Update

I've had a few comments on my last post asking for an update so people can see how I'm getting on. This post doesn't mean I'm going to be posting regularly again yet though.

The past few months have been extremely hard for me for several reasons. The first is the break-up with my boyfriend which I'm still not completely over, even if I have stopped crying about it on a regular basis. I still think we should have worked together but I can't sit around waiting for him to realise he's been an idiot. I'm not over him yet, I'm not ready to start dating again by a long way but I'm getting there.

I started a new, challenging job in September. I went through a few months of not being sure I was doing the job right, wondering why they'd hired me and thinking that I was never going to get the hang of things. I think I have now. It's got to a point where I think I'm doing a useful job and I'm really enjoying some of my work.

The other implication of the new job was it meant moving home. I moved to a new town most of the way across the country (this is England, not Amercia, so it's not as bad as it could be) from where I'd been living. This means I'm a fair distance from my friends and family. That was incredibly tough.

But I've survived these changes.

I had some bad days. I had some really bad days. And I had some occasions where I spent too much of the weekend eating half the menu of the local Chinese take-away.

There were some extremely rough moments when it felt that relapse would be all but inevitable, but I got through them.

One of the things that helped was something I wouldn't have expected to. I started taking kung fu. I went to the class for the first time more or less on a whim. I'd been here a couple of months and barely knew anyone outside of work, so I could go the entire weekend without real human contact. So I looked up classes and courses that were on at the weekend just so I'd be out there meeting people. I saw kung fu listed and figured why not.

I think that was a good decision for a wide range of reasons. Firstly, and probably most importantly, it's fun. I enjoy the classes and like the instructor. I like the other people taking the class so I get some socialising and am even starting to meet a couple of them outside the classes as well. But the reason that has most significance for me as a formerly disordered person: it's exercise that I don't control.

My instructor is the one who decides whether we have a hard or an easy class. He's the one who determines what we do and when and tells us we should be going home at the end of the session. He is the one who determines how hard I should be pushing myself, not the amount I ate the day before. If you go to the gym, you're in control of how much you exercise, how long and how hard. If you've had over-exercise as a symptom of a disorder, this can be dangerous. But my kung fu instructor has no way to know whether I ate normally or binged the day before, so the exercise is separated from the food. It becomes something that I do, not something that I do out of guilt.

My instructor also brings up the subject of food occasionally in class. For some people, this might be off-putting, but it helps me. He tells people off if they don't eat enough. One of the worst mistakes you can make is admitting in class that you haven't eaten breakfast. It's nice for me to hear someone saying that we should be eating more. He encourages healthy eating, but he does it by encouraging eating, rather than saying things are forbidden.

It's been good for me to know I have an instructor who cares about my general health and who won't be afraid to ask me what I've eaten. I hate lying, so I'm more likely to eat decently to avoid having to if he should ask me. The second time I nearly fainted in class, he started taking a strong interest in whether or not I was eating enough. He doesn't know I used to have an eating disorder and I doubt I'm going to tell him but it's reassuring to me to know that there's someone who'll ask me whether or not I ate after getting home from work, so I'm less likely to skip meals.

If you're in recovery and you had over-exercise as a symptom of your disorder, it can be difficult to know how to get back to exercise. There's no clear boundary between exercise and over-exercise. So I would recommend joining a class or a club of some sort. Make it something you enjoy, so exercise is fun not punishment. And make it something where someone else is in charge. That way, you'll be doing the same level of exercise regardless of whether dinner was half an apple or half the fridge. By turning over control to someone else, your disorder isn't the thing determining how hard you exercise.

So, in conclusion, I'm doing alright. I'm enjoying my job, I'm starting to make friends here and I've found a form of exercise I can enjoy without abusing it. There's another good thing that's happened to me over the past few months that proves there can be good even in bad times. I signed a publishing contract towards the end of last year and my first novel will be in book shops from September.

Giving this a break

I can't do this right now.

I'm completely messed up about my boyfriend dumping me (for no good reason I can see) and it takes time and effort to research and write coherant posts about eating disorders. I can't face that right now. It's difficult enough trying to keep myself from going back to everything I quit, without making myself think about it.

So I'm taking a break. I won't be posting for a while.

Hopefully, I'll be back when I get my head sorted out.

No video today

In previous weeks, Thursday has been a day for posting a new video.

I haven't made one this week. Making a video requires time and thinking about feelings. I'm trying to avoid both of those things. I meet people and schedule things with friends and then fill the gaps with anything and everything so that I don't have a spare moment to think about how I'm feeling.

It seems to be working. I made it through most of yesterday before I completely broke down.

I'm not letting myself mope, because once I start, I will hide under my duvet forever and only emerge to get more food.

Over the past few days, I've eaten quite a bit more than I should, and mostly sweets and fatty foods, but I've not had a real binge. That's probably something to do with not giving myself time. If I'm constantly doing things, there's physically not enough time to have a real binge.

It's still taking a huge amount of control to even maintain an illusion of holding it together.

Crying lakes of tears

My boyfriend has dumped me. He ended a three and a half year, near-perfect relationship. His reason: he was worried that if he stayed with me he'd end up settling down with me.

This is the comment of one friend on her thoughts when she saw I'd changed my relationship status on Facebook: "I was assuming... hoping... believing... that he'd proposed to you - I know that Facebook can be complicated when entering that sort of thing."

Another friend: "Wow, I can't say that didn't come as a shock."

A few months ago, when we found out we'd be spending a year at opposite ends of the country, a friend said, "You'll manage. You're you two."

Another friend at that same time, "I'm sure you can cope with a year long-distance. You're perfect together."

It seems the only person who didn't think we'd be together long-term was him.

Right now I think I'm going to be needing to pay attention to all the advice I've given to other people if I'm going to get through this. I'm spending loads of time with friends, so hopefully that will a) keep me from binging and b) keep me from thinking of him and crying my eyes out constantly.

Weekly Update 8th June

I am not in the right mood for writing an entry in a recovery blog.

I'd gone over seven months since I'd had a real binge. About eight months since I purged afterwards.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

Cry in the Dark

Recovering from an eating disorder is incredibly difficult. Fortunately, there are charities and support structures out there.

If you live in the UK, there is beat. If you live in the states, there is NEDA. Both of these organisations should help you find help near you.

Sometimes, there are no local groups. Sometimes, the thought of facing someone and telling them what you do is just too terrifying. In those cases, online groups can be an amazing help.

Livejournal communites like ed_friends and purgatorium can help you feel you're not alone. Be careful though, some people find that reading others going on about their disorders can trigger relapses. Make sure you join a group that supports recovery. Look at different communities and read a lot of their posts before joining. You want to join a group that's supportive and friendly, one that doesn't offer tips for continuing behaviour and one which will applaud you as you try to recover.

If you're not on livejournal, there are forums. One that is pretty quiet but very friendly is ED Friends Unite. This forum is very strictly pro-recovery, so it's a good place to go for any eating disorder. If that doesn't suit you, just search google. Remember, always look for pro-recovery. As with the livejournal groups, read through posts and check that the place is right for you. It should be supporting the fight to recover, with friendly members and not sharing tips for how to make your disorder worse.

All Alone in a Crowd

So, yesterday I went to meet the people who are starting on the same graduate training scheme as me. One part of the day was a "speed dating" section which involved us finding out each others' main hobbies. Three of the guys put down drinking.

Watching a presentation about how much fun last year's graduates had had on the scheme, there were an awful lot of pictures of people with drinks in hand.

Talking with the other people, there were plenty of comments about drinking, nights out and hangovers dropped into the conversation.

And suddenly I'm back to feeling like a sixteen year old freak who doesn't want to try drinking, isn't interested in dating and would rather stay in with a book than try and sneak into clubs. I was lucky in school; there were a couple of other girls who also didn't rush to the toilets to check their make-up at the end of the day, just in case they passed a guy while on the way home. I found a couple of people who weren't fussed about grabbing a boyfriend or going out clothes shopping or getting drunk. At university, I found a surprising number of friends who don't drink and plenty of others for whom alcohol is something occasionally sampled as a glass of wine at a party.

But there is still often that sense that I don't fit in. This loneliness and feeling of not being like everyone else was, I think, a large contributing factor in my developing a disorder.

I was talking to my mum the other day about one of my cousins. It seems he really doesn't fit in with his classmates at school because they're all interested in drinking, smoking, drugs and having sex (or at least pretending to be so for the sake of appearences). I went to a private school with a strong emphasis on academic acheivement, which meant that the crowd interested in those things was smaller and less influential. He's at a comprehensive and seems to be the only one not wanting to get drunk, high or laid.

I don't see most of my cousins that often, but I do sometimes worry. There is strong evidence that eating disorders have a major genetic factor. I can remember comments from my aunt in the past about how he seems to eat a lot but stay thin. Maybe he's lucky. Maybe he's energetic. Maybe my aunt has a different value for "a lot of food" than I do.

But I wonder and I worry and I wish there was some way that I could let him know that things get better. He won't always feel like he's the only one not interested.