Shame

I hate myself right now.

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I drew Kyle

Tonight we had art. I love art, it’s a great chance to process through things. Tonight, I got the idea to try to put a face to my eating disorder. This is what I came up with. It’s a grotesque, oozing, green monster with tendrils that go into my brain and body because it’s trying to control me. However, it has this antenna that has this beautiful butterfly hanging from it. I call the butterfly the beautiful lies my eating disorder tells me. All the things it claims to offer, the safety is seems to hold, the reasons I keep it around. All I can see are those lies hanging in front of my face, I don’t see the ugly monster on my back literally pushing me down (thus why the person is prone). The person is naked because my eating disorder tries to keep me in shame.

I named my eating disorder Kyle. The name is completely arbitrary, it just felt good to give the monster a name.

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.

Quite the day

Today, I got a jury summons. I’ve only received one before and wasn’t able to go. Normally, I would be excited to “do my civic duty”. However, you have to disclose whether you’ve ever been convicted of a crime. Here I’m going to let you in on a secret. I used to shoplift binge/purge food about 7 years ago. I was caught and arrested and scared straight. I really don’t want to disclose to people that I have to see in person that I used to steal. It’s embarrassing. I’m ashamed that I did it. I wish I could change it, but obviously, I can’t. So I feel repetitious about my jury summons.

In more exciting news, I bought a bike today! I also bought a new board game! So it was a very full day.

Grief, Vulnerability, and Shame

Today, I watched these two videos that my therapist assigned me to watch. They’re long, but if you haven’t seen them yet, I highly recommend them.

After finishing the video on shame, which I cried through, I felt ready to finally work on some grief work I’ve been putting off.

The first assignment was to make a Mad/Sad/Scared/Glad list about my sister’s death. It was hard, but good. Here’s that list.

• I’m sad that you’re not here anymore.
• I’m sad you won’t be at my wedding.
• I’m sad the kids are no longer a part of my life.
• I’m sad you will miss out on all future holidays.
• I’m sad you don’t get to hear our jokes and know our stories.
• I’m sad for all the “missed” time with you.
• I’m sad we’ll never get to go to another movie, you’ll never recommend another book, and never suck me into another game.
• I’m sad we can’t have girl’s nights.
• I’m sad all 7 siblings will never be together again.
• I’m sad my future family will never get to know you.
• I’m mad God let you die.
• I’m mad I couldn’t change it.
• I’m mad when I don’t think of you.
• I’m scared to feel the grief.
• I’m scared to let go of you.
• I’m scared of accepting that you’re gone forever.
• I’m scared of what it means to have a future without you.
• I’m glad you’re in heaven enjoying yourself.
• I’m glad you’re with your Savior.
  I miss you.

Hospitalization: Part 4

From my second morning on the Psychiatric Wing.

Yesterday, my counselor told me that pain is part of being human. She told me, “You can’t grieve your sister without feeling the pain and hurt and anger of losing her. And you can’t heal from the rapes and abuse unless you let yourself feel.” I know she is right, but the idea scares me tremendously.

It’s Saturday morning, 5:40. I’m waiting for 6 o’clock so I can take a shower. There are 2 showers on the wing and they don’t only let you use them between 6am and 10:30pm.

I’m tired physically, and keep yawning, but every time I lie down, I feel wide awake. Around 4:00, I got up to check the time (no clocks in the rooms) and another patient was up too. She asked if I wanted to play chess or checkers, neither of which I care for. We settled on Uno. We played several games, and both went back to bed around 5:00. I tried for 35 minutes to sleep, but was restless and just tossed and turned. It sounded like I might be keeping my roommate awake, so I grabbed my pen and paper and now I’m in the common area.

Earlier I was getting water from the kitchen when I saw a personal sized box of cereal. I so wanted to eat it. Eat it and purge it. And even though there were no other patients around to see me eat outside of mealtime, I knew there are cameras everywhere and a staff member would see me and judge me.

Ten minutes until I can shower…

Stereotypical Bulimia

Do some people really eat in the bathroom? That would gross me out. I thought to myself last night that I have become a stereotypical bulimic. Then, while searching for a picture to use in this post, I realized that I’m not. I’m actually just bulimic. If you google image search for bulimia, you get lots of girls leaning over toilets, girls eating in bathrooms, thin girls with measuring tape around their waists, etc. It doesn’t show the normal weight, overweight, obese women who have so messed up their thyroid and metabolism that losing weight no longer works but who can’t stop the binge/purge cycle. It doesn’t show the shitting yourself in bed, at work, or in public because you took too many laxatives. It doesn’t show the secretive eating and the crushing shame and the need to hide any signs you may have eaten. It doesn’t show the purging in bushes or public restrooms or the trash can in your room. It doesn’t show the hidden containers of vomit you have hidden all over your room that you worry your roommates/parents will smell or stumble across and the plotting of how to dispose of them without being caught.  I could keep going, but I think you get the point.

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.

 

Too much and not enough

Shame

One thing that many people don’t know about bulimia is the shame that is often associated with it. Shame ate the amounts of food consumed, shame at vomiting food, shame at “wasting” food, shame from laxative “accidents”, etc, etc, etc.

I haven’t felt that “bulimia shame” so strongly in a while as I did yesterday.

Normally, I am the one who does the laundry, at the laundromat, for the whole house. However, since I’ve had a fever of 102 and above for a few days, my parents went to do the laundry instead. I found myself in a unique situation: I was home alone. Naturally, I did what any good bulimic would do, I decided to binge and purge.

Who cares I was home with a fever? Who cares I was “supposed” to be out doing laundry? Who cares I had a terrible migraine? This was an opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted!

To further add to the shame, I ordered food with money I don’t have (as in it’s been budgeted for bills). Not only that, but my parents know I’m broke, so the whole time I was waiting for it to arrive and while eating it, I was terrified they would come home and find I had ordered food.

I ordered my food and waiting anxiously. I then answered the door in my shame, hoping the delivery guy couldn’t see it oozing from my skin. I then ate quickly, trying to get everything eaten before I could be discovered.

Unfortunately, I ordered more food than I could eat, which meant I had to go purge partway through. I covered my remaining food, and went to purge. The whole time I was vomiting, I kept thinking about that remaining food, about what I’d done, about how I would explain it if I was caught.

When I finished, I went back to my room to finish. The first thing I noticed was the smell of the food. Oh, great. Even if I finished, my room still smelled like that food. Even with the window open and fan going. You’d think I would have invested in air freshener, but I don’t have any.

I sat down to finish my food, eating methodically, only half-aware of what I was putting in my mouth. I watched Parks and Recreations on Netflix while I ate to help myself zone out even further. I finished my food, purged again, hid the evidence, and prayed the smell would dissipate before my parents got home.

By the time I finished both purge sessions and downing the obligatory laxatives, my migraine was pounding and it felt like my brain was frantically trying to escape my skull. I lay there in bed, pain in my head and pain in my stomach, filled with the shame of my actions, still feverish, and zoned out until I fell asleep.