My self destruct button

Marriage counselling aside … I have other things going on in my head today that I need to get out on “paper” but I needed to make a separate post about the therapy appointment as it was important.

Okay … I posted yesterday about how the scales had finally dropped another 2lbs, so there I am this morning in the bathroom jumping up and down like a crazy woman (read naked crazy woman) going utterly ballistic because the scales showed a pound GAIN today. I ate half a frigging sandwich yesterday (wholemeal bread, no butter, just low fat cream cheese and half a tomato) and I already knew as soon as the numbers showed up that I would eat nothing and limit my liquid to just water today. That would mean just half a sandwich in 2 days and if that doesn’t get the frigging scales to move then nothing will.

I know I shouldn’t weigh myself every day and obsessively track every frigging detail in excel (I have a very pretty colour coded spreadsheet that I designed to track my weight, measurements and BMI) because I KNOW that it fluctuates. I KNOW I should weigh once a week and measure every 2-3 weeks … but that doesn’t stop me doing it daily, and when it comes to the scales … *sigh* ok, I weigh myself at least 6 times a day as a minimum.

Weighing involves stripping completely naked and removing all jewellery because it all counts. I even realised that if I am weighing myself while I have my period, then I need to remove the tampon because the extra weight of a frigging TAMPON makes a difference. Well it does – everything weighs SOMETHING!!

It was around 4pm this afternoon that I stripped naked in the bathroom and weighed myself yet again. It occurred to me that the thought in my head was definitely a self destruct one – which was ironic after what the therapist had said earlier about my self destruct button and how I punish myself so severely.

Well anyway, the thought I had was … “I am going to weigh myself again to see if I can eat anything.” Like magically starving myself for a day and a half will suddenly magically make me drop 10lbs.

I had dropped 8oz so I “allowed myself” to eat scrambled eggs on toast. I used 2 eggs in the microwave so that there was no fat, and used low fat spread on two slices of toast. I ate exactly half. I know it was exactly half because I spooned out the eggs onto the toast so that it was utterly precise. I knew I would only eat half of it and I HATE WASTE … it just seems to be one of the “things” I have developed, one of my “rules” if you like … that provided I am eating something diet or low fat, and I only eat half of it – then I will lose weight and won’t gain any more.

I KNOW it is wrong. I KNOW it is. The thing is … it doesn’t help. I am an INTELLIGENT woman! I have 13 GCSEs (yes 13 – I went back and did more) and 4 A-levels. I am not stupid. I understand what I am doing to myself. I understand how fucked up it will make my body and I have blogging friends who are so so SO beyond where I want to be with regards to anorexia and being so ill and who are now on the road to recovery … yet here I am on this self destruct journey that I know I control … but daily I am starting to see that it is beginning to control me.

How can I even THINK about being so painfully thin and ill and underweight when I am STILL SO FAT?

The thing is – and this is what scares me … I am beginning to LIKE living with an eating disorder. It almost gives me a reason to feel special even though very few people know the actual extent of it. I like the way that I can’t control a lot of things in my life right now … but one thing I CAN control is my decision to make myself happy with my body by losing weight and being thinner, even though I KNOW from reading blogs like Lola’s that being thin does not necessarily equate to being happy … but when you are still fat it’s hard to believe that truly and deeply… even when you WANT your friends to recover and be healthy and how it really boosts your mood to read about how WELL they are doing in recovery.

I am a UK size 12 (US size 8) which is apparently a very healthy and “normal” weight to be, so I keep telling myself that I am FINE … that it is OKAY because people don’t look at me and see somebody struggling with anorexia … they see someone who has lost weight and is looking good. When I talk about being fat – people look at me with a quizzical expression on their faces as if to say “but you aren’t fat” … and no, I am not as fat as I used to be – I’ve lost 38lbs – almost 3 stone (17kg) but I am still fat.

I stayed out of the house after the therapy appointment today for as long as possible (avoidance), and I knew that by coming home around 5pm that I would be walking into a house full of cooking smells (my husband worked from home today so he cooked dinner for the children) and as soon as I walked through the door, he announced that he hadn’t bothered cooking anything for me because it wasn’t worth it and didn’t want to waste food.

My husband knows about my eating disorder because err he lives with me and also because I wrote him a long email a few days ago describing exactly what I was going through and why I blamed him for a lot of it. I laid it on the line and said his comment to me on our first wedding anniversary was what really kicked it off … (“well you are a bit fat aren’t you”) and even in therapy today when she was talking to me about my ED and trying to help me figure out where it started … I had to admit that before I met my husband, I had a big bum but I had never had any self confidence or body issues.

So back to tonight … I KNEW he wouldn’t have cooked for me but why did he feel the need to make such a big deal of it? He’s known for a long time that I have food / eating “issues” and even after I told him about it … he never did want to talk to me about it.

I also find it SO HARD to eat in front of him. I have issues with HIM and I have issues with FOOD, so to put the two together … well let’s just say pull pin and stand well back. I hate how he watches me take every mouthful and rolls his eyes when I put my knife and fork down on my plate after two mouthfuls. I just stopped eating in front of him. It was just easier. I usually do the kids their dinner early … he sorts himself out when he gets home from work, and I tell the kids I will eat later. It’s weekends and days he works from home that I am caused such anguish with having to try to force food down my throat in front of my children.

It’s not even the children … it’s my daughter. She is ten years old and just entering puberty so her body is changing and developing and she is aware of boys, fashion, peer pressure and her body. I catch her prodding her belly every now and again and it scares the crap out of me that she has noticed my weight loss, noticed my lack of eating and put two and two together. I do NOT want her to go through this, but I also know I am A HEALTHY WEIGHT and not currently at any risk of any danger and I am so DESPERATE to drop another 10lbs or so. I try to make sure my daughter sees me eat and I talk to her a lot about how she has a very healthy diet – she has a lot of fruit & veg and the right amount of naughty stuff for a balanced diet. She also gets plenty of exercise through school and her clubs and I need to keep her focussed on THAT not me.

I think I am doing a good job. She is very grown up for her ten years and I try to treat her like a grown up – just without all of the details. She needs to know that I trust and respect her … because to get respect you have to give it. She’s a good kid and dealing with the marriage breakdown very well. Her younger brother on the other hand is a whole other kettle of fish for a whole other post.

Ugh there is just so much going on in my head. Part of me is wondering even now that if my husband had stopped looking at porn the first time I asked him to … whether we would still be here and whether *I* would be here with my eating disorder. I need to make it clear I don’t actually have an ISSUE with porn when it’s used in a “healthy” relationship … but ours was definitely NOT healthy and he was ignoring me in favour of porn. That’s different.

Then again, if it HAD made a difference, I’d be a lot fatter by now (or at least 38lbs heavier), so maybe this was just meant to be.

I watched a little bit of Lorraine Kelly on TV this morning. I don’t usually watch that and am usually out of the house, but I was taking my time. I caught the end of an interview LK was doing with a recovered anorexic and LK mentioned how if you are going through things like this, then to check the GMTV website for positive information. I looked it up and was HORRIFIED!!! Alongside these very VERY basic articles were adverts from sponsors … about LOSING WEIGHT?!?!?!?!

What does an anorexic REALLY need to see when they are thinking about recovery and positive input? Yeah, they REALLY need to see adverts for Weight Watchers. They would have done better sticking an ad for new cars up there … at least then we could sit here and read their crappy articles and have new car lust instead of new thin lust.

Grrrr pissed me off … sent them a narky email. Never heard back — funny that!

It’s a fine line isn’t it .. my “healthy” weight and my “healthy” BMI of 20 means I do not qualify for a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, although according to my doctor, I have anorexic behaviours and issues around food and eating. Nope, I am plain ole EDNOS – “eating disorder not otherwise specified” and what makes it worse??? Periods … yeah periods … our ole monthly friend. To qualify for the diagnosis, you need to have missed at least three in a row

My last period finished 3 weeks ago … my current period started just under a week ago… I had just two weeks in between! What the fuck sort of sense does that make? Is it my body’s way of fighting back saying nooo we’re happy being EDNOS till you are thin enough? How does that justify giving me two in a month?!?!

Judgment – it is an ugly thing.

I’ve always tried to lose myself in the crowd before … as a fat overweight person you don’t want people to look at you, so it is easier to hide yourself away.

Other than taking my children to school, going to my work place (where I work alone anyway) and putting fuel in the car, I have hardly been out of the house in the last few weeks and had no social life whatsoever. I have also pretty much been living in my overalls because a) what I do for a living is messy, and b) most of my clothes fall off me and look ridiculous! I also haven’t wanted to deal with people or see people because all I get from them is how much weight I have lost, and how I should probably not lose any more.

Today I had to go into town – no choice – and I wore the one pair of trousers that I have that fit me and that’s only because they have an elastic waist that I’d tied up.

PEOPLE WERE LOOKING AT ME. Not just any old people, but overweight women in particular. I felt their stares and sneering judgmental glances on me. Women never looked at me like this when I was fatter and that made me feel even worse because I was looking back at them with their ugly muffin tops, six chins and flabby bellies and realised I was judging them for being fat and not the other way around … and that they probably hadn’t been looking at me in the first place. Oh the guilt. I felt destroyed.

I bought a new pair of jeans. I HAD to because I need something that fits me. Part of me resented handing over £25 for something that I am hoping won’t fit me for long because I still have those last 12-13lbs that HAVE to go before I reach my “goal” … you know … the one that will apparently make me happy when I am THIN, and the thing I hate almost as much as being fat … is waste.

I miss it …

Intimacy I mean and conversation.

That’s what I miss … someone to tell everything to and hold me when I am feeling low. It’s not even a sexual thing, it’s just about being close to another human being and I miss it.

I talked to BF today (my good girlfriend) but our conversation was so brief and we didn’t really get a chance to even touch the surface on what we’ve both been through recently. She broke up with her long term boyfriend recently too and I have been so utterly pre-occupied over the last two weeks that I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about it. I am a crappy friend.

She noticed my weight loss – it was the first time in a while I hadn’t worn overalls to work (what I do is messy – it’s easier) so the baggy overalls had hidden my changing shape. It felt good that someone had noticed.

*sigh* I am in a weird place right now and I’m not entirely sure how I feel. My husband keeps mentioning things like “when you move out I’ll be doing x,y and z to the house” and things along those lines and I do very much feel like a stranger in my own home. I think mentally I’ve moved out … or at least I am starting to. I bought boxes home today to start boxing up things like books, my craft stuff and summer clothes that I definitely won’t need before I move! I didn’t get around to actually boxing anything up, but it was cathartic to bring the big boxes home.

My husband and I are definitely avoiding eachother. He leaves the house at 8am in the morning and it’s kind of arranged that he sorts the kids out first thing when he gets up, and then I take over from 7.45am, so I see him for 15 minutes in the morning. I see him then for maybe half an hour when he gets in from work … and perhaps 2-3 minutes before I go to bed. Conversation is strictly limited to things about the children and what plans either of us have for the next couple of days so that we can conveniently avoid each other further!

I am feeling alone, insecure and confused… I realise that … and because of that I am clinging to the memory of what once was – but it is also what can never be again. I tried so hard with my marriage and at the end of the day I do harbour so many feelings of resentment towards my husband. I blame him for not listening to me. I blame him for ignoring me and using porn and I blame him for the reason why I looked elsewhere.

I blame him for so much, and although there is so much about our marriage that I miss, I know I will never get over that despite the fact that *I* had an affair and ultimately I was the one that broke our marriage vows. We didn’t stand there and say “I promise never to wank to porn” … we said “foresaking all others.”

Shameful isn’t it and trust me I feel shitty for feeling that way. The truth is, if it had been the other way around and my husband had done the things I had done, I would have kicked his ass to the curb a long time ago. I am full of guilt about it too. As a parent you try to teach integrity, honesty and truth, and all the while in the back of your mind is “you had an affair and you told LIES.“ 

I have a lot of soul searching to do before I can get over that one. I KNOW that my marriage is over and that even if we were to try again at this point … then it never could work with even the best therapy in the world. There is just too much water under the bridge and we have both already started to move on.

I can’t ever imagine being intimate with anybody else ever again … in a romantic sense I mean. It’s just not a place that I am in mentally or emotionally and I just need to be by myself for a long – LONG time. The thought of letting somebody close enough to really get to know me – when I don’t truly know myself … *big sigh*

On the upside, I did feel better for going into work for a bit earlier. I didn’t actually achieve much, but I did enough to make myself feel good about accomplishing something for the day.

I ate “properly” today too and I feel okay about it. I weighed myself at night (big mistake) and the scales showed a gain of 3lbs but I know that was only because I was weighing in the evening and I’d *just* had something to eat plus I’d drunk a pile of water and coffee during the day so I KNOW that is the only reason the scales said that.

I had a cucumber sandwich around 2pm and then I ate a filo pastry mushroom thing this evening. It’s the most I have eaten in days. It’s just easier to eat something small in front of someone than avoid talking about why I haven’t eaten.

Lying about food

I realised I had a serious problem with food and that my lack of appetite had turned into something else when my husband asked me what I wanted for dinner as he was cooking and straight away out of my mouth came “Ohh I had a late lunch so I’m not really hungry. I’ll grab something later.”

It was a lie – I hadn’t eaten anything all day … it was just easier to avoid a confrontation because I genuinely wasn’t hungry at that point, but that is when I knew I had a problem.

Week nights I can make the children their dinner and then he can cook something for himself when he gets in from work. I simply say I will make myself something later. He spends the evening upstairs on his PC and I’m downstairs on my laptop so he then has no clue whether I’ve had anything or not (and I will ALWAYS eat something even if all I feel I can manage is toast) … it’s the way it will be until the tax credits money comes through and we can officially separate.

I think my husband is aware that I have a problem with food, but again avoidance is the easiest method purely to keep the emotion level calm in the house. We’ve been through the shouting, the anger and discussed it all to the death – we’re at a calm level of acceptance right now. It’s easier just not to talk about it – it isn’t his problem anymore.

Once we’re apart I won’t have anything to hide from anyone ever again. A fresh start.