Tears In The Night.

(Trigger warning, abuse/rape/self-harm)

I wake crying in the early hours of the morning.  This is when my heart is breaking, when I can no longer ignore it. I lay there this morning and thought “These are the feelings that I used the eating disorder to numb. And I can see why, they are just unbearable. It feels as though I could die from this pain.”

In the dark, I travelled to other dark times. Ones that I’ve revisited far too many times.

When I was still living in the place I grew up with the family, I used to escape outside every night that I could. It would be after 10pm, when all the shouting and screaming and bashing and hair pulling had mostly died down, and the others were getting ready to sleep in their soft safe beds, having their nice warm baths.

I used to sit there in the back yard and stare up at the sky. More nights than not, our mutt Whiskas would come and just sit next to me, leaning on me, and we’d peer upwards in comradely silence. He got it.

The stars were brilliant out there. It was pitch black at night, not close at all to any city or even town that could dull the amazing galaxy up there. And I used to dream. Plan and dream – but mostly dream.

These escapes kept me sane.

“One day I’m going to be free from here. I’m going to be safe. I’m never going to be hurt so much again. I’m not going to go without anything. I’ll be happy. I’ll be successful. I’ll be free.”

Years into the future, Wanker forced me to drive with him out to a secluded national park on the outskirts of the city. This is the same night that he drove to the big bridge in our city, leaned past me and threw open my door. “Jump!” he taunted me. “If you want to kill yourself, just go ahead and jump already.” And I sat there, frozen. He’d torn my pants off after a fight to keep them on that evening, and seen my self harm efforts on the tops of my thighs.

(This was the very beginning of my years of self harming – and I had been terrified at the urge to do it, never having known that people actually did that sort of thing. I never read about people doing it in books or all over the internet like you can, today. My self harm went hidden for years, known only to myself and to Wanker, because I was so terrified of what they would do if they saw what I did to myself, surely they would call out the men in the white jackets..)

At the national park, it was darker than even back at home. Terrified and alone. Nothing but trees as far as the eye could see. And the stars, brilliant above, the first time I’d seen them so brightly since back home.

And as I gazed at them over Wanker’s shoulder, through a film of tears – the smell of the grass strong in the crisp cold air – I remembered those nights of dreaming. And something in me shattered.

“…so this, this is freedom.”

(Image Source)

Wet Wet Wet Outside = A Time Wasting Afternoon.

Winter finally decided to show it’s face here in Australia! I’d been pleasantly tricked into thinking that winter wasn’t going to be much trouble this year.. but brrrr. The sun hasn’t come up today at all. It’s been hiding. Like I have been – in bed.

An oldie but a goodie – it’s Wet Wet Wet out there.

In times like this, I really need ways to keep Shalimar occupied – because she goes stir crazy. This morning I let her outside for a bit, and came back to find her stubbornly scrunched up on the path, in pouring rain. Not even little light raindrops – a heavy downpour. She was determined that it wasn’t SHE who would give in, the rain would, she would just stare it down like she does next door’s Chihuahua. (Who, intelligently, was inside today.) (Yes, Shalimar, I know calling a Chihuahua intelligent is insulting to really intelligent animals like you…now stop clawing me.)

Anyway, the result of this morning’s escapade was the the rain won, and I had to rescue my forlorn little furry bundle and rub her dry with a towel. She enjoyed that.

So I’ve been dashing to and fro with toys and string!!! Lots of fun. My floor is linoleum so Shalimar skids for a full metre at the end of each dash. She looks like she’s skiing!

(Modified from Source)

Shalimar, however, looks like something more from Star Wars.

When it’s raining, I have trouble keeping my spirits up. Especially in winter. It truly hasn’t been any less than dim and dark today. I actually began to feel like I was the only person left in the world, as I had no idea when my home and community care worker was due, and texts to three different workers at the office drew no answers! It was too quiet!

Maybe the zombie apocalypse really had come? Were Shalimar and I the only living creatures still left alive?

Immediately I brightened!

Memegenerator – perfect for expressing my excitement! It helped me express a few other things too:

I mean, why? Have you ever walked behind a boy or group of boys, all with their pants down round their knees? They look so silly. How is that cool?

And I could not resist this last one:

And okay, JUST ONE MORE. Just one. I promise:

You can probably tell I didn’t get much done today.

I’m really in that sort of don’t care, depressed, blah mood. I was on such a high on Thursday and yes, I was expecting a hard come-down. But it can’t undo the good already done by going to ballet.

I realise that we often go through life seeing it through a filter. For me, that filter has been from the viewpoint of a bullied person – I felt perpetually a loser, inferior, shameful, just horrible. I didn’t want to show my face in public and felt I would die in shame to just be me.

On Thursday, to be greeted so warmly and kindly, was so very healing. It’s not ‘fixed’, but it’s a lot better than it was. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to see my life through a filter of  ”I’m not a bad person at all”. I already have experienced a shift in my self perception and the tone of my memories of my primary school years, by being contacted by quite a few of my primary school classmates on facebook – whereas I had seen myself as a snivelling, disgusting, dirty child who everyone loathed, they remembered me as ‘a sweet dancing fairy’. Suddenly I realised that not everything was as harsh as it was in my memory – how our personal filters change things!

Sadly this kind of shift isn’t possible with the bullying at the dance school – because what happened there was THAT bad, and I haven’t taken it out of context at all. But to realise that the vitriol was confined to that particular group of girls helps – I know that peer pressure means that everyone in a small group is likely to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to who is uncool and therefore open to abuse, and also that teenage girls CAN be that mean, but it doesn’t mean that the whole world thinks that. Hopefully this experience will separate for me the love of ballet and the horror of the bullying forever.

I also realise that an hour of ballet a week isn’t going to automatically fix my eating disorder – but there is still a bit of disappointment there that, despite my strong desire to be fit to dance, and my fear of losing all this if I ever went backwards – I’m still pretty much stuck.

Have any of you ever felt like you will truly never be able to eat or drink again in any way that’s ‘normal’? (whatever normal is – I know there isn’t really a normal – but I mean, in a way that fuels your body, doesn’t make your body sick, doesn’t lead to you purging it, and last but not least, doesn’t mean hours of freaking out.)

My relationship with food just seems forever screwed up, and I can’t imagine it ever changing. I hope so, and I’m going to fight to try to change it, but the belief just isn’t there. I can’t remember ever having a ‘normal’ healthy eating pattern. I can’t remember what it’s like to feel satiated, to not feel ravenously hungry, and most of all, to actually HAVE food in my stomach that stays there, is digested and passes through. That is perhaps the hardest thing of all for me.

I regret ever learning how to vomit, because I became far too good at it too easily. One of the reasons I was on TPN several times was because the vomiting was so bad, that even 12 resource plus drinks a day plus six meals – half of them bolused nasogastrically – weren’t preventing me from losing weight. That admission was one of the worst nightmares by the way, just imagine that – eating three big hospital meals and three big snacks, all accompanied by resource plus drinks AND being bolused in between or overnight? Sheer madness.

But I can’t turn back time. Wishing won’t help me, either. All I can do is every single ‘right now’ that I have, do my best. Keep on trying, no matter how many times I fall down. Distract myself with other things. Keep telling myself how much I DO have to look forward to. And do my best to embrace that old ‘what my body can DO’ importance over the appearance obsession that the eating disorder has bred.

I do know, now, what it’s like again to be on a high from moving my body, what it’s like for my body to feel GOOD, and I never, ever want to lose the ability to feel that way again.

So – onwards and upwards!

And while I’m wasting your time with this lame space-filler post – I have a problem. My hair is very shaggy dog!! What to do? I like it to be longer – I actually am liking this length, I just wish it wouldn’t always look like I just rolled out of bed in the morning.  I also don’t have a hairdryer and won’t be getting one soon, so styling is a bit difficult. What would you do? Any suggestions would be much appreciated! Thank you in advance

I Didn’t ‘Used’ To Be A Dancer – I AM A Dancer.

It’s Friday evening here in Australia, and I’m still shaking my head about something – the impossible happened. I actually went and did a ballet class yesterday morning. ME. BALLET. IMPOSSIBLE?

It happened!!! It was real! I did it!

Thank you so much to everyone who commented and passed on encouragement and happiness for me! I was overwhelmed with how many of you care – you are all quite awesome

I think that yesterday had quite a few ‘wins’ for me.

Social anxiety prevented me from getting myself anywhere for quite a few years – the last straw for me was when my legs started giving out on bus stairs. I could no longer catch a bus without help to get into it, and when my legs gave way, people would stare. Same with the train. There often wasn’t so much of a step up to get on, but getting to the station, the travelling, being surrounded by people.. it was all too much.

I also fear hugely the unknown – unknown places, finding my way around, maybe getting lost.

Yesterday morning I left at 7.30am for a 10am class. It was frightfully early, but I was planning to be there an hour early, to scope things out, warm up, etc. Also in the back of my mind I said “Well, something always goes wrong when I don’t leave enough time!”

You can plan your journey online using a government travel site, and it told me to catch a train to a far off suburb, walk a fair distance, and catch a bus round and back to where I wanted to go.

It started off fine. I caught the train, and got off at the correct station. Referring to the map I’d drawn, I walked out and followed the directions. However the street was no longer there – instead there was some huge construction project going on. Neither was the bus stop.

A worker directed me onwards when I asked him where people caught the X bus now, and I went that way, but ended up hopelessly lost. After wandering around in a totally strange to me place for half  an hour, a different bus went past, I flagged it down and simply said “I’m lost!” and the lovely driver gave me a lift to where the bus departed from now. I was a long way out of my way!

From there I caught the right bus, shot past the stop I needed by about 15 minutes walk, but finally found the right place – with 15 minutes to spare.

Even a few months ago, I would have melted into a pile of tears in this situation. Panicked so badly that I hyperventilated, or simply retraced my steps to the station, turned around and gone home.

Yesterday I not only made it to where I was going, I was able to laugh at it. It really was kind of funny!

One of the ballerinas who runs the school had come in especially to greet me, another  reason I wanted to be early – not knowing how early ‘early’ was. Thankfully I was there at a good time for her, too. She came up and was just beaming! Such a magical smile, so genuinely happy to see her again. I first met her about 20 years ago and it’s amazing that she and other people haven’t aged in that time. Ballet must truly be an elixir of youth

I felt so special being welcomed so warmly! Hugged and introduced to the class teacher (who turned out to be another ballerina I remembered who also remembered me!) They presented me with a lovely tshirt and tote bag as gifts and some free classes – so I have nearly a year’s worth of classes to go to! One of the best things she said to me was that she saw my name still on the honour board every time she went to the [redacted] Ballet studios – and thought of me. And the excitement she shared with me because I was finally actually walking onto a ballet floor in a ballet studio was so infectious I forgot most of my nervousness. It was a truly special welcome.  (Image Source)

Class was awesome too. I actually had little idea of what to expect – it is a ‘Ballet Barre and Pilates’ class. We did a lot of floor exercises, core strength exercises, leg exercises and some barre work at the end. I loved it. I wasn’t expecting to be able to do as much as I did, but I did all of it, and felt that I did it quite well considering that I hadn’t danced for more than a 15 years! I did struggle with things like keeping muscles working that I’d forgotten even existed – and with my own strength and stamina but pushed on. I’m proud of myself for doing everything in the class, completing the entire class.

I felt totally comfortable! The other class members came in all shapes and sizes and ages seemed to range from early 20′s to perhaps late 60′s. There was a really varied group of women. Also everyone was dressed comfortably. Leggings and/or trackpants, jumpers or skivvies or tee shirts. Socks seemed more common than ballet flats – only three of us wore them. Socks would have been more comfortable for the pilates exercises but I was thankful for my ballet shoes when we did the barre work – socks are very slippery for that sort of stuff! And the atmosphere was lovely, the women were all down to earth, friendly, warm people. No body shame, no bitchiness, all in a ballet class? Heaven!

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The only hard part for me was that there was one girl in the class (a younger one) who was emaciated – obviously, unavoidably anorexic. I studiously ignored her (except when saying hello, thankfully she didn’t come near me anyway) because I wanted this place to be free of that – I didn’t want to spend my classes looking at her and comparing myself. I hate that I do this, but I do, every time I see another disordered person on the street. I also hate that I find myself thinking things like “I’m not thin enough, I’m a failure, I should be thinner than her..” because I KNOW what a hell it is to live what she’s living – I know that hell. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It hurt and infuriated me so much every time someone said to me, “I wish I could have a bit of your anorexia so I could lose weight” or even “I wish I was as thin as you”. It was horrible! I can’t believe I do that, myself, think that of someone else, KNOWING their hell.

Also, I was extremely aware that the school’s owner and the class teacher knew I had been out for years because of the anorexia, that I’d been very sick with it. So I found myself looking at this girl and thinking I bet they are looking at her and me and thinking “but that is anorexia – why aren’t you really thin like she is? “

I know that’s not true at all, that’s stupid thinking, and that they know I’m here now doing this class because I’ve come a long way – put weight on, kept weight on, etc. And they are very non-judgemental people. It’s just an example of how screwed up ED can make us and how it twists a situation.

Today I woke up sore all over and barely able to move with Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness – there wasn’t an inch of me that didn’t ache. But it was worth it! And next time, it won’t hurt quite as much

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So that was my first ballet class after all these years – my return to doing what I love. Next Thursday can’t come quickly enough for me! It was the first time in years that I can remember not feeling depressed AT ALL. I felt on a high, totally singing and dancing in my heart even after the class was over. And I realise that this could be the key to recovery for me. I remember what it was like to place more importance on what my body can DO than what it looks like. I remember how good it felt to feel my muscles all working. To feel strong. To express myself.

If I can place more importance on being strong and being able to dance, hopefully I can let go of the ‘too fat, must be nothing’ obsession that still is there, all the time, despite me choosing not to act on it. Perhaps I will be able to comfortably gain the rest of the weight I need to gain, knowing that I’m creating a functioning dancer’s body – an instrument – rather than it just being ‘size’ and ‘weight’. I really hope so.

At the very least, that feeling of absolute joy – is enough to help me get through the rest of the week. I haven’t felt that joy in forever. I’ve missed it.

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Yesterday it was like I was coming ALIVE after years in some forced hibernation. I was waking up. I can’t wait to see what else is on the horizon for me.

Thank you again for all your lovely comments. I’m so happy to be able to share something so positive. And I truly wish that if any of you have dreams that you have lost to your illness, dreams you are putting off because something has to be ‘right’ first, and/or dreams that you dearly hope for but deep down can’t believe they can ever possibly happen for you – don’t give up. My dream was impossible – and yet it’s happening to me! So never, ever think it can’t happen for you too, and hang on to those dreams.

What is your dream? Do you believe it is possible? 

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Impossible Dreams – Back To Ballet.

Sometimes even the most impossible-seeming dreams can come true.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact time frame of many events in the last two decades of my life, partly because so much time was sucked into being sick and in hospital for months on end, where the days all merge into one another and the world outside no longer seems real. When you come out, you are shellshocked and have no idea what’s happened since you last were there. Whole buildings have appeared where there was a hole in the ground before. New prime ministers have been elected. Disasters have happened. Celebrities have died. People where you live have changed.

The other problem was my cognition. A starving mind doesn’t grasp time well. Nor memories. There are a lot of holes there. The holes scare me.

But roughly, it’s been fifteen years since I last danced. Fifteen years!! A decade and a half. Almost half my lifetime.

Ballet was the last ‘dream’ that Anorexia robbed me of before pushing me completely off the cliff.

(Image Source)

As I’d lost hopes and dreams one by one, I’d lost my grip on life and reality more and more. One of the main reasons I have survived my life is because I had goals. I had dreams. I was going to have a good future, and I was doing everything I could to make sure that future happened for me. My dream was to be a dancer – and I worked my butt off to make it happen. My passion for dancing was so deep that I stayed at that school, where I was bullied mercilessly, for two years rather than leave and go back to a school where I felt wanted, liked, accepted. Because it was worth that hell, to be a dancer.

I’d lost everything by the time ballet was taken from me. My beloved cat Hotchy who had been my one and only remaining friend in the world.  The hope of having a loving family. The only home I’d ever known. Innocence. My body. My safety.  So much more. All gone but ballet. And then, I was told I was too sick to dance. I was kicked out of the performance strand of my course, having to make up the last of my BA in units I could take from anywhere else university wide (having only electives left to complete, and the staff deciding it was extreme circumstances). I tried. I studied Subjects in Literature, Information Technology, Business, Creative Arts. But my mojo was gone.

I was in free fall. There was nothing left to hold on for.

(Image Source)

Over the years that followed, the hope that I would ever dance again fell ever further from reach. My limbs atrophied, I lost pretty much all my muscle mass. I developed osteopenia, then osteoporosis, then stress fractures in both femurs and both tibias in my legs. I felt the agony of peripheral neuropathy. I was in so much constant pain, that my body was to me, crippled, and would never function well again.

I was wrong.

It’s taken over a year of hard painful work with the help of physiotherapy services, but today I graduated from physio. Tomorrow, I am going to my first ballet class – more accurately it’s a ‘ballet barre and pilates’ class because I’m still very rusty, I still can’t do anything! But it’s a start and I’m so excited.

I’m so so so terrified too!

Tomorrow, I will be facing up to my past. All these years, the bullying that I went through at the ballet school and what was happening at home at that time, has overpowered every waking moment of my life. I’m not just going back to dancing again, I’m going back to a dancing school run by one of the ballerinas who was a principal in the company when I was in the school. I’m pretty certain there will be more people there that I know from back then. So it’s going to be pretty confronting!

I think that sometimes, opportunities arise to make peace with our pasts – and this is one for me. I’m hoping that I can realise that I am okay, and that I always was okay – that the way I was treated back then wasn’t because I was a horrible monster, but because adolescent girls can be nasty little bitches,  and sometimes bad things do happen to good people. They will no longer be the bitches in my memory, they will have grown up now. I’m hoping my mind can accept that all that happened then is over – gone – never again. Accept it and let go.

My physio today told me that ballerina who runs the school is coming in tomorrow morning just to meet me and make sure everything is okay, and that she was extremely lovely and welcoming on the phone. She’s also going to throw in a few free classes, and giving me a pair of ballet shoes to wear because mine are about 15 years old! How lovely are people? I continue to be surprised by the generosity and goodness of people towards me. So thankful, so blessed.

I went digging to find my old ballet shoes, this is some of the few things I’ve managed to save from those years. I never had any photos, but circled in faint reddish/pink is a little headshot of myself. Apologies for how dusty it all is, it lives in a suitcase under my bed (rather, Shalimar’s cavern)

 It’s really lucky that she is bringing me some shoes too. My ballet flats actually are still alive after all these years! But they are quite stiff, and mouldy.

But still wearable.

Shalimar is puzzled by my excitement! She’s on her leash because the door is open, I was letting her play near me as I dug out my shoes.

As you can see,  I have muscle on my calves again. (I have a lot of trouble looking at this photo and not seeing that my legs, to me, are HUGE now But they are legs that can walk and DANCE.) I also have scars, on my arms too.  I’ll be wearing opaque tights and trackpants over those, as well as a long sleeved top (thankfully it’s COLD) so I don’t have to worry about those. But I’m dreading the reaction if anyone there sees my scars.

I’m very tight and not at all limber any more. I’m also very weak  and don’t have much stamina. But they are all things that with work I will change. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

I can’t wait til tomorrow! I’m not going to be held down by my eating disorder any more. It’s time to spread my wings and fly. It really does feel like I’m being given my wings back

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Pinch me someone, am I dreaming?

What have you LOST to your Eating Disorder (or other illness/addiction)?

Have you ever had dreams you thought impossible, become reality?

The 1 in 20 Project – ED Bites

Carrie at Ed Bites has come up with a really good campaign we bloggers can get into – the 1 in 20 campaign. 1 in 20 of us will be diagnosed with an eating disorder in our lifetime. For comparison – 1 in 88 people are diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorders. I also shudder to think that this 1 in 20 is possibly a conservative estimate given that so many people with an eating disorder never get treatment for it.

It’s shocking that so many of us WILL be diagnosed with eating disorders in our life time and yet they are still so misunderstood and there’s so little help out there for those who need it. When I started this blog, I was horrified that to get adequate treatment, most of us need to be on death’s door. That’s crazy. It’s like telling a cancer patient to come back when the cancer has fully metastasised and has nearly killed them, because they aren’t ‘sick enough’ for help yet. Every single day, I still read and hear stories of people over the world and friends close to me who are desperately in need of treatment and finding no options. People who have to get sicker in order to even see an ED service. I have had young people fighting anorexia say to me “I have to lose weight because I need help and otherwise they won’t help me”. How screwed up is that?

And then there is the ignorance of the public. Too many times I’ve heard people saying that they wish they had anorexia or bulimia, because they would love to be slim or lose weight fast or eat anything without getting fat. Too many people think that it’s a lifestyle choice, like a diet. That it’s a superficial spoilt little brat syndrome. That it’s as simple as choosing to get off your backside and not be silly any more.

The truth is that while we have the choice to fight the disease, many of us struggle to even see that we are sick. That’s part of the disease. We never asked to have it, and it’s not something we could choose to have or not. It’s not something that is caused by a diet or by abuse or by bullying or by the media. Those are triggers, but the disease itself is not caused by them at all. And the cure goes far deeper than just restoring weight – which is at best, a bandaid.

In Carrie’s words:

Each year, roughly 4 million babies are born in America.

Approximately 200,000 of these babies will develop an eating disorder.

Every year has 525,600 minutes.

That means that every 2.6 minutes, a child will be diagnosed with an eating disorder.

Every two minutes, a parent will be told “Your child has an eating disorder.”

The 1 in 20 Project – ED Bites.

If you would like to join this public awareness campaign, please post the above graphic on your blog with a link back to Carrie’s 1 in 20 post. Carrie’s site has more information. 

Living In A Bubble World, and Primary and Secondary Emotions.

First of all, it’s been such a lovely sunny Saturday! You would hardly believe it’s Winter here, it was quite warm outside. Shalimar has been soaking up the sunshine.

As you can see, she’s going to have to be careful, because soon she will not be able to roll back over again! She will be stuck, like a big cat-pat with four waving legs. What a belly!

I also managed to catch her red-pawed in the middle of waking me up from my afternoon nap. This is why sleeping in my household is never an easy thing.  Simon’s Cat could have been based on Shalimar.

Sleep for humans is a precious commodity around here. Sleep for cats, not so much. Food is too, now that I’ve gone back to feeding her just what she is supposed to eat and nothing more. I feel awful because she’s not happy about it – but I’d rather have her a bit bitchy and here for the long term than die early from not being healthy.

It was really interesting reading everyone’s comments about how their eating disorders affected their feeding of their pets. It sounds like food is a far  more complicated thing for many pets than ‘just eating’.  Like it is for us, I guess.

Food and eating isn’t actually my biggest struggle. Neither is my weight. They are huge problems for me, every single day, all day every day. But despite having an eating disorder they aren’t the biggest source of problems for me.

Emotions are.

Even when my eating disorder kept my emotions totally hidden away – they were a problem. The problem then was that I was denying them. And a legacy of my life-long habit of NOT facing up to how I feel is that when I do face my emotions – they are just too much for me to cope with.

OVERWHELMING.

Which sends me right back into blocking them out again – by starving them silent. By bingeing to create a ‘greater’ pain or filling up the emptiness. By purging to try and get them out of me. Exercising to beat them out of me, or (more often) to beat myself up.

Since as young as I can remember, I haven’t been able to stay in the present. I haven’t been able to cope in the world around me, and then with my own feelings. I only recently recognised that I’ve spent pretty much most of my life not even here. 

(image source)

A dear friend of mine wrote about her own life in an email, and mentioned two words – derealisation  and depersonalisation. I had an inkling of what they would mean – but looked them up anyway. It was another one of those ‘aha’ moments. I had words for something I have been doing all my life.

Derealization is a when the outside world is experienced as unreal to you personally, while depersonalization is unreality in one’s sense of self. Both of them are ways I have felt more often than I’ve felt ‘normal’ – whatever normal is –  because I haven’t a clue.

Since I was very little, I’ve created a ‘bubble’ around me, to protect myself, but more to just shut everything and everyone else out. My earliest memories are bubbled away. All that existed for me at times was myself and what was around me that I wanted to include. The world ‘out there’ wasn’t very realistic. It seemed far away and sometimes I ended up stuck in my ‘bubble’ – unable to break out and join in. Derealisation  as an adult still feels like I’m in my own bubble, but I don’t shut the entire world out. I’m able to interact with everyone else and go about my business, but it’s all a very long way away outside of me.

Depersonalisation feels like I am almost watching myself go through life, not quite there. Watching my life happen from outside of myself. Not standing a distance away – for me it’s as though two realities are superimposed one over the other, but not quite in sync so that  the images don’t quite match up. So I’m watching myself from very nearly the same place as I’m actually occupying – if that makes any sense.

Both these states have led to my entire life feeling dream-like. Either it’s been a nightmare, or a really nice dream I’d like to relive – or now, just not… real.

Depression being such a battle lately has been a bit harder for me to endure because of this. It’s hard to go through your life feeling depressed, but the distance from reality makes me feel far more like I’m underwater or unable to actually ‘touch’ the world around me.

I also talked about primary and secondary emotions with my case manager yesterday and that’s something I want to do a post about when I’ve read the handouts she gave me. It’s a new concept to me, even though it makes a lot of sense.

I’ve spent my life not feeling safe to show my real feelings. If I was happy, it might get taken from me. And I certainly wasn’t going to show people how much they had hurt me. So for lot of my life I cultivated a blank, emotionless exterior.

As a result of feelings not being ‘okay’, I have a lot of secondary emotions. An example might be feeling happy (primary emotion) but that’s not okay. So I feel ashamed, and that shame (secondary emotion) lasts a lot longer than the original feeling of happiness did. Shame is actually something that I seem to feel a LOT of the time, more than anything else, these days. It makes sense to me that I’m not really feeling shame all-the-time so much as my real feelings becoming feelings of shame.

Part of my struggle with self image and self hatred is tied to this overwhelmingly constant feeling of shame. I feel like I’m a terrible, horrible, monster of a person, like I should not even be in the same room as other people, lest I infect their lives somehow. I’m ashamed of my appearance, because I always just look so, so wrong. Ashamed of what I’ve done – what the ED has made me do. Things like being selfish, shoplifting food, bingeing and purging. That’s actually a HUGE source of shame for me – the bingeing and purging. I walk around all the time feeling so, so small and horrible and hoping the world won’t guess my horrible, disgusting secret. (image source)

So to realise that I feel shame automatically as a result of pretty much any emotion is a revelation for me! I find myself wondering how much of the shame I feel is ‘learnt’ and how much is actually real, pure legit shame? Growing up I felt a lot of shame from being dirty and unkempt and not having the things kids were supposed to have, and I was shamed more often than not by my own family. So now as an adult, I realise that my constant feelings of shame are something I have learnt to feel and that I could be a much happier and less shameful person if I work on those feelings. Working on them sounds like another constant challenge to add to the acceptance self-talk I’ve been doing –  to continually notice and accept my real feelings ( “I feel happy.” “I feel sad.” and so on) before it turns  into shame or whatever other emotion I feel secondarily.

I don’t know how or even if working on my primary and secondary emotions will help me feel less distant and more ‘here’,  but my case manager did say that it would help with the depression and that alone is more than enough to motivate me.

All this is very long winded and introspective – but that’s what I think is important when it comes to fighting our eating disorders – being able to look within and start to notice what’s really going on – so we no longer need to abuse our physical bodies because of it.

I would love to  hear your thoughts and experiences! 

Forgiveness

Chances are that all of us have been hurt, betrayed, angered, upset – at some time, by someone. That’s life, it happens.

It’s often really hard to forgive someone who has wronged you. And that’s understandable. Often, they have just gotten on with what appears to be a pretty good life themselves, leaving you behind damaged and stewing. Stewing about being so hurt, and stewing about them just being able to move on, when you can’t. I hear it often when talking to others, I’ve even said it myself – “Why should I forgive them? They don’t deserve it!”

Yes, much of the time, they don’t deserve it. But YOU do. Often the person who hurt you has moved on, and they don’t even know or care if you have forgiven them or not.

Forgiveness isn’t for the person we are forgiving. It’s for ourselves. 

When something happens to us that hurts us, part of healing and being able to get out lives back again is accepting that it happened, accepting that you are hurt, and accepting whatever damages have been done to you – this is now, your reality – you can’t change that, but you need to be able to accept it to start moving on yourself – rather than going over and over and over it. I think a huge key to acceptance can be forgiving.

I read Natascha Kampusch’s book, 3096 Days, in which the author writes about the eight years in captivity in the dungeon of the man who abducted and abused her.  Reading what she went through, I cannot imagine living through that, I cannot imagine any human being coming out of that situation at all, and not being totally utterly broken. Yet she survived, and not only survived, but she amazes me with her strength, her wisdom (so obvious in her writing) and her ability to accept what happened to her and try and move forward.

What surprised me most about Natascha is her forgiveness of her abductor Wolfgang Priklopil. Her empathy for him, obviously mentally ill to her. How could someone forgive a person who hurt them SO MUCH, so deeply – ruined their entire lives – mentally ill or not? And yet she did. As Natascha wrote, she realised that if she did not forgive him, it would destroy her. She wrote that the reason she survived what happened was that she DID forgive him – otherwise it would have eaten her away inside.   (Image source.)

We can all learn a lot from Natascha Kampusch. I also totally recommend her book, although I warn that it’s extremely harrowing to read.

So, I have been aware of the benefits of forgiveness for myself, personally, for a while now. And yet, it’s not so easy at all. I struggle to forgive. My mother for her cruelty and neglect. My siblings for their abuse. The men who abused me once I left that home. The so-called friend who turned out to be a user and abuser herself.

I even get mad at life, for throwing me such a difficult time of it. At society, for turning a blind eye… and it’s hard to forgive, especially when I am still fighting to reclaim any sort of life and the world around me just goes on. Especially when there are some people who don’t even have a clue what it’s like to struggle in any way, who treat you as if you are personally a failure for not getting up and on with it, because things should be so easy. After all, it was for them.

Most of all, I find it hard to forgive myself. For allowing myself to be used and abused over and over. For being weak. For being sick. For not just getting on with life. For everything. For just being ME!

It’s really easy to go through my entire life angry at the world, angry at everyone who hurt me in any way, angry at those who didn’t help me, angry at myself, angry at LIFE. And becoming more and more bitter and filled with hatred and vileness by the day. This is the mindset that kills us, inside.

I think forgiveness comes more easily with compassion and empathy. Personally, I find it hard to forgive someone when all you can see is this horrid mean person who did this and got away with it. But when I look behind that, try and understand them a bit better, I find a human being. Who usually is hurt and damaged in their own way. I start to understand how their own brokenness might have contributed to what they did to me. And I can find at least a bit of compassion for what they must have been through – enough to soften my heart towards them. Have I forgiven? I don’t know. I still hang on to a lot of negative feelings of anger, sadness, “WHY”, but I think I’m slowly coming to a place where I will one day be able to let them go, knowing that they no longer still have any hold over me because I’m not  storing  anything about them in my heart and mind any more.

Compassion also is important towards ourselves, in order to start to forgive ourselves. I find it SO hard to have compassion for myself. My inner dialogue has for as long as I can remember, been harsh, full of anger and derision. I hold myself accountable in a way I’d never do to another, not even my own abusers – and interestingly enough, I have become my own abuser.

While my inner dialogue is full of  ”should” and “shouldn’t”, I can’t win. I always am not good enough, I always could have done better. I’m not trying, I’m a failure, it’s all my fault. Everyone else can just do what they need to do to get better. Why am I this way? How could I have been such a stupid loser to get so stuck in an eating disorder in the first place? Look at my friends who have recovered – what’s stopping me? Most of them have been through their own hells – and yet they are picking themselves up and getting on with life. Why can’t I just get off my butt, stop feeling sorry for myself and ‘get with the program’?

Talking to myself this way, I set myself up to fail. My self hatred grows worse, and I struggle to look after myself physically and mentally when I hate myself.

I’ve been doing my best to be gentle with  myself. “You are trying the best you can with what you have. Everyone’s situation is different – this is your life, and you are trying, that’s what matters. It wasn’t your fault for any of the abuse that happened – you were just a kid/a vulnerable young woman/in an impossible situation. You couldn’t have made it not happen at the time – even if you see options you could have taken to help yourself now – they were not there for you back then. And what was done to you – isn’t your shame to carry round. It’s theirs. Be proud that you have made it this far – you are still here. Don’t lose sight of how far you have come. And it’s time to give to yourself the care you would give to any child or vulnerable young woman you knew was going through what you did – right now.”              

I could go on – but you get the picture. Whatever you would say or feel towards someone totally NOT yourself in the same situation is often the thing to say and feel towards yourself – you wouldn’t blame a kid for being abused. Why blame yourself for abuse when you were a child? You wouldn’t blame another person for being ill, again, why blame yourself?

Letting go of the anger, the shame, the self-recrimination allows us to become more forgiving of ourselves – which in turn helps us move towards acceptance and hopefully a better chance of healing.

Do you struggle to forgive, whether it’s someone else or yourself? 

Has forgiveness or lack of it affected your life and health? 

(Top Image Source) (Bottom  Image Source)

Eating Disorders and Pet Feeding; and My Secret Dream World.

Happy Monday. It’s been a rainy holiday here, the perfect day to snuggle up inside – which is exactly what I’ve done.  For the most part anyway – as usual, Shalimar cannot accept that it’s rainy and cold outside, and begs for me to take her out. So I did. And this is what happened:

She’s gained some weight again. She’s struggled with being overweight for the last few years, actually was obese about a year ago. I was terrified for her health, and put her on a Vet supervised obesity diet for as long as we could afford ($55 a bag!!!! Pet food can be more expensive than people food..)  She was a LOT better. Even though I couldn’t keep her on the expensive food for more than a few months, it helped us to get into a routine and set amount for two meals a day – she no longer pesters me for food at all hours, and I no longer give in and spoil her with tidbits and extra feedings.

Well, at least, that was the case. Lately I’ve been slipping – she’s begun pawing for food at all hours again, partly because of cabin fever with all the rain lately, and I’ve been giving in to her. That stops again, right now. It’s scary how fast a few little bits here and there blow her up. I want her to be happy and healthy and she is neither if she gets too fat.

I have always been scared about how much to feed her. When I first adopted her, I vowed that she would never know what it was like to be hungry and not know where her next meal was coming from, or even if she would ever get a next meal again. I also was scared of messing up her relationship with food like mine is. I still struggle with that fear. Especially as I hold a lot of guilt about the number of times I’ve had to board her, and for me, food and love are hard to separate at times.  (It was a lovely pet motel who cherished her, but it was horrible for her still – to be away from home in a cage, large or not, outings on the grass and cuddles or not. This is a huge motivation for me to stay well and out of hospital.)

Mostly I just want Shalimar to enjoy her life with food just being food. That’s my goal. I just want her to be as happy as she can be, and as healthy as she can be. When she’s happy, I’m happy – which is why she’s allowed to eat my beans!

The other thing I wanted to write about today, was my ‘Secret Dream World’. In other words, where I go, when I’m in a very deep, almost comatose state of sleep. What has this got to do with eating disorders? Well for me, a lot.

It sounds crazy. It probably IS crazy.

All of my life, I have dreamt about a place, the same place. It’s recognisable to me because it only changes as one would expect with time (trees growing, etc). It’s a huge, complex place, like another entire WORLD. There are still new places that I haven’t explored or discovered yet. And it’s a beautiful place. Utterly beautiful. All the things that make this world of ours beautiful are there but perhaps even MORE amazing if that’s possible. There are buildings there, but they don’t spoil it like our man made crap is spoiling our world. They seem to coexist with the natural landscape as though they belong there (or have been extremely well planned and designed.)

I used to call it the Ether – for want of a better name. Not because I knew of the connotations of the word ‘ether‘ at that time, but because as a dancer, I used to strive to be ‘ethereal’ like the willis in Giselle‘ – and came to love the word itself. Some words are just beautiful to me.

I am a dancer, I grew up living the dance. Eating, sleeping, walking, playing, reading, I danced my way through life. So it was only natural that I tried to dance in my dreams. I found this a frustrating practice, because I could never quite touch the ground there – it was like gravity didn’t have the same force as it does here in our world. Have you ever tried to dance when you are hovering a few centimetres off the ground? (No, I suspect not!) It’s hard. Your movements become more sluggish and not tidy at all. I just wanted to dance!!

And it was this battle to dance that led me to learn to fly. I found that I could ‘step’ into pockets of the air, and that a leap through the air (a grand jeté) became flight. I soon progressed from leaping to flying, full on flying. Oh the exhilaration! Although all this was in dreaming, it was all SO REAL. I would fly and fly and fly and fly, and sing at the top of my lungs, and wake up back in the real world exhausted, breathless, still trying to sing, on top of the world. Deeply disappointed to be awake and wanting only to go back again and fly away forever.

Another interesting thing I discovered is that often I would fly too high, and I’d crash into some invisible shield, sort of like a safety net, that bounced me back again. I found myself believing that if I broke that safety net, I would never wake up again in real life. That was scary as much as it was tempting.  Especially as when I used to have these dreams all the time, my life was pretty horrible. I was a broken spirited, sick stick, trapped in a body that was dying and painful. I couldn’t see a way out, and so to escape it in these amazing dreams was heavenly.

These dreams are now one of the biggest pulls for me to sink back into the disorder. I only really seemed to ‘go’ there when I was very unwell – which makes me believe that they weren’t so much dreams as hallucinations. My mind needs to be in a very starved state for it to create all of that amazingness. And it’s still tempting, because living in the real world is still scary and painful. I’m terrified of life, terrified of being a failure, terrified of so much more. It’s the only place I’m free from the PTSD stuff, the depression, the pain and the never ending battle with my body.

And this battle, this epic, life-long battle, has left me so very weary. I often feel like I’m a thousand years old rather than 34. I need a rest – but the kind of rest I need isn’t possible in real life.

Does anyone else have this sort of experience? This sort of rich dream life that becomes more tempting than real life, an escape from fear and unhappiness?

I’m doing my best to make my real life as tempting as possible. Rejecting the oh-so-easy choice of just copping out and letting the eating disorder completely take over me again, so it would be over and I’d be ‘gone’. Nothing worth fighting for is ever easy, and that’s so true of my fight for life, for a real, genuine, LIFE.

My battle is for that feeling of genuine peace and freedom, and for a safety that I’ve never felt here. I hope that some day I can bring some of that beauty that exists only in my dreams into this world – perhaps by becoming more confident with my art again and painting it. Perhaps by finding a way to create little havens for other people here, havens where they can feel some sort of peacefulness and freedom to be themselves – another dream I have long held is to work with people in some sort of professional therapeutic capacity, to heal from what’s hurt them already, and just as importantly, to equip them with tools to not become that hurt and broken in the first place. To do this in a refuge-like setting that I’ve created for them.  It’s not a concrete dream so much as something that is still evolving.

To be able to begin working on making this dream happen, I have to first get better, myself. Which means staying in the here and now.

If anyone is convinced I’m a nutcase because of this post, I have one request – please can my straightjacket be rainbow coloured?

If you have a pet, how does your eating disorder affect how you feed them, and how you react to their weight? 

Do you have an interesting dream-life? Are your dreams more incredible when you are more unwell? Or less so? 

(Queen of the Willis image credit)

(Flying Dancer credit)

(Self-Battle image from Facebook)

Sweet Little Sister

Reblogged from iamnotshe:

My Fiona
My Wee Fi

Strong as a tree
Bright as a star
An Angel on Earth
There’s no one on par.

A heart that is strong
A mind that is wise
She cares for so many
She’ll always have ties

Her arms so wide open
Her caring unmatched
She snuggles and cuddles
She soon will be snatched.

My little sis…

Read more… 55 more words

I'm so honoured to have been given the special treatment by my Internet sister Melis! She's so very talented - and such a lovely friend to have indeed :)

Thank You

I haven’t got much to say tonight – I just wanted to write a short thank you to everyone – the support you have given me, particularly over the last week, has been overwhelming and I’m so, so grateful.

I didn’t think that as many people would want to read my blog as it turned out!

I haven’t had a chance to answer comments yet – and I hope that I haven’t missed anyone who requested the password. If I have, I’m really sorry, and please let me know!

It means a lot to me that I can write about my life and that it’s okay. That people understand and are prepared to hear my story. I don’t feel so alone any more. I don’t feel so…. silenced by deep shame. I’ve carried this shame like a heavy burden for years and years. Only recently am I beginning to realise that it’s not my shame to carry. I didn’t ask for what happened to happen and I didn’t have a chance really. I did the best that I could with what I had.

I’ve come a long way, and I’ve been able to leave a lot of this behind me. Accept it. Even forgive in some ways. But it hurts me deeply still – little things like the fact that my mother never really truly loved me the way one might crave to have a mother’s love. That my family rejected me, even though they were never truly family and in the end I’m the one rejecting them. That hurts.

I guess I’m living proof that one can live through a hell, and survive. Not just survive, but still have a hope of a life, happiness, love, and a future. Because now I know I do have those things. I have special friends who do love me the way my family never could. And I have so much more appreciation for even the simplest things in life now.

Writing this also has reminded me that when I’m battling depression and fear now, to remember that I’ve already come through so much – and that the battle now IS a battle I CAN win if I just put my mind to it and put in the effort. I’m also not going to let anorexia kill me after coming through all that!

Thank you again – it really touches me deeply that so many people care.