I just Skyped with D and it was good.  Or at least I felt it was.  I wish I knew his thoughts on the matter, but I didn't want to ask and ruin the good.

I am looking at phone upgrades.  I want a keyboard again so that I can text people with more regularity.  I have been using D's old phone (a Samsung Juke) since last August when my beloved Samsung Zeal met its untimely demise (i.e., I accidentally got it wet).  And while it's so sweet of D to give me his old phone and I didn't have the money at the time for a new one, I can't text on the thing worth shit.  It's TINY.  I needs my QWERTY keyboards!!

I miss being in touch with my friends, most of whom are across the country.  I barely text anyone except D sometimes and D's friend B when he texts me.  And I think texting more will help with the D situation.  My hypothesis is that the real issue is that we aren't very present in each other's lives anymore--I mean, it's not like we can really go places and do things together while we are long-distance dating.  So what I need to do is MAKE myself part of his life again.  I need to remind him of my presence and my awesome-ness.  Too often I do or see something fun and think "Oh wow, D would LOVE that, I have to tell him!"  And then by the time we talk again I've forgotten.  And then I remember later but oops, we've already hung up, so too late!

Today I have eaten 220 calories.  One apple and one soy latte (still in the process of drinking that, actually).  Not "healthy", but whatever.  It's better than binging.  Today is Day #2 of no binging.  Yesterday I had coffee, fruit, tomato soup (pre-made because I was at a workshop and they gave us lunch, so it was not vegan and it gave me a tummy-ache and acid reflux) and some more fruit.  Oh, and a blue Jolly Rancher.  I don't know how many calories all of that was, but there was no binge so it doesn't matter.

This week I am going to start doing yoga again, assuming I can drag myself out of bed 30 minutes earlier each morning.  (Starting Tuesday.  I am going to be up really late finishing all my homework--damn workshop--so tomorrow morning I am sleeping in.)

There are many "I"s in this post and I now feel very self-centered.  But I suppose that's what blogs are for.

feeling a little better today.  or at least more coherent.

really i am grateful that i can't make myself vomit or cut.  i am.  i just wish for some emotional release other than crying and eating.

everything is overwhelming lately

I can't handle this I can't I can't I can't I am panicking and crying and freaking the fuck out and i dont even know why FUCK why is everything so fucking hard and i cant get it right and i cant do anything right and i will lose d and fail out of grad school and just disappear and why can't i fix anything?  why can't i vomit, i want to. why cant i cut?  i need something anything to keep me going because i have nothing nothing NOTHING and i just cant do it anymore

please dont comment because i know this is shit.  i just needed somewhere to vent.  it didn't really make anything better but i dont know what will.

I am drowning under a pile of work and food.  Ugh.

I'm reading, just not posting.  My words don't come out properly these days.

3rd day of no binging.  I'm feeling good.  :)

I just had the strangest dinner because all I have in my apartment is canned vegetables and Werther's Original Coffee hard candy.

A mixture of tomato bits, green chiles, and mushrooms with a bit of hot sauce and curry powder.

It was actually pretty good.

I now feel uncomfortably full.  I didn't binge though.  Didn't binge yesterday either (though definitely made some bad food choices...like having some pasta salad and a bread roll and then not eating dinner).  So that's good.  I didn't count calories today or yesterday either.  I haven't decided yet if that is good or bad, but I'm calling it good.

And I feel happier.  Let's keep this up.

Still worried about D though.  Chatted a bit this morning on teh Skypes and he said he feels "pretty good" about us.  And he is coming for vday weekend, so that is only 2 weeks and a bit away.  I talked to new therapist about stuff, and I think it helped.  He hasn't texted me today though.  :(

I'm obsessive, can you tell?

Now off to do MOAR THESIS WORK RAWRRRR.  *dies*

So D and I just had a very long talk, in two parts.

The first part was really bad.  He said he was worried about us, he said things were bad, he said he didn't know what to do and that things were starting to seem hopeless.  He said he is worried that we are just hanging on for the sake of hanging on.  We talked about breaking up.  But he said he still loved me.

Then I had to leave to get to my appointment at the car place.  (Rotten timing, eh?)

They took an hour and a half to give me an oil change and tell me that there are many many expensive things wrong with my car (goodbye, savings account  :(  seriously, the entirety of my next paycheck will have to go to the car and rent will come out of my savings, leaving me broke again.  dammit!).  I called my best friend L and she didn't pick up, so I called another good friend H.  And she listened to me cry and told me I was awesome and that if things didn't work out that I would still be awesome and then we chatted about things and she made me smile.  And then L called me back and listened to me cry and told me she loved me.  Thank goodness for friends.

I don't remember if I ever mentioned it, but over winter break when I went home to visit L we talked about the ED.  So now she knows too.  It was a much less painful conversation than I thought it would be.  I started out by setting boundaries (at the suggestion of new therapist): I don't want this to change our friendship, I don't want to talk about it all the time, I don't want you to worry about me all the time.  I've been like this pretty much our entire friendship anyway so really nothing is changing except that now I am not lying to you.  I told her she could ask questions but that I reserved the right not to answer them.  She asked one (does the ED have anything to do with my mother.  haha, I guess the fucked-up-ness of my home life was apparent in high school).  Then she told me that she loves me and of course it doesn't change anything.  I'm so lucky.  We haven't addressed it since, which is absolutely 100% fine with me.

Anyway.  So I talked with H and L, not so much the details about D and I, just that things were rough and I didn't know what to do.  And I think that helped.  I felt a bit better, anyway.

And then I got home and D and I talked some more.  And we established that neither of us really want to break up.  And we made a list of issues and what we could work on.  And I told him about the emails with M, just to make sure everything is out in the open.  I don't feel so guilty about them anymore.  (Also, I think I should clarify--M doesn't live near me.  He's on the other side of the US, in the same city as D.  I know him from my undergraduate days; we worked together on a club committee.  So it isn't like we are hanging out or anything.  Our only contact is email.)

D is going to text and email me more frequently.  I am going to make a list of good things every day (thanks to Kazehana for that idea, D and I both really liked it).  We are both going to work on our communication.  And we are taking an online course together and discussing the lectures each week.  We need to do more things together.

Also I am going to work harder on my self-esteem.  We didn't talk about that, but I feel a lot of our issues do derive from it.  I've been working on it in therapy along with the eating, but I haven't met with new therapist in a long time (winter break and all).  We have our first meeting of the semester tomorrow, so maybe that will help.

I guess we will see what happens.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.

I feel like I am in that movie Groundhog Day where I live the same day over and over and over again and nothing ever changes.

It has been raining and grey all day every day and that gets me down.  I got myself a sunlamp.  I hope that helps my insubordinate brain chemistry.

I'm finding it difficult to focus and to work and all I want to do is sleep.   My binge-asaurus rex tendencies of late don't help matters at all.

Hot boy M (remember him?  The guy I was crushing so hard on before I started dating D?) and I have been emailing.  I saw him over winter break and we had a good conversation.  So he emailed me to say he'd enjoyed it and to tell me about one of his new year's resolutions (it pertains to me).  And I emailed back.  And he emailed back.  And I emailed back.

The emails are not flirtatious or anything and honestly, I'm pretty sure that being anything more than friends with him would be an unmitigated disaster.  Besides, I'm not interested because of D and he's never displayed any interest in me.  I still think he's hot, but then again, I think the singer from Owl City is hot too.

But I kind of feel guilty about it.  Which is ridiculous.  I mean, D has TONS and TONS of female friends and at least half of them are fucking gorgeous.  Surely I am allowed to have one male friend that I think is hot.

Maybe I feel guilty because of the smiles I get from these emails.  I don't know why they make me so happy.  Maybe I feel guilty because D hasn't been making me feel the same way.  (D is really really shit at communication.  He rarely texts or emails and we're both busy enough that we don't get much skype time.  Plus the whole 3 hour time difference makes things hard to organize and D is not a planner like I am because he is too forgetful.  Sometimes I wish we had a scheduled time to talk but that never works out.  And most of the time I understand that this is because of the time difference and the busy-ness of our respective schedules, but sometimes I am frustrated and think that he just doesn't want to try.)

I just want to stop binging and start working and be happy.  Is that so much to ask?

AND I had a fight with D that I totally started by being stupid and insecure.  He's an incredibly patient person and didn't end up going to bed until 2 AM his time with an 8 AM meeting.  To stay up with me.  I'm such an ungrateful little bitch.

Are we ok?  I don't know.

Pretty much all the problems in our relationships, all the fights we ever have, are my fault.  Seriously.  New therapist says I take blame too often and things in general are not always my fault, but in this case the issues stem from my low self-esteem and my insecurities.

I don't believe I am lovable.  And so I don't understand why D loves me.  (And D doesn't like it when I question it because he tells me all the time and shows me all the time and why can't I just fucking believe it?  Don't I trust him?  I don't trust anyone.  I maybe trust D more than most people.)  I don't understand and I hate not understanding.  I pick things apart and examine them.  I'm a SCIENTIST.  That's what we do.  Plus I am horribly self-centered and obsessive.  So I poke and prod at his concept of "love" and question and contradict and disbelieve.  And of course that causes problems.  Even the most patient man in the world could only put up with so much shit.

The other half of that issue is that I don't believe I am capable of love.

I feel like I should offer some sort of explanation for that statement but truth is, I don't have one.  I don't know what else to say.  Also now I need to go put on boots for the snow-covered trek to class.  Fuck you, winter.

The thing is that I don't know what I'm doing.

And I started this post thinking that I had something relevant! and insightful! to say, but now the words are stuck and my thoughts are jumbled and maybe my brain is saying something but the message will not get to the fingertips or the mouth and so it cannot find any avenue out.  And I feel sometimes I will explode with the unacknowledged not-thoughts.  Sometimes I believe if I open my mouth only gibberish would come out and within that gibberish would be THE ANSWER but I could never understand it and nor would anyone else.

I've been binging a lot and weight is up and self-esteem is down and brain is whirling.  Today I've had coffee and that feels good.  (Also I ate some pasta this morning, a remnant of last night's pasta binge-dinner (FUCK PASTA.  I HATE IT), and am now eating a plain Oikos greek yogurt.)  And tonight I am spending the night in the office and that feels good too.

And I hate that I define my life in terms of food and no-food and weight.

And I don't know what to do.

Been sick and busy.  Miss you.  Here's a pretty picture of how I feel:

Herbert James Draper

I am back at school and regular posting & commenting shall recommence.  Maybe.  We all know how I am.

So D was wrong and I have not actually lost any weight, according to my scale.  Oh well.  New year, new start, blah de blah de blah.

Do I sound jaded?  I have had SO MANY new years and new starts with this disorder.

Never a new year focused on recovery though.

Except how focused on recovery am I when I still have losing weight as one of my goals?  When my brain still tells me that not-eating is the only way to do that?  (Though I try not to listen to it.)  When I get back to my apartment and call D and my mother to tell them my plane got in safe and pay my January rent and pick up my mail and go to the store and then proceed to come home and binge on pasta and pita chips and hummus?

That doesn't really sound like someone in recovery.

Of course, if I went to a doctor today (without telling him about my ED history), he'd tell me to lose weight.  My BMI toes the line of obesity.  There.  I admitted it.  For all my disordered behavior, I am a fatty.  Now you know I am not exaggerating.  I refused to post my height and weight and pictures because I wanted you all to picture me as pretty and thin (and also because I am paranoid).  Secret is out.  Sorry, guys.

ARRGH.  BRAIN=FUCKED UP.

Goal is still eat 3 times a day aiming for 1000-1500 cals/day (because usually I am either WAY under or WAY over that...no in-between for Miss Salix).
Goal is exercise more often than not.
Goal is stick with the therapy.
Goal is maintain sanity.