Today, for any other family, would have been considered a normal day. But for me, for us, it was not. The big, earth-shattering event? We went out for lunch at a diner. My mom ordered some seafood platter. My brother, the double cheeseburger meal. I got a cheese sandwich because it would look weird to not get anything. I took the longest to eat. I feel embarassed when I think about it now. I had sat there arguing with my mom that this had to be over two hundred calories? "I feel disgusting," I whined. My brother rolled his eyes, "You're going to have a heart attack."

I didn't take it as a joke. And I tried to be as casual as possible and eat my sandwhich in little bites. It's not a huge deal. I mean, I haven't had anything else today, it's not like I'll gain five pounds or anything. But I'm terrified. I am literally so close to the brink of flipping.

But doing that would be the me last year. This year, I can't let that happen. This was all about control to begin with anyway, wasn't it? I am not letting this control me. I can have an unembarassing normal meal with my family, without calories and a cheese sandwich control my mental state. Well...not quite, but I'm working on it.

At least I don't want to do this anymore...well, most of me doesn't. At least I'm a step closer. I am not going to die. I am not going to give up on everything I love to this. I can't do that.

I don't know if I can stomach anything else today besides the sandwich but it's staying down either way.

I am so relieved I have this blog, otherwise I may be doing something so stupid right now it's not even laughable anymore.

I am addicted to diet pills, dieting supplements, etc. I have tried three times to get off of them. My body is so used to the caffine that each time, even when I've just tried to taper off them slowly, I completely crash or have a panic attack and go back to them. It's getting better, no more than three pills, a few cups of caffinated drinks, two sticks of energy gum, my energy mints, my sport jelly beans, and my energy drinks.

Used to be about double of that. I can't believe I'm not worse off than I am now. I can't believe my stomach can even handle meds anymore. For a long time, I'd been abusing my Prozac. Either not taking it at all or taking too much. Just to see what would happen.

I've never had a problem with drugs, besides all of what I just listed. I've never drank. I've never done illegal drugs. It's never been on my list of things to do. Maybe because it has nothing to do with weight loss to me so it's not worth it. I've also seen from someone I love the affects those drugs can have on you. I guess you could say my addiction is still an addiction so I'm not better.

I'm supposed to be taking multivitamins because I am severely anemic. My doctor said he was suprised I was up and walking around after my blood test because I was so low in iron and other things. In a sick way, that made me happy. Someone was for once acknowledging that something was wrong.

I once heard my brother say something about how once a month he "cleans" his system out with laxatives. I was young and wanted to try after eating a little too much once. Luckily, laxatives and diurectics aren't a problem with me. I learned the first time that I did not want to go down that alley. Hours in agony on the toilet, and it's not even real weight you're losing. The physical damage to your body is horrible, too. Not that I'm the healthiest kid on my block, but I will not use laxatives.

I think so much caffine is what keeps me up all night. I'm addicted to that fasting, caffine buzz you get. This high I get off of starvation and minimum sleep. Just typing this I am realizing how much I hate this. I'm hating myself. But I want to be honest, since I never am when it concerns me.

Someday I want to sit down and tell someone all these things face to face. Just to prove I can. I have dreams about the person I'll be someday when I'm better. I think I'll be great and I'll get so much done and maybe then I can learn to like myself. Even a little. I don't care about loving myself anymore, I just want to find something about me that doesn't have to do with weight or control or restriction that I like.

But I am so afraid that the person I want to be after recovery is just an illusion like the person I wanted to be after I lost "just ten pounds".

At this point, I know for sure that I must have screwed my body up in the worst way. This is hard because I want to be happy, I feel proud and I want to say that today was a good day. Because, to the sick me, it is. I haven't had anything but diet soda and a couple of crackers today.

It is now almost five in the morning as I type this, I have been up all night doing absolutely nothing. It's been like this for months. With friends and family, I am happy and I am normal. Right now, when I am alone, I don't know who I am. I have wondered over to the fridge at least five times tonight trying to find something in there to eat that maybe my sick side will let me get away with. I mean, come on. I can't even properly feed myself right now, how low of a point has this gotten to?

Right now, my friend is waking up to get ready to go on a vacation to the ocean for the weekend to party with friends. You know what I'll be doing? This. I'll be sitting at home, comtemplating the calories in a cracker, and whether or not it would hurt to let myself eat an apple.

And what gets me the most is, at the moment...I feel proud of myself. To the me who is hesitant about getting better, this is great. This has been a good day. But it's bad. I've been losing almost one pound every day for about a week and I'm scared but so exhilerated. I am terrified of what's happening to me. I spent an hour getting on and off the scale, talked to my friend on the phone...told her weight was not an issue to me anymore!

Why am I lying to the people who can help me?

And more importantly, why am I lying to myself? I don't know who I am anymore, and I don't think I ever really did.

So I have an appoitment set up for July 11th to meet up with a new psychiatrist. This will be my seventh one.

A lot of people have brought up the prospect that maybe it wasn't that all the past psychiatrists weren't right for me. Maybe it's that I wasn't trying, or I wasn't being cooperative. It hurts, but in a way...maybe I agree.

One of the last councelors I went to made me so upset that I stormed out of his office screaming and ranting which left me with an evaluation at Crossroads Regional Hospital (what some people call the "crazy house").

Others, I've had a chronic problem with lying to them constantly. Whether it's the fear that they'll be dissapointed in me, that I'll look crazy, or that they'll try to lock me up somewhere.

I suffer from severe depression and have been put on zoloft. I was taken off of it. Put on Prozac. My dosage has been doubled in the last half a year. It doesn't seem to be helping.

I know it's a chemical thing, but I feel like it's my fault the medicine isn't working. Doctors always warn that it's not a miracle drug and I can't depend on it, so I always think I'm doing something wrong. It's my fault.

I have so many certificates from past psychiatrist for me miraculous "recovery". I lie to them, make up breakthroughs and fake changes of heart. I'm an actress, that's my career: acting.  So it's never been very hard, and it's always come off as convincing.

I'm tired of letting my mother down about the whole counselor thing. It's not that I want to lie, it's that I feel I have to. It's that I feel there is no one out there I should feel free to tell the truth to.

I'm hoping to change that this time. But I'm not sure.

I don't think I did too badly today in terms of eating. I didn't have anything until around ten o clock tonight though...but it was three hundred calories so it's more then I used to eat. And I had a soda which was like another hundred. Small steps.
But not big enough.

I feel like a failure sometimes, but what can I do?

All of my friends are convinced that I'm better, I think. I'm getting good at lying, but they may be catching on. I don't know if I'm getting better. I don't know what it means to eat healthily so I don't know. I know I should have a nutritionist but that scares me to no end.

I feel like a hypocrite. I need to stop typing for a bit.

Until next time.

or if you know someone who does.

 You should watch this.

(This is not me.)

I think I can now safe to say that I'm most definitely not improving. I don't think that deep down I want to get better. I don't think it's even hitting home with me that what I'm doing is wrong. I don't think I really have a problem.

I don't really know what my problem is but the restricting is getting worse. Now it's not restricting that's a problem...it's eating that is.
I'm having a tough time keeping things down or sitting down and eating a bite. Or sleeping, definitely sleeping has been the most difficult thing. I feel like there are always more things to be done. If I wasn't so tired....this numb exhaustion. This buzz in my head.

I'm hoping someone will grab me and shake me and make me get better. But I have to want to and I'm not sure if I do.

Like a lot of problems, it's almost impossible to understand how someone going through one must feel. So what angers me is when people take it upon themselves to be your advocate. To be falsely understanding of what you're going through.

Here's my mentality on life in general: I will never fully comprehend what anyone else I know is going through because I am not them just as others are not me. Even when people share the same disorder and some of the same symptoms...they do not have the same lives, or problems, or feeling. Like I've said before, no two disorders are exactly alike. No two cases can be more then compared because they are never, ever the same.

Where am I going with this?

I am sick and tired of people's ignorance of this disease.

The thing is, I understand that you just want to help. I understand how helpless people must feel to see someone they know and love suddenly change before their eyes...how unable they must feel to helping them.

My problem is when it becomes more than concern, when it becomes more than support and love. The last thing you ever want to do to help someone with an eating disorder is to try to control them. That is the last thing you want to do.

I understand if you're a nurse in a hospital and you have to make your patient eat so they won't die from feeding off their own body.

But if you are not a certified nurse, and if you have no experience on the subject yourself, it is useless and unhelpful to harp and lecture us.

I am tired of people looking me in the eye and acting like, "Oh...you have an eating disorder? Yeah...I know about those. I read about them in my health book/saw a movie about it on lifetime/had a friend who was anorexic...you should really do such and such...I know exactly what you're going through. Don't worry...some day you'll wisen up."

I especially hate it when people embarass me in front of my friends and family and outright exploit me by loudly announcing, "Yes, she has an eating disorder...don't worry though. I talked with her about it. I'll get her to eat, she'll be fine."

There are so, so many things wrong with that. Ignoring the fact that you should never take over someone's life or ever announce their personal condition in front of others like that, where is this ignorant mentality coming from that once a person with an eating disorder appears to be eating again, they are well and healthy and recovered?

I am sick of people giving me that pitying look on their face and telling me that I shouldn't worry about it. 'You don't need to lose any weight!' 'You look fine to me.' 'Don't worry about the models and what they look like these days...that's unrealistic.' 'You know...starving yourself, that'll kill you.'

First of all, no offense, but...duh!

Do you think you would know more than I do about how this is affecting my health and my social life and my personal relationships and my dreams and every waking second of my life?

Do you think that I haven't figured out already that a lot of my obsessions with myself and my weight are unrealistic?

Do you think once I hear someone tell me I don't need to lose weight, some mystic veil over my eyes will be removed and I'll suddenly go, "oh! Really? Woop dee doo, silly me...I guess I'll completely drop all my unhealthy thoughts and habbits and basically how I've been living for as long as I can remember and be a normal person because you have saved me by telling me that I am not fat."

Our society makes a lot of mistakes in assuming things. Especially when it comes to the subject of eating disorders. What scares me is, I sometimes wonder if I would make that same mistake if I weren't experiencing it as I am now.

After all, I never knew I would ever let myself let it come to this.

 Recovery never, ever comes in the form of one sweeping instance or motion. In fact, from my experience, I've found that it comes to you in bits and pieces. You get it in the little things. It's not usually the big revelation we think it should be. After all, something as life-altering even lifesaving as much as this seems as though it should be huge?

But that's not usually the case, I've found.

I've always seen my eating disorder (metaphorically) as me walking around with my eyes closed. Oblivious to the outside world, the possibilties. The only thing I can see are the destructive thoughts and feelings from inside. When I catch little glimpses of some sign of coming back to health, becoming "normal" again, I like to call them "blinks".

I just recently had an extremely profound blink last week, the day before my birthday.

I had gone jet skiing for the first time with a friend. And I have to tell you it was....just exhilerating. And I almost swear...for a few hours, a few wonderful hours, it was as if I had forgotten about my body, or food, or my eating disorder. It wasn't an issue. The water, the wind in my hair, holding on to the jet ski tight enough, not crashing, screaming with joy when we jumped a wave, dipping my feet into the water...that was all I had time or the need to focus on.

I guess the extremity and the adreniline I had was enough to make me feel like I was blurring the lines between life and death. Like my life was truly in my hands...yet not really. I guess...dare I say it, in a way, for a few short moments I had found something to replace the feeling my eating disorder gave me.

It was spectacular.

The thing is though, I'm NOT better. As soon as we got in the car on the drive home, I wrapped a towel around myself and shook my head "no" to offers for dinner. I was in no way changed by the experiance...and yet, I am.

It was just a mere blink of what life in the outside world is like...but I will never forget what I saw. It gives me hope that recovery is not impossible, just hard. And worth the fight.

That day I realized that something, besides hurting myself, gave me pleasure. Something, besides food, gave me fear. Something besides my eating disorder made me feel.

That day I even entertained the thought that there are better things out there than an eating disorder to die for. And definitely better things out there to live for.

I have had nothing but a dinner at the Olive Garden today, one that I didn't even finish. One that probably wasn't very full of calories or fat, just mainly carbs. But my stomach is bloated and I can't explain why I am so...so freaking angry and sad right now to anyone. This has started to take even more of a toll on my relationships.

It used to be, there were a few select people who could get to know a fraction of the real me. Now, I can't even tell the truth or say what's hurting, what's happening even if I try. I am afraid of myself. I am so afraid of my stomach, and it's control over me. My control problem's control over me is what's scary too.

I have had to stop myself five times, getting out paper and a pen and fishing through the cupboards to calculate and plan out a (very, very small) food plan for tomorrow. I know if I want to be healthy I have to try, so I won't. But I swear it feels like somethings strangling itself to death inside me. I'm afraid of eating too much tomorrow. I can't fall asleep without knowing what I'm going to eat.

I want to do better than I did today. I want to do better.

There is so much want, want, want in my life.

Why do I want and want and ignore and abuse the things in life that I need?

I just can't put into words right now how upset I am at myself for the bloated size of my stomach right now. And how I upset I am that I care in the first place. I am just so sick of me. I don't understand how anyone puts up with me. I don't think I barely can anymore.

Out of all the inaccurate, over sensational videos out there right now on eating disorders, I found this one to be quite refreshing and it definitely hits home for me.