2008

I was watching a video just now that was uploaded to YouTube in 2008.  It had some little inserted pictures of journal entries written by the girl whose video it was.  They were dated like March, April, May, September, December of 2008.  My mind flew to 2008 and where I was.

2008 was an awfully difficult, strange, blurry year for me.  When 2009 came around, I couldn't have been happier to bid good riddance to 2008.  I was in Intensive Outpatient (IOP) at a particularly horrible eating disorder clinic here in Portland from October 1st to December 21st, 2007, so when I discharged from there, 2008 sneaked up fast.  

The ED clinic I was at put 40 lb on me in 12 weeks time.  They did basically nothing to fix my mindset.  This was the basis for the dark, confusing, strange year that 2008 turned out to be.  Nothing felt right.  I was as sick in my mind as I'd ever been, but now I didn't have the body to match how I felt anymore.  I couldn't get my mind around it.  I hated myself so intensely.  Never before had I felt that way, nor have I felt that way since.  

The earliest memories of 2008 I have are around Valentine's Day.  I helped my sister throw a Valentine's Party at her house for a bunch of her friends.  I was living in an apartment with the person I was dating at the time (and was supremely unhappy with the whole situation.)  I remember I wore a black T-shirt that said:

I Love You
I Love You
I Love You
I Love You
I Love you
I Hate You.

Underneath the black T-shirt, I wore a maroon thermal with tiny flowers on it.  I can remember severely hating my body.  My hair was dyed black.  That's really all I can remember about that.  

The next memories I have are from the week after Valentine's day.  I got a job working at a grocery store.  I wanted to work in the Starbucks kiosk but they weren't hiring at the moment.  I can remember walking in, marching right up to the GM of the store, holding out my hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Kate, and I want to work in the Starbucks here."  I think I surprised him.  He told me that the Starbucks wasn't hiring, but the deli was, and if I worked there I could get my foot in the door and be the next one into the Starbucks.  I hated working in the deli, but I did it until the end of March.  I can remember borrowing a pair of khaki pants from a friend to wear to work in the deli, but because I was starving myself again, they started to get loose and were falling down.  I can remember the deli manager making me go to the back to wash dishes because my pants wouldn't stay up and I didn't have a belt.

I remember going to a dietitian who told me she was going to put me on a slow weight loss plan.

All this time, I was losing weight.  Slower than I cared to, but it was happening.  I remember also having to take my car to the shop for a repair and driving a hideous gold pickup truck around.  Katy Perry's first album, One of the Boys, was in the CD player in my car all the time.  "I'm Still Breathing" was my emo song of choice.  I have a few scattered memories of early Spring, a breakup, my best friend at the time going through a breakup too.  I remember going with her to buy her first car.  I remember drinking Green Tea Lattes.  I remember skipping meals.  I remember my dad telling me that peanut butter would make me fat.  I remember having an Ab Lounger in my house that was totally useless.  And then I moved back home in May of that year, I believe.

I can remember liking a guy from work, having him over to my house when no one was home.  He wanted to... do stuff... I wasn't interested.  That summer we got a trampoline, and my sister and I jumped on it for hours.  We did flips, tricks, played the Genie game and Pop the Corn.  That August my bestie G from Canada came to visit.  When I look back at pictures from that summer I am utterly horrified by how I looked.  

Sometime that year my mom took me to see Dr. K, an ED doctor.  My memory doesn't serve well here because I seem to remember her being concerned that I was dropping weight, but the pictures tell a different story.  But I distinctly remember, by September of that year, being told I needed to not drop so much weight.  I remember wearing basketball shorts and Ugg boots to a therapy session.  I remember eating a muffin in the car that my mom got me from the lobby of my ED doctor's office because I refused to eat breakfast that morning.  

By November of that year, things were getting better.  I have memories of sitting on the floor in front of my full length mirror, staring at myself, willing the weight to go away.  December, my family went on vacation to Sunriver, OR, with my friend S and my sister's friend H.  I remember hot tubbing in the snow.  Right before that vacation was when I discovered I liked Corky, and my friend S was just falling for a guy too (they're now married with 1 cutie pie son who will be 1 in a few weeks.)  She helped me pick out clothes at a Macy's in Bend to wear to Las Vegas, which was the 2nd half of our vacation (that S and H were not coming to.)  That was my first time in Vegas.  My birds were boarding at Pet Barn where Corky worked.  That's how that happened.

We spent New Years in Vegas.  At midnight, when 2008 left, I was sitting on the floor of my hotel room, eating grilled cheese (I have no idea why), watching the reflection of fireworks off the sides of other buildings.  My sister was with me.  My dad was playing poker.  I don't remember where my mom was.  And that was the end of 2008.  I was so, so, so happy to see it go.