It came to me yesterday that there's a reason why people talk about being 'filled' with hope. It's because when hopes aren't fulfilled it's as if someone's reached in and scooped out a massive hole inside you. I can feel it, physically, an enormous, yawning chasm.
My husband works away from home, and I hate it beyond description. To be joined and connected emotionally to someone, and yet to have to say goodbye every single fucking Monday overwhelms me with something I can't really define.
Two weeks ago he told me he had an interview with a company based about 5 miles from our home - I dismissed it, jobs have come up locally before that just haven't been right for him, and I assumed this would be another one. Then he told me a bit more, and we let ourselves hope, just a little, that we might be able to finally start living our married life the way most couples do - ie together! - 18 months after we got married.
Suffice to say it hasn't worked out that way. Another hope chucked down the drain, yet again.
Now I have always firmly believed that everything happens for a reason, still do. There will of course be a reason for him not getting this job, I just have a horrible feeling the reason might be me. That I still have to learn to be ok with being on my own, being without him, and when it hasn't got any easier after several years, it makes the future look rather daunting, because I just cannot imagine ever getting used to it. I think I'm coping, then I stop to think a little, and there it is again, that overwhelming...something.
Something that I suspect could be labelled hopelessness, which was the overriding feeling that took over this time last year, when I hit the lowest point I have ever reached. That terrifies me, that a small event can trigger such a deep hole.
This time I've spotted it. This time I am not planning to use any of the destructive coping mechanisms I used before, but God, I'm so afraid of feeling like that again. I am so tired of going round in circles and spirals.
It would be so much easier not to have had any hope in the first place.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Monday, 14 February 2011
Finding the words
Maybe this blog should have been called I Speak Because I Have To.
I know that talking is an essential part of healing, it's just that sometimes it's so very hard to find the words.
It is much easier to just get on with living.
This sounds great, in theory, it's just that I know there's still so much unsaid, so much I find on the tip of my tongue every day. I've tried getting on with it, deciding there is no more to say, and living life as I find it, but sadly that seems to just end in turning the past back on myself, revisiting the old friends of self-hate and self-harm. When I stop talking everything starts twisting and magnifying.
It doesn't matter that I am pretty well recovered when it comes to behaviours, my head is still a long way behind, and it frustrates me that I can do so much only to be caught round the neck by emotional baggage and negative thoughts. I am reaching the point of fury over how much time and opportunity I have thrown away to this crap, I'm bloody twenty-five, and still feel like an eight year old most of the time.
And it's so hard to find words when most of the ones you'd like to use are connected with hurt and anger and passivity and lack of worth. I am learning to be me, to be ok with me, and I'm learning the language of empowerment, but in order to heal I have to revisit old feelings that still hang on to me in my current really rather charmed life. It's maddening, because I have come so far, I cannot change the past, and yet I still haven't grieved for the now-dead man to whom I first gave my heart, I still haven't voiced the deep and bitter anger that I have towards my mother and her illness. If I can't speak these things, I can't let go, and yet I need to look forward, speak as the woman I want to be.
It's hard. But if I keep talking, I can keep learning to live properly, as a whole person, as someone whose experiences shape not damage. I hope I can do this.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Temporary Freedom
This is Betty.
She is a horse, obviously.
She is also many other things. For a start, she is MY horse. I never dreamed, even a year ago, that I would have one, despite wanting to since the age of about five.
We have a complicated relationship, as you would expect from any strong and important partnership. I am a lot of the time a little in awe of her - she is strong, often wild, often affectionate, sometimes compliant, frequently afraid. And yet... she does what I, a small and insignificant person, ask of her a good percentage of the time. In return I feed and look after her, but how on earth can that lead to the level of trust that allows a frightened half-ton of animal to continue to walk towards something that she thinks might hurt her? By no means do we have the strength of partnership that many horse owners have with theirs, though I hope that will come in time, since we have as yet only been together for six months, but the acceptance she has for me already is astonishing.
In some respects it seems wrong to try to tame such an incredible flight animal, and yet, she totally accepts me and seems happy to follow. We understand each other in this way. I too am often afraid, want to be led, and often have a strong urge to run away from anything I perceive as threatening. Betty puts me in the other role, of leader, confident and prepared to face danger, and she accepts and trusts that I will keep us safe.
On a specific level, she is also a big part of my recovery. Going back to riding lessons nearly three years ago, after a long gap, gave me an hour of freedom from illness every week, mostly because I was concentrating so damn hard all the time that I forgot to inhabit my emotional brain! I feel totally free when I'm riding - galloping across a field does incredible things for the soul, and getting a precise exercise right in the school is a satisfaction I can't begin to describe for me.
She also blocks my exit route from recovery. I got her last year, after I had promised and proved to myself that I would cut down and eventually stop b/ping. Simple fact: I cannot afford a horse AND bulimia, and that fact alone is often enough to snap me out of the trance in which I used to wander round the supermarket. On another practical note, I cannot just disappear when she is in my life - I know this is crazy-sounding, when, for example, my husband should be enough reason to stay alive, and she is only an animal, but my husband, friends, family, are all capable of looking after themselves - on really dark days I honestly think they'd be better off without me. Betty is not, however, capable of looking after herself, and I know I must get up every day to look after her.
Basically, she keeps me relatively sane, which is everything I could ask for at the moment.
Monday, 7 February 2011
Lesson in Living
I had some sad news yesterday. A dear lady from church had died last week.
She was elderly, and we hadn't seen her for a long time since she moved to live nearer her family, but she made such a deep impact on me. She had the kind of reverent gratitude for life, and total encompassing kindness that made her very special to be with.
I will never forget sitting next to her in church one morning, a morning when I was really struggling, and prayed that God would help me somehow. He chose Dee to do this. She started to talk to me, I hadn't said anything really, but for some reason she started to talk about how she had lost her husband many years ago, and how there had, ever since then, been people around her to keep her safe, and keep her in the knowledge that she was loved. We talked for a long time, and I forget the detail of the conversation, but I will never forget the wonder in her voice when she talked about how amazing it was to trust that God would arrange the circumstances to help her to cope with whatever happened to her. And I will never forget her gratitude either, when she talked about the people in her life who helped her.
She talked about how she woke up every morning and thanked God that she was alive, knowing that He would see her through the day.
So often I wake up and wish I wasn't alive, knowing that every minute might be a struggle. How foolish this is. I have the most wonderful people in my life, I have physical health, I have faith, I have a job with a supportive team of people. I have SO MANY BLESSINGS.
I am gradually learning to accept and appreciate them, and people like this wonderful, patient lady make the journey so much clearer.
Rest in Peace, Dee. I pray that I may one day grow to have a little of your gratitude, acceptance, and faith.
She was elderly, and we hadn't seen her for a long time since she moved to live nearer her family, but she made such a deep impact on me. She had the kind of reverent gratitude for life, and total encompassing kindness that made her very special to be with.
I will never forget sitting next to her in church one morning, a morning when I was really struggling, and prayed that God would help me somehow. He chose Dee to do this. She started to talk to me, I hadn't said anything really, but for some reason she started to talk about how she had lost her husband many years ago, and how there had, ever since then, been people around her to keep her safe, and keep her in the knowledge that she was loved. We talked for a long time, and I forget the detail of the conversation, but I will never forget the wonder in her voice when she talked about how amazing it was to trust that God would arrange the circumstances to help her to cope with whatever happened to her. And I will never forget her gratitude either, when she talked about the people in her life who helped her.
She talked about how she woke up every morning and thanked God that she was alive, knowing that He would see her through the day.
So often I wake up and wish I wasn't alive, knowing that every minute might be a struggle. How foolish this is. I have the most wonderful people in my life, I have physical health, I have faith, I have a job with a supportive team of people. I have SO MANY BLESSINGS.
I am gradually learning to accept and appreciate them, and people like this wonderful, patient lady make the journey so much clearer.
Rest in Peace, Dee. I pray that I may one day grow to have a little of your gratitude, acceptance, and faith.
Thursday, 3 February 2011
What do you want?
Do it. Work out what you actually want. Regarding anything at all.
Did you wake up this morning, thinking 'today I want to do x in order that in seven years time I can have y sort of life?' I have to do this a million times a day at the moment.
'What do you need?' is one of my therapist's favourite questions. I have slowly, haltingly learned to answer in vague terms 'I need to talk about ...' or very occasionally 'I need some human contact' (a ridiculous phrase that I have just about managed to blurt out from time to time, meaning please put your hand on my shoulder or take my hand or something so that I feel connected to a person, and thereby the world). Never, ever, have I been able to make a direct request, but I've heard the question enough times to know that if I sit and think about it, I might in an indirect manner be able to respond semi-truthfully.
This is a different question though. 'What do you want?' means work out where you want to be next year, in five years, in ten years' time.
I am currently pondering this with regards to food - it always seems a good starting point, the obvious, diagnosable problem which I can take practical steps to change. Working out what I want when it comes to the jumbled chaos of how I think is far too complicated currently.
I've been in proper, active recovery from EDNOS this time for nearly 8 months (after years of 'trying' and relapsing), and I still do not know what I want. I know that in May last year I decided I was done messing with messing around and wanted to be healthy, but the challenge is remembering what truly is healthy. Half the time my definition is, frankly, wrong. I can't really pussy-foot around with the ambiguity of 'healthy' because what I think is healthy changes from day to day - it either means stuffing myself with as much food as I can fit in and announcing gleefully that I Couldn't Care Less what I weigh, or it means eating nothing but salad. Or on saner days it means being able to eat the requisite number of calories for my body to do what I ask of it and not wanting to die because I happened to include a sausage roll in this, or dared not to actually count.
So what do I want? And how does that impact on what I do today?
Maybe in the subconscious interests of research, eating has been terrible the last two days. I am now more than ever convinced that bingeing and purging is NOT what I want (this actually did not ever feature in any definition of healthy, so I guess that's useful, knowing that at least one of the definitions I have IS what I want!).
I also do not want to be so emotionally 'healthy' that I no longer care what my body does and looks like, so stuffing as much down as possible is out too.
The problem, really, is that I want to eat, exercise, enjoy food, feel comfortable about eating in a way that most people would define as healthy, and yet, there is still this insistent voice that says that I want not to care about food at all to the point where I can completely take it or leave it. There is the rub.
I still want to be thin.
But is that me?? I am almost certain the answer is no. I am almost certain that it is in fact my illness, so magnificently under control most of the time, that speaks with a very loud voice, and convinces me that it is myself speaking.
This I know: I want to want health, in every respect, and according to every 'normal' person's definition. The next step is to know that I just want it, and to continue to live in a way that leads me in that direction.
Did you wake up this morning, thinking 'today I want to do x in order that in seven years time I can have y sort of life?' I have to do this a million times a day at the moment.
'What do you need?' is one of my therapist's favourite questions. I have slowly, haltingly learned to answer in vague terms 'I need to talk about ...' or very occasionally 'I need some human contact' (a ridiculous phrase that I have just about managed to blurt out from time to time, meaning please put your hand on my shoulder or take my hand or something so that I feel connected to a person, and thereby the world). Never, ever, have I been able to make a direct request, but I've heard the question enough times to know that if I sit and think about it, I might in an indirect manner be able to respond semi-truthfully.
This is a different question though. 'What do you want?' means work out where you want to be next year, in five years, in ten years' time.
I am currently pondering this with regards to food - it always seems a good starting point, the obvious, diagnosable problem which I can take practical steps to change. Working out what I want when it comes to the jumbled chaos of how I think is far too complicated currently.
I've been in proper, active recovery from EDNOS this time for nearly 8 months (after years of 'trying' and relapsing), and I still do not know what I want. I know that in May last year I decided I was done messing with messing around and wanted to be healthy, but the challenge is remembering what truly is healthy. Half the time my definition is, frankly, wrong. I can't really pussy-foot around with the ambiguity of 'healthy' because what I think is healthy changes from day to day - it either means stuffing myself with as much food as I can fit in and announcing gleefully that I Couldn't Care Less what I weigh, or it means eating nothing but salad. Or on saner days it means being able to eat the requisite number of calories for my body to do what I ask of it and not wanting to die because I happened to include a sausage roll in this, or dared not to actually count.
So what do I want? And how does that impact on what I do today?
Maybe in the subconscious interests of research, eating has been terrible the last two days. I am now more than ever convinced that bingeing and purging is NOT what I want (this actually did not ever feature in any definition of healthy, so I guess that's useful, knowing that at least one of the definitions I have IS what I want!).
I also do not want to be so emotionally 'healthy' that I no longer care what my body does and looks like, so stuffing as much down as possible is out too.
The problem, really, is that I want to eat, exercise, enjoy food, feel comfortable about eating in a way that most people would define as healthy, and yet, there is still this insistent voice that says that I want not to care about food at all to the point where I can completely take it or leave it. There is the rub.
I still want to be thin.
But is that me?? I am almost certain the answer is no. I am almost certain that it is in fact my illness, so magnificently under control most of the time, that speaks with a very loud voice, and convinces me that it is myself speaking.
This I know: I want to want health, in every respect, and according to every 'normal' person's definition. The next step is to know that I just want it, and to continue to live in a way that leads me in that direction.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
It's the little things
I love the coincidences. This morning, having decided to look after myself last night by going to stay with friends while hubby is away instead of spending the night being miserable by myself, I popped home to feed the cat, and decided to flick the radio on for some company. I tuned in just in time for Thought For The Day (yes, I am a radio 4 geek.), and heard someone elderly and kindly-sounding talking about the new Anthony Gormley sculpture in Canterbury Cathedral. It is a sculpture of a body, made from old nails, and the artist says of it:
"We are all the temporary inhabitants of a body. It is our house, instrument and medium. Through it all impressions of the world come and from it all our acts, thoughts and feelings are communicated."
The speaker went on to talk about how we are so often dissatisfied with our body, yet it is in fact this wonderful, God-given thing through which we live our lives, and that we must learn to love and look after our selves and bodies in order to live a full life. It takes very little for me to forget this, and this simple message was a timely reminder for me this morning.
The speaker went on to talk about how we are so often dissatisfied with our body, yet it is in fact this wonderful, God-given thing through which we live our lives, and that we must learn to love and look after our selves and bodies in order to live a full life. It takes very little for me to forget this, and this simple message was a timely reminder for me this morning.
Next I hop in my car (after breakfast!), hit 'play' on my iPod, and this song plays:
Hypnotised by mirrors,
You should look out your window,
Beneath cracked panes of ice,
The sky's on fire.
Drowned by the screams of decadence,
A call to arms
Too busy working out to,
Work it out.
It's not gonna matter what you chose,
It's too late when everything goes Dark
One of my favourite songs, nothing unusual about hearing it, but it is one that made me have a think about what the heck I was doing to myself when I made a decision to do the recovery thing 'proper'.
You should look out your window,
Beneath cracked panes of ice,
The sky's on fire.
Drowned by the screams of decadence,
A call to arms
Too busy working out to,
Work it out.
It's not gonna matter what you chose,
It's too late when everything goes Dark
One of my favourite songs, nothing unusual about hearing it, but it is one that made me have a think about what the heck I was doing to myself when I made a decision to do the recovery thing 'proper'.
Stop looking in the mirror, slow down and make the decision to live, before you can't. The Hoosiers have notoriously ambiguous lyrics, but this one spoke to me with startling clarity. I am almost certain that the writer of the song was not considering eating disorders when he wrote this, but it translated perfectly to me in that context.
Lastly the simple fact that IT IS NO LONGER JANUARY!!! I hate January, as I'm sure many others do. It is long, dark, anniversary-filled and miserable. But today is February, and this simple fact makes me think of lighter nights and just generally looking forward again, instead of being stuck in a dark hole.
Just little things, but they were enough to convince me that I can do this today.
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