oh what i would give to be asleep

we are survivors - it's time to stop selling ourselves short

Someday Melissa

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/fashion/22Melissa.html

An article worth reading.
Melissa Avrin died of heart failure as a result of her eating disorder. Her mother in making a documentary to raise awareness.

small sample of items for the fundraiser!

Pine needle bowl made by Maggie's mother

Bowl made by English professor Dr. Trousdale

Knit Hair bow

Felt Scottie Dogs

Maggie - my friend in need

As you may have read from Mallory's blog post I just reposted here, my dear dear friend is in need of help.

Maggie is a beautiful, intelligent, funny and vibrant young woman from Appleton, Wisconsin.
She is 24 years old and has a heart that yearns to make others smile. Maggie has been struggling for most of her life from physical and emotional trauma. Due to her Anorexia Nervosa, her body is no longer functioning properly. Along with heart complications, low blood pressure and a dangerously low body weight, Maggie is currently dying of kidney failure.
At the moment, Maggie does not have the financial means to pay for the medical and psychological treatment, and her insurance is refusing to cover the inpatient treatment she desperately needs. The company even refuses to pay for the treatment her kidneys need in order for her survival. Without help Maggie’s body will continue to shut down.
Insurance companies are fairly notorious for not covering treatment for eating disorders. They are seen as self-inflicted and harmless. It is as if insurance companies don't think they are serious issues. When I entered treatment for my eating disorder in the summer of 2008, my insurance company did not want to cover my treatment at all. In fact, the day I arrived in Philadelphia I was informed that my insurance would prefer not to cover me until I weighed 7 pounds less. Following my admittance they tried to drop me every 3 days. The only reason I was able to stay in treatment for as long as I did was because my parents basically camped outside of our governor's office asking for help. I will forever be grateful for the 5 weeks I had at Renfrew, it is quite possible that they saved my life.
Eating disorders are serious. Anorexia Nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Maggie and I both lost a very, very dear friend this year. Julia was only 16 years old and the pain of her eating disorder was more than she could handle. Julia committed suicide on July 1, 2009. Even worse, Julia is not the only young woman I know who was lost to an eating disorder this year. Melissa Avrin and Hannah McKay also passed. Eating disorders are not harmless. They are life threatening, all consuming illnesses. Too many women and men die from their eating disorders, and I refuse to let another friend go now or anytime if I can help.
With the help of friends, I am holding two fundraisers in Maggie's honor. Next Friday at Agnes Scott College from 11:30 to 5 we will be holding a craft fair. Students and community members can come make and buy crafts and art made by students and supporters.
We will also be holding a silent auction in our campus's student center. The items that are being auctioned have been graciously donated by friends and family of Maggie as well as numerous students and individuals who want to help Maggie win this fight.
Additionally, money can directly be donated to Maggie Lang- Recovery Support Fund
3313 N. Casaloma Drive Number 98, Appleton, WI 54913
Maggie is studying to be a dietitian so she can help girls like herself recover from their eating disorders. Maggie is amazingly talented and kind, she just needs a chance to heal so she can share her story and show the world that recovery is possible.

From a wonderful friend's blog - Mallory Kathleen

This one is for Maggie

Oh yeah, it's just Hollywood. And the rest of us have nothing to do with Hollywood. It's not like we pay their salaries or anything with our patronage...

Hi all you unfortunate people who have somehow been coerced into/accidentally stumbled upon this blog,

I very much regret further polluting the internet with yet another blog from yet another self-absorbed person (that’s me!). You can blame my sister. You may commence stoning now.

In (relatively more) seriousness, though, I think I’m starting this blog to help start a dialogue, raise awareness and share my story of mental illness, in the hopes that it may help someone in the future. Our culture and society still have some pretty fucked up ideas about mental illness, and maybe if I can talk enough about my own experiences we can change some of these ideas and the fucked up consequences they have for people with mental illnesses.

A perfect example of someone who has been screwed over by our society’s complete lack of education about mental illnesses is Maggie, the person who mostly inspired me to start this blog. I don’t know Maggie personally – she’s a friend of a very, very dear friend of mine – but by all accounts she is a wonderful, sweet and bright young woman who means a lot to many, many people. Maggie has an eating disorder and has been struggling with it for years. Despite her efforts, Maggie is, right now, at 24, dying. She has heart complications, severely low body weight, low blood pressure and…oh yeah, she’s dying of kidney failure.

But guess what? Her insurance company isn’t paying for any of her treatment! They won’t cover her dialysis which is currently keeping her alive and they won’t cover the inpatient treatment she seriously needs. I’m not an expert on it, but apparently it’s very common for insurance companies to refuse to cover treatment for eating disorders, being under the impression that sufferers “did it to themselves.”

It’s bull shit, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Hopefully I’ll have one or more guest posters coming soon who are eating disorder vets themselves to tell you what it’s like to have an eating disorder, what recovery is like and what it’s like to try to get your treatment covered.

I think in general our schools, parents and even the media have good intentions about eating disorders. But as a culture we’re still pretty “bipolar” about the issue (sorry for the joke…I am bipolar, but we’ll get to ME later). On one hand, our cultural aesthetic embraces thinness and it isn’t uncommon to spend your life as a woman trading diet tips. On the other hand, every once in a while in the grocery store check out aisle I see one of those celebrity magazines like People or Us Weekly flaunting a cover full of gaunt celebrities with headlines that boil down to: “OMG ANOREXIA = TERRIBLE!” Next time you see one of these, look closely at the wording and the way these women are demonized. Or take a close look at the episode that happens once a season on America’s Next Top Model wherein Tyra solemnly hears accusations of a contestants anorexia. These people do not seem to feel that they are complicit in this situation at all. On one episode, a model will be lectured or even dismissed for suspected bulimia, but in the next a woman already far thinner than the average woman who will be a consumer of the products she endorses is coached into losing more weight. Cue the hypocrisy rant.

But the somewhat shallow way we talk about eating disorders and body image is hurtful to people who seek treatment for this illness. We want to believe that you can condemn a celebrity on a magazine cover for being anorexic and that will somehow help. Further, we want to believe that if a person knows they deserve love, their body is beautiful, etc., they will be okay. That’s strikes me as similar to the “snap out of it” attitude that people with depression often meet. it’s complicated. It’s an illness. Illnesses require treatment.

I think this post has already gone on too long and I’ve already bored most of you, so I’ll get to the point and wrap up. Without some financial help, Maggie will not get treatment and she will probably die. I would like for this to not happen, because I think everybody deserves a fair shot at a nice, decently long, reasonably agony-free life. So a couple of friends of mine and I are putting together a fundraiser at our college, Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia, to raise money for Maggie. It’s an arts and crafts fair and silent auction, and we are still looking for donations of the art, craft or monetary variety, places to advertise our event, attendees, etc. PLEASE HELP US!

The first thing you can do for Maggie is to RE POST this on your wall, your own blog, send it to your friends, family, co-workers, etc.! Maggie really needs all the love and support she can get.

Here are some other ways you can lend a hand:

1. If you are an artist or a craftsperson, you can donate an item(s) to be sold or auctioned!

2. If you live in ATL, you can volunteer to help with planning/running the event!

3. If you own a business or organization in ATL, you can allow us to advertise at your location (you can even donate an item or money in exchange for having your business’ name listed as a sponsor of our event OR on this blog- a great advertising opportunity!)

4. If you have disposable income of any amount, you can donate directly to Maggie’s Recovert Support Fund (contact me for details)

5. If you live in ATL, you can ATTEND our awesome event!

Much more will come on this topic, but in the meantime PLEASE re-post wherever possible! I don’t want to emote too much, but…this woman needs our help.

the way things are

i'm going to try to be better about posting more regularly. i think that blogging is good for me. alex explained it well by saying that although writing in my notebook is helpful, sometimes i need to get it "out there," into the world. not that i want everyone to read or know what i have to say, i guess i just need to release some things.
this new semester has already been characterized by ups and downs. familial drama is something that is hard for me to handle. the situation itself is ridiculous. basically i'm borrowing money from my grandmother and all my mom's siblings flipped their shit. money makes me uncomfortable, and i wish very much that i didn't need her support, but i do. it's sad to think that the family i loved very much could treat me and my mother so negatively, let alone treat my grandmother as if she is an invalid (which she certainly is not).
once again, my wonderful sister stood up for me (quite fiercely). i'm grateful to have the wonderful immediate family that i have. they've put up with my through all my shit and still uphold the "don't fuck with my sister/daughter" attitude.

i want this year to be better. i suppose that there isn't much i would change about the last year, it was long and at time difficult and painful, but in retrospect, many wonderful things came out of it. of course there are things i regret -- i wish i had talked to/seen julia more, i wish i had gone to her funeral, i wish i had the energy to be a better friend -- but there are a lot of things that i am grateful for.

i pray that in this new year i will grab ahold of healthy opportunities and that i can learn, at least a little bit, that how to cope in healthier ways. i know that i'm not going to change, that i'm not going to wake up happy, and that it will probably be a long time before i appreciate my body. but maybe i can take some steps towards being okay with myself.
moreover, i hope that this year will bring good things to the people i love so dearly. i know too many people who are struggling. i wish so much that i could help.

organically wrong?

Being home is always hard, not that it's bad, just that it is such a different place. it's a place where parts of me walk on egg shells. i absolutely love being with my siblings. more and more i realize how lucky i am to have them (which says a lot because i cannot remember not being grateful for them). but i guess i feel like the broken child. i use to try so hard to be the "okay" child, i was good at school, i was in the marching band, i took pictures and ate with my family. i didn't want them to know that i was fractured.

obviously my plan didn't work out. when i first talked to my parents about being depressed, it was my first semester of college. i think my mom understood that it was something deep, but for a long time it felt like my dad just thought i was mourning the loss of my boyfriend. that was hardly the beginning of it. he got me prescriptions of cymbalta (depression hurts, cymbalta did not help), but talked about it like it was just something to help me while i was stuck, told me i could just take it for a few months.

three and a half years and 6 antidepressants, 2 mood stablizers, and 5 sleeping meds later and i'm still stuck. obviously i've been in worse places than i am now and perhaps a few better along the way, but even with my hindsight bias, i feel like a dark cloud followed me even through the good times.

my exboyfriend once told me that he didn't understand why i was so sad all the time, and that maybe i was doing it to myself. it seems like, given my circumstances (a wonderful family, caring friends, a good education, an amazing girlfriend), there is no reason for me to be so unhappy. could it be me? why would i do it to myself? i can't let myself believe that that is true. that's just like "choosing to be gay". why would someone choose to be discriminated against? why would i choose to hurt?

i know that there good and bad decisions that i've made along the way, but i never once thought to myself "maybe i'll just try to make things a litte worse". there were somethings i knew were bad for me, but they all had/have their purpose. my eating disorder was a way to cope while holding on to the "okay child" title, self-injury was less obvious than my eating disorder and made me feel when i felt numb. it felt like the ends justified the means. although now i can see that the ends might have been better had i not picked up my maladaptive coping mechanisms.

in the grand scheme of things... how much of it is my doing? it's obviously all my responsibility, but for the longest time i've wanted to know how much of it is organic. how much of it is something that's biologically wrong with me?

strong women

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Anaïs Nin

letting go

(from last week's postsecret)

I hate feeling torn between holding on and ruining everything and letting go and not having a way to cope. This year has been possibly the best and worst year of my life. I have so much to be grateful for, and I remind myself of that everyday. Yet I still find myself wanting to revert to what I know made me feel better about myself. Something that was stable when I wasn't.

I know that relapsing like I did before is not okay, but that doesn't make it any less appealing.

i can stand up straight

it's been a long time since the last time i posted. it has been hard to write since julia's passing, each day that i put if off made it that much harder. for a long while, and even still at times, i couldn't think about having an eating disorder or food or be introspective in any way without going back to her. back to little julia. i hope in time i will be able to explain her beauty and do it justice.

it's been a year since i started this blog. it's weird how time passes. when i got my one year follow up survey from renfrew i couldn't open it. i never did. i just knew that it was the wrong thing at the wrong time. what it comes down to is this ... it's hard for me to look at how much has changed and even harder to look at what hasn't.

i've obviously grown and changed and learned much about myself and life, but i have also found my self walking in circle, thinking in circles and even trying to justify those circles.

i want to push through this.
i need to find peace.

as grief sets in

In loving memory of Julia Bliss.

(please click link)

hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

- Emily Dickinson

wishing all of you well

accompanied through our pain

i've been slacking and sadly not keeping up with this site.
for today i'd like to share something that a close friend sent to me. she sent it to me because she found strength in them thought that i might see it too. i'm giving them to you in hopes that you too will find that strength.
from my dear friend maggie:

it's okay to have a good day. really. it's okay to be doing okay and to feel like our life is manageable and on track. many of us have learned as part of our survival behaviors that the way to get the attention and approval we want is to be victims. if life is awful, too difficult, unmanageable, too hard, unfair, then others will accept, like, and approve of us, we think. we may have learned this from living and associating with people who also learned to survive by being a victim. we are not victims. we do not need to be victimized. we do not need to be helpless and out of control to get the attention and love we desire. in fact, the kind of love we are seeking cannot be obtained that way. we can get the love we really want and need by only owning our power. we learn that we can stand on our own two feet, even though it sometimes feels good to lean a little. we learn that the people we are leaning on are not holding us up. they are standing next to us. we all have bad days -- days when things are not going the way we'd like, days when we have feelings of sadness and fear. but we can deal with our bad days and darker feelings in ways that reflect self-responsibility rather than victimization. it's okay to have a good day too. we might not have as much to talk about, but we'll have more to enjoy

________________________

it is time to stop this nonsense of running around picking on ourselves. we may have walked through much of our life apologizing for ourselves either directly or indirectly -- feeling less valuable than others, believing that they know better than we do, and believing that somehow others are meant to be here and we are not. we have a right to be here. we have a right to be ourselves. we are here. there is a purpose, a reason, and an intention for our life. we do not have to apologize for being here or being who we are. we are good enough, and deserving. others do not have our magic. we have our magic. it is in us. it doesn't matter what we've done in our past. we all have a past, woven with mistakes, successes and learning experiences. we have a right to our past. it is ours. it has worked to shape and form us. as we progress on this journey, we shall see how each of our experiences will be turned around and used for good. we have already spent too much time being ashamed, being apologetic, and doubting the beauty of ourselves. be done with it. let it go. it is an unnecessary burden. others have rights, but so do we. we are neither less than nor more than. we are equal. we are who we are. this is who we were created and intended to be. that, my friend, is a wonderful gift.

love you.

and i love all you. i am blessed to have such people to lean on and i hope they find comfort in being able to lean back. more and more i'm learning that i can't expect myself to hold other people up just as i would never want them to carry the responsibility of holding me. but i am grateful for their support and their words. and i believe whole heartedly that this, all of this, will not be the end of us. we are too strong.
i hope that each of you will find april a new and refreshing month, that it's raindrops and storms will find you in peace.

one year ago . . .

for the past two years, it has been my job to take pictures of people during "love your body week" (which has successfully turned into "love you body month" here). the goal is to take pictures of people loving their bodies, identifying what they love. Some women choose their hair or their eyes and others venture on to say "i love everything," "i love my curves," or even "i love my body". as much as the forced social interaction stresses me out, it can be rewarding to see people who are so confident and even people who aren't so comfortable but manage to come up with something that they really do like about themselves. i like the project, i like the finished product, but i don't like how much it forces me to realize how uncomfortable i am.

me in 2008

i want to challenge myself, i want to say with confidence and honesty that i, too, love my body, that my insecurity is not in my figure or form. or maybe more realistically that my insecurity is not a hatred, that it will not limit me.

so how does one find solace in themselves when they are crippled by their self-judgment? is it a learning process? do you have to lie until you trick yourself into believe that you will be okay, that you are okay? or do you push through life looking for excuses to like yourself, outlets that make you feel like your life is worth something. that your body is worth something.

don't let me into this year with an empty heart

it's hard for me to believe that it's 2009, that time has managed to pass so quickly yet so slowly. it's been almost 6 months since i left renfrew, and my life has fluctuated up and down since my departure. when i left i was hopeful, scared but hopeful. i crashed in september and didn't climb out of my hole until late november. to this day i long to crash again. to be sick, to be good at being sick. but i can't be. there's so much that relies on me not being sick.
i look at myself everday and think that i am a failure. that i was no good at being ill yet no good at being well. i look at each of my "urges" as a weakness, each of my slips as a blessing yet a let down. i am conflicted and grateful that i don't own a full length mirror. i try to remind myself that i am so proud of the women i talk to everyday for pushing through, for fighting even when they don't want to fight anymore. i would never call them failures. i would never judge them because of their lapses, and i am lucky enough to have them, girls that would never judge me. girls who express faith in me.
with february comes "love your body month". a celebration of women and men who have defeated their eating disorders, a memorium for all those who have suffered and died. some days i wish that i could celebrate the month and be proud of who i am and what i have done. other days i find myself thinking that life would be easier if i let it all go.
regardless, i hope that this month gives the girls i love faith in themselves. it is an inspiration to hear from women who have overcome their eating disorders. i pray that each of you can use this month to find something wonderful in your and that you find the strength to hold on to it for dear life. this can be a dear life.

five hours and four minutes

here's hoping that this year is better than all those that came before it

comfort

it drives me crazy that people think i don't know that there are repercussions that from self-injury. i know. it settles in deeper everyday. i wish they knew that our scars isolate us enough. people point them out all the time - as if i don't know that it's not a good thing.
i hid them all for the longest time, mostly because i didn't want anyone to know how different i was. my friends were relatively functional, and it just didn't seem like there was a place for me and my masochism. there was no place for those things, there shouldn't be because they shouldn't need a place to be. they shouldn't be there.
every time some gives me that look, i know. i know they don't know what to say, but what i don't understand is why they think they need to say something. since when did the world start caring? even more, since when did life become a place where you can expect to be "comfortable"? maybe it's time for everyone to take a step back and accept that there are going to be some really uncomfortable things in our lives and that maybe step one is not asking when you really don't want to know the answer -- it's only going to make you feel more uncomfortable.
i may never be comfortable with what i've done to myself and in some regards continue to do. i may one day regret what will be my past, and there's a good chance i will because i'm not proud. but i don't need to be reminded that what i've done has altered the rest of my life. maybe what matters is that i'll have a "rest of my life" to find out.

questions

July 10th

"Today, for the first time in my life, I actually watched the clock. I just sat and watched it, on and off for 30 minutes. It was kind of grounding. I could tap my toes with each second. no time could slip by unnoticed"

i think i mentioned before that i kept a journal at renfrew. i wrote everyday, not as much as i could/should have, but i didn't want to waste any knowledge i could gain about myself. i tend to write when i'm unhappy which is why my current journal only contains sporadic self-deprecating tidbits of my day to day life. but i tried to write about everything.

i remember that hour pretty well. i was in the upstairs living room (a place that way easy to have to yourself) waiting to see dr rosenburg (see previous entry). it was during those slow afternoon hours before dinner, those 3 hours that are too long for comforting rest and too short for sleep. so i sat there. i challenged myself. i haven't been able to focus for the longest time. i brought at least 10 books to renfrew with me and managed to read less than a dozen pages. i wanted to prove to myself that i have some control especially since i was in a place that was taking away the coping mechanisms i've relied upon for years. as i sat there tapping my toes, my eyes would occasionally wander. i figuratively smacked myself and refocused. don't let it slip away. you've let years slip away. it's kind of a surreal feeling, the ability to capture time. as i tried to own life, i found myself grounded yet lifted. i knew that this was the present, that i was not stuck in yesterday or yesteryear. i was not anticipating the horror that could be that evening or the next day, i was where i should be... but i was not living. i was staring at a clock. pulsing with each tick. accomplishing nothing. being the nobody i've allowed myself to become.

i want to learn how to live. i hate being so trite, but i don't know how to better explain it. i get caught in the past, frozen in bad memories or dreams, distracted by shortcomings and then fast forward to the pathetic tragedy that could be my future. how do i move past my self-loathing and destruction?

i ask a lot of questions, but i think it's because i want to conjure up all the mysteries that are my life.

Dr. Rosenberg

July 11th -

"Do you Know the Bible?"
to some extent
"Do you know the chapter where Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son
Isaac?"
i do
"I think that is the worst chapter ever written"

She may be one of the most interesting people I've ever met... with her "just tell me the bad things" kind of attitude in a room filled with "stupid chickens", but sitting in her "chicken" filled office gave me time to think. The appointments were short but her words were poignant. I guess those words made me think. She's one of those people who will admit that she's not necessarily the happiest, but that she gets by by telling herself that things will be okay. That has never been my forte. Of course things will be okay, but that doesn't make them better now. Maybe I'm demanding too much of myself, too much of life.
In terms of the bible story, I guess I'm all three of them. God. Abraham. Isaac. I'm telling myself that I need to sacrifice who I am. And why? To make myself a better person? To make my life more manageable? To make the world a better place? That can' be it. So what are my motivations and why am I sacrificing myself? And why would I want to become part of the worst chapter... ever?