Leila's Journey to Life: puking

Showing posts with label puking. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 January 2013

Day 170: Starving and Binging - Two Sides of the Same Coin

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 155: Introduction – Starving Myself
Day 156: Wanting Passion and Purpose in Life
Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thought - Part 1
Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2
Day 159: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Writing – Part 3
Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions
Day 161: Become an Image and be Treated as an Image
Day 162: Eating Disorders and Unforetold Consequences
Day 163: Mistaking Obsession for Passion
Day 164: Eating Disorders as Perfection of Mind Dominance
Day 165: Eating Disorders and Real Self-Perfection
Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia

Day 167: The Big Fall

Day 168: Always Just out of Reach

Day 169: Turning my Back on Anorexia, Anorexia turning its Back on Me

Whenever I would go through a 'rough patch', I'd be bouncing around between starving myself and binging. I would get to a point where I was frustrated with myself and wanting to give up / get over with it -- upon which I would start binging.

I saw the binging as a point of 'stopping' the ED, where I believed that eating lots of food was the 'good' and 'right thing to do' in comparison and in contrast to starving/depriving myself -- while it was actually still a continuance and outflow of the same point.

Since I'd find myself in a bad spot, where I felt like a failure - I would go 'fine, whatever!' and go for whatever junk food was closest and stuff myself. But how I actually experienced myself and the binge eating was still a statement of failure, where I went from one side of being a failure / not good enough to starving myself to 'better myself' to the other side of eating lots and mostly lots of crap food as a point of 'I'm a mess / failure anyway so I might as well screw myself over with lots of shitty food -- I'm a screw up anyway, screwing myself over this little bit more is not going to make much of a difference'. So then that's how I would justify going into binge eating.

Then after I was done, I would feel bad, ashamed and guilty. I'd access a point of wanting to 'undo' what I just had done, so there puking became a point of 'going back in time' and correcting my mistake. So then I'd puke.

But even though the puking removes the food from your stomach, it doesn't remove the actual reason/motivation or the 'why' as to why I had stuffed myself in the first place -- which was in essence a point of self-disappointment and self-hatred.

All I cared about was getting rid of the guilt and now of course I also had to prove myself so then I'd go right back to strictly starving myself - back to the other side of the polarity.

I mean, the way I experienced myself within stuffing myself with crap food and knowing its not good for my body was the same way I'd experience myself when downing alcohol or doing drugs, where there was a point of wanting to obliterate myself.

So then when I eventually 'stopped' starving myself and believed myself to have gone 'back to normal' (not that I ever had a 'normal' relationship with food), I actually took on more of a binging pattern within myself and would 'spoil' myself a lot so to speak, eating lots of shitty food -- and then I would justify it with 'well, I'm eating aren't I?'. Like, even though I knew something was off about my eating pattern, I'd make it sound 'alright' because it was not 'not eating', as if the 'not eating' was the only thing that the ED had consisted of - while it hadn't, both points had gone hand in hand.

No-one also questioned this behaviour, and I was getting chubby -- but this was then considered 'healthy' as opposed to being skinny, and eating lots was encouraged and met by a smile on my mother's face, being happy that I was apparently 'out of it'.

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Day 167: The Big Fall

Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia

I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that I rather did not want to do the whole puking thing, because it seemed like too much of a hassle.

So now that I was in the position where I felt "forced" to puke, because otherwise I would not be able to move/progress any further -- I found the whole puking thing rather interesting. It was as if I had found a 'loophole' or 'cheat'.

Where I had previously been quite strict with myself in terms of my food intake and not eating anything besides that which would 'give me away' -- I now started indulge in bits and pieces. Because now I could tell myself that 'it's alright - you can just puke it out later again, no harm done'. But after doing some 'little' indulging (like say, one slice of chips, or a taste of something sweet) -- I suddenly had this wave or more like tsunami run over me, where I just broke down and STUFFED myself. I had been starving myself for sooo long and not eating any of the foods I so loved before -- and now with this 'cheat': I just caved in. I ate and I ate and I ate and I did not stop until I was as stuffed as I could be. And then the tears came, and the guilt and the shame and the throwing up. I struggled for a while with that, where I would constantly move from one polarity to another, from total strictness to total stuffedness -- where I would deprive myself from foods for a while and then it would just backfire and BAM binge party.

In a way this was cool to really see how we live in polarity designs, going from one polarity to another like a very bouncy ball.

After having puked so much and it having had an impact on my body where I just couldn't handle puking anymore because of the blood and pain involved, I got really scared and wanted to stop. I figured that since I created this condition through deliberately managing my mind to bring about this type of behaviour -- I could now just reverse it using the same techniques again.

I was pretty confident that I could do this, it made sense that since I created it I could also uncreate it. Then I got in for a surprise, because it was not as easy as I thought. In the beginning of my endeavor (as mentioned in Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thoughts - Part 1 ) adapting thoughts typical to eating disorder behaviour was very hard as it wasn't automatic and I had to formulate and bring about each thought very specifically. However, as I had now progressed in time -- the thoughts were no longer 'forced' and had become completely automated. So while I thought that I could just 'quickly reverse it' -- I got faced with quite the opposite. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, the thoughts, the images, the emotional experiences, the swearing at myself -- all those points I took so long to create and imprint within myself -- just wouldn't stop. They were there all the time, around every corner, within every reaction -- it had become my entire reality. Uh oh - crap...

So it was interesting to see how my 'plan' had actually manifested. All the time and energy invested in managing my mind in a forced way had accumulated in it integrating and becoming me. I was no longer controlling my thoughts, my thoughts were controlling me. I got a bit stressed a this point, because I had expected myself to remain 'in control' and now it was getting clear that I wasn't - how was I going to stop?

Then, at some point when I was at my lowest weight (about 52 kgs at 1.78m) and I had been doing the whole not eating thing for quite a long time, we went on a one week holiday by the coast. This was like one of my biggest fears, because I preferred school-time over holiday as this was the easiest time to avoid being around the watchful eyes of my parents. So now I had to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with my family every day -- and generally when our family would go on holidays, we'd also eat all the 'extras' -- so now I was eating all of those as well. And I couldn't risk to puke, because the apartment we were in was tiny so everyone would be able to hear me puke and it would be harder to cover up afterwards.

Everyday I would weight myself, and everyday I would see the indicator of the scale go up and up and up. I was in complete despair.

Then one day, we were about to eat mac and cheese for lunch -- and in that moment I just gave up. I had gained so much weight, while I had struggled for such a loooong time to lose it, and now it was back in a matter of DAYS. I just couldn't do it anymore - and then I caved and I caved hard and I stuffed myself and basically went 'fuck it, fuck this shit' and I cried and I cried. And I always remembered that moment as 'my fall'- almost like I was an angel that had fallen from heaven, into disgrace.

I never really understood how much that moment had affected me. Only a year or so ago, I was experiencing myself down, depressed and like a completely failure and I was writing about how I was experiencing myself and I just couldn't get 'where' this was coming from -- and then suddenly it just dawned to me - it was still an outflow of that one moment where I just gave up and crashed, and experienced myself as a huge failure and after that event, I never stopped experiencing that point, it just became 'who I am'. It's like the moment never stopped, it was still busy running.

I still tried once in a while to 'pick up' on it again, to try and start over, but it just didn't work out. So then I turned my back on that part of my life and slowly but surely went 'back to normal'.

Monday, 21 January 2013

Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia

In Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions I mentioned how at some point my family started getting suspicious of my eating behaviour and how skinny I started looking.

My mom would start pointing out how my lunchbox is still full when I get back home or from school or that she didn't see me prepare my lunchbox and how she never sees me eat breakfast, and that the scale has been left out in the bathroom a lot. I remember the one day, I came out of the bathroom and my mother looked at me and I just saw fear in her eyes, she looked bewildered and said "What is up with you! You don't have an eating disorder now have you?!". And because of the amount of fear and worry in her eyes, I just told her to "Stop being so paranoid, I'm fine". I think she was quite happy with that answer, because imagine if I had said 'yes mom, I have an eating disorder' -- that's like a big fear come true and she would have probably interpreted it has being 'her fault' and her being a 'bad mother'.

I realised I had been careless and had to become more specific in how I did things. In the mornings while my mom was in the bathroom I would take an empty plate, put the toaster upside down and shake some crumbs unto it. I'd then take a knife and put some choc-spread on it and make a streak on the plate -- now I had dirty dishes as 'proof' that I had eaten breakfast and I would leave it on the table in a nonchalant way. My mom would see the dishes and fill in the gaps herself, and I could see her smile.

I would do the same with my lunch, make lunch in the morning and then at lunchtime just crumb a piece up a bit and wipe the inside of my lunchbox with a piece to make it nice and dirty - forging 'having eaten lunch'. On weekends I would try going to friends, and tell my parents I would eat there and when I got at my friends I'd tell them I already ate at home.

I basically did not eat anything except for dinner, but now my parents were forcing me to take big portions and there was no way out of it. So I ate the big dinners and I started putting on weight, because now the body is in survival mode and wants to just store up as much in the body in anticipation of the next 'famine'. I started getting desperate.

During this whole period, I would also read a lot of blogs of other people, there's a whole 'pro-ana' and 'pro-mia' community on the internet ( pro-ana being pro-anorexia and pro-mia being pro-bulimia') of people posting daily about their daily application and progress. I saw that some girls would puke out the food they ate after binging - which was something I would rather not do -- I'd rather just not eat if I could instead of eating and then having to puke it out -- it just seemed like too much of a hassle.

But now that I felt that I was in a 'desperate spot', I decided to give it a go with my dinners. I'd drink a shitload of water, almost a sip after every bite so that it would be easier to throw it up later. I thought it worked great - initially. I could eat my dinners without any fuss, and could eat several meals during the weekends when there were more eyes around and then afterwards just go up to the bathroom upstairs and throw it all up. This worked fine for a bit, but after a while my stomach started hurting a lot and my throat as well. I couldn't puke as easily anymore and now whenever I would puke, most of the puke would come out through my nose and the veins in my eyes would pop of all the pressure, leaving them bloodshot. Then at some point I saw that I was puking out blood with my food and that's when I knew I had to stop -- my project had gone too far and the damage to my body was now undeniable.

To be continued...

Monday, 6 August 2012

Day 27: Ticks and Tick Bite Fever – Part 2

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, to as a kid when listening to the stories about ticks, tick bite fever and it killing people – have accepted and allowed these stories to imprint ‘fear of ticks’ as ‘fear of death’ within me

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to as a kid when hearing stories about ticks, tick bite fever and death – have responded to this within myself from a starting point of fear – where I within the moment of hearing the stories allow myself to become completely irrational and be possessed by this feeling of petrification of ‘what if this happens to me ‘, and created a fear relationship with ticks instead of investigating the tick phenomena and taking the practical steps / pre-cautions when necessary to minimize the potential of being bitten by ticks – and thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created an emotional relationship as fear towards ticks where whenever I was in long grass would pre-occupy my mind with ‘oh no what if there are ticks here’ and ‘I hope I don’t get bitten’ and ‘Eeek! What was that itchy sensation I just felt on my leg!” – where I allowed fear to possess me within every moment of my participation with nature instead of me being here, having taking the precautions and from there simply let go of the tick point – as I will either get bitten or not get bitten and being in my mind thinking, worrying and generating this fear experience will not make a damn difference to the outcome

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise – that before I ever heard of the tick stories I was fine playing and having fun in the grass – whereas when had been fed information about ticks (which when looking at it now was probably inaccurate / extremely exaggerated for the sake of making it sound more ‘horrific’ than it really is) this information now dominated my mind and changed my whole experience of being in grass/nature – where all I could think about was ticks – and thus I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that this ‘new information’ should in no way alter/change my behaviour/approach/expression within nature – as the same “threat” existed before, but because I was not aware of it, I did not allow it to limit my expression – whereas now I was ‘aware’ of the threat and allowed this to possess me as knowledge and information where I altered my behaviour and approach to being within nature because of this one point of ‘possibility’ – without seeing and realising that before I ever knew about ticks, the possibilities as statistical probabilities of me getting bitten by a tick were just the same – and so there’s really no reason why I should now be around nature with a constant cloud of fear within my head, as this will in no way change the possibility of me getting bitten by a tick or not

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have believed that my ‘fear of ticks’ was ‘keeping me safe from ticks’ – where I believed that if I am possessed/pre-occupied with the fear of getting bitten by a tick I will be more alert and will be able to keep ticks off me – where I traded ‘me being here as breath in every moment, trusting that I will deal with ticks if and when I have to and having an enjoyable time in nature’ with ‘me living in my head as fear of ticks as fear of death hoping religiously and faithfully that if I keep fearing maybe the ticks won’t get to me while having no fun at all in nature’ -- wherein the latter I allow myself to abdicate all self-responsibility as I simply ‘hope’ that it won’t happen

What’s interesting with being in the hospital – was that the exact same thing happened, where the doctor was now feeding me ‘horror stories’ of people dying/being badly affected by tick bite fever – and my mind going into that same fear frequency as it did when I was a kid, where I allowed fear to override all common sense and was willing to do anything to not make the horror story happen to me

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when the doctor told me that he was going to keep me in the hospital for a few days because of those few rare cases where people die/get badly affected – have gone into completely fear mode, allowing fear to override all common sense and for a moment just be paralyzed and willing to comply with anything as long as it would mean that I’d be safe from the horror stories

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trust doctors blindly, because of the belief that ‘they are here to help people’ – without taking into consideration the Money Game which is currently behind every doctors practice – where, if I had been here as breath it would have been obvious to see that through his words he was scaring me into being admitted to the hospital, as this would give the hospital/him income

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to unconditionally walk through an event – no matter what the outcome, within the realisation that having ideas/back chat about the event is not going to change/alter the outcome anyway – so why bother making the walk unpleasant by creating an inner hell about it, which is totally unnecessary

Pages

Sunday, 27 January 2013

Day 170: Starving and Binging - Two Sides of the Same Coin

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Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Day 167: The Big Fall

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Monday, 21 January 2013

Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia

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Monday, 6 August 2012

Day 27: Ticks and Tick Bite Fever – Part 2