Saturday.

Hello again all. I really, really want to thank everyone who left comments on my previous post - you all are so sweet and encouraging! Thank you so much - you have no idea how much your words ahve lifted my spirits. To be honest, I have been struggling with myself lately. I think perhaps the lack of feeling like I am moving forward in my life is affecting my mentality about recovering. At the moment, it feels like everything is as it was before, except now I happen to weigh more. And its incredibly frustrating. I hate myself for this, but I tend to blame my mother. She won't allow me to take more than one or two classes per semester, and she doesn't want me to get a job, she doesn't trust me to go out with my friends and get something to eat, etc. Its incredibly disheartening. I feel like even though she says she wants nothing more than for me to be able to live my life, she is never going to trust me enough to give me the space to do it. At times, and I have believed this since I was young child suffering with untreated and ignored depression/anxiety, that the only way things can ever truly get better for me is if I leave home. Its the only way to move away from the pressure and fear that has been instilled in me. Its very frustrating because I do not want to hurt my family, but at the same time, I often feel like my mother's immense need to shelter me from myself is destroying me as a person. I have cried a lot in the past two or three days. Because of how helpless I feel, like I've no where to run, no where to hide. At times it seems like there is nothing left for me here. But where is there for me to go? I need a change. Desperately. I am immensely afraid of relapsing right now. I hate to say this, but every day I feel like anorexia is trying harder and harder to creep up on me, slowly trying to usurp control again. Even in just little things like "Ooh! You've got too many carbs today. You're over by 2 grams, and you're under 2 grams of fat. You need to fix that." I mean for godsakes. Why is this suddenly becoming an obsession. I always watched my fat intake, because I know it is a fear of mine and I always wanted to make sure I got enough. But I never payed attention grams of carbs or protein before, lest it was way, way too much - I never thought anything of it. And now all of a sudden anorexia has decided that I need to worry about everything. And I just want it to stop. I wish I could just make it all stop sometimes.
Its been making me want to go back to my old way of life. Fortunately, without a steady job I can't quite afford to go there. That should help keep me clean. But even just having thoughts about getting back into drugs is annoying. I get afraid that I cannot control this, and that everything is going to slide out from under me. The fact that no one else around me seems to truly believe I can pull through doesn't help. I mean, my parents have their hopes, yes. But do they have confidence in me? Not really. Every word I speak is always twisted into something else, something that anorexia would say. Example, this afternoon at lunch. "Mom, can you hand me a butter knife?" "What do you need that for?" "To spread my peanut butter on my apple slices." "Why can't you just dip it like a normal person, is this another anorexic thing? Do you want a fork to eat the apple with too?" "Mom. I wanted a knife to spread it on with to make sure I got all of my peanut butter on my apple. If I just dip it, it'll get smeared all over the plate." ::enter Mom's agitated groan::
You'd think she'd be happy I was trying to make sure I didn't leave any behind. :sigh:

On the bright side, breakfast went quite well. And lunch was good despite the apple and PB incident.


Breakfast: 1/2 cup oat bran cooked in vanilla soy, a tablespoon of ground flax, and half a mashed 'nana. I stirred in two tablespoons of raisins half way through.After it finished cooking, I topped it with the rest of my banana, flaked coconut and cinnamon raisin peanut butter. Soo good. I forgot about the ground flax in my fridge - glad I used some of it today. It adds a really nice texture/flavor to oats. I've also determined that flaked coconut probably goes well with just about anything you can think to put with it, even cinnamon raisin peanut butter. Not sure why I was apprehensive about it, but it was a good combination.


Anndd here's lunch.

Bulgur wheat with hummus, sweet corn, almonds, broccoli and half a baked tomato. Salmon fillet with herb dressing. Also had my aforemention apple with a loving spoonful of creamy peanut butter. You know, it was so warm this afternoon, my usually-thick PB was actually melting on my plate. Crazy! Amazing how soft the end of the jar gets, yes?

I hope I didn't rant too much, I'm just very frustrated with things lately. In addition to the recovery bits, I've got somewhere in the vicinity of seven to ten boys talking to me, and at least three call me every day. Aggh. I am making myself nuts, trying to keep everyone happy. I know its an impossible feat. But its like part of my personality - to do whatever I can for someone else. :sigh: On the bright side, I am learning to say no when I need to. I suppose that's something, albeit a small something. I hpe my 20/21 year old emotional stability and maturity catches up soon. Right now I think I'm still stuck in 16/17. I imagine dating the same guy for eleven months in height of my anorexia didn't help much. You know, we broke up within a week or two of me returning from my first long-term IP stay. Yep. He didn't like that I was trying to take care of myself more and not just focusing all on his problems. Anyways. A year later, people at my high school still thought we were together. It sucked. I felt so trapped by him, even after he was gone. I think that's my aversion to being in a real relationship now - I am afraid of being cornered again by someone who won't allow me to have my own needs because they are too busy and concerned by their own. Have you ever fet like that? Where its like you need to take care of everyone else, or even just one some one else, and its like there's no room for you to pay attention to your own self?

Anyways. That's more than enough babbling on my part.
Hope everyone has a nice, relaxing, sunny Sunday. For those of us up here in New England, lets hope for 2 out of 3, eh? Rain rain go away...