I lost yesterday

I've been seeing blood lately. everywhere. i dont know why. im out of it- im struggling, yes, but the blood is new. or at least new for the moment. i've probobly experienced something like it before but like most sicknesses we forget the specifics as soon as we recover. we remember vague pain and discomfort but the details are lost until we experience them again. and with depression, at least for me, the pain seems brand new every time. and the imagined blood whether its a new symptom or a revisited one, is everywhere. i see myself slamming my head into things- walls, windows, tiled floors. i see myself fetally curled up in the middle of a room with a bright red liquid blanket spreading away from me- trickling, pouring, streaming out of an intangible wound. i feel my wrists slitting. i do not, im sure, imagine it correctly- it is easy in my mind the skin yielding softly, smoothy, quietly. there is no pain, the veins seem to pop like slicing through a plastic straw. the hand bends back in a way it only would if my arm was near sliced in half. and the blood bright and red pours quickly and neatly down my arm like chocolate sauce over ice cream. its not real. i know this. its also not a plan or a dream. its just blood. its only blood ive ever wanted- not death. i held a knife to soft flesh of my lower inner arm yesterday and pressed just enough to feel the weight but not enough to inflict damage. i haven't cut myself in close to a decade. its not a thing i want to go back to. i can''t imagine mikes face. i dont want to imagine mikes face. and yet i do imagine- over and over- the blood. my imaginary thoughts are bombarded by, covered in, this blood.
i lost yesterday. just lost it. in between the blood, and the pain, and the vomiting, laxitive enduced shitting, chest seizing sobs, and my mind running loops around itself, i lost it. at some point i gave it up. lay down in bed and left the world to run its course without me. i told mike it was better to waste this day than to deal with it. i woke up too early which is never a good thing for me. up early with nothing to do. plenty to do- theres always plenty to do- but nothing planned. nothing expected. noone to hold me accountable if my mind spins out. nothing on a schedule to tie me down from going crazy. this is never a recipe for a good day for me, ever. our plumbing was messed up and i was afraid the plumber would somehow know, or would find out. i am open with alot of people but some people for whatever reason i am never ok with knowing. i realised recently that if my neighbors ever asked i would immediately say i was pregnant and unflinchingly tell them i had had a miscarraige months later. they are not people who are allowed to know, neither is the plumber or the landlord standing in the bathroom with me at 9am. it ended up being our fault but more by negligence than harm and nothing was unearthed but still the nervousness of being discovered mixed with my inane fear of being disiplined for anything left me uneasy. i was the child that cried when i forgot my homework, i still shrink back like authoritative words are causing me physical harm. when i lived with other people my heart would race every time a housemate would call me. I would just stare at the phone nervously sure that they were going to be unhappy about something. i do everything but curl into a ball and shield my face with my arms when called into to talk to the boss. i am not good at being yelled at, even if no one is yelling. it was in the nervous expectations of being yelled at for something that i ran to the store to buy eggs. even though i likely didnt have enough time to get to the store and back before the plumber came and certainly not enough time to make and eat these eggs it was immperitive that i have them. egg whites are the closest thing that i have to a security blanket in a world where just the thought of eating most foods makes me run away into myself and curl into a little a ball. the thought of not having them readily available was making my mind shudder. i needed them. more than i needed to make myself or my house look presentable for the landlord and the plumber, i needed eggs that i would not have time to cook. i needed eggs to be sitting in my refridgerator. to what? save me? i knew how stupid it was as much then as i do now. some urges are not worth fighting. there are days i wake up with a mind thats racing around like a toddler after a day of eating halloween treats. these are days i should not drive. my mind is too busy chasing itself to fully concentrate on oh say focusing, paying attention, keeping my eyes still. and yet these are always the days i NEED to get to and back from the store in 15 mins. of course they go hand in hand. the need is only one of the many sticking points of a racing mind whose every thought is vitally important. imperative, necessary to go on with the day. i am sure that every new idea is my salvation. the one thing i can do to slow it. to stop the thoughts to litterally save myself from the day that is bound to happen. that is already spinning incesantly around me. but they dont. of course they dont. eggs can never save me. some days if i can catch my mind for long enough and force it into fulfilling one of these tasks i have a chance of escaping. excersise if it works does wonders. sometimes i can force myself onto a tredmill for long enough for the endorphins to kick in and gather back together the shards of thoughts that have exploded to the nether regions of my skull. many days each min seems like and hour, each step like torture- my eyes darting around the room and back to the clock every 2 seconds and i get off before it does anything. yesterday i didnt even try. when the eggs didnt save me i decided that buying some rings would and i drove to the mall, which is litterally 2 blocks away. and i couldnt concentrate enough to figure out where i was going and parked so far from the entrance i needed that i probobly could have walked a shorter distance from my house than from my parking space. and i wondered the mall looking as dishevaled as i had for the plumber for about an hour. i went into a store where the saleswoman said she had what i wanted but the store was so quiet and tidy and i was afraid of how i would look to her so i ran out while she was ringing up another customer. and i found what i wanted but not quite and i decided it wouldnt help today anyway because its meant as a symbol of recovering- promising recovery to myself- or at least promising to try and i really didnt want to try yesterday. so i decided that eating a box of chocolate little debbie snacks (and then throwing up of course) would help. so i drove to the grocery store and ate the whole box on the drive home. which is a great thing to do when your driving skills are already highly compromised. i understood half way through the box that this wasn't going to save me. i think i understood that before i opened the box but like i already said- i didn't want to try yesterday. i walked through a store in the mall thinking- i know you feel like you aren't anyone without the bulimia but you have to just give it up and you will find out who you are underneath it. to which i immediately replied- an anorxic. which is true. sadly, depressingly, honestly true. i have spent over a decade of my life jumping from one ED to another. if they are masking someone else below them i havent the slightest clue how to find her. but the bulimia, i understand, has to end. it has become too common in my life. too easy. too normal. but not yesterday. yesterday i didn't want to fight. i didnt even try. perhaps i was thinking of it as some sort of farewell. perhaps i am just a weak person. too weak to win this fight. perhaps i know that and keep myself from trying. before i gave up on my day yesterday i came home threw up. drove to a different grocery store where i stood in the laxitive aisle and had this conversation with myself
oh my god i forgot about ipikac. we really wanted to try that. im just so not in the mood to throw up uncontrolably today.
we'll have to do that next time.
there isnt supposed to be a next time. this is supposed to stop
but we're supposed to try ipakac. how can we stop without ever trying it?

like it was a tourist site i couldnt come home from vacation without seeing. as if drinking something and heaving uncontrolably is a desirable thing to do. this is why i must stop. i become infatuated with ipakac a few months ago while mike was still working from home and vowed to try it one day when he wasnt around. ipakac. the drug that sent karen carpenter into cardiac arrest. the drug that led to her death. i know this and yet... that is not good. because i know, know, that i would not take one dosage anyway. and i know that my body is already somewhat weakened by this disease. and yet...the desire to fuck with my body as much as i can is so strong. the desire to push as far as it can go. but what happens when you discover that threshold? fucking with death just to fuck with it- just to see if you can- thats not good. and yes death would never be the goal but just because it isnt the goal doesnt mean it cant be the outcome or any of a dozen other horrific internal harms that one can impose upon themselves. and yet...i stand in a grocery store and think about a drug that induces vomiting as if it is an amusement park ride. and then i pick up 2 bottles of laxitive instead. i can not tell you how many times i have stood in line with some version of yesterday's bounty. a box of little debbie snack cakes, an apple danish that im already picking at and bottles of laxitives. i often fear that the employee knows. im sure they don't unless they are bulimic themselves. at worst they probobly think-that stupid girl wouldn't be so constipated if just she stopped eating candy bars and snack cakes.

It is all that I have

Today has not been good to me. Or I have not been good to it. I don’t know. Perhaps I was given a hard day today and instead of fighting it I just pushed it further into insanity. there have surely been days that I faught a good fight and still lost to a mind that’s sometimes stronger than my will. As well as there are days that my mind is fairly placid and I simply sabatog myself. Regardless of how it got this way- today has not been good. Ive thrown up so many times that I have lost count. A dozen? More? Enough for my throat to be rasp and my hand to be cut where the knuckle hits the back of my molar. Enough to have asked myself many times ‘can this be over now? Please please can we be done?’ lately I have been trying to convince myself to stop. To decide that this is enough and find a way to move on. It isn’t so easy. Im not ready to let go. I don’t know a me outside of this disease. I don’t have a life separate from this. It is so ingrained in my identity that I don’t know how to lose it. I think I am waiting to bottom out. To hit a point where I can no longer except this in my life. But for those of us that push our bodies constantly just to know that we can- to prove that we do indeed have the control- how do you know how far is too far to push? This is today- this is why it happened, probably. This is part of it at least. I ate candy. Not much but enough it does not take much candy to feel like too much. Like 6 jordan almonds – sucking off the candy outside and spitting out the almond, 3 mallowcreme pumpkins, maybe 20 sugar free jelly beans. I estimate 200 calories. So in the logic of an anorxic- I tell myself I have to run 8 miles (because come on I’m going to eat other things today as well. I like to create a little calorie deficit). I go to the gym and after a half hour on the tredmill the room is kinda spinning and my eyes wont focus and im shaking. This is sadly not new or rare. I get this way at 3 times a week at the gym. Sometimes I run through it, sometimes I can’t. to my own credit I have never pushed so far as to actually pass out or vomit from activity. Although I have gotten close and I do wonder exactly what it would take. Today I left with only a 50 calorie deficit after subtracting the candy calories. Anything under an hour at the gym is more or less worthless in my minds eye. I’ll still go but all day I will chide myself for not doing enough. Oh I also weighed a pound or so more than yesterday this morning- I don’t know exactly. We have an electronic scale with digital numbers that go up and down within a small range around your weight while it calculates. If I step on and first red blinking number suggests a higher poundage than acceptable I will jump off as if its burning me. as though the number is not real until its fully decided and if I don’t wait for it I can pretend this day this weight didn’t happen. Somehow it actually helps. It’s the same way that I tell the treadmill at the gym that I weigh 125 every day even though I weigh close to 10 pounds less on any given day. I feel like if I gained back those 10 pounds I would be devastated to have to fess up to that in real calculated numbers. So I lie. And I generally just assume I burn 50 or so calories less than the machine says (although I don’t really trust the machines anyway). Anyway a pound didn’t cause this day. Didn’t help probably but most definitely didn’t push me into the shower with a plastic bowl. Im not that bad. Ah you see this is the problem. Im not that bad. In the car the other day I asked myself ‘do you need to hit rock bottom before you fix things?’ and I answered with another question of ‘what is this perverbial rock bottom and when exactly would I hit it?’ the general concensis is that I wont. on my knees in the shower today while crying and begging myself to stop I laid my head against the cold tile and asked ‘is this far enough?’ no. it is not. Because I am ok. Because I am not that bad. Because that moment ends and life continues. Normally enough. Because I may stand in the water and stare at white tiles and wish so hard to slam my head into them repeatedly. I may be able to see the blood smearing and marring the gleaning whiteness. I may wish for it and beg for it and imagine it with every fiber of my being. But I don’t do it. So its ok. Im not that bad. And how do you argue with that? On the one hand I have a disease that I understand fully to be a disease. But it helps me. it is me. it is all I have and all I know. I cannot express that enough. I cannot make you understand that if you don’t. it is me. and how do you walk away from you? From the only you you know? Even if it’s a painfull self distructive bitch of a self- it’s the only one ive got. I have never been an adult with some version of an eating disorder. I don’t know a me without it. I cant fathom a me without it. How do you walk away from you? How do you walk away from your only present and the majority of your history. How do you walk away from yourself? It is all that I have and all that know. It is all that I have and all that I know.