WordPress: Wanna/Thinspo Free?

So I took a stroll over to blogger and there are like hundreds of blogs that are wanna/thinspo-ish. Now, maybe there’s some underground community on wordpress that I don’t know about, but I’m pretty sure most of us here know the “who’s who” of eating disorder blogs, and if there are any wanna blogs, they aren’t tagging their posts with “anorexia” or “bulimia” or anything else ED related. Now, I suppose that’s a good thing that there aren’t any; maybe wordpress is the last social media site to go untouched by pro-ana stuff, but now that I think about it, I find it really hard to believe there are NO blogs out there dedicated to the subject. At least, I’ve never come across one. Granted, I’ve never really stepped outside into the community until recently, so I may just be out of the loop. But the content over there in blogger-land is very different from the content here on wordpress.

I have to say I am proud of the fellowship here; we do our best not to encourage dangerous behavior, but we also make sure to support one another on a human level. We interact and let each other know we know where one another is coming from. We post with intellect, we post with wit, we post with humour, and most of all, we post rawness; a rawness you will never find in a blog that posts pictures of waif-like girls in stilletos and black thigh-high socks. At the risk of sounding pompous (again), I truly believe this ED community here on wordpress is something rare, and I’m truly honored to be part of it.

Now, don’t mistake my proudness for pro-ana-ness. I’m not proud to have an eating disorder. Sitting on the toilet today after my laxatives finally kicked in, I thought, “Wow, I have a college degree, a husband, a wonderful home, a job, a family, and love, and all I have to show for it is this moment: sitting on the toilet, enduring stomach cramps, emptying out my bowels, worried that I will be late to work.” I’m not proud of this. I’m not proud of what I do. Scarlett wrote in her most recent entry that we use these eating disorders as safety nets, because without them we may be nothing (at least that’s how I interpreted the entry), and sometimes I do feel that way. But what’s worse? Being nothing, or risking not becoming something great because you’d rather be starving/bingeing/purging/shitting? Would I rather have moments like the ones on the toilet today, or moments where I actually accomplish something worthwhile, like starting my own cupcake business (even if I fail)?

I’m not proud of all that. But I am proud of the fact that we are not afraid to talk about it. We are not afraid to show the world that we have our imperfections, our faults, our defects. This is real life. This is what it’s like to have an eating disorder, and I think the ED community here on wordpress do a wonderful job exposing them for what they are: ugly, deceitful, cunning, baffling diseases that slowly drain us of everything good.

I won’t lie. I’ve posted pics and I’ve posted stats. I don’t want to put myself above anybody, because I won’t be a hypocrite. But the people here on wordpress have kept me grounded, and I believe if I were a writer over there at blogger, I would get sucked right back into that behavior. So, thank you to my regular readers and commenters, without you and your heart-felt blog entries, I wouldn’t be as grounded as I am.

Truth is a Dirty Word

People don’t like it when we lie and pretend we are something else that we’re not. But when we finally open up and say who we really are, we are chastised for being immoral. We are looked down upon because of our selfish ways or our values or the way we live our lives.

A classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I could put on a smile and pretend like my life is all in order. Why shouldn’t I? I could blog about my two-story home, my loving husband, my job,  our gated community with hardly any crime, our great marriage, etc. But then people may get upset because that would be bragging.

Or I could talk about how when I got together with my husband, he wasn’t legally divorced yet and our small, Bible-thumping town just about exiled us out of the county. Or about how when our small, two-bedroom house burned down I was on the verge of going completely insane, cutting up my legs and starving myself to death. But then people would get upset because I was being overly dramatic.

It’s a lose-lose.

My life has both good parts and bad parts, but regardless, it’s no better or worse than anybody else’s. And when you take morals and ethics out of the equation, no matter what I do, as long as I’m not hurting anybody else, it really is what it is. There’s no room for judgement, because at the end of the day, whatever I’ve done has happened and I can’t take it back.

People are so damn curious about eating disorders, and then when they finally read about how they really are, they point fingers and say how selfish we are. They blame us for damaging impressionable young girls who think they are fat. They balk when reading about how we are able to eat a dozen donuts and more in one sitting and then puke it all back up when we’re done. They ask stupid questions, like “You know you are killing yourself, right?” They almost always see it as a choice we are making more than a mental illness that has the highest mortality rate of all mental disorders.

So I have an eating disorder. Does that completely take away my right to dream of having children? Until I actually have children of my own, my thoughts and dreams are just that: thoughts and dreams. We are not our thoughts until we put those thoughts into action. Regardless if we are thinking of having children, thinking of having a one-night stand, thinking of slapping someone upside the face, thinking of downing a whole bottle of pills in order to kill ourselves, our thoughts are not our actions, because thoughts can be changed. So why the judgement? It’s like, what do you want me to do? Magically stop myself from wanting to have children? Let me take my magic wand out of my asshole so I can do that for you.

I work as a substance abuse counselor and 100% of my clients are court-mandated to be in my program. That means 100% of my clients were caught either selling or doing illegal drugs. The courts like to label them all addicts or junkies. The normies of the world like to think of them as second-class human beings. People who know nothing about drugs and drug addiction like to assume anybody who does an illegal drug must be an immoral person. When in truth, the majority of my clients are actually very kind, and some of them are better parents, spouses, or friends than some of my own family and friends.

Do I make bad decisions when I’m active in my eating disorder? Yes. I won’t deny that, and I will accept personal responsibility for the things I choose to do. But I never chose to have an eating disorder. Unfortunately, those were the cards I was dealt, and those are the cards I’ve been playing with for the past ten years. Some years I’ve been able to play fairly well. Other years I’ve been able to get out of the game completely. But others I’ve been drawn in, like the gambling addict who loses all his money and desperately tries to win it all back. In the end we only dig ourselves deeper into debt, or in this case, the never-ending cycle of an eating disorder.

Am I a bad influence to those younger than me or those who “want” anorexia? Possibly. But that’s not my fault. I may be co-dependent, but I’m not THAT co-dependent. It’s not my responsibility to “save” anyone, nor is it my responsibility to censor what I say in case someone stumbles across my blog and chooses to follow in my footsteps. That’s on them, whoever “they” are, and I will NEVER omit something that may be damaging to someone else. I don’t have the power to make anyone do ANYTHING, so I will not be ashamed of what I write in here.

You want to know about eating disorders? Read me or any of the blogs linked in my blogroll. Eating disorders ARE selfish, and I’m sorry for that, but it is what it is. If you can’t handle the truth, then look elsewhere for your reading material.

I Think I Fucked Myself

So I made the decision to join a step study (see my previous post). My sponsor is ALSO in this step study, which causes some issues. You see, I’m supposed to email her my food intake at the end of everyday. Needless to say, I’m not totally truthful in these emails and make it seems like I eat more than I really do. My justification is that I eat enough, or at least enough to function. I eat enough to maintain a weight of 80-ish pounds. I am too scared to gain weight, but she thinks gaining weight is an absolute necessity in recovery. Not the end-all, be -all of recovery, but an important part (she is in recovery from anorexia as well).

Now, as you can see in my previous entry, I answered the questions truthfully, admitting to anorexic behaviors and restricting. The next few questions (that will be posted next week) involve talking about my food plan and what I consider to be abstaining from the eating disorder. It also includes developing an action plan to avoid triggers and work recovery. Again, in my previous answers, I admit to things I’m technically not supposed to be doing. My sponsor (and husband) don’t want me to be looking at food porn or thinspo, nor do they want me weighing myself. And yet, I still am. So if I admit to these behaviors in the step study, she will KNOW I am lying. If she knows I’m lying she may discontinue working with me which is something I will have to hide from my husband or else he will flip.

So you see the dilemma I am in. I could quit the step-study, which will look bad. Or I could work the steps around a different program (possibly co-dependency) to avoid the food issues. Or I could be totally open and honest in the study and accept the consequences. Or I can blatantly lie to sail through everything. Or…I could “stretch the truth” and omit the parts I don’t want them to know.

Can you not see the addict in me right now? I’m spending way too much time trying to figure out how to get away with things rather than just surrendering and doing the right thing. And yet, I tell myself I wouldn’t have to hide all this if people would just back the fuck off. I honestly feel people are blowing my eating disorder way out of proportion and I should be able to eat the amount I am without people throwing a fit. I should be able to weigh 80 pounds without people wanting me to gain weight. I should be able to look at skinny women without people judging me.

I really would like to do this step study for my overall well-being. But I just can’t let go of the food/weight stuff. Let me work the damn program for all the emotional stuff I am dealing with.

And yet, a logical person would say, “YOU WOULDN’T BE DEALING WITH ALL THAT EMOTIONAL STUFF IF IT WASN’T FOR YOUR EATING DISORDER.”

I lost a pound from yesterday, so I’m at an even 80 pounds.

I toyed with the idea today that if I do get laid off in the next couple months, or my company shuts down, I will enter outpatient treatment if it’s fully covered. If my husband has an issue with me making that decision, that’s his problem. I feel I’ve come to a point where I would be doing it for me. Even though I don’t feel like I have a problem, it must be if I’m compulsively checking my wordpress or tumblr or scale or BMI or bones or fridge or mirror or…fill in the blank.  I think about it ALL day. And I can even justify that — just THINKING about anorexia makes me feel elated. So I think about it on the way to work, when I’m watching TV, when I’m having sex, when I’m counseling a client, when I’m reading, when I’m going to the bathroom…fuck.

Anorexia in the 80s and 90s

I was reading old articles from the late 80s and early 90s about anorexia. It was during that era that the disease was brought to the media’s attention with the unfortunate death of Karen Carpenter in ’84. Even more light was shed when gymnast Christy Henrich died in 1994 and Tracey Gold documented her public battle with news outlets like People Magazine and Primetime Live.  I look upon these articles and women and think so differently of the disease then than I do now. It’s hard to explain in words, but when I read about the disease then, it almost haunts me to the core. It’s like anorexia was this angel of death that came down and wrapped its long fingers around the hearts of these girls and squeezed them until they died. I look at anorexia (back then) as a frightening, shocking, and disturbing disorder and that if I touched it, I would automatically start to crumble and blow away like ash. And the most frightening part is I look upon those women as pioneers – eating disorder movies on Lifetime did not exist back then, nor did thinspiration or pro-anorexia — these women were some of the first to experience the disease in the public eye.

Now, I understand documented cases of anorexia go back hundreds of years. These women weren’t really “pioneers”. But they were the first that cameras caught glimpses of and journalists had documented. Anorexia then was so heart-breaking and terrifying. Anorexia now? I feel like society and media has stigmatized the disease and anyone who has it is made to feel like they are attention seekers or “emo.” Society has turned it into a “fad diet” and the pro-anorexia movement has turned it into a choice. There’s so much hype around it now that I feel people see it as a phase more than a real mental disorder.

As horrible as this sounds, I like to think of myself as somewhat of a “pioneer” of the disease as well– I developed anorexia around the time pro-anorexia started blooming. I was apart of the wave of girls who were looking on the Underground Grotto and Cerulean Butterfly . Girls were not yet submitting photos of themselves  so we looked at models instead — Kate Moss among one of the biggest of our “thinspirations.” Then anorexia became this HYPE…it was almost “cool” to have an eating disorder and it was like a badge of honor. Everything was a competition and nothing was a real problem anymore. I firmly believe the media has turned this disease into a freakshow and these sites on tumblr and livejournal only make it worse. And the worst part is that I’m still apart of it all (tumblr, posting pics of myself, etc.)!

I often wonder if I would have developed this disease if I had been born in another era. If I hadn’t had Lifetime movies to watch or websites to look at, would I have chosen this as my coping mechanism? Would I have sought comfort through dieting and starvation? Would I have counted calories and obsessed over my weight? Would I be as messed up? I have to admit I don’t think I would have started restricting my food intake if it weren’t for watching eating disorder movies. But then again, even as a young girl watching The Secret Life of Mary Margaret: Portrait of a Bulimic , I was fascinated by the concept of an eating disorder. It was almost magical in a sense where I was always curious to know what it would be like to have one. I wasn’t curious to smoke, or to drink, or to have sex, or do drugs…I was curious as to what it felt like to lose weight by starvation. And even without these movies or websites, my mother put so much pressure on me to be perfect in every way. Looks and appearances and grades were everything — I remember being called a pig and a slob when things were messy, I remember crying in class in front of everyone for getting a B on a test because I knew my mother would ground me, I remember getting yelled at for tearing my stocking on the playground, I remember having to take my pictures over at school because I looked “ugly.” Nothing was good enough. Perfect recipe for an eating disorder, right? But would I have developed one if I had never heard of anorexia or bulimia? I guess I’ll never know.

And even now, when I question whether or not I ever had an eating disorder, if I didn’t, why would I still be hanging onto these behaviors after so long? Why, even in my strongest recovery days, did I constantly worry about weight? Why have I checked if my stomach wass still flat every morning for the past 12 years of my life? I can’t not call this a mental disorder if it’s something that has never gone away. If it was a choice, I’d eventually get bored and move onto something else, right? And in the end, I guess it doesn’t matter how or why or when I developed it. What matters is that I have it and I may always have it unless I made the conscious decision to work towards recovery.

And yet — even when I know great women have died of this — I look upon girls like Tracey Gold or Karen Carpenter or Christy Henrich as idols. And there lies the mental illness….but I can’t help but feel connected to that era. I can’t help but feel connected to all the women who have dealt with this, survived this, or died from this. I can’t help but feel a kinship. I can’t help but mourn for the lost and hope for those who still have hope.

Skinny Gossip

01/26/12, 81 lbs.

I was introduced to the website, Skinny Gossip, a few months before my relapse. I actually refrained from looking at it for fear of triggering myself, but people were fighting over whether or not it was a pro-anorexic site. To appease my curiosity, I went and took a peak. If you really, thoroughly look through the site, you’ll see it’s not really a pro-anorexic site. Although they do offer “starving tips,” a lot of them are mere diet tips. The owner of the website does not promote anorexia, nor does she glamorize the mental disorder. She states this in her disclaimer and claims she just enjoys the “skinny aesthetic.” She does post semi-triggering photos of skinny models and celebrities and does encourage her followers to continue on their paths to ultra thinness, but in a “healthy” way (if that’s even possible).

Now, whether or not you agree with this is a whole ‘nother story. The owner clearly detests fat people and belittles even those celebrities who are at average weights for their heights. She praises celebrities who are on the verge of emaciation. To the owner, as long as you are physically healthy, there really shouldn’t be a problem if you choose to be underweight. This is her philosophy and she diligently tries to maintain a weight of under 100 pounds at all times.

I battle with this on a daily basis. I see my body in the mirror and take pictures like the one above because I’m horribly conceited. I actually like the way it looks and I can see myself relating to the owner of that blog. If I’m physically healthy, what is WRONG with looking this way? Some say it’s not about the weight. It’s about why I’m pushing so hard to be underweight. But what if it was? What if I just liked the way this looked? If you dye your hair blonde year after year despite being a natural brunette, am I supposed to judge you and say you have inner problems you aren’t dealing with?  Or do I just take it for what it is and not over-analyze the fact that maybe you just like being a blonde.

On the other hand, one could say the most healthy way to live is to just accept yourself for who you are. I obviously wouldn’t be striving to be ultra-thin unless I had insecurities or low self-esteem. And yet, on the contrary, I’m a very conceited, attention-seeking person who knows very well she is a beautiful girl. Who knows very well she got lucky in the looks department. Who knows very well she doesn’t need to be 78 pounds in order to be attractive to the opposite sex. So why would any normal human being want to look like a skeleton? Deep-rooted issues or mere preference? And one could argue even the most conceited person is probably more insecure than anyone — hence, the need for attention.

What do YOU think about Skinny Gossip? Do you think the girls who follow the blog religiously, who claim to not have eating disorders, really do have eating disorders? Does the owner have an eating disorder she is just in denial of? I think it’s an interesting thing to discuss — Sort of like the drug addict who says he just likes doing drugs.

At this rate, now that the ED is out in the open, I don’t feel like it’s put too much of a hinderance on my life. Isn’t it only a problem when it begins to affect your life in a negative way? I guess my whole point is, as crazy as the owner of that website sounds, I think she has a valid point. If being this weight doesn’t affect my health, my relationship, my job, my finances, or my sanity, what’s wrong with it?

I will admit to being an attention-seeker. That IS an issue I am willing to say I need to deal with. And maybe that is the underlying reason to this “eating disorder.” At this point though, I really do feel like this is a choice and not a mental disorder. I honestly feel like I am choosing to live this way. I don’t feel like I have a chemical imbalance in my brain, or that some other force is driving me to do the things I do. I will say, however, that the thought of choosing to live any OTHER way scares the living crap out of me, and I think there lies the “eating disorder” part of it, or the “non-choice” part of it. As in, this is NOT a choice. I can sit here all night and try to analyze and justify…in the end I’m either going to live a long health life as a thin person or I’ll eventually hit a rock bottom and/or have one of those “A-ha” moments where I come to my senses and live like a “normal” person. Only time will tell.

EDIT: Just read all the comments regarding my last two entries. Thank you to everyone who supported me. I can see where both sides are coming from. And if I could just say a few things (and the following is to the general public, NOT any specific person or commenter):

1.) Addiction and eating disorders are seen as very selfish. This is why you’ll often see heated debates regarding the subject. “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST EAT” or “WHY CAN’T YOU DO IT FOR ME?” If it was truly that easy, there wouldn’t be millions of addicts in the world, nor would the RELAPSE RATE of eating disorders and/or addictions be so INCREDIBLY HIGH. I will admit that yes, they are selfish, but we don’t just wake up one day and say, “Hey, I’m going to hurt all the people I truly care about by hurting myself.” That’s totally fucking ignorant if anyone thinks we feel that way (pardon my french).

2.) I can stand commenters calling me a whiny bitch. I can stand commenters rolling their eyes when reading my posts. But the thing I cannot stand is when people judge my husband and/or relationship based on my choices. As in, “She must have an insensitive husband if he doesn’t notice what she looks like,” or “They must have a really shitty relationship based on the things that she does.” People ASSUME, ASSUME, ASSUME. I know it’s WEIRD that my husband doesn’t really notice my weight. I know it’s HARD TO BELIEVE we have a deep, loving, committed relationship when I’ve hid so many things from him. But there IS such a thing as unconditional love — despite what I have put my husband through, he’s willing to support me and stand by my side.

3.) I know it may not seem like it, but I do have one foot in the recovery pool right now. Those of you who are just “tuning in” to my blog, I had a relapse diary over at www.opendiary.com for six months documenting my “weight loss journey” of total destruction. The diary has been chucked and I’m currently working with a sponsor in a half-assed attempt to get back into recovery. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I even have a problem, but for now, I’ll play along because my relationship depends on it. I do get a lot out of it, and I know the longer I work with my sponsor the better I’ll feel. I’m not going to lie and say my life is perfect, but I’m working the 12-steps not because of the eating disorder, but for all the other crap I have to deal with on a daily basis (work, stress, lack of motivation, depression, etc.). And when you work on all that stuff, the food/weight stuff really just takes care of itself. (And there lies the DENIAL — the entire post above I spent trying to convince everyone I had no other issues. HA!)

EDIT EDIT: All blogroll requests have been added. For those of you who don’t know how to add a blogroll, it’s under your dashboard under “Links.”

Thinspo

The horrible thing about thinspo is that I don’t find the majority of the girls in them to be what I see as thin. To me, they just look average. I think I am as skinny as most of the girls who are recognized as thinspiration, and therefore, they aren’t thin enough. Thinspo to me would be someone who was like 60 pounds. Thinness is definitely subjective, which is why I don’t believe people when they say I am too thin.