justifications
13:30 Edit This 5 Comments »
so I suppose yesterday was so boring that I couldn't be bothered to blog about it?! almost true, but I was also feeling pretty low and battered about by the time I usually blog at night and I couldn't focus my mind on it. in retrospect, I think I was just really tired and usually for me when I'm physically run down I get emotionally vulnerable and every niggling doubt I have about x/y/z comes to the surface. probably one of the contributory factors to my exhaustion was this...
the bedside table I got from Argos...I had no idea it would be this heavy!
my mind is totally scrambled today and I'm still lacking in inspiration to post. although if I'm honest, I'm not sure if it's also somehow feeling vulnerable and slightly off kilter here. suddenly using my blog to write about myself and how I feel seems incredibly...selfish? narcissistic? I don't know. of course the double standard theory applies, I love reading other people's blogs, I'm just confused by my own!
I also can't shake a sense of vulnerability and need to justify everything I say on here, especially since a few recent 'judgements' both online and from people I know in real life questioning my recovery. my knee-jerk reaction is that I need to list concrete facts about why they are wrong - the weight I've gained (a lot), how much of a state I was at the start of this year (light years from where I am now), the progress I am currently making...and so on and so forth. but I'm going to save that for another day. the journey behind me is important to me, and to my future, but I refuse to let my feelings of vulnerability push me into defending myself with it somehow. and let's face it, all this, in the end is for me alone.
on a brighter note, all this self doubt has had me thinking about how things have changed for me, mentally. the insecurities I have are usually related to whether I will be judged for not being weight restored, gaining slowly, still using a teaspoon to eat my cereal...you know, mundane 'physical' markers of recovery like that! but looking back at all the other times I've gone through partial weight restoration and said I was attempting 'recovery', the difference to me is very pronounced. the list goes like this:
early 2004 - prescribed a high dose of Olanzapine (a powerful antipsychotic with side effects of tiredness, weight gain and zombie like behaviour!) and told I can't return to school until I gain 30lbs at least and will be hospitalised if I lose anything. suffice to say, my 'recovery' wasn't self-motivated or particularly committed...relapse didn't take long.
Xmas 2004 - told I have to maintain a minimum weight to stay in school. comply resentfully and spent most of my time concocting plans to lose more when I leave home/manage to quit drs appointments/find a magic deception tool and so on. this goes on for awhile and it would be something of a joke to call it anything like progress.
mid 2006 - by this point I am a 'purging anorexic' or 'low weight bulimic' (I HATE both those terms, but that's a story for another post...) and I decide to 'recover' by shifting straight back into restrictive anorexia. smart move! (not)
Xmas 2007/early 2008 - after treatment in the summer this is possibly the first time I actually entertained thoughts about what recovery might mean rather than gaining weight with the blatant intention of losing it again once it would be 'easy' 'go unnoticed' etc. my commitment is tenuous and very limited though, and as I gain weight I just become more and more angry and bitter, wishing there was a way I could hang on to my illness. the ensuing relapse was worse than ever before.
flash forward to now. I have made much more 'acceptable' attempts at recovery before this, at least in terms of the criteria placed on it by treatment professionals. I know that I could have gained the 50-some lbs they wanted me to in hospital by this point, and perhaps then I would be 'statistically' considered recovered. but I have no interest in being one of the statistics who prove that relapse rates after inpatient treatment are shockingly high, that people move in and out of the diagnostic criteria for this illness throughout their lives. in short, I have no interest in repeating the previous experiences I've had where I (or my doctors) thought that weight restoration as fast as physically possible was all that was needed, and then relapsing to an even more dangerous degree than I did last year.
in any case, the part which to me is FAR more important than the physical is my attitude towards it. the fact that now I feel my mind is ahead of my body (and don't worry, my body is catching up!) rather than the other way round, which for me has always paved the road to relapse. that I can look at an emaciated woman in the street, or talk to one of my friends who is still desperately ill, and not in even the tiniest sense want to go back there. that I can be proud of my acheivements and recognise that I am a stronger person now than I was six months ago. that I don't just say all these things because I know logically they are true, but that I believe them.
of course, I still have my panicking days full of negative thoughts and worries! in previous years though, I would actually slip backwards and restrict or b/p on those days, and so even though overall I was 'in recovery' I didn't have long periods symptom free. it comes rather more naturally not to do that now :)
I make myself nervous posting positive things! but I will leave it, anyway :)
and I will leave you all with a pic of the best dinner I've had in a long time...
baked tofu pizza! sounds weird, looks pretty burnt too! (I was playing cards with my brother while it cooked and our game kind of went on a bit too long...) but it tasted fantastic. basically, take tortilla, spread all over with salsa, add sliced mozzarella and tofu which has already been marinaded in soysauce/chilli sauce/mirin/honey and baked for half an hour. then chuck under the grill for ten mins. yum.
the bedside table I got from Argos...I had no idea it would be this heavy!
my mind is totally scrambled today and I'm still lacking in inspiration to post. although if I'm honest, I'm not sure if it's also somehow feeling vulnerable and slightly off kilter here. suddenly using my blog to write about myself and how I feel seems incredibly...selfish? narcissistic? I don't know. of course the double standard theory applies, I love reading other people's blogs, I'm just confused by my own!
I also can't shake a sense of vulnerability and need to justify everything I say on here, especially since a few recent 'judgements' both online and from people I know in real life questioning my recovery. my knee-jerk reaction is that I need to list concrete facts about why they are wrong - the weight I've gained (a lot), how much of a state I was at the start of this year (light years from where I am now), the progress I am currently making...and so on and so forth. but I'm going to save that for another day. the journey behind me is important to me, and to my future, but I refuse to let my feelings of vulnerability push me into defending myself with it somehow. and let's face it, all this, in the end is for me alone.
on a brighter note, all this self doubt has had me thinking about how things have changed for me, mentally. the insecurities I have are usually related to whether I will be judged for not being weight restored, gaining slowly, still using a teaspoon to eat my cereal...you know, mundane 'physical' markers of recovery like that! but looking back at all the other times I've gone through partial weight restoration and said I was attempting 'recovery', the difference to me is very pronounced. the list goes like this:
early 2004 - prescribed a high dose of Olanzapine (a powerful antipsychotic with side effects of tiredness, weight gain and zombie like behaviour!) and told I can't return to school until I gain 30lbs at least and will be hospitalised if I lose anything. suffice to say, my 'recovery' wasn't self-motivated or particularly committed...relapse didn't take long.
Xmas 2004 - told I have to maintain a minimum weight to stay in school. comply resentfully and spent most of my time concocting plans to lose more when I leave home/manage to quit drs appointments/find a magic deception tool and so on. this goes on for awhile and it would be something of a joke to call it anything like progress.
mid 2006 - by this point I am a 'purging anorexic' or 'low weight bulimic' (I HATE both those terms, but that's a story for another post...) and I decide to 'recover' by shifting straight back into restrictive anorexia. smart move! (not)
Xmas 2007/early 2008 - after treatment in the summer this is possibly the first time I actually entertained thoughts about what recovery might mean rather than gaining weight with the blatant intention of losing it again once it would be 'easy' 'go unnoticed' etc. my commitment is tenuous and very limited though, and as I gain weight I just become more and more angry and bitter, wishing there was a way I could hang on to my illness. the ensuing relapse was worse than ever before.
flash forward to now. I have made much more 'acceptable' attempts at recovery before this, at least in terms of the criteria placed on it by treatment professionals. I know that I could have gained the 50-some lbs they wanted me to in hospital by this point, and perhaps then I would be 'statistically' considered recovered. but I have no interest in being one of the statistics who prove that relapse rates after inpatient treatment are shockingly high, that people move in and out of the diagnostic criteria for this illness throughout their lives. in short, I have no interest in repeating the previous experiences I've had where I (or my doctors) thought that weight restoration as fast as physically possible was all that was needed, and then relapsing to an even more dangerous degree than I did last year.
in any case, the part which to me is FAR more important than the physical is my attitude towards it. the fact that now I feel my mind is ahead of my body (and don't worry, my body is catching up!) rather than the other way round, which for me has always paved the road to relapse. that I can look at an emaciated woman in the street, or talk to one of my friends who is still desperately ill, and not in even the tiniest sense want to go back there. that I can be proud of my acheivements and recognise that I am a stronger person now than I was six months ago. that I don't just say all these things because I know logically they are true, but that I believe them.
of course, I still have my panicking days full of negative thoughts and worries! in previous years though, I would actually slip backwards and restrict or b/p on those days, and so even though overall I was 'in recovery' I didn't have long periods symptom free. it comes rather more naturally not to do that now :)
I make myself nervous posting positive things! but I will leave it, anyway :)
and I will leave you all with a pic of the best dinner I've had in a long time...
baked tofu pizza! sounds weird, looks pretty burnt too! (I was playing cards with my brother while it cooked and our game kind of went on a bit too long...) but it tasted fantastic. basically, take tortilla, spread all over with salsa, add sliced mozzarella and tofu which has already been marinaded in soysauce/chilli sauce/mirin/honey and baked for half an hour. then chuck under the grill for ten mins. yum.
5 comments:
People all find different ways work for them when it comes to recovery, some do it at home whereas others excel better in a hospital environment. You shouldnt feel like you need to justify your way of going about recovering, its working for you and that the bit that matters.
Sure as you said you could have gone into hospital and done it really quickly but then more than likely your head wouldnt have caught up with you and you wouldnt be as psychology on as you are now and would have struggled to deal with that new weight.
I eat my cereal with a teaspoon to, probably did start out ED related maybe still is but so what, at least your eating your cereal. Normal people have quirky food related issues to but no-one says anything to them just because they havent an ed.
I guess what Im trying to say is, you've made progress and still are, I get the vibe from you that although its still a struggle you want this and theres a greater chance for it to really happen for you this time, so if what your doing works stick at it.
Your pizza looked great btw, I thought those were fish fingers at the start!
xoxo
Hey hunni,
I personally have really been enjoying reading your blog, the ups and the downs, but mostly you seem to really be doing well... or maybe I'm comparing you to me and I feel like I suck right now!! Either way, I'm sorry you're feeling the need to justify whats going on and no matter what happens, I'm interested in YOUR journey because its yours not simply because it involves an ed and recovery etc... not sure if that makes sense :S
*mwah* xox
I feel the same way about my blog (how narcissistic of me to talk about my own life all the time), but then I remind myself that I primarily started it as a journal, and in that case it's only logical that it would be about my life. "Write what you know," right? ;) I quite enjoy your blog, anyway! :)
I also get nervous posting positives, probably because it feels so foreign! But if it's how you feel, then why not just go with it?
I've never in my life eaten cereal with a spoon larger than a teaspoon!! One of the things that annoys me about these so-called "treatment professionals" is the way that they ascribe every little thing to an ED and say it's disordered behavior... it just makes it that much more difficult for us to separate what's "normal" from what isn't. But you know what's ED-fueled for you, and that's the only voice you need to really listen to.
<3 <3
Whoo, experimental cookery! My favourite :P
I eat my cereal with a teaspoon too, and I will admit it's because I want it to last longer - but that's because it tastes nice, not because I'm trying to eat at a snail's pace :P usually you know, really, if an eating behaviour is OK or destructive. Other people might look and think they can tell, but only you know what's going through your mind at the time. Bollocks to everyone else, you have done amazingly well this year and no one has the right to tell you any differently. Just because you are taking things slowly physically doesn't mean you will never recover, it just means you are laying down stable foundations for your future.
My brain is not working properly today, sorry if this is a bit rambly!
x
Ooh blueeyedheart (and Fi too!)
You are so very right about the spoons and normal! I almost always preference a teaspoon and have done my whole life. I know its not disordered becasue the larger spoons struggle to fit in my mouth! I may look like I'm all grown up (at 28) but my dentist tells me my jaw is like the size of a child, a smaller child at that! It's bone people so its nothing I did to cause it!!!! Thus smaller spoons :).
Besides, I think if you're ENJOYING food then it should also be okay to take a bit longer to eat it as long as it doesn't become an exercise in ridiculously delaying food and yes I know lotsa people do that but one can eat at a fair pace with a small spoon!
Also, I don't know about Fi, but I've spent a lot of my life eating quickly to try and overcome the gastroperesis which then leads to super sore and way overfull stomach... but if I didn't eat quickly, I didn't eat much! So eating with smaller implements (and just planning smaller servings of things at a time) is helping to slow that down a bit and thus not create havoc with the gastroperesis!
Just extra 625am thoughts :)
xo
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