Realisations

I did not want to write today. It has been a hell of a day.

I got up and had breakfast, and drifted off to my tutorials in my usual Friday fashion. I managed to avoid spending "lunchtime" with the guy from my philosophy tutorial who appears to be very dedicated and patient in his pointless attempts to bond with and woo me. I went back to my flat, wrote a shopping list and went to Tesco. This is where things went downhill.

I can't throw up in the bathroom here; my flatmates would notice. I do it in a plastic bag in my sink. Yes, disgusting. My plastic bag supply has vanished, and so today I had to face the shame of buying small bin liners purely for the purpose of throwing up in. What's more, the only small ones I could find are these pretty little lilac perfumed ones. It's safe to say I felt like shit. And what did I do in response to this, you ask? Why I purchased binge food, of course.

I returned to the flat. Binged. Purged. Felt the usual mixture of guilt and disgust. Then something different happened.

I was hit with the realisation that I am responsible for the continuation of my eating disorder. It is my self-loathing that feeds it. Things have been nothing short of catastrophic this week, and I've fallen out of all of my usual routines. The thought of leaving the flat has made me feel sick, and instead of obsessively cleaning my room, as is the norm, it descended into a complete shittip. It was branching out and taking over.

The thing is, I will admit that I don't like myself but I find it very hard to acknowledge that genuine self-hatred is one of the main aspects of my eating disorder. The violence of bingeing and purging is the same as my self-harm; it numbs the pain but also punishes myself. I punish myself for being me.

I hate myself because of my past. I can see how it has made me what I am. I hate what I am. I am manipulative, spiteful, unstable and generally just a big fucking miserable liar. I hate how I thwart all of my own attempts to improve things. If my depression alone can't isolate me I act like a complete bitch to scare people away. My fear of abandonment means I will actively try to prevent what I want more than anything: to be close to others.

I'm a mess. I need to fix this.

I realise I can't do it overnight, that it has to be a gradual thing, and I need to start with my bulimia. I accept that I'm a bulimic. I hate the word so damn much, but I need to recognise what is wrong with me. I also have a personality disorder (as advised by an uppity psychiatrist, my suspicion is BPD but I will wait for a formal diagnosis), but I can't begin to tackle this properly until I have decreased the chaos caused by my binge/purge/restrict cycles (I haven't heard from the psychiatrist in a while, and the psychology place sent me a letter saying there's a huge waiting list. I am on my own with this at the moment).

I will be careful with my food. I'm going to make sure my blood sugar levels never get too low, as this increases the likelihood of a binge. I will eat regularly. I will have breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks. Three if I have been awake for more hours. This will make me feel huge, but I need to get some stability before I can consider evaluating exactly how much I need. I may keep a food diary, but this has the danger of making me want to restrict.

The most important part of my plan is keeping in mind that I'm not forcing myself to do anything. I'm allowing myself to get better. I'm allowing myself to take back control.