The Girl Who Cried "Recovery"

Once upon a time...fuck it...
Sometimes, I regretfully admit, I take for granted how lucky I have been to have access to treatment for my eating disorder in the past...
 When I reflect on all of the tools I've been provided over the years, the care I've been given, the friends I have made, I get all warm and tingly inside and rainbows nearly shoot from my ass I'm so grateful...
 But there is a deep-rooted, seething, mess of agression and pain bubbling beneath the surface of that gratitude that leaves me cold, cynical, embittered and utterly enraged with myself...
 The latter is, unfortunately, often the more prevalent sentiment... Especially over the past year...
I know I've probably betrayed this fact in previous posts: The "poor-pitiful-me" sob story where I whine about losing my insurance, and my job and my entire fucking life over the last year... How I relapsed instantaneously, gave up completely, resigned myself to a life of quiet desperation and suck, then magically resolved after almost dying, having some scary fucking seizures and heart problems and osteoarthritis, etc. and reuniting with the love of my life, to at least try to muddle through the complicated business of changing my entire fucking life...
Or maybe you heard the one where "I'm never purging again" rolled off my bloody, seizure bitten tongue back in November before I'd even fully regained consciousness, and that was the start of actually trying to recover...or something like that...
 What really happened is that everyone in my life wanted to have me involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital with a court order, specifically one where I would be completely immobilized, tube fed, and forced to lie there thinking about why I had to be in such a position... My boyfriend, friends, and family had gone about the business of researching this option extensively without my knowledge, and proceeded to terrify me with the notion that I had just better do something... Before they inevitably got to their wits' ends, threw up their hands, and  followed through with their diabolical plan... I was incessantly looking over my shoulder in absolute terror for the proverbial padded wagon and white coats "Coming to take me away... (ha ha!)"
They had concluded that I was becoming a legitimate danger to myself, or rather, had always been a danger to myself, and that I had been so for far too long to continue much further... To me, this all seemed wildly melodramatic...excessive... Surely I had not actually gone crazy enough to warrant such extreme interventions...?
This was the kicker... They placed this drastic plan on standby, subtly revealed details that scared the shit out of me, then said that I would have no knowledge of when it would happen, if it would happen, etc. so I couldn't hop on a passing freight train and elope... So every time I got into a car, since I was not yet allowed to drive given the seizing, for the last few months of 2012, I would instantly commence panic mode, terrified of the destination...
 Oddly enough, my idiotic behavior actually underwent very few significant changes, overall at least.  More like it underwent a brief superficial makeover...
 At first, In October, I was pretty serious about "getting better..."(or was it just not getting hospitalized?) My boyfriend supervised my every move for two or three months, my therapist got in on the Involuntary Commitment plan, and I was forced to have all meals with the bf, take medications that skyrocketed my weight, and make weekly weight gains (while assuring my therapist that I didn't care that I was doing so), in order to be permitted to remain an outpatient...
 The sad truth of all of this is that I was never really "outpatient material" to begin with... in fact, the only reason I had ever become one in the first place was because I received my termination notice from work on the same day I attempted to re-enter 10 hour/day treatment...
Fast Forward to January 2013...
 3 months and 40 lbs later, I was at the low end of my "range", and off the wagon in a major way, I had convinced them I was no longer about to die, got off of supervision, and was back to purging every fucking time I looked at food... My saving grace in these dark times was simple: Alcohol... Kept just enough fermented sugar and carb juice down to keep my weight from dropping too noticeably or quickly, while secretly vowing to carefully and covertly wick away what I'd gained and then some...
 The sheer absurdity of this ridiculous scheme is not lost on me...
I don't have any idea why I thought I could get away with quietly tiptoe-ing back to the verge of death, or why I continue to entertain that notion in the back of my mind today...  Perhaps I'm taking the results of that Barry Manilow shirt study from the last post a tad too seriously... But a HUGE part of me actually desires to go completely unnoticed as I make a total ass out of myself...
I digress...
 In the interest of continuity, as January, February, and now March passed, I began to get more and more freedom from those around me. I'm sure you can imagine the finesse with which I handled that freedom if you have not already read about it...
 Did you imagine lots and lots of bullshit and almost no action?
Well give yourself a gold star, because that is exactly what I've been up to since the moment I got off their radar...
With the boyfriend, I'd reveal a fuck up after doing it countless times a day for a few weeks, then I'd eventually break down and cry and confess what a naughty girl I'd been... But what I failed to acknowledge in these breakthrough moments of accountability, was that I had not once asked for help in the moment I was actually doing the up-fucking...
Likewise, the therapist who I've been avoiding appointments with for over a month now, has become a luxury that I can no longer afford to keep... He too, has become a total waste of my time, energy, and very limited budget, all because I tell him about 3% of what I actually do... Because, in his words, he will "send me to the hospital so fast it will make my head spin", if I "play" with him...
 And like the fucking child I am known to be, all I have done is play...
 You see, in my mind, eating once every day or two and only purging like 3 or 4 times a day is me kicking some serious ass... at least in comparison to how I was operating 5 months ago... and most of my life, for that matter... but if I currently had any the financial means to access to a professional opinion, I don't think I would exactly be getting patted on the back...
 Which brings us to tonight...
I have been chain-smoking and thinking and writing all day. This evening, I stumbled upon some news that should have made me happy, a friend who is also struggling is reluctantly returning to a treatment program we attended together... And what started out as relief that she was going to be taken care of and admiration of her strength, slowly morphed into a whole slew of emotions that but sent me spiraling into a pit of despair... And wow, did that ever make me feel like a piece of shit...
 I tried to ignore it... Mostly, because I felt like a sorry excuse for a human being for allowing my thoughts turn in such a selfish direction... But the din soon became an uproar and within moments I was sobbing uncontrollably in my boyfriends arms before I even had a chance to figure out why I was so fucking upset in the first place...
 Eventually, I began to have coherent thoughts, and told him every little awful thought in my head... Most notably, how I have had so many opportunities, so many chances, so many treatments to fix this stupid eating disorder and I pissed away every single one of them... relapsed immediately each time and now that I am utterly destitute and uninsured, I have no help when I would actually put it to good use...
To really blow the kazoo at this pity party, I continued to kick myself...
  I cannot blame anyone but myself for the situation I'm currently in. I was the one who stubbornly resisted every step of the way, I was the one who used up all my chances, and now I am laying in the bed I made for myself. Treatment is not an option for me now, it may never be again. This puts this whole business of trying to "getting better" entirely in the hands of the worst possible person: ME...
And I fucking suck at it...
And its unfair to ask him to stop me... or help me...
And he can't anyway...
And I've exhausted my family and all of their resources years ago...
And so on, and so on... You get the idea... Girl Who Cried "Recovery" when it wasn't really there, one time too many, eventually she gets ignored and it eats her...
 So, then he hits me with this, "So you feel like your doing this alone, but who exactly have you asked to help you?"
Fuck me sideways!
After rattling off a seemingly endless list of places I had worn out my welcome and people who had (justifiably) given up on me, he rephrases it...
"Well, what is it that you need?"
I snickered through the swollen slits of my eyes, "If I knew that I wouldn't need help!"
Then, it really hit me, the real answer:
"I have no concept of what I need. What I need is someone to fucking follow me around telling me what I need...or I'll forget that I have needs..."

Love and fucking Neurosis