Thursday, December 30, 2010

My tentative plan was to contact my university's eating disorder's clinic when winter session started in January.

I don't want to.  I know I need to because I'm getting more and more out of control, walking further and further down this dark path.  But i can't bear the thought of gaining weight, of going back to what I looked like before.  Maybe one day I'll post pictures.

This last week and a half at home, all I have done is binge and purge.  Now...my binges may not be as large as others.  I still probably stay below 2,000 or 3,000 a day with most of that ending up in the toilet.  I ended up reaching my GW3 of 110 pounds which shocked me, but my weight has been fluctuating wildly between 110 and 115 because all of the purging has made me retain water in the worst way.  Yesterday I had a moment that really scared me quite a bit when I was purging.  I had binged on a piece of biscotti, some potato chips, soem pretzels and soem bread.  All very dry.  I thought I had had enough liquid to wash it down, but apparently not.  For once stuff started coming up without my really forcing it, and it all got clogged in my throat in a big gummy mess before it came ripping out of my throat.  For a bit, it felt like I was suffocating and I honestly thought I was going to choke to death on my own vomit, or that my esophagus was going to rip open and I was going to bleed to death in my bathroom.  Afterward, my throat felt mangled and torn apart, so much so that I managed to talk myself out of a cereal binge later that night and just went to bed instead.

Today I haven't eaten.  Well, that's a lie.  I couldn't sleep last night, as has been the cas really for the last couple of days when I haven't been with my boyfriend because all I do is sit awake and count up all of the calories I have consumed, purge or not.  But I woke up and decided to make some cheddar cheese scones for my boyfriend and hairdresser because I was going to see them both today.  I 'm an amateur baker and have a little teeny tiny business going on the side as well.  Strange, eh, considering I hate eating so much.  But I ate one of the cheddar cheese scones right out of the oven, and immediately purged it up and made sure that it was completely gone because there was stomach acid that followed it. That was the only thing that I've eaten today.  I may allowed myself some steamed vegetable dumplings (45 calories each) just to keep my body from going back into starvation mode and keep it burning off this horrible fat on my frame.

This is sic.

When I was in high school, back when I was seventeen, I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression.  I tried to kill myself twice, and I was actually put in suicide watch in the hospital for a couple of days.  Not fun.  My depression was so severe that I actually suffered from psychosis in the form of hallucinations, both visual and auditory.  I know that my depression is getting quite, quite bad again when I suffer from hallucinations and these have been happening again.  When I was driving to the supermarket the other day, it looked like the highway sign was waving back and forth, leaving a spectral trail in its path.  I wasn't sure if it was a hallucination or if I was getting an aura for a migraine, but then I got an auditory hallucination as well.  When I get an auditory hallucination, I don't have specific voices talking to me, per se, one telling me that I'm worthless, or a couple telling me to do something or not to do something.  It's like I'm standing in the middle of a party and there's just the din of conversation and I can't make out any one particular voice.  It's awful and it makes me feel absolutely mental.  I've never, ever told anyone in my life other than my therapist about these hallucinations because I know they would think that I was absolutely mad and just write me off.  I don't want that to happen.

So, it's not necessarily because of the EDNOS that I want to go into recovery, but because I know that my depression is getting bad, and it is getting very bad very quickly.  I have been self-harming almost every day and I know that if things continue, it will not be long before I am back on suicide watch.  This sounds very pathetic, but I don't particularly care about harming myself, but I couldn't do that to my boyfriend.  I'm not glorifying myself in any way, saying that I'm irreplaceable, but it would be unfair for him to have to deal with the fallout of my death or my hospitalization or anything like that, and so for his sake, I want to get out of this horrible mental state that I'm in.

I have a hunger high.  I often wonder to myself why I binge when it feels so, so good when I restrict.  I feel happy in a way when I eat less than 500 calories, happier still when I eat less than 300, and elated and accomplished when I eat nothing.

Is...there any way to do recovery and continue losing weight?  It didn't work the last time I was in recovery.  In fact, I gained well on thirty pounds.  Ugh, the thought's enough to make me sick.

Thank you for reading all of my scrambled thoughts.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Yesterday was the worst day that I have had in a very, very long while.  I purged seven times.  Seven.  I know that to some that is not very much, but for me it is.  In a normal day, I will purge perhaps three times, maybe up to five if I am feeling particularly stressed out.  It was such a bad day, and I was left feeling particularly disgusted with myself.  Let me take you through my day.

The morning started out with my boss getting on my case about eating.  My boss recently expressed his concern about my eating and I told him that I would be seeking treatment in the new year.  I also stressed to him that it was important that I do it on my own terms and in my own time, but my boss is also a nosy asshole and doesn't quite understand that.  For breakfast, I eat oatmeal at work every morning at 9:00.  This is my routine.  I don't like when it is disrupted.  Yesterday morning he harassed me for about fifteen minutes about putting real sugar into my oatmeal instead of Splenda.  Why the hell would I do that?  I understand that you're concerned, but understand that nagging me about what I'm eating is only going to compound the problem, make it fifty times worse, and make me toss out the oatmeal instead of eating it. And believe me, when one is restricting as heavily as I am (400 calories a day), 140 calories makes quite a difference.  Would you like that on your head?

So now all of that attention is drawn to what I'm eating for breakfast when normally I like to hunch over in my own little corner of work and eat my oatmeal slowly and quietly with my own additions to it: lots of cinnamon to boost my metabolism, and lots of sugar to make me feel satisfied.  But that's blown.

There was a work holiday party that we walked over to at around 11:00.  It was potluck and it was served buffet style.  Panic.  Can you think of any worse situation for someone with EDNOS to be in?  I certainly can't.  Having to stand in line with fifty other people in the room, worrying about who is watching you fill your plate, judging what you're eating, worrying about who is thinking you're fat because you've picked up one too many rolls or put just a bit too much hummus on your plate.  I forced myself to put food I wouldn't normally eat on my plate because I don't want my boyfriend (who has been enormously helpful and supportive) to worry, and because I wanted to appear as normal as possible to my coworkers.  I grabbed a quarter of a cup of three bean salad, a tortilla chip, a piece of cheese bread (!), two pieces of sushi, and a boiled carrot.  This is a lot for me.  I was in the middle of crossing the room to grab a diet Coke when my stupid bitch of a peer cranes her neck quite obviously to look at my plate as I was passing by, scrutinizing everything that was on my plate.  Then she said, very loudly, "just checking to make sure that you're eating!"  In front of a room full of people, half of whom I don't know.  Lovely.  Great.  Way to make me feel normal and comforted.  Fuck you.

I go to sit down at the table where all of my coworkers and friends are sitting, and one of my coworkers asks me about how long I've been vegetarian (nearly seven years).  My boss takes this as his cue to the entire table, several times over, jokingly "oh, Q just doesn't eat.  No Q just doesn't eat at all.  Well Q just doesn't eat, look at her!  She just doesn't eat."  Great, wonderful.  Food in my mouth is sawdust.  Pardon me, I have to go purge.  Purge #1.

I don't stay away long because I know that if I do, then the jokes about "hey, did the food stay down after the meal" will start.  And guess what, they did.  I had to leave before I started yelling at someone, so my boyfriend and I walked back to my building.  Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.  I've had a lot of coffee and tea today, I say.  Purge #2.  Get the food out of me, I can't stand it.  I hate it.

I'm deeply upset and angry at this point.  What right do all of these people have to meddle and embarrass me at such a large function?  If you are genuinely concerned and have any modicum of respect for me, you would pull me aside and say something, wait for an appropriate time.  You would not embarrass me in front of strangers.  So after my shift was over, I went to my boyfriend's house to decompress.  I tried to make myself have a snack because I really, truly am trying to get better.  I had some PB2 (45 cal) and told myself I was only going to have 5 saltines to go along with it (60 cal).  20 saltines later and I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.  Lots and lots of coffee and tea, I say.  Purge #3 in my boyfriend's toilet.  How fucked up.

I go back to work, well and determined not to purge anymore today.  My stomach is already in serious pain and my liver feels like it's going to tear itself into pieces.  But the flip in my brain has already occurred and I'm well on my way into binge mode now.  I grab a pot of Cheerios and a bag of bar-b-que Fritos from the convenience shop and scarf them down while I'm in the office.  Run to the bathroom.  Purge #4.  I manage to pull myself together after that.  I think it's out of my system.

Oh shit.  Dinner with my boyfriend and his roommates?  That's okay, we're going out to get sushi.  I can handle that.  I've started eating a little bit of fish since I've been so vitamin deprived, but not too much because, after years of being vegetarian, it really does tear my stomach to shreds if I eat too much.  So we go out to dinner, I'm eating along with everyone else, but not too much.  I avoid the oysters, I avoid the fish head (because ew, gross).  And then his roommates start in on me.  "You know, I never see Q eat.  Q doesn't eat.  Nope, never see Q eat."  Despite the fact that they've just fucking sat across from me and seen me eat.  Also starting in on me is the girl to whom I've confessed about my eating disorder, to whom I've told about my extreme restricting because I had to tell someone.  The girl who knows that some days I don't eat anything at all, and on good days I may allow myself to eat up to 600 calories, still well short of the 2000 that I should be consuming per day.  And she joined in merrily, teasing and joking maliciously about how I wasn't eating, correcting me when I said that I do eat.  At this point my boyfriend was as livid as I was, particularly as he knew the day that I had been having.

I had to leave early to go babysit, but made a quick pit stop at the bathroom before I left.  Get rid of the sushi, get rid of the mushrooms, get rid of the salad.  Purge #5.

Got to my babysitting job.  Boys were all asleep, all I had to do was keep an ear out to make sure nothing was amiss.  God, I wish that they were awake so I could have run after them.  I lost my bloody mind.  I'm deeply, deeply ashamed to admit that I went on a binge in a house that was not mine.  Raided my neighbor's closet and ate half a bag of veggie sticks, Triscuits, nuts, two NutriGrain bars, a massive slice of whole grain bread with soem apple butter, then purged it all out in their toilet along with the french fries I'd scarfed when I got home just before heading over to their house.  Purge #6.  What fucked up person binges on someone else's food that they spent their hard-earned money to buy, that they use to feed their three children, and then promptly tosses it back into their toilet, befouling their house?

I run home, still crazed, scarf down a cinnamon roll that my mom had made earlier this week.  More French fries.  Soem bread.  Some pretzels.  And then I throw it up in my bathroom so forcefully that vomit and toilet water splatter back up onto me, onto the bathroom floor.  Purge #7.  I am so thoroughly sick with myself at this point that I want to die.  I take my prescription for the night and hope that it kills my liver so that I can just die in my sleep and put myself and everyone else out of my misery.  I know I have to go into recovery and I know that party of me really, really wants to.  The other part of me just wants to lie down and never get back up again because dealing with people and their selfishness and evilness is too fucking hard and I'm sick of it.

Right now I hate the world.  If you've read through all of this, I appreciate it.  I know that it was massively long and whiney.