a disjointed little post
I’ve been really sleepy the past few days. Like hardly holding my eyes open at 6 pm. Now, I’m doing a lot of things right – like, uh, eating. Plenty. Not purging (holy cow this is a major streak I’m on – and my OCD perfectionist personality luh-huvs a good streak). Normal amounts of exercise – 1 hour of dogwalking per day plus a “normal person” gym workout. Is this emotional fatigue? Is this exhaustion from the swirly whirly thoughts in my head?
When my brain is pathologically repetitive (obsessive.compulsive.yuckness.disorder), I call it “hooking”. I get hooking thoughts that snag my brain as if with a barb and then they start looping. And the looping recurrences of these thoughts starts to speed up – which I refer to as “the hamster wheel”. Quite often there will be 2 or 3 hooking thoughts fueling the hamster wheel to spin faster and faster and faster. No work can get done. No meaningful interaction can take place. Only festering and manic hamster cardio can take place. Any time the hamster tries to get off the wheel, or if I successfully lure him off, the moment four paws are on solid ground he remembers, “oh shit – my wheel!” and hops back on and gets busy spinning. Damn hamster. I want to shoot him. Except that he lives in my head and that could be a little messy.
I “stole” a fitness magazine from the gym tonight. Lovely – should we be adding klepto to my list of crazy disorders? Maybe I’ll bring it back later in the week so that it was only borrowed. But it had lots of delicious eye candy and weight loss articles. Why am I gravitating back to that and trying to fuel that awful fire? Because I’m not happy with the events of the week and my brain and it’s rodent inhabitants are driving me bonkers. The cover model was this girl who grew up near me and who’s dad and step-mom were my mom’s neighbors for years. Don’t get all excited, I’ve never met her (but I’ve heard she’s a slutty bitch which makes me smugly satisfied – fame and fortune and slender thighs can’t make you pretty on the inside). But there’s a little sidebar in the article about her “battle with bulimia”. Apparently all she had to do was hire a trainer to help her shed weight “the healthy way” (from her perfectly healthy 118 pound frame, might I add) and she was cured. Perfect. What a sweet little story that perfectly reflects to SHAPE readers what an actual eating disorder is like. Bah fucking humbug. I want to write a letter to the editor – leave a comment on whether you think this is a good idea.
I’m grouchy. I’m lonely. I’m tired. I need therapy tomorrow big time.
anatomy of a purge
I admit: I’ve gotten swept up in the tidal wave that is New Year’s Resolutions and self-improvement. Unfortunately, I’m caught in the frothy surface of the swell and not the thrashing, bubbling well of momentum and overpowering change that is below. I’ve put down the cigarettes, taken up twice daily walks with the dog, aimed to drink more water, lifted weights, eat more fruit and basically anything else seemingly good for you that you can think of to set a really arbitrary quantitative goal around and track using spreadsheets or bar graphs. Or sparkpeople.com. Doh!
Sparkpeople may have just been the straw that broke this saucy young camel’s back – turning my recently domesticated pet of an eating disorder into fiery beast stamping and spitting aggression. It senses competition. The presence of a new step-sibling – “the good one” who gets to have all the fun. All the data entry and goal setting and internet searches for tips and motivation. It feels its remarkable skills in these areas are underappreciated. Someone else has been assigned the lead role in the school play – a role it was born and groomed to do. And so it decided to make a little stink about it.
And further fueling that stink yesterday was a work day filled with hours of nothingness. I chewed through my to-do list by 12 noon, hungry for more. But I floundered – couldn’t settle on anything that really sparked my attention. Well, that is unless you count internet searching, sparkpeople data entry, and google searches for health tips while chugging 24 ounces of water in under 15 minutes (peeing every 12 minutes doesn’t do much for the attention span either). Left without tasks, my mind becomes a bored bovine chewing its cud and instinctively swatting its tail. I ruminate. I obsess. I get stuck on something and it just resurfaces over and over and over. Just when I thought I’d broken free with a People magazine and some Chamomile tea I was pulled back in, scheduling work-out sessions and walks in my planner and adding new foods to “my favorites” on sparkpeople.
Which leads me to now – 4 in the morning – without even an eyelash that’s sleepy. Churning. Plotting. Angry at myself for the plotting. Trying to supervise the internal sibling rivalry which has exploded into toy-throwing and biting. It seems that if my parts can’t play nicely with sparkpeople.com, I’ll have to take it away like an exasperated mother. At least until they grow up a bit.
Impulsivity and Regret
Mental note: must research the difference between impulsivity and compulsivity.
I remember my Aunt Julie used to have these fabulous easter toys – all Chinese imports with poisonous paint, I’m sure. Among them were these suction cup bunnies with springs. You’d stick them to the table (only after licking them for added suction – and added saliva hickeys on the coffeetable) and wait and wait until the suction gave out and they went boinging skyward. That tension, the palpable anticipatory stress intended to bring joy and excitement was painful for me. Excruciating. It made me want to squirm and squeeze the nearest hand until metacarpals fractured. It made me feel teary-eyed and an urgent need to pee.
And now, that feeling is back. So all this pressure building up, is it self-inflicted? Am I anxious because I’m lonely and bored or because I fill that void with endless possibilities? I could move. I could stay and buy a condo. I could take a job at the hospital (where I have an appointment to shadow the therapist there tomorrow). I could take a travel position and live anywhere. I could stay put. I could downsize to a cheaper apartment. I could stay here and pinch pennies. But all THAT uncertainty is self-generated. I don’t really have any decisions to make, why do I create them?
So I’ve made some imulsive decisions lately, none with grave consequences but I’m feeling regretful and a bit embarrassed by them or at least ashamed of them despite no one else really knowing. Here are several of these impulsive actions: I emailed about a job opening at a pediatric clinic in Charlotte, NC (haven’t heard any response in the 24 hours since I sent it but I’m check check checking until I do). I posted an ad on Craigslist for my apartment. I’ve emailed other people about their available apartments. I set up this appointment to shadow at the hospital (well, technically that was set up a few weeks ago). I’m embarrassed because these decisions, while reflecting my thoughts at that moment, were not well-thought out and put me in awkward positions. A couple looked at my apartment tonight despite the fact that I haven’t commited to move. Why didn’t I just tell them it’s not available when they called? Why can’t I have the nerve to undo a minor impulsive mistake. Why do I feel so ashamed of the situations I get myself into when I’m spinning my wheels so quickly like I am now. What drives me to act so quickly and without taking the time to think things through? Is this the same tendency that gets me into trouble in relationships? I am so fucking uncomfortable just thinking about something – sitting with it – pondering it – letting it simmer in my brain. I just want to commit. Just so it’ll stop rattling around in this noggin of mine. I want an answer. Because the situation is no longer black, I want to paint it stark white right now, even if it takes eleven coats of paint (which it wouldn’t if I’d taken the time to purchase and apply a primer but that feels like it delays the gratification so I skipped that step). I am swimming in a sea of gray right now and it feels like shark-infested waters. I want out out out. But the only way out is to stay here and relax, stop fighting, and realize that the shark fins are a figment of my anxious, uncomfortable imagination.
Whoa!
That little motherfucker called bulimia tried to hijack my dinner. Whoa. Where did that come from? I’ve been doing so well lately and haven’t even really had the urge. Maybe a few thoughts here or there but nothing of significance. And then, wham! I get bodyslammed and jackhammered by the urge while I’m eating. I fought it off (am quite proud of that as fighting the urge once it arises is not a well-developed skill) but it was about a 45 minute wrestling match on this brown sofa. And then the restricting negotiator part jumped in to mediate a truce – “okay, you can keep dinner as long as you skip breakfast and lunch tomorrow.” Well, Howie Mandele, I say NO DEAL! I will keep this dinner and eat again tomorrow morning.
Here’s the thing: I’m very anxious. All this time on my hands and emptiness in my home and my heart feels unbearable. Like being a passenger on a hijacked 19 hour flight to who-knows-where-but-you-fear-it’s-not-gonna-be-a-tropical-paradise and you thoughtlessly wore an itchy wool sweater for the journey. Like my brain is thrashing around in my brain like an rhinoscerous with insomnia. Like my fingers took speed and just need to type and fidget and flip and pick and move and destroy and shake. OCD is back (thankfully it appears to be situational and thereby easier to understand and face than a full-blown personality disorder). The checking, the endless 837 mile per hour thoughts, the hooking repetitive impulses, the restlessness, the cleaning, the order, the feeling overtaken in my own body. It hasn’t been this noticable since summer of 2007, also the summer of bulimic dispair. First and foremost, the two do NOT have to go hand in hand. Sure, the OCD sets the stage but I cannot let the behaviors start again. I’d rather have Gmail take away my account for obsessive checking that hinders other traffic from accessing their site than be sick. So I can’t let it go down that road.
I know that these feelings deserve some therapeutic attention and some understanding on my part of where they come from and what they need. But individual therapy is cancelled the next two weeks (thank God for group) and I’m not sure how effective I am on my own with this stuff when I’m so blended with it.
So in the meantime, here’s what I know:
things that make it worse: endless several consecutive hours at home alone, the computer, the TV, big chunks of unscheduled time at work, social isolation
things that make it better: moving my body, time with my dog, reading (picked up a good novel at the recommendation of a good friend), talking on the phone, going out for coffee/tea, podcasts, music, sewing/crafting, blogging (which, unfortunately opens the laptop to other repetitive wastes of time)
I think I’ll leave early for group – there’s usually a couple of very good people early to chat with. Then home to read. Turning off the computer now. Like actually powering down for the night (my poor computer never gets time OFF, only SLEEP – frequently interrupted sleep). I think I can I think I can…right after I check my…NO I think I can I think I can.
Just another day
Today was start-to-finish-BLAH. Not a lot happened. Gym, shower, dog to vet (unfortunately for my bank account and for my dog’s gastrointestinal functioning this is not out of th ordinary), work, home.
I did finish a project that has taken about 4 hours total – writing my formal insurance appeal to be reimbursed for $1200 worth of mental health visits which should have been covered under my plan. I have documented everything necessary (including a fabulous spreadsheet of every visit to my therapist since March and columns for whether it was pre- authorized, applied to my decuctible, reimbursed to me, etc.). Basically in America every plan is different in how they cover appointments such as mine. I have to pay out of pocket at every appointment ($80) and then wait patiently for a reimbursement check – that is after I met my $2500 deductible. Basically, for 15 sporadically timed and wholly random visits, I never received reimbursement. And believe you me, the insurance company makes a mistake when they screw over a healthcare professional. I dot my “i’s” and cross my “t’s” when it comes to my insurance coverage and I’m sure within the first 4 lines of the letter they will realize that I know of what I speak. As I saved the final draft I stood to do what can only be described as a touchdown dance and proclaimed, “Take THAT, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont!” No one was around to laugh at the dance or find humor in the silliness of how good it made me feel to write it (but wouldn’t you feel good if you suspected a $1200 check might be headed your way for the New Year?!).
Here’s a little tidbit from yesterday’s staff meeting, courtesy of my disordered brain. You may remember that I disclosed to my officemates that I was in treatment for an eating disorder several weeks back. And with the exacerbation of my symptoms you could probably guess that my weight is in…well, a recession. With no signs of an impending bailout. So I got up halfway through our 2 hour weekly staff meeting to warm up my soup for lunch, leaving the table with my coworker in mid-gossip about Hugh Jackman’s 5 o’clock shadow on the recent cover of People magazine. When I returned from the kitchen about 4 minutes later, we attempted (for the eleven millionth time) to get some work done or at least to talk about clients.
“You know who else has lost weight? Suzy”
First of all I changed Suzy’s name because she’s a client and whatever whatever privacy and such. Second of all, Suzy has lost weight. She needed to and I’m proud of her. Third and most importantly of all to my point here is that the 83.2% of my brain that is disordered zeroed in on the word “else”. What did I miss while I was gone? Where was the beginning of that conversation from whence the segue originated? Were they talking about some celebrity in People magazine? Of course that gem of a brain of mine, self-absorbed as it is, assumed automatically that while I was off on my soup-warming adventure my co-workers were chatting it up about how I was losing weight. 46.7% of my brain was extatic that they noticed (pat on the back for me) and 36.5% was mortified that they might be talking about me in my absence. The 16.8% of me that didn’t assume they were talking about me then felt invisible and pathetic and unworthy of anyone else’s attention.
Sorry for the arbitrary percentages. Sometimes I overspecify for emphasis. But it makes me think of this really strange (perfectly harmless and greatly amusing to others) habit I have (compulsion?) to exclusively enter odd times on the microwave. I never cook things for a nice round minute or even forty-five seconds. Nope, that’ll be 0:58 seconds for a 100 calorie bag of Kettle Corn. 26 seconds to heat a tortilla. 39 to warm my coffee after my shower. And…(drumroll)…the twisted pinnacle of this weirdness? Entering values over 60 seconds! (Gasp!) Who needs 1:10 when you could enter 72 seconds? Oh the possibilities are endless and I am just crazy enough to relish thinking of each and every one.
Sigh. I’m so glad I have this blog – a sanctuary for all my oddities, freakish tendencies and overall strangeness. Most people think I’m exceptionally normal. Oh how they are misinformed.
Dear throat, I’m sorry.
I can only speak for myself, but setting a lofty goal related to food (or lack thereof) or exercise and failing to meet it leads me straight to a purge. Alright, well in the midst of the cold and the cold medicine and the full-on eating disorder relapse some convincing little voice in my head decided I just wouldn’t eat all weekend. Just live on vitamin C pills and Dayquil. So, of course that lasted only part-way through the morning (and it’s only Friday!). Enter fatalistic, world is going to end, my life is over and I’m now officially a fat cow voices (of which there is a chorus). And thus today I set a recent relapse record for purges. A long string of very poor choices both for my long-term health and well-being but more immediately and superficially – for the condition of my throat. My poor sore throat suffering from some sort of germy bug from the nose-pickers at work and look at how I treat it! Every swallow of sandpaper and porcupines is a reminder of those poor choices.
The reality that I now face is that I’m having some other troubling symptoms starting to crop back up – the restlessness, the checking, the obsessions, the compulsions( of which purging has reinstated its previous title at the top of the list). So it’s not pretty here for me right now. I went to cranio-sacral therapy this evening and even that only helped a smidge…an utter let-down as I was really hoping this would help pull me out of this rut the way it did last time.
I am really feeling pulled under by the current right now. I even was a bit honest with my mom tonight when she very tentatively asked (oh it is so rare that she “goes there”), “how’s the eating stuff going?”. I seem to have inherited the addiction to euphamisms. The apple, the tree…you know the cliche. “It’s very sporadic,” I replied. ” Not eating much and having trouble keeping it down when I do eat.” She sounded disappointed and concerned. She drew some connection between not eating well and getting colds. Someone call the AMA – this lady is on to something! I didn’t elaborate on details of my ongoing clinical study into the effect of stomach acid and regurgitated spicy thai food on sore throats.
I’m feeling bitter and sarcastic and just no fun to be around or listen to right now. My apologies. Hoping to hit the sack here soon.
Ommmmm 101
Anxiety about going to my first night of group therapy mounted throughout the day as my productivity at 7 a.m. climaxed in a frenzy of manic “to-doing” fury by lunch time. Er…lack of lunch time. I know, I know. But I was too busy to eat (ha, even I find humor in that thin veil of an excuse!).
I was surprised and even more cranked up by the amount of time between when I got home from work and when I had to leave for part one of group for the week. I was jittery and fidgety as J tried his best to cuddle me on the couch. My skin was crawling and more than cuddle I had a craving for him to squeeze the breath out of me. Not to kill me, rather to envelop me and give me the deep pressure that reassures me of my existence and to hold me still. I paced. I checked the clock. I be-bopped to the bathroom to fix my hair. I checked the clock. I fed the dog. I topped off his water bowl. I checked the clock. I snacked on a little dinner. By the time I left the house there wasn’t a prayer of that dinner staying in me – I mean, you can’t go to an eating disorders group with a full stomach. At least not the first time. I may reconsider this rule in light of the apparent intent of this group to get me better.
So what I had made out to be a big deal all day turned out to be a small handful of girls (college, as I can tell) doing one of the slowest, most gentle yoga classes of my life. Incidentally, it also turned out to be one of the more distracted and numb classes of my life. To be expected. There were the other bodies to compare every inch of mine to, every shifting posture offering fresh perspectives. There were the instructor’s words for the mind to snatch and clutch awkwardly, dangling in the intermittent silence – “belly”, “weight”, “creases”, “flesh”, “gravity”, “body”. There was the reality that here I was again amid a group of women, collarbones and shoulder blades, hoping that somehow a shared experience would loosen the suffocating grip of my disorder. That IT is back. There was perfectionism about the alignment of my hips, the steadiness of my ujaya breath, the depth of my bends. There was disappointment in measuring what the experience was against my expectation of it. There was longing for Bree to be there. There was a sense of separateness from these trendy collegiates, an awkward, almost embarrassed twirling of my engagement ring. There was much to lure the mind away from the in and out, from the energy both in my body and in the room, from any intention set for this practice.
But what it was, while different from what I’d expected and maybe hoped, was a lesson. These things that distracted my mind are important. I wasn’t thinking of last night’s Amazing Race or how much gas costs per gallon. My thoughts are worthy of my respect and attention. I’m not ready to give them such right now, but perhaps in therapy on Thursday.
I’m glad I went. Maybe not for what I got out of it tonight but for the potential it represents. It may suck. But maybe just maybe it’ll help. Even if just a little bit.
