Body like a shell

A terrible few days. After years and years of self abuse my body has just reached the end of the road. My kidneys hurt. My meds have caused constipation so now I'm on a laxative daily to enable me to use the loo.

Oddly enough, for someone with a long term eating disorder, I have never used laxatives, enemas or things like Ipecac to make me vomit or crap out the food.
I guess I am a purist! Either that or I'm of the if it ain't broke, don't fix it mentality. Plus I never had an issue with going to the loo, and all of those things cost money and need storing which in a shared house can be tricky!

So to be given this laxative now, it feels slightly like a behaviour or one which will encourage me to use it as a way of losing weight.

Plus the terrible pain in my back and feet and kidneys has been proscribed new painkillers, which are good for raising my mood. My depression has come back worse than ever, such low moods that If my housemate weren't around then I wouldn't cope. I have started drawing my feelings, as a form of art therapy to help get the feelings out and it is a help. But the depression is terrible. I feel like I want to hide when I'm at work. Just like I'm unsafe, like I need to hide somewhere warm and safe.
The moods are out of the blue, I cant see a trigger yet but they suck. I feel lost. I feel so tired and depressed that I just want to sink to the floor and die.

Today I got terrible pains from my painkillers, in my chest, because I didn't eat a proper sized lunch. I need to have a sandwich from now on, and see if that stops them. I thought I was going to faint at work, I was almost passing out.

The pains finally stopped after a couple of hours, I still feel crappy so I ate a big bacon sandwich when I got home. Just to get food into me and stop the terrible whirling in my head. I will eat dinner in a couple of hours.

I'm just so depressed and so tired and so sick right now that I cant remember a point when I wasn't in pain. I just want a end to this even if its death, I just don't care. I hate feeling so sad and sick and sore.

Roller coaster

Another exhausting day. I starved from breakfast- cereal, a protein bar and coffee was all I ate all day. Until I got home. When my house mate went out, I made dinner and ate so fast it barely registered. I lost control in a way.

But I didn't over eat. I didn't have two rolls, I didn't purge and I didn't go crazy.

I know starving doesn't work. But I'm so terrified that I will lose control and binge that right now, food is the enemy. Tomorrow I might try a sandwich at lunch time but I know its probably not going to be possible. Food is too hard.

I'm so tired. I just need rest all the time. And I was so bad tempered today. I was angry because I wasn't getting as much work done as normal and I felt like I had to. If I don't do well enough at work then I'm not a worthwhile person. I feel worthless unless I do well in as many areas as I can.

I feel like there is so much inside me right now, all this anger and hurt. And I don't know how to get it out. I cant voice it and I don't know what to say to people. I am going to try drawing it, because I loved art therapy when I was in treatment and I find drawing easier than talking.

Beat South Wales Care Event

Just back from Beat South Wales Care event. This basically consisted of a talk from a bereaved parent of an Anorexic about what care this girl had received (very little, the normal poor quality of care and understanding) and how to get the care needed before we too die, a talk from a dietitian which was mainly aimed at Anorexics and a talk from the lady responsible for organising the ED care and support within Wales. This last part was interesting as finally there are specialist units set up in South wales, as well as a plan or care which is being enforced for all sufferers, not just for children and adolescents.

The fact that they served cakes at this event made me smile rather a lot!
I had a bite of one then stopped because I felt like everyone in the room was judging me for eating. I certainly was judging myself for eating.

I am so mixed up. I feel so guilty. Guilty for eating, guilty if I restrict, guilty for not caring about myself which apparently makes it hard for others to care about me, guilty for trying to do nice thing for myself like buying some makeup for example. I try to look nice, have freshly washed hair and do my nails, my clothes are always clean and I try to look nice even though I always feel like a heffalump. I try so hard to be nice and kind and a good friend, a good housemate, a good daughter. And I feel like I fail at everything.

I feel so ugly I often look in the mirror and feel genuine despair because how will I ever afford to change my face? I feel fat and ugly and huge, I want to exercise but my bones are too brittle to use a gym and the pool is currently out of order (fire in the adjoining steam room). Plus I am so tired. No , not tired, exhausted. My body, my mind, I could sleep twelve hours a day and I still feel tired. I am fighting this illness and my own impulse to purge every moment of the day, as well as working a full time job where I fight for my standards of work to be high so I can keep my job. I want to be one of the best in my team, talked of as a good employee. So along with my job, my illness, and also doing regular real life stuff like shopping for food, laundry, cleaning, paying rent and things like that, I also try to see friends, have a social life and keep in touch with people.

And its too much. I'm so tired, sleep is a relief. Except that these days my nightmares are every night. But at least I don t have to handle food. Then I awake from a dream so deep and intense that I don't know if I am really awake, and have to go to work , put the mask on and fight another day until I get back home and can rest again. In between kicking my GP's ass so she will get me the help I desperately need before I give up, crumble and die.

Somethings got to give and its been my social life. I don't keep in contact with people as much as I should. I don't want to see people. I don't want to go out because I will have to drink or eat with others, make conversation, act normal and its so so so exhausting. Then the bad thoughts come back into my head and ruin any pleasant moment for me. I am isolating myself and I know it but I cant think of any other way to survive right now. I haven't got many options open to keep me safe.

I am so so so tired.

Fat is a feeling

I feel terrible. None of my clothes feel right. I feel fat in everything.

How do you explain to others that fat is a feeling? That it is an emotion? How do you tell them that you dont want to eat because you feel so huge that you judge yourself for eating? That just being out of bed, out of your house is a massive achievment since you think you are so ugly that you cant bare to have anyone see you.
That fat means disgust, hatred, anxiety, exhuastion, and a general desire to cut yourself because you deserve to be punished?
And nothing anyone says to you makes it better.

Down the rabbit hole

My mind hurts. I ate too much for dinner.

Anorexia and its thoughts are starting up in my head louder and louder. Its driving me to less and less food in the day. I feel better with less food. Then I had to ruin it with getting too much pizza for dinner. I ate without truly enjoying the food, feeling as though it would be snatched away from me at any moment.

Then I went out to swim. I had to burn off the calories. I tried to justify the food intake to myself by thinking that swimming would burn off all the calories. I tried putting a pair of jeans on over my swim suit to walk over and could barely fit in them- old jeans which have been loose on me since I got them. Now I struggle to do them up. I ran to the pool- ignoring the pain that started down my spine as the impact hit it. When I got there, there were lots of people, in the Jacuzzi area. I managed to swim strongly for half an hour then I began to get cold. My muscles felt as if they were becoming stone. And then a large group of men came in and got into the pool.

I just couldn't stay in there, so I got into the now empty jacuzzi. It was so lovely and warm and i tried to enjoy the simple pleasure of the warm soft water and the ease it brought to my aching bones. but all I could think was "I need to swim another hour to burn this off". I wanted to exercise More but my body just hurt and those men were there. then they came to get into the Jacuzzi. I almost ran into the changing room! I skipped drying my hair, i pulled my clothes on in the bathroom and left. There were a group of women changing in there. one had the most wonderful figure. petite and perfect.

i look at every woman that goes past me. i savour their figures. I'm not sexually attracted to them or to any women but i just love to look at them and imagine that I have their bodies and am thin and beautiful.

My new books arrived today. Three books on Eating disorders. One is the accompanying book to the documentary film "Thin". So many pictures of thin, tiny, sick women. And I'm jealous because I want to be thin like them. I want to feel my bones. I want to be thin. I know these women are so sick, as sick as me but I don't care. They are thin. At least they are dainty and small not fat and clumsy and repulsive.

I hate fat people. I find them repulsive. Its disgusting how people get that way and don't feel desperate to change. At least I still have a figure and a waist and definition.

No more food. Cereal, a tiny lunch, small dinner. maybe not even lunch. food is disgusting and the thinner is the winner. I have to slim down. I cant cope being this big. I feel trapped in my fat, sick, painful body.

Dark days and Dragonflies

A dark day. Feel utter food exhaustion. Want to eat and purge, want to purge full stop , I just want all food out of my body. I feel so huge. I feel so tired of the entire business. Just shattered.
Just feel weighted down, as if my soul has been trapped inside this heavy sick body that's wracked with pain and which cant exist without drugs to enable it to carry on. So so so tired.
I feel utterly fat. I am the heaviest I have ever been. I just want to cut off all the flesh that's trapping me. I feel so so so unattractive. The body dysmorphia- another disorder I have, and a common one with ED's- is raging through me like a fire. I see a fat ugly monster in every reflective surface. I never want to eat again. I feel as if I don't deserve to eat because I'm so fat and disgusting.
I haven't bothered to buy food for my lunches this week. I got some fruit and Muller rices and that's it. Cereal, Muller rice, dinner. Nothing more. Everything seems too much. Food seems too sad. Everything just seems too much.
Its as if, if I can forgo all food, I might be free of all the demons trapping me and stopping me from being like everyone else.
Thinking about my past, my childhood especially, is to think about a catalogue of abuse, neglect and misery. The bullying from other children at school, even at nursery, was the better bit.
Sexual abuse from a family member when I was a toddler- which the entire family suspected or knew about and took no steps to stop, a confusing and very troubled relationship with my mother who could be both physically and mentally abusive, a father who didn't assist me with this because he chose not to see this and a feeling that no matter what I did I could never please, never be loved or appreciated and never fit in.
Its still a box I cant fully open. I cant even try. I need a professional therapist to assist me. And I'm hoping I get a referral soon. Because I so badly want to not feel so terrible inside.

How not to eat lunch, how to follow your convictions & how to find good luck.

Well, another day, another dollar. Started a new job this week, so have been training all week. Its nice to be working, gives structure to my day. Days when I'm not working are hard- more time to eat. Or think of eating. Or bake stuff that could easily feed a family of ten when its just me and Other Half around the flat.

Baked cakes last weekend, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many. Although other half enjoyed the cakes he did make plenty of comments of amount of cakes. Which was fair, there were a lot of them.

One large problem? Where to eat lunch. I cannot eat in public. Ever. I can only eat in designated eating areas and then I still hate it because other people can see me eating. If I can eat in private I will. When I lived alone (or at least in a shared house, I have never had my own place due to rent prices) I always ate in my bedroom by myself. Public eating is painful to me, and eating in public, especially in crowded areas, is just impossible. I see people just eating while walking down the street and feel both repelled and amazed. Its as if they are committing a pornographic act rather than eating.

So, the fact that as yet I haven't discovered a quiet corner to eat lunch in- work is in city centre- is proving difficult. There is nowhere. So I resorted to my old trick. I ate lunch in the toilet.

Yes you heard right. I sat on the loo, locked nice and safe in my cubicle and ate my lunch in there.

And yes, I realise this is gross but preferable to eating lunch in front of people. But today I did something different. I felt exhausted and in need of real nourishment so I went to MacDonald's for lunch. I did well, I managed not to buy masses or binge. I didn't purge either. However I was really uncomfortable. I found a table where I was mostly concealed from the rest of the restaurant, I had my book to read so I was distracted- I love to read while eating. personal favorite. It enhances the food. Anyway despite all this, I still felt really uncomfortable. I was worried by the other diners, worried they were all looking at me and wondering why such a chubby person was eating junk food. So I ate quickly and then left.

I cant think of a good solution to this. I really cant. Anybody else got one?

I also voted today. Lib Dem if anyone cares. And if the Conservatives win I shall put together a team of people and blow up Parliament.

I also got crapped on by a pigeon. Other half of course, get away clean and dry. The old adage that its good luck had better be true.