I've decided to start a blog so that I can share my cycles and eating disorder with everyone and have a place to go back to when I need to remember. Forgive me, I'm not a very good writer and sometimes these posts may be less than coherent.
Hi, I'm Lizzy. I'm 24 and live in work in NYC. I grew up with a great family with parents who gave me every opportunity available to us: great private schooling, summers at camps, backpacking across europe, or letting me pick up and move to argentina for 3 months when my on again, off again boyfriend broke up with me (again). Voice lessons, piano lessons, soccer games, shopping sprees at Bloomingdales and Nordstrom. I got everything I ever asked for and more. I had (and continue to have) great friends who support me and help me through everything. I graduated from a prestigious liberal arts college in four years, I got myself a super fancy job in business, and live and support myself (sometimes) in a pretty incredible apartment in Manhattan.
From the outside, I definitely look normal. But, on the inside, I'm just some fucked up kid, unable to control her mind or emotions and sometimes it feels like, her actions. I suffer from bipolar, EDNOS, and alcohol abuse. I've been cycling from manic to depression for as long as I can remember but didn't really know that's what it's called until recently. And with all of my rollercoaster-ing moods come a plethora of other problems. For example, my "episodes," as they call them, can trigger my eating disorder... which is my main problem right now. About a month ago, I had a very severe manic episode. I'm so glad that I have a lot of caring friends and doctors that took me in and helped me stay out of the hospital (this time). Since then, my eating has been, well... off. I go days without eating, I'll binge and purge, I'll purge from just a small amount of food. Food consumes me. Everything I do revolves around it. I make sure that I can get out of eating with other people, make sure if I do eat in front of people that I have a place/bathroom I can go to purge without anyone know. If I eat, I freak out. If I don't eat, I feel accomplished and safe.
A few days ago, I binged on McDonalds (something I haven't had in probably over a year) and immediately purged... I don't even know if I got all of it because in the process, I cut the roof of my mouth/back of my throat with my nail and had to take a purging break. I panicked - started hyperventilating, running around my apartment, pulling my hair out, screaming, wanting to break something... wait, I think I actually tried to break something. And then... here's the kicker... I grabbed the sharpest knife I could find in my kitchen, ran to the bathroom, made the shower as hot as it could go, and let the steam fill up the tiny space. Suddenly, I slow down and for a few minutes and come back to earth. I find myself staring in the mirror at my wide, bloodshot eyes that are sunken in to my beet red face with mascara running down it like black tears. I was grabbing the knife, like a serial killer, holding it up to the mirror and glidding it along my face and hairline. It was as though there was two of me. The one that was scared and silently screaming for her life; and the one that was about to tease the frightened child with pain (and, hopefully, death).
So then (here's where my memory gets especially spotty) I get into the shower, sitting down with my knees to my chest, grab the knife and start to cut small slits in my upper forearm. I do remember this hurting a bit but I was so memorized by watching the blood spill out, down my arm, across my palm, and eventually to the white ceramic floor that I didn't really care. I pulled the skin apart so that it would come out faster. I didn't realize until later that I was watching all of this go down from some place high above, as though it were a movie of someone else's life.
This is what happens. Something that seems so insignificant to others, like making a meal out of 10-piece McNuggets and a medium fries and scarfing it down in less than 5 minutes, can send me in this terrible spiral up to the ceiling, where I float to the ceiling and watch this crazy person, who looks and awful lot like me, go about her business, whatever that is for those couple minutes. Or is it hours? Days? Years??! I'm not even sure anymore how long I stay up there.
I'm completely aware of how incredibly un-normal all of this is. I know that starving, cutting, purging myself is each, in it's own way, killing me. I know that I need to take my meds, use the coping skills that I've learned from hours of intensive inpatient and outpatient therapy, and call a friend when in need. But right now, and for the past couple of weeks, I just don't want help. I've starting lying to my friends and family again and told my therapist and psychiatrist that I no longer want to see them. No matter how aware I am of how bad everything is and how much worse it can potentially get, I don't want help. I don't want to get help until the last possible second, whatever that looks like.
I hope that as I tell my story I can help others and find people who relate. No one in my life knows what any of this is like and can't seem to understand why sometimes I just don't want to put in the effort to make a change. Sometimes I actually like being fucked up. Anyone out there feel me on that?
xoxo,
Lizzy
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