Decision

My intensity is emoting fear in you.  Can you handle this any more?  Neither I nor you know the answer to that question, but firing you with my ricocheting emotions is like putting a spacer between my molars, incapable of watching the drifting as it occurs, but yet consumed with the suture-ripping pain, awaiting the separate island inevitable.  I told you I refuse to play victim any longer, and I stand by my word.  I am ripping out the spacer (in this case, my letters to you), refusing to let go of what we have, because I love you.  I am healing, I am better, it is getting easier, but two months in contrast to ten years if very short-term.  I recognize I need more time to beat this, hopefully with you by my side.  Therefore, I will put my letters on hold.

I found the willingness to fight back against my ED because I was scared of losing you. Ironically, I'm letting go of what I've only known for so long, and the worries between us still exist.  I asked for you to let me try, and I've put every ounce of strength I have found into beating this.  Please don't give up just yet.  I have so much left in me, so much more to do for this world, and it's brewing inside.  I will do great things.  Just wait and see.  

For now, I will write elsewhere, where I can be candid and intense in order to purge my feelings.  They are my feelings, as scary as they sometimes may be, and I will label them as reserved for my partaking only.  The emotions are too much too fast - I'm proud of your composure and your ability to understand, but these writings are too thick even for my best friends and family to read most days.  This journey has taught me how much I deserve to pay attention to what I need, and I have found the ability to express myself through my writing, without a person to direct my words towards.

You said yourself we are meant to be together.   Through the words of Wally Lamb, I repeat, "I know this much is true."

Thank you for listening.  

xoxo,

the real me

Expectations

It's 3:30 in the morning (ha, I have the Garth Brooks song playing repeat in my head now), and I've been up for over an hour.  I'm fighting, again, to find my desire to get better, the suicidal thoughts.  It's so easy to give up.  The past few days have been extremely difficult; I'm alone, feeling the loss of your parents leaving and you in Dallas so much sharper ... and I don't know what to do about us.  I've heard over and over again that I need to focus on my health, not fixate on issues not within my control, to let you ruminate over who I am today and who I will be ten years from now, twenty years, one day.  After our conversation last weekend I realize how alone I am in this.  I cannot rely on anyone to help me through my mental battle, even you, whom I hold onto to ground my wavering foundation.  I'm an exhausting person, and I want you to understand I relate to you wanting me to take the next step in my recovery.  You said yourself that you are placing unrealistic expectations on me (the irony screeching its nails on the chalkboard), because if you only knew what it felt like to live with my expectations for myself and for everyone else around me ...  I trumpet fairness, justice, exalting in the excitement of deriving "why."  Yet the second the mirror flashes before me and I am forced to look, I crumble with weakness into ashes littered with pity.  What a predicament.  I'm wallowing in self-defeat because I'm 26 years old with blinders shackled onto my face: little to no direction, difficulty swallowing any form of dairy, fat, carbohydrates, and oh, so much more, demonized by my obsessive compulsions to read, do yoga, write, walk to the library, go to meetings, count the number of letters in phrases I read (billboards, snippets from the paper, etc).  For instance, I'm reading Beach Music by Pat Conroy right now, and I'm glancing at it as I write. 19 letters.  Fucking crazy.  So anyway, here I am, beating myself up for the failure that is my life, only to now acknowledge you feel the same way.  Of course you do.  You've suffered through five years of agony, you see two months of sobriety (or abstinence - these are all ABA terms), and now you want me to take the next step.  It's logical, rational, and completely inapplicable to me and this disorder.  So I beat myself up for my elevating expectations, you are disappointed that I cannot overcome my disease to meet your expectations, and I'm lying in a deserted pool of despair because you're not meeting my expectations because you don't understand.  How the hell could you possibly understand?  No one who isn't suffering can get it.  I'm sorry for placing the same strain on you as I do on myself.  Talk about injustice.  

I just want to say a few more things: Do you think I don't want to have a 9-5 job?  Do you understand how envious I am of people that are capable of maintaining such an easy, sane mental lifestyle?  I would give everything, Mathias.  But that is not the life I was given.  I'm so fucking pissed right now that my life has to be so much harder (relative to the average workforce and happy-go-lucky American I think may still exist - and not discounting the sick, poor, deprived souls that inhabit most of this world).  But I have to accept it, and I'm learning that through this process.  It is okay for me to be sick, yet I refuse to play the role of the victim any longer.  How did you fall in love with a person who deemed themselves so unworthy?  (Okay, now I have the Sound of Music song, "How do you solve a problem like Maria" usurping poor old Garth.  I'm not one for country anyway.)

Lastly, I have made it a point to be very upfront about my ED from the beginning.  I spent my 21st birthday with you in my apartment the day I was released from Ridgeview from inpatient treatment, telling you about this eating disorder, how I had it 5 years before I met you and now tack on another 5 years and change to that.  I remember telling you that this is a lifelong disease, it will never go away, but it will get easier.  But there's no way you could know.  Maybe you were just excited to be in a relationship.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.  

Day sixty-eight

Enough said.  

Too many days to associate with me.  Today I'm shaking, wanting desperately to eat, feeling like leeches are suckling at my heart, depleting my body of its oxygenated blood in order to inhale, like my chambers are souring to purple as the plastic bag around the organ's throat tightens its grip, gasping, gasping.  Repeating to myself it's just one second longer until the pain subsides.  The relief is on its way.  Just wait.  Try another breath.

Wanting will

I want to bury my face in a bowl of pasta, suffocating my satiation like a dam in a river, saluting the knowledge that my desires will deliver me lifeless.

I want to position a noose around my neck and violently erupt from the rooftops, drip-dropping until I emerge into utter stillness.

David Foster Wallace's last written thought: no more words.

Emphasis.

I will not eat over this.  This minute, this second, I will not eat over this.  I will raise my own expectations for you and be strong, so that you will love me.

Long time

I am having difficulties with my Internet access, so please bear with me for the next few days. I am supposed to be in working order by the 10th, which (if I'm not mistaken) is Thursday. The move is complete, and I'll have some pics posted on my facebook account shortly of what the new pad looks like! I love it, and more importantly, I feel safe. Your parents are here which will be a great opportunity for me to eat three meals a day with other people (my sponsor suggested this to me), but I have no doubt I will be going to meetings daily. My obsessions are changing from bulimia to reading, yoga, cleaning, moving (the body in any way), and writing. Unfortunately I let my writing slide first last week during the move. My goal for this week is to sit down each day with some time devoted specifically to writing, even if it turns out to be crap. I miss getting in touch with what I'm dealing with on a daily basis.

More tomorrow, in celebration of month 2. wow.

Inspiration

Sorry for my ineptitude: I'm packing, moving, painting, reading, going to yoga, eating and then eating more.  I should not let this get in the way of my writing.  Today marks 7 weeks and 3 days of abstinence.  Still in a state of disbelief.  I've been having urges to binge this week on foods like soups, breads, etc.  Mainly carbohydrates.  I'm proud of myself for signing up for the 30 day yoga challenge.  I can really feel the affects both physically and mentally.  Week 7 is restoration.  Yesterday I ate eggs and a bagel for breakfast, a whole can of kidney beans with a tomato for lunch, and a couple pieces of broccoli and one pineapple ring for dinner.  I know, not enough, but I worked until late and didn't want to eat an entire meal before going to bed.  Plus I had lunch around 3.  Excuses, excuses.  Regardless, that's a large amount of food for me in one day.  And I feel okay.  My stomach is thicker than it normally is, but I will survive through today.  I read this and it rekindled my want for writing.

"But it would be worth the risk, worth failing, if I could find words to tell our story and also keep us covered inside it, work us invisibly into the fret, the warp and woof of the story's design, safe there, connected there as words in perfect poems, the silver apples of the moon, golden apples of the sun, blue guitars."

- John Edgar Wideman Weight

Not the only one

"I can't take the anxiety.  It feels like something is wrapping around my chest and squeezing.  I can't breathe.  My heart's racing.  My thoughts are spinning.  I can't keep up with them.  It's all right when I'm writing.  But the minute I'm alone again, the thoughts start up.  I'm terrified all the time.

"Are you taking your Klonopin?"

"Yes! It doesn't help!"

"Maybe you aren't taking enough of it."

Klonopin's a benzodiazepine, and those can be very addictive.  I used to love it, when it still worked.  Now I have to take handfuls for it to even make a dent."

"I am who I am.  This is the way it is: a balance, maybe an uncomfortable one.  It's about doing all the necessary, frustrating, boring, exasperating, annoying, banal tasks to keep episodes at bay, but accepting they'll come at some point anyway; structuring my life tightly in order to function well, but being flexible enough to deal with the unexpected; embracing the bizarre notion that sometimes things might go wrong - but other times they might not.  I try to build a future out of contradictions; madness is only a small part of my life, yet sometimes it completely takes over and tries to destroy me.  

That's all right.  It has to be."

-Marya Hornbacher Madness: A Bipolar Life