Resisting Relapse

I'm really confused.
So for the past week and a half I've been doing really well. And I mean really well. I've been following my meal plan exactly, I haven't been restricting, I haven't been self harming-- I haven't really used any negative problem behaviors. In fact, I've been happy. Truly. I've been experiencing happiness in myself for the first time in years. There have even been moments where I'm starting to feel comfortable in my own skin. Not very comfortable, but glimpses of comfort. I've been working so hard to kick my disorders to the curb, and I've been succeeding. And that truly makes me very happy.

Yet despite all of that, despite the positivity, the joy, the good progress -- I have an urge to relapse. And I mean really relapse - restricting, self harming, everything. It's like my body wants me to collapse, to fall back down, to let misery and disordered thinking take over. But why? Like I said before, things have been nothing but positive lately. So why do I have this desire to destroy everything.

I think it's because I'm so used to the darkness. The light is beautiful, but it hurts my eyes at the moment. It's unnatural to me, it's not normal. My normal is destructive - it's depression, panic attacks, self loathing, nonstop doctor's appointments, hospital visits, relapse, pain. So as this happiness starts to sneak its way into my life, my illnesses, the disordered thinking, the darkness -- it's dying. And it's fighting to try and get its way. It's telling me I haven't suffered enough, that I don't deserve to be happy. It's trying to convince me that if I just collapse, just have one more relapse, then things will be better. It's like I have this weird concept in my brain that I have to suffer a certain amount before I can ever experience true happiness. Especially with my eating disorder. My mind keeps telling me that I'm faking, that I don't truly have an eating disorder, that I haven't experienced enough pain to recover. It shames me for never being underweight and never being sent to an eating disorder residential -- never mind the fact that I've been been in so much pain because of my ed since I was nine years old. It doesn't care that I've spent every pool party wanting to cry, that I've never looked in the mirror and felt happy, that I feel horribly guilty whenever I feel too full - my eating disorder mind doesn't care about all that. It just wants me to lose weight, to obsess over food, and to feel miserable. It wants me hospitalized with a tube up my nose, and there's a sick part of me that agrees with it. That believes that that's my fate, that that's where I deserve to be. And if I'm honest, it's hard to find a part of myself that disagrees. It's hard, because still, after all my hard work, deep down, I don't feel worthy. I don't feel like I'm enough, I don't feel like I deserve love. But I need to tell that part of me to go to hell, because someday I will love myself. Someday I will accept love from others without wondering what's wrong with them. Someday I'll go to a beach without feeling like I want to cry. Someday I'll get upset without automatically wanting to restrict or self harm.

I believe that I will be in recovery for the rest of my life, but I also believe that I can win. That I can learn how to live with my disorders and still be happy. That I can start to realize that not every thought that crosses my mind is law. Someday my distorted thinking will call my name, and I'll ignore it.

And in order to do that, I can't relapse. I need to keep fighting. I can't give in and go back to the darkness, no matter how sickly "comfortable" it is. I need to let those thoughts pass through my mind, and then kindly stick it up my disorder's ass. Because I'm not okay with the idea of me being an adult and still suffering. I want to recover, and I want to be happy. So it's time to take the initiative, and keep going. Sure, part of me wants to restrict, and wants to self harm. But part of me doesn't. And it's time to start listening to the latter.

A Pat on the Back

I spend a great deal of my time wasting away in hatred of myself. My love handles, my thoughts, my skin, my academics, my issues, my hair, my weight, my actions--I rarely ever have a positive thought about myself. And that's how it's been my entire life. For as long as I can remember (I'm talking pre-K here), I've felt inadequite. It's not anyone else's doing, it's just the crappy way that my brain is wired. Thinking positively about myself does not come naturally to me, to say the least. But today I'm going to challenge myself a little bit, because I deserve a little self-praise.

I have come so far in recovery in the past four months that it's almost hard to believe that it's been such a short time period. I am an extremely hard working person, I always have been, and I'm really grateful for this trait, as I believe it's been a huge contribution to my recovery. For most of last year my life was in shatters, and I was in a living hell. There were so many times where I was just ready to give up, ready to end it all. You won't understand the pain and misery unless you've been through it yourself. I don't even remember a good portion of 2014 because I was in such a dark place. I've read journal entries that I don't even remember writing, and there's little gaps in my memory when the times were particularly awful.

But despite the fact that my every attempt to get better failed for a long time, somehow I kept getting up off the ground and fighting to make things better. I went through plenty of periods where I gave up, but somehow I always fought the urges to stop trying in the end, and I was able to continue on with my recovery. At the beginning of October I was in the hospital for the fourth time, plotting ways to try to kill myself in the hospital, starving myself, scratching myself when I couldn't find anything sharp--I was more than ready to die at that point. It's hard to imagine now since I'm so far from where I was back then. I was in a prison of my own mind, and I wasn't myself, I didn't recognize myself in the mirror and I felt like a walking corpse, a dead soul in a live body. I don't know how I did it, but I somehow survived that darkness and began working really hard. I had therapy multiple times a week, I attended a theraputic school, I was supervised very closely for a while, and I worked hard to start living again.

Today, people tell me that they're starting to see a sparkle back in my eye that hasn't been there in over a year. I haven't been seriously suicidal since October, and I'm two months clean from self harm. I am such a different person than I was in April, or September. I'd be lying if I told you I was happy, and that I didn't have any problems. I still have urges to self harm, I still have depressive periods, I still have panic attacks, I have a new bald patch behind my ear, my body dysmorphia is going crazy--my life isn't easy. But I wouldn't trade it for the world. I am so happy that I didn't get what I wanted in October, that I'm still here and I'm still fighting to get better.

I'm proud of myself.

Yeah, I said it. I'm proud. They say that God doesn't throw something at you that you can't handle. I often question that, but in the end I know it's true. Sure I don't have it easy like some other people might. But I am so much stronger because of my struggles. I might not be captain of the sports team or in the national honors society like I thought I was supposed to. But I am facing things that most kids my age won't face for years, I'm on a journey of self discovery, I'm learning skills that will help me for the rest of my life. I am so much more mature and empathetic than I would have been if it weren't for all of my struggles.

I spend most of my time cursing my mental illnesses, because I hate them, and they drain my life away. But today I thank them, because they're shaping me into the woman I'll be for the rest of my life. For better or for worse.

I'll end this post with a quote that most certainly sums up my journey through recovery.

 

"Rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

-JK Rowling

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

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.