Stupid, Illogical Brain Leeches

Last week I finished my virtual IOP program after being in the group for 12 weeks. I'm also rounded out the fall semester of my junior year. As of now I'm on track to graduate in May 2022, which is still four years of actual school if you disregard the one I was off for medical leave. I am constantly scared that I am not going to be able to do it in time though. It's a warranted fear, given how my recovery is going. I managed to discharge "successfully" from IOP, meaning I didn't discharge against medical advice, but I did that my the grit of my teeth and likely also the lack of complete transparency with the team there. 

When I write things here, I imagine I am reading them from y'all's perspective. Maybe it's just my inability to offer myself a fair amount of compassion, but even in this role-play scenario of pretending to be the audience to my own posts, it makes me want to freaking deck the author (me)! It really reflects how there is both the logical side in my brain who knows what to do and why it's hard to do it and the ED/sick side that doesn't care about anything except feeling some twisted version of pleasure and numbing everything else. 

Things have been really tough, once again. I have began doing and thinking things that I haven't been pestered with in years. My willingness to change is also at an all-time low. How fucking stupid is that? I am scaring myself as I charge in the direction I have been a number of times, but the speed and strength this time feels...scary. It is a strength that has me telling white lies so often I can't remember what is the truth. It is a strength that has been unafraid of recommendations for care because it has the will to refuse them. Today I told my therapist that if my physician (for my ED) did my exam and told me I needed to be admitted to inpatient at a hospital and called an ambulance to take me there, I told her I would refuse to get in and would drive myself home instead. And I mostly believe in that answer. That's insane. I would go out of my way to disregard the guidance of people trying to help me in order to serve myself. I feel like I'm not me. I feel like I have been taken over by bots or trolls whose only incentive is to see me dead. But it's tricky to be in touch with the dead part. These bots and trolls feel like they are strong and decisive and as if nothing can go wrong when they are in charge, so why the hell would I try to take back control? 

Finishing off the semester wasn't easy, but I know that that was almost universal after being online and amid the pandemic. It didn't help that I was spending 3 weekday evenings in virtual programming which limited available study time- but it did help to have that support. The simple company that seeing eight other faces provided (even if it was through a screen) really made a positive impact on my overall mood more than I thought. Since discharging a week ago, I hadn't really noticed how well I had managed to isolate myself outside of IOP. COVID doesn't help that situation, but I surely could have been doing more to maintain relationships. 

It's been a challenge to explain/portray to people outside the ED world, particularly those that have been riding along with me through this in some ways for a matter of years now, that when it's "getting bad again", it's scary. Even when it's happened before. Even if I was just in treatment a number of weeks ago. Even if my body does/doesn't look a certain way or has/hasn't changed since you have seen me. Trust me, I wish it was clear cut and I could give you a level of concern you should feel from 1-10. But the problem is that every time things "aren't going great", every time, it's scary and it is dangerous. It hard to explain that sometimes I can see where things are headed and I'm terrified. I'm terrified, but I will kick and scream before being forced to make a U-turn back to recovery. I don't want to explain that I don't want to get better before I get worse because the whole point of getting worse is so people will see me that way: worse. My eating disorder is a faulty tool for attention. 

I crave attention more than I like to admit. "Attention", is seen as a selfish and melodramatic thing to desire, but really it is the same thing as wanting connection and love. People have to take notice of us in the first place before there is even a possibility of them meeting out needs. Thus, a craving for so-called attention is born. Still, it doesn't feel respectable to reach out to people for support when really I am not interested in anything but doing harm to myself. How do you say to someone "help me, I'm hurting", and then the appropriate/caring response is, "well it seems ____ is hurting you, what can I do to help stop it?", but you have to reply something like, "I appreciate you, but I am not going to do anything of the sort but also can you still be here to have this same conversation next time I am sad?". It feels rather pathetic and makes me not interested in explaining to anyone how I feel, but the alternative of isolation is just as painful, if not more. 

I am nearing the second half of my junior year of college. I am closer to the end than to the beginning. I am struggling to make plans beyond that, though, struggling to even think about what the next few years will look like at all. I have no idea, but with what I am experiencing now I can only believe I won't be free of the ED by just magically willing that into existence, like I wish. Will I finish college in time so I can keep the scholarship I worked so hard to earn? I don't know. In fact, I have doubts that finishing through the grit of my teeth simply because I have "no choice" is gonna last at the pace and direction I am currently headed. At this point, I would warrant another, "well, bitch, do something about that then!". You're right. I should. And if it was that simple and I could just make choices that were best for me, I would. But I have the nagging, mean, incessant voices of my ED to please, first. And if I place them in any other order of priority, all they do is turn the volume up and make life that much more intolerable. So maybe, just maybe, if I give them what they have been asking for all along, no matter what the cost, maybe then I will have enough ammunition to defend myself when I chose to walk away from their instruction. If they try to tell me what to do, I could then say, "I already did that, sorry, not again". Will I ever reach any of the goals it lays out for me? I don't know. But I've tried doing this other ways, ways that deny the eating disorder what it asks of me for eternity. So maybe if I try everything in my power to appease it first, maybe then I can show it I am strong enough to be without it. Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not. 

I know that plan and pursuit sounds like one long, stupid, ED thought, and that it just tells me that to keep me tied to it longer. I know that. But I have seen how the tapes play out when I cut it off before it was done with me. I get help, but it is too difficult to get way from the raging voices and so I have always gone back. It's a stupid, illogical idea, and perhaps someone will change my mind or force me to abandon it before I carry it out. But its also a stupid and illogical disease, so maybe if I out-stupid and out-illogical it, maybe this time I'll win. 

Glo

PS. I still have a treatment team I see on the weekly and am safe. I discuss these crazy thoughts with them so they can tell me how to barter with my brain leeches. Just thought I'd give you insight on what the leeches have been spewing at me lately.