Hold On Tight

Usually after a morning like today, I'd spent the afternoon distracting myself by writing up meal plans, lists of foods, planning what/when to eat. I'd throw myself headfirst into any anorexic thoughts that passed my way and cling to the "comfort" of my eating disorder, as false as it may really be.

Today I listened to music, did some arty crafty things- stuff I don't usually do, but I wanted to make sure that I nurtured that voice inside me saying, "I'm not the same person I was".

Sounds cheesy when I write it out- I always hated therapists saying, "oh when you feel like XXX do YYY" because it felt so invalidating to the feelings/urges I had. Today, for whatever reason, it felt OKAY to just accept that I DID feel anxious, upset, scared, angry, hurt...

I think feelings are weird things. They are often triggered by something small or don't quite match up to actual experiences in the way you might expect. But they are THERE and they are VALID and most importantly, they pass. Nothing can or will last forever. As horrendous or wonderful as it might feel *right now*, there is no telling how or when it will change. Feelings aren't good or bad or right or wrong- they just are.


I'm posting this more for my own reference than anything else. It's so easy to get caught up in whirlwinds of anxiety/fear/anger/hurt/excitement/happiness, that you forget how, in time, things shift. In the meantime, all you can do is embrace whatever you have right then in that moment because it's our thoughts and feelings and experiences that make us who we are. We are ALL products of the people we've met, the things we have experienced, the lives we have lived. We can't go back and change things, do things differently, take back what has been said and done. We might never get apologies we are owed or "thank you"'s we deserve. But it's our choice how we use the *us* that stands today to shape our future. Easier said than done- believe me, I know. It doesn't feel like a choice when we feel pulled towards old habits, previous ways of dealing when the s*** hits the fan. But it is. Every second we make choices in how we act or think. And every second is a chance to do things differently from before.

So when the urges are overwhelming and every fibre in your being is pushing you into something you KNOW isn't going to take you any closer to the life you want to be living, remember that sometimes all you need to do is hold on, breathe and wait for the storm to pass.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was
more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

-Nin, Anaise

The Cheek Of It!

I want to feel proud of choosing something that I was craving for my snack this afternoon. But I don't. It's almost 4 hours later and all of a sudden, my head is spinning about what a stupid choice I made, that I should have picked something higher in protein, blah, blah, blah. All that really really important stuff. Because one small snack in the grand scheme of my diet is really the "make or break" of my day/week/life/the WORLD. Lol.

I am fully aware that my thinking right now is irrational. I am not acting on these thoughts- hell, there's not much I can do right at this moment. There's nothing I even want to do/have an urge to do (except write, obviously!)

I have been trying to distract myself by thinking about the human body as a whole. All the amazing things it does- some we are conscious of (thinking, feeling, etc), some we don't see/feel (cell production, osmosis, all that biology malarkey).

Did you know...

• In one day, a human sheds 10 billion skin flakes. This amounts to approximately two kilograms in a year.
• Every square inch of the human body has about 19,000,000 skin cells.
• Every hour one billion cells in the body must be replaced.
• The human body makes anywhere from 1 to 3 pints of saliva every 24 hours.
• The human body has approximately 37,000 miles of capillaries.
• The aorta, which is largest artery located in the body, is about the diameter of a garden hose.
• The adult human body requires about 88 pounds of oxygen daily.

Pretty amazing, right? So while I am sitting here panicking about eating a snack bar that is slightly lower in protein than my regular picks, my body is doing all kinds of amazing stuff. I wasn't thinking about this earlier- I was thinking about what food sounded good at that moment. My body told me, and I responded. Who am I to question the signs my body sends? Or more to the point, who is anorexia to know what my body needs to function best?

Edited to say: the focus of my blog has changed quite a bit since starting (more so in the recent couple of months) and I thought a new layout was needed. Plus, if I am including pictures, I have a hard enough time taking decent ones without them having to "match" a bright pink background! Let me know what you think!

Fake It Till Ya Make It

That's been today's theme, and you know what? I'm feeling okay about it. I'm not bursting at the seams with self-love, but I'm not beating myself up for pushing away the negative thoughts that came my way today ("go away- there is no time for YOU today").

I've been struck this week by how precious life truly is. Both in blogs and through the loss of my friend last week. I'm still not ready to talk about that in great detail, but it's just hitting me quite how fragile life is, how we never really know what lies around the corner. That's what makes life so exciting and wonderful, but also where heartache and pain and fear lie. Uncertainty, loss, unpredictability.

I was just wandering around town (shoe shopping!), but obsessing over my usual jazz ("if I eat abc for dinner, then I should have xyz for snack") when I got to thinking quite how much time I spend thinking about food, weight, calories, etc. The sheer amount of time I devote to essentially trivial stuff. None of which is going to matter in a week, a month, 6 months, a year...next Valentine's Day, am I even going to remember what I ate for snack on February 11th 2008? Hell no.

It just really got me thinking- when I'm old, I don't want to look back on my life and remember nothing more than endless hours in grocery stores, making lists, walking the same walk every.single.day. Enough of my memories NOW are of hospital, treatment, disaster. I don't want to waste more of my time- I want to look back and remember the trips I took, the relationships I formed, the cool adventures I had with friends. I want photos of nights out partying, vacations, celebrations. NOT piles of boxes of notepads filled with calculations about exactly how many raisins to put in my oatmeal. Life's too short.

Spend your time wisely- you never know how much you have left.

I want to look back and laugh and cry at the ups and downs, but I don't want to look back with bitter regret at all the things I never did because I was "too busy" with an eating disorder.

Wants V Needs

I'm definitely feeling a lot brighter today. I feel like I have more clarity in my thoughts, my ideas are less clouded by despair and hopelessness. I have a clear vision of WHAT I want, and that's part of the battle.

The last couple of years have been about trying to figure out something very basic: do I want to live or do I want to die?..

Having made the decision to LIVE am now faced with the task of figuring out exactly how I go about *doing* that. It's not so simple as breathing, eating and sleeping.

I want to create a "life worth living".

I know, on a basic level, that food, sleep and oxygen are essential to staying alive. There is so much more than that. We have other needs and wants too...there is a difference between "wants" and "needs" and I struggle to see wants/desires as important in day-to-day life. Maybe that is part of the problem.

It's okay to want things. It's human nature to want things. It's okay to want to have friends, hobbies, pleasure. Food...that's a tricky one for me. It is, to all intents and purposes, a basic need. A part of me believes that, and another part of me believes that it is merely a "want" that can be brushed aside and ignored.


According to this, food is a basic physiological need.

There are so many layers above the basic needs. At least I know where to start though, right? Prioritising physiological, then working on the rest. One layer at a time...

Epiphanies All Round...

I realized tonight that I base my entire self-worth on other people's opinions of me. Do you think I am good enough to do xxx job? Do you think I am the best harpist in this competition? Do you think my life is worth saving? I put myself into situations, not consciously, but time and time again, purely to see how other people perceive me.

My self-esteem is non-existent, and I rely on others to validate me.

Am I a good enough person to be given that award/medal/job/prize? Is my existence valuable enough that you are willing to step in and stop me from killing myself? Then I resent either outcome. I don't get the job/prize/whatever, and it further fuels my destructiveness. "I KNEW I wasn't good enough". If I DO get what I really want, then it just screws with my head. "They made a mistake/they have ulterior motives/they don't see me for what I really am".

Will I ever feel good enough? Not likely. I aim for perfection and discover it's a moving target. I keep moving the target. Okay, I won X competition, but now I need to win Y. I lost Xlbs, now I need to lose XXlbs. I'll never be good enough to meet my own standards.

It's a losing battle. The more I achieve, the more I strive, and the more I strive, the more I set myself up to fail. The more I fail, the more destructive I become and the cycle feeds off itself.

I KNOW this rationally.

What I don't know is how to change it.

How to lower my expectations/standards. How to accept myself for how I am. How to be happy with what I've got. How to value myself enough to not rely on others to determine what I'm worth.