Believe

Believe in the power of believing.
Say..."I Believe," and believe it.
Believe in something, anything, that gives you the courage and strength to continue on when it would be so easy to give up.
Believe me when I say that you are beautiful.
Believe me when I tell you "You deserve to be happy."
Believe that you have choices, and that you can choose wisely.
Above all, believe in yourself...

Hopes Garden

"Doug, I have an Eating Disorder".....These are words I remember saying one wednesday night in January 2008. He had driven me to London, walked me into the group and waited outside. There were about 8 of us and an amazing lady named Gil who was facilitating the group. We all talked a bit about ourselves, and then discussed a topic that was chosen for the night and then did a brief close on how we felt. I almost ran to the car after the group. I knew before, because two doctors and lots of people had pointed this out to me, but finally that night I knew it for myself, in myself, for real.  I was 41 years old and finally there was a reason i was like i was....and better yet...there were others like me! I had an eating disorder and i wasn't alone!!! There were others like me and they too were not just young teens..they were women with husbands and families. It was an amazing revelation for me and i will never forget it. Oddly, when you think about, how strange is that I was in some way excited that I was finally accepting this Eating Disorder as what i was sick with. But I guess after years of not knowing how....why....what, it finally just made sense to me! And that for me somehow seemed to make it somehow better...somehow bearable!

So I could go on and on about Hopes. How great it is and how it saved me those first four and a half long months until May 19th when I entered Homewood. I didn't miss very many Wednesday night groups.Since I found it  I have bonded with lots of great girls (and even an few awesome young men). One of my very best friends now is a great lady who I met just before I entered Homewood, (she had just been discharged) and got to be very close to afer my discharge. I have heard stories that have broken my heart to pieces, reduced me to tears, and made me break out in laughter. I have watched people fall apart and come back together. I watched a young man come so close to death from his eating disorder that I know there is a God, because there is no other reason he would be here today if there wasnt!  (BTW...he is doing so great now and although I am sure he still has his  struggles he is definately in a good spot right now...a healthy spot!) After HW, I had trouble adjsuting to Hopes, and until my first mini relapse didnt start going back to group. At present I am attending an Art Therapy Group, still with Gil and planning on soon doing the Adult |drop in group soon too. They have also recently started another group which would have been just what i needed upon leaving HW.  It is  for people who are in a better place with their eating disorder just to check in. I think that was a big issue for me when I first went back after In Patient treatment, there were so many people so in need of in patient treatment, that it made it hard being in such a good spot...it sure didnt help with the guilt issues so many of us live with.

Over the past almost two years Hopes has been there when and if I need it, and that is a wonderful thing. I have tried to give back by helping when they do fundraising. (It is NOT government funded...surprise surprise!) The staff there, Karen, Gill and Marilyn as well as a few others who do occasional groups are all amazing...as are all the volunteers I have encountered. London is so lucky to have this resource. I hope the day comes when I can say....."HOPES GARDEN...I used to go there!", but until then, I am so thankful it is there, and thankful I found it when i did.


                                                              

Whale VS Mermaid

I like this....


Recently, in a large French city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said: ¨THIS SUMMER DO YOU WANT TO BE A MERMAID OR A WHALE? ¨ A middle aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym. Read her response below:

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans)... They have an active sex life; they get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Barren Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them not to mention how could they have sex? Therefore they don't have kids either. Not to mention who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver and a piece of chocolate with my friends. With time we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren't heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good gosh, look how smart I am...¨
 
 
If only we could all believe this....

How ED and I met!

So, I will jump back later and talk a little more about some of the times in my life that things got "bad" for me...but as I said in my first blog, I chalked them all up to being a picky eater...and it just being the way I was. For now I want to talk about how it was brought to my attention that I had an eating disorder.

In  November 2006 I was downsized from a job I loved and really didnt know what had hit me. I am not sure if this was the start of my final falling or not but it seemed to be the first big thing that occured. I went on unemployment but was offered an old job back and before long decided i would take it on a part time basis. Within a few months I was back at it full time and right into my old workaholic self! (This, the workaholic trait i own, will come up again and again in my blog as both a positive and a negative...and i think it was my time in the hospital that made me learn that it was something I needed to learn to balance)
By late summer of 2007 I had begun to lose a great deal of weight, was shutting myself off from my old and dearest friends, family and husband, and was drinking like a fish, staying out all night, and although not doing anything to this day I would call inappropriate...I was in fact behaving very inappropriate. I thought this was all very normal...i was just having fun, and the weight...well I needed to lose the weight anyways! Nobody could tell me differently. My husband and I were seeing a marriage therapist and had been for some time. I decided I was no longer going to "waste" my time, as all of our problems were his fault, (again what was in my mind at the time...or as we now know, what ED was telling me to think!) and if I remember correctly Doug, continued to go, and at one session, mentioned not only my odd behaviors but the fast weight lose. He started watching me...what i ate...or should I say, didn't eat. He got the name and  number of another therapist in London who specialized in clients with eating disorders. He tried to talk to my "best" friend at the time, a girl I worked with, who was an alcoholic and my main drinking buddy. He hoped she would help get me to eat. He didnt know it but i was pretty much living on chocolate milkshakes by this time.He would try to feed me at home, but I would feed the dog when he wasn't looking.  Honestly I think back to all he tried to do for me, and how he went about doing it and I wonder why...why did he bother...why not just use that as the easy way out?  Who would have even questioned us seperating at that time?  Instead out of either a huge amount of love for me, or maybe an unwillingness to fail as a husband he decided to fight my still unknown problem head on. Le me tell you, Goddammit in the last three years i have met alot of determined people try to take ED on, and few have tried as hard as Doug has and havent had near the success as he has. More about him..and us later. One thing though, is I will honour his privacy here as this blog is about me and my struggles and although parts of "us" that may have influenced me that he would not want posted...wont be. He is a private person and I respect that in him.
Back to what it was like at work...there were two occurances shortly after my husband started seeing a problem when  I "fell" at work...reads...passed out! Some of my co-workers who really were my friends cared, tried to help, others well, lets just say, others made it worse.  Those who were into the whole gossip game made up all kinds of awesome stories. And that friend I mentioned above, I have to think that her alcohol problems which she later dealt with, were the reason she couldnt help me. I will later explain that I think of ED's as an addiction, although in an odd way its kind of a reverse way. My bosses were two of the first people I went to for help and turned out to be the worst two people in the world, not only did they not help they terminated me, and then the male boss refered to countless people about my stay at a psychiatric hospital, as being "locked up". To this day, years later, I am holding anger and resentment towards them and honestly that is not my normal personality.

Doug came to me in October and gave me the London doctors phone number and asked I call her. It took a good month to do so...it took longer to tell my friends and family. I am not sure that I was ashamed, or embarrased or if it is just the way ED convinces you to act and behave. Shut people that love you out and then they can't help you get better. It makes so much sense now looking back, and to this day it is a constant battle. (As I type this I am sitting on my husbands couch. We have been seperated since May it is nearing the end of September. I am living with him because I am unable to care for myself and once again he was there to take on ED. I know i love him and should be with him yet I fight the urge daily to run from him, the one person that I know can and will save me. When I am healthy and ED is somewhere deep inside of me its so easy to be with my friends my loved ones. As I start to lose control the first thing that happens is I push everyone away. This makes it so hard on those close to me) The first doctor visit, Doug went with me, just to make sure I was comfortable and it was fine. I can't remember alot of what we talked about...at this point I had been starving myself for a couple of months so my brain/memory was in pretty bad shape. I know we decided I should stop working...and that i should consider in patient care...and that she told me i had an EATING DISORDER. That was the first time someone told me that. She recommended a place called Hopes Garden in London to me that day too. I remember that I was not going to ever go there. It was a bunch of people sitting in a room whinning about there problems and it so wasnt for me! But as I got more comfortable with her she convinced me it was a place to go....

HOPES GARDEN ..the place I realized that I did have an eating disorder, and that it was ok, I wasnt alone!

A bit of history!

...oh I really can't tell you when it started, or where it started....and God only knows why it started...but I, I have had a relationship with this thing I call ED for a long time now. Its been more the months, years for sure...probably decades if you must know. ED is not a man, or an animal or even a car. ED is the nickname I call my illness, like so many of us with an Eating Disorder do. (Some others with anorexia will call it ANA). I am both Anorexic and Bulimic ...diagnosed asEDNOS..or Eating Disorder, NOT Otherwise Specified.

I suppose  it all began years and years ago sometime in my youth. I just decided i didn't like food. I was always labelled  as a picky eater. There were more foods I didn't like then I did. And when there was a great deal of stress in my life I would simply stop eating. No big deal, it was just the way i was...the way i dealt with life. My therapist now refers to it as "an unhealthy relationship with food"...

When i was 17 ans 18 I went to college, hated it, and dropped out and moved home to work for a year. It was an incredibly tough year as I had issues getting along with my father. He and I had similar personalities and I always felt I wasn't good enough for him. Because of this I was stressed. That was the first time I got too "skinny". I dropped 30 or so lbs by taking laxitives (yes I know they don't really work...blah blah..), and eating one very small meal if anything a day six days a week. Now, this would be a good time to delve deep into my past and give you all kinds of reasons that i may have an eating disorder...my dad teased me, actually us all about our weight, (mom and all three of his girls,) while I was the only one that was not a bit on the overweight size...yet it was me that got screwed up...sick. Or I could blame the fact that I went on my very first diet when I was just 12 to lose 5 whole pounds because i couldnt wait to fit in with my mom and sisters who had been on diets as long as i could remember. Like a young boys first hunting trip I went to TOPS in the church basement that week, had my first weigh in, was so excited to finally be "fat" enough to be on a diet. But honestly... all that is the past. I need to look to the future. Yes the past may have had an effect on why i am the way I am presently...but dwelling on it isn't going to fix it. I need to focus on the future and in part that is why I have decided to write this blog. I find writitng to be theraputic and cheap therapy at that.... I am hoping to connect with some others out there with anorexia, as well as possible educate some that don't have the illness about what it is like to live with it. It has been an interesting few years...and I think I will write about all that I have been through.

One thing I want to start off with is that I had a tough time deciding whether to post my picture. I am not ashamed of my illness, but what I have struggled with is, that as people know about it, they tend to look at me as my illness and even when I am as sick as I get, I am still so much more then the lady with the eating disorder. Although sometimes this makes it difficult I decided I am almost 43 years old i needed to suck it up, deal with the negative and hope that by posting my face it would bring a reality aspect to my blog.

Next time I will start to write about how we figured out I was more then a picky eater...