Update

So things have been tough lately, to say the least. My eating disorder has taken control of me in a way I didn't know was possible, and it's making me feel completely miserable. I've been restricting pretty badly, and when I eat anything - a boost, a pretzel, a strawberry, it doesn't matter - I feel massively guilty and am full of such a toxic self hatred that is hard to deal with. Then come the urges to self harm and purge, which are also difficult to deal with.
And as the past couple days have showed me, my eating disorder is starting to make me crack. I'm having a lot of trouble keeping it together, and things are feeling eerily similar to times right before hospitalizations in the past. That stresses me out like you wouldn't believe. I can't stress how much I do not want to go inpatient. I don't think I need to, but it still scares me so much. I don't want to do an IOP or day program either. I just want to be normal. I want to be able to handle things like a normal person, I want to be worrying about boys and prom rather than my eating disorder and other issues.
My anxiety has been through the roof lately, and this morning it was exceedingly hard to get out of bed. The thought of facing the world terrified me. Somehow I got to school, and I spent the first two periods in guidance, listening to my Calm app and trying not to have a panic attack. Not fun. I don't want my anxiety to severely cripple me again, but I don't know how to stop it.
I think I need to be more proactive with coping skills, so this week I'm gonna go out to Michaels and buy some art supplies. I'm going to get a big pack of colored pencils for mandalas, some watercolors to see if it'll be soothing, and some henna. I think henna will be a really good self harm substitute. I'll create beautiful designs on the places where I want to self harm, and hopefully it'll keep me occupied and prevent me from harming myself. I also have a huge obsession with henna (and Indian/middle eastern culture - I always say that I need to marry an Indian man so I can have the gorgeous wedding festivities and clothes. Also, Indian men are hot. Have you seen their beards?), so hopefully I'll have fun with this. The watercolors are a shot in the dark, I've never been good with painting, but we'll see.
I'm going to try and work on occupying myself with these coping skills instead of spending time online. I find myself looking for fashion pictures with skinny girls as "motivation" and eventually I just make myself so upset. I also spend way too much time on YouTube - it's an addiction. So once I've beefed up my coping skills hopefully I'll spend my time on those instead. It's so much more positive to create something beautiful anyway. And once it's warm I can combine them and do art outside in the grass, or go to the hiking trails and paint by the water. Being outside brings me so much peace, and I hope to be spending much more time out there from this point forward.
So yeah. That's a little summary about how things have been and my general plans. See ya later skater.

Being a Little Selfish

So over this past summer (2014), I was in a residential facility for five weeks. Before that I was in the hospital for a couple weeks. And before that I was in a miserable, awful place, and couldn't function. About this time last year I stopped attending school, and finished my sophomore year via tutoring. So when I was discharged from my residential in late August, I was in no way ready to go back to public school full time. So I ended up going to a therapuetic school, and I've been there ever since.

There's a lot of great things about therapeutic schools, and I'm really happy that I went to one, because I don't know where I would be now without it. Without the everyday routine of going to a school that's a safe environment, it wouldn't surprise me if I was still in and out of the hospital. And for that, I am so so thankful.

My entire life I've been an extremely high achiever. Saying I'm a perfectionist doesn't even cover it. So of course when I was in school, I was taking all the honors and AP classes I could, was participating in multiple varsity sports, was training to play DI or II softball in college, was in several clubs at school--I was overdoing it. Some people can handle this lifestyle, and intellectually, I can. Just not emotionally. Anyway, the reason I'm talking about this is to set a picture of what my school life was like before I went to a therapeutic school. So it's an understatement when I say that I am not challenged by the classes at the thereapuetic school. The classes are at a slow, remedial pace, for the focus is not on academics at this school, it's more focused on emotional needs and recovery This worked well for me for a while, because I needed to focus on recovery without the stress of super difficult classes. But as things have been getting better lately, I'm finally going back to my town's high school after a year of being away. It's crazy. I'm so ready for some academic stimulation and just some normalcy.

One thing that was comforting to me about coming back is that one of my friends, let's call her Jane, is going through a lot of the same struggles as me.  I was counting on her to be there when I need someone to talk to about what's actually going on in my life, when the normalcy gets too much and I need someone who understands. I never told her that this was what I was counting on, it's just what I thought in my head Unfortunately Jane is struggling a lot in the eating disorder department right now, and she's going to be in a residential facility for a few months. This makes my heart ache for her, and I'm so so sad that she's going through this, because I know how much it sucks. But the selfish part of me is also upset about her going inpatient because I feel like I'll be more alone without her.

I just have to remember that I've dealt with disordered thoughts for a long time without help, and now I have help. Yes, it really sucks that I won't have Jane beside me, but I won't be as alone with bad thoughts as I was for several years before I realized there was something "wrong" with me. I'm nervous to go back, and there's the disordered part of my brain that tells me I can't go back, that I need to relapse, that I need to act on the bad urges. But my wise mind is in control right now, and I'm know I'm doing the right thing for me