Need a happy place

This week can suck a fucking dick. 

I have been a goddam train wreck. My hormones have been crazy, the kids have all been a handful in their own special ways, the husband has been a complete piece of shit, and my eating has been inconsistent. I am approaching the finish line not where I want to be. I’m tired all the fucking time. And my fucking clothes didn’t get delivered to me - our postal worker clearly gave them to the wrong person, and they didn’t deliver them to me. I’m furious. I ordered more with express shipping and am going to get a refund but goddam I am so mad about it. I needed that small shred to be ok. To feel motivated again. To be in the headspace I need. I can’t

I want to run away. I hate everything right now. 

Hunger is happiness

I need to stop spending money. I have everything I could ever need. I’m done with all the checklists. My bank account is dwindling, and I’m not making enough to justify these things. If I don’t slow down, I won’t be able to afford a Christmas. I need to work more hours and take on more clients also. I wasn’t that irresponsible with the chunk of change. I was just that far behind. 

I’m hungry. It’s amazing. I stuck to the numbers today. I was active. I haven’t smoked in days, which saves me calories and money. I want to fucking lose weight. I have to.

I have 2 things to look forward to right now. It’s been so long since that was the case. Crazy. Vacation and husband out of town… I can’t fucking wait for both of them. Wardrobe, makeup, nails, and romance acquired. 

We have been good lately. It feels nice. I needed the space and now we have settled into a good place. The prospect of running away is still there. Nothing would stop me at this point if I needed to. I just don’t want to need to.

Ok. Bedtime. 

Weed and meds; what else

It’s been a rough patch…sticking to 800 cals is not sticking so well. 

I think I truly do have PMDD. It’s shocking how badly I feel exactly a week before my period starts, and I don’t know why it always seems to blindside me. I’m too old for that to be the case and feel like an idiot every time I connect the dots. I feel like death for a few days and can’t make myself be a human. This weekend was that… I had all these grand plans on cleaning the house and organizing myself that didn’t come to fruition. I was pooped and felt a little depressed and sore and achy and reallyyy anxious for a couple days, and it fucked my progress. I finally managed to pop a Xanax and get a good nights sleep and that seemed to help. Or maybe the hormones just managed to chill in the end. 

I started smoking heavy again over the weekend to cope with the mood, and my eating got completely out of control for those days. I was stuck again in the cycle and had to break it. Again. Since I started meds, whenever I binge, I feel like SHIT. They’re definitely hard on my digestion in general, and add a layer of shitty food on top, and I’m feeling like garbage and can’t take a dump properly. It makes me anxious, bloated, and angry. I wish I could just smoke and enjoy it. But I smoke, enjoy it for about 30 mins, and then my body tells me it’s starving, and I start eating. Munchies does not even begin to cover what I do. I have gone back and forth about it for so long - I need to figure out a system where I don’t engage the majority of the time. I think that will break the cycle and also give me some freedom. I’ve toyed with the idea of smoking just on weekends in the past, but I think that’s too much also. I think going to smoking only on special occasions is a better idea - whenever I can afford to eat more and have a fucking day to recover the next day apparently. I haven’t smoked in 3 days right now. I told the hubby I was giving my lungs a break. Ever since we both got our medical cards, he doesn’t seem to come to me for a smoking buddy as much anyway. We have so much access to it and basically never run out, so he doesn’t have to check in with me as much about it. The break means my body feels better, even if I don’t feel like I can calm the fuck down. 

I’m not gonna lie, the meds make me pretty up… I don’t think I realized initially, because I was still smoking. My mood and sex drive are great, and the suicidal thoughts have subsided, but I noticed I’m picking a lot and feel a little... manic. I’m constantly organizing and cleaning and adjusting every little thing, and I’ll suddenly realize I’ve been shaking my foot and wonder how long I’ve been doing it, and sleep is a little harder. I don’t mentally feel the sleep thing, but I do physically. I’ve seen 1am in recent weeks, which hasn't happened in years. I’m not sure if all this is just this week with the hormones, or if it’s just how they make me feel, or if it’s just my usual manic bullshit… But yeah, picking has emerged. It’s generally an issue with me, since birth, but lately it feels like I’m a little kid again trying to break the habit. I’m directing it at fidget things so that I don’t rip off all my nails and create massive hangnails for myself or chew my lips off or fuck up my skin, but the nervous tick energy is there. 

But if this is the trade off, I’ll take it. I’d rather fidget and pick than be fucking depressed. I’d rather clean my house than lay around in filth. 

The scale was nice to me today. It forgave me for the sins of my weekend, but the result of all of this is that I wasted a week of my precious month until vacation. I would love for tomorrow to be a better day when I weigh in. My eats today were great because I was so busy at work and very mindful of food, but I’m so tired of this struggle. I just want to lose this weight and be done with all this. I totally realize that I have to adjust my eating for life, and I’m working on that. I feel like I can maintain well, but this is just not the weight I want to maintain. So first I have to fucking get down there, and that’s the really hard part. 

Well… it’s hard when you do it right. It wouldn’t be hard for me to be crazy with it and drastically drop it, but that’s not the goal here. I’m trying to be patient. I’m trying to be reasonable. I’m not a reasonable person. My diet the past few days has been protein coffee for breakfast, snack pack for lunch, and a sensible dinner. I’m not calculating the dinner calories that hard but am avoiding the things that aren’t Anna approved in general. It seems to be a good system for now. Of course I always do add up in my mind the general calories (how could I fucking help it??) but it’s not a logged and researched routine like usual. I ballpark it and move on. Not the easiest thing. 

Think thin. 

Kid and sleep

I’m not getting enough sleep. It’s affecting everything - my mood, weight loss, and eating habits. I’m zapped every moment.

It’s extremely difficult to have an autistic child. It’s so hard that he can’t communicate with us. I literally worry every day about his future. 

Today he had a headache, and we didn’t realize. He was acting rotten, and I realized he must be feeling sick. I think he has had some seasonal allergies going on, and he’s been stuffy lately. He was putting his forehead against ours, rubbing it super hard, and yelling. He slapped me in the middle of the forehead, and the hubby told me he had done it to him also. He started slapping his own forehead. I suddenly realized at that point what he was communicating. I gave him some Tylenol and settled him down to let it kick in, and he became a different kid. I know it’s frustrating for him not being able to talk to us, and it’s frustrating for us also. It’s a fucking hard parenting experience.

The lack of sleep is because he doesn’t sleep well. He only sleeps about 5 hours at a time lately which is not enough. Even when I manage to get to sleep close to the time he does (which is difficult because it’s earlier than I feel tired), I still only get 5 hours of sleep max. It’s been 3 nights like this in a row currently. Last night he woke up at 3. At 3:30 the hubby came in which woke him up more (and he knows his presence is not welcome in the middle of the night, because this is what happens), and I left. I went back to bed for an hour until the husband got him back in his crib and then I checked on him and he was finally going back to sleep. At 5am. And then I had to get up at 8. So I slept from 11-3, 3:30-4:30, and then 5:30-8… it’s not even enough sleep, and it’s completely interrupted, and I’m behind on sleep in general right now so it was definitely not enough. I need him to sleep a long and easy nights sleep. 

I don’t know how to manage it. I feel so badly for my husband in this… if I feel like this, I know he is worse off. 

I need a nap. Fuck. 

Body versus mind

The scale was nice to me this morning. I was shocked. I was hoping for a number like 3 pounds higher than what it said, so it was euphoric. It’s hard how much my weight affects my mood… losing makes me elated, gaining makes me depressed, maintaining makes me apathetic. 

The dilemma of leftover pizza in the fridge was resolved. I ate it for lunch. I ate in moderation (honestly it’s literally the lowest calorie pizza that exists…) and I don’t feel fantastic about it, but really trying to be ok with things lately. This will probably put me at about 900 calories again today once I have dinner, but that seems ok… 

Maybe… I’m not sold on it… My brain is like “you’ve had 700 calories today and should probably just eat an apple for dinner.” BUT, I’m going to eat some grilled chicken breast and spaghetti squash and try to be ok with that. This shit sucks, but I said two weeks, and I’m really going to do it for two weeks. 

I want to throw up the pizza literally right now. I want to cry and crawl into bed and not go back to work today. I want to starve the rest of the day. I want to smoke a ton of weed and take 3 Xanax and drink some Theraflu and pass out. I want to get drunk. I want to disappear. 

I hate this body I’m trapped in. I’m trying to be ok with it. I’m trying to evolve it into something I can just be comfortable with. But is that possible?? Will I ever be comfortable in this body?? It’s the problem my body or mind?? 

Body. Right now, body. 

Fucking compromising

I did okay today. 900 calories. Its not 800, but I guess it’s close. Dinner was the culprit. Today I had a protein shake, fruit and pretzel and cheese prepackaged thing, nuts, and veggie pizza. I wasn’t intense. I wasn’t obsessive, but damn it’s hard to fight it… as I write this , I feel guilty about a 100 calorie pack of nuts. I feel guilty that I had more than one piece of pizza. I feel guilty that I ate a prepackaged thing with carbs AND cheese. I feel guilty about the leftover pizza in the fridge and that I didn’t cook a 200 calorie dinner like I should have. 

I feel like now is not the right time to experiment with having a daily calorie intake this high, but I also feel helpless and like I should just see. Two weeks won’t kill me… Right? Would there ever be a time that I would feel good about a plan like this?? 

I know the looming trip we have planned and my wish that I could get thin and tan and toned before it is a factor in this. I keep feeling panicked. I just really long to feel relaxed and confident for a few days and idk if that’s achievable in this body. I feel like I don’t have the clothes even to achieve that. I’m working on things and still have a month, but it seems impossible. I would love to lose just like ten pounds before my trip… that’s all. I’ve lost 30 in a month before. If I lost 10, my clothes situation would be ok and I could add a few items and not spend a ton of money and feel good in my clothes… I could go see my husbands cousin and not feel like a goddam hippo. I could put on lingerie for our anniversary and attempt to save my marriage. I just need this 2 week experiment to work for me, because it’s half of the 4 weeks I have left to fix the fucked situation I’m currently in. 

I didn’t smoke today, because I missed the window. I have decided that I’m really going to stick to the window… if I don’t smoke before dinner, I don’t get to that day. No mornings and no late nights with Mary Jane. She just talks me into eating shit. I feel like allowing myself that one time per day is a compromise, and I’m trying to live in more of those lately. 

I kind of hate compromise. 

I’m going to take a Xanax and watch Supersize versus super skinny. Think thin. 

Restricting reflections

I did well today; 775 calories. I wish I could restrict more, but I don’t think I can do it well… 800 calories a day is better than binging and purging. And if I could just maintain that number… that would be ok with me. It’s not my eternally ideal 500 calories or less per day (preferably 350, duh), and it would be a slower loss, but the current cycle is the slowest fucking method of all…

The recent cycle has been: 

• Restrict super hard
• Can’t maintain it
• Get super hungry and binge 
• Purge
• Restrict 
• Binge
• Purge
• Binge
• Binge
• Binge

Then I’m fat… 

I think if I just try to restrict to around 800 calories a day, that’s doable for me. It doesn’t mentally feel great, but it I know it’s logical. It fits the math in the end. It gives me enough wiggle room to maintain my blood-sugar and metabolism well, and it’s still half of what my daily recommended intake is. 

Dude. 

No one knows more about how the body manages food than an eating disordered person… wtf is this skill even useful for? How does knowing the calorie content of every food known to man help me? How does my knowledge of how fat is created, metabolized, stored, burned, and how it actually gets out of the body (through respiration when we sleep, primarily) ever going to help my fucking life?? These are just facts I torture myself with. And the amount I know about actual eating disorders would rival most practitioners who treat it. All of this knowledge is not helping. I’m still disordered. I know it all, but I am a victim to it. 

You can’t unlearn this stuff - all the things Ana and Mia have taught you. You can’t ever really get away from them. You just find a way, somehow, at some point, to stop listening… 

But then, to do that is to be fat. And we aren’t meant to live on this side of things. We have been thin, and we worked hard to get there. 

The recognition that it’s a problem is there in your knowledge bank also. When you recount how many hundreds of times you have thrown up in hundreds of bathrooms over the years (and what you know about plumbing due to this), it sets in that this is not really ok. 

So we put it aside. We decide not to listen. Not to pay attention to all we have learned. Not to count. Not to constantly do the math. We close our eyes and ears and hope that maybe we can go back to a time before we got like this; before we knew all this. 

And then you expand. You buy bigger sizes and tell yourself it’s ok. You look at photos of yourself and gasp - who is that fat person, and where is the girl I was before?? You trade your thigh cap for thigh rub and you want to die just as much as you did before - you just also look ugly. You think, “I’m probably more miserable like this.”

So then you start to listen again… You know what you could do. You know both sides of the coin. It would be possible to fully embrace it again - to mold your entire life around eating and not eating like you did before. You still know the way. 

But, you know it can’t be like that again. You don’t even truly want that. It sucked. Being fat and sad or thin and tortured are two equally terrible options. 

So, maybe aim for the middle? Maybe my weight can be just ok and my brain can be just ok about it. Maybe a compromise after 20 years of the yoyo. Maybe it’s dumb that it took you this long to figure that out. 

So you have to balance what they have taught you with what you have learned on your own without them. It’s a fucking impossible balance. It contradicts itself. Food is everything. Food is god. Food is the devil. Food is defeat. 

Why does this exist within me?? Why does it feel like a balance is not possible? Have I ever really given it a chance??

I ended up smoking tonight, because I started to feel physically sick. Idk why - I threw up the water I had just drank and laid in the bathroom feeling like garbage for an hour, and it wouldn’t pass. Idk if it was low blood-sugar, adjusting to my glasses, adjusting to meds, or what, but I couldn’t get it together… It’s funny how I can force myself to throw up a million times in my life, but when it’s my body naturally doing it, I don’t like it… I smoked one bowl, ate some food, and called it a night. No more food and no more smoking. 

I think if I could consistently do that, it might be ok. If I could repeat my choices today every day, I might be ok with that. 

Maybe smoking is another thing I get extreme about - either don’t smoke at all, or smoke all the trees…

Is moderation a possible thing with me?? Why am I so goddam intense, and how do I stop being like this??? 

Planning and plotting

I need to stop smoking. It makes me binge. Especially at night. And I think it’s giving me weird dreams and interfering with my sleep. I put all my pieces and weed away and am setting rules internally. 

I say this all the time, and then I don’t stop. But I need to. I need to stop talking about it and just do it. I’m not even going to tell the husband this - I’m just going to stop smoking. Smoking = binging even tho I try to pretend that’s not the case and won’t be the case. It is. I’m going to stop for two weeks and see if I stop binging. If I do stop binging successfully, I’m going to try to introduce it again and smoke only once a day when I’m cooking dinner and handling the bedtime baby stuff. Not any other time. It’s become too much and I don’t think I need it now that I have the Wellbutrin honestly. It’s like a fucking miracle has occurred with that shit. 

Wellbutrin is making me way less hungry, but at a certain time of day it wears off, and then I’m starving because I haven’t eaten enough. That’s being paired with smoking at that time of day. And then I can’t stop eating. I’ve been purging on and off and it’s not good.

So, plans:

• Stop smoking 
• Stop binging 
• Eat meals on a schedule 
• 800 calories max per day 
• 160 cals protein shake for breakfast and coffee or tea 
• 300 calorie max lunch with fruit
• 100 calorie snack of nuts
• 250 calorie dinner of meat and veg
• Take all the supplements 
• Do for two weeks and see if there are results 

I have been taking my meds in the morning with a protein shake and letting my body digest a bit before I take the supplements. I’m taking multivitamins with hair and nail boosters, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar gummies, and fiber. These are all things that are supposed to help with weight loss… so we shall see. 

I need to stick to this for fuck sake. What the fuck is wrong with me?? 

Insomnia

 My mood is improved but still a little tough. I feel like I now have the energy to get things done more frequently and feel more motivated and less anxious and lethargic, but I’m still really struggling with my eating disorder stuff and still struggling with feeling down. I hope the mood improves as I get it built up in my system properly. 

I ordered shorts that I think are going to arrive too small for me. I will have to decide if I return or wait until I have lost weight. I am pissed about it. I hate myself for being this fat. 

Today was meh… I was active and took a nap but my eating was weird. I was picky today and everything was unsatisfying aside from like bread. My sleep is weird. It’s hard to fall asleep but then I sleep soundly. I’m a little tired but I think it’s from the actual lack of sleep at night lately. 

Talking to my brother about my parents was cathartic and hard. I know he’s remaining neutral. I can respect it. I can respect that my husband can’t be. I just wish my mother was a different person.

White noise tonight. 

I’m a mess.

Binge. Purge. Binge. Purge. 

I’m fucking depressed. I don’t deserve happiness. I’m a terrible person. In the past especially, but even now. I’m a goddam fake ass stupid pathetic fat bitch. I’ll never. Ever. Fit in. I have no real friends and no one who even really knows me. I’m hidden from the entire world. 

Because the world will just hurt you. The world will fucking kill your will to live. 

There’s that familiar thought…

Fat and scared and unloved.

I desperately need to lose weight. At my doctor’s appointment, she gave me a number. It’s realistic for me, but it’s very high… I can’t believe I ever got to this point… I have lost 15 pounds so far this year, and I’m just now back to what was previously my highest weight. When I think back, I have a hard time actually identifying what caused this gain and where the fuck this all started. I think I was so depressed for so long… it was terrible. I look thinner in photos of when I was pregnant than I do right now… That thought makes me want to fucking cut… I’m so fucking ugly right now. Sometimes it’s hard to even work seeing my own goddam face in the corner of my screen on video calls…

My mood has been better since I started meds; it’s shocking. I hope it’s real. I hope it lasts. I’m so scared that this is just one of my up swings that I sometimes have, and that I’m going to crash real hard real soon. I’m terrified that my depression is just untreatable and incurable. It’s been nice to feel more capable and motivated, but I’m trying not to think this might be an actual solution because so many others have failed. Zoloft, Prozac, Vybrid... even therapy was not helpful (I guess because I didn’t like my therapist if I’m honest…) Why would Wellbutrin be different?? I haven’t had the constant obsessive thought, “I want to kill myself,” in a couple days. It’s been there in the back of my brain constantly for years now… I tried to access the thought earlier today, and it felt like there was a layer of fog between myself and that thought. Like I could still make it out, (I think I will always low key want to die…) but it was fuzzy. I’m so scared to be hopeful about this. 

The husband has been emotional and on a rollercoaster with that, and it’s so hard to stomach. He is so defensive be constantly says I’m having an attitude. He hates not working. He hates that we have been struggling. He doesn’t feel like a man. I get it. But it’s not my goddam fault, and I can’t do shit about that. Everything I say he takes it as an insult and if I try to objectively look at interaction, I truly don’t see where I’m doing anything wrong. I had a thought yesterday that we might turn out to be one of those couples who you look at and say, “it’s so weird that broke up. I wonder what went wrong - they seemed genuinely happy for a long time,” and when you ask them, they just say something like, “I don’t know. We grew apart.” I questioned if I’m falling out of love with him. I’m not sure I have answer to that question currently. It’s on hold. I have decided to try to just take the relationship one day at a time. Some days are good. Some are terrible. I have been sleeping in the guest room a lot lately. I think we both need space. There are elements preventing actual good night sleeps, and it’s not worth it to me lately to stick it out and sleep in the same bed. I just go off to my office/workout room/bedroom and sleep alone.

I always did like sleeping alone… it’s not what I just tell everyone. 

Started meds

I started Wellbutrin. Idk if it’s placebo, or if my depression cloud just managed to part a bit the past couple days on its own, but I feel like it’s a good thing already. I feel like I felt it immediately yesterday and again today. And I feel like yesterday at a certain time, it wore off… I know it doesn’t always work that way, but Prozac did this also - I felt it immediately. I’ve been on some message boards, and they all say some people react to it immediately. I am feeling quite good. I don’t think I’ll up the dose yet. I want to wait a month and see if I have any major episodes. And if I do, I’ll up it then. If not then we can leave it at this dose. 

I even got the urge to paint today. I’ve organized things. I went outside for hours the past 2 days and didn’t have a moment of panic. I was a little swingy yesterday, but is kid that was the meds or circumstances or a bit of both. 

I just realized I haven’t had one thought of death since I took my first dose… huh. 

Last night I did get those late night binge urges. Half asleep and wandering to the kitchen to eat food standing in front of the fridge… not my favorite thing… 

Meds and sleep

Went to the doctor today. They prescribed me Wellbutrin and referred me to psych. Today I am going to fuck it with the attempt to lose weight and not go nuts but let myself eat and starting tomorrow I am going to start meds and get myself fixed up a bit. I’m tired of feeling like garbage. 

And lately I’m just plain tired. Baby is not sleeping well. Which means I’m sleeping like 4 hours and not consecutively. 

I got a nap. It was a lifesaver.