Psyching Up for Travel

Hitting the road for a few days tomorrow. I'm going across a couple of states to visit with family and friends from high school over the 4th of July weekend. Historically, I tend to suffer pathetic ED regressions when I travel, and going back to the town where I went to high school makes it even worse.

Why? The main reason is that I feel some twisted sense of obligation to slide back into the role that I played in high school. I wasn't open about my ED, but you would have had to be blind and deaf not to pick up on it, so my friends all just came to expect that Cammy wasn't going to eat. I didn't get invited out to dinner, if we were hanging out and someone passed around food, I was automatically skipped. I know that they were just trying not to stress me out by putting me in the spotlight, but after a while it just seemed like one more padlock on the door to my little disordered cell. At times when I truly wanted to try to do better, I'd go behind the gym, in my car, or in some corner of the library to eat at lunch, because I didn't want to draw attention to myself by eating in the cafeteria.

Was this logical, rational? No. I had/have incredible friends, and I know they wouldn't have reacted negatively to me eating. It probably would have thrilled them. I guess I just wanted so much for the disorder to fly under the radar, I felt like an obvious change in behavior patterns would call attention to it more than the disordered behaviors themselves. Does that make any sense? If not, then that is precisely the point.

So, now I go back up there, still not in that ever-lauded "normal" weight range, but significantly heavier than any of them have seen me. My mealplan demands more for lunch than I used to consume in an entire day. Thusly, it's a wee bit awkward for me.

I have been up there once or twice a year since between high school graduation (2005) and now, so they've seen me at various stages, and I have eaten out, gone drinking, etc with them. I'm sure they think about the food thing much less than I do. But I still feel like I'm under the microscope. And I still feel the need to take preparatory measures in the days leading up to the trip, to make sure my tummy looks as flat as possible, things like that, even though I know my friends are much more interested in what is going on in my head than in the status of my midsection. And outside of worries about other people's perceptions, toying with food and limiting weight probably serves as an outlet for anxiety leading up to the trip. Not a good or desireable outlet, don't get me wrong, but it is what it is, just calling it like I see it.

So, I went over all of this with H. this week. I am going to try very, very hard to be as normal as possible so that I can enjoy this trip. Historically, I freak out, restrict, and feel weak and spacey after a day or so, greatly impeding any enjoyment, which is supposed to be the point of the trip, right?

I'm staying with a friend tomorrow night, then visiting with family on Friday and Saturday, coming home Sunday. My mom and brothers are going to be visiting as well (they live several more states away, so my grandparents' house is the central convergence point). I'm very glad my mom will be there as well. My grandmother does make an effort to cook Cammy-friendly food, but it is nice to have my mom around, because she is sort of a health nut (without being unhealthy about it), and so I won't feel spotlighted so much for my food preferences if she is there preferring those foods as well.

Also, I am looking forward to time with mis hermanos, known around here as Bro and Littlebro. (Slightly misleading names, because they're both "littler" than me in years, being 16 and 13, but are both much bigger than me in stature). I was such a terrible sister to them when we were kids. When we were very small I had no patience for them, always yelling and telling them to leave me alone. As a teenager, I still lived with them but pretty much checked out of their lives so I could devote myself to ED-dom, and I am really working to make up for that now that we're all semi-adults and can have intelligent conversations, go do fun things, etc. Bro was recently dumped by his girlfriend, and we're hoping the trip will help him take his mind off things.

So, what can I do to make this trip positive?

-Don't restrict. Such a simple idea in theory, right? But seriously, being out of my daily routine is very challenging. If I try to eat intuitively, I end up with way less than my meal plan. So I should probably break this goal down into more specific chunks:

-Don't over-compensate for calories not burned when I miss exercise sessions. I am in the terrible habit of knowing that I haven't burned X, and thus cutting back 2X on my calories. Must not do that this time.

-Don't abuse caffeine. I need some whilst on the road, but I can't let myself overdo it. It makes me sick to my stomach and increases my anxiety about everything (food and exercise always being the favorite topics) if I have more than a cup or so. And when I am that jittery I have no appetite, so it also contributes to restriction.

-Don't try to imagine what other people are thinking about what I am eating.

-Don't try to imagine what other people are thinking about my size.

-Focus on making the memories I want to have with my family. Meaning to relax and allow myself the energy to enjoy the time with them, instead of making just another edition of all the "I felt too tired and weak to have fun" weekends I have had in the past.

I will probably be sans internet after tomorrow night, but I may pre-write a post and schedule it to go up while I'm gone, depending on how my time goes tonight. I hope you all have a fantabulous 4th of July weekend!

Summer Doldrums

So, I've been neglecting my bloggerly duties as of late. This hasn't been intentional. I've been actually going out and doing things every weekend for the past month or so, and during the week I am either teaching or catching up on things I did not accomplish whilst socializing and teaching.

Also, I am experiencing this strange mix of busyness and total lack of motivation. A doldrums, I guess? Plenty of stuff to do, but not much energy or drive. None of it is very pressing or urgent. Important stuff, but no looming deadlines. I'm already working on three different writing projects with my adviser, but I guess it's better to get a jump start than to get slammed with all of that when the semester starts in August. Also, two of those projects were MY idea, I entirely volunteered to obligate myself to do them. Thus, I should be feeling a teensy bit more motivated than I actually am. I am intensely interested in the projects, I think this apathy is largely due to lack of energy, and I'm sure that when I start school in the fall and am suddenly in an academic environment again, it will light a fire under me and bring back that old insatiable need to DO. Not, of course, that I have just been laying around in front of the TV. I think I would get much more "real" work done if I weren't so addicted to reading books.

Ok, all of that is incredibly mundane, sorry. The main factor is probably ED-related at the core: simple lack of energy. I wish I could go just one day without using my legs. I am achy and sapped most of the time. It has been worse than ever for the past few days, I'm not sure why. Perhaps the heat? The heat index has been 105-110 most days. Maybe because I have been yo-yoing with caffeine, too: having it a couple of days, then none for a couple of days, on and off enough to keep my system a little whacked out. Every part of me aches by the end of a workout, including the inside of my head (sounds stupid, but surely you know what I mean? the swimmy pressure that builds internally when you're not well?). I literally sat on the floor next to the exercise bike for 30 minutes this morning in front of an infomercial because I didn't want to get up and hunt for the remote control.

Or the explanation could possibly be the fact that I am still working out for many more hours per day than can be considered even marginally sane. Although, I haven't increased that recently. You would think that as I have progressed with my weight it would get less tiring, but eithe A) that is not happening or B) It did happen but it just reset my tolerance for fatigue to a less extreme level. Food has been okish, weight is barely down at all. I feel like a wimp for being worn out all the time, when I know that physically I have been through much, much worse in the past.

Ok, I am starting to feel like this is the most boring post I've ever written. There have been positives over the past week!

First of all, I was privileged with a visit from Tiptoe last Thursday. If you can possibly believe this, she is even more lovely and insightful in person, we had a great time! G. was smitten. ;)

Next, I spent Friday and most of Saturday with J, that was terrific. We spent all day on Friday in Big City, halfway between our respective University Towns. We saw My Sister's Keeper (he was one of three males in the entire theater), wandered bookstores, had dinner at an amazing restaurant, and saw a live show at the Big City arts center. Then, for complicated reasons that involved shuffling vehicles between states, he drove me back here and then went home on Saturday. So tons of good J-ness. One thing I love about J is that he totally respects my space. I know that if T. had stayed with me, it would have taken forever to get rid of him on Saturday, but J. got up, went with me to walk G. and have coffee, then headed home, no risk of overstaying his welcome. I don't mean for that to sound snotty, I truly enjoy him, I guess I'm just trying to explain that he and I have similar socialization strategies: have fun, do things with structure and purpose, and then call it a day and get back to business as usual.

The weekend before that, I actually went out drinking/bar-hopping with a group of girlfriends, acting like a somewhat normal 20-something. Woo hoo! Also, that was the night before I broke things off with T., so I needed some girl power combined with controlled substances to relieve my mind a little bit.

I have a major road trip planned for next weekend, which will involve 3 or 4 nights in another state, already trying to psyche myself up for being thrown into a tailspin in terms of food and exercise.

I also realized that I only have 4 sessions with H. until I move. I haven't let myself process that much yet, but it is going to be incredibly difficult to leave her. I was venomously resistant to therapy for many years, (after having two different therapists simply refuse to see me anymore when I was a teenager), until I finally found someone I clicked with, and I know for a fact I wouldn't have come this far by now, or maintained at this level for so long, without her help. There is an ED center in my new city, I will give it a try, but I'm not sure about it. I saw their staff webpage and everyone there is so YOUNG. Not that I don't think young therapists are competent, I just feel weird about seeing someone so close to my own age.

This is devolving into ramble, so I'm cutting it off now. Nutshell status: heat saps energy, exercise saps it more. Socializing is fun, overcompensating later is not. Travel is stressful, but not as stressful as passing up an opportunity to see loved ones for the last time before I move.

Take care and treat yourselves kindly, much <3.

In Which I Miss My Own Milestone: Happy Belated Birthday, BBBB.

I intended to write a post heavy on the retrospective introspection in honor of the one year anniversary of this blog, but I realized today that I missed it! I remembered starting BBBB during June 2008, but didn't realize the inaugural post was June 4, so it snuck past me.

The first night I posted, I was actually in a motel room, trust G. at my feet, because I had to do quite a bit of traveling for my summer job. I was depleted, exhausted, demoralized, desperate, and searching, that night. I hadn't been planning to start a blog, honestly, but that night I just felt this extreme desire to reach out, and boom, BBBB was born. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure how long I would maintain the blog after I first started it. But once I started posting, I wondered how I had made it through for so long without such a mechanism for expression. I had already been in therapy for seven months at the time, but I was still having "committment issues" with recovery.

I can't emphasize what a hugely helpful tool this blog has been to me over the past year. Writing has always been an extremely cathartic and therapeutic outlet for me, allowing me to express thoughts and feelings that I am never quite able to verbalize.

That is only part of the reason I have come to cherish this blog so much. I have been truly overwhelmed by the support I have gotten from this awesome (and growing) recovery blogosphere. Seriously, y'all have brought me to tears on more than one occasion. I never cease to be amazed by the wisdom, insight, humor, and compassion traded around in this community, and although I don't know you personally, rest assured that your comments have touched my life in many ways.

So where is Cammy, one year later, anyway? I have definitely made progress in recovery. I even have a rockin' tattoo as a daily reminder of where I've been and where I'm going. I'm in a healthier place both mentally and physically, and feel like I am finally forging forward in a path that is drawn in indelible ink, not the faint pencil lines I used to trace when attempting recovery. I graduated from college last month, and am moving on to the next stage of my life when I move to a new state for graduate school this fall. I'm going to be bouncing around the globe a bit over the next few years, and am finally realizing how grateful I should be to myself for making an effort get myself healthy enough to pursue my goals and dreams.

I do still have a ways to go, in terms of my weight, my thoughts, and my behaviors. I know for sure I don't want to go backwards, as tempting as it may seem on bad days, but going forward is still scary as well. I got into this illness one day at a time, and I know that I'll have to get out of it likewise.

I do have to put one plug in here: therapy. I was venomously and vehemently anti-therapy (for myself, of course, I always encouraged others to get help) for many years, after some bad experiences as a teenager. When I finally broke down and got professional help in December 2007, it was a major turning point. There is no way I could have come this far, or maintained these efforts, for such a long period of time without the help of my fantabulous psychologist. So, I have disproved my own principle, and I am indescribably thankful to have found someone with the patience, diligence, and lack of tolerance for bullshit to help me figure out how to start breaking free of this disease.

Ok, sorry this has turned into such a nostalgic cheese-fest. I'll close with a few posts that I think have shown some of the most significant thoughts/ideas/realizations during my path over the last year, or just ones I like best for no real reason. Of course, I am not expecting everyone/anyone to read all or even any of the old posts, but I did feel the need to go back through the 200+ entries and review my year and give some credit to my favorites:

6/13/2008: Just Like a Pill

6/19/08: Does This Outfit Make My Schema Look Fat?

7/3/08: Power Shift

8/28/08 "Superficial"

8/31/2008 SlimcaNO

9/15/08 Progress is Slippery

10/16/2008 Pondering Positives

1/2/09 Frustrated with Denial

1/13/09 The Danger of Being Out of Danger

2/27/09 Mutual Suspicion

3/9/09 Anorexia is My Vodka

4/20/08 I'll Thank Me Later

4/24/09 Anorexia Athletica vs Exercise Bulimia?

5/10/09 Milestone Weekend

5/18/09 In Which Another Patient Tours My House

6/12/09 Friend Therapy

And once again, thank you, friends, for everything. Please take care and treat yourselves kindly, because you are more amazing than I can articulate.

Summer Fling Squashed

Just officially ended things with T.

Well, by "ended" I mean put a stop on romantic pursuits, I sincerely do hope we stay friends. He didn't make it very easy for me, but I do feel at peace with my decision.

Still, sigh.

Drama Fatigue

I have zero patience for drama. Zilch.. Kein, senki, nessuno, zaden, noben, ninguno. And yet is has pervaded my life to a suffocating degree over the past two weeks. Please, please forgive me for this digression into relationship talk, I assure this is not the norm for me and you will not be subjected to it often.

So, T. I like him, a lot, quite a bit. He is funny, sweet, hellaciously intelligent, and extremely insightful. But he is moving so fast. He's already using The L Word unabashedly, and is starting to really push for a verdict on whether I want a committed relationship or not. I hate to sound coy, but I honestly don't know. I need more time. And space. To figure it out. Yes, we've known each other for four years, but about three of that has been with only rare communication. We definitely have an intense connection, but I need to figure out what that means.

The boy is suffocating me, though. I do care about him deeply, but I am a pathologically independent person, and I do not like getting (literally) hundreds of text messages per day, no matter how much I like someone. I wasn't kidding when I mentioned that he is like a human G. Unfortunately, I am prefer a more feline style: scratch me in the right place, then leave me alone until I solicite further attention. The fact that I neither need nor want you glued to my hip does not mean I don't love you, and I understand/assume you need your own space as well. This worked very well for years with the boyfriend I had in high school, and not having him constantly panting at my heels made me want him much more, I suspect. So poor T. sees me needing space as pulling away or losing of interest, which it isn't. And stress over that is starting to over-ride my enjoyment of him and distract me from how much I actually like him.

It's hard for me to unentangle whether or not I want a relationship (which, by the way, will have to be over a long distance) with him, and if I don't, whether it's really because I don't or because I still have an emotional fortress around myself. I had a long, long conversation with him last night, and I outright told him that with my current status, if I was in a situation where I had to choose between ED behaviors/urges and him, I would choose the ED. He says he understands, and he will be supportive and patient, but I'm still not sure if he gets the significance of that for our relationship. I think he deserves better, and I'm not sure if this whole thing is worth the stress that it is creating.

Ok, I guess that's most of the venting for now. AARRRRGGGGHHH. Part of me is afraid, I guess, that now that we have resolution about how things ended for us several years ago, and now that I know he is mine for the taking (I don't meant to sound arrogant, but those are the exact words HE used), I don't want him in that way anymore. What if I am just a walking cliche, a person who only wants something when it's out of reach? And what if he is also that cliche, and will lose interest after the "chase" is over? I have no doubt that I care about him, have a unique connection, and will always value his friendship. The other stuff is just a mess.

I can't help wondering how all of this would be different if I were "normal." My weight may have crept up over the past year, but emotionally (and still behaviorally) I am still pretty walled off and have a lot of ground left to cover. I don't think it's responsible for me to be entering a relationship with someone when I know I will still make my disease a higher priority than they are.

Boy Therapy

I was most definitely having a dark period last week, but am starting to pull out of that and see the world through slightly less grimy glasses. A big thing that has helped over the past few days has been spending time with three of my favorite menfolk. (Please don't let this offend any feminist sentiments you may hold, believe me I do not think females need "taking care of" by males, don't get me wrong. My Girl Night session with my friend the other night was actually the biggest booster of the entire week, but I already wrote about that, and it just happens all the people I saw socially this weekend possess Y chromosomes.)

T:

Drove up to visit on Saturday (3 hour trip). Despite trading novel-length emails every day, it has been forever since we actually saw each other. It went really well. He is ultra-attentive (seriously, he is like a human G.; he even followed me to the salad bar at lunch just to talk to me while I got my leafy stuff, even though he wasn't getting anything), so after having a stressful couple of weeks it was nice to just get to be the princess for a day. We had lunch, came back to my place to talk, half-watch Gran Torino, talk, play some cribbage, talk. Then we got coffee and went for a walk, talk talk talked...I know he wanted to stay longer, but as much as I like him the ED is still stronger than my feelings for him, I'm afraid...so he was sort of kicked out in time for me to stick to normal evening/night rituals. Baby steps. He wants to plan a weekend trip to the beach sometime soon, that will be a good chance to challenge myself.

J:

I drove to see him yesterday (3 hour trip). It was SO nice to spend time with him! Even though I had never been to his new city before, it felt like coming home just because he was there. I got to see his new place, then we walked around the historic district in his town and had lunch. He gave me the tour around campus, showed me his new office, etc, etc, then we went to a botanical garden and walked around talking. It's interesting how different my feelings were about seeing him vs T. With T. it was an excited kind of good, with J. just a platonic, comfortable kind of good, and both did wonders for my mood. J. had helpful advice about the T. situation, it was nice to have a male perspective. Also, I think that heating things up with T. has helped me to resolve any confusion about what I feel for J., because it is much, much different.

Brother:

My brother absolutely cracks me up, I had some hilarious text conversations with him this weekend. He is so freaking intelligent, and kids in our family speak Facetious before they speak English, so once we get going in a back-and-forth it is quite entertaining.

All the things that had me so worried/stressed are still there, but the mental bruises from the initial blows are starting to heal. I know I need to just put on my big girl panties and Deal, and remind myself of all the things that I still have to be thankful for.

Awkward Turtles at Grocery Store

Full weekend update soon, but first, the Awkward Moment of the day: running into H. at the grocery store. Actually not the first time this has happened, but before it was in the parking lot, this time it was literally with me tugging at my hair in front of the dairy case, being indecisive. Fortunately, she and I are very suave characters and traded "heys" and that was it, no cart peeking.

Still, some days I feel like I should just glue one of these things to my head:

(Image credit)