My long time struggle with an Eating Disorder!

Some people don't understand fully about this subject. It's hard explaining something when you never had to struggle day in and day out with something so complex as an eating disorder. It has nothing to do with food but every thing to do with control. I characterized myself between anorexia and bulimia. I wrote this sometime in June 2004. The reason I am quoting myself because I'm in a different place now and back then I was living it. I was in a dark place emotionally and I was hurting with an inner fight I was losing and I would have to say I am not there anymore. I will always be fighting an Eating Disorder for the rest of my life. I learned what my triggers are and I DO NOT want to go back to THAT place of darkness. If anything else I can help someone else going through an Eating Disorder. I am warning you what you're going to read is emotional. "I shouldn't’t care what I look like because that sounds so vain but if you were told repeatedly over and over something is wrong with you, maybe, just maybe you would be screwed up as much as I am. I need to look perfect for me and only me. I’m so far from being perfect in my own eyes. I need to accept me. So many factors and this goes deep within my heart. I’m fighting with myself now and with all the trauma I had growing up and all the heartache being given’ up like yesterdays trash doesn’t compare to feeling like you can never be good enough in your own eyes. My ED has taken over my life. It consumes me every minute of the day and haunts me in my dreams. I can’t runaway from it. I silently cry within when I eat one piece of food. I hurt even more when I binge. I cry out when I purge it all back up. I am never in peace because it’s on my mind. My brain keeps telling me I'm not good enough and my heart keeps telling me I'm worth the whole world. I’m scared I’m losing this battle within. Some days I can’t get myself up to function and do just the little things and other days it’s not all that bad. No matter what people tell me about myself I have a hard time believing and trusting in it. I wish I could see what you all can see about my image because you don’t understand my perfection. How can you because I never talked about it until now. I could try to explain what my perfection is but I’ll be blue in the face and you would never get it. Maybe down the road I will try to explain my idea of perfection but right now it’s not the time. Maybe I don’t have time but some day I know I will beat this ED and then I can talk about it." "How do I begin? It’s hard opening up my heart and soul when all I want to do is run from my emotions. It seems like I’ve been struggling to get my shit together with this ED for years. 14 years to be exact and that’s a long time to have this disorder. I swear I done it all but then I’m still here all messed up so I couldn’t have done it all but I’m doing therapy, group therapy and I even joined a support group online but it’s all not enough to help work my life out. I’m going through a rough spot at the moment as you can tell. I’m feeling all sorry for myself. I’m dogging my body and I can’t even get my lazy butt off the couch and do some simple exercise. You would think eating is supposed to be some easy thing to do and it’s supposed to be easy but for some crazy idea I put in my little brain, I’m afraid to eat because when I do I binge myself silly. I am like hungry all the time and I keep telling my husband I can eat but I choose not too. I would rather not eat because for me, eating means gaining weight. Gaining weight for me is like, "oh my god, I can’t say it!" You would think I would be happy being at the smallest I’ve been since grade school but no, I’m not satisfied and have to lose that extra weight I carry around my waist area. I obsess over my body like not being perfect will be the end of me. I watch Dr. Phil all the time and he always asks those crazy people on his show what’s there pay off for doing all there destructive behavior and I have asked myself millions of times what my pay off is and for the life of me I’m figuring that out. If I knew what it was I wouldn’t be struggling with my ED like I am. I know I need to keep hanging in their and all that crap but it’s hard when your brain keeps nagging at you to be stupid. One day at a time!" "It’s a Sunday night on a beautiful June day. I’m listening to music trying to express my feelings the best way I know how. I just want to cry so hard but something is holding me back. I want to be so strong like I can handle this ED alone. Sometimes I wish I kept this disease a secret and didn’t tell anybody. I don’t like feeling vulnerable and have to lean on anybody. I recognize this disease wants me to be secretive, wants me to be alone, scared and ashamed with myself. It feeds on my insecurities and my fears. This disease has taken over my life because I sometimes let it. I feel like I have nothing left to give to myself at times. I fight so hard against my ED and a lot of times I just give up and let this ED take over so I don’t have to feel what the real pain is deep down inside. I have been damage so profoundly in my lifetime I don’t want to ever feel like that again. I’ll runaway. I know to get this ED under control I have to face and not avoid those feelings and thoughts I have about my past. I feel so out of control at the moment and want to just hide and sink in a big hole to think of nothing but happiness. Sometimes I tell myself I had enough and to get this ED under control and sometimes I tell myself I can’t handle the pain so I lean on this ED to just do its thing. This might sound so stupid but I feel like my ED is my friend. My ED has always been there for me even when its been destructive to me. I feed on it to make me feel better about myself. I guess what I am trying to say is this; it’s going to be hard learning to mange this Ed when all I know is this ED. I think I’m holding back the tears because I’m afraid to feel the ache inside. The pain is too much to bear and I want to be so strong. I am one big gigantic mess at the moment. I don’t know where to start. I don’t like to feel so out of control like I’m some kind of crazy wacko. On the outside I want to look like I can handle anything. I want to seem like everything is under control. I don’t want those people to win; I don’t want to feel like I failed or something like I can let some idiotic person bring me down. I want to show them I’m not going to let them believe they have the influence over me like I’m some pathetic person that can be affected by what they have to say about me. I get so furious with these people because I myself don’t want them to win. I know my past is my past but it doesn’t mean it hurts any less today. When I finely told my mother how I really felt and how hurt I am she ran the other way. I haven’t talked or had contact with her since January. She makes me feel so insignificant at times and I shouldn’t care what she thinks but she’s my mother and I loved her at one point in my life. Maybe I still love her today and that’s why it hurts so much. I don’t know. I feel so rejected, abandoned, and neglected by her. Maybe I just want her approval and to be proud of me. I shouldn’t care what she thinks of me especially what I have in my life today but the problem is I do care and that’s what hurts the most I think. The one thing my mother didn’t have control over was my ED. All those late nights as a teenager I binged while she slept and drank her beer to help purge all the food back up I would be so proud I was defiant and it made me feel so satisfactory I got away with it that night and every night after. I know I should have found something else to get back at my mother with but that was the only thing I could think of. I didn’t realize at the time I was only punishing myself. No one can tell me today my mother cares about me because I will never believe them and maybe that’s my way of protecting myself from the hurt I’m feeling at the moment but it will be along time before I realize she cares in her sick little way. I want to scream at her and slap her into reality. I want her to feel the pain I feel, I want her to get it that she hurt me, I want her to see me the way I see myself and that she was the one that caused it. I know I am a caring and sensitive person. Maybe I’m a little too sensitive at times but I can’t help that part of my personality. That’s what makes me I guess, me. I don’t let anybody see my struggles because I’m ashamed of that part of myself. No body can eat for me or to tell me how to feel. I don’t know how to lean on anybody. I have no problem talking about things and that life isn’t fair but I don’t know how to express how I’m really feeling. I’m alone most of the time because that’s what ED wants you to do, to cut yourself off from the rest of the world. I guess I’m in hiding. I don’t want to talk to anybody or be around anybody because I’m afraid they will see right through me. I don’t like confrontations. I don’t like people seeing me in a state of hopelessness or knowing I’m in a state of desperation. I have this anxiety at the moment because I’m sharing my secretive thoughts, I’m writing out everything I keep to myself, the stuff I don’t want anybody to know about me. It’s hard to actually believe I’m human and my thoughts are normal because this can’t be normal. I can’t be normal because it seems so insane to me. I don’t like being awake at times so I just sleep. I check out of this world by sleeping. I wake up and it's another day and I say man, I can’t handle being me today. I don’t want to face another day of having to work through my demons so I sleep. Dreamland seems a whole lot better than feeling like I’m not good enough. I remember when I was 12 to 15 I would walk to my elementary school in the middle of the night and I would sit there in the cold and look up at the stars and pray that someday life would be better for me and I would get out of this disarray I lived in. I wished I would find something special for me. I wanted god to take the pain away and then I found ED. I know god didn’t want me to get an ED but for me in the middle of the devastation of what my life was about back then it was my answer. What I’m trying to say is I had this determination back then to keep holding on for something great to make me see I was worth being born. I new I had to keep fighting the good fight because I knew in my heart I had something to give to this world some way or another. I think I lost that determination I had back then. I was so young and the lessons of life are greater of a challenge then what a little child knows by wishing on a bunch of stars. I don’t know what I was thinking by sitting in the cold in the dark and thinking if I wished that dreams would come true. I only got to where I am today because I made decisions and not because of some miracles I wished for. Maybe harming myself with this ED is selfish of me but sometimes I do it and not even am aware I’m doing it at times. I will sit there on the couch stuffing my face full of food because I starved myself all day and then become conscious what I’m doing and it scares me because I allowed myself to lose control for that moment. I feel so ashamed of myself when I do that because I’m supposed to be working the program of recovery. I know recovery doesn’t mean starving myself neither. The fear I have surrounding food is like finding out you have some form of cancer. It’s like finding out you have some devastating disease and can’t believe this could happen to you but its reality. My ED is cancer about food. Food is my drug to fight the cancer and I’m having a hard time taking the medicine. I want to stop what I am doing so badly because I know I can die from doing what I am doing. I am aware of this fact but it doesn’t make me want to stop at times. I still do it someway or another every single day and it scares me to think I’m harming myself because I’m getting some sort of satisfaction to get back at my mother. It’s like I’m abusing myself because I believe I’m this horrible person she told me I was. I keep contradicting myself because this is what the ED wants me to do. It wants me to be conflicted. It wants me to be confused and scared so I can only depend on it and no one else. I don’t like to share my thought and feelings with people because I don’t want to look like I’m some wounded soul who needs to be saved. Everything is so messed up, so crazy, and so confusing right now. It’s like I’m being pulling in every direction and all the voices in my head telling me what to do all the time. No wonder I want to check out of reality most of the time. It gets exhausting. I could keep going on tonight but I’ll leave it for another time." "I read about ED and the combination with Diabetes. I confess I lean towards foods I know I shouldn’t be eating but for me when I can’t eat something I end up craving for it. I eat a lot of junk food and sweets. I can’t help it or maybe I can but it’s like I have to have sugar because I know I shouldn’t be eating it. Once I figure these thing out I won’t want to eat candy and anything else that’s harmful to me. I’ll want to stay healthy and do things that are healthy but for now I haven’t really gotten it yet like it took me fracturing my left arm to quit drinking alcohol. It took me moving away from my family to realize I haven’t gotten over the abuse and the hurt is still there. I just hope I don’t end up committed to the hospital for me to get it. I know I’m not there yet to get committed but I really can’t see if I am or not. I’m just trying to make good decision for me right now. " Okay, that was hard to read. I definitely am not there anymore and hopefully I can have a brighter future. My kids need me, my Husband needs me and also the world needs me. An eating disorder may in the beginning be about losing weight but then it takes over your life and you're wrapped up in your head in a dark place and never saw it coming. I hoped this has helped the inner secrets of this disease.