A Synonpsis of the Milllions Upon Millions of Things Racing Through My Mind Presently..

 

“I’m so sick of food.”

That’s my first thought of the day. I am sick and tired of thinking about it 24/7, measuring, worrying, and the anxiety I feel every time someone walks in the room while I am eating my carefully prepared meals, usually cutting them into teeny tiny bite-size pieces which I eat with my cocktail fork and baby spoon. I compare the sizes of each bite, and how much and of what it is composed, carefully carrying out my method of eating the biggest/most calorie-dense bites first. If I eat one bite out of the order, the Voice will give me more of my own personal hell. One bite out of order, it will say, means the less time it has been in my stomach in order to digest more quickly. And then there’s the water. After each meal, I will guzzle down bottles of freezing water (my fifth grade teacher told me once that the colder your water is, the higher your metabolism is boosted) satisfying that evil Voice inside of me.( I guess the plus side, though, is that I get great skin.) Unfortunately, however, It will never be quite satisfied adequately. As soon as I finish eating, after every meal, I immediately go lay on the floor of my cold, dark room, clutching my stomach in pain. I feel horrible, both mentally and physically, as usual. Oftentimes, I wonder if my stomach actually hurts, or it’s just another trick on behalf of my eating disorder. I would not put it past the latter. It is truly exhausting work, this controlled manner in which I live. I have come to loathe waking up, dreading the moment my eyes are thrust open and I am slammed back into reality where it’s a constant control battle for my life between the Voice and I. I never tell anyone this though, of how much I truly hate how I live, because I know exactly what they would say to me. A, “Do we need to take you to the mental ward so you don’t try to commit suicide again?” or B, “Only you have the power to change that. Why the hell won’t you just eat like a normal person?” They are predictable in this manner, always reliably pointing out what I know all too well. Regrettably, it only further spikes my sadness. Nothing ever changes. Sometimes I believe nothing ever will. I have discovered that I have become so accustomed to my anorexia, so dutiful in being a prisoner to my own mind that I refuse to admit when I am making progress. I tend to view things with the black-and-white mindset that we mental illness patients so often do, which only adds to the Voice’s degradations and promises. Let’s say that I have been working on getting more peanut butter-the only “fat” I feel comfortable with- into my meals. I go back to the doctor a week later and my weight hasn’t budged, and I still feel like the chubbiest most grotesque human to ever set foot on this planet. The Voice automatically kicks in with its sneers:

“See? Don’t you see it? You tried doing what they said and you failed, as always. You’re still the same pathetic piece of crap you were before, but now there is even more fat metabolizing in your cells. Looks like it’s time to cut back a few hundred calories or so until it’s out of your system.”

I am finally beginning to understand this concept. This morning I noticed how I always view the battle as an all or nothing sort of game. Either I will wake up one day and make all the right decisions, which will lead to the foreign concept of “recovery,” or I will continue to let this monster destroy me until death do us part. I have to realize that I am making progress—though maybe not physically speaking, or very significant, for the matter—the fact that I am sitting here typing this to Heaven knows how many people, confessing to all my thoughts and failures; that IS a form of progress. Each time I discern MY thoughts from the Voice’s, THAT is progress. I have to learn to hold on to these moments, however minute they may seem to me, because it is the concept of knowing that I CAN have the strength to defeat this monster is what I need to arm myself with, pul out as my secret weapon why the raging for control roars. I have to realize that this monster is not me. I have a mental illness, and I am not well.

“Really now? You’re going to believe that line of bull. Look in the mirror, you disgusting pig, no one will ever love you looking like that, not to mention you act like a crazy freak. No wonder Josh dumped you. No wonder your best friends hate you. You’re a failure, an idiot, and a weakling—you will never be happy again.”

Lamentably, I must say that my future recovery/happiness as a topic of battle is one to which I never have a reply. I am not exactly sure why this word frightens me so, and why it seems like such a foreign fantasy. Partially, I would conclude that the latter has to do with the fact that I have never known anyone personally who recovered fully. In fact, I have never known anyone, besides the girls at Group, who have/have had an eating disorder. (Openly speaking, that is. There a quite a few people I know that I am convinced have some type of disordered eating.) Nevertheless, the amount of fear I have of letting go, not having this excruciating control and that relentless presence in my head, is far greater than my yearn to become better. That probably sounds quite injudicious. Well, I know that it is. But, that does not change the fact of the matter. Two issues stand out to me when I think about trying to do any better than just living in a sort of “halfway” between better and rock-bottom ( if that even exists, I am not too sure..) First of all, I am too afraid of letting myself give away this immense source of control. I fear that if I do actually receive full recovery one day, that I will become either extremely addicted to pills or the self-harm will become over-the-top. It is quite an irrational fear, I will admit, but I cannot help but think ‘what if.’ Secondly, and actually more prominently, is the all-too-potent fact that I fought this battle before, or, at least I did to some extent. I worked and did what the doctor’s told me to. I fought off the fought and got back into a healthy state..and then I lost it all. In less than one month, I lost what progress I had gained in two years. I think that’s when the numbness of the whole ordeal truly set in. Yes, I am indubitably exhausted of this life, however, I hold so much apathy that sometimes I start to think that perhaps it really is not that bad. Maybe, I ponder, I can just get by like this until my body decides to give up. I wouldn’t blame it. The fact that I never in my life want to work that hard for something only to discover that truly, I never went anywhere, is reason enough for me to be afraid of actually “recovering.”—I am deeply afraid of relapsing.

I read in a book (countless, actually) that a very small percentage of teenagers with eating disorders recover fully in their lifetime, and that number diminishes rapidly if they begin recovery once they are already an adult. Statistics show that quite a preponderance of most eating disorder patients spend their life in a limbo—bouncing back and forth from episodes, living a life of control issues and habits. I’m seventeen. I will be eighteen in December. I have been struggling with this since I was eight. My statistical chance of recovery diminishes each passing day.

But, I do not really care about that at the moment. All I care about is the fact that in twenty minutes I am supposed to go downstairs and eat my snack which really should not scare me (fat-free plain Greek yogurt and 4 oz. of granny smith apple—my “safe” foods). However, I am freaking out because part of me knows I need to eat more, I need to eat something better, since I weigh-in again this Tuesday and after checking the scales yesterday, I’ve reached my third lowest of all time. In consequence, the doctor’s will threaten me with inpatient and my nutritionist will probe me on and on, asking me “how would [I] like to brainstorm ideas to help me work towards my weight gain? What can [I] change?” (Sorry, Ashley, I truly do admire you and your compassion, but this is just ridiculousness at the present moment) Hmmm, well, golly gee, I don’t know. Perhaps I could try getting rid of the monster inside my head FIRST.

It’s one of the most difficult concepts that I have a hard time understanding—body before mind. When I eat, the Voice will get smaller and softer until eventually it goes away. I will be able to stand up to it; I will feel comfortable in my own skin. Granted, I do remember that when I was healthier, the Voice was indeed not as strong. However, it never truly went away. I never did feel okay with myself. And that’s the part that scares me, the entire reason why I am sitting here in my darkened room, rambling and ranting about truly nothing in particular. If I were to grow up, even if I am recovered, isn’t there a rather large likelihood that my kids (if I could even consider this scenario to actually be able to happen, I guess) will face the increased susceptibility to acquiring an eating disorder? I would hate myself even more (as if that could be possible, as well) knowing that it is all my fault, not even to mention the possibility that that didn’t happen and we were all one big happy family with the love of my life (ha, my optimism here disgusts me) and two wonderful kids and myself, the mother who was a drug-abusing, suicidal, teenager with anorexia and is now recovered. But oh wait! One bright, sunny, and cheerful day something in her snaps and all of the sudden the Voice is a little louder than usual and she begins to stumble, just a bit, but just enough that the fact that she is actually stumbling after all of those years freaks her out to just the right level of vulnerability that bang- the Voice sinks its greedy teeth. Then, her wonderful family will watch her waste away, battling her mind like someone out of a psych ward.

Perhaps I am being irrational. Perhaps I’m just pessimistic. No, my eating disorder is. Nonetheless, today is my day of discouraging thoughts of what the future may or may not hold. I cannot think straight, my grammar is atrocious, and I cannot for the life of me put a single coherent thought together. Today I am numb, and I just really don’t care.

~ by candyshele1204 on March 23, 2012.