Tag: disordered eating

I Just Want To Live

A Girl In A Complex World

Well, the comfort I was receiving from the hot water bottle was wonderful. Except, it was short-lived. Through no fault of its own though! That hot water bottle was / STILL IS an incredible tool in my Skills Box.

A lot has happened lately. Maybe a slight percentage has been a genuine response to trauma and/or illness, and not something I had complete control over …. but when you choose to do something, YOU are the reason it happens. So whatever happens is your fault, isn’t it?

I’ve put my body through absolute torture these past 2 weeks and its going to take a while to settle from it all. Unless you deal with it on your own personal level, absolutely no one will ever comprehend what its like to live with a brain that wants me dead.

I can’t help but feel a little jealous … I’m actually more than a little jealous, but I digress … of the ppl I hear and read about who also deal with depression, PTSD, eating disorders, BPD, dissociation, and so on who have found ways to still live productive lives and can maintain a level of stability that is acceptable in other ppl’s eyes. I’ve been dealing with this stuff for several decades … and I have yet to discover what ‘stable’ looks and feels like.

I don’t get angry very often but right now I feel absolutely PISSED – at everyone and everything. All I want is to be able to eat, drink, sleep, and socialize with other ppl the way other stable, functional human beings do every single day. It really isn’t that much to ask, is it?

I want to live … and experience things outside of survival. That’s all I want. I’ve totally got the survival part figured out. Now, I just want to live.

Relief In The Emptiness

A Girl In A Complex World

When I was in recovery, that’s what I missed most – the relief. The escape from everything I was feeling.

And its still the thing I continuously go back to when life gets hard. I’m either bingeing and purging several times a day or I’m avoiding food entirely. I’ve lost all sense of balance and my body is struggling desperately to keep up.

Every time I sense rejection, or unworthiness, and every time my sadness grabs at my throat, I numb it frantically with food. Then, instead of sadness, I feel fullness, which is even more unbearable. So I purge it all out.

This new, fresh emptiness is much better because it is a clean, hard-earned, exhausted emptiness. Now I’m too tired, too sore, and too weak to feel anything else.

So, I feel nothing. That feeling of ‘nothing’ brings such a tremendous amount of relief.

Is Surviving A Testament Of Strength?

A Girl In A Complex World

I ventured outside today. Not because I wanted to though. The last thing I wanted to do was put a coat and boots on to go walk around in the snow. I went out because I needed to. I’ve barely moved from the couch in 3 days. This year is not off to a good start.



First, we had the first-ever earthquake here in Central Newfoundland. Very minor. But there has never been an earthquake here. Then we had a major 3-day storm. Our driveway was washed out and our roof had some damage. Thankfully it was minor. Then I ended up spending 9 hours in the ER, for dehydration.

Through all of that, I’ve been struggling just to keep breathing. CPTSD has been kicking my ass. Between the paralyzing panic attacks, nightmares, disordered eating (restricting, binging, purging), chronic pain, and insomnia every breath I take requires effort. Putting in effort takes energy, and energy is something I have very little of. Or maybe it’s just a lack of drive or willpower. Either way, I don’t have much of anything right now.



But today I managed to tap into something inside of me that gave me a little boost. I was wiping away tears as I was putting my boots on. The dogs were so excited to have mom play ball with them. They’ve really been feeling the effects of what I’m going through and that has created such a massive amount of guilt for me. I try and tell myself that I really am doing the best that I can right now but it feels so fake.

The fresh air was amazing though. The sound of the waves along the shore was incredibly comforting. I miss walking there with the dogs. Another reason I dislike winter so much. When I get cold it triggers my CRPS and sometimes I’m in pain for several days after. It’s frustrating. Especially when more than half of the year is cold here in Newfoundland. So outdoor activity is quite limited. It’s a big factor in the decline of my mental health once the fall months are upon us.

Today the cool air was welcomed. It wasn’t windy, which made it much more manageable. It was as if by breathing it in I was bringing back a little glimmer of life. It even energized me enough to later vacuum, sweep, and mop through the house.

It was discouraging though to find myself standing in the middle of the room, on 3 separate occasions, completely dissociated, and I had to check my phone to see what time it was. Everything has just been so surreal. Over the last year, 40 years of trauma decided to all come flooding back at once, at times leaving me completely incapacitated. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through. I’ve shed more tears these past few months than I have my entire life.

So yeah. It’s been tough. But I guess surviving all of this is a testament to my strength? Maybe. I dunno. But I do know that growth doesn’t always look like success. Sometimes growth involves holding on when everything just feels so damn heavy. At least for me, it does.

The old me would have given up long ago.

How I Ended Up In The Psyc Ward

A Girl In A Complex World

It all started when I went for my regular Ketamine infusion, which is part of my treatment for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.

Felicia, the head nurse, asked if I was doing ok. She said I wasn’t looking like myself and that I was pale. I said I was good and that was all that was said. 



I remember lying back on the stretcher while they prepped me, putting heart monitoring stickers on my chest, attaching a BP cuff to my arm, oxygen in my nose … I was shivering and could feel tears running down from the corners of my eyes but i had no emotions. It was strange because that doesn’t usually happen. They took my hand to start an IV and I heard a faint voice in my head whispering – don’t touch me.

I remember turning my head to the side and just letting myself drift away. Don’t have any more memories about the treatment than that.

Once the infusion was done they wanted to talk to David. Felicia asked him how I’ve been doing lately. David later told me that he told her I’ve been purging a lot, that I’ve been quite depressed and that he’s been worried. Apparently she told him that I’m not looking well. That I was pale, my eyes were dark, and my lips were almost grey.

I was awake, my eyes were open, but I was non-responsive. My neck and head were spasming and I was staring off with no reaction when someone spoke or touched me. So they decided to keep me an extra hour to give me more fluids and more time to let the meds wear off. David asked if they felt I had taken anything and she said no because my vitals were all good. But they did bloodwork just to be sure. 

An hour later Felicia called David back in and told him that he needs to take me to the ER. Apparently I had been mumbling some things that no one could really pick out but Felicia had heard me say something about this being the end and it was almost time to die …. I don’t remember any of that. I’m just telling what I was told. 

So they put me in a wheelchair and David registered me in the ER, where I sat/slumped for 9 hours. David said I kept falling to the side as if I couldn’t hold myself up. He had to ask for a pillow and blanket to put around me to secure me a bit. He said I was in a completely different world.

Then they called us in to a small room that had nothing but 2 chairs bolted to the floor. And that’s where I spent the next 26 hours. It was nothing short of brutal.

Tears are burning my eyes now as I write that. I think it’s cruel how this was handled. They took me from the OR after having a procedure done and forced me to sit up on hard seats for a total of 36 hours. I was hallucinating. I was in terrible pain and developed a migraine. Had multiple bouts of vomiting. And I started experiencing opiate withdrawal because after I took my meds Thursday morning, I wasn’t given anything until Friday night. By that time I had missed 6 doses of morphine. It was torture.

David had to leave at one point. We had taken our dogs with us that morning. So David spent the entire day going from me in the hospital to the dogs in the car. He’d switch every hour. Take them for a walk, a drink, get them a snack then settle them in the car again before coming back in with me. But they couldn’t do that all night. So around 10pm he spoke to the staff. They assured him that I would be in safe hands and would be looked after so he left to go home with the dogs. Just before he left, he brought me in Zoey’s blanket from the car because he’d been asking for a blanket for me for 2 hrs with no luck. So I just kinda dozed off, sitting up in the chair, with Zoey’s blanket over me.

At one point I started to be more alert and I was really confused. I needed to use the bathroom but there wasn’t one so I left the room and just wandered around a bit. I went to the nurse’s station and asked if there was a bathroom and he said down the hall on the right. I roamed the hospital for a while. Took the elevator a few times, and eventually made my way back to that room. I called David, upset, wanting to know what was going on. When he realized that I was still there in that room – alone, he drove back to Grand Falls again at 4am. In the meantime, while hyperventilating and being trapped in that space with the chairs bolted to the floor, I clawed/scratched/cut my neck. 

David came, and he channeled his anger into fighting for me. He took me outside for some air then went and found a vending machine and got me a sandwich and water. I hadn’t had anything since 7am the previous day. Thankfully there was one nurse there on Friday that had a bit of respect and showed some compassion. She even gave me a little bit of her on personal toothpaste so I could brush my teeth. No one gave me a breakfast tray but she made sure there was one for me by lunch time. And she also contacted the necessary ppl to get my meds ordered. 

Then my psychiatrist came. It was still another long painful day sitting in that chair but by Friday evening I was admitted to the psyc unit.



And I’m still here. I am much more stable than I was over 2 weeks ago but still have a ways to go. Have no idea what is going to come out of this.

Its Not Dim Anymore

A Girl In A Complex World

Ive dealt with disordered eating for as long as I can remember. It’s like it functions by a dimmer switch. It’s always there to some degree. Sometimes the switch is turned down and, while never really on friendly terms with food, sometimes it’s not all-consuming. Purging is random and not an everyday occurrence during those times. Thoughts are not centered on food all day.

Then the switch gets turned up. Something will be particularly activating and the behaviors become prominent again. l have a few days or weeks where food is at the forefront of my mind and restricting, binging, and purging is what everything revolves around day and night.

Then the dimmer switch will turn down and I can pull myself out of the cycle again. 


This time it’s proving to be much harder to pull myself out of it. There was no gradual onset. And I can almost pinpoint the exact moment the alarms started going off in my head. It was when I was in the hospital a few weeks ago …

I was in the bed connected to the various tubes and machines, with no clothes on, just several blankets wrapped around me, bags of glucose and potassium running into my neck, fluids, and calcium flowing in through an IV in my foot, I had a catheter…

2 nurses were at my bedside with juice, cookies, and cheese telling me I had to eat it and they weren’t going to leave until they watched me finish it because after all, that food was my ‘medicine’ … 

I was severely hypo-glycemic and it was imperative that they grasp every possible solution, and that included food with simple sugars.

Since that moment my mind has become preoccupied with every single bite of food I take. The monster in my head has woken up and is on a vicious rampage. I gained a few lbs in those 2 weeks b/c of everything I had to eat. And drink. So many calories were consumed through fluids alone!

3 days before I was discharged they took the catheter out and I could get out of bed then. The first thing I did was go and throw up. The tubes in my neck complicated things a bit because the pressure of vomiting kept causing the alarms on the IV pole to go off. But once I figured out what the different buttons were for I was able to turn off the alarms by myself.

So here I am, spiraling. I’m mentally and physically unwell because of the sudden lack of medication in my system. So vulnerabilities are running high. I feel raw, trying to claw my way out of this mess.

And what a mess this is.