Fuck This Week

 

And last week. And the week before that. And while we're at it, fuck next week, too. It's not like anything's getting any better.

Grotesque

 The digital clock on my microwave reads 1:38. It is actually shortly after 8 PM; the time there is still frozen from when I impatiently snatched an oatmeal binge--6 packets--from the clutches of heat, searing my fingertips and spilling it all over the side of my microfridge.

This weekend I have not bothered to shave or shower, nothing new. I haven't bothered to leave my room save for jaunts to get more food, nothing new. I have done no work, made no art, written nothing for my quickly approaching creative writing deadline--again, nothing new.

What kills me is this weekend could have been totally different. I had done so well that week. I was so convinced that I had gained weight during a lovely excursion on a beautiful day with my mother, so obsessed with the memory of an unfinished organic cheddar and tomato quesadilla, so angry that I was out of control, so sad that I am so lonely and such a lecher, that I was giving my parents the silent treatment on the way back to campus Sunday morning (too busy thinking about my fuck-it binge). I could have gotten a ~real meal~, a garden burger and maybe some natural Sierra Mist, but I didn't. When I entered my room I stripped naked and jumped on my scale--and I hadn't gained anything. In fact, I had lost .2 lbs. I was in shock, with no idea of what to do with myself or the feel-sorry-for-yourself binge food sitting on my dresser. I checked my email--I got the interview I wanted for a holiday job at a major department store. Everything could have gone so differently if only I just threw out the food then.

Instead I am a pound-plus-some heavier in waterweight, with a sore throat losenges can't help and a lost voice. I reek of vomit and body odor. I have said no more than a sentence to anyone today--the most probably being "Yes, I want fries with that."

I really hate myself sometimes.

Try Hard

The school clinician looks me deep in the eyes, all serious.

"If we are going to do this--if you really want to make it through the semester--you can't half-ass this. You are going to need to try harder than you've ever tried before. I'm giving it a month--if nothing's getting better, than the deal if off."

I am going to try harder than I ever have before. I promise.

Undead, Undead

I wish I could come back from this unexplained, accidental absence victorious. I could share success and joy and good things and not falling asleep naked, caked in my own vomit. Not heart palpitations or the threat of leaving school entirely.

I am not sick enough. I am not sick. I am not.

I feel broken. I feel failed. I feel like I am a waste of space and money and time. I am nothing special; nobody should be bothered wasting their breath on me.

I went to an OA meeting on Friday, and I was at least thirty years younger than everyone. And aside from my lack of faith in God, in anything, what disheartened me the most was the thought that this will be me for the next ten, fifteen, twenty years; forever. It will never go away. It will always be a miserable, Godawful struggle to perform a basic human function--nourishment. Feeding myself. I will always be this way, so why bother trying to fight it.

This Isn't a Contest

I'm popular... at least, in my little mind. :) Two thousand of you who aren't me (not on a Firefox browser, at least) have been kind enough to click on my little corner of the internet, mostly by way of Scarlett who runs a far more eloquent and articulate shindig than I've got over here. Even still, I appreciate it. Though I'd like to pretend that this personal weblog is just that, personal, I would obviously be lying. If I didn't want anyone to read it or to notice me, I wouldn't be putting it on the internet in the first place.

I have a love-hate-love relationship with my eating disorder's relationship to the world wide web. Like a lot of kids self-isolating with an eating disorder, I didn't have any friends to confide in about all of this. I was very lonely in that I felt like I was the only one going through what I was going through. I wouldn't dare ask any of my friends about it--bulimia is the gross kind of eating disorder, you know. So, '87, Heather. To me, it was nothing short of a miracle to be roomed in the psych ward with a same weight, same height, same sort of high pressure prep schooled girl who also baked entire pans of brownies just for herself and her toilet. Ever since I've craved that connection, the kind you get with someone else who "gets" it. I've found it through re-watching documentaries like Thin and reading Wasted and, eventually, logging on to some of the more disordered (or imitation disordered) corners of the internet. I was a faithful member of Fading Obsession for several years, and this past summer I found a solid, wonderful, genuine group of girls through a muck of pro-Ana message boards.

I love my "girls," these girls who I've only "known" for less than half a year, like they are my soul sisters and closest friends. When they struggle I hurt, and when they succeed I am overjoyed. I follow their weblogs and chat correspondence religiously, hungry for the details of their lives. I laugh at the ridiculousness of this disease with them, and I cry with them when things are hard. I cannot imagine having made it through the past few months without their unyielding love and support.

That said... it is hard for these relationships not to turn competitive. Not in any malicious way, I'm sure of it--the last thing I would harbor toward any of these girls are ill intentions. But it is hard not for me to want to be thinner, or sicker, or more in recovery with any one of these girls dependent on my mood. I try to repress any malevolence or schadenfreude, but secretly I wonder if their failures or weight gains only serve to make me feel better. Or worse. It is so hard, so desperately difficult not to compare myself to them when making comparisons is what my brain does best. I want to be better than them. I want to be worse than them. I want to be the same as them, and that makes our differences in symptoms and recovery so hard to bear.

I love having a clique with in jokes and secrets. I love that they like me.

I hate that they aren't tangible people. Though I have been more honest and intimate with them than anyone "IRL," I have yet to hug them or hold their hands. Or hear their voices. Connecting with people in real life is so different than these relationships I've forged on the internet, and I wonder how our bonds would be if we knew each other in the real world. Would they still like me? Would I be too irritating, too self absorbed, too young, too stupid? Would they think I was too fat? Would you?

I am being real here, honestly, I swear. But maybe the film of my computer screen is a safety net.

So that we all can be winners, or I won't have to see the score.

Warning Signs

When I returned from my first psych hospitalization for my suicide attempt, my psychiatrist and my family and myself all tried to establish "warning signs." Signals that the ship that is me is going under, so I can avoid ERs and hospital gowns.

And we established that the "warning signs" were simply me... stopping. Stopping with basic hygiene, then with bothering to go to class, then with leaving the house. Not caring anymore. Combined with depression and binging, my apathy creates a hotbed for suicidal idealizations. My more impulsive suicidal thoughts can be worked through with willpower--mostly the fear of failing to kill myself right--within hours. It is much more dangerous, we established, for me to be left to stew in my own juices, so to speak.

Today marks 48 hours without having left my residence hall, and 24 without having left my floor (mostly to go to the bathroom). I haven't really made any attempt to go to class, my six hour studio classes,  classes missed that will surely dock my grade to a C automatically, my mediocre work aside. I have done no work aside from researching  residential care, and determining that everyone hates every single program. Though none of the OPs I've been talking with are aware of how much I haven't left the house, they all reccomend that I leave school for care. School doesn't refund, and that's the only thing keeping me here. If my medical evals come back poor, I'm going to have to leave anyway.

I kind of have an excuse for staying. I've been death warmed over with a virus--my nose clogged, my body dizzy and aching, my fingers icicles next to the heat of my tummy. I probably have had fevers. I am not lying about that, I suppose. But some part of me is thinking that maybe I'm fabricating my illness just to stay in and be dead to the world, the same part that thought I was making too big a deal out of this whole bulimia thing in the first place. The same part that doesn't believe me when I'm telling the truth and always, always thinks I'm lying.

I haven't showered in days, and the hair of my legs has grown thick and prickly. I haven't started another short story for my creative writing application, and time is ticking. I received my college recs from the registrar for the application a couple weeks ago. The one from my college counselor opens "The one word to describe _____ is resilience." What a lie.

Friday

I am too drained to even make an inarticulate, rambling, stream of consciousness post about my evaluation on Friday. Have an excerpt from the explanation I gave to Scarlett during a chat instead:

[9/25/11 12:15:10 PM] Cheeks: okay, assessment. they did a brief medical eval, and a longer psych/ed eval.
[9/25/11 12:15:24 PM] Cheeks: i would need to get a thorough medical eval with an ekg, bloodwork, etc. elsewhere
[9/25/11 12:15:59 PM] Cheeks: it was one of those times where you don't realize how fucked up you are until you start saying "yes" to everything
[9/25/11 12:16:16 PM] Cheeks: especially concerning medical symptoms

[9/25/11 12:16:44 PM] Cheeks: it was a smaller facility, and everyone on staff knew my name when i came in. i only saw a couple of other girls, very quickly, and they were near skeletal and being hustled from one room to another
[9/25/11 12:17:47 PM] Cheeks: i think i accidentally insinuated that i used oxycontin instead of oxyelite, haha
[9/25/11 12:18:03 PM] Cheeks: oh well, might as well add one more thing
[9/25/11 12:18:46 PM] Cheeks: the woman in charge of my assessment still had to talk to the "team" afterwards (ah! i'm in teamland!)

but she said that she felt that i was barely medically stable enough for intensive ip, and that just the evening program alone would not be enough
[9/25/11 12:20:18 PM] Cheeks: apparently my heartbeat was not cooperating that morning

[9/25/11 12:25:44 PM] Cheeks: disordered me wants to stop binging. and to keep losing weight. and to be superwarrioranagirl.
[9/25/11 12:26:09 PM] Cheeks: and trying to get better me wants to stop binging. but also wants to start being able to have a normal life without thinking about food all the time, when i can just eat when i'm hungry and idk have a boyfriend and go out binge drinking like you're supposed to in college
[9/25/11 12:27:13 PM] Cheeks: they did a blind weight for me, fully clothed. and they said i was XXX% of my ~ideal body weight~. which i'm guessing means a 20 bmi
[9/25/11 12:28:24 PM] Cheeks: i don't feel sick enough to stop school though. and i don't feel sick enough that my school work isn't getting done, or i'm not socializing at all. i do both of those things, they are just very, very hard.

[9/25/11 12:56:59 PM] Cheeks: and i am just now starting to feel the satisfaction of weight loss, and that is one of the first things about my ed to make me feel proud and accomplished in a while
[9/25/11 12:57:16 PM] Cheeks: one of the first things in general to make me feel proud and accomplished
[9/25/11 12:58:10 PM] Cheeks: i was skyping with a friend at uchicago last night. and i had to get up and get some water and when i came back she had seen a full body shot and was kind of angry i had lost so much weight
[9/25/11 12:58:40 PM] Cheeks: and i tried to play it off but inside i was so happy and proud that someone noticed.

I Can't Do This

I gained nearly fifteen pounds in five days.

Fuck recovery.

Evaluation

 

In two hours I will be evaluated. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier and better at this than me. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier and better at this than me, five pounds heavier than when I called for my appointment. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier than me and better at this than me, five pounds heavier than when I called for my appointment, seven pounds heavier than I was on Monday. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier than me and better at this than me, five pounds heavier than when I called for my appointment, seven pounds heavier than I was on Monday, terrified.

In two hours I will fail, at everything.

Warsong

I'm at battle with my body, and it's fighting back.

My arsenal of laxatives and starvation is no match for my beast of a body, which seems only to exist to return fire a hundred fold. Its weapons are my fat and my hunger pangs and the pain that wreaks havoc on my body nearly daily in a multitude of locations. Today's target is my bowels and urinary tract; the former feels as if it is constantly about to burst, the latter as if it is on a slow and cool fire.

It is a losing battle, but one I keep fighting with hasty attacks and ill-planned strategies. I keep fighting, because I am desperate to win, no matter how shoddy my odds.

If I win I will have beaten it, and I will be perfect, and I will probably be dead.

For now I'm K.O., and my body is doing a victory dance.

To See If I Still Feel

I don't believe in the After-Life, which is the only thing that makes death terrifying. The idea that I will only live on through someone else's memories frightens me more than anything; the idea that I will die alone without anyone ever having loved me horrifies me. One of the reasons I create art and literature, I suppose, is because they are tangible things that people can remember me by. I am obsessed with the tragically young and gifted like Ian Curtis and John Keats, and just as obsessively fearful of dying young before I ever even do anything or am anyone.

How ironic is it that every day I hop, skip, and jump closer to death's door? Every time I purge I'm taking a chance; every day I take too many laxatives and not enough Gatorade and I feel dizzy and my heart starts to tremble a part of me panics--"Is this it?"--while the other part whines that I didn't get enough up. I have had all of the potential symptoms of cardiac arrest. I've bled internally from my throat, stomach, and rectum. I've blacked out in the shower and hit my head on the porcelain floor of the bathtub. I am at death's door, knocking and ringing the bell and Trick-or-Treating.

I've had over a hundred hits today from Scarlett's blog (thanks for the plug, haha) about our late night chat over the potential causes of our ED deaths. Not a hospital, we both agreed, nor surrounded by family and loved ones. Joking aside (and there were many, many sickening but hysterical jokes made at 1 AM), we have both given serious thought to just how we might go, be it by our own hands or the hands down our throats. I admit to having many fantasy suicide or cardiac arrest scenarios floating around my head--floating in a bathtub in a gauzy dress, discovered by an impressionable bell boy in the elevator of a five star hotel late one night--because an early demise has always seemed such a vivid, real possibility. A possibility I don't terribly mind.

My aunt, who wanted so very badly just to live, died before the age of sixty this past week. How unfair is it that the people who try so hard to live die, and I--who am playing with death every day, like I'm asking for it--am still trapped on this Earth? Death is never fair.

I dream about death, but I know it won't be fair. It has never been fair.

Auto Pilot

Today I binged like I had completely dissasociated. I was not myself, not my worried binging self, or my disgusted binging self, or my fuck-it-all binging self. I just ate and didn't taste. I ate alone, and I ate until I started feeling ill.

Three pounds.

There is a part of my brain, making excuses... Only food weight, or water weight, a pound at most, one pound isn't too much, you'll fast this week, you'll lose it back...

But I am still stuck on autopilot, and I'm too numb to care. Maybe tomorrow I'll want to kill myself for not purging it up, but tonight I can't care about anything. Not even my irrational ED brain is "on" tonight. My brain is not on tonight.

She's Gonna Break Soon

 

When I'm not binging or purging I have all this screaming rage inside, but no where to put it.

I want to break everything, I want to break myself.

I am about to break.

I Will Let You Down

Today I ate 660 calories.

A ballpark estimate, I am sure. I always overestimate. I always count the calories for the homemade cheese and tomato and lettuce quesadillas at the dining hall as Taco Bell steak ones, I always count the dollop of sour cream I half-dipped the slices in as two tablespoons of Daisy. I always round up to the nearest ten. Even when I binge, I will go through the wrappers and round up the numbers. Which is why I knew that I stayed up on Tuesday night purging 2,500 calories of college mess delicacies, that when I woke up too late for class the next morning I went on to eat 4,000 calories of chocolates and Twizzlers and Klondike bars and muffins, that it all was painfully pulled from my intestines until I was three pounds lighter and I could barely sleep from the hurt and I had to leave my writing course to puke with 27 little orange Ducolax pills.

But things were getting better. Three pounds lighter made the pain and the cramps feel good. By chance I met with an onsite clinician who specialized in eating disorders and told me I can call her anytime, who recommended me BRAT diet foods that were within my calorie constraints, who felt my swollen glands and was shocked I had never seen an ED clinician before, who told me terror stories of the heart attacks I could face. My professor was not nearly as angry with me for missing the class as I thought she would be, though I lied (only a little, I was sick, because I am always sick). A professor agreed to review my fiction manuscripts for the creative writing program. I spoke to the counselor, and I maybe even felt a bit better.

My heart churns out an unsteady rhythm, and the cramps still rupture any silence or calm.

So I felt a bit stronger, like I had a better chance at normal. And after an iced coffee and a cigarette I had a 70 calorie, no sugar added, strawberry smoothie (I counted it as 125, you never know). And I went to draw with a girl in a studio. And I still felt hungry, and I went to the dining hall.

And it terrified me. I felt like I could have a plum, or I would have to eat everything. Every single thing. Restriction and Binge warred in my brain, full out battles with cannons and thunder. And I tried so hard, and I ignored them both as best I could, and I got a quesadilla and some green tea and a plum and said that is what I'm having and that is it. And I smoked outside and loitered and had fun, and I was myself with the kids outside (however obnoxious that might be), and I went back inside and I ate my plum and I ate my quesadilla and I dipped it in sour cream and I kept it down.

I kept it down.

I was so proud. It wasn't "normal," it wasn't 1,500 calories a day, it wasn't regular. But it was neither a binge nor restriction, I stopped the cycle, for one meal I beat the voices in my head. I called my mother and she sounded so happy, and so proud, and I was so happy and so proud.

And then I stepped on the scale, and I knew it was food weight, and I knew I had neither pissed nor defecated, and I knew and I knew but still...

I gained two pounds from this morning. Two, whole, big, scary pounds.

And all the pride vanished, and all the good feelings went away, and everything was terrible at once. If this was normal, I could never be normal again. Restriction said to me "Never Again." And Bulimia told me "Maybe there is still time to puke it up."

This Feeling Has Got to Stay

I know how fleeting this feeling will be, and I treasure it. Control. Fasts are fucking with my metabolism, but I had one more on Sunday. On Monday I had 60 calories in grapes and a plum. Today I had half a cup of oatmeal with brown sugar, barely a portion but I'm going to call it 200. I don't need to eat anything else today, nor do I want to. I don't want this feeling to go away.

A light has brightened the end of the tunnel by means of a competitive creative writing department which I'm hoping to qualify for. If I do, I will be earning dual degrees in that and visual art (the bachelor's in science rather than the bfa). I am suddenly... enthusiastic. I shop my short stories among my writerly friends from high school and impatiently await their responses. I don't want this feeling to go away.

I am filled with such love and warmth and gratitude for my mother. She is my best friend. I don't want this feeling to go away.

I am pursuing recovery, kind of. I am committed to, at the very least, getting myself a psych for the remainder of the academic year. I would like a "team" or some sort of outpatient care by the summer. I don't want this feeling to go away.

But...

I lost another pound this morning. This feeling can never go away.

Failiures

I tried, for a day, to be normal. I ate an avocado and tomato egg white omelet, a side salad, loaves of organic bread with jam and cheese, and a third or less of a raspberry tart out at lunch with my mother. I had not eaten in fifty hours. My mother was so happy to see me eat. The idea of my eating disorder no longer so revolts her that she denies my dramatics over it, she is genuinely terrified for me now. Ignorance or genuine terror, what is worse. What is worse not for me, but for her.

I felt good enough after eating to try on clothes at an Anthropologie. A large, my old standby, was baggy and disjointed on me. A medium bunched and swallowed my body. A small fit well. How could a small fit well? I don't feel small.

I dryswallowed fifteen ducolax pills. The girl I like across the hall asked me to go out to eat and party, and I went to the food court and ate four slices of greasy pizza and bags of chips and bags of gummi candy. And then I smeared on eyeliner and went to a party.

The music throbbed inside room like a heartbeat. The pulsating bass of top twenty hits swelled inside my belly. My belly couldn't take it, and I ran as fast as I could in my impractical, too tall cork wedges back to my dorm. And as I was overcome with cramps and slow shit and a firey hot pain through my intestines on top of everything, I started to cry. I wished so badly that I could be normal.

And then I went to get my scale.

I called my mother still in tears. My mother, once my worst enemy, so like me in all of the worst ways. When I'm with her only the bad things come to mind. Alone, lonely, I am so homesick for all of her good things. I sobbed muddled I-love-yous and I'm-sorrys and I-want-to-come-homes on the phone. I am such a fuck up, I told her. I can't do anything right. I ruin everything.

She told me it was impossible for her to unlove me. And those words are the only things keeping me.

What I Really, Really Want

Today I had a piece of Trident Layers with Real Fruit Flavor Sweet Cherry and Island Lime sugar-free gum. Layers and layers of flavor. Five calories. At 9:00 PM, exactly.

I woke up at two in the afternoon, dehydrated and hungry with half of my day already gone. And my day kept going. I called my mother, but that only reminded me how antisocial and lonely and sick I am. I need to clean my room, it looks like the worst episode of Hoarders. I watched White Oleander, and it reminded me of how much of an artist I'm not. I watched a Japanese film, Memories of Matsuko, after wrangling with my VLC player for an hour. Matsuko dies fat and alone in an apartment she never leaves. She is sad and lost and lonely and disowned by everyone. And it felt like me, or maybe it didn't, and I started crying. At first they were the kind of tears you can bat away, the kind that feels like you are physically having to make yourself cry. And it quickly turned into silent, gasping screams into my pillow and bawling as quietly as I could. I don't think I've ever felt so lost before.

I was going to clean my room today, it is just as filthy. I was going to write fiction today for my potential major change, I finished nothing. I was going to be social and try to find friends and maybe go out and maybe do some art or do some work or do something and I didn't, I won't, I can't. What is wrong with me, I don't understand, I can't understand. I want to be someone else so desperately, but I can't find anything to want.

I also gained two pounds after two days of fasting. Probably because I can't piss any of the fluids I've been retaining. I can't even do this eating disorder right.

What Else Is There

To get to my college guidance office you must enter a labyrinth. It is buried beneath floors of Liberal Arts departments, deep in the basement, hidden behind a maze of hallways that wouldn't look incogruous in a detention center. When I arrive for my appointment I am handed a clipboard stuffed with consent forms and intake forms and privacy forms, In the waiting room is a small girl I spoke to (rather impulsively, I usually am too involved in my little binges to pay heed to anyone, let alone strangers) in line for a cheese quesadilla. She is still wearing her pajama pants, and her hot and sensative boyfriend who waits for her when she's whisked away with paperwork and her counselor. I say something silly about the amount of forums on my lap, and she grins and tells me "You only have to fill it out the first time."

Check the boxes YES or NO, the papers read:

Have you ever contemplated suicide? Yes.

Have you ever attempted suicide? Yes.

Have you ever been admitted to a psychiatric hospital? Yes.

Do you ever diet or monitor your food intake? Yes.

With restriction? Yes.

Fasting? Of course.

Laxatives? 15 or more at a time.

Diuretics? Sadly, yes.

Vomiting? Much more efficient.

Exercise? I've tried.

Other? ...What else is there?

Do you ever feel like a failure? Always.

Worthless? Every day.

Hopeless? Constantly.

Lonely? Have I ever.

There is a page of symptoms for anxiety; I've experienced them all, but only when I'm starving. Nausea, Rapid Heartbeat, Dizziness, Hotness, Pins and Needles Sensations on the Tips of Your Fingers...

My appointment with the counselor feels much too short, mostly because I have too much to say. Everything that could be wrong with me has gone wrong of me, short of anything sexual (I fail at everything, you see). I have filled in every box and answered every question on the questionare. It is all very overwhelming in my head, but on paper it makes sense. Of course she's such a fuck-up, it says so right here and here and here...

She hand me a card at the end of her visit. It is her buisiness card, with her name and telephone number. But on the reverse she has scribbled down 1-800-RENFEW. She tells me to call and to make an appointment for an evaluation. "It might feel like the end of the world right now, but it's your eating disorder talking." If my eating disorder ended, it would be the end of the world. But when I get home I call Renfew.

"We just need to take your weight and height," she says at the end of their intake procedure. I tell them.

"And how much have you lost or gained within the last two weeks?" Two weeks ago I was in Ohio, tortured by relatives and birthday cake. I know my Ohio weight immediately--it is gross, but not my HW. I do the math, and the number is strange in that I've never put those little losses together. "Twenty pounds." Together they are kind of frightening.

I might cancel. I want it just as much as I want to cancel.

My Loneliness is Killing Me

Today I fasted, and it was easy.

Today I drank a glass of water, and it came up right away.

Today I called my mother, and she told me she was sorry.

Today I listened to "She's Leaving Home," and I started to cry.

My room is filthy, I have hours of homework due at 8:30 AM, and the rain is torrential.

I like a girl across the hall, she is a dancer and she smiles like a child (like I never could) and she lets me hustle her cigarettes. "Chill for five minutes with me," she asks, but I am too busy procrastinating by grabbing at my flesh with grubby fingers and tracing the paths of the stretch marks on my hips.

I can't make myself do anything.