Dialogue with My Eating Disorder

Dear Ann,

What do you gain from me? I’ve only been behind every accomplishment and good thing that has ever come out from your life. Do you think you would have excelled in academics without me? Without me, you would not have even stayed in Latin. I kept you there, because it was so safe for us. I made Latin and myself your primary focus, which brought you great success in various competitions. You know I was the reason you did so well in college. Do you think that you could have graduated summa cum laude in five semesters without me? Absolutely not! You would have fallen on your fucking face. You know I was there at your job interview. Don’t lie to yourself. You know Dr. Ash hired you partly because of your achievements (which all can be chalked up to me) and partly because of how skinny you are (obviously you have me to thank for that). Your students think you’re cool and funny, because you care so much about them. I give you the ability to put them as your #2 priority behind me. If you were eating breakfast, then you would be late to work and not completely ready for the lesson plans for the day. If you were eating lunch, then you wouldn’t get things graded as quickly as you do. If you were eating dinner, then you wouldn’t have the time to make up the amazing activities for your students. Let’s face it, the only reason you’re good at what you do is because of me.

Think about your family. How dysfunctional are they? Your mother is an alcoholic. Your father is an enabler. Amy has an eating disorder. Nanny is an absolute nutcase. Do you honestly think that without me that you could have some handle on all that shit? There is no escaping your family, except through me. I have helped you escape their pain and abuse for years. Lord, imagine your life without me. It’s not as if you could handle the shit storm they constantly put you through without me? Plus, and let’s just be honest about this, Nanny has already threatened to disown you. If you get rid of me, then that could be a definite possibility. I know some other parts will disagree here, but I really am just trying to protect you from that abandonment. If you get rid of me, then you will probably be exiled from your family.

If you give me up, there will be consequences. Big consequences! You cannot do your job without me, at least not successfully. You will be spending all your time eating and making lunch and making snacks and preparing dinner. You’re going to be wasting a shit ton of time that you could be devoting to your students. Your family loves you now! Look at all the attention I have gotten you and your younger parts. I am helping all parts here. If you give me up, you will have no way of dealing with the pain and the hurt that you and your other parts will experience. Your family will not pay any attention to you. Amy or Jocelyn or Blair or someone else will get all the attention, and no one wants that. I know this sounds really arrogant and attention-seeking, but you will just be forgotten and ultimately abandoned if you don’t listen to me.

I hope you know what you’re getting into. I don’t trust you at all for being here. You better listen to me or you will face some serious hell. You don’t know a world without me. Don’t start to look for that world now. It’s too late.

Sincerely,

Your Eating Disorder

Dear Eating Disorder,

I understand your desires to protect me. I know that you have served certain functions in my life, and for that I am thankful. You have gotten me through emotionally taxing times. You were part of the reason I excelled so much in school and in Latin. It’s too much, however. I need you to back off. I know you think you’re doing everything in the best interest of me, but you’re not. I am going to have to take some risks. I need you to step back and maybe take on another position or roll. Please. What we are doing now isn’t healthy.

You have to trust me that these risks will pay off in the long run. If you step back, then I will be able to be a better teacher. I need to get healthy so I can teach. Remember when I was in the hospital because of you? If we keep that up, then God knows I won’t be the teacher I need to be. I know I am going to be putting myself out there emotionally as well, but I am trusting that the treatment team knows best. I think it’s scary for both of us to see how much I am eating and how I am not purging or exercising. I am nervous about this too. But please, trust me in what I am doing and in what Jane and Alyssa are saying. I know deep down that I will always be loved by my parents and by my friends. Mom and Pop wouldn’t isolate me because of Nanny. I know that a Part of me thinks that they did before and they will again, but they won’t. They are much more supportive now. They understand both of us better.

I am going to have to take the emotional risks by stepping out without you and your destructive ways. It will be mentally, physically, and emotionally taxing. But remember, all of this is going to help heal some of my Parts and make me more efficient at doing everything you helped me do before.

My life is going to be different without you. We need to learn new jobs for you that don’t hurt me as much. The people here are trying to help with that. My life needs to change. I am going to have to start a bunch of things over from scratch because there is too much history between us there. I know you don’t like me thinking about quitting my job, but that might have to happen. I know you don’t like me thinking about moving back in with Mom and Pop, but that might have to happen. I am going to be taking some steps towards living a life with better coping mechanisms. With that life, I will be able to succeed more just like you taught me to but without the isolation, physical destruction, social repercussions, and emotional detachment that came along with what you did.

I hope you know that I understand your fears, and that I often fear the same things as well. Sometimes you’re so loud that I don’t know whether you are talking or I am. I just need you to step off for a bit. Please. This will be the best choice for all my Parts, including you.

Thank you for what you did help me with, but I won’t be forgetting the pain that you also put me through. We can’t go through that again. Just trust me.

Sincerely,

Ann

What I Gained

On the day I decided to enter recovery, when I was still in denial about my problem, an eating disorder specialist who was pushing me towards residential asked me something I will never forget...

What do you think you will gain in recovery?

 

My answer, at that time, was simple. Weight.

As I traversed my way through EDA meetings online and met new friends, I soon learned the new things I'd gain in recovery.

• knowledge about how many calories you can lose via various ways of purging
• opinions on the most effective forms of purging
• new tricks on how to hide food, make it look like I ate more, etc.
• new ways to lie

Then, as my life continued spiraling out of control, and as my weight continued to dwindle, I started gaining new things without intending on doing so...

• perspective - a voice truly my own, not Ed's
• friends, friends who wanted to help me and were not there to give me tricks and tips, but to cry with me when I relapsed, rejoice with me when I ate, and encourage me when I had urges to falter
• my health, after a trip to the ER and a few bags of potassium and magnesium

And if you're wondering, yes. I have gained weight. Am I okay with that? I'll answer that later. But what I can tell you is that about a month ago in an EDA meeting I began to cry. I cried my eyes out. I couldn't stop. I just kept crying. People kept asking if I was okay, and a friend kept her arm hugged around me. It was in that moment that I was making a decision. This decision had been denied validity by Ed for 17 years. It was in recovery that my true self started to fight Ed on this issue. It was in that EDA meeting that I fought with Ed, not listening to a single story or confession or "Hi, my name is ____. I have an eating disorder." For 23 minutes, nearly half the session, I tuned out. I felt like I had two brains, two living beings inside of me, two people trying to control one body. Finally, Healthy Ann won.


It was that day that I decided I would rather be fat and alive than skinny and in a coffin.

I have tried to live with that core belief for a while now, and while it may not always appear that I am believing that with every fiber of my being, it is the sole thing apart from my family, my friends, and my students that is keeping me in recovery.

What did I gain from recovery? I gained a second chance at life.

The Beginning

...And once the wood-working or chair-making or birdhouse-building began, so did the ritual. We would walk down that long hallway, ironically covered in floor to ceiling mirrors and pictures of skinny granddaughters (none of me), making our way to the master bedroom. On the wall beside the bathroom where yeast rolls were placed before they would enter the oven was a picture in a silver frame: my grandparents on their wedding day, cutting into a wedding cake, as if some 45 year old joke was being played on me. The words, "I weighed 90 lbs when this picture was taken." Immediately my four-year-old brain became confused by a number so high on a scale. She would continue, "If you don't weigh 90 lbs when you get married, your husband won't love you."
I lived through that ritual nearly every day of my life until I was 7. Often following but occasionally preceding our bedroom trips came breakfast. My grandfather would receive heaping portions of oatmeal, sausage, biscotti, and more than enough cups of coffee to allow for him to power him through making fifteen birdhouses in a matter of hours (a skill that I now recognize as a required one if you are going to be living with that woman unfortunately known as his wife).  My plate would follow Grandaddy's not long behind: half a glass of milk and the remnants of whatever oatmeal could not fit into the bowl in my grandfather's lap. I remember asking for more once, and even another time asking for M&M's to accompany my lackluster breakfast. Nanny responded with, "No. Because you'll get fat, and no one will love you." As I got older, Raisin Bran with bananas and sugar became an option. By now, I had been so conditioned that I would eat a few slices of banana and excuse myself. My grandmother must have been so proud of herself.

This is a story, whether in part or in full, that I tell to someone when they ask why I don't eat or why I didn't eat or why I feel it necessary to lose weight. I hate food. Regardless of what I eat or don't eat, I feel insurmountable guilt with every meal. That was not enough food. That was too much food. Remember, 90 lbs. 

When I reached the age of 13, I was 5'8" and weighed 89 lbs. In 8th grade, I hit 91. 91. I remember specifically the day that I hit that number. Looking back I don't even remember where I was to use a scale to see my weight. I just remember seeing the number. I wasn't even in high school, let alone close to marriage, and I had surpassed the acceptable weight range. That night, I received numerous phone calls and instant messages regarding a close friend's suicide attempt, her hospital stay, and the strong-willed desired of my best friend to follow suit. It only seemed natural that if my best friend left this world that I would have to as well. After all, I was 91 lbs. No one could love me like that.

That night, being so clueless as to what "cutting" entailed, I stayed on the phone as my best friend cut, listening to Good Charlotte's Hold On in vain. When she finished and I knew she was alive for the time being, I put Hold On  on repeat on my 1998 "Boom Box" and got into the shower. I took my glitter painted nails and dug them deep into my thighs as I cried. When I saw a drop of blood hit the floor, I quickly made sure that the water washed it down the drain, I came out of my depression-coma, and put on a robe. I got back on AIM to see the status of my suicidal friends.

It was when I saw that blood on the bottom of the shower that I realized that my solution of tearing away the parts of my body that I didn't like would not work for me. So, I turned to what I felt to be a healthier alternative. I would eat portions of the lunch my mother had packed, throw away what I was afraid to eat, and go back to class. Then, Math Club met. If I didn't have a Three Musketeers and a Diet Coke, eyebrows would be raised. So after or during Math Club, I would sneak into the girl's restroom, purge my body of all the things I had put into it, and go back to working math problems designed for people 4 years my senior. I couldn't purge at home, so I learned of great places to purge: church soon became my place of choice. The irony of that actually makes me giggle.

At some point in recovery from my eating disorder, I am supposed to acknowledge that I did this to myself. I don't know if I will ever get there. Did my grandmother stick her index and middle finger down my throat to ensure that the Three Musketeers from the teachers' lounge did not go directly to my thighs? No. Of course not. But she introduced me to restriction. She taught me how to eat nothing so that you gained nothing. She taught me the importance of not having certain foods or certain amounts of food. She taught me how eating leads to gaining weight and how gaining weight leads to no one loving you.

I was four. Am I really supposed to take responsibility for that? Shouldn't she bear some of the responsibility? No. OF COURSE NOT! She is, after all, just an old woman who doesn't remember any of this. She's sick. She can't take care of herself. Why should we burden her with owning up to what she did to me as a child? Why should we even acknowledge that she did anything wrong? She denies it... I guess we should just believe her, then.

I'm not 90 lbs.

The Backwards Nature of the World

I'm sitting here with a Dr. Pepper that has about two sips left and a napkin that has a small bit of jelly on it from this morning's peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Beside that is Scott's Johnston which I am using to create a test that I am obviously procrastinating. And beside the Johnston and just below the napkin is a stack of papers. Atop this stack is a paper that I must have out at all times today (or at least have handy) so that I might be able to write in every morsel of food that goes into my body from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep.
I'm seeing a dietitian tomorrow, that would obviously be the reason for the stack of papers and the food journal. This packet contains general information that my dietitian should know before/during her first consultation with me. This is the second packet I have received from a dietitian (The first one came from a doctor whose packet alone sent me into a horrendous panic attack, and it was later suggested by a friend from EDA that I not see her.) and this packet is less intense but equally terrifying. I had to call a friend just to fill it out. These ten pages are coated in the brutal honesty that my ED mind tells me every day of my life. Hearing these thoughts in my mind and acting on these unspoken thoughts is one thing; writing them on paper and then reading them is another. Words such as "typical" and "good" and "bad" sent me into a tailspin of confusion, leading me to the conclusion that my definition of typical or good or bad is not comparable to anyone else's.

This piece of paper is staring at me. A big blank box that above says, "Please list everything you ate and drank from the time you woke up yesterday." (Yesterday is today, because tomorrow is when she will be analyzing this.) Inside this large box reads "1 can Dr. Pepper - 1:00 pm; 1 PB&J - 1:00". I look at the box. I look at the kitchen, knowing it is empty but contemplating one of the small bits of food in my pantry. But I look back at the box, and I think "I don't need food. That's enough for now." Now, while I would probably be restrictive today anyway (like I said, I have no food), I figure that this box is adding to the restriction.
I have been told by some friends to expect a meal plan when I walk out from the dietitian's office, and that probably scares me more than anything else about this journey. I thought about buying food today so that I could add something low-calorie into that box, but I figured that I might be better off waiting to get groceries since I might have to buy according to this doctor.
Another fear aside from the meal plan? Gaining weight. I made the huge mistake of weighing myself last week at a friend's house. So, now I am trying to be "smart" by losing weight before I go to the dietitian. On some level I believe that by weighing less I will have less that they will make me gain, and they will have me take smaller steps. Who knows, but hey... I like the idea of losing weight still, regardless of what my dietitian, therapist, friends, or family say. Sorry, Mom.
You would think that seeking out help for your problem would be a great thing. Right now? I just see this packet as one more reason for me to continue on with my ED behaviors.

Update

So, I have an eating disorder. I have had an eating disorder for 17 years. I have been "active" in my eating disorder for one year, but I have been struggling with food anxiety, anorexia, and even bulimia for what has basically been my entire life.
I have had doctors insist that I drop everything going on in my life for intensive inpatient treatment. I have denied this.
I am struggling a lot with this. Without the support of EDA, I don't know where I would be. Shout out to my EDA girls :)

The Spoon Theory

Hopefully, this explains some things; hopefully, this puts things into perspective. Hopefully, you don't take your spoons for granted. 

Now, I don't have Lupus, but so many things that are portrayed in this video are true for me. Chronic pain is not something anyone truly healthy can understand. It's just like how I don't know what it's like not to be in pain. Getting ready in the morning, putting on clothes, all these things take time. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have changed clothes because the shirt or the pants or the dress "hurt". Allodynia is a common aspect of FM that no one really understands, and it takes away a lot of spoons. I often have debates with myself: is it easier for me to relax on the couch and do nothing or work up the energy to walk down the stairs into the cold basement and get my medicine so I will be more functional in about thirty minutes. 

I'd type more, but that would require a spoon, considering I already have an intense pain building within my right shoulder.

Wedding!

Congratulations to John and Liz!

While the happy newlyweds ate cake, Newby and I discussed how many people we would have at our wedding. Yes, I counted on my fingers. =]

Jocelyn, cousin and fellow blogger, was an honorary bridesmaid and was looking beautiful.

But of course, Newby and I were the best looking couple there (except for maybe the bride and groom)!

When I didn't catch the bouquet I had the following conversation with Newby...

Ann: Are you glad I didn't catch the bouquet?

Newby: Well, I don't consider you single. (And therefore not eligible to catch the bouquet)

A good time was had by all, and a big CONGRATULATIONS to John and Liz!