the cries for help

(continued from previous post... "the perfect patient")

After throwing my oatmeal toppings away, I walked proudly out of the kitchen and went and sat down in the lobby. I felt like doing a strut as I had regained confidence in my ability to control what I ate, even while in treatment. My life was falling apart around me and had been for the last few years, but as long as I could control what I ate, I felt like everything was going to be okay. Though I thought I was in control, something as "simple" as food had complete control over every part of who I was. Every thought, every move, every bite, every action was guided by how much weight I could lose, how much further I could run, and how many calories I could cut out. It was easy for me to think that I had dealt with the anger from my childhood or the many other heartbreaks and let-downs, of which I will touch on later, but the only reason it was easy for me to think all of that was simply because I was numb... to everything. What I didn't realize was that I didn't actually deal with any of those issues, I just stopped thinking about them because the only thing I could think about was food, food, food. There was no healing in my life, there was just numbing. And that's pretty much how I remember feeling during my early twenties... numb.

The problem with numbing... you can't just numb out the bad and only feel the good, you numb it all. Sure, I wasn't sad when I was thinking about food all the time, but I wasn't happy either. I was emotionless, driven only by what went in or out of my body. During that time period my mother once described me as a hollow shell, as if all the life had been sucked out of me. I functioned those years, but I wasn't living. My mind was sold out and my heart went right along with it. My mother was right. Didn't someone say once that mothers always are!?

So, day two at the facility and I've already abandoned God and figured out how to cheat the system... I was off to a great start with my recovery. If I'm really honest, abandoning God made me feel like a bad ass, but somewhere deep down I knew that I still wanted Him. I didn't want the life I had lived with Him before, but there was something about Him I still wanted. I so badly wanted Him to be someone other than who I thought He was, but it just seemed too difficult to figure out. I didn't want a God of rules, but a God without rules I just couldn't understand. I hated formulas, but I needed them if I was to accomplish anything, and that was how I felt about God. None of my formulas to get to Him seemed to be working, so instead of abandoning the formulas, I decided God didn't care and I abandoned Him.

I sat in the lobby after breakfast sorting through my thoughts about God, telling Him I wasn't going to talk to Him anymore, even though I was still talking to Him in that moment. I felt conflicted not knowing who or what to believe. I think I decided I would still ask God for help because I have journal entries in which I did, but I also decided that this time around was going to be my final round of asking. It was as if I was putting God on trial and saying, "OK, prove it!" To be honest I was scared to even consider it so final, to ask one last time. As long as I wasn't asking for help I could still hope that there was help to be offered, but if I asked and didn't receive then all hope would be lost. What does one do without hope? I had desperately pleaded for God to help me months before going into treatment and when it didn't happen (the way I thought it would), I was much too afraid to ever ask again. It was easier for me to think God was pre-occupied than to think He wasn't there, but when it really came down to the questions, I would say it was much easier to think that God wasn't there than to think He didn't care. I'd rather have no god than a god who didn't care.

Girls began to pile back in from the cafeteria after breakfast, running about the lobby and getting ready to separate into their different groups. I looked down the hall and saw Annie and Carson, who had been tranquilized the night before for causing an uprising. They were being escorted to the nurses station, barely half awake as their eyes struggled to stay open. I asked one of the girls why they got so upset last night and she explained that Carson had a panic attack and started to cut herself with a safety pin and when the BHAs tried to stop her, Annie came to her "defense." "Where'd she get the safety pin?" I asked. "It's easier than you'd think to sneak stuff in here," she said "or just to hide stuff and get away with it." She smiled as if she were hiding something, but she also seemed to be one of the sweetest, most innocent girls there. I smiled because even though it was only my second day, I knew exactly what she meant since I had just thrown my oatmeal toppings away without anyone knowing. "I'm Katie," she said quietly with a smile. She asked what I was in for and I told her an eating disorder. "Me too!" she said somewhat excitedly, which I found to be a little odd, but I suppose the excitement was over the fact that we had something in common, not the fact that we both had eating disorders.

Katie was one of the first adolescents that I really liked. She was just so friendly to everyone, but not in an obnoxious way, like someone who is just trying to be nice to everyone. She was mostly just quiet, not going out of her way to come across as someone special, but you realized she was special when you came to her and felt her warmth and her genuine kindness. As we sat on the couch in the lobby Katie explained that Annie and Carson got into trouble all the time. She didn't say anything bad or derogatory towards them but simply just stated facts. I liked that about Katie because it seemed to me that there were plenty of bad or derogatory things to say about Annie and Carson, but she opted not to. She told me they would be put on a sort of behavior probation where they would be monitored 24/7 by a BHA. I didn't know Annie and Carson that well, but I knew they weren't going to like that. As we were talking I looked at Katie's arms. One of her long sleeves was slightly rolled up and I noticed all the cut marks hiding beneath her clothing. I didn't say anything but I couldn't help but wonder what this sweet girl had done to herself, and why. I just didn't understand why. I had always thought that someone cutting them self was simply for attention, but Katie didn't seem to want attention. I felt distracted while we talked as I wrestled with the thoughts in my head.

Liz, the nurse I was quite fond of who checked me in the day before, came from the nurses station and called out that it was time for medication. As girls were lining up for their meds, the morning BHAs started filing in through the front double doors. A few of them asked how my first night was and I said the same thing to most of them, "interesting." I was a girl of few words during that time leading up to treatment and much of the time during. I felt so unlike myself, but then again I truly didn't know who "myself" was. Does anybody, ever? Even after people "find themselves" doesn't life just catch up with them again and they begin to wonder who they are and how they got here or there. I know this seems to be the case with me... a continual cycle of growing and changing, finding comfort in who I am for a short while, only for something else to come my way and shake things up a bit, or sometimes a lot. It is good, yes, I am glad and thankful not to remain stagnant and complacent, but that doesn't minimize the fact that it, life, can be and often is hard.

As the girls got their meds I was told by one of the BHAs that I would be able to meet with a psychiatrist as well as my new therapist that day. "Your dad wanted you to have a Christian therapist," she said, "and since we don't have one here one will be commuting from another location, so it will be later today." I was honestly embarrassed that she said that out loud and really glad that most of the girls were getting their meds so as not to hear. "Great!" I thought to myself, "I'm the only one here that's having a therapist wrangled in because I need to have one who's a Christian. I'm gonna be seen as the typical Christian who only wants to associate with other Christians. I don't even know if I am a Christian." At the time I was much too worried about what other people thought of me to see this as a blessing, which it ended up being, though not right away.

I was more concerned about my meals than I was about meds or therapy so I asked when I would be able to meet with the dietitian. "Probably not until tomorrow because she doesn't come in on Tuesdays," the BHA smiled as she said it. I was livid, though I didn't show it. "I was told that I would be able to meet with the dietitian 'tomorrow' yesterday, and now I'm being told today that I can meet with her tomorrow, what about my meals?" I asked. I could tell that the BHA was slightly nervous about how to answer seeing as how eating disorder patients are likely to snap when it comes to matters of food, just like a drug addict would if you tried to take away their drug. "Well," she paused, "you'll have to just keep eating what they assign you until you can meet with her." I tried not to cry. She could tell I was upset, "but the dietitian will definitely be here tomorrow." I was just as upset about feeling mis-led as I was about what I would have to eat. If there was one thing that I could not stand it was being told what I wanted to hear instead of the truth, which is kind of ironic because I was always so good at telling people what they wanted to hear instead of the truth. Maybe that's why it made me so mad when it happened to me, because it was something that I didn't like about myself.

Before lunch I was also informed that I was put on exercise restriction, meaning I wasn't allowed to exercise until I gained weight. What I didn't realize was that their idea of exercise meant any movement at all in which calories might be burned (at least that's what it felt like to me). I wasn't even allowed to walk to the cafeteria, which all the girls did because it was just up the hill. Instead, I and two other girls who were on exercise restriction, Katie being one of them, had to wait for a van to come pick us up at the front doors of the lodge and be driven a total of five seconds to the cafeteria. It was, to say the least, in my opinion, ridiculous. I was pissed about not being able to exercise, especially thinking about the amount I had to eat without the option of throwing it up, or taking a laxative, or now being able to burn it off. I wasn't in the van long enough to think too much about it and once we got to the cafeteria I was just so glad to be out of the lodge that I literally stepped out into the cold and wiped the lodge smell off of me.

The cafeteria was big and sort of divided into two dining areas. The girls were divided into two groups... those with eating disorders and those without. The girls without eating disorders all sat where ever they wanted and were able to go through the line and get whatever they wanted to eat, while the girls with eating disorders were confined to one table monitored by two BHAs. One BHA would sit at the table the whole time while the other would follow the girls through the food line. The "benefit" of having an eating disorder in treatment was that you got to go first through the line, but if you had an eating disorder then more than likely you didn't even want to go through the line, and the girls who actually wanted to eat had to wait longer, so it wasn't really a benefit to anyone.

The eating disorder girls all had meal cards which they had to hand to the servers and the servers would then fill their trays with what was on the cards. The meal cards were prepared each few days by the patient and the dietitian and together they would pick out certain food groups to comprise a meal. Since I had yet to meet with the dietitian I didn't have a meal card, and I wasn't allowed to pick for myself so I had to wait at the table for someone to bring me my assigned meal. Thankfully it was a mixed salad with tofu, "yes!" I thought to myself, but it was the biggest salad with the largest amounts of tofu I had ever seen in my life, "daggum it!". Even if it was just mostly lettuce, I wondered how the hell I was going to fit this mountain of leaves and vegetables into my stomach cavity that was three times smaller.

To take a few steps back and glance at another snapshot before entering treatment, I had lived and labeled myself as a vegetarian for the last year and was greatly considering becoming a vegan. (Katie and I had talked earlier that morning about us both being vegetarians, another exciting commonality.) Though I get the cool vibe associated with being a vegan because it requires a lot of discipline, keep in mind that it is also very easy to be a vegan when you have an eating disorder. I was basically eating salad leaves and fruit except for when I would binge and purge. I think for me to be a vegan just would have meant to stop binging. I had a way of disguising my problems by associating them with "normal" life styles or medical diagnoses. In another instance I told my family I was lactose intolerant, when really I was binging on ice cream and sweets and then making myself throw up. I thought it was genius.

It may have been genius if I wanted to continue to live as a functioning addict, but I have the journal entry dated 11/29/06 where I recognized that I had a problem and that I didn't want it anymore. It was on a trip to South Africa where I found myself binging and purging all through out the trip simply because I had broken one eating rule. Once I broke that one rule, as an extremist, I couldn't get back on track. At the time I didn't realize being on track, for me, meant anorexia (because of my severe food restriction and over-exercising), I just thought it meant I was being healthy. Getting off track, binging and purging, was what brought me to a place of admitting I had a problem. Getting help was going to be a long process because my idea of getting healthy was just another addiction, another disease, that I wasn't willing to admit I had. Nonetheless, at least admitting I had a problem of some sort was a baby step in the right direction. Much like Bob Wylie in What About Bob? I don't think I could have handled dealing with all of my problems at once.

My journal entry from that day in South Africa, November 29th, 2006 was as follows:

Today I realize I don't want to live my life in bondage, and even more so, in secret. Today I want to stop pretending like nothing is wrong with me. Something is wrong with me. Making yourself eat until you feel sick just because and then making yourself throw up is a problem. Not only is it a problem, it's disgusting, and I'm disgusted with myself. I don't know how to go about getting the help I want and need. I know the church is there, but it's hard to know who to talk to who won't talk to others, especially since I've been a leader in the church. I feel so ashamed of myself because until this trip I had gotten in great shape and lost all my weight by exercise and nutrition- the "right" way, the long way, the hard way. I really worked hard. And on this trip when I started gaining weight, I started taking the easy way out. Everyone thinks I'm lactose intolerant. I'm not lactose intolerant, I'm bulimic. When you feel you have to hide what you're doing, you should know it's a problem.

Once I admitted I had a problem I did okay... for a few hours. But even after deciding that I didn't want to live in bondage anymore and that I needed to change, I found myself repeating every behavior I had vowed to get rid of. Addiction is a terrible beast, a monster that truly can not be controlled if it doesn't want to be. Even an addict who wants to get help can't just simply stop what he or she is doing by choice. I had made a choice to stop, but I was stuck in a cycle too far in to be able to get out on my own.

After just a few hours I recorded these words:

11pm. This is no way to live. I hate it. I did it again. I don't even want to write it out because I am so ashamed. Tonight I gave in again. My stomach hurts, and I'm sure it's under tremendous stress, which is probably another reason why my skin is so bad. I keep blaming it on other people, but I really think I'm stressing myself out. I know I'm stressing my body out. I need help, and even though I feel so confused right now, the Lord seems to be the only one I can call for help. Of course, I honestly don't know if He's actually helping me, or if I'm really truly calling on him, or just saying that cause I know I should. I have to keep reminding myself that this is just temporary- this trip. Of course my problems will continue to follow me if I don't deal with them. I'm so unhappy. What has happened to me? I'm run down, I'm worn out. I'm tired of trying to keep up- with everyone- with society, with Christians, with my family. I'm running a race I can't win so I don't even feel like trying anymore. I know I need to talk to somebody, I just can't seem to take the step to do it. Knowing and taking action are two different things.

I will never forget that night. I fell on my knees on a hard wooden floor as a party was going on in the living room beneath me and I begged God to take all the pain away. I asked Him to either take it all away or to please not wake me up the next morning. I honestly would have rather died than wake up another day and be stuck inside of my head. I wasn't actively suicidal because I had the smallest bit of hope that if it could all just go away then I wanted to live, but if living meant nothing more than what I felt in that moment then I just wanted God to take me out. I begged God to bring me Home that night and allow me to see Jesus. "I'm going to bed now," I cried, "please just don't wake me up unless this will all go away, OK?" I was as sincere as a little child asking their mother or father to lay with them in bed until they fell asleep. I was terrified to wake up again, alone in my struggle.

As God would have it, I woke up the next morning, but nothing had changed. I assumed He understood that I meant for the pain to go away as soon as I woke up, not at some point down the road after being woken up. My heart felt heavy and incredibly sad as I felt somewhat ignored and neglected by God. I assumed my problems weren't big enough for Him to deal with. After all, with so much else going on in the world, what are my problems to Him?

That day while going around a mountain pass, I felt like my mind had been completely taken over. I sat silently on the back seat of an SUV, surrounded by my parents, my younger sister and her friend who was driving. As he zipped around each corner all I could think about was how much I wanted to die. I was gripping so tightly to the edge of my seat and I just kept thinking, "I want to be fucking shot. Please, just let it be done quickly and have somebody shoot me." All I could think about over and over again was being shot. I was memorized by the thought of it. It was like I was aware that I was going crazy and there was nothing I could do about it. I finally asked if we could stop the car and get out. We pulled over on the side of a ledge and everybody got out to take a breather. No one had any clue what was going through my mind. I looked over the ledge and thought to myself "if I just jump, this could all be over."

I think there was a beautiful view over-looking the mountains of South Africa, but I really don't know... all I remember thinking about was death waiting at the bottom of the mountains. I stared like a person obsessed with an idea that they couldn't get out of their mind. The bottom of a mountain had never looked so beautiful until that moment.

"God, I can't take this..." but before I could finish my mom walked over to me.

It was a few days later on that trip that I would confess to my parents that I had a problem and that I needed help. They promised to get me help as soon as we got back to America and kept a close watch on me the rest of the time. Despite their efforts, I still binged and purged, often in the middle of the night and always before going to take a shower. I thought admitting the problem would just made it go away, I didn't realize it was only the first step in a long list of steps to overcome addiction. Upon returning to America I told my parents I was fine, and that I was just out of control because of the stress of the trip. It would be another 2-3 months of living my life still in bondage, knowing I wanted out but not being sure how to get out, before entering treatment. I lived in a constant state of fear... fear of having a single bite of food because I was certain I wouldn't be able to stop if I started. I feared going home at the end of the work day, I feared just being awake, stuck in my thoughts and tormented by the site of my body.

One night in January of 2007 after having dinner at my sister's house and "giving it back" in her bathroom, I set out to drive home. I was discusted with myself as I drove and the only way I knew how to deal with my feelings of discust was to numb them out. I had already made up my mind to binge and purge as soon as I got home. My mind fought with itself as I went back and forth between whether or not I would. It wasn't even a matter of wanting to or not wanting to, I literally felt like I had no control, like my body craved something, and without my permission it had already decided that it needed to binge and purge. If I were to walk into that house there was no way I would be able to keep myself from doing it. I cried because I didn't want to do it anymore, but I felt like I didn't have a choice. It was like I was two people duking it out in one body. The eating disorder literally had a voice of it's own that over powered any bit of sense I tried to make.

As I drove home I cried and cried and begged God to take the feelings and the urges away. When I felt no relief I just kept driving. I knew I couldn't go home so I just kept driving. I drove to a town an hour and a half away from home and I parked in an empty parking lot. I sat there in my car and I screamed and cried. I let God have it, again. How many times had He heard me come running to Him? How many times had He heard me ask Him to take it all away? How many more times was I going to have to ask for healing? After screaming I sat silently only to hear the sound of my breath and the snot dripping from my nose. I waited for that moment, that triumphant moment when God shows up and light shines in and your whole body gets warm. I waited to feel His arms around me and the whisper of His voice to say "It's okay, my child, I am here." I waited in silence, breathing like a two year old who just wore herself out from a temper tantrum. I whispered one more time... "please, God, please, just show up."

Nothing happened.

So I waited.

Still nothing happened.

In that moment I felt so unworthy of God's love that my heart just completely broke. It broke so much more than it had ever broken before that I literally felt as if I couldn't breath. I did the only thing I knew to do. I opened my car door, stuck my finger down my throat and made myself throw up. Even when there was nothing left to rid my body of, I kept trying because I simply could not sit with the thought that God didn't love me.

That was the hardest I had ever prayed in my life. I couldn't have added any more meaning or any more faith to my prayers. That was quite simply all I had in me, and where I was expecting at least a whisper in response, nothing happened. I couldn't comprehend what that meant. Wasn't God supposed to heal if I asked in Jesus' name? Wasn't I supposed to find Him if I sought Him with all of my heart? Wasn't He the one who said if you had faith the size of a mustard seed that nothing would be impossible unto you? At one point later on in treatment I remember thinking, "my fucking mustard seed has been planted, sprouted and over-grown and now the birds that rest in the branches at the top are shitting on me down below."

Wasn't God at the very least supposed to care?

God's silence was so loud it made my ears hurt. After feeling as though God was never going to heal me I started to realize I needed somebody elses help, anybody elses help. But even after I finally drove home that night after sitting in the parking lot, it would still be another few weeks of binging and purging before telling my parents that once again I really needed help. Never did it cross my mind that God would use a method other than snapping his fingers and making it all magically disappear to heal me. Never did it cross my mind that God was asking me to wait just a little bit longer, that He had something bigger and better in store for my healing and He wasn't going to let me die along the way. Never did it cross my mind that while I was begging God to do something, anything, He was already unfolding a plan that would lead to life abundant as I had never known it before.

No, I did not think or know any of those things at that point prior to treatment, I just knew that I was angry and alone and well on my way to telling God I was done with Him, which I did the first night in the facility. It was just the night before I found myself sitting in the cafeteria that second day with salad mountain sitting in front of me. I didn't know the dietian yet, but I hated her already, for salad mountain was going to be impossible to finish.

At one point in my life I might have looked at what seemed impossible before me and approached it with the mindset of repeating over and over again: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." I once won a hot dog eating contest that way, just repeating that verse over and over, and beat out six guys... but I was also bulimic, so I had the advantage. But that day in the cafeteria, after all I had been through and the countless times I had asked God for help or for Christ to strengthen me, like my time in South Africa or that night in my car, I looked at what seemed impossible before me, even if it was just lunch, and with a tone of anger and hatred in my voice whispered, "fuck it!"

Eventually I will get to the point where I see God's silence not as neglect and abandonment but as taking precise and intentional care of me. I will come to know Him not has a god who withholds love and grace and mercy just to watch me suffer but who gives me those gifts freely, despite my selfish efforts and my dirty mouth, so that I might learn to rest in Him and find my worth like I had never it known. But even still, that doesn't come until later in the story. For now I am even more so determined to do life on my own so as never to allow myself to be hurt by anyone, including God, again. In retrospect, salad mountain wasn't so big in and of itself, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back in which I found myself saying "I can do all things through my own strength." A very dangerous place to be.

To be continued...