“I had more friends when I hated myself!”
I proclaimed the statement above during an exasperated, confused, rejected moment of my last week. I’ve come a long way on my road to recovery from an eating disorder but now I’m fighting a new demon. My current burdens are related to relationships.

I have a theory (as I usually do) about my current struggles. When I was stuck in my eating disorder, that is all I knew, all I cared for, all I focused on. People were an afterthought. I struggled with relationships while in my eating disorder as well, but I let nothing stand in the way of ED and I. My relationship with ED was the only one I allotted any effort. I was the perfect Juliet, ready to kill myself in order to be with my Romeo (ED).

My eating disorder is now gone and I’m left to face real people. I never learned how to have true adult relationships. My eating disorder started at a young age (sometimes I think as early as two years old). By the time I was 18 it was in full swing; threatening to take my life. My relationship with ED was NOT a healthy, adult relationship. It was dripping with neglect, distain, malice, manipulation and fear.

Now, when faced with the ups, downs, conflict and compromise of real relationships I am at a loss! I’m 29 years old and don’t know how to navigate a safe, balanced friendship. Romantic relationships aren’t even “on the menu.” I learned from an early age to depend on one thing and one thing only! ED was ALL that mattered. ED gave me everything and took everything away. ED was my God. When I banished ED from my life I needed to find a way to fill the hole left behind.

At first, I filled it with activities. Staying busy helped for awhile but in the end left me burnt out and just as empty. I began filling the void with people. People are fun and caring. Relationships are an important part of life. It seemed to work until I found myself in a cycle of disappointment and abandonment, losing one friend after another. I was depending on them too much. I expected my friends to be my everything. The problem with making someone my savior is that people are intrinsically flawed. People will NEVER fill me up.

I am thrilled to be where I am today in recovery from my eating disorder. I have freedom from food, weight and obsessive exercise. I no longer look towards binging, purging or starving to make me feel worthy. I truly love myself. My struggles today are with feelings of loneliness. I believe complete recovery is a journey through many stages of growth. This must be my next phase. I accept the challenge. I look forward to the day I can reflect and say, “I used to struggle with having normal relationships but today I am secure and enjoy healthy relationships with friends, family and myself.” Until that day, I focus on staying present in the moment and learning more about my path to complete recovery.

Attachment / Relationship Addiction

One of the many issues I struggle with is abandonment which has lead to attachment disorders and relationship addiction.

I have found a pattern in my relationships. My relationship addiction does not come in the form of romantic relationships. I can string together my life by the people I "attach" to. I seem to hop from one mother-replacement figure to another. I've known this about myself for several years now but can't seem to change the behavior. I HATE THIS ABOUT MYSELF!!!!!!!!!!!

I have spent much of the day angry at myself, no LIVID at myself because I have identified my next "mother / mentor figure." It's really very much out of my control. I don't seem to understand what I'm doing until it's done and my next "victim" is all I can think about. I feel like a vampire, sucking the life out of the people who are nice to me.

I want to stop doing this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These aren't people that I have any real relationship with though... well, sometimes it is but that's only when I've done enough to get them to "take care of me." It's very codependent and manipulative and I CAN'T STAND IT! The realization that I have done it again has really got me depressed. I just want to die! I shouldn't be allowed to be around people. I want to kill myself. The world would be a better place without me. I feel so sorry for the people I put in this position. It's not fair to them.

I seem to attach to very similar people each time, too. One of the first people I remember was a Christian camp counselor. I had this intense conversation with her then kept calling her after the camp to try and hang out.... She was probably in her late 20's and I was only in 6th grade. The other women have been people like dance teachers, school teachers, my old sponsor, a couple therapists... the list goes on. It's pathetic, shameful and excruciating. These woman usually (but not always) have the same kind of characteristics. They are generally older than me, pretty, average size, smart, nurturing, helpful and many times have dark, curly hair. What does this all mean? Most importantly, how do I stop doing this?

The general pattern looks something like this:
-I'm sad or lonely and start a new program of some kind
-I find a woman who is kind enough to listen to my problems
-This woman is helpful and caring
-I want to be around her all the time
-I start thinking about her much of the day: harmless things like, what I want to tell her about a particular incident or wondering what she would think about something
-I start crossing into calling her or e-mailing her more than I know a normal relationship would at this particular point
-I start to read too much into her responses and feel hurt when she doesn't get back to me soon enough or give me the attention I want
-My expectations for her become far greater than any one person can take on
-This period may last as short as a couple weeks to as long as a couple years until eventually I am let down enough times that I get so angry that I end it or she realizes that I have become a "leach" and leaves me

This cycle is self perpetuating as it continues to create the strong sense of abandonment and loneliness thus spurring me toward someone else to "fill me up."

Lord, please make it stop!

Fun

I've been tasked with having fun this weekend. It sounds simple and easy enough. Who knew fun was so subjective!

I was in my therapist's office yesterday, who gave me the "assignment," and I had trouble with it even before I left the office. Is TV fun? Is taking down wallpaper fun? Is finshing paperwork that's been looming over me fun? Is seeing a ballet fun?



I don't even know what FUN is anymore? How can that be? Everything has been distorted. It's just like food. One cookie is okay: tastes good, provides some enjoyment, etc. Twenty cookies bring on emotional and physical pain. This would lead me to believe balance is key. Balance is NO EASY feat. I kept asking my therapist what could be considered fun? I used TV as the example. I often feel like TV is a waste but I spend so much time in front of it. TV provides a much needed break at times, as well as some entertainment but when I've been sitting there for hours I feel physical and emotional pain.

I ended up going to the ballet last night. I enjoyed it but for me it's like an alcoholic taking the first drink. One is never enough. I always want more. I miss dancing more than any other loss in my life. Watching ballet leads me to want to dance again and then I can never get enough. But it IS fun.

Today I slept VERY late, mostly because I was up surfing the web about dancing. I decided to watch "a little" TV before getting my day started. That was almost 6 hours ago and now I've given up. I have soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much I need to do. It's another wasted weekend. Mom wants me to come over for dinner but I don't feel like I deserve it. I feel fat, useless, unworthy, tired, gross.

The need to not feel like this drives me to constantly go, go, go. Then I get overly tired and back to this spot or I give up entirely because I can't seem to make any difference anyway.

I'm in a very sad place right now. I am having immense trouble with my parts, relationships, ED. I don't want to promote this pain to anyone reading. The goal of this blog and in my life is recovery, health, balance. I'm struggling with all that myself right now though.