Still progress, not perfection, right?

Continuing on with my attempt to withdraw and abstain from laxatives, I am on my second day. I’m fighting a pretty bad cold and my appetite is extremely low due to that, so I have to find ways to get in calories, and usually once a couple days pass, I then start wanting laxatives again.

Like I’ve said a lot recently — I have never had a laxative addiction until recently. It’s a really hard habit to break, and I am trying to stop the cycle. My therapist had me do a pro and con list of laxative use. Here is what I came up with, to the best of my ability right now:

Short term cons:
1. I always end up needing more.
2. Gets in the way of work and daily life having to run to the bathroom frequently or at inconvenient times.
3. False sense of security.
4. I still don’t eat as much as I should.
5. I feel sick if I don’t use them/cramping if I don’t use them, bloating if I don’t use them.

Long term cons:
1. I will have to initially keep adding more and more because my body will adjust and stop working right.
2. Dehydration, heart palpitations (recently experienced this)
3. Eating disorder gets stronger and I risk returning to purging behavior.
4. I now have another addiction to fight.
5. If I don’t get control and quit, I will never be able to rely or trust my body.
6. Long term use will damage irreversible internally. Will end up needing them for the rest of my life.
7. Could aid in a full relapse.
8. Avoiding emotions and painful items then causes avoidance and empowers denial — never fully facing things, nor fighting anorexia, and I won’t get better.
9. Decrease in health.
10. Withdraw, detox is painful emotionally, mentally and physically.
11. If I keep using them, I keep staying in the problem, not the solution.
12. The longer I use them, the deeper the addiction, and the harder to come off of them in the future.

Now I guess the best thing I can do is work on it. And make it through one day. Someone told me in AA, choose, one day at a time, “Today I will choose life, not laxatives.”

Also, in an effort to be proactive in relapse prevention, I was told to list a bunch of acceptance statements, and here is what I have.

Acceptance Statements:

1. I have anorexia but I am taking steps to work on it and prevent a spiral or relapse.
2. Although I have anorexia, I am no longer purging. This is improvement.
3. I am getting better, but I am not better yet.
4. Using laxatives will only intensify my anorexia, causing vulnerability factors
5. When I think I need the laxatives, I don’t need them. I need support instead.
6. Right now I am struggling, but I am not where I was.
7. Using laxatives is a problem because I have a laxative addiction. It is NOT okay to use them.
8. If my weight is dropping, and my fat image is increasing, something is not accurate.
9. I do not see what other people see.
10. I need to learn to trust other people’s perception and honesty regarding my weight and self-image because they see things accurately.
11. Even if it is hard, I need to trust my team that I am underweight, and eating food will not make me fat. If I need help challenging ED statements like this, I need to tell someone so they can speak the truth.

So I guess currently, my biggest struggle is continuing to stay off laxatives and work on acceptance. it’s hard to see it in print, that I am still battling my anorexia, and in fact, my body image has gotten confusing lately. I am not sure if my lists will help anyone else struggling, so I posted them. That’s about where I am at right now after my doctor appointment this morning.

Scarves. Laxatives. Thanksgiving.

I was covering a story about high school students delivering turkeys and Thanksgiving dinners to those in need in a local township. It was a fun story, easy, and doable. I rode on a bus with 12 students, interviewed and shadowed them as they delivered these meals to seniors and families. For some strange reason, I connected very well with the teenage girls on the bus. I laughed with them and became fond of them. Perhaps I was living vicariously through them. Perhaps they were happy, and normal, and I wanted that for myself.

When we came to the final stop, we delivered a meal to a woman named Florence. It was the last stop of the journey so I decided to carry up a pie with a teen girl who was giggly and free spirited. When we entered the woman was so happy and enthusiastic and she was smiling. She turned to the teen and myself and asked if we “liked scarves?” She must have noticed the fall/winter themed scarves we had tossed around our necks. She lit up with so much joy, turned and said, “Oh! I have something JUST for you!” With that, she ran into her bedroom, (yes, this senior citizen rushed) and grabbed two scarves, gave them to the girl and I. She kissed me on the cheek and said “Merry Christmas!” I am so glad she said that instead of “Happy Holidays!”

She hugged me, and said thank you. I will forever keep that scarf. In fact, I will wear it!

I had therapy today. Today is Day 1 again, with no laxatives. I am attempting to completely stay away from them. I am told (in therapy) that I am in denial. She is probably right. She almost always is. But it’s hard to understand and grasp right now. But I am working on it. So Day 1, abstinent from laxatives. Why is this so hard?

Oh, and I am spending Thanksgiving working at the newspaper and then going to dinner at my nurse’s house ( also my pastor’s wife and close friend). That is all.

Trapped —

I brought in my laxatives, again, to my therapist today. Back down to not having any. I had been using them the past four days. It felt like a need, again. I had so much emotion and it seems that my anorexia is developing different outlets of behavior.

I’m trying though, but maybe I am not trying enough? I’m not sure. It’s always one of those situations where I don’t see the transition, spec by spec, to starting to struggle. How do I fix that? It’s as if I always blink and I am back to struggle.

The only thing that reminds me that I am getting better is that I am not purging anymore, which is amazing. But I am hoping that it doesn’t mean that my laxative abuse and eating less does not turn into a dangerous starvation slip. I can’t afford that. But I just looked over to a mini snack bag of chips and couldn’t even think about letting myself open it. Why? What the fuck is going on here with my eating? I know that I need to lay out a strict meal plan, to maintain weight because I am starting to worry that I am losing weight and I cannot afford that either. I don’t want that for two reasons — I’ll become addicted and spiral down with weight loss and two, I will get worse and farther away from strong eating habits.

So, I’m being honest and ask for prayer because I felt so STRONG and AMAZING and like I was winning in this war when I came home from treatment. I have to get this right. I have to fix this.

Recoop

I woke up earlier this morning around 6:30 a.m., naturally, which I haven’t done in a while. I hope that is a good sign. I am going to attempt to get on a good sleep schedule so I can get back to early rising so I can get to morning AA meetings — they always upgrade my day!

I feel a little better today. Last night, I was fighting really hard to not go back out and load up on laxatives. It was crazy. I was craving and yearning for it like I used to when I was using hardcore drugs.

I have never experienced this type of behavior with laxatives. My stomach feels a lot better today than the past two days, and I think my body is starting to regulate again. So, by the grace of God, I went to an AA meeting and then went home.

Last night, I did my fifth step and today I am doing my Step 6 and 7 today. Wow. I remember when I first came into AA. I will have a year on Jan 1. I had just started this blog not long after I first came into the rooms.

My mood is pretty level. Last night I talked to my dad and was able to set up my new budget and it’s totally doable so I have a lot of relief. And I can start paying everyone back who helped me and my treatment bill. Yes. Oh, and I colored Disney Princesses last night.

Other than that, I need to do laundry and pick up my prescription. I am also going to make a skills page for distractions with urges. It will list everything I do for distraction and ways to push through strong urges. Additionally, perhaps I will list other skills in using your voice and getting through other situations. Yes, I think I will.

Let.Me.Go.

My eating disorder is being such a wench right now. I have come so far with the treatment, my recovery, my new life, but some how I am extremely trapped right now. I am not hurting myself like I used to. I eat, even if it’s minimal, and I don’t purge, minus one of the two slips I’ve had in the past six months, and I gave my laxatives up, even though I never had a laxative problem until recently.

But it hurts. It’s suffocating me. I can’t breathe. I am still detoxing from those damn laxatives I was abusing this past week. I gave them up, so I should be feeling stronger. But, some how, as the pain passes, I feel it clawing away at my throat, pulling me and dragging me to go get more. “It’ll help” and “you’ll feel better” and “it’ll feel right,” all bombard me. And I know yesterday I was curled over in a ball, in agonizing pain trying to pass the abuse from the laxatives.

When I was at my worst, I never had a laxative addiction and it’s so strong now. I haven’t used them in two days, but the pull is getting unbearable. My calorie counting is frequent. I am measuring again. And still, I am better than I ever was with my eating disorder in the past 4 years. Somehow it’s just screaming at me and I can’t shut it up. I can’t get a break.

I’ve lost track of time all day long, blinking and glancing to notice an hour, then another, and one more, has gone by. I am almost finished with my shift and all I want, can think about it laxatives. I know this isn’t me, but I want ME back. Whatever my struggle has been this week, it’s taking a toll on me.

I am stubborn, never giving up, but what the hell ED. Why are you such a bitch?! Just let me go!

Detox

I’m exhausted. I found myself curled up on the floor in my single apartment this late morning. I woke up angry today and cursing at nobody in particular as I rushed over into the building for individual. For some reason, I just was not in the mood for therapy.

I had this realization that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, exhausted of having appointments throughout the week, every week, for the past several years. Fighting my anorexia is brutal and while I have accomplished so much, especially this past year, I am finding that I am a little weary because I know I still have such a long way to go. Who wants to be in therapy that much?? Not me.

However, I do enjoy the specific women on my treatment team. Without having them in my life today, I would have never flown out to Arizona and gone inpatient. Perhaps, I would not even be alive today spilling further words of my life story into cyberspace for all with a “google search” can find my life.

I couldn’t imagine my life without regularly working with or even just being around these women frequently. To take someone out of your life, or dramatically shift after almost, now, three years…you just can’t. It’s scary to me. I know I have been told people will always be in my life, actively, but I don’t know how to feel emotionally, without seeing someone for months at a time for the remainder of my life. So, I pray about it, pleading for God to heal that piece of my broken heart.

Perhaps that has a lot to do with my struggles this past week. Right now, I am dealing with the consequences of abusing laxatives for a week. I am struggling to not go buy more. I turned in my stash, again, today to my therapist. So now, I guess you could say I’m sort of “detoxing” from laxatives. And I’m in pain and let’s just say my body is very, very mad at me right now.

On top of that, I just don’t feel well. My stomach feels nauseated and I don’t have an appetite. And I need to put my 2 pounds back on because I dropped that within the past week. My eating disorder is such a bitch.

So with that, and my slip yesterday, I am trying to bounce back from it. I guess I am in the process of letting go and bouncing back. It just sucks. In all honesty, recovery is beautiful and inspirational, but the process is painful, like skinning knuckles across the concrete. But I have to keep trying… even if I am getting exhausted.

Trying to stay afloat and away from denial—recovery struggles

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.”