7:20 p.m. - 02/28/03
i've got a plan to get us out of here. ::>
It's the type of night when even I can't convince myself that I don't have an eating disorder (or at least, it takes more effort than usual.) And I suppose I could be grateful for that, grateful for pain real enough to recognize, but somehow, eating disorders are just never something to be grateful for. Ever.
I just went to the store with my mom, bought a skirt and shirt for majorally little cash, came home, put them on, broke down, put them back in the bag, and asked her to return both of them. It's not that they don't fit. I think they do. I still have a hard time telling the difference between close that fit and close that are too small. I tend to think everything that doesn't drape me is too small. And, when I was looking at myself in this outfit, it wasn't even the fact that I'm not pretty that bothered me. Because I know how subjective beauty is. I know how impossible it is to say whether something (or someone) is or is not beautiful. What I hate, what's really bothering me, is that I can't think that of myself. What I hate is that I can't feel for myself that I am beautiful. Because I know I could, if my perception would just stop smoking crack on me. I know I could if I didn't have an illness; I know I could see myself as pretty, as acceptable, as something other than disgusting, and selfish, and ashamed. I know I wouldn't look at the small space of thigh between boot-top and skirt-seam and want to tear my skin off, then. I know there's nothing wrong with me except the way I see myself. And I hate that. I hate being beautiful in a way only others see.
And the banner at the top of this "add an entry page" reads "Don't Hate Me...because I'm beautiful" and that's far too relevant and too twisted with meeting, as if beauty is a reason not to be hated almost- in the punctuation. I think my neurons have started an electrical fire, and I should just quit trying to put together logical thought. I'm not being transrational right now. I'm being sick.
If you're going to start thinking about doing something eating-disordered because I mention something eating-disordered, please don't read this next part. I'll tell you where to come back in...
So I was sitting with myself between trying on the clothes and deciding to rid myself of them...(basically deciding I wasn't quite ready for the outfit I picked out), drinking juice, and wondering why I hadn't gotten dinner right away when we came home. A nice thing about not being in residential is that I can wait and eat a meal after I know why I don't want to, rather than having to either eat it or miss it at a certain time. Of course, a nice thing about being in residential is that you have a set time where people say to you, "Eat now!" and often, you can make yourself do so. And what is this shit about "missing" a meal- it's not as if the meal and I passed each other without realizing it. I'm hiding from supper. If I don't eat it, I'm skipping it. Not missing it. I'm tired of pretending this isn't as serious as it is...
Which I am doing. I tried to let myself off the hook this evening, at a point when I normally would have made myself a promise to eat dinner and then made the dinner itself. I was like, "What's so bad about one meal? I'm having a rough time? It was that stupid woman at the clothing store; it was the way the clothes looked on me...no big deal." Right. It has nothing to do with everything that went on last night. It has nothing to do with the question the doctor articulated until I couldn't quit sobbing, "Do I have to relapse?" It has nothing to do with testing that water again. Fuck that shit. It's relapsing. It's eating disorder deadness. It's what killed Tracy. It's what killed all but the last part of me. It's what ruined my life and continues to ruin my life despite a lack of behaviors (because it's so much more engrained than that- not because I'm destined to be unhappy.)
(Mom: "Did you eat dinner?" Me: "Not yet." What I wanted to say: "Can you please not make this harder by acting like I've already relapsed?" What I wanted to say to the truly idiotic woman at the store: "Not to be a bother, but could you please not read sizes aloud while shouting to your daughter? I'm recovering from a dangerous illness and your litany of, '15! 11...oh, here we go 3, 0' really isn't helping me.")
So, I will eat dinner, even if it's the "easiest" dinner I can find in this stupid house. I will eat dinner, and I will feel fueled and nourished and all of those important things. I will also feel sad and sick and like I'm not good enough because that's how I feel. But I fight those feelings by treating myself well in spite of them. I don't have to relapse in order to be worthy of love. I don't have to relapse and go back to Rogers. I can't do that. I can't do that to myself or to them, and I'm not sure what order those alliances go in, but there still important.
And I just feel a little attacked right now, in weird ways. Like someone talked about me kind of meanly in their journal, and someone else started a mr-rogers diaryring, and that doesn't feel good on top of everything else. Nothing feels good on top of this kind of thing. What do I need? Bah... What do I need?
I need to not relapse. Number one. And that means that, in the next hour, I need to eat dinner. Let me go get that started and come back.
Ok, eggs are hard-boiling. I will have a source of protein and a source of fat, always my two hardest things. Eggs are boiling and when they're finished, I'll make egg-salad or something, and I'll have dinner because there are a thousand good reasons not to relapse, and a thousand falsehoods the ed is telling me that are easily disproved. When am I going to get this stupid illness to understand that I tried things its way? I know where it leads, it's not good, that's the end of it. Onto taking care of myself. Onto the issues behind.
Sorry. I guess I shouldn't be sorry but I am. If you didn't read that part, you can restart your reading here. I think I'm done sounding sick for awhile. Though I have been talking about the eating disorder more in general, especially with the daily EDAW e-mails I've been sending out. It's odd, but I think it's been good for me in some ways. I need to find balance between the fact that I want my writing (my public writing-as-an-art-form writing) to never focus on illness with the fact that sometimes I need to express that part of my life. Sometimes it's important to tell (even that part of) my own story.
(I just went, "Wow" because someone who joined a diaryring of mine has over one-thousand entries, and then I realized that, if atomgirl and chord are added together, I have over a thousand as well. I don't know whether to feel prolific or obsessed. "Focused" Julian used to say. I've been very "focused" on diaryland the past few years.)
I don't have a lot to detail in this entry. I need to do more homework; I barely started working before leaving with my mom. My dad is quitting his job almost definitely to possible take one he'll love. His health is not good, but people are looking after him. My mom's a bit on the loopy side lately, aware of it only enough to keep her apologizing. I'm struggling through struggles of my own. Obviously. I've been isolating. I need to take a break from something-fishy. I need to make myself a promise to stay away one week and see how I do. It's less helpful than it is hurtful right now and I need to learn how to not keep myself in hurtful cycles, whether they're with message boards or people. I've been doing a little bit better with the people part, though I did take a wrong turn a few days ago. Always too involved. Always care too much. One of these days, that doctor will teach me how to manage that attachment "gift" of mine. I think he maybe has it, too, or knows it really well. Maybe it's just the fact that he secretly spies on me and knows all my secrets. Or that he has ESP and knows the secret of life. It could be that.
Scatter-brained. Waiting for my eggs...Doing searches at google on shopaholism, which I can't afford to have, but which I think might be helpful for me to understand. I think I have the equivalent of disordered eating in the shopping world. It's not something that has taken over my life, it's not something that I avoid my problems through, but it's not something I know how to do healthfully. I figure some of this research has to talk about scarcity and need. And you know what thought I had just now? Well, I could go to sf and see if anyone has posted about that on the Other Mental Health Issues board. No. One week without the fishy bowl. I will use other resources that haven't been triggering me. I will do this.
Other things I will do include continuing to eat all my meals and possibly going into some more of what is behind this recent (as in today's) craziness. Otherwise, I might crochet, veg, postpone again. I'm not sure how much of it I can face outside his office just now. But I have an appointment Sunday. This means I will have talked to him three times in five days. Giagh. I have to let this go. Deal on my own sometimes and let him help me others. I have to get over the need to talk to him constantly and the need to not talk to him ever. Can I say "middle ground"? Better still- can I achieve it?
chord, who feels blech
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