Friday, November 11, 2011

pressure

I've begun the process of recovery. Not sure why I'm posting that here; I guess I just read through old posts, trying to remember just how bad I let it get, to remind myself why I'm doing this in the first place.

So far I've met with a therapist, a nutritionist, and a doctor. It's absolutely terrifying, and is just so time consuming. But I need to do this. I can't afford to not do this. I'm in grad school, this is the real deal. If I flunk out, I'll have wasted thousands of dollars and my best chance to get a job in the field I want. And I can't do that if I'm too spaced out to focus on schoolwork or too tired to get up for my job on time. That's what's started to happen, again, and I can't let it continue.

It's so incredibly hard. Therapy is like pulling teeth; I hate talking about my feelings to people, and it's doubly difficult when it makes me feel so fucked up. I've had an assignment from my nutritionist for 3 days and am already failing. Yesterday I binged/purged and felt so guilty after that I couldn't bring myself to eat the second serving of fruit I was assigned, and today I had to force myself to eat to top out at 750 calories, which I'm not even supposed to be counting. Today I had my physical checkup, and while my EKG was normal (whoo!), my blood pressure was so low the nurse literally had to squeeze the blood out of my arm to get samples.

It's terrifying to even go through these steps. I never thought of myself as someone who'd be weighed blindly or get an EKG. "I'm not that sick!" I want to scream, and the crazybrain voice echoes back, "Exactly, you're not sick enough for this treatment. Lose more and then we'll talk." To which sanebrain voice quietly, meekly replies, "You can't succeed if you keep this up. It'll pull you, like it always does, into the denial of life, and reason, and love."

Perhaps the most terrifying is that I don't know if I can do this. I'm sick of screwing myself over, settling for the small victory of an empty stomach over the larger accomplishments of professional and personal growth. I don't want this to be a half-assed attempt at recovery, but I don't know if I'm willing or able to go full-tilt.