talking about this for a little while helped make a connection to a recent memory. when D brought me to the cult, he would always go off somewhere else and i wouldn't see him again until it was time to go. he would come and get me and i always associated him with being the person that "saved" me from the horrible things happening there. recently i remembered what he used to tell me when he would come "save" me.........he would say to me "where have you been? i have been looking all over for you." as if it was my fault. i was responsible for what happened to me because i somehow "wandered off" and since i wasn't wherever he was looking for me, what happened to me was my fault.

judi suggested maybe i don't want to take responsibility for myself (my food choices, taking care of myself) because i think something bad might happen. i think she said other things but i can't remember everything. i asked her if i wrote some things out in a journal tonight and emailed it to her, would she fill in the gaps and let me know what else we talked about so that i could bring it all to donna when i see her tomorrow. she said she would.

i felt like some pieces came together today but i still feel trapped in it, not knowing exactly how to get out of it. i guess it's that word i'm not too fond of..........process.

as i write it all now, it makes sense and logically i can see all the connections. but when i'm FEELING it......forget about it. i can't connect to these realizations and the feelings overwhelm me and i feel like i'm drowning.

judi said these are important things for me to tell donna tomorrow when i see her. i know that. but i'm afraid. i'm afraid i'll walk into donna's tomorrow with a wall up because that's what i've been doing lately......shutting down between sessions. i'm afraid the wall will be up and i just won't be able to talk or access the emotions that i felt so strongly on saturday morning.

maybe if donna reads this before i see her tomorrow.....she can help me figure out how to get the wall down quick enough in order to talk about these things.

i'm going to try to sleep now. i need to get up early tomorrow to go see donna.

i'm wondering if it has anything to do with my appt. with donna this thursday. for years i was seeing donna twice a week for long appointments - plenty of time to really get into stuff and work on things. the past few months i've pretty much only been going for one hour a week. i thought i convinced myself that i was doing ok with that. i think in some ways i was but in other ways i wasn't. i do think i've reached a point that i may not need as many of those longer appointments as i used to, however, what i've come to realize is that i'm shutting down between appointments and it's making the one hour once a week appointments not very useful because it's so hard to take the wall down that i have put up throughout the week. i'm not sure if there's some solution but i do know that it's not working so great right now. so.....i made this second appt. for thursday this week but i think i'm a little scared. i think i'm a little scared to open "pandora's box". it's pretty much stayed closed for quite some time now and i'm nervous about it opening again. however......... i think i need to.

when i was laying in bed before TRYING to sleep, i was looking at floppy - the stuffed animal rabbit that i've had since i'm three years old. i felt kristy close by. since my cousins have been visiting i've been remembering things that happened, a lot from when i was three. i started to feel some things when i was laying there looking at floppy. i started to feel so scared just looking at it. it brought me right back to when i was three. i'm wondering if i should maybe bring floppy with me thursday. it might help me and kristy talk about some of the things we are remembering.

i see judi tomorrow. my last two appointments with her haven't gone so well because i was totally back into my ED mindset. i'm not sure where my head is at right now with it all. most of my head is consumed by the ED voice but there is a part of me that wants to go into her tomorrow and say - look, i feel like i can't find my healthy voice anywhere so until i can find mine, i will listen to yours - tell me what to do to succeed at this and i'll do it. this small part of me feels like that part of AA when you need to surrender completely to the addiction and your way of doing things and just listen to your sponser and the program. i feel like i want to go into judi with my hands up tomorrow and say that i surrender....i can't do it this way anymore. but of course i feel the weight of the vicious ED voice pulling me back. i don't know what will happen tomorrow. i just know i'm so tired of the eating disorder struggle.

i haven't written in about a week. this past week has been hard because i've felt so hopeless and miserable. i've been restricting because i feel hopeless about losing weight and i have felt like it's my only option. i need to work on this. tonight was a good start because i did manage to eat some dinner. i've also been isolating a lot and haven't felt like doing anything. i've felt very alone because my sister and jackie have both been away and donna was unavailable for awhile and i was just feeling very alone and i guess in touch with some abandonment stuff.

i saw donna tonight. it started off horrible because i seem to be shutting down between sessions as a way to sort of protect myself from not feeling. so for the whole beginning of the session i didn't know what to say. i WANTED to talk, but i just couldn't, unless donna asked me a specific question. it reminded me of being little and being with my parents and WANTING to open my mouth and speak........tell....but just couldn't physically make the words come out of my mouth. anyway, i don't know what changed in the middle of the session, whatever we started to talk about somehow made me feel and i became connected again and it got easier. then i felt really good about the group afterwards because it was good to be with people who understand. something we talked about in the group that i related to a lot was about feeling fake........not feeling like a real person. i want to come back and write more about that when i'm not so tired. i think that's a big thing for me.

so.....tonight i'm feeling a little better than i have in the last week. i'm relieved. i think i'm going to try and see donna later this week to avoid this whole shutting down thing.

i'm tired so i'm going to sleep now. just wanted to write those few things before i forgot.

but i think there's a much bigger reason........one that i didn't feel deep down until today.

being around my cousin is bringing up memories and feelings for me - ME, not alters. i need to KNOW on a deeper level what happened. i need to FEEL on a deeper level what happened. i can't explain it any better than that.

i want to explore these memories head on right now. i need to. except for some reason, it's not happening right now. i, and everyone inside, need a strong connection to donna in order to do that and we don't feel it right now. i hate that. i don't understand what's going on with everyone inside. donna says it's my fault - that everthing is the same so it's something that i'm doing different. maybe. but i trust everyone inside. donna knows we haven't shied away from dealing with a memory. i have faced them head on over the years. i really think the reason i was able to do so much healing in the past few years was because i and everyone inside felt unconditional support and connection and safety. we all don't feel that right now and we aren't sure how we are supposed to fix that.

well........tonight i decided that it's just so much safer when you pretend you don't need anything. that way, you won't put yourself out there in a vulnerable place just to get hurt.....even by people you trust.

i can't stand to feel the hurt anymore. i just can't. i don't know what to do with it. sometimes this kind of hurt hurts more than the abuse because being hurt by my abusers was expected. i never expected to feel this hurt associated with people i finally trusted.

i was doing so well with my healing. i was making a lot of changes in my life and moving forward....slowly. i just needed some security in place to keep moving forward.........but somehow, my security blanket has been ripped out from under my feet and i have landed flat on my fat ass and now i can't get up. the only good thing about today is that i only ate some cheerios this morning so maybe my fat ass will get a little smaller.

i'm not sure why i haven't been able to go out and do anything the past few days. besides work or a scheduled appt., i can't seem to get myself to do anything. i'm so afraid that this will continue day after day once work is over next week. this is why i am so scared when my time is not structured - falling into this unmotivated, depressed emotional place where i end up doing nothing. i know there are a million things i could do, but why can't i just do them? i eventually took a shower this afternoon and was going to head out to buy a new pair of sneakers and go food shopping, but i have no idea why i never left my apartment.

i also felt really gross about food today. when i just wrote my daily food journal to email judi, i saw that i was within my calorie zone for losing weight but for some reason i just felt gross all day and felt like i was eating too much.

i just feel "off" - whatever that means. something's not right. i guess in the back of my mind are some of those memories that are causing the nightmares.

i don't really feel like thinking about anything else so i think i'm going to stop writing and go back to staring at the tv. i guess it's my way of checking out lately.

i had another nightmare last night and have been seeing flashes of memories in my head all day. also feeling things in my body. it's really hard having my cousin visit. being around her is bringing up too many memories and feelings of.....him.

even though the doctor was very nice, i started to get very anxious in her office. when judi first suggested that it would be a good idea to get a physical or to even go to this doctor for these tests, i was very hesitant. she asked me a few times why i didn't want to go and did i ever have a bad experience with a doctor. i don't think i have but it's still very triggering for me. obviously i understand why going to the gynecologist is triggering for me, but why a regular doctor for a routine visit and who would only be taking blood? i guess it's just the whole vulnerability of the situation. i guess i sort of feel like a young child with this "authority figure" who appears to us as having some control over us. we feel like we are at the doctor's mercy. it sort of doesn't feel safe. so...i was very anxious in her office, almost to the point of crying. then when i came home i just felt tremendous anxiety and had strong urges to binge and purge. i was able to just have lunch and avoid any ED behaviors. i spent the rest of the day on the couch zoned out in front of the tv. i hope i can just fall asleep fairly early tonight. i'm very tired.

Work - The end of the school year was good. I really enjoyed my class this year and even though I was certainly ready for summer vacation, it was sad to say goodbye to them.

Graduate School- The spring semester seemed more manageable than the fall. I think because I had more vacations from work which gave me more time to read and write papers. I took a summer class in May and June that was very challenging - Crisis Intervention and Trauma Therapy. We read many case studies on rape and abuse. I think I dissociated while I read a lot because I needed to keep some distance from it but I got through it ok. Next year will be difficult. I will be taking two classes and doing an internship in addition to working full time. I'm not sure how it's going to work out and I get anxious every time I think about it so for right now I'm trying to not think about it until September.

ED Recovery- I'm still working with my nutritionist, Judi. For the most part I've been doing better with eating healthier and not engaging in ED behaviors. I had a minor step backwards this past week because of some other things going on and I ended up purging almost everyday this past week but today I was back on track and I think it will be ok now. I haven't been losing some of the weight I want to. I had a metabolism test and the good thing is that after many years of screwing up my metabolism from ED behaviors, the past several months of eating better has helped my metabolism and it's working very well right now. Judi thinks I might have this other thing (I forget what it's called) that can be caused by ED's and a symptom can be not being able to lose weight. If I do have it, a simple medication can help me. I have a doctor's appt. tomorrow with a doctor who specializes in ED's and who will look into this for me. It's still an everyday struggle not to give into the ED but I'm taking it one day at a time.

Therapy- I've had some ups and downs recently with Donna but I had a good session last night and feel a lot better about things today. My cousin is visting from out of state this whole month which has been difficult. It was her ex-husband that brought me to the cult from the time I was 3 - 10 years old. I've been having nightmares for the past week and have been seeing flashes of memories in my head. Some things came up in my session last night about my mother and Tara (6 year old alter). It's too much for me to think about right now so I'll write more about that another time.

So.......that's a brief update. I want to try to write each day simply about what I'm doing during the day or how I'm feeling. My perfectionism sometimes takes over and prevents me from writing when thigns are jumbled up in my head. I want to be able to write without having to sort it all out first. I often hold back from writing UNTIL I already figure things out. I want to change that around and use this as a tool to HELP me figure things out. That's my intention...... we'll see if it happens.

Tonight I was at a dinner for a teacher who is retiring. It was weird because four years ago, my last drink was at an end of the year party for school. Obviously, it was a very bad night because that night ended up being the last time I drank. It was just weird for this anniversary to fall on the same day as another "school related outing." It just brought back memories of that night four years ago.........not very good memories.

THIS IS MY NOW

There was a time I packed my dreams away
Living in a shell, hiding from myself.
There was a time when I was so afraid
I thought I'd reached the end.
Baby, that was then.
But I am made of more than my yesterdays.

This is my now,
And I am breathing in the moment.
As I look around,
I can't believe the love I see.
My fear’s behind me,
Gone are the shadows and doubt.
That was then.
This is my now.

I had to decide.
Was I gonna play it safe?
Or look somewhere deep inside,
Try to turn the tide.
Find the strength to take that step of faith?

This is my now,
And I am breathing in the moment.
As I look around,
I can't believe the love I see.
My fear’s behind me,
Gone are the shadows and doubt.
That was then.
This is my now.

I have a courage like never before, yeah.
I settled for less, but I'm ready for more.
Ready for more…

This is my now,
And I am breathing in the moment.
As I look around,
I can't believe the love I see.
My fear’s behind me,
Gone are the shadows and doubt.
That was then.
This is my now,
And I am breathing in the moment.
As I look around,
I can't believe the love I see.
My fear’s behind me,
Gone are the shadows and doubt.
That was then.
This is my now.
This is my now.