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!