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)

Reflecting on Shalimar – My Angel

I realised last night that in early January it will be a year since Shalimar and  I moved into the apartment I live in now. We have had absolutely no regrets, either. It is a peaceful and safe place to live for both of us and I’ve never seen Shalimar as happy as she is these days, not in her entire nine years. Whoops – nearly ten years!

Yes, Shalimar will be ten years old on the 13th of December! Her ‘birthday’ was decided by counting back two months from her official Adoption Birthday – which was 13th February, 2003. I still remember that day like it was yesterday – picking her out from a cage chock-a-block with kittens at the shelter – and knowing on sight that she was the kitty I’d come for. Somehow we had bonded before I’d even left the shelter. I still remember waking up the next morning – Valentine’s day – having hardly slept from a night of having this little kitten crawl all over me. My first thoughts were “She loves me.”

For someone with a life history of rejection and abuse, that is an incredibly wonderful, precious thought and memory. I can’t imagine living without her. I don’t know how I survived before I adopted her.

I have come to believe there are angels on earth. And I’ve come to believe that animals can absolutely be angels on earth.

Shalimar has saved my life many a time, in many ways. She’s given me a reason to live at all. She’s given me so much love over the years, unconditionally. She’s been my constant companion, especially during the loneliest years of my life.

Before I adopted Shalimar, it was common for me to have periods of unconsciousness that lasted scarily long times – for example, having a nap on Sunday afternoon might lead to me waking up on Wednesday night, completely unaware that more than a few hours had passed. But Shalimar wouldn’t let that happen. She woke me many times by crouching over me and patting my face with her paw, not stopping until I’d dragged myself out of the black hole I’d been slipping into. Many times I woke with a face like mince meat – she never used her claws deliberately, but even with claws retracted, cat’s paws can be quite sharp.

Shalimar gave me a reason to fight to get out of hospital – thinking of her in a pet motel, despite knowing they knew her and treated her with the best care and a lot of cuddles broke my heart, and I missed her terribly.

I’ve heard of therapy dogs (or care dogs?) trained for soldiers with PTSD. Apparently, these dogs know when their soldier is having a nightmare, and are trained to gently awaken them, switch on lights, and provide companionship and comfort.

Shalimar definitely would make a good care cat for PTSD. In a way, she is one already. I realised this on Friday when she woke me up from a pretty terrible nightmare with her gentle patting. She then cuddled up to me, gently butting my face with hers and stroking it with her paw. (I think she tries to copy my stroking action, which used to hurt given cats have claws, but she’s learnt to keep her claws retracted. Smart cat!) She’s done this many times before.

These days, it gives me a lot of joy to see how happy Shalimar is. Moving here was her version of coming home to paradise. It’s like night and day compared to living in the gritty city area where, to a constant soundtrack of traffic and sirens, she witnessed probably thousands of drug deals, and thousands of weddings in the Church across the road from her little balcony.

Shalimar loves to stalk lizards, and to pretend she’s going to catch those annoying birds that sit in the tree next door and taunt her (they even swoop her!). She  loves to just sit in the sun, watching the kids next door scream and endlessly jump on the trampoline (more proof to her that these human beings are all nuts). Grass isn’t some heavenly treat that I bring a bunch of home when I find it. It grows all around, and she can walk on it let alone nibble it. She has developed rather discerning tastes, though – so far she’s eaten my climbing beans, my corn plants, all of my chives and basil, and now she’s started on my tomato plants.

I’ve gone from being too depressed to sit and just ‘be’, to being able to sit on my porch and watch Shalimar just ‘being’. To watch her being happy and contented does wonders for myself and our time outside has become the most calming and cherished time of my days.

I wonder what the next year will bring for both of us? I think the sky is the limit. We’ve both come a heck of a long way.

Tiger in the grass! Watch out, lizards!

Home, Not Home.

The house where I spent my childhood is empty now. Nobody has lived there for maybe a decade.

About two years ago, there were catastrophic floods in my state and my best mate drove up to make sure I was okay. While she was up here, we drove out to have a ‘spy’ on my old home.

Part of growing up seems to be making up stories about the spooky, overgrown ‘haunted’ house in your neighborhood. These stories made camping trips and sleepovers so much fun, formed the basis for your imagined suburban history, and kept you wide eyed and ready to flee every time you had to walk past it.

The house where I grew up is now ‘that’ house. That creepy, overgrown, abandoned home.

It’s so thicketed with weeds that you have to fight to step anywhere once you get inside the gate – which is even more rotted than it used to be. The weeds are taller than a man, all tangled together with vines and legitimate plants and hiding obstacles underfoot that threaten to lame.

The house itself, when you get there, is cold and dark and quiet. It holds so many secrets, but speaks of none. Through the windows I see that someone has tacked gyprock roughly over the worst of the exposed walls and ceilings, covering the wires, pipes, nests and plants growing inside. It’s cleaner than I’ve ever seen it in the nearly 17 years I lived there. The floors are dry concrete rather than a muddy mess. There isn’t a muddy swamp outside either. There’s no reason for my mother to let the water run endlessly any more. Dad isn’t alive to pay the excess water fines and bills.

When you drop a vase, tiny shards will scatter away, never to be found again, no matter how closely you hunt for them. That’s me. Every time something shattered me, part of me was lost, to stay there forever and ever, haunting the scene of the trauma, just as much as the traumas haunt me to this day.

I still see the wooden floorboards upstairs in my mind. The room my brother and I shared. The holes he kicked and punched in the walls. The sliding door that was behind my bed head is curtained over with the same striped curtains that used to house funnelweb spiders in it’s folds.

Outside, the old trampoline rusts and rots. The wooden slippery slide my dad made me when I was very very little, when he was still around here, is now a pile of sticks. I suddenly don’t want to explore further. I wonder how the neighbors put up with this overgrown jungle of weeds and vermin bordered by their neatly mowed yards.

My friend has become alarmed – there’s a loud buzzing, and we realise that the side of the roof houses the hugest makeshift bee’s hive I’ve ever seen. They are swarming everywhere! And then I notice it, because they are up against where the electricity wire should go – it looks strange.

I crash through the undergrowth until I come to where the property pole should have been – it’s no longer there. I didn’t even notice. Our house was so far from the road, we had to have our own pole halfway for the electricity wire. I’m so puzzled, and I’m searching around me for it everywhere. Then I realise – it’s at my feet. It’s fallen over long long ago – rotted, most likely.  Kicking it gently flakes off big pieces of rotting timber.

Where is the electric wire, then? I find it – all around us. It’s come down with the pole and is tangled up completely with the weeds and the trees and the junk. We have been walking literally centimetres from the downed wires.

Thinking of that home always makes me shudder. Makes me feel sick. My mother still owns it. She hoards things – people, houses, junk. It sits there, carrying those secrets, keeping them forever. The weeds around it make it seem like the earth itself is trying to grow over it and perhaps one day, obliterate it, but in the meantime, I still feel like part of me haunts that place.

If I could only bulldoze it, I would.

Where Is Shalimar?

Nicole led us a merry dance trying to find Gwendolyn in the snow a while back.

I thought I’d treat you to my own version – Australia in the Late Summer style.

I might, might be so kind as to point her out next post. Have fun!

Camouflage Expert Shows How It's Done.

Life is beautiful

I’ve been spending a lot of time just taking in my surroundings and breathing in the air. It’s so green and beautiful compared to the city. And calm, and quiet.

It’s a perfect setting for someone who needs to slow down and focus on what matters. It helps me to practice being mindful rather than let my brain scurry away in a gaggle of anxiety and a beating of self loathing.. it helps to just shut it all down and BREATHE. Just BE.

Soon i will be preparing the earth of my own little plot for a garden, I just need to get a shovel. Possibly this coming Thursday I will go to bunnings! And a friend of mine has sent me the best housewarming gift!

gardening gloves, and seeds - Sunflowers, Parsley, Basil, Dill, Coriander, Rocket, Chives, Tomato, Corn, Broccoli - absolutely perfect!

I’m a very lucky girl

Shalimar has found it strange to actually walk on the grass here – she’s used to hard surfaces – concrete, or bitumen, or the very hard ground in the little churchyard. She has taken some coaxing to get off the edges and paths!

Venture off the path? But it's a JUNGLE out there!

But once she got started… she just took off. Her fears turned out to be totally unfounded!

Tiger in the grass! Watch out, lizards!

 

Now that she’s walking on the grass, sitting together in the yard is much more enjoyable.

Saturdays are meant for this.

I hope you are all having a lovely, relaxing weekend!!

Have you had, or do you have a garden? What do you grow, what would you like to grow? 

Black dog snapping at my heels.

Hello Once again I have neglected my blog posting. It’s a good thing this is just a hobby and outlet for me – if I was a paid blogger this would be a massive FAIL and the sponsors would be wanting their money back!

Last post I also promised that I would return with a list of nominated bloggers for the award I’ve been given. Another fail :/

Well – my solution – consider yourselves ALL nominated After all, you are all awesome!

As for me.. I’ve been trying to elude that pesky black dog again. Just won’t leave me alone.  Winston Churchhill’s black dog certainly gets around, doesn’t it?

Getting up is hard when there is a black dog around.

(Image source)

I don’t know where to go from here to be honest. Life is so much better. I’m safe. I’m free. I’m HOME. I have every reason to be happy. And yet I’m in the pits of major depression again.

I want to live. To do things. To go places. To be with the people I love.

I want to curl up in a dark place and not be there any more. Just go away, and be oblivious and everything just be over.

I’m struggling as always with my body image. I’ve kept this 16 kilos I gained on for two years in May. But because I’m still a BMI of 15, my brain hasn’t been able to adjust to see me as I am. I have to get to BMI 20 for that to happen, as friends who have been there attest. And that’s worth it. But even hanging on to this weight has been excruciating every single day. I just want to literally tear the kilos from my body and fling them away from me. Or unzip my body and step out. It feels like a burden that I drag everywhere.

This ^^ breaks my heart. And irritates me. So shallow – life is so much more than body and appearance. Life is so precious! Every moment we lose to body image crap and misery from depression, we don’t get it back! We don’t know if tomorrow is going to come. We only have right now. And here I am, wasting right now. I can’t do that.

I wish i could snap out of it… I’m trying to just bear with it. Push through each moment and keep pushing.

Today I got lost for the 503848903th time – but it was a good getting lost. I found my local brook (including ducks) with walking trail, lots of trees and quiet spaces .. and the walking trail literally goes forever. I just walked and walked and walked and cried. And it was like breathing after living in a very enclosed, air free place for a while. Walking is a very good therapy for me, especially when my surroundings are so beautiful.

Last night, I took Shalimar out for a ramble because I’d neglected to do it earlier. And it was dark and quiet save for a dog barking, bats flying overhead, and odd chirpy noises. And the crunch of Shalimar sampling her way around the yard with her teeth!

(Image Source)

I saw a star. A smattering of stars. It was a cloudy night, but even so, it was DARK and I could see stars. I have not seen the stars for years now. I have missed them so much. In the photo that I snapped  you can’t really see the stars but they were there.

This is my before night time view -

It doesn't look as bright as it is, but this is at 3am with NO lights in my unit - tall buildings never go dark in the city.

And this is what I saw last night -

I have missed this so much.. .and now it's home.

Such a huge difference! I’m so very lucky I’m home.

When I was still living in the place I grew up in, late at night I used to escape outside to stare up at the stars. It was very dark out there so I could always see galaxies of them! I used to just gaze.. and dream. Breathe. Tell myself that this wasn’t forever. That one day I wouldn’t be here any more, stuck here, I would be free, safe, happy…

By focussing on that ‘one day’ (in which my dancing was also key – because I saw it as my ticket away from there, my career as well as my passion) I kept myself going no matter what hell came my way. It helped me to survive.

I’m so glad to be living in place now that IS peaceful, that is SAFE. That is my HOME.

I will survive depression. It’s not forever. It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me. It’s something you have to just hang on through, because there is another side and when you come out on that other side, things are much better. I just have to put my head down and grit my teeth and keep going. I know I can. And I will.

Sorry for this long, self-absorbed post – but it’s helped me to get it out. I felt very alone before and even though this is just putting it out into the internet I don’t feel as alone or struggling to make sense of my feelings (or lack of them) any more.

Thank you for listening. I hope all of you remember that no matter bad things get, they WILL get better, so do NOT give up. Never. I promise you that life is worth it. xx

Home

Well here we are – Shalimar and I are truly home. And it feels wonderful!

It was worth the waiting, worth the stress, worth packing and cleaning and packing and cleaning some more. It is just truly beautiful. It smells lovely – like flowers and trees because it IS surrounded by flowers and trees. It’s DARK at night! It’s quiet! It’s like paradise for us both.

I haven’t let Shalimar outdoors yet, but she’s loving being so much closer to the outdoors even while inside.  She was NOT happy when I put her in her cage yesterday, and even more NOT happy when two burly men turned up and started hauling HER stuff out of HER home.

By the way, the picture I used to illustrate the last post turned out to be quite prophetic. My case manager and I thought we had a TRUCK and two men coming. What turned up was a UTE and two men. We looked at the ute, looked at my HOUSEful of stuff and both said.. “nah..”

But they did it! The ute must have had the same magic as Mary Poppin’s Bag.

Would be VERY handy

(source)

Well, when we got out of the car here at the new place, and Shalimar saw and smelt the GREEN… she just.. Ahhhhh. I could visibly see her let out a sigh and relax. She knows she’s come to a good place.  She’s settled in very well, and very fast!

Today she was pouncing around like she was nuts or something. I looked out the door and there was a bird about a metre from the screen. She was actually pretending she was out there… LOL. I’m not going to let her get any birdies!

I’m totally exhausted, I really went far past what my body feels it CAN do in the last week or so.  Yesterday I started tidying up and checking the last of the packing at 7am, kept going all day, finished unpacking at around 8pm. It feels really good to have it all done, and it feels really good to have NO useless junk and NO clutter and NO rubbish here. But maybe I should have slowed down because today I feel like a little old lady – sore and weary. I need to learn to listen to my body and stop when it’s had enough. Not hard to do.

I’m sorry I’ve been tardy with commenting on the blogs of people I follow – and you are some amazing writers with really good, interesting, mind-stimulating posts. I read them and enjoy them, but lately I’ve just been too frazzled to string many comments together. If I do, it’s a miracle. (well more accurately, it’s because the post is just SO well written or thought provoking that I HAD to no matter how tired I felt).

I’ll be back to full Fiona-ness soon

How am I really? Today has been the first full day here at my new home. After all the excitement and stress, suddenly I’ve plunged back into deep depression.  Major depression has dogged me all my life, I first was ‘diagnosed’ with it at nine, when (apparently – because I take everything my mother says with a major HUNK of salt) I wrote a suicide note. At nine???? I find it hard to believe a paediatrician would even consider diagnosing a kid of nine with depression – but that’s what I’ve been told. And looking back, I was very miserable during a lot of my childhood – for obvious reasons. I’ve never met a happy child who was being abused.

I recently saw a show called Twins , and one part of it featured a set of twins where one had anorexia, the other major depression. An interesting thing that they said, was that it’s possible that the SAME gene that causes anorexia, also causes major depression. If that’s true – and it’s likely to be – then it sounds like I have had a double whammy of it!

Maybe I'm twice the nuttiness?

(source)

Anyway, blathering aside, i have a lot of settling and exploring to do. Today was a FAIL – I ventured out to get to know my local area – this is the first place I’ve ever lived that I didn’t have a CLUE about before I moved here – there wasn’t much to find on the internet. Well it was so easy to hop on a bus somewhere, but to come back again? Every bus that went past, the driver first seemed clueless about where he was driving to (“um… I don’t know… do we go to —?” i mean, what the heck do they do, just follow the road wherever it goes?) Every driver finally shook his said and said that the next bus, five minutes behind him, was the one I wanted. And then that driver would say the same thing! But I made it home eventually. Phew!

Next time I think I’ll go prepared.

Ready for anything

(source)

Well that’s my news! I’ve missed my blog friends and I’m still blown away that any of you are actually reading! So I look forward to getting back to it.

In the meantime, i’d love to hear about what your first week of the New Year was like. I can’t guarantee I’ll comment back, but I’d love to hear anyway. Cos you guys rock xx

P.S, Shalimar wanted me to post this. Just because. (So did I actually..)

All we can say is.... YUM!

(souce)

Chocolate should be free for everyone!

 

 

All packed… and still not moved!

Just a quick post to say hellooooo, we are still here, still waiting to move

Yes moving day was meant to be today, but our removal men, or rather MAN, was minus his offsider.

So the new very important date that I can’t wait to make – is tomorrow (thursday) at 10am. Bring it on!

I’m sorry that I’ll be a bit MIA and vague in the next few days. If I get my computer connected tomorrow, I’ll still be all in a flap unpacking and jumping up and down and spinning around and racing outside to be in the garden and taking Shalimar with me!!!!! to really think straight

Can’t wait to blog from the other side, from our new home.

Take care everyone and have fun! xx

I am still scared that I have too much stuff to fit in the truck!

(Image Source)

 

Happy New Year :)

To my lovely new friends here in Blog Land – I hope you all have a wonderful new year in 2012, that you are happy, healthy, positive, lucky, everything you desire/need happens for you.

I have a deep unshakeable feeling that 2012 is going to be really positive for me and Shalimar – it’s definitely going to start with a new beginning. We move to our new home in just a few days – on Wednesday!

(Image Source)

Even so, my feeling of better things on the horizon is strong.. and comforting.

In 2012 I want to focus on being KIND to myself, and on SELF-CARE.  For too many years – most of my life – I’ve been just horrible to myself. My eating disorder is very much based in self loathing.  Part of the journey to recovery is finding the love, care and RESPECT to really start looking after myself properly, nourishing myself, letting myself THRIVE instead of trying to suffocate myself like a weed.

Even if I AM a weed – Weeds are but plants in the wrong place, aren’t they? And maybe this new home will be the place I’m meant to be in.

(Image Source)

By default, kindness and self-care will mean I can be kinder and more caring towards others too – you cannot give to others what you have not first given to yourself.

I also want to learn how to just BE. To live in the moment. Yesterday is gone – we cannot control it, cannot change it. Tomorrow is out of reach.  I want to live RIGHT NOW as best and fully as I can. And if I can do that, tomorrow will actually be that much better in a flow-on effect.

(Image Source)

Being able to just BE will help, I think, with anxiety, with flashbacks, with all sorts of things. With accepting my body, that I AM, that I don’t ever have to apologise for being who I AM. That it’s okay to be the way I AM and that I don’t have to try and change it and be something else.

(Image Source)

It’s been a hard decade, a hard couple of decades, so to have things start to just be okay and calm and positive will be a dream come true.

Here’s to fresh new positive beginnings for all of us. Happy New Year, my friends! 

What are you doing to see the New Year in? (I’m staying home).

What do you want the New Year to hold for you? Resolutions? Hopes? Dreams? I hope they happen for you xx

(Image Source)

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

I hate Christmas. Loathe it. It’s always a time of bad memories and sadness and lonelieness.

NOT THIS YEAR!

I have such wonderful friends, and their sharing has meant that Christmas is slowly, year by year, improving. I have plans, and I have visitors.

Also my life is improving, I have a new home to look forward to, and I’m so much healthier than I’ve been for years.

Even the details of my move are coming together – I have a removalist organised, and support on the day, and a moving date… 4th January can’t come soon enough!

I even have a Christmas tree! My first real tree

It's small but it's mine - and it's a real live tree - smells beautiful! In the background are my own artworks.

The tree is coming with us in January, and going into my little patch of dirt. Every year it’s going to be our Christmas tree again – and it’s going to grow with our new lives.

The hard thing – one of my closest friends has relapsed badly with anorexia. She has regained a few kilos but is still less than 30kg, and she’s not short either. Today I had the most wonderful time with her, but have come away scared – I am scared of losing her, and so angry at the eating disorder for doing this to her. Why does this horrible disease have to attack the most beautiful souls?

Please, God. Please help her. Help all of us.

Your lives are all so precious. Please, please, be kind to yourselves and take care! xxx