I wish things weren't as they are

There is so much I wish for right now. I wish this would be a positive post. I wish I could recover and not gain weight. I wish my dad were here for graduation. I wish I had gotten an interview for the assistantship this week. I wish I knew what I was doing this summer. I wish food wasn’t something I feared so much. I wish I could go to fro-yo or out to a restaurant. I wish I could eat what I wanted. I wish the food scale wasn’t bound to me. These things I wish.

So, in saying all that I am going to do one thing I have been wishing to do, and haven’t been able to. I am going to update you all on how I am. The truth. Well, the truth is I was doing well. I was challenging myself and pushing myself. I was being amazed by how much food my body needed and amazed that with my huge meal plan I was still maintaining. This all changed..I’m not exactly sure when…but around the time of the intervention last week.

That whole scenario made my life fall apart. There were a lot of emotions, a lot of tension, and a lot of changes in my family life that caused my picture of summer to change. It really shook up my world and starting that night I went back to using the food scale more than I should. I had been slipping a little bit with that before the intervention, but that day I used it for EVERYTHING. The intervention made me feel so out of control that I clung back to some sense of stability and security. I promised myself it was just to help me get through that day.

But then I went home for the weekend, and I kept using the food scale. I challenged myself a little at home, but didn’t push myself as much as I could have. Then I weighed and I freaked out. The maintanaince ended and I am back in weight gain. Or so it seems (they say could be flux but I don’t know). I thought I would be okay with it, but I am not. Everything just seems out of control and I want to cling to something for safety. I can’t distract with school, because classes are over as are my finals. I can’t call my dad for support because…well…I can’t even say it, but you all know. I don’t feel I can open up to anyone with my struggles because I fear another intervention. So I feel scared, alone, and shaken to the core.

I want to be this strong pillar of recovery and I am realizing trying to force myself to be that keeps me from speaking up when I start to slip. When I stop using the starch box and start choosing safe starches on my own. When I start weighing foods again even though the true, authentic me doesn’t want to. When exercise starts becoming a have-to, instead of a want to (luckily that phase ended). I feel I probably started slipping before the intervention, but it awaked a monster in me. It made me feel I really did have to fake it and couldn’t tell anyone I was slipping because they would force me to treatment, when slipping and relapse are completely different.

Problem is, the more I pressure myself to perfection in recovery, the more I slip, the more I hid it and try to fix it on my own, and then I slip more, and downward spiral it goes. So this has me panicking. How do I pick myself up. How do I start pushing my food choices, step away from the food scale, and get back to the somewhat happy relationship I had with food just a few weeks ago? I want to be in a better place. I do. I just feel I have fallen so far back in behaviors to control my weight and now I can’t even control that and I just am panicked.

I am still doing meal plan exchange wise….but the mentality behind it has gone. I have lost this desire to nourish myself and am just consumed with numbers and trying to control everything and keep it safe. To keep me in a comfortable recovery. But that isn’t where life is. Where freedom is. But I am scared by so many things right now..I just want to be in comfortable right now. Or I think I do. I honestly don’t even know. I want to be free….but I wonder if it is okay to play it safe sometimes…just to get through a hard season. As long as I am eating…can that just be good enough?

But then I wonder if that’s really what I want. Because I am in the good enough right now and I am miserable. But again I wonder if it is the weight gain, not living in the comfortable that makes me miserable. I just don’t know. Right now everything is a blur and I am feeling myself starting to shake in recovery and that scares me. Summer is coming. Therapy has ended. And soon I lose my N. Entering recovery on my own….in this mindset…it scares me.

I want to be only using my food scale for meat. I want to be eating real desserts. I want to be eating the scariest options on the menu. I want to go back to drawing from the starch box once and just trusting the selections no matter how scary. But I've already screwed those things up for today...so my mind says maybe tomorrow. But we all know tomorrow never comes.

Thoughts, prayers, messages, support…anything. I will take anything right now just to get by. Right now I am fighting for you all…so I don’t have to come on here and say I skipped out on my meal plan with only 9 days of commitment left. Today I will recover for you all. Stay in the fight.