still confused.

I'm going to dinner with Trevor and his fraternity tonight. It's this "etiquette dinner" thing they're holding. I wonder if proper etiquette includes purging.

I don't want to go.
I love getting dressed up, but I don't like it in this....'date' situation. I don't know. I'm worried I won't look good enough and being on display in front of a bunch of frat guys.
And Trevor is wanting to get more serious and it's making me want to see him less. Because whether or not I want it, I'm afraid of it.

And I am still in the same mode where I want to lay in my bed and watch Gossip Girl.
My motivation to drink myself into oblivion has gone significantly down, which is probably a good thing. I'm tired of having to piece my night together the next morning over Excedrin and Gatorade.
Sooo that makes it hard to get up and go to this damned dinner tonight...if I just want to go to bed after. (alone.)

I think I'm staying here, though.
I mean...I'm probably doing a few weeks to a month of a residential/inpatient thing in some midwestern state in the time between thanksgiving and christmas. But I'm going to be here next semester....and yes, I'll be doing groups and shit. But I'll be at school.
I'm...happy? about it. I'm extremely nervous. I'm extremely anxious.
I'm worried that school and treatment will cancel each other out. I've made it clear that I value school over other things. I made that clear last year in treatment. I was going to use symptoms if it helped me cope with stress of exams better...and it did, so I did.

And I have a rough semester next semester...don't ask me why I decided to switch from English to Business major. I'm keeping my double in Comm and minor in French..but now I have to do finite math or calc by the end of my first year and I fucking hate numbers. So, HELLO 8am math class!

I don't know about it. I'm confused at how I went from going to residential for 2-4 months to doing a month at the most of something similar and then iop...at school.

And I don't know if that's a wise decision or if I'm just glad I'm getting away with it so I don't miss stuff I'm excited about next semester.

...And...part of my uneasiness of being here has to do with Trevor I think. I can't be platonic with him, but I don't want to hold his hand or him to kiss me in public. And I don't want to go to fancy dinners with him.

slkfjalskfjlkajsflkj I don't know what to wear.

(and i still have to quit work. i'm calling tomorrow. i will not go to the holiday meeting. i will not go to my shift this week. i will quit tomorrow. haskfjalskfjklajsf I DON'T WANT TO.)

these people suck.

now they're saying residential.
my mom talked to the lady at the hospital who said that i seem to be anti-recovery, therefore a 'relaxed' treatment environment doesn't seem right for me at this point.

and i didn't want to hear that.

i want to flip the switch or go back in time and stop this.
i'm scaring the shit out of myself...i don't understand why i can't stop. because it is...just food. and it's such a simple concept, to eat. to eat and NOT purge.

i don't understand why i did this. if i could understand that...i feel like i'd be set in recovery.
but i don't think i had a reason.

ughhhh fuckkkkkkking shit.

aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Boys are stupid.
I don't want him to give me butterflies.
I don't want to think about him.
I don't want to wait for his text messages.
I don't want to want him.
I don't want to like him.

My fate is decided in 3.5 hours.
I have never been this anxious in my life.
I'm at a cross between the sound of food making me sick and wanting to eat anything I can get my hands on. Or wanting to run until I collapse. Or wanting to scream, break something, hurt something.
So I'm just going to sleep. Or I might do something stupid.


Please. Please. Please....what? I don't even know what I want to happen.
(because I don't want recovery at all.)


fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkiiiiiinnnnnggggg shittttttttttttttttttt.
i hate having emotions. where the hell did my numbness go? alksfjlaksjfkasjdfoikl

maybe there's a little fight left in me.

But I don't know for sure. 

I emailed the lady in the counseling center, I'm assuming she'll have me start groups. This means I'll have to tell my mom, who I also just emailed. I don't know if it was coincidence, or if she was tipped off, but in her last email she had this in there: 

Are you doing okay?  I know that you are busy and I am glad that you have such good friends.  I just still worry about you.  I know that you can put up a pretty good front.  You seemed happy while we were there but I felt like I noticed a little pain in your eyes.  Sorry-I can't help it-it's a mom thing.

I was going to lie, but instead I wrote this back: 

I don't want you to freak out or anything, but I am struggling a little bit. I stopped seeing the lady in the counseling center a while back, but I just emailed her to schedule an appointment. She had talked about me going to a local place for groups a while back, and I'm assuming that's what she's going to suggest when I see her. I let myself get too busy and put my guard down too much. I'll let you know what she says. I think the insurance plan covers it, but someone would have to look into that more to know for sure...

So that's that. I'm extremely nervous/anxious about what's going to happen. 

I don't really want to stay here anymore. I want to go home and do this there. 

I just know that putting your all into recovery is literally your all. And it's extremely hard to do school and work on top of it. I had to quit work within a month of starting at ACE. I did horrible for my standards my last semester. Not only because there was a substantial time commitment at ACE, but it's draining emotionally, and it made it hard to annotate books and do math problems while I was trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me and why. It boils down to it, for me, with my exam grades. I passed. But that's it. I got straight 4s. Average. I know being average isn't bad, but I like being a little bit above. I don't want to settle for average and have to say, well...really, I would have done better, but I was in recovery. I want to be better and then own the shit out of whatever I'm doing. I realized I needed to do something when I got my English midterm back. B. Really, Kelsey? I have gotten perfect scores on every thing I have turned in/taken for that class so far, and I got a B on my midterm. This wouldn't be bad if I did a mediocre job on all of my assignments. I wasn't there mentally for the midterm. I easily could have gotten an A with a bit of focus. I reread the shit I wrote...god. I don't know if I'm making any sense. I'm just tired of saying/thinking "I could have done better if I didn't have my eating disorder on my mind" 

Leaving feels like giving up though. EVERYONE has their shit. I'm not the only person in the world struggling with something. I don't think I should have to leave school to deal with my shit. I don't want it to be one or the other and it seems like it is. 

But that's that. Everyone knows that needs to know...and I'm still ambivalent and nervous about actually getting better. I'm worried about changing. I'm worried about finding out who I am without this monster. Olivia told me once that it doesn't define me, and I shouldn't let it. I do though, I have. Without it....I'm just an average student with crappy attitude. And I don't want that to be who I am. 

But either way, I just got extremely homesick and I want nothing more than to go home. I have never wanted to be with my parents this much, or to be home this much. I just want the familiarity of my room and my home. I hate that I want that since I tried swearing it off so much so I could go. 

And then there's the Trevor thing. Our relationship went from having mutual friends to being drinking buddies to being friends with benefits to him thinking we're dating and me avoiding him. A while back I posted about talking to him about just staying really good friends, and him hating me for it. Well, then comes homecoming weekend and ten shots of rum within an hour. I got pretty damn sloppy and when I get sloppy I get needy and there was a very horny Trevor. So we hooked up and I woke up next to him. Fast forward over an awkward couple of days to hooking up drunk a couple more times and deciding we could be friends with benefits. Then comes last night when he asks to me Greek Formal and if I wanted to date him. This shit has happened to me before, and this is the point where I cut off contact. That's harder to do when I've gotten this close to my little group of friends...and Trevor is an important part of it. I can't just stop talking to him--I'd have to stop talking to my other friends too and create drama of choosing sides. I just don't do the relationship thing...which is stupid because I'm dramatic to the fact that I've never had a relationship, and the opportunity comes and I flee. Emotional connections and me don't get along. 

I'd walk home if I knew the way.


-----

edit:

now what i did is setting in and i want to take it back. ahh. :\

Fuck it.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I need to put my hand through a window, or scream, or break a bunch of expensive China or pull a fire alarm. I need to break something and make a lot of noise doing it.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I'M DOING HERE.

I'm doing everything I was doing every time RR told me "you're going inpatient. now." I always talked her out of it. I always bought another week and lied about progress I'd made. I went through treatment lying. So I could come here...because apparently it was going to be the ultimate healer and I'd be magically better by walking on campus. I did do better towards the end of the summer. Kind of. I exchanged symptoms. Just because I wasn't purging doesn't mean I was better. I switched my diagnosis at least. Which is confusing because I feel like I recovered since technically I'm not bulimic. I just have 'an eating disorder'. It doesn't have a name. It's not specified. It's just a little messed up. I love that diagnosis because eating disorder not otherwise specified can include so many things. A lot of people are disordered. It's disordered to not eat carbs. But a lot of people are still on Atkins. It's disordered to have your food based on a point system and neurotically count the points in your food on a specialized CALCULATOR. But a lot of people are on Weight Watchers. I just eat a little bit disordered, according to my diagnosis. Which also makes it dangerous. Because it doesn't sound serious, so I don't take it seriously. Not that I took my 'bulimia' diagnosis seriously either. Interestingly enough, I still call myself bulimic. Hm.

Anyway. I talked to a friend a bit on facebook chat. She made me think really hard about what I'm doing here. I need to lose my pride and get help. I need to stop being stubborn and just let myself get fixed. I can envision what will happen if I tell my parents. They'll be super concerned. Calls will be made, meetings will be had...I'll leave school. I'll go to inpatient. I'll finish inpatient and go back to ACE. My life will be therapy again. Because I wasted my parents' money on lies. I wasted it on pretending that I was doing well. Kind of. I didn't pretend at the beginning. I didn't pretend until I was actually going to get what I needed. I didn't want more therapy so if inpatient was suggested I started lying. I felt around to see what was 'too much' to say in sessions, how many purges was bad enough for inpatient, and how many was still considered bad...but not too serious? I liked to make it fluctuate. It was fun. It was fun until I got called out for my stories from individual-group-family not matching up. I covered it well though. The person inside me that got recovered at ACE really learned a lot. I just didn't. So, I know what I need to do. Which is, shamefully go back home and be open to therapy and recovery and be honest and tell everyone what's going on and get better. I know. And I can think about that and pretend that I'd actually do that all I want.

But more realistically, I'll stay here. I'll never e-mail CM back...(hopefully she doesn't go crazy and come to my dorm or something...I keep forgetting she has all of that information...) I'll keep thinking about stopping on my own but not actually do anything. I'll do terribly in school because as the very sage RR told me every fucking day "your brain needs FOOD to work!"...I'll put on a facade like always and amount to nothing. And my parents will or won't find out. Depending if I lose weight. Or, they'll find out during the summer. Unless they go back to their naiveté they were in for the first 5 years of this lovely thing.

So...maybe it's pointless to write in this thing if I have no intentions of doing better. We'll see.

(Sorry L. I thought about it.)

Trust Me.

This is going to be long and non-sensical, just a warning.

I keep getting weird fortunes in my fortune cookies. The first time, they had my favorite ice cream in the cafeteria, and I wasn't letting myself have any. They also had chinese food, so I wanted to see my fortune. It said "It would be good to treat yourself to dessert". Last night, a group of us went out to Chinese and mine said "It would be good to tell someone what's on your mind." I thought about calling a friend because the more I thought on it, I wanted to talk to someone. I was just afraid. I just brushed it off and continued about the night.

T was all worried and didn't want me to drink again. Same with C (My roommate). Well. As college would have it, we did. But someone ended up having weed so we smoked instead. I hate that it calms me down so much because I hate the idea of drugs doing that. If I hate it so much, I shouldn't do it. But it felt really nice to be so chill after how anxious I've been lately. (That makes me sound like a stoner. I'm not, I swear). We hung out and talked, and then T and I went outside and had a cigarette again, just like Friday night. We sat there for a while and he just said "what are you thinking?" ...like it was that easy to just...say that I was thinking about how fat I am and how I'll never be good enough for anybody and that I don't even want to get better anymore, I just want to lose weight and disintegrate. And I don't even know who I am anymore. I don't know who this person is that drinks and smokes and reads sparknotes and doesn't really care about schoolwork. I don't know who the hell I am. I know why I'm like this though, and it's because I think so shit-ily about myself. It's because I'm so engrossed in my eating disorder. It has control over me and I love it. It feels like an old, warm sweater. You know that it's the most hideous sweater and it's been sitting on the floor all year but once you put it back on, it's warm and comforting and you never want to take it off. I don't have to think. I just let it take control. But at the same time, I think overtime. I think about everything but what I should be thinking about. If I was normal, I'd be able to pick up the damn Odyssey and read it and write my essay. But I can't focus on any of the words. It doesn't make sense. If I was normal, I would be able to make a lot of friends and enjoy what's supposed to be "the best years of my life". Everyone said that about high school too, but I'm pretty sure there was nothing worse than that.  I didn't go into my deepest thoughts with T. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't tell him about the inner workings of my mind. That's too fucked up. I'd never lay that on somebody just because they asked what I'm thinking. I just told him 'my story'. The short version. The whole...I've been making myself throw up since I was 12. Off and on until it got really bad my junior year and my parents found out. I've been in treatment all year and now I'm here. It's harder. Because I'm alone. And then he said the two words that I hate more than anything. "Trust me." I don't trust.  


Other people always let you down. You've just gotta be alone so you won't get hurt. That's how I think of it. You can't control other people. They do what they want. Who's to say that someone will stay true to what they promise? You have to trust that they will but how can anyone do that? How can you be so sure they're not going to hurt you? In my experience, people say: I'm here for you. Call me if you ever, ever need it. I'm not going to judge you. In the few times I've done this, people don't have time. They don't answer, and then they don't call back. They don't want to deal with all of my baggage. I didn't ask them to, they told me to tell them. I trusted that they were telling me the truth. People just want to help you to make themselves feel good. It feels good if you help someone in a moment of crisis, but what happens when I'm always in a moment of crisis? When you could literally call me every hour and I'd have a different worry? When I'm in crisis every time I walk into the cafeteria? That's a lot of phone calls. That's a lot of advice. And people don't get it. "So, why can't you eat the dessert? I'm eating it." "Because it's going to make me fat. It's going to make me explode" "Are you serious? It's good. Just fucking eat it. You're not fat. Get over yourself. Or don't eat it...it doesn't really matter." Maybe that's true. But that's not what support is. It always starts off well, too. They answer every time, they check up on you. Then two weeks later when you're still struggling they're like..."you're not over this yet?" Especially when the person has known you for all 6 years you've been struggling. "Why is this still an issue? You're not 12 years old in dance class. You're a big girl. You know better. I thought that was just a phase."

So how does T expect me to trust him? I've known him for 2.fucking.weeks. I trusted him enough with a lot of this information. Yeah, I wasn't sober but last night at least, I was in a good enough state to tell him I didn't want to talk. But it felt good to talk. I don't know if I'll do it again though. He knows the stuff on the surface, the easy stuff.

When we were sitting there, I just got to wondering...is it worth it? Is anything? What the hell is the point of life? Everyone dies. Everyone works hard to get somewhere but we just die. You're going to die, that's the reality. I know these thoughts are dangerous. They lead to 'if i'm going to die anyway, why not now'. I'm not in that place. But I am wondering what the point of recovery is. Maybe this is how I'm destined to die. Maybe I'm not supposed to get over this. Why should I try so hard to get better when I'm going to die anyway? When I don't mind this. This life, these disordered habits...they make me who I am. They make me psychotic and sensitive and hateful. I don't connect well, but that's because I don't want to. I chose this. And is it really so bad? Plenty of people out there are on diets. Plenty of people out there are just like I am but aren't in treatment. I'm used to living like this. This is how I've grown up, basically...one-third of my life has been littered with these thoughts. Everyone's different, so maybe it's just how I am.

Fight.

I had this whole depressing post about comparisons and it didn't work and it got lost.
I think that's a good thing because everything I post on here is negative.

I was just sitting here, in the library, hungry. I was telling myself that it was a good thing, that the burn and tightness in my stomach meant I was losing weight. That it made me pretty. So I told myself to shut the fuck up and went up to the library cafe and got pretzels and grapes. I'm going to fight it. I was going to say 'if it kills me'...but the point is for it not to kill me.

Recovery doesn't have to mean the extreme that I've been making it. I've been thinking that it's super disordered of me to pass up dessert when everyone gets it. Or, to get veggies instead of fries. So I went insane and was over-challening myself so I'd seem normal. That didn't really work because it made me too uncomfortable and anxious, so I kept using symptoms. It's not disordered to get veggies instead of french fries. It is if you never will eat french fries. It's not disordered to pass up dessert...it is is you never allow yourself something sweet.

I started reading Life Without Ed over the summer and she says something about this. She talks about feeling like she had to get the highest calorie item on the menu to prove she didn't have an eating disorder...and then goes on to say that behavior like that is still disordered, it's unhealthy to get the highest-calorie item every time. But, if you want it, you should treat yourself and get it.

“…Although Counter Ed pretends to be my ally, he is really just as controlling as Ed. With the exception of a binge, Ed will not allow me to eat anything in between meals. Counter Ed, on the other hand, will make me eat a huge snack between breakfast an lunch even if I am not hungry. He just wants to ensure that I am not restricting….” -Jenni Schaefer, Life After Ed

I'm turning my day around from the meal plan I configured in my head on my way to class to satisfying meals that look good to me. I don't have to get the mashed potatoes. I just have to get something.

unfocused.

I'm posting on this entirely too often, but it's been a rough day. I'm using this as a replacement to my journal which I used in excess as well--this is SO much easier...to type than to write.

Anyway, shortly after my last post, I e-mailed CM and told her I wasn't going to talk to my parents and I'm not going to do the groups. I told her I was going to wait a few weeks and see if as I get more accustomed to being here it gets easier and also see what my work schedule is like. I know I'm doing this to distract myself from my eating disorder, and as L commented...I know the right answer. It's like I'm in class and I'm too shy to raise my hand. I know I can do it, I'm just so damn ambivalent.

The day didn't end well. I went absolutely insane with symptoms...but I didn't go to frisbee or work out and aggravate my heart even more, so there is one recovery-oriented thing I've done today.

I can't focus on my homework. Due to anxiety? That's what RR diagnosed it as when I was having trouble in high school. My lit teacher, Mr. T gave me really awesome strategies to help too (I broke down in class one day and ended up telling him everything. His wife is a therapist for eating disorder patients, and he does a lot to understand.) I'm not using any strategies for schoolwork or for myself. I need to force myself to do it until it gets easier and I will start tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a good day. I will not use symptoms and I will do my homework in a gentle, well-paced manner so I don't flip my shit and get overwhelmed. How do normal people do it? How do normal people sit in the library all day and just focus on one thing? How do they go to the cafeteria and eat a normal meal and still have focus and control over their life? My friend, T pointed out something interesting. I have had an anxiety-related eye twitch for a huge chunk of high school that went away for the most part with my old meds but still shows itself sometimes. It's like I'm winking, and T and I had an awkward moment because he thought I was winking at him. He jokes around about it a lot--I don't really mind, but tonight after dinner he goes..."Why do you only twitch when you eat?" Now, how the hell did I not notice that?

I think I'm more capable than I give myself credit for. I had a whole month purge-free this summer...which is amazing considering towards the end of the school year, I was days away from being put in inpatient for the summer. When I put my mind to it, I can fight my ED voice. I think I just freaked out because of the weight gain. Which was ridiculous considering I was eating normally...well normally for a person on the cusp of recovery...I wasn't eating enough to gain the weight that I did. RR told me that I needed to let my metabolism regulate. It took too long, but I can't purge forever. I can go through the discomfort and gain some extra padding for the Chicago winters and let my metabolism regulate. It just doesn't seem like I should have to gain weight in recovery when I'm at the higher end of a normal weight anyway.

Sometimes, I just want to take a knife and slice my fat off.