The Body Electorate

The Body is in full swing election

Campaigning for a senate seat in the house of body image

Her boney knuckles shift unbound in fight for dominance

An underdog

Given half a chance between nicotine streaked fingers

And crash diets

She blocks the mental carcinogens spewed from lips

All too familiar with late night binges

Her slogan:

Hunger only believes it’s beautiful

When beautiful becomes sculpted out of hunger

Chiseled marble forms in magazines

And all the young girls follow the Pied Piper

The candidate clutches her skin over ribs

Stretching their way back to healthy

After a brief encounter with it’s opponents tactics

Plastic surgery marking pouches of “excess”

The body approaches the podium

“As many of you know, I have, in the past,

Fallen victim to the shallow

And I’m here to tell you

The only hunger that’s beautiful

Is the hunger to know yourself

Together we can fight the opposition

Take back the power of blood breath bones

Let’s look in the mirror with naked reverence

At what each sacred body has to offer us

Let’s unstitch the seams of size 0 fabric

Quilt in patches to embrace the “excess”

It need not define us

It’s just skin in reflection but a masterpiece of excellence

The body pauses – notices – a demonstration swelling

Wallets fat with weight watchers and waif fashioninstas

Pouty lips and high rollers on the strip of celebrity

Her stomach growls in protest

Hunger is beautiful, hunger is beautiful

Still stretch marked with the roadmap of supposed perfection

She eats a sandwich

She laughs

Soon she will have the floor

She will filibuster Teen magazine for each girl

Making decisions based on air brushed images

For every woman weighing worth with a scale

Yes, these fat fists are taking on the industry

She’s voting for herself

I heard this read at a poetry slam by its author, Jocelyn Bates. We had randomly become friends that evening. The fact that this was her poem made me feel like God was involved in this one....

Burying My Head

A child.
Tenuous and scared.
Always questioning her worth.
Not thinking because then I might feel the lack.
Silencing the persistent screams of inadequacy.
Burying my head in the sand out of weakness.

A woman.
Flimsy and timorous.
Concealing the sting of self doubt.
Filling the hole frivolously.
Ignoring the persistent bawl of my mind.
Burying my head in the sand out of fear of knowing the truth.

I was hurt.
By someone I loved.
He judged and criticized my beauty.
I learned to believe what I had already told myself.
Already fragile, he broke me.
Disregard and run to escape the deafening screams.
Bury my head in the sand to assuage the unremitting sting.

Control the unrelenting cacophony in my head.
Control the screams of insipidness.
Control through a nocuous restriction.
Control through not loving or exposing.
Burying my head in the sand.

Into the Dark

Capricious desires out of trepidation and need for solace and warmth.
Follow me into the dark.
Angst and remorse for the reasons he can’t.
Guilt for the desire.

Desperate cries for help from the pain that I don’t want answered.
Under rug swept.

Truth cannot be evaded.
Peace can never be found in anguish.

Forlorn about the agonizing and obscure journey to lucidity and life.
Connections feel incomprehensible.
The hall is long and the solitary journey feels daunting.

Go it alone.
Trust He will carry you.
Discover the depth of spirit in loneliness.
Stop hurting others as your hurt yourself.

You’re fractured from the fall.
Find the strength to know you’re not broken.

The Water is Warm

Life is for living. Maybe some of my troubles stem from my inability do that. I pretend to live. I play to the ideals and ideas of what that means. I backpacked Europe….I’ve jumped out of planes….I’ve let loose and know how to be crazy…but do I feel? I report to life the way a worker reports to their simplistic, mundane job for their 9-5 shift….thoughtlessly and effortlessly. I’ve gone through the motions and checked all the boxes for 30 years.

But how do I feel? WHAT do I feel? Do I know how to hurt? Do I know how to give and to expose?

I’m coming to a realization that MAYBE I know nothing about what it means to LIVE. I know nothing about what it means to THINK. I’ve failed to take advantage of those beautiful connections that God leaves for those who are willing to dig. Skimming the surface and only dangling your feet in the water means missing out on the feel of how the water can completely engulf your body…the numbing feeling of the cold…the complete refreshment at the end…..and that comfortable, gratifying exhaustion after succumbing yourself wholly to the water.

I’m ready to cannonball in and get my hair wet every time. I’m ready but I’m not sure how to do it.

Fear stops me. Fear of what I’ll find and how those realizations will change my life. I’m hanging off a cliff grasping a tuft of grass to keep me from plummeting to my death. I forget I have another strong arm and a steady place to grab onto to pull myself up. I choose to put my faith in that slippery and fragile patch of grass because it is what I know. I have a fear that I will fall when I’m changing over to the other hand.

Yielding to that fear is part of living life and experiencing the liberation of knowing how to try.

Go dive in, Megan...the water is warm.

Wants and Wishes

I want to be happy.

I want to love myself completely.

I want control of my life back.

I want to internalize the extent of the damage I've done to my body.

I want my anorexic mind to release me of it's peril.

I want to accept the feeling of loneliness. The duplicitous balance of both complete extroversion and introversion can live harmoniously.

I want to learn to do things that make me happy.

I want to learn those things that DO make me happy.

I want to learn to lean on those who love me.

I want to learn to find confidence in the acceptance of my insecurities.

I want to stop searching for external validation from others and things.

I want to be able to run again.

I want to invest more in my friends and less in my romantic relationship with my ED.

I want to think of others as much as I consume myself with MYSELF.

I want to always be honest with myself.

I want to stop being scared and take down my walls.

I want to learn to let myself fall in love.

I want to take pride and invest in my work.

I want to learn balance between being in love with the idea of love and reality.

I want everyone to know how much I love them even when I don’t know how to show it.

I want to stop beating myself up about everything.

I want to learn to put others before myself more frequently.

I want to get closer to God. I want to get closer to God. I want to et closer to God.

I want to carry what I hear on Sunday past the doors of the church.

I want to not be so good at lying.

I want peace and sanity in my mind.

I want to make people feel as special as they make me feel.

I want to be closer to my non-immediate family.

I want to feel comfortable in my skin even if I am ten pounds heavier.

I want to forgive myself for my divorce and all my mistakes.

I want to internalize the fact that EVERYONE has made mistakes.

I want to start to learn more from them and stop repeating them.

I want to always be surrounded by those I love.

I want to have the ability to see something that looks good and just indulge.

I want to let go of the guilt I harbor for everything that I do.

I want to remember to pray and call at least one friend every day the same way I remember to brush my teeth.

I want people to think of me as the natural “go to” when they need comfort, love, and support.

I want to always just let go and be myself – no matter the situation.

I want to learn to always have fun….I AM a lot of fun!

I want to learn to own and love every facet of my being and personality.

I want to stop caring what others think.

I want to never again tweak myself to be what I think another wants.

I want to allow myself to be lazy sometimes.

I want to get closer to understanding myself and my life.

I want to stop trying to be someone that others like and just like myself.

I want to stop comparing myself to other women.

I want to stop looking to men for personal validation.

I want to believe that people love me for who I am, not what I look like.

I want to be better at cleaning my house and stop trying to hide the fact that I’m not.

I want to accept myself if I don’t ever get better at it.

I want to stop pretending to be someone I think is desirable to others.

I want to stop feeling like I need to make the bed everyday.

I want to stop obsessing in general.

I want to start drinking more water AND more beer.

I want to decrease the time I feel like I need to spend at the gym and increase the time I dedicate to spending with friends.

I want to cut myself some SLACK!

I want to listen to more music and watch less television.

I want to take more pictures and not care how I look in them.

I want to learn to let myself TRULY FEEL.

I want to stop feeling like I need to put on such a stoic front.

I want to give myself permission.

I want to face reality and the responsibilities of life a little better.

I want to stop feeling so accountable.

I want to stop being so idealistic so I stop always feeling so let down and discouraged.

I want to let go of the concept of perfection.

I want to eat more ice cream.

I want to learn to slow down and be patient.

I want to love my body.

I want to own my own life.

I want to stop settling.

I want to learn to settle a little more.

I want to finally admit that honesty with myself and others is always feels better in the end.

I want to admit that I have a problem and be ok with getting help.

I want to use this list to take a second stab at my life.

I want to forgive myself if I forget half of the things on this list in that process.

I want to stop perfecting this list....the fact that I have revisited it so many times is so indicative of my perfectionist nature.

Simple Together

Simple Together - Alanis Morissette

You’ve been my golden best friend
Now with post-demise at hand
Can’t go to you for consolation
Cause we’re off limits during this transition

This grief overwhelms me
It burns in my stomach
And I can’t stop bumping into things

I thought we’d be simple together
I thought we’d be happy together
Thought we’d be limitless together
I thought we’d be precious together
But I was sadly mistaken

You’ve been my soulmate and mentor
I remembered you the moment I met you
With you I knew god’s face was handsome
With you I suffered an expansion

This loss is numbing me
It pierces my chest
And I can’t stop dropping everything

I thought we’d be sexy together
Thought we’d be evolving together
I thought we’d have children together
I thought we’d be family together
But I was sadly mistaken

If I had a bill for all the philosophies I shared
If I had a penny for all the possibilities I presented
If I had a dime for every hand thrown up in the air
My wealth would render this no less severe

I thought we’d be genius together
I thought we’d be healing together
I thought we’d be growing together
Thought we’d be adventurous together
But I was sadly mistaken

Thought we’d be exploring together
Thought we’d be inspired together
I thought we’d be flying together
Thought we’d be on fire together
But I was sadly mistaken

That I Would Be Good - Alanis Morissette

That I would be good even if i did nothing
That I would be good even if i got the thumbs down
That I would be good if I got and stayed sick
That I would be good even if I gained ten pounds

That i would be fine even even if I went bankrupt
That i would be good if I lost my hair and my youth
That i would be great if I was no longer queen
That i would be grand if i was not all knowing

That i would be loved even when i numb myself
That i would be good even when i am overwhelmed
That i would be loved even when i was fuming
That i would be good even if i was clingy

That i would be good even if i lost sanity
That i would be good

Dear John,

Dear Anorexia,

I have come a long way since the first day we met…I learned you. I invested in our highs and lows. They tell me that it is time to let go of you, but I don’t know how. I want to let go of you, but I’m petrified of what I’ll find. You’ve left this shell of a woman who doesn’t know how to recover. Who was I when you came in my life…I’m not even sure that I remember anymore. Was I happy? And when did we meet?? Two years ago or 15 years ago? It is hard to remember. For some reason I swear we met once in passing before we got to know each other intimately.

To your credit…you never left me. You made me feel safe. I could always count on you. You gave me power and control when I needed it. But what I’m here to tell you today is it’s over...it has to be for me. They tell me I am supposed to be seeing that you gave me all this safety and control at a high price…you did this in a very DESTRUCTIVE AND HARMFUL way to me. I’m starting to agree with them….but it is so hard not be loyal to someone I’ve grown to depend on so much.

It needs to be over. Nothing truly rewarding ever came out of our relationship as much as I liked to think of at times. The arguments we have had in my head have nearly killed me. You made me do things that are DISGUSTING like abuse laxatives, losing a lot of weight, and lying to everyone (including myself) by being secretive and self isolating. I was always angry and hungry. You made me starve myself. You made me have medical conditions from this eating disorder. You made me feel worthless and robbed me of my self-esteem. Worst of all, getting over you and undoing your evils will be one of the hardest things in my life I will ever be forced to endure. I nearly lost everything because of you, including my life!! No matter how hard it is for me to admit, you are not good for me. All I have done is GIVE and all you have done is TAKE. I deserve more.

How could you do this to someone? ME or ANYONE for that matter. You take lives away. You obviously aren’t contrite…you are still out there grabbing on to someone else. YOU should be ASHAMED of YOURSELF. Instead you leave "us" to feel guilt and shame. I have done nothing but live with you, fight with you, and lose sense of who I am.

In all of this realization, I am trying to understand you and why I still need you at times. I am NOT a bad person (like you said I was), and if you would only let me see that. I have met some wonderful people through my recovery process. They really do care about ME..not what I look like or how much I weigh. It's "ME" they care about. The INSIDE stuff. And do you know what a wonderful feeling that is, to have someone care about me, for ME. I don't have to be THIN to be LOVED!! It’s a great concept that I am still learning to grasp. I look forward to when I internalize that wholly.

I’m not supposed to need your protection anymore, nor, do I have to pretend to be someone else. I abused you for that in the 2 years you were around. Through that time, I needed you to protect me, let me feel safe and worthy of myself. I’m not supposed to want that anymore…I want to learn to not need that anymore from you. I can protect myself (in a healthy way), and I am beginning to love myself and find out who I am.

I’m tired of living with you so maybe if I ask you to leave, you will. It’s my life and you can't have it. It's mine. This letter is GOOD-BYE!! Please leave me alone, I don't need you anymore or want you in my life! You have hurt me 2 years too much. This is now my life, not yours! One I have worked VERY HARD to build. I deserve a happy, healthy, ANOREXIA FREE LIFE!!

Megan

Ramblings of a Ragamuffin

How do I feel?? How DO I feel??? Confused…longing for my old life back. Not wanting my old life back. Scared of the future….scared of the hurting and of hurting. Scared to take a leap of faith. Longing for this one to be the truth. Scared it isn’t. Scared of my life and how bumpy this path has been. This skin is a blessing and a curse. Scared of finding out the answers. Time to determine my life. Time to own my feelings.

Life is what happens when you are busy making plans. All I have ever done is make plans and not truly settle into any of them. When do I begin to own my life and my mistakes. When do I accept that the “new” is just that….. all new. When am I going to understand that the constant search of exhilaration is hollow in the end because I am left with nothing old and worn. Not bad worn, but worn like your favorite pair of old jeans that knows every inch of your body, or that old family blanket that symbolizes coming home….it knows how to comfort you by just existing. It’s sheer presence brings you warmth.

I am my own worst enemy. I’m the actress and the critic all wrapped up into one. The critic can see through the actress’s performance every time and writes the review before she even has a chance to appear on stage that night. The actress always beats herself up so much because she can’t re-live the bad review again.

The critic introduced the actress to anorexia. Anorexia made the actress deaf and blind…no longer susceptible to the pain the critic would hand out every night. Anorexia helped the guilt go away because the actress learned complete and utter self absorption. Who cares how well she does because she will always have anorexia to comfort her and affirm her that she is good enough. Screw what everyone else thinks as long as anorexia cares.

The problem is that anorexia isn’t welcome in the theater anymore. The door man threw anorexia out for heckling the actress…but she can only act when heckled. The actress has lost the motivation to perform if anorexia isn’t there to comfort and catch her….and belittle her. Why did the actress invite the critic OR Anorexia to come into her theater? And why has she chained herself to the confines of the theaters walls? It is a beautiful day outside but she can’t see through he dark curtains. She stays inside because acting feels comfortable like anorexia feels comfortable.

Stop acting. Stop being for others. Start to define what I am. Start to determine who I am. Start to love who is staring at me in the mirror...the truths that I can see through my skin. Decide why I’m so scared of no one loving the reflection. Stop being a coward and cowling in the wings. Get out in the daylight and learn to love the sun beating down on your skin. Breathe. Live.

Shame

The fist time that I felt this was when my initial therapist turned me away…claiming she couldn’t help me until I dealt with my anorexia, my most plaguing issue. I felt baffled and dumb founded. How could she see inside me so clearly. She was the first person that not only SAW my secret, but had the nerve to call me out on it. And the hardest part was that she was a professional. Even in my denial, a mental professional is someone who is hard to ignore.

I was called out again yesterday….by someone more significant than my therapist.
At my doctor’s appointment I heard the word shame used in reference to how I feel about myself. The hardest part to accept was that it was true.

I’ve looked very hard at myself in the last month. Anorexic people don’t deprive themselves for fun….they learn it as a coping mechanism. I was coping for something…some hole in my life.

I think that I have finally put my finger on what that hole is. I have come to the detrimental conclusion that I am a person who is constantly striving for acceptance and approval. This is something I have consciously chosen to ignore about myself. I strongly believe that all people hide truths from the world….and often times even from themselves. The scariest truths are the ones that you hide from yourself. My truth is that I need acceptance from the world. Every aspect of my life is something that I need people to accept and love about me. I need that external validation because I’m the only one who doesn’t accept MYSELF.

I feel like I am a sham…I’m fooling the world. They all believe that I am someone else….they all believe that I ‘m the person that they WANT me to be.
They want me to be extroverted, intelligent, witty, athletic, well spoken, well educated, fun, and successful….and I know the things to say to make them believe all those things about me. Sure…I am most of those things…but not to the extent that others want to see me as. I feel like I’m the ‘top in show’ when it comes to putting on an act to give each individual person what they are wanting from me. I am my own worst enemy.

I’m the original for saying, “I don’t care what people think about me.” The crazy thing is that the person who is least honest about that fact is ME. Inside my subconscience is screaming,”I SO care what people think about me.” But it also knows that it isn’t socially acceptable. Everyone knows that society accepts those who confess to NOT care about what other people think. So I thought that I was fooling them all…

The person who I was most fooling by not being truthful was MYSELF. All I’ve ever done was damage MYSELF. I’m ashamed of myself inside…so much that many of my motives in life have been done in search of external affirmation because I don’t give it to myself. When it wasn’t making great grades in school and college, being in the best sorority, getting my MBA, getting the best job, advancing the ranks, being the best teacher, or starting my own business, I was seeking the approval of my jerk of an ex-husband or striving to be the hub of my always growing social network. When I had achieved all of that I started to excel at running and began to lean out….which again brought attention and admiration.

The sad thing is that my eternal quest for the next validator lead me to the dead end road of anorexia. Anorexia literally devoured all of those achievements from the past. I lost whatever confidence I did have. No longer did I have the energy to excel at work or to care about maintaining friends. I cared about little in my world. Worst of all I lost the energy to even run. I lost the desire to achieve ANY personal goals outside of ONE…what the scale told me. I allowed the scale to become the only gauge of my personal self worth.

I am worth it. I am a fantastic person. I am intelligent and someone worth knowing. I just need to learn to internalize that wholly.

Research

A great friend of mine found an article on anorexia and sent it to me... Some of the statistics were hard to believe and quite frightning...it has a 15% mortality rate, carries the highest suicide rate of all psychiatric illness, and has a 50% relapse rate in the first year after treatment.

But my favorite part of the article was this quote which touched very close to home... I wish that everyone around me could understand this...

"There has been a little bit of a feeling that all an anorexic needs to do to get better is start eating, but it is nowhere near that simple," he says. "Nobody would say [to a psychotic] that they should just stop hallucinating."

Daily Struggles

I am breaking down today. I went to the doctor yesterday. He basically sat and talked to us for 35 minutes about the fact that my insides are so damaged that my body needs a substantial amount of calories in order to try and repair what it can. In a nutshell he was trying to drill it into me that at this point I can eat a significant amount more than the average person to gain any weight….that I am free to let go right now and just eat.

I can’t do it. I don’t believe him.

He went on about how his really scary, skinny girls have to eat upwards of 4-5,000 calories a day before they start to put on any weight. He said that all excess fat in my diet won’t go to my thighs, but instead to padding my heart, etc.

I’m not buying it. He says that I don’t buy it because I don’t want to believe it.

I ate yesterday… I ate more than my NOW required 1,750 calories per day. I ate a wrap…and then ate some ice cream for lunch. I guess for that second I wanted to believe the doctor and indulged in my favorite food besides birthday cake. For dinner I ate a huge steak and baked potato. My boyfriend then brought me ice cream again after dinner. He said that if he didn’t see me eat the first bowl of ice cream after lunch that it doesn’t count. I ate it to make him happy and because I love ice cream.

I hate myself now. I am crying inside. If I eat I can only handle it for ONE DAY. I can’t keep eating because my world is out of control and OUT OF ORDER. I feel so fat and unmanageable. I melted down crying when my boyfriend made me at a bowl of cereal at 10am. I feel like if I ate yesterday I CAN’T eat today. My fingers and toes are cold and sweaty and clammy with anxiety. The doctor says that when that happens it is my body telling me that it ran out of calories and I need to eat, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m hungry and I can’t eat.

If I didn’t have support right now I know that I wouldn’t be eating on my own…or at least more than 7 or 800 calories.

Clarity and Control

I learned to be anorexic. I taught myself over time that controlling what I ate and how I looked would help me feel like I was the driver’s seat. When nothing else in the world feels UNDER control, I always know THAT is something I’m in charge of.

Since my divorce I think that I have been desperately looking for some foundation on which to chart out my future. I have been grasping for some road map to gauge the direction on which my life is moving. I’m almost 31 years old with no marriage prospects, questioning my desire to have children, with a challenging career that can feel somewhat stagnant. Anorexia has helped me to cope with that feeling of disorientation. The pain of anorexia deflects me from thinking about the pain that I feel in my life about my lack of direction.

In my marriage I experienced quite a bit of emotional abuse from my ex-husband. The experience left me in a place of self doubt…am I beautiful enough to be loved?, do I have reason to be as self confident as I am? Anorexia has also helped to fill that hole. The more that I lost weight, the more positive attention I got. This is attention that I desperately craved from my ex-husband that I never got. Finally I was getting the affirmation that I so badly needed for years.

Where does this leave me? As a woman who bases her self worth on her weight and size and who is petrified to eat in the fear of gaining weight and returning to my old self. At this point, that overwhelming personal desire is bigger than my fear of death. No matter what people say to me about me looking better heavier, etc…I can’t hear any of it because I am the one who assigned this “worthy” label to myself at 125 lbs. If I am here I am safe and I am attractive and I am WORTHY of attention….positive or negative.

I have the most supportive and loving boyfriend who MET me 15 lbs heavier and who prefers that woman. He makes me feel like the amazingly beautiful woman my ex-husband should have made me feel like. But I am so far gone that no matter how much he begs me to gain weight, I don’t believe him. I don’t believe anyone who tells me that I look better heavier. I feel like everyone is just saying that to make me feel comfortable to eat.

I know that I’m sick. I just can’t unwire and I’m too scared to give up the control. I’m too scared to have to start feeling that pain of my disorientation in life.

Giving it to God

A very wise friend of mine met up with me today for lunch. He suggested that I give my disorder to God. Just trust enough to turn it over to him. That way, each time that I revert back to the familiar pain of my anorexic tendencies it shows God that I don't have faith that he will "catch me". I am so scared to get better because I am petrofied of the outcome. Until I lose the fear I guess I will never get better, so it is time to just trust that God won't let me down. Every time that I get anxious I should just have faith that God will catch me and teach me.

That is my new credo for today.

Old Habits Die Hard

The patterns that I keep repeating and the "wellness" that I am fighting is kind of like my disability. Michael J. Fox once said that if he had a room full of disabled people, and they were able to all throw their disability into the middle of the room and pick up any one that they wanted..that they would all pick their own because it is familiar. The unknown is scary. I am too scared to let go of my anorexia because it is a pain that I am familiar with. I know the outcome of this...regardless of how miserable it is.

But what I need to start understanding more is that one of the outcomes I am NOT familiar with. That my disability can kill me.

Fighting It

I’m tired of being controlled. I’m tired of hearing all the damage I’ve done to my body. I’m tired of doctors. I’m tired of all the attention I am getting and anxiety surrounding meal times. I’m tired of people asking me what I’ve eaten. I feel fine. I just want all this to GO AWAY. I want to be left alone for a while to give myself some time to process and see what kind of progress that I can make on my own. I need some time to come around on my own…not forcibly, but consciously. I know that I can do this, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Every day that goes by I get stronger and eat more. Every day that passes where I have evidence that my body hasn’t changed even though I’ve eaten, I get mentally stronger. But every time that I go to the doctor, I root my feet into the ground a little more feeling defeated.

Prozac

The doctor has me on Prozac. He says that I am obviously clinically depressed and that needs some help. The Prozac is yet to enter my system. My stress reliever is exercise and that isn’t allowed. I won’t drink because of the extra calories. The problem is that I am experiencing SO MUCH anxiety related to me eating! My boyfriend is forcing me to eat….and not just eat something…eat heavy foods. He says that is what normal people do. I disagree. I think that it is somewhere in between. There is a whole big world of people out there who eat healthy. Once upon a time he was only making me eat one meal with him. Now he is trying to sneak in 2 heavy meals if the situation allows. In a way I resent that. He had a deal. The reason it is such an issue is because he needs to understand that I don’t just get fixed overnight. The amount of anxiety that I experience in preparation for eating that meal is unmanageable at times. This is specially true if it is food that I really would NEVER splurge on. I also suggested just being forced to eat half…but me makes me clear my plate. I can’t manage everyone’s expectations….his and my anorexic mind. It feels like too much to handle.

Close Calls

Ever since it this all got bad I have had night sweats. Meaning....I wake up in the middle of the night or the next morning totally drenched with sweat. My sheets are wet, my pajamas are wet...if they are still on...and my skin is soaked. I never thought TOO much of it. I never thought that it was tied to my self starvation. I like to keep it warm in my apartment because I am always SOO COLD...I just assumed that was what it was from.

Turns out that it means that my glucose level dropped so low that I was on the verge of falling into a coma. I guess that means I had close calls 3-4 times a week for MONTHS. This was one of the things that I heard the loudest from the doctor.

I had another one two nights ago. I couldn't sleep for 2 hours after that due to fear.

I have been telling people that no matter what I hear from the doctor, I still am not internalizing how bad a physical condition I have put myself in. Just hearing it has done nothing to trigger my desire to indulge. I need physical evidence.

What happened two nights ago WAS physical evidence. In the middle of the night it scared the sh*t out of me. But has it REALLY affected me?? I guess not... Ive gotten better. I know I have...but it scares me to think that ALL THIS still isn't as powerful as the spider that I have sitting on my brain.

God Has A Hand

The doctor tells me that I would have died of a heart attack if I had done my triathlon this last weekend like I was supposed to. I didn't do it because the doctor strictly forebade me to. Turns out that the triathlon got canceled due to rain but was beautiful shortly there after. It makes me feel like it was God making sure that I didn't go anywhere because it wasn't my time....regardless of whether my path was EXACTLY as it is. Maybe if I hadn't experienced my recent changes, God still wasn't going to let me participate and die.

Dying to be Thin

I am reading this book called Dying to be Thin. It is so scary…and comforting…to read other’s stories to see how closely they parallel mine. The only difference is that most of them are like 90 lbs..which is NOT like me. The scariest thing I read was the first line of the book: Up to 15% of the people who are diagnosed this year with anorexia will die this year.

Low Points

If I put them on paper I become accountable and they become real. I expose myself and all others to tell me how screwed up I am in the head. Because to this point I acknowledge that they are “lows”but I still don’t see them as that bad…

Lows:
1. Spending hours at my elementary school where I teach researching how to be Bulimic
2. Trying laxatives for a few weeks
3. Being excited the day that I threw up in the afternoon due to taking multivitamins on an empty stomach because I purged myself of maybe 50 calories. That brought my total down to maybe 200 for the day.
4. The evening that I drove around to at least 4 or 5 places and got sweets from them all….ice cream, cupcakes, donuts, pie….and closet ate in my apartment. I probably consumed 4000 calories at least in one sitting. I felt sick but I kept eating and then licked the boxes clean.
5. The day that I was at woke and on the verge of passing out. I went with a student to the nurses office and she took my heart rate. It was 47….which is a bit more than it would be 2 weeks later. She told me that if it hadn’t increased in 1 hour that she would take me to the ER. I knew why it was so low and actually felt accomplished.


Highs:
Feeling the control of going to some restaurant and eating a very small portion…but something…and not feeling like I was going to break down afterwards.
Increasing my calories from 3-400 all the way to probably 800 or more and surviving. Noticing that I wont gain weight just because I eat something or incorporate protein into my diet. But if this the case then how come I still have so much trouble doing it.

Split Personalities

My boyfriend has come up with a new nickname for me. Annie. When I am stressing about eating or giving him a hard time about how much I am going to eat, etc he calls me Annie. He wakes up every morning and asks me who is there….Annie or Megan? He says that Annie is evil and that he misses his sweet, princess Megan….the person who was happy and confident and ate like a normal person. The funny thing is that is exactly how I feel….like a split personality. Megan KNOWS how ridiculous she is. Megan is the woman inside who wakes up and gets dressed every morning with confidence. Annie is the one who takes over and starts the voices. The voices saying ‘that’s to many calories”….”just press on even though you are hungry and can’t sleep…you’ll fall asleep eventually.” Annie is sick, and she makes my life hell.

Annie was with me last night. I was made to go to a Chinese restaurant. I would classify this as the worst possible type of restaurant I would be made to go to. Chinese restaurants are the epitome of fat and sodium….an anorexic hell. I ordered something very sensible. Mixed Veggies as my side and Beef and Broccoli as my main. I of course had already researched the menu and caloric value of it all. Truthfully, the calorie content was much better than if I was forced to eat a commercially made sandwich, etc. We were eating as a family so I had to be strong. Annie literally made Megan have to get up from the table to go to the bathroom to cry because I couldn’t make myself eat the meat in the dish. Even though my heart is hanging on by a thread, I was sitting there crying over the fact that I could not eat the food in front of me.

Hard Headed

I went to the doctor again today. I admitted to him that I am struggling to eat all 1500 calories a day that he asked me to. We talked about what I have been eating and my feelings about it. He basically told me that he thinks it is time for me to go to a treatment center. The short and long of it is that if I don't start to eat 1,500 calories minimum per day, that I am going to go to a hospital in Utah for 8 weeks. My parents want me to go now. I don't want to even call them like he asked me to. I have to want to go for it to be effective and I don't want to go. I can know that I am killing my body and this spider on my brain can still rationalize why I shouldn't allow myself to eat. The doctor says that either I CAN eat and my feelings can hurt and my mind race and my body can get try to get better, or I can NOT eat and have a quite head but kill off my insides. Even hearing that I'm still struggling to eat. Even hearing that...and both the doctor and my boyfriend telling me that it is mandatory that I eat something substantial for lunch...I still am having a hard time with it. You would think that me KNOWING that I have created a cardiac problem for myself, done permanant damage to my liver and kidneys, and no longer am growing bone would CHANGE how I view my self starving ways...but it hasn't.

My boyfriend gets to dictate what I eat - 3 meals a day - for the next week. I am SO stressed about this that I have been fidgetty nervous since the moment it was decreed. I have no control over the next week and it is killing me. I guess that alternative is me killing me...and Utah.

Learning Balance

One of the reasons I don't qualify myself mentally as an anorexic is because I will go through depressive bouts where I will binge. One day of binging followed by 2 weeks of starvation. Starve, binge, starve and stress.... When I binge I can finally sleep, and it feels great for a split second. My body and mind are temporarily satisfied and the voices stop. I fall asleep with a full belly. But the moment I wake up, the severe mental anguish begins. The voices I hear are not worth those few hours of silence.

My boyfriend is making me eat now. I have managed my mind...somewhat....and probably with the help of the heavy dose of Prozac that my doctor has prescribed.....by just eating half of whatever I am asked, etc. My problem is that it is feast or famine.

I would always rather not eat. I feel in control.

If I have to eat, I stress. I stress in the hours prior to eating. If I know I have to eat a meal that 'isn't worth it'...but I have to eat it...I will stress all waking hours before. But once I do it - and just eat half - then it is like...."I did it!!!". I stressed and ate....so now JUST EAT EVERYTHING. You dealt with the pain. As long as you had to go there....GO THERE. I take a healthy portion that is manageable from weight standards, and then want to supplement that with tons of food. I have done that 2 times since I was 'under watch' and I HATE MYSELF after. Ice cream is my thing. I will eat dinner and then obsess about eating ice cream... I will eat it and then HATE MYSELF.

This morning I was forced to eat breakfast. Not my 'f'ed up' breakfast (per my boyfriend), but real eggs and bacon. I ate 2 eggs and 1.5 pieces of bacon and half of a biscuit. Quite a lot for me, but not excessive. I calculated that at max I ate 450 calories. Mind you...that is more than I generally used to eat in one whole day. I did it.... I mentally managed it. But now, my body is saying "I'm hungry" again. Is it my body or my mind??? That is where the difficulty is....distinction.

Part of me learning to manage my disorder is learning to manage the extremes.

Giving it to God

I know that I'm supposed to....just let go and be along for the ride trusting that God will take care of me. I know that is what I want to be able to do. I'm not that strong yet. I stress about eating. I stress even more about getting dressed. I put myself through the agony of trying on all the clothes in my closet every day as a test to what fits.

At church yesterday the sermon was all about filling the hole that we have in our lives meant for Jesus with compulsions in our search for each individual's 'higher purpose' in life. Mine I am filling with an eating disorder and compulsive exercise. "If only I can be 123 pounds, then I could be able to find and understand happiness in my life" I have heard me tell myself. But when I was there it was a compulsion to stay there. My life stopped in order to maintain that weight. I didn't let go and become free like I seemed to think I would. But I was "happy". The funny thing is that I wasn't.

The lesson is that I need to find happiness in my relationship and devotion to God...not in how I look or how my clothes fit. What earthly purpose do those things present in my contribution to this earth?

The funny thing is that I can type all of this and rationalize it out and for a split second really believe that it is true....

But I can't bring myself to eat.

The Face of Anorexia

Anorexia doesn’t look like me.

How can I be anorexic? I have a healthy looking body. Or at least I seem to think so. I barely shy of 5’8” and weighed 127 before my friends took away my scale. Since I started “treatment”…or being accountable for eating per my boyfriend and family members…my clothes fit a little tighter, but still work. I’m not the picture of anorexia. I’m not the girl in the magazines who is skin and bones. I fill out my jeans just fine.
I look at myself and don’t see someone who is too thin. I see normal…I am normal. Obviously not in the head.

My doctor says that I am killing myself. I hear that in the doctor’s office but find it SO HARD to bring myself to eat otherwise. I get anxious at the idea of having to go to get a meal at a restaurant with others. I moved back in with my ‘family’ and now am accountable 24 hours a day. Accountable to people who don’t understand the mental STORM which brews within me all waking hours of the day. We eat out a lot, and to avoid fights I have to figure mental and physical strategy at least twice a day. Stress, eat, stress, repeat. I hate it. I hate myself. I hate the fact that I can’t see the beauty that everyone else can see. How did I get here.

The sad thing is that I don’t want to fix it. I do….but I am SCARED TO DEATH to do it. Scared to look in the mirror and hate what I am looking at. Petrified to not feel the satisfaction and sheer joy when I dress up in a small size and feel beautiful and WORTHY. That is all of it… I have taught myself that image equals self worth. If I let go of my image, then what do I have to offer. This being said by a highly intelligent woman who holds a masters degree who once had unstoppable confidence. Where did she go? What did anorexia do with that girl??

Reality Bites

God works in mysterious ways. Through a series of coincidences…that should not have occurred unless a whole series of other events had happened…I got in touch with an old friend who recently started working for a medical doctor who specializes in eating disorders. Apparently he is big. She got me an appointment with him and I went in Friday morning. The whole time that I am driving there I am telling both my father and boyfriend how I probably don’t even qualify enough to see this doctor and I will probably be wasting my money.

Turns out that I am bad. He did an EKG and a whole other battery of tests on me. In a nutshell, with the results I could have been admitted to the cardio care unit of the hospital immediately. My resting heart rate is over 15 points lower than the most elite athletes…and that was after a 30 oz cup of coffee. My heart has shrunk significantly due to starvation and lack of protein. He is amazed that I have not dropped of a heart attack yet with the amount of running that I do. I am strictly prohibited from doing any exercise and he is not sure when I will ever be able to again. He wants me to check into a care facility. I am also clinically depressed enough to recommend an inpatient hospitalization.
And I thought that I was on the bad side of relatively normal.

If GOD had not created all these coincidences I would have never known this and maybe ACCIDENTALLY checked out in who knows how far into the future. I would have done my triathlon and probably killed myself in the process.

The sad thing is that now that I am away from the doctor, I am struggling to eat. I KNOW how I need to feed my heart and my brain…and I am trying and I am doing better than before. But, I struggle mentally and am probably not yet to where I need to be calorie wise. I have binged a few times since and feel like total sh*t. I can’t exercise and that is the biggest mental struggle so far. If I can’t exercise than how can I eat. If I have to eat without the balance of exercise then how will I look good in my clothes? I am so screwed up in the head that I am more concerned with my image than my life. PLEASE HELP ME GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Obsessions

I found out yesterday....from a professional....that I have an eating disorder. What the hell is wrong with me and how come I dont want to fix it?? Normal people wouldnt want something like that to consume them, but I like the control. I didn't realize that you dont have to throw up or 100% starve yourself to have an eating disorder. Go figure. Apparently this is tied to how I see my self worth. It's true...and incredibly depressing. I am so down because someone professional called me out and labeled me...but no other reason. I dont want to fix it because that means that I might get fat and that means that I might be able to be happy with myself each time that I put on a size 0 or and xs label. I love myself and I hate myself all at the same time.