Before Puzzle’s walk

I am waiting a bit before heading out, because according to weather dot com, the rain will end shortly. Meanwhile, I have brushed Puzzle’s teeth and put my shoes on.  We are ready.  We are waiting.  We are hungry for our walk.

Over the past week I have watched my body and lived in it while it restored itself.  I kept records of the changes, as I always do.  This morning my blood pressure is closer to “normal” than it has been in months.  My pulse has dropped 25-30 points and is now what it usually is.

I am thankful to free my body of the drug that raised both my blood pressure and pulse to a rate that was far from normal for me, and caused me great alarm.   But I have also made some other necessary changes to the way I live.  I discovered what I needed to do through experimentation at first, until one day, I fell into a groove, a place that feels okay for me.

At some point I’ll speak aloud what happened to me, but for now, I think I need to keep it to myself.

Something like this happened to me once before.  I had a sudden shift, and felt changes in me.  Of course, people like me have shifts and changes all the time.  Life is all about shifts and changes.  But the time that this happened before, I knew within days that I was stepping into something brand new that was scary and different and colorful, and with that, stepping out of the hell I’d been living in.

They tell you that these changes don’t happen overnight.  Is this a rule?   As a writer, it is my duty to break every rule.  Likewise, my tendency to live my life a bit contrary to convention is what works best for me.

Last night I read my records from around the time of my 40th birthday.  I have always said I suddenly got well on my birthday.  I said I woke up and was free.

So I flipped the pages, one by one, and got to January 8th,  my birthday, and no, there wasn’t really a change.  I wondered if I had made it all up, just a fairy tale in my mind.  I flipped the pages further.

I got to January 11th, three days later.  That morning, I woke up different.  It’s all true.   Without much question, I found myself headed on a different path that day.  What I am not remembering correctly is the exact date of this shift.  But I don’t think it’s very important.   We have feelings about birthdays, especially “landmark” birthdays such as my 40th, much as we might tell ourselves that these dates are arbitrary.  I was ill then and in a bad way, and a big party would have felt very out of place.  Instead, I received something that would last longer than a few hours of cake and cards and hugs from people I hardly ever see: I received a new life.

They say that when you start to get better, you are the last person to recognize it.  I think I broke that rule as well.  I took a few steps and waited a while and tested my limbs, and yes, everything is working about how it should.  I guess I’ll keep on walking now.

Terror on Puzzle’s walk

What once was the high point of my day has now become a nightmare.   I had to get Puzzle out early today for fear that if I waited too long, I wouldn’t be able to wear anything to cover my body over the clothes I was already wearing.  I was up at 4am and should have thought about things then.  I should have taken her out when I had the chance to do so.  Instead, it was already past 7:30 and the world was awake.  People were awake.  This was going to suck.

My back was killing me.  All of the food that was stuffed into my stomach from bingeing not too many hours ago was pressing against my lower spine.  I tried not to think about my stomach.  The pressure of uncomfortable jeans that less than a week ago were loose and felt like my friend made my back feel worse.

I thought about living in my size XXXL black fleece vest, the vest that hides my body because it’s so big that it covers up my belly, doesn’t show anything…well, this is the way it is going to be all summer, I guess.  The vest has pockets and I can keep what I need for Puzzle’s walks in the pockets.  I love my thick jumper dress, too, the one I wore yesterday, cuz when the wind blows, the dress is so thick that  it doesn’t wrap around my thighs and “show” how thick they are.  No one has to know.  But the dress’s pockets aren’t big enough to hold everything I need to carry.

This summer, hey, I’m not going to be wearing a belt pack, you know?  Then again, it’s still April.  Maybe I’ll get a handle on this bingeing by summer.  On the other hand, maybe I’ll be dead way before then.

So Puzzle and I slipped out the door.  I’m scared to listen to headphones now.  I don’t want the memories.  I don’t want people looking at me and remembering me and saying, “There’s that girl with the headphones and the dog.  She used to be so skinny.  What happened to her?”

For a while, I listened to Talking Heads.  Remain in Light.  I listened to that album hoping it would make me skinny again just like before, make me 80-1/2 pounds all over again.

All this time, I have been trying and trying to bring back the starvation days.  I have wanted it back.  That is why I listened to the music.

I keep on trying to starve myself, and if this bingeing will stop, I will succeed.  But it fucking doesn’t stop.

Puzzle and I hurry past the neighbors’ yard, the one where they hate dogs.  Last night in the middle of the night I let her pee on their lawn, but this morning, undoubtedly they’re peeking outside and have their little eyes glued on us.  These people, at least, are more obsessed with Puzzle’s peeing than they are with my weight.  We move on.  I let Puzzle relieve herself just past their lawn.

Eventually, we arrive at an intersection.  I once went uphill, but this morning I won’t go that route.  Too many good memories.  I was so overjoyed on that street.  Not anymore.  Now I obsess and obsess.  I can’t deal with that right now.  I turn in the other direction.  Here is a nice stretch of land on both sides of the sidewalk where Puzzle sniffs and no one has ever complained.  Not only that, but these are not fussy homeowners who lean out their windows and scream obscenities at Puzzle.

I remember when that happened last winter.  It may have been even before that.  The house has been torn down and rebuilt since then.  It was some old, old guy, older than the rickety, worn-out house.  He said, “Get that fucking dog off my yard!”  He slammed the window shut.  Since then, for a long time afterward, he banged on the third floor window every time we walked by.

It could have been far worse.  He could have called me fat.

I realized that we’d made a circle.  If we continued, we’d end up going straight past the front of my building.  Well, no way.  Not with my freaking neighbors sitting out front gossiping.  Undoubtedly they were sitting out there and had started up already, the English-speaking on one side, the non-English speaking on the other.

I decided to turn around.  Like fast.  Even before we got a chance, there was traffic up ahead.  I realized that I was dangerously close to the Housing Authority employee parking lot.  It was way, way too close to 8:30, when the office opens up.  Anything much past 8am is a risk.  I will be seen.  I made a mad dash to the rear.  We retraced our steps.

Eventually, Puzzle and I arrived at the back parking lot again.  It was getting too dangerous, too populated.  I had to walk past the laundry room, but thankfully, no one was there.  Up the elevator, empty, thankfully, no one to look at me and say to themselves, “She gained weight.”

The challenge from the elevator back to my apartment is walking dangerously close to the hall gossipers and the housing offices and the general main floor hubbub.

Any person is too many people for my comfort.  But hasn’t it been this way, like, for years?  Like since I was twenty-two, scared of humans?  Just plain ashamed to be alive at all, like I didn’t deserve to take up space?

Excuse me Julie, hate to clue you in to this, but you exist, like, way, way too much.

I made it past the offices without incident, and hurried past the hall.  Last night, someone knocked on my door, some neighbor.  Puzzle barked, but I didn’t answer the door.  The person knew I was home.  I have the right not to answer my door, you asshole.

The person who knocked was begging for help.  I waited until he left and knocked on another neighbor’s door, again begging for help.  He said he had a fire in his apartment.  This has happened before.  He is blind.  He thinks he has set his apartment on fire.  The first time, I went in there and looked and assured him that there was no fire.

I have learned that this is a regular occurrence.  He panics, runs into the hall, bangs on doors, and hollers about this to anyone who will listen and come to his aid.

I am only now thinking about this.  As long as we continue to do this and baby him, this behavior will continue, too.  They test and test our fire and smoke alarms ad nauseum.  He needs to learn to trust his.

Not everyone has an easy life, I guess.

I arrived at my door, and quickly slipped inside.  Home at last.  I fed Puzzle, remembering that yes, I ate some of her food last night as part of my binge. Sucks.  I’m going to have to switch her to something that no way will I ever eat myself, just to keep ALL possible binge food out of the house.  This is going to include just about every single food there is except things that take a very long time to cook, or, rather, anything I can put into my mouth, chew, and swallow.  I’m considering feeding her that raw meat diet because I can’t deal with dry dog food sitting around for me to binge on day in, day out, available to me.  I’ll take my chances that I won’t cook the raw meat and eat it myself.  Just give it a try and see.

I need to do this to keep Puzzle from becoming an orphan.

She ate her food.  Fast.  It is the same as always.  Such a simple creature.  Of course she has no clue why the rest of the bag disappears so fast.

I took off my clothes.  Size XXXL vest.  Jeans, shoes, socks.  All I had on now was my oversized t-shirt, the one I slept in, and a pair of underpants.  I asked myself how long it will be before I have to go up an underwear size.  Naw, I’d kill myself before that.

I am safe, though.  No one has to see me, until I have to take Puzzle out…again.

My life over the past week, in more detail than some of you would like, perhaps

As I have previously stated, my brain doesn’t work properly.  This is going to impede my ability to write this article, but I will do my best.  I have been sitting here a while, in fact, knowing exactly what I wanted to write, but somehow, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do.  Then, I figured it out:  Write.

I plan to be specific, detailed, and graphic.  I may use numbers that specify my weight or pounds lost or gained, calories, and other things people count and measure.  I will mention specific foods.  I will describe in detail some very sick and dangerous things that I have done.  I will talk about body parts.  I will quote some of my negative self-talk.  I think a lot of readers, whether they have an eating disorder or not, will find this article disturbing.  I am not writing this for the purpose of disturbing people.  Actually, I hope you read this.  I am writing it for two purposes: first of all, as always, to tell the world just how insidious this illness can be, and also to share my story because I know now that I am not the only one who engages in these insane behaviors.  I know that there are others, and I know that perhaps some folks reading this may recognize that they experience some of the same things that I do.  No, you are not alone!  I am right here with you.  I guess you could say I have a third purpose in writing this, and that is the simple joy of getting something written.

I suspect that my blog upsets people.  I have an upsetting life, and this is why people don’t want to be friends with me.  It’s too painful to be around me.  I cry all the time and don’t eat, and a lot of the time, I talk nonsense.  But I’m happy that I don’t have a political blog.  There are so many political blogs out there, angry political blogs, and others that are not so angry.  I am a child of the 60′s when everyone was angry and political.  Some grew out of it and some never did.  I never got into it in the first place.  If you read here in my blog about my childhood, perhaps you can understand why, and perhaps this explains why I have a minimal amount of political material here in my blog.  The only way that I get political is when I get revved up about the way society treats people with mental illnesses, and the general ignorance in society about eating disorders.  In sharing my upsetting life here in this upsetting blog, I hope to break down some of that ignorance.  I am a real, 54-year-old woman and I really do experience these things.  See me.  Hear me.  Believe me.

Maybe I’ll start with last Saturday, the 21st of January.   I woke up exhausted and the first thing in my head was, “Ugliest fat stomach you can imagine.”  I hadn’t eaten for a couple of days.  Today was going to be another.  I peed, then weighed myself.  Upon seeing the number, I said to myself, “Gross.”  All day, I was in a bad, bad bitchy-headache mood so intense and angry that I found myself unable to write.  Believe it or not, this bitchy-headache mood is unusual.  I was turning into an anger machine.  I didn’t realize it, but I was very quickly becoming depressed.

I came home from the library having produced nothing.  Out of curiosity, I took my vital signs.  Because of this antidepressant I take, my pulse runs high, around 94, and my blood pressure runs a little high as well, the diastolic around 85.  Now that I think of it, my antidepressant has probably saved my life by keeping my pulse from dropping super low like it was last summer, although I got readings in the 40′s a month ago.  Saturday night it was 54, but my blood pressure was as usual.  I kept my fingers crossed that I would feel okay tomorrow, okay enough to get myself to church.  I hoped, also, that I wouldn’t feel faint in church.

Sunday morning I awoke at 4:30.  Before weighing myself, I guessed my weight.  I was right on the mark.  I had lost three and a half pounds since yesterday.  But within minutes, I was in that same bitchy-headache mood…again.  I returned to bed to try to shake this awful feeling.  Sleep helped.  I was able to get to church, and that, too, helped a great deal.  I find that church calms me in a way that nothing else can.  Church is also exhilarating and energizing.   My headache was gone afterward.  As I walked home, I still felt like I was a walking clenched fist, but I said to myself that at least I recognized that fist.  If only I could rid myself of this anger!  I stole off to the library as quickly as I could and got a bit done on my book, then came home.

By now I’m sure I recognized that the anger in me was the same non-stop anger that I felt in October, the feeling I had that both preceded and accompanied the severe depression I went through at that time.  I couldn’t tell you how long the depression lasted.  The eating binges that went along with the depression were horrific.  At that time, the answer was indeed a pill.  I’m still taking that pill.  Has it stopped working?  Or am I so malnutritioned that whatever pill I take won’t make a difference anyway?

I think it was around 8pm, Sunday night.  My memory is a little spotty.  I’m kind of blanked out on the vegetables.  I hadn’t eaten for several days.  I had some lettuce, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts in the fridge.  I told myself that lettuce was very high in calories and that it would be better to eat cabbage if I were to eat solid food at all.  I measured a little in a measuring cup, and wrote down the calories.  I did this again.  Then I broke into the entire bag, sat down leaning over it, and threw handfuls of shredded cabbage into my mouth.  The dog ate what fell onto the floor.

Either it took several hours to eat all these vegetables, or I lost time and went into a confused state for a while.  I’m sure it was past 11 when I went wandering into the hall.  No one was out there.  No one saw.  I had with me a small empty opaque bag and a small bag of miscellaneous trash to throw out.  I tried the second floor trash room first.  The trash room door is heavy, and the overhead lights make a tell-tale squeal as soon as you turn them on.  The barrels were just about empty.  Just cigarette boxes in a plastic bag.  I exited and closed the door behind me as quietly as I could.  There had been no elevator activity during the past few minutes.  I pressed the “Up” button, hoping no one was awake on the third floor.  What excuse could I make for being up there?  But the third floor was as dead as the second.  Nothing had been left on the table in the hallway for scroungers.  In the trash room I spotted a small bag with two small, heavy, rectangular boxes inside.  Candy.  Chocolate, probably.  Uneaten.  My treasure.  One of the boxes had been broken into by mice.  The cardboard box had been chiseled into sawdust by tiny teeth in spots, revealing the candies, and they were indeed chocolate.  I would have to be careful not to let the sawdust spill in transport.  I tossed out my actual trash, which I was carrying just as an excuse to venture into a trash room, and placed the bag of candy into my empty opaque bag.  No one saw me return to my apartment.

Brandy-filled chocolate, expensive type, real booze, alcohol included.  Only a couple of pieces had been completely devoured by mice.  Three or four had been partially bitten into.  These I tossed out, hoping that I wouldn’t dig into the trash later on and retrieve them.  There were easily forty pieces in the box that I ate.  I found the brandy repulsive.  The chocolate was chocolate like any other.  The smaller box was outdated and the inner brandy had completely evaporated.  The chocolate was discolored, stale, and brittle.  Some was so hard that it cut into my mouth as I tried to chew it.  I tried not to think about my unsuspecting third-floor neighbor who had tossed out these chocolates.  I never even knew who lived on the third floor.  Now, I really didn’t want to know.  I wrapped up the empty boxes and threw them out in the second floor trash room, put on my coat, and went out.  Frozen pizza, bread, peanut butter, a pound of cheese, sour cream, chocolate-covered raisins, cookies, I don’t remember what else.  I ate.  I collapsed on the bed.

In the middle of the night sometime, something happened that even now slips in and out of memory.  I experienced severe leg and foot cramps.  I have heard that cramps of this sort arise out of nutritional issues.   At the time, I thought that the cramping would never, ever end, that I would be permanently in a state of immobility and pain, lying on my bed, trying to work out the knots and kinks that deep down I knew had been caused by my own inability to feed myself reasonably like everyone else.

Yes, I was fully aware that I was overwhelming my body in more ways than the binge itself.  My digestive system hadn’t seen food, or any calories, for days and couldn’t handle anything solid.  I should have had spoonfuls of vegetable juice to start off with, every few hours or so, awakening my body.  There is indeed such thing as being in a starvation state.  It’s no myth.  Because I hadn’t eaten, ingesting anything more than the tiniest amounts of nutrients to start with was putting a strain on my heart and my entire body.

That night, I awoke, stuffed myself, and collapsed again, several times.  It was somewhere during this process, probably during the brief moment before losing consciousness, that I realized, each time, that it was unlikely that I’d wake up again.

Monday morning.  Therapy today.  I can’t do this.  I canceled both appointments last week and I feel pressured to go in.  Just can’t imagine going in like this.  I e-mailed my T, not knowing what to say.  I went back to bed.

I dragged myself to my appointment.  I dragged myself home.  I went back to bed.

If anything happened food-wise Monday, it went unrecorded and forgotten.  Or maybe I can’t even think about it all.

I awoke at 4 or 4:30am or so Tuesday, and found my browser pointed to dunkindonuts dot com to find out which shop opened first.  Mount Auburn Street opened at 5, Main Street at 5:30.  Mount Auburn Street was farther away.  The route back was all back roads, dimly lit, so I wouldn’t be seen.  The only other time I’d been there was late at night, so the chances of being recognized by an employee were next to nil.  But Main Street was so much closer.  I had to walk on a main road and cross at a major intersection, but very few people were out to begin with.  Most of the customers at Dunkin Donuts at this time of morning are in a hurry to get to work, and the chances of seeing someone I knew, such as a former neighbor, weren’t too great.  If I did, I would scoot out of there fast.  I brought with me two large bags.

Dunkin Donuts has packaging for a dozen donuts that’s about as idiotic as you can imagine.   It’s a flat box.  The dozen donuts lie flat out next to each other, face up, on display, instead of nestled side-by-side sensibly in a brick-shaped box.  This flat box will pop open unless you ask the employee to put “stickers” on it.  They have to use stickers because they have no tape.  Undoubtedly, the employee will only put on one sticker, or will put the stickers on incorrectly, and the box will pop open anyway if you don’t instruct the employee properly.  In the past, I have had the box pop open and donuts have fallen on the floor.  I ate them anyway.

But the main problem with this idiotic box is not that it pops open.  It’s that you have to walk around with it.  There’s nothing to cover it.  Sure, Dunkin Donuts has a big bag for it every now and then that they might offer you, but it says “Dunkin Donuts” on it, so what’s the use?  If you’re carrying the box, everyone knows.  If you’re carrying something in a huge Dunkin Donuts bag, everyone knows.  If you’re walking around with anything resembling a flat box and carrying it flat, by god it’s either pizza or Dunkin Donuts and I don’t want my neighbors seeing me walk into my apartment with either of these.  Especially the dozen donuts.

That’s where the two bags came in handy.  One bag for the stupid flat box.  The box fit perfectly.  The other bag for the four pumpkin muffins.  The employee hardly paid attention to me, just did her job.  She wasn’t even awake yet.

I don’t know how long it took me to devour all this.  The donuts were gone in one sitting, but I slowed down on the muffins.  I was in bed for the rest of the day, seriously depressed.

It must have been after the rest of the East Coast had finished supper that I began to consider hospitalization.  Of course, the hospital would do nothing for me.  But at least I’d get a break from this.  Maybe a couple of days.  At most hospitals, they just put you down, call you “chronic,” misdiagnose you, laugh at you behind your back, shake their heads, and when they send you along your way, they say, “See you next time.”  Well, fuck them.  I could try to get into the place I was in in September.  They didn’t once laugh at me.  They were so kind to me that I cried because I felt like I didn’t deserve it.

I must have picked up the phone, stared at it, or dialed it and then hung up, or dialed wrong, maybe twenty times, and then gave up.  I fell asleep.  I woke up and called the crisis team.  I always question myself when I call them.  They are a funny bunch.  I’ve had varying experiences calling them.  The service used to be run by another company, and before that, yet another company was running it, but I’m not exactly certain.  There was a point at which pretty much anyone who answered the phone would give me the same answer.  This was several years ago.  “We don’t know anything about eating disorders.  That is a medical issue.  Go to the emergency room.”  That was basically what I’d get.  Then there was a time that I’d call them, and the minute I’d open my mouth and say half a word, I mean half, not a whole word even, they’d say, “This is not an emergency.”  They’d give me the number of this patient-run “warm-line” to call.  No way am I going to call this number and talk to someone that I might know out of my past life as a mental patient from, say, twenty years ago.  They were just as fucked up as I was and I don’t want to remember them or associate with them.  So if I call the crisis team, I risk the “We don’t know about ED” or “This is not an emergency” responses, but recently I did get a very amusing response from a crisis team person.  At the time, though, I didn’t find it funny.  Starvation has its way of slowing down my thinking and my speech.  Sometimes, my speech is a little slurred, and that combined with the occasional difficulty I have pronouncing some consonants due to missing molars…well you guessed it.  The crisis person told me to call back when I was sober, and hung up.  So I sat there with the phone in my hand for a long time, but that night I did call, and someone useful answered the phone.  Not only that, she wrote down my stats, so the next person I speak with will know a few things before calling me a drunkard and hanging up on me.  We worked out a plan, just some simple things I’d try to get done in the next hour or two, and then I’d call them back.

I never got even the simplest thing on the list done.  I felt like the depression alone would make me drop dead.  But the phone rang.  Late.  I assumed it was a telemarketer.   But my called ID said that it was my therapist.  Really?  No human being had called me in ages.  It was late and I could almost see the lifeline, from me, to her voice.

My therapist and I haven’t communicated, or shall I say I have been pulling away from her, since maybe October, or November, or maybe I should say starting in October, then a little more in November when I went to London, then in mid-December you could say there was this complete split.  She went on vacation and I thought I’d be dead by the time she came back.  I still don’t know what to do about the split.  But there she was, on the phone.  I told her I was surprised that she was calling because I thought she only cared about the patients who were motivated to do well and get better.

She said she cares very much about me.

I knew, right then, that she was telling the truth.

As I write these words I remember that last summer when I was at Mass General (the “Prestigious Boston Hospital”) and in such a weakened state that I couldn’t even get out of bed, weighing eighty pounds, dehydrated and malnourished, my brain slowed and confused, refusing to eat, my heart rate at times dipping under thirty beats per minute….She was there.  She came every day.  This is my therapist.

We talked for several minutes.  She asked me not to cancel my appointment with my PCP, Dr. K, tomorrow, Wednesday, even though it had been my plan to cancel everything that week.  I normally have therapy on Thursday, but this week, my T is in New York for a training or conference or something like that.  I agreed to show up for my appointment with Dr. K, whom I see weekly.  Or at least I’m supposed to see her weekly.

I awoke Wednesday and promised myself cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye that I wouldn’t eat today.  I peed and weighed myself.  I had gained nine and a half pounds in three days.

Then I looked in the mirror at my fat face.  Perhaps there was a quarter inch of added flesh on my cheeks.  I could feel it when I moved my mouth and bit down and smiled.  Chubby face.  A couple of days of not eating, or eating next to nothing, and the fat cheeks would be gone.  I tried getting myself showered and dressed, but my mind slipped into starvation madness.  I repeatedly begged myself to stay sane, but it wasn’t within my control.  It took hours to get ready to see Dr. K, just to get dressed, get Puzzle out, brush my teeth.

In the cab, I knew I was useless for conversation.  I usually try to talk about things.  The traffic, the weather, previous customers.  Do you think I should have brought my umbrella?  We’ve been lucky this January.  But I was silent.  It didn’t matter because my mind was talking up a storm.

I tipped the driver generously, and got out at my doctor’s office.  They were having some kind of pizza or burritos or something at the office for someone’s birthday.  Not only that, but they were eating these huge pieces of pizza and burritos.  I told my doctor that I had turned 54, much to my surprise.  She gave me a hospital gown to put on once I’d taken my clothes off.  If your mind doesn’t work right, this undressing and dressing process can be long and involved and experimental and fascinating and have lots of stuff in it worth writing down.

Dr. K checked everything and asked a lot of questions.  She weighed me even though I didn’t want her to.  Of course I hadn’t eaten all day, but I’d had a heck of a lot of water to drink, and I admitted this to her.  Apparently I drank a half gallon that morning.  For me, that’s not particularly extreme or much to be concerned about.  I’m not supposed to do that before getting weighed, though.  I told Dr. K that I had been incredibly thirsty.  She said that’s okay.  I think she was more worried about other stuff.  Like my overall deterioration.  She asked me if I was going to be okay going home.  I said I would.  I went to the lab to have my blood drawn.  They remember me at that lab, or at least they remember the good vein I have in my left arm.  I am always polite and kind to them.  It’s important to be polite and kind to people.

Much later, I was in the library, finishing my writing.  I had been there a few hours.  I don’t think it was yet closing time, but I decided to leave because I didn’t want to dig into a different project.  I was satisfied with what I had written and decided it was okay enough to leave alone for now.  I started to pack up.  I stood.  I immediately felt faint, but this wasn’t postural hypotension, which is the sudden lowering of blood pressure upon rising.  I know this feeling and I’m generally not prone to it.  Then, all at once, confusion, and fear because I didn’t even know where I was!  Was I in a hospital?  Where was Puzzle?  Where were my glasses?  I knew I had to get out of there.

I don’t know what it was about the opening of the automatic sliding doors and the cold, fresh air on my face that awakened me and brought me back a bit closer to sanity and away from the disorientation that I had felt.  At least I had found my way out of the library.   But when I got to the sidewalk, instead of turning right to go home, I turned left, to the CVS.  Using my CVS coupon, I purchased two frozen pizzas (I was rather fussy about which brand frozen pizza to get) and an 8-oz bag of candy.  These I carried in a large canvas shopping bag.  I often see people I know in CVS, neighbors, frequently.  I make a habit of “casing the joint” upon entering that store, going up and down the aisles looking for familiar faces.  If I see one, I bolt out of there and buy nothing.  This includes if I’m just going there for toothpaste.  But I saw no familiar faces this time.   I closed the canvas bag tightly in my hand when I left the store so no one would see the pizzas.  As soon as I was at a safe distance, I removed the bag of candy from the canvas bag, ripped off the top, opened the zip-lock, and placed it in my jacket pocket.  It fit perfectly, with no tell-tale wrapper showing.  The candy was “for the road.”  It was ideal for this purpose.  No melting on my hands.  No embarrassing brown chocolate on my lips.  Soft enough not to rip up my gums.  And no crumbs.

I stopped at Tedeschi’s, too.  Thankfully, the cashier was one that I didn’t think had me pinned as a binge eater…yet, anyway.  I purchased foods that are totally non-suspect: a loaf of 12-grain bread, peanut butter (18-oz, bargain brand, smooth, can’t stand crunchy), a pound of sour cream, a pound of elbow pasta.  Basically the same as Monday.

Several hours later, it is clear to me that my stomach is filled about as full as it ever has been, ever.  We’re talking about not only a thirty-two-year history of this bingeing behavior, but a gradual weakening of the stomach wall due to stomach cell necrosis.  The reason that the stomach cells die is because the stomach has been stretched to the limit so many times, and this causes cutting off of the blood supply to stomach cells, so they die.  Dead cells don’t stretch.  They are brittle.  They break instead.  This is why each time my stomach is stretched, the risk of stomach rupture is greater.

Yes, I knew the risk, and I knew I was in danger.  So what did I do?  I drank a couple of glasses of water.  Yes, I filled my stomach further.  Stupid?  I suppose.  I was thirsty.  Extremely thirsty.

I knew damned well that all it would take would be an involuntary yawn and it would be all over.

I lay down.  Within thirty seconds, I was asleep.

You see, I don’t want to die of a stomach rupture.  I don’t want to die with a wicked huge belly.  I don’t want to die in a binge.  I don’t want to die with binge food all over my kitchen counter.  I don’t want to be remembered as one who died from pigging out.

That was a lot, lot, lot of food I bought Wednesday evening.  I didn’t finish it until Thursday at around 4pm.  I spent Thursday in bed.

All day Thursday, my stomach remained stretched to the limit.  Let me describe it to you.  I am talking about a round belly, sticking out on three of four sides, a little different from nine months pregnant but definitely just as big or bigger than pregnant considering it was on the sides as well.  The pressure was very uncomfortable.  That’s not exactly the word for it…I’d say the pressure was unbearable, as was the stretching feeling.  If I could have thrown up everything that was inside my stomach I surely would have, for comfort’s sake, but I’ve never been able to do this.  Probably sometime when I was a child, I trained myself to suppress the reflex to vomit.  Not only that, I’ve suppressed the memory of why I’ve suppressed the reflex.  I’ve even tried Ipacac and was miserable for hours and hours and hours…then a little spittle, nothing more….I only did that once.  But back to my stomach….I would have taken a photo, but posting it would have been in poor taste and would have shown parts of my body I’d rather not have posted online.

The rest of my body was not nearly as shocking, or at least not to the ordinary eye, or so I would imagine, but still, I found it disturbing enough in my own eyes.  My arms were still skinny skinny skinny anorexic, the last remaining holdouts.  I found it extremely disturbing that my ribs were rapidly disappearing, both in front and over my entire back.  My collarbones didn’t protrude as much as I wanted; in fact, there was quite a bit of change in this area.  Thankfully, there wasn’t much change in my hands or wrists…yet.  And my legs were downright awful.  The chronic edema I have is bad enough and follows no pattern, not really.  I can starve for ages and consume no salt and still have edema.  Today, my ankles didn’t bulge over my shoes, but my socks made huge ugly dents in my calves.  Edema doesn’t hurt at all but it does ruin my self-esteem.  My entire legs were thick with it.  My thighs were an added two or three inches in thickness.  That’s a lot on a short skinny person.

Ultimately, it was because of my huge stomach that I couldn’t wear clothes Thursday.  Nothing fit.  I would have had to wear nine months pregnant maternity clothes, and I’m not certain that those would have fit because the bulging was on three sides, not just in front.  I couldn’t go out in pajamas and I couldn’t go out looking like this.  I ended up putting a long coat over pajamas to take Puzzle out.  This was the only reason I would need to leave the apartment, and surely, I wouldn’t leave the apartment for any other reason!  I had pajama bottoms sort of hung under my huge belly and over my butt and hoped for the best.  On top I wore one of my large, large shirts that I’ve kept over the years.  Many of these I threw out because I couldn’t tolerate the memories of being nearly two hundred pounds.  Those shirts…it was too painful to look at them…I couldn’t stand it.  But there were others that I kept that are huge but I don’t have the same association for whatever reason.  I sleep in them many nights.  I made a quick exit out the back door, and entered back into the building as quickly as possible with Puzzle, looking at no one.  If it were summer, I don’t know what I would have done.  I couldn’t have hidden a belly like that.

I believe I slept for a period of four hours, from 9pm Thursday until 1am Friday, and awoke feeling that something had changed.  What was this?  I had weighed myself Wednesday morning, chastised myself for my fat face, and vowed that I would not eat all day.  Then, of course, I broke this vow.  Fell flat on that fat face I hated so much.  Why, now, did I want to go through all this again and weigh myself and find some body part to criticize, again?  Wasn’t this what my mother did to me all my life?  Even after I left “home” for good, she always picked a body part of mine, heck, any body part she could think of, and beat it to bits with her commentary.  What is the point of this?  Why play her game?

Fuck the scale.  It didn’t matter if I stepped on it or not, after all.  I decided to step on it.  Between Sunday at 4:30am and Friday at 1am, that is, Thursday night late, I had gained eighteen pounds.

I was now a reasonable weight for my height.  Hah!  Did I feel reasonable?  I felt absolutely miserable physically.  My stomach felt pressure all around and stretched to the limit, my back was killing me from pressure, my bowels felt stuffed, my whole body stuffed with crap, I had a headache, and was miserably carbed 0ut, overheated from metabolism overdrive, and depressed.  I wasn’t even thinking about the eighteen pounds.  This was a given.

It was 1am and something had changed.  Even before stepping on the scale, I knew I had reached a point of turnaround.  I felt it in the air around me and inside me.  Not only that, but I was going to talk about what had happened to me this week.  I felt that by sharing my story, I might help someone feel less alone.  I began this blog entry.  For four hours or so, I wrote.  It was rather tough and slow going.  I daydreamed a lot and got distracted and deleted stuff.  Eventually, I got tired and slept.

I awoke much later and weighed three pounds less.  I knew I needed more sleep.  Several hours later I awoke and had lost another pound and a half.  Another hour later I’d lost another pound and a half.  Somewhere in there, my mind went.  Despite this, I was able to write at the library, that is, work on this blog entry for four hours at the library.  I had hoped to work on it more at home, but ended up goofing off instead.  I weighed myself before bed.  In roughly twenty-four hours, I’d lost nine pounds.

Saturday morning, I was clinically skinny.  I was also no longer depressed.  I determined that this depression “phase,” if you will, was most likely over.  Good riddance!  Today would be the second day that I would be up and out of bed!

Ah, the joy of starvation….It does indeed feel good….

Today is Sunday, the 29th of January.  I have been to church and now I’m at the library.  I feel really terrific.  I’m still working out the kinks in my sleep, because I was asleep all week 24/7, and switching to “normal” hours, that is, awake all day, asleep at night is certainly a switch for me.  In less than three days I have taken off sixteen pounds of the eighteen I gained between Sunday and Thursday, from massive bingeing.

Yes, I warned you readers that I was going to get technical and use “numbers” in this entry.  I was going to get real and show you exactly how I think.  I think about these numbers.  I think about these numbers all the time.  I know at eating disorders sites they don’t let contributors use numbers and that posts are “edited” and the numbers are either taken out or the posts with numbers are completely deleted.  This is my blog.  I run the show here.  And no, this is not a pro whatever blog.  I am just being me.  This has been my world for thirty-two years.  Sometimes things have been a lot, lot better, but since sometime in 2008, I relapsed, and haven’t been able to get out of this nightmare.  We, that is, you and I, don’t know what will happen next.  I have heard some awesome miracle stories, absolutely amazing stories, people nanoseconds before being placed into their graves rising up, defying all odds and attaining what seems like the impossible.  Not just with anorexia nervosa necessarily or mental illnesses in general, but any illness, I have read amazing stories of regaining health.  I’m not sure what the real pattern is to it, what the unifying factor is….Money?  Good insurance?  Supportive family or partner?  Faith?  Something else?   I’m sure some of you are positive that you know the answer to this…think again.  It is not so simple, because everyone is different.

If we were all alike, we could get our miracle cure instructions from vending machines.  There would be a one-size-fits-all religion.  There would be no need for political arguments because we would all think alike.  We wouldn’t even need to vote because we’d all agree on everything.  There wouldn’t be a 1% and we’d all be occupying Wal-Mart.  Eeks!  I don’t even know what Wal-Mart looks like!  I’ve never been to one!  Maybe that’s my problem….

Today the minister’s sermon was called “Occupy Watertown.”  It was about the wealthy and the rest of us in the community, and how disturbing it is that the split seems to be increasing.  I think one of the most moving parts of the sermon was when the minister talked about how disturbing it was when you keep finding babies in the river, more and more, and maybe it is good that you are rescuing them, but what’s really important is finding whoever is upstream putting the babies in the river, and likewise, building shelters for homeless people is one thing, but what’s more important is getting homes for homeless people.  He talked about how in our church we are all together no matter what our economic standing, and we take care of each other, and our sense of community is more important than how much money individuals have or don’t have.   The sermon hung together incredibly well, and I hope that I communicated to the minister that I was quite moved and impressed by it.

Sometimes I drop in on our minister, and it so happened that on Friday, two days ago, I did just that.  I was on my way to the library, where I am now, to write this entry, and work on my new memoir.  I only stayed a couple of minutes.  It so happened that he was in the middle of writing his sermon.  I could tell that the sermon was cooking along, and I didn’t want to take up too much of his time.

I know what it’s like to be on a roll with one’s writing.  It’s got to be one of the most exciting feelings I’ve ever experienced.  You don’t even have to be a writer, and you don’t even have to write to know this feeling.  It is the feeling you get at the track, maybe in December, the feeling you get during the ninth lap at sunrise, the feeling that your legs are no longer there and it’s just you and the track and the sun and you are floating and the music is carrying you.  It’s the feeling you get when you hear Joni Mitchell’s voice, her voice that you remembered some thirty years ago, and find yourself weeping.  It’s the feeling that you get when you and your dog are walking and there’s so little traffic that you don’t need to stop for anything, you’re zooming together, and the dog may have no obedience training and be zooming this way and that, and though the two of you aren’t touching each other, you’re totally in synch, and in synch with the sidewalk and the earth.  It’s the feeling you get when you’re in church, and as the minister extinguishes the chalice, he asks that we hold what we’ve experienced this Sunday in our hearts until we meet again next Sunday, and as you’re sitting there, you feel the chair cushion under you, your hands in your lap, and at once the piano accompanist begins the same Bartok Chorale that he plays every Sunday.  You had known this piece, and forgotten it, until you came to church only a few months ago, and now, it is here again.  You knew this piece as an adolescent, a secret oasis, listening alone with the turntable at night while the others danced at their loud parties.  Now, the Chorale plays in the sanctuary, and the diamond needle rests gently on the record and floats through not only your memory, but the present time, because you know that at this very moment, in this chair in the church sanctuary, where you sit weeping, is right where you belong.

And it has passed from Sunday into Monday.  I have experienced being awake during the day, rather than sleeping all day, for four days now.  Last night I attended a “dress rehearsal” for a recital to be given by our church accompanist later this week.   It was so wonderful that this concert was held at our church, so close to my home that I could easily walk.  Hearing a night full of piano music from the Romantic period awakened a part of me from my distant past, the part of me that existed just prior to the onset of my eating disorder.  Electricity!  Magic!  Such was the beauty and fascination of learning and excelling at everything I did with my music.  It was like walking through a pristine garden where everything was sacred and and glistened with dew.

Just don’t get too close.  Once you touch a flower, it will crumble and disintegrate at your fingertips.

I cried last night.  You could say that I cried myself to sleep, only I really didn’t sleep too well last night at all.  It’s nearly 5pm right now Monday evening.  I cried because I realized, suddenly, that although I am no longer depressed, I am no further away from death than I was before.  I am, in fact, eating nothing at all because it is easier to eat nothing than it is to eat just a bit and try to decide what to eat and when, that is, to make these very complex decisions.  Nothing is absolute, and very simple.  Nothing is perfect.  Absolute is perfect.  You don’t have to weigh and measure nothing.

Starvation is the only way I know, the way I’ve learned, in my sick way, to keep away from dying in a binge.  Of course logic tells me that this is untrue.  I cried last night because what I am doing, in fact, is substituting one death, the more desirable one, for the other.  To avoid death while bingeing, I am substituting death by starvation.  That’s the bottom line.

Why, I ask, you ask, my therapist asks, any logical person asks, don’t I have “life” in there as an option?  Why don’t I just eat like everyone else?  And why do I think about death all the time?

There is someone in my life who talks about taking time to smell the roses.  I hear this expression all too often.  What if I don’t like the smell of roses?  I can’t say if I do or I don’t.  The smell of roses doesn’t impress me one way or another.  Or maybe I haven’t smelled a wicked good rose yet.  Something tells me that roses aren’t the only awesome thing out there.

In a bit, I’m going to leave the library and go home.  I’ll have to bundle up because it’s rather cold out there right now.  It’s so windy out that I might get chilled right through me, but once I get home, I’ll put ice on the thermostat and make myself a cup of Roastaroma herbal tea in the new mug that the church gave me when I became an official member.  But by far, the best part of coming home is the look of excitement and wonder in Puzzle’s eyes when she greets me as I let her out of her crate.  Her little back end wiggles to and fro; in fact, her entire torso wiggles and twists this way and that, and she trots into the kitchen to see if there are any morsels on the floor that she can snatch up.  This evening, she’ll find nothing.  She’ll return to me, her bright eyes full of expectation.

How can I let this creature down?  How can I let anyone down?  How can I leave those that love and care about me?  Much as I gripe about the world, it is mostly filled with goodness.  I may say that I do my best to be rude and hostile, but this is generally the exception, because I truly believe in the importance of being polite as much as possible, and kind to other people.  If God is good, how could the world be bad?  If God is good, how could I be bad?  If people are good, and people are all different, then how could any size, or shape, be at all distasteful or unsightly?  And who am I to judge?  Am I the scale-keeper?

Of course, I do judge a lot of people.  I jump to conclusions about a lot of people.  I say swear words sometimes about people and situations that I don’t like.  Sometimes I get pissed off.  Sometimes I get fed up with situations.  Sometimes, I go on writing rants and probably drive you readers up a tree.

You can climb down now, because I’m ending this entry soon.  But be sure that you know where the nearest tree is, because you can be certain that I’ll drive you straight up it very swiftly…next time…because I have this tendency, when I go to bed, somehow, to make it through the night, and be alive and ticking the next morning.

 

On our walk: January 13, 2011, midday

Last night I  joked with myself, figuring that
If I live another month
Within that month
Surely I’ll lose a tooth.
It’ll come out by itself
And hopefully this won’t happen in church.
Maybe more than one tooth.  Maybe several.

I felt each of my teeth, wiggling each
With my fingers, trying to guess
Which one of them would come out
But none seemed to give me any answer
Any peek into the future.

I bent over and picked up Puzzle’s poops
With a flip-top Baggie.
This I did twice on our walk.
I am thankful for such simple tasks.

Where does this surge of energy come from?
Not a calorie in sight.
But today
The sky, the moment.

This morning, I know
I must try to keep my mind sane.
My insanity protects me.
But today I am going to send an e-mail
To my favorite undergrad instructor
Whom I went to hear read
Not long ago.

I’ll tell him how much I cherish his words
The influence he had on me
Just thank him
And tell him that whatever happens
Well, you know, mixed
There will always be mixed
But basically I am okay with it.

Before leaving on our walk
I checked weather dot com
Power lines may be down
Well, so be it.
I brushed her teeth.
I brush her teeth every day.

I hooked up her leash.
I had a thought.  A fleeting notion.  I knew
There doesn’t need to be any logic to it
It doesn’t need to make intellectual sense.

I put on my headphones.
Just for old times’ sake, Bruce Springsteen
Louder than I could stand.

Down the hallway.
Puzzle is eager to get out and sniff.
She tugs on the leash.
The front door opens and I pass through.
I step into the strong, strong wind
And at that moment I know for certain
That my feet still carry me
That although I thought that I had lost my faith
God has been in my heart
And held me tightly
All along.

 

Milk and bones, part four

Now sometimes, it gets strange.

I mean sad.  I did say sometimes I do eat.  Usually, well, I don’t know.  A bit of vegetable.  I do count calories.

One evening, not too late, I had an unusual meal.  I was in a trance and ate a box of Milk Bones.  Milk Bones are dog biscuits.  You can buy them at the supermarket.  They are a common brand.  You may have tried to eat them, perhaps when you were a child.  Maybe, you were curious about how they tasted.

Recently, Milk Bones Brand Dog Biscuits celebrated its 100th year anniversary.  It said so on the box.  I stared at this written statement while I consumed the entire box of Milk Bones.

I have missing molars that make it impossible for me to eat hard or crunchy food.  If I try to eat extremely hard food by chewing it with the teeth I have left, I get huge gashes in my gums and all over my mouth.  Milk Bones are extremely hard food designed to be that way for dogs.  These biscuits are not intended for human consumption.  It even says so on the box.

I have an eating disorder and had the sick desire to consume the contents of the box of Milk Bones.  The flour in the biscuits is uncooked.  I cooked the biscuits in the microwave.  I boiled them.  I was able to soften them but not as much as my teeth required.  They were still crunchy.

I ate them.  I ate every single one.  If you have never been there you don’t know.  It took fucking hours.

I want to tell you something.  Those biscuits aren’t flour and cornmeal and chicken.  They have these teensy bones in them, these sharp thingies.  Every time I bit, every chew, little needles poked and scraped into my gums, between my teeth, into my cheeks.  I ate the whole box.  My mouth is a fucking mess right now.  It’s on fire.

But you know, eating Milk Bones is not life-threatening.  Mouths heal quickly.  I have this experience as a painful sad memory that I can soften with laughter and keep vivid only here in writing, then in my mind allow to fade along with the injury in my mouth.

And yes, I  observe, very carefully, the information provided on the side of the box.  The Milk Bones company is very specific.  One Milk Bones biscuit, of the size pictured on the box, contains 20 calories.

I took note of it.

 

I am in a really negative space this morning on the day before my 54th birthday. Sorry.

I wish this wasn’t the case.  But it is.

I woke up alive.  I was glad to get adequate sleep.  About 7-1/2 hours.  Nice.  I slept rather late.  I had dreams.  I don’t remember them now.  I felt scattered in my thoughts this morning but eventually I got focused and into a very angry space.  Then, I decided I’d better get a move on and get on with my day, take a shower, get dressed, and so on, get Puzzle out, as it was really well into the morning.  I found that my anger was morphing into despair.  Then I interrupted myself and came here.  I decided I’d write about what I was feeling.  Here I am.

I’ve been posting on Facebook lately.  This is highly unusual for me.  Just using it as an outlet, expressing myself, reaching out, as my birthday approaches…what the heck.  Mostly my Goddard classmates are on there.  Excellent folks.  Many are on Pacific Time.  Things happen late at night.

I awoke this morning wearing my pajamas.  Well, this makes sense because I went to sleep wearing my pajamas, and I didn’t take them off in the middle of the night.   I have these bright red fleece footie pajamas.  I took them off when I went to pee when I got up.  I wished and wished and crossed my fingers that the edema that I’ve had for days and days now had disappeared in the night.  This sometimes happens.  Well, fat chance.  It didn’t.  I have the ankles of an elephant.  Still.   My skin is so stretched that I have these terrible sores and I had to put lotion on last night to keep them from getting worse.  If you have never had anorexia you don’t know how terrible this makes me feel inside, to have legs, or at least calves, as if I am about fifty pounds heavier than I really am.  Well, forty.  Sucks just as much.  My body is betraying me.  When all this edema stuff suddenly started at the end of last April, I really thought that my body was ruined and that my life was over.  I died, really, a long, long time ago.  I am not the person I was.  The world has not been the same.  It is a cruel, cruel place.

I must slink around at this point. I must avoid hospitalization at all costs.  I am terrified.  This is an unrealistic fear but it is a fear nonetheless simply because it is always a possibility due to the fact that I am a mental patient and people have their prejudices.  I see my therapist on Monday.  I wrote January 8 on my calendar, the day of my 54th birthday, and I wrote, “Happy Birthday.”  The next page was blank for a very long time.  I guess it was yesterday that I noticed its blankness.  I wrote in the date, January 9th, and I wrote in that I see my T that day.

On Sunday, I will be 54, and I will still be 54 on Monday.  So when I go to see my T, I will be 54.

I don’t know what I was getting at.  Well, I do know.  Hospital means nut ward.  Nut ward means state hospital.  State hospital means absolutely no eating disorders treatment whatsoever and staff who have absolutely no knowledge of eating disorders.  Actually, the staff in state hospitals probably are completely uneducated and possibly don’t even have high school diplomas and most likely barely speak English.  State hospital means sitting around all day every day in a wobbly chair surrounded by other patients who can barely put a sentence together.  Maybe I’ll take up smoking again.  It might be the only activity they offer.

My life.  What’s left of it.

Avoid hospital.  Be free.

Things left: Puzzle.  Church.  I’ve got a few friends, God bless them, but most have left me.  Not that I blame them.  I blame some of them, though.

I am really, really blessed to have my church.  I am blessed to have what I have left.

I am blessed to have my writing.  I have been writing a lot lately.  It is necessary.

Now, I will take a shower.  It is late.

I hope the shower is hot.  I have my showers, too.  I do have a lot left.  A fair amount.  Today.  All day today.  All day Sunday, January 8th, my birthday, when I will show up at church a bit before 10:30, in time for the service.

The weather is supposed to be nice here in Boston.  Quite fitting, I think.

Flashing lights

You know, I feel fairly decent today.  It is near the end of the year.  Already, the days are getting longer.  The difference is only a couple of minutes, but it seemed very noticeable to me.  Puzzle and I celebrated this difference during our late afternoon walk.  I had my headphones turned up loud.

We walked down Main Street where a cop car had stopped a speeder.  It is a place where this often occurs.  I didn’t want Puzzle to linger too long under the flashing lights.   For some reason, the lights reminded me of those strobe lights they had at my junior high dances.  The music was sickeningly loud there.  I had never heard music so loud.  I ended up dancing with Charlie I think, but I don’t quite remember.  Then he introduced me to Jeff.  I already knew Jeff but I guess it was our formal introduction.  And then we were going out, me and Jeff.  We kept it secret.  We wrote letters in the summer and wrote our initials backwards so our parents wouldn’t know who it was.  My parents guessed anyway.  Then he broke up with me and told everyone that he hated me.  I was in the eighth grade and I didn’t really care.  We never spoke again.

Puzzle and I came home, and I fed her.  Dog food is so simple.  You just put it in a bowl and the dog eats it.

It is around 6pm.  So far, I have made it through the day.  You can never be sure.  I am blessed.

Delays today on the buses I often take in Watertown, the #70 (20 minutes) and #71

There is a disabled trackless trolley on the #71 route that I think is also holding up the #73 route and causing delays today.

The delays on the #70 route are due to traffic.

So saith the MBTA site.

I do not plan to travel on the buses today.  My original plan had been to go see Dr. K, my primary care physician, for my usual weekly check-up (I have anorexia nervosa and this is necessary) but I’ve had to move the appointment to Friday because Puzzle, my dog, has a bit of an emergency and needs to go to the vet.  She has a sore on her butt.  She’s been picking at it.  The groomer noticed it yesterday and pointed it out to me.  It’s much worse today than it was yesterday.  I kept her stool sample and will give it to the vet, though I don’t know if they’ll need it.

If I’d gone to see Dr. K, I would have taken the #73 and #71 buses, and stopped at the Star Market, where the two buses intersect, on the way home, to pick up a few things.  I also would have stopped at the CVS in Watertown Square, and then walked home from there.  In Watertown Square, I would have had a nice view of the site of yesterday’s calamity with the downed wires.

The last time I was at the vet’s with Puzzle, I weighed 80 pounds.   I wanted to make sure she got her necessary shots done before I died of starvation.  I wanted her taken care of.

She won’t need more shots until next July.

Today’s appointment will bring back some stuff.

Gotta run.  It’s time to get ready to go.  Wish Puzzle the best of health, everyone.

An open letter to my T, my blog, and the world

I need to make this writing a priority this morning over a number of other activities because I need to get this off my chest.  It does not take priority over certain things that are vastly more important.  I have walked Puzzle.  I need to make sure she can get groomed tomorrow.  So I need to stop writing at some point and remember to call Pooch Palace to get her scheduled.  Hygiene–hers and mine: essential…but today I haven’t showered yet and writing takes precedence.  I’ll make time to brush my teeth again.  My hair…yeah, I gotta do something with this mop before I go to therapy.

I need to say some things.  I need to be straight with my T about certain things.  About a week ago I realized that I don’t have much time left on this planet.  I thought about things realistically and figured that my 54th birthday is in January and I’ll probably make it to that, but the chances of making it to 55 are next to nil.  My body won’t hold out.  I see the statistics and it’s amazing that I’m still alive.  The statistics are different depending on the source, but by far the majority of patients who end up with anorexia nervosa don’t make a full recovery.  A small portion do.  Many do, and deal with it for the rest of their lives.  A portion die.  A portion suffer a great deal for the rest of their lives.  A portion commit suicide by other means.  And so on.  The younger you get it, the worse your chances are.  The longer you’ve had it, the worse your chances are.  And so on.  You can interpret the data a number of ways but it’s a fatal illness no matter how you look at it and no matter how you look at it, it’s clear that this illness is the most lethal mental illness.

Dear T: The truth is that I want you to just go along with this.  Quit trying to stop me and quit trying to change me and quit your assumption that I am trying in any way to get better and change and grow.  It is useless.  I gave up on myself.  Just let me die and keep me company.  A week ago I decided to self-starve because I have no will to live.  I am not trying to make myself die I am just trying to lose weight.  If I die I don’t care.

Okay, I’m tired now and I’ll take a t0-minute nap and come back.

I’ve been permanently sleepy for a couple of days now.  Back.

As you know, I get these breakthrough binges (you I’m sure are bored of hearing about this) and I have binged a few times but get right back to starving and continuing to lose weight.  I don’t think I lost anything over the weekend and I haven’t been able to get anything like an accurate reading with a belly full of food.

I have had a couple of instances of drinking high amounts of zero-calorie liquid (water or zero-calorie sports drink, occasionally diet soda) very quickly and then peeing it all out.  I can’t seem to stop myself when I do this.  I’m not trying to hurt myself.  It is automatic.  Maybe I am just thirsty.  I drink to the point of physical discomfort.  I looked up on the Internet how much you have to drink to get a serious problem and I’m reasonably sure I’m not in the danger zone.  When this happens, my pee is bubbly afterward.

I believe the last couple of times that I binged, my food wouldn’t go down my throat.  It got caught there.  I got some water and pushed it down with the water.  I found that I was able to stuff food down faster than ever.  At 53? weird.  Maybe I’m just remembering wrong.   I have some junk food in the apartment right now that I should probably get rid of.

For a while, when I binged, it “showed.”  Oh, no, when I binge it shows anyway.  Duh.  Stomach and intestine overload.  I have heard that your stomach or intestines can burst from this.  A doctor once told me that this was the truth but I looked it up and there have been cases. Of course you don’t survive that at my age.  When I say that it showed, I meant that my ankles and legs and entire body swelled up.  As of sometime yesterday, this stopped happening.  They’re fine.  My torso is huge and full of food but the rest of me looks normal.  I have to wait until I poop it all out.

Okay, back to life.  But the body changes again.  I am making all kinds of spelling errors and am falling asleep…again.   Something’s horribly wrong that I have to sleep all the time.  Another ten-minute nap and I’ll be back.

I woke up two minutes before the alarm.

I sleep…I don’t sleep…well, duh…I play with food and it messes real bad with sleep.  Real bad.  Serves me right.

I don’t know why I do all the stuff I do but I can’t make it stop.  Losing weight…it is just ridiculous.

My DMH person seems to think everything’s hunky-dory with me.  Whatever.  It’s her job to make sure people shower and get to their appointments and fill their prescriptions.  I don’t think they have people with anorexia in their program much.   I dress with my shirt right-side out and she looks at me and figures I’m fine.  ADL’s.  That’s “Activities of Daily Living,” meaning, again, showering, taking meds, brushing teeth, getting to your job, cleaning the house, laundry, paying your bills, taking public transportation…I do everything but one: eat.  A big one.  I guess that one’s a given for most of her people.  And sleep.

I don’t even sleep responsibly anymore.  Night blends into day which blends into night.  All a blur.

There are things going on that are very good right now and I thought I’d mention them.  My relationship with Frank.  My relationship with L.  Puzzle.  Puzzle’s walks.   Puzzle’s walks have been a little crazy and driven because I think about death while I’m walking her.  I enjoy myself anyway.  I keep my appointments and that’s a good thing.  Church is just a fabulous addition to my life.  Absolutely a fantastic thing I’m doing.  I’m going to print out what I wrote yesterday and bring it into today’s session.

Okay, here’s another thing I haven’t made public but I will.  I ran it by my T Friday and she feels it’s a very positive step I’m doing to help myself.  I’m taking a trip to London to attend a seminar my publisher is putting on for its writers.  The trip will be in a month.  I can’t believe I’m doing this.  It will give me a sense of purpose and I don’t want a sense of purpose but it’s weird because at the same time I really want to meet my publisher and get to work with him, and I assume get to meet the other folks at the publishing house as well.   I won’t be gone long.  I made the plane reservations and hotel and am all signed up.

This was in fact very difficult to do.  My bank decided that whatever transaction I did was suspicious activity, and shut down my credit card after I made each purchase.  This started with the transaction with my publisher, because it was a UK transaction.  My bank doesn’t take chances.  I appreciate this.

I have been spending the month of October working on my outline for November’s National Novel Writing Month.  National Novel Writing Month probably won’t happen for me because of this trip.  I’ll be gone for four days but it’s going to zap much of my energy for November.  It was a sacrifice I had to make.  I will still create the outline.  Why?  I’m excited about the book.  I think Nano is doing another Nano later in the year.  Nano got so big that they do one in a month other than November now.  So I’ll have another opportunity maybe.  I haven’t talked much about this outline.  I will.

I’ve run out of energy and there’s more I wanted to say.   Later.

Puzzle’s potty trips for Hurricane Irene

It’s not 100% set in stone yet, but the plan right now is this:

I have the Internet repair guy coming sometime between 5 and 7 tonight.  This totally screws up Puzzle’s evening potty trip, which is difficult to begin with because she can’t find a toilet in the rain for whatever doggie reason she has.  I’ll take her out at 4.  It’ll be raining but the wind will be mild.  She’ll have to wear a sweater to protect her non-water-resistant coat from the rain.  I’ll wear my rain jacket.  It’s incredibly difficult, when you need four hands for dog walking tasks, to find a fifth to hold an umbrella.

Next potty trip: 8 or so, not much later as the pouring rains will start up soon.  She’s not likely to have to go a second time.  Tough.  This is her last opportunity for a long, long time.

Sunday morning no way will it be safe for any doggie to go out.  Leash or no leash (she’s always on leash).  She’s going to be pissed at me…well, hopefully not at me (ha ha).  She’ll whine and moan non-stop and drive me crazy until she figures it out and uses some discreet indoor spot.  Dang, my dog hates an indoor potty.

I just re-checked weather dot com and it appears that something has changed and now they are predicting that the wicked bad winds are going to go on all Sunday night.  So…Sunday PM, same deal, Puzzle.

I have plenty of junky towels, paper towels, and cleanup spray, but I think it’s time to buy a newspaper maybe…maybe I’ll even read it.  Probably not.  It’s for her, after all.  If she can read, well, that’s news to me.

Hopefully, the newspaper will end up unreadable and stinky, and something else won’t end up unreadable and stinky.

Monday morning….I have a question for you idiots out there: Why is it that when you finally go #2, they call it “success”?  Hopefully, Puzzle will already have earned her own PhD in Poop indoors a couple of times.  Dogs, of course, aren’t supposed to hold in any kind of PhD.  After all, they can’t even read.  Books on tape, braille, large print…nope, won’t help her.  But if her learning specialist (I think they don’t call them tutors anymore) came to the house and petted her like crazy and gave her treats, Puzzle wouldn’t care about learning.  Not that she ever gave a hoot (evidenced by the fact that when you tell her “sit,” she sits for about a half of a second, then gets up again).

Those of you who know better will more accurately call Puzzle’s trip outdoors Monday morning “relief.”

I wonder if I will buy the Herald or the Globe.

See ya later.