THE ROAD TO HELL AND BACK (still on my way...) #7 : New Me – Same Shit.

----------------------------- WARNING! - NSFEUI (Not safe for emotionally unstable individuals)

I am proud of myself. In the last 4 months I’ve managed to get my life back on track again. I found a job that I like, I found a place to live that I like and I found a hobby. Or is it just a hobby? As soon as I got out of the hospital, I started going to the gym. I thought I’d feel better about myself and eating in general if I also work out. Well, it was good – I felt stronger, happier and more energized. But somewhere this underlying wish to burn calories still existed. Soon I just had to go to the gym. Soon I’d google ways to burn the most calories in less amount of time. Soon I started feeling guilty about eating too much, delaying meals, exercising to exhaustion, bodychecking, etc.

I made an anonymous instagram account to share my "dark side"... My illness screamed for attention. Over-exercising and "indirect" self-harm (allowing a situation where I'd get hurt).

I secretly hoped that sharing my illness would help me to get rid of those obsessive thoughts about my looks. But it did the opposite. The more I made this kind of posts, the more those thoughts controlled my life.

I’m working on getting a therapist. It's hard to confess I have problems with communicating and eating. I also wanted to quit appointments with my doctor, because it really seemed that the only thing that keeps those ED thoughts going, is having the diagnosis and being labelled as anorexic by a doctor. But why did I go to the treatment in the first place? I wanted validation. That’s it. Basically I’m back where I was just before hospital. My BMI is abut the same – 16.5 and there’s a strong wish to get lower and lower and lower… not rapidly, but I just can’t accept going higher. I guess I just needed the authorities to confirm that I really do have serious issues and that I’m really fucked up. Why have I glamorized being fucked up since childhood? Why do I glamorize being poor and abused? Why do I glamorize being hurt, mentally and physically? Why do I love the pain?

I think about recovery a lot. I’ve been thinking whether it’s good to go back to hospital in the summer. Or would it be just the same shit – validation? Could I just let go of the rules in my head? Could I just eat whatever? I mean w h a t e v e r … quite unimaginable. Just eating something when I feel hunger, not worrying about it not being a full perfect meal? Eating a meal without a thought of completion/perfection in my head. Knowing that if I felt full, I don’t need to force myself to finish, because I can eat again at any time.

Here's what my rational mind says about this:

Hungry = weak = anxious. That is the problem. And the cause for it is my low weight. If I wasn’t underweight, then feeling weak wouldn’t make me feel anxious, as there would be no threat signal from brain that I’m about to collapse without energy. If I wasn’t underweight, then feeling hungry wouldn’t make feel weak so soon, because my body would have reserves. So to get rid of this mind process, I’d have to gain weight. And not some arbitrary “normal”. Real normal. BMI of 18.5 or more, to be exact. That would be 59kg in my case.
Could I make the compromise to be still in 50s but be at healthy weight? At the moment – no. I’d look HUGE, I’d feel HUGE, my face would be HUGE. But what about your health? Grey hair before 30? Is that normal? Skin as dry as paper? Feeling sleepy ALL THE TIME?

I've come to an understanding that if I ever went to the hospital again, then to gain to healthy BMI and telling them to not let me out before. I can’t get rid of those thoughts before I haven’t got to a weight that I’m scared of, hypothetically. Because the truth is, I haven’t been to that weight since age 19. I’ll be 29 in a month. Maybe it’s about time to give it a try? I can theoretically lose it if I don’t like it, right? Right...?!

Hospitalization v2.0

This is what I came for, again, right? Being so physically wasted all the time made the idea of hospitalization seem like a good one… So when I went to see my doctor and she said I should immediately stay inpatient for a few weeks, I didn’t fight much. It was like a relief, or a reward for all this hard work I’d done during those months. I’d never admit it openly, but at least I admit to myself that I’m addicted to this situation – people taking care of poor little me.

2016 vs 2017
On the left: the start of my recovery, BMI ~14. The reddish liquid flowing to my veins is iron to fill my depleted iron stores. Feeling wasted as f*, almost no sense of reality.

On the right: same day one year later, a relapse. BMI ~16. Just feeling effing bored in the mental ward.

Anyway, I didn’t gain much weight in the hospital (less than a kilo in 3 weeks) but something clicked in my head. One evening I just decided to give it a try – start trying new foods, new tastes and loosening up my eating rituals.

First step – just get up and get yourself an ice cream. Without guilt. Something I hadn’t done for years…

After that ice cream everything went more easily. It was kind of a key. Now I’ve been out for few weeks and have been enjoying all kinds of different foods from McDonald’s to home-made pancakes.
I feel that the more I try to play the doctor and get inside my own head from a scientific point of view, the easier it gets to distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong, healthy and harmful.

PART 1: https://steemit.com/health/@joanneblowanne/killing-perfectionism-1-intro-perfection-and-control
PART 2: https://steemit.com/anorexia/@joanneblowanne/the-road-to-hell-and-back-still-on-my-way-2-onset
PART 3: https://steemit.com/anorexia/@joanneblowanne/the-road-to-hell-and-back-still-on-my-way-3-loss-of-control
PART 4: https://steemit.com/anorexia/@joanneblowanne/the-road-to-hell-and-back-still-on-my-way-4-fat-is-a-feeling
PART 5: https://steemit.com/health/@joanneblowanne/the-road-to-hell-and-back-still-on-my-way-5-let-thy-food-be-thy-medicine
PART 6: https://steemit.com/health/@joanneblowanne/the-road-to-hell-and-back-still-on-my-way-6-bumpy-road-of-recovery