Why I Hate Thanksgiving

November 22nd: "Don't eat all day so you can eat tomorrow."

November 23rd, Morning: "Workout for hours so you burn off the calories before you eat them."

November 23rd, Dinner: "How many calories are there in turkey? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Did they use butter in the potatoes? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Why is everyone watching me eat...? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Will they notice if I go to the bathroom after we eat? Bite. Chew. Swallow."

November 24th: "Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. How could you be so weak? It doesn't matter if it was a holiday. So what? You're weak. You gave in and ate. Failure. Fat. Fat. Fat."

Thanksgiving is the hardest holiday for someone with an eating disorder. A holiday revolving around food? Our worst nightmare. You'll go back and forth between guilt and defiance. "I can't eat." "It's a holiday and I'm with my family. I'll eat." "These potatoes are full of butter and carbs." "It's one day a year, I'll be fine." You become stuck in this circuit until you're mentally exhausted. 

And the jokes don't help. "I'm going to have to unbutton my pants after this meal." Why would you ever eat that much? How can you eat that much? "I'm not going to have to eat for a week after this." Ha. Ha. Jokes about restricting are so funny. 

The thing you don't understand is that we've spent weeks, months even, preparing for the emotional turmoil that is the holiday season. So much food and having to eat it in FRONT of people? The constant thought that people are judging your every bite. The questions. "How can you eat potatoes without extra butter?" "You don't want dressing on your salad? Ew." "That's all you're eating?!" 

Please, just take into account that Thanksgiving and huge meals are an insanely tough time for some of us, no matter what stage of recovery we're in. Holidays are hard even for "fully recovered" eating disordered people (I put "fully recovered" in quotes because I don't believe this to be possible). 

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

"I'm Fine..."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm fine."

I've said before that "I'm sorry" is my catchphrase. If so, my second catchphrase would be "I'm fine." I don't like to talk about myself, and more importantly, I don't like to talk about my feelings. This is not a good trait considering last night I nearly had a mental break down regarding the stress that comes with juggling three jobs. I was freaking out and cried multiple times, harder than anyone should cry because of any job. But the thing is I don't believe I was freaking out solely because of the jobs. Most the time when I cry or have these breakdowns, it's little things that have built up over time from feelings that I don't allow myself to feel. I don't allow myself to feel these feelings because, "I'm fine."

The funny thing is that I could spend hours listening to other people tell me about their problems and feelings and be perfectly fine with it and want to help them in any way that I can. But if I spend one minute talking about my feelings to someone, I immediately feel guilty, like I'm taking up their time or that I am a burden and then I apologize profusely and quit talking. I normally end a sentence about myself with, "I'm sorry for talking about myself so much. It's no big deal. I'm fine." I'm not sure what made me this way or why I feel the need to apologize for having emotions. I just don't want other people to have to worry about me or my problems when I should be able to handle them myself. I shouldn't need help with my emotions. I should be able to control them and I should be able to fix myself. I don't know if "fix" is the right word, but it's the only word I can think of right now. The problem with all of this is, like I said earlier, when I tell other people that I'm fine, I'm mostly trying to convince myself of that and in doing that, I don't allow myself to feel the emotions that I should be feeling. This is where the trouble starts. This is with the emotions start to accumulate behind this dam I've built in my brain until the cracks start leaking and the dam finally breaks and what happened last night happens again. 

In group therapy, my therapist used to give us hand-outs on "mindfulness" and "distress tolerance," etc. One of them was called "Cheerleading Statements for Interpersonal Effectiveness," which I thought was incredibly stupid at the time, but now I kind of get it. Two of the statements it lists are:

1. It's OK to want or need something from someone else.

2. Giving, giving, giving is not the be-all of life. I am an important person in this world, too.

These are two statements that I have been trying to frame my life around. I am important too. I am not a waste of space. I am not a burden. I deserve help too.

I'm so mad...

I'm mad.

Pissed.

Frustrated.

Angry. 

Furious.

Mad that I've wasted more than half my life stuck in the grip of ED (eating disorder). I'm always going to wonder how my life would have gone if I hadn't been preoccupied with my eating disorder, and I don't just mean food or weight. I mean that I was preoccupied with being perfect, not taking up too much space, not being a burden...

I wanted to share a journal entry I wrote my senior year of college (about two years ago) after a particularly important group therapy session.

"I'm just so angry. It's as if all of the anger that I've never felt is building up and radiating out of me now. I've never been able to feel angry without feeling guilty about it or feeling like a bad person for being angry. Now that I know what I'm really angry at, it makes it so much easier and honestly, my anger is just picking up momentum. I'm mad at ED for affecting so many people, and I'm mad at him for affecting me and stealing a huge portion of my life that I can't ever get back. I'm mad that he is still affecting me now and that he's probably always going to affect me. I'm mad that people on the outside just don't understand what it's like to deal with ED and there's no way to explain it to them. Honestly, maybe they don't think that way and I'm furious because ED makes me believe that there's no hope. I'm pissed as hell that ED has made me despise myself. I'm pissed that I can't see a reflection of myself without feeling disgusted and I can't see another girl without comparing myself to her or him for that matter. I'm pissed that I can't focus in class. while studying, while I'm with my friends, or while I do anything without thinking about my self-hatred. This is not a life to lead, a life full of anger and self-hatred, of something so unbelievably hard to control and I'm the most angry that it chose me. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Am I really that bad of a person? That weak that ED saw me and picked me? What did I do wrong?"

It's so easy to be angry at yourself for feeling the way that you do, but remember, it's not you. Get angry at ED. Get angry at your anxiety. Get angry at your depression. NOT at yourself.