Shifting Baselines in Recovery

Ok, I had a super-intense week (I'm definintely feeling like a legitimate loaded-down graduate student), but I submitted a proposal and another assignment yesterday, so I can take some time to breathe and post updatage this weekend. I expect blogging may be much more sporadic in the coming months.

So far, though, the verdict on grad school definitely positive. My classload is pretty light, and classes are really just looked at as a formality at this level (you have to take courses and earn credits, but the profs make it very difficult not to get good grades). I have external funding, so I don't have to teach or hold office hours for students. I have class for one hour every morning, and the rest is just unsupervised time to work. I do have a ton of reading for my classes, so that takes some time, but other than that I am pretty autonomous, working on grant proposals, a review paper I'm hoping to submit for publication, organizing plans for my research, etc. My advisor is completely laid back and lets me make my own hours, so I'm generally there from 8-1. I go home, have lunch, and work from here for the rest of the afternoon. There's no point in G. being by himself all day when the internet allows me to do exactly the same work here. This is not to say that things aren't stressful, of course, there is PLENTY to fill my autonomous hours, but I feel like I am learning so much and am really enjoying moving on to a more professional status.

I had my first appointment at the ED center on Thursday, but I'll write about that in a separate post. I'm backlogged on updating, and there was other stuff I wanted to mention first.

Ok, so after I moved (and actually starting before I moved) I was in a state of slippage, and I lost weight steadily for the first 2-3 weeks that I was here. The worst was the week classes started (maybe about 10 days ago? feels like much longer, it's been an eventful 1.5 weeks), because I was constantly being put in new environments with new people and unknown eating situations.

I've started to do better since then, even before my appt at the ED center (I've only had one, which did not make an appreciable impact on my status, the first visit was just history/review). Not better as in going out and buying milkshakes 3x a day, but better as in at least restoring the baseline eating/behaviors I had been functioning with prior to slippage.

How/why did I make a conscious choice to catch the slip? I thought I looked too thin, and unhealthy. I saw that, and definitely realized that it was correlated with me feeling fuzzy and shitty all the time, and that this is not the kind of life I want for myself. But what I find to be interesting from a recovery standpoint, and the point of this post, is this: Current Weight is still significantly higher than what I have maintained for most of my adult life. Less than what I weighed three months ago, but much higher than what I weighed two years ago, or three, four, five...you get the picture. Two years ago, if you told me I needed to be at Current Weight, I would have freaked out and imagined myself as a gooey, spherical miscreant.* But now, I am able to accept that Current Weight still has me in the underweight range and neither looks nor feels good.

I know many people assume that anorexics see themselves as fat. That is not always the case. At many points I have been painfully aware of how painfully thin I was, but the key was that I was convinced that if I gained any weight, then I would become fat. Even if the weight gain still kept me well below normal. It wasn't so much wanting to lose weight, it was obsession with Not Gaining that kept me trapped. I still can't say that I'm gung-ho about gaining weight yet, but I did feel like I was smacked in the face with an insight when I realized that even though I have indeed gained X, I'm still pretty damn thin, so maybe the next X pounds won't turn me into Jabba the Cammy* either.

So, the shifting baseline of body perception was the story I wanted to share today.

Of course I'm not claiming my body image is normal now, or may ever be 100%. Even though I know quantitatively I'm considered underweight, I still have anxiety over my stomach and other "problem areas," and am still struggling with food rituals and my exercise rut. But I don't want to be sick, and I feel like my perspective is slowing moving in the right direction.

(I hope that readers realize that when I make remarks like that I am just relaying what goes on in my mind about myself, and am not at all implying that that is what I think about other people who may be overweight. I never look at an obese person and plug "Jabba the" in front of their name. I think it's common for people to think hateful things about themselves that they would never apply to others, and I just wanted to make sure no one was offended).

Matched?

I just had my first "date" (more like an on-campus coffee appointment) with my Match.com guy, and it went well! He was very nice, and we had some interesting conversation. I felt kind of bad because we lost track of time and he was late to his next class. Even if nothing romantic develops, I at least feel like I've made a friend.

Ok, nose back to the grindstone, some ED thoughts (not disordered thoughts, thoughts about ED, you know what I mean!) later.

Scraps

I have now been tagged twice for the Honest Scrap Award, by Amy and Kim, but I've been so hectic for the past couple of weeks that I haven't done it yet. Sorry!

The description is: "this award is bestowed on a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver's opinion, brilliant. This award is about bloggers who post from their heart, who often put their heart on display as they write. There are three rules that need to be followed on accepting this award:

1) Brag about it.

2) Select seven blogs you find brilliant and link to them.

3) List 10 honest things about yourself.

Bragging is hard. Hopefully it is enough to say that I am honored and appreciate the fact that Kim and Amy thought of me when tagging people for the award. If I am proud of anything, it is that I've been lucky enough to meet such amazing people in

this corner of the blogosphere. So I brag for all of us. :)

Ok, 10 honest things....

1) Every year I get one of those Page-A-Day calendars and keep it in my kitchen, but I always forget to keep up with it (I use a regular calendar and a day planner to track important things), so by the end of the year I am still somewhere in the April section.

2) The only thing I have ever deliberately stolen was the lid to a toilet tank, swiped from a gas station. This is a loooong story.

3) I scar insanely easily. Even little scratches or scrapes that barely even drew blood often form keloid scars. My knees are the worst, due to an active and adventurous childhood.

4) The amount of music I listen to dropped dramatically when I got an iPod. When I'm walking (which is about 98% of the time I listen to my ipod), I prefer podcasts and audiobooks. Podcasts are FREE and music is not...I do have quite a bit of music on there, though, and listen to it while I drive, and when I work out.

5) If I am eating something square or rectangular (sandwich, poptart, etc), I bite around the perimeter of it first until it's round and then eat the middle. This is not an ED quirk, I've done it ever since I can remember.

6) I have worked with a variety of animals that many people are afraid of, but I am very afraid of water fowl (ducks, swans, etc). Bad childhood experiences.

7) When I was a kid, I had an imaginary camel named P.J., and I used to play checkers with him. I wish I remembered whether he was a Bactrian or a Dromedary.

8) I was so insanely lonely and desperate to meet people after I moved that I finally joined Match.com. My new city is big enough that there were actually a good number of people in the vicinity also registered on the site. I've been trading e-mails with a few people, but have one that is definitely a favorite. Awkward turtle: on the day of my grad school orientation, one of the PhD students recognized me from the site and sent me an e-mail afterwards confirming he was right. Ack!

9) I am immune to poison ivy. I still try to avoid it, because it is one of those things to which you develop sensitivity, not immunity, through exposure. (Did you know the mango is in the same family as poison ivy? Some people's mouths break out of if they eat it. Sad.)

10) I always wrote stories as a kid, and have the first 50,000 words of a novel gathering digital dust on my hard drive right now.

I have been sp behind the times with doing this that I am not sure of who has already been tagged and who hasn't, so I sprinkle the tag juice on the masses, go forth and confess your quirks!

Panic Fading

I am starting to feel a little less in danger of spontaneously combusting. I got moved into my office (I have an office!) today, and having my own "space" on campus is a big comfort. I share it with one other grad student, who happens to be the HOTTEST guy I have seen in the department so far. He is also in the class that I had this morning. Hmmm. And he has pictures of his family on his desk in the office, but there are no wifey looking people. Hmmm.

Grad school classes are awesome. Well, I've only had one official class as of yet, the rest don't meet until next week, but so far so good. My professor brought coffee for everyone today, and told us that worrying about grades is a distraction, so we've all got A's unless we really just go out of our ways to screw up. The material is going to be pretty fascinating, and there are people from a variety of research areas (within our field) in the class, so I think it will be a good experience.

I am going to one of the meet and greet socials tonight, hopefully I will be successful in, well, meeting and greeting people. It is timed such that it doesn't interfere too badly with my routines, and that I can make it home for my own dinner at the usual time. I'm not planning on eating there, but I have no idea what they'll be having, and I've done ok with food on my own today. If I plan to eat there, then I still fall into the pattern of restricting the rest of the day to "save up" for what they might have, and that just doesn't put me in a good place. So that tendency is one thing I need to work on.

Speaking of working on things, some progress in the treatment front today: I had an appointment with my new physician here. Actually, only the nurse practitioner talked to me, but she was great. She spent a lot of time and seemed genuinely interested in me. I told her upfront that the main reason for my appointment was to get a referral to the local ED center. My old doctor kind of glazed over and seemed clueless on the subject of EDs, but she was much more on top of things. When I said "eating disorder," she immediately had a list of questions about my bones, reproductive stuff, water intake, etc etc. She seemed more prepared to deal with the topic than any physician I have dealt with so far.

So, I did that, got stuck with some needles (never mind the tattoo, I HATE needles! I don't even have my ears pierced), and got my referral. I have an appointment at the ED center next week. H. promised to fax over a treatment history, so the new psychologist has a heads-up on what she's getting herself into with me.

I have not done well with food for the past few days leading up to this appointment. I just wanted to make sure that my poundage was "low enough" when they weighed me, even though I know that's an invalid concept for EDs. But with the appointment, combined with desperation to look nice and make good first impressions on my new colleagues this week, has meant crappy food habits. I usually consume vast (probably unhealthy) amounts of water (not to fill up, I'm genuinely that thirsty, might be the workouts, I think I talked about this at some point before), and I even restricted that prior to my appointment this morning and got dehydrated and felt terrible. Probably messed up my urine and blood samples, too, that definitely wasn't representative of my usual state. Getting back on the wagon with food will be a goal for the weekend.

I am feeling better about things today. Now that I have a rough draft of daily schedules in my head, I feel a little bit less like the sky is falling. In my last post I mentioned the challenge of cutting out a signficant chunk of exercise, and I think that is something I'm going to be doing in stages. I don't want to really talk about details here because I don't like outlining my workouts for everyone to judge. I won't end up with any cut out today, but next week will be the first full week of my full schedule, so we'll see how that goes.

Ok, off to try and pretty myself up for this social.

Want to be Real

First of all, thank you all for all your support on last week's worried post. I am sorry for slightly wigging out, but I have a constant fear of being triggering, or just coming across as incessantly and intolerably negative and whiny to the point that everyone hates me. I am going to keep writing about what's going on with my recovery, in the hopes that at least some people will identify and benefit with it, but I will make an effort to mix in more insights with my rants.

Speaking of such, my head is overflowing right now. I am starting grad school this week, and am quickly becoming overwhelmed. And it is not because the courses or research are too hard. My classload is actually much lighter than anything I ever had as an undergrad, and although I'm writing grants I already have a good nest egg of research funding. I don't have to teach this semester, so in theory it should be less stressful than my undergrad schedule.

But while the student stuff is easily manageable, the professional/community side have thrown a wrench in my lifestyle, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that I am going to have to make some lifestyle changes if I am going to keep up with this. It is expected that grad students maintain a presence on campus most days, in addition to participating in a lot of other things. It's hard to explain why exactly this is stressing me, because it's not that I don't want to be involved. I love this stuff, and these kind of people. And it's not as if I never left my house as an undergrad and this is a shock to my system, because I was way over-involved and busy with tons of organizations. It's just hard to explain right now.

I think a big thing is that over the summer my eating/exercise routines have become more and more rigid, and now that I am facing actual obligations that interfere with my cemented daily patterns, I'm sort of freaking out.

Most of this pressure is actually social, not academic. I know that it's the first week, so everyone is in meet & greet mode, but it seems like there are two social events every night. I have been incredibly lonely here, so I want to get out and meet people. I want to, but at the same time the anxiety over breaking my routines is killer. I feel so ridiculous.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but the fact that I can't walk to campus in this town is a huge source of all this anxiety. That was a nontrivial source of exercise for me as an undergrad (I lived close enough to walk but far enough away that it was significant). Now that I am commuting in a vehicle, I am going nuts trying to figure out how I'm going to compensate for that energy. I feel like I have to add yet another workout on top of everything else I do, at the same time that I am facing less and less opportunities to steal away and exercise. My mind has been this constant swirl of logistics and planning on how I can use every spare moment of the day to squeeze in a work out, or how much food I will have to slash if I don't. I am trying to work out my schedule for each day of the week in my head, I don't know why it's so important for me to know EXACTLY when I will do X, Y, or Z every day. Not knowing how I will fit everything in is making me crazy.

So, all of this has been stressful, to say the least. But I think it is serving as an eye-opener for me, too. My life style and relationships as an undergrad were built around the scaffold of my eating disorder. I was much better than high school, but I guess I hadn't realized how significant everything was until I was pulled out of my comfort zone. Like one of those rats that finds itself awakened and plopped into a maze with the harsh lights shining on it, dazed and lost and a little bit suspicious.

I don't want to be the person that rushes home from class to work out instead of being in the office interacting with people. I don't want to be the person home alone every night while other people are having barbecues at the beach, just so she can have the same dinner she's been eating every night for years. I don't want to be the person running on 4 hours of sleep every night because she has to wake up so early to work out for hours before her first class. I don't want to be the person that is too busy mentally calculating calories during class to fully engage with the discussion. I don't want to be the person that can't do intramural sports or club hiking trips because she has neither the time nor the energy after doing her standard exercise.

I want to be a real person. After observing the other girls/women at orientation, I saw lots of examples of people who seem to be getting much more out of life than I am right now, and it gave me a lot to think about.

So, a challenge I have been contemplating is to cut out the morning workout that is supposed to be the equivalent of walking to class. (I have already added this, over the summer, because I wasn't going back and forth to campus, the issue is not having time for it anymore now that classes are starting). This would be a huge challenge, in both resisting the workout urge and trying not to adjust my calories to negate it. That is something I'm going to work on this week, though.

My alarm is going off in a little over 5 hours, so I need to go. Thanks again to everyone. Also, I have been tagged twice for the Honest Scrap award, I promise I am not ignoring it! I will probably never be tagged for anything again due to my slowness. Things have been hectic, but am thankful for the tags and will be on that the next change I get.

Undone Does Little for EDs

I just read the book Undone by Karin Slaughter. I don't typically do genre crime novels, but I read a review of the book in a magazine and it mentioned that the plot features a serial killer that targets women with eating disorders. I was intrigued, and picked it up even though I hadn't read any of the previous books in the series. (Apparently Undone is actually a convergence, where the main characters from the authors two series meet and interact).

I have to admit, even though I'm not a big fan of slasher/cop mysteries, the book was well-written and the plot had good twists. The ED issue, however, was done horribly. All of the victims were middle-aged women (late thirties-ish) living in the Atlanta area that knew one another only through a pro-anorexia web forum. I won't give away the plot to explain how the killer found them and how they all turned out to be linked in real life.

Each of the women was portrayed as nothing but an anal caricature of an uber-bitch. None of them had any friends, and they were all hated by their co-workers. They were all foul-mouthed and caustic to everyone around them (except two were single mothers with young sons they were devoted to). And I don't mean they were friendless because they were too sick for social lives, they were friendless because no one could stand them. I will give away one point: one woman who survives (I won't say how many did, I hate spoilers and try to avoid giving them) has nothing but rancor and hatred for the cops and doctors that saved her life, constantly calling the detective "bitch" and the like while she is being interviewed after she's safe. Their homes are sterile and virtually un-lived in, they display no compassion or feelings toward other anorexics than competitiveness and disdain. They are all successful and wealthy, but it is hammered over and over that they have such self-absorbed, rude, insufferable personalities that no one can stand them.

Out of the 435 pages of the book, there is one paragraph that tries to back pedal a bit: one cop asks another if all anorexics are like that, and she tells him something to the effect of no, but the disease is more common in people that already have those personalities. It is presented weakly and unconvincingly, and then the Starving Bitch stereotype is continued for the rest of the book.

I thought the author missed a great opportunity to point out the dangers of pro-sites (the details of the forum are never discussed, apparently cops were never able to crack the women's passwords and get into the site), or to have some intelligent discussion of how EDs are not just a teen issue. She did point out how many EDers at non-critical weights can fly unnoticed by medical professionals who think they are just thin, but to someone unacquainted with eating disorders I'm not sure if that was demonstrated clearly enough to pick up on (it was assumed at first that the killer had starved them, and the women were all thin but not deathly emaciated, having kept their illness subclinical for decades).

I have heard enough ignorant jokes about anorexics to be a little bit sensitive to these things in the first place, but I read this book carefully and I don't think it's just me projecting my defensiveness, I truly do think she presents a biased and inaccurate portrait. Many of the EDers I've met have indeed been driven and ambitious, but NONE have exhibited the kind of cut-throat mentality and complete misanthropy of the characters in the book. Really, their personalities are absolutely reptilian.

(I take that back, I own a reptile, and he is calm and nonvenomous).

Anyway, if you want to read a crime novel, Slaughter is a good writer (what an ironic name for someone who writes murder mysteries, I wonder if it's a pseudonym?), but I had major, major problems with her portrayal of ED sufferers in this book. I think I am going to write her a letter, possibly with a link to this post.

Sampling Error

Sunday linkage: Indexed blog hits the nail on the head:

Apology

I think I owe you all an apology. One reaction to my last post pointed out that sometimes my descriptions of bad days and struggles can be perceived as endorsing/promoting anorexia. I am not at all trying to single one commenter out or start any personal drama, because I know that if one person has voiced it, many people have certainly thought it.

This was my fear when I first started this blog. How to be open and honest about the difficulties of this process without triggering anyone? I have been religious about not using numbers (weights, BMI, calories, etc) or specifics about food, exercise types/duration, etc, but I know that sometimes attitudes and events can be triggering enough for some people. I am so indescribably sorry.

When I started writing this blog, I expected to get maybe a handful of readers, people that I already knew from places like Something Fishy. I never really expected anyone to pay much attention to it, honestly. I could have just kept a personal journal, like I did for many years before, but I guess some small part of me was just so desperate to reach out, even to a small number of people.

I do get a decent number of hits now, and perhaps I have neglected the responsibility that comes with writing things that are open to the public. I make no attempt to either inflate or diminish events/feelings when I am struggling. I could paint you a happy, rainbows and daisies picture of how recovery will be a complete, straight shot to happiness and bliss. I could sugar-coat, in other words. I could put a positive spin on everything, even on nights that I sign off and go to bed wishing that something would happen to me that would prevent me from waking up the next morning.

My original goal with this blog was to narrate my recovery, as honestly and openly as possible. I thought that it would lack meaning or value as an outlet if I edited what I was going through. When I talk about going through hard times, slipping, and generally struggling, I am not in any way, shape, or form advocating of complacency with this disease. Recovery is hard as hell, but even at the incomplete stage at which I currently exist, it is worlds better than living with anorexia.

This post doesn't stem entirely from the comment I mentioned, please, please don't see this as an attempt to garner sympathy because someone hurt my feelings. For the past few weeks, actually, I've been thinking about my relationship to this blog. I've had a lot of personal upheaval over the past few months (dad and friends deploying for war, my mom leaving her job, relationship issues, graduating, moving, starting grad school, leaving my therapist), and I feel like too often I let my posts devolve into just whine/vent sessions, with no underlying meaning attached. This habit didn't develop intentionally, and I can definitely see how it is tedious and frustrating for people who seek posts that have an actual point. If I am even bored with myself, what in the world can other people be thinking? Every time I slip, every time I have a hard day, it is just a different verse of the same song I've been singing for almost half my life now.

Boring is one thing, but triggering is another, and I am so, so sorry. I guess this is just a long-winded disclaimer: if you have an eating disorder, RECOVERY IS WORTH IT. It is a challenge, no doubt, but the benefits vastly outweigh the turmoil of the process. I don't claim to be "recovered," yet, but right now I am at a healthier weight than I have been since I was 15. My anxiety over routines is orders of magnitude lower than when I was in high school. I eat more calories for breakfast than I used to consume in an entire day at some points of my illness. I don't wake up every day (making sure to sit up very slowly, stand up in stages, because of my chronic and critical low blood-pressure at the time) taking it for granted that I will have chest pains, that I will be freezing, that I will wander around my life in a fuzzy hypoglycemic haze. I can walk my dog for miles without having to lie on the couch for an hour afterwards. I was able to do a research stint in the jungle for a month last year, doing things that would have probably killed me if I had been in a weaker physical state. I can read twice as fast and retain twice as much information. I can go out to dinner with friends. For a long time I refused to even say the word "anorexia," but over the last year I have really built my skills in talking about it with both friends and family. Am I having a hard time right now? Yes. Do I have a long way to go? Definitely. But if life is this much better around the halfway point, I can't even imagine the rewards that await me with full restoration.

I guess the only part of the comment I mentioned that truly hurt/upset me was the suggestion that I'm not "even trying." I can see how you would think that, from the way I describe hard days, as if that is just normal and I'm fine with passing out, slashing calories, and other disordered behaviors. But if I were complacent about it, if I didn't see it as something that warranted change, I would not be frustrated and disheartened. This blog wouldn't exist if I just accepted my eating disorder as an unavoidable status quo.

What it comes down to, is that I spend most of every day pretending like everything is fine, presenting a professional and efficient facade to the world while my inner life is in turmoil, and this is the only place that I let my proverbial hair down and talk about what I'm really going through (besides one hour of therapy a week, which I am currently without due to my move, but I do have an appointment for a referral to the clinic in my new city). How ridiculous is it that I am submitting grant proposals to try to convince people to give me tens of thousands of dollars for research, when some days I fail at even feeding myself. "What are you, 22?" Yes, and I feel every bit as ashamed as I should about my failure to function like a normal adult. But not as ashamed as I feel that I have been so self-absorbed and oblivious as to let triggering posts dominate this blog. From the get-go, I worried about that, and I cannot put into words how sorry I am if I have had a negative effect on anyone. I have met some of the most amazing, strong, insightful, compassionate, and overall amazing people through this blog community, and the thought of being that weak link, the slow kid, the one that can't get it together and brings everyone else down too is really disturbing, again I can't apologize enough.

I think I will be doing a lot of re-evaluating about this blog over the next few days.

An Exercise in Being "Fine"

The trip this weekend was...interesting. I have mixed feelings about it, which is typical.

I mentioned in my pre-trip post that I was tempted to back out of the whole thing. Partly due to stress in travel and breaking routine, and partly because I have truly been feeling very depleted and run down after all the physical and emotional strain involved in moving. I run on a very thin energy margin, and extra exertions quickly put me in the red. I have had heart problems in the past, and when I'm slipping with eating/exercise I still get chest pains and palpitations. It scares me to think that they used to be just a fact of life for me. Not "will I have chest pains today" but "how bad will they be?" My junior year of high school I actually checked myself out of 4th period, drove myself to the doctor, and demanded an EKG because I could feel my heart getting so out of control. I didn't tell my mom until 3 days later, when I had already made myself an appointment with a cardiologist in a nearby big city. I wore a Holter monitor for 24 hours, and went to the cardiology appointment by myself the day after Christmas.

Anyway, the cardiac stories are tangential to the topic of this post, sorry the main thing is that in addition to having zero energy, my heart had been acting up late last week. I was supposed to leave for the weekend trip (which involved staying at a friend of the family's vacation house in the mountain and doing a lot of hiking in the surrounding area) on Saturday morning. I felt so cruddy and low energy, but forced myself through the morning workout and everything else anyway. Then I came really close to fainting, and the palpitations were bad. As exercise-obsessed as I am, the LAST thing I felt like doing was setting off for a trip that involved hiking, etc.

My mom had taken off work so she'd have a long weekend, and the friend who owns the house had also gone out of her way to arrange to be there for the weekend, so me backing out at the last minute would have been an annoyance and inconvenience for everyone. Still, I felt so bone-achingly terrible that I called my mom to tell her I wasn't sure if I felt up to coming. She knows I have anxiety over breaks in routine, and even though I tried to explain to her that I truly felt ill, she thought I was just making up excuses to hide the fact that I am just a neurotic spazz and didn't want to come. She didn't use those words, but that was the message. Then she did the whole huffy "Well, just don't come, then, just don't come" thing in a way that made it obvious everyone would be pissed if I chose that option.

I really didn't know what to do. I actually did want to go, despite the break in routine, because I love being out in nature and I was truly looking forward to visiting with the friend and her daughter (who is roughly my age), plus having time with my mom. But I felt like a squashed bug, physically. I was feeling weak and light-headed (I hadn't eaten anything after the fainting episode that morning and my decision-making faculties were not at their sharpest), and was on an emotional edge as a result. (Tiptoe, by the way, was great support to me that morning via text, she is seriously the most amazing friend possible and definitely deserves a shout-out).

Most of all, I was just so frustrated and disappointed that either 1) I couldn't make my mom understand what was going on or 2) it was clear and she was willfully refusing to acknowledge it. So I sent her a text message saying that when I said I was feeling "ill" I meant that was having chest pains and had almost passed out, and of course then she went into ultra Worried Mommy mode, and called me immediately to tell me I should go to the ER. I used to walk around with even worse pains and palpitations every day, but she obviously had no concept of what I used to live with day-to-day (despite the whole cardiologist debacle from a few years ago, see above), which just pissed me off more. So then I went into Brat Mode and decided I would insist on going on the trip anyway, just out of spite because I knew she was worried. Did I mention my head wasn't quite screwed on all the way at this point?

So I packed up the car, loaded the dog, and set out. I talked to her about 20 minutes into the trip (I called to tell her I'd be running late; I had to turn back for something I had forgotten to put in the car), and it was like a brand new clean slate. No mention whatsoever of me feeling ill, being upset (the earlier convo had been a big sobbing blowout), or anything out of the ordinary for the morning. Case closed, grit your teeth and dig out the Happy Family mask.

I had some food on the way there, which made me feel a little less shaky, both mentally and physically. Of course, since I was traveling I drastically slashed my calories from the meal plan. I'd been told we were all bringing our own food to just do our own thing (the house is very remote), but it turned out that the friend wanted to cook, and made nothing I was comfortable with, except for the salad my mom had brought for me. She asked me once that evening how I was feeling, and I just did the tight-lipped "fine" response and she didn't pursue it. I really think that although I'm still technically underweight, because I don't really sickly anymore she has a hard time wrapping her brain around the fact that I can still be doing poorly and feeling ill.

We did the hike the next day. It wasn't really long or strenous (it was 20 degrees cooler up in the mountains than here), and despite the slashed calories I may have actually stressed my body more if I was home doing my exercise routines and walking in the heat.

It was fine. I was fine. Everything was fine. We were talky and cheery and the Fine Facade was flawless. I ate enough of my granola bar stash to get through the hike, and Mom made sure there was always salad at the table so I'd be able to put stuff in my mouth like everyone else at meals. There were a lot of times when my mom and I were alone that either one of us could have broached the subject, but we didn't. We did touch on it on the phone as we were driving back to our respective cities, and she always says that she's not trying to ignore it, but doesn't really think that "nagging" me about it will do much good, and feels like I will get mad no matter what she does.

I can understand this to some degree, because I can be a major awkward bitch sometimes if I feel like someone is intruding on my food/exercise rules. But with her, it's not so much that I want her to DO anything as to just acknowledge that I'm struggling. She doesn't even have to understand, I just want some sign that she's aware I'm having a hard time, instead of playing Happy Perfect Daisies all the time. I've told her repeatedly that I have a hard time eating at family gatherings, that I actually eat just a fraction of my meal plan. And then at dinner the only "safe" alternative she offers is a garden salad, when she knows I struggle with getting enough calories to feel healthy in situations like that. The salad was a perfect out, and my ED voice rejoiced, but I also felt like it further reinforced the degree she doesn't "get" or doesn't want to address what's going on. She is conscious enough about her own diet to know that just because I'm shoveling in lettuce and filling my stomach doesn't mean I'm getting what I need.

Now I'm rambling and whining. Sorry. Just needed some major ventage. I want to emphasize that I love my mom dearly, we are very close and she is fantastic in every department except for the ED Stuff. But when the ED Stuff is what has been running my life for close to a decade, that can be significant.

I wish more than anything that I could be the healthy, fun, free daughter that she likes to pretend that I am.

Update from the Other Side

So, I'm here in New City, and have actually been moved in for about a week. I have been meaning to update, but honestly haven't had much to say for myself. I feel like I am incredibly tedious sometimes. The classic travel and stress triggers meant my eating sucked for a few days, and the packing/loading/unpacking effort has meant that my energy levels have plummeted into the red zone. I have been back on track with eating since my family left town, but the energy suck is really getting to me.

I have mixed feelings about the move. My new apartment is tons better in terms of space and design, but the location is terrible. I'm only 2 miles from campus, but I am triangulated within the three busiest roads in the city. This is possibly the least pedestrian-friendly place I've ever lived. This will make it impossible to walk/bike to school, and has made it really challenging to find a decent walking route for G. I am more than a little pissed, honestly. I'm paying exorbitantly high rent in order to be so close to campus, but it's not doing me any good. My mom was the one that came to see the apartment before I signed the lease (she was just 4 hours away from New City, compared to my 9 hours), and I wish she had noticed that my neighborhood is rimmed by 4-6 lanes of highway. There are a few residential blocks, but it's nothing like what we were used to in Old City, where we could walk straight downtown and all the way around campus. Here, even where there are sidewalks (almost nowhere) they are designed imbecilically (I made that word up, but I think the world needed the term). There is about 100 ft of sidewalk, then it ends and another 100 ft stretch starts on the other side of the street. Then that one ends and it switches back to the other side. It's like someone logged onto SimCity after too many beers. Trying to stick to sidewalks would be like playing real-life Frogger.

Ok enough ranting about that. The root of my frustration is that this means a lifestyle change. In Old City, my morning routine was 1) exercise bike, 2) walk G., 3) home to shower, have breakfast, make self presentable, and 4) walk to campus. If 4 is replaced with driving to campus, then that puts a cramp in my exercise totals, which means major stressage and obsessage and general displeasure. Since I have no function, purpose, or social life right now, I can compensate for that easily, but I will be majorly crunched for time once the semester starts and will probably have to either 1) adopt an even more extreme regimen, almost certainly sacrificing a great deal of sleep, or 2) grit my teeth and deal with having a 7 minute drive instead of a 27 minute walk. I can't decide which option will be more painful.

I miss Old City. I know I complained about the racism, and New City is indeed more diverse, which is great, but New City is also much bigger, busier, louder, and less friendly over all. I am going from a small university town (total pop ~40,000, of which 24,000 are students) to a city that happens to have a university (100,000 people, of which 12,000 are students). Big cultural shift. I have been astounded at how aggressive the drivers are. It really seems as though no one gives a damn if they hit you. In addition, I've been surprise at how thin people are here. Maybe it is just my clouded perceptions. I saw plenty of skinny sorority girls in Old City. But sometimes I am more triggered by thin middle-aged women than people my own age, for reasons I can't explain. I don't like it here.

Ok, that's my whining update. Now can you see why I've procrastinated posting? I have nothing new to say about my status: I'm tired, stressed, and exercise is kicking my ass. Ho hum, what else is new. My days pass quickly; each box on the calendar is a succession of workouts and borderline anxiety attacks in the kitchen.

One positive: I have added to my little family, I now have a cat! I adopted her exactly a week ago. I'd been tossing the idea around for a while, and then I happened upon a cat adoption fair at PetSmart and saw one that just grabbed my heart. She is a year old, and is a little frail but very fearless. If you take everything I love about G., she is the polar opposite, but I am finding that to be endearing in its own way. ;) It has been a few years since I owned a cat and she is most definitely challenging my control-freakishness, but that's probably good for me.

I'm headed out tomorrow for a girl's weekend with my mom, cousin, and aunt at a family vacation house in the mountains. I'm pretty stressed about that too, the old ED anxiety over food and missed workouts, and came *this* close to backing out. But I know it's important to my mom, so I'll go.

I also miss H. She told me to update her on how I'm doing via e-mail, and I'm glad she didn't just toss me out cold turkey. At the same time, I don't want to be needy and clingy (a la What About Bob?)Money is incredibly tight for both me and my parents right now, so I am probably going to be taking a break from therapy. I'll give myself a month or so to experiment flying solo, and then re-evaluate.

I'm sure there is something I'm leaving out, but I'm tired and have to get up early to drive in the morning, and this post is plenty long enough already. I hope everyone is doing well, I'm working hard to catch up on blog entries, but will get even farther behind when I'm out of reach of civilization this weekend. Take care and treat yourselves kindly!