Update and Cry for Help

Hey out there…I wonder if anyone even is reading anymore…if anyone even cares…or if, due to my lapse after lapse, people have stopped reading. But I promised myself this blog would be honest. It would be my true recovery…it would be me..and that’s what I am holding to. So for any of you who are reading, or care, or whatever…here is an update.

I moved back to college and jumped right into my 3^rd year as an RA which means a third (and last) year of training and floor preps. I love the inspiration God laid on my heart for my floor ad have been hard at work with that. Training was…well…training…it’s not the best in the world but it wasn’t as horribly dull either.

Despite being overworked and running on little sleep…I am excited. I realized towards the end of summer I felt so trapped at home. I had fallen back into the “caretaker” position of my mom. Putting her feelings before mine and allowing her to berate me. My nutritionist was so scared I would lapse again and knew soon I would be leaving so she stopped pushing me and started letting me do whatever I wanted. She also started telling me things about exercise and fear foods that were…well..to be honest…triggering as heck. I was desperate to get away from her and from the plan I was stuck doing. Not because it was a huge amount or anything…more because I realized she had let me write it…and by me, I mean ED. So even when I was eating it was all safe foods and all what ED still wanted me to eat, but she wouldn’t work with me to change it. Any time I asked she said it didn’t matter what I ate I just needed to gain weight. I felt unheard, lost, and again felt that outside pressure to gain weight that makes me close up.

The only relief I was getting at home was when I could sneak away to see my dad. He just knows how to bring a smile to my face. But then even that became hard as he started sending me texts about how he didn’t want me to go back to school and die. How I needed to recover. I knew where he was coming from, but I was desperate to just break free from all this chaos and pressure and get my recovery back to being mine.

The problem though is all of this just kept piling on and on and when I got back to school I ditched my meal plan and all the pressure and all communication with my family. I knew I still had a week till I met with my new nutritionist, but I wanted to throw my meal plan out so she wouldn’t force me to do that one. So I ditched the plan and the pressure I was feeling to follow it…but my only back up was restricting…so I went crawling right back to that. And the guilt that brought because I realized I was starting off this semester in the worst restriction I have had since I went to treatment two years ago…it’s just pushed me more and more into the lapse.

I feel like I am in a cyclone I can’t stop. My lapses are getting worse and worse and more and more frequent. All the excitement and nerves I have about my appt this Monday and the fact that I really think this semester is make or break it for me when it comes to recovery and the fact that I want to make it which I know means gaining weight…my head just starts spinning. Throw in all the pressure from work right now and I don’t know I just felt desperate to cling onto something and so I clung back to restricting. I thought it would make me feel secure especially because I could stop worrying about weight gain….I was horridly wrong.

The restriction is never low enough, exercise never high enough, and the fear of weight gain is just escalating higher and higher. The fear of food is skyrocketing. List of what is safe is shrinking. The lies are outnumbering the truths, both in what I say to others and what I am telling myself. And the desperation to get better….it’s there to an extreme. Yet I feel like I am desperately trying to climb up a muddy hill on my own and just keep slipping. I am running and running but getting nowhere. I am just here stuck waiting for Monday. I feel like I am waiting for Monday to exhale. That somehow seeing my old N (which  I have been waiting on since she left for maternity leave back in March)….will bring some relief. I don’t know I just feel like she gets me and will push me…and I just want her to tell me what to do.

The problem is though I need to learn to listen. I need to turn my back on lapsing to get my way. My way keeps getting me to this place and I need to commit to her and to recovery and to my therapist and to God and do this thing outpatient. OR I need to go inpatient. It’s either that or I die. The end. That’s it.

I just don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to stop this lapsing. I don’t know how to push through the fear. I don’t know how to ask someone to force boundaries upon me. Like I want to have my old N make me do desserts, bagels, no exercise….but I feel like a disgusting pig if I ask for that and wonder what she will think of me. But it’s what I need….I just don’t know guys.

It’s a crossroads I come to a lot in my life…me or others…what matters more. I know what I NEED to recover but I don’t ask or push for it because I am scared what OTHERS WILL THINK. I know I NEED to gain weight, but what will residents think? I know I NEED more boundaries, but what will N think when I ask for them? I know I want and need to eat scary foods, desserts, whatever the heck I want….but what will N think? I know I need to eat real fats, not my low-fat fat exchanges, but will N think that means I am a fatty? I know I need to accept weight gain and not slow it….but what will others think if I become okay with gaining weight?

I guess I am just so scared others will think I am lazy or fat or weak or whatever. But what if by recovering and gaining and facing all this people think of me like I think of those I know who are in recovery. What if they see me as strong, courageous, beautiful. What if these judgements I think about myself and that others will have are just more lies I believe? And in the end…am I willing to die just so people don’t think negatively about me? I don’t know…I sure act like I am.

And then I am also empowered by this thought that the enemy (aka Satan/ ED) is attacking me so much, making lapses so bad, pushing me so close to death….because I really am supposed to do something great, to help save lives, to make a true impact against ED. ED wants me dead because if I am dead I can’t free others, I can’t fight against him on behalf of others, and his reign can spread. But what if God has put me here to fight ED…through my own recovery? What if I am supposed to allow Him to gain ground in ED treatment? All the more reason for ED to fight against me, and all the more reason for me to fight back.

And I know all this. I know I should fight. I know it means facing fear. And I guess I am scared maybe I can’t do this outpatient and will just fail. But heck…if I keep lapsing instead of trying that will always prove true.

 So…I don’t know. I am here asking for help I guess. What tips do you all have to, in the moment, when that fear is escalating…to just push through and stop. How do you overcome the fear of failure long enough to give yourself chance at success? How do you allow what you need to be more important than what you and others think? What can I do to make outpatient work?

I love you all and hope to write more this semester. Again…it’s something I need…something I need to schedule in my life…but I wonder if anyone reads, if it matters, and again…what others will think…