I’ve been in a familiar situation this past week…mixed feelings, mixed thoughts, mixed mood…chaos in my mind! But the familiarity with it doesn’t make it any more easy to deal with…or live with. I have still been thinking about recovery-should I, shouldn’t I? can I, cant I? hope or fear? It’s like a roundabout in my head.
The conflicting thoughts in my head about recovery are also accompanied by conflicting mood. Sometimes this week I’ve been ok, plodding along and getting on with things, but other times I have felt overwhelmingly sad, depressed and helpless with life.
I have been feeling really lonely, like…REALLY lonely. Most of the time I do feel lonely anyway but this past week it has hit me hard. Friends have been a key motivation for me trying to get a bit better. In hospital I always told myself that if I got a bit better I could go out and have friends and do normal things that friends do. And I did start to have a glimpse of that, a little taster, last year. But currently, as it stands in my mind, it feels I haven’t really got any proper friends…not like everyone else seems to have. I very rarely go out and most of the time (well, practically all of the time) I do just feel alone.
And that is when anorexia creeps in…anorexia is always there for me. So I hold on to it for company, when I feel like I haven’t got anyone else. And coupled with that is the thought that things still won’t change even I did get a bit bigger…I will still be lonely and miserable. So what is the point in being bigger and lonely, you might as well stay thinner and lonely. Thoughts like that are just constant in my mind and it is very wearing and debilitating. I hate the way my mind thinks and I hate the way my mind makes me feel. But it is my mind and I am stuck with it.
The past few days on my way home from work I have been playing my Britney Spears album for the first time in years. And one of the songs I have been playing on repeat has the lyrics:
“Lonlieness up ahead, emptiness behind, where do I go?”
And this sums up exactly how I have been feeling.
But, it is not to say that how I am feeling is evidence of fact or proof that I have no friends. No, it is probably not, but I can’t help how I feel at the moment. Feelings are very hard to ignore even when they don’t reflect the truth. And anorexia has a knack at making you feel like absolute shit. But despite all this negativity (and I am sorry if I am being overly negative) I had a really enjoyable occasion on Saturday evening and it did restore a little bit of hope in my mind.
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| Me with my second family on Saturday night |
When you feel down it is easy to ignore the positives and just dwell on the negatives. My nanny from when I was growing up and her children (who are all like a second family to me) came round mine for Spaghetti Bolognaise night and I had a really good evening. Nowadays we don’t get to see each other that often but when we do it is as if no time has passed. They have always been there for me and have always shown me love. And it helped me realise that just because people are busy, just because you don’t see people that often, it doesn’t mean to say they don’t care. I know this isn’t how I feel but as I mentioned earlier, feelings aren’t always fact and I need to try and remember this.
The Britney Spears song goes on to say:
“You couldn’t see all my hopes through my fears.”
Anorexia makes everything fearful, that life is too scary to live without it. A lot of my current confusion is built on fear; the fear of recovery, the fear of being without anorexia, the fear of life. But, as the song says, through all these fears I do have hope. This past week anorexia has been playing on my fears of loneliness but I cannot let it take over. I had a really nice time Saturday and my hopes have been restored. And I will not give up on them.