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.