Monday, October 13, 2008

wrestling with anorexia--winning right now

Well I feel I weathered a possible relapse. I was feeling sucked into that anorexic mentality that I don't deserve to eat, don't deserve to speak to people, everyone hates me, they are looking at my fat, etc. I think that my dog's death triggered this, as well as a new job and the associated pressures. I do need to be more vigilant when I see triggers coming.I can't be so cavalier; I can't assume that I will stay on the recovery road when I've gotten sloppy with my eating. I need to learn from this--I could have gotten sucked in again. Easily. I'm being careful not to further trigger myself right now because that was too close. I am eating real food, not junk and I am weighing in only twice a week. I won't go into a grocery store or go clothes shopping for a few weeks (for some reason, those situations trigger me badly.) I also need to go to my group--but it is tough because I am still new and already, a request to come in later one day was denied. I will try, though. It is all I can do. I think my crazy schedule does contribute to bad eating, but it doesn't need to and I certainly can't have the attitude that a skipped meal is a good thing. Like I was thinking, last week, that this crazy schedule would get me thin because it is so easy to not eat and I was thinking about how good that is. That is not my thinking--it is kind of like being possessed, weird as that may sound. But my mind is mine again and I know that weighing 80 pounds is unacceptable and extremely unhealthy. I want health, so I don't want to weigh 80. Of course, last week I really wanted to go back to my skeleton days. Life was less complicated. I got up, ate a few bites, exercised for hours, felt like I might die, ate a few bites, exercised again, weighed myself, took pictures (so I'd see exactly where that fat was lurking) and measured myself and read nutrition books and tried to calculate my basal metabolic rate and made spreadsheets of my caloric intake versus my calorie expenditure. And ate a few bites (maybe) and exercised some more before lying in bed awake all night, pinching and prodding my fat and my bones. I was a professional anorexic. Professional anorexics are basically treated worse than prisoners--they are essentially slaves, actually, (and I use that term to emphasize the seriousness of this illness, not be be cavalier about slavery), earn nothing and work all day until they are tired and ragged and they have nothing to show for it but being tired and ragged. They don't eat and sleep, they are denied love and friendship and warmth and health and comfort; they can't think clearly enough to enjoy beauty or to be interested in anything not pertaining to their affliction. God is diminished for them, or He is absent. They might feel unworthy of God, unworthy to pray or to worship.
Why is a body that looks pitiful and sick and revolting to 99.5 percent of the world sometimes worth everything to me? I know that my old body, be it the 70 or 80 or 85 pound one, with its cruel ribs and sharp hips and meatless ass was an ugly one. I hated it and I loved it. I thought I was ugly in it--in my present body, the 96 pound one, I usually feel okay--average, a little chubby but not hideous. Why would I want the hideousness again? I know that debasement helps no one and is not productive; I know God does not want that for me, no one wants that for me (except, sometimes, me).
Am a wrestling with this demon and sometimes it pins me down.

No comments: