just a small addendum…
I feel like posting again was probably a mistake, unfortunately. (so I’m posting again? eh? Just wanted to tie up loose ends I left with an update!)
Since I never posted here about much of ‘me’ outside from what’s related to my eating disorder (obviously I wrote about my life but only in that context), this now feels like ‘recovery space’ or ‘ED space’…which is why I left it behind…should have remembered that! Anyway, I was obviously having a grumpy miserable day, but I regret coming back and writing all that cause now I feel like I have to come back AGAIN and say ‘yep I’m ok and obviously shitty moods do pass’ 
But enough of that! Point is…as I said I am ok 
in the cold light of day when I’m not feeling stressed and out of my depth, honestly I should be looking on my worries as a good thing. If I didn’t feel like I was grieving for a huge part of me that I gave up…well, I’d be wondering what was wrong! Here’s a quote I found yesterday that sums it up perfectly…
“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” Anatole France
In the end I suppose my reactions now reflect how I’ve felt throughout recovery, in that the most deeply terrifying thing is the possibility of success, the idea that I am capable. Every step of the way that idea provided a strange duality…both incredibly empowering and absolutely petrifying. Realising that I was able to defy my eating disorder in terms of behaviours felt this way, and for awhile now it’s felt like the ‘presence’ of it is absent mentally as well as in my actions. I think this is what scares me. Because really, it’s time to find what’s left. Anorexia was like a corrosive acid that burned it’s way through absolutely everything…it influenced every hour of every day, and times where I was able to be ‘completely myself’ without it there in the background were practically gold dust. What I anticipated about the stage I’m at now was the need to be wary and watch out for any sign of regression. What I didn’t anticipate was that the progress I’ve made would itself be bittersweet. But in any case, it’s far more positive than negative. Even the negative, I suppose, is a new opportunity. Because really, there was no other way.
(addendum number two: I got a prescription for a dopamine antagonist which is working wonders for my nausea and pain, and I’m eating much better now and not losing weight. I still have some problems and have to be careful about fibre/volume, but I’ll definitely be fine until my referral )
I am thinking of making a tumblr or something like that so I can post pictures and random stuff, and show it to my ‘real life’ friends too. I like having a place to muck around with but like I said this one is all tied up with history and suffering and complicatedness. So if/when I sort that out I’ll post the address here 
it’s almost like losing myself
well hi. starting a post after a long time feels a lot like introducing yourself to a stranger who’s looking in the other direction…awkward to start! I’m not writing this for a purpose though, so that part should be easy. just at a moment where things swirling around in my head need to find their way onto virtual ‘paper’ somehow.
it’s officially summer now. uni’s over, lease on the house is through (I was so sad to see the last of that house…silly, but I could have cried! it was home in so many ways), exam results are out. I averaged a high 2:1. it’s testament to how much I’ve changed since I was 18 that I was actually really happy with that, not disappointed. I’d like to grab a few more marks in my degree as a whole but this year doesn’t count so that’s cool
new modules for next year – all what I wanted, and I reckon the highlight is one that wasn’t even actually my first choice, Literature and Terrorism. but having looked at the reading list and read one background text…amazing.
I’ve been staying at a friend’s place for the last two weeks or so…so really have just been shopping, going out for coffee, watching TV and so on. more adventurous exploits (Dublin, staying at my parent’s place in Dorset, Manchester to name a few) will begin next week
both the upside and the downside of this summer so far has been the ‘new start’ aspect of it all. I’m moving into new accommodation in October with a bunch of people I won’t know, cause me and my tutor agreed that it’s awkward for me to stay where I was seeing as I’m out of sync with people I made friends with in the first year since I repeated it, and some of my friends have graduated now. obviously this is somewhat unnerving!
anyway more than that, my whole life is a bit of a leap into the unknown right now. when I last posted I felt like I was leaving my life with anorexia behind, and I could finally say it didn’t have a hold on me at all. but hey, more fun for me! what I didn’t realise was that that left me…behaviourally/mentally healthy, yes…but still ‘out of sync’ with where I would have been if I’d never had an eating disorder. I didn’t have an intense struggle when I reached a healthy bmi, which seemed odd. but the past month every problem that’s not to do with my ED seems to want to come and hit me round the head…just for a nice twist in the tale. to be a little overdramatic, it feels like I recovered and now there’s a huge hole inside me. a black hole of…well…nothing. I was underweight and disordered since early in my adolescence and now I feel thrown into something I don’t understand. the infuriating part is that I seem to have blacked out with permanent marker the part of my head that wants to blame this on my weight or food intake. there are no easy solutions now. (or rather, solutions I find myself practised at implementing!) mostly, as I said to my friend the other day, I feel like an addict who’s over withdrawal but adrift in the ‘real world’. I have no clue how to live while ‘healthy’…but rather than that uncertainty making me miss using behaviours or being really underweight, it just makes me feel this empty space left over all the more keenly. I rant and rave about how unfair it all is cause I had to rip my world apart at the seams to get over this illness, but I don’t want it back. I don’t know what I want. this part requires patience. and to me, that’s a four letter word.
in any case, I am ok. well, I think I will be ok, but I underestimated the ‘grieving’ process so to speak. it felt like metaphorically tearing all the ED’d bullshit out of my mind would be a cathartic end point to it all…and the fact that it just seemed to leave a gaping wound doesn’t go over too well at times.
just to get Fate’s middle finger well and truly stuck up in my face, I’ve been utterly miserable due to stomach problems lately. well, I was until last week, but I got a prescription for a dopamine antagonist which is helping a lot. plus a gastro referral in a couple of months. I’d lost some weight before that though, and although I reckon I’m eating more with the medication, my appetite’s still a bit rubbish. I’m not sure if some of that is aversion to the possibility of pain though? could be. tis incredibly frustrating. often I have nagging thoughts that I should be eating more but early fullness and nausea are such a pain to deal with. and I know the answer may be ‘put up with it’…but to be honest it makes me want to scream WELL JUST FUCKING TRY IT YOURSELF :@:@ (lol sorry not directed at anyone reading more just the whole thing makes me pissed with myself) esp given that I’m already not eating vegetables, haven’t been for ages, and the past few weeks I’ve had no fruit and very little wholegrain too, cause I know I need more dense foods and less fibre. I also have juice or sugary drinks a lot and very few low calorie foods. feels like I am making some sacrifices and not just rolling over and giving in no? but even with that I seem to get full/sick or in pain before I’ve gotten to the amount I need to eat, which is still probably like over 2500 sedentary. if anyone knows of a way to reduce metabolism please let me know! (I’m only half kidding…I want to cry at the thought of spending the next two months sitting propped up without moving for fear I’ll puke, but also the thought of losing loads of weight…erm bad.) anyways sorry for venting my medical dilemmas here. it is a lot better since I’m taking the medication, and if I keep losing weight even with it, I’ll just have to go back to the GP and beg for ideas.
in the meantime…some of this wouldn’t go amiss…
oh also, on a fun note…I’ve been learning to walk in 4.5 inch heels! I’m such a trainers/flip flops girl so this is rather impressive for me and I love it! makes me ridiculously far too tall though, my dad wasn’t happy when I towered over him at dinner the other day! but hey, why not! if I break an ankle I’ll go back on that but I’ve been lucky so far…
believe in the resolute urgency of now
so, exams are over (survived without serious incident, have to wait til the results are out though!) and I just got back from a week of shopping in London with a friend. it keeps hitting me suddenly that I have no work to do, nothing to worry about, and a whole summer stretching out before me. life is good!
earlier today I spent a good two hours alternately crying with happiness, grinning at my reflection and jumping around, though. sure, summer is good, but it doesn’t beat the fact that for the first time in my entire life I’m at a healthy bmi 
haven’t weighed myself in over a month now so I really had no idea what would happen, and although I was crossing my fingers for a gain, it was hard to be sure cause about six weeks back the difficulty I’d been having with my metabolism and appetite got to the point where I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep gaining. however…after some amazing advice I received about stimulating appetite and kind of ‘tricking’ your body into getting more food in, I think putting that into practice must have done the trick the past few weeks.
anyway I had a review appointment this morning which was why I got weighed…basically it was to determine what to do with me seeing as I’m in such a good place, but my history is worrying. conclusion = infrequent check-ups…fine with me. they are reluctant to discharge which I understand. anyway, the point is, I got on the scales and literally did a little ‘squeee’ of happiness, then spent the next few hours grinning my face off. I never believed I would make it to this weight. it’s over 40lbs above my lowest and higher than I’ve ever been. but in the backwards weird way that life works, it’s causing me no issues whatsoever. I went to buy myself some new clothes as ‘reward’ and was way happier looking at my reflection than I was a few pounds lower. I guess I no longer have the slight insecurity I did while I knew I was underweight? anyway, it’s awesome.
so where does this leave me? for a while now I’ve felt like the missing ‘piece’ for me was a healthy bmi. I have no behaviours, I don’t weigh/measure/count or meal plan, I eat anything I want and don’t struggle with ED thoughts. at this point I obviously wouldn’t consider myself ‘totally recovered’ given that a) time-wise it is early for me and I need a good few months/years to pass, and b) I still want my weight a bit higher than it is now, right on the ‘barrier’ of 18.5 isn’t ideal for me. but I don’t consider myself ‘in recovery’ anymore either…anorexia plays no role in my head, so fighting it doesn’t need to either. sure I won’t change my diet or ‘go onto maintenance’ but that would be impossible anyway given that I don’t plan or carefully consider what I eat now, or have a clue about calories. from now on I need to move on with my life away from the eating disorder, cause it’s had no role in my day to day life for a while, and now I’ve passed the ‘barrier’ of a healthy bmi which was so significant and a massive fear in my head throughout my ED, I think it’s time to stop defining myself in relation to it.
so I suppose the inevitable consequence of this is that I doubt I’ll be blogging anymore 
I just don’t honestly think my day-to-day life aside from the ED is something I want to be ‘writing’ about, more ‘living’. and I know this differs for everyone, but for me my blog was my story. I’ve been keeping it up the past month cause I wanted one final showdown before I wrapped up the novel. I didn’t want to leave it with the idea that getting to a healthy weight isn’t a very significant part. I wish I could stick around and let you know when I hit my ‘target’ but a) I’m no longer worried that I will be afraid of gaining, cause this was the biggest ‘sticking point’ for me and b) let’s be honest I’ll probably not know when I DO get there unless I happen to have an appointment cause my interest in weighing myself is less than zero.
so now I feel a little sad and nostalgic. I am so thankful to people who have supported me and it has made me so happy to know that my ramblings have helped some people. I will probably still check my friends blogs 
I would miss you guys otherwise! and who knows I may update at some point to say I am still here and still happy! in any case emails are more than welcome…it’s on the ‘where all the ladders start’ page…
so this is goodbye. sniff all I want to leave this blog with is the idea that recovery is NOT ‘managing your thoughts’. it is being free of them. and life is worth it, for everyone. just had to end on a slightly cheesy note ok? I am having a happy day. now am off to get drunk and celebrate!
how to survive exams with a smile on your face…
rely on obscene amounts of caffeine. or Red Bull. or maybe both.
take breaks to do amusing but useful household tasks like defrosting your freezer with a hairdryer.
eat easily prepared, fun food. Asda Happy Stars…like the potato smiles of my childhood but better and these days I’m a fan of HP sauce and fish or crispbakes to go with it rather than dinosaur chicken nuggets and ketchup. shame, cause those would have made a cuter picture!
climb a hill round the back of your house with some friends and take blurry pictures of the city at night.
swing a chain soaked in paraffin and set on fire around your head!
and again! ps: Katie, who lent me the poi to play with, is far more skilled than I and I have much cooler pictures of her playing with TWO strings of fire! (I stuck to one for fear of setting my hair on fire or similar ), but I will give her the pics and see if she wants to post em! and explain poi, because I was just messing around for kicks and don’t really know how to do it!
give yourself a break to go out and buy yourself lunch. particularly if it’s Subway. my new combination: Italian BMT, cold, with spicy cheese, lettuce, pickles & BBQ sauce on Italian herbs & cheese bread. awesome.
and before I forget…ask me more questions on Formspring. my link was broken for ages but it was brought to my attention so I’ve fixed it now ask away! it will give me a good distraction during revision breaks!
just to lower the tone a little…
some pictures from the past week or so
first, I decided to actually try and become a blogger! see, I may or may not find it hard to make it a secret that I find some ‘blogging’ foods or combinations really rather strange. green smoothies? er, no. vegetables will never find their way into my drinks. carrot cake oats? I’d rather have a slice of carrot cake or a plain bowl of porridge with raisins and brown sugar (not together though!)
however. I’ve been on a total PB kick lately, so thought for kicks I’d try out this jar thing. bear in mind, in this case it was PORRIDGE in a jar. on this strange island we don’t call it oats
unfortunately I think I sort of failed though. PB&CO? sorry…bit expensive…and I find it a bit too runny too? anyway Tesco’s own PB is actually rather good this was quite amusing to eat especially as a double serving of Oatso Simple (yeah I also fail in this respect, much prefer it to whole oats cause I don’t have to bother sweetening it myself!) fits perfectly in the jar. I may do this again despite my cynicism
this is just me being vain…also new t-shirt from Topshop. I am so loving this colour and on a mission to find any other items of clothing in it I can get my hands on!
essence of summer…Ben & Jerry’s ah and I love how aesthetically pleasing my car’s dashboard is! good for photos!
our little town is so cute…see the little stall selling whippy ice cream in this photo? adorable!
and another one to continue the ‘Britishness’ theme (it’s a poster in the window of Whittards!)
oh and a new fun food discovery…deconstructed sushi mine is mackerel and avocado but I’m sure it would work with anything. oh and have been having this and other Asian themed food with lemon iced tea. just discovered it in the supermarket and it makes me think of visiting Hong Kong, cause I used to drink it like water over there. they actually do mango and peach as well over here, but lemon’s my favourite! totally recommended
less than two weeks until my exams are over…I just wish it would stop being so sunny! all I want to do is go out
I’ve said too much (I haven’t said enough)
I don’t believe in recovery.
ok, I should stop starting or titling posts with stuff like that, or I’ll lose all interest factor and become like the boy who cried wolf! in any case. obviously that’s not literally what I mean, there’s a tad more to it than that!
being healthy* and retaining ties and friendships with people who are still very ill inevitably brings up the dilemma of ‘how do I help?’ ‘can I even help?’. in one sense the answer is obvious – no. no one could help me when I was ill, save flapping around trying to keep me safe and effectively talking in a language I didn’t understand. but now that I’ve spent nearly five months effectively in the process of ‘fixing myself’ and arrived at a place I couldn’t even imagine at the start, is there mileage in explaining my choices or decisions to other people? obviously, this becomes an even more pressing subject when you have a public blog
(* given my professed disbelief in recovery, I refuse to describe myself as ‘in it’ in this post! so excuse my necessary alternative words and understand that healthy isn’t used to mean a bmi number )
the problem I have with the concept of ‘recovery’ is in the opposition of it. recovery versus illness. right versus wrong. black versus white. quite beyond the entirely misleading moral implications that go along with descriptions of recovery as the ‘right’ thing…it’s not that simple. as least, the way my mind works and the way I frame my own experiences, I can’t see it that way. while right now the idea of using ED behaviours confuses and baffles me (why would I want to do THAT? ) that’s completely and utterly influenced by it being MY perspective, from this moment, in this body, with these experiences. people are not the same, and I was not the same even six months ago. honestly, I used to be diametrically opposed to recovery. it made absolutely no sense to me, and you could have told me that that was just a function of the illness until you were blue in the face, I wouldn’t have believed you or even understood what you were talking about. a huge thing that I came to understand over the past few months is that medicine and convention pathologise everything about eating disorders, but that this means nothing to the experience of the individual. fair enough, some scientist somewhere may one day be able to quantify and pin down the neurological processes that make someone opposed to recovery. but it doesn’t mean shite all when that’s the position you’re in, because your thoughts ARE your reality. ‘truth’ is relative to the experience of the individual. and this is why I’m uncomfortable talking about ‘recovery’ as though I’m ‘right’…(even though I’m fairly sure I am, lol, but again that’s a decision made relative to my own experience)
see all of this might somehow be productive and even helpful if I could pin down a decision I made to ‘move’ from illness to health. if I ever weighed up the pros and cons and came down on one side. but that didn’t happen. what I did do was take a risk, a risk which I almost certainly believed would destroy me. but it wasn’t with the intention of ‘changing’ myself into a ‘reformed, recovered’ person. first came the grudging decision to add five hundred calories to my day, in order to quiet the terrified voice in my head telling me my nine lives might run out soon. then to eat pizza and a tuna melt panini because somehow a path opened up in my head which I hadn’t even seen as an option before, and my curiosity is such that I can never turn something like that down I almost can’t believe that the cumulative effect of decisions like that ended up with me where I am today. it’s bizarre, and it certainly wasn’t deliberate.
another aspect: what I actually DID to improve my health. there’s a ‘process’ for this too, a model that I’m supposed to believe in and have bought into. but in a strange way, I didn’t and I don’t. I think this is a matter of the way you frame it. conventional ‘recovery’ says you have to gain weight – this is non-negotiable. in the world of facts and truths, this is undeniable. but that wasn’t how it happened for me. once in treatment I was told ‘think of this as a way of improving your quality of life’. that was said to me in a total ‘harm reduction’ sense, but it actually turned out to help me in a far more positive way. it turned out that, once I was gaining weight, I became averse to doing anything else because of the benefits I saw from it. certainly I made ‘rules’ for myself in order to make those decisions easier to handle. but they were MY rules, not the rules of some shadowy treatment professional over my shoulder. not the pressure from a conventional ‘ideal’ of recovery. in a sense, the past five months have been about finding my own way, and the more time passes, the more I find myself questioning the concept of ‘recovery vs. illness’ itself.
whether I am happy? of course. but elaborating on this is almost pointless. my memory of the time where words meant nothing to me is far too strong. sure, I can paint a great picture of recovery. I’m intelligent and good with words (apologies…this stream of consciousness is far too long to include a paragraph on humility ). I can also write about the horror and the emptiness of my life with anorexia. I’ve certainly done it before. but when I look back at those posts, even now I can see the strange appeal of the descriptions. in practice, hell no fuck off never going back there, I almost shiver at the thought. but it’s probably a flaw of the human condition…the strange allure of the edge of the cliff. hell, even Milton’s Satan seems pretty damn charming when it’s all written out in a powerful and evocative voice (excuse the introduction of my latest revision to my story here!). I could try to express how much happier I am until I’m the one blue in the face, this time. but I can still see my old self, who never really believed any of it until, well, I got here. and I’m so damn stubborn and headstrong that no ‘belief’ or ‘trust’ could help me in the most difficult moments, when I was alone with my own thoughts and the desire to turn backwards was almost pulling me apart. I had to find that for myself, and again, take the risk.
so I guess the conclusion of my strange musings is this. trying to ‘promote’ recovery (and not even in a deliberate way, it almost slips out when you’re so happy about what it’s done for your life!) feels fairly futile for me. but I still feel some kind of hope when telling my story, so to speak, because even when I look at it in the non-conventional sense of accidentally stumbling on health, I can see that the ‘impossible’ is very much possible. even us ‘hopeless’ people who sit around listening to the ‘gospel’ of recovery and wanting to run out of the church can still improve our lives beyond recognition. and yes, part of me is still that hopeless person. always will be. but that doesn’t mean I can’t change and haven’t done so, cause, well, I’m living it.
now I feel like I went round in some sort of philosophical circle, like the poets who wrote long tracts about the deficiencies of the form of poetry. I guess I still can’t help sliding my ‘truth’ in there a little but it seems important to me to explain the divergences I feel with my experiences and the conventional ideal which I felt my ‘recovery’ would have to fit into. cause I’m sure I can’t be the only one I know this will all be irrelevant for lots of people, cause, well, everyone with anorexia isn’t the same! as my rant on pathologising everything about the illness would seem to indicate! but it feels fairly important for me.
also, this wasn’t all conceived for the benefit of getting it out there in public! I’m beginning to feel like the next step for me IS accepting my dislike of ‘recovery’ as a concept, and moving away from it as an identity. it seems like in some ways it sucked me in, and I don’t want to build my life around what I used to be. incidentally, don’t worry that that will be a great reason for me to stay underweight/not watch out for signs of relapse despite intending to move towards life as a ‘regular’ person, I intend to be the kind of regular person who still takes care of their body and their health
try not to breathe
“I will try not to breathe
I can hold my head still with my hands at my knees
These eyes are the eyes of the old, shivering and bold
I will try not to burden you
I can hold these inside. I will hold my breath
Until all these shivers subside,
Just look in my eyes”
(REM – Try Not To Breathe)
the above is small me. I had a dreadful forced smile, I know!
(oh and the black bit is my brother as a baby, he’s 8 now so I didn’t really feel it was sensible to ask him whether he minded having a guest role on my blog, so I just blacked him out!)
anyway. more significantly it is ‘small me’ right before things got bad, with self harm and with the beginning of my eating disorder. I suppose it’s been easy to get caught up in the recent past, especially with the strange, twisted and winding road everything has taken since then. while the eating disorder has been the thread of continuity through my life since then, for me it has morphed considerable and I often lose sight of how it started.
for a start, I was restrictive back then, at the beginning that is. now I may or may not (and apologies if I do this on here, it’s meant in jest!) take the mick out of restricting a lot now (or when I was ill and distinctly purging type, anyway!). you know, the black humour…’why would I want to do THAT…live on celery when when I could have my cake (or ten) and a heart attack thrown in for free too?’
but yup…admission. the living on celery part used to be me. for about half the time I’ve been ill, actually. it was so similar and yet so different…feels light years away from my memories of the last three years…but the effects were the same, much of the causes were the same. I relate to plenty of other people with restrictive anorexia so I’ve no idea why I haven’t thought about how things started for me for ages now, especially in recovery where I’ve been trying to untangle this whole complex web. incidentally, the title and the quote are cause that REM song is one of my overriding memories of the beginning of my illness. the wish to subdue myself, need nothing, be nothing. the quiet, and the clamouring sounds I desperately ignored and tried to silence with more silence.
the different subtype isn’t the only reason I sometimes get amnesia about those years though. it’s the (potentially very distorted) memory that my eating disorder was ‘in control’ and ‘not an issue’ then. granted, things did escalate in severity a great deal when I left home. but that’s like saying I’d rather be slapped in the face than stabbed in the eye. I developed a kind of nostalgia for the times, up to when I was about 18, where I had an eating disorder, rather than BEING an eating disorder. I remember saying to my keyworker in inpatient that ‘if I could just get that balance again, I’d be fine’. unsurprisingly he told me something to the effect of ‘once you’ve touched the hard liquor you’ll never go back’
but in any case even if it had a chance of working it would be a ridiculous idea, given that life without ANY disorder has to beat some kind of compromise rubbish.
I guess the upshot is that I need to be a bit more aware of where everything started, and not conveniently erase those years and imagine that the past, say, three are the only containing problems that need to be solved. and also, have a healthy respect for the dangers of restricting! because while my worst and ‘closest’ memories are of recent, very much non-restricting years, that wouldn’t be how a relapse would start for me now. cause even these days, binge/purging doesn’t become an issue (well, there are still habitual/emotional triggers, but definitely not an out of control finding myself in Tesco at 3am type issue!) until I’m below a certain weight. which I am quite a way over now. the things I need to watch out for are much more of the ‘cutting things out/feeling the need to weigh food/fear of certain foods’ type. no worries, I have no concerns in that area at present but a little caution and awareness of the ‘warning signs’ I need to keep in mind would be good!
don’t know why I’m posting yet again when I have work to do btw! but I have pretty much finished (crossed fingers) and am going out with a friend tomorrow I will try to remember my camera and snap fun photos!
brave new world
forgive the literary reference. I’m up to my eyeballs in metaphysical poetry right now!
in any case, the past week has been pretty exciting for those of us in the UK, no? and definitely the beginning of a ‘new era of politics’ whatever that may mean! I’ve been totally unable to concentrate on my work cause I keep flicking back to the BBC website to see the latest update. definitely going to remember this election for a long time. I mean think of the highlights…’I agree with Nick’…(now to be substituted with ‘I agree with Vince’ I suspect!), Gordon Browns hilarious mike gaffe, Cameron’s favourite joke (Nick Clegg!), and my personal favourite…the ‘ConDemNation’
anyway, everyone I know seems to have an opinion and 50% of my UK friend’s facebook statuses are something to do with the election. I initially joked and said I would leave the country if Cameron were elected, but I feel a bit more optimistic about the whole thing now. hopefully the two parties will balance each other out a little! I’m a Lib Dem supporter at heart but a little compromise never hurt anyone right?
soooo, tell me…what do you think?
feeling positive about the ConDemNation?
would you have preferred a Lib/Lab coalition, or a minority government?
and MOST importantly, are or are not Gordon Brown’s kids the cutest thing ever???
to bring this back round to what my blog is y’know, meant to be about – can’t help feeling like it’s a bit of a brave new world for me too lately! it’s been three weeks since I wrote about how I was no longer at an ‘anorexic’ weight. three up and down weeks, with difficult moments body image and mood wise, but actually, especially just recently, more filled with revision and exam panic than much else. it’s already strange territory to BE in this weight range…but what’s even more so is that, hang on, I’m not spending my day crying, not leaving the house and planning how much & how fast I will lose when I relapse. what’s up with that? I’m also not only eating well and with variety, but substantially more than most people of my age/height etc. previously I’ve always gained on fairly low intakes and just the idea of taking in what I am now at such a ‘high’ weight would have been ludicrous.
this is all good. right? it’s also very confusing! what is happening to the normal order of things?!
I also seem to be, in the main, ok with my body. more so lately which annoyingly may have to do with the fact that I haven’t gained for a week (or rly I think two, I can thank PMS fluid retention for convincing me I had, hate that!). all I have to say about that is – F my metabolism and F my digestive system. oh and, I’m sure I will find a way round it, so don’t worry about me! but one good side I guess is that I have gotten to see the magic of how maintaining can ‘shrink’ your body, even at a weight totally ‘unacceptable’ to my eating disorder. don’t get me wrong, I don’t love my body or anything radical like that! but it seems to matter less. it just is. yeah I’d like to be toned more and have less scrawny arms and have curves from the front as well as the side…but really life’s too short. I’ve spent a long time being aware of this stuff 24/7 and caring about it every instant…and quite frankly I can’t be arsed. my body is functional. it isn’t around to look good for other people’s benefit, or even for my own. once I stop conflating body shape with validity & worth, I find I really don’t care that much about mine. there is still the uncomfortableness. why does my body occupy space and feel so…present? why do I feel like a person not a robot made of sticks? and I know that will flare up when I get going with gaining again because of the changes. but hey, side benefit. I also now know it will end. cause yes, my target weight has a symbolic value. but when I’m used to being so much lower, what’s another 10lbs from now? it is totally deal-able, is what
sidenote – this may be the last you hear from me for awhile exams start next week. well, maybe I’ll post some short stuff with pics by way of a break or something…if I have time!
frostbite
over this winter I’m pretty convinced fate/karma/whatever lined things up in order to make me as cold as was humanly possible. here in the UK we had the worst winter I’d ever seen, complete with snowstorms, temperatures well below zero and travel warnings everywhere. I was also at a very low weight. oh, and in our student house with very poor heating at the best of times…our boiler broke. so with our heating system, not only no radiators, but also no showers. the only hot water came from the kettle and I ended up going to a friend’s to shower and keeping my feet warming by sticking them in a tupperware box filled with almost boiling water while I was at home. anyway…suffice to say my extremities got pretty blue/purple/black and by the end of the worst two weeks I couldn’t actually feel my toes at all. not a transient electrolyte thing but literally constant lack of sensation. during the next few months, as they started to ‘thaw’ (can’t think of a better phrase!) and I could feel them again, they hurt like HELL. wearing trainers hurt, and knocking them even slightly felt like they were bruised. it took until a few weeks back for the pain to be completely gone.
forgive the metaphor, but the ‘frostbite’ scenario with the cold feels like a parallel for a whole lot of things about my life right now. as your body heals, it starts to ache, and the pain starts to tear you apart. both physically and mentally. finding myself ill yet again hasn’t done much to make me appreciate being healthier, but I can’t help but notice that I’ve had a lot more viruses/colds/general crap while recovering than I ever did when I was ill. not only that but emotionally, obviously it begins to hurt. the only thing I miss now about being very underweight is the numbness. I can remember the horror of it cause I’ve cried and raged and screamed enough about it in recovery, but I know that I didn’t feel that pain at the time. and the fact that obviously, like my poor battered feet, it’s a case of waiting it out until the healing is over and the pain subsides to a bearable level isn’t great for someone as impatient as I am.
aside from the lemon that is my body though, things are rather good. I went out this morning and bought myself some new jeans which was exciting cause they’re a size 28 and I actually don’t think I’ve ever bought jeans that size before. I’m quite tall, so almost certainly I’ll be at least that size at a healthy weight, but previously unless I could wear a 26 slightly lose, I always either lived in trackies or bought stuff way too baggy. clearly wearing something tight and flattering at such a ‘high’ weight was inconceivable. well anyway, I love my new jeans who would have thought that when your body isn’t all angles and hollows, stuff can fit you comfortably and look good rather than being stretched over your bones and not much else
don’t have pics of them but did buy something else really nice the other day…
new dress yes I clearly have a shopping problem. shame I also have an excuse
also ate some good foods…
chocolate/caramel/peanut slice. like a Snickers, but better salt and caramel is an amazing combination!
I’ve been thinking, when my exams are over I need to put my knowledge of food and need for high cal foods to good use and get more creative in the kitchen! it should be nice, cause I can have all the benefits of having gone through an ED (having read 50 bajillion recipes, loads of friends who know everything there is to know about food, love of cooking/baking) without the negatives (anxiety about it, cal counting etc). if anyone knows some good recipe sites please let me know. at risk of being slapped with a kale stalk, please nothing with green smoothies/protein pancakes/50 servings of veg a day
