Milestones

When I was in hospital several months ago I made my first long term goal. The future does not exist for me on a daily basis, I am permanently stuck in the difficulties of the moment. Long term goals are overwhelming but also incredibly important as they can provide an anchor to keep me steady when my strength waivers, but if I reach these goals they then become milestones. Days that I didn’t think I would reach when I planned them.

I achieved this first victory against my depression on the 19th of December, when I went to see my favourite band live, with tickets I had purchased 4 months previously. In that moment, listening to a sea of voices sing lyrics that have seen me through some of my darkest days, I felt something. For the briefest of moments, I felt the win. But then it was done, and I was left back in the same bleakness as before. So a new goal was needed. I had known this would happen, the crash, so my next date with life was already planned.

That day is now upon us, a day I had planned to reach with my dearest friend, who has her own battle with mental illness. It was a simple plan when it was conceived, to go and see the film Wild. Wild was one of the last books I was able to read, before depression robbed me of my ability to digest words. It was a book I loved, a story I found inspiring, and seemed very fitting given the present I was in.

As time moved closer to the 16th of January the plan evolved, to include a meal and shopping and a luxury hotel stay. At the time, I genuinely made these alterations with good intentions, wanting to celebrate us both achieving a joint milestone. But looking back, I wonder if there was a hint of desperation to my planning. Over the last month, my battle with my depression and my eating disorder has become more one sided, and I am loosing ground by the hour. Seeing Wild was no longer about achievement and hope, but something I was crawling toward with broken, bloody nails and sorrow perched heavily on my back.

I am now going back into residential treatment on Monday. Six weeks to go into recovery from my eating disorder, to return to a healthy weight(ED monkey: You are a healthy weight already, they just want to make you fat again), so that my body can absorb my anti-depressants (BPD monkey: LIES! they are just trying to trick you, you’ll never win) and I can battle my depression with renewed strength. Which is all well and good, despite my fear and despondency toward treatment.

But for now, today, Wild day, I feel like I have failed.I guess that is the problem with goals, once accomplished they are wonderful, when unsuccessful they are crushing. Johnny Cash once said “You build on failure, you use it as a stepping stone.” It remains to be seen whether I can be step past today and build a different future, but for now my only goal will be to some day have the fortitude and mettle to make another goal.

Who...Are...You?

Tick, tick, tick. One week to go until my admission to the clinic, one week left with my longtime companion. My friend, my solace. Tick, don’t eat, tock, ignore the pain, tick, more coffee, tock, another cigarette.

On and on the day goes, the little monkey whispering words of encouragement in my ear: The thinner you are going in, the thinner you will be coming out. Tick, smoke, tock, coffee, tick, ignore the ache, tock, don’t be weak. His little tail is curled around my neck, soothing, reassuring.

But then I notice the little claws sinking into my shoulder, the sense of desperation in that sharp grip. My desperation. My clawing hold, clinging to my eating disorder.

What am I without it? Nothing. A waste of time, space and flesh. I know this is the other monkey on my shoulder, my irrational, emotional mind. But now this is the only other voice in my head. I have disappears into the chasm of my illnesses. I am not here anymore. I am lost, where is the white rabbit to guide me back to myself?

Chapter 1129

And so it begins, yet another chapter in my battle with mental illness. Another battle in a war that seems without end, with no white flag in sight. Next Monday I will finally face my eating disorder, while being admitted to a specialist facility. My family and friends have expressed great relief at my impending incarceration, for them this is the light they were waiting for, having stared down the tunnel of my illness for so long without respite. Help is at hand, the end is nigh, hope flickers on the horizon. And I can see why they feel that way, the basic fact is that my problems with food and body image now consume my world and they feed into my other mental health problems. They fertilise the darkness inside me, help the inky tendrils grow further and faster, sharp thorns sprouting and piercing my thoughts with greater frequency.

Most people can’t possibly understand the uncertainty I feel; the anxiety; the overwhelming, crushing fear. They can’t understand how I became so overwrought in the week leading up to my assessment that I made suicide attempt number 74 (came so close this time, I could taste the success!). Surely I should be jumping at the chance to rid myself of this monkey on my shoulder? But after 7 years, my eating disorder is so much a part of my life that it feels like a friend. It is always there for me, offers words of encouragement when I do well, sticks by me through difficulties and after a life of mediocrity I have finally found something I’m good at. And now I have to let it go, fear number one, who am I without it and how will I get through the hard times without it?

Fear two, what if I give recovery my all, kick ED ass, and then my depression doesn’t magically lift like the doctors say it will? What if I give up the one thing I have that’s mine and I’m left with the rest of my broken brain, the part that I have no control over?

Fear three is an obvious one – gaining weight. ED therapists talk a lot about the bodies comfortable ‘resting weight’. That is, the weight/size you would be if you ate normal healthy meals and exercised regularly. I know that the weight I am now is nowhere near my resting weight, I am built to be curvy, with wide shoulders, hips and some junk in my trunk. But that’s not what I want, I want to defy biology and fix my shape from the bones out. But recovery means gaining weight, numbers creeping up, the most terrifying thought there is for me. More terrifying than dying. Which is ridiculous, completely and utterly ridiculous. But knowing it is ridiculous makes no difference. I can see the rational thoughts, I can say them aloud, I can acknowledge the facts: my body and brain are exhausted and my immune system is shattered, I have no hope of fighting my depression if I stay as I am.

But knowing what is right and believing it are two different things, so for the next 7 days I will fight to remember the facts, to focus on the logical, to not let my fear overwhelm me. To not think about the fourth fear, failure.