Good Day

I woke up today ready to let myself eat any way I wanted. I didn’t tell myself to try to eat a certain way because if I do that I feel like it’s a commitment, and if I make a commitment I feel so paranoid that I won’t be able to keep it and I just end up thinking so much about it and feeling anxious about it that I end up losing any control. So I don’t make promises to myself anymore so that I don’t feel the pressure and the anxiety to keep them. So I woke up telling myself that no matter what I do, it would be ok. And so I was able to go through the whole morning without eating or drinking anything without feeling deprived or even thinking about food, and so I went to my nutritionist empty, which I always do so that she gets as accurate a weight as possible, though she doesn’t tell me what the number is, and I don’t want to know because I don’t want to think about the numbers at all anymore. Ever. And if I had my way no one would ever know my weight ever again, but whatever.
Anyway, I went to my appointment even though I really didn’t want to, because I didn’t, and haven’t, felt like I need someone to be keeping track of my weight or my eating. I don’t like her criticizing my eating or telling me how I should be eating or what I should be eating, I really don’t have any intention of changing my eating for her or anyone else. I am going to eat how I want and that’s that. If I happen to eventually want to eat the “balanced” meals etc that she wants me to, then I will, but only because I want to and choose to, not because SHE wants me to.
Well, at the session we ended up talking, like we usually do, but today I actually enjoyed talking to her. Not sure why, exactly, but I felt more open about how I felt. It’s hard to express. I guess I felt like a real person, like I had emotions again, and someone to share them with when I needed to. A lot of the time I feel an emotion, but only when I’m alone and there’s no one around to physically share it with, so it makes me feel like it’s lost and doesn’t exist, and then I don’t exist either, like I’m not real. I don’t know. Anyway, we talked about what college is going to be like, what I want to be as a person, what I want to be defined as, what makes me happy, you know, self-discovery kind of stuff. I liked that. Somehow we then ended up talking about being too thin, and I said stuff like, “I know it’s stupid, but it’s not fair that these runway models are allowed to be as thin as they are, but someone like me can be bigger than them and would still need to have intensive in-patient treatment. It’s ridiculous! I feel like if I can be as big as I am and have people think I need treatment that these model girls should be forced the same treatment! Why do they get to flaunt their thinness but I have to be ‘cured’ from mine?” And I mean, it’s not like I don’t think society is sick for letting these models be so thin and for advertising their thinness as beautiful. I hate it, but I also know that I have a piece inside of me that buys into it and wants to be that thin, and it’s that part that is jealous of the girls that get to be thin and resents the people that want me to get treatment. I don’t think I’m thin anymore. I have always felt like I was never in so bad a condition that in-patient treatment was necessary, but Kathy (my nutritionist) said that she had a patient not too long ago who was 10-15 pounds heavier than I am go to an in-patient facility and get fed with tubes. She said if I went to the Remuda Ranch (the in-patient place) today, that they would feed me through a tube, too. That boggles my mind, I don’t feel like that is necessary at all. There are girls who are in much worse shape than I am and they don’t get fed through tubes. It feels like that is overreacting, or overkill, or whatever. She also said I look emaciated. I thought I did when I weighed 79lbs, but not anymore. I feel full and curvy, bulky even. But hearing her say that made me feel better about myself because it made me feel like it’s still ok for me to keep gaining weight. When I was binging last week I just felt so bad because it felt like I had gained too much weight and that I had become fat and gross or whatever, but if even after all the binging I’ve done she still thinks I look “emaciated”, it makes me feel like I haven’t completely lost myself, like even though I lost myself for a while in the mindless binging it didn’t cause me to turn into something I didn’t want to be overnight. I still have a chance to be healthy and have a healthy relationship with food without having to work backward from being overweight. And it also makes me feel like if I do lose control and binge every now and then that it will still be ok, that I still won’t get overweight overnight, and that’s a comforting thought.
Well, after the appointment I felt good, kind of lighthearted, and then I went to pick up Elisa from driver’s ed. Then we came home and I had lunch, and in the middle of it I got a call from my boss who asked if I was available to come into work. I was, and I gratefully left to go work, because I had no clue what I was going to do the rest of the day after I had eaten. So I worked from 1:30 to 5, and got $6.97 in tips (woohoo!), but then mom called and asked me to rent a movie (Blockbuster is right next door to the Baskin Robbins I work at) for the night, so I spent $4.65 there, and I don’t know if mom is going to pay me back. But one thing that really made me feel good today was this one woman who came in: as she was paying for her ice cream she said, “You have a very pretty face. Your bright eyes and nice lips, you just have really angelic features.” It was the sweetest thing a stranger has ever said to me, that I can remember anyway. I wanted to tell her how much I appreciated her kind words, and let her know how badly I needed to hear that because I haven’t felt pretty at all this last week. I wanted to tell her so much, tell her that she must have been sent from God because that timing was just too perfect, but for some reason I didn’t. And she left before I got to go in front of the counter where I could have gone up to her at her table. I just really wanted to thank her, she has no idea how much she helped me out. Oh well…
Well, after I rented the movies I came home and watched Ratatouille and One Night With The King with mom. The movies ended at 11, and so now here I am at 12:25AM, and I have work later from 1-4PM.
That’s pretty much it. I think today was a good day. I feel calm, and good, and I was able to keep busy most of the day so my thoughts weren’t bored and trapped and all over the place like they are when I’m bored and alone. Hope tomorrow is a good day too.
For now I guess I’ll try to get some sleep…