recovery

Recovery and Relapse

In Proverbs there is a scripture that talk about a righteous man who falls seven times, when he gets back up, he honours God. In the same sentence that he has fallen seven times God still calls him a righteous man and how honouring that is.

Trigger warning… Relapse.

I have been away for some time. I really put my effort into staying in recovery and I was doing good. I was able to have some things that i haven’t touched since I was a kid. When I was working out, it was to keep my body moving and feeling good, not to burn as many calories as possible. I was finally feeling free from Ana’s grip. She was always yelling but her voice sounded distant.

Recovery was something I thought I’d never achieve and yet I was doing it! As I mentioned I tried and enjoyed! a treat from childhood. Wendy’s fries and a small chocolate frosty. The memories came back with happy times. Times before fast food became a crippling fear. See, I’m rocking this recovery journey.

The question begs… So what now? Am I still doing great or did I drop the ball? I am sure by the title and the quote that you know I lost the plot.

An immensive feat was that i wasn’t on the scale using numbers to determine my worth for the day. I wanted at one point to simply throw it out but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I figured if I wasn’t getting on it as much no real point in throwing it away. A way to look in the mirror and laugh at Ana’s unnecessary attitude for me not getting on the scale.

So I am coming here to hold myself accountable for the relapse I am currently in. I’ve lost a decent bit within a very short amount of time and people are side eyeing me. At least it’s ridiculously cold for May. I have been able to get away with some extra layers without concern. It has been a battle after last week’s therapy session. My homework was to increase my calories by increment amounts to get me back on my way to recovery over the next few weeks. Lord help me as she doesn’t know that I’ve gotten worse and I don’t know how the hell I am going to increase when I cannot even bare to have anything but a shake. Solid foods are just not appealing. But wait there’s something else.

I started Wellbutrin two and a half weeks ago to help with the ADHD. Week one was absolutely a breeze. The second week was absolutely torture. I was on constant high alert always next to tears. I have the shakes which I’m fine with. I shake normally, this just intensifies it. While looking through some research and I found several websites and read the entire PDF information on Wellbutrin only to find that I, along with many others, aren’t supposed to be on this medication. Why you ask? Because anorexia and bulimia make us much more susceptible to having seizures with great consequence. Get this, Wellbutrin only intensifies our susceptibility to actually having a seizure even if you have never had one.

I decided that after all of that information I just read through, I felt the need to get ahold of my psych nurse and ask if it is true. As if reading the entire page from the drug maker wasn’t enough to make me believe it. Is it true that I shouldn’t be on this? Her response, stop taking it immediately. I found out the reason she even put me on it was due to the fact she thought my ED had been in remission for some time. So she called me out on the carpet letting me know that even if she doesn’t bring up any questions of ED behaviours, I need to be more forthcoming so this doesn’t happen again.

Understandable that she would want me to stop taking it. I am bucking at the idea because it has definitely blocked whatever appetite I ever had left and has kept me moving on this destructive relapse helping the numbers to continue to drop. Plus I am two and a half weeks in so it would be a waste if I don’t give it the full month. I am able to focus more but it is still not fully in my system to make a true judgment of its ability to help me with ADHD. However, I don’t want to waste medication and leave it in the box with everything else. Might as well keep going. At least finish the bottle.

The thing is, I am making a conscious decision to let her continue to be at the wheel only to continue to drive my relapse further and further down the hole. In three weeks I’ve lost a bit and in my mind with her it’s not enough. However, I know better than this and I should want to get her out of the car and shove her in the trunk. Yet, eating disorders have such a powerful grip that they start to bind you with zip ties knowing that those are the hardest to escape from. Why do I, as a grown woman, adult even, want to continue to allow such a childish, immature disease control my life when I have so many better things to do and things to think about?? How am I allowed to be an adult with a career when it is obvious I can barely handle my own mind and body.

To wrap this post, I am stuck between wanting recovery back and wanting to continue to be on this destructive path until I am finally sick enough to walk away. Recovery isn’t easy. It isn’t pretty and it is exhausting. I want to get better but I also want to stay sick. It is such a very weird dilemma I have found myself in.

I hope that this helps someone know they aren’t alone and that recovery takes time and effort. That it isn’t easy and we need to keep pushing through to what we know to be a better way to live. Eventually, we will find recovery and never look back.

Uncategorized

A Weight Not Lifted

Therapy today was productive and I took home a good amount of homework. Yet, as I drove back to the office, all 42 miles, which provided me enough time to realize how little of the truth I told simply in hopes of looking and sounding “better” than I really am. Classic move.

I pull into the parking lot, car park sounds so much better but I severely digress, weighing (pun not intended) all of my options. Do I send an e-mail in hopes it will go unnoticed for a few days? Do I shut up and move on with my day as if I hadn’t seen her just an hour before? Or… Do I send an e-mail letting her know that at the end of session when she asked if there was anything else, that in fact there was something else?

As I roll in my chair back to my keyboard I try to lose myself in work hoping I’d figure it out later and deal with it all another day. Ana didn’t want me to be honest. She didn’t want her secret out, that she is in power not me.

I’d say maybe half an hour in and my recovery side, the “angel” side, tried screaming over her telling me to tell H how much of a relapse I have been in, that nothing is okay, and how much I don’t want to do this anymore. Recovery side of me actually won and I sent her an e-mail with the direct link to my website here so that she can truly see what a shit show my life has really been. Maybe this is me willing to give recovery another chance. Maybe recovery me felt strong for essentially ratting myself out. Whatever it was in that moment, I sent the e-mail and moved on with my day. To say I didn’t stare at my inbox from there until I clocked out would be a terrible lie.

For now I choose to believe somewhere in me wants a better life than what Ana has provided me for so many years. I choose to try and see that, year after year and relapse after relapse, this isn’t what life is and how life has so much more to offer. I have to fight to live and be at least okay with the one body I have and will ever have. For today, I may have been in complete restriction, I am choosing to nourish tomorrow.

Uncategorized

Recovery Process Loading…

Sitting here looking at my legs and seeing my stomach and feeling that they are there has me beyond uncomfortable. Once again she takes the lead and back down I go. I have to let her win because being in this body at this size is too much. I can’t do this anymore. I know this is a blog of recovery but most posts are of me giving over my power to Ana. When will I ever be in recovery? Is recovery even possible at this point? This all started when I was 15/16 when I was first diagnosed. I am now 32. That’s shameful right there. I should be over this.

By society’s standards of the “ideal” lb for 5’5″ woman is between x and x. I am on the higher end where should be in the middle and I prefer to be under the lowest ideal number. Why am I ever striving to be the absolute smallest I can be? Why am I chasing the need to be tiny, to be light, to not take up so much space?

My body has helped me carry my nephew through a rough hiking trail in the Mohican State Park. My body helped me climb the tower to the top of the castle and view the beautiful autumn colours. My body got me halfway up the fire tower even though my courage to continue to the very top ended at the fourth flight with still four to go. My body allows me to run for fun. All of these amazing things and the constant goal to be tiny is so bizarre. I deserve to take up space in this world. I have been blessed with a body that allows me to do so many amazing things so why am I hell bent on destroying it?

I think I need more therapy than just once a month.

Uncategorized

Breathless

It is a battle between physical health and mental health now. I feel my body slowly fading as my energy goes more and more towards her and even less towards myself. I am physically drained. The most mundane tasks are taking more energy then they have in quite some time. I cannot afford to slow down now. I am getting closer and closer to where I want to be.

This is what happens when you let her take over. She destroys your body. Slowly so you don’t really pay mind to it.

I am 31 and I already have my spinal discs degenerating. My chiropractor told me my entire body has been in flight or fight mode for so long that my pain threshold is through the roof. He said most patients would have jumped up when all I did was tell him it was fine. He coined me as his interesting case. This is what eating disorders do to our bodies. Whether we want to admit it or not.

That last sentence pains me to reread. I want to be tiny, I mean tiny. Yet, I don’t want to forsake my physical health to get there. My heart is beating in a bizarre manner that catches my breath and stops me immediately. It is an odd sensation and I’m not sure if it is just the daily stress bothering me or if my heart is really trying to tell me something. Should I actually be worried this time? I don’t see any reason to. I have GAD. So they will say it is my anxiety. I drink a lot of coffee. They will say it is the caffeine and to cut it back. My PCP even told me that he once had a patient go to hospital for an EKG and he was having a full blown heart attack but the EKG read normal. Where do I go from here?

My body isn’t small enough yet. I have too much going on in my life presently and especially in the coming months. I don’t have time to stop and turn course. I have to keep pushing through. I always say that pain is just weakness leaving the body, but what if the weakness isn’t pain, what if it’s a sign of something screaming for help? Can EDs really be that damaging? I dare not ask as I shouldn’t put that out into the universe.

Uncategorized

Pushing Boundaries

Another successful day for her and another loss for me. I lost my fight over breakfast. I only had an apple. For lunch I made myself drink an Orgain shake. I ran two miles and that exhilarating feeling getting off that treadmill is something unbeatable right now. Yet back to the office I must go. I want to be able to complete the full 5K by the end of the month.

I did have one win. One win for recovery today. I ate dinner. Not what most would consider dinner but it is better than last night… better than nothing.

One bite at a time. Recovery is my commitment. Am I on the right track? I’m trying to be. Will it all be better by morning? Absolutely not! However, by writing this, no longer hiding the secret she loves to be, I am able to fight for recovery whether or not I want it right now. I will get better eventually. For now it will be my daily struggle until it become natural once again.

One day I will be better. As of right now, I shall quote Emma from RBS: “I’m not better, okay, I’m not better and I keep waiting for someone to figure that out; and they don’t. I mean of course they don’t ’cause as long as I say the right thing and I act the right way they’re happy, because that means they cured me right?”

Right now I am not better and that is why I decided to write this. To share and to learn from others. There are many of us bloggers that are trying to recover and there are those that have blogs of recovery. I hope to be able to share my experiences and hopes for a recovered future and that one day this will be a blog of nothing but recovery.