I've spent a long time keeping my secrets pushed down as far as they could go, almost four years of recovery trying to convince myself that all of it was gone and I had the control again. Once again I show the anorexic mindset, recovery or not it is still there. Control is an illusion, I couldn't control my pain by bleeding, by starving, purging, or swallowing my pain. It always found its way back and it has made its way back again. There is a lot about me that people don't know, mainly because it is personal and it tends to send people running the other way which feeds into my shame factor. The way I see it I'm twenty seven years old and I can never help people if I let my own shame run my life, it has done it enough. Between shame and fear nothing ever gets accomplished. I love it when people say they have no fear, everyone is afraid of something, everyone has something in their past that they don't want anyone else to know about. Fact of the matter is simple, I'm not going to live as long as I would like to so its time to push the fear aside because my story,my experiences might help someone else avoid some of the pain I've endured or at least let them know that they aren't alone and they have nothing to be ashamed of.
All of this was brought on by a medication that my doc put me on to help with my pain and also hopefully slow my gut down so some thing might absorb. Unfortunately, it didn't work it triggered the things that I had managed to bury deep inside me. After a few nights of taking it I found myself waking up screaming and my skin crawling for a razor blade. I was back living in the Women's Shelter, back in that court room begging the judge to grant to restraining order, praying they would arrest him. The man who took my innocence was back in the forefront of my mind...I was screaming begging him to stop while he hushed me and held me down. It had been a long time since I had dealt with a night terror that bad, so bad that I hid, couldn't even gather up the courage to wake up Josh. I found myself feeling ashamed again, those old voices were screaming that I deserved punishment, that it was my fault. I'm lucky enough now that I'm strong enough to send that screaming back away and realize that I did nothing wrong. I told him no, he made the choice to ignore me. I spent six days under the care of Dr. R on the med unit being tube fed because I wouldn't allow anything inside my body...I fought tooth and nail to get back from that and now I have to find it in me to trust another doctor with all of this and i can't lie and say that I'm not terrified because I am, but I can't hide anymore.
I have to tell him how the anorexia began, how razors became my only way to escape. I have to tell the truth about my mom and the last thing I want to do is vilify her. She was sick, when she wasn't drinking she was a mom like any other mom. She wanted what was best for me, she encouraged perfection because she knew I was capable of doing wonderful things. She didn't start hitting me until I was a teenager, maybe I should have told, maybe I should have done a lot of things, but she was my mom. I took care of my baby sister, I made sure that I tookere the brunt of everything when she was drinking. I will never stop blaming myself for her death, for not some how getting her help. My mom died from heptorenal on December 8, 2007 twelve days before my twenty second birthday and leaving my five year old sister without a mom. I resented her for a long time, I ate less and less, swallowed more and more laxatives, pills, and I cut deeper and deeper. I was lucky to have a doctor to help me through everything the best he could. Yet, fear still ruled me, controlled my sleep. I woke up on a nightly basis screaming my head off wanting to do anything to make it stop. I couldn't use my words, I couldn't tell anyone what was going on, I had to seem fine....I wasn't fine, I just hid more and more secrets. They ate away at me until I saw no way out.
By 2009 they had discovered the gastroparesis and removed most of my stomach. I was fed and medicated through my J-tube. They sent me to an outpatient psych doc who put me on high doses of "helpful" medicines...told me they would take away the anxiety, the night terrors, the depression, they would fix everything. They made me suicidal, not the attention seeking kind where I wasn't actually going to do it, but the kind where I had it all planned out. I went to the psych eval at the hospital and told them I was a danger to myself and they sent me home because I was too medically compromised. Later that day, by the grace of God and a miraculous friend I woke up in the ICU after pushing massive amounts of medications through my feeding tube. Again, this is not one of my proudest moments.
It wasn't long after that incident that I was introduced to Josh and he immediately saw past the front I put up. He put my meds in a lock box and slowly but surely he helped me help myself climb out of the darkness I was living in. It took years full of ups and downs for me to find myself worthy of recovery, to let go of the shame and fear of what others would think of me if they knew the truth. I wrote this because I know there are so many others who live with the same secrets, the same burdens and you don't have to feel ashamed. tomorrow I am going to come clean to my new doctor and if he can't accept what I'm saying then he doesn't deserve to have me as a patient. The way I see it I have overcome some seriously jacked up events in my life and I don't feel sorry for myself at all because all of those evens have made me stronger. I know that I experienced all of this to help others. I was terrified to write this and if you comment I hope you are gentle. My demons still live in me, though they live in the distance they are still there and i fight them everyday, but I fight them. It is not impossible to come back from the edge...I did and so can you.
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