Who falls again

I rewrote the post about relapse a bit and decided to post it after all. Warning: I have another tendinitis and my sister has no more patience with ED in our house and makes it pretty obvious = I am not very optimistic fed up with everything (mostly myself) right now. I don't say absolutely nothing new or insightful in this post. It basically is prolonged persuading myself to keep going. Here we go. 


1. Who falls again. And how. 


Wikipedia says: A relapse (etymologically, "who falls again") occurs when a person is affected again by a condition that affected him, or her, in the past. 

It's not how many times you fall that matters, it's how many time you get back up.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Every time I read these kind of quotes I want to yell: Oh really? It sounds really wise and maybe it works in healthy people, but constant falling and struggling to get back on track and not seeing an end of it isn't much of a life. Anorexia has not killed me and in some aspects it has made me stronger, but I won't say this kind of acquiring strength is what someone would wish for. 

It is not very clever to argue with omniscient Wikipedia or old wisdoms, but I say: it is never A relapse. It always is The Relapse. Individual. Morphing like eating disorder behavior itself. Scary. It is very complicated to define or classify it. 

I absolutely didn't see first relapse coming/happening. One week you feel super strong, finally having an almost normal life of a 17 year old, second week just little bit low and third week life is bad dream, you can't eat and you can't sleep and you can't be awake and only thought that keeps you survive a never-ending day and never-ending emptiness is the thought about a perspective of ending your life (and couple of hours later, in the night, your heart is going mad and your chest is burning and you beg God to not let you die that night, because Mom doesn't deserve it). Couple of years (and kilograms, hope and trust lost and regained) later I let myself gradually slip and I was at least half-aware of where I was heading to; starving myself was at that time simply (haha) more bearable than the anxiety. Sometimes I've fought back and avert the coming relapse. Sometimes I've given up. Some of my relapses or lapses were triggered by some stresses or situations, but generally I am a kind of person that can sing: Good Times Are Killing me (even without LSD), because I tend to do better under stress and slip when I have long holiday or too much free time (free time became in the mean time really stressful for me).

2. Is this real? 

I think now I know myself and the tricks my mind is able to play better after the years and I live, but I don't feel stronger. 

Actually I feel pretty drained, fed up and tired. 

Moreover, I am afraid (as always when I slip a bit) that what others think is depression and anxiety is just my social laziness, inability to challenge myself properly, me being spoiled and void and superficial and having low threshold for stress tolerance, that it is just abnormal coping mechanism and not a real disease. 

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real? 

-Dumbledore 

3. Reasons for not falling.

Right now everything in my head is screaming how easier and calmer and more predictable my days would have been if I allowed myself to eat little bit less and/or let my exercise go to typical pre-2009 summer (=crazy) mode. Just a few weeks before you start work. The tricky thing is that I know it works. It works for a while. Like a drug that makes my anxiety levels drop and my mood marvelously stable. For a while. For a while before the calmness becomes frost. 

And at the same time I have so many objective reasons to keep myself as far from the verge of anorexia abyss as possible: 

• My family. My dear friends. Enough said.

• I think a lot about patients. Actually about people. All these people that were patients when I was in the school and thus helped me to finish it. About people who are (my) future patients. Every single cell of my body wants so madly to help them, to make the last 6 years of my life useful, to learn more, grow up, face challenges, make a little difference in someone's life. (Which does not mean every single cell is not fucking scared out of their scull membrane). To make this job properly, I need to take care of myself, both physically and mentally.

• There is writing. Piles of scribbles in the box under my bed and couple of bites (well tons of them) in my computer that I am scared to call novel and not sure what to do with it when it is finished, but it is important for me to finish it. 

• This winter I felt so physically strong. In January I just took my running shoes and tried to run 10 km on the stadium with a friend. The air was so cold and I felt weird, because last time I was running on this stadium I was very underweight. During the run my mind was spinning even faster than my legs: I (unfortunately) still somehow missed my old body (or better: I miss the missing parts of it), but the feeling of running really fast and not feeling dizziness or cramps in calves was so worth it. Moreover, we did the 10 km in just 47 minutes without really trying hard which makes the theory: (substantially LESS exercise + proper nutrition = better stamina) somehow palpable. I want it back. 

• In winter I felt like I was ready for a relationship. Or at least for thinking about it, not turning down invitations etc. I didn't seek actively for it, but I feel that it is a topic. There was a space in my head for these thoughts. There was confidence. Now the space and confidence are gone again and I really really am scared that the longer I am living without a boyfriend, the harder it will be in the future to find someone.

4. I am pretending I am my very own therapist. (Everyone is.)

I haven't had a therapist for the longest period of time since I got ill and it may be a problem (I don't know, it is probably something for another post), but if I had one, he/she would insert here: 

• Recognizing a relapse is first and scary, but most important step to get better, so actually you did a good job (+ me thinking something about how I would love to skip this never-ending first step(s) and how being recovered, being THERE is good job.)
• Not letting yourself slip is worth and necessary even if NOTHING was on your list. 
• It is good you think and write about it, but you can rarely think yourself out of a relapse. Go do. 
• I may discuss dopamine with you but eat the snack first, ok? There are important molecules in the bread and cheese and tomatoes as well, did you know that?  
• Try harder. Rest harder. Try again. 
• Considering I am imaginary (and despite you think you know better) you need someone to kick your ass kick anorexia's nonexistent ass more or less professionally with you. Go tell someone in addition to this blog what's going on. Don't pretend you are your own therapist.

I am crazy.

in the valley of sinusoid

I've just writen long post about my sister's ultrathinness and eating habits and how I am worried (and :/jealous and furious and how I absolutely hate myself for it). Well I am worried but deep down I know this all is my problem, my slip, my fight. It is me who needs help. She is very thin and very distant, living her life, not our sisterhood- it is killing me. But it is part of ED. I feel like crying, but I need to pick a phone and call to my Prague therapist, because my eating and labs are not very impressive. Every cell in my body is so damned tired of this.

Tomorrow Warning

Reading about Tomorrow syndrome in Cammy´s insightful blog is sad and so familiar. I decided to write my own TS-Warning list, for me and maybe for someone else in need. It´s nothing new, but sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest:

1) Tomorrow is harder and at some point impossible when we postpone recovery.
2) Tomorrow is easy and it´s bad to do what´s easy just cause it´s easy (here I definitely don´t want to say that easy things are bad!)
3) There may be no tomorrow - I know it sounds pathetic, but it is unfortunately right- not only for us- for our grandparents, pets or deams.
4) No dream begins tomorrow. It is always Today what counts.
5) We can trick and blameour mind with Tomorrow, but our body doesn´t get these tomorrow-I-will-eat-promises. It has memory, but there is no anticipation for "better times". Hopeless body = hopeles mind... welcome vicious cycle.


I am this kind of busy (unproductively trying to arrange all exams and stuff:(, being to drained to study after whole day standing in gyn-surgery => panicking that I won´t make it = being so damned tempted to selfmedicate myself with ED behaviour...
But no, NO. NO please.

Fat Miss Failure

I promised myself that with stable healthy weight my emotions will be stable and healthy.
My weight is one or 2 kilos from target (and my target was not set at BMI 17,5 or so). (Actually I think I have higher BMI than my younger sister now- don't worry K, I am NOT going to count it, but I am much shorter and... stop it).
So why is the anxiety so brutal? Why every meal or deciding what I will eat is struggle? Yesterday I was trying to fool myself that this is just traveling anxiety, my jaws are aching from chewing gum so intensive and the fact I can't even read a book (I can always read at the bus) is alarming. But this morning I was again almost vomiting, feeling so desperate and void here in Berlin, Miss Failure in the city of opportunities and progress. The "prescription" would be so easy...seriously, stop it,
The fact that I have done most of my research last semester and now I have plenty of free time (everyone is jealous - irony) makes it even harder. I need some distraction and I can't think about nothing but exercising etc. Stop it- there are variety of cultural opportunities in Berlin, nice parks (for walks, photographing, making picnics and reading books- not just frenetic running).
How comes that after all those years I am not able not to feel almost ashamed and inferior when I don't overexercised and see someone exercising? Am I and really so shallow and my values so vain? My ex-therapist would probably say that it is not me, "just" the disease, but the disease is in my mind and who am I if I am not my mind? (My body? Haha- somehow tricky as well).

Ok, got to plan some distraction program and social challenging for this semester as my labmates are really confused to see me in the lab much more often than I need to be there.

Why is it sometimes so damned hard to just be a normal human being?

equinox

Despite the balance in the title I don't feel well balanced now.
I am not doing well and boy have I tried and tried and tried.
It' s spring break, I am home and the lack of school stress and independency is killing me.
I've been crying myself into sleep for three nights in a row.
My weight is way higher than last spring, but I am fighting every day with the voices that are telling me that my life is crap, my social life is z.e.r.o., my existence is useless and I don't deserve or need to eat, to have this heavy useless body. I am fighting it, but it seems that in last weeks I am not able to do anything else. I passed all my exams plus I quite enjoy the research I am doing, but it seems like I have no desire, no drive, no energy. I am avoiding every social event, because I feel fat, stupid and like someone extremely unenjoyful to be around. In fact I am dreading to live with my flatmates after few weeks at home.
One of my sisters is driving me crazy, she has her dieting - sorry: cleaning - days and she has no patience with my tears and fears and the fact I am 2 years older, but thanks to my ED it feels like I am 5 years younger than her. She is so strong, independent, little selfish, very ambitious and I know she loves me so much, but I think with her personality she doesn't understand the pathological way of thinking in someone with anorexia. She has had her own eating issues - I am sure finding her balance and her place in the faculty (she studies now history and political science which is in this country very masculine field) was not easy, but she is getting there and I am so happy.
But I still want to fight it. I just don't know how. The thing is I can't afford to pay an intensive therapy (and I don't want my parrents money) and I can't afford relapse now after all that money and energy I put into recovery last summer/fall. I survived Christmas somehow, I was so focused on doing better, January weeks of exams were also kind of succesful, but now I feel this vacuum and my "safe" coping mechanisms are comming. In fact they are here now for weeks. I am telling myself that as soon as I will be in the school, things will be better, but I know it is not so easy.
I am drained and see not much future. And still I wish so many things! To learn, discover, try, help, say, write, love. I just now can't see myself to do it, days are quite painful.

I am sorry for this post, although this blog has virtually no readers. It is neither insightul nor somehow original. This is my reality. Or ED's reality? I will fight, I have to. Facts:
1. I need to eat properly. It is basis. Finding another "solutions" and "underlying" problems is Ed's strategy. Food first. I need energy to solve another problems.
2. Although I need to eat, food is not something miraculous. It doesn't need to be "pure" or bio or vegetarian/vegan/super nutitious/"best". It is just food, it will be broken down to the same ATP. Just eat.
3. My family is not here to support you all the time and cure you. I should be incredibly happy they are still believing I can recover after all those years. I have to accept the fact my mother and my sister K are not supporting and understanding me like I wish they did. In fact it feels like they don't understand at all. But they love me, I know. And I love them so much.
4. Psychotherapy is not working miraculously. I have to work and work and work.

And with number four in my head I am going to bed, need some rest in this one hour shorter night. Good night!