You May Remember Me From Blog Posts Such As…

A year on from writing the first post on this blog I scrolled through my past posts giggling at some and holding myself back from deleting others. What’s funny is, the posts that I want to delete are not the ones where I out my secrets. They are the rambling confused ones like A Path Not Travelled, Don’t Scald Me, Love Me and The Bigger Picture And The Messy Scribbles (wow that really felt like a Troy McClure moment!), where I know I’m not really fully saying what I want to. They were a reflection of a very confused me, blaming myself for something that wasn’t working. At times I was trying to get a message to another person, in this most indirect form, whilst simultaneously convincing myself that I needed to find something to fix in me to make a failing situation work. As much as they are not my favourite posts, they will stay because they are part of a journey that this blog set out to document.

My favourites on the other hand, are happy posts about drama class vs. usual Friday nights (That Friday feeling) finding a grey hair (Mr Grey) , and being a nosey neighbour (Monday Night Viewing) – the funny little stories that pop up in the wonders of day to day life. Even a day sitting in a hospital ward brought me an interesting story to share (A Morning in Bay 6). I’m also quite proud of my ability to express a deeply held secret in a few posts that I decided to make (My Biggest Shark, The 1st Appointment, The Last Appointment and The Happy World Of Haribo?)

In the year since I started this blog I’ve lost two very close friends, appreciated the friends and family I have more, left a job that felt pointless to me, gained a job that I’ve been told I’m doing pretty well in, ended my appointments for my eating issues, moved back home, and been on three holidays, to name a few. My last birthday was the most civilised I’ve had in years and didn’t involve getting drunk and forgetting half of the conversations, but made me really appreciate who I had around me and cherish the words they shared and time they gave. I suppose a lot can happen in a year, and I hope I’ll still be blogging in the next one to document a little more of what goes on. Happy New Blog Year!

Give the book a chance

As I impatiently turned the pages I realised why I may have been bought the book entitled “The things you can only see when you slow down”. I had begun to read its early pages while on a train journey simultaneously listening to Spotify, rushing to meet a friend, and thinking about a phone call I had to take that could come at any moment. I began to read the words about how we see ourselves as originating from a part in body and not as part of the world outside, when I paused the book for a Wale song that I wanted to give more of my focus to whilst I swivelled around in my train seat to allow the hooded passenger beside me to vacate. Upgrading myself to the window seat and placing the book back in my bag it occurred to me that in that moment alone my attention was scattered, shared but not given to the book, the song, nor the moment. I had also felt impatient with the numerous empty pages and illustrations at the start of the book and wanted to get to the point and now wonder if it was a clever little trick to place lots of extra pages before the books start, to get people to do as the title says and slow down.

This isn’t the only book I’m reading. I have a book with a good 500 pages waiting for me, having only flitted through the first 20 wondering how long I have to read for until I get into it. This reminds me of a tube journey in which I did pay attention, and began to watch the lady opposite me (in an entirely non creepy way) who was reading a traditional real paper book. Her facial expression exuded suspense and wonderment at the pages she was turning. Her tightly coiled strawberry blonde hair interrupted her face, but she didn’t waste a moment to move the overspilling strands from her eyes. Her focus remained on the ink and paper. The large wedge that sat in her little left hand showed me that she was towards the end of the book she held. I imagined that she might end up at the end of the tube line far from her home with how into her text she looked, but somehow it felt like even then the read would have been worth it. A few mucky looking seats down another commuter sat, this time with a small wedge in her left hand – she was at the start of her chosen read. She had a pensive, inquisitive look. She looked as though she had stepped out of the day job although was still dressed the part in her checked black and white dress, and into the world of the book. Her chipped nails with remnants of blue varnish held the book firmly and her calm eyes rarely looked up between pages or tube stops. She didn’t know what that world had to offer yet but she was willing to make the effort to find out.

I thought about the rules I held for new things:

1. Series: I give a new series one episode to impress me. I figure that they should have put a lot of work into their pilot and if they didn’t then they aren’t very good. The pilot is about ideas not about money in my books, and you get an essence of the ideas in that first episode, as well as for whether the acting is believable.

2. Movies – they get 20 minutes for similar reasons to above.

3. Books: for books I give them 30-50 pages. This one isn’t so well thought out. I simply lose interest and get bored of reading unless it becomes worth my while very early on (currently I’m hoping I haven’t lugged a 500 page book half way around the world that falls in that category).

4. Dates: I don’t have a rule on this one per se, but my tolerance is pretty low. If it feels like the situation could be even potentially disappointing or risky – I abort promptly early on in the dating process.

In doing the above am I missing out on the series that picks up after episode one? The movie that came with a great message that you’ll only experience towards the end? The book that eventually gives that sense of wonderment that train lady one felt, and that train lady two was willing to hang in for? The date that flourishes into something worthwhile when given the chance to?

Sitting on my plane ride sharing the space with awkwardly angled sleeping passengers, I realise I’m doing it again. I’m writing this and I’m watching a movie, wrapped up in my rather flimsy airplane blanket. And I’ll probably say that this movie was rubbish, having never given it a fair shot. Planes are a rare occasion where I can watch a film with less distractions, and it’s likely no coincidence that I enjoy the movies I watch on the plane more than those I watch at home. Perhaps I’ll give life more pages and try not to run away from things I begin so easily.

The Happy World Of Haribo?

I stood in the kitchen, rapidly defrosting from the blizzard that swirled outdoors, catching up with my Mum about our days. She showed me a bag of mini Haribo sweets she had bought, and with a smile said “I got these for the girls, for little prizes.” Looking at the smiley teddy bear packaging with disgust I snapped, “Oh that’s all so full of rubbish why would you get them that?”. Mum seemed quite taken aback by my hostile response and ‘sweetly’ added “well it’s only a little treat”, with a tone that said she was rapidly retreating from further conversation. I persisted “but there is no nutritional value in them at all. It’s just sugar. It’s not good. Chocolate has some nutritional value but why give them that?”. “Ok just leave it,” Mum pleaded but I didn’t know when to let it go, and for some reason this topic had got to me.

I apologised the next day. I realised that I hadn’t been very nice, and that she had not asked for my opinion nor said that she intended to feed my nieces solely Haribos for the rest of their lives, so my outrage was uncalled for. Plus if you looked in my bedroom the greatest irony of all would be the little red and blue wrapper you’d find in my bin. Yes I had succumbed to the Haribo bears. Perhaps I was angry with myself, and wanted the treats kids get to be non food related in a strange attempt to spare them from the mixed messages of our world. My feelings also lay in the fact that I knew my Mum wouldn’t go near such things, and had an iron resolve when it came to the foods she does and doesn’t allow herself that I quite clearly don’t share. “Some people are just able to restrict, while for many others it triggers Bulimia. It just depends on the luck of the draw – well not luck, I mean neither are good”, I remembered Laura telling me at one of my appointments last year, rapidly rearranging her words so as to not make eating little sound positive.

I discovered that this week is Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and In scrolling through some online material I was reminded of how prevelant they are. I thought about the transformative anorexic eating disorder character that comes about so similarly across people who don’t share much else in the way of likeness. I thought about how to reach those people young. I thought about what would have helped me. I thought about the comment my colleague, unaware of my past, had made when I reported having been on a surprise 15 course taster menu; “oh but you don’t really like food,” and remembered hearing this before from people who thought those with eating disorders hate food. From my experience, they don’t hate food, they are obsessed with it and know and think far more about it than you’d ever guess. Sometimes the feelings surrounding it can all be too much, but it doesn’t mean that they ever stop liking it. They’re probably more likely to hate that they like it, to wish they could just remove it from the equation of daily life.

I tap away on my phone, writing this blog from my bath tub of fast dissolving bubbles. My belly is full and I want nothing more than to remove all of its contents, but instead I place myself in this warm self imposed isolation tub and just hope that the discomfort passes. Sometimes I go in my room, or in summer I take long walks to get away from food and the feelings that come with it. I feel guilty for avoiding my family, but I feel more guilty for surrounding myself with food that I can’t always resist nibbling. An innocent nibble in the wrong mind frame can escalate rapidly, and it comes at a cost that only the toilet bowl would watch me repay. Likewise, a skipped meal or period of sickness can trigger insane urges to binge that I swore to myself would never again emerge. I once read a definition of Bulimia Nervosa to be “ox like hunger of nervous origin” – I don’t know if that’s accurate, but whenever I experience it I think “yep that’s the ox again”, and nothing can satisfy it.

As my bath tub cools and I’m prompted to bring this post to a conclusive end I recal a Simpsons episode (they really do cover everything), where having starved herself for some time, Lisa succumbs to a manic binge on a cake. Homer moans at Lisa as she refuses to sum up the complex matter of eating issues in a neat conclusive statement, which I suppose is what I was longing to do here. My point in raising awareness is this- for me it was once long ago about wanting to get to a certain size or number, but what it became was daily turmoil to fight the inner ox and the punishments that followed. I would long for a blood test to tell me I had a rare disease that caused these urges, but without an acceptable explanation I only blamed myself and descended further. What I mean by this is never mistake anyone with an eating disorder to be vain. They are in deep inner pain, and part of them longs for an escape from their prison you can’t see.

I studied psychology because of a desire to fix the eating disordered part of myself, and then fix other people. I don’t think there’s a full on fix for this one, but I think helping people when they are young in the right way is the key. Having written this blog and floated in my bathtub for long enough, this is a thought I am going to pursue, with ox like strength of positive origin.