i just got a phone call from someone from OA- a woman i knew when i was in recovery, as it happens. she was calling to ask if i wanted to be taken off the phone list… she must have been going through all the numbers on the list. and i haven’t been to a meeting in over a year.
i told her not to take me off the list. so she asked if i was still in OA. and i said i was hoping to go back, eventually, maybe in the next few months.
i want to cry. i miss how things were when i was in program. i hate my life now. i hate my eating disorder. but i’m stuck and i won’t even consider returning to program before i reach 120 pounds. hopefully that will be no longer than 2 months from now. (i have 15 pounds left). but even then, i don’t know if i’ll go back. maybe go back and hang around at meetings- but i don’t think i’ll be ready to stop losing weight in 15 pounds.
i hate myself. i wish i’d never left the program. its a program for fucking fat people, why the hell did i feel like once i reached a certain weight due to binging then i couldn’t go back? if i’d stayed even when my relapse started and committed to losing the weight healthily, maybe things would be different. maybe i’d have a job, a life, friends, still. maybe i wouldn’t be crying right now.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anorexia, eating disorders, pro-ana, proana
so, according to something i read today, i am a member of the elite club of old school proana. meaning that my first experience with proana was back in early 2002.
i found out about pro-ana because i had an eating disorder and i was on opendiary. the eating disorder section of opendiary at the time was heavily influenced by pro-ana. tips were traded openly and very few people in recovery went anywhere near the ed group, every once in a while someone would post something condemning the “pro” tone of things, but mostly pro was just the norm.
i was nearing the end of my initial 100 pound weightloss (i lost 100 pounds in a year to reach my first goal weight), and i had yet to experience any negative effects of my ed. to the contrary, i thought i’d found the secret of life! so i fit in with the pro mentality very easily, in spite of my bachelors in psych, my year and a half working with teenage girls, and my plan to become a social worker.
from OD i joined the Ruby’s Gloomy Place pro ana forum. RGP was the mildest of all pro-ana forums at the time- it didn’t discourage recovery or encourage eating disorders in people that didn’t already have one. it advocated choice when it came to treatment, and there was an active tips section. to my shame i posted in this area several times, explaining my methods of restricting and hiding my restriction from others. and i learned a lot i hadn’t known about how to purge more effectively. there was also a thinspiration section that was almost entirely devoted to pictures of emaciated girls and extremely thin models. as time went on i experienced more and more of the negative side of anorexia, i “accidentally” lost 20 pounds beyond my initial goal weight, and i relied on my friends at rgp as i went through the fear and depression that comes when you realize your disorder is entirely out of your control. then eventually i entered recovery for the first time in late 2003/early 2004. i’ve been part of proana on and off since- i tend to drop out when i’m in recovery and re-join after i’m in full relapse. but i’ve come a long way from where i was in the beginning- writing triggering fiction staring “ana” and long manifestos that, again to my shame, i have seen borrowed from in many places that describe the pro-ana mentality.
when i relapsed this time, i hadn’t been near a proana forum in a couple years, and i have to say i am impressed by the changes. i don’t kid myself that proana is or will ever be a positive force in the world- but tips are no longer the norm, people who clearly don’t have eating disorders are heavily discouraged from sticking around, and most people i know in the proana community would not have been described as pro-ana at all back in the day.
i don’t mean this as a defense of proana, exactly. i’m not someone who considers todays ana-lite forums harmless, or entirely about support. but when i see the changes that have taken place, (including places like we bite back and even the community that’s grown around my arch enemy mamavision) i can’t help but feel a little bit proud of the direction things have gone in. it’s my belief that with the right types of pressure, proana may outgro the pro part of its name and really embody the “support” model that many sites now claim they embody. i think it would be nice to have places that were relatively small and mostly free of wannas that supported people regardless of their recovery status and self-censored enough to prevent people sharing methods with one another, but not so much that members felt unable to express themselves. if they gently encouraged recovery that would be even better.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anorexia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, something-fishy
ok, get ready for some cynical shit, kids.
i was never a fan of something fishy, because it was totally over censored. but i didn’t leave the forums for good until they were bought by a company that owns drug and eating disorder treatment centers.
The recovery industry does not have our best interests at heart.
I’ve been in treatment, IP and OP, more than once. In particular, I’ve been to one IP ed treatment place in my area twice, and the stays were a bit over a year apart. In my second stay I saw about 5 people whom had been there in my first stay. Frequent fliers, of which I suppose I am one myself. People who leave treatment, fall off the wagon, become ill, and re-enter treatment.
Now, IP treatment centres are incredibly expensive. They’re run by for-profit companies, though. Think about it for a second. If perhaps about half of their business is treating frequent fliers- what POSSIBLE incentive do they have to develop effective treatment methods? They’d put themselves right out of business if they did that! No, their profit incentive is to treat a few people with very mild cases of ED, while giving the appearance of treatment to everyone else. Their profit incentive is to give people false hope that this time will be different, while blaming them for their inevitable relapses.
I believe this goes for the drug addiction treatment centres too. If you look at it from an economics standpoint, these places literally can’t afford to make people better. They are parasites, and as long as we have life-threatening illnesses we have very little we can do about it. Instead we just keep grasping at the straws they give us and refusing to see the truth- that they are preying on us, not helping us to recover.
well, my last post was so annoying, depressing, and self-absorbed i decided to listen to the arctic monkeys, and post some song lyrics while i’m at it.
perhaps vampires is a bit strong, but…
i’ve seen your eyes as they fix on me what is he doing?
what on earth’s the Plan has he got one?
you better give me some pointers since you are the big rocket launcher and
i’m just the shot gun.
i aint got no dollar signs in my eyes that might be a surprise but its true, see
i’m not like you and i don’t want your advice or your praise, or to move in the ways you do-
and I never will.
’cause all you people are vampires and
all your stories are stale
and though you pretend to stand by us
i know you’re certain we’ll fail
i’ve seen you’re eyes as they fix on me full of confusion
your snarl is just so condescending
try to explain that we’re on to a win if the fee we get in near recoups what we’re spending
he said I can’t believe that you drove all that way well how much did they pay ya?
how much did they pay ya?
you’d have been better to stay round our way
thinking about things but not actually doing a thing
the good news is, my weight’s down. the bad news is, i’m ahead of my usual progression right now. even though i’m still 18 pounds above my goal weight i’ve reached the phase where not losing weight feels like absolute torture- as if i’m gaining and growing bigger and fatter by the second. meanwhile losing weight no longer even feels good- it feels as if i’m staying the same, or the weight loss isn’t real, or my scale is broken. anything but feeling actual pride in my accomplishment.
maybe it’s just because i’ve lost 3 pounds quite quickly over the past few days. it’s hard to believe that its real, but the thought of it not being real terrifies me. i’m now within 3 pounds of the “normal” weight range. i feel so conflicted over that. on the one hand i am desperate to be in the normal range and no longer over weight. but on the other hand, 3 pounds is not a visible amount of weight. and i am disgusted and horrified by how fat i am- 3 pounds isn’t going to change that feeling. so it seems like being in the normal range is all downsides- when i’m in the normal range i’ll no longer have the protection of defending my behavior because “i’m overweight, lots of overweight people go on crash diets, this is completely normal apart from my history of eating disorder”. i will no longer have the comfort of looking in the mirror and seeing fatness and knowing the my bmi backs that up 100%, that any doctor would tell me to lose weight, etc.
ho hum. 18 more pounds of this to go. and then the real fun begins. how shall i play it? should i enter recovery and pretend to be “trying” while i allow my weight to slowly slip down another 20 pounds. should i go full out pro-ana? kill myself? that last one’s a joke since i have a fear of leaving too fat a corpse. only thing that keeps me breathing sometimes, lol.
one thing is for sure, i’m going on a major clothes shopping spree when i hit 120. so what if i’ll have to buy size 2s instead of size 0s? i am already swimming in the clothes i have and 20 more pounds is not going to improve things. so i solemnly swear that when i am 120 i will not consider myself too fat to buy new clothes, however fat i may still be.
ah this post is crap.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: mamavision
Well, over at mamaVISION today we got some “inspiration” in the form of a plug for “The Foundation for a Better Life”. Apparently they put up cute bilboards with little messages on them encouraging people to better themselves. So far, so good, right?
ah, but wait! you read their mission statement (helpfully provided by mamaV) and it had some words that immediately leaped out at me. things like “values” and “personal responsibility”.
but Vanessa, are you against values and personal responsibility?
glad you asked! no, i’m completely in favor of both of those things. it’s just that anyone with half a brain knows that the people who are most likely to use those words in the public sphere are right-wing conservative christian nutcases. the sorts of people who try really hard not to be racists, and fail miserably. the sorts of people who hold signs complaining that “god made adam and eve, not adam and steve!” – and seem to miss the point that any of us “steves” out there were certainly made by god too. so i called foul and looked into this Foundation and lo and behold- i was completely right. the person behind it all is a conservative christian billionaire named Philip Anschutz. (if you’re me then the words conservative christian billionaire basically are the same as saying evil incarnate. everything i’m for, this guy is against)
check it out for yourself if you like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_for_a_Better_Life
and the person behind the Foundation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz
ANYWAY. This brings me to my point. I’m so ticked off! MamaV supposedly has a background in journalism for Christ’s sake! She is supposed to be the fucking voice of Reason who sees through the fashion world and the proana world??? And she can’t google the Foundation and click on its fucking wikipedia link before praising it to the skies? It literally took me less than a minute to confirm my suspicions. Meanwhile, mamaV doesn’t even realize that “quality values” is code for “no gay people”. Meanwhile, mamaV who is a functional adult with a background in J-school (as compared to a crazy basketcase former social worker like yours truly) doesn’t even know to google the Foundation just in case they aren’t what they seem? Instead she reprints their publicity crap off their website. This woman is in marketing? Are you kidding me???
So. either mamaV is lazy and naive as fuck, or she’s actually a conservative christian anti-gay nutjob herself. I don’t know which is worse. At this point I think I’d respect her more for having a secret anti-gay agenda.
so cliche. i want to by little, tiny, disappear. but i really really do right now. i just cant lose the weight fast enough, i’m so tired of being huge.
my old scale was wrong, so i’m only down to 142. i just want to get this fucking weight off. i don’t care about my health, i don’t care about anything. i don’t have anything in my life to care about, anyway. i just need to get small, and then… who knows? i have no plan. if anything i’ll be worse off when i reach my goal than i am now, because at least now i have something i’m working towards.
haha, ok, maybe that’s an exageration.
but honestly, sometimes i wonder why everyone who has a bit of weight to lose doesn’t starve themselves. i’ve been restricting without any purging for 2 days and i’ve got this wonderful floaty euphoric feeling. sure, it doesn’t last forever. but i wonder if it’s something about my brain chemistry that makes restricting feel so amazingly good, or if it happens to everyone that tries it. because if it does i’d just think more people would try it, especially people who have weight to lose.
i mean, people have life endangering surgery to lose weight- why on earth would they draw the line at a starvation diet? and once people start a starvation diet why on earth don’t more people get hooked. for me, once i’ve been going a while it gets harder and harder to stop. which is exactly why it was so unintelligent of me to start, regardless of my weight at the time. because if it feels this good when i reach my goal i’ll find an excuse to keep going… going… gone.
when i was obese thin was something magical and unknown. something i’d never had and barely even allowed myself to wish for. until i started restricting the first time i never really thought thin was attainable.
when i first lost weight everything changed for the better. briefly i was more popular, more successful, happier- it coincided with a time of my life when everything was going well, but the way people reacted me also changed completely. people say it had more to do with my attitude, my confidence, and there’s something to that. but people are nicer to thin people. they listen when they speak. it’s hard to explain but people are just more open to getting to know you if you’re thin. they find you more intelligent, more interesting, funnier. certainly this all gives you more confidence and it reinforces those characteristics. but the initial reaction people give you is very different if you’re thin.
for me being thin became everything. and it still is, even though it won’t do me any good at this point. even though my life won’t get better since i’ll still be on disability, have no friends, have no prospects. at least i’ll be thin.
