I woke up at 8:30am today and honestly, it feels great. You would think that it wouldn’t, but it does. I turned my phone off around midnight last night and read a book (currently, Daisy Jones & the Six.) I haven’t been getting much sleep lately due to the fact that I restarted some old medication I used to take and failed to remember it was a stimulant… and I couldn’t do what I would normally do and wake up to take it at 2pm. Seriously, my sleep schedule got Messed. Up. this semester. On campus (I’m on winter break right now) I found myself going to bed between the hours of 2am-6am, waking up between the hours of 8am-4pm. There was no consistency. It was chaotic.
There’s definitely a big stigma around taking medication for ones own mental health. I’ve gone back and forth about my thoughts on it and… well… at this point in my life, I benefit from taking it. And I think that’s what matters most right now. Meeting yourself where you are presently, non-judgementally.
If you’ve read my other blog posts, you would know about my history with eating disorders. Recovery is a never-ending, non-linear journey. And here is how my mind views things today:
- Hunger. The feeling of hunger. How do I feel about the feeling of hunger? Honestly, it’s not uncommon for me to feel excited. Hunger, in the past, had become a symbol of accomplishment, of success. Look at me! I didn’t just spend the last few hours eating out of stress or anxiety or depression or boredom. Success! To me, there used to not be a very clear middle-ground. It was either binge or restrict. And I will admit, sometimes it still feels that way and I have to remind myself that the black-and-white thinking that says to either eat everything or don’t eat at all, doesn’t lead to anything good. But in terms of hunger, I’ll sometimes find myself clinging onto the feeling, not wanting it to go away once I did eat. Well, I would want the physical discomfort to go away, but I wouldn’t want the feeling of accomplishment to go with it. Feeling full on the other hand, has a tendency to be associated – in my mind – with the opposite. Instead of feeling accomplished, I felt like a failure. To me, feeling full meant that I simply didn’t have enough willpower to take control. Feeling full meant that I just forfeited another chance at losing weight.
It feels weird, writing this; knowing I still subconsciously care about things like weight and size. I want to believe that I don’t worry about my physical appearance anymore. But I do. We all do. It comes in waves.
- It’s interesting to experience the difference between when medication works for me vs. when it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, I have a much harder time accessing my thoughts. My mind will feel incredibly foggy. I believe I’ve talked about the fog in previous posts. It will be as if I am unable to think clearly about anything and instead, fly by the seat of my pants at every given moment, clinging onto whatever feeling comes my way. An example of this would be that full feeling I was talking about, and purging. When I find myself in the midst of this “fog,” the feeling of fullness can trigger my entire trajectory to radically shift. All of a sudden, this feeling of fullness causes me to make it my mission to get rid of it. This is where the purging comes in. In the moment, it’s as if nothing else matters. What matters is that the food is out of you. You want the food to be out of you because of the feelings you’ve attached to the food. You want to get rid of the food because you want to get rid of the feelings. So yeah, one second, everything is going swimmingly and I’m having a grand ol’ time and the next second, I’m rooted in an overwhelming fear and anxiety. And during this time, the mental fog clouds over the bigger picture and consequences of things. My logical mind knows that purging is irrational. Throwing up can cause immense damage to the digestive system, dehydration, heart problems, tooth decay… the list goes on. But in that moment of panic, I’m not thinking of any of that. Just like bingeing, it’s a rush.
- Avoiding eating for the wrong reasons. This is something that I’ve found to be very, very deceiving. As I was in bed this morning, reading my book, I was hungry. Super hungry, actually. I had barely eaten yesterday because I was sick and physically wasn’t able to. So yeah, of course I was going to be hungry the next day. But there I was reading, going back and forth (much longer than I probably should have) about whether or not to get up and make myself breakfast. I did. But then the next obstacle approached. What do I eat? I learned semi-recently that the physical pain I had been experiencing non-stop for so long in the past was actually due to a soy allergy I thought I aged out of. Also a dairy allergy. And a gluten one… but mainly soy. But now I’m faced with the question of, how much is the food is affecting me due to my physical allergies vs. my mental turmoil and disturbance with it?
So now, take all of this and put it in a big pot of guilt. I have these thoughts and I go through these experiences and think to myself, dude, there are people who literally don’t have access to food and here you are taking it for granted. There has to be a balance of having gratitude for what you have while also understanding that you’re having these thoughts and that judging them based on what you think you “should” or “should not” think, isn’t going to help them go away. Same idea as ‘you can’t hate yourself into a version of yourself that you love.’ Once again, meeting yourself where you’re at. Gratitude, I believe, is one of the most powerful feelings one can experience. It’s beautiful to feel grateful and it’s something I think we should all strive for. It’s so easy to take for granted what we’ve been given. It’s so easy to get lost in the fog…
Another thing I’m at crossroads about right now is expression in the forms of either past-tense or present-tense. Maybe it’s apparent in my writing, maybe it’s not, but I have a tendency to switch back and forth between the two tenses, not knowing which to choose. Here’s why:
I feel like there’s a big difference between saying,
“I struggle with ___” (present-tense)
vs.
“I have struggled with ___” (past-tense)
By saying either tense, you are acknowledging a truth about yourself. However, I still believe there’s a different impact that each of them leave. By saying that you presently struggle with ___, you’re more prone to subconsciously reinforce the bridge between your past and present, strengthening the bond between You and ___. As I write this blog post, I’m constantly reading over my words, debating on whether to write as if I am actively struggling or as if my struggle is in the past. And I think this is something I’m going to have to reflect on more. Because I think it’s both. Yes, I have been struggling recently. But what is “recently” you know? Someone could say something happened recently that happened 2 days ago while someone else could say something happened recently that happened 2 years ago! And I’m not struggling at this very moment, so is it not inaccurate of me to say that I’m actively struggling with something when I’m technically not? And what if I was done struggling with something but because I think and say that I am presently struggling with it, it lingers longer? This is the debate I also have in regards to the idea of manifestation. A way to manifest something into existence is to act like you already have it. This causes your brain to produce the feelings it would produce if you actually had whatever that thing is. (I have another post called Manifestation that dives deeper into the topic and explains this more.) Nonetheless, I find myself leaning towards using past-tense more than present.
Although, past-tense (“I have struggled with ___” instead of “I struggle with ___”) is that it can become too broad if overused. It becomes confusing. Like wait… what do I feel then? Have I been over-reacting? If I am this aware of my past struggle with ___, and I don’t actively feel it in this exact moment, maybe I’ve just been forcing myself to experience that struggle and I can actually stop at any time.
(Stick with me, I know this is confusing.)
So then after thinking this, I go through a period of pure bliss, feeling like I had just discovered enlightenment. But then as soon as I feel ___ again, I come spiraling down. So now I’m thinking, I’m the problem, I’m forcing myself to feel this way, this isn’t naturally happening. I’m probably doing it for attention or to prove a point. What am I trying to accomplish right now??? Basically, I overanalyze the situation rather than simply being present with the feeling at hand.
Honestly, I’m not sure if any of this will make sense to any of you reading. If it does, great, I’m glad. If it doesn’t, I don’t blame you. Words are weird. Language is weird. Humanity is weird. It’s all weird. I think my writing got more and more incomprehensible the longer I wrote. Theoretically, I could delete the last 2 paragraphs… but just for giggles, I’ll keep it in.
Hope you enjoyed this stream of consciousness…
Much love to you all <3
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