A Case of the Randoms

Time for some update-age, I think. It's reading week here, meaning we have four days of nothing but studying for finals. While it's nice to have big chunks of time to get all my work done, lack of schedule always throws me off. Generally, I structure my eating around my class schedule and always eat at the same times without much internal debate. When I have no schedule, though, too much freedom opens the door for thoughts of should I eat now or later? Or never? But no worries, zero meals/snacks have been foregone due to my anxiety over excessive free time.

I haven't done any formal exercise in over a month. This is a Very Big Deal. Up until I hurt my foot, I was religious about working out, and a single day off led to major feelings of guilt and ickiness. And now? Well, I'm not cured of the urge to work out. I still test my foot every morning to see if this weird, nagging Achilles injury has gone away yet. I'm still constantly antsy and on edge. I still fantasize about running miles upon miles. But several weeks after cutting the exercise cold turkey, something in my head has definitely shifted. It has occurred to me that I can function without doing my obligatory workouts. I no longer open my eyes each morning and immediately commence panicking about not being able to torch some calories.

Most importantly, I don't freak out to the same degree about my body exploding with weight gain. I've actually slightly increased my calories over the past few weeks, and I've gained absolutely nothing. Zero pounds. My weight has stayed almost identical, and maybe even gone down a teeny bit. I'm also convinced my appetite has increased since cutting the exercise, which still makes no sense to me but I'm trying to go with it.

Oh yeah, I broke up with S. I did a lot of soul-searching beforehand, doubted myself, went back and forth on it a million times, and spent about a week in serious internal conflict. Basically, it came down to the fact that I was just not interested anymore. He's an incredibly nice and caring guy, but there wasn't any spark for me. Plus, S was a million times more serious about the relationship than me and all the attention was making me extremely uncomfortable - not because I felt unworthy of the attention or anything like that, but just because I had no desire to reciprocate, which didn't feel fair to him. I was constantly filled with guilt about not putting enough effort into the relationship, whereas it seemed like he went above and beyond every single day. The whole thing was becoming incredibly one-sided. Does that make sense? I felt like I was constantly letting him down by not being committed to the same degree.

By the end, most of my hesitation about breaking it off came from not wanting to hurt his feelings. Once I made the decision though, I had no regrets. So I went to his house the other night and we had a long unhappy conversation in which I tried to articulate that I wanted to end things and he tried to convince me otherwise. I prevailed - not that it felt like much of a victory.

So that sucked. But in all honesty, I'm absolutely okay with my decision and I'm relieved to have the whole thing done. I was really worried about my total lack of interest - that something was wrong with my brain that left me with the emotional capacity of a zombie, but I gave the relationship a shot and it just didn't feel right.

I'm still working on my plans for winter break treatment, but I think it will involve me coming back to College City early and doing more intensive outpatient treatment with R and J. I'm definitely resisting formal IOP or IP, so I think this is a compromise I can live with. R's main goal is to have me restore some weight and get on a more solid footing medically and psychologically before school kicks off again in the spring.

That's all I got for now! Back to studying. Happy Monday, everyone!