Denial is not necessarily a struggle for me as much now than it was throughout the past several years. I don’t really understand denial, lately, for it’s not that I am denying things happened or that things are a problem—I am kind of just negating the fact that certain behavior is not so healthy.
This past week, I have found myself using laxatives. I have never been a laxative abuser, almost my entire eating disorder life. I had tried them in the past, but found that they didn’t work for me. But lately, having more education on certain things that help regulate the body, and using them for a week, I find it not only working, but find myself hooked to it.
It’s not that I am trying to lose weight, or I can see myself losing weight. It has a lot more to do with feeling confident that knowing what I am eating is coming out within the 24 hours I consume it. It’s this fear that my food won’t digest and that it’ll just sit in my body and turn to fat, or something.
I know that this fear is a ritualistic one, that tied into my anorexia.
It’s strange for me, not to get too much into labels, that I can say my bulimic behaviors have ceased and that I truly do struggle with anorexia.
I am not as bad as I was before, regarding fasting and not eating, but my specifics are more condensed to same foods, measuring, and not eating enough as I should. I know this isn’t great, but I have been worse before with behavior. Or maybe I was just unstable, and couldn’t keep any food in me. Perhaps this laxative dependency that has started to develop is a new addiction that has developed in my eating disorder, that I didn’t necessarily struggle with before.
And this is what concerns me: It feels right using it and that it would be a massive struggle to give it up. But the scary part is, while i feel like it is OK, I find myself getting chest pains, and figure I am getting dehydrated from it, perhaps. Or even, the fact that last night was the first time I used it twice, from once a day, to twice a day. That’s an addiction on the rise. I just don’t know how to manage it.
Because I am not trying to lose weight, but I am also not trying to gain weight, and I am starting to focus on my body so much more and if weight loss happens, I’ll be completely triggered.
I don’t know why this is so much to digest (no pun intended), but it’s hard for me to think about, and deal with, which is why I started this entry with “denial.”
May I find peace in this uncertain world. 