An unfortunate event

the past couple of days have shown no change as far as my motivation and body image.

family therapy went better yesterday, but i still am reluctant towards the whole thing. bottom line is that im not ready to give up my anger. i feel like if i let it go then i'll forget, and so will everyone else, that i was so unhappy. i feel by letting the anger go that i am invalidating that feeling for myself. im so used to living with anger, i don't really know how to function any other way and at this point im not sure that id want to since it is comfortable and it is what i know. good emotions such as happiness just scare me to death. i don't know how to handle those emotions nor can i imagine a life where those emotions are part of my life. anger has been my comfort, besides me ED, the one thing i can fall back on to be there. in some ways it serves as an excuse for some of my actions and reactions, but most of all it serves as a reason to have my ED. if i let my anger go, then i feel like i'll be expected to let go of my ED too and im just not ready for that yet.

i put in a pass request for a dinner/snack pass with my parents and brother yesterday. i was really hoping they would deny me since i did so poorly on friday, but part of me knew they would give it to me since i was going to be with my parents and i did well with them before. i even wrote, "id be fine if you just give me dinner or snack if you think dinner/snack would be too hard. i know either way it's going to be difficult so...and if my family meeting goes poorly, i'm not going." so i tried to give them a reason not to approve me; i was almost begging them. but alas, they approved me for dinner/snack, and of course, my family meeting had to go ok. so there was no backing down.

we went to the rain forest cafe. i primarily went there because i heard it was a cool place and had never been, but also because it is a very distracting place which i thought might make things easier for me as far as getting out of my head was concerned. i already pretty much knew i was going to restrict, but not too badly. i only ended up not getting my third starch and a caloric beverage, i probably didn't have enough vegetables, but that's not a big deal.

i was very anxious about having to eat in front of my mom, dad, AND brother. i was totally beginning to zone out during the end of our family session because i was in my head thinking about having to eat and how awful i was going to feel. this feeling didn't go away during the car ride, once we got to the restaurant, while looking at the menus, while ordering, or while waiting for our food. surprisingly, ordering wasn't too difficult. i wasn't too worried about taste because i knew i wouldn't taste the meal anyway.

when the food came and everyone had their plate in front of them, only then did i feel semi-ok, but that was only because i was beginning to disconnect. the mechanical part of me took over and allowed me to eat. i ate slowly though of course and with some ED behaviors. i had a wrap, which is always particularly difficult for me to not eat without ED behaviors present. the way i eat a wrap is just incredibly EDed. my third starch actually conveniently came with my meal--potato chips--but i wouldn't eat them. there were a few reasons for this 1.) because i decided before i got there that i wasn't going to eat my third starch 2.) i cant remember the last time i ate chips in front of my mom and i would have felt like a fat pig for eating them, even if i only ate them for the sake of following my meal plan 3.) if i ate them, then that would mean i ate my entire meal and the only other person who didn't leave anything on their plate was my dad. to do the same thing would have meant i was like my dad, and my dad is rather large...i would not have been able to handle all that. but mostly, the whole eating them in front of my mom was the major issue for me that really was the deciding factor to not eat them, and the fact that she left basically half her meal uneaten.

after dinner we walked around the mall and shopped for a while. i got a shirt and some bermuda shorts. both fit me and i am comfortable in both. i was very reluctant to try on pants because im not sure if my size will stay the same and no sense in wasting money. i only tried on shirts that would hide my "refeeding belly." it was ok, but a rather depressing and anxiety provoking experience.

i was hoping i would get off the hook for snack, but alas, once again, my family remembered. we went to hagaan daas and all got some sort of ice cream-ish dessert--except my dad but that was fine, he doesn't really bother me too much with that stuff. it took me a really long time to decide what kind of ice cream i wanted--my ED was yelling at me a lot--or if i should restrict more and go with the sorbet, the smoothies, or even just a yogurt parfait--my ED was yelling at me about this too. somehow i decided to get cookies n' cream ice cream. i think i remembered how my mom used to get that kind for us a lot when we were younger so i decided based on that.

i ate it slowly--though i was the first one to get my snack, i finished it last, and quite a while after everyone else was done; ED. i hated eating this in front of my family too. i felt huge and embarrassed. it had been a long time since i last ate ice cream in front of them, not counting the other time on pass. when sat down in the car, feeling my stomach made me sick. i felt uncomfortably full, and then the idea came in my head to purge. the internal conflict began.

once i got back to the hospital, i talked to the CRC about how it went but all i could think about was purging. i was very anxious and really couldn't focus on the conversation. when it was time for bathrooms to open i got my stuff to clean my face and brush my teeth and went into the bathroom. i purged.

when it was time to fill out my pass return and i got to the question "did you purge?" i really didn't know what to say. i have always been very honest on my pass returns and i already had answered "yes" to "did you restrict?" i stared at the paper for a good five minutes and then decided to be honest. i replied with, "yes--a little." which was not a lie. at this point, i feel like my team knows where im at and doesn't really get affected when i write on my pass returns that i restrict so to add this too it didn't really seem like something that would phase them too much.

consequently though, i had rather bad body image from the moment i woke up and i was thinking about the night before and what i did. breakfast and lunch were ok. i felt full after both, but particularly after lunch this feeling of fullness was accompanied by even worse body image.

the rest of the day was rather uneventful. i had no meetings today, only groups.

dinner was fine as far as me eating goes...it generally is fine since i disconnect. however, the incident that occurred did not make dinner so easy towards the end.

a girl that i really respect made it pretty clear when there were 3 minutes left to dinner that she wasn't going to finish eating since she had half of her meal left. a couple of her friends tried to encourage her but she just kept joking, acting like nothing was wrong. they said to her that she was going to have to replace and she said she wasn't going to drink it--which she could refuse to do since she is not medically compromised. when time was up, she booked it out of there to call her therapist to see if she could leave, avoiding the whole replacing thing altogether.

myself and her two friends were rather upset by this especially after she was on warning today since she hadn't eaten much of anything all weekend during her stay on another unit AND since i saw her replacing for her lunch today. i told one of the girls that im worried about her and she replied that she thinks shes trying to get a head start on her ED. this was not a comforting thought at all.

then in post meal, when it was her turn to talk about her day she said how it went and how dinner when and her reason for not finishing was that this weekend on the other unit, she proved to herself that her body really doesn't need that much food. to hear that was EXTREMELY triggering and upsetting. this is a girl who i greatly respect and really held in high esteem. to see her basically fall apart after this weekend was just a huge blow. i looked up to her as a role model. there had been sooo many times where ive wanted to not eat, not finish meal, or not eat on passes, BUT i always--except on passes--ate or finished because i always worried what this girl would think or say. she has a tendency to give people the third degree for not finishing so for her to not finish and then continue to joke and not worry at all about how she was affecting anyone else was just a huge slap in the face.

mostly though i am just sad and worried for her. im worried because these are not good signs at all. im worried because she is the type of person who lets something get in her head and then she becomes overpowered by it; she cannot fight it. im worried because i really fear that she will go back to her ED once again. but most of all im sad. im sad because she is such a great, beautiful, smart, and compassionate girl who cannot see how much she is valued by others and cannot value her own life. im sad because she seems to have made the choice to go back to her ED

ever since last night the idea of purging has been in my head. after the incident at dinner, i decided once again to purge. once it was time for the bathrooms to be unlocked after dinner, i purged. im not sure yet if i plan on doing this after snack too. i don't think i will tell my therapist. i don't really know what im doing right now.

im still engaging in another ED behavior too. one that most people know about but one that i haven't been able to stop.

all i do know is that im fighting like hell to keep my ED and i am trying to make it clear to everyone that this is not over for me yet by any means.

"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it."