4-29- Blogging away on a Boring Day...

Blogging Away on a Boring Day….

Story of my life lately, oh well at least I like doing this. My classes start in about 22 days so I will have more to do then, yay or nay? I guess yay for the time being. As I always say I really like all the feedback I am getting from all my peeps. It looks like even more people are starting to read my blog; and feel free to give your friends the web address for my blog, the more the better.

So in January of 2007 I got admitted back inpatient at Johns Hopkins because I couldn’t control myself while at home. I was in the hospital for a few weeks to a few months I believe and then they switched me back to the beloved day hospital. Out of sheer fear of not wanting to go back inpatient I actually followed the rules. Every night after day hospital I went to the Johns Hopkins Children’s House, a place for patients and families of “sick” children at Johns Hopkins to stay. I didn’t like staying there because I did not feel like I warranted the title of being a “sick” child. The families and children staying in that house [hotel] had cancer, were getting organ transplants, they were dying, and here I was just not knowing how to feed myself; actually let me re-phrase that, I knew exactly what to eat I was an expert at nutrition, I just refused to feed myself. Staying in the Children’s House was really nice though. They had a big basement full games that we could play. I played pool with my mom. When she was exhausted from an emotionally drained day with a deranged 14 year old she went to bed and I told her I was going to go the basement to play a little bit of “X-box”. I went into the bathroom in the basement and got in a few reps of crunches and sit-ups.

The day finally came that they had done all they could for me, I had reached my secret “goal weight” and I was deemed “stable. The asshole Social Worker pulled my parents and I into her extremely small office with no windows and I watched and listened as she horsed out the rules that were being put in place for my “contract”. I was furious. I hate being tied to any sort of obligation and this especially was just another way for my superiors to control me. The contract stated things such as following:

Marissa will get weighed once a week

Marissa will not go to school if she doesn’t eat her “exchanges”

Marissa will not participate in PE if she falls more than 3 pounds below her goals weight.

 

Just lots of stupid little things like that. I was also required to come up to Baltimore every month to see the Director of the Johns Hopkins Eating Disorder Program. She was to be my psychiatrist. I just couldn’t escape this woman!!! I was genuinely pissed, and I was determined to have the last word. It was the last day and we were eating breakfast and I did something like pick something up with my fingers, or use the wrong utensil (some minuscule “behavior”). Later that day in rounds while I was being baked like the loaf of doe I was the charge nurse said “It’s your last day, you know you can’t do that and you did it anyway”, she probably added in about 5 other smart ass remarks as well. I sincerely hated this nurse. I said something like “Fuck you”, and I got kicked out of rounds. I was definitely a mouthy little 14 year old, mostly in the defense of my illness. Hey I felt a lot better.

It was March or April 2007 and I was finally home! I had been a patient either inpatient or day hospital, at the God awful hospital since last September. I remember the rest of my 8^th grade year I felt like a prisoner. Every morning was a battle to follow my meal plan enough to be allowed to go to school. I was always late because of this. I put up a fight every morning so my mom had to drive me to school every morning. After a month or so I got in school suspension because I had been “tardy” so many mornings. They asked me why I was late so many times, and I just said I was not a morning person. This was completely unfair to me. I was in suspension with a bunch of stupid boys who probably cursed out teachers and punched people in the face. I was there because I didn’t enough food in the morning and hence me being late. It was so backwards. I learned my lesson after that. I didn’t get another in school suspension.

The rest of the year consisted of eating lunch with the guidance counselor and that damn stick up her ass school nurse. I eventually started to fall into the system of my middle school schedule. I did not feel normal. I felt the farthest thing from it. I had no friends. I was the kid who had been at school for a few weeks earlier looking like a holocaust victim, and now all of a sudden I looked a bit more normal. I was still quiet and kind of weird though. That’s what the mental hospital does to you after over 5 months. I could not relate to one person in that school. I did however have fun after school with my neighborhood friend. She went to the same school, and every day after school we would walk 1.5 miles to Starbucks where I got a large black coffee with about 20 packs of equal. My friend looked with horror as I dumped 20 of those suckers into my coffee, and then another 1 or 2 packs into my mouth. I wondered why I had no friends. I can’t even imagine.

The end of the school year came there was actually a trip to Richmond for a 8^th grade party or something like that, in this really nice hotel. I wanted to go so bad, mostly just to escape the hawk eyes of my parents for a day or two. I actually had a really good time if I remember correctly. There was a big dance and I sure as hell was dancing, and we stayed up half the night; and for the first time in my life I felt half way normal. I was having “normal” fun, not the kind of fun you have when you are starving yourself. Well the 8^th grade year ended soon after that and I didn’t keep in contact with anyone. I mean, I only went to that school for like 4-5 months out of the school year.

The high school I was supposed to the following year was not what my parents wanted for me at all. It was a rough kind of school, and I was the skinny white kid that the girls at that school would have put between two pieces of bread and eaten for lunch. Plus, there was a brand new high school that was just finished being built a few miles away. So what a great opportunity! It would be a perfect new opportunity for Marissa, a new environment. I could get away from the house that my eating disorder had started in. So we moved! I was very excited. The new house was bigger, newer, and it had a pool! I usually hated swimming because this usually felt like I was in Northern Atlantic Ocean with a sinking Titanic. Lots of things actually happened the summer of 2007. I randomly decided I wanted a bunny. My parents agreed to it, I could get a bunny and he would be my “recovery bunny” yeah right. I love my bunny though. I also started volunteering in the hospital this summer.

Things started to look semi good for me I believe. The new house was nice. We didn’t have the reputation as the family with the sick kid (yet). I had a big room and it had a bathroom. My dog loved the house and the pool. Volunteering in the hospital was exciting for me. It was suggested I do it so I start to think about other people than just myself. I believe my lovely psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins was in support of this, and if she was in support of something then you sure as hell could bet my parents would be. I feel like this Psychiatrist became my parent’s savior (not literally) in a way. They took every word out of her mouth to heart and followed it through like it was written in stone. My mom later said that on my very first day at Johns Hopkins, it was this Psychiatrist that sat her down and explained that what I was doing/experiencing was a normal part of an eating disorder. So I guess I don’t blame my parents for clinging to her. I admit myself that she is pretty damn brilliant.

Although I appeared to be doing lots of normal healthy things, a lot of what I was doing was still fueled and motivated by that bitch eating disorder. Going swimming in the pool with my dog was fun but it also meant burning extra calories. Volunteering in the hospital for hours upon end meant walking around all day, as well being able to eat lunch unsupervised, thus being able to restrict. I also was having fun and learning though. There was the natural curious young kid volunteering in the hospital, but there was also still a vile sick delusional eating disorder. It was so interesting though. The first summer I believe that I volunteered mostly in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) and Surgical Admitting Unit. It was exciting being on the other end of the system – giving care instead of being a patient. I was still sick as ever though, but I didn’t want to admit it. There was a giant accurate scale in the Surgical Admitting Unit, almost identical to the one you would see in an eating disorder program. When there weren’t any patients around I would just climb right on, also keeping an eye out to make sure none of the Doctors or nurses saw me in hopes they wouldn’t find out my evil little secret.

Summer was great. I was also getting in ingrained in my mind that I was going to be a nurse or even better yet, a Doctor. After all I had seen at Johns Hopkins and now the Hospital I was volunteering in I was sure I wanted a career in medicine. The hospital I volunteered in was tiny compared to Johns Hopkins. It had about 350 beds as compared to Johns Hopkins 1000+ beds. I was spoiled what can I say? Little did I know my fascination with healthcare and careers in general was part of some big neurotic thought process, which caused me to opt out of all the colleges/universities I was accepted to all together, yep all or nothing baby.

I turned 15 in August. My present from my psychiatrist “Marissa, you know your goal weight goes up a pound on your birthday”.  Are you serious? Thank you for that. Happy Birthday to me!  Yay me, at least I wasn’t in the hospital for this birthday.  It was time for school to start. I was ecstatic. I was starting high school. My parents and I got a tour of the high school. It was huge. Every room had a “smart board” in it. My high school was the most technologically advanced high school on the east coast. I was pretty proud. The first day of school came around and I caught the bus. No more missing the bus because I didn’t eat enough. I tried so hard to be normal, but pretending to be okay isn’t always the best thing. For the first couple of months things went relatively well. I always had that little voice in my head telling me things just weren’t good though. My high school’s cafeteria bragged that it was more like a food court. Maybe for a couple months, then it got too expensive. My mom would ask what I had eaten for lunch and I would gleefully say “I had a Sandwich a Soup, it was great”. I hadn’t eaten that, and she knew it too. Every month when drove up with one or the other of my parents to see my Psychiatrist I was always scared shitless. Was my little secret going to be found out? I was so extremely manipulative it was disgusting. Every time I saw this Psychiatrist I would bring a big liter of water with me in my bag, and the morning I was to get weighed I would put a big old pack of crystal light in it and drink it. Along with as much coffee as I could get down in the hotel. I also wore a chain belt, double sweatshirts, and thick metal necklaces. I was definitely underweight and I just did not want this Psychiatrist to find out because I knew she would throw me back into the barn yard; and she did, eventually…

This “water loading” idea of mine would happen every time I would get weighed until I reached the age of 17 in the 11^th grade. I realized then it just wasn’t worth it. I would sit in this hour long appointment feel like I had a boiling ball in bladder, and I would picture myself pissing all over this Psychiatrists’ office. She certainly would put me away then. That is just another example of the idiotism an eating disorder makes you go through. It ruins you. For some reason I think she knew all along what I was doing though.

Back at school things were going fine. I was participating in PE, and every month we would have a week of health. When we reached the nutrition chapter I was absolutely thrilled. I got an A on that chapter. I even went to some football games my freshman year. Although I tried so hard to find a crowd or even one friend at all, I felt the wave of rejection like smack in the face. I just wasn’t as good as these people for some reason. I was different. Yes I was different, I am different, I will show you different, I can show you  that, I can starve myself I bet you can’t do that. I decided to start softball conditioning. I have no idea why I thought I was actually going to make the softball team. Softball girls are pretty tough. At the time, some of them were probably double my weight, and their biceps were probably the size of my calf. However, I persisted and continued to try. I ran up and down the bleachers 10 times, I ran around the track, I did whatever the coach asked me to do, but after a lunch of 2 apples I felt like I was going to keel over. I truly think I was delusional because I could not understand why the other girls could do it but I couldn’t. Because you are starving yourself you idiot!!!! I believe I still had my parents fooled at that point. I wasn’t quite at that “deadly” point yet, and they had no real proof of what I was or wasn’t eating for lunch.

Things wouldn’t go on much farther though. One day during PE my PE teacher called me into her office.

“Marissa, I am worried about you, you don’t look the same as you did early this year – you look sick, do you think you have an eating disorder”?

 Do I have an eating disorder? Ha!  That’s the stupidest question I have ever been asked.

“Umm yes I do actually; I have been seeing a Doctor for it for a while”.

 

For some reason I actually ended up telling my mom that my PE teacher said that. That might have been a mistake. Well my next appointment with my psychiatrist didn’t go well. I had lost a significant amount of weight. I was going back to Johns Hopkins Inpatient program. I had to tell my guidance counselor at school and she understood. She was going to arrange for my school work to be sent up to me. I wasn’t a complete failure however. I had managed to stay out of the hospital for a year at least. I had done marginally well for the first 1/3-1/2 of my freshman year in high school. The stress and the pressure and the feeling that no liked me was just too much I suppose. Or maybe it was just the eating disorder had become an erratic way of life for me.