August 11, 2011

• Back to Black

  First of all, I have to say that all of the people who read this blog are THE BEST. Whether I’ve met you in person or not, on my last blog entry you all left me with some very positive things to think about myself, and it made me feel a little better. (I want to say it made me feel a *lot* better, but my negative feelings toward myself are still stronger than your positive feelings toward me, unfortunately.) Thanks for being a good friend to me.

  This week I am trying a new approach to my health. Kaiser is my medical provider and they have a system where you do this whole health evaluation online, and answer all kinds of questions about your habits from eating to sleeping to smoking, etc. From there, taking into account your own motivation and confidence in reaching your goals, it recommends what your top priorities should be. Then it all becomes part of your medical record, and they check in via email every week to see how you are doing. I think it might be worth it to really give it a try. My top priorities are eating healthier and reducing stress, with secondary priorities being exercising and sleeping better.

  I’ve started recording what I eat each day so I can see where I’m at, and then I’ve set goals for how many calories I should eat each day (as well as how much fat, protein, fiber, etc.). I worry about doing this only because it’s part of what allowed me to obsess about my weight a few years ago and develop bulimia. I would include even a piece of gum I chewed, and tracked ounces of water I drank and everything, and if I was over the # of calories I set my goal at, I would purge. This time around, I think I have enough perspective – and have gone through enough negative consequences from bulimia – to not do this again. I’m not beating myself up if I don’t meet my calorie goals for the day; I’m just using that as motivation to do a little better the next day. All of this is forcing me to think a lot more about the food I eat, which is good, but I am being cautious so I don’t go too far the other direction.

  At the same time, I want to talk about self-esteem. This concept is completely bizarre to me. There are things I love about myself, and times that I think I am completely awesome, and even times when I look in the mirror and like what I see, like my face, skin, and eyes, and my height and long legs and fingers and being curvy and sort of Amazonian. I’ve learned to love my big toes and broad shoulders, and am OK with my legs. And of course there is the other stuff, like being forthright and opinionated and caring and making great soup and having excellent taste in media of all kinds and a pretty voice and an intelligent mind. There really are lots of things that are good about me that I do recognize. It pisses me off that I’ve let my body become this way and that the fat is, to me, so bad that it cancels out a lot of the good.

  Anyway, I’m trying this new healthy thing and hoping to make it stick. I feel a resolve inside me, but that resolve reminds me of what I felt before the bulimia developed. And at the same time I feel unstable, like just under the surface, if it weren’t for the meds, I would be an absolute wreck. I literally felt so bad about the way I looked in my 30th birthday photos that I wanted to die. I seriously, seriously did. (So much of this feels at odds with me being a feminist, like I shouldn’t feel this way, but I know body acceptance doesn’t just appear magically.) And I feel a despair about things I’ve done in the past (like being mean to old boyfriends, or the shitty things I did to my family when I was doing meth, or even lies I told my friends in high school, or feeling ashamed of something stupid I said 2 years ago) that is almost ridiculous. And little things seem so dramatic to me. I have enough experience with this crap to tell myself that it will pass and believe it, and I have trained myself not to make decisions when I’m sad, angry, lonely, hungry, or tired, because the results are never good.

  All the stuff I was excited about just a couple of months ago just seems blah now. I don’t want to join the governing board for the women’s chorus because I don’t think my voice will be heard. I’m not excited about singing this season. I don’t give a crap about the blogging conference that my school is sending me to, and am hardly blogging at all. I’m sick of school and just want it to be over. I’m not looking for internships. Every day I just have to force myself to go to work and I don’t enjoy it like I used to. Even as I type this I know I’m setting off red flags. But the thought of starting over with YET ANOTHER therapist is just too much to take. Every few months to a year, the person I was with – whom I had learned to trust at least a little – ended up transferring or retiring. This last one made me feel shattered every time I went to see her, and then she transferred. And I just can’t do that again right now. So I’m waiting for the crappy stuff to pass and focusing on one little thing at a time.

  It’s good to have everyone’s support, even though I know I don’t post much or comment much anymore. You are all SO loved.

  • 1:07 pm
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