Failure to Launch

First, thanks to everyone who left kind comments on my catching-up post. I felt pretty vulnerable and anxious about putting the blog back online, but hearing from y'all was worth it.

One of my college friends is at a conference about 45 minutes from PhD Town (this is EXTREMELY far from where we went to college together, so it was an exciting coincidence), so I drove over to see her yesterday evening. We were never extremely extremely close during college, but mostly because I really wasn't extremely close to many people in college at all; I have a tendency to keep people at arms' length and was really sick for much of that time. Anyway, we were involved in a lot of things together over the years and have a lot in common, so it was really great to catch up with her. There is something so special about seeing old friends, you know?

Even though during high school and college I almost never talked to anyone in "real life" about my ED struggles as they were going on, in retrospect I'm sure that most people at least had some idea of what was going on, especially junior year when I came back to school after having a really severe relapse over the summer (2007). This friend in particular is one of the few that I told about my recovery tattoo when I got it right before Thanksgiving of our senior year (one of my close guy friends actually went with me to get the tattoo; he was great. Does anyone else have an easier time talking to guys about ED stuff than their female friends? Not counting online friends, at least? That's a topic for another post).

So when I do get the chance to catch up with college friends, I can often sense them tactfully trying to get a read on how I'm doing. The friend I saw last night was a competitive gymnast for 13 years, and while she never had any ED issues that I know of, I'm sure she saw a lot of it and is more in tune than most people. For example, when we were making plans she suggested doing dinner and was careful to also offer "Or we can just get a coffee, whatever works." In other words, "Don't be scared away from coming to see me because the food situation is intimidating."

We had a great conversation (over coffee, I swear I've gotten really good at eating out but I just wasn't feeling it this week), and as we were wrapping up she stopped to say "You know, you look really good, how do you feel?"

Which, when it comes to non-ED people trying to check in on you, was one of the best approaches I've heard. But. I always have major mixed feelings on being told that I look "good", of course: "OMG she doesn't think I look too skinny which means I'm FAT which means that there's no way I can change this lifestyle which it totally structured around workouts and food because I'm doing all of that and I'm not even skinny and if I gain an ounce I'll leave the "good" zone and be FAT and if she thinks I look "good" she probably assumes I AM good when really I feel like this disease is a huge vat of cement that I'll be buried in forever."

I know, intellectually, that she actually meant: "I'm relieved that you're not as emaciated as you were for a lot of the time I knew you in college, because that shit was scary."

And the last part of my gut-reaction was also automatically invalidated when she asked how I "feel", as in, "The surface looks improved but what's going on underneath?"

So, Cammy gets an insightful and compassionate inquiry. Following an extremely lonely and vulnerable and emotionally fraught month. And I had a complete failure to launch. This was me:

I'm so terrible about fielding inquiries about this stuff in real-time. The only person that can ask about it without me completely shutting down is Match, and I still stumble to explain myself to him on this topic a bit sometimes, even though I've gotten way better at it and I know that he displays more insight about this stuff than some therapists I've seen.

So I stuttered and babbled a bit about how yeah, everything is great, only rainbows and roses over here, and rambled some other stuff that I can't even remember now, and then we ended that awkward segment of the episode, said our goodbyes and parted ways. Brilliant, Cammy, brilliant. I can intellectualize my way through what her comment really meant, but I still fail at responding coherently.

In my last post I talked a lot about how my Nana's death has affected me. I think one interesting component is that the month since her death has been a novel time during which (some) people were interested in some aspect my mental well-being, and asked about it, when I didn't feel immediately emotionally and verbally clamped down (depending on the context of the asking, that is). I suppose part of how an ED works is by making it seem like it has some kind of wall built around us, so that even people who really want to help can't get in.

Preview of the next week: Finals week is almost done (I'm in that double-whammy period of life during which I still have to take exams AND write and grade my own students' exams), and I'll be back home for the holidays next week. I hope everyone else is weathering finals okay, and if you're past the stage during which you have to worry about finals, I'm extremely happy for you and jealous of you.  Love y'all.