values

While I am bragging, I wanted to share a small (huge) success I had yesterday. Usually I am writing about what a screw-up I am, but here is a case in which I did the right thing. Also, I was thinking that maybe sharing this experience might help someone else in a tight spot.

As I may or may not have mentioned, i have fallen back into restricting lately. It started my sticking to only "safe foods" in order to help myself stop purging (and I have been pretty successful with that). But as we all know it is a slippery slope, and I seem to have slipped back into extreme restricting, calorie counting, and obsessing. That, plus Seroquel wwithdrawal is giving me severe nausea and more excuses to not eat.

So anyways, my new and good friend jasmine invited me over to lunch yesterday. i was happy to go, let our kids play, and visit with a good friend. i was not, however, feeling that great about the prospect of eating there. I have no problem eating in front of people. The thing was, I had no idea what she was going to make, and if it would be "okay" to eat it or not. plus, she did not know about my ED. Still, it was just lunch. She might make something light like a salad. I decided to go and do my best.

She made lasagna.

In my mind I was panicking! Lasagna! A perfect combination of foods that I was currently not allowing myself to eat!

So we sat down to eat, after serving the kids, and i am telling myself I would just serve myself a small piece, whatever, when she proceeds to cut and serve me the largest piece of lasagna I think I have ever had in my life!!!!!

As I sat down and faced the cheesy rectangle of doom I considered the facts. Jasmine is a dear friend. Lasagna is not an easy dish (she must have worked hard to make it). She does not know about my ED. Jasmine is from another country, where not eating the one's food may or mar not be incredibly rude (as if it isn't here). I really like jasmine.

So there is only one right decision for me, and it only takes me a split second to come to it.
I will eat the lasagna. i will not freak out.

I am at the point in my life where I really value my frienships. I have found that, for me, true friends are few and far between and I have lost way to many of them to my ED. No more.
The mantra that I kept repeating in my head was "I value our friendship more than my eating disorder. I value our friendship more than thinness."

Eating the lasagna was suprisingly easy, and I didn't even consider purging afterward. To do so would be to dishonor our friendship and the kind act that Jasmine had preformed on my behalf. Later in the day I did have anxiety about the way my stomach was sticking out (or i percieved it was). But I was still glad I ate the lasagna. i did not regret it once.

I thinking about this, I have realized how much I have changed from the early years. Sure, I still have an eating disorder. But there were years when i would have just picked at the meal and said I wasn't hungry, or not even gone, because maintaining my weight was more important than sharing a meal with a friend. Or maybe I would have wolfed down three pieces and excused myself to the bathroom. To my shame, I have done that sort of thing before.

this success came at a good time for me, because as you may know I have been marinating in s sense of failure ever since I went to the support group on tues. It is nice to see that even though I am not ed free I have made progress and in many ways am able to enjoy normal everyday things that I could not before.

That is all.