I seem to be picking some suspect post titles recently, or maybe that’s just my filthy mind? So no, I should make clear to one and all, before you get any funny ideas, that this is most certainly not a post of ill repute. It’s a post about pleasing myself by spending my time wisely.
An eating disorder and depression robbed me of my time. It’s hard to find time to do anything for yourself when you are ill. To relax, or socialise are near impossible when you are constantly planning your next binge or your next workout. Relaxation and enjoyment are deemed lazy and nonproductive. Atop the list of priorities, like a raggedy Christmas fairy is the issue of eating and fat. If time was free to spend, I would be spending it in the supermarket, or charging up the calorie allowance in a craze of sweat and sweat pants. Socialising usually involved food, and that was not allowed. Relaxation didn’t involve burning calories, so that was crossed from the list of possible daily activities. The time which I did have left over, when I could bear to drag myself from my safe zone, was usually spent pleasing someone else.
An eating disorder is contradictory in so many ways. They make us so self-obsessed and so self-involved that other peoples feelings often get ground into the treadmill, or thrown out with the junk food wrappers. Deceit and self preservation, or rather protection from discovery ruin numerous chances to learn to interact, or gain pleasure from it. The nature of this makes an eating disorder even more of a web, and you are sucked in yet further as you put all your eggs in one basket. The number on the scales, or image in the mirror becomes more demanding, and more important as other areas of your life are jettisoned to make room for the ED cuckoo. I am nothing but a number, I have nothing but that number, that number comes before anything and anyone, and I become less of a person and more of a number.
It was always a nagging anxiety that I was being a complete bitch to my friends. Being unreliable, or withdrawn, putting the needs of my push-me-pull-you brain before their invites and phone calls. Top it off with low self esteem and depression, and I felt horribly like I was a social failure, a truly bad person. Not a truly ill person.
I used to over compensate when I had the opportunity, and put myself out even if it meant suffering in the process. Reasoning that I was such a horrible friend, a poor choice of mate, that I must do X, Y or Z in order to make up the shortfall in Karmic influence, and atone for my nasty disposition. This often meant going to great lengths to prove how I was worthy of someones friendship or love. Always trying to please, I focused more and more on any little slight, and took it as further evidence of my innate shittiness. But it only made me try harder and harder, and I became locked in that desperate desire to be a good person, a nice person, a person who was liked by everyone. Never having too much of an opinion, or if I did, then backtracking wildly if I was confronted.
One such classic example of this is my attitude to my Brother Jake and his friends. There was a time a few years ago, that so much as a nod from one of them would have sent me to cloud nine. I idolised them, and would have literally given my eye teeth to be accepted into their clique. Some are kind people, and have been like elder siblings to me. But some are not. Some of them are just people who these days I would cross the road rather than talk to. They are girls I went to school with who made 5 years of my life very unpleasant indeed.
Jake turns 30 at the weekend, and has been going through a rough time over it. A recent relocation with work, and the bust up of a relationship which he had staked a future on, has fueled the fire to a pretty low spell for him. He’s decided the end is nigh, he is turning 30 single, and with an uncertain career future. Originally he had been adamant that he was staying at the coast by himself, wandering the coastal paths alone to contemplate his future….alone. I’ve been trying to organise a surprise visit for him, with several of his friends, but typically as these things go with an unwilling participant, it’s all gone a bit wrong. To cut a long and complicated story short, I now have to get myself up to London on Saturday in the snow, to meet up with a bunch of people, half of whom I’d be happy never to see again, and either beg one of them for a bed for the night, or find a hotel. All in the name of Jake’s birthday surprise.
If I was to go, I’m sure it would be OK. Maybe I’d get on with these people well enough now, it’s been sometime since I’ve seen them. It still has the 12 year old inside me panicking about my newly acquired flesh, and not cool enough wardrobe. It’s making me like an insecure child again, worried that they won’t like me, for being who I am. Perhaps I’ll go, perhaps I’ll be ok, perhaps I’ll not be ignored all night and feel isolated. But that’s what I would have done before recovery. I don’t have to be the perfect sister now. Before I’d have gone along and played nice to please Jake, in case he decided to be angry that I missed his party. The thing is, it will make little difference to him if I go or not. In fact it would probably be nicer for him to not have to worry about his slightly nuts little sister tagging along with his friends to a night of extreme drinking and dancing. I can catch up with Jake at anytime, and all I was trying to achieve from the original plan was for him not to be alone for his birthday. And if I don’t go, I really do not care what his friends think of me.
I have realised recently, I don’t have to be liked by everyone to be a worthwhile or valid person. I don’t have to see everyone as a potential friend or contact. Through life we meet all sorts of people, some we get on with and some we don’t. That doesn’t make us less or more valid as human beings, it’s just an issue of personality. And so I am not going to get up at the crack of dawn and spend my grocery budget for the month to go and spend the night with a bunch of people who bullied me at school. I love my brother to bits, but this decision and our relationship are not linked in anyway. I have plenty of friends in my life already, and I am happy not having to pretend to be something I am not. I accept me as I am, and that is enough.
Lola x
An eating disorder and depression robbed me of my time. It’s hard to find time to do anything for yourself when you are ill. To relax, or socialise are near impossible when you are constantly planning your next binge or your next workout. Relaxation and enjoyment are deemed lazy and nonproductive. Atop the list of priorities, like a raggedy Christmas fairy is the issue of eating and fat. If time was free to spend, I would be spending it in the supermarket, or charging up the calorie allowance in a craze of sweat and sweat pants. Socialising usually involved food, and that was not allowed. Relaxation didn’t involve burning calories, so that was crossed from the list of possible daily activities. The time which I did have left over, when I could bear to drag myself from my safe zone, was usually spent pleasing someone else.
An eating disorder is contradictory in so many ways. They make us so self-obsessed and so self-involved that other peoples feelings often get ground into the treadmill, or thrown out with the junk food wrappers. Deceit and self preservation, or rather protection from discovery ruin numerous chances to learn to interact, or gain pleasure from it. The nature of this makes an eating disorder even more of a web, and you are sucked in yet further as you put all your eggs in one basket. The number on the scales, or image in the mirror becomes more demanding, and more important as other areas of your life are jettisoned to make room for the ED cuckoo. I am nothing but a number, I have nothing but that number, that number comes before anything and anyone, and I become less of a person and more of a number.
It was always a nagging anxiety that I was being a complete bitch to my friends. Being unreliable, or withdrawn, putting the needs of my push-me-pull-you brain before their invites and phone calls. Top it off with low self esteem and depression, and I felt horribly like I was a social failure, a truly bad person. Not a truly ill person.
I used to over compensate when I had the opportunity, and put myself out even if it meant suffering in the process. Reasoning that I was such a horrible friend, a poor choice of mate, that I must do X, Y or Z in order to make up the shortfall in Karmic influence, and atone for my nasty disposition. This often meant going to great lengths to prove how I was worthy of someones friendship or love. Always trying to please, I focused more and more on any little slight, and took it as further evidence of my innate shittiness. But it only made me try harder and harder, and I became locked in that desperate desire to be a good person, a nice person, a person who was liked by everyone. Never having too much of an opinion, or if I did, then backtracking wildly if I was confronted.
One such classic example of this is my attitude to my Brother Jake and his friends. There was a time a few years ago, that so much as a nod from one of them would have sent me to cloud nine. I idolised them, and would have literally given my eye teeth to be accepted into their clique. Some are kind people, and have been like elder siblings to me. But some are not. Some of them are just people who these days I would cross the road rather than talk to. They are girls I went to school with who made 5 years of my life very unpleasant indeed.
Jake turns 30 at the weekend, and has been going through a rough time over it. A recent relocation with work, and the bust up of a relationship which he had staked a future on, has fueled the fire to a pretty low spell for him. He’s decided the end is nigh, he is turning 30 single, and with an uncertain career future. Originally he had been adamant that he was staying at the coast by himself, wandering the coastal paths alone to contemplate his future….alone. I’ve been trying to organise a surprise visit for him, with several of his friends, but typically as these things go with an unwilling participant, it’s all gone a bit wrong. To cut a long and complicated story short, I now have to get myself up to London on Saturday in the snow, to meet up with a bunch of people, half of whom I’d be happy never to see again, and either beg one of them for a bed for the night, or find a hotel. All in the name of Jake’s birthday surprise.
If I was to go, I’m sure it would be OK. Maybe I’d get on with these people well enough now, it’s been sometime since I’ve seen them. It still has the 12 year old inside me panicking about my newly acquired flesh, and not cool enough wardrobe. It’s making me like an insecure child again, worried that they won’t like me, for being who I am. Perhaps I’ll go, perhaps I’ll be ok, perhaps I’ll not be ignored all night and feel isolated. But that’s what I would have done before recovery. I don’t have to be the perfect sister now. Before I’d have gone along and played nice to please Jake, in case he decided to be angry that I missed his party. The thing is, it will make little difference to him if I go or not. In fact it would probably be nicer for him to not have to worry about his slightly nuts little sister tagging along with his friends to a night of extreme drinking and dancing. I can catch up with Jake at anytime, and all I was trying to achieve from the original plan was for him not to be alone for his birthday. And if I don’t go, I really do not care what his friends think of me.
I have realised recently, I don’t have to be liked by everyone to be a worthwhile or valid person. I don’t have to see everyone as a potential friend or contact. Through life we meet all sorts of people, some we get on with and some we don’t. That doesn’t make us less or more valid as human beings, it’s just an issue of personality. And so I am not going to get up at the crack of dawn and spend my grocery budget for the month to go and spend the night with a bunch of people who bullied me at school. I love my brother to bits, but this decision and our relationship are not linked in anyway. I have plenty of friends in my life already, and I am happy not having to pretend to be something I am not. I accept me as I am, and that is enough.
Lola x