It’s partly because I haven’t been able to find the words to say what I am feeling; and partly because I’ve had to change my get-back-on-track strategy. I am trying to squeeze the eating disorder out with activity, this time; and have learnt that, without flexibility, I just keep going round and round –

It has been a case of the doing the same thing and expecting different results phenomenon.

What helped me the first time I stopped the bulimia doesn’t quite fit with where I now am. The feelings and challenges are similar – but the context is totally different; and so, as a very wise friend pointed out, the solution I had proposed no longer matches up.

It has taken a while for the penny to drop.

I have moved through frustration (“why can’t I do what I need to do?”) to fear (“I don’t know how to change things”) to acknowledgement (“I am still not moving in the right direction”) –

I can hold onto the fact that I’ve done it before – I just might need to do it differently this time round.

This is a both liberating and terrifying realisation. It has also taught me a few things about the recovery process that I did not fully appreciate before….

Adaptability is fundamental. If the first approach isn’t working, then it’s not a matter of failing – it’s about trying other things until you find a way that works.

The slip-ups are not, as I had positioned them, gaps that will become openings for the eating disorder. They are, instead, opportunities to spot the weak points and make sure they don’t trip me up again.

I have known that recovery is a dynamic process, but never seen it so clearly, nor managed to step away from the disappointment when it does not go to plan. This is the other lesson in there.

Recover a bit – more forward – slip a little – learn something new and recover a bit more – move forward –

I am growing stronger, I think, although it has felt like I have been getting lost.

Because I would like 2011 to be jampacked full of new adventures and experiences. To be a time where I make up for the lost ground and explore the world unseriously. To be about pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone further and further so that the possibilities, which are already awesome, keep emerging, and I am never quite sure what will be next.

And, I would like 2011 to be about looking, again, at some of the rules and assumptions that I have been living by and seeing if they really stack up. To be about asking whether I wear, or say, or do, xx because I feel or should – or because I want to? – and then seeing if I can work out a way of being that feels like me.

All of me -

The good, the bad, and every shade in between.

- because authenticity comes, with adventure, as one of my 2011 words; and is, I am beginning to learn, the key to self acceptance, and wrapped up with empathy which I want to feel in abundance because -

2011 is about people. It is about connections. It is about getting over my nerves of that first introduction and remembering that we are all human and I am okay, usually, when the conversation starts. It is about looking beyond me. About learning to trust. About remembering that we all have our own stuff. About maybe finding love, if I’m lucky, but loving regardless of whether it comes back.

And, alongside this (while I’m throwing it all out there) I also want to start the new blog I have been talking about; wear over the knee socks with boots; learn a dance and overcome my two left feet; eat some of the things that I am still afraid of…

And never forget, when it gets hard, how much I love life.

Wishing you all the very best for 2011.

There’s maybe a few more boxes and then it’s good to go.

I was asked, on one of my posts, if I knew the reasons for my current relapse. This separation is one of them. I am bad at goodbyes at the best of time but this farewell feels particularly challenging. It is entangled with my eating disorder and my recovery; and, even though the move is something I desperately wanted, I am still experiencing the wrench.

So this is a post about my flat which isn’t, I admit, the most interesting of blog topics; but it feels like something I need to write through in order to let go. It is an acknowledgement of the sadness that I am currently trying to throw up because I’m still not sure where to put it; and also of why my flat was so important to me.

From institutionalisation to…a little flat with sloping ceilings and the most amazing view.

My flat was my first home post a three year stint in rehab that had been preceded by a few years peppered with admissions, and a temporary move back to my parents’ home in between. I had become accustomed to NHS walls and signs about the hand basins; and, suddenly, I had a space that was all my own.

When you’ve been looked after for a long time, it’s strange to make the move back into the “real world”. Difficult to not wake up to a knock or know that, at the other end of the corridor is an office filled with people who can help –

My flat was the transition.

It taught me about responsibility and it helped me to start to care.

DIY Queen

During the first few years, my eating disorder remained particularly active, and my flat became the place that I binged.

I had thought, which I finally managed to break free of the bulimia, that it would be impossible to break the associations; but I found that my flat could actually help –

And so, for the first few months, I painted myself into recovery. Each evening after work when I would historically have been bingeing, I picked up a paintbrush and worked my way around my flat. I discovered – and carefully filled and concealed – every crack and hole in the walls; knew where the dents and curves were; painted over the food that had splattered up the walls beside the TV where I used to crouch –

And made myself a home.

My home

Last year, my house became a home. It became a place where I could invite people (because there wasn’t food hidden in every spare storage space), and share with people (because I was learning, for the first time, how to share meals), and feel safe, and secure, and warm, and all those things that are really important….

It also helped me to find me.

Each chosen colour was an act of self-discovery; each arrangement of furniture or selected picture or carefully constructed painting or stack of books, was a step in the journey to discovering what I liked as a person. To creating a place that represented me –

But was, as I’m beginning to realise, only one step in the journey.

Moving on

I have done things in reverse. Have gone from living alone to flat-sharing, from building a home to a room that will never be mine.

The upheaval has thrown me more than I expected; the sense of loss, been hard to vocalise – but only because it is new. Only because I have carefully re-entered the world and now I am moving out of this first gentle re-introduction.

This is, I keep reminding myself, not about rooms and roofs: it’s about opening up my world and truly moving on. The learning remains, even if the things that assisted it do not.

30 years is a long time to spend in one place. Ironically, I never wanted to remain where I grew up before I became so ill. It was one of those twists of fate where circumstances dictated the outcome, and I wasn’t in a great position to move on.

Writing this post has reminded me of this. Of the hopes and aspirations that exist alongside the sadness. Of the feeling of being trapped that characterised my life, even though the freedom has knocked me sideways.

I don’t want to go back, despite the sadness. I just haven’t quite got used to what’s next.

“I was wondering if you could share any tips on how you just quit bulimia cold turkey? Everytime I tell myself that this b/p is going to be the LAST, but it never is. “

I was going to link her back to a post that I actually entitled ‘Cold Turkey’, and then I realised that, actually, it didn’t happen like that.

Yes, once I’d made the ‘real real’ decision to stop, I did, and I haven’t been back since then….but the ‘real real’ decision was preceded by lots of real decisions, and decisions, and new starts, and special dates when I was adamant that I wouldn’t purge or binge –

And each of those failed attempts filled me with terror – and helped me to succeed in the end. It is a paradox but one that I’ll try and explain…

My bulimia kicked in around 14. I dabbled; and then, following a stint of inpatient treatment for anorexia, I dived in. For 7 years, I binged and purged chaotically and unpredictably; and, despite my best intentions, I couldn’t seem to stop. I turned a new page every birthday; went to university with an untarnished wardrobe and a fresh agenda; made myself promises and incentives – and yet still found myself in-and-out of treatment or suddenly in the middle of yet another binge.

When I was 20, I was hospitalised with 24 hour supervision and stopped bingeing for three months. It is hard to break the cycle: I needed that support.

I also relapsed the moment the opportunity arrived.

We can not undo the things that we have done. I don’t know why I needed to go back so suddenly and so absolutely, but it reinforced the message that the bulimia was central to my life. This is where the first part of the paradox comes in: each attempt and subsequent failure convinced me that I would never be able to stop –

Fast forward another 8 years. I had given up on new starts and dreams of recovery by this point, because the few tasters I’d had of a binge-free existence had been so excruciating, and I had negated any evidence that I’d be able to truly change….

And so I got angry – that I was so scared of giving up something that I desperately wanted to give up. And I started collecting proof – by going back to the times that I’d achieved binge-free days, and setting myself tester nights to see how it felt. And then I set a date, and I made sure that I remember my motivation, and I rallied up some moral support – because it’s really really tough doing it on your own.

So in the end, I did stop completely and on the decided day, but the preparation, I think, had started in the years before. For me, it wasn’t so much practice makes you perfect – more like the frustration made it easier to challenge the bulimia’s messages; the failed attempts stopped being a source of my own failure, becoming instead a sign of how vicious the bulimia was. This was the rather complicated turning point: the attempts became a reflection of the illness, rather than a reflection of me.

That’s the narrative. I think it’s different for every person but it’s important to acknowledge the context that the illness is operating within. There are some practical things that helped in the early stages – eating enough to make any urges manageable; getting support from friends; distractions; being kind to yourself; keeping a check on the expectations about how the experience will or won’t feel –

And so, no, I didn’t succeed on my first attempt – but I have learnt that it is always worth trying and you can get there in the end.

Before I rip them – and myself – to shreds, I’m going to write down a few of the things that particularly stood out for me in two days that were full of information, and sharing, and caring, and all the things that I isolated myself from, both during my illness and, during my equally stubborn and internalised recovery –

1. You don’t have to do it alone

I had my first treatment for anorexia in 1993. Things were very different then. With limited understanding and some practices that wouldn’t stand up now, the ‘me Vs them’ model that eating disorders (EDs) are great at creating was given a good dose of unnecessary ammunition that took a long time to shift…

The NEDA conference, like the Beat ceremony the week before, was full of professionals, and carers, and those directly and indirectly affected by EDs, all coming together to help raise awareness and support people in their fight to get well. It was a joint event, on an equal footing, characterised by empathy and compassion rather than anger or blame.

I know that things are complicated. That there are financial considerations, and some outdated assumptions, and a huge deficit in support for men – but I got a real sense of collaboration that has to come to a more positive end.

2. Patience

A lot of this joint effort seemed to hinge on the recognition that recovering from an eating disorder is a slow process. That it doesn’t happen overnight, nor come immediately when the symptoms change or weight is restored. It requires, instead, a level of patience, a word that doesn’t roll particularly easily off my tongue -

Patience in waiting for the discomfort of change to gradually lessen.

Patience in learning that you can overcome challenges which seem insurmountable and innumerable.

Patience in catching up with experience and emotions and relationships and all the corners of a life that an eating disorder manages to get stuck in.

Patience in starting to trust others again –

Patience in them trusting you –

3. The other people

NEDA was honest and open, and it really made me consider how difficult it is for all those who are impacted by EDs; the family, friends and even professionals who also come to live under the shadow of an ED.

When you’re immersed, it’s impossible to realise the impact you are having on those around you or it was for me, anyway. Yes, I knew that I was causing worry; I felt terrible about pulling other people into the ED’s games and, yes, it certainly impacted on my home life and environment…but, I wasn’t quite able to translate this awareness into action, and I prized the eating disorder above everything else.

During the conference, I heard parents speak about their children; siblings, about the pain of not being able to save a sister or brother; and partners talk about how devastating the eating disorder was to watch -

It is hard seeing it from the other perspectives and difficult to resist the temptation to slide into guilt….but this is why the joint effort is so incredibly important; and why it makes knowing what we’re dealing with so key.

4. The science

I am not scientifically minded. I kind of see how it all fits together, but I have to concentrate very very hard. There’s lots of research coming out at the moment which even non-scientifically minded people like me can’t miss. It’s about understanding some of the neurological research and patterns; and also exploring how people are affected by eating disorder behaviours in cognition and things other than weight.

It sounds like we’re getting nearer to gaining a more comprehensive (body, brain, mind, context) take on what goes on.

I don’t think there was one cause for my eating disorder, nor that it will be possible to understand fully why I became so ill – but each little piece helps to make a bit more sense of the experience and the understanding helps me to move on.

5. Moving on

The ‘in recovery’ or ‘recovered’ question also came up a lot for me at the conference. I don’t know whether there’s an answer for this one: whether being ‘in recovery’ drags it out and keeps it present; or if it’s a realistic description given how quickly an ED can reassert itself, and how hard it is to transform some of the traits that can impact on its development.

For me, the conference was about recognising how far I have come – but also noticing the areas where my sensitivity is still high and acknowledging that I haven’t quite reached a resolution on some of the themes that were raised –

Like body image and self acceptance (because it’s not all about that, but the culture we live in makes the context hard) -

And relationships and emotional maturity (because I’m still catching up there).

It was also about acknowledging that I have moved on in relation to my own self perception. That, increasingly, I am able to separate myself out from the ED that I once saw as my character and identity; that I was attending the conference, not just as a recovering sufferer, but as a person.

This might not make sense, but it’s a mammoth move for me.

It’s a mammoth move for me, and one that wouldn’t have happened without all the treatment and support I received. This was my other message: the work that still needs to go on.

6. The reality

The NEDA conference was the second time in the space of a month that I have realised how lucky I was to survive and how fatal eating disorders are. I don’t know the exact figures, but every time I hear them, they seem to get worse; and every wasted life winds me.

I think things are moving in the right direction, but I hope they’re moving fast enough.

I also hope that some of the barriers that still exist (healthcare costs or insufficient treatment provision; a lack of awareness around different types of eating disorders), and the things that make it harder (the complexity of the body image / media / ED / self esteem relationships; the female focused language) start to shift – because fighting an eating disorder is not an easy battle for anyone to win.

It is not an easy battle, nor fought on a single front…

So, in no particular order, these are some of the things that we discussed.

Making the decision

I made the decision to recover on multiple occasions. I decided that it was a good idea time and time again. Each decision, though I didn’t realise it then, was a brick in the foundation; and, I started growing when the emphasis moved from what I would stop doing in relation to eating, to what I would start doing in relation to life. That subtle shift made all the difference. It tipped recovery into the positive, rather than making it all about what I was losing and giving up.

I didn’t make the decision

I’ve written before about ambivalence and waiting for the ‘aha’ recovery moment. It did not come. I don’t know whether it ever does. Right up until the point when I stopped bingeing, the uncertainty hung, and clung, and tempted me back. The same thing happened with gaining weight. I did not wake up one sunny morning and find that it had suddenly become okay: I had to start while I was still clouded with doubt.

Cold Turkey

I went ‘cold turkey’ on bingeing. I stopped, over night, because I couldn’t manage stopping for one day. It was all or nothing and, after years of daily purging, I couldn’t decipher the shades of grey. One day without it was unbearable – so I had to stop thinking about the one day and start thinking about the rest of my life.

I had attempted cold turkey before – but you don’t have to stop trying if it doesn’t work first time.

My ankles did not swell up (even though they had in the past). I did not treble in weight over night. My body did learn, within about a month, how to process food. I did find that one day was bearable and I did break the day down into hours. Oh yes, and I ate.

Recovery involves eating

It took a number of years for this to register. Eating makes it easier not to binge. It’s also a requirement if you need to gain weight. I’ll come back to this one…

Breaking bingeing routines

Going cold turkey on bingeing meant that everything changed. I won’t pretend that it’s easy. The first few months, it sapped my energy in the same way that the illness had sapped me. I made it through by…

• Lowering the bar: I gave myself a break and didn’t expect to feel great. I didn’t fight the days when every minute stretched into an agonising hour, and I didn’t try and plaster over how I was feeling. I just allowed myself to be.

• Distractions: Because there were hours to fill when I stopped bingeing and lonely gaps where other people should have been, I had a long list of basic things to keep myself going. Su du ku, films, magazines, card-making, the internet, walks. Nothing too demanding, but enough to get me through the day.

• Eating: I could not stop bingeing while I still refused to eat. Simple – and yet so painfully hard. The first few months weren’t about weight gain, for me; they were about getting enough inside me to give me a fighting chance of fighting the bulimia. It is impossible to do this if you’re still in starvation mode.

• Shops, reductions and associations: These were everywhere. I had a supermarket on my doorstep and a routine that was etched in stone. I knew the reduction time at every store and had managed to include most foods within my bingeing routine. Planning, preparation and risk management – I thought about what I was doing and put precautions in place long before I actually began.

If, then

We talked about my “if…then” strategy during the vodcast. After so much therapy, it had become second nature and totally ingrained. “If this happens then I will…” got me through some sticky stages and is a way of thinking that seemed to minimise the risks. “If I want to binge then I will remember that the feeling will pass in a few hours time”. “If I feel tempted not to eat, I will remember that I don’t need to feel guilty because eating will help me get nearer to life”. That kind of thing. It goes hand in hand with self talking, which is the other thing that got me through.

Self Talking

I lay in hospital one night worrying about how I would binge on a loaf of bread that had cost me 10p in the reduction bin. This is what an eating disorder does to you.

I reminded myself of this whenever I felt my resolve slipping. That my life was worth more than 10p. That I did not want to wake up and suddenly realise that I’d lost another 10 years. That eating was okay and gaining weight, totally acceptable, because I’d decided that I was going to give myself a shot at life.

And that people were more important, to me, than food.

Loneliness and re-engaging

It is the loneliness that got me – and the loneliness that spurred me onto being well. It could not be undone in a day, nor undone by anyone other than me.

For the first phase of my recovery, I remained alone, both in the long empty evenings, and because my head was in a different space. It was tempting, then, to be sucked back into the spiral – but that would just have kick started the cycle all over again. So I waited, and I talked to a few wonderful people who propped me up, and I started being more proactive when I had moved through the initial all-consuming stages of change.

Telling people

I told people. This is hard. It is particularly hard if you’re ashamed of your behaviour, or if you’ve said that you’ll change so many times that it starts to fall on deaf ears. It is hard if you’re scared that you’re not sure you’re ready to change, and you’re therefore creating a space to be challenged by someone else.

I was surprised.

When I really started fighting the bulimia, the people who were aware of what I was doing completely held me up. They did not judge me and they kept me going; and, a little bit later, when I got cold feet, their support and my gratitude stopped me slipping back.

Gritting my teeth

I am still not very good with certain foods and don’t like being out of control. Over the past year, I’ve got good at gritting my teeth. There are things that you have to do in recovery that are hard and challenging and upsetting – and, sometimes, you just have to grit your teeth and remember that the feelings will pass. So, if I want to spend time with my friends without food spoiling the evening, I need to get on with it; and, if I’m in a meeting at work and lunch consists of a platter of sandwiches, then I have to remember that work is part of my future and push on through. It gets easier, though it starts off feeling impossibly hard.

There is no right or wrong way to recover

I spent a long time looking for this. It does not exist.

Different things work for different people, and different things work at different times. You just have to keep trying, if you can, because however impossible it feels, please don’t give up.

Nothing is impossible

I thought I would never recover. Enough said.

There is much much more….but we only had half an hour and it was hard to jump back. Please feel free to add any other ideas or things that made a diffference – because recovery is a lot easier if you’re not battling alone.

I’m not sure why and I can’t work out what happened; but, at some point, I got scared about being okay. I worried that I’d be nothing if I was ‘normal”, that I was letting myself go because I was letting myself enjoy life.

And so, I put the brakes down. Hard. I re-erected the walls and re-instated the rules. It was not okay to be okay.

We know what happened.

I ended my last post before I reached the end. The moment of insight that had been eluding me has finally clicked into place. This re-animation is the same as I felt at 17 – only this time I’m not afraid of it. It is alright to be okay.

The inspiration that I have been waiting for has stalled and is yet to catch up with me. Any insights that might prompt a blog post are suspended, somewhere, far above me; so, for the moment, all I can say is, “I am okay”.

I think this is enough.

I think, in fact, that it’s more than enough. It is a giant breakthrough in the light of my previous aversion to the flatness of okay-being, and a million miles away from the terror I felt a few weeks ago. It is also totally alien to how I typically am –

I have absolutely no idea what I am thinking and haven’t yet found the time to analyse everything that’s going on. I’m sure that will come…

But, for the moment, I’m getting up as the sun begins to rise and getting used to the hum of planes flying across from Heathrow. I am smiling on the way to my Putney Bridge bus stop, because the river makes me excited and I like feeling part of the trainer-clad suit-wearing crowd. I have found that I can actually eat breakfast when I arrive at work which is something I never thought I’d be able to do; and that it is okay to stray away from my old morning routine.

It is okay to not live by a routine.

And so, I am coming back into London as the commuters go out; and the drawn out bus ride is one of my favourite half hours, because it gives me time for Twitter and it helps me to wind down. I have gone ‘home’, on some days; and, on others, I have found myself haphazardly wandering through the tree-lined side streets and noticing things that I didn’t notice when I was here before, even though some of the areas between now – and then – overlap –

This is okay, too. I am not who I was then.

I am not who I was then – because I have been able to eat supper with friends, without worrying what’s on my plate whilst the conversation fizzles out around me; and, I have let my Aunt cook me supper, and found that I can manage okay. I have come home at 7 on some nights – and at 10:30 on others – and, regardless of the time, or situation, or how I am feeling, I have ultimately been okay –

This has been the fear. That I will not manage. That I will not be okay.

I might be a little lost for words at the moment, but I think that I’m doing okay.

I forget this, though it would probably fall under my lessons about life category. Sometimes, there is a seismic shift in thinking or a way of being that is at odds with how big or small the movement is on the outside. Sometimes, one small step beyond your comfort zone can dramatically change the landscape.

It is too soon to tell where I will end up. Tomorrow brings another suitcase and another hall, and it is still very early days. I suppose this is yet another pause to catch my breath, and re-orientate myself before I move again. Now that I’m doing, rather than acting, I have moved beyond the fear; but I am yet to throw the anchor down and there is still a disconnect: travelling can be a lonely venture, especially if it’s mostly taken place in your head.

This might explain the yearning to come back here, the longing to ground myself in words and create a written bridge between myself and the world. It might also be because I want to share this experience as it’s been quite amazing. Like stepping through the next door.

So this is a reminder.

This is a reminder that, before I got lost under the panic, and before I started resisting the changes, which is always a recipe for disaster, I was so excited I could barely breathe. It is also a reminder that when I focus on the things I haven’t done in the past few months, I lose sight of how many great things I have notched up along the way.

The great things I have notched up along the way.

Six weeks ago, I was full of grand planning. There were visions of spontaneous holidays; mountains; a whole new blog; sea swimming…maybe even a night in a tent. They didn’t happen. None of them. And, while I have been listing all the things I should have done, I have overlooked some of the great things that have happened…

Like trips to the theatre and walking around London feeling that I was seeing everything through new eyes. Meals out with friends and afternoons spent crying over Maggie O’Farrell on the sofa. Zumba classes on Monday mornings that taught me how to swing my hips and made me smile. Spontaneous evenings out with new cocktails and new people, followed by lazy Sunday mornings and the unfamiliar sense of not rushing life along. My first period and a flicker of romance and the very overdue sense of enjoying being a woman. My two year binge-free anniversary. Watching films and drawn out cups of coffee and hours spent on Twitter just having fun.

Just having fun.

Before I got scared.

Fear deadens excitement. You get tangled up in it. Before I got tangled up, I was excited. Really excited. I forgot that until today.

I forgot that it was incredibly liberating to be following my heart and listening to my gut, rather than my head. That I was breathless excited about throwing myself down a new career path and seeing what I would learn along the way; about following a passion, rather than just going along with whatever cropped up. I was smile-when-I-talk eager and sleepless-night-looking-forward to moving down to London, and living the life that I skipped all those years ago. I was full of energy when I thought about the future, and full of optimism about where I might take my life.

Full of optimism.

I still am.

I’d just forgotten that I made the choice –

And overlooked that it’s not all change. Some things will still be the same.

Getting grounded.

I was going to write myself a post for a few weeks time, for if I was feeling shaky and needed a little pick-me-up. I don’t want to pre-empt this need though, so I’m going to leave this reminder here, instead, in case I wobble.

There are lots of things changing at the moment, but there are also things that will stay the same. Lots of variables that I have no control over; but some constants that I can hold on to, if I start to lose my way.

Like myself. I am still me.

And my friends. Who are still them.

And the many many lessons I’ve learnt over the past year, that won’t just disappear because the context changes, but will continue to help me find my way.

There are things that I can do, regardless of where I am, that will mean that I am still me; like talk, and tweet, and go to Zumba, and read Emily Dickinson in the bath, and spend obscene amounts of time chatting nonsense on the phone, and write, and learn, and watch Family Guy DVDs. And many more.

It will still be Autumn next month, and X-Factor will still draw me in, and the days will continue to get shorter, and I’ll probably still lie awake for hours at night –

Because though lots is changing, there’s also some stuff that will be the same.