From Sound to Music

Today is one of those days where I really want to write something extremely profound and thoughtful and yet nothing is coming into my brain that seems worthy to share.  Which, of course, is such a silly thought because I know that I have many worthy thoughts to share.  So I think what I will share today is that I am starting to actively listen to music again.  For about 10 years I chose not to listen to music.  I would have silence in the car.  I would have silence while playing around on the internet, or cooking or just hanging out.  I couldn't handle having the additional noise. 

I suppose I couldn't handle all the additional noise because I already had enough noise in my head to begin with.  I didn't need to add to all the crazy that was living in my head. 

But now that I don't have all that crazy up in my head.  Well, okay, let's be honest, I still have crazy in my head.  I mean, I wouldn't be me without some level of crazy.  But I am no longer bordering on insane.  I no longer have voices shouting at me in my head.  I no longer have constant static blazing through my brain.

So now when there is silence, it truly is silence.  Not that I have a problem with silence.  I'm totally fine with being lost in my own thoughts.  However, what I am enjoying is discovering music and finding out what kind of music I like.

My life has gone from one of just constant noise to one filled with the beautiful sound of music. 

So, my friends, what musical artists do you enjoy?  Share with me!  I'd love to discover more!

For My Family and Friends

I can't believe that I haven't written in a post for over 6 months.  I must apologize for not doing a better job of keeping up this blog.  I think I allowed it to be on the back burner for awhile because I've been going through some personal changes.

It has been 3 years and 3 months since I checked myself into the hospital for recovery from my eating disorder.  I really should say that it has been that long since I've made the choice to live.  I know that statement may seem dramatic to many of you.  I mean, who wouldn't choose to live, right?  However, for anyone who has ever grappled with the trap that is depression/eating disorder, it is a legitimate choice that one must make before heading into recovery.  And I must say that I am extremely thankful for choosing to live.  I am elated to report to the world that I am no longer in recovery.  I am now fully recovered.

So, enough about the past.  Onward to the future.

What I am most excited about this new phase of my life is learning and discovering who I am.  For so many years, for as long as I can remember actually, I have followed the thoughts of others.

"Oh, you like Nirvana?  Yeah, me too!"
"Yeah, that presidential candidate is a total fool.  I agree with you."
"No, I don't like that lipstick either."
"Nah, I don't want to live downtown either."

I could go on and on but I digress.

I am starting to discover what it is I do like.  I like rain.  I do not like hot weather and no ac.  I love clothes.  I don't like shopping.  I love dogs, cats and creatures of all sorts.  I do not like pickles.  I do not like driving in traffic but I love driving.  I don't like mayonnaise or homemade sandwiches.  I love cake but not icing.  I love Velveeta, even though I know it is horribly processed.  I adore long conversations with friends while sitting around a bar and drinking.  I do not like blatant rudeness.  I am selfish and at times selfless.  I think charity is great.  I think hand outs are crap.

Once again I could go on and on.

My basic point is that I am ready to discover who I am.  I am ready to face life, no not face it, run towards it, embracing every mistake, choice and experience that comes my way.  I will always listen to the advice of my friends and family but I may not agree with you or listen to you.  And that is okay.  I am eager to live a life filled with regrets, or maybe none at all.  I am thrilled to be able to call myself an artist and will never shirk from what others think of me when I state that I am.

So, friends and family, I ask for your patience.  I ask for you to understand that I am going to be fully living life from now on.  I may make decisions that you do not agree with.  I may make decisions that you think are the result of a conversation we had.  All of this is okay.  Please know though, that any decision I make is mine to make and mine alone.  I will confer with those who may affected by my decisions but my decisions are still mine to make. 

I cannot express to you, my loved ones, just how excited I am about the life that is ahead for me.  Please understand that I am going through a growing spell equivalent to an early 20something and provide me love, understanding and support.  Because this life that I have ahead of me is something that I'm grabbing by the horns.  And I'm not letting go.

Two and a Half Years

It has been two and a half years since I graduated out of the hospital for recovery from an eating disorder.  Two and a half years.  Some days it seems as if the time has flown by.  Other days it feels like it has taken a century for me to make it this far.  With all the work I've done to heal myself, two and a half years later, I'm still in recovery.  I no longer restrict myself from eating food but ED still has power over me because even though I don't restrict I've realized recently that my view towards food hasn't really changed much.  I still use food as punishment or reward.  Mostly as a punishment.
I in no way eat a balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, lean proteins, carbs and fats.  Processed food seems to be what I crave nowadays.  Mostly because it's easy and I don't have to expend too much energy into thinking about what I'm eating.  Which in turn actually causes me to over think the negative aspects of what the food I'm eating is doing to my body.

I thought that by not really thinking about what was being put into my body that I would be able to get over being obsessed about food.  Looks like I was wrong.  I'm still inherently obsessed with food. But instead of being obsessed with restricting myself from it I'm obsessed with the next thing I will put into my mouth.  Lately I seem to crave salty, carb rich, fatty foods.  Not that there is anything wrong with eating those types of foods but in no way does a diet rich in those foods create a healthy person.

The catch though, so it seems, is that my mind is still stuck in the idea that if I don't eat these types of foods then I am restricting myself from "normal eating".  Normal eating is my ultimate goal.  I truly want to be able to look at a food and see it as food and base my wanting to eat it from if it is sounds good, not if I should eat it or not.  Sound confusing?  Yeah, it pretty much is.

I'm reading a book by Jenni Schafer called "Goodbye Ed, Hello Me".  It's about reclaiming your life back from an eating disorder and reach the ultimate goal of being recovered, not in recovery. Ms. Schafer states in her book, as long as I keep giving ED power I will still be in recovery.  I'm stuck right now in that weird place of not wanting to give ED power but not knowing how to reclaim my power back.

Like I said, it's been two and a half years since I graduated from the hospital program.  I thought I would be further along in my journey to being fully recovered.  But I'm not.  I'm where I am, which is, I guess, exactly where I am suppose to be in my recovery.  But not for long.  I don't want to be in recovery anymore.  I want to be recovered.

There is so much that I want to do that it is a little scary at times.  I don't necessarily have the energy to do all I want to do right now, because, well, I'm still not fueling my soul in a healthy way.  But I've reached my limit of playing the victim of ED having this power over me.  I think that is the basic point that is frustrating me.  I'm still playing the victim to ED.  I don't want to play the victim anymore.  I want to just play.  I want to explore life without this following me around like a dark stormy cloud.  I want to be able to just live.  Not live with an eating disorder.

It's taken me two and a half years to make it this far.  I wonder where I'll be in two and a half more years?

What defines me? Not a number!

I weighed myself the other day.  It has been two and a half years since I've known the # of what I weigh.  And now that I know that number I don't really know what to make of it.  I've known for quite a while now that I've gained weight since leaving treatment.  I didn't need a scale to tell me that.  I don't need some foreign abstract number to tell me the obvious in life.
Yet, to be honest, when I saw that number I didn't feel sad, I didn't feel hatred towards myself and I didn't immediately fall to pieces.  What I did feel surprised me because I felt indifferent.  I didn't feel nothing, I just didn't really care what the scale said one way or another.  I didn't sit down and automatically start calculating the amount of weight that I've gained, in fact I still haven't and most likely won't.
It is what it is.  Just a number that has nothing to do with who I am as a person.  It has nothing to do with my health and well being.  It has nothing to do with who I am and what I can contribute to society.
Now let me be clear on something.  It's not as if I'm completely happy with how I look.  I think that the world we live in has caused it to be extremely difficult to be happy with yourself.  (But I'll save that conversation for another day.)  I've wanted to start losing weight once I realized I was gaining weight.  Yet all that does is create and inspire the never ending spiral of dieting, bingeing and self hatred.  So, I'm not dieting.  I'm not really exercising. And in the long run I now realize that I'm not doing much in the way of physical self care.  I don't really have the desire to exercise.  I certainly do not have the energy to be all consumed by food, calories and fat grams.
So why did I step on that scale in the first place?  I'm not really sure.  I guess curiosity got the best of me.
My point of this very scrambled post is this;  Who cares what someone weighs?  It does not inform anyone of what their contribution to society is.  It does not dictate who they are.  Caring about someone's weight does nothing but objectify them.  And no one is an object.
It is high time that we stop looking at the surface of what someone looks like but allow ourselves to look deeper and find out who that person is.  I know I'd surely appreciate that.

Dwelling

I'm a dweller.  A worrier.  A ponderer.  A thinker.  I can dwell on a subject for hours, days even.  My husband can tell the second I start dwelling on something.  "You're dwelling." He says in a singsong impatient but loving voice.  It amazes him how I am able to keep at a subject until everything little item has been scrutinized at least a dozen times.  My high school English teacher, Mr. Doody, would say that I'm a pro at beating a dead horse.  I must agree with Mr. Doody.  I am a master at dead horse beating.
I don't want to be.  It's not like I set out to over think everything.  I just do it.  It is in my nature.  I could say I blame my parents but that seems so passe nowadays.
Lately, my dwelling has gotten so bad that it induces panic attacks.  I'm no stranger to panic attacks but we aren't friends either.  I've learned how to cope with them using healthy habits but I'm perplexed as to why it seems lately I've become an uber dweller.
The ironic twist to all of this is that now I'm dwelling on the fact that I'm a dweller.  Sort of seems redundant, right?
So how does one become a non-dweller?  Is it possible to really learn to just let things be?  Am I capable of just letting go of the habitual worrying?  Only time will tell.  At least this gives me something to think about.

Processed

Cheetos.  I have loved them since I can remember.  The crunchy, salty, cheesy goodness that comes from indulging in a bag of these delicious treats has always been a comfort to me.  Licking off the built up cheese goo that has stuck to my fingers is to me, what licking the bowl after a bowl of ice cream is for people with a sweet tooth.  Cheetos have been my go to comfort food since I was at least seven years old.  My favorite kind of Cheetos are the original crunchy kind.  Don't get me wrong though, I'll take any kind you give me and completely make myself sick off of them.
That right there is the problem folks.  I have actually been making myself sick off of them.
From reading this blog you all know by now that I suffer from clinical depression, anxiety and anorexia.  I have now been out of the hospital for a little over two years.  Yet I feel as sick as the day I left.  I know that some people reading this will think the last statement is an exaggeration.  But I tell ya, it's not.  My symptoms of depression have not lessened.  I do not feel like I have a healthy diet plan.  I suffer from anxiety on an almost daily basis.  Each of the three issues above cause me to not feel well.  When I don't feel well, (sad, blue, lethargic), this gal does not want to cook, engage in interactions with others and dont' get me started on how just the thought of exercise makes me want to curl up in a ball on my bed and never leave.
So, when I feel crappy like that I reach for a bag of Cheetos.  Or any other overly processed food-like product.  (I say food-like because, let's face it, most of what is in these foods isn't food.)  I go to processed cereal, pastas, pizzas, Chinese food, and the list goes on and on.
Then I eat one of these oh so non-nutritious meals and low and behold would you believe that I feel even crappier afterwards?  Which causes my depression to deepen, my anxiety to creep up and my eating disorder to come back.
Last week I had one of my lowest lows since entering the hospital to seek treatment.  I couldn't even manage to make myself breakfast, get dressed or bathe.  Instead of taking care of myself, I would drive on down to the old McDonald's and get any old thing off their menu.  Drive back home, devour it and feel even that much more crappy, then I would take a nap.  After waking up I'd walk to the kitchen to grab a bag of Cheetos (insert any type of crappy processed snack food here).  Consume enough Cheetos to feed a football team... Well, by now I think y'all see the pattern here.
Realizing that I wasn't feeling better, and in fact worse in some cases, I figured why not put my time of sitting in my red leather chair to better use and research the foods I was eating.  What I found out blew my mind.  And at some point I will share what I've learned with you.  However, I have learned far too much this past week to be able to detail it here.  I'll save it for another blog.
However, the positive thing I have learned is this: in the same way I use food to hurt myself, I can also use food to heal myself.  I am slowing switching my diet from almost an entirely processed diet to one full of micro-nutrient rich food, no gluten (for now), no sugar (starting tomorrow) and full of lean healthy proteins.  I will eventually cut out caffeine but let's not get too crazy here to start.  I mean, I am the owner of a coffee shop!
I just started this new way of eating yesterday.  I am going to enter into it slowly and carefully.  This isn't something that I'm falling head first into.  I have friends and family who are extremely knowledgeable in this area.  I have a doctor and therapist who I use to advise me in all things physical and mental.  So, I'm entering this new lifestyle safely.
Today I have been craving a bagel or Cheetos or muffin or (insert any gluten laced food here) like crazy this morning.  But then I remember why I'm doing all of this; to reclaim my life back from depression, and the craving nearly melts away.
I'll be sure to post more regarding how this new healthy eating plan works for me.  I don't intend to make this a "diet".  I plan on changing my diet so I can reclaim my life.  Depression, anxiety and anorexia have robbed me of too much of my life.  I have so much to be thankful for.  It's high time I feel good enough to appreciate all that I have.