In just over a week I start rehearsals for a play I hate, by a playwright I hate, espousing a message I hate, with a cast I hate working with, directed by a director whose directing style and views (and maybe personality, I haven't looked into it) I hate.
In order to engage in this hate-fest, which is a curriculum requirement, I have to cut down to one therapy session a week. Because we're talking 5-hour rehearsals 5 days a week.
Yup.
This is also the director that, as my freshman year acting teacher, had me spend that year feeling like a rubbish actress. Granted, she didn't sit there and force me to feel a certain way, but you get the picture. I was vulnerable, and very new in recovery, motivated for the first time in the history of ever to embark on an anorexia-free life (and boy, was the timing super), but very raw and impressionable. And the impression she gave me (and others in my class) was... you are not good enough.
There is something wrong with the way you do things.
There is something wrong with you.
You should be better.
Well, that sounded familiar.
I ran back to restricting like a Pavlovian dog running to his supper dish at the sound of a bell. The difference being, my supper dish was empty save for a few celery stalks and some mustard.
The recovery, at that point, had in me found a solid enough footing that it put up a valiant struggle. It actually took time for the eating disorder to win me back behaviourally. But by summer '09, I was back to my old tricks, fresh out of a year of stern, self-invalidating acting coaching and the eating disorder using that class as a portal to weave its way into every facet of my being.
And then residential and then summer relapse and then trying to recover on my own and then fuck that shit.
And here we are now. (Entertain us?)
I am about to descend back into the lion's mouth of being coached by that director, only this time, already ill. Yet knowing that what she says is bullshit and that I am enough. Loving my personality, yet addicted to my eating disorder.
It's still a toxic environment. I'm already infected, but things could get worse.
I could start doubting my acting ability again.
But strangely enough, I feel strong enough that I believe that won't happen. In the oddest way, I have made leaps and bounds with the esteem in which I hold my personality and my talent (or at least my ability to fake talent).
I just don't know if this will maybe make my anxiety worse, or fuck with my body image so that I'll want to cut my calories death-low, or anything.
And speaking of that.
Got a call from the MD today. My blood work came back with some liver abnormalities (that's happened in the past and doctors have always been very vague about it. Like "yeah... this is, um, a... thing. Don't freak out, it's just there. I dunno"). A new development is that my platelet count is low. Again, no huge medical emergencies, but I guess my body is getting lazier and lazier. "Platelets? Do you really need that many? Here, take these, I made them yesterday. If you want more, I'm charging you extra. Calories."
Well, give me a fucking week and you'll get your damn calories, body. I fly out to visit my parents for spring break on 12 March and RF always takes two weeks if I want it done properly (read: with no tissue gain, minimal water gain, and lowest possible risk of RFS).
On Thursday night I went out for what I believe was my second party of the semester. One of the few girls I actually really dig was turning 21, and it was pretty fun. I was out of my comfort zone, so I only stayed a couple hours (which for me was a lot), and pretended to drink and be tipsy. I didn't feel pressured to imbibe for imbibing's own sake, I just didn't want people noticing that I was sober and figuring that it might be a calorie thing.
Really, all this has got me wondering about my own 21st birthday, which is coming up in just over a month, and asking myself, "what the hell am I gonna do?" Obviously I want to celebrate, but... drinks? Calories? I'm not foolish enough to fast all day and blow every calorie on alcohol. That's how death happens. The girl whose party I went to was talking to me about how we would commemorate my impending legality, and she recommended this truly brilliant-sounding tavern downtown. I looked it up online, and everything, from the name to the decor to the ahh-mazing top shelf alcohol selection, just sounds so perfectly me. And it's new, too (established in 2010), so it's almost like a group of awesome people got together and were like, "AJ's turning 21 soon; let's erect a tavern entirely in her honour." Anyway, I want to go. I want to go and sample drinks and laugh with friends and take pictures and laugh some more and... yeah. I want to enjoy food.
I want to enjoy life.
Nobody should spend their 21st birthday sitting in a cramped one-room apartment, staring vacantly at a computer screen or book page, waiting for it to be 30 minutes since she's finished her nighttime cup of blueberries because then she can weigh herself for the first of three times that night, to get a better idea of what the scale's going to say in the morning. And wondering if she should have eaten 12 almonds instead because 80 calories of almonds weighs a lot less than 80 calories of blueberries and it's all about volumetrics, see.
That's not enjoying life. Doing that, especially on your 21st birthday, is pissing on life.
So I really hope I can formulate some plan to allow myself a night off. Without eating normally all that week. Fuck knows I'll already be hating myself enough, just having come out of spring break.
Four days until my one-year anniversary discharging from CFC.
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