So Much Fear

So my mom sat me down yesterday to talk about my eating. I feel like my parents do this often, and it always makes me really really uncomfortable. But this time it wasn't just an awkward open conversation. She had a proposal for me, if you will. She knows that being in eating disorder programs with other girls is really triggering for me, and I'm pretty sure that neither of us want me to go to a day program, so she gave me the option of seeing a nutritionist first. If that doesn't work or I'm noncompliant we'll look into a PHP or IOP.
Now, I have a pretty bad history with nutritionists. It's like the dentist for some people - they scare the life out of me. If I had it my way I would never ever see a nutritionist/dietitian. I want to avoid them like the plague. I've had two pretty bad experiences with eating disorder specialists. One was when I was at a residential over the summer. I was in the eating disorder (EDO) program at the hospital, and it was absolutely awful. It wasn't even the other girls that were super triggering. I just hated the way the whole group was run. I was made to feel guilty for having snacks outside of my meal plan, most of the EDO staff were anything but warm and fuzzy - it was a bad experience. If I'm honest, I think they made things worse. Another thing that bothered me about that program is that every single EDO staff member was extremely skinny. And that's not an exaggeration. They were very thin to the point that I questioned some of their health, which for me was quite triggering. It's hard when someone who is stick thin is telling you that you need to eat more/less. It felt like they were being hypocritical.
I had another bad experience with a nutritionist this past fall, although it wasn't as dramatic as over the summer. Anyway, the point is that I generally do not trust nutritionists/dietitians/people who specialize in eating disorders. Perhaps that's narrow-minded, but it's how I feel.
My next point - veganism.
Being a vegan is something that's very close to my heart.  I believe in the vegan lifestyle very strongly and am fairly repulsed by the thought of eating animal products. Being vegan is a part of me - a part of me that I actually like. And unfortunately, I am 99% sure that the nutritionist will not allow me to continue a vegan lifestyle. And my parents are on the side of the nutritionist. If she tells me I need to eat eggs, they're gonna try to make me eat eggs. And that absolutely sucks. You can get ALL of the nutrients and good things you need through a vegan diet, no problem. Nutritionists don't care, they just brush it aside because they think it's a form of restricting. Guess what, it's not. I became vegan because I don't want to support the abuse, exploitation, and murder of innocent animals. I didn't do it so that I could limit my calories. And the restricting I'm doing now has nothing to do with me being a vegan. It's because I have an eating disorder, not because I choose to love animals rather than slaughter them.
But I have agreed to see the nutritionist. I know I need to. My ed is slowing tearing my life into shreds, and I can't let it continue.
So what will I do about the veganism? I have already told my mother that the only way I will eat eggs is if we get them locally at a farm or household I trust. I have worked with chickens before, and they can have wonderful lives if they are treated right. They are not just for eggs, they're animals before they're food, and I had no problems collecting their eggs and giving them to others, because I know that there was no abuse involved. As much as I'd prefer not to eat boiled chicken menstruation, I know that I will have to come to some sort of compromise with the nutritionist. So that is where I can allow a little bit of leeway.
But at milk/dairy, I draw the line. I cannot honestly justify what goes on in the dairy industry. I cannot support an industry that forcibly impregnates an innocent creature only to take their child away from them seconds after birth. That child is then tied to a post in order to ensure that they do not grow any leg muscles. Cows have a very strong mother-calf relationship, so this poor newborn calf spends four months crying for their mother, in agnoy, before their life is brought to a bitter end for the sake of veal. The mother who lost her child is carted away and hooked up to a machine where she can hardly move. She is fed with unnatural foods. She should be eating grass, but they force her to eat corn or hay so that they can fatten her up. She lives a life without ever seeing the sun again, crying for her child as a machine squeezes her udders and cause her pain. Sometimes they even drill a hole in the side of the cow so that they can shovel the food in, since it's not natural for the cows to eat them on their own. Seeing any red flags? 

This is only a sliver of the atrocities that exist in the meat/dairy industry. Humans seem to forget that animals feel pain, that animals have emotions. There is little evidence that their pain spectrum is any less severe than ours. If someone were to try and kill a human by slitting their throat or zapping them with a electroshock wand, that person would be locked up for life. Yet we do it to innocent creatures every single day. Just because animals can't fight back or defend themselves doesn't mean that we should torture them. And for what? For you to enjoy that hamburger of yours? So that you can put extra butter on your toast? It's a horrible, sick industry, and I do not feel comfortable supporting it. So many people turn a blind eye. There's a quote that goes something like "if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian." And I believe that's true. It will take a lot for my nutritionist to convince me that eating dairy is okay. Who knows, maybe she will change my mind. But if she gets to inform me about how she's "right" about food, I get to inform her about everything that's wrong with the animal byproduct industry. If she can go home and watch Earthlings and Forks Over Knifes and still come back and tell me to eat cheese, then I will realize that she has a heartless element to her, and I will feel bad. But no good, self respecting person would be able to watch Earthlings while eating a steak. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here to watch the documentary, Earthlings. It exposes everything we've been taught to shove under the rug. I'm not saying you have to be vegan after watching it, but it should give you some insight as to what you're really supporting when you're scanning the meat aisle at the grocery store.
Okay, sorry for the rant. It was unintended, I swear. I tend to keep my thoughts about veganism to myself, because people love to attack you when you say you're a vegan, but I needed to get that out.
So, moral of the story.
I have agreed to see a nutritionist. I want to fight it tooth and nail, but my desire to stay out of an IOP is motivation for me to at least try to trust them and go along with their plan. I am by no means happy about this, but it has to happen. I can agree to eggs, but not dairy. Not yet anyway. She might require me to eat dairy, which would kill me, but I'm going to listen to her. As much as I don't want to, I will. Wise mind? Maybe. But I'm definitely reluctant.
Goodbye my petals, I'll see you in the next one.

A Ramble

One of the difficult things about recovery is quite hard to explain. You see, when you've been in pitch black darkness for a long time, even the smallest glimpses of light hurt your eyes and feel blinding. That's essentially how it is in recovery. It may seem strange, but being completely caught up in your struggles and illnesses has a certain comfort to it after a while. Don't get me wrong, being consumed in mental illness is nothing less than hell, but humans are creatures of habit, and we can essentially adapt to any sort of situation or lifestyle, no matter how uncomfortable and miserable it is. My "normal" day in 2014 (although each day was such a battle I can't really determine a true normal) was full of so much pain and suffering that was so difficult to cope with. Some days I would spend having panic attack after panic attack around the clock, meaning that I was so worn out and petrified that I couldn't leave my room. Then there were days where depression completely consumed me, and I retreated to my safe place, which is my room. I would lie in bed sobbing for hours on end, pausing only to resort to problem behaviors, such as self harm, overeating, or restricting. Unless you've had the extreme misfortune of experiencing it yourself, I can't even begin to explain what life with debilitating mental illness is like. I would wake up every single day and cry because I didn't die in my sleep. I would write essays in which I prayed to God for him to just take me away from this earth. I would sit on my bed by my window, staring down at the ground below my window, forever contemplating whether or not to jump. I don't remember a good portion of 2014 because I was so deep in my illnesses that I wasn't even completely conscious. My bedroom became my prison cell--it was one of the only places I felt safe, and at some points the mere idea of going downstairs or to other places in my house caused me extreme anxiety. Don't even get me started on what going out was like. When my mom dragged me out of the house to go grocery shopping with her, I would literally collapse, my limbs like noodles, because I was so overcome by anxiety that my body just shut down.

But I'm not here to reminisce on the hell that was my life this past year. My point is that every day was a living hell, and eventually the extreme pain I felt became commonplace. I went to bed knowing that the cycle of misery would repeat. I would collect sharp objects knowing that I would self harm again. So when you start to have successes in recovery, it feels really really strange. Often times when I feel happy it makes me very wary and suspicious, because it's such a foreign feeling. When I had those little moments of happiness, I would often end up being swallowed in anxiety because that emotion was so uncomfortable and unknown. I didn't trust the "happiness" I felt, because in my eyes it didn't matter, because I just expected my life to go back to darkness the next day. Soon it became sort of a twisted pattern. I would have a couple good days, maybe even an okay week, and then a horrible string of days would follow, as if to counter the good feelings with the bad ones I was so accustomed to. Even now, when the good days (well, "okay" days is probably more accurate) sometimes outnumber the bad ones, I still feel a little uncomfortable by the good emotions I feel.

Sometimes I also get the notion in my head that, because I have good days now, all of the misery and bad days I had in the past are suddenly invalid. When I feel fine, it's hard to imagine how low I felt, just as when you feel so down you can't possibly imagine being happy. I find that this concept applies to my trichotillomania as well. When I'm doing well and I have a dormant period, I get so upset with my past self for all the damage I did. I think to myself "if I can do it now, why couldn't I have done it then? I could have prevented all the hair loss and the mental repercussions that came along with it." I almost feel like I'm a fake, like I invented all of the bad days in my head and they never really happened. Now of course this is false, no one in their right mind would choose to be plagued with mental illness, but my mind plays all sorts of tricks on me, and this is one of them. When I have a string of good days, I sometimes feel guilty because it feels like I'm discrediting the bad days. In my wise mind I know that this is silly, and doesn't really make too much sense, but my mind is often so muddled that I usually can't see this.

I'm not entirely sure what point I'm trying to make here, or if I'm even making any sense. It's just that the good days in recovery can sometimes be very challenging as well, because it's such an unknown feeling. Just like I got used to the misery, I have to get used to the good days. The good that's in my life right now can sometimes make the bad days feel even worse. My mom made a good analogy about this the other day that's pretty spot on. She said that when you're driving on a bumpy road, each bump isn't out of the ordinary, and therefore each of the potholes and cracks don't stand out. But when you're driving on a smooth, freshly paved road and you hit a bad pothole, it feels like it's damaging your car because it's so out of place. I feel like that concept definitely applies to recovery.

Now, when I say I'm having good days, I'm in no way saying that things are all better. I still have depressive episodes, I still have strong urges to self harm, restrict, and purge, I still have bad panic attacks, I still get bald patches and thin spots in my hair--I'm still struggling. But the struggles I'm dealing with today are not to the severity that they were a few months ago. I'm not suicidal anymore, and I can't even begin to tell you how amazing that feels. To be okay with living, to wake up in the morning a little sad, but being able to cope with the fact that I'm on this earth and I'm not going anywhere is beautiful. I'm focusing more on the beauty and joy in life and the things I love, and it's truly helping. Things are still hard, but I'm functioning so much better than I used to. I'm able to get out of bed, get ready, and go to school, things that were completely impossible for a long time. I can resist the urges to self harm, I'm eating well and exercising, I'm focusing on self care and being kind to myself. One of my biggest struggles right now is body image, and the bad thoughts sometimes overwhelm me and stop me from functioning. But I'm able to bounce back so much quicker from the tough times, and I am so thankful that I didn't succeed in taking my life in 2014. I'm so happy that I have been resisting the self harm urges (I'm 2 whole months clean!), I'm not starving myself, I'm letting myself live, which is so amazing,

Life is hard, and I'm not happy, but I'm on my way. And for that I am so proud.