4-27-13

I changed the title of my blog today. My reasoning behind this was because I think the original name was a bit too abstract. I am afraid some of my viewers/followers might not have understood; and the more I thought about it I thought the new title fit better. I chose the word Skin Deep because much of what I felt (and feel), I feel in the pit of my stomach, the center of my heart, or the core of bones – hence the name Skin Deep. The word Madness is quite obvious. Much of what I have felt the last 8 years (and more perceptively my whole life), was bone chilling madness. Whether that be in the form of a life threatening eating disorder, self-harm, anxiety and sheer panic as a young child, my recent mood disorder, and numerous other things.

Now back to my story...

After my belligerent 14 year old ass decided to run to my first official day of day hospital at Johns Hopkins I nearly had my head bitten off by the Director of the Eating Disorder Program. After being told that I had acted like an “Animal”, I was just down right pissed. This is the Doctor that made me gain what perceived a massive quantity of weight. How dare she not understand my actions. I was kicked out of rounds after mouthing some smart ass remarks, and sat down in front of my breakfast. Nothing like breakfast to cheer me up! Some of the other patients could tell something had happened and were asking me what I did. I had told them I just ran from the apartment we were staying at to the hospital. Some of them were smirking and saying way to go, others said I was an idiot. I was the epitome of an idiot.

I certainly didn’t do that again. I didn’t want the big bad Psychiatrist under my bed to get me. For the next couple of weeks I adjusted okay to day hospital. In the Johns Hopkins day hospital program patients go to the gargantuan hospital size cafeteria and get their trays and bring them back up to the unit to eat. Sometimes the nurses take patients out into the great city of Baltimore to eat a meal in a restaurant. This was probably the most humiliating part for me. We went to some nice café where people drank café and ate scones, and here were the special eating disordered patients that spent nearly an arm and a leg buying an enormous meal just so they could get all their “exchanges”. The worst is yet to come. In the inpatient program at Johns Hopkins patients drink their Ensure Plus with their meals. In the day hospital the patients have to get an “Ensure Replacement”, i.e. a mammoth sized piece of cake, cookie, ice cream or other massive dessert sized food with the same amount of calories as an Ensure Plus. It was sheer hell. To this day I don’t understand the logic behind that.

Well here it is the end of December and it’s almost Christmas. Marissa has been away for over three months. What a creative “challenge”, it would be to send her home for Christmas, have her go to school (only for a few days of course), but then come back to the eating disorder day hospital in Baltimore!! What a fantastic idea!! I thought this plan was as ridiculous then as I do now. But alas, there I went back home to Chesapeake VA in time for Christmas 2006. Right back into the same environment I nearly killed myself in. It definitely felt very odd and it always does. I was happy to see my dog though. I immediately started playing basketball out in the street with some of my neighborhood friends; they assured me every time I asked them that I was still “thin”. I told them the amount of food I had to eat in the hospital and they pain snakingly still said they ate that much. I wonder if they said “Yeah that’s a shit ton of food”, I wonder if that would have been any better for me.

Well I was home for 2 weeks. Christmas 2006 was a success. I was fresh out of the eating disorder unit. My parents had stopped taking pictures of me when I was “sick”, and had thrown most of them away that they still had. So the Christmas 2006 picture was a keeper for sure. I detested it at the time. Sickness was still an innate a part of me though. I had a warped sense of reality. I started waking up early before school and riding my bike the exact route that I had compulsively ran the year before. Riding a bike was completely fine though, it didn’t burn nearly as many calories. Ha!

This was also the first time since last September that I started 8^th grade. I would only be in 8^th grade for 2 weeks. My parents and I decided I was going to take a leap of bravery and go to a public school for the first time this year. For it was in that bloody private school that anorexia first climbed into my spine. It was going to be a fresh start.

So for the 2 weeks I was home I rode my bike every morning then got dropped off at this new public middle school. It was extremely intimidating. These people had grown up together and were getting ready to go to high school. They went out and saw movies together, they played on sports teams, they took history tests, and they went to pizza parties. What had I done? I went to interpersonal group therapy, I ate strictly scheduled meals with other sick persons, (which was not a pizza party…) and I had bathroom breaks (Which were one of the best parts of the day)! I ticked to the metronome of a strict psychiatric inpatient schedule. That’s exactly where I was socially as well.

I was a sick little girl. Sick I was indeed sir. The God awful Social Worker from Johns Hopkins strictly arranged for me to eat lunch with the School Nurse and the 8^th grade guidance counselor.  This was one of the most degrading things that ever happened to me. I would sit in the guidance counselor’s office with the lunch my mother had dropped off at lunch time (I was not trusted to bring it because I would throw part of it away- and the hell I would have). The guidance counselor would sit at desk starting at me, and the school nurse would sit next to me arms crossed and eyes glaring. I was totally going to maneuver and bull shit this dumb school nurse because I didn’t think she was serious about watching me. Well, she was. I tried to throw some cheese off my sandwich onto the ground and she would just say “Don’t do it”, I of said “What if I do?” “Then we will call your mom and you will have to go home”. Yep. That was the arrangement. If I refused to eat, or manipulated the food in any way they would call my mom and I would go home. Going to school was a “privilege” for someone like me.

During these two weeks they had made the mistake of letting me participate in PE. So I was getting a good amount of exercise for someone who was used to sitting on their ass in the hospital. I honestly don’t remember how it even happened, but it was early January and I had lost a good amount of weight. The Doctor and my Social Worker instructed my parents to bring me back up to the hospital. I landed myself right back inpatient. I had not followed the meal plan well enough at home.

I was happy to see my meal plan had been temporarily reduced when I returned back to the inpatient unit. My joy would last only a few days, as the full weight gain diet would return before I knew it. (It is standard eating disorder treatment to start patients on small amounts of food if they have been restricting to prevent “re feeding syndrome”).  It had been two weeks since I had at that defiled table on the eating disorder unit and there I was again. I was falling down the rabbit hole yet again. Johns Hopkins is extremely meticulous about the rules at the table. There is actually a nurse sitting at the table with you. I definitely played dumb my first meal back. I used my fingers when I was supposed to use my fork or something like that, and the nurse said “you know the rules Marissa”, “Oh, I didn’t know I couldn’t do that”, I said. I knew not to do that.

I definitely became well known on the unit after my little 2 week stunt. Just like my little run to day hospital my first day, my Christmas break and school stunt became known amongst some of my fellow patients. People asked why I did it, they laughed, I laughed, and we conspired (which happens often among the sick). Although we had negative conversations sometimes, the friends I made in the hospital were and are my closest friends, and I remember nearly everyone I have met. I laughed so hard I cried many times too. During times where there isn’t much to laugh about we laughed at anything. It was a weekend evening and some other eating disorder patients and I were laughing so hard we were asked to stop because we were burning too many calories. We laughed even harder at that! What we were originally laughing at were the names someone said they were going to name their kids one day. Someone said they were going to have triplets and their names were going to be “Ana” “Rexie” and “Mia”. Well golly day this just struck my funny bone. Hahahahahaha!!! We were laughing like a bunch of fools! Were we high? Maybe – On Seroquel or whatever other meds we took at night. It really wasn’t that funny, but we sure thought it was. I had many a good laughs. I was either going to laugh or cry, so I laughed…and cried sometimes.