#journal prompt

Last appointment my Dietitian ‘G’ suggested I complete a directed journal entry as I find it can be easier to articulate some of my ‘disordered’ thoughts through the written rather than the spoken word.

The prompt she gave me is:
What does it mean to be a lower weight?

Dear G,

I’m sorry but I find myself unable to complete your exercise.

When I write about depression the words rush out in waves and my fingers topple over to keep up with the tide of thoughts that spill out of me.

But when I sit down to write about restriction and weight, my mind becomes as empty as my stomach and I end up staring at a blank page. Sometimes it’s the same way when I’m asked to reflect on parts of my trauma. It’s like trying to press together two like poles of a magnet; something in my mind pushes me away from the dark crevices where those memories reside.

So because I am a perfectionist and couldn’t return empty-handed without an answer, I did what I always do and I read. And read and read and read. I read everything I could to find the ‘correct’ response.

Google tells me that eating disorders, particularly bulimia, are not uncommon among those that have experienced abuse. But in my heart that feels wrong.

After the rape I didn’t restrict. I indulged. I ate whole blocks of chocolate before I got up out of bed in the morning. I slept for days at a time. I drank myself into weekly episodes of unconsciousness. I put on a lot of weight. I went from my lowest to highest and not once did I purge.

Not to mention I first restricted my eating to lose weight years before it happened. It doesn’t fit.

When I started cutting Psychiatrists and Psychologists and Counsellors seemed to want a trauma to blame and it would frustrate all the professionals to no end that they couldn’t find a catalyst, no reason to point to and say, ‘Aha! It all makes sense.” Un-abused people supposedly just don’t start harming themselves, or so I guess everyone wants to believe. But they do and I did.

Maybe it’s the same here and now. Maybe I’m just horrifyingly vain? Would that be such a terrible thing to admit?

It never occurred to me when you warned me about the inevitability of ‘crashing’ that you might have meant bingeing. I feel like I’m fabricating an excuse, but after I spent many midnight hours ravishing the corners of the internet for answers, reading articles and journal entries on the relationship between eating disorders and abuse, I lost it. I binged like I hadn’t eaten in years. It was as if I was in [place] all over again and I was powerless to stop myself bleeding catastrophe everywhere.

I am fine when I am in control. I am fine when I know what I’m eating, when I’m eating it, the calorie make up, and when I am exercising it off. But all hell breaks loose when I am not in control.

At the moment, standing on the scales each morning to see the weight go down is the best part of my day. It is the only thing I look forward to, and I am trying to do everything I can to ensure that scrap of happiness, and I guess that has bred obsession.

There is barely a moment that food doesn’t occupy my waking consciousness: “Eat. Don’t eat. Just a bit. No no no.” There is no space in my mind for anything else.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but after eating at Christmas I was flooded with emotions and I cried and cried with a misery I did not know was hidden in me.

Sometimes I think restriction keeps the feelings away, pressed down somewhere inside, and maybe that’s why I struggle to access any thoughts to write about. It seems a cruel irony that I would first have to begin eating again in order to figure out why I’m not eating so that I’ll eat again.

So I’m awfully sorry but I’ve come up empty. Empty-handed. Empty inside. Entirely empty.

I do not know what it will mean to be a lower weight but somehow I know that I want it.

With regrets,
Montmorency

sheabutterbitch:

skipping to day 17 because i fell behind on posting, whoops! anyway, write a letter to your past self. this can be you yesterday, you 5 years ago, you last week, child you, unborn you. listen to your heart about it.

happy valentine’s day! what a wonderful day to reflect on why you deserve love, especially self love! i hope you all have a wonderful love day.

this one’s pretty self explanatory as well. take your time to reflect on this one.

this one is pretty self explanatory. go forth and write about yourself with love in your heart.

i know it’s a pretty standard prompt, but really think about it. what is something you tell everyone because you’re proud of it? or that you wished everyone knew because you’re proud? something you find yourself reminiscing on? how does it make you feel? be as detailed as you want, or can be.