running up that hill

who else never knows how to start a post?
again, this should be easy for someone who is apparently good at writing essays! still, I never seem to know how to start those either. once I get going I can write and write and I love it, but the number of times I've sat in front of my computer or a piece of paper wondering how to dive into talking about Shakespeare or the Russian Revolution...maybe I'm just an indecisive person ;)

today was another day out with my brother, my mum's ill so I took him off her hands for the day. it's not swine flu, but it might be septicaemia though, she had it before when I was at school and apparently the symptoms are similar. I think she's feeling pretty rough though :(

ah well no complaints about spending time with my brother! perhaps I am a child at heart but who cares! we went for conveyor belt sushi in Picadilly which was brilliant...I missed breakfast so it was the first time I've ever taken five plates to make up for it. usually I get scared of volume eating so I just pick denser stuff and the kid eats more than I do lol. I think (please do not let this jinx me) that my stomach is feeling a lil better lately.

went to the natural history museum in the afternoon which was a total mental trip back to my childhood. there was much disappointment about the long queue for the dinosaurs exhibition though! here's a quick snap I took:



after that, errr I may have dragged my bro to Wholefoods. come on, tell me you wouldn't have done the same! it's only two stops from South Ken where the museums are soooo why not? here's my stash...



muesli for my brother (ok I had to placate him somehow, he was bored), Vanilla Heaven PB, Clif bars, Wallaby bars, mint carob (omg love this)

I also bought one of those Pack Tunch 'bars' (ok it's not actually a bar shape so I don't know what to call it!) but munched it for afternoon snack before I took this picture. twas really nice texture/satisfaction wise but I wish I'd bought a different flavour cause I didn't realise it would taste SO much of apple, I was hoping for more cinnamon, which I really couldn't detect. there's also lemon/lime and pineapple/coconut though so I'm not writing them off ;)

sidenote: does anyone have some CHEAP snack ideas for me? spending loads was fun but I am realising that my two relied upon ideas, bars and cereal, aren't ideal. I can't have cereal at every snack cause I have it at breakfast and it gets repetitive, and bars aren't cheap!

post-Wholefoods we went to Starbucks on the Strand, then headed off to Hamleys and the Apple store. small child's paradise much! tonight I am shattered but I love London, I could spend forever wandering around even if I do have to do 'kids' activities!

feel like things are looking up at the moment, I am much more motivated and happier than I've been in ages. I don't feel on edge all the time or obsessive/anxious and worried about everything. on the one hand it's great, but it makes me nervous that I know it's probably related to eating more and gaining. confusing, but now there's this lurking nervousness in the back of my head that I can only feel 'normal' on a weight gain diet, how am I ever going to maintain? argh. of course, I should trust that maintaining a healthy weight will be different to a very low one. but trust is a sticking point, lol. it didn't help that I expressed these worries at my last appointment and I think I may have been misunderstood, but she told me that I shouldn't worry and she would help me adjust my diet at my target, I don't need to keep gaining forever. bearing in mind that the target is a bmi of 17 soaking wet...argh. of course we agreed on that because I have never been at a healthy weight and I'm not a fan of freaking the crap out of myself before it's necessary, so I tend not to think about gaining more and just hope/pray that things will fall into place in the future so that I will! but now I'm scared of facing the dilemma that I won't feel mentally 'good' if I stop and maintain there even for a few months, but throwing myself into gaining more weight than I've ever done in my life, just as I get back into uni probably? could be a crap dilemma. I don't know why I am overthinking this now, I should probably stop as I feel like things are going really well and I'm trying to think of all the ways they could go wrong :P

on another slightly dull note, I think I have to weigh myself and I am freaking the heck out. my last weigh-in was last week and I won't have another one for at least two weeks, maybe more. I need to see what's going on, but I'm equally terrified of gaining/not gaining/too much/not enough...you know the score! any tips for non-freaking out?

night all :)
x

as it's Wednesday, I have to share an amusing fact with you all...I only just recently figured out what 'hump day' meant...it was one of those things I'd been reading for ages and just skimmed over, then when I actually thought about it everything snapped into place, and I thought 'my gosh, I'm really quite blonde sometimes!' so now I know and my life is enriched...but for someone who is supposed to be an English student in a great department I really need to wisen up a little :P

anyway. the past few days have been adventurous indeed. (not really, I just thought I'd say so!). took myself off to the library and dragged a pile of heavy books home...yes, History geek and proud!



today was 'babysit the small child' aka my eight year old brother day, so we went swimming (aka messing around on the flumes in a leisure pool!) and bowling. thankfully my stomach managed to settle down because in the morning after breakfast I really thought I was going to be sick...great timing! still, our little excursion proved that my body is not infact totally kaputt...probably I will sleep well tonight though!

picked up a brilliant new sandwich to take out (ok don't think it's actually new new, but it was the first time I'd seen it!). haven't had pesto in a long time and it was AWESOME :)



also did some thinking. oh I know, groan and look away now! ;)
the title of my post first came from reading around and wishing that people I know with EDs (and other mental health issues actually) could be able to have more compassion for themselves. now the obvious, most glaring facet of that would be how brutally we can treat ourselves when we are ill, pushing our bodies and minds to the limit...thinking we should 'just be able to cope' with pretty much everything, no matter how horrific.

but it has also been playing on my mind that a similar version of this unwillingness to forgive ourselves any weakness can carry over into recovery too. not just in blog-land, but on other websites and real life too - I know so many people who I feel just plain don't give themselves credit for what they've achieved. the attitude that being ill was just 'selfishness', 'vanity', 'immaturity'...I understand this, because it makes leaving the eating disorder behind a much more clear cut choice...but it saddens me because it almost feels like passing judgement on who we were and deciding that recovery will make us into new and better people (not just healthier ones!). I don't believe that anyone puts themselves through hell because they are selfish, or immature. it's difficult and painful to think about the functions the eating disorder had for us (not least because we realise what we are missing!). but I feel that for me, recovery will mean respecting my past choices, yet wanting to change them. coming to terms with the 'loss' of mistakes I've made, but not blaming.

as far as all this applies to me - I've done things I regret terribly due to my illness. when I came home this February I felt barely human, and didn't act it either. I was waiting for all the boxes to be checked before I was admitted to hospital for a few days, and during my appointment I had broken down in tears and said that I didn't want to die and I was terrified. all true. I also begged and lied through my teeth to avoid being admitted to a general ward due to my potassium levels...saying I would do everything right, not put myself in danger and so on. to be honest, I wanted the few days to a) push my weight down more and b) binge/purge as much as I possibly could before I went in. I wasn't allowed to drive and I couldn't walk far so I told my dad I wanted to 'go window shopping' in town. total excuse to buy as much food as possible. I still can't believe I came back to my parent's house and deceived them like that when I quite honestly could have had a heart attack at any point. just DID.NOT.CARE. so yep, I have had a lot of moments of hatred for myself during that time. a lot of times where I have thought that I must be an inherently selfish and thoughtless person to put my own 'addiction' so to speak above anything else. just the amount of money I've spent on this sickens me! but today's thoughts are: I am not recovering because I hate mySELF when I am ill, but because I deserve better than that. anyone does. I have screwed up, lied to myself, lied to everyone around me - but that's what this illness does. I didn't ask for it and sure as hell didn't want it. I hope all of us can shift the balance towards being PROUD of ourselves now rather than ashamed of the past. cause it's definitely making me feel better :D

blogging while movie watching again - The Matrix Reloaded this time :D

snack recently consumed was a favourite I discovered while on my road trip with Katie - Crunchy Oatbakes cereal with soya milk and sliced banana. ok, so I should probably be a normal person and eat cereal in the morning, but I bought it this afternoon and was so pleased with my purchase that I wanted some tonight! I'm a huge fan of cinnamon and nutmeg and this is basically concentrated essence of both. (ps, that's clearly not all I ate :P I forgot the pic again until I'd munched half of it)



this was my ACTUAL breakfast, and one of my current favourites: Total greek yogurt, agave, Weetabix Crunchy Bran and lemon Nakd raisins. usually consumed with another banana, cause y'know, I heart bananas obviously.



I'm still super ridiculously tired at the moment, seems to have struck full force today. I was trying to watch a documentary on iPlayer about pandemics and ended up falling asleep for an hour and half AGAIN! this has happened to me before when refeeding so it's not a total surprise but it always frustrates me no end. throughout my teen years I was able to juggle a 'life' and my disorder somewhat, and I always had some sort of functionality through pure adrenaline even when at low weights. granted, at my worst points I was still totally miserable, this didn't make being ill any more bearable, but I did keep my life going to some degree. this Jan I went ski-ing at a bmi and frequency of behaviours where I really should have been abstaining from any exercise at all, and up til the week before I went IP as an emergency I was still at uni handing in my essays. of course, I don't intend to glamourise this. there were points when I was perversely pleased with myself at being able to 'cope' with my illness and not be totally disabled by it, but to be honest it was physically and mentally exhausting and horrible to do what I did, I just didn't feel 'allowed' to stop, until I was literally put in the position where I had to in order to avoid earning myself a bed in a general hospital.

ANYWAY. I did have a point. which was that refeeding frustrates me immensely purely on the basis of feeling like I have 'become useless' and get so tired and spaced out, where logically I would expect to be filled with energy and far more functional than when I was ill! living at home doesn't help with this last point, as demonstrated tonight where I got to be the target of some more jokes about how I'm a 'lazy teenager' and 'never do anything'. of course my parents can't really be expected to understand anorexia and how that will translate itself in my mind, nevermind why I'm always fine until I try to recover! but it is rather depressing!

so in the spirit of reframing things I guess I'm trying to see the next couple of months as an opportunity to rest and rebuild some strength rather that 'achieve' anything. if I can achieve some mastery over my eating disorder that'd be a start! part of my trouble, I think, is that I worry about 'getting out of practice' at life. I want to jump right back in there at once, as soon as I've decided that's my end goal. anything less and I worry that I'm actually NOT being healthy, and not having a full time job/studying etc is a sign of mental apathy! ahh I don't know. it's all very confusing. suffice to say I have no choice right now unless I want to work in Tesco's and lie about how long I'm staying for! plus it's only two months until I leave for uni. I guess this is evidence of how my fear probably isn't based in logic, more in a disordered 'whyyy are you sitting around eating when you're really inactive?!?' train of thought.

many thanks to everyone for the kind comments by the way :)
I had forgotten how helpful blogging can be and I'm very grateful!

eta:
ok I had to add this pic from the other night as it's rather relevant to the 'having a life' theme and my friend just tagged me in it on Facebook. tis at a bar in Soho last Thursday.

evening everyone :) or y'know, whatever time it is in your part of the world!

I'm currently blogging while watching Munich (best film ever) and just finished eating my snack. Here are some silly pics for your viewing pleasure...

this is me, with a highly appropriate new hoodie (currently breaking a lot of ED rules, mwahaha)



and yep, I kind of ate half this bar before I thought to snap it. sorry, just tasted too good! I totally thought of Jessica when I opened it and noticed that it really smells of cocoa, like she said in her review awhile back! so good.



as far as 'real life' goes, I met up with some old friends from school on Thursday/Friday and had a brilliant time. I was really struggling and having a hard time after my weigh-in (more on that later :P) but being with people and trying to forget about it really WAS the right choice. we also had Indian takeaway, which was brilliant, and honestly did not cause that much anxiety cause I just went with the flow and told myself I wanted to model myself on my healthy friends (the few glasses of wine may have helped the anxiety relief too!).

being around people is great for me, I think, cause it reminds me of what I want in life and how 'normality' doesn't have to be terrifying. I'll be honest, I almost wanted to throw in the towel and not go because my head was a mess of confusing thoughts, as I said after my weigh-in that morning. it gave me a break from thinking about all that rubbish and now I think/hope I'm looking at it from a more detached perspective. I expected the gain, which was 1kg so fairly substantial, but what got my head spinning was being asked if I am 'ok' with it, and if I continue gaining fast apparently I can always talk about reducing my diet to gain more slowly. now obviously I'm not 'ok' with it !but I'm coping (I think!) and I really want to get to my target before I move out in October. obviously I doubt I will keep managing 1kg a week seeing as I just increased my diet to get that gain, but if I manage .5 it's totally possible for me to get there. anyway, my dietitian was telling me that I might not manage to reach the target, but it doesn't matter and that any gain is a good one. NOW I'm realising that she said this to make me feel less pressured and stop me from thinking in a black and white way about it. but at the time I was going crazy feeling like it wasn't 'ok' for me to get there cause I hadn't been 'told' to! crazy head. my rationalisation now though - this is good. I have to OWN this and gain the weight for myself, not because anyone said it's necessary. I mean, it's not like anyone was going to start reading the riot act if I went off to uni at a bmi of 15. it's me who would lose out, everyone else would just get on with their lives (without me!)

so, after all that rambling, the point is - I will own this. by next week I will be more than 20lbs above my lowest weight. I will 'do this to myself' because I want to, not because anyone can force me to. by October I will have gained over 30lbs this year. I have gained weight many times in the past before, and I always thought that I 'had' to...to stay out of hospital, to stay in school...this year I realised that I 'can' stay at the weight of a child if I am stubborn enough and old enough that no-one can force my hand. perhaps it took that to make me start to realise that it is no life. I just hope that taking responsibility for weight restoration can make it stick.

of course, I am slightly putting a brave face on this. if I do well this week I will get to a weight I've been below for almost a year, and am somewhat terrified of. altho I haven't gained a lot yet, just the psychological effect is making me feel totally out of place in my body. at least while I was gaining in hospital I knew I was still emaciated...now I am aiming for a weight where I will probably look relatively healthy, a weight which I have never stayed at/above for more than a few months. this time I intend not to drop below it again once I get there, and that terrifies me. but I am not letting this make me restrict, because I swear I have freaked out and done that enough times for one lifetime. I need to be done with this.

had to start with that :D
one of my amazing, devoid of any nutritional value, delicious espresso cupcakes. which I may have, uh, eaten three of in the past two days. and considering having another one in an hour or two. lol, they need using up before they go stale soooo...

had a pretty good day, I've gotta say. I went to pick up my letter from the doctor's surgery about returning to uni, only to find I had to pay £30 for it! I thought this was ridiculous enough in itself until I opened the thing, and found out that it was TWO LINES long. brilliant. it filled me with mixed feelings too, as it said that I'd 'responded very well to treatment'. um, discharged self AMA from both treatment programmes I attended this year (inpatient and daypatient). I think my GP is either thinking wishfully, or just assumes that gaining a bit of weight means I responded well. unfortunately I also forgot my dietitian's appointment today, so not doing well on the 'proving him wrong' front! this wasn't deliberate tho, I am just disorganised. she's rearranged it for Thursday really early in the morning, ouchies. serves me right. hopefully I will have some good things to say about this week, I hate going in there and not having done anything positive.

going to face a bit of a challenge tomorrow, my mum and brother are going away for a couple of days so I will be alone in the house. really do NOT know why this is always such a trigger for me as they DO go out anyway and don't watch me eat every meal. I think it's probably just a psychological thing, but if I can do well with my intake/activity/life etc regardless I will be very pleased.

made a great dinner tonight...on top of the learning curve in baking with *real sugar* etc, here comes the frying learning curve...



prawns, mushroom and spinach fried in sesame oil, then added some teriyaki sauce
and the finished product:



with 'five grain mix' which I bought in Newcastle's Chinatown. this is SO good, it's a mix of brown rice, black rice, soybeans, pearl barley and...um...ok I confess I forgot the last one! anyway, it's good. way more interesting than plain rice, and packs in more nutrients/calories ;)

I've been SO tired today it's unreal! not sure why as I don't feel like I've done much, just that trip to the doctors to have my pockets picked and a trip to the supermarket. I drove home at 11 last night tho so that may have something to do with it :D. also, does anyone else find they have LESS energy when they start eating more? it drives me insane. I don't actually know how much I'm eating (am staying well clear of counting or anything like that cause it will probably make me insane and stressed about it) but for the past couple of days I've had a 'just fucking EAT MORE already' attitude at every meal. plus you know, all that icing! I think my body is leeching all my energy to digest or something. it had better stop soon cause I hate getting shattered in the day, I slept for an hour and a half this afternoon!

tomorrow's missions:
send off an RSVP for my friend's 21st
call my car insurers and find out if they can give me a decent quote to take the car to Durham
maybe go and visit a friend in London (crap, must text her now!)
go to the damn leisure centre and ask about that cheap membership (I was meant to do this today when I fell asleep!)

firstly, THANK YOU guys for welcoming me back. it was very much appreciated :D

I am trying to be a good blogger and update with pertinent things going on for me...and let's be honest, last night I had a bit of a crazy emotional rollercoaster which is worth talking about! one of the things which I was rambling about in the car on our recent road trip (we did a lot of rambling :P) was that I'm starting to wonder if telling me I can maintain a low weight and go back to uni is one of the best things the NHS has ever done for me. hold up, no I'm not going insane! and I don't mean that it's one of the best things they ever did for my eating disorder! at the moment it seems to me like being given what I see as 'permission' to live with my eating disorder has given me the opportunity to get really angry about it. I think it's something I had to experience first hand for a few months to realise that, as happy a face as I may put on, putting up with anorexia in my life (and interfering with every aspect of it!) really drives me crazy! when I'm relapsing and actively losing weight it's always seemed like there's a tangible end to the process...being forced to gain weight, having to turn things around to stay in school, hospital etc. but now what terrifies me is that I can very clearly see an option where this just DOES NOT end. since I have been stable for months it's very difficult to do my usual 'denial' and tell myself that I will 'eventually' surely gain weight/eat more cause I don't have the 'staying power' or whatever. which, mind my language, is a load of fcking ED'd bullshit...cause I can tell very easily now that I will only let go of the reins on my diet if I do so very deliberately.
I think I had a point here. which is that more and more in the past month or two I've been feeling just plain pissed off at this whole thing. at realising, finally, just how ill I really am and how much my life has changed compared to my old friends who are off enjoying themselves at uni/in life right now. we have a reunion in October and I don't want to go to it and listen to everyone's stories while thinking 'well, this year I made a good stab at giving myself a heart attack/renal failure, then I sat around in hospital being infantilised and getting bored out of my skull'. I have a great group of friends from school, and we used to talk about the future with so much anticipation. I really never believed my eating disorder was 'serious' enough to hold me back. I think I told myself it would just 'take care of itself'. suffice to say, I had plans. ack, once upon a time I was pretty damn intelligent. I managed 4 As at A level and 3 advanced awards despite being emaciated and crazy at the time. now? what am I good at? nothing useful in 'real life' to someone without a totally distorted ED'd brain, that's for sure!
this is what was going through my mind last night when I start crying with frustration at about midnight. I have no idea what brought it on, but despite being pretty much inconsolable, it did give me hope in the sense that I have never been this angry/upset with my life before. my keyworker in hospital told me that I would really recover when I was sick and tired and angry with my illness. and back then, I wasn't. so I calmed myself down by telling myself that maybe this is progress. it feels very dangerous to not be cynical for once and admit it, even to myself, but it could be a good thing. on the more amusing side, I decided last night I was going to break a 'rule' and eat something late at night, since I had been up crying and watching crap TV for hours. I ended up eating a banana with tons of PB (no other food in the house on Sunday!) and then feeling dreadful cause it was Sainsbury's basics and had palm oil in it. oops. more DCD for me in future. but I felt like that was a big step. I'm realising lately that I scare myself into keeping my diet controlled cause I have the most ridiculous fear of overeating ever. which makes sense in my illogical head because I binge/purge (so I 'can' overeat?) but absolutely no sense in that I never binge in an 'unplanned' way and I have never in my life objectively binged without purging. so I know that it's stupid but I still tell myself that if I eat something 'extra' it will be 'overeating' and therefore still not healthy, even by 'recovery' standards. STUPID. it really creeps me out how smart I can be at tricking myself into bad habits.

I'm going to meet one of my best friends (and my future housemate) now, as I spoke to her on MSN late last night when I was upset and being a lifesaver, she invited me over for a cupcake baking afternoon :D. ok, so cupcakes on their own won't fix everything, but they could certainly help lol.
will try and take pictures of them and update soon ;)

helloooo :)
I feel like I should probably slide in shyly and apologetically right now, having not updated my blog in, uh, a rather long time! anyway, my return is probably best attributed to some of my brilliant blogland friends, and a very upfront honest post is called for, so beware, lol.

I went on a roadtrip to Durham with Katie this week, from Sunday to Thursday. if you read her blog you'll probably have heard this backstory, but we both went to university there last year (well, her at York, me at Durham) and dropped out in spectacular and ridiculous fashion when we were forced to admit that our eating disorders had gotten seriously out of control. the last time I saw Durham I struggled to walk the 500 yards to my dad's car carrying my blanket, and was only taking that route of transport because I was told I was too physically compromised to get the train home. this time I was full of boundless energy and happiness! hehe, well, mostly. I didn't find the trip as difficult as I thought I might, probably due to the presence of amazing friends so I didn't get lost in thoughts of the nightmare that the winter I spent there was. me and Katie also hung out with Jonathon, Antonia and Hannah (who will start a blog soon....doooo itttt!). it's funny, but we all felt like being in each others company actually HELPED us with our eating rather than holding us back (we all have eating disorders). not only did I stick rigidly to my meal plan during the holiday, I also broke a few 'rules' like eating while walking around in York, and eating at different times to usual. I know that Katie did too, and Hannah had a good couple of days intake-wise, so go them too! ;)

anyway it was chatting to these guys which prompted me to come back to my blog. I'll be honest, I felt a lot of pressure to fit in as a 'recovery' blog and chronicle loads of acheivements - if I had a bad day/week/life I felt like I couldn't post for fear of triggering people. but realising that lots of my friends are in blogland and my blog doesn't have to be just about 'recovery' but more about ME prompted me to return :)
with that, I have to add that if you DO find my blog triggering I honestly honestly understand and don't mind. I WOULD rather if people just didn't read rather than telling me to change what I write about though. I mean, it won't be full of numbers every other line or anything, and I'm not relapsing (and have no intention of it!) but I'll get this out of the way here - I am not at a healthy weight, and am not gaining at the moment. I gained and lost the same kilo about four times this summer before I held up my hands in defeat! if that bothers you, again, I totally understand, but this is why I want to make my blog more 'general life' than 'recovery'. in fact that fits in really well with my life plans at the moment! I genuinely do see myself entering 'full recovery' and gaining weight in my future - 'managing your anorexia' may beat hospital but it isn't fun. however I've been living at home for the past two years and at the moment both me and my doctors agree that this set up isn't productive or helpful in terms of recovery. so we've made the decision that I will move out (living with a few good friends) and return to uni, thereby getting back 'into life' first. I haven't made progress at home but I have proved that I can avoid relapse, so continuing that will be the first challenge when I move out, and later on I hope that I'll have more success with recovery in a different environment, as I find the one I'm in now incredibly counterproductive.
so, this was a very long disclaimer - but the gist is, I want my blog to be 100% 'real'. I'm not pointing fingers AT ALL (and this doesn't apply to everyone!) but I get the feeling that some bloggers feel pressure to only post the positive, or not post/skirt around things when they aren't going well. I know I did! but anyway, no longer. as some of my really close friends have blogs and I love 'em to bits, I'm gonna come back and be real without worrying about 'how my blog looks'.

this has become really long so I'm going to just leave it there and come back in a bit with more ramblings. but I will finish with a pic :)



this is (left to right) Antonia, me (looking really shiny!) and Katie. yes, I did steal it from her blog!
xx