(no more) regrets

Man that was a whirlwind!

I know i always bang on about how fast weeks go by, but seriously...?! i got up on a monday and then in a blink its friday again. how does that work!? especially when i still have SOOO much going on everyday of the week, it just seems to whip by.

Still, another week down... so no complaints there!

I had a chat with one of my colleagues today cos she was off all week, her husband had a job interview in LA so they flew out to America and only got back yest. i was green with envy (as you can imagine!) i am such a lover of the US, i so badly want to pack up my stuff and head out there to live and work, but finding a job is so hard... Ive looked into the teacher route, but i would have to teach in a british american school, not a regular one... so the options are very limited. I have also thought about nannying, which i know is quite a common option for english girls wanting to move to america, plus id have the bonus of having teaching experience, so i could be a nanny/tutor? i dunno... If anyone of you have any knowledge or advice about this, id be super grateful... Its been on my mind for a while now. Im bored of my situation at the mo. ive been at my current job for nearly 4yrs and altho i love it (most days!) i feel like im not really challenging myself or taking any chances to travel and explore life and the possibilities is holds... i dont want to stay stuck in a "safe" job just because jobs are hard to find, only to look back in ten years time when its too late and regret it....

Regrets are something that have been flittering in and out of my mind lately. I dont like to have regrets... i think it leads to a dark and depressing place and since you cant change the past, why let it influence your future?

But i have been thinking more and more about all the time that ive wasted on this eating disorder, not to mention all the joy it has stripped me of. I cant help but feel like ive been cheated. I feel like aged 18, i had this whole exciting future planned. I was off to london to go to uni... i had loads of friends, i was social and confident and happy... and then BOOM. everything changed. it started off with me getting sick with M.E, i had to miss alot of uni and stay at home being looked after, amids visits to various doctors and specialists and far too much being poked about at with needles :-s i lost alot of the confidence id had so much of and i lost trust in both myself and others as i doubted myself constantly and didnt think i was worth being around if i was so unreliable and sickly. Im ashamed to say i did get very "wallowy" for a while... i had my fair share of the "why me? why now? this is so unfair..." 's

But it happened. I couldnt change it. So i dealt.

U cant keep whining forever, right?!

But NOW... fast forwards 6 or 7 years and im struggling with a whole other illness, which granted was somewhat influenced by the previous illness but obviously had its genetic pre-disposition already set up in my pysche. It now occupies WAY too much of my time and energy. And this is energy that i dont have to waste and because i keep this energy so tightly reigned in through a restrictive, less than sufficient diet, i am suffering the consequences. and it sucks! I dont regret what i have learned about myself from this time period... but i DO regret the effect it has had on my life and the lives of those close to me.

So what can i do about this?

I can try and rebuild the broken bridges, try to heal the pain ive caused people by hurting myself... reconnect with the people i turned my back on because i didnt want to be distracted from anything but my ED. But i cant do that on my own. I need to rebuild MY broken bridges first, which is tricky cos I cant fix myself by myself... ive realised that now. Originally i thought that support from professional's like a therapist and a nutritionist would be all i needed to "fix me"... so when my mum told me i had to get help, enough was enough... i thought OK, ill go to the doctor, hobs a good'un. But i was wrong. AGAIN. it was not as simpe as taking a pill and being "cured"... in fact, they reinforced my feeling like i was a broken piece. If i didnt follow my plan or gain weight, i felt like i was letting THEM down too, which put more pressure on me and made me feel inadequate... i couldnt even RECOVER properly, i was a failure. It didnt help that we didnt really address WHY i was finding it so hard... and so after what has been an 'up and down' year or so, i discharged myself.

So im still faced with the problem... HOW do i fix myself??? i thought for a long time that the answer lay in being stripped of all control and making someone else take care of me-inpatient style. But after a few failed attempts to get my mum to do this (bless her, she's not the most forceful of people!) i thought better of this! example:

mum: thats alot of salad... do you think you should be having that???

me: yup, i like salad.

mum: but salad wont make you gain weight will it...

me: nope. but i like it, so YA BOO SUCKS TO YOU.

(ok the last bit is an exaggeration, but you can get the gist of it there!)

So since i cannot actually GO ip, i am trying to be the stronger person for myself. I wanted to give the responsibility to someone else, but i think in actual fact... the responsibility needs to come from me. If i dont want to gain, i wont. simple fact. i have danced around the idea of gaining for so long, adding a little bit here and there and feeling like that should be enough. but you know what... im starting to believe what people say in that gaining weight is NOT all that easy. i mean, maybe for a normal person... they eat alot more, enjoy it and BOOM, theyve gone up a dress size! But when you live with the disease that is anorexia, it is ALWAYS in your head. so every extra morsel, every nibble, every DROP of food will be scrutinised in your head... so it is unlikely that you will EVER let yourself get fat. cos the sheer willpower that it takes to eat is more powerful that the reckless extra slice of cake or cookie that normal people would allow themselves to enjoy.

So i need to try and break through that willpower. When im at a better weight, then fine.. it can help to keep me in check. but right now i need to reclaim my independence and put myself more in charge of me.

When i can achieve this, i can start to fix the other areas than have fallen apart because of the bad habits i have lived with for so long....

Im gonna need a lot of glue :-)