Honesty Amidst Setbacks

I find it incredibly difficult to be completely honest about how I’m really going. Especially on such a public forum as this blog.

There are perhaps a couple of people I’m always totally honest with – and that is because they are part of my treatment team. Being honest with them is obvious to me. They can’t help  me unless they know what’s happening! Scarily enough there are many people with eating disorders who cannot be honest with their treatment team – in fact, it seems to be very common in the earlier stages of being so unwell, or when the person is lacking in insight. Insight makes a huge difference in this fight – being able to understand that you are unwell, and why, and that the people around you are trying to help you, not persecute you.

It’s quite obvious in the blog world, actually, to come across people who blog about their supposedly ‘healthy lives’, but don’t have the insight to acknowledge the elephant in the room, their eating disorder – and the fact that they are becoming more and more unwell and more people every day are speaking out in concern for them. I can never understand some of these people when they so blatantly ignore the concern and pretend they are fine, or worse, they are well - and it’s often hard to find respect for them. There are so many people, especially younger and more vulnerable people – who read these sites and take on board the messages these sick bloggers are putting out there. If there is one thing I would absolutely loathe myself for, it would be inadvertently causing or triggering someone else’s eating disorder.

But despite it being so easy for me to stand in judgement – we often forget that eating disorders are by nature, an illness in where the person suffering from it often lacks that insight or is in heavy denial. That they often act in ways that infuriate, irritate, frustrate, people around them. That deceit is a classic behavior  born of shame and fear and the need to hang on to their disorder. Being sick doesn’t make someone bad. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been thought of and told that I was a bad person, because I was too unwell to just eat and keep it down and behave. And I would have done anything at those times to ‘behave’ so that I could stop hurting, worrying or frustrating people – I tried with all my heart to do that. It wasn’t something I was capable of doing at that stage.

One of the main reasons I find it so difficult to be honest with people about how I’m really going, is deep shame. Long before I had the foggiest notion that I actually had an eating disorder, I saw people with anorexia on current affairs shows on TV and just was heartbroken for them, and frightened for them that they were so fragile and that they would die – and I couldn’t understand at all why they were doing that to themselves. It shocked me to think they had actually chosen to do that to themselves and then to continue to do so in the face of imminent death and the pleas of their loved ones. I just could not get my head around it.  I thought they were also incredibly vain, to be killing themselves to just be skinny – I didn’t even see the appeal of being skinny. All my life, I had found skinny quite ugly. Instead, I strived to be strong, and to be able to dance. I was extremely proud of being able to dance at the level that I had gotten to, and at what my body could do. Even as a young child, It had been obvious to me that the worst dancers in my class were the skinny girls, who just couldn’t get anything right and always looked gangly and out of place. Conversely, the biggest girl was also the best dancer and always front and centre. She was bouncy and full of energy and personality.

And I have to admit – I thought they were brats. Sick, scared, lost, hurting brats, but brats nonetheless. I thought they were selfish. I thought they were manipulating everyone who cared for them in order to get attention and mollycoddling. I truly did.

So when I finally had to admit just after my first hospital admission for anorexia (spent protesting that I had needed to lose the weight and that I wasn’t at all like the ‘real anorexics’) that I had anorexia too, it brought incredible shame and disbelief down on me. I couldn’t believe I had an eating disorder. I who had been overcome with fury when other class mates had whispered “That’s what Fiona has” during a biology class discussion about anorexia, who had disgustedly retorted “that’s what spoilt vain brats do, and I would never do something that stupid” had indeed, done exactly that. Talk about irony!

Now I know better. I know that’s not true at all. I’ve never wanted the attention having an eating disorder has brought me. And I didn’t have anyone to mollycoddle me – my family has never cared. My dad, when he tracked me down a few years into my hospital admissions, tried his best, even offered initially for me to move in with them in the Far North – but I was too scared to, at that stage he was a complete stranger to me. And I didn’t want to impose on him and his family. I didn’t want to bring my problems into their world, they didn’t deserve that. He persevered with me – and I stayed with him a week or two here and there over the eight years I knew him – it was such a blessing and a privilege to be given a second chance at having a real family. I loved my stays with them – I was made welcome, treated with kindness and respect, and my little sister was always all over me which warmed my heart – I loved her dearly. (Still do.)

Unfortunately, despite wanting more than anything else to be able to just ‘stop’ being unwell when I was with them, I couldn’t. I tried so hard! I usually lasted at best a few days. In those years, I wasn’t even really able to eat ‘normal’ food, so great was my fear, so I usually had my own food and created meals to eat with them, mostly dinner meals. I tried to make these meals look large and as close to ‘normal’ as I could – hoping that my family would just think I had other preferences and was feeding myself satisfactorily and not worry or be sad that I couldn’t enjoy some of their delicious meals. I wanted them to believe I was happy. I didn’t want them to worry at all. I failed.

A huge pile of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and a million carrots (nibbled mostly during the evenings when I just badly wanted to EAT everything in sight) does not look like a good nutritious meal to anyone. Neither does a pile of brown, terribly overcooked cabbage. I only fooled myself. It was plainly apparent to anyone that I was sick, and even when I wasn’t staying with them, my dad worried. He would phone me (in the days I was still trying to communicate via phone) and ask me how I was doing, and I’d tell him I was going okay, hanging in there. Unfortunately he could tell just by my voice that I wasn’t well at all, he later told me, and instead reached out to someone he thought was a friend of mine – who had given him her details at a time he’d visited me in hospital and she had been there. She wasn’t a friend – I thought she was too for a while, she turned out to be an enemy – she fed my dad the nastiest of lies – told him my eating disorder was to hurt him, to ‘get back at him’ for not being around when I was younger. That it was for attention. That I was dying, when I was very sick but definitely not on my death bed (she also tried to force me to make a will once visiting me – and got promptly kicked out, who does that?!) She also contacted my sister, who was in her very early teens at the time, perhaps even a tween still at that stage – this forty-something year old (really)parent’s basement-dwelling woman, friended a kid. And fed her lies about me too. Told her that if I loved her, really loved her, I wouldn’t be doing this to myself, and that my dad died of cancer – melanoma – because of the stress I had caused him.

I have deeply regretted that I wasn’t honest with my dad about how I was really going, no matter how unwell I was. If I was honest, he wouldn’t have felt the need to ask someone else how I really was, and he might never have been fed such a pack of lies that probably coloured his views of his own daughter, nor would my little sister have been fed the lies that led to her gradually hating me more and more until the last straw was me actually doing something deplorable – shoplifting binge food and getting caught on the morning of dad’s funeral – for which she cannot forgive me. She hates my guts now. What’s more, I just reinforced the lies by what I did. Shoplifting is the thing I hate perhaps most about me. I haven’t done it for a while now – but I haven’t let my guard down and I never will. There have been so many times in my life that I have stopped, for years sometimes – and then fallen down that hole again. The urge to grab food is always, always so strong, even more so when I’m upset, stressed, unwell and definitely, hungry. And the bingeing and purging is the most horrible thing ever, I wish with all my heart I’d never started down that road, a road I feel unable to break free from now. I would never have struggled as much as I have, and I would never have shoplifted food – something so, so wrong to me.

I fear judgement so much. All my life, I have been harshly judged, by my own family, and by society. My own family (apart from dad) never made any attempts to understand me. When I got out of there  they didn’t know me. They had had nearly 17 years living with me from my birth to get to know me – and they didn’t have a clue. This was because they simply did not care.

Everything in my life was something I was judged for. My mother spent my life berating me for all the good things she did do for me – telling me endlessly that if only she didn’t ‘have’ to take me to ballet, the car wouldn’t be wearing out, she’d have more money for other things, she would have more time to spend with my brother and sister. She would have been able to finish her studies and be working now. She would have been a successful artist. She would have fixed our filthy, unfinished house up.  It didn’t matter that she took me to ballet perhaps 3 times a week, which took about 2 – 3 hours at a time tops. That is not the lions’ share of the week. She had all day that we were at school to be an artist, to do her schoolwork, to clean up or fix things and so on – and she instead would sit around watching soapies on TV or working on the growing pile of receipts she kept to create another bill to send our dad of money she wanted to demand from him. She spent all day with my older sister who was home all day too, they were like best girlfriends rather than  mother and daughter. She had time to take my brother to soccer and martial arts and basketball. They weren’t starving for attention or time with her.

The last couple of years I lived there she didn’t even have to take me to ballet or pay a cent for me aside from absolute basics – food and clothing. My ballet was paid for by scholarships and sponsorships I’d won, and I got myself there using public transport. My days were long – a school day for me was up at 5am, chores, breakfast, cold bath, try to iron dry damp clothes I had to wear. Catch bus at 5.55am. Transfer to train, for nearly an hour. Transfer to another bus to school. We started dancing at 8am with Limber, followed by usually ballet class, then jazz or tap or repertoire or pointe or contemporary or something else afterwards. I danced during the class breaks, and danced afterwards til everyone had showered so that I was in there mostly alone to avoid the bullying that was happening all those years. Showered and caught our bus to school to begin academic work at about 2pm, going through til 4.30pm. Then reversing the transport home, at 6.30pm where there were more chores, homework, and endless family battles to navigate. I would practice most nights and end up either lying in bed all night exercising or falling asleep at about 3am at my desk, to repeat the next day. This was six days a week, there was no time for me to get a job and between the ages of 14 to 16, I was still extremely immature and probably wouldn’t have been able to find anyone to employ me anyway. (I did try – volunteering during my holidays and canvassing local businesses for work with my resume.) My mother, who was paid a single parent pension, an allowance for me for my disabilities, and maintenance from dad – refused to supply most basics for me aside from food – and very cheap food at that, usually buying food for the family and cheaper food just for me. She even refused to buy me a school uniform, and the school supplied me with one out of their spares cupboard, kept for accidents, four sizes too big and stained. One of my school teachers helped me tape the fronts of my shoes together and paint over the tape so they stayed on my feet. I also tried to keep my shoes together by nailing nails into the sole from the inside – and ended up walking painfully on them all day as they worked themselves upwards. (And I was grateful – it was a uniform, just like everyone else had.)

My point is, my mother was not only needlessly cruel, she seemed to blame everything on me. I was just a kid, and one who had been tightly controlled too, so that I was very emotionally immature, and she was my mother. My PARENT, who was meant to feed me, clothe me, look after me. Instead, she taught me that I was some horrible, unworthy and inherently wrong creature not worthy of what other people took for granted, and the bullying I suffered due partly to  my constant scruffiness (especially during ballet school where most of the others were from affluent backgrounds) and partly due to my ineptness socially, just reinforced this. I grew up deeply ashamed of myself as a person in every way.

My own family never cared enough to really find out who Fiona was, and they made it clear I wasn’t even worthy of being understood or accepted,  and so they certainly didn’t even try to learn about or understand eating disorders. They believed every stereotype there was – to them, my eating disorder was a sign of me being the spoilt naughty selfish girl they’d always told me I was. In later years they accused me of using a ‘made up illness’ to basically be a lazy bludger, never working, never achieving anything but sponging off the taxpayer, and this stung deeply. They of all people, knew how hard a worker I was, and how I surpassed all expectations, winning a local Australia day award among other acknowledgements for my striving and perseverance. They used their words and their cruelty to basically ally themselves with the eating disorder and strip me of the last vestiges of self – invalidating my past, and stripping me of even being able to hang on to knowing I was a hard worker and an achieve who was capable of better things than this, or that it wasn’t laziness that had stopped me in my tracks. That my whole life hadn’t all been a complete failure.

It makes sense to me that if your own family judges you so harshly, what can you expect from people who don’t know you? I went straight from leaving home into the arms of the man who raped and stalked me for years. It was a very familiar situation for me – and it felt like all I deserved. I’ve met quite a number of people who were more than happy to feed my insecurities like the so-called ‘friend’ who lied to my dad and little sister, and a certain number of ignorant people who don’t seem to realize that not everyone is born with the privileges they take for granted, that some of us have to really fight to even survive let alone enjoy the milestones that they are assured of achieving. In my own heart, I feel like the biggest failure ever, I reflect on my life and see missed opportunities, on so much hard work thrown away, and so much support and belief from people I failed in some way – let down, failed to meet their expectations, or cut off. I feel as though at 35, I haven’t even achieved as much as most teenagers have, and that there is no way I will ever be able to catch up to them, let alone those of my own age group.

I’m just so deeply ashamed.

I’m reminded constantly by those who have taken the time to get to know me, and who genuinely care, that I have come a long way, that I can’t afford to compare myself with anyone else, because nobody else has had to fight the same things I have in my life – same as there are so many people out there who have faced circumstances I have no idea of and for me to judge them on their face value at any point of time that I come in contact with them would be so wrong, and totally belittling how much they HAVE achieved – just in a life completely different and therefore with different milestones and measures of progress to mine. And yet, I am so scared of others judging me harshly and finding me a failure, a loser, that I judge myself the most harshly of all.

And here is where honesty comes into the equation – I’m already ashamed of the fact that I have an eating disorder. My shame when I am struggling more than usual or I relapse is many times greater than that. Throw in the harsh judgement towards people with eating disorders that I often come across online, particularly if they blog about it, and the shame of having fallen from my position of being able to say “Here I am, I am proof that a chronic severe eating disorder doesn’t have to kill you or mean you can’t turn things around.” and most importantly of all – “There is hope” – and it’s extremely hard to face up to people and be honest with you all about the fact that I’m not doing all that well any more.

I don’t consider myself to be fully in relapse – but I’m borderline. I’ve slowed down, perhaps stopped the weight loss, but I can’t seem to get it to go back up again – and what’s more, am sitting just above what used to be my discharge weight from hospital back when times were bad. And as always, ED brain has taken over – I struggle to keep hydrated, struggle to eat, struggle with bingeing and purging. Physically I have lost a lot of strength and the chronic pain I worked so hard to rid myself of is plaguing me again. And I’m so angry at myself – I know how hard I worked to get where I was – and now, I’m no better than I was on leaving hospital during those bad  years again. I am so disappointed in myself, and so scared not only for myself, but more so, for Shalimar. What if I get so sick again, what will become of her? I don’t want to send her back to the pet motel all the time – she’s getting old now. She deserves so much better than this. And I don’t want to miss out on sharing a single moment of her life with her. I missed too much of her life when I was in hospital. I’ve let her down, most of all. She depended on me and I am not living up to those responsibilities.

And I’ve let you down, the people who read my blog. It was supposed to be a journey of hope, reclaiming a LIFE, of proving that just because everyone has expected you to die, doesn’t mean you have to.

Here is where I am going to take on board my own message. I am going to believe in hope, and I am going to remind myself that it is always within our power to change our behaviors and our thoughts, if we desire to enough. The more I walk on my chosen trail in a forest, the more worn and visible that trail becomes, and the less visible the trail I’m no longer walking on becomes as nature reclaims it and grows over where it used to be. Same with my mind – the more I practice new ways to think and new behaviors, the more natural they become to me, and the less natural the old ones will be, too. It’s called creating new neural pathways. It’s also called not giving up, being stubborn, and fighting to live – all things true of me.

I have so much to live for – even more now. I have less than two months to go until I am officially a uni student again. And I’m finally realizing that my hopes and dreams and goals these days  might be vastly different, but they are still things I’m able to be passionate about, and my life still can be for good, rather than have been pointless.

I’m not going to live up to the expectations of the people who taught me I would never be anything more than a loser.

I’m going to fulfil my own expectations – and those of the people who truly care and want the best for me. I’m going to fight and make this life truly count.

Thank you for reading, I hope to be able to bring a more positive post next time.

 

(Image sources: 1, 2)

Lost? Time To Find New Pathways!

First of all I want to thank everyone for your support and compassion when it comes to my last post. I was, as the title suggests, extremely discouraged and depressed. I still am battling depression hugely, but there have been little glimmers of hope for me since I wrote that.

That post, as some wise owls also remarked in the comments section, was an example of pretty screwed up, negative, unhelpful thinking.

By saying things like “I will NEVER…” I totally deny myself any chances of that thing happening, before I’ve even really tried. I close the door just like that. And I do deny faith, deny God. (I’m sorry if you don’t believe in God – each to their own. I do) Deny any plans that He has for my life, or any faith in Him that with Him I can get through anything.

Diane mentioned that to come back and use my newly minted CBT skills on those statements I made would be very helpful and I agree. Those are thoughts that have been going round and round in my mind, upsetting me, causing me anxiety and making me feel hopeless. If I am not challenging them, they will never change. Challenging them is the first step.

I may no longer have the dreams I had when I was younger – but who of us ever knows what is round the corner? Even the best laid plans fall, and often. If only we had a crystal ball, we could plan our way to success and happiness step by step, including navigation around every hurdle we would face on the way! But life is not like that.

Life doesn’t only give us hurdles. It opens doors. All the time, in unexpected places. Opportunities don’t always announce themselves. We have to keep a look out for them. And we have to believe in them. If we don’t, we won’t look, and we will sail right past them.

There is no factual evidence at all that I will never amount to anything in my life. NONE. I am ONLY 35 years old. That is not even half of a person’s life expectancy. And I might not have things like certificates or diplomas or degrees, I might not have a job or career or a family or house or car, but I have lived experience – and that is something you just cannot buy or learn.

I don’t have a crystal ball or ESP. I have no idea what the future holds for me. I don’t even know what tomorrow really holds for me as opposed to what I’ve planned. 35 is not too old to begin anything. I might struggle to have kids, and who knows, maybe I never will meet a partner, but I have wonderful friends who love me in the ways I need to be loved, and there are many kids out there who some day I might be able to adopt or foster. They won’t be ‘my’ kids, but I would hope that I could be part of thier lives even if briefly.

There are definitely things I can do – I’ve been researching with the help of a close friend, Tertiary Preparation Programs, which are short uni courses that help you get back into being a student. I might soon be doing one of these, online and part time. It would be awesome to call myself a student again after so long – and this might be a pathway into something like a psychology degree or case management or social work, which might be another 8 years if I did it part time (and then still not be actually qualified) but I’ve just thrown more than 15 years of my actual life away to the ED, more than that, so what’s another 8 years when it’s going to be positive stuff? And this is very sudden – yesterday my therapist just suggested it as I was bemoaning exactly what I wrote here in my last post. I do need to feel like I’m actually working towards something again. The cognitive difficulties? I’ll tackle that as it comes. Even if I have to do only one unit at a time, I’ll do this. I’m still not actually finishing most books I borrow from the library, in fact I don’t start most of them – but I’m getting through more of the book before I give up. That’s progress I guess.

I’ve been told of a program that is run by survivors of child abuse, for survivors, that’s situated out in a remote area, a series of 5 day retreats. It sounds really great, and what’s more, they do not turn anyone down based on financial difficulty – they help you come up with a way to do it. Feedback sounds really good – some people say the 5 days was worth more to them than a 6 month hospital stay. What’s more, since the volunteers who run the course are all past program participants who have come through their own troubles and trained to then come back and help, that again is another pathway to my future that I might choose. I’d be really happy with something like that. To help other people like me as a volunteer at a place like that.

Basically what’s most important to me is that my life is meaningful, in that I left something behind that was better for my having been here (as opposed to leaving a deficit because I took much and contributed nothing or very little.) For me, meaningful means helping others, however I achieve that (whether directly or indirectly.)

I’ve looked into some other options for therapy (8 sessions left for the rest of 2013) including funding that’s set aside for people with Eating Disorders to attend therapy (not very likely but worth a shot) and a community counselling organisation which would provide free or sliding scale sessions. They do seem to specialise in ED,  I do worry that they sound very ‘feminist’ based which isn’t my thing at all, but again, I have nothing to lose by checking them out and I have an intake appointment next Tuesday to meet them and see what they are like. (And I am, as usual for me, petrified!)

A close friend has recommended a psychiatrist who specialises in Trauma and will bulk bill (sadly bulk billing is getting scarce these days), and psychiatrists are able to bulk bill I think 50 sessions a year as opposed to the 10 that psychologists can. I had given up on psychiatrists – my experiences being that they throw medication and labels at you but don’t do anything to actually HELP you, whereas psychologists are all about changing your thinking and behaviours and working with your emotions. They give you real tools to take away and use for the rest of your life. But I will give this fellow a chance if he will give me one. I googled him and he has a huge reputation in this country so I just hope he’s not too busy for someone like me.

To help me face up to the anxiety that is ruining ballet and volunteer work with, I’ve been working with my care team to come up with ways they can support me to get there – after which once I get stuck into it I’m fine. it’s getting there in the first place where I fall down most, and it’s spending 2 or 3 days before hand constantly in panic attacks about it that exhausts me. I panic over the simplest things like “will I get up on time” and “I need to leave by x o’clock, remember that” and to have someone support me in the getting ready and getting there will help a lot of that anxiety calm down. I’m also changing my volunteering day, because Mondays is perhaps the worst day of the week for me. My weekends tend to be my busiest days of all and by Monday I am physically and emotionally a wreck, which doesn’t help in getting myself there in one piece or feeling very productive and helpful once there. And to help with the anxiety about what people will think of my appearance at Ballet, I’ve visited Bloch and come away with some really nice dance clothes that cover my scars, are loose but not baggy, and breathable. (I hate that I fret over this, but to me, the people at Ballet represent a group of people that once judged me very harshly, and to go back to them covered in self harm scars and underweight is something I feel very ashamed and self conscious about.)

I bought dancewear very like these!!

This leotard in Rouge

A similar wrap top, but very light and floaty material (for our hot summer) in baby pink

Black skirted jazz pants very similar to these, with a tie front, but no pattern.

And one for the wish list:

Another reason I NEED to have children some day. So i can dress them up in adorable clothes and shoes.

I don’t help myself when I catastrophise about possible disastrous outcomes (that 99.999% of the time never happen) or engage in all-or-nothing thinking (“I’m not a success, so I’m a failure.”) I don’t help myself when I let what I feel override what I know to be true (for example, feeling fat overriding knowing I’m actually underweight, or feeling that people will judge me and find me to be a loser over actually knowing that those particular people like me, are nice to me, and accept me.)

I don’t help myself when I close myself off to any possibilities not just right now, but in the future, by declaring my life ‘over’.

I don’t help myself by forgetting that I don’t have to fight my problems by myself, or even face them alone. By forgetting that God has a plan for every single one of us, and that He has a plan for MY life too – even if I don’t know what it is yet. He is fighting for me every step of the way, and everything that I go through is part of His plan for my life. I don’t help myself by losing faith not just in God, but in my own self. (Thank you, Missy, for the reminder.)

Giving up on myself is the same as declaring myself worthless. And if God finds me worth fighting for, and even worth creating in the first place, who am I to have the arrogance to say “God, you are wrong, I’m awful!”

I’ve been enlightened in SO many ways since I wrote my previous post that I DO have more options than I can even know of right at this moment, that more options will be coming along in the future. That it’s never too late to change or to start afresh, to begin with something new. And that the fastest way to really fail, is to declare yourself a failure before you have even tried. It’s not failure when you give something your best shot. It’s only failure when you never even try at all.

I could go on, but this is already a heck of a long post. I am also needing to work on my screwed up sleeping patterns and have taken proactive steps to try and get more and better quality sleep –  but I didn’t mean to include boring other people to sleep as well!

Thank you to everyone for your support and your belief in me – and for reminding myself to believe in myself.

(Image sources – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Happy New Year! High Tea, Friends, Happiness, And More To Come.

Hello! I just wanted to quickly pop in and share with you my special, challenging day – and most of all to wish you all a wonderful, happy New Year.

I can’t believe that 2012 is coming to a close already. It goes so fast!

Today, I did something that a few years ago I never would have dreamed of doing. Another something – after Christmas and my Sleepover parties!

I met up with two special friends for a Fashionista High Tea at a pretty amazing place, the Palazzo Versace hotel on the Gold Coast. We had high tea in this amazing room – the Le Jardin restaurant -

High tea was sublime -

Eyeing off the goodies…

Of course, I take terrible photos. Focus on the FOOD, and the surroundings! The pool was amazing. We are all going to have to come back at some stage and get ourselves a pagoda!

That can totally be a New Year resolution.

I’m not really big on actual formal resolutions any more. I used to aim for the sky, far higher than I could possibly hope to achieve. It meant for me, that I fought harder and usually achieved more than had I aimed for what was ‘reasonable’. That was one of the secrets behind my high achievements of my younger years.

The biggest secret was that I was obsessive and relentless and pushed myself, body and mind, beyond the limit – and this contributed to my eventual break down. I guess there are ‘reasonable’ limits on most things for a good reason.

I often think just how much more I could have achieved in my life, had I stuck to limits that were reasonable for me. I might be in a career now, I might be married, or at least have a partner and kids, I might be a totally different person in a totally different position to now.

But we can’t waste more time with regrets. We only have right now – our future is made up of a series of ‘right nows’ – and it’s by making right now the best we can make it that we ensure our future will also be the best it can be.

And that’s what I’m going to focus on in 2013. Trying to make every moment count. Trying to continue the good things I’ve managed to achieve this year, and add more, but not overwhelm myself to the point of relapse.

In 2012, I achieved 2.5 years hospital free, and with a fairly stable weight at around 15 kilos heavier than what I used to fall to, and 5 kilos heavier than what my discharge weight used to be. I started volunteer work, graduated from physiotherapy after 18 months, started ballet classes, moved suburbs, completely cut off my biological family, and grown in many other small ways. I’ve taken up some more hobbies like gardening and sudoku, been painting and in an art show,  and I’ve been stretching myself so much more socially – getting out there meeting friends and DOING things with them instead of letting the social anxiety part of things cut me off.

I’ve eaten out so much, eaten so many new things. Like Christmas dinner, birthday meals, just meals at restaurants and picnics, high tea today. A couple of years ago, there was no way I would even put a speck of that stuff in my mouth, or keep it in my body,  and that’s before we even get into the ‘in public’ stuff.

I’ve  even gone swimming in a public pool and at the beach, and I’ve slept over with friends twice.

And I’ve started proper therapy and am working hard, making good  progress.

It’s been a great year. And there is so much more to come.

In 2013, I just want to keep expanding on these things. I want to increase my work hours so I can get a real job, and keep on volunteering because it’s good for my spirit. I want to do more ballet, and tackle the crippling anxiety that I have to fight to get to do it every single time. I want to do more things with more friends more often. I want to enjoy my own time more, doing more things I like or find meaningful or constructive rather than sleeping my life away or being sucked up by all ED thoughts and activities. And I want to progress even more with the therapy, and hopefully be able to achieve some peace – to that end, I already have an intake appointment lined up with an independent ED-based counselling/therapy service provider early in January and hope that when my 10 psychologist appointments are up, this fills the gap. (I also found the courage to ‘fire’ my private psychiatrist.)

I’m not making any ‘absolutes’ though – because we never know what is going to happen, and I think that as long as I’m going in the right direction, that is what matters.

I hope all of you have a wonderful, safe, happy new year, and that it brings better times – better health, peace, stability, healing. I hope that the good things are only a sign of things yet to come. And despite wishing you all so much more, in the same breath, I wish you all enough.

Okay, enough of my long winded ‘quick’ post! Go celebrate, go sleep, go see out 2013 in a way that makes YOU happy, and start the new year in a way you mean to continue.

And thank you all for being so supportive and lovely to me throughout this year of blogging.

(Image Sources: 1, 2 , 4, 5, 6)

(Ps, Shalimar has informed me of her desire to spend the new year eating, sleeping, catching lizards, and repeating it all over again )

Sleepover Parties

… are something that eating disorders exclude you from.

It certainly excluded me from weddings, parties, anything.

Never again!

Today I’m apologising to you, my readers, and to the brilliant bloggers whose posts I love to read, for being awfully behind in my commenting and responding – for a GOOD reason -

I’ve just been enjoying a sleepover with a very special friend – and it was awesome. Absolutely awesome.

It’s really lovely to be doing some things that are ‘normal’ – but for me, so, so special.

PS this is the face that greeted me on going to bed last night – her puppy!

Don’t tell Shalimar!! She was fine, though. One night alone (with plenty of food and water and toys) is still a far cry from the days she spent months at a time in pet motels. She was absolutely fine.

I think she’s dreaming of driving a car or dancing a jig..

Have you reclaimed anything that you lost to being unwell?

(Featured image source)

Crazy Christmas Cat Lady Survival Pack

I wish there was a pack you could buy that had everything in it to deal with Christmas with an Eating Disorder. In fact, I think it’s brilliant idea that someone is going to make a fortune out of some day.

I think mine would definitely need things like a ready-to-assemble sound-proof screaming booth, canned answers to the questions that I get asked every single year several times over, Super duper clothing that no matter what I ate or drank felt comfortable and hid all sins (both imagined and real, and I think the maker of the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter would need to be involved.. in fact, scratch that, just give me the darn cloak already…) and so many other things I can’t even think of yet.

It’s very easy in the midst of stress and frustration and the whirlwind that the end of the year can be, to lose sight of the little but important things. For me, Christmas is special because of the people I’m so blessed to have in my life.

This Christmas I’m actually going to be wanted, included, and spending it with people who love me, do their best to understand and support me, and never would willingly hurt me as my family has done. This will be my first Christmas with my true, chosen family as part of the family  - as opposed to being a guest. In a way, this actually makes me a bit more scared of the actual food and social aspects of the day, because I although I have always tried my best to take part and not give others any reason to worry, more than ever this time, I don’t want to ruin the day for anyone, or give them cause to worry about me. That means participating to my fullest ability – whether the ED says I can or can not. I know that my friends will not be disappointed in me if I can’t, because they truly love me and want the best for me. But they would be sad, and I want to only give them cause to be happy.

I have always tried so hard – and most times, failed (In my eyes) because in hindsight, I might have been joining in, and pretending to eat, but I can see that I didn’t fool anyone. But this year I have more power, more insight, more love and support, and in many ways, I’m a different person to the previous years. Same person but better. (New and Improved Fiona?? LOL)

I do still wish there was a kit full of little lifesaving devices to help me through every eventuality though!

I have so much to write in the lead up to Christmas, that I don’t know where to start. So I thought I would start with this question to my readers -

What would you have in your Christmas Survival Kit?

Let Go, Walk Away.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been able to distance myself from the people who have hurt me more and more. This hasn’t been easy, surprisingly.

You would think that if someone hurt you, it would be the easiest thing in the world to get as far as you can away from them and stay there. After all, we have an instinct that keeps us alive – to flee from bad people (or to stay and fight them, but even the most fighting spirit knows when they are beaten). It seems that this is overridden, however, by another survival instinct – bonding.

My psychologist explained to me that human beings are actually the only species that is completely helpless from birth for a significant period. This surprised me – I mean, kittens are born blind, for example, and baby birds seem fairly helpless. But no, she assured me, they become able to fend for themselves very fast indeed, and if they are pushed out of the nest or abandoned, they can survive.

Humans, when abandoned or attacked as babies, cannot.

So one of our earliest and most important survival instincts is bonding with our parents, especially our mothers. We want her to love us and bond to us. We want her to care about us – because our life is completely at her mercy. If our mother doesn’t love us or bond to us, she might not want to look after us and we will die.

This hit home hard for me. For my entire life, my mother, my older sister, my brother – they have all hurt me continuously. With my older sister, I very early on accepted that she was ‘not a good person’ and ‘dangerous’ and to keep awares – but even my deep down belief that people – especially family – are inherently good and are on my side led me to constantly letting my guard down with her and being wounded by her again.

My brother and I were very close when we were little, but as he grew older he became more and more violent. I kept on forgiving him. I never forgot that childhood bond, and I suppose that because I knew he had been subject to sexual abuse at the hands of our older sister too, he was dealing with his own stuff in the only way he knew how, which obviously was outward, whereas mine was inward. So I didn’t really blame him, and it was hard to hold it against him much past the actual acts of violence. He’s also shown redeeming qualities – he tried hard to be there for me at several points over the years I was struggling with the ED, and he also rescued a pile of things from our childhood home and mailed them to me in a few batches. The memories were overwhelming and it was a truly precious gesture and one I’m forever thankful for.  (My mother would not allow me to even see my own photos, certificates, yearbooks etc when we were growing up, and I left behind pretty much everything I ‘owned’ when I left.) 

My mother. How to even begin to talk about my mother. A very complicated woman and a very unwell one. Or insane. Or just evil? It’s hard to think of your own mother as evil. I can easily see without a doubt that my older sister is extremely evil – but with my mother, well, she’s very good at appearing ‘nice’. The harm she causes is more underhand, sly. But yes, I can look at it and see that in most cases, she truly meant to cause that harm, whether she will admit that to herself or not (or to anyone else, ever.  Because my family in their eyes, are absolute f*cking saints.)

My mother has absolutely devastated me with her actions towards me many times. And yet, I gave her a pass, every time. I kept on going back. I couldn’t believe that my own mother could possibly mean harm to me. After all, mothers are supposed to love and protect their children, aren’t they?

Sadly it doesn’t always work that way.

It took me years to understand this, to accept it, and to be able to stop wishing that it was different. Even after I realised and accepted that my mother had no love for me and at many times actually meant me harm, I found it so difficult to stop thinking that maybe I could change it. Had I not been loveable enough? Was there something about myself I could do differently? How could I be different enough to please her? Maybe both of us could change. We might not have had the best relationship so far, but many people work hard on their relationships as adults, and become if not friends or close, at least friendly, right?

I tried all that. For years. I tried everything I could think of. And nothing got better. It was a truly toxic relationship. I couldn’t do right by her, but not just that, she didn’t CARE. She didn’t care what happened to me, she didn’t care if I died. She didn’t care enough to want to know who her daughter actually was as a person, she just wanted another possession that she could manipulate and control and create drama with to satisfy her own warped wishes.

I also felt like a traitor. These people, they are my family. The people with whom I share blood. Despite the harm they have done and the harm they wish on me, they kept me alive during my growing up years. My mother educated me, clothed me, fed me, took me to ballet – that’s something many kids never get. And I’m forever grateful for that. (To a degree – my mother was also very often negligent and cruel to me, witholding even basic necessities.)

So how can I just reject them? Turn my back on them and walk away – forever. Not just for a while, not just creating distance – completely cutting ties. Forever.

As much as I loved my mother (despite not actually liking her as a person – there is a difference and I knew that very young) I had to accept that having her in my life, having any of them in my life, was only destroying me.

I realise now it’s the only way I can ever find peace and perhaps healing from this. With them in my life, I was constantly being hurt and upset and never had a chance to put things behind me. It was constantly there, being raked over again like raking open a wound that’s trying to heal.

I started cutting ties over a year ago. Slowly. Because I knew I would never be able to just rip myself away. And because it’s hard. Even now, I feel regrets and tinges of sadness and panic, all the time. What if they have noticed I’ve vanished from their lives, and are hurt, think I never loved them? What if they decide I’m an ungrateful brat (well they pretty much already always have said that – so nothing much would be different.) 

And then, there’s my little sister. She’s not the same as they are. I don’t think she realises just what they are truly like. I don’t think she believes how much they have hurt me, especially I don’t think she would ever believe my brother has hurt me. And I think she hates me for even suggesting it.

She hates me for a number of things. For always being unwell. For not being able to cope with my dad dying and his funeral without bingeing and purging at night in secret, which led to me desperately stealing binge food. And so, for getting caught shoplifting on the day of his funeral (something I thought I’d kept to myself and that they didn’t know. Something I have never forgiven myself for, and never will.)  For ‘using my eating disorder as a reason to sit around and be lazy and not work’ and ditto with the abuse and the rapes. For making everything ‘about me’ despite me trying so hard to make it about anyone BUT me and hide my own problems for them. For just being a complete failure as a sister I guess. For ‘not loving her enough’ to get better (and if only she knew how hard I tried, and how much I hated myself for not being able to do it for her since I couldn’t do it for me.)

I wonder if she remembers how close we used to be. I don’t think she does, and I don’t think she cares. She’s completely cut me off and ignores me completely. I have tried so hard, in every way I can think of to try, and it’s been rejected. I have been rejected, and in many ways, hurtfully and rudely. I know she has her own issues – indeed her own mother talked to me about how hurtfully she’d treated her, too – but it stings and it’s heartbreaking and there isn’t anything more I can do about it. It’s her choice.

My little sister is my biggest fear in cutting off my other family. I’m scared that one day she might come around and give me another chance, but there will be no way of her finding me. And the more distance I put between us all,the harder it is for me to find her, even on facebook, now. I’m scared that she will think that I didn’t love her enough, didn’t care about her, when I disappeared. That I didn’t want to be involved in her life when in fact the opposite was true. It hurts, it really deeply hurts.

It’s been a while now. I haven’t spoken to any family members since last year. I didn’t tell them when I moved away and I went silent on the electoral rolls and discontinued my main phone. I’m about to adopt a legal alias in preparation for changing my name, change my mobile phone number, and I might close my facebook and create a new one to just distance myself from the web trails that account has made. I’m planning to move interstate in the end, hopefully sooner rather than later. My point is, I’m moving closer to this all the time, and my chances of ever getting to know and maybe even be friends with my little sister again are diminishing.

And yet, if I hold on, just in case, I’ll truly never be free. No hope of peace. No hope of healing.

If you love someone, set them free. If they return on their own, they are yours, if they don’t, they never were (~ Richard Bach)

<– I hate that quote. But all I can do now is accept it, and live despite it. Focus on the positives, that I have people who truly love me, truly accept me, and would never dream of treating me the way my own family have. I have my beloved Shalimar, who is my ‘everything’. I have hope again, as I rebuild my life little step by little step. There is so much out there for me to do, so many places to go, people to be with, I think the person I most need to set free in my life is myself. 

(Image source 1, 2)

Have you loved and lost? 

A Little, Empty Life.

One of the hardest things about my life as the eating disorder has shaped it, is that it really is a very small, self-centred, empty life. It’s hard to admit that, and hurtful when others say it, but that’s the reality. You can’t have an eating disorder AND a life. You just can’t.

I’m sure most people with an eating disorder have tried to at some stage. Many probably  still have a ‘life’ of sorts, for now. When you are in the earlier stages, and are yet to experience the full devastation it can wreak on every part of your existence, it can be difficult to imagine that it could bring you to such a grinding halt. Also, some people who have had their eating disorders for a long time have a ‘semblance’ of a life – they have had to learn to live around it or with it – work to support themselves, for example – but it’s just a resemblance from the outside that shatters pretty quickly under gentle poking around. It’s not really life when you barely scrape through each day going through the motions and pretty much become a robot. Wake up, eating disorder stuff and work, go to sleep (or toss and turn if you are one of the many with insomnia). Same the next day. And the next. And pretending on a daily basis to be ‘fine’ in order to be professional at work is exhausting and isolating.

My career was going to be a professional dancer. I’d already come a long way in just a few years, and it was looking like it could be a reality. I had the talent, I had the perseverance and the drive to push myself beyond the pain and constantly keep working beyond ‘normal’ limits to keep achieving in order to use that talent. I’d also had a lot of really good luck that enabled me to have opportunities that most people never get.

Having an eating disorder meant I threw all that away. Years of hard work, of actual blood, sweat and tears – just thrown away. All for nothing. My physical health declined so quickly after I fell over the edge from sub-clinical disordered eating into a full blown disorder that I didn’t even know what was happening until after the fact – in hindsight it’s obvious. At the time, I didn’t even realise that I was sick, and I genuinely thought I had a huge weight problem. I was also in denial, in pain, traumatised and suffering from PTSD, dissociated all the time, and irrational. I genuinely believed that if I lost weight, my problems would be fixed. Even when the majority of those problems had nothing to do with my weight or my body.

Today that doesn’t make sense at all. I can see it’s irrational.  But back then, I couldn’t. Even when I’d lost too much weight, been kicked out of the performance strand in my dancing course at university, and was constantly passing out, and people were remarking on not only my weight loss but now that I’d gone too far and was looking sick,  I still firmly believed that all that would be solved when I ‘got my dancer’s body back again’ which to me at the time, meant losing weight.

Totally ZERO insight. Not a clue.

It all went downhill very fast after that point. A valuable lesson that I have learnt from this  is that it’s so important to have activities and goals that are meaningful and purposeful in your life – to have a reason for getting up in the morning, a reason for being alive at all. A reason to not give in completely and let the eating disorder suck the last bit of life out of you.  The more that was taken from me – not just ballet, but ability to think in order to do the academic classes at university, to have a conversation with people, the stamina and thinking in order to keep doing the volunteer work I’d always done, the steady hand and imagination to keep doing my drawings and paintings, the imagination to write my poetry, and the energy and self-esteem to keep up with friends – the more of it I lost, the more of myself I lost, too.

After leaving home as a teen, I’d become fiercely independent. I’d lived to that point with every aspect of my life completely controlled – right down to what I could think,  what I wore, read, and did with my spare time. My determination to survive in the ‘big bad world’ was such that I strived to budget and manage money, pay bills and look after my commitments without failing. To get myself around the city despite it being unfamiliar, to find my own housing and fend for myself. I did fail to keep myself safe – since I fell out of the family frying pan into the fire of Wanker the rapist and stalker – but for the first few years I did quite well in everything else, especially considering that I had to learn a lot of basic life skills from scratch. In a home where you are brainwashed and tightly controlled, you don’t learn these skills, even when you are actually performing them – because you aren’t ‘practising’ them so much as you are ‘obeying’, like a robot, every command. Thus I had been preparing and cooking family meals, cleaning, washing up, laundering, working in the yard etc for much of my childhood, but found I didn’t even know where to begin on any of these tasks when I’d needed to do them on the outside.

So to lose my independence to the eating disorder was a huge blow for me. And I lost it ALL. I had no say about my life. My finances were taken over by a state trustee and a state-appointed guardian made decisions about my body. As I grew physically less able, Home and Community Care moved in to help me to get out of bed, shower and dress, go to appointments, look after the housework, encourage me to come on a drive to the park or just get out, and most importantly, help me look after my cat, Shalimar. By this point, I’d had her a few years, and I still can’t imagine living without her, now. We have been almost inseperable since the first hour we spent together. Almost, because with me constantly in and out of hospital, Shalimar was in and out of the pet motel. Thankfully a really lovely man who ran the facility I finally settled on for her, cared for her personally and sensitively – giving her cuddles and walkies and treats. But it wasn’t a life for her, and it was the thing I most regretted about being sick.

At my sickest, I even had to be bathed, toileted, and fed. The indignity of it, especially when some of the nurses or aides who are doing it are much younger than you, really stings. I felt so helpless.

At that point, to look back at the strong, determined, courageous, talented and highly achieving young woman I had once been – was heartbreaking and very bizarre. No way in the world had I ever imagined such a future for myself. I’d aimed for the sky, and beyond, back then! I had believed that if I truly hoped and dreamed for something, I would achieve it – no doubts – because hoping and dreaming to me was synonymous with going out of my way, pulling out all the stops, not stopping at all until I’d gotten there. In fact, I’d made a point of always setting goals that were higher than I (and most other people who knew me, too) imagined I could ever achieve, because my will and my drive was such that I usually ended up surpassing the more ‘realistic’ goals I’d had that way, achieving more than had I just aimed for the them in the first place.

And here I was now – helpless. Pathetic, weak, miserable and helpless.

Eating disorders will strip even the brightest people of their every hope and dream. It will leave no aspect of your life untouched. You will constantly drop to a new low, feel like nothing could possibly get worse than ‘this’ – and then fall again even further. Nobody escapes this. Even for those who somehow hang on to some semblance of sanity and function for a longer time than usual – it will crumble around you in the end. Because it’s impossible to maintain something that is the very antithesis of LIFE and LIVE.

Many people with eating disorders have to start from scratch when they start to turn things around. The little basics of life have to be learnt all over again, but it goes far deeper. Many of us find ourselves in the body of a complete stranger. If we ever knew ‘who’ we were in the first place, we don’t even begin to know that now. We have lost being a person to become basically a host body to a parasite. Interests, hopes, dreams – they all have to be found all over again. And in the jaded, weary aftermath, it’s difficult to find the cares for that stuff, it seems so trivial compared to the battle we have been wading through.

But it’s important. Essential. You can’t just rip the eating disorder from the person and expect them to be okay. They have nothing. You have ripped away their ‘suit of armour’ and their skin, too, leaving them a quivering helpless mess of jelly and innards that will collapse uselessly in a pile. The way you need to do  this is to replace each old supporting and protecting structure for a new one, before taking the old one away. A new activity here, a new interest there, gradually ease the person from leaning totally on the old to shifting more and more weight onto the new – and hopefully when you can finally take eating disorder from that part of their life completely they will stay standing and keep going.

It’s a long slow process. It can’t be rushed.

In many ways, I’m the same person as I once was. Yet, in many ways, I’m completely different, and I do feel like I’m living with a stranger in the same body every single day – not to forget that my body feels like someone else’s too.  My rebuilding process has involved me being broken down to the very most basic, shattered slivers of myself as I once was. Hopefully this time around, the foundation built will be sturdy and I will be stronger for it. Ballet, volunteer work, reading, gardening, interacting with friends much more, art, and spending precious time with my beloved Shalimar all make up parts of the scaffolding of my new person. And with the therapist in trauma therapy, we are chipping away at the frozen, tormented bits to hopefully reveal and set free the little abused kid so that she can finally grow up and leave the past behind her.

You are not the exception to the rule.

Even if you still have a life, if you have an eating disorder, you will not escape this loss of life. I promise you – you simply will not, can not. And that is why I tell this story. My message to you is, get out now. I read of people asking if they are ready to attempt to get better, are they ‘sick enough’? Do they want to let go of losing weight, or the illusion of control, or of whatever pretty carrot the eating disorder has promised? Maybe there is a special occasion they want to be thin for first, or studies to be finished, or someone to meet. Some goal to have achieved, or some point to have reached where they will ‘know’ they now are ready to change.

My question is – what makes you think you will even have those choices? Or that when you get to whatever the goalpost is, you will be able to change, then?

I listen to someone telling me that they want to time their recovery for after a vacation period, when the harsh reality is that if they don’t start fighting now, they won’t even have that vacation period, and they certainly won’t have a choice about when to be plunged into treatment or hospital. I listen to someone telling me that they have to finish the year’s studies first, and wonder if they realise that if they don’t start fighting NOW, not only will they not finish the year’s studies, they may lose the chance to complete the entire course. I hear someone saying they can’t take time from their job to fight for their lives, and wonder if they realise that it’s take the time, or become so unwell they have no choice about losing it, and maybe not even be ever able to work again. And I listen to  someone wanting to be thinner for some occasion and wish she realised that it’s too high a price to pay for that – this disease leaves you crippled and weak, even bedridden, and in the end, DEAD, and believe me that’s not a good look for anyone.

We don’t have tomorrow. None of us has tomorrow. Or next week. Definitely not next year. We only have today. We can only do what we can do right now. And every moment that we don’t fight for our lives against ED, is potentially a moment in the future where we no longer have a life at all.

Even if you take just one small step today – challenge yourself in just one little way, change just one little thing – to fight your eating disorder – it’s a chance you now have. It’s a little bit of yourself and your life and your future that you are claiming, now when you are still able to claim it.

Keep fighting. 

(Image source)

Escaping Prisons Both Real And Imagined (trigger – abuse, rape)

I think a lot of my eating disorder has involved me trying to hold on to what is familiar to me, trying to feel ‘safe’.

Despite all that it’s put me through – utter hell in which I lost everything, including nearly my LIFE – I daily find myself daydreaming about losing weight. More than daily – all through the day. And I dream of it at night.

It feels a bit like an old friend and lover. Familiar, and seductive. You know them so well. There aren’t any unknowns (although there are – you can never know anyone’s deepest secrets as you can never know anything’s deepest most hidden facets in this life).

Sometimes, despite this ‘friend and lover’ having being an abusive one, it feels safer than what I face now. It’s a prison that I actually daydream about returning to, of creeping back into the cage and shutting the scary world out.

Every step forward into LIFE is a step I have not travelled before, and a step that I travel without my peers, for they have all gone on ahead of me when I should have come this way. The fear of each step is so great, I have to fight to not just turn around and run away again. 

I fear so many things. I fear failure most of all. That, and ‘not coping’. I’m not good at new things now, and find myself overwhelmed by the colourful, exciting, ever-happening quality of real life. The eating disorder kept me very closeted. It was a dark, isolated life, then. And despite it being my cage, I came to find it familiar and comforting.

There have been studies done showing that when you keep a creature in captivity for long enough, you can open the doors and let it free – and it likely will not flee. I feel that way, myself.

As a child in my abusive and neglectful home, I accepted that this was what was. I did not like it  or agree with it, in fact, it was extremely traumatic, especially as I grew older and my brother’s violence and my sister’s twisted cruelty grew worse. And my mother’s ability (or desire) to either protect me, or to supply me with the basics of life at all – seemed to dwindle ever more.

I couldn’t change it. I hurt terribly from it. But I accepted it.

Accepting it, actually caused me less pain than not accepting it. I am sure that had I not been able to accept what was, I would not have survived – it would have utterly broken me. More than I was broken, anyway. I mean, fatally broken.

Picture a wild bird in a cage, just caught, terrified at their predicament and thrashing to free themselves. In the majority of cases, that bird simply will not be able to get free from the cage. If she doesn’t accept her fate, she will batter herself to death, or at least be weak, bruised and battered – and still trapped.

You need to conserve your energy and strength in order to fight what you can fight when you are that trapped (in any way). You need to realise which battles are worth going all out for, and which, even if won, would only be empty victories.

But looking back, I see just how trapped I had become by my own mind – and it wasn’t just because I’d accepted I was trapped for now.

It took me so long to run away from there, not because anyone was stopping me, but because I believed I could not run away. 

Our home had so many LAWS. These laws were punishable if broken, and the punishment felt like it would be as bad as death (or as I felt, worse, because of the emotional and physical distress punishments could involve).  One of these many laws was ‘thou shalt not step outside this house and yard’s perimeters without due cause and permission.’

Our yard was fenced by a brown, wooden farmstyle fence – planks of wood placed horizontally between each fencepost, with two gates that were always heavily chained and padlocked. Intimidating, especially with loud barking dogs and ‘dangerous dog’ signs, but very easy to climb over. It wasn’t even that high – higher than me growing up, perhaps shoulder height when I left. I climbed over it every morning on the way to school, and every evening on the way back home. But had I wanted to climb over it when I didn’t have permission? I couldn’t have. 

That easily-climbed fence was as effective as an electrified, barbed-wire-topped prison fence for me.

And it took being pushed for me to grasp the courage to break the ‘law’ and leave – realising that I couldn’t stay here and stay alive any longer.

And so, I fled for the ‘greener grass’ out yonder.

This is where I look back and say “I fled the frying pan and jumped into the fire”. Because I did exactly that. I met Wanker.

I wonder, had I come from a family that wasn’t abusive, would I have fought Wanker harder? Would I have refused to accept things as they came to be? Talking to my headshrinking doctor about it, his theory is that Wanker was familiar to me. He treated me the only way I’d ever known – cruelly, and without any respect at all. And, right after my flight from my home, that was familiar to me and therefore in some way, a comfort.

That makes me recoil in disgust, to read that – that I found comfort in that rapist bastard’s treatment of me. I was hurting, I fought him tooth and nail at first, and the  first day he raped me (in a rape that just went on, and on, and on for an entire afternoon, at least 4 hours) I kept saying “NO!” loudly the entire time as well as fighting – and I may as well have been battering a tree trunk for all that moved him.

I never, ever wanted anything to do with Wanker. Never. Not even before he hurt me. I simply didn’t believe I had any chance of avoiding his abuse of me. 

So I’d taken my prison from home with me – wherever I went from there, I still wasn’t free. I still was trapped by abuse and resigned to being abused because that was all I had known and all I felt worthy of.

Later on again, in hospital, the treatment of me there just confirmed to me that this was all I deserved. I was nothing better than a wild beast – and that’s how they treated me. And I stopped hoping for better, because I didn’t feel I deserved better.

So the big question for me here is – how do I take freedom with both hands? Not only sum up the courage to step out of my prison, but to stay out of it?

I think the answer is, one step at a time. And with courage – despite the fear of it all. By reminding myself that there isn’t such thing as failure unless you are talking about the failure to even try. And that I have nothing to lose by pressing ahead – and everything to lose by taking the easy way out.

Because that’s what it is, really. It takes great strength and courage for a child to stay alive in the face of such trauma – but it takes none to stay in your cage after the doors are thrown wide and the monsters are gone – monsters in your reality that is.

The monsters in your mind, they are a different matter entirely. And for many of us, they haunt us for life. 

This is not from weakness – child abuse actually impacts on our brain.

Healing will be different for everyone. For me, it’s a very slow process, perhaps it will be a ‘forever’ process. I might never be healed, but always healing – if that makes sense.

For me, little things are more important at the moment. Like being accepted by my peers. Adding activities that to most are small and of no consequence into my life. And repeating, and repeating.

Every time I leave my home to go to art, to go to ballet, to do volunteer work, to have coffee with a friend, go to the supermarket, or even to put the rubbish in the bins – I face my fears. And every single time I face my fears this way, I’m making myself stronger and another step closer to some day being able to embrace this big scary world as simply ‘the world I live in’ – because I’ll be able to live in it, enjoy it, and feel safe.

I think this is part of why when it comes to fighting an eating disorder or an addiction or a mental illness that keeps you isolated and trapped – such ‘little’ milestones are just as important to work on achieving as are the more obvious ones, such as weight gain, abstinence, or managing your anxiety.  They are all the stepping stones, and you can’t just hope to yank out what you are trying to overcome and not freak out when there is nothing there to replace what it’s been in your life. We also have to practice at life, just like we need to practice our ballet or our piano playing or other skills daily to improve them. It comes by doing. This is a huge challenge to me, I who tend to keep retreating into avoidance!

One last important thing?

Forgiving yourself. You did the best with the situation, knowledge and resources you had at the time – you did your best. It’s not your fault.

Thank you to Motifake for the demotivational poster images.

Featured image source. 

I Challenged My Fears – And Had Fun!

Some people have been asking – how is the ballet going lately? I’m aware I haven’t updated about that in a while. I’ve also not taken up where I left off with the job searching! So sorry!

I’ve always saved the best til last – even as a child, I ritualistically ate my green vegies first, then the coloureds, then the starches, then the meats. My rationale was “Save the best til last!”. Even today, I still have to do that!

Ballet is by far the best thing in my entire life (after people and Shalimar) so I will start with the Job search.

I’ve been working with a disability employment service for about 8 months now as a voluntary client – which means I’ve asked to work with them because I want to find a job. (Involuntary client means you are mandated to work with them or you will be cut off from benefits, you have to find a job so you can move off benefits in the end.) The service I’m with works with people who have mental illness, helps them to re-enter the workforce, challenge the obstacles that face them and to keep that employment.

My biggest challenges were:

1. I’ve never had a paid job! I’ve done TONNES of volunteer work, up until probably more than 5 years ago – but that doesn’t really count in my mind as being a taxpayer and contributing to my country. It also doesn’t support you or pay the bills!
2. Cognitive difficulties – they suck. I miss being able to read my beloved books, being able to concentrate for more than a few minutes, and so on.
3. Weakness physically and poor attention span – I can’t go for very long – even doing a part time job at the moment would be more than I could actually do.
4. Self confidence/self esteem/self belief = zero!
5. Skills – I have none. It’s been years since my volunteer positions and work experience, so I’m very rusty. I have never learnt any of the computer programs I might face in a workplace, and my computer knowledge is vastly outdated now. I also don’t have a clue of how to do any basic workplace task – I am good at taking direction, but I’ve never learnt the ins and outs of the workplace beyond a voluntary one, and that’s vastly different.

All of those are quite easily to deal with if I leave my emotions behind. The agency are there to help me – they will help me reskill, get an up to date resume, refer me to a service that will help me with the interview. They find employers in your chosen field and market you to them – reverse marketing, so you aren’t competing with other potential candidates. When you get the job, they will modify the workplace to suit your disability. They also subsidise your wages for a set period of time so that your employer is more likely to take the risk of employing you in the first place.

The thing that they can’t help me with? FEAR. And boy am I a tangled ball of fear!

Unfortunately, the least amount of work hours clients must take on is 8 hours a week. I know, minimal. But I wasn’t sure that I could do 8 hours a week straight out. Remember, I have been sick, bedridden continuously, for a decade, and seriously sick for much longer than that. So 8 hours a week might be a drop in the bucket for most people, but for me it is seriously a big deal.

One hour a day in appointments, plus getting there and back, leaves me exhausted.

I’m pretty sure that I could do 8 hours a week, but I didn’t know for sure. So the agency said – “you are not well enough to work, so we will have to exit you.”

I was CRUSHED!

But I did ask if they could help me get volunteer work – and a few phone calls were made…. I was suddenly asked “Can you work tomorrow?” Every bit of me screamed “NO!! TOO SOON!” but I said “YES”… and that’s what I did today.

Today I did my first 2.5 hours of voluntary work in years and years – at the very service I would have been referred to had I been deemed employable. [A worldwide mentorship service/boutique organisation] works with women who have been out of employment for a while. They outfit their clients in appropriate corporate wear for the interview, give them a makeover with cosmetics, accessories, shoes. They help them prepare their resume and conduct mock interviews too! If the client gets the job, they come back and are outfitted in a week’s worth of pieces. (I’m aware this isn’t the actual Dress For Success in my area – it’s a very widespread organisation. I didn’t link to my local one for privacy reasons!)

How awesome are these people!?

Today went pretty well. I was terrified of going. Last night I spent the entire night just freaking out! One of the things that I’m most scared of is that nobody will ever want to employ ME, because I’m inferior. I’m an inferior human being. (Please don’t’ feel the need to tell me I’m not, I know, rationally, that I’m not. Emotionally, this is the thought that torments me most.)

I’m terrified because I do struggle to hear, that I won’t understand what I’m meant to do and do it wrong.  I’m scared that I’m so ‘weird’ that any customers will be turned off, or that everyone in the workplace will be repulsed at me.

Then add the fears of finding the right place, of the unknown in general, of will I wake up in time in the morning? Will I look okay in whatever I wear, what if I’m dressed wrong? etc, and it gets pretty overwhelming.

Today I proved those fears mostly unfounded. I wasn’t trusted with very much – mostly to just straighten the racks of some very nice clothing. It was only 2.5 hours, but I was exhausted – I was on my feet the whole time, and I wasn’t used to concentrating for so long either, even on something mundane and simple. But I did it, and they seemed happy. They did appear to expect me to be simple, as they knew I was deaf before I turned up, so I hope I’ve proved those expectations wrong. I was a bit overdressed, but at least that’s better than being under-dressed. I felt awkward the entire time, and wanted badly to leave – but they were lovely kind women and I do not think they would be the type to have unkind thoughts at all. So all in all, it was a good experience.

I now believe I CAN do 8 hours a week from the start – and feel that whatever is asked of me, I still give it my everything just I used to give everything and be such a valuable volunteer worker. This was a bit like a ‘working interview’ so I hope that in a month’s time when the next sale is on, they want me back. I guess they do, they all said see you next month when I left! I also put my name down to volunteer if any weekday hours come up. We will see what happens next!

Now to the ballet!!!!

I had so many mixed up feelings about going back to ballet! It was the love of my life, apart from the people I cherish and of course, my cat Shalimar. As a teenager, it was the only reason I kept going. I lived, breathed, ballet. And then, it was taken from me.  I did not dance for nearly 15 years, and for much of that time I was if not bedridden, at the least, very weak and debilitated. At several points, I couldn’t even sit up alone let alone stand or walk, or even hold my own head up.

So it terrified me to go back to ballet again. I knew without a doubt that I would not be able to do anything near what I used to. That I’d have to pretty much start from scratch. Just the fact that it took a year’s physio to be strong enough to ‘maybe’ start pilates – and that was rushing it, because I admit I really pushed hard at my physio! – I knew that for sure. And I feared it, because it did used to be such an important thing to me, what I could do, and the standard of dance that I’d reached before the eating disorder turned disastrous. I will admit, I was a snob when it came to ballet. The kind of ballet snob who cannot even go to a children’s ballet concert without picking out the faults in technique, the changes in any choreography that is a traditional repertoire, etc.

Other fears were that it was very likely I would run into people from the dance school I’d been at who had bullied me. I still am deeply affected by their torment of me for those years, and I didn’t think I could cope with actually seeing them. All these years later, I still find that a lot of my shameful feelings come from thoughts of ‘how would those girls see this?’ Because I know they would look down their noses at me, and everything about me, even now. I’ve often found myself a failure, simply because I couldn’t imagine any of them understanding me now or feeling any compassion towards me now, given that they are adults now too. Or even feeling any shame for what they did.

The school I go to now is actually run by quite a number of members from the company that my school was attached to, who have retired and are now teachers in their retirement (we retire young! 30 is considered ‘old’ in ballet!) I’ve been so very lucky, that the company member who started the school, and  another who was so kind to me back at the school in my teens, have been the ones I’ve had contact with, the first, coming in to welcome me, gifting me with a school tshirt, bag, and some extra free classes, and the second being my teacher! It’s been just the most kind and welcoming reception, which has been extremely healing for me. It’s also really humbling for me, as they were principals back then, and both were extremely inspiring to me. (Still are!)

(I’m having a giggle at myself – I was the sort of teen who would shrug at rock stars, but get all starry eyed for ballerinas!)

I struggle still with actually going – often it will take several attempts to just get out of my home and to the classes. I will go out, double back, go back out again – such is my anxiety, that it’s almost crippling. But I’ve made it most times, and it’s getting a bit easier to go now that so many of my fears have proved unfounded.

PAIN has been a HUGE issue. On top of the normal Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness the  majority of us deal with when we start doing physical activity we are not used to or after a break, the pain I’ve dealt with has been excruciating and just beyond that. I was in so much pain after the first few classes that I could barely walk or get out of bed the next day, and it would also last pretty much the entire week. My doctor has said that it’s most likely because my muscles wasted so severely. At one stage I was convinced that I must have gotten stress fractures again (During the time I was bedridden, due to my severe osteoporosis, both of my femurs thinned to the point of cracking.) because it felt like my feet had shattered underfoot and I was walking on the shards of bone, and I had the same kind of pain in my femurs as I’d been getting back then. Thankfully as it’s now gone, it wasn’t my bones.

Over time, the pain has lessened. This last week was the first time I actually woke up the next day with very little pain. It was also the first time I was able to dance for the full length of time, and the first time I felt that I was able to ‘dance’ a little bit more than fall over, just a little bit more coordinated.  I started with the pilates/ballet barre class – and it’s a gentle class. The exercises are the kind of things I used to do to warm up before a day of dancing – and I found them very hard, I still do.  A few weeks ago, they added a new class after my pilates class, another introductory ballet class. So now, I do both classes! The ballet class is very easy – simply barre and centre, and the exercises are probably pre-elementary level. But now it’s the hardest class I’ve ever done!

I still have the basic ability – thankfully, that never has been lost. I’m fairly flexible – I was very tight at first, and I cannot do the splits any more. But I’m getting there again, faster than I believed I would. My turn out is actually better than it used to be. But I don’t have the strength or power to do what I used to do. So that’s what I need to work on! My legs are like jelly, and my balance very precarious. This last class was awesome because my balance had improved enough that I could really almost dance the adagio – it was a really lovely one, too. I was able to dance it more lyrically rather than be  trying to grab hold of the air in order not to topple over!

I do find it frustrating that what my mind remembers and what my body remembers are very different things. I will try to do something, remember all the muscles to use, remember the technique, and my actual muscles will not obey. I might try to do some quick little steps and fall over because my mind is far ahead of my legs, they just will not move. Or do some petit allegro and although I do everything to jump, I won’t even get off the floor! It feels like one of those dreams where you are desperately running from something, but the faster you try to run, the slower you get!

I’ve still been struggling with eating – and the most surprising thing for me is that I’ve been able to increase my breakfast and keep it down, soley to be able to dance. Breakfast is THE hardest meal of the day for me. I find it hardest to start eating, to put anything in my mouth, food or drink. Even water makes me queasy in the morning. But I didn’t have the energy to do what I wanted to do badly, and that meant I needed to fuel my body more. And I did. I noticed the improvement directly from eating more – I’m hoping so much I can keep improving on this. Ballet might actually be what saves me from the ED – nothing else has been more powerful than it to this degree. If I can get back to how I was pre-ED – when what my body could DO was far more important than weight, appearance, size, or food – then I really could see myself as finally being able to eat and keep that food down and not do battle with the ED for the rest of a shortened life until it killed me.

I also feared what I would look like. I can’t really tell if the other people have found me too skinny (I do feel and see myself as fat, but I know I am not, and I know that others will see it. I remember the horror and disgust many of us used to have towards other dancers who we thought had ED’s, back when I was at the school in my teens. ) I can actually see in the mirror that I’m too thin, but thankfully I don’t see it as gross, disgusting too thin. It shocks me to see myself looking like that – and to think, this is me a few years ago plus 15+ more KILOS! What must I have been like? It’s a hugely sobering realisation of how sick I actually was.

I also was okay with them seeing my arms – I have now bared my arms two weeks running with no problems – nobody even seems to see them. They are covered in self harm scars – pretty bad and noticeable ones – so it’s a relief that it’s okay. It’s not even quite Spring yet but it’s already very hot, and to be the object of disgust would have ruined everything for me. If anyone has noticed, they have been very tactful and I’m so grateful for that.

I can feel that I’m making good progress, and that’s the main thing. This isn’t my career now, this is for enjoyment, and it’s been utterly wonderful. For two hours a week, I can escape to a little world that none of ‘this’ (being the ED and the PTSD) has been able to touch. I hope it stays that way – it’s been a welcome refuge.

So, I guess I should be giving myself a pat on the back for these triumphs. I’m still nowhere near what many people take for granted as everyday activities, but I’ve come such a long way and it’s wonderful to finally be seeing the real, tangible rewards rather than having to remind myself that although things might not be visible, it doesn’t make them any less important.

Thank you for reading this hugely long post! I hope you are not now snoring. Snoring is where I need to be – past my bed time! I have a lot of comments to answer – I’ll get to them tomorrow if possible. Hope everyone is well!

(Featured image found on Facebook!)

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!

(Image Source)

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

(Image Source)

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.

(Image Source)

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? 

(Featured Image Source)