a letter to myself...

      Sunday 18^th November 2012

Dear self,

This is hard. I so desperately want to be better - I don't want to hate myself for eating anything – however tiny or healthy, or be constantly number-crunching in my mind to the extent that I'm not fully present in my daily life...I don’t want how I see myself be determined by the verdict of the scales each morning; I don’t want to sit with my head down a toilet having a panic attack because I ‘ate too much’. I don't want to force myself to miss social events to be alone in my room and do jumping jacks so long I get carpet burns on the soles of my feet, or ‘have to’ keep running even though everything hurts and I have blurred vision and a spinning head.

. My BMI is still by some criteria technically in the healthy weight range. But I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. And my eating disorder is impacting a lot on my health at this weight – so I hate to imagine what it would be like at an ‘unhealthy’ one. In the last week, I’ve thrown up blood; been horribly dizzy and nauseous; had palpitations and panic attacks; fainted (having eaten a perfectly healthy amount that day); had a constant headache and have just felt exhausted in every way. I don’t want to be like this anymore.

But I keep lying to myself. Saying ‘you can really recover when you’re sick enough to recover’; ’when you’re thin enough to recover’; ‘when you get to x-weight’; ‘when you beat your lowest weight by enough’; ‘when  you can see another rib; and another’… it never ends. I’m realising that I’ll never be ‘thin enough’…and even if it was it’d just have to be a longer and longer road to recovery when I actually start…because here’s the thing:

With an eating disorder there are two options: recovery or death. You can be stuck in the in between misery of just going through the motions of life with it for a while, but ultimately you either recover or die... I’m pretty sure which option I want to pick!!

I love life. I love God and my family and my friends. I love church and worshipping my amazing God, and I love Autumn (and Spring, Summer and Winter!).  I want that John 10:10 life back. I need to stop being so ambivalent and ultimately choose recovery. It’s so hard, but I need to start making better decisions. I hope this letter can motivate me to make those decisions…

With love,
Me

creating a beautiful day..

Although I've been struggling quite a bit with food and exercise-related things the past couple of weeks, I had an absolutely LOVELY bonfire weekend at home last weekend: I saw my church family, got to lead worship again, bought a cute new onesie, had a breakfast date with my mum, saw my parents and had a mini-induction to the job I'll be doing at christmas when I'm home (cleaning the golf club). It was beautiful:

However, I ate so much. It probably logically was a really normal amount, but because of the way I've been eating at uni lately (having smaller meals more frequently each day and tending to have the 'safe' option and do it all myself), it was really scary to have 'big' meals with a starter and main course with side dishes etc - and to not be in control of preparing them. I was so caught up in the emotion of seeing everyone that I managed fine at the time, but had a bit of a panic on the train home and have been struggling more since...

But this morning I decided I was going to create a beautiful day.

I don't like Thursdays. We have a symposium most Thursday mornings (essentially 4 lectures back to back without a break), and today we even had an extra lecture scheduled for after the symposium: 9am-1pm in a lecture theatre hearing about cancer isn't the most fun, but this morning I made the conscious decision to make today a good one. How?

1) I prayed. My alarm was set for early for extra time but I pressed snooze too much (silly dozy Anna is a bit selfish with her sleep apparently!) and only managed to get up about 15 minutes early. But I had a flick through my Bible and took the time to commit the day to God in prayer; to tell Him that I couldn't do it in my own strength but that I wanted to glorify Him today - and would He be able to help me? 

2) I made a wholesome, healthy breakfast the night before. No decision anxiety required; no portion panic to begin the day - I just took my glass of muesli and yummy additions out of the fridge and sat down to eat it.

3) I reminded myself of what I was doing. As I sat in lecture, I had a verse that had been stalking me on social networking this morning (think Romans 12:12 was the youversion verse of the day!) written on my hand during the lectures as a constant reminder...

...and the results were brilliant! I was able to listen and stay pretty much focused the whole way through the (slightly painful) morning of lectures - which is unheard of for me in a symposium! Usually I've given up trying to understand it an hour in!

also, little unexpected blessings made me happy - Alice returned to me my orange pen I thought I'd lost. Not a big deal to most people, but I love my colour schemes (to a worryingly OCD extent, but that's a different story) so it got rid of some anxiety that's been floating around my notes for the past week or so.

I'm still messing up, of course. Today I've done lots of things I probably shouldn't - calorie counting, body checking and loads more things. But I'm pretty happy with how the day's going: I feel like I've created it beautifully within my constraints: God is good and I am so blessed.