I think it makes sense on its own... feel free to tell me what your thoughts are. On any part.

++++++++++

It’s taken me like 6 years to get insight into my disorder. Somehow I have to share how people don’t get through the insight gap. I feel a compulsion to make others understand why a “borderline” or whatever you want to call it could choose (or not consciously, but unconsciously, choose) such actions. And I don’t just mean one person. More than one person that I’ve talked to lately either doesn’t believe in borderline, or sees no “excuse” for the behaviors.

Just remember, guys: There’s always a reason people do what they do. It’s not just to be attention-seeking and it’s not just to be “sick”. There’s an internal, bigger reason. And until that reason starts getting resolved, the person isn’t going to WANT to stop the behavior, because intuitively it makes no sense to stop. At least from my perspective. Why would you stop something that prevents further pain, or seems to take certain pain away? That’s part of what people with borderline, eating disorders, etc have to learn in recovery. It’s the reason therapies exist. WHY would you stop anorexia when you see/feel 1 good reason for stopping it and 10 to keep going?

Only when the disadvantages pile up severely do you see the need to change, I think. And even then your emotional pain might be so great that you cannot face it, and all you can see is behavior usage to lessen it. And it’s not a good choice, but it seems better than other choices.

I answered the question about why would you say you’re recovering if you can’t take responsibility for your actions. Well, there’s why. You don’t want to need to do that stuff, but you DO need to do it. The need to do it has to be addressed therapeutically. People shouldn’t want to hurt themselves, but they do. I did. It’s a mental illness because it’s not normal, and normal people don’t understand it. Most people don’t understand why someone would want to cause themselves pain. And they certainly don’t understand how you can do that and simultaneously be seeking help “to stop”.

I didn’t want recovery from my actions. I wanted recovery from my pain. I didn’t care about my fucking actions. That is all superficial shit, or so I saw it. The meaning behind things is more important. The problem is that I didn’t understand that, well, hurting myself hurts myself. There were a lot more consequences than solely the act of hurting myself. I couldn’t see it then, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I could have. But now… I believe it. Now I see why I need to recover from my actions if full recovery is going to be possible.

But it took me six YEARS (well, more if you include how long it all took to develop) to get insight like this and I am not a stupid person. Chances are good that the the average person with BPD is not as intellectually intelligent as me, as my intelligence is above average. If it took me six years to break through that layer of insight, how long might it take another, not so psychologically adept person? And even now I still obviously don’t know everything. Like how to properly communicate with people. I missed that class.

This started out as an argument and turned into me thinking. Sorry if anyone got lost.

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.

Cutting this because it's quite triggering. Contains weights, BMIs, etc etc.

I couldn't think of a way to do a good "summary" update, so I'm just giving you the last update I wrote on my forum. If anything doesn't make sense, feel free to ask me about it.

Read on

Apparently a friend of the person discussed in my last post now wants to friend and subscribe to me? Okay, whatever. But I hope it was for a good reason, and not to like... try to get secrets out of me. Everything I post is public, so nobody will be getting that from me, at least. But I'm going to try not to be cynical for once in my life and believe it actually was for a good reason.

Dietician appointment in a little over two hours. My ridiculous physical symptoms of yesterday (heart going nuts every time I stood up or walked anywhere) seem to be gone today, so I guess I don't have to worry about getting vitals done or some shit. Not that I'm convinced she would do it, but anyway. To be honest I don't even see the point in going, because I don't honestly see how I can up my cal intake at this point, and that's pretty much why I would visit an RD at this point. But I guess it's good to keep some sort of connection with someone who actually knows about EDs. It might be helpful later on, too, if I actually try to get into residential again, which is something I'm seriously thinking about.

The problem is that in Canada, there are extremely few options when it comes to residential eating disorder treatment, and any inpatient treatment is basically reserved for only the most emaciated, death-bed anorexics (like programs in true hospitals). I've already been to Homewood, and I know another stint wouldn't help me again for various reasons. They diagnosed me as anorexic and yet put me on a weight maintenance contract; they have NO individual therapy (what kind of treatment facility has no individual therapy??); they allowed me to gain 18 lbs in 5 weeks when I was supposedly on weight "maintenance"; I could go on and on. But it's not going to help this time partially because of the lack of individual therapy, but also partly because they absolutely do not support suicidality in the program. In fact, I had to be three months free of a suicide attempt before they even let me in. Not to mention that if you cut even once there it was a dealbreaker -- as in, they could dismiss you from the program for doing it. Which is SO ludicrous, because so many people with ED issues also have self-harm issues, and a facility as supposedly great as Homewood should be able to deal with it without one cut being a fucking dealbreaker. I mean, how stupid is that?

Another facility I've been considering is Bellwood. This one is in Toronto proper (Homewood is in Guelph, about 45 mins outside Toronto) and is based on the 12 steps. Obviously, most of the programming there is for addictions. I sent them an online message about whether they have individual therapy, can deal with clients who traditionally get suicidal when not having their addiction/ED (because I do consider the ED an addiction, or certainly addiction-like), and whether they can handle people with borderline traits. I also requested that if they could not do these things, if they could recommend somewhere that could. I don't know how long it will take them to get back to me, but I hope they can actually tell me something helpful, because where treatment is concerned I'm seriously at the end of my rope.

I've done M House twice (first time for four months, which is the full stay, and the second time for almost two). I'm doing the ED IOP program for the second time, now, and am doing far worse in it now than I did last time, although admittedly I had a much better start. But things have deteriorated ridiculously. I've lost 10+ pounds with no signs of stopping, I'm taking laxatives every day, I intentionally don't drink liquids I think will hydrate me (basically any drink without caffeine). I still get ridiculous SI urges, but I've been able to ignore most of them. The suicidality is just being kept at bay by the self-harm/dehydration with laxatives. It's just... I don't know how much longer this extremely unstable balance is going to hold. I do know that sooner or later, something will give, and more likely than not I'll either end up in a hospital (which I HATE), dead, or permanently injured somehow. I loathe every single one of those options, actually, but I can't seem to avoid it when I get, or am getting, in truly awful states of mind.

I really do have a very strong mind, you know. I endure a lot more mentally than probably a lot of other people could. But it's because my head has been so full of SHIT and distortion my whole life that my mind has naturally had to be stronger, to cope with it all. It's not some wonderful gift someone bestowed upon me, and I take zero credit for it. If someone has to lift increasingly heavy weights his or her own life, every day, eventually that person is going to develop really great upper body strength. And it may seem awesome to someone looking in on it, but that person remembers the weights, the strain, the muscle tears, the pain, the stiffness, the suffering of it all. In the end, the final product looks completely different from what it took to actually get there.

I dunno if I'm making much sense anymore. Just that... I want OUT, so badly, and I was desperate enough to email Bellwood for myself, and hopefully I'll ask about more options when I see my dietician today. All I really want is like a comprehensive list of residential (or even inpatient) treatments in Canada that don't require you to be an emaciated anorexic on your deathbed. So far I only know of three residential places, and one is private and extremely kooky (and I wouldn't qualify anyway, because they don't let you in if you already take medications, and I can't stop my meds or baaaad things will happen). The two IP places I know of are the ones that only take emaciated anorexics. Soooo... I don't know yet, but I guess I'll find out sooner or later. I hope I will.

I fucking hate life. I fucking hate... everything.

I guess I'm sort of in relapse mode, now. I've only lost about 4 lbs, making my real weight about 117 (scale weight with clothes and food is about 120), but I am purposely not eating nearly what I should, and some days I hardly eat anything at all. I went away this weekend, and ate fairly normally throughout the weekend, so now apparently I have to restrict a lot to "make up" for it. Even though I know I couldn't have GAINED any weight this weekend, the fact that I'm pretty sure I didn't lose any is apparently a problem.

I also bought laxatives today, and took 4 a few hours ago (dose on package is 1-2, but the package dose NEVER works for me). I didn't even buy them to be "empty", as I still have fairly regular BMs... I just did it to lower my electrolytes, and to put myself through physical discomfort and/or pain. I just... feel like I deserve it, so much. I really really do.

I was suicidal practically every night last week... I actually ended up inpatient on Monday night, because it was getting bad enough that I was planning how I'd do it, and I think I actually would have taken an OD had I not gone into hosp that afternoon. My stay was completely useless, though -- the "team" at short stay doesn't have a fucking clue about psychological disorders, and consequently couldn't do shit for me. They couldn't even speed up my psychology referral at T Clinic (I've probably got at least another YEAR till I get a new therapist). So I asked to go home the next day at around lunchtime, and within an hour or so I was discharged. I didn't even have to fight with them. But I knew the psychiatrist would let me go, because I framed things when I spoke to her as a "freakout" (which is not exactly the right term for it), plus I was resisting everything the "team" was telling me, because it was all bullshit. (Well, it was.)

Of course, I still can't deal psychologically with my life, and if I keep thinking like that about suicide I'm going to end up in hosp again, and I cannot fucking STAND that ward, and I want to remain out of there if at all possible. But not acting on the suicidal urges doesn't make them go away... it just makes me need another, different method of holding back those particular thoughts. So... apparently ED is starting to return to its former place in my life.

After everything I worked so hard for... I came to a psychological challenge that I absolutely cannot deal with on my own, and no one can help me, so here I am, going back to where I started again. I am fucking PISSED about it, really truly, but I feel like there's nothing I can do about it right now or I will literally go insane, and/or actually end up dead this time, because I'm fed up with turning myself in. So... what's worse, destroying my soul with an eating disorder and yet leaving my physical body alive for longer, or killing the physical body when it's the mind I really want to kill, and in actual fact I don't truly want to die? I really don't fucking know at this point. I just know the option I prefer, and it isn't the suicide one.