Take this girl

Up at 5 am and, looking in the bathroom mirror as I yawn and stretch my arms from sleep, I can’t help but smile. It may just be in my head because, being weighed on a daily basis, I know I haven’t put on a whole lot, but I think my face looks ever so slightly different. For once the drawn out hollow-cheeked thing I have dubbed “the horse face” isn’t staring back at me. The difference is subtle and it may be that I am the only one who notices it, but it feels good. It reminds me that the girl I thought I lost, the one that was replaced by this person that I don’t ever want to think of as me, is still in here somewhere.

The reflection in the mirror that has been gazing back at me with its hollow, purple-rimmed, sleep deprived eyes has been a constant presence for about 4 years now. Whether this sickly zombie version of me has been fully emerged or lurking just below the surface she has made her presence known for a long time. I talk about her as separate from me in hopes that its true. She isn’t the me that I know, the me that has the potential to be happy, the me that actually knows how to smile. Yet she has been there, in and out of vision, slowly inserting her bony cheeks and wan pallor into my life.

She may never be totally gone because, if nothing else, she will exist in memory. That type of presence I can deal with though. I know that I won’t ever be able to forget her once she is completely out of the reflective eyes that stare back at me but at least she will be where she needs to stay…and I will be where I need to stay.

Would now be a good time to sing the praises of zucchini bread? The slice that graced my breakfast plate this morning practically came with its own glowing aura. Somehow, though, I didn’t feel bad about eating it, in all it’s glory, at all. The only thing I can say is that it was calling to me and I took full advantage of its sweet song. Heck no, I don’t feel guilty!

Thought provoking

Two sentences creep their way into my head like thieves as I walk around the small yard after dinner. I don’t know how they got in and I don’t know where they came from. All I know is that they are taking something from me by even just being there. They are:

1. I don’t have any friends.

2. I have people who will forget about me as soon as I’m not around.

Soon the first two are joined by a third and possibly the most scary of the trio:  3. At least I have a daily schedule I can rely on.

I try and drive the sentences out but each time I cut one off another starts fresh. i can feel them stealing life from me.

I know they are wrong though, they have to be. There is just no way something like that could really be true…but doubt is a devious monster. I watch the ground as I walk and adjust my comfy weekend pajamaish pants so they don’t drag in the newly wet grass. Elle and Benji are playing catch again and Molly, Carrina, and Tiffany are halfway around the same loop that I’m on, chattering away. For once its not stroke-inducing hot out and Sunday winds down again as Monday prepares itself for dawn.

I know I have friends. I’m 30 and its almost ridiculous to be reassuring myself of such a basic statement. If wisdom comes with age then I would think I shouldn’t really need to be even forming those words into a sentence. Its something I know – I have friends. I also understand the meaning of the phrase “out of sight, out of mind”. Its not a hard concept to grasp and perfectly understandable with us all being human and what-not.

The guidelines for friendship are something I have had trouble defining my whole life and what I feel it comes down to is that there aren’t really any. many people have many different definitions of what a friend should be but I’ve come to realize that, for me, a definition of that word shouldn’t be made. If I were to sit down and make a list to answer the question “what is a friend?” I would be following that criteria every time I met someone new whether I was conscious of it or not. Then, inevitably, something wouldn’t fit. Anxiety would set in and I’d start stressing out about the validity of people I considered my friends and thats a hole I know I don’t want to have to try and get out of.

The scarier thing though, the one about the routine, really snuck up. I can’t help but question the subconscious validity of that statement. Is that why I’m so strict with my schedule? Is it so that I don’t have to rely on people to do what they say they will because I already have the daily structure so definitively planned out? A routine is not a replacement for a friend. Again, a basic thought. It doesn’t matter that I know I can count on it to do what its agenda says it will. Its hard to differentiate because I know I can trust the routine. I can rely on the fact that it will be there when I need it and it won’t let me down, but does that really mean that I don’t have to rely on anybody else?

People are fallible. They will make mistakes just as I do on a regular daily basis, but that does not mean that they are not deserving of trust. A lot of thought has gone into this and I think more is needed still but, for now, I have enough to work with. The sun is setting. Its time to head back inside. As I meander up the stone walk to the double doors a comforting calm sets in and I smile to myself before jogging ahead to join my friends.

A scheduled shift

I’ve got some weird anxiety going on right now about breakfast tomorrow morning. It started out that I thought I was worried about the Sunday push-back of meals because I didn’t want to be hungry in the morning and have to wait even longer to eat. The more I think about it though the more it seems like it has to do with the schedule and what I am used to.

On Sundays, to accommodate those who opt to attend a morning service that held in the building, breakfast is maneuvered from 8 am to 9. Waking up so early, naturally being hungriest in the mornings and the routine of getting meals at the same time every day causes this little fluctuation to not sit very well with me. I’m not, by any means, annoyed or angry about any of this. I know that the situation and the schedule blip are somehow making me anxious but mostly I’m curious about why it is exactly that I’m getting this anxiety.

Finding a routine to structure each day by was not something I set out to do. Yet i have lived by one set schedule or another of my own making for years and years. I know, too, that a good portion of this eating disorder has to do with following a schedule, self-discipline, and being strict with certain things. Ever since falling down the rabbit hole of anorexia my food and meal times have been what everything else gets scheduled around. Everything is laid out perfectly here too, meals and groups at the same times every day of the week. Even a large dry erase board in the hallway with it all laid out for us to navigate. Then along comes Sunday and its extra hour.

I know in my rational mind that everything will turn out just fine. I’m not even sure what I am worried about. Its only one hour. The day will seem like any other out of the week once breakfast is over since the rest of the schedule is spaced out between the other meals like normal.

As I lay in bed, letting sleep seep slowly in, I ponder these things. Something inside me has the drive to really understand the reasoning behind my own emotions. I don’t know if this sort of self analization is the right thing to be doing or not and I guess it couldn’t really hurt anything but, regardless, I will be bringing up these new ponderings with Annie, my therapist, the next time we meet.

The sweetness (part II)

Flaw number 1 in my coffee sweetener test was that, ever since the caffeine detox I have been trying to keep the intake down to one small cup in the morning. Number 2 was that, not only had I already had the early cup but Fridays, because of Coffee Klatch, I wind up having a little bit more than usual. So, I didn’t really want coffee to begin with when they came to get me for the study at 4 pm. 3 was that they didn’t specify what cup size they would be presenting me with and I was surprised at the large drink placed in front of me when I had expected the smaller size I normally get. Coffee, for me at the small size, is complete with 3 Equals, so thats what I worked to earn even though I didn’t want the coffee to begin with.

Had i known the coffee would be a bigger size the outcome would have definitely been different since that size I will usually put 7 or 8 Equals in. I don’t know if it would have been different in that I wouldn’t have worked for any Equals because, to get 7, was a lot of button pushing for something I didn’t care for at the moment anyways. Or maybe the outcome would have been different in the way that I would have stuck it out and worked for all 7 knowing thats what I would normally put in a cup that size.

I told the lab techs about these contributing factors and sort of felt like I maybe hadn’t provided them with a good enough result template. I guess, though, that there is really no correct or incorrect way to provide our information. I suppose thats the reason behind it being an ongoing study. Well, I did what I could. Hopefully they’ll get some of those result-altering kinks worked out in the future. Who knows. I did my part, it way definitely interesting to say the least, and now thats that.

The sweetness

I sat, feeling goofy in my disposable plastic apron, ready for the scheduled research study to commence. The table in front of me in the small lab room had been laid out systematically with 10 clear plastic cups filled with a set amount of cherry Koolaid and accesorized with large red straws. The cups themselves were marked 0-10 in black Sharpie and in front of each was a line of Equal packets corresponding to the cup’s number. With a set of rating sheets in front of me, a call buzzer to my right, a rinse cup, spit bucket, and short stack of napkins to my left, I was primed and ready to take the sweetener test.

The object of this little exercise was to start with a sip of the “o” marked unsweetened Koolaid, roll it in my mouth to taste and rate its sweetness, how much i liked it, and weather or not I wanted more on the corresponding sheet. Then spit, rinse, and repeat with the next cup after first adding the required number of Equal packets. The rule was to do this until i got up to the cup I didn’t like due to too much sweetener and then do one beyond it.

Alone in the small stark room through this I took my time and tried to rate each one as accurately as I could. Having gotten to 10 and still not finding the drink to be more than moderately sweet I wiped my mouth and rang the call button for the lab tech. That was the first part of the study.

Next, after the table had been swept clean of anything having to do with the Koolaid testing, a small laptop was brought in and placed in front of me. This part was titled “work for Equal”. It involved sitting, staring at a screen with an Equal packet pictured on the left and an empty column on the right. With the promise of actually receiving a cup of coffee containing the number of Equal packets you were willing to work for, the button pushing began.

Basically I was asked to just sit and continuously press a key on the computer repeatedly until an Equal packet appeared in the column on the right. Each time a packet appeared it would take almost double the amount of key taps to earn the next packet. If you really wanted all 10 available packets for your coffee it would take up to 40 minutes of continuous button pushing to earn them. All of this was to observe and track just how much a person with an eating disorder relied on artificial sweetener for taste. How long we were willing to sit and do this tedious work just to have that one last packet of Equal. The study, though, was still in its very early pilot phases and was hindered for what I could see as accurate results by some definite flaws.

(to be continued…)

Stuffin’ stuff

The amount of energy that digestion of this quantity of food takes is astounding. After each meal I feel like I have just run a five-miler that I forgot to stretch for before hand. It’s definitely a different kind of tired than the one caffeine withdrawal had induced though. This kind is easier to deal with and almost more comforting in a strange way. I’m sleepy and full but it’s because I’m doing something that I know is good for me. Something I know I need to be doing. I also know that it won’t be like this forever, and that is the thought that most often covers me like a snuggly afghan to keep the anxiety shivers away.

I am up to 2600 today and this, plus my one daily Ensure, is the level I will hover at through the weekend. Its Friday and the rain they have been calling for these past few days has finally broken free of the overcast cloud bellies above the city. The gray day outside is persistent but I find it comforting; it just seems to fit in so nicely with the fullness, tiredness, and generally contemplative mood around here. The sweet vanilla scent of sugar cookies is still lingering in the atmosphere from when we made a fruit pizza in baking group this morning. The things we bake on Friday mornings in the tiny kitchen are later the challenge snack presented at Coffee Klatch.

Mostly Coffee Klatch is to experience conversation, fun, and social behavior where there is optional food present. Generally a game of some sort is played as we sip our cups and chatter. Its a good end of the week afternoon activity and good practice. Isolation and resistance to social settings is a common eating disorder side effect and some of us have given into that so much that we aren’t really sure anymore how to act in public. Its something that you don’t realize you have forgotten until the time you need those basic skills comes up. You have to reassess how to act, what to say, appropriate behaviors, how to eat around others. It’s definitely a strange thing to realize you have let go but it does happen.

The fruit pizza is cooling now and it looks, and smells, delicious. I don’t know if I am gong to have any or not in group because I am already so so full. I don’t have to make that decision for another hour or so though and I know I will at least consider it, which is all they ask of us.

The common grace

Its official – I am no longer “the new girl”. We hadn’t been graced with anyone a few days ago when the speculation started but, yesterday, the prophecy was fulfilled. Amy arrived flanked on either side by her forlorned but determined-looking parents and trailed by a sister close in age who appeared to be on the verge of tears the entire time they were here.

At 17 Amy is not only the newest but the youngest as well. Although understandable timid for being in a new place such as this her hesitance seems to melt away as, by dinner, its apparent that she will fit right in.

Over a meal of chicken, baked potato and veggies as the main plate, among our individual additions we learn that her ease into this environment is because, to Amy, it’s not new. having been transferred from a different inpatient program at a children’s hospital in another part of New York she tells us of her dreams to become a doctor and about the substantial amount of high school she has already missed due to this illness. She’ll be entering her senior year in a few months and, this one, she’d like to be there for a majority of.

Her large doe-like eyes blink behind a pair of glasses that suit her so well she might look incomplete without them. There is an ever so slight change in the wind with her presence here. Language is censored just a bit more, shows that may offend, like “Sex In The City” which she has already confessed as being “too much”, are watched in the more secluded back TV room. We are not trying to treat her like a child by any means and its clear that she doesn’t want to be seen that way. It’s just that the need to be accommodating to others comes ridiculously naturally to so many people with eating disorders. Sometimes if I don’t keep my own urge to make everyone around me as comfortable as possible in check it can become overbearing.

I have to say though that, for me, fitting in around here is not hard. many of us share a lot of personality traits and, although I’m not sure if its coincidence or something to do with eating disorders affecting certain kinds of people, it has made adjustment that much easier.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch…

I have been talking to my husband, Chris, on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes its hard to coordinate our phone schedules but at least there is more flexibility here than there was at Remuda. He seems to be tending to our zoo and hold down the fort at home sufficiently and he reassures me daily that things are running smooth and steady as a windup toy. I miss him greatly and the soft tone of his voice leaks a hint of sadness when he tells me he can’t wait for me to come home. We both know this is whats best for me, our relationship, and our future together but it doesn’t make being apart for so long any easier.

He’s not alone in our 2 story house with its half-acre yard and small garden by any means. Our 4 dogs, 2 cats, 5 snakes, and 3 tarantulas keep him company and a fluctuating work schedule has him in a mostly constant state of action. Knowing he’s got everything held together down there puts my heart a little more at ease. It’s a hard household for just one person to manage but his many abilities never cease to amaze me.

To say that Chris and I have been through a lot together, to me, would sound like and understatement. We are opposites in many ways but it makes for a good balance in the relationship and we come together where it counts. With our 4 year wedding anniversary just around the corner I am warmed by the thought that I won’t look sick for our renewal wedding a year from now.

When Chris and I got married it was standing in our street clothes in front of a licensed justice of the peace. The whole process took less than 10 minutes in the middle of a living room that somebody’s “old money” posh grandmother had decorated. From there we walked a block up the street to the courthouse, got the proper papers signed, paid the small fee and that was that. Although word of our marriage leaked out little by little we wound up keeping the news from a good many people for a number of months. We had our reasons for going about things this way but mostly it was because we would not have been able to afford anything close to the wedding we wanted for quite some time. Thats what brought about the idea to do the ceremony we originally lacked as we renew our vows on the date of our 5 year anniversary.

It was only recently that Chris told me he wouldn’t want to do the ceremony with me looking so sick. Momentarily, when he said it, i was stunned because we had both been looking forward to it for years now. It made sence though and, once I sat with the idea for a bit, its how I felt as well…and that is just one of the factors behind my motivation to be where I am now.

Positives

I am so very ready to be done with this activity monitor business. The tape holding it to my skin is getting itchy and its a pain in the butt jostling all the wires around every time I change clothes or use the bathroom. I know I’m griping and I only have about 3 hours of its company left but, hey, were supposed to be honest with ourselves here.

Today marks the 3rd day of the 2200 calorie regimine. It also brings with it the onset of my first daily Ensure Plus shake. People keep asking me how I’m doing with the new additions to my menu, whether I’m anxious or might perceive any problems with them, but right now I don’t. Not yet. I try and leave the answer confident but open-ended. Right now I am still hungry between meals which makes acceptance of all of this that much easier. So long as I can continue to not let my mind wander into the zone of food analization I think I will be okay.

In the past, although I always have liked their milk-shakey taste, Ensure drinks have been a source of apprehension for me. Mostly this is due to their presence in my life being a sign of a major change underfoot. Through time and association that is just the weight they have come to hold with me. I do my best to keep a positive attitude through this because my acceptance and continued determination depend on it. I count myself lucky for the ease at which I have had staying in that frame of mind so far but, as much as I would hope, I can’t say for sure that things will continue this way. I suspect there will come a time, as the additions continue, when I’ll be full all the time…but I’m choosing to deal with it as it happens.

For me its been easier to take things as they come both in dealing with anxiety and also with placing trust in the onset of events. When I look to the future, in terms of being able to uphold the lifestyle I am learning here, I don’t know for sure what is going to happen. Its easier for me though to stay determined and upbeat as long as I remember that, although the possibility for just about anything is there, I don’t have to deal with the mights and coulds of it all right now.

So today, yea I’ve got the addition of the first Ensure, but if it helps quell my hunger between breakfast and lunch, then bring it on!

Making eyes

Marley stares. She sits across from me at the lunch table with her peanut butter on wheat and just stares at me. There is no particular expression on her face and I can’t tell if she’s watching what I’m doing or just spacing out but I discomfort building within.

For us, the active consciousness of our eyes at the meal tables is out of respect. We look at each other when in conversation but, when all is quiet and we are doing our best to clean our plates in the alloted half hour, we make the effort to divert our gazes elsewhere. This is not something that would be an issue in our natural daily lives because we know that then the people around us aren’t scrutinizing our trays. Here though we know, for the most part, what is going through a person’s mind when their eyes are affixed on another’s food and eating habits. There is the inevitability of comparison, the registering of amounts, and the internal analization of any quirks or rituals that go along with our food consumption. We have all been on both sides of those situations here and knowing what a person is thinking when they watch you eat can be quite unnerving…and yet Marley continues to stare.

I have never eaten with her before and it just so happened that our trays were laid out this way this time so, although uncomfortable, I don’t say anything to her about it. Later though, while enjoying some afternoon fresh air, I bring up the subject with Laura and Benji as we sit in the sun. They reassure me that I am not the only one with this complaint.

“Just call her out on it.” Benji says with a wave of his hand. “She does it to everyone.”

“Yea, actually Tiffany called her on it this morning at breakfast and all she had to say was ‘Marley, you are making me really uncomfortable.'” added Laura.

“Yea, I saw that.” said Benji, “Good for Tiffany. When Marley was doing it to me the other day I didn’t have the guts to say anything, but I will next time.”

“What did Marley do when Tiffany said that?” I probe Laura as I shuffle my foot in a patch of grass.

“She looked embarrassed. She just muttered a ‘sorry’ and sort of hung her head.”

“Hmm…Well, if it happens again I’ll figure out what to do. its good to know though that It wasn’t just me.”

And that was that. For the time being the conflict was resolved and, mostly, forgotten about. I’m sure it won’t be the last eating habit around here that someone unnerves or annoys me with. The food rituals and subconscious quirks of eating disordered people are innumerable and greatly varied. It’s in our nature.