struggling

it's my birthday tomorrow, which makes me hate myself for writing this post. i should be doing well and happy and positive on my birthday right?

I'm working on the abuse in therapy, which has been hard, but necessary. However I think it's sent my anxiety into overdrive and I'm MAJORLY resorting back into my ED. It's weird though, I really don't feel much anxiety. I have been restricting a lot and I know it's not good but I have no appetite and eating feels so hard right now. Definitely something to discuss with my therapist...

which brings me to my next issue. My new insurance from work SUCKS. It does not cover therapy. And I will most likely have to change some of my doctors because they are not in my insurance network. I cannot afford therapy on my own, and my parent's are having financial issues themselves. I am petrified that I will have to cut back on therapy, and I'm not sure how I would deal with that. Never been in this situation before, and I'm panicking.

Like I said, tomorrow is my birthday. I will be 22 years old. I am spending the day at Busch Gardens with some friends. SO excited! I LOVE rollercoasters! Then I am having birthday dinner with my family later that night, and birthday cake afterwards. Just to throw it out there, cake is my biggest fear food. I am going to try and resist the fear and have a piece of cake on my birthday.

Right now I'm hurting though. I want to curl into a ball on my therapist's couch and cry and cry. I don't want to lose therapy. I need it right now, more than ever.

realize.

I'm crying. Big fat teardrops are rolling down my cheeks. It keeps coming and coming. In my head are images of my 22 (almost) years on this planet. The good stuff first. Going to the hospital to see my little sister when she was born, learning how to do a cartwheel for the first time, trips to the mall with my grandmother, visiting my cousins in Maryland, spending my summer 24/7 at the pool, getting really good at gymnastics and winning beam at nearly every meet i competed in, loving the feeling of flying through the air in gymnastics and diving, family vacations at the beach, halloween, christmas, blowing out my birthday candles...such good and fond memories. I was happy, a very happy kid. Sure I had my issues with ADHD, but I was happy and full of life and potential. Enter age 11. Images of my body being violated, hurt, and abused. My last gymnastics meet ever, in pain physically and emotionally. Why? My talent and potential were taken away from me. Who am I? Numb. Lost. Depressed. I found a new use for scissors. Not in a good way. Reaching out to anyone and everyone who would listen to me, except my family. Just wanting to destroy myself, what I've become. Looking at the bottle of pills. I want out. Psych hopsital, is this really happening? Food, my enemy. Staring at the porcelin bowl. Never happy with the scale. Remuda Ranch, the desert, life long friendships, but the ED has become my identity. Still do not know who I am. The next 6 years are a repeat of cutting, eating disorder, being suicidal, therapy, and being flat out miserable.

And here I am...4 days away from my 22nd birthday. For the first time...realizing...no, really really realizing...I am the only one who can change myself. That I have to do this. I want to have babies one day, fall in love, travel the world, have an abundance of friends, and grow old and happy. I finally WANT to do this. But I'm scared. It's hard to see the end, a happy end. I struggle with..."do i even deserve this?" Do I deserve happiness and peace, when I have just wasted my time and other people's time for so long? Oh God, I want it so bad. I am ready. I will do what it takes. I want better.

random thoughts

My dog Lucy


Some of these might makes sense, some might...it's just what is inside my head.

- the last time I was truly happy was when I was 10 years old. This needs to change.

-I live literally 2 minutes away from my parents, and yet I miss them when I go to my own house. I'm almost 22 years old, to me this is a problem.

- My birthday is on Monday. I feel so old.

- I do not know how to define the state of my eating disorder recovery. I guess I am considered "in recovery" but it doesn't really feel like it

- My oldest dog, Lucy, is 11 years old. And even though she is in perfect health and so energetic I constantly fear she is going to die soon and I don't think I could handle that.

- I need to make an appointment with my colo-rectal surgeon. I am having a lot of pain and bleeding again. This needs to be fixed, but it's such an embarrassing problem.

- I have decided to really actually talk about it. I don't want to. But I know I need to. I'm scared. I'm terrified.

- I want a baby. No really.

- It's really hard to eat right now. I get hungry, and then when the food is in front of me, the hunger goes away.

-Ultimate frisbee summer league is almost over. This makes me sad. On Sunday, I got hit really hard in the head, very painful. Still have a headache. I think I might have had a slight concussion. Oh well, I have been hit harder.

- My bed is the most comfortable thing in the world.


- I want to go back to the beach.

depression

I've been hesitating to post. I am pretty embarrassed with how much I'm struggling. I don't even know why I am having such a hard time with depression. But I am. It all started last Friday. I guess I had a pretty intense therapy session, and it just triggered depression and a lot of self-harm thoughts and urges in me. I wrote about how hopeless I have been and still am. One one hand I want to die...I do. I want to just end the anxiety, the pain, and the torture. But on the other hand, I know deep in my heart somewhere there is some hope, and that I have felt better than this before, so I know it's possible again, right? I don't know if I am suicidal or not. That sounds crazy I know. But I can't figure it out. I definitely was the other night. Does anyone, like me, get annoyed and frustrated with having to rely on medication to make anxiety or depression better? I know it's a great thing, but I often wonder if that's really the solution to my problems. Besides, meds scare me, always have. I take them, but very reluctantly.

So, I don't want to live the way I am living anymore. I know the strong and right thing to do is to fight, but honestly I am tired of doing that too. Some would argue that I'm not even fighting to begin with, but I think I am. I fight my urges, I fight my thoughts. I go to therapy, I take my meds, I do my breathing exercises, I have a job, etc. Maybe I'm not perfect at all of these things, but at least I am doing them. And who does it perfectly anyway? People keep telling me..."you can and will recover from your eating disorder. you will heal from the sexual abuse, it will get better. These things just take time" I always want to respond with..."how much time?" Okay, so I know I have only just begun to work on the abuse, it's only been about 7 months that I've been working on that in therapy. But with everything else, the eating disorder, the anxiety...that's been going on for years. I don't blame my current or previous therapists. If anyone, I blame myself for not being at a good spot in recovery at this point. Maybe I am not fighting hard enough, trying hard enough. Maybe I don't want it. I'm not completely sure. I do know that it scares me to recover from all of my issues. They have been my identity for years now, without them...who am I? Everyone will leave me. I will be alone.

I am constantly terrified that my therapist is mad at me or annoyed at me. She swears she isn't. But sometimes I wonder...she must be. I have annoyed school counselors and therapists in the past, how come she hasn't yelled at me yet or left me? I was abandoned by a school counselor before, and yelled at many times. Okay, so maybe I deserved to be yelled at a few times. But my therapist right now trusts me, I think. She seems to. I don't know how I deserve such a good therapist. She's really amazing.

I realize this post has been all over the place, but that's kind of how I am right now.

Today is my little sister's 18th birthday. I can't believe how old me and my sisters are getting. My big sister turns 26 in a couple of weeks, and I turn 22 in a month.

Anyway. Whoever read all of this deserves a medal. I know it wasn't that much fun or exciting to read.