My CPN has gone back to being an idiot devoid of logic. Yesterday i walked for nearly an hour in the wind and rain to see her, only to be met with this wisdom:
"You're thinking rather negatively..." (well no shit, i'm depressed duh, aka the reason i'm seeing you...)
I said "I just want to do normal stuff like have a job, go to uni, go travelling..." and she says "i think you need to lower your expectations of yourself". (right, WHAT. Don't think i even need to list everything that's wrong with that statement...!)
"Why don't you move? Go live nearer Simon..." (right, yeah, so if Si and i had an argument i'd have absolutely NO-ONE i knew to turn to...! And i'd be 40 miles from almost all my friends?! AND have to get a whole new medical team?!)
And then i was in so much pain walking home from the friction of my jeans on my eczema that i had to get a taxi. £4.
Pfft.

I've got to write my appeal. I basically have to sit here and write an essay describing all my psychiatric symptoms and their negative effect on my functioning in extreme detail. I can't think of anything more patronising, demeaning, negative and depressing to do. But i know it's got to be done.
Writing notes for it with my support worker rather ruined the taste of my gingerbread latte.

In terms of ED i'm really well atm. Better than i've been in years. What's annoying is that no-one can see it because of the depression. I've lost quite a bit of weight and am not eating much because i've no appetite, so it looks like i've had a relapse. But i'm better than ever. How frustrating.

My psych team are really pressing to get me moved out of here. They've decided that my housemates and at-home friends are causing a toxic environment for my mental health. I disagree - that is a rather oversimplified explanation for my decline. I'll look into what they've got in mind though. It's supported housing but with mini flats with communal areas. They seem to be simultaneously trying to get me socialising more by helping me do voluntary work and college courses, but at the same time when i do make friends they deem them innapropriate and try move me away from them!

In other news, i'm still a tearful suicidal mess.

Well hum.

Seem to be over the majority of the side effects now. Did reach some low points - inability to care for snail babies (v important) due to the parkinsonism, a makeshift chamberpot due to failure to manage the stairs, best-friend-at-home having to lift me into bed after an attempt at brushing teeth using water in a cup on the floor. All rather comical now.
I guess tomorrow i have to go to the doctors and admit my idiocy, and somehow persuade him to give me more pills, still let me start withdrawing, and let me go off and sort myself out. Hmm. Have a bad feeling it won't neccessarily go to plan though, expect to be interrupted by some combination of CPN, crisis team, emergency blood tests and/or hospital. With one of the meds 1000mg alone is enough to kill, and i took 900mg as part of a cocktail. But i feel fine so i'm not worried.
Got to get self to the jobcentre or CAB and start my appeal asap. And tomorrow afternoon am being interviewed by a friend-of-a-friend about being vegetarian (for some reason).

I've taken no meds since the OD and i'm so much less drowsy.

Everyone's being a pain about food/weight/ED stuff. Have got zilch appetite because i just feel low. The only things i seem to be able to motivate myself to eat are sugary crap. Sugary coffee, gingerbread men (don't know why), pick&mix sweets and plain white rice are the only things i feel like consuming. Weight has dropped noticably and apparently i "look like shit". My housemates even have brought the subject up, and i had been keeping quiet about my ED past so they had no idea initially. It's annoying because i've done so well to leave ED-related thinking behind (so much so that people have had no idea at all) but the physical effects of my mood are looking like a relapse from the outside.

I can't believe that i turn 22 in a few minutes.

This med-increase-related not-well-ness is easing off slowly. I've been able to put away my sickbowl, and can wander around without having to grab onto things for balance much. 

Earlier i was out bench-hopping (where i walk from bench to bench, and sit down to regain the energy and get control of dizziness ready to move on to the next) when it occurred to me - part of the reason i'm so exhausted is i'm hungry. I'm always a little hungry, just never enough for me to do anything about it (i'm still in the habit of waiting until i'm Really Properly Hungry* before eating). Simon's always on at me to eat more because i just end up knocking the edge off hunger with crap like sweets instead. And now it's getting colder i know my calorie requirement will be going up, so i need to take action.
Each day i'm going to aim to eat around 4 small meals. I need to get past the idea that eating bread, pasta, eggs, milk, cheese, fish - these are all okay. And when Simon takes me on our weekly trip to Asda i need to not freak out about the quantity of food i'm buying, because recently i've got what i felt was adequate (and was about what i'd get through in a week, say, a year ago) but only turned out to last 3 days.
I'm going to eat more bread - i might as well seeing as our house gets free bread from Greggs all the time. And i'm going to eat more scrambled eggs, because heck, i like them. And i'm going to make a stew/soup of some kind. And it's going to be okay for me to eat quite a few readymeals - they're not ideal but are much better than just nibbling biscuits on low-energy days, and Asda vegetarian ones aren't that bad actually.

And now it's past midnight, so
 

*I love the way xanantha writes, like this. It really clicks with me, so much so that i start talking with emphasises like this in my head.  

I guess sometimes it's not always bad when you're reminded of how bad you felt in the past.
I went back a year in my LJ. I'd forgotten how ill i was. The depression was indescribable. The crisis team phoned me repeatedly on my birthday itself. I remember my birthday trip to Edinburgh that my dad took me on was terrible because i was in such a state that everytime my dad wasn't looking i'd start crying. And i was underweight, eating fuck all (and not realising it was actually fuck all), and binging and purging
 several times a day.
BUT, even though it's sad to see how ill and down i was, i am SO much better now. I can compare day-for-day and i'm so SO much better. And that's good.

Saw my new doctor today. He's maltese, and around 60ish. He does seem like a good doctor (in that he asked lots of questions, and ordered more blood tests than needed just in case), but is quite weird (he said goodbye with "god bless you").
He was curious about my anaemia - ie, why i have it. He asked about heavy periods. And that's a good point - why do i always become anaemic with my very-civilised periods, whereas Emmy (who is in agony with the heaviness and painfulness of hers and is continuously medicated for it) doesn't? I've not been vegetarian very long, and the ED only got bad in a malnutrition kindof way when i was 17, and had already had anaemia twice. There is of course an ED-and-anaemia correlation though.

Talking of vegetarianism - it's annoying me because it's entwined itself so much with my ED, and i'm not comfortable with that. My ED (and OCDness) may not be a big problem atm but it's still a bigger struggle than i'd like it to be. I don't like the way that if i see a menu only a small minority of the food is 'okay' - that's too ED-like. So my conclusion is that i should make as much food 'safe' as possible, and that will help. So i'm going to make animal products feel 'okay' again. So each time Simon eats some animal product i'll eat a tiny tiny mouthful. I've done a miniscule mouthful of a beefburger, a sausage roll and some roast chicken. And of course dairy and fish.
I still want to be vegetarian, but i want it to be on my terms - i'm not having my ED/OCD/vegetarianism control ME, i want to control IT. My intention is to get to a place where there is no 'bad' food, and from there i CHOOSE what to eat. I'll probably choose to be vegetarian 99% of the time anyway, but not in an obsessive meat-is-gonna-kill-me-don't-let-it-NEAR-my-food-! way.

I've found a weird thing - my housemates here are much more accepting of vegetarianism than my last ones. I've always thought in a stereotypical kindof way - that vegetarianism is a middleclass thing - and so i was surprised that my student flatmates saw it as such a weird concept. Here though Amii (17-yr-old housemate) actually asked if i was vegetarian when she had some leftover (as opposed to just asking if i wanted the meat), and no-one finds it weird.
Though i do wonder if last year when my flatmates were weird about my vegetarianism they were actually finding everything about my eating habits weird (because, really, they were fucked), and were trying to find something solid to approach. Whereas now my eating habits are really rather reasonable, and i don't look as ill physically as i did then. Unsure.

Today is my 2 week anniversary of moving here. It's also 2 weeks til my 22nd birthday.

2 weeks here and it's been crazy. It seems more than 2 weeks. 2 weeks ago this evening i was sat in McDonalds using their Wifi and trying to disguise that i was sobbing into my fillet-o-fish, but it feels like months ago. It's been a mad emotional rollercoaster that's made me question so many things.

The biggest question i guess is - why the FUCK is it that we supposedly live in a 'civilised society' yet there's such a huge gap between rich and poor, between priveleged and disadvantaged? Here in Lincoln i now have two distinct sets of friends - my uni(-related) friends, and my friends-at-home (housemates, neighbours, friends of these). It's blindingly unfair that my friends-at-home haven't had the same opportunities and comfortable background that myself and my uni friends have had. And it makes me sad that they don't question it, they don't get upset and angry, they just seem to accept that a person is born to live different lives. Like i grew up in a (mostly) loving family, in nice houses, married professional parents with degrees, went to good schools (went to 2 of the top 500 secondarys in the country, and that list included private and selective schools, while my 2 were state comps), went on holidays, could take up almost any hobby i liked; pretty much total middleclassness. My new-best-friend-at-home doesn't know his dad, his mum is basically nuts (she hates her kids for some reason, and wouldn't even have them home from christmas day), he grew up on one of the cities estates in a council flat, i don't think he even has GCSEs, his 17-year-old brother is homeless and staying on friends floors. It's FUCKED UP.

The couple Simon and I came across the other night (the woman being punched by her boyfriend, etc) turn out to be homeless, and probably alcoholics (on the basis that i've seen them around a couple of times more, huddled in doorways, obviously wasted, with beer cans).  

So that's why i'm emotional really. I'm just seeing so much of the unlucky side of society, whilst still very much attached to my middleclass university-related priveleged side. A middleclass side who are so damn biased against those less fortunate than themselves (if someone criticises a "chav" then i get a little upset) just out of plain ignorance, and i know i did that too. It's a big contrast. A lot of learning.

-

In other news - i've got to conclude that Simon knows me better than i know me. He's been on at me the past couple of weeks to get back into the routine of buying, preparing and cooking proper meals because he reckoned that not doing so could trigger a bit of an ED relapse. I was annoyed and skeptical about this, but he was right. I walked in Tesco today to do my first lone food-shop and.... shit. 2 months of food from dad and 2 weeks of surviving on non-real meals (cereal, plain bread, fruit, nuts... very little else really) have taken their toll and i was just lost. Nothing feels safe. I've reverted to my starting-uni staple of stir-fry. Obviously will have to branch out from that very soon.
And i've lost quite a bit of weight. My jeans don't fit.

-

I spoke to my CPN today. I was actually a Well Behaved Psych Patient by asking for help. The mad moments are being diagnosed as severe panic attacks, which is ironic because my "severe panic attacks" of age 16 seem like a walk in the park compared to these bastards: i'll choose serious somatic symptoms over paranoia and terror anytime. They want my anti-psychotic dose upped *grumbles*. CPN also says it's time for me to join a support group to meet other people with "similar problems" (pfft, fat chance of finding anyone like me. Same diagnosis does not equal same experience). 

Chest pain = not appreciated kthnx.
I just wish i knew why it exists. First i thought it was the caffeine (contained the the coffee, caffeine pills and diet pills i was inhaling). Then my doctor said it was because i was generally not eating enough and so my muscles would ache, including my heart muscle. My ECGs and blood tests were all fine, and so the doctors didn't bother to look further. I'm not particularly scared by it, it isn't really awful to experience, but i still want to know why. And obviously i'd rather it wasn't there, it's not pleasant. 
But now I'm maintaining a healthy weight, no ED behaviour really, no more than two-cups-of-coffee's-worth of caffeine a day. And the pain did ease off a bit when i restored a healthy weight last december.

Today i (accidentally) only consumed a banana, a bowl of cereal and a milk-based drink, which is obviously not enough. But it's not bad, definitely not worthy of punishment by chest pain?!

I found out today that when i was first diagnosed as having a 'mental illness' my mum saw the doctors without me, and they asked her if there was any possibility i had been a victim of sexual abuse.
That's the kindof very intrusive question you get used to as a mental health patient, but mental health stuff always shocked and scared my mum and dad. 
To question a parent without the patients permission - i guess that's something that only happens to you when you're a child psych patient, whereas when you're under the adult services i guess questions like that breach confidentiality? Interesting. I know my psychiatrist got me to sign a load of forms so that she could talk to my dad in an appointment without me when i was really ill last year.
I can't remember that much about my childhood psych service experiences. Probably they weren't very interesting, they probably felt like just another appointment, like the paediatricians, the physios, the GPs, and the neurologists. Just another appointment where i nodded along, gave them everything they wanted to hear, pretended that i could be bothered to do any of my 'homework'. I expect i never really thought that there was any possibility i'd still be under mental health services for the next 5 years either. I do remember the huge fuss that was made at my first appointment when dad wouldn't come to the appointment with me. He didn't want to go in there, and i didn't want him there particularly. To be honest, my dad and i didn't really know eachother well at all back then.   

I am ALWAYS hungry at the moment. I don't know why. It's hard work to keep me satiated for long.
This is todays food:
Breakfast: banana, coffee (w/ milk and sugar)
Mid-morning: coffee
Lunch: 3 egg omelette with pepper and cheese, slice of toast, Muller 'corner' yoghurt 
Snack: 4 dates, slice of fig-loaf
Late afternoon: milk-based hot chocolate
Dinner: fishcakes, peas
Snack: kitkat, tea
Snack: huge bowl of butter popcorn, whole chocolate orange
Now, i'm not good at calorie-counting, but doesn't that look like a lot?? It's wayyyyy past 2000cals, i know that. The choc orange alone is 800. And... i did no exercise!!! I didn't even walk anywhere!! And i was SO hungry between meals and snacks too, before dinner i felt sick with hunger. Feeding myself is so damned expensive with this vast need for food, especially when i eat primarily nutritious food (unlike today where i just resorted to junk to fill myself up). And it's stressful too, because i have such anxiety over food - in fact i find it hard reading back over what i've eaten, just because it looks so 'bad'.  

I've spent almost the entirity of my waking day reading Where Does it Hurt? by Max Pemberton. I first came across the authors first book when i was admitted to hospital after an OD, and dad brought Trust Me, I'm a Junior Doctor for me to read as a laugh. I then found out that he'd written a followup because an extract was in The Big Issue.
Both books are biographical - about Pembertons experiences being a junior doctor. The first one was an amusing and enjoyable read, and the second was too, except it was more. Where Does It Hurt? is about him working for a homelessness project and drug dependency unit. I was completely absorbed by the book because it was full of mental illness, addiction (which i identify with to an extent via my ED and SI) and social problems. All stuff that i'm absolutely fascinated by, in part because of my own experiences. I pass people sleeping rough on the street each day, people-watch on benches next to people who live in hostels swigging cider, i have a friend who's been in the throes of drug addiction since we were 16, everyone binge-drinks, i've sat in enough psychiatric units... and i always wonder how it all comes to this, how has our society let so many people down? Where Does It Hurt? smacks peoples assumptions about addicts, the mentally ill and the homeless.

I think these kindof problems interest me because they feel so close to home. If i didn't have the sympathy of my dad, where would i be right now? I would be homeless. Probably not crouching in a gutter somewhere, but i would be. In the book a huge proportion of the homeless were people with mental health problems. They take the same drugs as me, they'd go to the same doctors, nurses, therapists, consultants, etc. They're just not really any different.

EDs and SI are addictions in my opinion, both psychologically and physically. It feels unfair that drug addicts are condemned more than those with other addictions. If you look at the condemnation, the condemner will usually say that it's the fault of the person for starting. But with an alcoholic almost everyone drinks alcohol and we don't think "maybe i shouldn't do this because i might become an alcoholic". When i started restricting my diet i thought i was being healthy, it never occurred to me until it was far too late that i was stuck in an ED, an addiction. Children are allowed to play on 2p machines in the arcades at the seaside without everyone worrying about a gambling addiction. People expose themselves to things they could become addicted to constantly, and it's an unlucky combination of our psychology and biology as to whether we become addicted. Same as with our exposure to lifes stresses - some combination of our psychology and biology determines whether we'll be fine, or whether we'll develop a mental illness.
Drugs do tempt me. Finding something to escape the horror of living with depression et al seems fabulous. But i thought it through, and decided it's not worth the risk. It's not like i haven't been there before - trying to blot out my feelings with eating, not eating, various purgatory techniques, bit of alcohol, painkillers, shopping. But each time i used those i'm not sure it's worth it afterwards. And so i came to the decision that i'm not going to expose myself to things that i know are potentially addictive and that i can avoid - no drugs, no smoking, no alcohol. I've got enough addictiveness set aside within myself without adding to it anymore - the fleeting temptation to not eat, to eat too much of something, to take lax, etc. Maybe those urges will always be with me? I don't know. But i don't want to carry more with me, because i've enough already waiting to sneak back in.
I see people swapping one addiction for another a lot. Or one obsession for another. I've done it myself. ED recovery meant drinking every night for quite a while. And then at some point it moved over to self-harm, and that self-harm got steadily worse and worse. It frustrates me when i see others exposing themselves to new things they could so easily get addicted to (particularly drugs), when they've only just kicked another life-threatening addiction. I feel helpless, a bit like when you see someone cross the road in front of traffic. You can see the potential for disaster, but there's nothing you can really do. And part of the frustration you feel is frustration you feel at yourself too, because these are your own traps too.

Sortof on this subject - now i have ESA and DLA i need to find somewhere to live. For some reason the last public housing list wasn't sent to me, which is annoying. I've been looking for a room in Lincoln, and am thoroughly sick of the words "Sorry, no DSS". Out of 67 rooms in Lincoln, 3 accept DSS. I'm very nervous about all this home-hunting stuff, i feel out of my depth completely. 

This somewhat-increased depression is having a weird effect on my eating habits. I'm both disinterested in food and comfort-eating at once. Not a good combination.
Most food is just not really appetising, and the energy involved in preparing and eating it is too much against hunger. I can feel the physical hunger, but haven't the appetite to match. Mealtimes will pass me by, and it's only when i notice my stomach hurts from hunger or someone reminds me that i do eat. But at the same time i'm drawn obsessively towards certain foods for comfort-eating. Tesco Finest chocolate chunk bakery cookies, pick and mix sweets, bananas, milky coffees, bread or toast with plenty of butter. I know if i were left to my own devices my eating habits would be fucked by now, but fortunately dad's too used to me+ED+depression so food appears at least once a day and i'm expected to eat it all. I'm worried that the simultaneous overeating and undereating alongside decreased exercise is going to cause me to gain weight. I'm tempted to just not have the comfort-eating foods around, but i get panicky about the mere thought of it, but when they are here the awareness of their presence bugs me until i've eaten the whole lot, even if it makes me feel sick and horrible.

I've been trying to exercise a little. But lack of energy and motivation means it's a hard battle. I can motivate myself to walk to a cafe each day - that idea is enough to motivate me - but it's a little costly. I do like sitting in a cafe, either with someone or with something to read, with a nice mug of coffee. It's a fairly good little habit to have when you're very depressed - gets you out, gets you doing something, puts you around other people (even if you don't talk to anyone or anything). 
I am glad that this time around (with depression) my concentration is good enough for me to read most stuff. Not being able to manage books for a couple of years was horrible. I could sortof manage magazines, but they're just not thesame.  

One reason my ED is difficult to keep under control is because i know i've been thin, and therefore any fat upon my body seems an excess, and the possibility of going back to the ED to rid myself of that 'excess' fat seems somewhat appealing.
But i know this is illogical. Partly because even though i was much thinner than i am now i felt a hell of a lot fatter. And to add to that the bulimia meant i always regained the weight, plus some extra temporarily - and that is one special type of hell. I always seem to forget those. And i forget the horribleness of day-to-day life with an ED too.

( so here's a pictorial reminder )

Does fat mean something different for me than for 'normal' people? Obviously most people don't go to the same extent to avoid body fat that those with anorexia or bulimia do. Does fat represent something different for those with EDs to those without?
I really can't understand why i give a shit. Especially because my ED helped me gain insight into the societal hatred of fat: I know that fat doesn't really mean laziness, greed, excess, a lack of femininity, or stupidity. People without EDs tend to hold these views stronger than i do, yet they appear to have less of a fear of fat? My experiences of my own fat and the views passed to me by my upbringing weren't extreme in any way. 
I want to reduce my fear of fat, loosen this obsession. I have no idea how.  

Edit: i completely forgot to put this under my usual friend-filter. I'll leave it as it is, but must warn that this is quite explicit!

Should get to bed soon, but not sure how well i'll sleep - strong wind and rain lashing against the window, and this house is so draughty that everything's rattling and banging.

I wish the ED thoughts in my head would just fuck off. There's no obsession quite like an ED really, nothing is so all-consuming. Relapse is a constant temptation at the moment. With an ED i think the choice of whether or not to engage in your ED (at the stage where you're well enough to make the choice) is like choosing the lesser of two evils. Both being deep in an ED and not being in your ED can feel shit, just in different ways. I think the problem at the moment is there's not much to distract me or motivate me to keep away from it all. 
I've been getting chest pains the past few days. I don't know why. When i was getting it a lot i and my GP concluded it was just like any other muscle when it works hard with little fuel - just an aching muscle, agravated by caffeine or exercise whilst consuming little food. However that's not the case at the moment so it needs a rethink. It makes me nervous though, but i must remind myself that i've been told by quite a few doctors that i'm fine. Chest pain is an odd one because it just feels wrong, that it's not meant to be there, not like other aches and pains.

Am hoping that by the time i get back from Lincolnshire (on monday) my ESA has been processed. And that maybe my first proper payment of DLA comes through (the big backpayment was 2 weeks ago now). Fingers crossed.
Looking at dates....

Today is my LJs 4th birthday!!!!

I was going to link back to the first ever entry, but i sound so childish as a 17-year-old KJ that i'm too embarrassed to.

And it's 2 months til my 22nd birthday. 22. Sounds properly grownup.

Bleugh, depressed.
My mind and body have slowed right down. I'm at like 0.000001mph. Like moving through sludge. Being this slowed down can be kinda scary if you're outside in the world. Everything moves too fast for you and you can't keep up. People everywhere, traffic moves frighteningly fast, so much noise, so much colour, so much light. I feel like an elderly person who can only hobble slowly and doesn't understand quite what's going on around them.
I guess this depression has been triggered mostly by loneliness - that's the only logical explanation - though that doesn't quite make sense because i'm not really isolated or something. Most people can cope with being on their own without their minds seeming to turn in on themselves. I managed it for years (well, kinda - i had Emmy and mum) and though i wasn't happy, i wasn't ill.
I've noticed in a long-term kindof way that my speech isn't as good. It's slower, clumsy, and i get stuck on certain words, i just can't remember them. People only notice if they've not been around me for a prolonged length of time - people who've seen me a lot are less aware of it because it's been a gradual decline. Sometimes i surprise myself and a quick spew of perfectly-formed speech comes out unexpectedly. I feel kindof powerful when that happens.
I have no appetite, but i'm hungry as ever as usual. I'll be weak and shaky and tired from hunger, but there's nothing i want to eat. I need to get stricter with myself because i tend to just turn to really easy energy-boost food like biscuits which is only a very very short-term solution really.

My ED is kicking at me again. I think it's because i'm on my own a lot, not surrounded by people with normal bodies and normal eating habits who can rub off on me, and constant distraction from the thoughts. When i'm on my own i look absurdly fat, simply because there's no-one to compare myself with. And there's damned mirrors and reflections everywhere in this house.
It's also tempting to give in to the ED because i have so little interest in anything else, and little motivation to stay away from it. However i know that giving in AGAIN is futile and i'll just end up even more physically and mentally fucked that before.

The media has been awash with stories about orthorexia in the past few days (eg - The Guardians take on it). I consider orthorexia to be a real problem, one that has been around quite a while, that strongly effected my mum, and orthorexic tendencies underlie my own ED. And recognition of this problem is probably good because then sufferers can be helped.
BUT, as usual, the media coverage is all wrong. "sufferers tend to be aged over 30, middle-class and well-educated" screams "WORRIED WELL ARE MAKING NEW PROBLEMS FOR THEMSELVES AGAIN!" in readers minds (especially because middle-class people can never have real problems). "Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out" is inaccurate, and probably a description of the most severe orthorexia. And then the expert doesn't help matters "It's everywhere", "I see people around me who have no idea they have this disorder. I see it in my practice and I see it among my friends and colleagues." which looks like the case of normal behaviour being pathologised again.
Anyone reading this isn't going to be convinced. Any term that looks like 'anorexia' (such as pregorexia, exorexia, tanorexia, etc) is often a fad-ish worry over some people taking normal behaviour too far (which feeds into the assumption that anorexia is dieting taken too far). Orthorexia probably looks like what anorexia looked like when it first came into the media spotlight - something superficial and only affecting the priveleged. There's very brief mentions of what orthorexia can do to the person - possible malnourishment, social isolation, strained relationships, stress. Those brief phrases mean very little written in an article. For me, my family and my friends there's been the tearful arguments in the supermarket, panic attacks in restaurants, the complete avoidance of eating and drinking out, hours obsessively researching, the constant anxiety and heightened emotions around anything remotely food related. And there's NO mention of the underlying causes - my mums was almost a form of PTSD, of avoidance of her fear, a HUGE control issue - and breaking her food rules in her mind was on a par with something hugely detrimental.

Posting rather a lot today, but i think this is important-ish...

I'm so incredibly WELL right now. Mentally great.

Let's see -
I am not sad, down, unhappy. I am not feeling unreasonably hopeless. I can concentrate well enough to read certain books (the print is important, weird as that sounds). I've had a nearly-normal amount of energy the past few days, with some crashes(, and my inevitable need for mid-afternoon sleeps). I'm reasonably motivated (at least, more than my sister!). The concept of hurting myself seems alien, bizarre. I have no suicidal thoughts at all. This seems incredible considering the stress i've been under the past few days. I am in control of my eating disorder and panic disorder, they're not in control of me. I am reasonably okay socially, though i have a big problem with word retrieval - words will just fail me and i'll be going "that thing, yknow? That...that thing you put on the thing....in the erm, thingy..." sounding nuts. I've not touched any ill-advised pills for months. I've not binged and i've not purged, for months. I've been eating dairy and wheat without wanting to rip it out my stomach (i even had macaroni cheese for dinner...insanity!). I can't remember the last time that i had some kindof 'truly mad' thought or sensation (hallucination, whatever). I can even think of the future - i can think ahead more than a week without being overwhelmed with the horror of being alive that long!
It feels so truly wonderful, so blissfully simple. You don't know how lucky you are to be mentally well until you've been so very mentally unwell.

It feels very fragile though, like a wound that has just scabbed over. Push myself an inch too far and i'm back to where i started. I've learnt that by now - 'don't run before you can walk' - a mistake i've always made.          

I got dad to phone up the hospital today to ask about the problems with my mouth. The stitches are dissolvable. And the numb tongue will probably get better in weeks/months. They asked if i had tingling in my tongue, which i do, and apparently that's a good sign because it implies the damaged nerves are regrowing.
The remaining stitches are annoying me. It seems i've dislodged them and i keep feeling them moving around. I think one of the knots might be coming undone, but i can't open my mouth wide enough to check. I want to trim the loose ends of the thread to stop them flapping around. It's bad enough that bits of loose flesh flap around without bits of thread there too.

When i got up today the lack of energy was profound. It took me over half an hour to shower, and walking felt like i was dragging weights around. I was determined to do something useful though, so i promised myself i'd do the dusting. So i did. And then cleaning the surfaces, cos the dusting wasn't effective. And then i started feeling more alive so i went on to do the sweeping, hoovering, cleaning all 3 toilets, sinks and showers, unblocked the drain, and i mopped the kitchen floor. That was ALL the cleaning i need to do before leaving day, done in one go!!! It's amazing how sometimes if i build up little bits of activity i can actually become quite productive (i think stepped exercise is a major part of treatment for CFS/ME, and i can see it helping). As a result of the energy expenditure i ended up sleeping extra-long this afternoon, but nevermind.
My success with cleaning today has given me confidence - i think i can do a bit more. One of the major things i want to start doing soon is more exercise. I guess doing it early on in the morning is a good time?? I don't know what to do. I only want to do a little each day so that it becomes a routine (and i consequently stay motivated), but i know that to have effect exercise needs to last a certain length of time. I don't remember the details well. I also have to think about what to eat before/after.

Tomorrows job: buy a diary. And do some food shopping (bananas, other fruit, vegetables, mozarella, pesto?).
Hopefully Simon will come back tomorrow.

Still no feeling and taste for most of my tongue, apart from a bit of tingling. Not cool.
As a result i've accidentally damaged my tongue a few times, resulting in a few ulcers and weird lumps. One cut was so deep i had to get my nail clippers to it to stop a flap of skin getting caught in my teeth.
Just now i felt something weird at the back of my mouth and thought it might be a stray beansprout from my hoi-sin-tofu-and-noodle stir-fry i had earlier, so i pulled it out. Out comes a knot of thread with a lump of gum attached, and a bloody taste appears in my mouth. They'd failed to mention that i had stitches in there. Careful inspection reveals that i have at least one more in there too. And there was no plan of them being removed... and i'm pretty sure they're not dissolvable ones because it looks just like thread that i'd sew a button on with!! Not cool either.
And what happens to the big hole where my tooth used to be?? Surely it's going to get food and stuff lodged in it now and get even more infected than it did before??

This whole tooth-out thing is taking the piss; it's really annoyed me. Thinking about it, i didn't really need it doing. I have plenty of space for a tooth to grow there. The reasons it got infected a couple of times was partly because i didn't brush it (i didn't realise it was even there) and because it got covered up with scar tissue (caused by my bulimia where very fast and careless chewing plus coatings of sugar and stomach acid caused a buildup of ulcers and lumpy bits). Since i've been brushing it carefully and getting a hold on my ED there's been no infections, but they went ahead with it anyway to try avoid trouble later on. However i've got plenty of trouble now - what if i never regain feeling and taste in my tongue? And what about the flappy bits of gum mangled at the back of my mouth ready to trap bits of sugary food and get infected?! I'm not pleased.

Simon's gone home again. At least 2 days on my own.
I've plenty to do though. This flat has plenty of cleaning left to do. Tomorrows jobs: hoover communal areas and dusting.

Wow.

Been an interesting day.

I was the last of 4 patients to go in for my surgery which meant 4 hours in the waiting room. Ended up reading an entire Elle, Heat, Cosmo AND Red. Boring as hell, and not able to eat or drink anything. I can't bear not drinking, so i sneaked into the loos for a sneaky sip of water from time to time.
I've never had general anaesthetic before. It's weird - one minute the anaesthetist is asking what art medium i like the most, next thing i'm waking up with no feeling round my mouth. I've only just properly woken up now, at 10pm. I couldn't stay awake at all today, i just lay in places and dozed, drooling blood attractively, promting my dad to bung my mouth with wads of cotton. I could barely walk and needed my dad to just be my slave (which was pretty good actually).
I HATE starving. I've had bad hypoglycaemia attacks today where i get faint, nauseaous, and so hot that i'm soaked in sweat. By 7pm dad and i figured how to drug me enough that i could eat a little, though i can't open my jaw more than 1cm because they removed the muscle from my jaw temporarily and so it swelled up in protest.
My face is swollen brilliantly. So's my hand where the canula went. I've still got no feeling in my tongue which is funny, apart from i bet i've chewed it to bits!

The bastard of it all is is they've only taken out 1 tooth due to the other 3 being completely covered in gum. Damnit!! Potentially gonna need more surgeries then, but have great incentive to maintain a healthy weight and stay away from bulimia which caused all the mess in the first place (unlike others who have theirs removed due to lack of space, i have a huge gob, but bulimia means my mouth is full of scar tissue which causes infections at the back). Though ironically when i was weighed before my surgery it turns out i've lost more weight, damn.
Ah well.
Being physically unwell is a lovely change to being mentally unwell and having vague physical symptoms with no known cause. It's so much simpler being like this, and everyone knows how to help you. It's like a health holiday actually.

I'm 'home', aka in Ciren with dad and Emmy.
Emmy has changed a bit. She seems less self-centred (well, a little bit!), more energetic (she's so damn busy! At the moment her main thing is getting work at all the nearest festivals), and just... different. As she's sortof a child i guess i'm seeing her grow up a chunk each time i see her every few weeks/months; dad says it's like how it was when i was tiny - each time he came home after being away for a few days i'd look and seem different.
 
Tomorrow i'm having dental surgery. Two wisdom teeth, big chunks of gum and scar tissue (thanks bulimia), all coming out, under general anaesthetic. Can't say i'm looking forward to it lol.

I had my hair cut today. It's the second hairdressers i've ever been to. Before i was 5 i think my mum cut my hair. Then from 5-9 when i lived in Dorset it was a combination of my mum and a visit-at-home hairdresser. And from age 9 until today i've always gone to the same hairdressers, always with my mum or dad.
As a result of this i am SO ignorant about hair. Until recently i didn't know what "perm", "wax", and a whole load of terms you probably take for granted meant. Today i got a bob without reallllllllly knowing what a bob is. It looks good though so that's okay! 

Following on from this where i wondered if i still had depression, i'm now wondering if i have an ED or anxiety disorder. I have pretty debilitating food and weight issues, but i wouldn't call them a full-blown eating disorder at the moment, i'm not really engaging in any eating disorder 'methods'. As for anxiety disorder i'm not having panic attacks, not particularly debilitated - mainly because i'm not exposing myself to much that would challenge me. Part of this is practice and exposure - things like travelling across the country by trains would have made me so terribly anxious once, but today (though i found it stressful) i was okay. And lastly, i'm not self-harming.
Maybe i'm "in remission" from mental illness. They're all there, but sat in the background, ready to bubble up as soon as my guard is down or i stretch too far.

On the train today just as i was coming into Glos i finished the book i was reading - The Best Day of my Life. I'm very proud because i've been working on it for ages and ages, months actually. It wasn't a really good book but it did make me think. Some peoples best day of their life (it's a compilation of descriptions written by celebrities of the best day of their lives) were so mundane which contrasted with incredible achievements - eg picking potatoes in an allotment vs reaching the summit of Mount Everest. I've realised happiness isn't about huge conventional achievements. Some peoples achievements can seem pretty small - some of the things i've achieved that i'm really proud of aren't really that special; eg yesterday i asked a stranger a question - that's a big thing for me. Going to university, getting high qualifications, climbing a 'career ladder', earning lots of money - i'm not sure they fulfil you, even though it's drilled into you that that is what you're 'meant' to do (well, 16 years in full-time education tells you that anyway). 
One guy in the book, an MP, wrote that having an ordinary life is a failure of attitude as opposed to a failure of life. I strongly disagree. Who's he to judge a person like that?! There is nothing wrong with having an ordinary life, it's not a failure of life OR attitude. Some people don't lead ordinary lives and achieve immense things, but it's not a good thing - think of Hitler! Some people experience such horrific disadvantages in life that leading an 'ordinary life' is bliss and a fantastic achievement on their part.

Yesterday Simon and I climbed the hill, stopping at almost every bench (thanks to my exhaustion). We walked around the cathedral. On the east side there's a tiny little building, almost a hut, built in the same materials as the cathedral. I'd always wondered what was in it. We saw a maintenance guy open its little door and do something inside - there was a big rumbling noise and the ground beneath our feet shook. I went over and asked what was in the hut. It turns out it's a giant pump that brings underground water up pipes on the outside of the cathedral into the roof for if there's a fire.
We walked round the south side and we saw some rare birds that are living in the roof - peregrine falcons.

Then we went to the castle. We walked around the top of the walls overlooking the city in all directions. We climbed the observation tower (it was added in the victorian times for astrology and to look out for escaped prisoners, and during world war II it was used for watching for fires) which was amazing. We saw the Roman well. And the best-preserved remaining Magna Carta. And we went in the prison and looked in the cells, and saw where prisoners used to be hung.
It was fascinating. I love how Lincoln is absolutely steeped in history.

 

I'm reading a tacky real-life story about people with weird eating issues:
There's one guy who only eats food that's triangular - pizza, dorritos, samosas etc. He retches each time he tries putting something non-triangular in his mouth. And having something cut into triangles in front of him doesn't work either.
There's a woman who has a phobia of ketchup. She can't be in the same room as a bottle, and if she's at a restaurant she has to hide it behind the menu.
And there's a woman who has a phobia of mushrooms and can't even have them in her house, or eat them chopped up tiny. She thinks it might have stemmed from being stung by a jellyfish when she was little. 

I find these fascinating, and wonder about the links between them and 'normal' eating disorders, like what's similar. Selective Eating Disorder seems to sit in between this kindof phobia ^ and 'normal' EDs.