5-3-2013

Well yesterday I saw my therapist and psychiatrist. I usually like those days. Sometimes I just don’t feel like things are ever moving forward for me or that they even understand. I am just starting out with my psychiatrist so I suppose I need to give her some more time. She takes thing very slow. I was used to a psychiatrist that changed my meds or did something at almost every visit. This psychiatrist is not doing that. I think she just wants to get to know me. That’s fine I guess. She asked me what I wanted to focus on, and I really don’t even know. There are so many things to focus on and so many things that I want to change. Why does everything have to be so hard though? Once I get busier with my class I think that will help a little bit. I really miss all my Sheppard Pratt and Johns Hopkins girls. You all are my best friends and you mean so much to me. I miss you all.

In my last entry I talked mostly about the death of my Nana and my volunteer experience in the summer of 2008. I really was enjoying volunteering the hospital and I was sure that I was going to be a Doctor or a nurse myself. The staff at the hospital began to say “they should just start to pay you already”. I completely agreed. I started searching for jobs at this time. It’s relatively hard to find a place to get hired at the age of 15; I did however apply to some places anyway. One place of which was a retirement home right down the road from my house. During this whole time I continued to drive to Baltimore with parents to see my lovely Psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins. She continued to lecture me on what the consequences of eating disorder was and that I was already beginning to take on the role of a “professional patient”, I liked this idea. I was very doubtful I would ever get through a nursing program or other formal training program, so why not take on the career of a professional anorexic? Who cared if I died during the making, although I did not (and still) have a hard time thinking anything life threatening will ever come out of my eating disorder.

In September 2008, I was starting 10^th grade at my school again. We were going to be the first class at this school to start freshman year and go all 4 years. I was already beginning to fall into the danger zone at the beginning of the year. The entire 10^th grade year was a tough eating disorder year (isn’t every year though?). I was beginning to feel like I was going to live with this eating disorder for the rest of my life, and to be honest I did not care in the least bit. I had turned 16 by the start of this year; adulthood was knocking at the door and I was becoming more fearful of that prospect. I was going to have to take College Admission Tests next year; this is when it all really started to count. I took Algebra 2, English, PE, and Creative Writing the first semester. Creative Writing was supposed to be my “fun” class which didn’t add extra stress. Believe it or not, it didn’t, I actually enjoyed it, despite being tired and cold to the bone by the end of the day. By this stage in my eating disorder I had learned that I could lose weight quite well without exercising. I had stopped exercising at this point because I was morbidly depressed and extremely malnourished (yet again). Some people say that eating disorders a choice, and I agree they are, but eating disorders are also a compulsion, an irrational fear, and a delusional coping mechanism. To the people suffering, it makes complete sense. There also becomes a point when one is so ingrained in the disorder that they cannot fix it. The need someone else to tell them it’s okay to eat for the time being and that means go into a structured hospital/program.

This year was the most isolative year for me thus far. I also was on what is appropriate to be called a “suicide diet”, at this point. I would stand out at the best stop at 8:15 AM and I would arrive at school in my homeroom by 8:40AM. I believe my second class was PE. My PE teacher was probably just trying to do her job. When we were told to run laps around the gym and I could barely do it because my muscles were eating themselves, I was told I would get points take off if I didn’t run faster. I do not think she knew what was happening to me although I don’t know how she couldn’t. At lunch I would go into the career counselor’s office and talk about what career I wanted to do. Nothing she said ever helped, and I am still in the same “career crisis” today as I was 4-5 years ago. In September 2008 I actually got a call from this retirement home and they offered me a job. I was thrilled. I had lots of experience with the elderly from my volunteer days. This job was very physically demanding for me at the time. After a day at school I was told to arrive at this Retirement home by 4:30pm (which left about 35 minutes for me chill out and have a small panic attack at home). From 4:30-7:30, I was carrying 4 plates of food on my shoulder to about 15 tables. I cleared the tables, set the tables, vacuumed, and did whatever else they told me to do. This carried on until February 2009. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got home at 7:30pm. Some nights there were parties and I had to stay even later. I tried my absolute hardest not to pass out on the floor. From the time I woke up until I ate dinner “dinner”, I had maybe an apple and some lettuce at school and a couple diet cokes. When I got home I would have a giant batch of cooked cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, or zucchini. I also had a few other small things. At my worst it was just all vegetables. The craziest thing is, I actually only fully craved the vegetables. They say when you are starving strange things taste good. Well that head of soggy cabbage I looked forward to all day was a pot of gold. There were one or two occasions in which I was at work and I got these horrible abdominal pains. I lay on one of the sofas waiting for my mom to pick me up early. I was very afraid I was going to lose the job, due to looking like cancer patient. I believe I was severely dehydrated and my internal organs were hurting for some reason. Never found out what that pain was.

My cousin and Uncle came to visit the winter of 2008. They had never seen me in person when I was that sick looking. A few months earlier at my Nana’s funeral I had looked healthy (I had just gotten out of the hospital). I definitely was a weird person. They had never been to Virginia and since my Dad is high ranking awesome Navy man he got us a tour on one of the air craft carries (I believe it was either the USS Roosevelt or Enterprise). Walking around that ship was exhausting for me, but I have always been interested with Navy ships so I did really enjoy it. It’s just sad to think how much I disturbed people back in those days. I had chopped all my hair off, so I had a really short uneven red bob. I believe eating disorders and severe starvation effects style and pretty much everything. I wore leggings with everything because I was absolutely freezing. I never wore pants though; so I would walk around school with big baggy shorts with leggings, big black boots, and a cheetah animal’s back pack. I was very eccentric. I also used to spend hours in the grocery store just looking at the nutrition facts on everything. I had discovered sauerkraut!! And what a better idea than to put a whole can of the stuff in a lunch box, and take it to school and eat it at lunch with a bunch of other high school students! So there I was with my cheetah back pack in hand, shorts and leggings, I sat with a bunch of random kids I didn’t know. I pulled my can of sauerkraut out and started eating it… the other students just stared - eyes in amazement. (Why the hell is this rail thin kid eating vinegar cabbage out of a can?) Looking back, I think it’s really sad and I do feel bad for myself. I was so starved I felt like I had to eat sauerkraut. Soon enough I would be returning to Sheppard Pratt Hospital. Three years after my initial admission. I was so thankful not to be going back to Johns Hopkins.