Bundle of malcontent...

Its actually March 10th... Welcome to a week after the last day of National ED Awareness week. I had high hopes and big plans for that week. Namely, actually posting shit!
Imagined myself advocating all over the place... acting all recovered... I even made a video... well received, but a total sham...
The week did not go as well as I had initially planned... Apparently, being aware, while crucial, is quite jarring in practice. I spent the week actually crippled by awareness... Whether it was: (a) because focusing on the eating disorder sucked me into active participation in it, or (b)the loneliness in finding out how little other people understand setting me about the unpleasant business of trying to fill in the holes... (c) or the comparisons i drew between other friends in recovery... or (d) realizing how much i often suck at getting better...I do not know....
One thing I do know is that I am exhausted...
Since I embarked upon this "recovery" shit several months ago, I have given up an enormous amount of the control, security, and identity I erroneously thought was mine to begin with... I'm fighting my ass off just to fucking function and, at this point, it's way too fucking complicated to explain...
I've been off meds for a few months now... over the past week, something has been creeping up on me that makes me want to sprawl out on the floor in tears and rage... I keep fighting off those "I want to die" thoughts... I think, perhaps, that I thought them one time too many when I didn't mean it... now I have this "cried wolf" scenario with no buffer... I remember what meds were all about now... but I'm fucking terrified at life both with and without them...
How does one go about communicating that she is out of her mind when she refuses to swallow what has the potential to remedy that?
I hate the anxiety and frustration that fester inside of me... I like them placed, chemically and unnaturally, as far away as possible... however...
I've mentioned in the past that I (thought that I) had good reasons to stop taking them... manipulation of my neurotransmitters, misdiagnosis, money, initial "fattening" ...
But now, after 3 months off meds, I'm beginning to understand heir intended goal... I'm more conscious of medications than I want to be... one professional (my current prescriber), influenced me greatly, when he not only challenged my previous mood/anxiety diagnoses, and proposed that he panic attacks and extremes in mood were actually consequences of the ED... not ADD, GAD, Bipolar, or PTSD predisposing me to an ED... well, he is even on board about the PTSD...
I recall triumphantly (and half jokingly) crying out when he changed my Bipolar/GAD diagnoses to PTSD about 10 weeks ago, "Whohoo! At least its not organic!"
Translation: I didn't COME broken, someone BROKE me!"
But there's the panic, and death wishes, and incapacitating misery that sneak up on occasion and paralyze/humiliate/scare me...
My throat closes, i cant breathe, reason eludes me, I usually cry, and every train of thought ends at "RUN!" or "DIE!"... You know the Anchorman meme, "That escalated quickly!"?
On more than one occasion, most recently last night, I found myself transferring my post-meal frustration onto my boyfriend... This seems to happen whenever I get inordinately and inexplicably angry at what I ate, how much I ate, or the fact that I ate at all... in the past, its been, "NO I'LL GET THE GARBAGE! DISHES, etc..." as I almost violently shrug him off... I recognize that almost everything I hear before a meal sounds like, "You really shouldn't." And everything during and after screams "Look what you did, Lard Ass!" And whoever seems to be around when emotions get unbearable, is likely to be accused of saying some variation of these phrases...
My boyfriend is in the process of recovering from a serious addiction to opiates using Suboxone, which binds to your opiate receptors as a partial agonist, and has a ceiling effect to prevent the high while essentially delaying the withdrawals... meanwhile, the idea is to curb both cravings and the reward response, giving you perspective and insight you may lack if actively using...
After one of my, now famous, mealtime explosions last  night, we began to discuss the concept of "easy does it" vs. "Total immersion" in the recovery process... we compared experiences in our respective inpatient treatments and our massive "fails" when we relapsed....
I wondered why, in substance abuse and other addictions, there were all these "training wheels" Suboxone, Methadone, benzos to ease withdrawal symptoms... and yet, ED clinics rather violently throw you into 6 meals a day, prevent your typical responses, and generally avoid the gradual adjustment approach altogether... I understand that the nature of the beasts are entirely different... their bodies are trained to function with their drug of choice and atrocious and violent withdrawal symptoms ensue... but the truth is that they were technically designed to operate without 50 PKs a day... weening them off is the cure...people aren't designed to function without nourishment and reintroduction of food is what saves our lives...
I've been responsible as a psychiatric caseworker and technician for monitoring patients in the throws of withdrawal and understand that the "easy does it" approach is absolutely necessary to learning to live without drugs or alcohol... its truly brutal and no one should be drastically ripped from something their bodies are so used to!

But I also recall all of the times I had violent reactions to the reintroduction of food... vomiting in my mouth, chest pains, inability to shit for weeks, hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety so severe I've screamed, kicked, fought, ran away from treatment, found a way to purge at all costs, etc. I've seen others rip feeding tubes from their noses leaving a bloody mess... different beast, same host of horrors...
I just wondered as we talked if there was an equivalent approach in the ED realm, besides antidepressants and benzos (which honestly do fuck all to curb ones desire to purge and/or starve...) to ease one into the notion of eating food without compensatory behavior... I instantly devised several hundred ways that I could makes the most distressing parts of my own recovery less anxiety provoking... Avoid meals with others, choose safer foods, remove the pressures of social engagement and the temptation to compare, go my own pace, use supplements again, start exercising more, quit drinking, avoid reflective surfaces, etc.
Then he mentioned that the Suboxone was less like training wheels and more like delaying the inevitable.... and I realized just how very eating disordered every one of my lax recovery ideas sounded...
Feeling wise for noticing this, I told him that I forget that my Eating Disorder resembles OCD every bit as much as it fits the addiction model... and that as a result, anything I do that changes how I feel on more than one occasion will become a ritual by the third time I do it...
Then looking at my list of anxiety reducing ideas, I realized that, in the context of an active ED, every single item had become a way of life almost immediately EVERY TIME I've used it in the past... eating alone becomes years of isolation and pushing others away, supplements and smoothies and safe foods become all you will allow to pass your lips, exercise becomes required, and avoiding mirrors enables you to never have to admit that you are wrong...
It all made so much sense why each is treated differently... An eating disorder, like its OCD counterpart cannot be trusted with a comforting behavior without that behavior escalating to indispensable ritual rapidly...
Shit... thought I was onto something... that maybe I was failing because I was pushing myself too hard before I had developed the coping skills to handle it...
But now I'm left wondering where the balance lies between being patient with yourself and being a little pussy who refuses to commit to change...
More soon...
Love and neurosis,
Little One