Four days forward, three nights back

I've been putting off writing this for two full days, and my stomach is in knots contemplating how to put into words the failings I've been stumbling through since Tuesday. But my commitment is to honesty; this writing is intended to keep me honest and accountable. So, as difficult as this is to reveal - somehow putting it in words makes it feel more real and permanent than leaving it in the dark - I am going to do my best.

So far, this writing has been difficult, but relatively "shame-free." I have been fighting and feeling deeply, but I haven't been skipping meals or purging and my writing - thus far - has been about my recovery "victories." Even though I didn't always feel good about it, I had a solid four days of eating "sobriety" this week, with three meals a day and no purging. And then I slipped.

Time to write about the dark pig that lives inside me. I've been slipping.
Guess what world? I can't even do recovery "right."

Tuesday night I came to my little coffeehouse shelter to write, and before I left I felt okay - almost arrogantly victorious. I drove home and was fine, but before I even put on my pajamas my head was screaming. I still don't know what set it off - my best guess is that something triggered ED (the funny name we give our eating disorders) in group therapy. Our session was centered on "nutrition information," and the women in my group were really focused on what will happen to our bodies when we start eating regularly. They want to know if they will lose weight, or stay the same, or feel differently. I have the same questions, but for some reason the answers provided by the nutritionist made me feel like I was doomed to become a genetically fat, abnormal, angry woman.

Here's what the nutritionist said (according to the interpretation ED heard): "This is a hellish disease. You get everything you don't want - you gain weight, and have trouble losing it. Your cells will never again want to release fat. Your genetics determine your body type, and you have no actual control over your ideal healthy weight. If you don't get better, you'll be miserable and fat. If you do get better, your brain will work better and you'll be fat." My question remains - what if my brain gets "better," but really these crazy people are brainwashing me to think that fat is okay?

Yep, it's messed up.
Anyway, I kept thinking about our session and found myself getting more and more anxious. When I got home after writing, I tried to get ready for bed and distract myself by watching a movie, reading a book, and doing a crossword puzzle. I felt it coming, and didn't know how to stop it.

I was hungry. Stupid me. Hungry. How could I be hungry? I had eaten all day, and it was well past 10PM. I should have just gone to bed, but once I felt the hunger kick, I was stunned. The voice in my head said, "You fat pig. HOW CAN YOU BE HUNGRY? You're fat, and still eating. Pinch your love handles. Stop it. You failure. You're not hungry!"

Then I counted my calories from the day, rounding up and counting conservatively. I came up with 1600. That felt like far too much, even though I know that "regular women" need 1800-2200. And, I had worked a full pizza shift at the bakery, which amounts to me burning many, many more calories than average.

Enter the pig. While my anorexic mind screamed, "you're getting fat! Out of control and lazy. Stop it. You're not hungry!" the pig inside me was simultaneously fixated on eating something. I had to eat, the pig was rationalizing that I hadn't eaten enough during the day and that one snack could be okay. The two halves of my brain battled for twenty minutes, and I finally gave into the pig. I drank an Ensure, hoping that my anorexic brain wouldn't label it a "binge." But too late. I had screwed everything up.

The details of what happened next are still too hard to write about. I am embarrassed, and feel like I act like an untrained animal. Maybe I am an animal. The synopsis is this: once I decide that I have overeaten, I have to get rid of the food. If I don't, the world will know my failure. It will show up and I will get fat.

Purging is an awful, painful process. I hate it. I cry. I scream. It isn't something I want, but it's something that ED has convinced me I NEED. I think there are three main scenarios in which I get triggered to purge: One - I am hungry, but don't feel justified in eating (which, until the last few weeks, was absolutely every time I felt hunger. Now, I am trying to trust that I am allowed to eat three times a day). Two - I feel fat and need to do something to show myself that I am not satisfied, and won't just let it happen without a fight. And three - I need a distraction, and need to be numb for awhile. If I am obsessed with food and focused on eating, and purging, I am too stressed and occupied to deal with anything else.

So what happened on Tuesday night? I got hungry. I didn't know which voice to trust: the anorexic part of me saying, "you hungry pig," or the bulimic part saying, "you should really eat all of those cookies because you obviously aren't good enough to be a starving anorexic, and you ate all day today and are now, most definitely, going to be fat."

I don't know if I binge objectively or subjectively. All I know is that once I decide that I have "binged," I have to purge. And in order to purge, the more food and water I have in my stomach, the easier and less painful the process. Sometimes simply smelling food or entering a grocery store will set my brain off and I'll decide I've binged (without eating anything! I know that is insane, but in the moment, I honestly can feel myself getting fat). One time I woke up after having a dream about a potluck and knew that I had no choice for the morning - I had to purge.

Back to Tuesday night: I decide the Ensure was a binge. I couldn't deal with the fat feeling anymore. Instead of trusting my mom and my therapist (both of whom I had talked with earlier), I lost it. Instead of going to bed, I threw up (two episodes) and didn't sleep until almost 3AM.

This post isn't all bad news. Here's the big victory - even though I had a purging episode on Tuesday night, I woke up on Wednesday and ate breakfast anyway. I usually can't get myself to eat for days after an episode, because I feel like I need to wait until my system is cleansed entirely to try to be "good" again. But I ate all day Wednesday, and even had dinner!

But immediately after dinner, the voice started again. I had told my mom that I was going to the Vagina Monologues, and instead of calling her after I had eaten dinner, I sent her a quick text message and stayed inside my head. Instead of leaving my apartment to write, I tried to fight the voices but I also didn't leave because... because I knew they would win. I purged twice again on Wednesday night.

I got up this morning (Thursday) and thought, THIS HAS TO STOP! Mostly, because I don't have my scale anymore and I can't keep eating normally AND binging and purging. I will most definitely get fat doing something like that, and without a scale, I have no way to monitor it.

So, I went to work and ate breakfast. I was feeling full, but obstinate. I did not want to fail again today.

But then... I did. I ate the corner of a muffin, and before I knew it, I had convinced myself that I had screwed up and had no choice but to purge the afternoon away. I went home and had one episode - and decided that I needed to get back "on track" somehow. So, in addition to "cleansing" my body by throwing up everything I could imagine, I cleaned my entire apartment. Fresh start. My apartment is clean, and I had purged my way through lunch.

I have NEVER managed to eat dinner after a binge/purge episode. I can never rationalize it; there's no way that someone who has already eaten so much deserves to eat dinner. But tonight, I called my mom and told her that we needed to TALK on the phone after dinner instead of just texting, and I followed her plan to get a Subway sandwich for dinner. I ate it, with some Hot Tamales, and then biked my ass to the coffeehouse, where I am now sitting, stuffed and scared.

Usually, I starve until my survival mechanism forces me to eat "compensator-ily," and I always purge that food. But I know I still consume the calories, so I go back to starving. And I have always had a scale to make sure I'm not gaining weight.

I'm freaking out now. I have eaten regularly, AND binged/purged, AND I have no way to check my weight. Everything in me is screaming, "RUN AWAY NOW! You're already out of control."

But there's also a piece of me that is so frustrated, because while I was eating regularly and not purging earlier this week, I felt so accomplished. I was doing well; I was proud. And then I screwed up. And the thing with my disease is that once I fuck up, I have a damn difficult time rationalizing that I get a new start. I feel like I need to wait until I've been "purified" and "good" enough. To be pure and good, I must NOT EAT. It's an awful, evil cycle. I know that it's cyclical, but when I'm in it, I have a really hard time getting on a different track.

Moving back to the "healthy" track is why I'm writing this tonight. If I keep it hidden, I'll keep doing it. I'll keep getting away with it. I won't get better and I'll keep lying to my family and friends about how I've already eaten or am not hungry or can't go to the Vagina Monologues because of something or another. I'll stop answering my phone because between work, sleep, starving, binging, and purging, I have no time. And I don't want anyone to find out.

FIND OUT. I did it. Four times since Tuesday. I am dark with guilt.

BUT I REFUSE to keep lying. The only thing that's going to help me get better is to stop letting myself get away with it. Since MY brain is the thing that is sick, I can't trust myself to make sure that I'm behaving rationally and doing "well." My sick brain wants me to lie to everyone; my soul knows that when I stop lying, ED won't be allowed to get away with this stupid shit anymore. I would be lying if I said that I don't secretly WANT to get away with it... because I do. But half of me also wants to live a different life than this secret and dirty one. My work is to strengthen that half.

For today, this is still hard to write about. I am hoping that the honesty makes me brave and strong, and that eventually I can talk about the pieces of this that make me feel unworthy and eternally unlovable. And maybe, one day I'll realize that I don't have to "feel bad" about it (which, right now, feels like a naive and unrealistic dream), and that having this stupid and complicated disease doesn't make me a "bad" person.

I will end this and bike home. If I can get through one night without purging, tomorrow will be much easier. My friend Amanda is coming for the weekend, and my goal for tomorrow is to NOT STRESS about having her visit so that I don't set off an afternoon, "preemptive" purge before she arrives. One day at a time, one hour at a time. I am going to try desperately not to purge until she get here... and hopefully while she's here I can dig myself a little more deeply into the "healthy" track. Time for a couple more steps forward, right?