Anxiety has been hell this week and I really can't tell you why, other than the whole weight thing. My physical symptoms are getting to be pretty shitty. I'm a lot more lightheaded than I'm used to (even whilst starving) so that kind of concerns me. I really hope I can talk myself into booking a dr's appointment next week. I'm always wary of seeing doctors because I hate getting weighed by others. I worry that their scale will show my weight as being higher than what my scale says at home; that they'll think to themselves, "I've seen worse"; that I won't be "sick enough" weight-wise by their standards. I know what my scale says I weigh, but then I worry that for whatever reason it's inaccurate (even though I just bought a new one). ...And yes, I go through these fears every week when I see my dietician. But both she and my therapist have been urging me to see a doctor, and I don't want to go back to the student health center (the ED doctor there SUCKS and I'm afraid that after all the bullshit I put her through last summer, she might force me out of school as a medical liability). So I have the number of a doctor my dietitian recommended, and now it's just a matter of picking up the phone, making an appointment, and following through with it. I did make an appointment with him last semester but cancelled the day before because I panicked and decided I was too fat to be taken seriously.
I did hit one of my weight benchmarks, along with a body image benchmark, this week, so ED-wise I'm happy about that. Body image has actually been super the past few days. At least I've got that going for me -- and that's no small matter. It's the other physical shit that's got me down. For the most part, my reasonable side has given up on trying to talk myself into eating more, even when I'm really feeling ill. Instead, I've sort of resigned myself to the fact that there's no way my eating disorder is going to budge in its rules -- so when I'm feeling dizzy and weak I no longer think, "come on, eat more," but instead think, "come on, get out in public so that you can pass out and someone will call an ambulance and maybe, just maybe, you can get a couple hours of IV fluids and stabilization for whatever else you need."
Not even my rational side wants to eat. It wants to get caught. And no, not for attention -- really. For time.
I just want to buy myself some time.
I was talking to my parents yesterday afternoon and they were proudly telling me about how they started doing some volunteer work with NEDA (the National Eating Disorders Association). Hearing that from them was like a knife in the gut. They had participated in a lobbying day and were getting involved in whatever that upcoming ED Awareness Week is about, and they just sounded so happy and fulfilled and shit. And I was like, "that's great; I'm really glad that makes you feel good," and they were like, "are you uncomfortable with this at all?" and of course I said no, because really, I'm not; it just makes me feel so damned guilty.
I imagined them going up to legislators and handing out pamphlets and dutifully spouting their cause, and I wondered what, if anything, they said about me. "Our daughter has anorexia"? "Our daughter had anorexia"? "Our daughter is recovering from anorexia"?
I wonder what the fuck they think is going on with me.
My mom asked how I was doing "with [my] eating," in the midst of all my anxiety shit, and I said something like, "well, I'm not consciously trying to cut back" -- lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie -- and she was so genuinely, heart-wrenchingly supportive that I had to excuse myself from the conversation as quickly as possible and go cry. You have no fucking CLUE how deep in shit I am. I'm not angry with them about it. I just feel so alienated and so, so alone. And I can only imagine how it would kill them, how it would destroy them if they knew. Oh, they'd pull me out of school, no question. It would tear the family apart. Again. And I'd be so pissed there's no way I'd even give recovery a shot.
My fault. Shit's such a mess.
/Endrant.
I did hit one of my weight benchmarks, along with a body image benchmark, this week, so ED-wise I'm happy about that. Body image has actually been super the past few days. At least I've got that going for me -- and that's no small matter. It's the other physical shit that's got me down. For the most part, my reasonable side has given up on trying to talk myself into eating more, even when I'm really feeling ill. Instead, I've sort of resigned myself to the fact that there's no way my eating disorder is going to budge in its rules -- so when I'm feeling dizzy and weak I no longer think, "come on, eat more," but instead think, "come on, get out in public so that you can pass out and someone will call an ambulance and maybe, just maybe, you can get a couple hours of IV fluids and stabilization for whatever else you need."
Not even my rational side wants to eat. It wants to get caught. And no, not for attention -- really. For time.
I just want to buy myself some time.
I was talking to my parents yesterday afternoon and they were proudly telling me about how they started doing some volunteer work with NEDA (the National Eating Disorders Association). Hearing that from them was like a knife in the gut. They had participated in a lobbying day and were getting involved in whatever that upcoming ED Awareness Week is about, and they just sounded so happy and fulfilled and shit. And I was like, "that's great; I'm really glad that makes you feel good," and they were like, "are you uncomfortable with this at all?" and of course I said no, because really, I'm not; it just makes me feel so damned guilty.
I imagined them going up to legislators and handing out pamphlets and dutifully spouting their cause, and I wondered what, if anything, they said about me. "Our daughter has anorexia"? "Our daughter had anorexia"? "Our daughter is recovering from anorexia"?
I wonder what the fuck they think is going on with me.
My mom asked how I was doing "with [my] eating," in the midst of all my anxiety shit, and I said something like, "well, I'm not consciously trying to cut back" -- lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie -- and she was so genuinely, heart-wrenchingly supportive that I had to excuse myself from the conversation as quickly as possible and go cry. You have no fucking CLUE how deep in shit I am. I'm not angry with them about it. I just feel so alienated and so, so alone. And I can only imagine how it would kill them, how it would destroy them if they knew. Oh, they'd pull me out of school, no question. It would tear the family apart. Again. And I'd be so pissed there's no way I'd even give recovery a shot.
My fault. Shit's such a mess.
/Endrant.
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