Friday, September 21, 2012

ED Reflections, no. 7

Holy balls it's early, eh? You might be wondering why I'm up so early on a Friday morning, and you'd be right, because this is nuttzo. The reason I'm up so early (5 a.m.!) is that I'm the best wife in the world. Yup. And the best wife in the world agreed to get up early to wait in line at the Apple store for the iPhone 5 release so that David can get an iPhone 5 and start making prototypes and molds for his iPhone 5 Popsockets. And yes, I do realize that lotsa peeps get up at five a.m. everyday, but I'm no longer one of those people, and it was pretty absurd when my alarm this morning went off that early.

So here I am, sitting with my Apple computer amidst a bunch of Apple freaks who just couldn't live without an iPhone 5 for another day. Geez. And, not surprisingly, they are mostly male, and prolly talking frantically about their Linked In profiles or something.

Whew. OK, rant over. But David owes me.

Today's post picks up where my last ED Reflections post left off, namely, with me complaining about how I started yakking. I don't want to add too much detail to that, exactly, but I will say that from the time of my first purge--eighteen--until I was about twenty-one years old, I consistently struggled with disordered thoughts and periods of binging and purging.

By the time I had turned twenty or twenty-one, however, I was living in Boulder in a dorm specifically for "scholars," i.e. people who could beat the school average of C-. I was happy here, and met and began dating my only serious college boyfriend. But binging and purging quickly became the only way that I could deal with stress and the big, fatty meals that our chef prepared for us. It's also around this time that I finally confessed to my parents that I was bulimic and began seeing a therapist.

My first therapist was a bit of a nightmare. She was about forty-five to fifty years old and usually wore mini-skirts to our sessions. (And I mean mini-skirts.) I didn't dislike her because she wore mini-skirts per se, though we did lack a deeper connection that made any kind of real recovery possible. In general she just didn't get me, even to the point that she suggested I'd been abused as a girl when I'm pretty (mega) confident that I wasn't.

I stayed in therapy from a few months to a year, until I hit a good streak of time where I was lessening or quitting my ED behaviors. That is, after a couple of good weeks, I decided to quit. Ha. Classic and idiotic therapy move.

Unfortunately, from that time until the age of about twenty-five, I just continued on my crap-path of trying to get by. I was usually desperate to lose weight and thus constantly dieting and thus frequently binging and purging. Hint: starving yourself makes you go berserk when you finally do eat. This seems obvious now, though at the time I didn't feel like I had any other choice.

I just felt trapped. So trapped, and scared, and even though I didn't realize it then, angry too.

OK, with that I'll leave it. It's not freezing outside, but my fingers are starting to get cold and confused about what they're supposed to do with the keys on my keyboard.

I hope you all have a wonderful fall weekend! Eat something pumpkin!

*Will you get an iPhone 5? Do you hate Apple products? Will you get an iPhone 5 even though you hate Apple products (and culture)?

4 comments:

  1. I'm kind of a stereotypical neanderthal guy when it comes to sharing feelings, so I just wanted to quickly say two things:

    1) I'm very impressed with your ability to share personal things. I envy that, don't really know how to do it, and sometimes wish I did.

    2) It took me waaaaay too long to realize this post was not turning into a story about how your husband had to see a doctor because he was a little too excited for more than four hours. Waaaaaaaaay too long. Medical abbreviations are fun.

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    1. Thanks, Mike. Actually, now that I know people are reading--even if it is only five of you--it is a bit harder to post stuff that is really intimate and has the potential to make me look weak, stupid, cry-baby-ish, etc. But, what the hell!
      P.S. I'll try to do a few more penis-inspired posts for you soon. (Cough. Perv. Cough)

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  2. Ummmm, I disagree. Sometimes my husband shares way too much personal info. For instance, the fact he admitted he was thinking of penises while reading your post. Perhaps too much. I don't know. But just maybe.

    We will not be getting the IPhone5. In fact we are considering dropping the data plan on the cell phones and just going back to texting. Saves $100 a month.

    If you want personal, my husband thought I was bulemic when we were dating because I used to use the bathroom after every meal. Apparently he would hover outside the door. Turned out I was just brushing my teeth and checking my hair. What? The relationship was too new to kiss with garlic breath.

    I think it shows a lot of spunk not only to blog about your ED, but to do it while in line at the Apple store with tons of peeps around. That sounds very healthy to me!! Kicking that ED to the curb!

    Also I think sometimes people read TOO much into a situation. Not everything goes back to life at age five.

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  3. $100 a month?!! Ugh. Phone companies suck, yes? I could never afford a smartphone until David's salary began subsidizing my $18,000/yr graduate student salary (cha-ching!!!), but now I'm totally hooked. I'm addicted and I feel so dirty but I can't stop...
    But seriously, I am actually embarrassed that I have an iPhone 5. I am not rich enough, or important enough, or vain enough, or conceited enough to have one, and yet here I am, installing iBooks on my phone so I can read my geeky books while waiting in line to buy chard at the farmer's market. #cliché
    That's kind of sweet that your husband was worried enough to wait outside the bathroom and listen for yakking sounds...he must've liked you a lot, and not necessarily just because you always seemed to have fresh breath. (I bet your spunk reeled him in too!)
    And p.s. thanks for the ED/Apple blogging props--you're right, and I totally didn't think about it that way! I think I'll treat myself to a new iPhone app as a reward:-)

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