New Experiences

I started intensive outpatient yesterday. This means doing 2 meals at home. However, I’m on disability and hardly get enough money to cover bills, let alone money to buy food. In shame, I told my dietitian this. She then took me to a food bank. It was an overwhelming experience. It was filled with fear foods, which were handed to me whether I wanted them or not. On top of that, while waiting for my turn to go through the line, the man at my table kept talking about being too fat and how he wouldn’t eat the bread because he didn’t want to gain more weight and so forth.

I now have food to last a while, minus protein, though I do have a whole frozen chicken in my freezer. I feel like an awful person for taking all this free food that I don’t want in the first place. I don’t want to eat it and I don’t want it in my house. How awful am I that I took food from someone who wanted it when I don’t even want this food??

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Today I will:

Yesterday sucked. I binged and purged and didn’t follow my meal plan at all. I was left with a lot of guilt and shame and disgust.

• So, today, I will follow my meal plan 100%.
• Today I will NOT binge and purge.
• Today I will focus on recovery.
• Today I will take time for self-care.
• Today I will let go of the past two days of failure and look to my future.

Weary

I am tired. I am weary. I have been so busy this week. Between appointments, spending time at the hospital with my dad, treatment, pre-surgery stuff, helping out around the house, plus we have been going through our storage unit trying to get rid of as much as possible so we can stop paying an extra $200 a month on a storage unit to store a bunch of stuff we don’t need. That’s physically exhausting between the fibromyalgia and the rheumatoid arthritis. I woke up this morning fatigued, tired, ready to sleep another night. My body aches and my brain feels like cotton. I have another day of looking through boxes and moving furniture and then spending time with my dad at the hospital.

I’m grateful to be able to spend time at the hospital. But I feel guilty if I take time to myself because he’s there 24/7 alone, bored, restless, in pain. I know I need to take care of myself too, and I’m trying, but finding the right balance has been hard. Today is a week since we ambushed him. A week he’s been in the hospital. He’ll find out more tomorrow about when he can come home.

In flavor heaven

Something you may or may not know about me is that I looove peanut butter. I don’t eat it often, but I love it immensely.

Well, tonight, I decided it was too late to throw coffee into my shake like I normally do (since I normally drink it in the morning) but I wanted to mix it up from just straight chocolate, so I threw a little peanut butter into my Shakeology. Can we say delicious?? It tastes like Reese’s peanut butter cups. It feels too naughty to be my healthiest meal of the day. Sometimes, and this is probably my eating disorder talking, I feel guilty for drinking my shakes because they’re so yummy that I feel like I must be doing something wrong.

Where is the line?

He buys me stuff all the time.

Groceries. Gifts. Toiletries. 

Today he got me some gifts. Just now, I stumbled across the receipt. It was a lot of money. 

I feel guilty.  I feel like I’m using him to get things. I feel manipulative. I feel like I’m stealing. I feel like I don’t deserve these things.

I feel cheap. It makes be wonder at which point do I cross the line into prostitution?

It doesn’t help that I hate it. It doesn’t help that I disassociate when he touches me. It doesn’t help that I feel like a doll in his hands, there only to receive him and help him achieve pleasure. It doesn’t help that the thought of it makes me sick to my stomach.

My anxiety has gotten really bad lately. I don’t go anywhere. I make plans to do things with people, and then cancel.

I feel like I can’t call it off. I feel like I owe him too much, financially. I feel like I owe him my body because of how much he’s paid for and bought me. I don’t think I can ever make up that deficit, so I don’t think I can ever leave.

Last Night

Last night, I was hanging out with my ex. We’ve maintained our friendship for the last year.

I don’t know what was different about last night, but he called me sweetie and we kissed.

And we kissed.

And we more than kissed.

I was enjoying it. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him, how much I missed being close to him. It felt good to be close to him again.

Then it happened. Before I realized it had happened, we went further than I was comfortable with. I suddenly found myself overwhelmed and scared. I didn’t know how to respond.

As I type this, I can see and hear all the people who tell you to “just say no” but it’s so much harder to do when you’re in the situation and you’re panicked and confused. I didn’t feel capable of stopping it. I felt trapped.

He didn’t know. He thought everything was fine. I disassociated and played the part. Why? I don’t know… I guess because that’s what I’m used to. That’s what I was trained to do.

I hated myself for it. I still hate myself for it. I wish I would have told him. I wish I would have stopped it. I feel dirty. I feel cheap. I feel like a liar. I feel sick.

Afterward, I wanted to die. I wanted to take out blade and cut into the vein on my wrist. Instead I lay there and cried silently into the pillow.

This morning, he was all smiles. He greeted me cheerily and kissed me. I was revolted. I think then he could tell something was wrong. He invited me to come shower with him. I declined. He left shortly after, and I haven’t heard from him since.

I woke up repeating to myself, “I hate you, I hate you.” I keep finding it playing on repeat in the back of my mind. I’ve been near tears all day.

I feel like I have no right to be upset. I am not justified in my despair. I feel guilty for last night, and I feel guilty for feeling guilt.

I don’t know where to go from here.

 

Adventures in food and guilt *self-harm trigger warning*

Earlier, I tried to eat an apple.

I failed.

I can’t eat apples whole. When I was a teen, I had braces and if I tried biting off of the whole apple, my brackets popped off, so I started cutting my apples into slices. I had braces for a couple years, so this was years of having to cut my apples.

My disordered brain latched on to this, and I haven’t been able to eat an un-cut apple since.

Well, earlier, I went out to get the one piece of food in the house that belongs to me: one apple. However, my youngest brother was sleeping on the sofa (a story for another post) and has to be up early for work so I was trying very hard not to make noise. Our cupboards have latches on them and will NOT open or close quietly, so I wasn’t able to get anything to cut it with.

I went back to my room and tried a couple bites, but I just couldn’t do it.

A while later, I decided to eat some crackers. However, I was feeling really guilty about it before I even started, so I decided to make a cut on my arm for each cracker I ate.

I know, I know, I am not brilliant. M

Anyway, this was going along fine until the 13th crackers. Then, I accidentally cut too deeply.

I sat there in shock for a couple seconds. The unexpected pain and seeing my skin hanging open put me into a momentary state of confusion.

After coming back to reality, I recognized that I needed to do something about my arm. I quickly grabbed some toilet paper and pressed it firmly on the cut for a while to slow the bleeding.

After a while, I removed the tissue to check the cut. I got this terrible, sick feeling in my stomach when I saw my skin just hanging open. I pushed the cut closed and it just fell open again.

At seeing this, I knew I probably should go get stitches, but that wasn’t happening. I decided to just dress it carefully. I pulled out my Hypafix tape (best stuff ever) and I bandaged my arm, being sure to make sure my skin was tightly pulled together at the cut. I wrapped up the rest of my arm to cover the other cuts, then cleaned up all the signs of anything happening.

Now, I’m a little dizzy and very nauseous, but my arm doesn’t hurt. It will, that’s for sure, but right now it’s fine.

While I was dressing the cut, I asked myself whether those crackers were worth it.

The answer is most definitely “no”.

Bulimia picture dump

I don’t even have this excuse.

Not without the laxatives, at least.

I’ve had friends offer to buy food for me because I never had any in my apartment.

If I’m going to have ice cream (or any sweets) I definitely don’t want to do it around others.

I really wanted binge food the other day, but didn’t have a way to get any, and wondered whether I could buy some on Amazon. Then I realized I’d have to wait at least 2 days to get it.

I’ve consumed some strange things in the name of bulimia… (Never forks, though.)

Every time

A moment of sheer terror

I think my cat had a seizure. I was so scared I cried. I’m so worried for her. She’s my life and my baby. I can’t afford to take her to the vet. I feel like sucj a bad pet mother. I’m snuggling her, terrified she’s dying and there’s nothing I can do for her. 

Because I’m selfish

I was told I am selfish for not wanting to live. Not that I am selfish for planning or attempting suicide, just for the sole lack of desire to exist. 

I was also told I’m selfish for not caring enough about others to stop being bulimic. I am selfish for making them worry. 

You know what helps someone who is struggling, who already thinks little of themself? Telling them that you agree with all the horrible things they think about themselves already. Telling them how selfish and inconsiderate they are. Not only will that make them see the error of their ways, it’ll guilt them into being less selfish and more mentally healthy. 

Oh…wait…