March 31, 2012 by Fiona

I Think I’m A Mean Girl.. rant warning – BPD, self harm, overdoses are discussed.

(Or – She’s Done It Again, Call The Whaambulance.)

I used to be the biggest Yes-Person around. Whatever you wanted to hear, I’d say it. You would never hear a peep out of me if I thought it might not be agreeable.

Lately I’ve become far more outspoken. This is scaring me!!!!! I’m so not used to it. I’m getting annoyed, I’m getting angry, but instead of burying it, I’m speaking it.

What scares me most is that I think it’s making me a mean girl.

I have a number of friends on Facebook in the ED and the PD communities. Most of them I don’t know personally, rather I met them through support groups and the like. I can be a very supportive person, I am a good listener (ironic since I’m deaf!) but I also can be bluntly, blatantly honest.

It’s scary to see girls doing what you used to do yourself, years back, watch them destroying themselves, and scarier, watching a horde of minions – hanger ons, enablers – swarm around them and reinforce what they are doing. It’s started me questioning what a good friend is?

Is a good friend one who supports you through thick and thin and tells you only what you want to hear? That your worst behaviour is okay and not your fault, even when it’s NOT okay and it IS your fault?

Or is a good friend one who offers their ongoing support but makes it clear that your behaviour is not okay at all?

I’m with the latter.. but I also have no idea really when to cut my losses and walk away. Rarely do these people want to hear the truth. But I stay and argue with them and end up getting insults hurled at me and told that I don’t have a clue what these people are going through, I’ve never been there, I don’t know what it’s like to be in that much pain (I HAVE, and I DO, but that’s not the point).

I have to learn acceptance. I’m getting better at acceptance, but truly, walking away when you are emotionally invested is hard to do. Really hard. I don’t even know why I care so much – TOO much. I mean, half these girls would throw me under the bus without a second thought – a lot of them don’t really care about anyone but themselves right now. A lot of the behaviour I call out, happens because the person wants to be fed in some way – as in, they want people to tell them how sorry they are for their pain, to coddle them.. they want. They don’t want to give, they just want.

Case in point for all this – This girl, let’s call her S, has spent the past week updating her status with the most attention seeking of statuses. “I’m going to take all these paracetamol pills” “I can’t go on, this is it guys, I give up” ”F*ck you, (her ex), it’s all your fault, I’m going to kill myself now”. These are illustrated with constant photos of S with assorted medical paraphernalia from her routine doctor appointments, photos of S with assorted emo slogans, and finally today, when S took her much-threatened overdose of paracetamol, photographs from the hospital ward of her IV, her hospital bed, her ECG stickers… you get the picture. What was the last straw for me amongst my sense of building ‘UGH’ for want of a better word, was that she tagged her ex girlfriend (who is a lovely girl who has not done anything to deserve this) in the hospital photos with captions like “See, proof, see what you did to me”.. this is just so wrong.

All of this is blatant manipulation, Borderline behaviours.. and it makes me sick and ragey. So I opened my big fat mouth and inserted big clumsy foot. I RAGED at her. And I got angry at her enabler friends for supporting this stupid behaviour. What made it harder for me to resist is that just a week ago S and I had a bit of a heated exchange about her tendancy to post emo photographs and ‘Recoveryyyyyyy<3<3′ bullshit one day, have a blow up with someone and scream “That’s it, I’m giving up on recovery I’m going to die and you can all go to hell” the next day, then be back on the “Recoveryyyyyy<3<3″ bandwagon the next day (and I can guarantee that she’ll be back in recovery after she’s discharged and it will all start over. She told me I totally was wrong about her, that i didn’t understand recovery or her fight, that she was genuine and sincerely fighting. And then she pulls this shit, right out of the air – exactly the stuff she claimed she never did.

So, I did it wrong. I should have backed off. Nay, more than that – I should delete her. But I care. I know I’m going to get my head bitten off when I get in there and don’t join the enabling “Oh you are such a fighter so so sorry you poor brave thing” army. When I say, this is a choice YOU have made, you chose this, and you cannot blame anyone else for it. When I say, this behaviour is NOT going to make anything better and recovery is about staying with these feelings and working through them, not going off and overdosing and cutting yourself and screaming at everyone who cares about you that it’s all their fault. I know I’m going to get a serve when I say, I doubt very much she intended to actually kill herself, considering that she has threatened to take those tablets every single day for the last week and enjoyed it when you all begged her to flush them or “please don’t do it!!”, and considering the fact that she had a photo uploaded of her successful overdose at the first opportunity and a running commentary throughout. If you really want to die? You aren’t going to give every one every chance of stopping you!

I’m done. I’m truly done. It’s time for me to learn some really hard lessons on boundaries, on the fact that I cannot save anyone else – especially when I still have a lot of work to do saving myself still – and worst – am I, myself, feeding their sickness in some way? I hope to hell I’m not.

Here is a screen shot of the latest drama. I really think I went overboard and yes, time and place was not appropriate. Given this girls history though..

What do you think? Am I a mean girl? And please be honest – honest feedback is something I can use to make sure I do the right thing – or the not so wrong thing – next time.

Is it dangerous to enable someone’s destructive behaviours? Is it better to wait until the crisis is over before calling them out on it?

March 28, 2012 by Fiona

My Very First WIAW!

I’ve always been fascinated with food and what other people are eating, so I’ve loved reading What I Ate Wednesday posts – but never been able to participate because what I eat.. well what do I eat? Nothing worth sharing, and what I do eat is often so bizarre I’d never want to put it out there.

However I do have some better, more on track moments. I thought that I would share a few favourites from the past week with you. There isn’t much green in here – I could say the capsicum in the salad and the splash of lime juice count, as well as the green grapes!

Favourite Lunch -

grainy bread with beetroot, corn, spanish onion, crumbled tofu and mustard pickles; cheese flavoured sunrice crackers; home-grown passionfruit and grapes.

I’m loving the tanginess of this sandwich filling. Another variation that I often eat uses tinned tuna instead of tofu. I also love to add chopped beetroot, corn and onion to hummus.

Favourite salad -

Tofu salad with beetroot, corn, red and green capsicum, tomato, spanish onion, mustard pickles.

Favourite treat – Home-made Ice-cream! Please do not snark at my ‘mixing bowl’. I have a VERY basic kitchen and this was bigger than my real mixing bowl! How appropriate to make ice cream in an old ice cream container lol.

Condensed milk, cream, mashed banana and a splash of lime juice - so simple. So rich and creamy!

It worked!

Ice cream is a huge fear food for me, as are cream and condensed milk so this was a huge but worthwhile challenge. I’m definitely going to do it again, and experiment with flavours – maybe coffee, maybe mango.. It could have used a splash of vanilla essence – but I didn’t have any.

Favourite chill out -

Coffee and the local paper while watching Shalimar in the garden.

Coffee never lasts very long with me. Someone needs to make a heat-resistant hydration back pack so I can sip coffee every minute of the day, hands free.

Shalimar is back on her lead – after 1. being very naughty and running away! and 2. A neighbour telling me to keep her out of the communal gardens in case she ‘hurts the flowers’… really? She’s a cat, and she’s snuffled those flowers for almost three months and caused no harm. So sad – but I’m in the process of organising an enclosure to be built outside the front of my unit, around her favourite snuffle-place and under the window where her cat-door conveniently happens to be. Hopefully soon she will have access to HER area whenever she wishes, and no save-the-flowers neighbours will be able to ruin the fun.

Poor Shalimar. I really feel like the fun police. So not right.

And I was so chuffed that I had to include my favourite compliment -

Victoria Beckham? Oh really? Nah.

My helper from HACC (Home and Community Care – helps me with everyday things that being ill means I need help with – shopping, cleaning, transport etc) said that I looked like I was channelling Victoria Beckham yesterday. She cracked me up! I am missing the sky-high heeled shoes and the utter cool, stylishness she exudes. And the extreme skinniness.

I bought this dress from an Op Shop and really like it – the photo (and myself) do not do it justice. It’s a warm, heavy wool dress by Cue, perhaps a bit large, but I really liked the shape of it. I’m stuck wearing my utterly UNcool shoes because of my very sore feet and legs! If I don’t have to walk far, I can wear ballet flats, but heels are out forever sadly.

Well I hope you all enjoyed my post and were not too grossed out at the food I ate!!! Happy Wednesday. And Shalimar says hello… Really, she’s clawing at me because she is jealous at all the attention the computer gets. Time to go play with her

March 27, 2012 by Fiona

Reading My Blog Stats Often Make Me Sad.

I’m just glad that those people who entered such terms as “how to be anorexic” and “pro ana guide” arrived here, instead of where they were meaning to!

I often have a laugh too. Another funny term that’s popped up a lot is “Mary Poppin’s Bag”. As for MacGyver – I think he’s brilliant – but just a bit strange!

My apologies to those looking for personality disorder songs. Perhaps this might hit the spot.

Have you looked at your blog’s stats? Are there unexpected search terms to find your blog? What is the strangest search term you have ever found?

And seriously – do you believe that someone can ‘learn’ how to be anorexic?

March 25, 2012 by Fiona

Simple Feel Good Things You Can Do Today

Don’t forget how precious life is and how it’s often the simplest things that are the most rewarding.

March 25, 2012 by Fiona

Health at Every Size

I subscribe to Health At Every Size.

Over the years I think I have tried every diet known to man, and many more different versions of them made up by myself. I’ve starved, binged, purged, swallowed pills, swallowed epsom salts, disgusting teas, shakes, exercised for nine hours a day, wrapped myself in cling wrap… you name it, I’ve done it.

I’m not alone. Thousands upon thousands of people have put, and still ARE putting, their bodies through unimaginable abuse – just in the name of attaining or maintaining an unrealistic size and shape. Instead of aiming for ‘me sized’ they are aiming for ‘what they say I should be at any cost sized’.

What price? Our health? It’s a huge price to pay.

What is healthy? Is healthy really skinny? More and more evidence is proving this is NOT so.

From WebMD-

“Obese people who are otherwise healthy live as long as normal-weight people, new research from Canada suggests.

Some obese but healthy people actually are less likely to die of heart problems than normal-weight people who have some medical conditions, the researchers found.

“You shouldn’t just look at body weight alone,” says researcher Jennifer Kuk, PhD, assistant professor of kinesiology and health science at York University in Toronto.

“A healthy lifestyle, including being physically active and eating a healthy diet, is probably more important than your body weight and focusing on weight loss, if you are otherwise healthy,” she tells WebMD.

Kuk and her colleagues used a new tool that helps identify which people would benefit from weight loss and from weight loss surgery. Called the Edmonton Obesity Staging System (EOSS), it grades or stages obese people depending on whether they have diseases such as heart disease or cancer.

The study is published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism.”

So after all my efforts, I might be thin – but many obese people are healthier than I am!

And did you know that just because you appear thin, does not mean you are thin within? The TYPE of fat you carry is more important than how much fat you carry. A thin person with too much visceral fat – fat around the organs – is very unhealthy indeed. More unhealthy than a fat person who has little visceral fat but more peripheral fat (that which is dimpled, under the skin). Many dieticians call this phenonemon “Thin Outside Fat Inside” (TOFI) or “Skinny Fat”

This is a very good article about this phenomenon.

People who are TOFI carry hidden fat deposits – in the white fat around vital organs, streaked through underused muscles, and wrapped around their hearts. This fat sends out chemical signals which eventually lead to insulin resistance, diabetes, and heart disease.

And yet – they are thin.

‘Our work so far has shown that you can take two men of the same age, with the same BMI [body mass index], and find one with five litres of fat within him and another with two litres. We’ve even scanned people who are underweight and found up to seven litres of fat inside them.

‘What we don’t yet possess is enough information about how different genetic groups store fat. But we do know that you can manipulate the way the body stores it by changing the diet.’

- Professor Jimmy Bell, head of the molecular imaging group at the Medical Research Council’s centre at Imperial College, London

So if we really are serious about our health, what can we do?

We can stop abusing our bodies in the name of weight loss.

We can stop relying on a number on the scales and concentrate on how we feel to measure our health.

We can eat well, move more, and let our bodies find their own healthy weight. While that might not look like we want it to look, that’s the best indicator of healthy your body can give you! We are NOT meant to look like most models. We are meant to look like ourselves. Radical idea, hey?

This is why I subscribe to Health At Every Size. The basic concept is – eat healthy food in healthy amounts. Move your body every opportunity you can. Enjoy your life.

And your weight? That will fall into place – as it’s meant to be.

You will look like YOU. And there is not a single other person on this earth who is better at being you, than YOU.

How do you feel about Health At Every Size?

Do you think you are healthy on the inside?

What do you do to stay healthy?

Diet industry has no place in school environment – June Alexander

Diet industry has no place in school environment – June Alexander.

Jenny Craig has NO place in our schools! We do NOT want to teach our children how to diet!

“On May 25 Amy Smith, the CEO of Jenny Craig, will present to a conference of educators for the Alliance for Girls’ Schools (AGSA). Described as a “champion of women’s health” by Catherine Misson, Principal of Melbourne Girls Grammar School, Jenny Craig’s CEO will be enlisted to “inspire” attendees: what they learn will impact on what they bring back to the classroom.

Already letters from health professionals have begun flooding in, with some voicing their protests from as far as the US and Middle East. They all agree on one thing: Global giant Jenny Craig, which profits from the billion-dollar diet industry, is not an appropriate ‘leader’ for educators of young girls.

Bombarded relentlessly with toxic body image messages, girls are constantly pressured to conform to an unrealistic and narrow ideal. Eating disorder experts report dieting to be the biggest predictor of eating disorders, with unhealthy weight loss practices becoming the norm in schools.

By the age of 12-17, 90% of girls will have been on a diet of some kind. 8% of teen girls smoke to control their weight, and many compete to see who can eat the least number of calories during lunch at school.

When the ultimate goal is a certain number on the scale- rather than the ongoing engagement with health-giving behaviours, we are putting young people at risk of developing eating disorders and a lifetime pattern of unhealthy weight loss practices.

Global giant Jenny Craig thrives on women’s body dissatisfaction and the idea that their bodies are ‘not good enough.’ To date, there is no independent research to show that the Jenny Craig approach leads to sustainable outcomes for the majority (>3-5 years). ‘Before and After’ shots do not count as evidence: what is really being sold is weight cycling for most.

Regardless of what Jenny Craig’s CEO is speaking about, having the Jenny Craig brand adopt a leadership role legitimizes the diet industry and sends a strong message to educators that weight is what matters most. One could just as easily have the CEO of a tobacco company present an “inspiring” talk on their business success.

We wonder how many educators will walk away thinking weight loss should be on their agenda (and that Jenny Craig will be there to help them)? How many will transfer these negative body beliefs – consciously or subconsciously – to their students?

Jenny Craig has also sponsored the Kyle and Jackie O Show, with Kyle Sandilands known for his long history of hostile comments towards women. These include fat-shaming female Australian Idol contestants by accusing them of having “tuckshop lady arms,” having a “jelly belly” and an attack on Jenny Craig’s own ambassador Magna Szubanski stating “You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall off … like she could be skinny.”

It was only after the public vented their outrage at Sandilands following his disparaging remarks about a female journalist’s appearance and threatening her with violence, that Jenny Craig finally pulled their sponsorship. “You haven’t got that much titty to be having that low cut a blouse. Watch your mouth or I’ll hunt you down,” Sandilands warned, and called the journalist a “fat slag”
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/we-badly-misjudged-jenny-craig-abandons-sandilands/story-e6frfmqi-1226245912273.

It beggars belief how Jenny Craig’s CEO could possibly be seen as an appropriate choice for educators of young girls, let alone a “champion of women’s health.” While we welcome the urgent and vital discussion on body image and weight and health issues for the conference, the CEO of Jenny Craig is not an appropriate choice to lead this.

Several attempts have been made to discuss the issue with Jan Butler, conference organizer, however she has refused to discuss the issue.

It’s time to escalate matters. Please sign the petition and tell Jan Butler it’s time for Jenny Craig’s CEO to go!!”

Jan Butler: agsa@agsa.org.au

Catherine Misson: principal@mggs.vic.edu.au

The petition is here

March 24, 2012 by Fiona

She’s Gone

This morning was awesome. I met a very close friend – more like a sister to me – for coffee. She has been sick for as long as I’ve known her. Most – 99% – of the time, I do not see her weight, I see my friend. That was true, today, but today, her weight affected me more than usual, probably because she was less well. My friend is emaciated and weighs less than half my weight, is close to my height. I’m underweight – BMI 15 – so she is very very thin indeed.

It infuriates me that while worrying for my friend’s life, fearing that I will lose her – she’s so fragile and she has been emaciated without a break or weight gain for the past 19 years – while knowing the hell she lives – I could be looking at my own weight, feeling like an elephant and wanting to have my ‘old body back’. My old body was nearly dead! Was not at all nice to live in. I hate the phenomenon that is wannarexia and yet, today, I was just as bad. I hate that.

Today was also voting day for our state election – voting in Australia is compulsory. I made my way to my local polling booth and needed to explain to them that I was voting in my old electorate because I had not yet completed and submitted my silent elector form and it was too risky for me to change my enrolled address before submitting that. Being a silent elector means that your address is not published on the rolls, for needed privacy and/or security, it’s not easy to get, you need good reason, and I do have.

It was straightforward, no problems, but it brought up strong feelings – specifically about what I was running away from – the past, and people from my past.

The final nail in the coffin for today, was that the booth was held in a local scout den. A loud, wooden, outdoorsy building filled with scouting paraphernalia. I was a brownie guide as a child and memories of childhood, of SO MANY THINGS just swamped me. It was a tidal wave. A tsunami.

Attempting to walk a longer way home to calm myself, I lost myself.

Haunted girlie tramping over grass and paths, one foot each in two worlds. Parallel worlds – one here, the other, a tumble down an abyss into yesterdays never left behind. Haunted girlie, running for her life, but running IN her nightmare, cannot leave it behind.

Torment. Will there never be peace? All around the edges of the past, whispers and sneers. As Lollirot’s blog name implies – the message was, “Kill the inside.”

I found myself, four hours later, with no idea of where I was – suburb, street, landmarks, all were unfamiliar – and no idea where I had been or how I got there. I kept walking until finally, I did come across a familiar place and from there, found my way home.

Home to 2012.

I’m here now. I’m safe. But how long will it be, before I land in the other world again?

And will I ever leave that world behind in the past where it belongs – for good?

(main image credit)

March 22, 2012 by Fiona

Woman Hopes Others Learn from Her Fight with Eating Disorders

Reblogged from fox4kc.com:

Shawnee, Kan. -- A woman says her fight with anorexia has ended up being a death sentence. Ten months ago she entered hospice care with six months to live.

Now Danielle Buettner says she's still fighting and wants to beat the disease. Her life depends on it. She hopes that by sharing her story others with anorexia will get help before it's too late…

Progress

A quick brag – I couldn’t not share my excitement. Today was another physiotherapy review.

Two years ago I was so unwell that I’d been through periods of not being able to walk, stand, or even sit up by myself.

Six months ago, a lot stronger, but wracked by pain and fatigue, and still so weak that I was unable to sustain a good posture leading to a lot of the pain I was in. Literally sleeping my life away, I spent all my time in bed, in pain.

Today – graduated from six months of hydrotherapy where I worked up to 35 laps of the pool deep water running. Posture is heaps better, as well as general appearance (from the physio’s view) and tone and better core strength! Walking a minimum of four days a week briskly, for at least an hour. Gardening, enjoying the outdoors, enjoying window shopping, painting, sewing..

I will miss hydrotherapy so much – after all, it’s in a pool! But now I have the skills and the strength to safely take it away and do it myself at a public pool. Instead, I’ve now been placed in the physiotherapy back exercise class. It looks to be composed mainly of floor exercises (from what I saw today) and the expressions on my soon-to-be classmate’s faces were rather grim! But I cannot wait.

It’s another step on the way to my ultimate goal. After a few months of back class, I will hopefully be cleared for pilates. Pilates will help me toward my goal of ballet – yes, back to ballet!!! For the first time it actually seems achievable!

*happy dance*

Progress and hard won triumphs constantly remind me why I must never slip back again, must never allow myself to become so unwell again. It was devastating for me to have my body reach such a state of ruin. To lose this hard-fought-for strength and growth again.. I can’t see myself being able to pull this out of the hat another time.

I should not be alive today – I’ve been told that again and again by pretty much every professional on my treatment team over the last so many years. My body is not bouncing back easily, but it IS responding. If I ever go back to how things were again – it will be lost to me. I can kiss any hopes of having a functional body goodbye for life.

It’s not worth it.

Life is so precious and we only get one chance. We only get one body, and all it asks is that we treat it well – fuel it, nourish it, keep it active and not push it too hard. And yet so many of us take it for granted, until it’s too late and something backfires in a painful and debilitating way.

We are not our bodies… but our bodies are pretty damn amazing.

image credit

March 21, 2012 by Fiona

FOUND – Soundtrack To My Life

1995. My first year in the dance program at university. My first year away from home. My first exposure to independance, choice, food on my own terms, money, drugs and drink and consensual sex and staying up all night and making my own rules. (And yet, so controlled was I, that I still found myself unable to break their rules.)

I was so, so alone and lost and scared. I’d ditched an abusive family for an unstable existence where I straight away fell into the arms of the next abuser.

My eating was terrible. My dancing was beginning to fail, after the achievements of the last year at the full time dancing school attached to our state ballet company, I was now on a downward slide – puffy, self conscious, not confident, dizzy, slow, lethargic, heavy. I lost it.

I could no longer leave my problems at the door of the dance studio. I could no longer leave them anywhere.

The next few years were the most miserable of my entire life.

I found solace in music. Listening to Rick Price, Bryan Adams, INXS, Michael Jackson, The Corrs.. the nineties music was my soundtrack and brings back tears today.

Wandering in the university library searching for ballet videos, I found a CD (I decided to include a link here for those of you who have never used a CD… I’m getting old!) - of Brahm’s Second Piano Concerto – borrowed it, and was instantly obsessed. This music speaks to my soul. And since those years, I’ve forgotten what it was called, searched for it on Youtube, found multitudes of second piano concertos – but they were wrong.

Tonight I stumbled on my beloved Brahms again.