Honesty

Part of learning to speak is learning to speak the truth.
No embellishments, no omissions, no out and out lies.

I don't know that I've ever been a particularly honest person, really.  I learned pretty early on that telling the truth often gets you into trouble of some variety.  I was a pretty compulsive liar as a child - mostly out of fear.  My mother was unpredictable in her reactions, and it was generally preferable to lie my way out of a situation than to hope for any understanding.  Of course, I was usually found out and the consequences were a lot worse, but that didn't make much sense to me for some reason.

As I got older I got sneakier.  I learned to tell enough of the truth to appear honest, yet kept the darkest things back.  Even those I trust didn't get to hear the whole truth.  My eating disorder was all about lies, a notable example being when I sat in the pub with my best friend, explaining earnestly that I'd had a rough patch but was working hard to get back on track, halfway through which discussion I disappeared to purge.  Oddly, I felt no shame or guilt whatsoever at the time, but looking back now, I am disgusted at the blatent lie, the horrendous abuse of trust.  People have been trying for ages to HELP me, and there I was, lying through my teeth.

Some people, of course, don't want to know the whole truth.  My husband, loving, supportive, kind and patient with me, freely admits that he does not want to know the ins and outs of what I can do to myself - it is too painful for him.   Which is fine by me.  When he asks questions I will answer, when he doesn't, there is no need, and I can be myself, free of the need to confess, because sometimes there are things that are just plain more important than illness.

Some people do want to know.  My therapist, for example, asks a straight question, sets out in straightforward terms that I am to tell him at the beginning of a session if I have hurt myself in any way.  This is fine by me too - I know where I stand, I trust him to use the information to help me.

Some people do not want or need to know anything - there is no reason why I would tell my work colleagues, they only require me to do my job.

The difficulty is the people in the middle - those who are friends, who care about me, who wouldn't be so deeply involved as to be really hurt by what I have to say, but who I have kept for years at arms length for fear of... what?  Judgement?  Ridicule?  Actually having to face the fact that the way I was living wasn't right? I am trying, now, to learn not to just skip over their questions, to really be honest about  how I am.  I struggle with it so much, this feeling of being self-centred, complaining constantly, being dramatic... But I'm not, I'm actually just being honest.  In some ways it's freeing, in others a painful, laborious process.

Yes but...

I go back and forth on whether or not I want (need? deserve?) therapy.  Often I come away feeling terrible.  Often I come away feeling bold and strong.  Occasionally I come away feeling I have learned something about myself, and ready to watch out for an opportunity to change the progression of events.

I have a brilliant therapist, by a real stroke of luck.  The NHS didn't really want to know about me - I'd had their provision of counselling and therapy and was, surprisingly enough, not magically 'fixed' after the requisite twenty sessions.  I was, however, not 'ill enough' for any more treatment, so slip through the gaps I conveniently did, despite all who saw me being in agreement that I needed help!  I could get wound up about it if I tried, but in reality, it just sent me in the direction of a counselling charity to whom I will be forever grateful.

Anyway, enter therapist who successfully convinced me he was worth trusting, offered me the unaccustomed idea that I might be ok, and ever since has assisted or at least listened to my rather laboured thought-processes around whether or not life is worth living!  The thing is, therapy is hard work...  and I am intrinsically lazy.  I am definitely the sort of person who leaves things well alone, until they absolutely have to be dealt with - whether this be the clutter on my dining table or the clutter in my head.  So I frequently come to the conclusion that it is much too hard and I shouldn't bother, because a) I am not worth that level of effort, and b) I am too tired to sift through everything while also working on being better on a behavioural level.

Sometimes, however, on those occasions where something clicks, I know that I am better off for the work that goes on, however reluctant I might have been to do it.  This week is a good example.

My therapist (who shall be hereafter known as P) pointed out to me that my response to any offer of unconditional worth, is 'yes but...'
Now I know that I struggle to accept a compliment with any form of grace.  I know I don't believe anyone that says I am ok, even loved, as I am.  But I hadn't realised that I apply it to situations, turn it into behaviour as well as thought.

Example.  I need to eat lunch (yes, but if I do I will get fat, I will end up bingeing, I can't eat any of the things in the shop opposite...etc)  So I do not eat lunch.  I have only been a little aware of the dialogue, but my avoidance of lunch is a huge 'yes but' to the totally scientific and objective need to fuel my body.  Yes, but I am different.  And as a result I feel useless in that I'm not doing the right thing for my recovery.

A more subtle example.  I love to take myself out for coffee and read a book when I have a free couple of hours.  I started doing it when I was really ill, and needed to escape myself for a while.  I rarely do it now - I often think of doing it. 'Yes, but I should be working, I shouldn't spend money, I might end up eating a biscuit with it, I should do some exercise instead'.  I don't discuss it with myself that way, but I do decide to spend those hours at home instead, usually wasting time or doing a minimal amount of work very slowly and getting cross with myself for doing it in an inadequate manner.  And there we go - I feel useless again, where if I'd actually done something nice for myself by going out, I could have come home feeling relaxed and probably achieved a lot more later on.

Objectively, I can see a pattern whereby I put myself in situations that leave me feeling useless every time.  Challenge for the coming days:  Spot the 'Yes but...' and evade it.

I am going out for coffee.

Swings, Mirrors and Perspective

Moods are a strange thing, and the weekend brought a lot of things to consider about how I react to situations.  Husband arrived home on Friday, and as always it was a rush of joy to be back together - it doesn't matter whether it's one day, five days or three weeks, I always feel like there's a hole in my very being when he's away. I've tried to get used to it, but it never gets any easier.  I'll be rocketed from the depth of despair that is the state of most evenings I spend alone, to absolute happiness when he's home.  While I've never got used to the situation, I am at least prepared for these moods - however real they are at the time, I can rationalise them to a point.

Not so with the mirror effect.  I wonder if this a feature of mental illness, of uncertainty about ones own judgement or perception - when people close to me feel something deeply, I tend to reflect this mood without any real reason for it in my own life.  I've always been described as 'sensitive', even empathetic as I got older, and without doubt I consider this generally one of my better features, however there are times when I find that it's detrimental to my own health.  Certainly, picking up on how someone feels helps me to understand them, but when being with someone affects my own mood so deeply, it can lead me to consider staying away...  Where does one draw the line?  How much can I help someone unwittingly pulls me down with them?  The answer, sadly, is not an awful lot.

Such was the case on Sunday.  There is a tremendous amount of guilt for removing myself from situations where someone might need some support, but at the moment it has to be me first.  Selfish as it may be.
I found perspective in running, as I often do.

I consider myself extremely lucky, that despite it being a feature of my Eating Disorder, I have been able to reclaim exercise as something that really does give me perspective.  When I run, I know exactly where my body goes to, I feel it as a real, powerful acceptable being, and I am ok with how it behaves for me and how it looks.  I am not and never have been tiny - I have, as they say of a good cart-horse, 'nine-inches of bone', and as such I start to look pretty rubbish around a BMI of 20.  Even at my worst point of being ill I was a 'normal' weight, I never managed to gain the coveted underweight label.  The point being that this doesn't matter to me when I run - I am content with being my physical self, appreciating its strength, and enjoying the speed I can achieve solely with my own power - I feel free.

Not only does it give me physical perspective, but it distances me from the unhappy child/teenager I was.  As a child, I was overweight, unfit and very unhappy, and now I am healthy, capable and have ways to bring myself back to my adult self.  I ran a half marathon a couple of months into my recovery, and never believed I'd be able to do it.  Crossing the finishing line was possibly the greatest achievement of my life - not my degree, not any of my academic or professional successes compare - this was something I did for me, by myself, and is so far from anything I thought I'd be able to do.  This doesn't sound like perspective I'm sure, but it is. I recognised for probably the first time that I could do something that wasn't expected of me... and that makes me free to be me, not just the person that does what is helpful to others.

Perspective comes of putting myself first for a change, learning to recognise the outside influences that hurt me, and take myself away from them somehow.

The art of being capable

Capable.  It's a word I've used a lot, through both illness and recovery.  It changes its meaning according to where my head is.  It's been both destructive and constructive.

When I first became ill, I was 'capable'.  Successful, even.  Success was a useful mask for a mess of emotion - like everything else I was doing at the time, I grieved successfully.  I lost the most important person in my life, and knew the route I was meant to go down - Shock, Pain, Guilt, Anger, Depression, Acceptance.  I did them all successfully, within the space of about a month.  I was even capable of doing emotions right.  Keep them quiet if any step out of the prescribed order, carry on being successful at Doing Things.  Be capable.

Only trouble is that capable actually meant squashing every unrequired emotion and indeed most needs.  Including the need to digest food, acknowledge my continued feelings of grief and admit that actually, I wasn't ready to be independent.  Capable was a hiding place, a protective device and a means of self-sabotage.

After a year of therapy, I learned that my definition of Capable was preventing me from asking for the help I desperately needed, and stopping me from getting the support I longed for, and I more-or-less abandoned it overnight.  There comes a point, when you begin to consider allowing the mask to slip, and suddenly the energy required to continue being 'capable' is too much, and in my case it fell apart completely.

The trouble is that I felt entirely helpless at this point - the trick is balance.  I don't have a lot of this.  Life is black, or it is white.  It is night, or it is day.  It is collapse, or entirely come together.   I like to think that recovery is showing me a bit of the fascinating in-between - the greys and mists of dawn that are neither night nor day.

It is choosing the parts of Capable that suit me.  It is amazing how the little things change an entire experience.   I hate being alone at home overnight, but if I can engage adult thinking a little, it becomes bearable, and I cope, rather than becoming a sobbing, terrified mess.  I do this by being capable.  I light a fire, to keep warm.  I cook a meal (this is hugely significant to me - I was never allowed to be involved with cooking as a child), and I remember to put the bin out.  Tiny, insignificant things, that almost every 25 year old thinks nothing of, but to me are the difference between being the inarticulate, desperate, lonely child who cannot manage alone, and being myself, the woman, adult, wife - Capable human being.

Such a significant word.  Such a difference in the way I use it now to a year ago.  There isn't any need to be successful or perfect - capable simply means making the best of what I have and can do, and consequently managing to move forward, even in situations where I am very afraid.

I will continue to embrace Capable, as long as it helps me to discover my adult self.

I speak because I can

It's taken a number of years to find a voice.  A number of years, a number of false starts, and incessant missions to hide behind any masks I could possibly find or create.

There are hundreds of blogs on mental health issues, eating disorders, recovery and so on - I often feel my story is not worth telling, it becomes trivial in the face of what some people go through...  but this is the mindset that allowed me to slip behind the mask and discount my voice in the first place, and kept me hiding as I slipped ever further.  The critical voice of my internal parent, keeping me quiet and driving me to self-destructive means to keep the outer intact.

I am learning to speak.  An odd thing to say, perhaps, for someone labelled as articulate.  I have borrowed a number of words and lines from other people - songs, poetry, writing, but it is time to find my own to add to them, time to say the things that have been kept locked away.

This sounds like a cliche to my critical ear.  I hate writing in cliches, I hate drama and excessive display of emotion, but the truth is that cliches become so because people recognise themselves in what they hear - they are a method of giving voice to something very personal in a way that leaves everyone understanding what is going on - surely this is the point of speaking?  To be heard and understood.
'Drama' and excessive emotion are a huge part of who I am right now.  To pretend otherwise and go back to being flippant or minimising is continuing a pattern that has never helped.

I speak because I can, and in a way that suits and expresses where I am.  I will learn not to make apologies for this.