Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

This is how I feel right now :)

So I'm going back to school on Saturday!!! Just two more days of work to go, and then I'm FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! SO EXCITED! I am really pumped to get back to school and see all my friends and start classes again. Also, my friend Isabel, who is currently living in Chicago because she graduated, is riding the bus to school with me. She wanted to visit my school this weekend anyway, so it just worked out that we could ride together. Yay three hours of talking! :-D

I am only taking three classes this semester, and I'm starting work on my senior thesis. As a psychology major, you have to be invited to do a thesis. This is because your thesis must be a psychological experiment, which takes department money and advisor time, and there aren't enough professors and money to let everyone do that. Everyone else gets to do Senior Seminar. So I got invited, and I'm planning to do my thesis on something related to disordered eating (shocker, right?). At this point, it is looking like anxiety, body image, or media related stuff. I don't know yet though, because I've barely started my preliminary research. I have all of first semester to plan and propose my experiment, and then I conduct it and write it up during second semester. Yay! I am nervous but excited. 

On another note, I did a TON of clothes shopping this past weekend and ended up with some great stuff!! And the good news is that I did all this shopping, and emerged with my body image and self esteem intact. I found myself blaming the clothes instead of my body when something didn't fit. I probably tried on upwards of 40 pairs of jeans before I found some that fit, but I acknowledged that this was not my body's fault, but just indicative of the way jeans are mass-produced. So yay! It's been quite a while since I've shopped and felt good about my body while doing so. I ended up with two pairs of jeans and about seven shirts. Plus a pair of heels (yay!) and a pair of flats, both black. This is a pic of the heels: 

So pretty! :) I'm excited, because I can NEVER find heels that fit my feet. Awesomeness!

Ok, that's about it. I'm going to go back to freaking out about when I'm going to pack... Love you all! <3

Goals!

Not much to report here. I have my period, which makes me a raging bitch. Grr! It's funny, when I was on birth control, I had more cramps, longer and heavier periods, but less bitchiness. Off birth control now, and I have less cramps, shorter and lighter periods, but a crapton more bitchiness. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around, at least for the cramps and length and heaviness? Weird.

I've been baking non-stop recently, making tons of cupcakes and brownies for various events and people. I finally found a sub for when I'm gone (cuz I go back to school in a week, so I'm missing the last week of the kid's classes). Thank goodness! I had to offer baked goods, which reeled someone in. Speaking of baked goods, ALL I WANT RIGHT NOW IS CHOCOLATE! PLEASE FEED ME!

Still no let-up in the flashbacks while driving. LAME. I made a new playlist on my iPod for non-triggering songs. Too bad they are mostly lame songs... But on another note, my body. It sucks. I just feel gross and pudgy. I'm back at the weight I was when I was a freshman in college, which was gross. I feel fat in all my clothes and especially fat because I'm bloated from my period. I am really hoping that going back to school will be good for me and my eating. Here are my goals for the semester (food and non-food):

Food Goals (NOT RULES)

• Eat one dessert per day, max.
• Don't drink soda unless I'm out to eat or ordering food on a Sunday night (no dinner is served in the dining halls on Sunday nights, so we have to find our own food). 
• Work out at least twice a week (preferably with my workout buddy!). 
• Avoid obsessing over these goals, food in general, working out, and my body. 
• When going to Walgreens or Walmart, do not get large amounts of chocolate or junk food; pick healthier snacks that would be good for late night hunger. 
• When bored while studying, only eat when actually hungry (shocking, I know!). 

Non-food Goals

• Obsess less over grades and GPA. 
• That being said, try to get good grades and impress professors. 
• Try to convince professors to let me knit in class (I have all new professors/a professor that won't let me knit; tragedy!!!!). 
• Get all my homework done early so that I can either a) get ahead, or b) hang with friends more. 
• Before the semester gets too hard (aka, before spring break), figure out which graduate schools to apply to and write a draft of my personal statement. 

That looks good for now! Ok, there's a cat sleeping on half of my computer, and I have to shower before my therapy appointment. Love you all!

Sometimes

Sometimes I am terrified to go back to school because I don't know what will happen this next semester, whether I will start drinking and hooking up again or if I will be a normal person for once.

Sometimes I feel triggered and I don't know what exactly did it.

Sometimes I do things to intentionally trigger myself, so that maybe it won't be so bad next time.

Sometimes I'm triggered and want to cut so badly that the only thing stopping me is the fact that I'm lazy and don't want to get out of bed.

Sometimes I wish that my rape wasn't so lame; I wish that I could prove it, or at least remember it, and then maybe it would feel more real.

Sometimes I wish that I had my eating disorder back, because it gave me something to focus on and control.

Sometimes I want to sleep for a month.

Sometimes I just want to be a "normal" person who doesn't need drugs or therapy.

Sometimes I hate myself because I feel like I should be better than I am, like I should be a better person, friend, daughter, sister, victim, student, employee, a better everything.

Sometimes I'm happy though. Perhaps more than sometimes :)

Noooooo, stop it, flashbacks! YOU SUCK!

Since I've been talking about the rape SO MUCH all the time, I've been having more flashbacks. This is probably normal. When you think about something more, it also invades your unconscious mind more as well. The sucky thing about this is that I get flashbacks when I listen to music. NOOOOOOOO!!!! I love singing in the car! But unfortunately, a lot of the songs that are on the radio/that I love are about getting drunk, dancing, hooking up. And all of those things are things that I associate with being raped. For example, there is this song that I love called Give Me Everything Tonight by Pitbull. I absolutely adore it. Mostly because it's fun to sing. I like catchy songs that I can sing along to. But there are a few lines that always trigger me.

But I might drink a little more than I should tonight,
And I might take you home with me if I could tonight,
And baby, I'ma make you feel so good tonight,
Cuz we might not get tomorrow. 

Sounds fine, right? Nope. The part about drinking a little more than I should, and the taking you home if I could, is triggering. Because I did drink (a lot) more than I should have, and I did take her home with me.

This isn't the only song that triggers me. Others include Last Friday Night by Katy Perry and E.T. by Katy Perry. Actually, come to think of it, basically all Katy Perry songs. Firework is ok, but there are a lot that mention getting drunk (Last Friday Night) or hint at nonconsenual sex (E.T., during the intro when he says "Imma disrobe you, then Imma probe you, see I've abducted you, so I'll tell you what to do...").

Anyhoo, this sucks, because I love Katy Perry and I love singing songs like that! But when I have them on and/or am singing to them, I get flashbacks and have to change the station. LAAAAAAAME. Hopefully that will stop, cuz it suuuuuuucks.

Ok, bedtime. Oh, also, today marks 100 days with no cutting!! YAY! <3

My happy place

This is from The Sound of Music. Please say that you guys knew that! :)

I realized something yesterday, as I was driving home. I am at my happiest, most excited, when I am driving and listening to the radio and singing. I get really giddy and sometimes can't sing half the song because I'm giggling. It's a wonderful way to start off the work day, because it makes me feel like it will be a good day. It's also a pick-me-up at the end of the day, when I'm super exhausted from working with the kids. Unfortunately, singing in my room or the shower doesn't have quite the same effect (wonder why?), but I still feel happy when I'm doing that too. Anyway, I thought that was very interesting and potentially useful for future reference.

Yesterday and today were good. No purging, no restricting, no cutting. I feel like a fat cow, but that can't be helped. I mean, it can, but it will take longer than 5 minutes to make my brain believe that I'm not a fat cow. Anyhoo, my family decided to drive back from California in one day instead of two, so we spent 11 hours driving yesterday. Fun! Not. I was super bitchy all weekend for some reason, including and especially yesterday, but I'm doing ok today. It is suuuuuper nice to have a whole day off from work to do nothing. This week I will only work 3 days instead of 5, since I was gone yesterday and today, which sounds heavenly. And after this week, only 2 more to go before I go back to school!!!

The only hiccup is that since my sister is back, she wants to use my car. And of course, she is probably going to get her way. Which means that I will probably have to drive my dad's car to work every day. I hate my dad's car. It's a stick shift, which is fine, except I just hate his particular stick shift. It just feels wrong and I hate driving it. I will seriously take the bus to work, which would take hours, to avoid having to drive that car. Ugg. I'm hoping that I can convince my parents to let me use my mom's car, which is still not my favorite, but is alright. Either way they would be carpooling, so why does it matter which car they take? I don't know. What I really want is for them to make my sister drive mom's car, but that probably won't happen.

I have to babysit for my neighbor tonight, which I am slightly terrified of. I am good with kids, but not little kids. She 3 girls: a 4-year-old and 2-year-old twins. I am hoping that things will go smoothly. Their mom said that it would probably be an easy, pizza-movie-popcorn night, which sounds doable. Wish me luck!

Talk to ya'll later :)

My brain... on psychology!

Hey guys! So this weekend has been good. Since I purged on Thursday, I've been having eating disordered thoughts, but nothing I can't handle. I visited a friend while in San Francisco yesterday and she helped me get a grip on some of the things going through my head. My sister actually just called me out on counting calories... she's right, obviously. I shouldn't be counting, and I'm going to stop. Sometimes it just freaks me out to not know what I'm eating!! I'm sure you guys can understand that. Bleh. But no more. I am trying to do better and I know that I can get things back to normal. Yay for recovery!

Speaking of recovery, I was talking to a friend the other day who said that before she was hospitalized for her eating disorder, she wasn't even aware that she had one. When she was in the hospital, they gave her parents information on eating disorders and she asked to read them too, because she didn't really understand what she was being diagnosed with. I just find that so so fascinating, because I can't remember a time when I wasn't aware that my eating habits were disordered. There might have been a time at the beginning of my eating disorder, when I was 13 or so, when I thought that everyone was dieting and bingeing and that stuff. But I quickly realized that I had an issue. I just couldn't stop using my ED behaviors because I was so terrified of being fat. This is probably the psychology major in me too; I've known the DSM diagnoses for eating disorders ever since I knew that you could be diagnosed. I know what weight I would have to be for my BMI to be "anorexic." I know how many times per week you have to purge (or fast, or use laxatives, or whatever), and for how many months, to be considered bulimic.

And I felt A LOT of pressure to meet those standards. I didn't want to be EDNOS, because I felt like it was a wimpy diagnosis for people who didn't really have eating disorders. So I did my best to meet the standards I needed to, so that I would be taken seriously in treatment. I mean, it's not like I decided to throw up a certain number of times per week. That sounds silly. But I did feel like I had to learn to purge in order to be considered bulimic. What I was missing was that I was already fasting, overexercising, and using laxatives: all things that are considered bulimic when combined with bingeing. Oops. So when I finally got into treatment, I didn't have a mild case of bulimia; I had severe bulimia. Partly because of the pressure to fit a diagnosis, and partly because I was so scared to recover (read: get fat) that I had waited until my ED behaviors were super out of control. Ladies, never learn to purge. It only comes back to bite you in the ass. Once you can do it, it's always in the back of your mind as an option. And you think you can control when you do it, but really, it's controlling you. LAME.

By the way, all of the above refers to my first round of eating disorder stuff, ages 13 to 16/17. I had that relapse in February 2010, when I started this blog, and didn't quite make it to the bulimia diagnosis. But that was different, because I knew new tricks and ways to hide and ways to avoid bulimic behaviors in favor of restricting. So yes, different than high school.

Ok, enough of that. In conclusion, the weekend was good, if not stressful because of family dynamics. I'm looking forward to driving back home tomorrow (driving all day sounds suuuuper fun... not) and having a day off to do nothing :-D I hope your weekends were awesome too!

Better-ish

It's ok, I'm fine. I guess I had a lot of things going on, and the stress built up. I haven't talked to my therapist specifically about the purging, but she says that stuff like wanting to cut is normal when people are overloaded, like I am now. I mean, I have rape crap on my mind, Isaac crap, stressful work, pressure because school is starting soon and I haven't done much research and haven't started applying to grad school, and I feel fat and gross. Is that enough yet? How much more can I handle? I'm also exhausted all the time because of my job, so that doesn't help. But the good news about that is that I never have the energy to cut myself. I really want to sometimes, but I usually am waaay too tired to drag myself out of bed. So that's good!

I didn't purge yesterday (Friday), but I wanted to. I mostly wanted to cut though. Idk what is going on currently, but the cutting urge is stronger than usual. It's probably related to the aforementioned stuff. Bleh. I'm so tired of this! I miss when I was feeling happier, when my meds were first kicking in. I know that my medication is working still, or else I would actually be cutting and/or purging, but I'm still annoyed. I hope that once I get to school and stop thinking about the rape, stop working, etc. then I will be less crazy.

Weeeeelll, I should go. I'm at the airport, waiting for my flight to board. I'm flying down to California to see my sister :) She is swimming at US Nationals right now. Well, she finished swimming yesterday. And GUESS WHAT?? She's a superstar; she made her Olympic Trials cut in 200 backstroke! She is going to the OLYMPIC TRIALS! My sister is so cool. I'm so so so proud of her! :-D
So anyhoo, I'm sure she's even more excited than I am (or not, who knows ;) ). My parents are already down there. They left on Tuesday, but I didn't feel like missing a whole week of work (read: $300), so I stayed and am flying out today. We will spend the weekend together in San Francisco and then drive back to Oregon on Monday and Tuesday (15 hours of torture). So I'm missing 2 days of work, but hopefully I will be refreshed and ready for 2.5 more weeks of work before I go back to school!

That's right folks! I go back to school in 3 weeks exactly! SO EXCITED! I miss my friends and I actually MISS SCHOOL. After working for 7 weeks (and 3 more to go), I am so excited to do schoolwork. School is something I can do. I'm good at it. It's my thing. Working with kids = not my calling. Adolescents, young adults, and adults, yes. Kids, no. Bleh.

Ok, enough chatter. Gotta pee before I board for my flight. Love you all!! I will update over the weekend (maybe) and let you know that I haven't purged or cut. NO CUTTING. NO PURGING. NOOOOOO. :-D

Crap

I purged. I have no idea why. 'Nuff said.
Squirrel.

Creepy Old Guy

It's been a challenging few days. One main thing to report is that I found Isaac, aka Creepy Old Guy, on Facebook. Have I talked about him before? I don't think I have. Here's the general story.

I was 16 and I went to an underage gay bar with friends one night; my first and last time there. I was sitting by the bar, resting my feet, and this guy came and sat next to me. We started talking, and eventually he gave me his number. I was super flattered, especially because I had really low self-esteem due to my ED and had never had a serious boyfriend before. At this point, I didn't really know/admit to myself that I was gay. So anyway, I texted him the next day. Originally, he claimed to be 21, but after we texted for a bit, he admitted to being 28. This should have been my cue to run away fast, but I didn't for some reason. We started dating, and things quickly progressed, in terms of sexual stuff. At first, I thought it was great. I felt like I was being a grownup and having a real relationship. But of course, I didn't tell any of my friends that I was dating him, because I knew they would say that I shouldn't do it.

After only a little while of dating, maybe two or three weeks, he started to tell me that he loved me, that we should get married someday, that he wanted to follow me to college, etc. I thought that it was kind of creepy and  sketchy, but I went with it because I didn't know what else to say. I felt like I had to reciprocate, because isn't that what adults do? Now I know better, but my 16-year-old self wasn't as smart as my 21-year-old self. Around the same time that he started getting creepy, I started to get tired of doing the sexual stuff that he wanted. We didn't have official intercourse, in case you were curious. But I didn't want to do it anymore, whatever it was. However, I thought that if people loved each other (I had convinced myself that I did love him), then they did what the other partner asked. He said things like, "If you loved me, you would...." so that I would do what he wanted. He didn't use force or threats, but it was an unspoken rule that 'no' wasn't really an ok answer. So I never really said no, but I never said yes either, and I didn't want it.

We dated for four months before I finally worked up the courage to break it off. I was really desperate for someone to love me (besides my parents), and that made it hard to dump the only person who said that he loved me. But I knew that it wasn't a healthy relationship, so I ended it. After that, I realized that I was really messed up because of what he did. I would drive by his street and hyperventilate and have flashbacks. I would see someone who looked slightly like him and freak out. When I got to college, I was hypervigilant because he had said that he would follow me to college, and I was paranoid that he really would. This was five years ago now, and I still have flashbacks. I can't do certain sexual activities because I get flashbacks or they remind me of him. My ex helped with that a bit, but you can't undo everything in a short period of time.

So yes, that's Isaac. After we broke up, I broke off all contact. I unfriended him on Myspace and deleted all the pictures of him, etc. But every so often, I wondered what he was up to, if he was victimizing any other underage girls. So I would look for him, but I was never able to find him again. Until now. I randomly decided to look again on Monday, and I found him. As soon as I saw his picture, I felt a jolt go through my body, and I knew. I knew it was him, even though he has more facial hair now, and he looks older. I guess he's 33 now... weird. Since I found him, I can't stop looking! I think that part of me thinks if I look at his picture enough, I will desensitize myself, and it won't bother me as much. I don't know if that's true, but whatever. Whatever the cause, I need to stop looking. NOT GOOD!

The good news is that he lives in Texas now, not Oregon or Wisconsin, so I don't have to worry about running into him. For the longest time, I was super paranoid that I would see him somewhere. The bad news is that now I have a very real face to put on my fuzzy memories, which makes them more vivid and distressing. But that's ok; I needed to face them anyway, right? I'll be fine :)

So that's my big thing for the week. There is more, but this post is SUUUUPER long now, so I'll talk to you all later! <3