a post for my goatgirl

i dont know if you will read this but just in case - i love you, think of you often (pretty much everyday) and hope you are well and happy

xxxxx

mum

mum, i miss you

Times up

Im so lonely and beaten my all the noise in my head I don't know how I can bear to be anything anymore.

I want it all just to go away. I want to go away.

Im really tired if it all.

Life and stuff

Stuff makes my head hurt

Noise

The noise in my head is so loud and it never lets up, not even for a second. It's been a while since I've felt this unwell, this unable to manage. But I don't feel able to cope. The noise drowns out every sane thought I have.

" stupid, fat, idiot, fat, bitch, not good enough, horrible, fat, ugly, numbers, size, fat, rubbish, weird, unlikeable, fat, alone, deserve to die, stupid, unworthy, freak, unloveable, lonely, fat, skanky, stupid stupid stupid Fat fat fat fat far fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat FAT"

Repeat for the rest of my life.

The noise wins. I can't sleep, I cant concentrate, I can't hear people even, because it's all so loud.

Noise, your prize is I give up. Trying to have a life just doesn't work. I try and be well and you are just too too loud.

Getting un-lost

I got lost
Then I started to get un lost
I felt like me
For a fleeting moment
And now I'm getting lost again.
What If I never find my way back?

Does anyone read this?! (read the disclaimer!)

Ok, my disclaimer for this post is that its my first weekend after finishing at the day hospital and i feel wobbly and lonely and really stressed. So I normally loathe myself for being needy and insecure,

but just wondered if anyone was there?

End of treatment

13 months later I've finishes my treatment at the day unit. I'm back to outpatient appointments- once weekly with my therapist, and sessions as needed with my keyworker and dietician.

I haven't quite worked out how u feel about this yet

Discharge from Day treatment

Next week is my last few days on the day unit, with Thursday being my last day.

I'm still trying to ignore this fact.

It's not like things haven't changed - so many things are different now. I can't remember the last time I made myself sick - and it used to be averaging around 50 times a day this time last year. Its been a year since i self harmed. I've got a flat - and I've lived here for  year, which is the longest ive been settled anywhere for so long. I've got a part time job, a total lege of a horse on part loan, and I'm going back to uni in a few weeks time. I FEEL better. Things are ok.

The thing about having spent so long in the day unit (13 months) is that not only am i attatched to the routine of it, im going to miss the team so much too. They have been completely brilliant and gone out of their way so many times. I've got used to talking to them all when things are hard, and just the day to day banter of it all. I mean, my keyworker spends most of the time taking the mick out of me, and its just all the comfortableness of having people around, and feeling part of something - and the thought of leaving the safety of that for days on my own is really worrying me. I know i have friends to see, but the unit has become my main connection - and before i went into treatment, i had plans, and was seeing people and doing things - and i still felt so awful i wanted to die. Im worried im going to go straight back to that, no matter how i try and plan my time, and food and all the rest of it.

So, i want to leave. The groups drive me up the wall, im so bored of talking about food all day, and in a way, ive outgrown the unit. Its just I dont really want to go either.

My big day

I officially no longer meet any of the diagnostic criteria for a severe eating disorder. The worries that I have around weight and body image would not be enough along to give a diagnosis beyond anxiety.

This is what came out of talking to staff at the day unit today. They ment it in a positive ' be proud look how far you've come' sort of way. so why am I sat here in floods of tears?

Well, I guess it makes me feel like in doing something wrong. I feel like I just lost the only thing that linked me to my mum. On a slightly lesser scale, I feel like I've now lost the people I've come to look to for support- the unit at the staff. And having been there almost a year now, I have developed good relationships within the team. Which I guess seem a bit like replacements for the real life ones I don't have. So being well means breaking the ties with people that I've come to depend on and trust.

It also scares me in the sense that so much still doesn't feel right-like the way my weight can be so consuming, and the way I think about myself and how I look. And how much I still struggle with trying new foods and eating well. It's scary to think that if j went to a doctor now, they wouldn't give me any help.

Yet I still so badly feel I need support so it doesn't slip away.

Don't think I'm not pleased. It's what I was aiming for all along really. But the reality, in such a clinical way is just really scary. And I so desperately want them all to still care. We have had so many new admissions recently, I feel worried about being left to just get on with it because I'm " well".

So it might sound stupid, or ilogical or a million other things, but this is how I feel right now. And instead of feeling damn pleased, it makes me want to curl up and cry. And puke my guys up until I can't stand up anymore.

If that's my reaction, how is it all ever going to be ok? I don't want to be ill I think I'm just scared of all the change that cones with being well- and that seems to cloud all the amazing good things it brings.

I just feel scared and upset and really alone right now. I just want someone in my life to be there and be constant. And that's about me letting them be too, but god I feel so so alone right now.

I've been better...

I really have been better

Feeling very panicky and worried about filling time when I leave the day unit at the end of August. I can't bear going back to being by myself all the time, having no one to talk with, and just the day to day-ness of it all. I can't bear being that lonely again. Even knowing its only a month or so later I go back to Uni isn't helping- because I go back I to a different year, where I know even less people than I did last year, which really is saying something.

The panic and worry is so bad, so there and consuming, that I already think I'd rather be dead.

I can't can't can't do this. I'm so tied of being on my own.

and then sometimes it gets too much

so, for the last week I've had this pretty much continuous flashback playing through at the back of my head, like background noise. It just wont go away. I'm having this constant fight to not just continuously zone out and tune into it...and trying to keep on doing anything is really hard.

Then in group today my head just melted and i couldnt keep pushing it back anymore. literally ended up a soggy crying crumbled heap. I couldnt stop for so long, i didnt know where i was, what i was doing, who was with me, anything, i just felt lost. It took a long time to get back from that, and now, i think, well what happens if i cant get back from it on my own? What happens if i just lose it totally?

Potential new therapy model

I really really love the sea. I love it in summer to play and splash about in. I love building sandcastles on the beach and eating squashed picnics with sandy sandwiches. I love the cool evening walks and watching the waves crash about in winter.

When I was little I used to wonder how all the people sat on benches just looking out to sea weren't bored. And now I understand, because I could watch it forever.

The NHS should really think about beach therapy.

Re-connecting

Means lots of things in lots of different and difficult ways.

Because you cant move forward without looking back at things, try as i might for all this time. Re -  connecting with the old is scary and new, when you starved, purged and cut away your memories of the past, of how things were.

But it also means thinking about how things could be, and taking the odd leap of faith that everything will turn out ok in the end...and even if its not what you planned for, its not the end of the world, you just need to take a deep breath and let things that will be BE.

Being ill for so long meant that i missed out on a lot of things, and its only through working to get better that i realise just how much i lost. Its not just that i missed birthdays, and nights out, and boyfriends and parties, uni and fun-i lost friends, family, ambition and interests. I lost my spark, my personality and all the things that could have made me who i could be. Being ill literally ransacked my life. I feel like im grieving for the friends that i made and lost, or didnt even get the chance to meet. I got so wrapped up in 'ill' that i couldnt see anything else, got needy, or couldnt keep up contact, or just got so self absorbed and inverted. It hurts now so bad, all the things ive lost, makes me ache and cry for it all.

Just so you know, if you ever happen to read this, or are someone i used to talk with a lot on here- I love you, and i do care. there are so many people that helped me feel connected when i needed it the most, in so many different ways. I just got shit at managing to do anything, or be there for anyone when it all really hit the fan here. but im sorry and i do care.

I want to re connect with things to put them right or lay them to rest. i guess the hardest thing is accepting that it isnt always possible.

A post for shizzle my nizzle

Shizza

I love you innit boi

you know who you are girl! xxxxxxx

Life lesson

Actually, sometimes life is just plain boring. The thing about recovery is that you tend to think it comes with all sorts of glittery excitement. Which is certainly true in a lot of respects- it defiantly offers opportunity. But one think I'm finding a hard lesson to learn is that actually, life IS just mundane and boring and same old sometimes. But that's ok. It doesn't mean I'M boring, or rubbish. Just that life just chugs along doing nothing in particular sometimes. I get so caught up in not feeling I'm interesting enough, or that I don't do all the things over people do with their weekends and spare time. I got so busy comparing myself to all this that I forgot that everyone has tones where really, nothing is going on at all. That other people get bored or fed up, and sit and watch telly in the eve without feeling ' boring'.

So this weekend I am going to do nothing. Like really nothing. I'm not feeling very well so I'm gonna to spend weekend on sofa with a hot water bottle, some DVDs and a book or 2. And I'm going to be ok with not having been anywhere or done anything noteworthy. Because trying to define myself by " doing interesting things " is not far off from trying to define myself by my weight. And h am defiantly more than that.

Days like these

Make me feel like I don't know which way up I am. 8 months into treatment-I never thought I would get this far. For every step forward it feels like ten back. But sometimes, I think there might just be a glimmer of something that wasn't quite there before.

What's it called again?

Oh yeh.

A life

Xxxxxxxx

stuff

I cant figure out if blogging about this seems ridiculous-i mean where is the logic in publishing all your secrets?on one hand it weirds me out, and on the other-well i still do it, so it must mean something. hmn. confussed.

The inevitable-ness of it all

I dont know why i ever thought it would be any other way. The minute i let go and really trusted the team, they totally screw me over. How can i work with you when you cant even get the simple things right? I wish they could realise how much they keep hurting me. Everything ive worked so hard for is unravelling because they keep changing the goalposts and have this absolute mental block with communicating with eachother-which means each member of the team has different ideas of what you should be doing. Which does not help.

So i guess wthat it would always come back to this. that really, i know the only person i can sort of trust to not hurt me over an over again is myself. And being left woth just me to trust-well thats a bit shonky, seeing as i seem to have an inevitable need to end up dead.

I just needed to see that not everyone in the world breaks their promises, and shatters your heart and faith in to a million pieces in one big STAMP. I waited and hung in there so long to get this treatment, and i gave myself to it 100% and now...well whats the point when they can see whats in a textbppk, and not an actual person? they agree things with me, important things that have a bog impact, then change their minds over and over. They tell me if i follow the food plan then my weight will maintain. So why has it gone up so much now?

And then  people you thought were friends shit all over you. I am so supportive of my friends, and it HURTS that they are NEVER there for me when i need them the most. Or that they use the words they know will hurt the most, just because they can. Just because they know what they are, and they are feeling irritated. well, thats HURTS more than you will ever ever know.

i cant be doing with this anymore.

see ya

Relapse, and rational thinking.

As a person, I very much fall on the more pessimistic side of life. I think the theory behind this is that if you expect the worse, than anything else is a pleasant surprise. This doesn't necessarily make me a "glass half empty' type - it just means that i spend far too much time thinking, and not enough actually doing.

Which is perhaps in part why I am thinking that this relapse means that nothing is ever going to be right, and that I might as well give up now. Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that this tends to quite quickly make me veer towards suicide type thoughts and self harm. 

I have spent a significant part of this week with various people at the day unit, talking about this. And you know what-well relapsing does suck. But at least I'm able to distinguish between relapse and illness-and see that there is space inbetween to get things back where i want them. Which is a definite difference to even 6 months previous to this. A friend of mine died at the weekend, far too young, and its such a sad, dark time. And its ok that im feeling so undone and so so sad, and numb to things. And its normal to not be managing very well, and finding everyday things such a struggle. it makes sense and its understandable that food is so difficult. I feel like everything takes so much more effort than it would usually, and all the staff tell me this is a normal part of grieving. and that i didnt grieve for my mum, so maybe its all coming out now, hitting me even harder in one go. So whilst its not OK to relapse and let the ill thoughts invade my head space, its understandable. And it doesnt mean that i cant make it better. Its HARD to eat everything im supposed to when i feel this way. I missed a lot of food out over the last week-and its not been willfull restriction, more that i just haven't got to it, its got a lost in a mess of crying and fitful sleeping and being so drained and depleted. And i know that for people without an eating disorder, losing ones appetite would be seen as normal in a situation like this. And while this is the case for me as well, i cant just not eat-beacuse it gives the ED so much scope to start to move back in and shit on all the work i have done.

It gets harder when you feel like you are keeping secrets between you and your illness. I've managed to be honest about what i have and havent done food wise with staff, which helps. 

And yes, i feel horrid, and hopeless and defeated and have a LOT of triggering thoughts about not wanting to be around anymore. But if i can just keep telling myself thats its ok to feel like this, its expected, ive just lost someone special to me, and im just starting to deal with the loss of my mum, then maybe they can just stay as thoughts.

I think I just got rational about this.

How the heck did that happen?!

things that make you wonder why...

I had some really, really terrible news over the weekend, the kind of things that shatters your heart into a million pieces, makes you curl up with grief, and ask "why, why, why?"

It makes me want to hold everyone i love close to me, and never let them leave, and it also makes me want to push everyone far far away, so that it doesnt hurt when they go, cos i got there first. 

I hate that i have relapsed so badly. I hate that by relapsing, its becomes about me. and its not, its really really not. That all the support at the unit turns into how are you coping with food/self harm, instead of what happened. I didnt want it to be-and by posting this im going to own that, stop it and get on track again. Because too much life has already been lost.

xxxxxx

i love you precious precious girl xxxx