little girl found

today, the little girl tip-toed out of the shadows and spoke
she admitted to being afraid
she said outloud that she wanted someone to take care of her
she admitted she wasn't as strong as she may have acted all along
this event was quite unintentional
she tried to suck her back in and keep her quiet
but the little one snuck out anyway and squeaked quietly in her tiny little voice
while skipping thru the tearsdrops and the pain and sadness
past the shame and the anger and the darkness of her own hollow reflection
Let her speak, she said...you must finally let her speak.
allow her a life, a soul of her own
the time she deserves to be a child, helpless and small
let her breathe, let her grieve, let her hold your hand when she is afraid
and try as i might to ignore her, she is strong too. stronger than me sometimes.
and when i keep her locked away, deep inside....she tears at my heart, and my soul
like she has for so long
being punished for no reason, really
but for everything, actually
and so it is
i let her speak
just this once, for now...
but please, would you hold my hand?

We are a community

“We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free." -Starhawk

Repost from Oct. 24, 2008

this has been a rough week for me. my ED voice has been roaring loud...begging for me to come back, restrict and use bad behaviors. You're getting fat, he tells me...and despite having given up my scale a month ago in Program, i went to the gym for the first time yesterday and couldn't resists it's call to me. it was not a good thing to do. i am heavier than i suspected - past my "scary" number - way past what i went into the hospital at. Yeah, my jeans and clothes all fit just fine. People tell me i look good, better than when i was admitted, even though i'm almost 10 lbs heavier now. i was telling Pyx yesterday, in hysterics, that at that moment, i'd rather be sick and a smaller number, than healthy and a bigger number. My skinny jeans still fit? I don't even "get" that! i feel like a house....giant and flabby and horrible and unattractive. All because I got on that stupid piece of machinery. And not only did i get on that scale, I hated that number so much and was convinced that it MUST BE WRONG....that I ran downstairs to the other locker room and weighed myself on that scale too. Same shitty number! i got very depressed. Decided not to eat the rest of the day. Called all my supporters and talked to them about my knowing insanity and intent of sabotage. They all told me the right stuff - but it didn't work. I was so convinced that I am disgusting because of that number that I couldn't even really absorb it. I wanted to wallow. I wanted to numb out. i wanted to self destruct at a deafening rate. all bad things.

why is a stupid number so important to me? why does my entire self-esteem depend on that number? why, no matter how many people tell me the right things, do i only hear ED sometimes? And why, even though i'm very intelligent, educated, exp'd and motivated to be healthy...why is it that sometimes the only "person" i can truly hear is ED?

Well, i got up today on the right side of the bed Happy, motivated, positive and determined to stay healthy and choose life. I've eaten my breakfast, written in my journal and rubbed my touchstone that says LIFE on one side and TRUST on the other - both of which are crucial choices in my recovery. i'm not writing all of this to bum you out, or in search of any kind of pity. Please.....that's so NOT what i want to do here. But maybe this helps me to write about it. Maybe i'll help someone else who doesn't understand why this happens to them, or to the one they love or care about. Maybe this is just a written "purge" or public admittance of my sins. I am a recovery Catholic, remember. Old habits are hard to break! LOL

Anyway, thank god it's Friday. It's getting COLD and the leaves are falling and so beautiful. The air is crisp and my "baby" scorpio girl turns 8! I can hardly believe it! She is so beautiful and sweet and huggable and bright. I'm so lucky to be her mommy. We made cupcakes last night and she brought them in to class today. And I also get to attend "pumpkin day" in my son's first grade class this afternoon. There will be pumpkin pie, ice cream, bread, cake (mine) and seeds....a perfect afternoon for a struggling eating disorder parent! HAHAHA

Have a great weekend! Grow the love and pass it around....xoxo

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
- Mary Oliver

Beatae Memoriae

today was her service
i couldn't say goodbye, i'm still in shock and disbelief i think
in group therapy we shed many tears
some were angry, some were quiet
i was numb and couldn't stop crying for the entire hour, or day for that matter
there were people there who admitted they were jealous that she succeeded in death
this is a fucking twisted and sick disease
the winner of the game (the best ED addict) is the dead one
sadly, my friend H won this time
but there will be many more, probably even from my group
but i don't want to be that kind of winner
and i'm all numbed out from the xanax
and i am all cried out for this moment
even though the tears always find me again
i am empty and numb and guilty and sad and angry and confused and hurting
i want her back
i want to hug her again and tell her she's beautiful, inside and out
and i wish i could have saved her
but i can only save me

Rest in Peace sweet girl

She was only 32 years old and one of the characters from my story. The daughter of a famous cardiac surgeon. God, such morose irony. She started restricting when she was only 7! So much pressure. Too much for her to handle. A brilliant girl - an honors student, member of MENSA, champion show horse jumper and the mother of a beautiful 8 year old boy. The light of her life.

And what a sense of humor. She had me and all of us there in constant stitches. We fed off each other's energy. Laughing, crying, hugging. We were in the facility together for both our children's first day of school. We were filled with guilt and shame and shed many regretful tears together that day. We learned how to knit together. I even went out on pass and bought big fat knitting needles and beautiful soft, fluffy yarn for us both to learn from another sweet girl. And what fun we had, even there - amidst the dark reality of the present moments shared. We were goofy and smart and sad together - sharing the common thread of a life long disease.

Her story with me started when she had a heart attack and was admitted into the ICU at age 32, 5'6" tall and weighing about 90 lbs. There she remained for 6 days, being tube fed and receiving intravenous packs of potassium before they moved her to the EDU. That's when we met. I was admitted two days after her. And that's we became fast friends. She ran a nightclub in my town (small world, eh) and i manage a band. We shared dreams of future playdates with our kids and girls nights out with cosmos, rock and roll and lots of laughs.

A couple of weeks later, I was getting better though, and she was not. We parted ways, temporarily, when i was discharged from inpatient and moved across the hall during the days to do intensive outpatient. We'd blow kisses and send love in little secret waves through the glass panes of the hospital doors. And a few days later she was transferred to a residential facility where they expected her to remain for several months, healing. I spoke to her the day she was transferring. I told her i was worried about her. She was very depressed and losing her will to live. She was angry and frustrated and ashamed that her eating disorder was out of control. I calmed her and told her it was okay and that she'd find her strength to beat this. She had to, it was not optional.

I didn't know then that it would be our last conversation.

i found out last night that my friend died in a hospital near there 6 days later. Another heart attack - fatal this time. Her mind had been taken by the disease long before her body though. But not her soul...her soul ached so much to be a good Mommy. A good daughter and wife and friend. She was so very generous and nurturing and sweet to everyone but herself. And i find it impossible almost to believe she's gone. Only days ago she told me she loved me on the phone. And even though i knew how very very sick she was, i believed i'd see her again. But i won't. ED took her from us and from her son and her family...her father, the heart surgeon.

This isn't part 2 of my story. This is a tragic reality i am trying to process. i feel empty and devastated and scared and so damn angry. It's really, really beyond fucked up.

H - I hope you found peace my beautiful, sweet sister. our time together may have been short, but it was so colorful and intense and passionate. i shall be sure that you did not die in vain. i promise you that.

Sweet dreams lil one...may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest
xoxoxoxoxoxo

little girl lost

When i checked myself in, i was so scared. i thought i'd be the oldest and the fattest. i thought i'd be the only mom with little kids. i thought only girls struggled with eating disorders. i thought i'd have my disease the longest at 28 years and counting. sadly, i was wrong on every single preconceived notion i'd had.

there are only two hospitals in my state that have inpatient Eating Disorder Units. there are 14 beds in the EDU of the hospital i was in. it's a confidential unit. only first names are used, really. my therapist and husband had intervened to ask me to check into one a month before i did. i promised to get better, try harder, begged them to give me one more chance. and so i did. i tried harder to lose 15 more pounds before being admitted. i didn't eat at all. well, i restricted to 500 calories a day, but then would exercise enough to at least burn off 750-1000, so my body was literally eating the muscles i was working. sometimes i swear i could feel it happening when i laid real still at night. when you starve your body, your mind does crazy, terrible things. i was an emotional roller coaster, up, down high and low. the pendulum was swinging more and more erratically and i was in a very dark, empty place. my mind played sick tricks. the addiction to this behavior is alluring because we crave the control, we need it to exist in our daily lives. somewhere along the line it became our coping mechanism - the singular way in which we handled all the chaos around us. everyone thinks its about the physical body. about the food. about the pressure to be thin. it doesn't start out that way. those become symptoms of something much deeper and darker. and we're good hiders. we've hidden our disease for so long. its easy in the beginning. but the deeper we fall into the abyss, the more embedded the lies become to our mere existence. they are us and we are them. there no longer lies a distinction, we don't know who we are without our eating disorder. it gains a voice and life of its own.

i had hit rock bottom when i checked in that day. i couldn't stop crying, i was bingeing and purging twice a day and not eating the rest of the time. my children were posturing themselves not to upset me, i.e. make me cry or angry. i couldn't make simple decisions, my brain was clouded and dark. i had started "cutting" for relief and that scared me...and my husband and therapist and friends who knew. and i was in real physical trouble. so dehydrated that my potassium and sodium levels were low enough to put me into cardiac arrest (of course i didn't know that until i was tested at the hospital). And i was so dizzy from the dehydration that every time i sat down and stood up, even slowly, i would go black - taking several moments to regain my sight and equilibrium. a few times i fell down even, and lied to those around me about being clumsy or something goofy. i started calling the hospitals to seek help. Doing interviews on the phone - telling my shameful secret that was literally now consuming me from the inside out. MY control mechanism that had taken over my control. controlled me. This one agreed to have me in the next morning for an evaluation. Once I did that, they wanted to admit me right away, but there was a wait list! Ha! A wait list to get a bed in an Eating Disorder Unit. 5 days they said. I begged them for sooner, i might not make it til day 5. Thank god, they called me two days later and off i went. Got there, did all the physical check-in procedures, and then my insurance company refused to admit me. they claimed i hadn't done enough outpatient work to warrant inpatient care. they often do this, especially with bulimics since we often look pretty normal, generally weighing an average amount, normal BMI, flying under the radar easily. but bulimics die faster than anorexics, generally. Heart attacks, ruptured esophaguses...you've heard me say it over and over again now. i am LUCKY!

i knew if i left the hospital that day, i'd never come back. my husband and children had dropped me off. my kids thought i was "going on a retreat to learn how to take better care of myself and be a better Mommy". hey, it wasn't untrue. My younger sibling was flying in from across the country to help take care of my children during my absence. took off work, leaving his partner to deal with all the business. It would take me a minimum of two weeks inpatient to "break the cycle" they said. I was going to miss my children's first day of school, first soccer match, swim lessons and dance classes. But i knew that if i didn't get help now, i'd die and leave them without a mommy - missing every major event in their lives and robbing all of us of a life full of the beautiful love we share. And so....i had to move forward, like it or not. And since my insurance company wasn't cooperating, i was offered me two options by the hospital. i could go home and they would work with the insurance company and let me know the verdict OR i could check myself in as self-pay (at $1200 per night) and let my Doc fight for me, with the added the ammo that i wanted to get better so much i wouldn't leave. I chose the latter.

But it wasn't really a choice. I knew if i left, i'd never come back.
at least not walking.

The first post is the deepest....

Body dismorphic disorder.....that's what they call it. ya know, when you see yourself in a completely different way than others see you, or as is reality. we all have moments when we think we look bad...or conversely, really good. but this is the thing that gets eating disordered people crazy. when the 90lb girl thinks she looks chubby or even fat, even knowing how wrong this was. and there are varying degrees of it, just like anything else. i didn't think i had it at all til i was in the hospital - ha! no, i'm a good 15 lbs heavier than when i was admitted there. i can see the good and bad in my physical self since then. the bad is that sometimes my "skinny" jeans are tight now. and the muffin-top creeps over the waistband. all my jeans were hanging off of my when i was admitted. as was my skin. when you are so severely dehydrated like that, your flesh is no longer supple or plumpish. you're body eats away at itself and uses every bit of its resources to save itself. dehydration is really the biggest threat. that's when your electrolytes get messed up and out of whack so bad that your heart's functioning power gets sketchy. the potassium packs they administer via IV hurt BAD. and the rehydration process takes days. every single time you stand up, or even stand from sitting position you about pass out. the blackness, the dizzy feeling...and on top of all of that your brain chemicals are so messed up that you are super emotional. angry, sad, depressed, afraid. and in the hospital they feed you. and it's forced. and it's monitored. you have to lick the cover of the yogurt container - every single calorie is accounted for. and you sit there like cattle being fed before slaughter...and in 16 hrs of therapy a day. and everyone, no matter how beautiful you think they are - or how underweight - or even how ill looking they are...is envious of the skinniest one. And when the new admits come in, and we've all been feeding at the trough for days....a terrible triggering effect ripples through the floor. Competition and rage. Doesn't matter how sick s/he is or how young or old or close to death. We all still want to be that thin again. and many of us would be.....and some of us died trying.
i'm not sure why i'm writing this stuff today. guess i needed to get it out. i think i was bothered by a conversation i had with my roommate from the hospital last night. They have a support group on Tuesdays, which i attended religiously for months after my release. But when you are released, they ensure you have an outpatient team to see. You see the psychiatrist that admitted you monthly, and a therapist and a nutritionist weekly. The therapist takes care of your mental needs and addictions and the nutritionist works with you on the ED related stuff, more specifically. What you are actually eating or not. What's working or not. Exercise, patterns, behaviors, monitoring your weight, etc. We're not allowed to own scales you know. And that was really hard to give up when you are used to weighing yourself 10-15 times a day. And yes, you don't need to tell me how dumb that is....i know. But even when you know, you can't stop yourself from doing it. But we find them everywhere. At the gym, in our doctor's offices, at Bed Bath & Beyond. I haven't known my weight now for about 4 mos. I think that was the last time i cheated and got on the scale at the gym. And it calls me everytime i walk by it. But i know i can't get on cuz it'll throw me off track and maybe even into an ED spiral for days. But i can't go to the hospital support group anymore. I go to one thru my nutritionist's office. My friends from the hospital are all on facebook and i see their struggles. But they aren't working the program either. They haven't decided yet, truly made the decision that they want to live MORE than they want to be thin. Being thin is still their main focus in life. And i gave up that main focus. I mean, don't get me wrong....i would still LOVE to be smaller, tighter and better. But now i'm trying to work on being HEALTHY and that's a big difference. But i struggle some days. Yesterday i struggled alot. Yesterday was bad. But the difference is that now, i forgive myself and start over. Recovery is never perfect - but i do have hope. i want it. i need it. Living a "normal" existence is so alluring to me. And last night was the hospital support group. And many of them always call me, every Tuesday "Are you coming tonight?" they ask. No....i'm not. Finally last night, after my old roommate told me how badly she is struggling, i said to her..."i'm sorry, i love you all...but i can't go to that group anymore. it's triggering and filled with bad energy and intentions, and as much as i care for you all...i can't do it anymore." She was silent. And i know that they need to find their own way. Hit their own bottom and pull their way back out of the holes they are in toward the sunlight again. But of the 14 of us that were in the hospital together, one is dead, at least 3 are close to death, 5 that i know of are heavily back into their diseases again - both the men are really sick again and they were some of my biggest inspirations during my inpatient time - and there a at least 5 or 6 (maybe more) that have been re-hospitalized or placed in a long term residential program since Sept. And one of the is a bloody nutritionist for godsakes!

So i have been pulling away from them all bit by bit. I wanted to be supportive in the beginning and help and talk everyday and send them love notes and texts. But i can't do it anymore. It really tugs at my heart to turn away like this. But its self preservation. They haven't decided to LIVE yet. And oh god, it's so hard to do that! I just told my husband last night, after being knee deep in ED shit all day...that sometimes, even though i know how horrible it is, and how bad it makes me feel...i just want to be there again. Sick and hungry and weak and angry and dizzy. Because i did it for so long, the allure of being there again is like going home. And i know this hurts those who love me. i'm sorry. I don't mean to hurt you, or myself. But recovery ain't perfect. And i'm working really hard at it, please know this. And unlike all those from the hospital that are still sick or back in the hospital again...i have unwaveringly seen my team since my release. I go every single week. And i trust them and they are giving me the tools and motivation to stay on track. And my support group now is full of people who are in recovery. I mean, we all have our moments of struggle. But for the most part, everyone is dedicated to healing. To living a happy life and letting ED go. And that's the difference. I must see the hope. I must see those who have done it and hug them and absorb their strength and allow their light to shine into my shadowy crevices where ED still lurks.

yet, i feel guilty for those i am leaving behind. lost little lambs. but i can't be their shepard. i can only save myself - and that's hard enough