living is easy with closed eyes.

And then she recovered.......: So you think you want an eating disorder?



So I've fallen in love with this blog since it was recommended to me in treatment. I think the author is beautifully honest, inside and out.



I especially love this post because so many ignorant people or people who want to diet think it's funny to jokingly want an eating disorder. Sorry, but it's not a fucking joke. It's serious. It's painful.  It's deadly.



Sometimes when people say something as outrageous as that I just laugh at their stupidity and ignorance on the subject of eating disorders. But most days I want to scream in their faces and curse them out until they wished they hadn't said a fucking word about it. But I hold myself back, because I know that it isn't the way to get my point across. It isn't the way to educate.



So that's why I think this post is so vital, so important and so starkly and stunningly written. It tells every bit of truth about the horrors we face with eating disorders.



Check it out. Pass it on. It's a must read.

i guess you could say i had been having a 10cc love affair.

So I finally had my very first psychotherapy and education group (PTE) with my local eating disorder treatment centre. I've had a few 1 on 1 sessions with my counselor there, but it was sporadic and not as regular as I had hoped. So I'm glad this has finally started so I can get on with making the changes I desire. I'm excited (but nervous) to learn the skills they will teach me and how to put them into action to start my road to recovery.

 I also met with their dietitian and she has given me an ED specific meal plan to regulate my eating. That scares the hell out of me. I never eat. I go all day with no food, then binge and purge at night. How am I supposed to avoid weight gain when I have to eat 6 times a day?!? Now I know that's Jenna, my ED identity, talking. She's the girl in my head screaming at me all day, telling me what to do to be skinny and criticizing when I don't lose weight. Or even worse, when I gain.  But still, eating is terrifying. What if I do gain weight? I can't afford to. Literally and metaphorically. I can't really afford new 'fat clothes'. I'm already at a much heavier weight since getting sober. The methadone and my anti-depressants make me crave sweets. And now that I'm not on the streets and am actually eating (sort-of), my weight has sky-rocketed. And worse, I don't have the dope to keep me from eating. It was my miracle drug. I felt good (or nothing) and never felt hungry. Win-win.

But sobriety has been so much better. I feel good. I feel normal for once in my life. So I'm not willing to throw all this work away over a few pounds. I have hard days with it still. Days when I want to just give it all up. Roxy, my addiction's identity (am I starting to sound crazy yet?), starts telling me about all the good times we had, about how much easier it was. About how happy I was. She reminds me of how many more friends I had. She promises I'll be okay and tells me to just let her out of the cages she's been put in for nine months.

"You have money now. Just take a few days off and celebrate with your left over birthday money. Come on, you deserve it after all this hard work!"

'But what if I get hooked again?'

"You won't. I'll protect you. Don't you want to lose that weight too?"

And with that thought, Jenna's on her side. I may be strong enough against Roxy now, but if they both team up on me, it's almost impossible to say no.

So I make a compromise. Instead of the drugs, I just won't eat. No drugs, no food. How does that seem fair? It isn't. But until I can get them both locked up, it's what my choice is.

So as you see, my life and sobriety is dangling by a thread. Not only do I want recovery, I need it. I just want it to work so badly. I can't live like this any longer. I want to quiet the voices in my head. I want to smile because I'm happy. I want to eat because I'm hungry. I want to look in the mirror and like what I see. I want to see my value as more than my weight and size. I want recovery.

I'm finally ready to take the steps, not just dream about them. Although the first group was pretty dull and only the introduction, it made me optimistic. I felt for once that I can  do this. And I will. It will be a long, hard road. But I've walked those before and ended up stronger than when I started. So it's time to do it again, to raise my head high, lift my feet, and walk this journey to freedom.

always recovering, but never recovered, with the constant possibility of relapse.

Addiction is a lifelong disease, which makes recovery a lifelong process.

I know this because everyone says it. My mom about alcoholism, Nic Sheff (Tweak) about meth/heroin addiction, and me, about mine. No matter how many years you stay sober, the addiction is always apart of you, waiting to climb back into your body and take over. They say it about eating disorders too. No matter how hard you work, how long you stay out of it, there's always that chance you give into it one day.

And you see, for someone struggling as much as me, a lifetime seems way too long to be dealing with something. Why can't it just go away now? Leave me the fuck alone for, like, an hour. For once, I'd like it to just be me inside my head. I'm tired of hearing from my addiction, I'm tired of hearing from my ED alter ego, Jenna. Just go away, I don't want you here anymore.

And this is why people relapse.

There's all these voices in your head, from all your different problems, telling you what to do.

And sometimes it just gets too overwhelming and you give in. At least it keeps them quiet for awhile.

when you can stop, you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't.

It's funny how that works. I don't know about most people, but for me, it was a conscious decision to start using. I never really thought I would ever touch any type of drug. I mean, my whole life (twenty years) I hadn't even taken a sip of alcohol. When I went on my meds for depression and anxiety, I guess that's when I really started, but that wasn't the start of addiction. I was so used to feeling so high strung, so up, with my mind racing all night long, with days and days of insomnia. And the less I slept, the more depressed and anxious I became. So when I was prescribed anti-anxiety meds and pills to help me sleep, I guess that's the first time I realized how fucking awesome it is to be fucked up. Because for once, my mind just shut down. My whole body was down, and I felt nothing. It was like all my tension, all my worries, all my anxiety was just gone, pressed down so deep in my body that I didn't even remember it had ever been there. I was so naturally up, that I wanted to go down. My boyfriend would talk about coke, how if he were to use, that would be his drug of choice. I asked him why, and he told me that you feel so awake and clear, and amazing. I didn't understand, it sounded horrible to me. Why would I want to be amped up when I'm like that all the time, and it only drives me nuts? I guess when you don't sleep and lie in your bed for hours with your mind running for days, you don't really have the desire to use something that will just make it worse. My mind moving so quick was the problem, I just wanted to be gone. To feel calm and sleepy and numb. My normally tight body was suddenly loose. I'd take a couple pills, and put on some music and just fucking dance. All I could feel was the beat of the music, and the sway of my hips. And then, when the music finally lulled me to sleep, I would surrender to it willingly. Oh yeah, and did I mention that when you feel this good, the only thing that could feel better, is sex? So that's all I wanted, to fuck, get fucked up, and to dance. But I was single at the time and not a slut, so you do the math. The funny thing is, that sleeping pills and Xanax would still be my drug of choice. That is, if I had a choice anymore.

You see, even though I don't like my current selection as much, it's what I'm hooked to. Something that at first was a choice I made. It's what was there when I didn't have another option. It was there when I needed something to numb the pain. But now, without it, it's my biggest source of pain. And not just psychologically, but physically. Sleeping pills and Xanax, although a better high in my opinion, never had me hooked. I never needed them, and still don't. If they were in front of me, I wouldn't turn them down, but if they aren't then it's still no big deal. I mean, I think about them from time to time, wishing I had some. But not desperately wishing I had some.

So after my dad died, and I was lost and hurt and aching and rotting from the inside out, I would lie in bed, wondering what I could do to kill the pain. And then it came to me, pain killers. Plain and simple. By association, I knew tons of people totally addicted to them, and they weren't hard to find for nothing. You'd think after seeing these people's lives torn apart by it, I would have thought twice. But I didn't. Yep, I actually planned for a couple of weeks, to start using until I couldn't feel anything. And that's what I did.

At first it was small, even just a little and I was fucked up. There were times where I thought to myself, "Nah, there's no point in doing any today." I could have stopped easily, but the other voice in my mind, Jenna, always said she didn't want to stop. And to be honest, I didn't either. I could have easily walked away, but I wanted to stay. And so I did.

But now, when I need more and more to keep me leveled, when I wake up with pain shooting through my entire body, mind dull, I wish more than anything I could stop. But how do I stop, when the whole reason my body hurts so bad, is because I've gone without for more than a few hours? It's like in exchange for killing the pain in my mind, I've had to taken on the physical pain of withdrawal. I want more than anything in the world to stop. Even more than recovering from bulimia. And believe me, I've tried. I've spent the last couple of weeks waking up and trying. But it's so hard to quit when you can barely move, and know that you probably won't be 'functioning' for another week without using. When people around you expect you to be up and about doing things, keeping up your responsibilities, and you can't even stand up, how do you quit? If they knew, it wouldn't be so bad. But not only do I have to keep my using a secret, but if I'm withdrawing, I have to keep that a secret too.

So it's become this vicious cycle. I want to stop, so I don't have to hide anymore. But stopping means hiding something even more obvious, so to hide that, I have to use. And so it goes.

I should have walked away when I had the choice.

No.

I should have never fucking started.

secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

Have you ever had a secret? One that's so big you can't tell even the closest people? Probably, because everybody has at some point. And if you're like me, you don't go around announcing to everyone how you stuff your face and puke it all out the next minute, or that you hide out in the bathroom with the water on to hide the fact that you've been crushing and snorting pills for five months without anyone knowing.
But what happens when these secrets, these secret addictions are about to rip you apart? How can I ask for help when nobody knows? I don't want my boyfriend to know how fucked up I really am, I don't want my mom and brothers to have to have the burden of my problems, we've all been through enough this year. And once it's all out in the open, there's no going back to secrecy. Not really at least. Somebody will always be watching, listening, looking for the signs that I'm lying, that I'm not sober, that I'm still bulimic. That I've gone back to hiding what I just came clean about all over again And honestly, I'm surprised they can't see it now, I must be a good liar. I should play poker. But once your secrets are out, once they aren't just your to hold on to, if you ever go back to them, that's all you'll ever be. A liar. And a disappointment at that. Haaah, then I'd be the lying disappointing bulimic drug addict daughter that nobody wants to have to deal with.

Kind of sad.

So this is why, once you accept these secrets, and acknowledge that as long as their only yours, they will be another one of your addictions. Cause I mean, you'll hide them as much as you hide your habits. And the secrecy will tear you apart just like your habits. And what's a secret, if you tell? Not a secret anymore.

There's another adjective i forgot should be on my resume.

Secretive.

moving on is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.

This is what happens every time I start something, try to get better, try to do something with what I've been dealt to help myself, and hopefully to help others. I start, with so much dedication and drive, but within a few weeks, my ED loops me back in, my addiction dictates how I function, and then I eventually give up because I can't seem to tell myself that I can do this, I can beat this. I say I can, but deep down, I don't really believe in myself  anymore. I started and restarted this blog in hopes to write my way through recovering from an excruciatingly long run of bulimia, and to maybe have someone, even if it's just one person reading even just one of my posts, feel like they aren't alone. That there's tons of us out here looking for someone to resuscitate them. But somehow on the way, I've just give up twice. And as soon as things got tough, I cracked. Instead of grieving the loss of my dad the healthy way, I snort drugs until I can't feel any pain. I'm no role model, and I shouldn't even have a blog. What is anyone going to take from me? That I'm a bulimic who tries to recover and ends up with a severe drug addiction on top of everything? I'm pathetic and nobody should look up to me, nobody should read this and think that I'm any example of anything. I wanted to encourage people. I wanted to give girls younger than me, less deep than me, hope that they can beat this. And all I've done is shown how weak I am. How I can't ever do what I set out to do. How I just let my problems walk all over me, let Jenna, the girl who's my reflection, control my life until I'm so beaten down I can't get back up.

I wish I knew why I just can't let go of this. Why I can't say good bye to my ED identity that is Jenna, for good. Is it because she's become so apart of me that I don't know how to live without her anymore? Can't live without her anymore? It can't be because I'm afraid of failure, I'm pretty used to that by now. I think it's because moving on, and letting her go, not living with my ED defining me, is so unfamiliar and uncertain. What if I get better, and I still think I'm fat, still think I'm ugly, still feel so worn down and tired? What if I let go of who I've become, to only feel the same or worse, just without my identity? Lost and alone. Because sometimes the only way I can deal with all of this is knowing that I am here, and Jenna is apart of me, keeping my going, even if it hurts like hell.

I think I'm just afraid that when I finally just simply let go, what's left after that will hurt. The process after will be hard, and long, and tiring. Afraid that it will all be for nothing.

So since I have nothing better to give to you, take this: don't look up to me. Don't read my posts and think I'm strong and can influence you to get better. You have to get better on your own. You have to pick yourself up and stop living and doing things because and for others. Because if you only try to recover because you read someone's blog, you're not doing it for the right reasons, you'll end up falling back down because you weren't ready. And in the end, pleasing other people is the whole fucking problem here anyways. So when you're ready, when you can finally accept that it's time to let go, don't be afraid, just do it. You only get one shot at this, and not going for it isn't benefiting you anyways.

Sorry about the gloom, have a good rest of the night (or morning? ahaha, drugs).

an optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in, a pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

So which one am I? (I know it's only 4:35am on New Years Eve, but I'm starting this year's celebration alittle earlier. Or I suppose, due to my new found habit, continuing the celebration from the night before).

I guess this year I'm a bit of both, as much as I'd like to be only an optimist, I'm also realistic (at least in some ways) and understand that I've never been much of a positive person. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

See, this year, of all years has been a bit unusual for me. And mostly in a horrific way. Not only has Jenna taken over my life significantly this year, I've also lost alot of people that mean the world to me.

It all started fairly early in the year. My grandma, who was elderly became sick. The next thing I knew she was in the hospital, and a day later, she was gone. Over the last few years, as my disorder took over my body, I haven't been that close with my Grandma. This was the first lesson I got in making sure you always save time for those you love, you never know when you're going to lose them.

Next, and thankfully (or not, depending on how you see things) not as sudden, was my best friend, my brother, and my amazing dog Rogan. As a vegetarian, and an animal lover, I did see my furry friend, of eight years, as one of the closest people to me. I loved him so much. He was with my through thick and thin (literally and figurativey) and unlike everyone else around me, he loved me unconitionally and unjudgementally. He hit me harder than my grandma did. And unfortunately, his death was overshadowed, and didn't get the attention and greving it deserved.

But nothing, and I mean nothing hit as hard as the day I lost my dad. He was only 55 years old. With so many years ahead of him. My heart sank getting a text from my mom, telling me to come home immediately. I knew somehting was wrong, but she wouldn't tell me. I got a ride from my boyfriend, Ryan. There were five cop cars outside my house. No ambulance. I couldn't possibly imagine what could be going on. Was someone in trouble with the law? Was I?

I never in a million years guessed that my aunt would say, "Jordyn, your dad's dead." I could see sick, a heart attack or stroke (he'd had both in the past). But nothing prepared me for "dead." He was the most important person in my life. One of the only men I'll ever love, along with my brothers, and hopefully one day when (if) I'm married, husband.

The last few months since October 26th have been a blur. Filled with funerals, calls from collection angencies about my dad (news to everyone), crying, anger, eating, puking, drinking myself sick, and now, my newest way to forget. I can't see myself healing from this anytime soon. I don't know if I ever will.

And see, through all this I've really only lost myself. Through all this pain, self induced or death induced, I've moved towards ways to make me forget, make me not feel the pain I feel. I don't want to hurt. I've always hurt enough without everything else I've been through this year. I thought I couldn't recognize the person I saw in my reflection, but I was wrong. Now I see that I've just been seeing me disapear, as Jenna comes into view. But now, when I look at myself, I definitely don't know who's staring back at me. And this new girl, she scares me to death. I thought Jenna was scary, but this girl takes it to a whole new level.

And so I wonder, will I ever get Jenna back? Will I ever get me back? ANd this is why I'm both a pessimist and an optimist this year. I will stay awake all night, to see this horrible year leave me, and to welcome the new year in, hoping it will be better for me. For everyone. Hoping I'll finallly get everything my life put back in place.

So happy new year everyone. Enjoy your last night of 2011, and your first day of 2012.

Let's just fucking hope it isn't the end of the world like everyone says. Wouldn't that just blow.