~ The Doctor's Appointment ~
Went well. And by "well," I mean, I really dig this guy. He's the first medical doctor I've had outside of a residential treatment setting (or perhaps even including that) who truly seems to "get" eating disorders at their very core. Like my new psychiatrist, he was very sympathetic but not the least bit insincere. He's also just very personable. I'm not sure how else to describe it. "Good bedside manner," I guess it's called. And he knows his shit. Which is very important.
The nurse who did most of my workup was also pretty good, if not a little less empathetic, clucking disapprovingly as she tried to take my blood pressure with a normal cuff and then sighed, "let's try the child-size one, then." Cool, my eating disorder said. The only thing I really care about with nurses is whether or not they're good phlebotomists, and this one was. (Unless it was a fluke, which, yes, I do worry about.) I don't know what it is about getting needles stuck in me that makes me regress to a four-year-old state. I'm not squeamish, and my pain tolerance is fine. I think it's just the knowledge that, eek, there's something foreign and unsexy inside my body and it's taking out something that I need to survive and one wrong turn could really, really screw me over. But anyway, the blood draw went down with minimal pain and I'm still anxiously awaiting the results of that.
I also had an EKG done and the one thing that came up was the fact that I have a few premature beats. I was told that this is normal in malnourished individuals, and even in some otherwise healthy adults, and the rest of my EKG looked good so this was nothing to worry about. I worried about it a little bit that night anyway, but got over it. I have a follow-up scheduled in a couple of weeks.
*
~ Academics ~
I met with my academic adviser on Friday, as is mandatory for all school of theatre students before picking the next semester's classes (because actors are incompetent and can't select their own schedule without the advisement of a... failed actor). I told her about my plan to get another General Education class out of the way for first half of the summer -- I only have two left now -- and further free myself up for my double major in political science.
"Absolutely," she said. She then informed me that because of the number of credits I've completed I now have senior status at the university, and that I'm the first BFA student ever to double major. WHAT NOW, SCHOOL OF THEATRE DEAN. I came in last semester a sophomore who, per academic protocol, "couldn't handle" junior level classes, and now I'm a technical senior taking on an unprecedented second bachelor's.
And for THE FIRST TIME since starting back with the sophomore class -- and I mean that from the bottom of my prematurely contracting heart -- I had a sense of my life moving in the direction it was meant to go.
I honestly wanted to cry out of happiness when she let me know all this. I felt myself getting teary. It just sounded so smart, so capable, so mature -- all these things that I repeatedly tell myself I'm not. And all I could think in the back of my head was, "please don't screw it up, AJ, please don't screw it up, please."
Do. Not. Fuck. This. Up.
I need to reevaluate where my eating disorder and I are going, at the end of this semester. ("Why not now?" Shut up; inconvenient.) I need to have a long sit-down with myself and my priorities and my scale and my calorie calendar and my weight diaries and say, "look, we just want very different things."
Because we do.
My anorexia wants me to be dead. I want me to be awesome.
Does not compute.
*
~ Therapy ~
As discussed in my last post, I'm slowly being pummeled with more and more evidence that MY EATING DISORDER LIES. More than I ever understood. And in therapy, I'm starting to get where a lot of these lies are coming from.
The first lie has to do with my distorted body image. My therapist and I have been exploring the roots of my seemingly innate feeling of fatness, of needing to lose weight, and the first bit goes like this: infants, not having a fully developed limbic system, often experience emotions physically. They will feel anxiety, anger, confusion, uncertainty, happiness, what have you, in their bodies. (Even adults get this a bit, now, don't they? The whole "pit in your stomach" thing; the physical pleasure a rush of endorphins produces; the heat of anger.) My early life -- early early early early life -- was full of uncertainty. My mother drank. I noticed a lot and understood a lot less. I took in a lot of information, perhaps more than other babies, and put some of the pieces together in very illogical ways because, hey, an infant's reasoning is a bit limited. I felt uncomfortable in my world and so I felt uncomfortable in my body. Something felt "off" on the outside and so something felt "off" about my body.
Secondly (and sort of on the same vein), my anorexia and body image distortion ties very neatly into my anxiety around needing people. I don't want to need people. I don't want to need others -- because I learned at a young age that others might not be reliable. But it's not just that. I don't want to need at all. Needing anything -- help, love, food, or people -- felt like weakness because I wasn't taught that needing would produce reliable results. Needing felt wrong. And I felt like every last one of my needs, however insignificant, however fundamental to life, was too much.
Being hungry meant needing food, and needing food was wrong.
My needs and desires were too much. I was immature, incapable, clingy, foolish, and stupid to have them, and above all, I was fat.
I apologise because I'm certain I haven't articulated this clearly at all. But trust me, it makes sense to me, and that is no mean feat. I'm finally starting to believe that the lies are lies. What with the discoveries I'm making in therapy, and the whole thing with the girl in my class (see previous post), and feeling like academically/professionally more and more stars are coming into alignment... maybe recovery is right. Maybe recovery is possible. Maybe I can; maybe I should. Maybe I will.
And with that, I'll leave you with a picture of my nail polish and my Powerade Zero having a colour fight. (I'm drinking Powerade like a good girl in the hopes that the electrolytes will help my heart rhythm. So far, they just might be! I've had fewer chest flutters the past couple days.)
I would also like to point out that when buying nail polish, you get what you pay for. That Sally Hansen blue has about the same consistency as paint. Huzzah collegiate budgets.
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