Friend Therapy

Despite all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth that has gone on around here for the past couple of weeks, there is one rock in my life that never budges: I have the most amazing battalion of friends that a person could ever ask for. The distant ones are just a few clicks away via the net, and I do still have a small crew left in town after graduation.

So, yesterday did not have a very auspicious beginning. I woke up with the suffocating feeling of panic, a sky-is-falling type of sadness. And shame, for some reason. Have you ever been so upset that it's like your brain is white-hot, so it feels like your skull is tightening and melting from the inside out?

I ended up crying behind my sun glasses for 3 miles of G.'s morning walk yesterday, and by the end I was sobbing so hard that I literally had to sit down on a curb two blocks from my house because I couldn't breath.

Then I showered, Tweeted some news articles, and replied to an e-mail about research permits. Nothing to see here, folks, business as usual, just keep driving by. I choked down some breakfast to keep from passing out at work, and headed off to teach for the day. Literally drew blood on my arm pinching to keep from crying as I walked towards campus.

I texted a friend of mine on my way home at the end of the day, and, bless her heart, she immediately went into rescue mission mode. I do not meltdown (publicly), well, ever, so she intuited that this was bad. (Although I haven't assigned her a letter in my cast of characters, you have actually met this friend before, see here).

Half an hour later, she arrived at my door armed with a six pack of pomegranate Smirnoff, two pints of Ben & Jerry's (Half-Baked froyo for me, Chunky Monkey plus a bottle of extra Hershey syrup for her, have I mentioned she is my hero?), and the first two seasons of 30 Rock on DVD. She correctly surmised that I might need the alcohol to loosen up for the sweet stuff, and I was thankful for her foresight, because it worked.

So today, still many things weighing on my mind, but I think that a night of taking a break from myself and my thoughts was definitely needed.

Once again, thank you, Friend. And while I'm at it, thank you so much for the kind and understanding comments and e-mails I have gotten recently. I know I have been a big wad of No Fun stuck to the shoe of the blogosphere, and I am always so touched at the widsom and compassion from readers. Thank you, Friends.

And Now Cammy Cracks

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I had a serious boyfriend in middle/high school, we were together for most of the time from the sixth grade up until graduation. We had a fairly amicable split, more out of pragmatism than lack of feelings for one another (our lives were just going in different directions). We haven't had much contact since then, but trade occasional updates. I am not "in love" with him anymore, but still care about him quite a bit.

So, I was so happy to hear from him a few days ago, I needed that old anchor amidst the cruddy circus that is the rest of my life right now. Then, once I actually read his message, I discovered that he is deploying for Iraq soon.

I am a camel, that is the straw, and this is my back, buckling and crumbling and turning to dust.

Am I a terrible person for being more upset about this than about my own dad deploying? I guess the difference is that my daddy has been a soldier ever since I was born, this is his job. That has always been a part of my life. But it just plain seems unfair for kids I grew up with to be going over there to play chicken in the desert with brainwashed, weaponized teenagers.

This is the boy that gave me my first kiss, my first bouquet of roses, the first boy to tell me he loved me. We met in band class, and he used to slip notes into my clarinet case. He spent countless evenings dealing with me when ED was bad, and was the only person I felt comfortable eating in front of. He came over and read to me when I was sick with a bad reaction to my pain meds after having my wisdom teeth out. We cried together on September 11, 2001 (this was also the day he vowed to join the military himself). He was my date to senior prom. He worked double shifts (including graveyard) at CVS for an entire year to help pay for us to go to Italy together. While were there, on the ferry to Capri, he caught my vomit in his favorite hat when I got seasick. He picked out a star for us that was "ours," so we could each look at it and be "together" no matter where we were. When he graduated from basic training, I felt like my body was physically swelling with pride for him.

Can you even see the same set of stars in the sky from Iraq?

I gave him the talk which is, in retrospect, much like the one from Jenny in the movie 'Forest Gump." I told him not to try to be a hero. If something bad happens, run. Turn the other way, get out of range, protect yourself no matter what. For every story about people who pulled of amazing feats of valor and lived to tell about it, there are many who were not so lucky, so please don't risk it, don't risk yourself.

His only response was "You know that's not the kind of person that either of us wants me to be."

What, the living kind? Yes, goddamnit, that is exactly what I want.

This is all terribly myopic and selfish, but right now I have the emotional stability of an amphetamine-riddled gnat, and I am pretty much beyond caring.

And I think that T. is already starting to play mind games with me. How can one person make you feel like a goddess with the world in the palm of your hands at some times, but at other times like a beetle scurrying around looking for a rock to crawl under? I can't tell if it's him or me that is making this so confusing, I really have no business trying to deal with any kind of serious relationship right now.

Apologies for yet another rant, doom and gloom, whinefest. I promise that at some point I'll actually have something coherent and relevant and hopefully semi-insightful to share, but for now I am just tired of everything.

Status of Things

So, I haven't really been updating much on the status of things ED-wise lately. This hasn't really been intentional, I have just had uncharacteristically little to say. I don't really know how to describe the place I'm in right now, and I feel like any commentary will consist mostly of whining.

I won't call it relapse, I'm not doing very terribly, but it's definitely moving backwards from where I was around graduation. There is just so much on my mind right now:

1) Moving at the end of the summer, and starting grad school.

2) My brother's struggles. My mom thinks he might be gay, but is trying to figure it out. This is not an issue for me at all, my brother is my brother, but the rest of my family are strict Catholics, so it's a tense subject.

3) My dad deploying

4) My mom making a huge career change that is going to create a lot of financial stress for the family.

5) Seeing so many friends leave town

6) And a new wrinkle, a big confusion over a relationship. This is very complicated and probably warrants a separate post, sometime when my thoughts on the issue are coherent enough to explain it. In a nutshell, a guy (I guess he gets his own initial now, let's call him T.) has popped back up in my life over the past week. I fell so hard for him as a freshman, but then he cut off with no warning (he was at a different university), and I found out later that he hadn't exactly represented some parts of his life very honestly to me. So, 3.5 years of forgetting him. And now, one simple message from him last weekend put my brain into a tizzy, and I've been very sleep deprived this week from talking to him late in the night and thinking about him even later. It's like everything picked up exactly where it had left off. Basically, I all of the things I wished I had felt for J. (who did treat me much better), I feel for T., times a zillion. But he lives three hours from me now, and I'm moving four states away in about seven weeks, increasing distance to 12 hours, so it seems like very, very poor timing. We're still working through exactly what we want the "status of us" to be. This is very strange for me, because I DO NOT let people into my inner world, and yet with this guy it just feels natural, which scares me.

Amidst all of that, I really have had almost no interest in food. Most of the time, in my experience with the ED, food can occupy an absolutely insane proportion of my thoughts, no matter how little I was actually eating. Now it's not like that. I just have no interest in it, and each mealtime is stressful because for once, I haven't planned, and don't want anything, but have to figure out something anyway, which involves long stressed out sessions of pacing between fridge, cabinet, fridge, cabinet, fridge, and usually at least a few episodes of just planting my ass in the middle of the floor and crying.

This, combined with super, super-bad body image is just not doing me any favors. I'm having major weight gain distribution issues. I know that with regaining weight, the only way out is through. Your body has to get healthy enough before it things even out, hormones have to normalize, etc, and if I freak out and drop weight again I won't give it the chance to redistribute. I just hate feeling like a a walking belly. And because I work out so much, my legs have added a significant amount of muscle, which makes them look disproportionate. And I hate my cheeks. And I'll stop now because this line of moaning and groaning could go on indefinitely. And especially with the T. stuff going on, I would really like to not feel as though I have the body of an awkward 11 year old.

See? I told you. Whining. Sorry.

On Sponges

Children are like sponges, soaking up the world as a vast ocean of information, sights, sounds, feelings, etc. Little things make big impressions. I was out shopping today and noticed a few really sad situations that reminded me of how tough it is for girls to actually feel good about their bodies these days.

Case 1: I was in the fitting room at Kohl's, and heard a woman in the stall next to me with a young daughter, she sounded like she was about four or five years old. The girl was just chattering away while her mom tried on clothes, and then I heard them start to leave:

Girl: Are we gonna buy that?

Mom: No, we're putting it back.

Girl: Why?

Mom: Because I didn't like how it fit.

Girl: But I thought you looked be-yoo-tiful!

Mom: Well I'm glad you did, but I didn't like it, no lunch for Mommy.

Case 2: After a morning of torture in clothing stores, I retired to Books-A-Million, my safe zone, where everything is guaranteed to fit. Except for when I saw two 12ish looking girls, both of them with the gangly, spaghetti-limbed figures typical of growth-spurting kids, poring over the latest edition of this really obnoxious book on calorie information and diet strategies (I don't want to list the exact title because I don't want to even give it any backwards promotion).

Girl 1: Oh my god, that is what I had for lunch yesterday?! Can it really have that many calories?

Girl 2: Ouch, you'll have to make up for that. It says here you have to do X sit-ups to work that off, and that's if you hadn't even eaten anything since then.

Arrggh. You can just see girls absorbing the information, processing, storing it away, referring back to it as they build their images of who they are and how they are supposed to fit into the world. They should be climbing trees, sneaking candy before dinner, and building forts or something.

I watched the movie Gia today, and noticed that Angelina Jolie had a much fuller figure in that movie, when she played a supermodel, than she has in any of her recent movies or media appearances. (Full-figured, of course, being relative). And that movie was made 11 years ago, before she had several babies.

I also watched a really sad documentary online, following an eight year old girl's journey through treatment for anorexia. I highly recommend it (I didn't find it triggering, and I'm having a hard time right now, but there is ALWAYS a potential for someone so please be cautious if you're struggling), see it here (h/t to Life, Love, Violin):

Watch Dana: The 8 Year Old Anorexic [Part 1] in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Watch Dana: The 8 Year Old Anorexic [Part 2] in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Sorry for such a gloomy post, I guess I have just been sitting on the sad observations today and needed an outlet. Some people are susceptible enough to EDs even without huge environmental triggers, what kind of environment are we creating for the next generation of women? I know this problem is common knowledge, it's not like I'm having profound and novel revelations here, I guess sometimes it just hits harder than others.

And It Piles Higher

So, word came today that my dad is deploying to Afghanistan for 15 months.  How, exactly, can this happen without anyone asking my permission? *

He won't be leaving until 2010, hopefully not before his birthday. It could be worse, when he went to Iraq he only got two week's notice.  

(*I really shouldn't bitch so much, because he is active duty, this is his JOB.  I would imagine it's much more disruptive for the families of reserve troops that are called up for deployment).

Brother Update, and Thanks

First of all, I really don't have adequate words to thank you all for sharing your experiences, insight, and advice with me in response to my concerns about my brother.  This goes for both the comments and the private e-mails. I hadn't dared to hope for so much feedback, it is incredibly appreciated.

Second, Brother had an appointment with his doctor today, to talk about the medication issue.  Apparently this guy is a pediatrician that specializes in adolescent medicine.  My mother said he sat and talked to Brother for about two hours.  In the end, Brother decided to wait one month, then reassess the situation and see if he still wants to try meds.  In the meantime, he is going to add an additional phone session to his weekly therapy appointments, and he is enrolling in Tae Kwon Do classes for a physical outlet that doesn't involve much competition.  The doctor thinks that one of his problems is that his confidence is so low, he just doesn't try to do anything, because he assumes he'll be no good at it.  We're trying to encourage him to branch out and get involved with things, without pushing him.  He is exceptionally patient with kids, and he's going to try to volunteer as a Vacation Bible School assistant at their church.

Have I mentioned that I am incredibly proud of this kid?  When I was his age, I was still in profound denial about a mental disorder that had come close to killing me, not once but many times over.

It's funny, because when we were younger we were terrible to each other.  But once he got to be about 13, things just smoothed out and we are truly friends now.  We actually have some deep conversations, about everything from abortion and capitalism to Lost and Stephen King novels.  So, to close, I share with you a text conversation from yesterday:

Cammy: I heard your TV is on its last legs.

Brother: Yup, health hazard, flickering gives you seizures you know.

Cammy: Neighbor moved out the other day, managed to sweet talk him out of his TV, bc he had to fit everything in his house into his Jetta.

Brother: And? I can haz?

Cammy: Haz you can. I have two already.

Brother: Wait, define Sweet Talk.

Cammy: LOL, nothing that put me at risk for cooties.

Brother: Ok good.

Cammy: Would you still take the TV if it had?

[4ish minute time lag between texts]

Brother: Did some soul searching, and you know, I think I would.

Cammy: Thanks, next time you benefit from my electronics trafficking skills I'll have to add a handling charge.

Brother: Doesn't cooties risk become illegal when you actually start collecting fees?

Ok, depending on your level of propriety you may or may not think that was funny, apologies in advance, but I get a kick out of him, and he's not bad for a 16 year old boy.

Thanks again, I am always struck by how lucky I am to have stumbled into a community of such supportive, insightful people.

Anti-D Advice?

I really don't feel like talking about current ED stuff right now, but there is another issue I'm concerned about.  My 16 year old brother has been seeing a counselor this school year; I was SO proud that he asked my parents to find one for him, completely on his own initiative.  He is a very smart, very introspective kid, but the whole Being a Teenager thing is challenging for him.  He has a girlfriend, but other than that I think he only has one real friend.  I'm not sure why, because he is good looking, and funny, and intelligent and caring as hell...but he definitely lacks confidence and has been shy since the day he was born.

So anyway, things with Girlfriend are rocky now, and the counselor called my mom in for a meeting because he felt like Brother was going downhill.  Now he wants to put him on anti-depressants.  My parents are very hesitant to do this, and because I have experience in both biology and being a dysfunctional teenager, my mom seems to be weighing my opinion on the issue very heavily.  I tend to be very cautious, I am worried about side effects on his developing brain and creating a cycle of dependency.  But I have never been on either anti-d's or anti-anxiety medication, so I really don't feel like I am in a prime position to judge.  Brother seems to be leaning towards it, but I think it's just because he sees it as a Magic Pill that will make the world all better for him.

The very first time I was tossed into therapy for my ED (completely against my will, and with a family counselor that had zero ED experience and later fired me), they offered me anti-d's but I refused.  I was in 100% denial about having a problem.  They also recommended that I be hospitalized, but of course I wanted none of that, and my parents didn't want it either.  What would everyone have thought, if their golden girl had to repeat the 7th grade because she had to be shipped off to learn how to feed herself?  Anyway, in a nutshell, my parents have always taken a very, very hands-off approach to my ED, and I pretty much got away with murder (almost literally) when it came to my disorder.  I was extremely obedient and compliant with everything else, really no trouble at all as a teenager, except for that pesky anorexia thing...

During sessions with my current psychologist, I have discovered that I never really realized how much my parents mismanaged dealing with my disorder.  I do not blame them at all for my disease (beyond genetics, which they can't help), please don't take me the wrong way.  I would not trade my family for the world, and love them dearly. They have been extremely loving and supportive, just in an extremely passive way. But now that I'm more aware of how important early intervention is, I don't want Brother's issues to get swept under the rug as well, so we can play Happy Family and pretend like problems will just solve themselves.  At the same time, I don't want him to feel like he has to rely on a drug to function like a normal person.  Ack!  And I have asked him what he wants, and all he can say is that he just wants to "feel normal, whatever that takes."

So, now for the entire point of me breaking my unofficial blogging hiatus: I am using my Ask the Audience lifeline:  if anyone has had experience with anti-depressants, either positive or negative, can you please contact me?  If you don't want to post a comment, feel free to e-mail me at gsd0405@yahoo.com.  Brother has another therapy session this week and at that time he, the counselor, and my parents will probably make the decision about meds.