Spanish Flu and Tummy Troubles

Ok, so this is addressing part of why I’ve had such a crazy month upon returning home from Europe and touch a little bit on a personal update (I’ll hit part 2 and 3 later) but yes, you read that title right! Spanish flu!

Well…not really…but a pretty nasty bug that my family picked up in Spain! We came to calling it the spanish flu because that’s where my dad first got it before passing it to my mom, brother in law, and myself. My sister was the only one who escaped unscathed.

Now as you may recall I had my tonsils out about 6 weeks prior to contracting this virus and my body functions were still very much affected by that slow recovery. My immune system was NOT at all working at peak capacity (especially after 3 weeks in Europe) and while everyone else threw the bug in a little over a week, mine hung on. A long time. I got bronchitis and had to go on antibiotics, but it still wasn’t over. I was coughing so badly that I sometimes literally was gasping for breath, and the spot where my tonsils used to be was inhabited by these horrible blister looking things. I had no voice, a terrible sinus infection and ear infection, and was not sleeping because I couldn’t stop coughing.

Sooooooo…second round of antibiotics! Yipee! This time, they hit it with the big guns, an extremely powerful antibiotic 3 times a day. The doc had me prep with 2 days of a probiotic and then take a double dose of probiotic for the whole round of antibiotics. In addition, I kept taking my acid reducer and digestive enzyme. But still, the antibiotic hit me hard.

Like really hard. It was pretty much 2 weeks of vomiting and the worst diarrhea ever.

So a couple days ago I finally finished the antibiotics (yay!) and my sickness was obliterated (double yay!!) but the battlefield that was my stomach is a micro-organism ghost town (insert dramatic music here). We’re talking no survivors post apocalyptic nuclear war style! Yay for embarrassing farts, shits, and stomach cramps.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’m sharing all of this TMI information. Well, I feel like this is a prime time to focus on self care and on healing my gut through the foods I eat and returning it to normal and health function. This is a prime time to symbolically take care of my body and be gentle to it and nourish it through food. This is not a time to binge, purge, restrict, coffee-load, or any other high impact high stress disordered activity.

This is an opportunity to be mindful and listen to my body and work with it for what it needs.

Today’s Affirmation

You may see me resting, but you won’t see me quit. You may see me recharge, but I will never stop giving. It’s ok to ask for what I need to keep myself moving. You walk until you can’t walk anymore, and then you begin to crawl, and when you’re too tired to crawl, you find a good friend to help carry you for a little while.

You may see me struggle, but I will never give up. I will take a moment, catch my breath, re-affirm myself to my goals, and then start all over again.

Because it’s ok to fight. It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to get discouraged and frustrated and to do what you need to do to take care of yourself in this moment. As long as you go back to doing what needs to be done, it’s ok. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will my life be lived in a moment.

Consistency, tenacity, perseverance. Keep chipping away at it buttercup, it’ll happen.

Semantics Part Two

“So…are you vegan?”

Ugh! Here we go again! Another dinner with the boyfriends family, meeting new people who had come into town. Another question I didn’t want to answer. Unfortunately, this is something people who struggle with eating disorders are all to used to. “Um…no, I’m not.” Awkward trail off as I changed the subject.

Fear of being found out or discovered. Guilt that I was acting abnormal enough that people were asking questions at mealtime. Shame for what I am.

Shame that the true answer to this question was no, I’m not vegan, I’m anorexic.

A mental illness and medical condition. Not in any way a character flaw or some kind of path of immorality or mar in virtue. How does such a word as anorexic come to so encompass and define a person, as opposed to “I have anorexia”. Cancer sufferers are simply that: people with cancer, not cancerics. People with multiple sclerosis aren’t multiple sclerotics. And yet we are vegans, vegetarians, paleo, and anorexic/bulimic somehow got linked into that category. Something we are, not something we have.

Shame

Here’s my question: how does the emotion of shame get linked to a life threatening medical condition? I follow several vloggers on youtube who talk about fitness/lifestyle and I’ve seen at least 2 videos in the past 24 hours alone that follow the story line of “I’ve been accused of having an eating disorder/orthorexia/anorexia and I don’t! I’m not an orthorexic (or insert choice adjective here)!”

Nobody “accuses” people of having cancer. Nobody defensively refutes the presence of fibromyalgia or lupus.

Shame: I am something bad. Guilt: I have done something bad.

See the problem here? And how do we heal when we feel like we are inherently so poisonous, after taking one of these labels upon ourselves? Defining our lives. Just another thought about the weight of words.

Twitter Announcement

Sorry I’ve been so absent. I’ve had so much going on and have been juggling several “adulting” things in conjunction with being extremely ill and dealing with death after death (no one close to me directly, but a lot of people close to those who are close to me, so I’ve been focusing on supporting a lot of people). I know I keep saying this, but I promise I’ll do a proper update soon when I get the time. I’ll let you know about a big transition that is coming up starting a new season in my life especially and telling that story.

I’m saying this today to mention that I’m still here and trucking along and doing ok. I’m also saying a goodbye to my Twitter account and all of my followers there. I’m officially disconnecting this blog from that account and deleting it off of my devices. This is a self care act because of how much toxicity and “pro-ED” is on Twitter. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and now I think it’s time to just cut those ties to a lot of disorder and triggering content.

Just one more step to saying goodbye to my ED and opening that space in my heart to more wholesome things.

I hope you’re all doing well!

The Reality of an Eating Disorder

How did I end up here in this suffocating mass of people? A salad in front of me and noise all around. My emotions rising high in my throat and threatening to burst forth in a cascade of tears. I bite them back in embarrassment. We had gone around the circle in my group this week and made goals that we were all going to hold each other accountable to. Mine was to go out and have a “real meal” at a restaurant.

So here I was, with the waitress worriedly asking if my meal was ok, a barely touched salad in front of me. I focused my eyes on the ball game on the TV and didn’t realize until my boyfriend took my hand worriedly into his that i had been playing my thumb against the steak knife, allowing it to shear against my skin, the pain somehow making it easier to maintain control in such a public and exposed space.

The guilt and shame of my stupidity overwhelmed me and I dug deep into my salad, forcing the bites down my tight throat until I thought I might choke.

“You…you don’t have to eat it all…that’s a lot of food…” the words and hand on my arm snapped me from my resolved inhalation of the meal in front of me. I felt suddenly embarrassed and unsure about the size of the meal.

“Do you think its too much?”

“.. That’s not what I said. Eat if you’re hungry. Are you hungry?”

“I…I don’t know…do you think its too much?” My hands scrambled for my phone so I could look up the calories. He snatched it away.

“You don’t need that. Its ok. Eat if you want to, but don’t feel like you have to eat the whole thing. It was a big salad.”

I was unsure of what to do. Anxiety welling up into my eyes. I took a deep breath. My hand played at the knife again. It felt as though all eyes were locked on me. “Do you need a box hon?” the waitress popped up out of nowhere. Panic and no words. The dissolved from my tongue as I scrambled for the “right answer”. The right thing to say to appear the most “normal”. Would someone bag up a few leaves of salad and chicken and take them home?

She knows. Everyone knows. He hates you. He just wants a girlfriend who isn’t a fuck-tard. You’re such a burden when you get like this. You’ve been such a shit for weeks and hes going to leave you. Oh shes looking at you funny. Quit acting weird! SAY SOMETHING!

“Ummmm thanks…no, ummmm, I’m ok. Its fine. The meal was very good.”

Concerned eyes all around. He took my hand and I squeezed his tight, grateful for the anchor as he walked out. A joke jumped from my lips followed by a smile, desperate to break the haze. The outside was so hot, so humid. It was a blanket suffocating me.

Another joke and smile and laugh. Chattering on about something inconsequential that I cant even remember.

But if I just let the drugs talk,

They have a different story to tell.

Because somehow I manage to

Make my life a living hell.

I get tired of this life I’m in,

And sometimes I don’t want to stay.

And then I need to sit right down

An just cry my heart away.

Protein Powder and Fireball Whiskey

My heart breaks. I get daily messages from a friend, lonely and desperate. Pictures of his growing muscles. Talk of whether it was leg day, or maybe back and tri’s. I try to be patient and calm with all this talk. I never jump to conclusions, as diagnosis is a slippery slope. But as the weeks and months wax on I become convinced he has a problem.

I tell him my story and confront him about what I see. I say I wish someone had told me when they first saw I had a problem. I explain eating and exercise disorders. I ask him if he thinks its a struggle for him and if he wants me to maybe help him talk to someone professional to see if it’s a problem. He says little, but denies nothing. The days continue and he tells me more and more about the pain he feels, the twice daily workouts, and his meals. I leave the thoughts I’ve planted in his head alone, not wanting to pester or break his trust. He slowly lets me into the intricacies of his life meal by meal, workout by workout.

A snapchat of protein powder and fireball whiskey, one chasing down the other. I ask how he is feeling and he says “good”. I leave it at that. I get a picture, a come on if you would, seductively flashing a nice V-cut set of abs and asking how I am. I give a generic answer, unsure of what to say. Unsure of what to do.

My heart aches.

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

I’ve been delaying posting to wait and see how a few things pan out, but I’m going to post a “life-events” update sometime in the next few days. In the meantime, something came up in one of my treatment appointments that I wanted to kinda hash out and process.

I was in my dietitian’s office and we were talking about how it’s been such a stressful week for me and how I was dealing with that. Eating since I got home from the trip hasn’t been going so well and I’m really in a pretty nasty binge/purge cycle. I weighed myself about halfway through the week, coming in at XXX.X. Well, I didn’t believe that number and decided to double check it with a different scale, which read XXY.Y. Of course, upon the different result, I had to triple check with yet another scale that ready XXZ.Q.

Well at this point I of course ROYALLY lost it and had a major freak out that I didn’t know which number was accurate. I consoled myself with the thought that when I got to my dietitian appointment she would surely have an accurate scale and I would know the correct number.

Fast-forward to my dietitian’s office. She looked at me, said she would weigh me if I wanted her to, but then asked me why the number was so important. No news here, this is the first question every eating disorder recovery specialist asks and one I’d heard a million times but never had an answer to. She stated that all scales were a little different and that there was no assurance that any one scale is “right” and that it’s more important to use the same scale consistently so that it shows fluctuations. I rolled my eyes and said that I knew all of that logically in my head, but I still wanted to know my exact weight. She asked why that was.

The first thing that popped into my head was a very honest and authentic, if kinda fucked up, sentiment that had never occurred to me before. “Weight is a standardized way to compare ones-self to others, and how can you have a standardized method if the testing is inaccurate?”

What? Wow? Could I really believe something so cold?

It’s embarrassing and hard to hear yourself verbalize but understanding the root of your cognition is part of the process in changing them to what is more right, true, and healthy. I needed to “hear” myself think that in my head and then recognize how utterly screwy it really is! So often when our hearts are hungry, we will eat whatever lies are there to fill us up. And the lies we tell ourselves are the most dangerous because we truly believe them! How do you catch yourself lying to yourself? Three years of therapy I guess.

Just another step in understanding and in the healing process.

Journal Entries

This post is to talk about the struggles that are so prevalent and unavoidable in everyday life. Even on a beautiful Mediterranean vacation, anxiety, depression, and disorder follow you wherever you go. And you know what, THATS OK. It’s ok to feel those things. I am at peace knowing I got up every day and met the day with zeal and with open arms for new experience despite the discomfort. I know I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone repeatedly without rest and that despite anxiety, I continued to allow myself to be present in the moments that mattered.

Journaling was key for me throughout the trip, especially since we didn’t often have phone service, so I couldn’t vent to my normal supporters. My journal became my pressure release valve.

“My thoughts catch in my throat and I swallow my tears. Never let them see the madness stirring. Never let them see the trail of bread crumbs you drop behind to maintain your position in the real world. Memories burst from my heart like doves from a magicians hat. They swarm from within and fill my lungs so I cannot breathe. I drown. I haven’t realized until an ensuing headache takes residence, that I’ve spent the past hour with teeth clenched in an attempt to warn off the demons with a snarl. Refusal to fall apart. No! Choke it all back. Put the tears in your pocked to save for a later time when you need them.

“I make tick marks in my arm to ground myself in the repetition. People think I’m counting drinks. I smile and let them think that. They don’t know I’m keeping track of jumping jacks I’ve done, each mark correlating to 100 exercises.

“Memories recently dragged from the dungeons of time swirl, like scenes from a movie played behind my eyes. They threaten to burst from me. That’s why my ribs encase my heart in a cage.”

“The pitch and swell of the sea is rising higher and lower as we go. The clouds are blocking out the last essence of sun and giving way to a mere haze of grey light. The wind bites cold, like the pricks of needles against my skin. It’s almost as if the sea is laughing at my position as a girl trapped on a floating island. Only safety masked by a dozen smiles and the clink of glasses. The cackle of the sea is pierced by a ray of setting sun breaking through the density of the clouds. But it is only for a moment. The joke is up as a crew member asks me to leave my corner of recovery, saying he must clear the area due to strong winds. Please no? Let me stay one moment longer?”

“I’ve developed a particular lack of appreciation for the rock and pitch of a ship coupled with the choking haze of cigarette smoke.”

Bailing Out

New original song is posted! Bailing Out – Youtube Link

Blinding Love

You were a whisper on the breeze.

You came in soft and wrapped me up.

You held me tight, so calm, so safe.

“Trust in me child, I’ll make you warm.”

 

My savior’d come, my knight was here.

And hope shone through in darkened caverns.

My heart so full, I didn’t know

That I looked on with blinding love.

 

So bright I could see nothing else!

The glow would pulse and beat and ache

Dark turned to light, black turned to white.

A white tormenting and cutting deeper.

 

Now whisper gone and warmth removed.

I am so cold, so very cold.

Hiding my eyes, though love still shrieks,

Demanding to be known again.