Ups and downs

Maybe I'm experiencing a delayed reaction to seeing my weight.  I'm reacting to something and I don't know what it is.

I had this dream last night that I went home and lasted one week and was hospitalized again.  This time I readily went to the psych ward.  It was so familiar...the disappointment in the eyes of my GP that I had failed again; nurses bringing me the tube feed supplies; me being peaches and cream on the outside for everyone and yet completely dead inside again...

Why would waking up after this dream make me miss that?  It is an odd sensation to miss such an undesirable life.  I know how it could be explained:  wanting the safety and familiarity or that life even if it's a negative familiar; it was predictable - the days out of the hospital were hell, as were the days in hospital but it was a routine...crash and burn and be picked up again - repeat.

I have this desire to have what I call an 'Ensure day'.  I just don't feel like eating.  It's not about the calories or the food.  I don't need my 'safe foods' (those don't really exist for me anymore), I just want the day off from eating.  I don't want to decide what to eat and I could just eat what my meal plan says for today but I don't feel like that either.  I would rather just not bother today and hook myself up to my tube feed overnight.  It's so messed up and I guess being able to recognize that it's messed is an advancement in my thinking.

I also know that this will pass.  That it is just a day that I have to get through and that if not tomorow a day in the near future will be brighter again.

It's hard right now too because this program is in its infancy, the staff cannot understand what it's like for a person to miss that life.  Most have had such little exposure to eating disorders that they have no idea of the life I came from.  They can't understand that tubes and IVs were the norm for the last 4 years until I got here.  Any of my adult IP treatment used parenteral nutrition.  The last time I ate adequately for so many months was easily 9 years ago.  Any time since there has been punctuated with days of fasting or really bizarre behaviour like not eating all day and then eating junk at night.  There were the inevitable q4-5 monthly slips with purging.  The behaviours weren't as intrucive as they were near the latter part of the last 9 years but they always existed to some degree.

What I have to hold onto right now is the reality that brough me here:

With an eery peace, I accepted that this was/is my last attempt at recovery from this.  If I have to live a life constantly struggling to protect myself from behaviours and always looking over my shoulder for the ED or questioning mysef at every turn about my intent and if it's really Julia that's choosing something...I just won't do it. 

This is it.  Recovery or I actually give up.  I'm not willing to give up.  I'm not ready to end my life and at this point, that is the option.  In reality, its not an option at all!  My life is not mine to take and so, I will get through this.  I will feel the pain and live through it.  I will reframe my thoughts constantly and reach for the positive.  I won't ever, ever stop trying.  I'm not leaving here until there is not even a sliver of a chance for anorexia to sneak back in.

I do NOT want my tube back.  I do not need an Ensure day.  I want to embrace life.  I know it is worth it, I am worth it and I will get there.

This is just a day in a valley or the journey...I will get through.