"With time it does become a new normal"
In June when I came back from my compulsive and guilt driven walk, I sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and started jotting down a plan to talk to my treating team about in the coming days. I had reached a point in my battle with Anorexia that I was skating on very thin ice a lot of the time, and that if I didn't do something, all the choice was going to be taken from me and the choices and decisions were going to be made for me. And this is not what I wanted to happen, so I did something about it.
So I took my ideas to my team, and from that moment I figured I couldn't go any further backwards or any further deeper into my eating disordered patterns or behaviours like I have done a million times in the past. I knew that if I continued the way I was headed and that if I tried to loose a rapid amount of weight before an admission and I was only setting myself up for even harder times. So instead I started trying to start things from the home environment. Such as trying to reduce my compulsive exercise and trying to eat a bit more regularly. I knew if I didn't try and start to be implementing some of the things that I knew would be coming my way, the harder it was going to be. So I started making some changes whilst I was at home, and was transparent, open and honest with my family about what we had to do whilst we waited for a green light for an inpatient hospitalization. The plan didn't go as planned, and I didn't want to go back to the EDP program I had been going to in and out of for the past three years because I and my family felt it wasn't the best fit for where I am right now. So five weeks later, here we are and trying to do treatment and refeeding from home.
Oh boy, and it has been a ride since day one.
The first few weeks I started having panic attacks again. I would be laying in the darkness of my room, curled up in a ball and hyperventilating. My hands went all stiff to the point I could not open up my hands, they would then shake. My eyes were tightly shut and I was in a completely different world. When I first started having my recurring panic attacks, I felt so much shame and that I was being pathetic. I felt too scared to ask my family for help, because most of the panic attacks that I had had in hospital had been so traumatizing and dismissed I felt like I couldn't ask for help and that I was just meant to suffer in silence alone. My younger step sister found me on numerous occasions, in the thick of my panic attacks. For a 15yr old who hadn't ever seen me like this, helped me get through the other side on multiple occasions. . She was simply there, made me feel safe and not alone. She road it out with me, until I could breathe again and open my eyes. She does an amazing job and I am always so thankful and appreciative.
In the late afternoon, I would curl up in a ball in the darkness of my room again and lay there under a blanket, where I would be so consumed by eating disordered thoughts, anxiety and fear. I would lay there stressing about the fact I had to sit at the kitchen table and face yet another dredded meal that my eating disorder for the last two to three hours of anxiety and stressing about it had convinced me a million reasons why I should not eat and not turn up at the table. I'd be told dinner was ready and on the table downstairs, but it felt impossible to move my body from the ball I had curled myself up in. Either my dad or my step mum would come up and get me to come downstairs for dinner, to get me there it took quite some convincing and everything I had to pull myself out of bed and sit at that table. I'd end up realizing that by not going down to the kitchen table I would be letting my eating disorder win, and in fact making it stronger and louder. And by listening to it's voice telling me not to eat, I was giving it more power over me. Power that would continue to keep me sick, unwell and the reality that I would not get better. I feared how loud that eating disorder voice would yell, scream and abuse me even more if I was do disobey it by going down and eating dinner. I would be riddled with fear, and knew how my eating disorder would respond to me trying to stand up to it and also going against it. The afterwards was always filled with pain; emotionally, mentally and physically. Pain, which I really didn't want to go through again. (We will get to this part.) Once I got to the table it would feel like my body had frozen up again, as I sat the totally not present at all and in my own little world. I'd sit there and just stare at the food on that plate for ages not wanting to consume it. Some time had passed and I would finally pick up the fork, which felt like climbing a mountain. Slowly I'd pick, sort, cut, stir through that plate of food. Which I know are disordered behaviours. But for me at this particular time it wasn't about fixing my disordered habits or tendencies, it was purely about getting the food in my mouth. And it didn't matter how it got from the plate to my mouth, as long as it got into it. I'd eventually finish, this painful, challenging and super difficult meals. Afterwards I then go back to my dark room and curl back up into a ball. Where sometimes I laid there in complete silence and other times I would be crying and bawling my absolute eyes out. I was in so much pain, so much misery and the guilt and anorexias abusive voice came crashing down on me. I could see it, see my eating disorder. I was on one side of a door, and it was on the other. Bashing at it, with me on the other side. It wouldn't leave me alone and it wouldn't shut up. I would lay there and sob (which was pretty ugly) for ages and I would enter a dark place inside my mind. I'd just wanted it to be over and in the darkest of moments I just wanted to die and not have to do this anymore.
I didn't know how to let my dad support or comfort me. I didn't know how to let him help me or how he could help me. I barely knew how to help myself, let alone how to let him help me. If we wind back a little, it was only very recently where I let my giant brick wall down a little and stopped putting on that mask that hid my inner and deep struggles with my eating disorder and depression. I have only had my dad back in my life for just over a year now, after not having a relationship with him for about six years. I was still getting my head around this new person and getting to know this new version of my dad. To also add to it, I have never really felt like I could go to my parents for anything or to be vulnerable for pretty much my entire life. So letting my dad see me ugly cry and howling my eyes out into my pillow that night was a huge big deal for me. I knew he cared, and I knew he loved me and I felt really bad about not being able to or even knowing how to let him help me. But in these moments he couldn't be and wasn't the person I needed in these moments, for a multitude of reasons. My step mum, who is an absolute blessing- may I add, who already is such an important part of my life but also became to be my biggest support in helping me through these difficult, upsetting and challenging times. She was the person I needed right now. And she is there every time.
In the initial early days, I was afraid to ask for help and afraid to ask for what I needed. I'd try and just manage all by myself for as long as possible no matter how bad things were. Asking for this thing called help was something that was a complete foreign concept to me. Something that I hadn't really done for a lot of my life and especially in the late teens/early adolescence years.
I felt like a total burden. And at times I still do. But not nearly as bad as I was feeling.
I felt like that as her pretty newly step daughter, I shouldn't be a problem for her to deal with. I felt bad needing her love, care and support. I felt awful knowing she had been to work that night or all day and then having to come home and deal with my pile of crap and my distressed state. I felt bad that I needed her to lay beside me on my bed until I had stopped crying or fallen asleep. I felt bad leaving my dad downstairs by himself whilst my step mum was looking after me. I felt awful that I felt like I had the entire load on my step mum and for needing her help to get me through these times. During the day, when I wasn't a complete mess, we'd talk a lot. I'd say to her that I felt like a burden and she would reassure me that I wasn't, and that she was more than happy to support me.
Asking for help verbally was impossible to begin with, I simply could not do it. So I started off with bringing myself to sending my step mum (who was downstairs) a text message asking for help to get me through a panic attack or to come and sit with me or if I could have a cuddle. Sometimes it would take me twenty minutes to finally press send, but it began to not be as hard to ask for help this way. She'd come up to my room and be with me night after night, no matter what.
I am so lucky to have such a wonderful, loving and caring person in my life. I am so thankful and I am so appreciative forever and always.
As the weeks went by, I went from text messaging asking for help from up in my room, to one day where I stood there and said to my step mum "this feels like soy sauce coming out of my mouth" (because it wasn't something I was used to asking) but I asked "can I please have a hug." Asking for help or asking for that hug began to not feel so foreign or strange to me. I began to be able to ask for those two things, using my words more and more.
I really struggle late afternoon/early evening and especially pre and post dinner. Instead of going up into my room and my depressive state we broke this cycle I was in and began to trial staying downstairs in the living room, where I would lay on the couch with my step mum. We'd put a pillow on her lap and I would lay there with a blanket over me curled up in a ball quietly. I felt safe and not alone. Living with mental illness and an eating disorder often makes you feel very alone and isolated, but laying there with my dad and step mum in the room I felt not so isolated. I also felt less guilty not leaving my dad downstairs by himself anymore and that my step mum could still have the company of my dad or watch the tv whilst also supporting me .
A few months back, I hid a lot of my struggles, emotions and thoughts. I was also really afraid and felt guilty for asking for the things I needed. But from struggling to send a text message, I can now just walk up to my step mum with my arms wide open and ask for a hug with pretty much no to very little anxiety about it. Being able to do this, is something I pretty much have never been able to do. So this has been huge for me.
Fast forwarding from panic attacks, bawling my eyes out nightly for quite some time and learning how to be loved and looked after. I then took another massive step.
To tackle next was actually consuming FOOD regularly & following a MEAL PLAN again. Two things that absolutely terrified me.
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