I have just come back from yet another trip to the dump. I am finding this clearing out my flat thing hard. It’s not just the slight OCD-tinged tendencies towards hoarding that are so difficult to deal with; it’s the fact that so many of my possessions have been coloured by my past. They are throbbing with association and each wrench aches.
I guess this is normal.
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I have a desktop of half-finished blog posts. They are driving me insane. I am not sure that they will ever be completed because at the moment I seem to be in a state of constant change. Things are moving so quickly that each post is elbowed aside mid-flow, and I rarely reach a clear conclusion before the next thing comes along. It is quite disorientating.
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I whinged on Twitter all weekend. After a fortnight of heady excitement followed by a colossal nosedive, I think I might have been driving my poor followers mad. I got myself stuck in a bit of a vicious circle: feel bad – complain about feeling bad – feel bad about complaining that I feel bad – feel even worse – complain about feeling even worse…. and so it went on.
The truth is, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed; and, because I’m overwhelmed, I’ve been temporarily blinded by a kind of white blanket of fear. It has seeped everywhere. In the cracks between waking and sleeping; when I step through the door after being out with friends; in the moments when I am waiting for the kettle to boil…
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I wobbled last weekend. Amidst all the pride at reaching my second year anniversary and after the giddiness of a jam-packed-life-changing week, I had a sudden panic, standing on the beach at Brighton, that the gap between the world and I is still too chasmic to bridge….
It is not the food that has turned out to be the hardest part of my recovery – it’s discovering how far I have removed myself from life.
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On Sunday, it will be two years since I last binged and two years since I last threw up.
When I stopped, it felt as though I was wrenching out my heart. Now, it feels like I unclamped it.
I do not miss it at all. It does not cross my mind, apart from when some small, unpleasant reminder, like a shattered tooth or an unexpected flashback, make an unexpected appearance – and these certainly don’t tempt me back.
The first year was about existing through the days and the evenings; this year, it’s been about life. I do not need the film subscriptions and elaborately planned meals and scheduled phone calls to distract me any more; in fact, I rarely have enough time.
Even in my wildest imagination, I did not think it could be like this…
And so, I’m celebrating the occasion – as I did last year, and will do next year – as my unofficial birthday or the date that I allowed myself to come back to life.
It is, inevitably, tinged with sadness and a strange dusting of betrayal, though I could not say who betrayed who –
It does not matter.
The point is that I have had a second chance and I am starting, finally, to feel alive.
If you know the secret to patience, I’d love you to share it with me. Patience is a virtue I certainly do not have.
I’ve been waiting for things all week, and it’s left me somewhere between frazzled – and totally burned out. I like things straight away, please, before they might run out or run away…And yes, I know that I am a grown woman.
I also like to know exactly what’s coming and when it will arrive; so there’s some control and anxiety bubbling around in there as well, just to heighten the experience.
This is nothing new – I just haven’t sat with it before. It was one of the key feelings I tried to get rid of during my illness; either by not wanting (so not waiting), or by changing the direction with the violence of a purge. If you want things, you might be disappointed. If you’re excited about something, bingeing offers an alternative high and one that resets the equilibrium…in a very flawed way.
So, excitement – and the need for patience – and managing unpredictability – are all things that are quite new to me; and good, because it means there’s lots to look forward to – but bad, because they kind of mess around with my head and mean that I’m always trying to catapult myself ahead…
A lovely quote from Eckhart Tolle kind of summed up what I think is happening: “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there.” This is what impatience is all about, for me. The next step, the next thing, the next certainty.
Now.
Of course, life doesn’t really work on these terms. You have to wait for things and you have to appreciate that some things happen – and others don’t…. But it would be good to have a few strategies or approaches to dealing with the interim period, so to speak. To help me learn how to be patient – or, at least, how not to burn myself out.
Any ideas?
A while ago, I wrote a post called Clinging on to the Past. It was a difficult post to write as I had to acknowledge that I might be holding onto my eating disorder; and also, because I couldn’t see how the situation would be resolved.
At the time, a comment was left suggesting that I would know when the time was right to move on. It was a comment that touched me deeply, and has stayed, therefore, alive in my head. I couldn’t see how the miraculous transformation would materialise – but the hope made me feel warm and that was almost enough.
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I have a fractured tooth. It is a front one, which I’m finding quite hard. They have bonded it, for the moment, but it’s only a matter of time. The others are likely to go in the same direction.
It has been 23 months, almost to the day, since I last threw up; but the damage has been done. There is a little network of cracks spiderwebbing from my teeth to my ankle –
But I do appear to have developed a backbone of steel.
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I have been carrying around some stuff for a while, without realising that it’s not actually mine.
I didn’t stop to consider where it came from until recently; in fact, I don’t think the question even entered my head. It has only emerged – upon closer inspection – that a lot of the fears and feelings I have assumed over the years do not belong to me.
It has been like getting home with the right black coat – only when you check the label, it’s wrong.
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Sometimes I will do something little – like flip the lid off a glass bottle – and the ‘pop’ will send me catapulting back, again; to nights standing in the kitchen, screaming with frustration, because I’m desperate desperate desperate to binge.
And sometimes, when I have to go back to the places that it has dominated – like stations, and supermarkets, and hospital waiting rooms – then a smell or a sound can leave me winded, because it carries, still, the panic and chaos and ice cold despair.
Sometimes, an innocent action – like a friend adding an extra splash of oil – will trip the switch into the old ways of thinking; and my stomach will twist and my head close in and I won’t be able to what am I going to do don’t make me
Breathe.
And then again.
It is as impossible to run away from the flashes of memory as it is to run away from ourselves.
We can only notice them, from the safety of distance, and thank God that things are no longer the same.
Things feel a hundred times better now that I have finally started moving. The anticipation is always far worse than the action – and yet each time, I seem to forget.
Change often happens this way for me. The fear paralyses. Then comes the frustration. And, finally, the elastic-band-snap of emancipation and whoosh, I’m free –
Come what will.
I went through the same process in my recovery. The same wheel-spinning-yet-not-going-anywhere, until it felt like a miracle that I didn’t implode. All talk, I seemed – and no action. All words – and nothing behind them but fear.
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I went to a School of Life Sunday Sermon, and heard a neuroscientist, called David Eagleman, speak. If I’d got round to any pre-event research, I would have gained a little insight into the stuff he’d be talking about; but I was, instead, hooked by a one word title.
“Uncertainty.”
Anything that might illuminate a concept I grapple with, on a daily basis, is guaranteed to grab my attention.
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Last night, I bumped into someone from my past; and I shocked myself, when it came to saying goodbye, by nearly asking a question I’ve been grappling with for years: “am I still the same?”
“Am I still the same” is my “do I look fat in this?” question. The reassurance seeker that I continually seem to ask. “Do I look the same?”, and “Am I still the same”, or “How am I different?”. And please answer that I am not.
I have resisted, more recently, from externalising the discussion, but the variants have been tingling, slightly unpleasantly, on the tip of the tongue
Up until now, I haven’t bothered to unpick why this staying the same has been so important. What, exactly, I am staying the “same” as; and why it matters if I am “different”. There is a vague link to weight in there, and an outdated attempt at subtly asking the “do I look bigger?” question – but it is the underlying implication that has left me slightly more disturbed.
If it matters that I do not look different and is important to remain the same, then I am pretty much destined for failure; because if there’s one thing we can all be certain of, it’s change.
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I started to write an eloquent post about the semantics of the word “recovery”.
It has stuttered and spluttered, for the past few weeks, and I have made myself feel misunderstood. I do not want to write about it nicely, at the moment. I don’t want to phrase how I’m feeling in pleasantries or flowery terms.
To be honest, I’d rather just sit and cry.
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I have stepped out of my comfort zone. I didn’t realise what a leap it was, until I reached for cover – and it had disappeared. I am still, it seems, hiding under my eating disorder; and not quite sure whether without it, I am enough.
This time it was my writing, which shows just how far the illnesses’ influence extends.
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Yesterday I wrote about things that don’t help.
It was one of the hardest posts that I have written. It sent me straight back to some places that I have forced myself not to dwell on; and reminded me of how hard it is to have a voice. Particularly when you’re up against a system and not feeling that great about your own state of mind.
Today, I have been attempting – and failing – to advise other people how to handle these feelings.
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I thought that I had reached my limit and exposed all the deep, dark secrets of my eating disorder. That I had probed every sensitive area, and subjected each to my ridiculously exaggerated analytical-lens.
Nope. I still manage to shock myself.
They keep coming, thick and fast, like unpleasant discoveries or bruises that are so deep they are only felt when you push the exact spot.
This post’s on possession. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of; but it might lessen – this possessiveness – if it is acknowledged and moved on.
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Some of my friends think that I should move on.
Some of my family worry that I’m clinging to the past.
My doctor suggests that I might be making it harder for myself; my counsellor imagines me with a career, a husband and two kids, and thinks I shouldn’t waste another moment; my head is sick to death of the whole subject –
But I am not ready to let it go, just yet.
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I have been feeling a little sick over the past few days.
This is not a good thing.
The last time I was sick was the big d-day; the final swansong before I waved goodbye to a friend that I knew was killing me.
I realised, of course, that there’d be times when I might be ill, or instances when I’d find myself bending over the toilet again, whether I liked it or not; but, I didn’t anticipate the sudden stirring of memories that the once familiar taste of bile would evoke.
Like a horror film, with the flash-lighted-frozen-framed images getting closer and closer, the throbbing in my neck and the somersaulting of my stomach have triggered a slideshow in my head –
And it starts like this.
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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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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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“This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—”
Extract from Emily Dickinson
This is my liberation.
This is my time to feel alive.
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m singing now and I’m holding onto each golden moment.
This is my emancipation, my thawing.
This is finding my voice when it had been taken and recovering my self when it got lost. This is coming up for air –
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.
When you’re sick, you want to get better.
Unfortunately, it’s rarely that straightforward with an eating disorder. It’s never just an illness – it takes a while to even recognise it in this guise – and it’s hard to work out whether it’s a friend or an enemy.
Because it’s both.
The paradox screws with your head.
The dichotomy makes moving on and getting better a real challenge.
Ironically, it’s also the key to recovery.
I think I may have mistaken concern for care, confused professional curiosity with personal interest. I think I may have become accustomed to being looked after, grown used to the attention.
There’s nothing like a chronic eating disorder to rally up a medical army. It does a great job of ensuring that you’re well looked after, takes you right back to a parent child scenario – and it’s not hard to guess which seat you’re occupying.
It feels like a safer place to be. It feels like you’re special.
For a while. But then, like a child throwing a tantrum, you find yourself cranking up the volume. It’s not always a conscious thing – you’ve just got to work that little bit harder to get the same response.
I had been hoping for the white dove letting go elation. The release of a balloon. A ceremonial burning.
I was expecting the worst. A painful wrenching. A terrifying step in the dark.
It has been like a tick that I have been trying to shrug off.
A recurring theme.
It has been a whole mishmash of emotions. A turbulent and unpredictable journey. A snail’s pace edging towards recovery.
Weight.
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