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