10:10 a.m. - 02/23/02
moving at the speed of sound.
Angelfire is once again on my back for exceeding my designated mail quota. I think there should be an e-mail packrat feature that allows you to save mail so that you don't have to keep dealing with all this 103, 104, 106% bullshit. I know I could just save important (nostalgic) messages to disk or something, but I'd never go back and read them, and the way it is, I occasionally (ok rarely, but still) do.
I was trying to find some I could delete today and I stumbled across an e-mail I got from Sara (the one who used to be at anorexia.diaryland.com, who has not been around for awhile and whose e-mail is now defunct)...I looked at the letter I had sent her and it struck me hard. There's a lot of truth in it, and I meant well of course, but it's very different from what I would say now. I wish she was still around; I wouldn't bother her, but I wonder how she's doing. I know people change drastically the further Ed pulls them in, but...she never struck me as the pro-ana type. She struck me as hurt and desperate but not militant. She wasn't an Ana worshipper, or didn't seem it. More like the type to look you in the eye and say, "yeah, I know it's sick - you got any better ideas?"
This is the letter I sent her (soon after she admitted she was not diagnosed anorexic but had an EDNOS; she was working to get the "real" diagnosis and she took a lot of crap for it. So I wrote her.) I don't know why I'm posting it, but I need to today so I am.
"I tried to respond to you yesterday after your message but as usual when the letter is important to me, I accidentally deleted it. *Sigh*. So I'm trying again.
About a year ago, I messed around with anorexia. I wasn't actually anorexic, and like you anyone who didn't want to believe I had the disease only had to look at me to know that the accusations weren't true. I didn't look like I had an eating disorder and so certain people let slide the idea that I would not eat for two or three days at a time. Those "certain people" include myself.
A year later, I still don't have a clinical eating disorder. However, I have "odd eating habits"...meaning that I cannot eat in public to save my soul, I lose my appetite and my ability to eat when I become upset, and sometimes, just for some sense of control, I start to starve myself again.
Why do I do it? I don't know exactly. It has something to do with the illness I *do* have: a combination of anxiety and depressive disorders which does its best to make my life a living hell, and has--on many occasions--tried to steal it completely. For me, the starvation was one more desperate shot to lose some of the pain. I knew it was stupid, I knew what I was doing, and like you, I *wanted* to be anorexic. Part of it, I think now, was a need to have a disease that people had some understanding of. When you have problems that don't make the news--for instance, an eating disorder not quite bulumia or anorexia--people tend to look at you as someone who isn't at risk. It seems--easier, I guess, to try and be the "standard psycho" than the unique one.
That was how it was for me. I'm not pretending to know what it's like for you.
Anorexia is awful and it's dangerous, but that isn't the point. The point is *why* you would do this...because until you understand your intention you can't truly decide whether or not you want to go through with what you're doing. You can't stop trying to be perfect until you understand why you want to be. For the most part, in my experience, anyone who is allowing a disease to eat their outsides away is already being brutally subjected to some internal parasite. You are going to have people tell you, as you already have, that this is unhealthy and stupid and irresponsible.
What they don't understand is that you know all that. You know what you are doing, what you're risking, and for some reason it's more important to you to risk that than to go through with the pain you're experiencing.
You may or may not become a full-blown anorexic. As it stands, you are trying to intensify an already serious disorder of your own will. To me, that says that possibly there is something else wrong.
I'm not suggesting that you have the same disease I do--I have no degrees or anything, and I do my best not to pretend I know what I'm talking about. But I have struggled with perfectionism and it's offspring disorders most of life, and I've come to understand that the diseases that make it to the outside are mere reflections of what's going on inside. If you are withering away on the outside, and trying to "speed up" the process, it might very well mean that no one is paying attention to the fact that you are withering away internally. If this is the case, the first person who has to realize this is you. You are the only one who can take action because you are the only one who can decide it's necessary.
I know how hard that can be. But I also know that no matter how many fires you "play" with, you can only lose game after game.
In your latest entry, you mention that death is irrelevent. You're right in saying that we all will die. A kid in my art class thought it was inevitable that he'd be drafted and so he'd decided to enlist in the military. I looked at him with horror and said, "You're convinced you'll be drafted, so you've decided to enlist. That's like saying 'I'm going to die someday, I might as well commit suicide right here and now.'" I'm asking that you consider this from the opposite angle. You will die someday, but that doesn't have to be today.
If you can live with the pain long enough to find something else, that something else will be worth living for. That's the only promise I can whole-heartedly make.
I spent over three years in the clutches of suicidal depression. I know it is not a choice whether or not you feel as you do, and I know that there is no way to tell that voice inside of you that it's wrong, when it is so convincing. That's why you have to find a way to confide in someone else. So they can make the voice that sounds so much like you (but isn't) disappear.
Your entries say that you believe in God. You're smart enough to know that you are putting your disease above him. I never thought of it that way until I read your heartfelt, intelligent words. You're exactly right. We *do* put these disorders above the God we know we'd be safer to trust. You know which one loves you and which one is trying to distort you. That's a lot more than most of us know. If you continue this way, then you are exceedingly likely to forget. And when you forget, you put yourself in unequaled danger.
Your diary is an obvious outlet for you. I urge you to use it to consider *why* you're doing what you're doing. (Because none of those people who send you letters claiming to know have any idea. And that includes me.) If you consider this yourself, you will come to the right answer. Whatever it is.
You aren't a horrible person, and it's impossible to make a mistake if you give it to God, whoever that is for you. Because God can make anything work. The question is, what are you going to give God to work with: your life or your death? God *can* take away your pain while you are alive, and then you can experience true life. If you kill yourself, either with this disease or in some quicker manner, God will take away your pain. But you won't be alive to feel the relief. The disease will bring no relief. Ana will never be pleased with you or love you. God already does.
People who commit suicide see nothing in tomorrow. I want to remind you that there is a purpose. You are doing something beautiful: right now, today. You are putting out into the world the words that so many of us have thought and been too scared to say. You are confessing the "sins" of a Pain too many people have felt. If you don't allow yourself to get help, you cheat, not only yourself, but the rest of the world around you.
You have a gift to help us all. I want you to consider the idea that you cannot give that gift unless you are alive and no longer consumed by pain: something that *is* possible. You just have to decide you want it and determine a plan to get it. I hope that you do. I don't know you, but I can see you doing wonderful things as a voice for the people you didn't know existed.
I suppose I have rambled on enough. The other e-mail wasn't this preachy; I'm sorry. :) It was more of my own story, my own pain. I hope there is a reason I am sending *this* one instead. I hope it does something for you.
If you would like to write, I'd love to hear from you. Also, you might check out this website/ newsgroup:
www.pale-reflections.com
When I was told I was anorexic, I went there and joined the mailing list. I found it extremely helpful. Just a thought.
Yet Another Stranger From Out Of The Woodwork,
Mary
*
All the stuff about God is foreign to me now. She must have written something pretty intense for me to be drawn onto that track. The idea that we're putting our illness above God is understandable to me; it doesn't toss out all other pain now. I look at it and I think, "of course we did. Ana/Ed's results are quick. They don't take faith and trust and time."
"a hard proof but a valid one. Time." -joanne greenberg
I think I'm struggling with how many stories I've lost track of, how many girls I tried to keep hold of who I seem to have lost. I need to start searching for them again. I need to know that people are ok, and I need to know when people aren't. I need to try my hardest to know.
Katia- hasn't written since her discharge, don't know her current discharge
Silje- will discharge on Tuesday (yeay!) and *will* write from Norway
Chelsea- discharged about a month? ago, haven't heard from her since I was at RED
Heather- wrote her once while she was in the hospital, don't know if she got the letter, don't know where she is
Sara- haven't heard from her since the night we talked about Tracy, lost her phone number
Anna, Tori, Molly, Carly, Rae, Rosie, Abby, Jill, Jenny, Ana, Brittany, Andrea, Erin, Dixie, Jenna, Christy...
Tracy.
There are so many. :(
I have Jenna's contact info, so I can check on her, and maybe she has the info for someone else; she might have Sara's which would be cool. I don't expect to keep up correspondences with all these girls, but one of the gifts Tracy gave us was that she got us back in touch and reminded us how eternally connected we all are. I wasn't close to all of the girls who came through the unit while I was there, but maybe (maybe) I can check up on a few of them, and hope that the others are checking on each other, and not have to go through the "I lost track of them and look what happened" pain again. Selfish agenda: I miss them. I want to see how they're doing. I want to go back to RED as I knew her, and they are part of that.
I can write or call Jenna and she will have info (hopefully) and I'll stay in touch with Silje (I already have her Norway address) and eventually I can call RED and ask them to share some addresses with me, which I'm pretty sure they do, as long as people left them in the drawer like they're supposed to. I could probably track Brittany down pretty easily as well, as she lives relatively close by, but I'd have to be careful with that because last I heard Brittany was on a schedule of purge/party/purge/party/repeat...and I need to not get caught up in that. But could a phone call hurt (beyond the obligatory panic attack?)
This entry is not at all what I expected to write. I expected to write how my birthday is tomorrow (yeay, 17) and my birthday has always been, as my sister puts it "an excuse" to do something lovely for me. We don't really buy gifts for siblings' birthdays in my family, but Sarah always says something for me because she says I'm so easy to shop for that my birthday just gives her a reason to do so. Which is funny. In broader terms, though, I've always had the most amazing birthday surprises. People I barely know draw me cards. My friends once stuffed my locker with balloons and gum and a card signed by nearly my entire grade. That same year they brought me a cake and presents and all this craziness (granted I was anorexic, so the cake was scary and they took a picture of me eating it which is significant blackmail material, but still the sentiment slipped through my illness)...my classes sang happy birthday to me and other classes heard and joined in...it was absolutely mind-blowing.
I was thinking about all this last night, when things were so awful, and I had just read through my poster from RED, the one that everyone signed and wrote notes on that always helps me calm down a little. And then I read through these lists I have of "Good Things About Mary" - we spent a nutrition group coming up with them one day when I was particularly screwy in my head. Leann just threw out the nutrition plan and started writing things on the chalkboard. They went around the room and told me why I was great and Katia and Abby wrote them down and gave me copies, which was so spiffy. And so random. That's what struck me last night about red. Red treats you year-round the way the world's best people treat you on your birthday. Red is grateful every day that you were born.
Meanwhile I am grateful that tonight (tonight!) I will be bouncing to Ani music live. This makes two Ani concerts to zero Tori so Tori really needs to come to the area *soon*...but...Ani is just so yeay, that I'm sure I'll have a grand time. And I'm going with my brother which should be spiffy. Ditch my parents and see Ani? Ye-eah! Talk about a good end to sixteen-ness.
I just have to remember to take my anxiety med before the concert so I panic or pass out or anything non-fun of that sort...
oh, randomness
chord
"and you'll stop me, won't you/ if you've heard this one before/ the one where i surprise you/ by showing up at your front door/ saying 'let's not ask what's next/ or how, or why'/ i am leaving in the morning/ so let's not be shy..."
-ani "shy"
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