I really do not know what to even say, or where to begin. Other than that things have gone downhill real fast over the past two weeks. Forgive for being vulgar, I just have a lot on my mind that I have a hard time articulating without using unnecessary profanity. But basically, I feel so fucking out of control right now.
I do not know what to do with myself. I have been ambivalent about recovery for basically the entire time I have been "in-recovery" (whatever the fuck that means). Kind of one foot in, one foot out. The idea that "I can always go back" circling through my mind. There have been phases (such as right out of treatment) where I have been on a "recovery high," things are well, I feel joy, I want to get better, I feel like I have a life, etc. But then that high wears off, and my hope or desire towards recovery dips. It is like a spectrum, I am constantly climbing up and down it. I am doing well, I have hope, my desire spikes, or I am doing well but reality hits me and I start freaking out because life is different without my eating disorder (not necessarily a bad thing, but a terrifying thing), or I am struggling and I lose hope entirely and give up. The last couple of months I have been on the lower end of the spectrum, but still hanging in there by a few threads.
I do not know what happened. The holidays came (lots of "scary" or "triggering" foods, stress of being surrounded by people and having to make an attempt at being social), not having school as a motivator to keep pushing forward, not having structure and isolating more which feeds into my depression, going off my meds, grad school application deadlines and literally having NO motivation to do anything but sleep all day, feeling hopeless about getting into grad school because I literally can not get myself to move forward in that direction, hopelessness about the future in general, feeling inadequate because I am almost 26 and still dependent on my parents and still not having my shit together... basically all these things, if not more, just triggered me to fall back into using my eating disorder behaviors.
I had been struggling already with mostly heavily restricting my intake, but then the holidays and holiday food came into the picture and that pretty much triggered a monster in me. I went into the holidays pretty confident that I was going to be okay, I always do (I don't know why I don't just learn from history repeating itself, but even if I did I'm not sure how that would prepare me). Usually when talking about my behaviors I talk about restriction as the main behavior I struggle with, but I go through patterns where I will start purging, which triggers me to restrict my intake of pretty much everything (because I hate purging, everything about it), which leads to binging and purging. I literally have not gone a day without binging and purging multiple times a day in 10 days. It makes me feel gross to admit that, because it is atypical of my disorder, but it happens and can last a few weeks to a few months. When I get into the cycle I can not get myself to stop. All I can think about is fucking shoveling every thing I can into my mouth and getting rid of it. Every day I promise myself I will not eat "trigger foods" (because there are some things I pretty much can not eat without knowing I will end up purging it), that I will stick to my safe foods, maybe I will even eat enough if that means not binging and purging. But then the intense desire to consume and consume and consume kicks in. I don't even taste the food anymore (I do in the beginning). It kind of comes as a package, eating everything and then getting rid of it. I hate every single part of it, but I can not stop.
Sorry if that was too much information. I feel really ashamed of binging and purging, but I am not going to sit here and pretend that I just restrict my food because that would be a freaking lie. The only way I know how to get out of this cycle is simply to not eat. Fill up on coffee, diet sodas, zero calorie energy drinks. Eat less than 500 calories a day. Only eat specific items which are precisely weighed out. Take an hour to pick apart a fucking clif bar, which I may or may not purge. Binging and purging literally scares any desire to eat out of me. This is how things got out of hand the first time my family recognize there was a problem, binged and purged for months until I was so scared of eating that I literally starved myself until I ended up on bed rest in a treatment center.
All of this is making me feel so out of control and hopeless, and making me lack motivation to recover completely. I do not have a desire anymore to keep trying and setting myself up for failure. Why try when I can only get so far before I fail? I feel like I can not live a life without my eating disorder. I know what kind of life (or lack thereof) my eating disorder brings me, and it is terrible in ways that I do not even know how to describe. It is dark, lonely, depressing, scary, but also filled with emptiness. It completely ruins my relationships with everyone. But I keep getting pulled back to that. It is so much easier to live like this, and I do not know why. I always see the quote floating around, "recovery isn't as hard as living a lifetime with an eating disorder." I call bullshit. Recovery is actually the hardest thing I have ever attempted. Every fucking day I have to re-make up my mind that I want to recover, and even then there is the challenge of actually being able to do it. WANTING to recover is a challenge in itself.
I made a pretty bold move and decided to stop seeing my dietitian. I just do not feel like there is any point to seeing her when I do not even know if I want to recover anymore or if I am even capable of it. I feel like I am throwing money away. I do not think a dietitian can be helpful unless I am motivated, and right now I am not. Plus, I am pretty sure I irritate the crap out of her because she is constantly giving me recommendations and I do not follow through with them. Or I will hit my calorie goal for a few days, and then completely fuck it up. I have not quit the rest of my team yet, but I feel like it is really pointless to see them right now when I just do not have any desire to get better anymore. Who knows, maybe they will spark something in me and help me pull myself out of the current cycle I am in.
