Unplanned Hiatus

Oops, I didn't mean to go for a week without blogging. The break was only PARTLY my fault, since my laptop has been in the Computer Hospital since Friday.

Even before the laptop fiasco though, I was being lazy about updating. I guess I'm a little worried about always rehashing the same things - therapy, food, restaurant stress, body image blahs, etc. All of the above are definitely still very relevant to my life, but I shouldn't assume that everyone always wants to hear me bitch and moan about them. Any ideas for more interesting posts?

Anyway, a quick recap of the last week: therapy was...interesting. And stressful. My dietician J showed me a graph of my weight since I started seeing her and R. Basically, it was a straight line. Meaning, obviously, my weight has not changed in the past eight or so weeks. While this wasn't surprising (I weigh myself at home), I did have mixed feelings about seeing it mapped out in black and white. The eating disordered part of me always wants to lose weight. Always. The ED part only cares about the graph - why isn't the line going down?

At the same time, though, there is so much more going on than what showed up on J's graph. I am way more happy, social, and sane than I was eight weeks ago. While I admittedly have not thrown myself wholeheartedly into weight gain, I have no plans to starve and lose any. I don't feel fat; I just don't feel thin. So, staying at the same weight doesn't necessarily feel wrong, even though I KNOW that I am underweight and should, from a medical standpoint, gain at least X pounds to get back to where I last got my period.

J and R, however, are quite concerned that I haven't put on any weight since starting treatment with them. Both tossed around the idea of IP a couple of times - more as a scare tactic than as an actual threat, I think - but they are still going to work with me as long as I am "willing." It bothers me that they see me as UNwilling, since I feel like I'm trying so hard every day just to break even and it never seems like enough.

I told R that I knew he was probably frustrated with me for making zero progress over the past couple months. It's not his fault - I've been pretty impenetrable on the food/exercise issues. I realize it sucks, as a doctor, to prescribe medicine for a patient who won't take it but still shows up every week with the same complaints. Well, no shit you're still sick!

R was nicer than that. He said: "I'm not frustrated, Kaylee. I know you're trying. But if I let things go on this way much longer, then I'm just enabling your anorexia."

Happier news: I feel myself loosening way up in some food-related areas. I've been to three restaurants this week, went out for drinks at a bar after a full day's worth of food (yes, I'm legal!) on Thursday night, and ate a few gourmet chocolates with NO warning (a present from the boy, awwwww). No, I wasn't happy about the last-minute decision to go out for dinner last night; but yes, I ended up having an awesome Girls Night Out. Progress? I think so!

The semester is flying by. Why is it that a semester at school goes by in a heartbeat, while my semester at home seemed to last for an eternity?

I'll be better about blogging this week, I promise!

More or Less

Lately I've been thinking a lot about where I was a year ago. Getting competitive with myself, I guess. Compared to last year, I now weigh more. I eat more. I know more about myself - what my limits are.

I also cry more. I worry more.

Last year, I had more fun. I liked myself more. I laughed more. I took more classes. I was involved in more clubs and activities. I was more productive. I put myself right in the thick of things until my low heart rate put me in the hospital. Until then, anorexia hadn't taken me out of commission whatsoever - and I feel like recovery has.

I'm better off now -  I know that. But there's more anxiety, more stress, and more self-consciousness. Everything makes me nervous. Part of me wants to go back.

My confidence is just shot. I feel like I can't do the same things I used to be able to do. I used to zip through my reading each night, grind out papers, sail through exams, raise my hand in every class, and still go out every weekend and have a fantastic time.

But now? Now I can't concentrate on a textbook for more than five minutes at a time before I start picking my nails and jiggling my leg and counting calories in my head. Essays take me forever to finish; the ideas just aren't there. In class, my mind starts spinning and it feels like everyone else is three steps ahead of me. I got a B on an exam that I was positive I aced. (Yes, I know I won't get much sympathy for that. But it still bothers me.) I am so fucking uncomfortable in my body that sometimes being around my friends - even the best ones - makes my skin crawl.

My mom has gotten more than a couple distressed calls from me. I freak out randomly about things that do not deserve my attention. I hate hate HATE how I look. As if it even matters.

After almost nine months of treatment, I feel like there's less of me in me, even though there's supposed to be less of the anorexia. What gives?

I am, however, finding that I have more intense friendships. I rarely go out with a big group anymore, but I go out with one person, or two, and feel more alive afterwards. Last weekend, one of my best - and first, actually - friends here took me to dinner. We couldn't get a table for an hour, so we walked around the neighborhood, just talking. Then we spent two hours in the restaurant, talking. Then he took me home and we talked some more.

So, maybe less fun, but more memorable? Less adolescent, more adult? Less exciting, more important? Sometimes it's just so hard to accept that I can't be who I was before. I was manically productive and my days were jam-packed with a million things I couldn't wait to do - but I was sick. So I can't be that anymore, and I'm not sure where to go from here.

The Ritual

Exercise hasn't always been tainted by anorexia-fueled motivations for me. I was always an active kid; I played a ton of sports, primarily soccer and lacrosse. In high school, I got hooked on cross country and track, and now long-distance running is still my exercise of choice. I get really antsy after sitting still for too long on any given day, regardless of what my eating habits were like on said day. I genuinely believe that I need a daily (or almost daily) sweat-sesh to maintain a happy, productive, sane state of mind.

THAT BEING SAID... I'm having a bit of a problem. Lately, my workouts aren't excessive, per se, but they aren't exactly healthy either. I don't spend insane amounts of time at the gym, but I go every. single. day. At the exact same time, too. The gym employees could set their clocks by me. I rearrange my schedule to accomodate my exercise time. I freak out if something gets changed, and I immediately go into damage-control mode to make up for the moved/shortened/altered workout.

I have gone through periods of working out much, much, much more than I do now. Over the summer, it was bordering on the extreme (although I was eating much more then, too). But that's not really the problem anymore. Recently, it's just been all about the ritual. Wake up. Drink coffee. Work out. Shower. Start day.

I feel like I can't miss a workout or everything would collapse. Actually, I don't think much about what would happen, because I wouldn't even consider skipping a workout. It isn't a decision anymore. It just happens. It's just what I do.

I'm not sure what my rationale is, either, because I don't pay attention to the calories I burn or adjust my intake based on expenditure. (Still wary of the BMR issue.) It just doesn't connect in my head. There's a vague sense of Maybe I should eat a little less since my run was a little shorter today, but I don't do any calculations or anything. My thinking is more like: I will feel so gross and lazy and awful if I don't work out today, so why skip it? What is so special about today that should merit a day off?

I feel like I wouldn't be able to function after skipping the gym because I'd be so preoccupied by guilt and disgust with myself. Even knowing that one day off wouldn't affect my weight, and that it would in fact probably be beneficial to give my muscles a break, I just can't justify it. So I guess I'm more scared of feeling fat than actually getting fat?

Yet again, my brain's lack of logic astounds me.

Failing at Therapy

R wants me to gain weight so that we can move forward and talk about things other than food.

I want R to fix my brain first so that I feel okay with gaining weight.

Obviously, he's right and I'm sick. But the bottom line is: I don't feel capable of adding calories and gaining to the weight he wants. I just don't. At this point, my mind won't let me. I'd hate myself too much.

To clarify: my weight is NOT in a danger zone. It is lower than optimal, but not deathly (I swear!). So yes, I should gain the weight that R wants - or at least regain the weight I've lost since May - but it isn't a matter of life of death at the moment.

So it's hard for me to agree with R when he goes all alarmist on me about it. It's not that I'm not taking it seriously, it just doesn't seem like something that needs to be fixed right this second or else you won't make it through the semester. 

Right now, I just feel stuck. I'm not trying to intentionally antagonize R by being a stubborn little snot, but my brain is caught in a rut and the idea of changing up my meal plan with the goal of actually gaining weight is absolutely unfathomable. It's not that I don't think gaining weight is necessary - I do think it's necessary, to a certain extent. I want my period back. I don't want to be ruled by food rituals. I want to be able to eat in restaurants without freaking out before, during, and after. I want all of these things, but I just cannot see myself actually giving up what I have now. Which is, essentially, a pathological obsession with meaningless numbers.  Yay.

There was a moment in my appointment this morning when I actually thought R was going to fire me. He didn't, but did start pushing "more intense treatment." The options he laid out: 1) stick with what I'm doing by seeing R and J each once a week but actually follow the meal plan, 2) see R and J each twice a week, and have my mom come out for "support," 3) start going to group therapy in addition to seeing R and J, 4) start attending IOP in the center where R and J work, or 5) go home.

Obviously, I picked the first option. I basically told him IOP was NOT an option. Not interested. Not necessary, in my opinion, and not exactly feasible with my schedule. I know that health is the priority over school, but still.

So. I guess that's where things stand. I'm really going to try following the meal plan.  But if it were that easy, I would have done it already.

When the Going Gets Rough

I hate using this blog as a whine fest but things have been a teeeeeeeeensy bit rough lately. I guess I started restricting during the chaotic travel/move-in/general transition period with the mindset that it was "just temporary" and "just to be safe" from all the unpredictability and that I would "go back to normal" once I settled into a routine.

Well, basically I kinda sorta maybe just settled into the routine of restricting. Not horribly, but some. I'm not starving and I'm not dying. Just teetering a little. It's hard to keep perspective about it because the last time I was in this environment, I was so much worse. If the Kaylee of 2010 could see what the Kaylee of 2011 eats, she'd have a heart attack. Not from malnourishment - from shock. (Maybe a little bit from malnourishment.)

I guess I just thought that being back in college would make everything easier and it's not.  I think I expected that the excitement of having a life again would carry me and I'd sail through recovery. Oh hey Friend, you wanna go out to eat? No problem! I can do that now! Food rocks!  Now I can almost see how staying on track at home was way simpler because I was so isolated. I mean, it sucked, but I could mope and moan and groan my way through weight gain without having to participate in real life too. Real life is complicated.

When I saw R for my second appointment yesterday, he said again that he definitely wants me to gain at least another XX pounds. Last time he told me this, I said okay. This time - well, I didn't outright refuse, but I left R's office with absolutely zero intention whatsoever of following through.

I had a hard time articulating my thinking to R when we were talking. My weight was down a little from where it was last Wednesday, but the difference was small enough that I assumed he would attribute it to normal fluctuations. Instead, he made a really big deal about it and said: "I think we can safely assume that you're losing weight." Basically, I told him the truth: that I'm not trying to lose weight, but I'm not doing much to keep it on either, much less gain any. He asked me to keep food records this week, but I'm scared to. I don't want him to tell me to eat more because I feel like I'm eating just fine, dammit. Or maybe it's not totally fine, but I don't care because I don't want to eat more and I don't want to gain weight.

The biggest problem is that none of this feels like a problem. I'm not dead on my feet from exhaustion. I'm not at a dangerous weight. I'm not even skinny. I'm fine. I don't know how to express to anyone that the issue is not that I don't know how to gain weight. I do. Gaining weight is very simple. The issue is that my mind is not okay with gaining weight. R can tell me to pack my extra Clif bar, but if I've already decided that I'm not okay with eating it, well, then, I'm not going to eat it.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm being purposely stubborn and difficult. Nothing bugs me more than feeling like an obstinate brat around the people who are trying to help me, but this really is how my mind works. Once I've decided something (e.g. I can only eat X calories today) then that is what I do. Period. If you offer me a bite of your cookie, I will say no. If the store is out of bananas, I will go to another store. I am not flexible and I do not adapt.

My motivation is still there, but it's shifting. I'm definitely motivated to stay in school,  which is contingent on me being healthy. So I'm motivated to being healthy, but I'm also motivated to not hate myself, and I don't always have healthy ways to accomplish that. And I can't help it that when I go into the student center bathroom and catch sight of myself in the full length mirror (that was NOT there last year!), I get so disgusted with myself that all I want to do is throw out my lunch and run for hours.

The Ghost of ED Future

There is a woman who works out at my gym every morning.  She is probably in her thirties.  She arrives before I do and she stays until after I leave.  She moves from the treadmill to the elliptical to the Stairmaster.  She watches herself in the mirrors when she walks from one machine to the next.

She is very thin.

I am the first to admit that you can't tell if someone has an eating disorder by looking at her.  You just can't.  You don't know anything about her lifestyle or her genetics.  You don't know if she just has a freakish metabolism.  Maybe her whole family is rail-thin too.

But this woman is so very thin.  Not natural, athletic, slender-thin.  Sick-thin.

Really, I am trying not to jump to conclusions because I know that I am probably biased and have a somewhat skewed view of body weight, but this woman looks unwell.  She doesn't look like someone who should be working out for an hour (at least) a day.  Remember how I said she might be in her thirties?  Well, I am basing that on the fact that she seems to socialize with a few other women who are in their thirties.  Because this woman - at least from the neck up - could easily pass for sixty-five.  Her face is wrinkled and worn.  She has huge dark circles under her eyes.  Her hair is gray and wispy.

This woman terrifies me.  Not so much that I have stopped going to the gym altogether, but enough that I have tried going a little earlier some days, a little later other days, just to avoid seeing her.  She is still always there.

Obviously, it's horrible when young girls have eating disorders - eleven, twelve, thirteen-year-old girls who have already learned to hate themselves so much they are intent on self-destructing.  But it almost makes me feel worse to see a grown woman with an eating disorder (assuming that this woman does).  It makes me hate everything about anorexia that much more.  This illness fucks up your life and then it sticks around for the aftermath.  I'm still new enough to recovery to find the concept of "fully recovered" hard to imagine, and seeing this woman does not make it any easier.  Her toothpick legs, every tendon visible and screaming for a layer of fat, drive home the point that anorexia doesn't discriminate and you don't grow out of it.  It isn't a phase, or bad judgement, or teenage rebellion gone wrong.  It doesn't just go away.

I'm twenty.  Where will I be in ten years?  There have been very few times that anorexia has truly scared me (denial denial denial), but seeing this woman is one of them.  I desperately want to be rid of this sickness - not thirty and still plugging away on the bike, still hating myself, still devoting my life to hurting myself.

That Feeling

To anyone who says fat isn't a feeling, I say: you've obviously never felt fat before.

I KNOW what they mean - fat isn't an emotion. Fat isn't a mindset.  Fat isn't something that should inform your decisions and your lifestyle the way that joy and empathy and curiosity should.

But fat IS a feeling.  A true, physical sensation.  You feel it with every ounce of your body, even if you don't have any actual fat on you.  You feel it when you move, when you sit, when you get dressed, when you shower, when you - God knows - step on the scale.

A couple of months ago when I was in the midst of gaining weight, I remember wailing to my mom, "But I feel faaaaat!"

Now, my mom is one of the most balanced eaters I'ver ever seen.  She tries to be healthy, but indulges occasionally and eats foods she loves with no guilt.  She exercises a few times a week because she loves running and being outside blah blah blah.  She has a normal, healthy body that she treats appropriately and appreciates for being functional.  No, I don't know where I came from.

So naturally, the concept of starving yourself is baffling to her.  In response to my meltdown, she was incredulous: "What?  You think you're fat?"

No, Mom, I didn't say I think I'm fat; I don't think I'm fat.  In fact, I know I'm not fat.  I know that technically, I'm underweight.  I know that people who wear size X jeans cannot ever be considered fat.  I can calculate my BMI in my sleep, and I know that no matter how I play around with the numbers (what if I were half an inch shorter....two inches taller...what if I gained/lost X or Y or Z pounds...what if I shaved my head/clipped my toenails/plucked my eyebrows before weighing myself again...) I do not fall anywhere near the "overweight" category.  So again, Mom, no.  I don't think I'm fat.

But I do feel fat. I feel it when I sit down to eat, and I feel it after I've finished eating.  Not because I believe that one meal will actually make me gain weight instantly, but because my body feels too big and squishy and uncomfortable.  I feel it when I consider taking a day off from working out, knowing that rest is fine and healthy and good, but also knowing that a long sweaty run will make me feel, at least for a little while, better.  Less fat.

Sometimes I wonder if my feeling fat is actually just me feeling normal, and I have forgotten what normal feels like.  I know that the intense physical dissatisfaction with my body probably has to do with emotions - like frustration, insecurity, depression, loneliness, etc.  But I also know that feeling fat is real, and I am insanely jealous of anyone who disagrees.

Fasting to Fight Famine

I definitely want to update about the meeting with M and my mom yesterday but I haven't really had a chance to process everything and I know I won't be able to articulate it well right now.  But it went okay and I do feel a little better about things.

Anyway, there was kind of a funny moment when I got to M's office.  I was coming straight from work, but I got held up and was about 10 minutes late.  I came bursting through the door huffing and puffing and stressing because oh how I hate being late.  My mom and M were already there and I was a mess trying to un-fluster myself and be composed and explain why I wasn't on time and I said, "Sorry! I had to go to a meeting about the fast-"

And both my mom and M blurted out in perfect unison: "You can't fast!" and then just turned and looked at each other in this mixture of shock/horror/slight bewilderment.  They have only actually met each other a few times but at that moment, they were on exactly the same page.

To be clear, I did NOT fast yesterday, but most of the people at work did.  There was a 24-hour office-wide fast to raise money and awareness for the famine in Africa (I'm not 100% sure how it worked - I think you were supposed to get family or neighbors or whoever to sponsor you for fasting for the day or something like that.)

So, obviously, I did not have the green light to forgo food for the day, nor did I particularly want to.  First of all, I don't think I could forgo food for a day.  I get predictably hungry every 3-4 hours like clockwork - any longer, and I start getting the sick dizzy faint-y feeling.  Even in my hardcore anorexic days, I still ate pretty regularly.  Just not much.  Secondly, I knew I was getting weighed at M's that afternoon and definitely did not want to step on the scale with nothing in my stomach.

Thirdly, and on a slightly different note, I don't know if fasting for a day is the most sensitive way to raise awareness for a famine.  It almost seems like you are minimizing the problem - "Hey, starving Somalians, look at me!  I can go without food too, see?  I get it!  Wow, you're right - this totally sucks!"

(Am I reading too much into this?  Am I just overly sensitive to the starvation issue?)

I think the rationale is that the fast is an act of solidarity - rather than stuffing our rich, Western selves with delicious fattening food while millions are starving to death, we will devote this one day to trying, in some small way, to empathize with their suffering.  I can understand it from that angle.

Still, it doesn't exactly sit right with me.  I guess it's sort of like when people use"dieting" and "being anorexic" interchangeably.  Someone can cut her intake and lose lots of weight and be skinny, but that does not mean she's anorexic.  One is a choice and the other is not.  A diet is not anorexia, and a fast is not a famine.

Kaylee Fun Facts

- I am 20 years old but I've been mistaken for a high school freshman twice in the last year.

- I am a mix of six different ethnicities.

- I played the violin for 15 years and almost went to a music conservatory for college.  Now, I barely play at all and I haven't touched my violin in almost a year.

- I bite my nails like crazy.

- My mom and I have always been super close, but my anorexia has put a major strain on our relationship.  We talk to each other about pretty much everything except for that.

- Nature makes me happy but I am intensely afraid of poison ivy.

- And snakes.

- I have a 23-year-old brother who is the smartest, funniest person I know.  Growing up, we fought nonstop but now we are much closer.

- I tried to read a book on my mom's Kindle but hated it so much that the book was totally ruined for me.  I had to go buy a paperback copy and reread it.

- Depression, diabetes, cancer, alcoholism, and schizophrenia all run in my family.

- My dad looks Middle Eastern (he's not) and anytime I am in an airport with him, we get stopped and searched.

- Six months ago, I decided to give up Diet Coke because I read that it's bad for your bones.  I've pretty much abstained in that time with only a couple of lapses.  We'll see if I can hold out during the summer.

- I refuse to give up coffee.

- I know I'm not supposed to, but I still weigh myself twice a day.

- I am terrified of giant squids.  Not sharks, just squids.  Even in swimming pools.

- When I was in fourth grade, my teacher told me that I should try reading Gone With the Wind when I got older.  I made my mom go buy it for me that day and I finished it within the week.  I have since read it about five more times.

- The same teacher also once told me: "No one is going to know that you're smart unless you speak up and let them know."

- My biggest insecurity is that people will think I am shallow for having anorexia.

Me, Now

I officially entered treatment for anorexia in December, although I had been dabbling in eating disordered behaviors for at least eight years.  I went through a period of extreme restriction and weight loss at age thirteen when I was very sick and probably should have been hospitalized, but I dodged that bullet.  Mostly because I was too smart and sneaky for my own good, but also because my parents (and I) preferred to avoid drama at all costs.  So, a few weight checks with my mom, a stern talking-to from my pediatrician, and that was pretty much it.  I gained a bit of weight back, problem solved.

Then I had a major relapse this past year as a sophomore in college.  While I had been playing around with restriction again for most of my freshman year, enough alcohol and late-night junk food runs kept me social, sane, and at a decent weight despite a pretty anorexic mindset.  By the end of the following summer, though, I was determined to lose weight and it went downhill from there.  By November 2010, I hit my all-time lowest weight (a little under where I was at age thirteen).  When I came home for Thanksgiving, my mom freaked out and started calling doctors.  I headed back to school to finish out the semester with instructions from her to get through my exams and, basically, not die.

I maintained my weight through Christmas, started seeing a nutritionist and a therapist at home, and headed back to school in January armed with a brand new diagnosis and a massive meal plan.  Within a week, though, I was back to my old workout routine and restricting patterns.  Then the blackouts/dizziness/heart flutters started happening and scared me enough to call my mom.  She convinced me over the phone to see a doctor on campus who did an EKG and bunch of blood tests, freaked out, and just like that I was on a plane back home.

My life since January has been a blur of doctors visits, scales, food, and intense loneliness. I have battled horrible body image, screaming/bitching/crying fights with my parents, and seemingly endless food and weight gain.  In a few short months, I have isolated myself more than I ever thought possible.  Now, faced with the possibility of reemerging into life again, I feel like I might be starting to dig myself out.