Oh, hey! It's not often I do these; it's not often I let people in and share what's actually going on in my noggin, especially when it's all crazy nonsense.
So. I'll own up before I start. I was diagnosed with severe depression when I was a teenager, and I've swung in and out of it since then. I had a fair amount of stuff happen during my childhood and teenage years that therapists have assured me will have definitely contributed - I'm carrying a lot of stuff around with me, and sometimes it gets a tad heavy!
When I was a teenager, I also became anorexic. I didn't know that's what I was...all I knew was that I developed a (very private) conviction that people would think I was fat if they saw me eat anything. So I stopped eating at school. Then I stopped being able to eat in the morning before school...I didn't know why, I didn't think about it; I just didn't feel like I could. Then it snowballed to a point where I was barely able to eat anything. I didn't do it to lose weight, I didn't have a set of scales, I don't know what I weighed at that point. I do know that I still thought of myself as fat, ugly and worthless, that I compared myself to everybody else constantly and that I simply couldn't eat. Eating felt like failure. Starving myself felt like success, something I could be good at, something where I was winning. Being hungry meant I was doing ok. It was uncomfortable, but it was something I could control, a control that nobody could take away with me.
I don't think you ever recover fully from anorexia; through support, therapy and lots of personal effort you can learn to control your behaviours and handle your thoughts so that you're not plagued by the demons, but it's a lifelong battle. I'm currently waiting for a letter telling me who my new therapist is, as my last eating disorders specialist has moved on elsewhere and I'm in between people. I hate therapy, but I'm committed to recovery, so I'll keep going.
Right now, I'm not doing so great. There's nothing much wrong with my life - ok, I do have suspected Multiple Sclerosis, which is a total ballache, and I'm still carrying the memories of a lot of crap with me...but I have three beautiful children, a gorgeous, caring, loving fiance who I absolutely adore, a supportive family and some fantastic friends.
But this is the nature of depression. There doesn't have to be anything wrong for it to rear it's ugly head. I'm struggling with it like hell at the moment.
People with eating disorders often talk about the 'negative voice'. It's a strange thing to explain - it's not like actually hearing voices (or at least, it's not for me)...but more like your own internal dialogue turned evil. You know how if you drop something, or maybe if you walk into a room and forget what you went in there for, or if you accidentally put salt in your coffee instead of sugar, or anything daft, you have an internal dialogue that says "Oh for God's sake you're so clumsy!" or "What did you come in here for?" or "Well, I'm not drinking that!"? My internal dialogue is loud, critical and relentless. I constantly hear, from within my own head, that I'm fat, unattractive, useless, stupid, dull, boring, a terrible mother, that my lovely fiance could do better and that he SHOULD do better, that my friends don't care about me, that I'm a burden on people, that there is nothing physically okay on any part of my body, that I'm too lazy, that I don't do enough to help other people, that I'm selfish...and so on and so forth. I also develop a paranoid voice; my fiance will leave me, people don't like me, I'm so hideous that people are laughing at me, everybody thinks I'm ridiculous. I have this all of the time.
When I'm quite stable, I can argue back against that voice; I can rationalise and figure out that my fiance loves ME, with all of my crap and wotnot, that I'm at the lower end of a healthy BMI range for my weight, therefore I'm NOT fat (the negative voice tells me that I need to be underweight to be 'thin'), that I have friends who call all the time to chat, that I have friends who make the effort to make sure I'm ok and come pick me up and take me places if I'm having a bad day (so NOT fair-weather friends).
When I'm not as stable with my depression, I can't argue with the voice as well. I'm on the highest possible dose of sertraline; an anti-depressant which works on anxiety. Usually, it works. Sometimes, it doesn't.
I know when it's not working when I start to feel hopeless...I don't want to get out of bed, I can't be bothered with doing anything, I can't focus on anything and I feel emotionally numb. I have to plod on - my children need me, they need me to be their happy, friendly Mummy who cooks their dinner and listens to their stories and helps with homework and bathes them and tucks them in with a smile on her face. It's harder with friends. Drew knows when I'm struggling because I go off into my own world - he often notices before I do, because the things that usually make me laugh don't seem to even register, and I space out while he's talking to me. Most of my friends know that if I have a quiet day, I'm not being off with them, I'm just trying to battle my way out of a dark place that depression has gotten me lost in. I still try to be bubbly and cheerful, but apparently it's pretty obvious that it's an act. I make the effort, but it's not genuine and true friends know this.
Unfortunately, knowing that I'm acting like that, that I'm not as responsive as I'd usually be, that I'm being quiet and spaced out, that I'm not able to take part in conversations as actively as usual, makes me feel dull and boring...which gives that bullying negative voice something to pick on. It's a highly inconvenient cycle that's very hard to break out of.
Drew's away with work this week. I've kept myself busy all week, but today Heather and Charlie are with their Dad. Jasper's having a nap...and I'm left alone with the contents of my defective noggin. I can't watch TV, because it's just not interesting me enough. I'm trying to re-read the Harry Potter series but, much as I love it, it's not holding my attention. I have a wedding magazine, but I haven't even opened it. I'm battling anorexia again and feel awful because I had a doughnut earlier...the argument is raging in my head that this is FINE - it's all I've eaten today - and that I should have dinner later...while the negative voice is telling me that I'm fat fat fat and shouldn't even go into the kitchen again today. I want to get better, but it's a tough battle to fight. It's bloody exhausting.
I'm so sick of the crazies...
Apologies for the maudling post - I promise you faithfully the next one will be happy smily again. Honest!
No comments:
Post a Comment