102.8. Took lax last night, but I only BMed a "normal" amount this morning. We'll see if anything more happens when I drink some coffee (aka bowel irritant).

Yes, I'm lapsing. Yes, it could (and probably will) become a relapse. And, no, I don't care. I just can't handle this weight, and all the food, and the ED brain SCREAMING in my ear all the time, as well as all the other psychological shit that comes up when I'm eating. I just... can't... do it. I'm not strong enough to handle all of that on my own. And I have zero supports, aside from seeing my pdoc once every 3-6 weeks, and that's just for med checks. It's not as if he does any sort of therapy with me.

How can any rational person expect a polymorbid individual with a strong and long-standing ED to recover on her own? I look at it now and I shake my head. I don't know how I could ever have expected to just be able to gain the weight without any repercussions. My steel will only lasts for so long... with mental illnesses constantly tearing and pecking and poking at the will left and right, it is impossible for it to hold fast forever -- eventually it always begins to show the signs of wear and tear. And after that it's only a matter of time before it just starts to unravel completely.

So it goes.

I got up at about 5 AM or so today... that's getting pretty normalized. So that's good.

On the other hand, though, apparently I don't have to worry about my weight, because it went up 1.5 lbs in two fucking days. Today I was 104 lbs. Fuck my fucking life. I need to gain weight, yes, but not THAT FAST! Ughhhhh.

I'm having a hard time telling the ED to go fuck itself lately. I keep thinking more and more about wanting to get skinny and lose this stupid weight again. And then I remember it never does me any good to lose the weight, that I always get sick and sad and miserable. But I fucking hate the numbers always going up and up and up, and eating so fucking much because apparently now I'm ravenously hungry most of the time (and I have eaten a LOT in the last couple of days). I hate all this recovery bullshit. Yet I don't want to back down from the "commitment" I made to myself and to a lot of other people. I was pretty public about putting my recovery out there. A bunch of people I know IRL, or am close to online, know I'm recovering again and this time I have been saying it's really for real, I intend to gain all the weight back, whatever. How can I let them down? But at the same time... how do I deal with all this fucking SHIT???

Apparently my weight gain has slowed... I've only gained about half a pound this week. I'm currently at 102.5, which is still a gain from before, so it's still okay. Nonetheless, though, I really ought to be gaining 1-2 lbs a week (which is what any ED program would have me be gaining, or aiming to gain, per week), so I'm going to have to start my whole calorie-counting spiel again. I had started ignoring calories and sort of doing the eating-when-hungry-stopping-when-full bit (and believe me, my body TELLS me when it's hungry now!!) but apparently that might not be enough. So I'm gonna have to keep track of what I eat, and if I do any extra movement (even stuff like walking), so I can keep my caloric intake appropriately high enough to gain the weight, and at a decent rate.

My sleep schedule is totally fucked up, also, so this actually counts as "morning" for me. I had my "breakfast" at about 1:30 AM O.o. BUT my aim is to stay up a little bit later each day, and eventually my sleep cycle will go back around to where I'm going to bed around 11 or 12 at night, which would be ideal (to me). Going to bed at 10:30 AM or so and waking up at 1am ish is still better than going to bed at like 7am and waking up at maybe 8pm. I did at least get some daylight time in yesterday. And I'll get lots more in today.

101 lbs.

Carnation Instant Breakfast made me have a freakout yesterday (such a "heavy" "caloriffic" snack on top of three square meals) and I was having enough panic symptoms that I needed to take an Ativan. But once I took that, and then my normal clonazepam, I became calm enough to be able to feel and honor my hunger signals later on. So I ate a pack of oriental Mr. Noodles, which might not be the most "healthy", but it was DELICIOUS and so satisfying. Even later that night, close to bedtime, I was thinking about having another pack, but then I saw corn in the back of my cupboard and thought, "Or I could have corn!" And since I knew I would have been equally happy just eating corn, that's what I did. The whole can, to be exact... not that that's a ton of calories, I know. But I can't seem to leave a can of corn unfinished. I love corn. Lol.

As long as I continue to gain, or at least maintain, and I know I'm eating "enough" for at least maintenance, I feel like I'll be okay. But I do think that right now my body is quite happy with gaining weight and probably even wants to gain, so if that's the case I'm not going to try to stop it. I want this to be as intuitive and therefore pain-free as possible. Of course it's not going to be all pain-free (as evidenced by my panic symptoms yesterday), but the more I keep trying, the more I'll accomplish.

I think I'm eating enough... or am I? I have a pretty normal breakfast and lunch, usually. Often I have a snack in between (today's was two scrambled eggs with ketchup). But then after that... things get kind of dicey.

I know I probably should eat at least a snack before I take my night meds and turn in, even though I've only been awake about 10 hours. But what to eat? I consider a chocolate bar, but then this little wave of fear washes over me. Chocolate bars are hard. Sugar; fat. No nutritional value. Calorically dense. That's the real reason, the last reason. I don't really FEEL hungry (although somewhere underneath there's hunger; but it's not at the forefront really nagging at me). It's hard to convince myself to eat ~250 calories of pure fat and sugar when I don't "really" feel hungry. And yet I sort of do.

I'm trying really hard to go by my hunger signals, but maybe they're just not working right now. If not, I'm not really sure I know what to do. I guess I just have to... keep trying. I could see the dietician I saw before, but I know I wouldn't want to talk about my weight at all (though she doesn't make me if I don't want to), but also I'd have a hard time following any sort of structured meal plan, which is the only thing she could really offer me. So I don't really see the point in going.

I may only have been up 10 hours, but I'm tired already. Not that I will complain much, because the Seroquel increase last night made me sleep about 15 hours, so I went to sleep at like 3 AM and woke up at... 6 PM. It's 4:30 AM, so even though I haven't been up a long time I feel that I should go to bed. I don't want my sleep schedule to get massively fucked up like it did before... sleeping when the sun was up and only being awake during darkness. It fuels my agoraphobic tendencies, not to mention fucks up those night light cues we're supposed to get from actually being awake during normal hours. You know.

Oh, yeah... I weighed myself yesterday and I was 100.5 lbs. So that's about a three and a half pound gain from where I was just before I started eating again. Which is... good, I guess? I feel rather neutral about it so far, because I'm not out of anorexic/underweight BMI range yet. But if I gain enough weight that I would no longer be classified as underweight... that's probably about when I'd start freaking. That's at (had to go calculate it...) exactly 106.7 lbs. Ughhhhhhhh. I don't even want to THINK about that right now. So I'm not going to.

Good night.

I hate eating... I hate trying to be and/or seeming "normal"... I just want to go back to trying to be skinny. I fucking HATE this.

So far I've eaten despite what ED thinks (although sometimes I've delayed my eating by quite awhile, but I've managed to at least eat a bare minimum of what's "necessary"). I just wish this was any easier. Wish I didn't keep going back on my stupid ED Tumblr and seeing other girls in their EDs / going back to their EDs and wanting that same thing. Wish I didn't hate my life. Wish I didn't feel like crap so much more of the time without ED.

I just... hate this shit. I'm sorry, but I do.

I am still trying, and determined to try. Really truly. But my friend who was IP for anorexia signed herself out AMA today, because she hated the hospital with a massive passion. Everything about it just freaked her out too much, I guess, including the food and how "strict" the dietician is. I've worked with that dietician and, yes, she is strict... but it's a very common sense strict. My friend (we'll call her E) didn't want to be eating in the first place... I'm about 99.9% sure of that. And since they had to start her off really low on the meal plan, she was due for lots of increases over time. I guess mentally dealing with so much added food (it's actually not a lot of food, but I've been in there and it really SEEMS like a lot of food at the time) made her freak the fuck out, as well as other things, like how she hated the psychiatrist she was assigned under, was stuck among mental patients whom she probably perceived to be far more sick than she was, etc. I really do know how E feels, because I have been there done that... but the fact of the matter is that her vital signs still weren't good when she left today, and she probably still wasn't eating much, and she likely hardly gained any weight, because she never does at the start of her treatments (and she was below BMI 15 when she entered hospital).

The whole thing makes part of me want to say "fuck it" and go back to behaviors. But the other part of me is saying... I don't have to do what she's doing, or is likely to do. My guess is that E is going to either end up dead or certified at some point -- and, really, do I want to end up in a hospital with a tube shoved down my nose, possibly restrained so I couldn't fuck with it? Do I want to end up on that stupid psych ward again on the ED protocol, anxious about every meal and every snack, freaking out when another patient gets manic or crazy, possibly having to watch another eating disordered person force their way through meals? Do I want to end up dead? No, no... NO.

My decision, though it sort of started out as me not wanting to be a hypocrite, didn't finish that way. Eating more, maybe even gaining weight, is what's best for ME right now, and my choice to try doing these things really doesn't involve anybody else. What E does is her own decision. She is so extremely deep into her anorexia -- she hasn't told me this, but I can tell, because I've known her for years -- that it's totally and utterly in control of her every movement and action. I don't want ED to have that kind of power over me. Even if it means suffering mood-wise because I lack that coping mechanism. Because in order to get past any of that shit, I know I have to go through it. Avoiding it or shoving it down with ED is not going to help me fix any of it. I actually need to deal with it... deal with every emotion as it comes up, and not let my fear take me over and make me run away and do self-destructive shit to "erase" the feelings, as it tries to do. I don't want to be a fucking avoidant anymore!!! I want a goddamned LIFE, you stupid fucking mental disorders!!!

Attempting recovery, again... whatever that may be. All I know right now is that it has to involve eating, not purging, not doing other addictive/self-destructive behaviors, and actually facing my emotions and fears headlong instead of running from them. Further than that I don't know. But I realized I want to do so much more than just let the restriction/anorexia consume my head, and it was getting to that point (when the body is a starving organism all it can think about is food and all that crap). I don't want it to get to that point. I want to still have a mind, and to be able to think.

It's not that I particularly want to give up ED. I wish I could continue on with it and have my head be fine and then everything would work out in a way I was happy with. But the reality of it is that my weight is too low for it to work like that... and maybe even at higher weights it still wouldn't work like that. I just... can't be the empty anorexic shell. I can't get back there again. I can't let that happen.

I want to read, and learn, and think about more important things than disorders, and have a brain available to do so. If that means I have to eat, then it means I have to fucking eat. Whether I like it or not; whether I would prefer to eat or not. Neither of those things matters. It's what I NEED to do that matters.

Some of this has come from the fact that I have a friend who's IP for her anorexia right now, and seriously struggling both food- and mood-wise, and so I've been sending her all sorts of positive, recovery-inspiring pictures over iPhone. But I felt like a complete and raging hypocrite for telling her that SHE could do it, that SHE could face her fears and be brave and strong, and yet simultaneously diving deep into my own ED and ignoring everything I was telling her. So I guess this picture-sending thing has sort of gotten me to say, "If I believe she can do it, and I believe other people can do it, and lots of other people have done it too... then WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I DO IT???" Sometimes my rational brain actually does take over and tell my stupid, childish ED self where to go. Sometimes it does. And other times, like before last night, ED is in complete control and all I want to do is submit to it, because it "feels" easier.

Well, I can't do that anymore. I have to eat, and not purge, and not cut, and not do any of the other stupid shit I have done, because it interferes with my ability to think and it precludes the possibility of me ever having a life. So I HAVE to recover. It is not an option not to recover. I HAVE to.

(A response to a comment I got on my forum...)

I figured out that holistically healthy and well just isn't possible for me with the "treatment" available to me. Nothing they can offer me here, or in this country for that matter, is actually going to fix my underlying problems, and since that is the case I want nothing to do with a stupid half-life in which I feel physically fine but feel like shit mentally and am incapable of actually having a real life. I'm happier being back in ED and at least feeling like I'm doing something, and like I actually have some sort of purpose, and something to strive for. I can never feel that way, or find any purpose, outside of ED, even ignoring all the other mental health crap I have.

So I just do not see a way out of this. I don't. I wanted to do American treatment; my psychiatrist flat out said he would not advocate for that. And unless you get a letter from God, pretty much, you're not gonna get funding for treatment in America, and I have no money (I live on welfare, for crying out loud). And since my main mental caregiver at the moment has made it clear that he won't advocate for me... well, that is really that. I can't see myself getting anywhere with the bullshit here, and I can't go elsewhere, so what the fuck am I supposed to do? (PS: Did you know I'm STILL on a fucking wait list for a psychologist? Which I've been on since January of 2011 and will be on till at least June of this year?? Yeah. And I'm still expected to be able to get adequate mental health care in this fucking place???)

Relapsing again. There's no use in any of you trying to encourage me to stop, because I won't.

Today I weigh 97.1 lbs, but that's because I ate a whole meal last night, and solid food before that. Yesterday I was 95.9. Hoping to get back to that weight within the next couple days, and then even lower.

This is just the way my life is. I don't need any "oh my gosh I'm sorry" or "I hope you pull out of this soon" posts. It won't change a fucking thing. This is just life, and it's just what I'm doing, and that is ALL there is to it. No discussion; no debate. Frankly, nothing you can say will change anything, and I refuse to do anything differently. And that is that.

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.

ED = bad. Death wish = even worse. In essence, I am trying to die the only way I can try to die right now. None of my acute suicide attempts have worked, so now I'm trying to do it the chronic way. I don't know if this will work, either, but right now I have to do it. I have to try.

Today I weighed 94.2. So far I seem to be losing about .2 a day... which is okay, but not great. There's still a part of me that's attempting to hang on, and keeps making me eat more than I (mentally) want to. Which means the body survives longer, I guess, but...

I dunno anymore. I really, really don't.

Weight today was 95.2, but it's been jumping all around the 95s and 96s. I'm not really bothered about it. I know I'm not eating enough to gain any real weight... or if I was, it would show up on the scale and I could correct it. But 95.2 is actually down from several days ago, so I'm okay with my current level of intake.

I'm having what so far seems to be a pseudo / extremely light period... I had cramps and symptoms all day yesterday but with no blood, and this morning I woke up to the teeeeniest bit of brown blood. It may just be starting really slowly; but either way, it's screwed up from normal, since my period usually follows a pretty regular pattern. Maybe my weight actually is having some kind of effect on it? I honestly have no idea.

What I do know is that I do NOT want to gain weight. I will eat, what I consider "decent" amounts, and will likely continue to do so unless it makes me start to gain weight. My metabolism is up, however, so at this particular point I'm not super worried that a meal or two per day will make me gain anything. In terms of food, I feel surprisingly free and non-obsessed, given my weight and the fact that I would be quite willing to restrict to keep it to this level if necessary. I am glad of the heightened metabolism, because it lets me have that extra freedom and mental sanity. I do truly enjoy having more energy and clarity of thought than I normally would while restricting.

So... I'm not recovering, but I'm not totally deteriorating. I'm in an in-between place, but one that is easier to live with than any in-between place I've ever been in before. I must say that, relatively speaking, I enjoy it. I feel like I have at least a tiny bit of a life, or the ability to have a small sort of a life, which makes me feel happier and overall more well.

Today I am 95.8. I have been eating. I hope to continue eating.

Further than that... I guess I don't really have much to say, except that I NEEED to get on NaNoWriMo, STAT! I don't even have 4000 words, and it's day 5. (For reference, you need to have 5k words done on day 3 to be "keeping up".)

I’m retaining water everywhere on my body because I dehydrated myself so bad from lax the last 2 days.

Feck.

On the plus side, the reason I’m retaining is because I’ve actually been eating somewhat normally today! Hurrah for me! (Cereal and milk for breakfast, a banana for snack, a FULL lunch/supper thing, and now a lemon meringue pudding cup.)

Then again, I was 93 lbs this morning...

Feck.

(It could just be water weight loss. I guess we'll find out.)