white flag: n. A white cloth or flag signalling surrender..
Today was another step towards recovery, although I'm in a state of flux over it. I am currently in a one-step-forward-seven-steps-back mindset. Appointments terrify me, I walk through the door and can barely stop myself from doubling back and just running as far away from all this as I can. Run and run and run. But somehow my feet carry me through the door and I sit underneath the eating disorders sign and traumatise myself with a certain amount of irony that the fat girl is sat under the ed sign. I hate that sign. I hate weigh in but I am celebrating in misery because there is another kg loss but something is telling me it isn't right: this is so addictive and the ground around this feeling is so magnetic. Weight loss is ecstasy. I'm making myself ill, and I'm happy but I'm not happy. I'm floating somewhere between exhaustion and craziness on a daily basis and it is becoming hard to differentiate. That isn't happiness. I know what happy is. Happy was the first hold of my little panda nephew last week, happiness was falling in love with him, happiness is how crazy-much I love my sausage nephew, it's my mum and dad and my dog, and my friends. Happiness is cuddles and love you's from sausage-nephew, it's early morning wake-ups with twos from my pup. Happy isn't the emptiness from starving myself, because I am learning that even if I am thinner my mind is still broken and weary and my heart is still sinking. It isn't the constant state of circling anxiety and draining myself with these battles over eating. It is not the panic that comes with weight and food combined. It is not the guilt I'm overwhelmed by when I lose control and eat.
Almost two weeks ago I took too many laxatives and went to hospital. Not an overdose per-say but, they liked using the O word in hospital. I a lot of laxatives that came with physical symptoms and I went to hospital with my problems shadowed by my fear of the stigma that comes when you have craziness running through your veins. But, I was pleasantly surprised. The charge-nurse, ENP and ED Consultant were all amazing, supportive, caring and above all understood, and I couldn't have asked for more wonderful individuals. The thing is, when you have mental health problems you need that compassion and communication. You need that supportive arm around you when you're edging towards breaking down into floods of tears that you don't know if they'll stop when they start. You need to be understood, because to you understanding is everything when you feel like you're becoming out of control. Having someone nod, or just say 'I get you'. It saves you from yourself a little bit. The ED consultant talked around things with me for about an hour before he let me leave - and he only let me go because I was already 'seeking treatment'. That was the first time I felt grateful to be under the clinic and embracing this. I haven't talked and cried that much in a long time. It was those tears that stop you from talking because you can't catch your breath, the sort of crying that leaves you with a dull headache for the rest of the evening, because your body is depleted and drained of all emotions and fears and fluids and everythingness.
So, I arrived today expecting a slap on the wrists for my behaviour. I can't explain why I took so many, I can only try and justify it by saying I hated myself so much in that moment I just wanted to be empty. And, today she passes me the question of "who hurt me so much that I hate myself so badly?". And, the truth is I don't know? We talk around 10years of supressed grief that has been resonating in my heart all these years, we confront how it felt to suffer that loss, the anger and the sadness and she begins to make me understand that I need to let myself feel sometimes. She tells me my eating disorder is control and mastery. I have to be in control. I have to be and make everything perfect. We talk about being a nurse, and how perfectionism will drown me if I carry on with this pressure on myself. She's telling me 'not everyone can be saved' and I can feel my heart breaking. I know it's true, I don't want to be a nurse to be a hero, I want to be a nurse to help. And, we talk about the weight of words. I have no doubt she understands me, but I sit here and close off sometimes and she's watching every movement my eyes make and she can see when I am switching between being present with her and between getting lost in myself, and every time I go away she's there asking where I am. I know she knows what she's doing, but I question how much she can understand. Unless you've lived it I don't think you can, I don't think you can realise the enormity of the struggles on a daily basis, how even dragging yourself from under your duvet can be a challenge when mirrors hurt and when your mind tells you you're heavy today, I'm not sure she can grasp how important that extra km on the treadmill is, or the elation when you lose even 1lb. With this comes heaviness and weight and overbearing desire to be perfect.
Today I tell her I am not Anorexic like she wrote in that letter and on my care plan. I tell her I am not thin enough and that she see's people much thinner so she should know that. And, she's calm with me, she moves a little closer and looks me in the eye and shows me my weight chart, my BMI is 16.2, she said she admits people as inpatients with BMI under 16.6. Her eye contact doesn't shift and I can't shake her, and she can read all the things rushing around my little mind. I'm telling her I want to be thin, and she's the only one who doesn't get angry but she talks me down to the reasons and rhymes of my wants and needs. She connects with me over stuff, she rationalises and intellectualises with me. I've been moved to top of the waiting list now and so it's a case of any day for treatment. I'm not sure how I stand on that one. I'm not sure of my readiness, but I ever doubt that. Eating disorders come with a gravity that keeps grounding you back to them and rotating you around and around until you're so dizzy with it all you can't leave, you can't stumble away because it becomes all you've known. It's all you know and it's got a safety to it that appeals to the sickness in you.
I just know I'm stood here with my white flag at half mast, somewhere between recovery and getting sicker... there is just a gravity to this, it pulls me in.
- Loola. X
Today was another step towards recovery, although I'm in a state of flux over it. I am currently in a one-step-forward-seven-steps-back mindset. Appointments terrify me, I walk through the door and can barely stop myself from doubling back and just running as far away from all this as I can. Run and run and run. But somehow my feet carry me through the door and I sit underneath the eating disorders sign and traumatise myself with a certain amount of irony that the fat girl is sat under the ed sign. I hate that sign. I hate weigh in but I am celebrating in misery because there is another kg loss but something is telling me it isn't right: this is so addictive and the ground around this feeling is so magnetic. Weight loss is ecstasy. I'm making myself ill, and I'm happy but I'm not happy. I'm floating somewhere between exhaustion and craziness on a daily basis and it is becoming hard to differentiate. That isn't happiness. I know what happy is. Happy was the first hold of my little panda nephew last week, happiness was falling in love with him, happiness is how crazy-much I love my sausage nephew, it's my mum and dad and my dog, and my friends. Happiness is cuddles and love you's from sausage-nephew, it's early morning wake-ups with twos from my pup. Happy isn't the emptiness from starving myself, because I am learning that even if I am thinner my mind is still broken and weary and my heart is still sinking. It isn't the constant state of circling anxiety and draining myself with these battles over eating. It is not the panic that comes with weight and food combined. It is not the guilt I'm overwhelmed by when I lose control and eat.
Almost two weeks ago I took too many laxatives and went to hospital. Not an overdose per-say but, they liked using the O word in hospital. I a lot of laxatives that came with physical symptoms and I went to hospital with my problems shadowed by my fear of the stigma that comes when you have craziness running through your veins. But, I was pleasantly surprised. The charge-nurse, ENP and ED Consultant were all amazing, supportive, caring and above all understood, and I couldn't have asked for more wonderful individuals. The thing is, when you have mental health problems you need that compassion and communication. You need that supportive arm around you when you're edging towards breaking down into floods of tears that you don't know if they'll stop when they start. You need to be understood, because to you understanding is everything when you feel like you're becoming out of control. Having someone nod, or just say 'I get you'. It saves you from yourself a little bit. The ED consultant talked around things with me for about an hour before he let me leave - and he only let me go because I was already 'seeking treatment'. That was the first time I felt grateful to be under the clinic and embracing this. I haven't talked and cried that much in a long time. It was those tears that stop you from talking because you can't catch your breath, the sort of crying that leaves you with a dull headache for the rest of the evening, because your body is depleted and drained of all emotions and fears and fluids and everythingness.
So, I arrived today expecting a slap on the wrists for my behaviour. I can't explain why I took so many, I can only try and justify it by saying I hated myself so much in that moment I just wanted to be empty. And, today she passes me the question of "who hurt me so much that I hate myself so badly?". And, the truth is I don't know? We talk around 10years of supressed grief that has been resonating in my heart all these years, we confront how it felt to suffer that loss, the anger and the sadness and she begins to make me understand that I need to let myself feel sometimes. She tells me my eating disorder is control and mastery. I have to be in control. I have to be and make everything perfect. We talk about being a nurse, and how perfectionism will drown me if I carry on with this pressure on myself. She's telling me 'not everyone can be saved' and I can feel my heart breaking. I know it's true, I don't want to be a nurse to be a hero, I want to be a nurse to help. And, we talk about the weight of words. I have no doubt she understands me, but I sit here and close off sometimes and she's watching every movement my eyes make and she can see when I am switching between being present with her and between getting lost in myself, and every time I go away she's there asking where I am. I know she knows what she's doing, but I question how much she can understand. Unless you've lived it I don't think you can, I don't think you can realise the enormity of the struggles on a daily basis, how even dragging yourself from under your duvet can be a challenge when mirrors hurt and when your mind tells you you're heavy today, I'm not sure she can grasp how important that extra km on the treadmill is, or the elation when you lose even 1lb. With this comes heaviness and weight and overbearing desire to be perfect.
Today I tell her I am not Anorexic like she wrote in that letter and on my care plan. I tell her I am not thin enough and that she see's people much thinner so she should know that. And, she's calm with me, she moves a little closer and looks me in the eye and shows me my weight chart, my BMI is 16.2, she said she admits people as inpatients with BMI under 16.6. Her eye contact doesn't shift and I can't shake her, and she can read all the things rushing around my little mind. I'm telling her I want to be thin, and she's the only one who doesn't get angry but she talks me down to the reasons and rhymes of my wants and needs. She connects with me over stuff, she rationalises and intellectualises with me. I've been moved to top of the waiting list now and so it's a case of any day for treatment. I'm not sure how I stand on that one. I'm not sure of my readiness, but I ever doubt that. Eating disorders come with a gravity that keeps grounding you back to them and rotating you around and around until you're so dizzy with it all you can't leave, you can't stumble away because it becomes all you've known. It's all you know and it's got a safety to it that appeals to the sickness in you.
I just know I'm stood here with my white flag at half mast, somewhere between recovery and getting sicker... there is just a gravity to this, it pulls me in.
- Loola. X