It appears that my last post was over a year ago. WTF!! After reading that post, it seems that recovery was pretty good because I had just destroyed my scale. If only I had known then what the next few months would bring. For a while recovery kept going well, until March when it just started to go downhill. Slowly at first, then after an event in April it plummeted faster than the Flash and I had relapsed horribly(even though I had already been there for a while). So, sometime in late March both my nutritionist and therapist ganged up me and said that I was either going to go into the Partial Hospitalization Program(php for short) or if I refused it was inpatient against my will. Well then! If you put it that way then I guess I'll go. So on May 20 I started treatment in php and stayed there for 14 days then I was transferred to IOP for 8 days. Treatment was an interesting experience, in PHP it was like you were in this vacuum and you could really work on your eating disorder without the distractions of the real world, for 12 hours a days you are immersed in dealing with your shit and it is kind of nice, sort of hopeful. Then you get transferred to IOP which is only 4 hours of dealing with your shit and adjusting to normal life the other 20 hours of the day. When I left PHP I was doing really well and ready to finish the work in IOP. I really wanted to get better, I wanted my life back, I wanted to live and most of all I just wanted to be free. So about halfway through IOP I felt a change in myself and my recovery focus was starting to get blurry. I was supposed to discharge 6/21 because I had to go back to work and go on our summer service trip. The staff on IOP strongly urged me not to discharge, I wasn't ready even though I felt hopeful they thought that I was not strong enough in my recovery to discharge especially after only 8 days. I knew better, I told them that I had my out patient treatment team, I would be making my regular appointments and that everything would be fine. Oh how wrong I was, how utterly and miserably wrong I was about leaving. I wasn't ready at a all, not to deal with normal life, and especially not ready to deal with the shit storm that was coming.
The Sunday following my discharge from IOP I left with my youth on our summer service trip. It was going to be great and I knew that I was so strong. I was completing my meals, following the meal plan and not worried at all that I was going to be a badass recovery warrior while at the same time being an awesome youth director. Before I left, my nutritionist gave me a challenge to try one of my fear foods, Pop Tarts. I decided that what better time to do it while I was with people I love on our summer service trip. So during the middle of the week during some down time in the gym I had a pop tart. I was not ready. It triggered me. BIG TIME. Slowly through the rest of the week ED's voice and influence started creeping back in, me being tired and unfocused from focusing on other things was vulnerable to fight back. On the way home from Kentucky we stopped at this amazing place in West Virginia and at dinner I was terrified. My anxiety was super high and I struggled to finish the meal, even my very close pastor friend noticed it and tried to help me snap out of it, but his voice was drowned out by ED's. Even though I had about 3/4 of my meal I felt defeated. I get home, recover from the sleep deprivation of a youth trip and return to my appointments. Everything was fine, I was challenging myself, sticking to the meal plan and even added another group to my out patient work. Then comes July and we learn that we have no health insurance benefits because of my husband's reduced hours. No health insurance=no op treatment. So rather suddenly my work in recovery just comes to a halt. I keep trying, I am clinging to recovery with whatever strength I have. So we muddle through July, we go on vacation have some fun and then come back to reality or whatever reality is for us.
Then comes August, I go to Churchwide Assembly, the girls go back to school, and the shit hits the fan. I get a call from the landlord that the rent checks bounce and I have no idea what is going on. At that point I learned of our reality, my husband is barely working, he's getting like 2 hours a day and we don't have enough to survive. That had been going on longer than I knew and we were slowly drowning. Then he loses his job completely. Fuck. I beg our landlords for mercy and they let us stay in the house living one month behind and come up with an agreement to make it up. In September I took on a third job and Jason got a new job so things were looking up. We were struggling but it felt like we were on the path to things getting better. I am working like a dog, every day of the week, over 60 hours a week and nothing feels like enough. At that point my life was too much to deal with and I just give up. I don't accidentally relapse, I went and found my old friend and embraced him then asked him how he could fix things. Oh he had such great ideas and I listened, I followed along fully accepting what I was getting myself back into. So I start acting on symptoms, my anxiety becomes way more than I can deal with so all I have is my eating disorder. On my most hopeful days, it's all that I can do to stick to my meal plan and not the one given to me back in the spring. Then we lose my car on the day that my husband's grandfather was laid to rest. Two weeks later we lose our house and have to move in with my in-laws. Then, at the end of the year my husband loses his job. Nothing gets better. Through and awful series of events things just get worse.
So here we are in January. Cold, overcast, dark January. I am struggling more than I ever have before. I want desperately to get better and to not only live life but to thrive. I want God to use me, use my story, use all of this for his good, but in the depth and darkness of despair it feels like he can't. That's what's happening with me, what's happened since last January. I am still hopeful, I know that this isn't permanent, I know that I will some how find recovery again and most importantly I will heal from all of the wounds I carry. I don't know how. I don't know when. I just know that I will.
No comments:
Post a Comment