Don't Get Too Attached

Truth: I was honest when I said I don’t have a scale at home.  Ditched it before I moved, like I said.

Truth: One part I left out is that I discovered a digital scale at the locker room in the gym, and have been checking myself on it 2-3 times a week. This still a major improvement from once or twice a day when I had one at home, and I feel very free from having a number define the tone of every day before it even starts, but I still am tracking the numbers in a looser manner.

Truth: I am losing weight. A certain number of pounds even since Match left two weeks ago. I don’t even want to.  I am noticing certain features on my body that I think are a lot less attractive as a result, won’t go into details for fear of being triggering.

Truth: I want my body from April back. I just feel so trapped in this cycle of behaviors that it’s like it entirely overrides what I know it’s doing to me. 

Truth: I CANNOT let myself get too used to this weight.  I am so bad about setting new norms (whether it be weight, food, workout time, etc) and getting entrenched in that rut, and I can’t let this weight become my new default. I know this is a common issue: you get used to something and even though it’s way below (or above or whatever, depending on the issue of concern) what you used to do, and you KNOW you weren’t fat/out of control at the old level, it still becomes very scary to think of reverting to that healthier state of mind/behavior/physical being.  I’ve crossed the thin (no pun intended) threshold where I start to notice effects on my concentration and memory, and I just can’t afford to let that happen, at this of all times.  I can’t let myself slip into a mindset of feeling obligated to not let myself get above this weight.

Truth: I do NOT mean to be dramatic, y’all, really my weight is not life-threatening or hospital worthy or anything like that. There is a certain weight X at which I tend to notice big changes in emotions, cognition, energy, etc etc, and I’ve crossed that but still am not anywhere near the neighborhood of where I have been at really sick times.

Now for some positives:

Truth: I am really feeling confident that I picked the right school/program.  I’m starting to meet people, am enjoying my classes so far, and have had a fantastic experience with the school as a whole so far.

Truth: But I really miss my dog.

Truth: iTunes has a free preview up of the new Matchbox Twenty album, zomg I love it.  If you were a fan of them way back when I definitely recommend checking it out.

Truth: I have been too broke to get my own internet connection, and the neighbor whose wifi I was “borrowing” moved out earlier this week.  How rude.  Fortunately I can do most interwebbing on my iPhone, but it’s still a bit of a pain for looking up PDFs or sending substantial emails.

Truth: Someone I’ve been friends with since undergard has sort of really hurt my feelings over the past week or two, and I don’t think I really let myself process it fully until today.  You know what? It fucking stings, like bad.  How’s that for articulation?  Granted, I brought it on myself a bit in ways that are far too complicated to go into.  Probably better that it happened now rather than later when things were messier.  And that I’m so worn out and drained right now that I’m in my “too numb to cry over anything” mode.

Truth: Oops, forgot I was on the positives part of the post now.  Smile is pasted back on in 3, 2, 1…

Truth: I hope y’all are doing well and I hope you know how much your support (both online and in other media) means to me.

"Should"

I wish there was some rubric or metric to gauge how I "should" feel on my third anniversary with Match vs my actual thoughts and emotions.  That would involve me sorting out what those actual thoughts and emotions actually are, though. Really not up for that at the moment.

Ghosts of Things That Never Got the Chance

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I've gotten myself into a really good situation with this program, and really, really want to try not to mess it up.  I have so many regrets from the millions of ways I've let the ED interfere with every.single.possible aspect of my life over the years.  I want to protect this experience that I'm starting; I want to be as normal as possible and at my max capacity and to make it something I can look back on with minimal regrets.  Thus, this passage in the novel that I'm currently reading really stood out to me:

"Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin.  The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen."

-From Broken Harbour by Tana French

Present Absences

So there are a couple of things about my lifestyle that are different here that I've failed to mention so far, both of which are absences that are probably improving conditions for me at home.

1) No scale.  I trashed it when I moved out of my place in late April.  This summer has been the longest I've gone without consistently weighing myself in YEARS.  When I had the scale, I couldn't imagine not using it every day.  It was how my day started.  Wake up, pee, shed any clothing, weigh.  Commence with living and all that mess.  If I didn't do it, I spent the whole day anxious that I didn't know the number, didn't know how hard I "needed" to be on myself.

Now that I haven't had one in a while, I honestly just don't want one.  I have too many other things on my mind right now I guess, I don't want to have to think about what the number is, what it was yesterday, why is it up/down/the same, oh my god what if it is up/down/unchanged still tomorrow, could I have had too much sodium yesterday or am I dehydrated from too much caffeine yesterday or WHAT THE HELL ELSE CAN I OBSESS ABOUT RELATED TO THIS GODFORSAKEN NUMBER BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THIS IS WHAT I DO BEST.  No thanks.

2) No exercise equipment at home.  This, my friends, is a HUGE change.
I wish I could say that it has decreased my exercise time, but alas it's sort of created the opposite situation, because now I have a long walk to and from the gym, so I burn a good bit of energy just getting to my workout and haven't been stellar at compensating for that.  I added calories deliberately on a day or two, have just let myself be a little more liberal on other days, but really the issue is that the exercise is eating up SO much of my day.  Compensating calories til I burst won't make up for the disruption in my lifestyle, and I really want/need to cut back.  Plus, I feel like absolute drained shit these days and I know that's the cause. I had a conversation with a friend about it yesterday that put some things in perspective for me (you rock, lady), and I think I'm going to have to grit my teeth and slash time starting tomorrow.

BUT to get back to the point, I think that having a living space without exercise equipment is helpful, because I can come home and just be in relax/recovery mode, rather than having to halfway dread coming home because I know more workouts are waiting for me. Something about coming home and doing exercising in the evening or late at night makes it seem sort of secretive and more disordered.  Not that eating up my day hours with it is any less disordered.  You know what, I want this all to just go away.

To end on a positive, I had my first literature discussion/project planning session with my PhD adviser (he needs a letter, let's call him K) this morning, and was SO happy with how it went.  He seemed to think I made some very good points and I learned a good bit from him too, and I really like the dynamic that we have so far. It's such a big contrast to my Master's adviser. For example, my MS project was not really related to any research that adviser had done before, so he sort of assumed I knew I was doing and showed no interest in helping me develop methods or theoretical foundations, just sort of left me to it. When it came time for my oral exams and thesis defense, he almost made a fool out of himself because he was so unfamiliar with the literature underlying my methods. It was kind of frustrating that I'd worked so hard to master everything but really could have bullshitted a lot of it and he wouldn't have known the difference.

 In contrast, K. and I are starting a project (not my dissertation research, a side project) that covers new ground for both of us, so he set us up a schedule of going over the literature together to learn it at the same time and trade ideas, tackle new methods, etc as a team.  And I think it's going to be awesome.  I'm feeling more confident about this decision every day.  The rest of my lab flew in from Research Country today (a good number of them are native to that country), so it will be exciting to have that group dynamic going too.

I hope everyone's week is off to a great start, love y'all.

Doing My Best to Make Good

Ways I am trying to do well with some challenges:

1) One thing that is both great and potentially dangerous about PhD City is that I walk a LOT.  Now a trip to the gym involves a substantial round-trip walk, whereas before I always drove to my workouts.  With that plus walking around town and various errands, my energy output has been pretty constant and significant, and I've definitely felt the drained, fuzzy-headedness a few days that tell me I'm in an energy deficit even when I'm not "stomach hungry."  So, in an unfathomably logical move, I actually added extra calories today.  Who woulda thunk it?  At some point soon I'm going to just have to scale back the formal exercise to make up for all my foot-commuting, especially once classes start.  It will be okay, must tell myself this.

2) In addition to adding more calories today, I've been eating some things that aren't items I'd normally consume. That's because Match bought some groceries for himself during his visit and left them here and I am BROKER than broke can be at the moment and just can't let any of it go to waste.  It's nothing major, just things like having white bread instead of wheat, margarine instead of butter, little things that are probably totally insignificant on the scale at which I consume use them until they're used up.  But it did take a bit of a mental push for me to break rules about what is and isn't Cammy Food, you know? (by the way the simple fact that I normally buy butter now is a HUGE improvement over the state of my anti-fat food habits a few years ago).

3) The climate/environment here is one that has always resulted in an absolute disappearance of my appetite.  That was a factor in a really severe relapse that I had in 2007 when I spent the summer in a city in a different state but similar environment.  I've definitely noticed the effect here (Match totally lost his appetite here too, I swear I'm not crazy...okay you probably know better than that, but I swear THIS is not one of my forms of crazy).  But this time, unlike in 2007, instead of taking advantage of that, I'm being diligent about making sure I get my calories in, whether I feel the physical need to sit down for a meal or not.

4)  Okay so I know this is a common issue, but I was going through some recent pictures last night and couldn't believe how big I looked in them. To me.  Who the hell knows what it really looks like.  It was just so weird because I know that in actuality my weight is the lowest it's been in a long time, but it was either the angles in the photos or what I was wearing or or my current body proportions (anyone have boobs to spare?) or just my crazy fucking skewed perception.  I think the fact that I've built some muscle with the weight training and running (finally able to start lifting weights again, and didn't lose as much muscle as I'd feared during the hiatus), especially in my legs, just makes them look more solid or whatever, and I perceive that as bulk on myself when I would NOT on someone else.  I seriously almost just didn't post any photo with me in it from the whole road trip/exploring sessions that Match and I documented...but I guess I was in enough of an insomnia-induced haze that I put them up anyway.  And you know what? The one in which I thought my body looked the absolute worst and most bulky was the one that got the most "likes" and comments.  Go figure.

I thought I was going to have a friend from college here for the weekend (the person lives in an adjacent state, although still an 11 hour drive away), but that fell through at the last minute.  I'm bummed about that for a few reasons, but have to admit that it's been really nice to just have some quiet, laid-back time to myself, Match has only been gone for 3 days and I just came off an intensely social/cohabitation-heavy summer. I had a bit of a lonely spell when I first found out my friend wasn't coming, but it's probably better this way for multiple reasons.

I hope everyone has a fantabulous weekend, love y'all.

The Broke Insomniac Speaks

So, where to start.  Here's a positive: I'm in PhD City and I really love it here. It's in a different region/climate/overall type of place than I've ever lived before, but so far I definitely feel like it was a good choice.  It's a nice college town in a beautiful landscape, good for outdoorsy people like me, the people are unbelievably friendly, and so far all of my interactions with my new department have been very smooth and welcoming.

I drove for three days to get out here (two of them with Match in tow) and then had M. here for another 5 days, so food was not at its best during that time. Well that's not really owning it, I guess: I was not my best with food at the time. I have to say I did pretty decent on the car days, as far as managing exercise anxiety, but we were super active once we got here and I probably didn't get what I needed in every single day.  (Incidentally, I know I've griped about his health habits in the past but he is totally overhauling himself in a lot of ways related to that, material for another post maybe because I am glad for him but get a little triggered at times).

I have so much and so little to say about the Match stuff all at the same time.  Need way more than a blog post for it.  Our third anniversary is coming up next week (we celebrated it the night before he left).  This trip was overall more positive than the last one, but we had a few fights and more tense moments than I would have liked.  I felt guilty for being ready for him to leave, because under all the tension he is incredibly good to me. How can I feel simultaneously smothered and lonely in the relationship?  Like I said, I could do so much brain leakage about this and related complicating factors but I won't subject y'all to it right now...

One major stressor has been that part of switching from one grad program to another entails going almost 10 weeks without a paycheck at the same time I have to finance a cross-country move and set up a new apartment.  I had an intake appointment set up with the new psychologist for today, but had to reschedule it because I can't even afford the fucking gas to make the 50 mile drive and back.  I don't mean I didn't want to spend the money on it, I mean I literally do not have that much money in my bank account and have maxed out my credit card.  I get paid on September 1, and things should get at least somewhat better after that. Ugh.

As long as I'm whining, I pretty much never have insomnia issues, but I've been averaging about 3 hours a night here, both with and without Match.  The fact that I'm sleeping on an air mattress could be a factor (my apartment decor is Sparse Monastic at the moment), but I doubt it because it's the same one I was using at my parent's house last month.  I have been awake since before 3 AM, it's now past 10 PM, and I feel no urge to go to bed.  Haven't increased caffeine and even decreased it today in desperation for a good night's sleep before a big meeting tomorrow.  Second ugh of the post.

I feel like I just did a bunch of paragraphs of negatives.  Clearly, there is a lot of change and stress in my life right now.  But the bright side is that right before the move I was having a huge surge of self-doubt about whether I picked the right program, how I would do, whether I was making a huge mistake...but those fears have definitely been assuaged.  This place really reminds me of my undergrad town, and I already feel way more at home here than I did in the city where I did my Master's.

I'm also really, really going to try to use the start of this program to establish healthier routines.  I'm going to need to have a much more constant campus/office presence, which means no more letting workouts dictate my morning, afternoon, and evening schedules. Have to get serious about priorities and the fact that my career is my reason for being here.  I'm really in a mode of wanting to meet people and socialize, and I don't want the ED holding me back on that front either. I can do this.  I want to do this.  I really want to be able to do this.

Thanks again for all the supportive messages and texts throughout this transitional period, you  mean the world to me.  love y'all.

Moved

Hey lovelies, I have been out of the blog loop for the past week, full update soon though. Trip has definitely had its ups and downs, but the major up side is that I am totally in love with PhD City. Really going to try hard to set up healthy patterns here so I don't ruin it for myself.

Match goes home tomorrow, so more soon. Love y'all and please excuse typos, posting from phone.