of it has been 'getting to know you' stuff, but for whatever reason this part is extremely willing to go where ever Therapist wants to go. Much more willing than I am and more importantly where the host part is willing. However, Therapist has not yet taken advantage of this opportunity and I am sure when she does it will become quite chaotic. This part has some serious issues with self-harming which honestly none of us inside have gone to this extreme in about 5 years. Sure there have been minor slip ups, but nothing like the amount of SI going on to my poor leg. It's not really the frequency in which it is happening that bothers me, it's more the amount of it...like the space in which it takes up on my body. Therapist is trying to be patient with it which I am grateful for, but I am unsure of how long this patience will last.

While I am on the topic of SI I have to bring up the eating disorder. I am in such an odd place with it and because it has been brought up in therapy consistently for a few sessions I feel like my head might explode. I have been in this funk over my ED since I went home for vacation or right before. I had decided I needed to be thinner to see my family and went on a drastic diet plan to lose weight. After returning home I engaged less and it just kinda bumbled back and forth until September. At some point last month I got into heavy restricting and lost some weight but then decided that I could 'allow' myself certain foods and splurges based on the amount I had lost. That didn't stop and I began to purge after these splurges. I began to look as bad as I was feeling and was confronted on this by a lot of people. I lost some friendships and then I decided to just shut the hell up about it. The past couple of weeks I will go a couple of days with restricting and small meals at night which have all been bad food choices. My weight is yo-yo'ing and I am retaining fluid making me feel larger than I am. For whatever reason this all came to a head yesterday before I even stepped foot into therapy. I had eaten breakfast and part of lunch when I realized just how fat I felt. I tried on about 11 different outfits before settling on one just to go to therapy.

And then the shit hit the fan because Therapist decided to confront me on this without having any idea what kind of ED day I was having. I lost my ability to talk to her like a rational adult and freaked out on her. I wanted to scream at her just to leave it the hell alone. I don't even remember the last time I felt this angry at her! I get so angry at her when I am in this space because seriously, Therapist is a tiny person. She is maybe 5'2'' and thin and as far as I can tell, always has been. Sure weight fluctuates, like when she was working two jobs and commuting all the time she didn't look healthy. But in general she stays the same and it bothers me. I want to get mad at her because she has normal eating patterns and probably doesn't think about it any more than the average American female. So when she tries to tell me I am not fat or that there is life without an eating disorder I get frustrated because I KNOW I will get fat and how does she have any clue what that is like?

I was bitching and moaning about all of this to my best friend which led to a conversation about her eating disorder in which she was surprisingly honest (although we always have these conversations in a light-hearted and sarcastic tone) and I was talking to her about what I could pick up on about her habits. Well, I had a revelation about the way I perceive my body. I honestly believe my body is constantly selling me out and it cannot be trusted which obviously stems from a traumatic place in childhood. All my basic body functions were exploited by my parents, they were used against me and so therefore I began to hate my body for doing normal things. Simple things like needing to use the bathroom, sweating, getting hungry, being exhausted, breaking and then reacting to the abuse that I was going through which I interpreted as making me guilty as a willing participant.

All the eating disorder therapy I have been subjected to has been about learning to trust my body while never addressing this issue that I have. I become enraged when I am told to believe that if I just treat my body fairly it will not do anything drastic. I will not drastically gain weight if I eat my meal plan, I won't get fat, blah blah blah. Like I should ever believe that my metabolism will adjust accordingly and set itself at a weight it is comfortable with. What about what I am comfortable with? My set weight by my last nutritionist is about 10lbs heavier than I am ok with. What I need is someone to ask what I want, and help me get to that space in a healthy way. If I want to be a certain weight that is not below a healthy BMI then why can't someone just say ok, this is how you get there without diet pills, laxatives, diuretics and starving yourself? Therapist is not the person to do that because I refuse to tell her what I weigh now and what I'd like to weigh because she is obviously below that number and it would make me feel fatter. If I went to a nutritionist and never mentioned I had an ED and told them the weight I wanted they would be cool with it and help me diet effectively. It's like because I have an ED they set my weight so much higher than I need to be to prove a point or something.

So, all this thinking has led me to several not so good actions to lose the weight I cannot stand. I have downed several diet pills of different brands since last night, started an excel spreadsheet to track my calories and basal metabolic rate, and have decided on an irrational caloric intake in which I will punish myself accordingly shall I go over that set amount each day. Stupid? Absolutely. But my body will not control my life!

Ho-Hum

What oh what am I doing? It's terribly difficult to tell what is up and what is down, what is right and what is wrong. It's like things are slipping from my grasp and I am just standing there trying to hold on with nothing strong enough to keep it in my hands. My isolation is so strong these days that half of the time I forget that people outside of me are existing. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but for example I had to remind myself today that I have a sister and that I haven't spoken to her in a few days. I think because I am so numb that anything outside of my 4-wall routine I forget about. I am unsure of what any of this means except that lately, especially yesterday and today I know that I am not ok.

Therapy yesterday was similar to Monday only I left in a panic and wanted to go running back. I speak about my therapy sessions generally in a sarcastic way to defend against any real feelings I may have experienced, only this time I will admit that I was terrified and the world seemed so big ans scary when I left that I was dying to go running back to Therapist's office just to sit on the floor and be safe. Each therapy session we talk and talk and talk but the last two there has been little talking and a lot of sitting, listening and just being. No correct answers, no guessing, just being and as easy as that seems in my head its been two of the more difficult sessions I've ever had. What's strange is that I couldn't get stuck in my head because I had this piece of paper in front of me that required I be attentive and connected. Something about drawing, I cannot dissociate when I do it, I HAVE to be aware of myself. The hardest part is being so aware and sensing this presence next to me on the floor, moving, humming, drawing and glancing over at me and knowing that person is someone I am choosing to be there with me, that I am allowing into such a private place for me and being ok with that and allowing her to respond to me.

Art for me is something I generally do in private and I dislike sharing it with people, sort of like music but that is another post entirely. Let me see if I can articulate this. When there is a crayon/pencil/marker in my hand and I use it, it makes marks that prove to me that my movements have impact. What I see in my head becomes tangible and reactive and it gives me a voice that I usually cannot find. I enjoy the feeling of different art mediums and generally choose different ones based on my moods. When I am more logical I like paint to get my out of my head and when my voice is completely lost I prefer colored pencils because they are so precise and when I just want to have fun I enjoy markers because of their intensity. When my own images frighten me collages are better because they are ready-made images that I don't own and less scary. So to do this with Therapist right there sometimes makes me feel more vulnerable.

Being in an art space also tends to make my crazy less easy to hide. I become antsy and overwhelmed by blank spaces that I feel I need to fill. I despise blank paper and either need to fill it or make it smaller. I feel like an ass when I cannot contain this anxiety and it's all over the place. Then my anxiety increases as I can feel the awareness of the actual human sitting beside me on the floor, separate. I felt like an alien observing for a bit, too afraid to ask questions but completely mesmerized by her behavior. I mean, she was ok, nothing bad was happening, she was humming to music...so I must be ok right? Confusing as hell. I guess at some point during all this thinking I stopped my drawing and zoned out or freaked out, I am unsure of the details but Therapist must have been calling my name or something and I wasn't responding...so she tapped my arm. You could be thinking one of two things; 'OH my god, she touched you?' or 'And?' which isn't my point in telling this either. My reaction went something like this in my head:

"Oh my god, oh my god, I'm real. I'm real. Oh crap, I am actually here, ouch ouch ouch, don't leave, I need to leave, oh crap."

A fury of emotion and intensity wiped over me and I haven't been right sense. But as quickly as I felt the real-ness, it left and I am wondering if it was real.

In other news, I have not spoken to my mother in a week. Why? you ask? Because I am determined to prove to Therapist that I will give her up if she lets me have my eating disorder...which I already know isn't an option but it's important for me to build ammunition to make my case. This a BAD idea to cut the Mom-world off without first discussing the internal ramifications and all the problems that this could cause without first talking to Therapist. I know she'd be elated to hear that I am not talking to Mom, but at the same time I can sense her fury for making this decision alone and for all the wrong reasons thus leaving her with all the traumatized/angry/acting out parts that will surely ensue. But I am determined to have my eating disorder even though I can feel it killing me a little more each day.

My days now completely revolve around my scale, how long I can go without eating something, and then rewarding myself with something that is unhealthy because I have done so well not eating, then feeling guilty for allowing it and starting over the next day. I currently look like I've been in a bad fight with so many bruises all over my legs and my eyes look like someone has punched them both several times. I am pretty sure my digestive system no longer knows what the hell it is doing and it's like rolling the dice when I do eat, unsure of which digestive pain I will endure as it tries to figure out what to do with the foreign body I have consumed. It's stupid, I hate it, but I will die without it (and somehow with it too). It's a true addiction.

The worst part of it is how emotional I get and how much work I have to do to numb it out. All this therapy stuff has be bawling one second, laughing hysterically the next. One second I am content and ok, the next I am ready to jump off a ledge. Which the ledge is where I am spending more and more of my time. I am needing Therapist more and more yet unable to justify it and instead I am trying to push it out of my head which in turn makes me more depressed and isolated.

I dunno...I wish I was more positive and upbeat it's just difficult right now.