Thursday, July 29, 2010

A therapist? For me? thankyouthankyouthankyou!

 For the past couple days I've been doing the footwork to move myself toward help for my anxiety and adhd issues. Still, it blows my mind that I can't manage it anymore. I mean, I kind of liked the coping skills I worked hard to develop, but it doesn't matter. All isn't lost.


I consider the ability to ask for help as a coping skill, too, a survival skill. I've made calls, visited the websites of local mental health centers and talked with my friends that work in the field. By casting that net, I was surprised at what came back.

 A few moments ago, I checked my messages. One of the more respected private therapists in my hood is willing to help me and he's able to offer a sliding scale fee. YES! He'll direct me to a proper head shrinking doc and other resources, as well. I'm so relieved; no crisis center!

The therapist and I are acquainted with one another, enough to exchange small talk, but he doesn't know me. He doesn't know about the problems I have. I'm really looking forward to this. I feel hopeful. The connection wouldn't have been made without the help of a mutual friend. To him, I'm so grateful.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

So, what constitutes a crisis anyway?

America - home of the red, white and BLUESThat's what I asked the mental health worker I spoke to Tuesday afternoon when she informed me that I wouldn't be able to schedule an appointment until September (to be seen in October!) and asked if I wanted to make use of their crisis services. Of course, I gave her no opportunity to answer, as I was busy telling her my short list of reasons why I'm not in crisis.
  1. I'm not suicidal.
  2. No self harm here.
  3. No risk of overdose or alcohol poisoning.
  4. I'm not really acting out ED behavior.
  5. While I have a history of EDs, I don't really fit the diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder anymore.

Obviously, I don't want to risk being hospitalized. Though I know I could always sign myself out...unless I got 302ed by the state. I need to cast those fears aside. I don't have to talk about ED crap.

Thinking about this is freaking me out. I'll call the crisis line tomorrow. I just want to ask some questions about ocd, adhd and anxiety. Seriously, I need to get real and address the issues so I can get on with my life.


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Monday, July 26, 2010

obviously babbling

ESRB "Teen" rating symbol, displayed...

I love how I feel after days of insomnia. Add to that inadequate calories, compulsive exercise, plenty of caffeine, heavy cleaning, solitude, music, video games, books and internet. Stir until numb. Christ. I'm a 38 year old teenager.


 So it concerns me a little to see myself as I am. I don't mean my physical appearance. Lots of fat, even average chickies would love to be as small as I am. Believe me, I am not complaining about that. I'm talking about my head space.


But fuck it. I'm numbing out my crazy. I'm just being myself; doing the things I like to do without interruption. It's this very focus on myself that will help me solve my dilemma.  I gotta get down and dirty; gotta do what I can to alter my consciousness without using drugs.

Cleaning Lady
I gotta organize my clothes and gather donations for goodwill. I gotta help people understand the bigger picture. I gotta paint the foundation of my house. I gotta clean out the basement. I gotta wash the ceiling. I gotta...I gotta...I gotta.
I gotta do something!



 Makes me want to act out the riot within, give voice to the silent screaming I do.


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Saturday, July 24, 2010

wake up call

obsessive compulsionsImage by lavagirl6699 via Flickr
Moments ago, I realized that I had outright forgotten where I put a few burning incense sticks. Let me back up a bit to set the scene.

It's wicked hot today and humid. I feel like I'm not all together with it. Because of the heat, I'm somewhat lethargic. Also, it's my first of ten days to myself. Anyway, for months I've been craving cinnamon pancakes with cooked apples and maple syrup. So I decided to have a pancake or twelve and puke. I made a conscious choice.

Those of you with an eating disorder have probably purged at least once, so you know first hand how much it can waste you. And wasted I was...am? I felt dizzy and spent, but slightly euphoric. I know y'all know the high. Don't play like you don't.

After getting that out of the way, I carried on with my day and began to heavy duty clean the kitchen. Cleaning out my house seems so important to me right now. I thought some incense would be nice. I lit a three sticks, one for each floor. I remember lighting them. I then put some tunes on the stereo and got caught up in doing whatever; singing, cleaning, looking through my daughters scrap books, crying about the life we've lost, pulling myself back together, cleaning, etc. You get it.

I did dishes, dusted, cleaned everything in the kitchen stopping short of scrubbing the ceiling and walls. I really, really want to do the ceiling. I can't explain it. When I took a moment to get water, I smelled the incense and I panicked. I looked all over the house and could not find it. I have no idea where I put it to burn, no recollection.

My thoughts are so obsessive, so demanding of my attention that I get consumed by them. I hate it. I'm totally obsessive compulsive, totally anxious most of the time and I don't know what to do about it anymore. I want some drugs, man, alprazolam or lorazepam preferably.

I do this every time anxiety gets bad, think about calling a doctor, a head shrinker. But I don't want to get labeled as a drug seeker, even though I probably already am. I have so many days like this with crippling anxiety. The best I can do is to putz around the house and hope that it passes. Fuck. I'm too old for this.

The good thing is that with pancakes out of the way, I can do my fast without a particular food obsession. The bad thing is that I'm nutz. I wish I weren't; really, I want to have my life back - any life back. The funny thing is that I sound like this to myself when I think these oh-I-wanna-get-better thoughts:  Wah wah woh wah woh wha wah wah wah wah, like Charlie Brown's teacher.  (o.O)
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Friday, July 23, 2010

the BIG ONE

I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for the coming ten days. Tomorrow, my children will be leaving for their big vacation with their dad and his entire family. While they'll be in cousin heaven, I'll get to regroup.

fasting Buddha
Part of my plan is to "detox" my little bod, so there will be some heavy fasting going on in my world. The goal of the fast is to achieve clarity, to embrace quiet and to move toward certainty...because I have got to get my shit together. I'm out of time; out of money.

The second part of my plan is to beg and busk for dollars. That's right. I've been looking and looking for work that is suitable for me and there is nothing out there. I'm not about to sit and be passive, waiting for something to open up. I'll lose everything if I wait. So, I'll beg at rush hour and I'll busk at night in the busiest part of my hood, a popular night spot in the city. I'm not above it. I have children and I have a mortgage. I'll do what I have to do to make it.

The other thing that needs to be done while they're away is the cleaning out of my house. I've got to search for the debris from my emotional past, toss it out and move on with my life. Time and chaos continue with or without me. Why do I have to keep acting like a fucking hurt victim, hiding myself away from everyone? I'm sick of it.

There's more to the role of fasting than just to get clear headed. Fasting, elevating my "control" levels or what I call, turning my crazy up to eleven, will quell the surges of anxiety I'm sure to experience in the coming days. I'm a little nervous, though I'm not sure exactly why. I guess I'm afraid that fear will reign supreme and that I'll never make it out of the house. It sounds so ridiculous, but it could happen. So I think about fasting instead.

I'll be online more often for support and to check in with people. Wish me luck. There's a good chance this is going to be a rough ride.

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Thursday, July 15, 2010

controlling our food

This documentary is so important, I'm embedding here and linking to it on the sidebar. It's about Monsanto, makers of products such as agent orange, round up ready corn and round up ready soybeans. If you aren't aware of what's going on with food these days, you really need to see this.




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Wednesday, July 14, 2010

a note about fasting

diagram of a human digestive systemImage via Wikipedia
Fasting can be pretty terrific. I mean, who doesn't love the feeling you get on a fast? One of the first things many people notice is the seemingly instant weight loss. And they're like, wow, about it. It shouldn't be a surprise though, if you've got some basic body knowledge.

What you need to know:

The body uses significant amounts of water in the digestive process.  You will lose pounds in fluids and waste quickly because you've eliminated the need to digest foods while fasting. For a time, this can be a real boost to someone trying to lose weight.

The bad news:

Most of that weight will return once you begin digesting foods again. It's not really bad news. It's just factual.

I don't want to imply that fasting has no place or purpose. It just isn't a fix all. You're only depriving yourself of a day's (or whatever the length of the fast) worth of calories. It still takes a 3600 calorie deficiency to lose a pound.
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Sunday, July 11, 2010

measuring home again

A tape measure.Image via Wikipedia
I don't really want to be home. This house represents every failure in my life. Nothing has gone well since I bought this place in 2003. I fucking hate it; however, this is where my tape measure is.

I mention this because it's one of the first things I wanted to get out when I got home. I hadn't measured anything for five days and was getting rather anxious about it. When I got down to it, I was relieved to see that nothing had changed. I was so sure I'd gotten bigger during the suburban retreat. But no; waist 23", hips at the widest 30 1/2", thighs at the biggest 17 1/2", arms 9". Okay.

Walking into this house, I feel instant dread. So much about this place is unfinished, the debris of my messy emotions clutters up the space. Here and there are little reminders of the many ways I've failed while living here. I tuck away the oddest things.

In all rooms, I suppose the most emotionally revealing spaces are my bookshelves; books, cards, letters, pressed flowers, receipts, little mementos. While mostly hidden, I know what's there, the things I keep in between the pages.

Letting go of emotion is so hard for me sometimes. I guess the mementos of times past remind me that I've yet to fully close the issue within myself, but the emotional clutter has built up so much that I can't find my way out of my own mess. Submersing myself under a veil of eating disorder thoughts and behaviors certainly doesn't help matters.

So, I'm setting a goal here and now, to clean out (entirely) one room at a time in my house. Perhaps starting with the children's rooms where I've hidden the least of my emotional clutter. Whatever. I have to do it. I have to move on with my life.
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Friday, July 9, 2010

on pharmies and in the burbs

So, I'm in the suburbs at grandma's not-so-secret hideaway. I came out here Monday. Want to know the most honest reason why I came out? Cause there are a number of reasons I could list and they'd sound valid enough.

The truth is that I needed pharmaceuticals. Alright? In a way, it can be a sick relationship between us. My grandma has always given me the pharmies I want. When I was strung out and needed some benzos just to freaking rest, it was to grammy's hideaway I went. When the ugliness of living with addicts was too much...grammy's hideaway. Anytime the pain of life gets to be too much...grammy's hideaway.

To me, the relationship is complicated. Granted, she's the only person in the world who's had my back no matter what. I have to wonder, though, if the fact that her husband, my granddad, molested me as a kid has anything to do with that. He's dead now, but even he would insist that they help me no matter what back in the day.

Developmentally, I'm frozen. The fact that I can come out here with my children, play by day and get zonked on benzos and barbituates at night doesn't help. I prolong my stagnation. What's there to move forward to anyway?

Out here, I get no mail, no phone calls (I let my cell battery go uncharged), no one knocking on my door; I have no responsibilities. At least not at the level I'm use to handling. I'm so fucking sick of my responsibilities. Aside from the work I've been doing around my grandma's property and in her house, I haven't been doing shit.

Well, I have been working out (I brought my bike and the track stand trainer with me) and watching television; sports mostly, but I'm fascinated by the myriad reality shows. Like, wow; Cut Off, Next Artist, Dog, Real Housewives, Bethanny, First 48, Dance Your Ass Off, etc. See, I don't watch TV at home. I don't have cable. I see TV viewing as being one of the most worthless pursuits of all time. Still, I've been checking it out plenty.

Nothing exists here. I don't exist here. In the burbs everything is surreal to begin with, so it seems nothing like real life. It's one big fantasy/nightmare and everyone is faking who they are. Today, I'd planned on going home. The children are with their dad and I thought I wanted some time alone. Apparently, I just want time to come to a halt and this is the realm of no time.

This is the environment in which everything stopped for me. Maybe I come back for lengthy stays every now and then hoping to reclaim what was stolen from me. Maybe I come to forget who I've become.


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Tuesday, July 6, 2010

purge this dogamnit

At the moment I'm utterly filled with disgust. I'd much rather return to drug addiction than fucking puke again. It started well enough, dinner that is. I had a salad with a nice variety of veggies and some vegetarian peperoni. I'm totally comfortable with this for a meal usually.

While I could blame my weak state of mind on Uruguay being out of the World Cup...Like this is a joking matter. I'm so light headed it feels like it should be. Laugh it off. Move on with my night. But no.

I was adding the calories from the salad to my day's intake log, realized how close to 1000 calories I was and panicked. One thousand calories should be totally acceptable though. Especially because I spent over 100 minutes on the trackstand trainer. Yeah, can you say mentally unstable? Cause that's me, man.

What killed me was a bagel I had earlier, with peanut butter. I make a point not to eat bagels as a rule because they're a waste of calories for the sparse nutrients you get. Though I got most of it out of me, I know I didn't get it all. Even after I spent an hour throwing up.

I realize I don't binge or barf enough to meet the criteria for bulimia, but to me it kind of doesn't matter. The behavior brings about such unbelievable self loathing. It fucking feels like bulimia. (I don't mean to belittle anyone suffering with bulimia. I've been there, too.)

Is this what I do to set myself up or what? Maybe I just don't want to weigh 90. I did return to 92 the last time I weighed myself, after fasting last week. I guess I'll fast again. I don't really care about my health to be honest. Fuck it. I've got to push for under 85% of healthy weight. Enough of this sitting at 87-88%.
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self harm - the risk I took today

Image via Wikipedia
Hungarian razor blades - 1950's year - sociali...My forearms, that's where I've done damage, where my scars are. My favorite tool is an old school razor blade. While there is a sting, the cut is clean and neat.

This kind of blade is really dangerous for me to use; yet, I like that about it. I like that I have to be precise, exact. It gives me a sense of being in control. Odd? Maybe.

(I can't believe I'm writing like this.)

April 2008 is when I last hurt myself. Sadly, the cuts were so bad that I had to wear long sleeves that entire Summer. I didn't swim once. Shame and regret topped my list of feelings on a daily basis. As much as I tried to hide the injuries from my children, they saw them. My explanation was weak at best, but they were little and they bought it for the most part.

(as I write this my discomfort grows, my stomach hollows, my chest caves in, my heart races, my eyes get teary, my throat tightens)

Today, my son was checking out my arms, counting my scars. He asked if those were the scars I'd gotten when I was fixing a floorboard a couple years ago. My daughter was in the room as well and I had the instinct to tell them the truth. So I did.

I told them that I'd cut myself, that it was a side effect of a strong pain medicine I was taking at the time. I apologized for lying to them but explained that they were too young to understand and that at the time I was freaked out by my behavior. My son kissed my forearm, commented that it must have really hurt and said he didn't mind that I lied. My daughter said that it was ok and not to worry about the lie.

Here's what I didn't tell them. The medicine was oxymorphone extended release. Strange as it may sound, I can imagine that it'd be a fine drug to use on occasion just to relax. As part of a therapeutic regimen, it was a disaster. The feeling of being high as hell, like dope high, didn't stop. After two weeks, I'd reached the end of my mental stamina.

(a panic attack is now under way, heart flip flopping, breathing is laborious, shit!)

With my mental strength diminished, I'd started to disassociate. While I'm quite familiar with disassociation, it isn't something I really do anymore. The episodes are few and far between. And yes, I was sexually abused as a kid, raped as a teen and thus and such. I've worked on it since the memories hit me following a suicide attempt in 1992.

For me, there are a few ways to get back in the moment when I disassociate but because I was wasted on the oxymorphone, I could come up with only one. Self harm. Sad. True. I've not done it again since then. It's a behavior that hasn't been useful to me for a long time, but it's an old stand by. It's there in case of emergency and I was in an emergency situation.

I don't condone self harm and wouldn't encourage it but I understand it. I'm not going to feel bad for doing it. It started during a very out of control time in my life. I was a kid acting out in every which way and had no clue why. The sexual abuse was never my fault; rape, not my fault; incest, not my fault. SI was a textbook response as was anorexia, bulimia, anxiety and drug addiction.

Today, I came clean just a little bit more. Perhaps one day I'll set it all free and fully live.


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Saturday, July 3, 2010

My Latest Attempt at a Reality Check

Some people say that size is objective. I say, there's no freaking way. I don't remember a time when I had a realistic take on size. I don't even know what that would mean. My only gauge for size comes from a hollow pit of distortion.

Frustrated by my body's unwillingness to cooperate with my mental demands to get smaller and stay healthy, I decided to take another shot at acceptance. Go ahead. Laugh. My brilliant idea was to take pictures with the computer camera so I could see what I look like, to see if I can be acceptable.

 How messed up is that? How seemingly vain and narcissistic of me to do such a thing. What non-ED people fail to realize is that it's nothing like that. It's not about thinking you look hot and wanting to admire yourself. It's more like a desperate need to feel connected to your physical existence.

When I look at these, it doesn't translate well in my head. It doesn't even look like me; it doesn't look the same way I feel. And I find it curious that I didn't photograph my head. I guess I believe myself to be a hideous person, not that I'm ugly...except on the inside.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Marketing of Madness

This documentary is a must see for everyone, especially people taking psychotropic drugs or who know someone who is taking them. I'm pretty sure that's all of us. Surely we all know someone taking medication for "psychiatric" reasons. The question is, do they really need it or has society simply bought into the idea of "madness."

Here is the first in a series of 18 videos. I've put them all on a playlist on my youtube channel, channel zero.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

well it's a good day...

...to fast again. And I'm glad that I am. I weighed 93 yesterday. As much as I hate to get funny about numbers on a scale, that's a pound more than I've been. Naturally, I'll see what it says tomorrow morning when the fast is done.

Sometimes, it's surprisingly easy to fast. When it is, I don't hesitate to drag it out as long as I can. It's been 32 hours, so my muscles feel weakish. I doubt I'll be working out today, but I'm still sipping my a.m. cup o' joy. Caffeine may give me the boost I need.

I'll have broth later because my stomach will start to get funny cramps. But hey, what a great distraction from my unemployment and dire financial situation. I've even talked to friends whom are business owners about work. It truly is a bad economy. I'm sure something will come up though. I just have to wait this out and keep asking around.

My thoughts tend to be a bit scattered and spacey when I fast, so I'm making this a short one. Love to all! Stay strong guys. Whatever your goal, you can do it.