Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve - Anorexia Style


Happy incipient diet-ad day!  Seriously... I freaking hate this time of year.  I love fall, I love winter, but I hate January 1st through January 14th or so.  

Anyway!  As you may or may not be aware, anorexia is a lifestyle.  Honestly.  For someone entrenched, or at least as entrenched as I am, it is a lifestyle.  It influences every decision you make.  Every thought you think.  Everything you see and do is stitched with anorexia.  It never leaves your mind.  Never ever ever.  

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing for the last minutes of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.  

2004- In Disneyland with my parents and my sister.
2005- In Hawaii, on the balcony watching fireworks with my best friend who I had just met 2 days before.
2006- In Hawaii again, at the Cheesecake Factory, picking at salad, with my same best friend and her family.
2007- At a party in Sunriver, Oregon, hating my (significantly heavier) body after just coming out of the worst treatment session of my life.
2008- In Las Vegas, sitting on the floor of my hotel room eating a grilled cheese sandwich.
2009- In Las Vegas, kissing my (then) boyfriend (now fiance) who had flown in to surprise me.
2010- In Hawaii with the (now) fiance, watching fireworks at our resort.
2011- In San Francisco, standing at the window of the hotel room, watching fireworks over the bay.

At the end of every one of those years except 2004, I was hating my body.  This year is no different.  I have accomplished a lot of things in 2012.  Made a lot of good friends.  Lost a few friends.  Gained some new family.  Lost some family.  Tried new things.  Went new places.  Got better.  Got sicker.  Over all it was a good year.

There's an hour and 31 minutes left of 2012 and what am I thinking about?

My accomplishments?  No.
My goals? No.
Fond memories? No.

What am I thinking about?  I'm thinking about how fat my thighs are and how I can get rid of my love handles that I hate so much and what angle is most flattering for a picture.

Speaking of pictures.... this is another thing that happens when a person has anorexia.  They become obsessed with pictures.  You see, pictures have the ability to make me look fat.  But they also have the ability to make me look thin.  So I take tons of pictures.  And this is one way I can tell that I've gotten a bit sicker: before, I would discard half the pictures I took because I looked fat.  Now I only discard 3 or 4 out of every 20.  Because maybe I really AM that thin.

Happy end of 2012 everyone.  I hope 2013 treats you well.

Seattle

Quiet.

Hello from Seattle.  I don't have much to say right now.  Just hanging in there.  

This picture grabbed me, though.

Missing Pieces

Sorry.

I realized after the fact that I left out a lot of important things from last night's post.  In my defense, I hadn't slept more than 3 hours per night in about a week and had just spent the day being flung from sea level to 38,000 feet, to 5,000 feet, back to 36,000 feet and back to sea level again (although airplanes pressurize at 10,000 in the cabin, so it should have been all the same to me.  Haha!)

Anyway... one of the reasons this blog exists at all is because I have an eating disorder and it is supposed to help spread awareness and help people understand that eating disorders are not:
-a choice
-fun
-just a "rich girl's disease"
-easy to overcome
-easy to live with
-easily fixable

Eating disorders are:
-painful
-scary
-my best friend
-my worst enemy
-capable of ruining lives
-sometimes fatal

I sometimes think to myself that other people (such as my parents, friends or fiance) can forget about my eating disorder when they walk away from me.  But I can't ever forget about it.  It's with me all the time.  It's always in my head, telling me really awful things.  

But... one thing I know for sure is this: imagine, if you can, that God (whatever he/she/they may look like for you) has a quota for eating disorders.  What if God had a quota for everything like cancer, AIDS, eating disorders, broken bones, deaths?  I would take this eating disorder if it meant that it would keep someone else from having it.  That is how hard it is.

So here's the parts of South Dakota I left out:

Eating yogurt for dinner on Christmas eve...

And then beating myself up for eating something else later.

This is what the dessert table looked like at our Christmas Day gathering at my mom's cousin's house.

One of my cousins later stated, "oh my God, I'm gonna gain so much weight!"  Furthermore, another one of my mom's cousins has an eating disorder and she was incredibly triggering.

This is what I had for dinner on the last night we were there.

Merry Christmas and South Dakota

Winterized!

So... it's been several days since I updated.  I was in South Dakota, freezing my ass off.  Nothing quite like the midwest in winter!  I have several pictures, links, anecdotes and other things to share with you from my trip.  But before I do, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year and best wishes for 2013.

Okay.. now on to the "stuff":

We (meaning my mom and me) got to Vermillion, South Dakota at about 1:00am on Monday, December 24th.  But first, let me back up just a smidge.

Sunday, December 23rd, I taught Zumba at 10:00am, rushed home, finished packing stuff into my carry-on suitcase (do you have any idea how hard it is to pack for below-freezing weather in a carry-on?!) and zoomed to the airport to catch a 3:30pm plane.  My mom only told me right before we left that we did not have assigned seats.  I was thinking, 'oh great, we're screwed.'  We almost were.  We barely squeaked on.  I was in the very front of the economy class and my mom was about 40 rows behind me on that 757-200.

So.  We get on that flight by the skin of our teeth and fly, uneventfully, to Denver.  We pull into gate B27 30 minutes late.  Our next flight leaves in 20 minutes out of gate B79!  As soon as the flight attendant opens the door I am barreling out of it, up the jetway and into the terminal where I discover we have to run clear to the other end of concourse B, which is about a half mile long at the very least.  My mom gets off the plane eons later and we literally RUN through the Denver airport.  I was laughing the whole way because we must have looked ridiculous.  I was in my parka and boots, carrying my backpack and dragging my mom's suitcase as well as my own, and she was running after me in slip on shoes and a ski jacket, her purse flapping everywhere.  We got to B79 only to find the flight was delayed - our plane wasn't even there yet!

We get to Sioux Falls, SD at around midnight.  It was dark and it was cold.   We rent our car, a very stylish, very white Chrysler 200 with remote starter and heated seats!  Oooo.. heavenly.  We drive speedily down I-29 and make good time to Grandma's.  One interesting thing to note was that once we got to Vermillion, I had to remind my mom how to get to Grandma's.  The "city" (such as it is) seems to morph and grow every time we go.

After tromping around Grandma's at 1:00 in the morning, trying to be as quiet as possible and of course making tons of noise, Grandma wakes up and comes out in her nightgown, pushing her walker and scares the living shit out of me.  She looked like a little whitish ghost coming down the hall!  I blew up my air mattress (manually), ate some bread and peanut butter because my heart was skipping and stuttering like crazy, and went to bed.

Before I passed out, I wrote a journal entry to be entered into my journal or onto here later.  Here it is (entry in blue):

Monday 12.24.12

Grandma’s house

2:00am

I must lose weight in South Dakota.  I was such a pig before I left, it was totally unacceptable.  I ate a little when I got to Grandma’s because my heartbeat was all crazy and I was shaking.  But tomorrow will be different… I will not eat very much. 

Here is the food/eating schedule I will write down (but I will add the times in according to when I wake up):

11)   Plain coffee from McDonalds w/ stevia and ¼ - ½ c. nonfat milk (might have to be ½ cup because the coffee is bigger than what I make at home)

22)   Tea with stevia

33)   1 packet oatmeal with ¼ c. nonfat milk

44)   ½ fat free yogurt

55)   fat free hot cocoa

66)   Try to restrict as much as possible during lunch/dinner if out.  Eat the oatmeal for the remaining meal. 

Also, I can walk here.  I packed gloves AND mittens, hat, scarf, hood, UnderArmour, hoodies, leggings, jeans, thick socks and boots.  I should be set.  No excuses here.  I can walk to the other side of Vermillion in about an hour.

Goodnight.

Well, it didn't really turn out that way.  But oh well.  Also, sleeping became impossible past 7:00am because Grandma's caregivers arrive at that time and, of course, have to shout to be heard.  Also, Grandma likes to watch Wheel Of Fortune reruns at that choice time of day, at about 1000 decibels.  It was snowy, though, and pretty.  I do love white Christmases.

Here comes the first link.. hold on, wait for it...

On Christmas eve day I took the rental car to go buy some bread and other random shit at Walmart (shush, it's the only option) and I discovered a wondrous thing.  Really brought the Christmas spirit to my heart.  God bless us, the car had Satellite Radio!!! Relieved, I turned it on and heard this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9mmhh_wvkA

I. Cracked. Up. Laughing.  I love this song.  I cranked that shit and rocked out all the way back to Grandma's.  I had it up so loud that apparently my Grandma, who wears 2 hearing aids, heard it from the living room.  "What's that racket?" she apparently asked my mom.  So funny!  Anyway I played the song for her later.  She was not amused.  She's 97 so I doubt very much she knew what "cock" meant in that context.  Ha!

I went for a walk in the 12 degree weather.  2 hours.  I was freezing.  Enough said.

Christmas eve my mom decided we were going to church.  Oh... no...  Me?  In church??? I have a Star of David tattooed on my back and the word "shalom" written in Hebrew on my right shoulder blade!  I do not belong in church!  

So after "Christmas eve dinner" (which consisted of grilled cheese sandwiches for my mom and grandma and a fat free yogurt for me), we went to Trinity Lutheran for Christmas eve mass.

I have to say, I had never really heard the story of Christmas before.  I knew it was "Jesus' birthday" and about the manger and all that jazz,  but never had I really thought about it.  I don't mean to be totally anti-Christianity, because I'm really not, but... pardon me, the story makes no sense.

So there's this girl, who sorta-kinda has sex with this guy but they never really have sex, just kind of dry hump and all that good stuff.  Anyway, she get's pregnant because she doesn't realize that there exists a thing called "pre-cum."  But oops! This girl is engaged!  So her fiance comes back into town and she says to him, "I'm pregnant!  But I never had sex!"  And for some reason he believes her and says, "wow! It's a miracle!"  And she's thinking "uh huh.. sure..... just keep thinking that..." and 2000 years later we are still celebrating Christmas.  I bet that Mary, whatever happened to her, is shaking her head in disbelief about what has become of the world.  I believe Jesus lived and I believe he was a really good guy.  But sorry, I don't believe he was the Son of God and I don't believe that Jonah lived in a whale and I don't believe whats-their-name lived for 900 years, and I certainly don't believe that people can rise from the dead.  That just cannot be.  

Nevertheless, the service was actually enjoyable.  We all lit candles and it looked pretty.  Then we drove around looking at Christmas lights in Vermillion.

Christmas day dawned clear and colder than anything I've ever experienced.  We drove up to Arlington, SD in almost sub-zero weather.

By the late afternoon, however, it had warmed up just a touch.

I've decided that I have a new favorite Christmas song.  I've heard it at Starbucks many times, while having coffee with my mom or sitting at a table drawing in my sketch pad.  For a Christmas song it is very easy to listen to.  Funny that it turned out to be Sixpence None The Richer.  I've known of them forever but I never would have guessed it was her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-b5IC_Jsfc

December 26th was a balmy 16 degrees!  I walked for 3 hours that day.  Here are some pictures from that walk:

This morning we woke up to a litte blizzard!

The roads were clear, though, and we had no trouble making to Sioux Falls to catch our plane.  On the 2nd flight, the guy next to me was fighting with his wife across the aisle the whole way.  I have never been so glad to feel the wheels hit the tarmac!  

So now I'm home... and tomorrow I am off again!  My fiance and I are going up to Seattle for New Years.  Here are some more random pictures from South Dakota.  XO! 

My Grandma opening Christmas presents before church on Christmas eve.

Me telling my Grandma what 16 degrees feels like (photo credit: my mom)

I learned to drink my coffee black with Stevia (fewer calories!)

My mom and I baked scones on December 26th.

Representing USD (Go Yotes!)

Some more random pics taken with my computer:

Peace out South Dakota, until next time. XO

Rant

Thursday

I'm sitting at my kitchen table, trying to make a meal plan for the day.  So far I'm stuck with:

9:45am - coffee with 2 pkts stevia and 1/4 c. nonfat milk ---- 28 cal

And that's all.

The rest of my food for the day (at least until dinnertime) will consist of half a fat free yogurt (40 cal), one packet of fat free hot cocoa (20 cal), one cup of corn flakes (1oo cal) and 1/4 c nonfat milk (23 cal), and 3 oz. of baby carrots (35 cal).  That totals 246 calories by the time dinner comes around.  Which will be at about 8pm, because I have Zumba.  Which should burn off those 246 calories.

I'm dying.  Whatever.

So anyway, things are crumbling around me at an alarming rate.  My family is going down in flames, my job is picking up steam (which I actually like, but it's hard to reconcile that with the next thing..), my therapist/dietician are at odds with my Naturopath about whether or not I should even be doing Zumba at all, I think I'm addicted to laxatives, 26 innocent people died in CT, two innocent people died in the mall here, my good friend is in the hospital, and my cousin, the only one who understood me fully, is dead.  

There's a whole other part of this that I don't feel I can really bring up on the internet, but just know that it has to do with my family (i.e. parents and sister) and it's breaking my heart.  I mean really breaking it.  I am so, so tired.  Sometimes I don't want to keep fighting this fight.  I'm sick of fighting!  Why can't anything ever just be easy?  Why does everything have to be so hard?  I've been asking that since I was a little kid!

But.... I know I am strong.  Better me than someone else.  At least it's me.  I will have this eating disorder and all the other shit, if it means that someone else is spared.

Hiatus

Grief

...is apparently something I suck at.

So, after a disturbed 22-year-old opened fire at the Clackamas Town Center in my city, killing 2 innocent people and injuring a third before killing himself, things got very strange very fast.  

On Thursday I found out via facebook that my cousin died.  She was only 33.  The autopsy report is not in yet, although I would not be surprised if they find she died of a heart attack.  

Then Connecticut happened.  Honestly I don't even know what to say about that... I think that, whatever I was going to say, it's already been said.  It's a tragedy.  Let's just leave it at that.

I can't do anything about the Clackamas Town Center shooter.  I can't do anything about Sandy Hook Elementary.  But could I have done something about my cousin?  I don't know. Maybe so.

She told me some things, back in 2008, when I spent about 5 hours with her talking one night.  I don't know who, if anyone, else in the family knows how troubled she was.  Should I have tried harder to stay in contact with her?  Could I have helped her?  I'll never know.

All I know is that the entirety of my life's encounters with her made tons more sense after I talked to her.  All of a sudden she looked different to me.  I understood her better.  She understood me.  We were both black sheep.  I always felt out of place in that side of the family... but now that I understood Hillary, it wasn't so bad because I wasn't the only one.  

But now she's dead and I am the only one.

God, she didn't always make the right decisions.  God, she wasn't perfect.  But God, she did the best she could...

....and God, I'll miss her.

R.I.P Hillary
1979-2012

Faith

Greetings...

...from my bed.  This week has been so insane that I can't even drag my sorry ass out of bed yet, and it's almost 10am.

Okay, let's start with the obvious thing:  what in the name of god is happening to our country??  Jesus Christ, maybe the world really is  ending next week!  The last 12 months, I swear, have been littered with more and more insanity and tragedy than I can remember from the last 10 years of my life.  People eating dogs, people eating people's faces, hurricanes blasting through cities, football players killing others and themselves.  Then in just this past week, two awful shootings.  

One in my city.  One across the country from me.  Both horrible.  Both committed by power-hungry young men who are killing themselves and taking innocent people with them.  What on Earth is happening?  

More tragedy - this time personal.  My cousin died late Wednesday night.  Nobody is really sure what happened, but to me it sounds like she had a heart attack.  I'm no doctor, but from what I heard... that's what it sounds like.  She was only 33.  I know she had an eating disorder.  And I'm thinking oh my god, what if that had been me?  

Yeah, that smacking sound was reality slapping me in the face.

Tug of War

Catch-22

It's a damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don't kind of situation.

If I eat, I can kiss my good mood good-bye.

If I don't, well.... do I even need to go there?

I have to keep my sanity today and tomorrow.  I have to help out a friend and I can't do that if I'm not with it.  Yes, this responsibility was kind of thrown on me at the last minute but... that doesn't really matter.  The point is that it's on me now.  There's nobody else that can help her for some reason, so I've just got to go and do it.  It's easier for me to just go and do it than to bug other people about doing it because they should be doing it rather than me.  That made no sense, I'm sorry, but... whatever.  My brain is not working right.  It's just busy up there.

So.  No food.  I just can't deal with that too.  I have to keep my cool to help my friend.  She's in the hospital and has to be out of her apartment by tomorrow.  For whatever reason, her roommate is unable to gather people up to do this, so that's where I come in.  And it's not exactly right around the corner.  Oh well. Whatever.

Today's to-do list looks a little bizarre:
-Do my laundry
-Do a load of my friend's laundry
-Find a Hanukkah gift for my fiance
-Bring stuff to my friend at the hospital
-Go to my therapy appointment at 2
-Go back out to the apartment to pack and clean
-Light the menorah
-Clean the kitchen
-NOT EAT!!!

Oh man... I need some more coffee! Lol.

Dispossessed

That Wasn't Me.

Well!  I just re-read last night's post.  You know what that was a perfect example of?  Possession.  

Not demonic possession, although I guess you could argue that it was.  An eating disorder is kind of a demon, right?  A metaphorical demon.

Anyway, that kind of thing happens to me all the time.  It happens often when I journal, even more often (all the time) in my head, and occasionally it pops out.  Sometimes it'll pop out aloud.  For example, one time I was at treatment and was having a meeting with my fiance and my therapist.  Someone said something about french fries and I just blurted, "I hate french fries!"  

Then I stopped.

And thought.

And I said, "No actually I like them."  Because I do like them!  But they scare me to death!  My eating disorder hates them.  They are bad for you... they are evil.... so that part of my brain just took over momentarily and those words popped out.  It was so odd.

It's rather like a tumor.  I've never had a brain tumor, thank goodness, so I don't really know what I'm saying here.  But to me it seems like having a tumor.  It's like a part of you (cells) that are already in your body (we all have some cancer cells) and they grow or get out of control (form a tumor) that hurts you and can kill you.  It's like that only different.  I have this brain, right?  It was already in there when I was born.  Then this part of it (the self-critical part) grew a bit, and then got a bit out of control and turned into a "tumor" (eating disorder) that can hurt me and maybe kill me.  It's not cancer but it kind of behaves similarly.

Not that I'm trivializing cancer - oh my god NO.  I have known people who have died of the disease and it is terrible.  So please don't take that the wrong way.  Both are bad.

And although I feel some better this morning, that vise-like grip is still on my brain and I really don't want to eat today.

Fail

WHALE!
***Trigger Warning!!!!!!!!***

I am a total whale.  I hate myself.  I fucking hate myself.  Tomorrow I cannot eat.  At all.  All day.  Not one bite.  I can have coffee, fat free hot cocoa (once. It's 20 calories), tea, diet soda, and diet cranberry juice (5 calories.)  THAT IS ALL!!!!!

Even though I did chew and spit yesterday AND today.... I still ate.  A lot.  So much.  It was horrible.  I cannot let myself lose control like that ever ever ever ever again.  My mouth is all cut up and sore from chewing and spitting crackers that are salty and pointy.  Good.  I should do it more, the pain in my mouth reminds me not to EAT.  

I am stronger than this.  What is wrong with me?!  

Okay, now that that is out...

I went to my therapist's group tonight.  It was awkward as fuck because I knew 2 of the people in there.  One was a lady I met in treatment in the summer of 2010.  She recognized me right away.  The other was a girl who was in DBT with me in fall of 2008.  All I could do was pray she wouldn't recognize/remember me because that particular group experience ended very badly for me.  At the end of the group she said to me, "did you used to go to DBT...?" and I was like, "....yeah."  Fuck.  So she remembers me as an incredibly hot tempered, spikey bitch.  Well... that's about accurate.  Too bad, I was kind of hoping to start fresh in this group.  Unfortunately that was not in the cards for me.

I don't know what to do because I can't imagine myself every really saying anything in that setting.  I was sooooooo quiet tonight.  Which is not exactly atypical of me; I'm often quiet in groups.  Mostly for fear of opening my mouth because half the time I don't even know what's going to come out!  Better safe than sorry!  And the lady I met in 2010 will remember me in a similar light.  Great.... 

I think it's a waste of time and money, but I can't very well say that after one day, can I?  I need to go get my sketch pad out and drag something out of my brain and onto the paper, because I'm sure my therapist will want to see something profound when I see her tomorrow.  

Good night. XO

Oscarina the Grouch

I am so irritated!

This happens to me from time to time.  Okay, more like all the time.  I've always been a very irritable person.  Add to that the fact that I have sensory "issues" (meaning certain sounds/textures/sensations that I absolutely abhor) I get flat out bitchy sometimes.  Okay, maybe more like all the time for that one, too.

The biggest problem sound for me is lip smacking.  I should just say mouth sounds in general, but smacking is really the biggest one.  Unfortunately for me, my dog's licking/smacking habits seem to have changed almost over night!  All dogs smack, it's just a fact.  Don't ask why I wanted a puppy - I don't know either!  That's why I like my pet birds... they don't have lips.

Anyway, the dog used to chew minimally, which was a relief for two reasons.  One, it meant she didn't smack as often as a dog who is constantly chewing and two, it meant our possessions were more-or-less safe.  However, over the last two days, Abigail (the dog) has decided it's necessary to walk around licking her chops constantly, and that it's very important to lick and chew every piece of lint, dirt etc that she finds on the carpet, and that it's absolutely imperative that she chew on a bully stick or himalayan dog bone at absolutely ALL times!  I am about ready to throw myself off a bridge here.  To make matters worse, I can't find my earphones so I can't put my iPod in to drown out the sound.  

Yesterday in the car was bad.  I was running errands with Abby and I was about to crash my car because her smacking was so bad.  I couldn't turn on the radio because she's afraid of it. She doesn't like music when she can't figure out where it's coming from and my car stereo seems to stump her time and again.  So I couldn't do that because she'd start shaking and whining and barking.  So I had to put up with her licking and smacking for an hour.  By the time I got home I was THISCLOSE to a break down.  So I went to Zumba.

Always a good alternative :)