a cautionary tale

If you want to skip reading this one I will sum it up for you: Lisa + vodka= four point restraints. But if you want the gory, humiliating, and (let's be honest) kind of funny details of a twelve hour period of my life which occured back in the summer of 2000, read on. But be warned, this was the Old Lisa. You know, the crazy one.


I found myself one Sunday afternoon on the inpatient psych ward at St. Lukes hospital, facing a commitment hearing the following morning, which I was sure to lose. About a week prior to this I arrived to the hospital by ambulance from my sister's house, where I passed out (sort of, I was concious but could not get off the floor and my heart was doing crazy things). Several days of IV fluids had me feeling better, but now the plan was to send me to the eating disorders treatment center at UIHC (evil hell) against my will. I didn't have much hope of getting out of it because I had lost committment hearings in the past, when I was in much better shape.
Alone, depressed, powerless, future uncertain. What's a girl to do? Getting wasted seemed like a fabulous idea.

I started calling everyone I knew who might bring me alcohol. Oddly enough, I kept getting shot down. It seemed nobody wanted get wasted with me on the psych ward on a Sunday night? Just when visiting hours were about over and I had all but given up I got ahold of my friend Liz, who was happy to hear from me and delighted to smuggle in some contraband.

Liz showed up within 20 minutes and we both went straight to my room and closed the door. I was on a mission :get wasted, eff it, who cares. I drank till my head spun, then hid the rest of the vodka in my hospital issued mouthwash bottle (after pouring the mouthwash out under the bed, since my bathroom was locked). Then visiting hours were over and Liz had to go, and I weaved my way down to the dayroom.

From here on out it's kind of a blur. there are some things I remember very clearly, and some things that I did I do not remember at all, but were told to me by other patients the next day. Apparently I got up on the pool table and started giving a speech about freedom to the other patients. I remember the speech, vaguely, but I do not remember the pool table. I remember hearing my name on the loudspeaker, asking me to report to the nurses station immediately. I remember to long walk down the hall to the nurses station, the way the walls were swaying as I tried to make it there without falling down. I don't remember if I was successful or not.

The next memory, I am in my room, and one staff is searching the room and another one is sort of frisking me and shaking me at the same time and saying "what did you take? What did she give you?".
Me (slurring): "kiss my ass!"
Me again:"But first you'd have to shave it! Haha!"
Yes, in my drunken stupidity I had insulted myself. Classy. But if you need any more evidence as to why I shouldn't drink, read on.
They left and I was alone sitting on my bed, with a staff person sitting in a chair outside my room keeping an eye on me. I remember falling out of my bed and landing on my head, but it didn't hurt, just sort of felt like I was floating down. Staff helps me back into my bed. I don't remember much after that.

Here's where the other patients fill in the blanks. They weren't supposed to go down the hall where my room was because of the "crisis", but several of them kept finding excuses to walk by and get a glimpse of the drama. Apparently at some point I crawled out of my room and partway down the hall. When staff asked my where I thought I was going I replied "I'm going to f-ing Pizza Hut". Also I threw up all over my room and the nurse was overheard saying "well, at least we know she ate dinner!".

But I guess things got a little crazy when the lab showed up to draw my blood. I totally flipped out, which is why I woke up the next morning in the seclusion room in restraints.

I drank so much that when I woke up monday morning I was still a little drunk. So I was not alarmed to find myself strapped down in the seclusion room. Maybe I was a little amused? You have to remember, at this point in my life I was quite dysfunctional and didn't care about much. Anyways, as I lay there surveying my situation, it dawned on me that I was wearing scrubs. I realized that at some point while I was unconscious (or semi-conscious) someone had stripped me and changed my clothes. Things seemed less funny after that.

After being checked on several times, a nurse came in and unstrapped me. She brought me out of the seclusion room and over to a chair in front of the nurses station and said "SIT". So I sat there. I'm not sure how much time passed, but eventually my doctor came on the unit, walked right over to me, and said "I can't believe I had to get a phone call at 10:30 last night for an order to put you in restraints! There is no longer any doubt in my mind that you need to be committed, only now I am rethinking my recommendation on where they send you after discharge!" Then he huffed away.

Next my court-appointed lawyer shows up. "Lisa, it doesn't look good."

"I know." I say.

When it is time, the nurse takes me from my chair to the room where the committment hearing takes place. I sit silently through the whole thing and don't say much. There's no point.

After the hearing, the nurse asks me if I want to go to the bathroom and get cleaned up. I shuffle into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and find that my hair is wild and crazy and I have dried puke on my face.

I just sat through my hearing with dried puke on my face.



I will end this story here. It just goes on and on and gets more painful and embarrassing. For years. Until eventually, remarkably, against all odds and predictions, I start to come out of it. I think maybe getting pregnant with Emma was what jumpstarted it. I started eating, quit drinking, started going to church. I did these things, not because I was sure that "health" was what I wanted, but because of my deep "mother's love" for my daughter. I had to take care of myself, to take care of her. A few more years would pass, bringing marriage and another baby along the way, before I really began to see that life without the eating disorder was possible, and worth fighting for.
I guess I'm still fighting. I have my ups and downs, but when I think back to where I used to be I realize how far I've come. It's like looking at a completely different person. When I look back I see a sad, desperate girl, acting out because she is afraid to face her feelings, desperately wanting help but unwilling to accept it, spinning her wheels in the mud that is the life that she created for herself.

I'm so glad I'm not her anymore.

this is me, being brave

Ok, so i was lying in bed last night thinking (I know, happens alot) and i just started to think about my life and what I really want out of life and what my goals are. So first goal: I want to be alive (duh!). Second goal: I want to be happy.

I used to think that being thin would make me happy. That the pursuit of thinness would add meaning to my life. I am just now facing the reality that I have spent the last 12 years of my life "thin" or in the pursuit of thinness and there has been little joy in it. What there has been is alot of pain, shame, missed opportunities, regrets, letting my loved ones down, ect. I have kept banging my head against the same old wall expecting different results and it has brought me nothing. i live in a constant sruggle of body, mind and spirit that exhausts me, and I find no fullfillment in it.

Could it be I am ready to really, finally give it up?

In order to give up this eating disorder, this WAY OF LIFE, I will have to be brave. I will have to be honest. If I hurt, I may have to cry. If I am lonely, I may have to search out a friend. If I am scared, or unsure, or having doubts, I will find a solution, a way to feel safe that does not include self-destructing until someone comes to rescue me. In other words, I will have to stand on my own two feet. I will have to take responsibilty for what I have made of my life, and do my best to make it better.

In many ways, it feels like I am just starting my life, or at least my adulthood. I've had the role of "sick" for so long that many things have been done for me and I have been able to avoid or get out of alot of responsibilities which should have been mine. What will it mean to me to be healthy? Will I lose my social security payments? That is something I have been terrified of. Can you believe I've been on disability since 2000? But I can't let it be a roadblock to being well anymore.

Of course, i am not expecting to make all these changes overnight. After all, this is a 16 year illness we are talking about. I can't just change into a well- adjusted, fully funcioning adult with a snap of the fingers. This is comforting, though. I know there will be people that are here to support me. I will still have a doctor and a therapist. The difference is, if I'm struggling emotionally, I'm not going to relapse and get sick enough until they know there is something wrong. I am going to USE MY VOICE and tell them what is bothering me, instead of playing some passive-agressive game. This might be hard for me, but hopefully in time it will be easier.

I do not live in a fantasy land where i think all my problems will go away just because I have decided they should. I still have a chemical imbalance which causes me to become deppressed and anxious. But starving, bingeing, and purging has made it much worse than it probably would be. My little dream is that if I eat healthfully, stop throwing up, and enjoy moderate excercise, i will be able to help myself feel better emotionally. Maybe then I could get off a few of the meds. And the ones that I would take would be more effective (especially if I wasn't throwing them up all the time).

This is my goal: to be healthy. ALIVE! THRIVING! I want my kids to be proud of me! Heck, I want to be proud of me!
To be honest, I'm so scared right now. What if I fail? It's easier not to try; to stay sick. Then I would never know if I could "hack it" or not.
But I have to try. For myself, for my family, my girlies, the dream of maybe a baby in the future. Oops did I say that out loud?
Here I go, into the unknown....

the truth is...

The truth is that I have been avoiding writing about Ed related stuff for a little bit because I have been going down the wrong path and basically was too ashamed to admit it, and a little bit afraid of what you all might say. I have been feeling a little bit like a traitor to the cause. Well, here goes....

I had decided to lose all the weight that I had gained this summer. You know, the good-healthy-I can eat normal food now with my family and have energy to do fun stuff-weight. I decided that I was just too fat to handle the "extra" weight anymore and desperatly wanted to lose all the weight and then some. So last week I bought a scale. I went to the library and got my number one ED book that always triggers me to lose weight (i know i know, ugh!). I began severely restricting my calories. I wasn't purging, just not eating. I made a conscious decision to adopt my anorexic behaviors again.

This lasted for several days. Durring this time I felt weak, dizzy, crappy, and spaced out. I was crabby with my family and short of patience. I thought about food all the time. I felt disconnected from everyone and everything. It was amazing how fast I got back to that place mentally where only the diet matters.

I began to have arrythmias, but I ignored them. Doubts crept in, but I shrugged them off. Thin was what i wanted, and thin I would be.

Then last night something changed. I was lying in bed (feeling crappy) and I really began to think about the last several days and I asked myself : Have I been happy? I had to admit that the answer was No. And isnt' that the whole point? To live your life in a way that makes you happy? In a way that connects you to the poeple that you love, and allows you to act in line with your values? And I wasn't doing that.

But, the anorexia voice said, when you get really thin you will be happy and nothing else will matter.
But, I thought, it might be a long time befor I "feel thin" enough to be happy about it. It could be months. Do I really want to live like this for months? i thought about this for awhile. i imagined what my life would be like if I were constantly starving and couldn't enjoy my children and sometimes didn't even have the energy to care for them and couldn't cope with anything because of constant low blood sugar and had brain fuzz and nothing left to put into my marriage ect ect. And then there is the whole "I could kill myself on accident doing this" thing. I cant even describe what a tragedy that would be in the life of my husband and children. I have no right to do that to them. I thought about the quote that Z put on her blog one time, from a child whose mother died of an ED. "I wish she loved me more than she hated herself". I thought about that long and hard. I pictured my childrens sweet faces. And I knew. I knew I loved them more. That clinched it.

I decided to stop. To just stop it all, to eat again. To accept that I dont like my body and just try to get over it. To realize that it would be a trade-off. I may not have the body I want, but I have life, family, happiness, energy, ect. I will inevitably have moments of despair when I look in the mirror. Yes, there may be weeping and knashing of teeth as I try on shirt after shirt and realize that nothing I put on is going to make me look the way i did ten years ago. But I will just have to live through it and move on.

You're weak! the ED voice said. You're weak and you are giving up!

No, I said. I am brave. I am choosing a path that may be emotionally painful. I am choosing to live imperfectly in an imperfect world. I AM BRAVE.

Today I nourished my body. It felt like finally breathing after holding my breath for a really long time.

progression and regression

I had a good look in the mirror today (naked, eww) and unfortunately my body image has taken a turn for the worse. But it's not really a concern over "would I look good in a bikini?" or anything like that. It's more of an emotional thing. Ok, I'll explain....
You know the whole theory about anorexia that says that the anorexic starves herself to avoid having a "grown up body", and the goal is to regress to a childhood form? Or something like that; I'm sure I didn't state it correctly but you get the idea. Well, for me it's the opposite.
As a child, I always had a soft, curvy, kind of chubby body. Thighs that were wide at the top, a stomach that stuck out, breasts before I hit middle school. I was awkward and insecure about my body, myself, and I was dealing with some pretty bad anxiety and deppression and also crap going on at home. When i developed anorexia in my teens, and then when it got worse as a young adult, I felt I was starving all those negative feelings away, growing up, becoming more sure of myself and adult and in control. Becoming my own person. When my anorexia gets bad, although I don't look it on the outside, on the inside I feel very powerful and "grown up", and when I look in the mirror that's what I see. Those are the feelings i associate with a sickly and underweight body.
So, as i begin to put on weight, my mental self-image actually regresses. Today when i looked in the mirror and saw the round tummy, the thick waist, the thighs that touch, even though it was a more shapely, womanly body, what I saw was a child. Myself at 12. Scared alone, consumed by fears and insecurities. A helpless, hopeless child. And all those feelings that i am terrified of came flooding back.
I want to run from it. I want to starve it away. I want to restrict until I become lean and hard and strong again. Until I am sure of who I am; until the scared little girl is gone.
I'm not going to, though. I can't make any promises about tommorrow, or next week, because i'm not sure how long i can tolerate this, but just for today, I will be brave. I don't want to be sick for the rest of my life, so I have to find a way to live with this body. If I keep starving it away when the feelings get too uncomfortable, I will never get well. I have to face this.

On a side note, my last post was post #100 on my blog. I just have to say that having this blog has helped me through so many rough times (today included) and i am so greatful for my blogger friends and for the courageous and wonderful people I have met, who support me, and who share their lives with complete strangers. I actually think that I have had more breakthroughs while blogging and reading blogs then i have had in therapy in a long time. So, thank you!

ED Head!

I am really struggling with the eating disorder thoughts. I want to lose weight now! Immedietly! I cant stand my body; I disgust myself! Grrrr!
I have therapy in a few minutes. I suppose I should explore this line of thinking with my T and try to figure out what is going on. One theory I have is that I am obsessing about food/weight/body as a coping mechanism to distract myself from worrying about Emma. Also, i have other stress: big birthday party for Chris, upcoming move, money stuff(always). It seems like when I am losing weight, nomatter what is going wrong in my life, it doesn't matter because at least I am doing "good" with my weight. By "good" I mean bad of course, you know, unhealthy.
I feel like in alot of ways I have never really grown up. I am still stuck using the same behaviors and thinking the same thoughts i did when I was 13. I want to feel mature, strong, powerful, effective, responsible, and capable. Instead I feel scared, unsure, incapable, and helpless. I run from these feelings into the false safety of the eating disorder. But i know the ED is just an illusion of control and autonomy. In the end, it will keep me dependent and weak. So why do I keep going there?

grattitude and challenge(s) update

I just have to say that i am so full of joy and happiness and love, due mostly to the wonderful support and comments i got on my last post. The last 2 days i feel as though a weight has lifted, and i have been walking around with a spring in my step. i know that sounds corny, but it's true. It was an amazing feeling to have people i didn't even know (and people i did know) reach out to me and tell me they understood me and cared about me! So, thank you!

I know i mentioned last week that i would be doing "food challenges" once a week on thursdays and would be accountable on this blog. Well, i had to move this week's challenge to tonight because tonight we are going to chuckie cheese for my daughter annie's 3rd birthday and we will be having cake and pizza, which will be a huge challenge for me. There is no amount of cake and pizza that feels ok to me, any amount feels like a binge. And i definately do not want to be throwing up at my little girls birthday party; that thought is just too sad. SO, i thought this would be a good opportunity to practice eating some "fear foods" in moderation. That's why i didn't do a challenge on thursday; two challenges in one week is too much for even a badass such as myself :) . Especially when, really, eating in general every day is still a challenge.

Oh, and the best for last: I have not purged since last tuesday! :) :) :) !

finally- some success!

Good news! After 2 days of following my contract yet still engaging in behaviors *ahempurgingahem*, I had a purge-free day yesterday! An so far today has been good, too. And i have to give myself extra creit because there has been so much Easter cany around, and i do pick at it here and there, but i havent binged on it or anything. Oh- an i did add crunchy veggies and lowfat dip to my mp if i wanted them in place of apples, cause i was craving some to go with my soda and i didnt want to wait till sunday to change it on the contract and its MY contract anyway! Thats not cheating, is it? Because it's a healthy addition, not an unhealthy one.

Here's something i struggle with, though. I'm trying to get rid of the bulimia with my whole heart but there is a part of me that doesnt want to let go of the anorexia. And (deep breath) this is REALLY embarrassing to admit, but a big part of me really wants to stop purging because then it will be easier for me to restrict and lose weight. THERE. I said it out loud. So, how do I change this? I guess i need to figure out what the anorexia is doing for me; what need it is fulfilling that isn't being fulfilled in a health way. Cause it must serve some sort of purpose, otherwise i wouldnt still be "doing" it.

I think that changing therapists is a really healthy move for me. I don't have my first appointment with Hope until next week, but when i do see her, i think i am going to be really honest and just tell her about the feelings i just wrote about , because that is what i really need to work on. For years i have been "trying" recovery while still maintaining parts of my eating disorder that served me. I need to figure out why and truly give it all up so i can have a lastiing, meaningful recovery and a real life.