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.
today my eating disorder felt…
like a small child ignored, tripped over and hissed at to move, implored to go find something to play with in the other room while mommy talks on the phone/cooks dinner/fill in the blank with any household task that busies the mind sufficiently to supress authentic emotions. My eating disorder talked to me tonight while I shuffled along the snowy sidewalk, a vision in Gore-tex with large dog in tow. It spoke in the voice of a four-year-old girl; high pitched and melodic and sweet like honeysuckle blossoms. It spoke to me with sorrow dripping heavy off each word.
“You don’t love me, do you? You’d be happier without me, wouldn’t you?” and proceeded to sigh with lower lip protruded and brow furrowed.
And then it threw a tantrum. And I purged.
Goddamnedfrustratingyellingpoundingoffistandstompingoffeet
I failed to notice myself stumbling as if intoxicated right over the grey smudge in the sand dividing at peace with oneself from in love with the perfection that is onesself (a.k.a. my ego). Whoops.
So instead of shutting down, I’ll choose to restart. Recalibrate. I don’t have to continue to descend the spiral toward darkness. I can see where it leads and simply retrace my first step, turn around and go the other way. I can attempt to refocus on the peace with myself. Balance it with gratitude for the universe for allowing me to feel that way. Not giving myself, my discipline, my will power and drive, my perfectionism all the credit. That feels too close to the disorder.
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.
Clicking the ruby red slippers
And I’m back. Back to the land of snow and ice. Back to reality. Thank God it’s another holiday week and my workload is light and the week is short.
After some quality time walking my pup, I’ve got therapy, work and then group tonight. A little jarring to my system, which enjoyed a weekend of no responsibilities.
I got home and J and I got along fine – a little distant and awkward but fine. We talked a bit last night – calm and compassionate. My parts that were terrified that it might escalate again relaxed a bit. But they’re not sure how long this calm will last.
We agreed to seek out some more couples therapy. We’ll have to find someone new since our last therapist is a co-leader of my group therapy and there’d be some conflict of interest there. So a new couples therapist to round out my team of mental health professionals is in order.
I’m feeling pretty blank today so not much to post. Other than I’m alive and well, weary from travel, nervous of conflict and resistant to the responsibilities of the day.
*I just ate breakfast. I didn’t purge yesterday. Woo hoo!
I know better
I know that restricting does the following:
-fogs my thinking
-makes me anxious and irritable
-depresses me
-sets the stage for a perceived binge (chocolate covered almonds after dinner, for example)
-sets the stage for a purge (grrr)
-makes ANY morsel of food that enters my belly elicit bloating and discomfort
So why do I do it??!! Partly I’ve been restricting all week as an effort to stave off any purging (which it hasn’t entirely but has certainly decreased it). Partly it’s because of the emotional demands on me right now and the side effect of needing some sense of control (so ED cliche’ed but true). Partly the pain feels good. But I got some “bars” at the grocery today that feel like an acceptable breakfast/lunch or snack to give a whirl tomorrow. I know I can do it – it just requires talking myself down from that disordered place. Compromising with my parts.
I’m starting to visit friends here at home and to accept the phone calls that are incoming. My mom and I saw “Marley and Me” today and I got a perfect excuse to let some tears out in a safe space (no one but me had to know that it wasn’t because of the plot-line).
And, brace yourselves for a shocker, I got some good advice today from my mom. I fully expected her advice to be just to end my relationship. To give up and move on. As if it’s that easy. But she just told me that she thinks I should go back to Vermont and start living the life I want. If it fits with J’s, great. If he resents me taking time and energy for my own self-care, to make a social network, to seek out some sort of meaningful spiritual community or any host of other things I know I need in order to be healthy….then the relationship will naturally end. She thinks that I’m putting too much energy into talking about my needs rather than just living my life according to them. I know that this approach may sound totally negligent of my partner’s needs. But he has, to date, been unable to (1) understand the concept of needs – he even says that he doesn’t understand, (2) articulate any needs himself, (3) demonstrate any needs other than for me to have no needs of my own. I have to tend to agree with my mom’s advice – if only because the talking doesn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. Maybe this will be a more effective way of eliciting change in J than talking about it.
A huge loud part of me says that you shouldn’t want or need your partner to change. That love is about acceptance and compromise. But I’m being completely honest with myself that there are other parts that are speaking up that there are several things within our relationship that simply cannot continue. I’m trying to remember myself when I was healthy (including when I met J) and to begin a path back towards those values.
In my ongoing reading of the IFS relationship book, I was jolted into an upright and alert state by the following excerpt related to abandonment anxiety:
“Whenever we fall in love, the other person always appears rich with a superabundant life…extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily alive, an animal whose nature is not to be docile but rebellious, not weak but strong…which is free and liberating, but also unforeseeable and frightening. That is why the person who is more frightened imposes on the other a great many restrictions, a great many small sacrifices, all of which are basically intended to make her gentle, safe and innocuous. And the other person gradually accepts them. To avoid upsetting her lover, she imperceptibly eradicates everything that may have that effect. She makes many small renunciations , none of which is serious…gladly makes them because she wants her lover to be happy, and she tries to become what he wants her to be. Gradually, she becomes domestic, available, always ready, always grateful. In this way, the marvelous wild beast is reduced to a domestic pet; the tropical flower, plucked from its environment, droops in a little vase by the window. And the lover who asked her to become like this because he wanted to be reassured, because he was frightened by the new experience, winds up misisng in her what he had previously sought and found. The person who stands before him is not the same one he had fallen in love with….he asked her to moderl herself on his fears, and now he faces the result of those fears – her nothingness.”
-quoted in the IFS book from sociologist Francisco Alberoni
I want so fucking desperately to be rich with superabundant life. Not in a false way to make others feel good. I genuinely want to feel extraordinarily alive and strong. It doesn’t fit nicely into a measurable outcome but THAT is my supreme goal for 2009. Without descriptors of whether that is in a relationship with J or on my own.
quiet night at the Moseberg’s
J has been sleeping since I got home from work at 5:30. It is now nearly 10 p.m. and I’m wrapping up my day and about to go to bed for the night. I can’t help but think that his slumber is fueled by avoidance and passive aggressiveness. It’s making me feel really really pissed off.
I purged my dinner. Fuck. I have grandiose schemes in my head of serious restricting over the holidays. Double fuck. Yesterday may have been a bit much for my system to handle without flaring up my ED/protector parts. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. Dinner wasn’t anything more than I’ve eaten over the past few days without purging so I feel like that is a nice bit of empirical data that tells me so much of it has to do with emotions (wait, but I already knew that). Days like these I just want to run away from my life. Parts of me don’t want to marry this man. Parts of me don’t want to join his name and mine on a mortgage. Parts of me get hopeless and start thinking suicidal thoughts. Parts of me imagine planning a trip to NC to see my mom and just not returning. But those are just parts. They have their reasons.
Where did my Self go?
Things that help:
1. Really obnoxious horde of teenagers loitering in the restaurant bathroom last night who foiled my plans to undo dinner.
2. Wine to mellow the static electricity of anxiety while said dinner was digesting in my tummy while I was at a holiday get together at a friend’s.
3. Waking up to a sweet mom email and encouraging comments on my blog. Positive energy REALLY helps wake up the part of me that starts to get sleepy and give up when ED barges into my brain. I beg you to leave comments – they mean more than you know and a single one can sometimes tip me back to the motivated side of the recovery/relapse continuum.
4. A friend over for tea and lunch. A friend who knows what I’m struggling with, even if she can’t relate. A friend who I didn’t have to take the mealplan off the fridge for.
5. Realizing that even though I just scarfed a handful of cookies (NOT on meal plan), it was not an inordinate amount and I can just sub that for my planned snack. I’m okay. I’m okay. Breathe – just a normal serving of cookies. Not equivalent to 5 pounds gained. I’m about to go to the gym anyway so I’ll work it out then (I know…this is partly ED talking but 20 extra minutes of exercise feels less destructive than yacking).
6. Waking J up so I wasn’t alone this morning and making him go to church with me – got us out of the house, got us in a room full of singing people and killed an hour of an otherwise unstructured Sunday.
7. Smoking cigarettes – Oh no. I’m gonna get in trouble for this one I’m sure…BUT hear me out – just personal experience here, not encouraging others. As an on-again-off-again smoker for years, I sometimes “dabble” in this less than healthy behavior. But it can feel like a good substitute after eating to do something that elicits some neurochemical release and some of the familiar thoughts of “oh I shouldn’t be doing this”, “this is bad for me”, “i really should stop doing this”. Yet, my food stays in my belly. I’m in risk management mode right now – I think that’s what they call it in social work when you might bargain for “less” destructive behaviors in the relative scheme of things.
With these powers combined….so far so good today. I’m sure I’ll post again before it’s all over. One thing I’d like to explore is this: I don’t think it’s coincidental that just when the emotional shit started to get heavy and dark and dad imagery started bubbling up from the yuck, I flipped the switch to managing “behaviors” and focus on food/mealplans/etc. Maybe managing my spiraling out of control purging is a means to distract.
Wishing and hoping pays off…
No, I did not wake up this morning (1) magically cured of my eating disorder, or (2) 10 pounds lighter (I am constantly amused by the polarization of my brain). But I did get a SNOW DAY! It’s all I could think about last night as we watched weather reports forecast a Winter Storm with bad road conditions.
So here I lay, sipping coffee in bed with my pup by my side – lounging and contemplating what to do with my day. No plans. I’m in the quiet before the storm of anxiety about unstructured time. Before my manager parts start making lists and setting goals and feeling wound up tight like a top about the emptiness in the hours ahead of me. Trying to remain in this contented and warm headspace: I think I’d like to read today. I’d like to go to the gym. I’d like to play with my dog in the snow (he goes bezerk with joy!). Take a nap. Take 85 pounds of laundry to the laundromat.
I’ve felt really disconnected from my life, my body, even my brain this week. Like I’m floating about 3 feet above my actual being – hovering in a limbo state. Lots of purging and in a much more frantic and sensation seeking manner than last week (when it was just something I did once a day, part of the routine). It’s led to the inevitable awakening of my sleeping restricting part. I’m tired of the purging and eating regular meals has made me feel gross. I want to cleanse this weekend and feel empty and hungry and clean. Is it weird that I equate restricting to cleaning up the house? It feels too cluttered and chaotic in my body and mind so I’ll take food out of the equation. Another factor I think contributing to the restrict voices is this curiosity I had yesterday – what if I wrote my dad a letter that read:
Dear Dad,
As you know, I have been battling an eating disorder over the past several years. I have also asked you repeatedly to “give me a break” and stop contacting me via email, phone, letter, packages, smoke signals or carrier pigeons. I know that you have found it irresistable to keep contacting me and requests for you not to do so apparently make it more enticing for you. I have decided to treat you like the three-year-olds I work with and enforce consquences for your poor choices. From this point forward, I will be losing 10 pounds for every time you contact me. I will send you photographs of my progress as a reminder of this consequence. If you correspond with me enough, you will need to forward mail to me in a hospital. You can undoubtedly stalk me and get that address when the time comes.
Sincerely,
Your daughter
I know, I know, what you’re thinking. Correction: I don’t know what you’re thinking. I know what I’m thinking and what I suppose you’re probably thinking. That’s crazy. That gives my disorder power. I would never send that letter. It’s just another one of these daydreamy thoughts I’m having a LOT of lately. But the interesting conclusion that I came to at the end of this daydream was that even THAT wouldn’t stop him. He’s incapable of giving me space or respecting boundaries.
I’ve been having so many dad-related thoughts and feelings and memories lately which are both interesting and terrifying. They take me “there” where I never want to go. Down into the yuck. But maybe the yuck isn’t “down” – maybe it’s actually floating 3 feet above my body because I’m confused as to why I’ve felt floaty disconnection this week with co-occuring access to the yuck? Is it a reactionary dissociation? Huh? Freud? Jung? A little analysis, please guys?
So I’m going to take this post back to where it started…snow day joy. Coffee’s a little less hot, back is starting to hurt from typing-in-bed-posture and anxiety has crept in with it’s entourage of manager parts. But regardless, I don’t have to go to work – woo hoo!
The awkwardness of being human
J just had the most wonderful insight as we laid in bed chatting about our crazy families of origin and the possibility (albeit a terrifying one to both of us) of a family of our own.
“Everyone just walks around acting like everything’s normal. No one ever talks about the awkwardness of being human. It’s really weird to be a human.”
That, folks, is why I love that man.
I had an extremely weird human experience tonight at the gym. Some sort of weird waking vision – like a dream, only on minute 18 on the Stairmaster. I got this imagery of my father doing surgery on me in our living room and harvesting my organs. It was so disturbing and vivid that I got very rattled. Unsure of whether to hop off the 814th floor of my imaginary building and head home, to cry while pounding away on the pedals or to open my book and pretend the whole thing never happened. I wound up spending the next 12 minutes pouring sweat into puddles on the floor directly below my elbows. I decided to stay with the image but was so uncomfortable that I cranked the machine up to level 20 and began sprinting. It felt strangely like whatever was coming up, bubbling up from the pool of yuck inside me and was somehow important. Probably very painful but valuable. I came home and later wrote about 3 paragraphs of it to get it out of my head. It is truly bizarre, a visual metaphor for my relationship with my father. It feels too fresh and twisted right now to share on the blog but that will likely happen soon. Just need to give the emotional dust a few days to settle. Need to talk about it in therapy Thursday.
Yoga was pretty solid for me tonight. I felt comfortable and present. Heavy through the soles of my feet (I guess that’s what they mean when they say “grounded”). Still purging but at least I feel like it’s for good reason – like some of the yuck is making its way up and of course I don’t know what to do with it. I do feel like I’m getting just a little bit closer to knowing. Like maybe I’m on the cusp of something. Maybe. Please, maybe.
Life as a prairie dog
I am a zoo-lover. A trip to the zoo was a key feature in most family trips and my grand total visits to the Toledo, OH zoo – just an hour from my grandparents house – must be in the double digits. Which makes me a zoo expert – if only in my own head. Tonight, I can firmly say “I feel like a prairie dog”.
I always felt bad for the praire dogs. Such a nervous species shouldn’t reside for the duration of their imprisoned lives in such an open enclosure a mere 10 feet from the outstretched, cotton-candied hands of six-year-olds. I’m sure that zoo designers aim for the least restrictive enclosure (from the perspective of zoo-goers, not of the catpives) and the fact that prairie dogs presumably cannot jump, leap or scale concrete walls allows them an open dirt field with only a short wall. They always struck me as terrified - scurrying in and out of their holes always with a few of them tensely teetering on their haunches at attention, scanning the crowds for potential invaders.
I feel like there are millions several parts of me that wish my enclosure was more fortified – perhaps with 4 inch thick plexiglass or at the very least some netting. I was already feeling this way tonight upon reading my dad’s letter (I KNOW, I KNOW – WHY DON’T I BURN IT, THROW IT AWAY, WIPE MY ASS WITH IT AND FLUSH IT, anything but READ IT….maybe I’ll touch on my theories on this topic later). But then J confessed that he had read my blog. Fuuuuuuuuuuck. Not that there is anything I’ve posted (I reread at least the past 20 or so posts) that is radically different from anything I’ve uttered aloud to him or made vague reference to in his presence. I even sort of understand his reasoning for checking it — he wicked panicked when I forgot to call immediately upon arriving in Brooklyn Friday night and my phone battery had died. After several hours of calling and emailing he checked the blog – and found that I had posted that very night and was alive and well (alright – well is subjective but I was definitely alive). The bottom line is – I’m not even mad at him per se. Just really sad about the situation. As the child of a Narcissist Borderline parent, boundaries (or lack of respect of them) is a hugely touchy issue. Overstepping boundaries and privacy is touchy like pouring Tobasco sauce on a paper cut for me. So with my dad somehow locating my home address and J reading the blog…all in the same weekend….I’m feeling like scampering into the nearest hole in the dirt. Anyone willing to stand guard?
As a consolation prize – my dad got the address wrong by 10 house numbers. Lucky for me our mailman is just THAT good that he caught the mistake and made sure I got this very important piece of mail. Thanks for going above and beyond, dude. Don’t expect a holiday fruitcake or anything for that little bit of excellent service. The good news is that if my dad does go bonkers achieve a new level of bonkerdom and decide to show up on my doorstep to (a) kill himself (b) break into my home and cry on my living room floor , or (c) hand-deliver the adorable new puppy he bought me … he’ll find himself at the neighbors 10 houses down the block – PHEW!
Okay – reasons why I read the letters:
-to remind myself of how insane and toxic my father is so that I don’t reconsider my decision to amputate him from my life (it was a very long and meticulous procedure with high risk of infection)
-out of curiousity of how fucked-up this one will be
-to hurt myself, to punish myself, to be mean to me.
-to amuse myself with my own inner monologue of bitingly sarcastic, inappropriate and downright hateful potential responses…of which there are typically dozens.
-because, in this instance, I had WAAAAY to much time to ponder the contents of the envelope before I opened it and in that time my brain had concocted a totally plausible scenario in which my father reports in the letter that his new wife is pregnant with a little girl – so (1) I was going to have a sister and (2) he would have a new replacement daughter. hmm. should probably talk to Bree about this.
In the history of my eating disorder, I’ve had those days that are just downright shocking -even to me- with how far I’m willing to go to purge. Let’s just say that there are several rest station bathrooms between NYC and Albany that I’m quite familiar with now. Jeeze, that’s disGUSTING. So in the aftermath of that…I’m trying to figure out what were the precipitating events or feelings and how I could have done things differently so that I could have felt better this weekend. My brother and sister in law got some sort of stomach bug and last night my brother was hurling in the bathroom. And then proceeded to talk about it all this morning. I’m not sure if this was triggering for me or just felt insensitive or ignorant or what… I just felt really uncomfortable. Especially with a weird combination of guilt, shame and glee that he wasn’t the only one who’d used his toilet for those purposes this weekend. Ugh. Too many toilet references in this post. It’s even grossing ME out.
Way too much has gone on emotionally for me this weekend. Time to turn off the light, close the laptop and give myself a break for not coming up with a way to tie together the praire dog theme here at the end. sleep now.
