Getting it out in the open

It pisses me off when other people can be happy when I'm not. When other people can laugh when I don't feel like laughing. Of course, "other people" almost always just means "my immediate family".

It seems to me that sometimes they like to make my life extraordinarily difficult just because they can. No other reason. They are subversive and manipulative and shadowed and hidden and always, always veiled, just because it pleases them to be so. It doesn't matter how their actions affect other people. It doesn't matter that someone might have emotional fallout, emotional devastation, from their actions. So long as it makes them happy to do something, they'll do it, and fuck what other people think, because those other people will be ready to bounce back when they are wanted.

The trouble is... that's exactly what does happen in my family. Everyone, including me, gets away with emotional "murder", and then later all come crawling back to each other, proverbially kissing all the asses and "making up". Only the making up just happens on the outside, because inside, all the currents and tension still resonate. They continue to hum somewhere way, way down, only for them to crop up the next time something random happens to somebody and they get the chance to make themselves known again.

I have known for a good while now that living in this house is poisonous to me -- probably at least a year. Ever since I began therapy with Jane -- the one who, by the way, my mom has always said "seemed to make me worse". Of course that would be her reaction to the one person who has ever fucking helped me. The one who stirred up emotions. The one who refused to let me keep burying myself and my thoughts and my feelings. Of course anybody being more open about their self-destruction and anger and pain would make my mom feel, on a basal, fundamental level, that something was wrong. Because, to my mom, emotional expression feels wrong.

I don't say that lightly either. I have had lots of time -- that year, plus many more previous years of cloudier observation -- to study and analyze and form that hypothesis, and I still believe it. To my mother, manipulation and subversity are methods of communication, and they seem far easier to her than to just be open about things that touch nerves. Overt physical aggression is absolutely intolerable, and irrefutably WRONG, to her; but mental aggression is to her just a normal way of being.

I have also speculated, in recent days and weeks, that when people have outbursts in response to her manipulations, it actually makes her feel more in control. When people whom she expects to blow up are composed -- and have rational arguments that are not founded in what she sees as skewed thinking -- it makes her feel as though, proverbially speaking, her world is unsettled, and she must do whatever she can to make it feel safe again. This means, among other things, that she projects her own feelings at us -- only she does it in ways that makes it seem as though her emotions have nothing to do with it.

For a small and significantly more trivial example: One night, my mother got mad at me about using her work laptop and told me to just "get off" it, seeming to be angry with me. But I learned, by remarks she had made before and did make afterwards, that she was not angry at me... she was merely afraid of the fallout she would experience if she had to take the blame for something I did. This all seems insignificant; but to her it seemed as though having to take the blame for something she didn't do would somehow fundamentally upset the precise balance of her world. If this happened, she could not handle it. Therefore, instead of acknowledging her fear of that happening, she instead proceeded to drive her daughter away from the machine by whatever means were necessary. It did not occur to her that this would hurt her daughter; it was far more important to her that her daughter Not Harm The Machine for it was a Very Important Piece Of Equipment. Because if something happened to work property under her care, maybe she could get reprimanded. Maybe she could face losing her job if she got enough reprimands. And then she wouldn't be making money anymore -- then she wouldn't have something to do with those 40 hours -- then her whole existence would completely fall apart.

Melodramatic? Yeah, it seems that way when I describe it like that. But nothing about it feels like a melodrama or even like something out-of-proportion. However, I suspect that she herself, in her current headspace, would never even be able to begin acknowledging any part of this analysis as "correct". After all, if she accepted any of my analyses as even remotely possible, it would mean that her world is not as comfortable as she thinks, and this is something she must avoid at all costs. Hence her complete denial that anything is wrong with her. Oh, no: This is me having been brainwashed by that unhelpful Jane person. This is me projecting my own insecurities on her. This is a million other things that have nothing to do with her. Just as long as it never gets discovered that she lives under a self-constructed protective bubble -- just as long as she does not get disrupted -- just as long as things seem stable to her, that's all that matters. If we get hurt in the process of her ensuring her own safety, that is regrettable but necessary.

Yes. Now that I write it all down, it all seems even more true. The sad thing is that my mother has built her bubble so carefully and to such complexity that the chances of her ever breaking out of it are slim to none. The family therapy we did, the one thing I had hoped would finally make some of those walls come down, turned out to actually bolster her. This is because we happened to go to a really shitty family therapist ("But she has the credentials and she does family therapy all the time, so she is right and you are WRONG") who basically joined my parents in saying, "How do we deal with this crazy child?" And of course all three of them denied that this was what they were doing -- as people with that psychological mindset would!!!

Can you understand, though, why this frustrates me SO fucking much!? Can you understand why, for the last two years, all I've really wanted is to get out of my house, out of this pervasively psychologically BAD atmosphere? All I do here is suffer. All I do here is get worse in my current "disorders" or "develop" "new" ones. It all comes from the same place -- a place which is so much easier to wallow in and believe in when I'm around two people who project such negative psychological energy. Because, of course, my dad bolsters Mom's opinions on everything at least 95% of the time. Somehow, I think he is innately attuned to my mother's need for this psychological protection, and refuses to let me break it. Gets upset when I try to break it. Acts out irrationally, in his own different ways, when I do try. Don't get me wrong -- my dad is not the psychologically unhealthy one here. But he does not try to make anything better, either, and in doing his little mostly-passive thing he only succeeds in fueling her and making all of this that much worse.

One thing I am a bit afraid of is what's going to happen to my sister, living in such an atmosphere, especially if I go. I think that me being actively "mentally ill" detracts a little bit from Mom and Dad's focus on my sister, which is already very intense and often fairly psychologically negative. If I was to go -- how else would they focus on her? What would they start to project on her that, currently, they are able to project on me instead? I don't know. I do know that my sister has a history of restriction, and anxiety, and intense emotions -- like the ones I had at her age. What happens to her over these next three or four years is going to have a very significant part in determining what happens to her after that. And I can't help being worried. What will those ignorant, oblivious parents of mine do to her without realizing it? I can only keep my optimism that maybe nothing so bad will happen. Or that if something does happen it will be fixable.

As for me, though... sometimes I severely doubt whether I am "fixable" or not. But I honestly think that unless I can get away from my parents' influence, and stay away for a significant period of time, I will not get better. I will not recover. In fact, I think that under their thumb I will probably continue to deteriorate. I think part of the reason I want to go to Homewood SO badly is to just fucking GET AWAY from them. Be able to recover under my own self-chosen terms and forget that my parents even exist. That's why I honestly think it's a mistake to make me do family therapy when I'm up there, even over the phone. I mean, we tried that, and it didn't work at all... and, in actuality, succeeded in making things way worse. I don't want to have to deal with that huge, black energy when I'm up there. I have enough of their residual negative energies in me -- I don't need MORE!

Woah. This is like... a novel. But I think it needed to be said. And I know it was important for me to write it down somewhere. This is just the place I happened to choose. Please don't comment with anything superficial or irrelevant, because, frankly, that would hurt me a lot right now. I have to say, I feel rather fragile. I suppose you would, too, if you thought you were in a terrible, hurtful place and had no hope of getting out until at LEAST early March. Especially if you had just realized that the place was more terrible than you could have imagined at first.

And it still hurts to know that if she ever read this she would completely, 100% invalidate everything I've written here as complete bullshit. It does. It hurts to know that my own mother can't see and respect my intelligence and intuition. And, god, I wish it didn't. But what can I possibly do about it?

The straight-up truth about real binges

One cookie is not a binge.
One cupcake is not a binge.
Two or three pieces of cake is not even a binge.

A binge is when you stuff cereal down your throat just because you NEED something to eat that you can get down in huge quantities FAST FASTER FASTEST, as if this was a race where anything but first place will lead to the realization of all your worst nightmares. (Except the binge itself, of course. That's a nightmare all its own.)

A binge is when you eat until your stomach is distended, and the skin stretches so you can see ribs you couldn't see before you started your gluttony; when you eat until your whole abdomen, your whole torso, hurts; when you can't even straighten up because if you did the pressure in your guts would be too unbearable; when you can feel the liquids and food trying to shove their way back up your esophagus because you can't fit it all in; when even all this sometimes isn't enough to stop you. You just need one more bite... no, two more... threefourfiveten...

A binge is when you ravage close-to-empty cupboards frantically, looking for anything to shove in your face, even stuff like brown sugar from the bag, or full-fat peanut butter in huge tablespoons straight from the jar, or some hideous peanut-butter-Quik-syrup-brown-sugar-artificial-vanilla thing that you mixed way the hell up with the biggest spoon you could find and are just eating because it's so high calorie and disgusting.

A binge is when you eat things you don't even WANT, don't even LIKE, because you NEED to be terribly, hideously full so badly.

A binge is when you eat even though you don't even REMOTELY want to eat, because your biology screams "MORE MORE MORE" and you scream "NO NO NO" and it just happens anyway and you can't even begin to stop it.


So... do you still think one cookie is a binge????


(Note: This entry is almost definitely not directed at you. Mostly it's angry commentary because of all the dumb wanarexics on proanorexia. Which is where I posted this originally, with a much less polite ending. Haha.)

The Emotional Side of Weight Loss

So today has been a looking-up-articles day for me, and I thought I'd share this one, because I thought it was interesting, and also very very true.

In my opinion and experience, one dramatic reason it is so difficult for people to lose weight and maintain it is that there is always an emotional component to weight loss and maintenance. Yet this aspect is rarely addressed and most people are not aware of their own emotional roadblocks.

The possible emotional issues and explanations for them are infinite. Each person has her own unique history with food, exercise and body image. The story behind each of these issues often lurks in your unconscious and was created long ago by your experiences growing up and colored by your parents and households relationship to each of these arenas. These stories stay tucked away and all you may experience is "I can't lose weight" or "I always put it right back on." The reason may be that something is driving your need to eat, your difficulty exercising or your comfort having a normal weight body.

Below are some examples, but remember that your own personal story will be more nuanced and individualized. Once you can address the emotional component of weight management, your ability to diet and maintain a healthy weight will be easier.

• Anxiety. Many people have fears, worries and nervousness that drives their eating. When they are afraid of something, rather than working to figure out what that something is and how they are going to deal with their anxiety about it, many people try to comfort themselves with food. Food may have always been their families’s and their own way of finding comfort. And at that moment of anxiety, the food does distract you and make you feel comforted, so you set up a system of positive reinforcement for eating. You begin to associate eating as a way to calm anxiety. But in the long run, the food does not address what makes you nervous, so you just keep eating, and you start packing on the pounds while still experiencing the anxiety. Figuring out what’s bothering you and why and how you can realistically deal with it is important to break the cycle.

• Depression. Again many people struggle with sadness and it is unpleasant. They try to "cheer up" by eating food that makes them feel soothed and nurtured. They feel that yummy food makes them feel taken care of, like mom's pie or mac and cheese. Using food to comfort and distract yourself from feeling blue may be the most common reason people fall off their diets. Many people have memories of food being used at home to cheer them up — have an ice cream, don't cry, here is a lollypop. Again, this becomes cyclical because, at the moment, it does cheer you up, but in the long term it is more depressing and hence you eat more. Figuring out what’s at the root of your sadness and finding other ways to cope with it can interrupt the cycle.

• Exercise phobic. This is the person whose story tells them that exercise is very, very unpleasant. It may be they think they are totally un-athletic and therefore find it defeating and embarrassing to exercise. They think that they should be more competent at sports and other physical activities so they avoid doing exercise to not feel like a failure. Another common exercise avoidance issue is pushing endurance. Many people feel that being out of breath, sore or very tired is scary. Some even find that sweating is anxiety-producing and a major turnoff. Understanding why you avoid exercise can help you debunk the story that keeps you from doing it.

• Body image fears. Some people, particularly women, are afraid to lose weight because they are afraid of being sexy and attractive. It sounds strange, I know, but I see many of these women in my private practice. They struggle with being afraid of sex, or men in general, and are really frightened of themselves should they lose weight and no longer have that insulation as protection against men’s attention and their own sexual urges. Some women fear they will lose control and be too sexually wanton. Others have a fear of the sexual act. And still others are afraid that men will hurt them. Women who have been sexual abused in their past may particularly struggle with this. Understanding this fear and working on that will free you to lose the weight and address the real — and perhaps even more important — issue

Original article here.

This will only make sense if you've read "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold

My bones are lovely --
The loveliest of bones --
And I am not a rape victim --

But I don't know if there's a heaven --


01/19/2007

one who pretends to be someone he or she is not

I fucking love the new Evanescence CD. Particularly the songs that are popular on the radio right now (well, and a few others). I feel like a complete poseur. "Get over it, Niika." Grfl.

I'm thirsty, but I don't want to get anything to drink. This is because I'm stupid. Yes, you heard me. STUUUU-PIIIID.

I don't know how the fuck I'm going to hang on long enough for Homewood. Then again, if I got through Christmas, I can probably get through this. But still. Nobody knows how close I get sometimes to royally screwing up absolutely EVERYthing. I really mean that. It would be exceedingly, idiotically simple to fuck myself over and have my admission to Homewood delayed for a long time, if not altogether reconsidered. And there are many times when I am sorely tempted to do it. Yet I don't... and why? Because some tiny part of my brain still tells me, "I will NOT let you continue to destroy yourself. I will NOT let you entirely eradicate the one avenue of decent help you still have left."

Sometimes I really, truly wish I didn't have these few scraps of common sense left. Because if I didn't I could destroy myself without being quite so conscience-stricken. It would be so, so much easier. Plus I wouldn't feel like such a poseur. Because I still feel like one.

Fuck this. Fuck fuck fuck this.

PS: You have no idea how much that quote of mine in the third to last paragraph makes me hate myself. I'm being totally serious and honest when I say that. I DON'T FUCKING DESERVE ANY "AVENUE[S] OF DECENT HELP". WHY DO I CONTINUE TO LET MYSELF STAY OUT OF HOSPITAL FOR AN EATING DISORDER TREATMENT I DON'T EVEN FUCKING NEED!?!?!

song (lyrics)

i am petrified and ugly
a scaffold by a storm-played building
the paint cracked and grey

my bones are not enough
i need to be a paperweight
so light i'd billow
if you'd take your fat hands from my wrists

please let me go
i can't live anymore
i can't breathe anymore
my lungs are feathers
brittle bones can barely claw my name in sand

i am worthless and scarred
arms of raw chicken, purple and shredded
i'll be gone before they heal

emaciation no longer fills
i need to combust, my limbs
frozen in nitrogen and exploding
one last garish grin

please understand
i won't live anymore
i won't breathe anymore
my lungs are seawater
no platelets, no oxygen left to circulate

i will go
i have already gone
see you above, below
or see you never again


01/17/2007

Shadow on the wall

This place -- these journals, the ED chat I go to, everything -- they all make me feel so guilty. If I put anything besides the barest of vegetables/fat-free dressing and lean meats in my mouth, I feel like a horrible fat cow who is going to gain a thousand pounds overnight. On top of the thirty million I just gained from eating something that wasn't under, say, 100 cals.

Plus there's how I feel myself. If I get really warm because I've actually eaten enough food to heat myself, I feel like a disgusting glutton and become terrified to eat at all. If I drink enough water to fully get rid of my edema (which I get a lot when I eat really salty foods), I feel like I'm nourishing myself "too much" and I purposely make myself edemic again.

I dunno. I just want to hurt. I want to numb myself out. I want to mute myself out of existence -- slowly blend my colors into the background, until you can't tell the difference between me and the wall. Until you press in and can't feel my flesh, can't feel my warmth -- just the hard, smooth, cold surface of the paint I stick to. I don't want to be me anymore. I want to go away and never never come back.

I hate emotions. I hate vitality. I hate being real. I hate being corporeal. And of course I really hate being, well, me.

to the bones: a poem

ps: this is also an acrostic.


to the bones

In the heat of my frozen night, your
warm body melts my disdainful
icicle limbs, covers my sinew
lovingly as the soul and calcium
leak from my brittle skeleton. You are

leaving me, flying on sex and adrenaline like
opiates, my dissociation invisible,
visible, like my flesh, my
emancipation from limbs and life. I
yawn, lie still, as our mouths form misshapen
ovoids, as I mutter
under your primitive erratic breaths.

This is what it means to be young:
outerly sexual, involved, but in our minds
the thoughts race, clipped and begging escape.
Hedonism will only take us so far.
Everything has a beginning, an end; my
bones are my statement, printed
on my mind and matter -- an expression of
nihilism: my wordless vowels, screaming frigidity.
Excluded from insomnia, you warm us, you
sleep; my steam exudes from your lips.

Not back to the grind

Everyone at my university started school on Monday, and so everyone's been writing a lot of entries about university -- and I have to admit, it makes me wistful. And almost disappointed in myself.

I know, I know... it's not "really" my fault that I can't go to school. I know that the last two times I tried, I really really badly wanted to make it work, and I simply was not able to. Hell, even my GP said, "You're not planning to go back next semester, are you?" (not a direct quote, but close enough). Clearly, I am not mentally ready to go back to school, and clearly I am not the only one who thinks so. Even my parents are supportive of me not going to school at this point in time, and they do not accept even the slightest hints of laziness from me.

But I miss learning, and I miss feeling like I'm actually accomplishing something in my life, and maybe most of all I miss the atmosphere and the people. I honestly think my university is a really great place -- I love it there, even as a general student instead of music student. Actually, if I am being honest, there were a good few things I liked better about being a general student... but anyway. The point is, just being on campus has often made me feel better. Then again, sometimes it hasn't. But I'd always been able to handle even the worst times before.

Really, though? I just really wish I wasn't so bloody screwed up. I wish I could actually do courses without ending up needing to drop them all because I get so stressed and FREAK the fuck out. I wish I was "normal", whatever that is. Failing normal, though, I really would like to be "functional". One would think that's not so much to ask -- but, apparently, functionality is hard to come by these days in the World of Niika.

:|

Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it.
No, really. I'm actually not.

I am going to the dentist today. If I was able to cancel -- I would.
But I can't, because I have to get my teeth done in a certain order.
Did I tell you guys I have to have cavities filled in each of my four quadrants?
Yep, that's right.
Because I'm a disgusting fucking bulimic who doesn't brush her fucking teeth.

I don't know what I want -- but I don't want anything I have.
What is the precedent for flipping a life inside out?
I just want things to change.
I want my head to change.
I want me to change.
But nobody will help me change me. Nobody in this godforsaken province seems to have the skills necessary to help me.
If nobody has the skills to help me, how the fuck am I ever going to get better?!?!

The answer is: I can't. I won't be able to.
I'll be stuck here rotting slowly, until one day I either take my own life or die of some medical consequence of the ED.
The ED, which isn't even good enough to be anorexia, but which I could still die of anyway.

If no one can help me, I wish they'd just let me die.
Or I wish they'd help me die.
Because I am slowly but surely reaching the limits of my tolerance.
And once I reach them... I'm sure something stupid will happen.
Because something stupid always does happen.

THIS SHIT NEEDS TO END BEFORE I GO EVEN MORE FUCKING INSANE THAN I ALREADY AM.

My new plan is to dehydrate myself.
I wonder how this one is going to work.
Tried it once... got pretty far with it, actually.
I'm much too interested in my own self-destruction...

(PS: Comments are off for a reason. Send me one and I'm immediately removing the comment and banning you. ^_^)

I feel like fucking bawling.
What. the. fuck.

I think I really fucking need to go to bed. Because I'm never like this and it's weird and I'm probably just tired so I need to go to bed. Yeah.

Enough of this shit. enough of my shit. bed. bed bed. yes.

Wish I could make myself oblivious to everything
Wish the world would stop revolving
Wish I could concentrate enough for things to make any sense
Wish anything in my fucking head ever made sense
Wish I would learn to just fucking deal, as Marya would say
Wish something could be merciful and just put me out of my misery
Wish I was just fucking NORMAL

Because I really fucking hate this shit
Hate it hate it hate it
Make my brain fall into usual patterns again
Please
Please please...

The truth about laxatives, from one who knows

Laxatives:

- Make you shit.
- Do not make you lose weight. In a day or two, the scale will be right back up where it was before you took the laxatives, or sometimes higher, because there is a good chance that you will retain extra water.
- Make you lose fluids and electrolytes. So, basically, every time you take them, you're putting yourself another step closer to hospitalization. And I presume that most of you don't want to be hospitalized involuntarily, especially for something as worthless as laxative abuse. Or do you?
- Hurt like fuck, and can pull the muscles in your rectum if you use them too much. Oh, and sometimes you may leak. Involuntarily.
- Are addictive.
- Really, really are not worth it.

Long update

So today I got my call from Homewood. They've accepted me to the program, and I can expect to be admitted around late February or early March. They usually admit people on Wednesdays, from what I've seen, so my admission date would probably either be February 28th or March 7th. I suppose it could also be March 14th, but I really hope it won't get pushed back quite that far... :/. They're making me wait three months from late November, because that was when I got admitted to hosp for the last OD, and they want me to have been stable for three months before I am admitted. Which I can completely understand, given that their admission exclusion criteria includes active suicidality.

My psychiatric stability isn't really the only thing I'm worried about, though. I have actually questioned my own medical stability lately -- like, honestly and with seriousness questioned it, not just had hypochondriacal misgivings. I have a doctor's appointment for Thursday, so hopefully I can at the very least get my vitals and some bloodwork done, just to make sure there aren't any major problems. Because if I become medically unstable, that is another reason for my tentative admission date to go *poof!*. In other words, I have to avoid medical instability if at all humanly possible... and I intend to. I do not want this plan foiled because I was stupid enough to not at least look after the very basics of my own health.

Part of me is excited, and even hopeful. Part of me doesn't want this at all. However, this program might be the stepping stone I need to really start dealing with my shit -- and I won't know until I get there what the program might have to offer me. So I really want to give it a shot. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? Someone could pay for my plane ticket a little earlier than they were expecting? I mean, it would have had to be paid sometime anyway, right? I dunno. I'm trying not to let myself get into that little pessimistic void I'd been sinking back into lately. Not sure how well it will work -- but it has to work well enough to keep me out of hospital, at least, otherwise I'm really fucked. Right? Right.

So I have to try and keep myself up even a little bit... because, even though I don't believe in fate, I know I was given this chance for a reason. I mean, clearly the Homewood team heard something in that interview which made them decide to admit me despite the fact that I've been suicidal and I self-harm and I've been diagnosed with BPD. And it's pretty clear to me that something in me is trying desperately to claw its way out... something that they are apparently willing to help free itself. And I have to give it the best chance I can to do that. Otherwise I'm never ever going to get better from this shit -- and if I don't get better, I will die, in months or years or however long it takes. I am sure of that now. And that's not a thought I can stand.

I honestly don't even care if I get better from the ED. However, I realize, among other things, that the ED is just a symptom -- albeit a very big and potentially life-threatening one. I use it to block out my feelings. I use it to focus on something other than the things in my head that are trying to bring me down and even to kill me. I mean, that would sound melodramatic, but you all know my history. I think enough has happened now that we can safely say this isn't just me being a drama queen. This is real. And the very first step to being able to deal with myself is being able to get rid of the ED symptoms, if only for a few months. Bring myself back to better physical health, at the very least. It's pretty damned hard to deal with one's psychological demons when one is in a state of malnourishment; and I am well aware that nutrition is gonna be an important part in building my strength to face whatever it is that I'm not facing. (Realize that at this point I'm so far in denial that even when I have some idea of what the real problem is, I say, "That's such bullshit. That can't be the real problem." And then I just go off and keep ignoring it.)

I probably sound intelligent at this point, and maybe even vaguely more "well" than I was before. Please believe me when I say that I am not. If my brain was functioning properly, I would not be killing myself with restriction and purging. I would not have been a self-injurer in the first place. I certainly would never have taken all those overdoses, especially that last one, which was what I'd consider the first "true" suicidal moment in my life. I really, honestly did not care if I lived or died -- and I came pretty fucking close to actually dying. And that scares the shit out of me. I need to get out of this mindset that dying is okay. It's not. It's not.

Help me be strong, help me be... help me...