I noticed, this morning, as my sleepy eyes slowly sharpened on the drizzling rain, that I hadn’t checked the forecast for a while.
This is progress.
The need to know – or control – or anticipate the future seems to have loosened; and, instead of checking in to BBC weather at hourly intervals, I have obviously found more interesting things to do, or just realised that I can manage, come rain or shine.
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There is a little voice in my head that likes to make connections between totally unrelated things. I call it the if-then voice, because this is its favourite line.
If you don’t do that – then this will happen, OR, if you do that – then this will be the result.
It likes to predict the outcome, does the if-then voice. It likes to consider any action – or non action – in terms of what will come next and in line with its own, mysterious, agenda, which is mostly around controlling me.
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I have been asked to talk about the things that kept my eating disorder going for so long. The ‘maintaining factors’, in medical speak.
It is difficult to answer this now, when the reality of so many lost years feels like an open wound, and, if I could go back and violently shake my previous selves, I would.
It is hard not to turn to myself and say, yes, Melissa, what exactly did you think you were gaining from choosing an eating disorder over the things that most people aspire to, like jobs and husbands and families and friends…
Maintaining factor 1: Oblivion
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As a self help sceptic (reformed), the irony inherent in my blog has not been missed.
If you’d given me a web address or a self help book a few years back, I’d have turned my nose straight up.
There was a certain arrogance to my eating disorder (what would they know?) that sneered at self help (like it’s that easy) and people who claimed to “understand”; an automatic scepticism towards shop brought solutions and the hollowness of a few positive words that couldn’t possibly appreciate my pain –
I might have been wrong.
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There are a few things that I would like to take the opportunity to leave behind in 2009, starting with a strange little habit that I have of separating each meal into its constituent food group and then knocking them off, one at a time, in the prescribed order: green (vegetable), orange (carbohydrate), red (protein).
Whilst New Years is traditionally about making new resolutions, I’ve decided that breaking old ones is equally acceptable; and, there are a few lurking habits that I’d like to shrug off as the clock strikes midnight –
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As I may have mentioned (!), it has been a year today since my last cigarette; and, whilst, I may not have uncovered the secrets of nicotine abstention, I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping myself on the straight and narrow.
A year ago, life without cigarettes felt unimaginable and totally unappealing; so, if you’re going through the same struggle, here’s a few things that made the impossible, possible –
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I am not great with new years.
I tend to find the ending, daunting; and the expectations, a little too much to take.
I get a little scared that I will wake up, on the first of January, to a completely alien landscape –
Or that it will be completely the same.
For a few years, I worried that I wouldn’t wake up at all.
I’ve clearly brought into the ‘new year new you’ hype and the inevitable annual apocalypse; so, this year, I’m getting prepared, and I’m trying to enter 2010 on a more positive footing –
It is an opportunity, and not an ending.
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Sometimes, getting better is far scarier than staying ill.
Sometimes, the apprehension and the expectation and the uncertainty can stop you from changing your life. We’re far more comfortable with what we know –
It will be okay.
It might feel scary, but you’ll be okay.
There are no certainties – but it will not be as bad as you expect.
It just takes a little courage and a few deep breaths; and, when you’ve got through the first challenges, you’ll be looking back and wondering what took you so long –
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I couldn’t resist. I know the subject (re-learning how to start eating normally) is serious but I’d rather lighten the tone, ease the tension a little.
And it’s not just an empty pun. It’s exactly what I had to do. Prove that food isn’t what the eating disorder said it was, start building up a little evidence, find a little ammunition to challenge 17 years of negative associations.
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Giving up any addiction is a challenge.
Giving up bulimia feels doubly difficult because you can’t just take food out of the equation.
I don’t think there is one hard, fast and proven-to-be-effective way out of bulimia. It is a strange and precarious mix of circumstance and determination and planning and support and being prepared to go through the uncertainty and the unknown.
It’s hard to get it right first time round.
Piece by piece, I am slowly letting go.
Step by slow step, I am gradually saying goodbye.
It is a long and painful process. I have been here before, but not this far down the road, not this close to freedom, not this scared and strangely empty.
OCD is like being a hamster on one of those running wheels. You know that you’re not really getting anywhere but getting off feels near on impossible. The only difference – and this does make some assumptions and ignores the benefits of exercise – is that you’re acutely aware that you’re a hamster running in a wheel.
It’s incredibly frustrating. It’s horrible to realise that you’re engaged in something so futile. That the future, in a ghoulish parody of groundhog day, simply holds more of the same futility.
Deviating from the prescribed route would be fatal.
Staying on it would be equally fatal.
“It’s all right. Tomorrow I’ll be pretty again, tomorrow I’ll be happy again, tomorrow, tomorrow…..”
Jean Rhys, ‘Good Morning, Midnight’
If you’re a member of the tomorrow brigade, stop now.
Tomorrow will never come.
It took me fifteen years of waiting for tomorrow to learn this.
Tomorrow, I won’t throw up. Tomorrow, it will be okay to eat. Tomorrow, I’ll start again. Tomorrow, I’ll feel different….
The transition between illness and recovery can be a little uncomfortable.
There’s a particularly awkward stage when your head is still on auto-repeat – but you’re trying to ignore the programme.
Where you’re so consumed by the process that you don’t have the headspace – or the inclination – to do any of the things that you’re looking forward to doing a little further down the line.
Where the agenda is simple: get through the day.
It doesn’t last – although it can feel like a lifetime – but it helps when you can escape into other things for a little while.
Welcome to the wonderful world of ‘distractions’ – the things you do to keep yourself busy when you’re thinking about things that you shouldn’t be thinking about.
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