I haven’t posted in awhile. I had my 21st birthday last week, which was pretty cool and I celebrated with some great friends. But it always seems when some big event or party happens I end up left knocked off my feet by my disorder.
I just need to talk and let things out about my recovery. I have been really really struggling for about two weeks. Really seriously struggling. I had been doing well and then BAM out of nowhere I’m hit with these awful things again. I have gained weight and it scares me. It absolutely terrifies me. I don’t like it, and what acceptance I found in gaining weight has since been lost. I don’t like the weight I gained because I don’t like what I see. I have been so stressed lately and my emotions have gotten the best of me. When I get stressed I eat, I eat, I eat and I eat. It doesn’t seem like it will stop. I am like in a whole other world when I have a binge attack. I am just focused on one thing. FOOD. Nothing else in the world matter, just the food. I am not talking healthy food or anything good for you body at all. I am talking candy, ice cream, sweets, doughnuts galore…and the list could go on. I just eat until I feel like my stomach may literally explode. I eat until its impossible to even keep my food down. I crave the food that I put into my mouth and then of course I feel disgusted.
I look around the room and look at all the empty containers, wrappers or whatever and see all the evidence and traces of my problem that I have left behind. I can’t handle it all the guilt and awful feelings swarm my head until I do something to get rid of those emotions. To free myself.
So I then let myself become a slave, a slave to a porcelain throne. That’s just it. I am a slave. A slave to the things which I have been battling for what seems like forever. Letting myself rid the guilt and emotions. Ridding myself of all the junk that I ate. Letting myself become a slave to another thing, just as dangerous.
I then feel free and good again because I have “rid” myself of the food and emotions. A disgustingly dangerous game. I feel better for a time, but it doesn’t last long of course. The guilt of “ridding” myself of those things have crept its way in.
A cycle. A cycle that just continues again and again and again. It may be weeks or even a month before the next attack happens, but they just seem to always come back to knock me off my feet. To set me back on all the progress I have made. To make me just want to give up and give in to it all once again.
I know that’s not a solution. I know its just me enabling my problem. But it just feels so much easier than battling it and feeling bad about it.
I wonder if the cycle will ever end sometimes. I wonder if I will ever be back to normal. I wonder if I can find acceptance in the way I look in the mirror now. I want to look in the mirror and not see a distorted image of myself…I want to see ME. Not what I am distorting mentally.
I have read about so many others who have recovered from their eating disorder, but part of my wanders about them. How long do they go before they have an episode or does it just stop? Will this awful game ever end. Those are the thoughts that I have. Negative ones, I know.
The negativity is what consumes me sometimes because it just seems so hopeless, like I can never really recover. I let the negatives take over instead of looking at the positive. Like the fact that I had actually made progress and gained weight. That I wasn’t having many episodes at all. But the truth is I never accepted the weight I gained or the way I was looking.
It may very well be that my progress wasn’t even progress. That it was just a coverup. A coverup to please the people around me and make them feel like I am doing better, when really I wasn’t.
I was just pretending to do well, when inside I wasn’t doing well at all. I don’t like people constantly watching me and looking at what I eat. So I don’t eat much for a long time. Then when I get the chance I binge and eat and eat and eat, because I have let myself get so hungry. Back and forth, round and round I go.
I have to change the cycle. I have to somehow find acceptance in myself and my weight gain. I have to be more open and tell my family and friends what I’m feeling and when I’m struggling, because they love me. They want to help me, but it’s me that has to find a way to be strong enough to fight this.
My Odyssey 