Here's a Xanga entry I just wrote, which I had titled Recovery schmecovery.

++++++++++

Okay... the title is a little bit... bitter, maybe. Not positive, I guess. But I am actually sort of attempting recovery right now. In fact, I guess you could say that I am attempting recovery.

To be totally honest, I don't like that phrasing right now. Not one little bit. I feel like "recovery" is a word laden with so many ideals and expectations that it doesn't even come close to suiting what I am actually trying to do right now. "Recovery" means always trying to be in a positive headspace, and never acknowledging anything negative in my life, and never feeling anything bad because, oh my goodness, feeling anything bad might lead to behaviors and/or relapse. (Never mind the fact that one could say I am still in relapse right now, since I am not weight restored and still probably not eating "enough".) Recovery means making blogs and collages full of positive shit and trying to convince myself that nothing bad in the world will actually matter once I have enough good things in my head. Recovery means... never knowing or feeling the darkness in life, or emphasizing with another's horrific, or just really crappy, life experiences. Recovery, at least in my own little world, is somehow now a massive, pretentious word which I have to fake my way through in order to be "successful".

This ideal, happy "recovery" experience, for your edification, is bullshit. (As Marya would say.)

Let's be blunt here. Recovery fucking sucks. Swear words necessary here, as I feel. Recovery just feels gross and awful and uncomfortable, and is full of anxiety and panic and terror and depression and fatigue and bloating and general displeasure. I mean, there really aren't enough horrible words to describe it, especially in the early stages. Your stomach is not expanded enough to accept the amount of food necessary for true health; but, more than that, your digestion is slowed down, so if you happen to eat anything particularly high in fat or fiber, say goodbye to a functioning stomach for at least 3-4 hours, and say hello to horrible bloating, feeling terribly full, and having everything sit in there for, well, at least 3-4 hours. This is not an exaggeration. In fact, I have been known to purge something 5 or 6 hours after eating a meal and still have parts of the meal come up. It's pretty hard to deny that I probably have at least a little delayed gastric emptying here, as well as the normal feeling too full and feeling bloated because I'm simply not used to having all the food and stool weight in my intestinal tract. My body sometimes decides that it cannot even pass gas without giving me awful lower back cramps (true story -- it happened to me last night). I mean, you'd've sworn I was on my period, literally. But, no, it was just my body trying to get rid of some methane. Wtf???

I mean... I am so not used to this. I've never had to recover before from such a low weight, or with such restrictions on my actual physical stomach and intestine functioning before. In all my weight gain "adventures" before this, or restorations to normal amounts of food at normal times, my body has immediately and positively responded to all the food provided. I guess the fact that it's not bouncing back so quickly is a testament to the duration of the eating disorder (soon to be entering its sixth year) as well as to my increasing age (although I'm still only 25). I really do not enjoy these negative physical sensations, and it makes it that much harder to convince myself that not only is recovery good, but it is absolutely necessary. Eating is absolutely necessary; but not only that, eating normally and eating normal amounts is also necessary. It might take me awhile to build my intake up more, but I know that there is a certain point I need to get to, both in terms of weight and in food amounts per day, in order to be truly, holistically healthy and well.

I really don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, and I'm not really trying to. I am doing all this recovery crap despite all the discomfort (and sometimes pain), and I am doing it despite the fact that mentally I do not always want it, and most of the time it is terrifying, especially when I think of gaining weight. However, a few days ago I managed to have strength enough to destroy the dial on my scale, which I then took to my dietician to get rid of for good, so I can't actually actively weigh myself at this point. I don't trust any weight that is not in the morning, nude, after peeing and before eating, so I'm not going to be hopping on any other scales anytime soon. I know there's no way I could be doing this at all if I was weighing myself, because seeing it go up at all, even if it's just because of food and water weight, freaks me the fuck out and makes me start restricting again, because of the utter terror I feel about weight gain right now. So the fact that I don't have a scale is actually a positive thing, despite the fact that nobody is going to be weighing me right now at all. Once I admitted to the dietician that I was so freaked out about being weighed and having it show a falsely elevated weight that I was too anxious to eat before seeing her, she agreed that at least for the next 2-3 sessions I have with her I will NOT be weighed. To her it's more important that I'm eating, and trying to eat more and more regularly, than that I be weighed every single week, or in fact anytime that she sees me. And I really appreciated that she initiated that herself, as opposed to me having to talk her into not weighing me (which I wouldn't have done -- I would have just restricted before appointments instead). It makes me trust her a little more. Which is good, because I've had more of a history of not trusting her than I have of trusting her, and I would really prefer to actually trust my dietician if I'm going to entrust my body and my health to her. You know.

This turned into a much longer entry than I'd anticipated, but I guess the point is... I'm trying. I may fucking LOATHE it by times, but I have to continue to try. When I'm not eating I have no energy, am apathetic, and basically show most of the other signs of clinical depression despite not actually having a true clinical depression right now. It's amazing to me that something as "simple" as restricting can cause me to have such a total mood and energy change, as well as all the other symptoms it causes. But it does help me to reaffirm why I actually don't like restricting, and why this desire to eat more actually does come from my true self. In some ways restricting comes extremely easily to me... it makes the perfectionistic, obsessive part of my personality very very happy. However, there are more basal parts of my self -- such as my passionate temperament, and my staunch feminist and anti-dieting, intuitive eating beliefs -- that really fucking hate restricting; but, more than that, think that restricting is an utterly stupid thing to do. These parts have been really trying to assert themselves lately, and I do not believe it's so very bad that I'm trying to let them. I really, really don't.

I hope this entry made sense. My brain is trying to short-circuit itself now, so I'm not going to be able to give it a read-through and edit like I usually do, at least not for awhile. Forgive me for any heinous editorial errors that may have occurred during the production of this entry.