hanging in there?

God, it’s been a rough few weeks.
I don’t know where to begin.
I’m just on the roller coaster of emotions, and I can only blame it on stress.
I’m working so much, too much, I know that, and this overachiever lifestyle is only harming me.
I’m helping way too many other people…and not helping myself.
It’s really ridiculous.

I miss this blog–it was my baby for so long. I don’t know why I am abandoning it.
I have lots of my clients talking back to their illnesses, using the same strategy I used to do, but I’m not doing the work to myself.
I’m telling them to be kind, while I continue to beat myself down.

This is not healthy.

Three weeks ago, my old therapist called me and asked if I wanted a full-time therapist position at a residential facility eating disorder unit.
Not even kidding. This came out of nowhere.
I haven’t really heard from her since- apparently, it is in the developmental stages, and I’m scared to even get my hopes up because it’s really up in the air, but talk about a dream come true. I’ve been scrapping three part-time therapy jobs, barely making livable wages, working 60ish hours a week. A full-time position would be a dream right now. And working with ED clients? That’s why I went into this field in the first place!

But, I’m also struggling in my own eating disorder life, and that’s because I’ve been stressed as fuck. I’ve been bingeing, craving junk food, not exercising as much as I’d like to, and not sleeping as much as I need. I feel fat, and fat isn’t a feeling, but whenever I “feel” that, it means I’m feeling really insecure, incompetent, and unsettled in my own skin.

But, in my own shallow words, I FEEL FAT.
And there is nothing more triggering in recovery or in quasi-recovery than the threat of being fat.

I’m not fat, but I am not taking care of myself. There’s a difference.
I need to start.
Otherwise, I’ll be burnt out before I know it.

Just needed to get this off my chest. Had a horrible binge earlier. Feeling the post-food coma of laziness, guilt, despair, and anger…it’s nothing I haven’t felt before, but it’s painful nonetheless.

Hope all is wel with my lovely readers. Shout and say hi! I miss this community.

easier to blame the disorder

Again, I haven’t been blogging much, but I plan to write in here everyday this week, only because…accountability? It’s cathartic? It’s my own free self-therapy.

The past twelve hours have been hard.

I want to blame food, because that’s easy. I want to blame my body, because that’s easier. I want to blame the eating disorder, because that’s the easiest. And I always want to blame cookies, because why should those exist? How pretty and neat it is to wrap up all my fucking problems and feelings into this one category- this medical diagnosis. How controlling and concrete and nice that all looks.

I’ve struggled for about ten years. I’ve been weaving in and out of whatever this labyrinth called recovery is for about two or three of them. I’m so high-functioning that it’s ridiculous. I’m so good at hiding and lying and secrets that it’s only now starting to worry me. This disorder is SO GOOD at being this secretive lover, fleeting in and out of my life whenever it desires.

I’m still half-assing recovery. I’m afraid I’ve lost meaning of it. I’m afraid that I’m no longer afraid of slipping into old behaviors. The old defenses keep cropping: denial (I’m fine and nothing is wrong; there is nothing I need to be worrying about), intellectualization (I’m just being HEALTHY! Everyone can eat certain things in moderation!), rationalization (It’ll all be over tomorrow; I’ll start again tomorrow), and of course, the best one: minimization (I’m being melodramatic over nothing. People are much worse off than I am. I’m not even “sick enough”).

There will always be food. There will always be my body. But there doesn’t always have to be an eating disorder.

I have to keep preserving. I want to. I really, really, really want to keep onto the path of healing. I have to take care of myself. I’m taking really good care of everyone else. I’m holding the woes and worries of my clients. I’m doing killer therapy. But none of that matters if I’m in shambles.

None of that matters if I don’t choose active recovery.

To be continued…

the hard days.

The hard days hurt.

They feel like square one.

They look like a wrecked battlefield. 

They taste like defeat.

The hard days make me doubt myself, make me loathe myself.

I wish they could go away forever.

And yet,

I feed into those hard days.

Pun definitely intended.

I let them define me.

I let them overrule me.

I let them get the best of me,

I choose to focus on the eating disorder,

Rather than focus on the emotions of life

I choose to focus on the food,

And how little or how much I can have of it,

Because it provides escape.

Because it’s the cheapest, easiest, fastest comfort I know.

And comfort-

Why am I still chasing comfort?

When the disorder is anything but? 

When the disorder is chaos and pain and absolute horror?

Why chase comfort

In a voice that only offers sugarcoated deceit? 

Why seek solace

In the hands of your greatest enemy? 

 

 

I wish there was a CURE button. I wish there was a black-and-white recovery solution. I wish I could stop the obsession forever. I can’t. I don’t know if I ever will. But I’m trying. I just hope it’s enough.