Sunday, 18 January 2009

• I haven't written here in forever, although I've been writing in my ED LiveJournal some.
  
  The truth is that, lately, I really just haven't had much to say along ED lines. My b/ping has decreased significantly in frequency, and I'm also eating a lot more calories every day without it being quite as bothersome to me (most of the time). My interests now seem to lie more with eating intuitively, and the idea of exercising a lot, toning up a lot, has more and more appeal to me as time goes on. I try to move some every day, whether it's through walking to classes and around campus, etc, or just doing some random jumping jacks or calisthenics in my bedroom.
  
  I think the reason I stopped b/ping nearly as much is that I don't want anybody in my family to know I'm doing it, not even my sister. For a long while I thought they really didn't know... but then I got slightly more careless, sure they weren't picking up on it, and that's when my sister realized shit. And so she talked to me on MSN, a few days before Christmas Day, and was like, "You shouldn't do that" and blah blah blah. And it wasn't the words that affected me so much, but the fact that she knew something that was supposed to be "my secret". And so it didn't feel like a sanctuary anymore... somewhere I could escape to get away from life, to put it on hold for awhile. And so the appeal of doing it was lost to me for quite some time.
  
  I actually went for at least two and a half weeks without purging... from two days after my sister talked to me until, I think, a few days after school started. And when I've done it, it's always been in ways that don't involve me going to my downstairs bathroom and turning on the fan and water while people are home, which is the obvious way that my sister found out about. When I do it I either binge in my room, privately, and purge in the shower, or I wait until all three of them are gone out, at which time I can binge quite openly in the living room, and then use the bathroom upstairs to purge, which has a toilet that flushes way better than my toilet downstairs. (Another sign my sister probably picks up on is that I have to flush the downstairs toilet at least 3-4 times, usually, to get it completely clean again.) I can't use the upstairs bathroom when anyone is home, since it's very close to many of the main rooms in the house, and there is only a wall between it and my parents' bedroom. I can purge in the shower, though, because at this point I'm able to purge very very quietly when necessary, and the running water clears it all away pretty quickly. I do get a little paranoid lately because sometimes the tub drain seems to smell a bit, which means I have to minimize my shower purging, which means, if I can't use my downstairs bathroom, that I get very little opportunity to purge.
  
  I really hate talking in terms of recovery these days, too. The truth is, I never really recovered, ever, and even yet, although the "symptoms" seem to have decreased, it's not because I'm making any truly concentrated effort at totally, 100% getting rid of the bulimia. It's just because, for the moment at least, it doesn't work the same for me as it used to. If it started working better for me, I'm sure I would do it more. It's not really so healthy to think about this, I realize, especially because I'm very keenly aware of the mind-numbing and emotion-numbing effects it all has on me, which only adds to my emptiness and dissociation from life and vivacity and meaning -- but I still feel that I need the option. When I talked with the psychologist I'm seeing on Thursday, he mentioned that purging could be something I use to keep me grounded and more in the present moment... that it makes me feel more alive. I would probably agree with that assessment. When I'm anxious, it calms and soothes me, and when I'm numb and blank and hollow, the physical violent of stuffing myself to the point of pain with food, and then the act of purging itself, can serve to "wake me up", so to speak. After a b/p, maybe I can exist in the real world and actually deal with it. Perhaps it prevents worse dissociation to a degree.
  
  And now that I haven't been b/ping as much, that emptiness and blankness is really starting to hit me more. I am more aware that in a lot of ways I lack anything really meaningful and significant in my life. I often feel like I'm just coasting, riding some kind of wave through the ocean but not taking in my surroundings whatsoever. There is no thrill of the rises and falls, no noticing of the biting cold of ocean spray, or the heat of blinding sun, or the beauty of a sunrise or sunset. All I can see is the dark blue right under my feet, and the coldness of the water blowing back at me seems only to add to my numbness. It is a huge struggle to be able to lift my eyes from the surface of the water, and so mostly I don't even bother. I am able to continue to coast, so why do anything else? And yet as I coast, more and more days of my life get wasted in nothingness, and even the things I do that I should enjoy are often things that are just "there". They give me some superficial happiness, but nothing more.
  
  I need to somehow figure out a way to escape this void I'm in -- a void which isn't dark or sad or full of any kind of negative emotion, but rather swirls with the kind of static you see on a television that isn't on the right channel for the VCR. Grey nothingness, a sound that never changes, a soul-sucking haze that doesn't want to let me out. That's the kind of void I mean. If only it was a dark void! Then I could try to find the light on the outside, try to pull myself towards it... have something to struggle against, a goal to work for. Only I have no real struggle, no goal to work for. The grey is like being given a decently comfortable bed when I am eternally and completely exhausted. It is hard to even want to get out of it, and it seems to fit so well with what I need that I don't desire to look much further than where I am right now. And yet lying in a bed all day every day isn't a life. It's an existence. And even barely that. So I feel my dissonance only slightly... enough to bother me, but not always enough to motivate me to move my body from the mattress.
  
  What I can't figure out is... is this dysthymia? Is this what dysthymia has become for me? Instead of darkness, sorrow, there is a blank thing thrown over me that I can't escape from? Is this another way that dysthymia can manifest itself? Maybe, like the anemic who is constantly exhausted and lying in that bed, always trying to get rested and never succeeding, I just need a dose of something to feel better, to get my energy back. Fuck, maybe I should be on antidepressants or something. I really don't know. I'm so functional most of the time, and so non-depressed seeming, that nobody ever even THINKS that I should go on meds. Most of the time I don't think I should, either. And yet these sorts of periods of grey, of haze... they are bad in their own blank way. The fact that they don't seem to be continous only adds to my confusion, and my conviction that I don't need anything other than the counselling, that this is a situational/existential problem, not biologically based, and I just need to learn to deal with the warped way my mind works.
  
  I'm really blanking out now, so this entry will end here. Not that it wasn't already long enough. :P
  

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