A light in the dark.

Her name is Nancy, and today she was like a light in the dark.
Nancy didn't fix me today, being fixed from this problem doesn't happen in just a one hour session with your amazing therapist.
But Nancy rubbed some of the vomit off my vision of the world and helped me see things I didn't know were there. They've been there a long time without me even knowing. I guess that's what happens when you build a wall around.
When I told Nancy that it was like looking over a foggy bridge trying to find freedom from my eating disorder cycles, she told me that there was another way to see it. She told me that it's more like having a string, and every step I take that I am adding a Pearl, and eventually I will have a irreplaceable Pearl Necklace.

I don't know if I'll ever have a full necklace. I don't know what entitles a "step," to be a "step." Finishing a meal? Not purging? But is it really a step when that one step causes you to take ten steps back to make up for it?

She also told me that I needed to keep a feelings journal, where I would write my feelings. She told me it cannot have to do with food, or fat. Because she knows I have lots of those journals, she took one that she still has filled with "pig," stuff. She said I need to face my feelings rather than numb them with my eating disorder. I don't want to feel, I hate feeling. I cannot control rage, but when I am starving I don't have the energy to be in total rages, so it all works out.

The Retirement of my Fingers

Finally, I can purge without doing this to my hands. It has been getting easier and easier to just..blah.. But today for the first time I purged without my hands at all. My stomach muscles just contract just the right way, I push in the right places.. and out it comes.

I couldn't sleep last night, because all I could think about was how fat I am, and now when I see Nancy she's not going to think I'm really doing bad, because I look like an elephant. Even though my father commented yesterday on the fact that I keep losing weight rapidly, my mom told me it is getting way out of control again. I don't see it, I see such a fat person in the mirror. I try clothes on obsessively to make sure they're still baggy, measure myself, weigh myself. I am losing, but I don't see it. I never see it. Wouldn't matter if I was 600 pounds or 60 pounds, I would see something similar. Ha, that's an exaggeration, but you get the point.

Feeding the Hungery

I fed a hungry person today.
A starving person.
I felt good about it.
Because it wasn't me.
I was driving about in my car, and I looked over to see a homeless man digging through the trash, he was pulling out scraps of food and bags that he pawed through, finding morsels of calories to put into his body for nourishment. I wondered what it would be like to be desperate for food and actually eat it with no intention of barfing it out.
I felt sorry for the man, no telling his story. An Alcoholic maybe? Consumed by his addiction to the point of really losing it all, or Cocaine. Maybe something else, but whatever it was, I felt for him. I was scared to do so but I rolled down my window and said, "Sir!" he snapped his head toward me.
I was scared, but I said, "Are you looking for some food?" And held up the shiny green apple from my bag.
He smiled and he ran to take the apple. He smiled at me and showed that he had really straight but yellowed teeth, he was filthy, when he spoke to me I have no clue what he said, it was all mumbles and squeaks, I smiled and just said "You're welcome," and sped away as fast as I could.

He did me a favor, by taking the apple. I was going to waste the apple. If I didn't eat the apple and barf it up, I would have trashed it. So, he took the apple so I didn't have to waste it. And in turn I gave him some nourishment.

Just let me go.

I want to scream this to the world sometimes.
As scared and isolated as I feel with my eating disorder, I also just want to be let go so I can suffer on my own. Not because I sensationalize the idea of being broken and alone blah blah. It terrifies me, I am so scared of my eating disorder I can't even say. I don't want to be seen as dramatic and theatric, but at the same time I don't feel it's right to be needy and greedy and allow other's to sacrifice so much and put so much into a potentially very pointless cause.

I abuse, I lie, I manipulate, I neglect, and I crush all the relationships I have. Therefore I don't create any new ones. I did, back in January reach out, and try to live recovered while still binging and purging, I created a friend in the world, a few friends, a potential boyfriend. It was all a giant fucking mistake. What the hell was I thinking? Two people specifically, the boy and my friend Brandi are both being hurt. And the thing is that I am just going to watch them suffer while ignoring all calls, all messages, all attempts at anything. Everything they did was for nothing, all that we did together was for nothing.

To me friends are useless, because I can't treat them right. Boyfriends are even more useless, because I know that I can't even begin to invest in that sort of relationship in the slightest.

Family is the worst case for me, I am loved. My mother loves me, my sister loves me.

"I won't give up on you."

God I hate that line. 

I just want to yell at them, "JUST LET ME GO, PLEASE!" Because I am pointless, I am not worth the effort because I will never get better, they will just try and try and it's all for nothing at all.

So close, yet so far away.

So close, yet so far away. It is the story of my life. 

Not always, but most of the time. I am not being a pessimist, I am not being woe is me. I am just stating this as a pure fact, and most of the time it is to no fault but my own.

Today while the family was bowling I had this thought when I bowled and had knocked all pins but one. 

So close.

I rolled and my ball didn't even miss the pin by a centimeter.

I have had the though of, "So close yet so far away," before, but it hit me again.

I am so close to living a life of freedom from my eating disorder, because I know exactly what healthy eating means. I know the "tools," to recovery. I know all the facts about how many calories I need per day, how much exercise, health facts blah blah. Yet, I cannot act upon them. I can say, "I will eat a healthy and balanced diet and exercise moderately!" I can say this and smile even, but can I do it? No.

If I am not bingeing, just the thought of food in my mouth, on my tongue, or the smell or sight of food is enough to make my heart beat harder, and my anxiety sky rocket, my thighs to feel suddenly as if they are growing, my stomach giant. I just hear it over and over in my head.. "A fat cell is forever, a fat cell is forever." 

I see the other side, but I can't get there. 

24 hours, Three 30 minute Meals

Okay, there are 24 hours, 1440 minutes every day period. About 12 hours are spent out and about.. scurrying about the earth doing our humanly tasks.

One of those tasks is supposed to be eating. Food, eating food.

Glorious, Right?

Thinking about eating three times a day, healthy meals that will keep you focused and strong and alert and healthy and blah and blah and oh yea.. blah.. It is easy. Easy to think.. Okay, for breakfast I could handle this.. lunch that.. and dinner that.. It'll all work fine.

Wrong. The emotional turmoil that eating three, even two meals a day and keeping them inside me causes is just horrendous. 

Breakfast, if any would be the easiest for me. I get out of bed, I feel weak, I feel nauseous, sometimes I have that clamping in my chest, sometimes I can't move my limbs for a few minutes, sometimes I black out when I first sit up.. So eating breakfast seems logical and safe. Of course my version of breakfast is picking at the breadcrust of toast or picking small pieces of cereal out of soymilk, consuming about ten flakes then dumping it, while cutting an apple into mico cubes into micro cubes and nibbling the peel off each micro mini cube.

Today I ate breakfast. When I am with mom for the day, I eat. I don't want her worrying, I cannot handle watching her cry over me, or worrying. She loves me, she supports me. When I am with her for the day eating is possible. When I am alone it is binge/purge or just don't eat. Mom is the only person whom I can say, "Okay, I will eat something." 

Three meals though, three meals is hell for me. 

By dinner time, I was a wreak. Of course, my day of calories only totaled around 570, but still that is 570 more than normal. Well, my version of "normal." So, two hours before dinner was due to happen I started crying.. and crying.. and crying.. and punching pillows, and crying. What to do? I was going to eat, but every cell of my being was saying "WHAT?! This isn't our norm here!" 

Dinner.. 

God, I hate dinner. 

I cried for another hour after dinner and didn't stop fidgeting the entire car ride to Grandpas, which was 2 hours. I craved my normal cardio workouts on the elliptical or to go on the 6 mile running trail I love. Or the toilet, to purge. Or maybe an epicac this time, or laxatives even.. I am not into laxatives, but the feeling of food inside me is just torture. I SWEAR that I could FEEL the calories coming out of the food and going into my body, lacing yellow lard into my thighs and around my abdomen, under my chin in billowing mounds of weakness and filth. 

I don't know how to think of food differently, but I hate feeling this way. I don't want to hate food, I don't want to be controlled by my hate for food. 

I ended the night by talking to mom for four hours. I told her about how scared I am, and how I am sorry that I keep falling back to this. She cried again for me. I cried for her that she has to deal with me. I told her I was sorry that I am such a dramatic drain ball of sorrow and pity and whine. We laughed at that because I was being theatrical on purpose to be funny. She informed me that if I lose 10 more pounds I will be IP status and she won't hesitate to play interventionist. She said she cannot lose me, and she won't let me die. She said she doesn't understand what I am going through but she supports me and wants to help. She is so different with me these days as opposed to when we did the whole Anorexia bit years ago. It was always fighting and yelling and control struggles and anger and name calling back then. I am so grateful that I have had her for these years because we have both learned so much, and she's never stopped trying or stopped loving me.

I am so grateful to have her, so why can't I just stop this nonsense and 'recover?'

I can preach this, I can ask this, I can say this over and over and over. 

But I will not stop.

I can't imagine my life without my eating disorder. 

It's raining vomit.

MAJOR WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES!!!

Right now, I feel like hell.

I am freezing. I can't sit up straight.. I feel like I am curling into myself, like I am going to curl up like a rollie pollie (pill bug) into a round ball and close up to the world forever. 

As I expected, I did binge on the Mazatlan. The pizza too. I binged on that this morning after mom left for work, she wasn't even out the door five minutes and I was in the fridge stuffing it into my mouth as fast as I possibly could, chuggin water and coffee. I binged on other things, lots of things. I am so ashamed for this behavior. I am so ashamed that I eat so much, like a pig. I shovel dollars and dollars of food, food that others would eat, food that starving people in third world countries would love to have. Just so that I can throw it all up.

I think it is selfish and needy and greedy and DISGUSTING, but yet I cannot stop. I get so starving, and once I start eating I am like, "I am going to barf it anyways, eat it ALL." 

After that binge/purge I went to take my dog to the groomers, after dropping him off I stopped by the store to get fruit and raisins and nuts. I ended up getting yogurt too, thinking of how yogurt makes purging so much easier. Then I decided that since I had three dollars in my purse I could buy a cinnamon roll with frosting on it to binge on later. I walked by this pastry around 15 times trying to tell myself I didn't need to get it, but it was only 50 cents, and I only have this day left for binge/purging since mom's off work for the next three days. I got the damned pastry. 

I ended up adding more to it, but this was initially what I binged on for my second binge of the day. I purged it all pretty well, purging seems to get easier and easier. It used to get hard after a week or so because of my gag reflex. But lately it's to where I don't even really need my fingers at all. Just bend over and press on my stomach, contract my muscles just the right way and blaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It all comes out.

Behold, the disgusting reality:

Why post this? Well to show nasty reality of Bulimia, it's disgusting. It's not pretty pretty mia darling. It's nasty and smelly and horrible. 

Bulimia is your hands being raw and bruised. 

Bulimia is your face being puffed and sore.

Bulimia is your mouth raw and burning. Your teeth yellowed and chipped.

Bulimia is your stomach swollen and aching. 

Bulimia is not being able to swallow even drinks after purging.

Bulimia is red broken blood vessles all over your chest and face.

Bulimia is yellow fingernails.

Bulimia is lying to everyone.

Bulimia is spending your graduation money on food.

Bulimia is stealing food.

Bulimia is eating out of the trash.

Bulimia is hell.