To All Those Who Have Helped Me So Much - Eating Disorder Recovery Message Board

Aurora · 05-31-2005, 12:30 AM

Hiya,
I just wanted to drop a line. You know who you all are. Some of you have been supporting my attempts at recovery for some time. And I can never repay you for the help you have given to me.
Just wondering how you are all doing lately? I sure hope you are all Ok.
Drop me a line if you get the chance, just so I know how you are.
Hope all is well with you,
love and hugs from H xoxo

sumi · 05-31-2005, 08:10 AM

Hey honey,
How are you? I often think about you and posting but have learnt over time to just let you be and find yourself and once you do you will return to us on these boards.
I hope you are doing well. Please tell us how you are? Or where you are in your life and in your thoughts.
I am doing ok, pregnancy has it's ups and downs. Although I love being pregnant and know I will have a precious little girl in my arms soon I struggle with eating almost every day. I eat very healthy and once in a while I have my bad days. I cannot work out very much as I have had a few scares with contractions. I'm now six months, already! It's hard knowing you are doing this for your unborn child but at the same time feel so damn guilty every time you put something "bad" in your mouth. Luckily the first five months I wasn't too hungry but lately it's insane! I am hungry every three hours and if I don't eat my sugar drops. Not good. So I try to eat five small meals a day.
Sorry to all my friends that I haven't been as attentive in the last few months but they have been very hard with so much going on in my life and so much unknown. We were told that our little one has a one in two hundred chance of having Downs Syndrome based on an AFP screening test and that was very painful to hear. So we had some testing done and a level II ultra sound and everything came up fine. We were told that there are many false positives with the AFP testing and that we were one of them. But we didn't do an amnio as there were too many risks.
Anyway enough about me, I hope you are all well. I think about every one of you here and pray you are all ok.
Take care

Aurora · 06-01-2005, 03:39 PM

SUMI!

Lovely to hear from you honey! I know that having an ed and being pregnant must seriously mess with your thoughts and emotions. On the one hand you just want to be a mum, nurture the baby growing inside you, whilst on the other you still have that ed 'need' to not gain weight and to be 'thin'. I put the word 'thin' in that way because the thinness we strive for is a general feeling of thinness that forever eludes us even when we are emaciated and essentially dying from the 'need'.

I am so excited for you though, a little precious baby girl is growing within you. Soon you will get to meet her face to face. What a beautiful and amazing thing to experience. I love children. They truly are precious, and I know your baby girl will be so loved. That makes me truly smile.

You should be so proud of yourself for maintaining a healthy intake, even though it scares you so much and probably feels very alien and wrong in many respects. It is no small accomplishment for you, and the best thing is that it is the gift of love that you feel for your baby that is keeping you going.

I am doing Ok. I have been having extreme variations in my mood and emotions. I dip very low sometimes, but somehow have managed to stop just short of ending it all. That sounds so melodramatic today because I feel very positive today that life is filled with possibilities. But just this weekend I felt low enough that I really nearly did do something stupid to end my misery. Luckily, thanks to my dog and several packs of cigarettes and a very long sit on a park bench in the middle of the night, I managed to talk myself round to giving myself another try.

The way I see it is that I have to persevere a little longer. I have worked so damned hard at keeping myself very sick, at essentially trying to torture myself to a slow and painful demise. But I really haven't worked very hard at trying to learn how to live. I can always fall back into my headlong rush to self annihilation if my attempts at living do not go well... but first surely I must see if i can work hard at actually TRYING to live... not to just exist in limbo, not quite dying,not quite living. I have been stuck in my ed world so long I have no actual memory of life without it to some degree or other. But who says I cannot give it a shot anyway.

I am rambling now so I will leave it at that.

Please know that I am here for you whenever you need me. And I look forward to hearing more about your baby. Hang in there my friend, you are amazing.

love and hugs from H xoxox

juicy*lucy · 06-02-2005, 08:24 AM

Aurora and Sumi! My two favourite people!!

Oh my god, I feel so bad for not taking more time to come here and see how you both are. You have so much going on in your lives right now and I'm sorry for getting so wrapped up in my own stuff that I haven't been here for you both. I'm sorry as well that my replies to you are not, perhaps, as thoughtful as usual, they probably don't say very much that is useful. but I mean well - I'm getting my words all scrambled today and I've just started a new job so I don't have much time online like I used to.

Aurora - I continue to think about you most days, hoping that you are okay and that life is treating you better, like you deserve. Your latest post sounds so positive which is fantastic!! I'm so, so pleased that you are going to try living - dying is the easy way out, and it's what the anorexia wants. You don't have to give in to her, because there is so much more out there for you. You will be rewarded for learning to live, and in time, learning to love your life. It is hard, hard work some days, but the benefits of being able to remember each day and having the strength to do things far outweigh the feeling of hunger. I can't really explain it, today I'm not very good with words

but I feel having a go at life is the best thing for you. I really do.

Sumi - 6 months in? My goodness, how time flies. You are doing so, so well, I hope you are proud of yourself because pregnancy is difficult for most women but for any of us...you are such a strong person to be doing so well, I only hope that if I have kids I can be as strong as you are. You are an inspiration to me. Take each day as it comes, and know that you can deal with it because you prove to yourself that you can, every single day. And it'll be worth every second when you have your baby girl with you. If you're feeling down, just remember that it'll all be worth it in the end.

As for myself, things have been a bit rocky for the last month or so. I had a really hard time at my old job, they tried to change my job and then when I complained to the director about it they made me redundant. I have a new job now which I like, the office and people and work are great, but I still have to deal with my old director over things like holiday pay (which they never gave me) and I'm thinking about an employment tribunal which would be a real strain on me, and I'm not sure if I'll go through with it. I've spent a lot of time crying recently - real, hysterical tears - and I just get the feeling that although I have so much good in my life and people who love me, I still don't love myself enough. I think that's what makes me sad - there's still a part of me that doesn't love me and wants me to be 'scrawny' (as mum called me the other day) and skinny and ill, and yet I can't have that because I can't hurt my boyfriend and my family...so it's just a constant battleground in my head between what I know is right and what I wish could be right, and it just makes me so tired. I've been off anti-depressants for nearly 3 years now but something is making me think maybe I need them right now. Maybe I can't get through this on my own. I don't know... I've just come in to edit this post as well, I can't believe I forgot to say... it's not that big a deal for some people but I made myself sick yesterday, and 3 times in total over the last 3 weeks. Not really that much of a big dea; I suppose, I haven't told anyone because I'm so ashamed of myself. I really can't get into that lifestyle again.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. I will write to you both soon, properly, where I say something helpful for you both. You both mean a lot to me, I hope you know that, and I really hope that things are good and getting better for you.

Much Love,
Lucy xxx

sumi · 06-02-2005, 09:34 AM

Lucy, that's so bizzare that you replied, I just came to the boards to ask where you were. I'm sorry you aren't doing well and completely sympathize with you as I too was in a similar situation regarding work. All I can tell you is at the end of the day a job is just a job and we are all just numbers. Make sure you take care of yourself and your relationships cause when it is all said and done those are the things that stay close to you. I almost ruined my relationship with my current husband because of that job and my ED was out of control and after everything was said and done I meant nothing to them. Please, please don't let a job take you down, if you are unhappy try to find something else because when you are unhappy with one thing everything else seems to follow suit. The ED gets worse, the mood swings get worse and it's not healthy for you. Take my advice honey, I love you and care about you.

Aurora - I am amazed at your wisdom sometimes, I never think about things the way you do and when I read your post I was so happy because not only are you seeing things in such a wonderful way you are teaching and encouraging others on this board to think in that perspective. You are right about everything, you have spent so much time trying to not live that you really don't know what it means to be alive. You are a wonderful caring person and I'm glad we have you hear. Hang in there and fight with all youv'e got cause you are worth it and you are special and deserve the best.

Anyway sorry guys but I have to go as my boss keeps walking in!
Take care or yourselves and love you