#triggery?

You all come to me willingly, even though that's only what you all think. You can't really call any of us mere mortals willful, after all.Still, by some twist of contrived circumstance you all find yourselves entering this place

It's a happy place, I like to think. It's where my best work is done, well, all of it, actually, and there are so many happy faces. Were. I meant were. I don't really think of myself as an artist, like some of the uninitiated might call me. You actually might have heard of me, the 'painter of ash station', but I find that to be an injustice to my work, and what I'm trying to accomplish.

Artists, you see, fumble around in the dark trying to answer the deepest questions, well, question, about our condition with their useless degrees. That's not just visual art, that would be any of those soft, feel-y subjects. I don't mind, they put some great stuff out, but for the really important stuff, it just seems sort of badly organized, you know? Like a mismanaged tech company, but it's time for them to go out of business. The wave of innovation is here. I try to answer the Question with a bit more of a clinical methodology. This is the new millennium, after all, and we've applied science to everything else in our lives, so why not this. I'm sort of surprised no one else has thought of this before, really.

OK, so, I guess my work is sort of still art, but only in subject matter. I am a scientist. Ha. It's funny, you see, because I don't have any of that fancy training or anything, but that's how the real pioneers did it anyway, right? Trial and error, empirical observation, the good old fashioned tried and true scientific method.  Did you know they don't teach it anymore? But with my way, it's just me, some minor mechanical assistance, and my subject.

Now, to breach THAT subject, ha, if you'll excuse the pun, You're here because you're supposed to be. Me too, actually. I'm pretty sure that all of our human history just might be in anticipation for this, our little encounter right here. Isn't that exciting? All of this! War, love, countless generations of breeding and an infinite number of stories to get to this moment, this single quantum state, this single possibility out of all the rest. It must be like, a bazaillion to one odds of it being me, but that's just the way Fate works.

I bet the Big Guy is watching with baited breath, dying, ha, awkward, to know. I mean, why else would He have set this game in motion, with so many tears and dead lovers and maimed children? What a bad joke! It's really heartbreaking, don't you think? So the crux of the matter, of course, is. 'Where is the soul?' Like, either He doesn't know either and we're his computer simulation about to bear fruit and he gets the answer for His Omniscience 101 final, or else it's been a metaphysical game of hide and go seek, him against us. Well, eat your heart out Jesus and Buddha and Kant and Heidegger, because I've got the foolproof, one hundred percent guaranteed methodology. It's taken a while, sure, but you know what they say about eggs and omelets, right?

Whew. I guess I'm just nervous, my hands are literally shaking right now. I just can't believe that it's be, that I'm about to do it. I can see yours are too, so I guess you must now how I'm feeling, right? Our lives were just a warm up for these next few hours. I mean I'll be able to die happy if this goes the way I think it will. You too, I hope, right? Well, I mean, I guess we'll both see about that! We don't want to count our chickens or whatever, knock on wood.

OK. It's alright. We'll both get through this just fine. I know it. Uh, could you calm down a little? You're kind of freaking me out. Right. Thanks. Do you mind if I keep talking? It helps. I find it relaxing. Right. So, where was I? Uh...wash between the fingers, check for holes in the gloves, great! The Soul. How can we feel it? I mean, come on, we've all got the tight feeling somethings, or that sense of like, urgh, like when someone talks at the movies, or says like 'you dum fag' or something. Classless, I know, right? Like, excuse me, trying to be a decent person over here. That's how we know we've got one, right? It's totally ineffable, cause we can't see it, but it has to be there. 

So the better question to ask is, how do you know when you don't have one. Is that death? Should we send some subject to like, those Baptist nutjobs down south and see their reaction, measure it with electrodes and stuff? No, because we can't trust any of that, we know because we, as human beings, know. That's it. I mean, correlation and causation, I may not be degree'd up and everything, but even I know the saying about how one isn't the other. No, I think, and my entire work is based off of a much simpler hypothesis. See, life and death, out machines can measure, and in today's day and age, even control. This one here, for instance. We're really good at building really clever, efficient machines. It's really elegant, actually.

Anyway, my way of thinking is, to tear out a soul from it's natural resting place, that's got to be the worst crime against nature, right? The absolute worst. Like, not even against the laws of nature, but the laws of metaphysics or whatever. There needs to be some sort of reaction. Something maybe even beyond the capabilities of our eyes and ears and machines to perceive, but something we can feel. In our souls. Kind of like a resonance. It just makes sense, you think so, right? And following from that, sort of, the more natural, the closer to the original state it is in, the bigger the adverse reaction has to be, right, all the easier for measuring, or at least picking up on. I'm flying a little blind, so I need to build some sort of idiot-proofing into my experimental design.

As an extrention to the last post I made...

Today has been….eventful? Last night I tried to write down how things have been this week and I did manage to make a list but I found it so very difficult. Part of me wasn’t even sure where I was. So on the way to therapy this morning in the car I decided to draw an image. The image was basically a piece of paper with a big crack down the middle – I named it "the void" and I wrote how I have been feeling – numb, lost, confused, emotionless, a failure, a fake. I described it as a place where I can escape to. It is a place where I don’t have to face any emotions; no problems. I sort of shut off from the world, away from reality. It’s strange because we talked about this place and how I have managed to stop restricting my intake any more – which she said she was really proud of. We sort of worked out that this is a place that I escape to when I don’t want to face the emotions and realities that I am faced with in life. It is my way of shutting off from the world. I have triedto  find inside, some reasons to try and increase my intake but I have felt so numb, so disconnected that I end up just giving up and “having the same as yesterday”.

However, part of the way through the session (I was absolutely shattered from trying to talk about things) I just came out with “I don’t want to be like this anymore. I don’t like this person I am. This place that I have found myself in. It scares me to think that I am really hurting my body still – I haven’t had a period in 20 months. I want a future. But I can’t see it. I don’t know what to do. I feel lost.” I don’t know where it came from but it’s the truth. This relapse that I have been in – I don’t really want to be going through this. I want my life back but then at the same time I don’t. It is strange to think about and sitting here typing is making me a little confused. I havent had a "life" for over two years now. All I have known is anorexia. depression. anxiety etc. We spoke about how I tend to equate the scale going down to safety. This safety is me locking myself away in this void. It is a darkness that swamps me but at the same time it is comforting. It feels as though I have achieved something and well it sounds awful to say but when I see the scale go down I immediately think to myself “I am okay”. It also, in my head makes me believe that people may/will care about me more. They may give me love. It is like I don’t want to grow up sometimes. I want to be fragile, small, special. But at the same time I know how disordered all of this is. It is stupid.

We did speak about a sort of “calm” that I felt yesterday when I was on my own, decorating the tree and cleaning the house. I felt at peace? slightly. I was plagued with thoughts but it was "manageable".  I didn’t have anyone else in the house with me, no one expecting me to do anything, no one breathing down my neck, no one watching over me constantly. It was just me, myself and I (and the cats of course) but it was nice. And we talked about how I need some of this alone time. So I am going to maybe go for a few walks this Christmas if the weather is okay to just take some time out.

We spoke a little about trying to accept my mum how she is and not expect any more from her – like shopping the other day and all she wanted to do was go home which made me think that she didn’t want to be with me.

We also spoke about Christmas and how I need to try to relax and “step out of the moment” that a few days wont make the world end.

The thing is the pros of staying where I am right now are all short term and I realised this today. They will not help me one single bit in the long term but they seem so appealing.

Every single time I seem to get to places like today I try to move forwards but then I always seem to end up back here again? Part of me has kind of given up hope at this point. It wil just keep ojn going around, a constant cycle. 

However, even though the anxiety will be hell if I try to move away from this, it will be better off in the long term

We spoke a lot about anxiety and trying to sit through it etc.

Over analsying etc numbers, seeing it as "all or nothing"

Then we spoke about how every time I give into behaviour it enhances that route in my brain. It is not trying to just physically recover from an eating disorder it is also trying to re-route those cognitive pathways. Each time I give into anorexia, the path is like it is being shined. But if I don’t follow it then the path becomes less shiny, and so will soon become a path or roadway that is less used – like an old dirt track, it will slowly become neglected and no longer resemble a path but the fact is that I have to keep saying NO to the behaviour.

wow we talk about a lot apologies.

  So I then met with L in costa for a supported snack – this was “needed” as I have not been doing so well on the morning snack front recently – I was going to get my usual. L tried to get me to have a food snack as well and when I said no she asked if I would have whole milk which was too scary for me right now, I felt so fragile, weak and draindc. But when I got to the till I asked the barista what the toffee nut caramella was (I dont even know what part of me asked this to be honest!) and well he said what it was and then was like “it’s really nice…” and so yes I ORDERED IT. SAUCE AND ALL. This was really hard for me as I usually have the same order every time at this costa and I got scared that they would judge me but it was fine. And the drink was actually quite nice, not as syrupy as I thought which was a good surprise as I was really scared it would be too sweet. Yay for seasonal drinks. I know it may not seem like a “win” to some people but for me, today, after that therapy session it was HUGE.

We sat and spoke about a lot of things I won’t bore you as it links a lot with my therapy session but we did speak a lot about trying to look after myself.

It was really great to talk to her I feel she kind of gets it and she does NOT play into my ED one little bit. I sat there and was like “I hate this blah blah blah but I don’t know how to do it, how do I increase?” and she would not set me numbers. She said it was an ED related thing for me as I over analyse everything. But she did say that I need to stop the weight loss. I have managed to stabilise my calories so they have not fallen any more but I know I need to pull myself out of this and I am the only one that can do it. She sat there and said “I can’t make you do anything. I can’t force you to do anything. I can only support your decision” yesyesyes this is MY decision IT HAS TO BE. It has to come from me – which reminds me that those realisations I have had recently have actually been really significant as people have been telling me things like about my period for way over a year now but I sort of had to reach the point where I go “Oh god this is really not good for me” and I have to do it myself. It does scare me because I didn’t think I was still damaging my body one little bit. But apparently I am?

Anyway, I digress, she congratulated me on “stopping the train” and that right now this place that I have got to, I need to commemorate reaching it. She said that it is really important. This crossroads I find myself in, with my head being torn two ways is a good thing it means that I have “the power to say that this is not how my story ends” and I do. I am the one who has the power to change. She said that what I really need to do is to start saying YES TO LIFE. Not focusing on the calories etc., but to make sure that I am having enough but I need to start doing things for myself. Looking after myself and she said that she believes completely that if I start to do that then the increases etc. will follow. I need to trust her. I need to trust recovery. I need to sort of, I don’t know how to put it, just do it. I need to move away from my past, accept that things may not have been the best but accept that I can do things differently now. I have the power to shape my future. I need to separate myself from the depressive side, I know that sounds weird but it is almost like I feel as though people expect me to struggle and be sad. Okay my depression is pretty bad some of the time but I think that my dad is in a depression right now and I believe he has been all my life. But I can’t let him affect me. And the same goes for other people. I am my own self. The future is out there and I can reach for it but I need to accept and choose life. So that is what I am doing. I am choosing a life. A life that is free of anorexia because at the end of the day that is no life. 

So Big Fat Quiz of the Year (and  masturbatoriums in particular) reminded me of this glorious and strange bit of comedy. Which there is sadly only three clips of on Youtube.