If Telling My Story Helps One Person, I Will Tell It Again and Again

First of all, let me say thank you to everyone across the web for the outpouring of support from my earlier post.  I was touched beyond words, and as I sat at the basketball game Tuesday night shooting cheerleaders I was also fighting tears of gratitude as the messages poured in and blew up my phone.  Thank god for auto focus.  Also, let me be clear, that I do have health insurance and doctors who are working with me to figure out the medications.  Unfortunately, the tweaking of the drugs is just another fun part of BPD.  So, I know that there is hope, and that there is a way out of this.  It’s just when I’m in the midst of it it’s hard to find the hope.   One last thing, there is still the worry that all that I revealed yesterday will have some serious repercussions in regards to some people in my life.  While I know “If they bail on you b/c of this they didn’t really care about you in the first place” I don’t necessarily believe that. It is possible that they care very much but the ugliness of this disorder is just way too much for them to handle.  But I will deal with that fallout if/when it ever comes.

Carolyn from This Talk Ain’t Cheap left me a comment on that blog post that I tried to reply to, but I felt it I didn’t reply adequately enough.  So, please indulge me, while I try to do it justice here.

I was diagnosed in 2007.  I had been treated off and on for depression in the years since my divorce from the girls’ dad in 2005.  I can now look back and see bipolar behaviors in my childhood that we sort of just wrote off.

We totally missed all the signs

It’s hard to determine exactly when my bipolar disorder manifested itself.  My parents and I ignored it, wrote it off, explained it away, for so very long.  My childhood was not your typical childhood.  My father was a minister, so we lived a pseudo nomadic life, moving every three years.  Making friends and maintaining friendships has never been easy for me. Never.  I have often wondered if that is because of the moving so often, or if it is because of the BPD.  One of the characteristics of BPD is lack of impulse control.  I remember screaming and throwing my hair brush at the mirror because my hair wouldn’t curl the right way.  I remember my mother being concerned about me because I was so overly involved in my friends’ drama, everything was life or death.  Bipolar is about extremes, and so was my life.  I could go days, or weeks without cleaning my room, and then, for whatever reason feel this overwhelming NEED to have everything in it’s place.  I would spend an entire day tearing my room apart only to put it back together again.

I was a sophomore in high school when I had my first go ‘round with anorexia.  BPD does not partly alone.  While the thoughts in my head would sometimes rage out of control, I found that the one thing I could absolutely control was the amount of food I ate, or didn’t eat. And I was very good at controlling that.  Control though was part of why I went undiagnosed for so long.  I was afraid to let go of control.  I maintained a B+ average in high school.  I always did what was expected of me, I never broke a rule, I was a good girl.  I had to be normal, and perfect.  We as a family of the minister had an image to maintain.  Crazy was not part of that image.

Until my father’s job demanded we move to a new church.  In January.  Of my senior year.  The middle of my senior year I left all my friends, the guy I was dating, and moved to a town where the only people I knew was my family.  My brother and sister would be starting school and meeting new people making new friends when we got there.  I would be graduating when we moved, and wouldn’t have any way to meet anyone.  Hello first depression.

I can point out other episodes throughout my life that should have been huge Ah-ha moments for us.  The day I was pissed at my English Lit professor for calling out me and my boyfriend for passing notes in class.  After class as my boyfriend and I were finishing our “discussion” I put my hand through a glass door.   I drank entirely too much in college and had sex with too many people.  Impulse control, I didn’t have it.

Those signs might have been explained away as a rebellious teen pissed at her father for ruining her senior year.  The years to come would not be any easier.

One of the biggest signs of lack of impulse control was my first marriage.  Chris and I dated off and on (mostly off, only on when nobody else was available) during high school.  My father hated him.  I can see why now.  I graduated from college in the spring of ‘91, that December I looked Chris up.  We hadn’t talked in years.  He was single, I was single.  I always had a huge crush on him, and he was always the one I could never catch.  30 days later we decided to get married.  We I told my parents the night before.  They were not pleased.  I couldn’t stop to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head, I could only hear the mania squeeing inside “I’m going to marry him!  I win!!!”.

The manic episodes I experienced during that marriage were epic.  I remember Chris calling my father to come get me, he was giving me back.  I was crazy.  The broken door in college? Just the beginning of things I would break in the midst of a manic rage.  Then I had my son, Ian and the postpartum depression hit.  We came home from the hospital to a disaster.  Dirty dishes all over the kitchen and living room, dog hair on every single surface, and fleas… I took one look at that mess, took Ian, walked right back out the door and told Chris either clean this house up and get rid of that damn dog or you and the dog both will be on the streets tonight. I will be at my mother’s”.  I was serious.  I never saw a doctor about my depression. I just sucked it up, like I had done most of my life.  I just thought this was normal.  It had always been normal for me.

I divorced him, married the girls’ dad, got pregnant, twice, and went through two more horrific bouts of postpartum depression, lather, rinse, repeat.  The manic rages and the fights that ensued were epic.  There were slashed tires, shattered windshields, holes in walls, slammed doors.  In the midst of a rage, I took the girls to his mother’s house and, convinced she was trying to steal them away from me and chase me out of her son’s and our daughters’ life handed them over to her saying, “Here, you want them? Take them.”  I was screaming out for help and nobody heard, nobody listened, nobody offered to help.

Getting an answer.  It was only half an answer, but it was a step in the right direction.

My 37th birthday was a turning point of sorts.  A disagreement with the guy I was dating at the time led me to my first breakdown.  That was the first time I was completely consumed with hopelessness and despair. I stopped at a gas station to get gas, and for whatever reason my car wouldn’t start.  I called my mother and step-dad to come help.  I was already well on my way spiraling out of control deeper and deeper into a hopelessness I couldn’t, didn’t want to fight.  By the time they got there 20 minutes later, I was curled up in the driver’s seat in a fetal position barely able to speak.  They followed me home that night.  I asked them to leave my son with me, knowing his presence would be just enough to keep me from giving up completely.  I spent 36 hours crying, writing, calling family and friends to ‘say goodbye’ and not sleeping.  I still have the notebook I wrote in that night.  “Isn’t 37 years long enough to hurt?”  I don’t know if anyone really knew I was calling to say goodbye that night, but my dad called the next morning to check on me.  When I told him I couldn’t even get out of bed, he told me to call my mother and get to the hospital.  They gave me some meds, the name of a therapist and a pat on the back.

Depression.  Clearly.  Anti depressants. Yay!  Wonderful for the depressed. Not exactly great for the manic depressed.  The meds treated the depression, and swung me head on into a manic mood.  Mania is awesome, until it isn’t.  You feel great, all kinds of creative and energetic and fucking fabulous.  Until you take it way too far, and you get creepy and scary.  Once I was swinging away from the depression my doc stopped the anti depressants.  I would have repeated cycles of this… depression, three months on anti depressant and viola! Cured!

Naming the demon that lives inside my head.

I have written about that night here once or twice.  The night I finally allowed myself to admit to myself that there was something very seriously wrong with me and I needed some very serious help.  I was dating Brian at the time, living 2 hours apart.  I had taken the day off to spend the day with him.  In the course of the day I saw a message on his MySpace page (it was before we really knew or cared about Facebook) from a girl I didn’t know.  I couldn’t let it go.  The words of that message, “Nice pictures Brian”, echoed in my head, the my manic brain blowing that message clear out of proportion into a full-blown affair.  By the time we got to his house that night, I was convinced he was going to marry her, and I seriously considered just going home.  But I didn’t.  I stayed.  He knew something was wrong, he asked about it.  I denied it.  He pushed, I’m sure, out of concern.  I snapped.  I threw accusations and hurled hateful horrible vile verbal garbage at him.  The more my mouth vomited this poison, the louder I screamed inside to shut the fuck up.  He sat there that night, and took it.  He never raised his voice.  He tried to deny it but honestly there was nothing for him to deny.  He tried logic and reason, but those are ineffective against a manic rage.  He said “I was going to tell you I love you tonight.”  and my mania raged at him “Well, now you don’t have to lie.”  and inside, I curled up in a ball and died.

Just a quickly and violently as it started, it stopped.  As loud and passionate as I had hurled those vile hateful words at him, I just as quickly shut up.  The one thing I had screamed so loudly and wanted so desperately inside and finally happened; too fucking late.  I not only didn’t say another word that night, I couldn’t.  The shame and disgust from my actions washed over me.  I saw the hurt and the pain and the damage I had caused and I hated myself.  I wanted to disappear.

The next morning I drove home, called Pathways, made an appointment with a psychiatrist and a therapist and started to find the answers.  The damage was done, and couldn’t be undone.  But I could finally see that there was something very seriously wrong with me and I needed help.  I walked out of that appointment with a name for the demon that lived in my head, Bipolar disorder.  A scary disorder.  I was scared that people would hear Bipolar and think CRAZY or asylum.   I was afraid that if this information got into the hands of either of my ex husbands they would use it against me and take the kids away from me.  I bought into the ‘mental illness’ stigma myself.

Naming a demon is not taming a demon

Now I knew what I was living with. But that doesn’t mean things magically turned up unicorns, rainbows and glitter.  At first I used bipolar disorder as an excuse/explanation for bad choices.  I refused to take responsibility for anything. I was a real hawt mess.  It wasn’t until I ended up in out-patient therapy after another breakdown (this one involved tequila and vicodin) the first time that I finally got it, I was going to have to step up and take responsibility for my actions and my life.  I was not my disorder, I could live a fairly normal life if I worked at it.

And worked at it I did.  And I have, and I continue to work at it. Bipolar disorder can not be treated like an ear infection, there is no set course of treatment.  The only thing the medical field can agree on is that it takes medication and therapy to be most effective.  It’s not fun, and it’s not easy, but ‘normal’ is better than not.  I have done two stints in outpatient therapy, the latest one, just last summer, after yet another huge trigger and spiral into nothingness.  I have never been committed.  I lost my son along the way, his father took my disorder and used it to poison my son against me.  The girls dad gets it, he knows that the girls being here is what keeps me fighting and trying.  I am lucky in that regard.

My disorder still fucks up a lot of things in my life.  My sister and I are no longer speaking to each other because of an episode at Thanksgiving.  The longer I am unemployed the harder it gets for me to step outside of my routine.  This weekend the despair and hopelessness came to visit again in much the same way it came that night in 2007.  And I fight every day to get up and go on.

I am hyper aware of my girls behavior, moods, reactions.  I watch for any signs my parents and I missed in me.  At 12 and 14 I know that we could very well be on the brink of… something.

I am determined to live with it.  I am determined to find something close to normal.  I am determined that this disorder not destroy me, or my daughters.  I am determined to fight this fight and win.  And I know that I will fight every day for the rest of my life.

What I've learned in the past 72 hours

Is long past due.

Here.

And to myself.

And it came this weekend.

I am going to tell you what happened as diplomatically as I can.  I am going to protect one person who truly deserves to be protected.  I will protect the rest even though they deserve absolutely nothing from me.   That’s not true, they deserve a lot of things, protection, and respect are not among them.

The thing is, the longer I sit and think about this as I write it, the more I think, what’s the point?  It won’t change anything.  They won’t care. Well, they might, they might get mad.

But there’s more to the story than just this one incident.  And because of that, I’ll tell the entire story.

Brian and I broke up the day after Christmas, but we suck at commitment. Truly. We can’t commit to staying together, and we couldn’t commit to staying apart. (until now.)   We started ‘dating’ again… basically we went to dinner and had sex.  Not really ‘dating’ but he called it that.

We gradually worked back to me being allowed at his mother’s house (where he lives).  Me. ALLOWED.  Whatever. But I felt like I was working, begging, pleading for attention, phone calls, text messages, something to show me he remembered me, thought about me, maybe even missed me. She went out-of-town for a week.  I was ALLOWED to come over every night after work, because A) I brought dinner home with me every night (and was never reimbursed for it) and B) I did the dishes.  I got to spend the weekend she was gone, at the house, and that meant I got to clean the house and do everyone’s laundry. YIPPIE!!!

And yet, I stayed.

The day finally came when he actually needed me.  Because he was working, and something needed to be done.  So I agreed. (This is where the protecting ungrateful people comes in).  Something happened that morning, and to be honest, I lost my shit.  It rocked my to my core.  I was hurt, disappointed, pissed off,  just beside myself.  And could do nothing, because, I was nobody.  I was not the parent, I wasn’t even the step-parent, or the step-parent-to-be.  To be honest, I wasn’t even The Girlfriend.  I was the parent’s fuck buddy.

The parent’s reaction to the situation?  Blew me the fuck away.  My opinion? Because it’s my blog, and my opinion doesn’t even matter in real life, but my opinion? They totally UNDER reacted.  But, then again, I was nobody.  I got told “Butt the fuck out” and then got told “Go Fuck Yourself” in a text message. From Brian.

The entire drama of the entire situation (add to the fact that there were lies being told about me that I was never able to defend, refute, or prove wrong) and I went over the edge.  I wanted it all to go away.  I wanted this shit over with.  I wanted nothing to do with this group of people whose level of  discipline is so much  less than mine, whose explanation was un-fucking-believable.  All I could think was “Who the fuck are these people and why have I been begging to be a part of this family?”

I wanted the hurt, my hurt, to stop.  I didn’t want to die, I didn’t want to go away, I just wanted release.  I knew nothing I did would ever matter to him. I knew he no longer cared, if he ever did.  But I wanted to lash out, needed to vent my anger at someone.

And I was the only one there.

And I vented. And I lashed out.  And I broke down.  Much like I celebrated my 37th birthday.

I spent 10 hours yesterday in the hospital. My bosses sent me.  My best friend called Brian to tell him.  He texted me “Tell her to stop calling me.”  I sent him a text that said “No need for you to check on me unless you actually care.”

He never made the effort.

Today, I sent him one last text message, “Thank you for everything. You taught me that I deserve SO much better than you, and that size isn’t the only thing that matters.”

The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn…

What does love look like?  What is love?  Will I ever find it?  Will it ever stay?

All valid questions.

Love is a choice we make each and every day.  It isn’t something that just happens, not some place that we fall, it’s a choice.

For some, it’s an easy choice to make each and every day.  For others, it’s a struggle, one they choose not to make.

I am looking for love.

There… I said it.  I’m looking for love.  But before I can find it I have to define it, at least for me.  What does love look like, what do I want it to be?

I read Britt’s post today about/for Jared and my heart ached with an emptiness from a lack of deep, true, giving, unselfish love.  I want to be able to love someone that much, and be loved that deeply, that truly, that unselfishly in return.

Loving me isn’t easy.  My bipolar makes it a real challenge.  Even when it’s under control and medicated, I’ve learned medication isn’t always the answer and doesn’t always work.  My medication and treatments have to be switched and changed and tweaked a lot.  That is a challenge, and it takes it toll on me, and those around me.  It’s not something I chose, it’s not something I can help.  Loving me is a challenge.

And so far?

Nobody is up for it. At least not long term….

And I wonder if being bipolar, at least for me, means being alone for the rest of my life.  This isn’t the life I wanted.  This disease isn’t what I signed up for.  Even when it’s controlled, it’s still… a guessing game at best…

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love and to be loved in return. Letting someone love you is hard.  That means you have to allow them to see your weaknesses and your flaws and trust that they can accept those things as well as your sparkling eyes and witty personality.

They say it’s out there.. you just have to go and find it.  I wonder sometimes if I ever will.

My love hate relationship with my body Part II

For Part I of this series, go here.

After my first baby, the rules of my control game changed. It was no longer about controlling what I did or didn’t eat.  It was all of a sudden all about getting back into my own damn clothes and the numbers on the scale.  My son was born in October.  By Thanksgiving I was back in my own jeans (size 8 ) and by Christmas I was back in my skinny jeans (size 5).  I was fueled by the envy of everyone around me who was amazed at how quickly I had gotten back to my pre-baby self.  I lived on the attention.

I spent the next 13 years playing this game.  My weight fluctuated between 115 and 120. I was still just as obsessed with the numbers on the scale and the numbers on the labels of my jeans.  And yet, every time I got pregnant, the games stopped, but started right back up again, the day I came home from the hospital.

By the third go round (after the birth of Newt) I recognized the pattern. I knew in my head that it was unhealthy, and yet I was helpless to let go of the control, and the attention it garnered from my friends.  It wasn’t long after Newt was born that my marriage to the girls’ dad changed.  To be honest, I always had a difficult time with PPD (thanks BPD) and their dad had his own version of PPD.  The fights were epic and our relationship was out of control.  The one thing I could control? My food intake.  And I controlled it with drill sergeant precision.  The numbers on the scale reflected just how happy or unhappy I was in my relationship.

I wasn’t happy in my marriage.  It wasn’t good.  So I sought my happiness in my weight.  I believed, wrongly, that if I could just get down to 100 pounds life would magically be perfect, fairy tale happy.  I starved myself.  I popped diet pills, I used laxatives.  I stopped just short of throwing up but only because I *hate* with a passion that burns brighter than a thousand suns to throw up.  I had my limits.  They were few, but I had them.

They day before I finally left the girls’ dad, I stepped on the scale and the number that day? 98 pounds.  I am 5’ 7”.  At this point? My size 3 jeans were hanging off of me.  I was wearing sweatshirts because I was always cold. I had no body mass to keep me warm.  That day?  I stood on the scale, saw 98 and just stared.  I had won the game!  I was under 100 pounds for the first time since I started this game all those years ago!  I had reached my ultimate goal.  I was winning.  The competitive voice in my head said “Way to go.. now lets see HOW FAR under 100 you can go!”.  The reasonable voice in my head said “Look you’re unhappy here. This is proof that this relationship will kill you.  Get out.  Save yourself and your kids.”

I listened to reason.

I left.

But the games didn’t stop.

I allowed myself to eat and put on enough weight to get above 100 pounds, but just barely.  I couldn’t give up all that I had gained (or lost as the case may be) but I couldn’t survive weighing less than 100 pounds.  Also?  When everyone you know is expressing grave concern about your weight you kinda can’t ignore it or them.  So you do the bare minimum, whatever it takes to get them to leave you alone, without giving up the game.

That was seven years ago.

Five years ago this August I met Brian.  Four years ago next month, I moved to be closer to him, get away from the girls’ dad, and give the girls (and me) a better life. I was still playing the games.  Food was still the enemy.  Brian’s family? Loved to eat.  They loved to cook, especially his dad.  And they ate real food.  Steaks, shrimp, crab, lobster, pasta, biscuits and gravy.  And drink? Margaritas or rum and coke, Mimosas or Bloody Marys for breakfast.  And the cheesecake.  Oh god the cheesecake.

I played my games for a while, but his family? Made it their mission to put some weight on me.  And when faced with all that food, all that glorious, fabulous food it’s hard to play the game.  Then Brian said “I love you.” and then promised me bling if I just gained some weight, and promised to love me for ever if I would just stop playing the games and get healthy.  And did I mention the cheesecake?

Slowly but surely the food, alcohol, Brian and his family won out over my rules.  I was safe, I was secure, and I was loved.  It was ok to eat.  And I ate.  And slowly, one by one, my outfits stopped fitting.  My jeans got too small, my shirts were too tight, and the numbers on the labels of my clothes got bigger and bigger.  There were days I would stand in the bathroom looking at my reflection crying for all I had lost (or gained…)  Crying because I had never seen myself at a normal healthy weight and I hated this ‘fat’ me.  Crying because I was losing the game I had played most of my life.  It was at these times Brian would tell me “I love you, and I love this, and you look wonderful, and healthy and please stop crying.”  I would tell myself it was enough. I would tell myself it was ok to be ‘fat’ because Brian loved me.

It wasn’t that long ago that I stood on the scale because absolutely nothing fit any more.  None of my clothes fit, I had started buying new clothes, with double digits on the labels.  The number on the scale? 160.  The only other time I had weighed anything close to 160, I was 8 months pregnant with a baby.  This time? There was no baby.  This time? I was fat.  Nobody commented on it. Brian’s family still told me I looked good. Brian still told me he loved me and the extra weight.  But that wasn’t enough. I didn’t love me.  I didn’t love the extra weight.  I had lost.

I knew I had to change things, but I also knew I couldn’t go back to my games again. I couldn’t go back to anorexia and lose the weight that way.  My girls are 11 and 14 now and they watch me.  They pay attention.  They would notice, they would see the games that I played and the dangerous ways I fought to lose the weight I so desperately hated.  I knew I had to change, but when you know there’s a cheesecake in the fridge that his mom bought just because she knew I loved cheesecake, it’s hard to change.

When Brian and I broke up in December, all of a sudden the steaks, and pasta three nights a week went away. Suddenly there was no cheesecake calling my name before I went to bed each night.  Now, there would no longer be biscuits and gravy and bacon and eggs for breakfast every Sunday.  There would no longer be lazy days spent watching television in bed, eating and napping a lazy Sunday away.  And without much effort at all, 30 pounds fell away.

I’m still not happy.  I am happier than I was at 160, but I’m not where I want to be.  I am playing the numbers game, but not obsessively like I did years ago.  Frankly, I like food, and I’m just too lazy to play those stupid games.  This time, I am watching what I eat and not eating nearly as much as I used to.  Just this weekend, since the weather finally warmed up, and we’re only a couple of blocks from the school, the girls and I went to the track and walked around it. That is something I can do every night.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the game.  There are times I wish I had that kind of self control again, but I know this time? I have eyes on me, I have daughters that I influence and I don’t want them to live the life I lived with anorexia.

My love hate relationship with my body Part I

I spent Saturday morning reading the posts over at Curvy Girl Guide.  I have never considered myself a ‘curvy girl’ but I have a love/hate relationship with my body.  To say that I have body image issues?  Is like saying Charlie Sheen is crazy.  He’s Shite Crazy.  And I? Have body issues.

I clearly remember the first time I hated my body.  I was 9 years old.  Yes, 9.  My best friend Debbie came over to spend the night.  Debbie was The. Most. Popular. Girl. in 5th grade.  Everyone wanted to be Debbie’s friend. And this week? She picked me. (yes, this week, that’s how we rolled back then. Crazy stupid now, but then? Life or death. Period.) Oh, and you should know that the goal of being someone’s friend was to have a sleepover.  That was the crowning moment in a friendship.  The irony of that moment?  Once you had a sleepover, the friendship was done.  We would go to school the following Monday (sleepovers were always on Fridays) and start looking for a new friend because you could only be friends with one person at a time.  Anyway.. that’s an entirely different blog post for another day.

So, Debbie came to my house for a sleepover!  I was making it big!  I was going to be the 2nd most popular girl in 5th grade because I was Debbie’s BFTS (Best Friend till the Sleepover) and she was spending the night at my house!  She rode the bus home with me, we did all the usual girl sleepover things.  (she had a training bra! She let me wear it! Scandalous to a preacher’s daughter.) And then, for whatever reason, we had to take a bath.  So, because we were BFTS’s and we did *everything* together, we jumped in the tub together.  (what? Back then? That wasn’t weird at all.  It was the 70’s still.  DO.NOT.DO.THE.MATH!) We sat side by side in the bathtub, legs stretched out in front of us.  And we could sit side by side. Know why?  Because Debbie was no bigger than a minute.  She was tiny.  Ethiopian tiny.  And sitting there beside her, I saw her skinny tan legs, next to my pasty white thunder thighs and for the first time in my entire life, I was jealous.

And ashamed.

And didn’t know what to do about those feelings.

True to form, Monday morning, back at school, Debbie and I both started looking for new friends, which had everything to do with the Friendship protocol, and nothing to do with my body envy.  But I never forgot…

My first bout of anorexia came my Sophomore year of high school.  Thanks to genetics I had always been a bit on the skinny side. I had always been one to eat whatever I wanted and never worried about my weight.  My sophomore year I had strep throat twice and that spring, caught mono.  With the sore throat and all the sleeping going on, eating just got in the way.  So, I didn’t.  When I finally went back to school, it was fun to see how little I could eat in a given day.  It became a game, a contest with myself.  It got to the point I was living on a Hostess Cherry Pie and a carton of milk a day.  That’s it.  Period.  And some days I would only eat half of the cherry pie.

But even that? Had nothing to do with my weight.  It had everything to do with my ability to control how little I actually ate in a day.  (and the attention/envy of everyone around me. Finally I was the Debbie in the friendships I had.) It was a game I played with myself.  I didn’t think anything of it.  I was blissfully unaware of the number on the scale, because I never stepped on a scale.  I was completely unaware of how I looked until a friend of mine commented on how she wished her stomach was as flat as mine. (At that point I was all “YES! Somebody wants to look just like me! Just like I wanted to have legs like Debbie’s!)  I didn’t think there was a problem, even when my dad brought home nutritional drinks and told me I had to drink one before breakfast and before dinner every day. He meant before as in drink them and then *eat* something too. (I drank them, because he made me, but I didn’t eat anything the rest of the day.)  By this point, it was a contest of wills.  I had been winning the “How little can I actually eat” game I played in my head and I was not about to let my dad lose it for me now.  I distinctly remember vacation trips when we would stop at an all you can eat place for breakfast and I would have 1 piece of sausage and a glass of milk.  That’s it. That is how far my control had gone.

My anorexia never started out about my weight, it always started as a control game I played with myself. I eventually started paying attention to the numbers on the scale. Obsessively paying attention to the numbers on the scale.  Because those numbers? Were the scoreboard in my control game.  Those numbers determined if I was winning or not.

In the midst of these games I was playing with myself, I had three babies.  Each time the pregnancy test came back positive, the food games stopped. I never worried about the weight or the amount of food I ate the entire time I was pregnant with any of the kids.  It was never about me then, it was all about the baby.  But the day I came home from the hospital, I wanted that weight gone.  That is when the games became about the weight, the numbers on the scale, the size of my jeans.  After my first baby, the rules of the game changed.

To be continued….

Comfort Zones: Who needs em?

This weekend?  Full of all kinds of lessons.

Britt wrote on her blog Friday about being ready and able to say “Yes” when opportunities arise.  Being able to grab the opportunity, being open to accepting it.  While she’s talking about herself being able and ready and open to accepting the invitation to go to Paris for a month, or travel the country for a year, I’m taking much smaller baby steps. But to me? Are just as profound.

For the past four years my life has been the same.  Live at my house Sunday night through Thursday night.  Go to work, send girls to school, dinner, homework, laundry, whatever during the week.  Friday night through Sunday evening?  Stay at Brian’s house. I never accepting invitations to plans with any of my friends from work on the weekends, because my weekends were spent at Brian’s house.  I never accepted invitations to anywhere with anyone because Brian is such a homebody that when he gets home from work, he doesn’t want to go out anywhere.  And going without him? Just wasn’t something I would have done. He would have gone with me if I had insisted, or he would have said I could go without him, but, well, I just never did.  That’s just the way our life was.  Homebodies.

Now, though, I don’t have anyone to answer to.  On the weekends the girls are at their dad’s, I have nobody else to consider but myself. I can go out with my friends if I want, I don’t have to turn down opportunities, or invitations.  I am free to go and do as I please.  And learning to step outside my comfort zone, (and my house) is taking some getting used to.

Take for example, last week.  I get a text from my friend Hateful Bitch, whom I haven’t seen since I moved to The Lou, and haven’t talked to nearly as much or as often as I should.  I will admit to neglecting our friendship.  So, her reaching out to me, makes her a way better friend than I am. Anyway, she texts she’s going to be down here in The Lou Friday night, maybe we could get together, hang out?  Turns out I’m taking the girls to their dad’s that night, and won’t be back until 9:00.  Ok, breakfast or lunch the next day?

Sure.

Come Friday, plans start to change.  And here’s where I have to step outside of my comfort zone.  Instead of meeting Saturday for breakfast, she asks if she can just come crash at my place.

Sure.

My house? Very simple. No cable/satellite TV, no internet, (and as of this past week.. no DVD player. We’re down to VHS here people. OLD VHS.  Like my television is almost never on now.) I live in a little hole in the wall town, and? I need to go grocery shopping.  I have almost no food in the house.  Coffee? Yes.  Food? Not so much.  Seriously.

All kinds of inviting and house guest ready I am.

Instead, she asks “If I get a hotel room downtown would you drive downtown and hang out with me there?”  Uh, let’s see… hotel, cable, internet, a bar…

HELL YES!

And that’s stepping outside my comfort zone.  Instead of going home after dropping the girls off, I plugged the address of the hotel into the GPS and drove downtown.  Something you should know about me?  I HATE driving downtown, but I will. During. The. Day. when I can see.  I HATE with a passion driving downtown at night.  Especially when I have no idea where I am going.  Add to that the fact that the hotel was three blocks away from the hockey game that just ended when I got downtown, and traffic was a clusterfuck.  I was way the hell outside my comfort zone. (I was wishing I had Brian because he always drove downtown at night. But if there was Brian, I wouldn’t have been at the Union Station Marriott, I’d be at his house sleeping in his bed instead of hanging out with my girlfriend)

And I did it all for Hateful Bitch.

Also? Other lesson learned? No matter how young and hot the guy offering to buy you a shot of Petron is… the shot? Won’t be worth it.  Petron will kick your ass. Hard. Especially when the bartender has a heavy hand and the shot? Is like three fingers.  Never shooting tequila again. Never.  (and nothing happened with young hot Petron shot buying dude. Nothing.)

One more lesson learned?  The Marriott at Union Station?  Charges you a fuckton of money for their rooms and valet parking and being right there at Union Station.  AND? Apparently internet.  It’s a fucking NICE hotel. And they can’t give you free WiFi.  WTF?