Twisted.

“Call me if you need to.  Otherwise, I’ll see you in May, when you’re working full-time and completely freaking out about it.”

These were the parting words of Robin, my NP, earlier this afternoon.  Right before she patted me on the shoulder, wished me Merry Christmas, and sent me out of her office.

I sat in my car and cried.

May?

As in the May that’s five months from now?

I should be thrilled about this.  I should be shouting it from the rooftops.  I am healthy!  I am no longer required to make monthly trips to Robin’s office so she can check up on me – I don’t have to be weighed, or harassed, or see her again for a whole five months!

But I’m not thrilled about this.  Honestly, I think I’m struggling to even be happy about this.  How can I not see Robin every month?  How can I still be okay if she’s not checking up on me all the time?  My nurse practitioner has always been a safety net – how can I possibly be safe if she’s not there? 

I hate that this is bothering me so much; I feel like I’ve become the nightmare client who has no respect for professional boundaries.  I’m like that character on Monk, who gets upset when his therapist refuses to meet with him on the weekends.  Or the guy in What About Bob? who tracks his psychiatrist down while he’s away on vacation.

Maybe I am blowing things out of proportion – I will admit that I tend to do that sometimes – but that’s honestly what I feel like.  I’m nervous I won’t be okay, and I’m also worried that my relationship with Robin will change if I’m not so sick any more.  Isn’t that twisted?

Familiar.

“Would you trade it for something else?” Joyce asked me.

The eating disorder, she had meant.  I was sitting in her office, feeling slightly miserable because I’d spent the majority of last week struggling with awful thoughts about my body image and gone to bed every evening wanting to throw up.  I was royally ticked, too; obsessing over my weight and how I look seems stupid, and petty, and vain.  And, in all honesty, after nearly 6 months of the eating disorder not being much of an issue, I was upset that all my thoughts about it had suddenly popped back up.

Joyce says that, most likely, it’ll always be an issue for me.  Body image will always be one of those pots that are on the back burner of my personal stove.  For a long time, my automatic response to stress and anxiety will be a desire to make myself get sick or starve myself. Which sort of sucks. 

“Would you trade it for something else?” my therapist asked me.  “Given the choice, would you trade the eating disorder and all the struggles you’ve got with body image, and perfectionism, and all of that for something like alcoholism?  Or cancer?  Or schizophrenia?”

No.  I wouldn’t.  Not ever.  And I guess this is because, at the very least, the eating disorder is familiar.

Funny how that works.  Do you think that anyone, given a similar choice, would choose their familiar pain?

Sick.

Doing heights and weights on the kids with the school nurse at clinical last Thursday, one of the 8^th graders weighed 118 lbs.  He was of average height and healthy looking.  He came in laughing, and seemingly happy.

When I was at my worst, right before I spent six weeks in a partial-hospitalization program, I weighed 124 lbs. 

I was 5’9” tall, 19 years old, and I weighed about as much as an eighth grader.

I’m starting to realize just how sick I was.

changing.

The past 5 years or so have been a blur of appointments.  Therapist’s appointments, nutritionist’s appointments, meetings with my nurse practitioner, doctor’s appointments, support group meetings…  I am on a first-name basis with all the ladies in the local phlebotomy lab, because my NP’s been sending me to get blood work done on a monthly basis for as long as I can remember.  I have grown used to this schedule.  My whole life has altered itself to fit around this disease, simultaneously being treated for an eating disorder and doing my best to keep it a secret from everyone around me. 

It’s scary to be getting better.  Exciting, but terrifying at the same time.  What will my life look like if I’m not seeing Robin once a month?  If I’m not sitting on Joyce’s couch on a bi-weekly basis?  My relationship with Susan has changed because I’m no longer “sick”, and it completely and totally sucks… Can I handle my relationships with everyone else changing as well?  These women have been a part of my life for so long – I have depended on them for so long – that I cannot imagine not having them there. 

In some demented, twisted way, a part of me wants to stay sick just to hold onto those relationships. 

Is it normal for people to miss the parts of themselves that aren’t there any more, even if they know those parts of them weren’t healthy?

Garbage.

“Remember – Nothing tastes as good as thin feels”

This is one of the many phrases clipped from a magazine and posted on the bulletin board in the women’s locker room at school.  I noticed it tonight, on my way into the college’s pool.

I noticed it, and then I ripped it down.

No one needs to be reading that garbage.

Baby-steps or Leaps and Bounds?

I’ve got an incredible friend, who’s name is Rachel.  She’s not my sister; Bird’s name is spelled Racheal.  However, I did meet Rachel through my sister.

Over the past few months, Rachel and I have become fast friends… something that neither one of us really expected, I don’t think.  We email one another every other day, at least, and call one another frequently.  We’ve become supports for each other, sharing our problems and helping each other move through them.  I’ve really come to appreciate Rachel’s friendship, and greatly value her opinion and advice.

Earlier this summer, Rachel and I decided that we both needed to focus more on the positive things in our lives.  We started to begin each email we sent to one another with a list of 5 positive things that had happened to us since we last wrote.  They can be blatently positive things, like “I got an A on my Nursing final exam.” or less obvious, like, “I got to work in the garden last night.”  The rule is that they’ve just got to be positive.

Below are Rachel’s most recent 5 Positives.  She sent them to me in her last email to me, and I was so thrilled when I read them that I asked for her permission to post them in my blog.  She agreed, and actually re-wrote them for me (very kindly) in a way that would look better in a blog post.  The reason I wanted to post them was because I want people to read them and be as ridiculously proud of my friend as I am.  So read Rachel’s 5 Positives:

 My baby steps towards recovery..

1) I always overdress much more than necessary.. trying to prefect my appearance. But last week I tried wearing ‘normal’ clothes, meaning jeans and casual shirts rather than my control top stocking, jewelry, heels and very overdressed outfits. And here’s my lesson: I was okay, I found I was much more approachable to people who didn’t know me. It was nice to not wear all that extra stuff too.

2) Tonight I had a grad party to go to. I had a really fun time with my cousin whom I’ve never been brave enough or socially able to meet. We spent all night talking and scoping out the nice looking boys. We got talking about life in general and about eating disorders and so I told her a tiny bit about my experiences. She asked me about it, and you know what? My first answer right away was that I had an eating disorder.. but then I regained sanity and said I have an eating disorder. My lesson this evening: I’m starting to see my ED as something in the past, and that’s all. And I learned that being healthy and sociable is SO much better than being sick and isolated..It’s just not worth it anymore to give up my life and be miserable.

3. Being at UR really has just put everything into perspective. High school and everything about it, the people, the drama, it’s all so small in the grand scheme of life. Yet it’s so easy to get wrapped up in thinking that it is being in the midst of it. But I realized that there’s just so much more out there and so much that I’d never be able to learn with my ED. How could I go into neurology if I’m too shaky from not eating to preform brain surgery? It would just get in the way of my future and prevent me from pursuing what I love. And I don’t want that to be the way I define myself any longer. I’d much rather be a cyto-geneticist than an anorexic.

4) I have, no had, about 4 safe foods that I’d been eating and that’s it because I was afraid of anything else.. my comfort zone. So three weeks ago I got a little bit of honey mustard on my turkey bagel, and it made a world of difference. So little by little I’ve been stepping outside of my zone. I began eating things like bagels (with cream cheese) and pretzels. I had waffles this morning (I’d called my grandma to tell her) and cake at a party. And you know what?.. to my disbelief, I didn’t go into a carb-induced coma or anything.. I was okay!!… I really really was, pushing good even! I wasn’t all weak and sickly like I usually get.. I felt a lot better. My mom and sister and grandparents couldn’t be any happier. My sister had asked me if I ‘got cured’ while she was at camp..She practically choked when I had eaten breakfast with her this morning.

5) I’ve been praying, a great deal actually for recovery. I asked God to please help me deal with those horrible guilty feelings I have after eating. To help me see myself for how I really am, not in some distorted way. I asked that He’d be with me every step and thanked Him for giving me strength. I also prayed that He’d help me take all this and use it to really help others. And He’s done all of this, I wouldn’t have made all this progress without Him.. He’s just answered me in so many ways.. I love Him so much!

So that’s my story of how I’m beginning to recover from my eating disorder. I’m trying to find any way that I can to use it to help others.

Aren’t those some of the most wonderful Positves you’ve ever read in your entire life?  Rachel called me last night and told me about a few more ways she’s stepped out of her comfort zone this week.  I squealed – like the high-school-girl-“Oh-my-goodness-no-way!”-can’t-contain-my-excitement squeal – because I was so happy for her.  Somebody leave some comments for my friend, telling her how happy you are for her as well…