Back With A Vengeance...

After a long hiatus... and a TED talk AND a whiny last note indicating I may disappear, I've been freelancing so much that I'm quite exhausted of writing articles for other people. This is not to say that my e-book on anxiety won't be awesome... once I get past my own anxiety about telling others how to tame the beast without Valium...which I both take and desperately need to leave the house...

Ok, time to calm down and finish my fucking yogurt...

 I've been on a bit of a ride the past several months... Unfortunately I think I might have had life's proverbial car in reverse... On the bright side, I began receiving Medicare benefits in December, so hooray for being insured after two years of hell and seizures and poverty, I'm proud to say I jazzed it up with an Advantage Plan HMO and have reassembled a FULL eating disorder/medical/psychiatric/neurological team, all of whom I'm sure find me quite disappointing at the moment... and in this moment, as this half eaten light yogurt in front of me indicates... would be any rational human being's opinion of my life...

Where to begin... I was bad, sick, and probably about to die, in February 2013, some discount clinic counselor changed my fucking meds (2 of which have the magical property to hurdle someone into 30 to 50 lbs of weight gain in a big hurry) and shat on my very real anxiety disorder by labeling it PTSD, trying to drag some early childhood sexual trauma out of me that just didn't exist... if you exclude my mother and her various boyfriend's behavior at the time and the people I slept with in out of pity in high school that I despised... I, perhaps, was the victim of many traumas, and other kinds of abuse and neglect, sure... But exactly what exactly did that constant love (and staunch Catholicism) I experienced from my father, grandparents, and aunt not do to offer relief from my other home? There are damages, yes, but I was not generating false memories for some hack who thinks all ED's arise from sex...Wanker... I was older and my ED is younger than my sex life... I refused all the meds and dropped him within a month... (Patient Assistance Programs can stop sending me free Remeron and Zyprexa now, I'm on shit that actually works without driving me insane)

Stop looking at me yogurt...
You expired last week (but are still unfortunately edible) so there...

Whoa the rambling is bad... I've been out of Valium for a while... forgive my anxious overstimulated brain as we move forward...
So since December, when my husband, A TALENTED PILOT demoted to cooking at the Waffle House over reckless driving charges, unnecessarily by someone scared he would take their job, lost his... forcing us to live on my measly disability check (intended for 1 person)... In all of this we lost my car a week ago to repossession, we've had almost no food in the house that I don't save for him, and our power will be shut off in 3 days if I cannot force myself to write a graduate paper for a well paying student... What do the kids say to not offend people (here I don't care)? FML...

So with a VERY good healthcare plan designed for the nation's elderly, I tried to imagine a future for myself, despite recent setbacks, and made a team, like I always had to do when I discharged from treatment...
It quickly became VERY apparent that I had NOT just been discharged from treatment and had gone off the rails like a mad woman to lose all the medication weight and then some... and kept began desperately trying in the past several weeks, at my new dietitian's behest, began attempting to stop purging, not usually a road to my best side... But even my ED said, "Yes. It's time to stop doing this shit..." Unfortunately the ED knows why I always leap into tackling this behavior...
This is usually the path to my dark side, or, as I prefer, a nosedive into the Hellmouth...
Not purging, for me, causes me to experience withdrawal symptoms very similar to those who discontinue opiates, like painkillers, etc. Both the stomach and stimulation of some opiate receptors in the brain release a high amount of endorphin, as experienced by "runner's high", sex, chocolate, and similar activities. The stimulation of purging (and, of course, eating, for most people) causes the stomach to release a large amount of endorphin (which spell-check won't pluralize for me... interesting). I've been doing it nearly every day outside of treatment and sometimes in treatment for nearly 18 years. Longest I've gone without it outside is about 2 weeks...without restricting or lying through my destroyed teeth... when I stop, I get depressed, lethargic, (more) anxious, ravenous (because of my ridiculous combo of ED's, I perceive everything to be a "binge"... except alcohol, which I will not waste but can't afford in over a month) Fun Fact: Alcohol has, at times sustained me at higher weights for months at a time, carbs, sugar, calories, lowered inhibitions... It has no nutritional value I've had nutritionists in IOP tell me repeatedly that a margarita or beer is not a night snack...
Sooo... not purging either means not eating or restricting and then giving up on very dumb foods I give a shot, to purge... Maybe because I've deluded myself for so long that I "have to"... I don't know... For a, by all accounts, "highly intelligent" person, I am still a silly, chubby, desperate, 10 year old... Almost 30, it feels so immature and stupid... but its stuck in there and the mirror is a brutal liar...
 2 weeks of trying not to do this and I really suck... I feel like I can't function, can't sleep, want to sleep through all the hunger til the next appointment so I don't purge...
 The new dietitian looks at it as a "baby step", it feels like a crawl where I keep trying to stand up and fall on my ass...
I'm so back and forth right now, I want to be comatose until it ends... They induce comas for people who have stopped functioning on their own physiologically... Let's try that... Someone watch Netflix with my husband, write all my bullshit other people pay me for, and pay my bills, until I wake up from this nightmare...

Lily Myers - "Shrinking Women" (CUPSI 2013)

Anatomy of a Fuck Up

Between old Looney Tunes cartoons and my multiple readings of Of Mice and Men, I vaguely recall the character of Lennie, and his Looney Tunes likeness, saying "I done a bad thing"...
While this phrase sums up the beginning of this month well, I have been on a big and long ride the past several weeks. Puts the wildest shit a tragic novelist can devise to shame... But then those
World War I ambulance drivers like Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald always really pissed me off. I know that tragedy had a very real meaning to these men, but to me, it always seemed like overkill, to the point of being just silly and absurd... For me it was never like tragedy needed absolutely everyone to suffer horribly and/or die ironically... I always favored the tortures that Kafka and Dostoyevsky devised... For, in my own experience, real tragedy is about despair and fear. Death is an easy out, the greatest torture on earth is at our own hands, nestled within the depths of the human psyche. Living with what you have done as well as what you blame yourself for anyway... that is what destroys a person.

Nearly a month ago, I really fucked up...
I had spent the 3 months prior at my Grandma's side as her second husband of 8 years shriveled into a shadow of his former self in her living room on hospice... Bone cancer had taken my Grampa the same way 11 years ago, after 45 years of marriage...
Her second husband was the one who saved her from loneliness, gave her another chance at life with another extraordinary man... I owe all of the good in me to all 3 of them... my boyfriend and I visited them constantly, assisting with his care, helping with errands, smiling, reassuring, anything we could...then things start to blur...
After Pap died, my boyfriend and I somehow managed to slip away with all of his hospice medication. I'm money situation was getting desperate and I think that we were going to sell them... I forget... Unfortunately we also decided to take some ourselves with quite disastrous and amnetic consequences... I don't remember the rosary and I don't remember the funeral.... Apparently people without cancer torturing every nerve ending in their body are not intended to take pure morphine and heavy duty opiates... The doctor came back to collect the medication after the second day and my grandma found it gone. My aunt who is an RN came to pick it up my boyfriend's parent's home, where we were staying and we were kicked out. Everyone else banned us from their houses as well... We decided to cover up on my bumper stickers, license plates, etc and rob a Pharmacy... But we wound up chickening out after casing four different ones... Apparently there were 3 other robbery attempts that night on some of the same pharmacies and we would have been caught facing felony charges.
This is where grace comes in...
The next day after nearly three days in my car without sleep, my father reached out to us and offered us a way to redeem ourselves. We were married next day and my now husband began working a couple of days later. My disability back pay from 2012 arrived and I have spent this entire month renovating my new home, which is about the size of the average kitchen... And, as they say in all southern stereotypes, is "older than Methuselah"...
In light of the unpredictable nature of trailer plumbing, I set myself a "quit date" for purging (again)... it helps that the kitchen is the living room, the living room is the bedroom, and the bedroom is the bathroom....
kind of helps remove any semblance of privacy...
"Helps" is often a term people who are prone to binging, purging, and restricting, use when they are exchanging one behavior for another.... I know that ending up knee deep in vomit and ruining our plumbing is not an option. However, I am also aware of my blatant disregard for anyone else when it comes to my ED. People who are paid to stand and watch eating disorder patients use the restroom have managed to miss the occasional purge... I've done some disturbing and truly degrading things in desperation to not gain weight... And while this new situation of being unable to purge feels extremely liberating in a way... By making it something I simply cannot do... To my husband in the adjacent room, separated only by a saloon door... To all of our hard work over the past month... To my decrepit body and rotting teeth... It cannot happen. Period.
But taking away my ability to purge tends to transform every meal into an argument... My new home essentially becomes another one of my restriction prisons... or, if you like, a battleground, upon which I will fight with every breath in my body a daily war on calories, fat, carbs, weight, and anyone who is unfortunate enough to be in the way...
I'm scared.
I'm too old and, if I'm honest, too fucking smart to still believe that there is any reason to keep these unreasonable expectations, ridiculous beliefs, and maladaptive behaviors around... I know I am wrong, I know what is true, and I know that this never lasts...never makes anything better...
I know Anatomy, I know Nutrition, I know Psychology, and I know Me...
Yet I am once again feeling like a "fuck up" is a state of being rather than an occasional mishap...
Surely, this stupidity is not running my life... STILL...
Please, Doctor... there must be some mistake...
Love and Neurosis,
Little One

Getting Real Tired of Your Shit, Me...

Fuck me! I began this post on my cellphone and "Rainy Days and Mondays" by The Carpenters comes on XM Radio. How apropos...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjFoQxjgbrs‎

 Freaking Monday night depression hit me hard, strangely revolving around an intense desire to restrict back to September of last year... Karen Carpenter smacked me in the face with the hard truth of what that means...it essentially means death... but I tend not to concern myself with that neon pink elephant looming in the room... Not me... Nope...
For those unfamiliar with Karen Carpenter, she died of anorexia, more specifically, of a heart attack due to refeeding syndrome, in 1983, 2 years before I was born... they like to show documentaries about her in ed treatment facilities and on Lifetime...
Back then, for the vast majority of my disorder, and even now, this disease was and is extremely misunderstood and, sadly, often mistreated if not untreated... The consequences are devastating and ED's currently claim more lives than any other mental disorder, yet many suffer in silence and more still can find no way out....
Being anything but silent, I probably represent the latter... But the price of exposure of your disorder, although inevitable after so long, is to either accept or feign responsibility for your behavior...
It's that or let everyone believe that you're on drugs and go invisible for several months every year or two...
It's strange how ashamed and totally unashamed I am at this point... I despise the attention the truth gets me, but it's far easier to tell the truth more often than not... at least the truth keeps people from guessing you have AIDS or a big time addiction to heroin...
But, the result of being honest is vulnerability and transparency... everyone knows what goes on in that restroom and has a little insight into that twisted little brain of mine... People see the deliberate nature of your behavior around food and eventually gain the knowledge to make judgements and even decisions regarding your wellbeing...
This is where I get myself into trouble...
I have a tendency to blindly leap at recovery from time to time with no real desire for what that really means... total surrender of what has come to be my life...

My half assed efforts remind me of old roadrunner cartoons, lots of anvils and walls and splats and explosions, but for some reason I never get to die, just come up with another equally stupid idea that's going to leave a me standing, charred, in a cloud of smoke holding the fuse...

A lot of death has been hovering around my family and I lately. Most so far, grow old, some VERY old, before age or disease takes them... This blows my mind, as I had zero expectation of living to be 28, much less 91...

I've begged for death, even sought it out to the extent that I was even given last rites...

I don't seek it out so much anymore, but I still struggle with living in this particular version of my body... and that in itself confuses me to no end about what exactly it is that I want.... I cannot live this way, can't live that way, I apparently can't even die right... what the fuck!?

I'm actually willing to admit that a lot of this hostility towards my physical self is due to the fact that I'm especially triggered since last weekend. I went to a sort of reunion this past weekend and awkwardly tried to reconnect with some friends from my high school theater troupe, they hadn't seen me in 10 to 12 years... though I would never attend a school reunion, I'm known to make exceptions for smaller groups that I'm more intimate with, but the experience scared me shitless... I was grateful that no one really asked where I'd been or what I've done with my life... I kept it simple: degree in psych, worked in case management, pharmaceutical research, and a psychiatric hospital... even let some of my closer friends know about my "dancing"... 

But yesterday the pictures of the event showed up on Facebook.... thankfully only within the theater group which is closed... and I saw my body through the lenses of their cameras and pondered making an app that lets you cathartically rip digital pictures into pieces to make yourself feel better (technosavvy app designers, msg me)

Some hours and research later... it exists already...thunder stolen...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.km.photo.torn

Great! Just what I need to take self-loathing to the next level... because Fatbooth wasn't bad enough...

I would normally let this post trail off into oblivion while I downloaded and redownloaded both apps respectively and manipulated every picture in my phone into a human thumb to tear apart, but I just don't have the stomach for it tonight... Not only am I thoroughly disgusted by my self right now and have no desire to make it worse, but I feel so guilty that I'm actually having these thoughts as someone I love spends his last night on earth... I think its high time I pulled my head out of my ass and prepare it for the kicking that's coming over the next week when it isn't the center of my attention for once...

 Love and Neurosis,

Little One

Happiness and Other Drugs

It's been a minute hasn't it?
It's strange to come back after a long dry spell to find that your website has gone on without you...
I guess writing blogs is not so different from writing on a bathroom stall...leave your mark until your life's next paint job...
  I wonder how many abandoned blogs are floating around out there, their authors grasping for that one contribution they want to share with the world, only to lose their password, become mired in obligations, or stricken dumb by doubt and insecurity...

I have decided to make the writing my career for the time being, while I work to regain my footing after a long period of relapse with my eating disorder... found an agency to produce content for at $7.50  per 500 word article I can shit out and have been doing ok with that... Although I find it strange that when I want to get some "real writing" done to sort out my own thoughts and feelings, I sit here blankly staring at the blinking cursor for months before beginning to form words. Maybe it's the fact that the other one is incentivized. I make about 3 cents a month with my web traffic on this site only to communicate to my readers that I am stuck in the same rut that has claimed the past 18 years of my life... My articles about back pain and and elementary math education probably get more hits for my clients...whoever they are...

Since my last post, I turned 28, and I found out my Social Security backpay for all of 2012 is FINALLY en route... I'm currently working on not spending this check in my head before it gets here in about 3 weeks... But after over 2 years spent broke, miserable, struggling, sick, and not working (unless you count writing and exotic dancing) it's very hard not to want to take that fat check with your name on it and say, "I fucking deserve to be happy for once!"

This would usually an improvement on my typical thought process, but  it's been my experience that me when I'm excited or comfortable is often more dangerous than me when I'm miserable... Elation and hopelessness, are two emotions that both tend to translate to crazy in my experience, but hopelessness has a certain "je ne sais quoi"that prompts your inner survivalist into action... Desperation has a strange way of making you keep going, probably because you have nothing to lose. Conversely, the limited experience I have with "contentment" suggests that it quickly gives way to apathy and stagnation... and those are two things I simply can't abide... That being said, I've designated this small fortune to "move" me... Literally and figuratively... I intend to use it to get the fiancee and I a place in Austin again, reconnect with a treatment team (maybe... or parts of one), get my meds straight, my pain sorted out, labs done, DEXA scan, orthopedic treatment, car insurance, etc. Hard to move when you physically and financially CAN'T... so I thought I'd see if I could turn the tables on my long held tradition of irresponsibility... I'm not terribly optimistic, but I'm only as hopeless as I have to be to stay motivated...

I tried to take another stab at remaining purge-free several weeks ago after (MORE) months of pretending that I was working at it (and fooling absolutely no one but myself...) only to find my ED here with me still with no sign of relenting. My behaviors are consistent at least. I don't proper "binge" any longer, however I still subjectively consider everything with calories to be a binge, so my "everything must go" mentality is pretty much still the norm. In a VERY surreal new development after months of totally avoiding every reflective surface and hiding in giant clothing, Texas just got too fucking hot for that shit, and I had to bust out the tanks and steal a few pairs of men's shorts from the fiancee... This has, however, made me into Neurotic Body-checker of the Century, and I now I cannot seem to stop looking down and in the mirror, the car door, the window, disgusted and yet oddly fascinated by my new-ish size... To clarify, it fascinates me in the same way a rash or a tumor fascinates me, it's certainly not a good thing, but it sure is weird and interesting...
Too bad shitty body image remains immune to ointments and radiation...

To further complicate matters, the lack of ability to afford to see a credible doctor in about 2 years has taken its toll on my body, causing it to feel like I distributed sticks to an army of 10,000 invisible bodybuilding gnomes so they can follow me around whacking the shit out of me everyday... My arthritic body makes the simplest activity (like fucking sitting) into a chore... I cannot communicate how profound this pain is, but it is unlike anything I've ever felt, probably because it doesn't heal or dissipate, it only gets worse with each passing day. I've never known myself to be much of a pussy about physical pain, I usually muddle through it to get shit done despite it, but this is different, this isn't going away and I know it... I've almost given up hope that even maintaining a healthy weight is worth it, at least when I had pitiful, atrophied, sorry excuses for muscles, they didn't cripple and torture me so.... Actually sustained a stupid, but reasonable relationship with other people's pain medications for a while... Reasonable, as in I actually took 2, waited 6 to 8 hrs before taking more, and maybe looked for some every 3 days or so... But it doesn't even remotely touch the pain and getting them is exhausting, more money and trouble than it's worth when you're actually hurting... So knocking that out with the check by seeing a specialist is going to be amazing...

But I won't get too happy about it just yet... Then I won't go...

Until next time... hopefully that's soon...
Love and Neurosis,
Little One

  The past few weeks, perhaps it's even been longer, are somewhat hazy...
I feared to approach the issues weighing on my mind the heaviest with my typical habit of dissecting them, knowing that I would just make a big mess and solve nothing...
Several monthss back,  I think I gave up... Yes, again...
I discovered for the billionth time in my 28 years on this planet that not one fuck is given about my recovery as long as the state of Texas refuses to insure me via medicaid, despite the fact that I am considered Disabled by the same entity. In addition, I was granted an insulting $16 a month to feed myself and told to try again in December 2013 when I become eligible for SSI/Medicare in addition to my current disability benefits... I'm happy to report that this is because Texas told the Affordable Care Act to fuck itself, so it takes longer to be eligible....
But get this madness, if I don't get a "malnutrition" diagnosis this year and every year I actually need these benefits from now on, I'll lose that too...
 So then I filed my taxes (late) and find out that as of January 2014 I would have been mandated to purchase private insurance ANYWAY... So I thought, perhaps it may benefit me to purchase a private insurance plan to get me from now to December... but wait... Disabled? Doesn't that mean expensive? Pre-existing conditions and whatnot? Your sick already? Well, then there's no way we can insure you, we would have to pay for medical expenses like we are supposed to...
 Thinking long and hard about abandoning the whole time-tested attempts at recovery...
Not only do i seem to give zero fucks... this disorder is my identity now, and i dont trust what'll be next...

We are not worthy!

Things have come to an inevitable head... I had several depressing as fuck phone calls over the past few days... weighing my options (or lack thereof):about the possibility of yet another trip to residential... or even PHP... or anything that I am not doing now...
I was surprisingly excited, or perhaps just desperate, to do the humiliating phone assessments that I've done a thousand times before... I half hoped that some one would say "I know just the thing!" And I'd be scooped up, hugged, supported, and welcomed into an environment that could save me from myself...

  Every conversation ended promptly after "What kind of insurance do you have?" Followed by "Unfortunately we won't be able to help you."
I realized how screwed I was... I knew I forgot something... being sick requires money...
   Furthermore, many leave you with the impression that you need to take a few weeks to go get sicker.... then call back... Sorry we need you to almost die again before you're worth saving...
Fucking absurd....
So they can tell you again that they can't help you... wish you the best of luck with your descent into madness...and their job is done...
  At one point in my life, this constant fuckover made me a staunch supporter of healthcare reform... public option... all that shit...
I identify as a libertarian, but the prospect of not living in terror that my perpetual state of illness goes perpetually untreated, I thought "What the hell?"
I think I should've changed my tone.... been more incredulous...
I feel like everyone around me is fed up and poised to withdraw support.... as a topic I've spent so long running into the ground.... I can't see my bullshit being tolerated much longer....
In fact, I'm damn near the point of banning the topic from my conversations and my life entirely... I'm tired of belaboring this useless argument... "It's not that bad." if I am not yet capable or willing to make the changes then I'm not going to waste everyone's time talking about it incessantly...
Except here I guess... I'm about to expand to some other topical blogs to get my mind off this shit, but rest assured, this disorder has gone absolutely nowhere... I'll keep posting...
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