A Very Raw and Truthful Account of What It Looks Like When I Backslide In Recovery TW: ED, Restriction, Bingeing.

Something happened in December that threw off my recovery.

For some people, this might be an intense family gathering surrounded not only by the food that you're "supposed" to indulge in all while under the scrutiny of the people whose opinions if not matter the most, certainly are expressed most vocally and irrepressibly.

For others maybe it's not the family that's triggering; maybe it's the office party where there's all this pressure to bring something indulgent, but know that if any of your coworkers see you snacking they'll all be talking about you in the bathroom.

Who knows...there are tons of triggering moments. None more so than the fucking diabolical launch of all the New Years' Juice Cleanse, Slim Quick, Paleo bullshit diet plans and the relentless flogging of gym memberships and fitness classes as methods by which we "atone" for anything so human as enjoying food for a little while.

Anyway, all of this is to say that these have been triggers for me in the past.

But not this year.

This year, I was bamboozled by six weeks of illness starting the week before Thanksgiving.
Having a two year old, and beginning to work with the public again after a reprieve from exposure to their unwashed masses meant that starting November 15th, there was a cold in our house, and one of us had it, in some form or another, FOR A GODDAMN MONTH.

Somewhere between the antibiotics, emergency room visits for skyrocketing fevers, sinus infections, pediatrician appointments, buckets of used tissues, sacks of cough drops, chicken soup and pots of tea, Thanksgiving and my son's second birthday happened.

Neither of which we could celebrate because one or all of us were so under the weather.

And then the week before Christmas, we thought we were in the clear. We figured a month must have done it, but the germ gods had other plans.

I came down with it first.
A 24 hour stomach bug that put me on the toilet with a trash pail in front of my face for the better part of 8 hours. It was so bad and so sudden, I had to ask my husband to stay home from work because after a night of mandatorily evacuating my body, I was too weak to stand, let alone care for our agile and vigorous toddler.

And he was amazing.
My Beard brought the babe to me to nurse and cuddle because he was frightened and confused by his prone mama. After the six hours of chills, shakes, and crippling stomach pain that followed in the wake of the horrors, he took the babe away and brought me gingerale, pedialyte, and later, saltines and pepto bismol.

It was a rough bug, but a quick one, and I was surprised at how much more human I felt almost exactly 24 hours after the symptoms came on.
Of course, as I was settling into bed with my son at that exact moment of relief, the toddler came down with the bug and began his six hours of bodily voiding.

I was surprised at how competent I felt considering how weak I was, but my husband had to go to work the next day, and so I immediately became dedicated nurse locked in until the 24 hours had had its way and finished with my child.

As I'm sure you can imagine, freshly absolved of the bug myself, getting our little guy through that with which I had so recently tangled did not make me want anything more than the few crackers I managed to help him eat before we went to bed that night.
When we got up the next day, I was more concerned with getting the baby to eat and drink than I was with putting anything more than a cup of weak tea into my system.

Then...suddenly it was the afternoon, and I was alone with the baby, and I realized it had been almost three days since I'd eaten more than a piece of dry toast.

I checked my stomach for feelings of hunger, and there was nothing.

And here I was, triggered, triggered harder than I had been since I had the baby.

I knew I had lost weight.

I knew I was probably the thinnest I had been since I had my baby.

I knew if I looked at my body what I would see.

And here's the shitty thing.

I looked anyway.

I looked and it made me even further divorced from my actual bodily feelings.

There was suddenly an ease to this starvation thing.

I mean...I'd been so sick...I didn't feel like eating, and now my stomach was so small, even a few pieces of toast filled me up to the brim.

I could hear the nasty whispers of that voice I had spent so long trying to silence.
You know what it sounds like.
You know how it wheedles and promises and tells you that just by listening to it over the cues of your actual body, you can get everything you ever wanted.


Fuck.

I admit...I didn't handle it well.

It scared me.

I ate pizza that night.
My first real meal in three days, and I didn't binge, but it did feel weird and wrong and uncomfortable.

I tried to sit with those feelings.

And then my husband came down with the stomach bug.
And then it was Christmas, and we were too weak to travel, so we got rescued by my parents, who took us up to their house, but the baby wasn't recovering as quickly as I had thought, and so meal times were interrupted and aborted. I ended up having to miss several meal times and scrape together my sustenance from leftovers carefully wrapped and put away by my mother who chittered and worried about me the whole time.

And here's the ugly truth:
ED's LOVE THAT SHIT.

They love that nagging from loved one's
"ooh you're looking a bit thin, dear."
"Did you get enough to eat? You can't afford to miss a meal!"
"Is that all you're going to have? Are you sure? Wouldn't you just like a little bit more?"

And it's like a high, the control, the power, the repetitive, "No thank you. I'm good. No thanks. I'm all set. No. No. No."

I can't speak for anybody else, but for me, in the grips of the ED Voice, the inquiries as to whether I'm eating enough, the commentary on me being thin, the constant asking if I'm okay...

That's what I'm missing in my life, and that's all I want.

I want to be cared for.
I want to be worried about.
I want it to matter to someone that I am struggling.
I want my depression, anxiety, fear, and worry; my suffering, my sacrifices, my martyrdom to be written all over me, so somebody asks me if I'm okay.

It makes me feel like i matter at a time when I am incapable of asserting to myself that I matter at all.

To be noticed...it's huge.

And it makes sense. I mean, here I was, caring for my child, my husband, taking care of myself as best I could, dealing with sickness after sickness in these unrelenting waves, and all I wanted was somebody to take over. I just wanted an adult to come in and take care of things so i could have a day where I didn't have to be the strong one.

Except we don't get those in real life, not as parents, not as adults, and the closest I could get, was getting thinner and getting worried about, and then getting the privilege of saying no no no, and the satisfaction that maybe they'd keep worrying enough to check in on me again, in a week, when I didn't know if I'd be okay yet, when I was certain, I'd need checking in on.

I told you it's the ugly truth, but it's pulling it out and examining it under the bright, unforgiving light that takes away its power, because here's the thing.

The body fights back.

Here we are, two weeks after my parents' house.

Life is still doing it's thing.
There are blizzards that bring all travel, work, and plans to a halt.
There is a cabin feverish child brought to frenzy by being stuck indoors for weeks on end.
There is holiday burn out and aftermath and packages to send and cancelled deliveries, and every other thing that makes you tear your hair out this time of year.
And everybody else is dealing with it too, so nobody's asking if you're okay anymore.

The pendulum always swings back.

All of a sudden, you find yourself engaging in behaviors you haven't done in months, maybe years.
You're waiting until nobody's around and then eating half a huge bar of chocolate in great big gobbles. The gluey sweetness fills your mouth but you barely register the flavor. You swallow as fast as you can. You're halfway through the bar, which is maybe a pound, and you realize what you're doing and it scares you.

Your kid is in a high chair watching, and though he's not old enough to understand, he's soaking it all in. The strange behavior. The way that Mummy doesn't eat like Daddy, doesn't eat like anybody else.

You're flooded with shame and guilt, and the binge feelings you worked so hard to quell are surging through you alongside the sugar rush, telling you how worthless you are, what a terrible mother you are, what a horrible example. It's all connected. It's all fused into one terrible cycle, and you're as stuck inside it as a lost swimmer trapped in the curl of an undertow, being dragged out to deep water.

That's how it feels.

But you prepared for this.

I mean I prepared for this.

I am not the weak, struggling girl I was ten, five, even two years ago.

I know this game.

I recognize this tide.

I know if I change the direction of my thoughts, I can escape it.

So I wrap up the rest of the bar of chocolate and I put it away.
I take three deep breaths, and I pour myself a glass of water.

I'm not ready to drink it.
There's too much going on, and my body feels all kinds of crazy, so I just take it with me, like a safety blanket or a life preserver. This glass of water is going to make me feel better in about an hour, when my body is struggling to metabolize the binge, and I need to be ready to take care of it, to tell it, that it's okay, that I am working on it, and we are going to get out of this together.

Later, I drink the water.
It took more than an hour for me to feel like I had room enough for it in my belly.

It was about three and a half hours later, as I was lying in bed.
The darkness was there, and the baby was asleep, so it was just me, alone with all of the confusion.
The ED voice screeching as loud as ever about "making up for it tomorrow" about "worthless lack of self control" about "you deserve everything bad that happens to you because look at how disgusting and pathetic you are."

And I drink the water and I quietly tell it to go fuck itself.

There is no point in saying, "what's done is done."

What's done is what haunts me and drives my actions.

So instead, I breathe, and I keep drinking the water, which is a very small, very pointed way of getting out of this. I tell myself it's okay. I forgive myself over and over. I remind myself that my body went through shock recently.

It went through a period of almost three weeks of starvation, and its natural response was to get as much into it as humanly possible when it finally got past my ED.

It was scared that I was going to starve it again.

It was trying to save me.

When I realize this last part, I feel the hot sting of tears behind my eyes, and I tell my body, with my hands on the soft mound of my stomach, "I'm sorry."

That's all.
That's where this began, and it's where it continues.

No matter how many times I slip backwards on this journey, I start with the apology to my body.
"It's okay."
"You did the thing you were meant to do."
"I'm sorry, and I will do better by you now."

I manage to fall asleep, and I keep breathing, confident that I have slipped lose of the undertow, and can begin swimming back for shore. I know I can get there. I just have to keep going.

Winter Well

For as long as I can remember, I have endured Winter.
I have no enjoyed it.
I have not delighted in it, used it, anticipated it, or waited for it with bated breath.

I have known, like any New Englander (and while not one by birth, I believe my 20 odd years of New England winters should designate me at least the honorary claim), that
Winter Was Coming And I Needed To Prepare.

As a child in Canada, I found winter mesmerizing at first. Coming from a place like Australia, where the winters were comparable to the best possible slightly drizzly day in late May according to Canadian Meteorological rules, I found the relentless deposits of snow and blistering cold to be fascinating in the way that only a child can be fascinated by things that can kill her.

I made snow men. I snowshoed. I skied. I tried ice skating and wasn't terrible at it. I shoveled and was abysmal at it. I learned how to tie a scarf around my face and pull my hat down in negative forty degree weather so that only your eyes were exposed, and then I learned what frozen eyelashes felt like.

When we moved to Maine, the luster had very much rubbed off of Winter.
As a teenager I was required to be moody and hate everything, and so I hated Winter fiercely.
I hated it for keeping me indoors (when all I wanted to do was read anyway).
I hated it for the shoveling my parents demanded I do every time there was a blizzard.
I hated it for the feeling of cold that seeped into my bones and which could only be driven away by gaining five to ten pounds in three months and as a teenage girl this was the kind of Catch 22 that made one suicidal.
By the time I had enough fat on me to keep the cold away, the cold went away on its own, and it was presumed that I should be ready to strut around in the shortest of denim shorts and flimsiest sundresses as only true New England girls do once the thermometer goes above 50 outside.

As a young adult, I escaped Winter by having a love affair with California.
I have yet to resolve my feelings about this country's West Coast, but suffice it to say, that there is somewhere nestled to the Pacific where I am certain I could have the New England bled right out of me if I were to try. And I wouldn't hate it.

But here's where I am with Winter now.
I am in my mid-thirties, a time, when a great deal of uncertainty and self doubt begins to move out of the rotation on the "Most Important Things To Obsess About on an Hourly Basis" list.

I had a baby a little over two years ago, and so many of the things on that list have little to nothing to do with me anymore at all.

Then there is the peculiarity of Winter.

In a time when we are pressured to constantly move.
A time when we are never successful enough, beautiful enough, relevant enough, rich enough, clever enough, well read enough, charitable enough, funny enough, fuckable enough, or productive enough...
A time when you feel like you must update your blog your twitter your facebook your instagram your "followers' your friends you family with every single moment of your completely ordinary day and somehow sell it like it was something superior to everyone else's completely ordinary day...

In this time, Winter makes you stop.

Winter doesn't give you a reason to go out.
Winter forces you to find reasons to stay in and slow down.

Winter makes you stay inside your head, inside your house, inside yourself.

And as a person in these times, that is quite difficult.

In fact, I watch many many people take this time to escape themselves very seriously.
The book vacations using credit cards and scamper away to the tropics where they can run around and pretend their lives aren't waiting for them the moment they get back.
They go on cruises so laughably distracting from the routines of everyday life that they must create new routines inside their ship lives to keep from going mad.
They expunge all evidence of the holidays and dedicate themselves religiously to militaristic diet and exercise regimens that fill their brains with calculations and meaningless arithmetic all boiling down to DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT DESERVE A COOKIE WORTHLESS FLESH MACHINE?

Very few people actually dwell inside the Winter, and thusly, themselves.

Do not be fooled.

Even the bullshit American appropriation of hygge-hype has nothing to do with the actual ministrations of what hygge stands for. It's much more a way of excusing one's introverted behavior by means of hashtag.

Gods forbid we don't feel guilty for sitting on our couch with a book and a cup of tea.

Which is what I am getting at.

In Winter, I clean my house.
I scrub the cupboards and I purge my closets.
I pine sol the bathroom and I reorganize all the books on my shelves.
I do this, because I am spending so much more time inside I want it to be a nice place to be.
I buy a couple of fat candles that I will enjoy lighting when the sun leaves us at 4:23pm.

I invest in a nice brand of hot chocolate, and the good biscuits, or I learn to bake a new kind of cookie that I can put in my little cookie jar and feel very fancy when I reach in and there they are, all warm and slightly crumbly from the dry air.

I don't fuss with exercise.

If the weather is decent, I take a walk, but never for distance, only for silence, to appreciate the ocean, or the way the world goes all to whispers during a snowstorm.

If there's been a snowstorm, I get up, first thing in the morning, put on my favorite music on my headphones, and I shovel out the driveway. While I do this, I fantasize about the enormous breakfast and twelve cups of coffee I am going to have when I am done because nothing is so delicious as the food and drink you consume after shoveling snow.

I don't worry about gaining weight. If I do, it will keep me warm.
If I don't, I have a thirty pound baby who likes to take naps on my chest for that.

It's almost sneaked up on me, but I believe I have finally learned how to winter.

And Winter well at that.

NEW YEAR'S REVOLUTION

Good Morning 2018.

Right away, you tried to play your same old 2017 tricks, but we are wiser now.
We are smarter, more resilient, less naive.

In 2017, I felt like nothing was in my control.
I felt at the mercy of the media, of politicians, of big companies who couldn't care less about me.
I felt manipulated, overlooked, exposed and vulnerable.

I felt powerless.


And as the end of the year approached, I began to realize the biggest thing I wanted to take away from this year was the overcoming of that powerless feeling.

So when I opened facebook at 7am on January 1st 2018 and the first fucking thing the stupid bloody algorithms tried to tell me was that North Korea was constantly ready to push their nuclear button, I said, "FUCK THIS and FUCK YOU."

Because no.

I don't think we're on the brink of nuclear war.

I think the current administration wants us to believe we are because then we will cling to it.
We will be so cowed by the biggest, scariest threat that they can feed us, that we will let them "do whatever it takes to protect us," and gobble up all the stupid fear mongering bullshit news articles about "escalating tensions," "good guys and bad guys," and every other carefully chosen phrase that will not make you freak out, but put you in a low level of anxiety and tension that makes you feel vulnerable, weak, and desperate for a big, strong hero to tell you, "Do not worry citizens. I have this under control."

You are being manipulated.
Every article you read.
Every headline.
Every tv show.

All of it is designed to make you feel a certain way.
Every piece of media you engage with is designed to make you feel invested in a plotline, or character development, or mounting dramatic tension.
Not every source of such material is in it for simple entertainment value.

And it is really really really fucking important to know where you're getting your entertainment/news/media from, and what they benefit from if you wholly engage with their manipulation.

They may get a second season of their incredibly well written netflix series.

They may get a third article on the well read blog that's gaining popularity.

They may get a third release of their celebrity endorsed clothing line.

And they may get a second term in office, or avoid prosecution for their multitudes of crimes, if we, as the consumers do not pay attention.

SO NO. I WILL NOT BE BUYING YOUR CULTIVATED FUCKING WAR SEEDS. I WILL NOT BE BUYING INTO YOUR POORLY CONSTRUCTED SUBPLOT.

2017 was really hard.

It was a year of disillusionment and fear.

Part of that was realizing that there are still a ton of people who hate other people for no bloody reason, which I admit, was really brutal.

I, like many, believed we were well on our way to a new time of peace, love, hope, and understanding.

The thing about all that really nice stuff, is that it's like a garden, it must be tended to and taken care of, or else it withers and dies.

If you leave the garden to everyone else, you will come out one day and there will be no tomatoes for your pasta sauce. You have to water the garden. You have to plant the seeds too. You may even need to teach your children or your friends how to take care of the plants should you get ill or need to take a break so that the garden survives your absence, but the thing is, WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE FUCKING TOMATOES.

Long story short, it is okay if you had a rough 2017.
It is okay if you are tired, and it feels overwhelming to go right out and check on your garden right now.

BUT WE SURVIVED YOU GUYS.
AND WE WILL KEEP SURVIVING.

IN FACT WE WILL THRIVE AND SO WILL OUR TOMATOES.

Okay that metaphor is a little ridiculous now...

But truly.

Don't let the follies of last year inform your decisions for this year, or exhaust you before you've even begun.

Do not read articles that discourage you from resisting.
You do not have to believe something just because it is in print.
You do not have to believe something because it is on tv, because it is on a well reputed blog, or because it is being spouted by the supposed leader of your country.

You do not have to believe a god damn word.

And you shouldn't.

Because you are being manipulated.
Constantly.
And you can decide not to be.
You can decide to turn off the computer, or the phone, or the television.
You can talk to your friends, read other articles, and speak with the representatives who engage with and stand up for your beliefs.

Believe me when I say this alone is an act of rebellion.
Continued education is an act of revolution, and choosing not to be manipulated is a virtue of that education.

Believe me when I say, we are going to thrive this year.
2018 is not a year of fear for us.

It is a year of fear for THEM.
BECAUSE THEY ARE TERRIFIED OF US.
WE HAVE THE POWER.
 BECAUSE WE HAVE THE MAJORITY.

HAPPY NEW YEARS REVOLUTION.