My Geriatric Teen Years: Day 6

Yesterday, it was about 9 pm, and I was starting to doze off. I looked at the time, and thought "Oh, it's late. No wonder I'm tired."

A split second later, I stopped myself and thought "What the HELL?? It's 9 pm, I'm tired, and I THINK THAT IT'S LATE??" That, my friends, is when I had an epiphany:

I'm a grandma. Seriously. Since coming here, I've been living like an old person. Early to bed, early to rise, structured meals, and a cat that wakes me up each morning by causing near suffocation by sleeping on my chest.

Then I realized that maybe living like the elders isn't such a bad thing, at least for now. My life was spinning out of control before, and I literally couldn't handle it. This feeling of powerlessness manifested itself physically through my eating disorder, and I really think I need to stay away from that for a while if I have any hope of recovering.

We went to an OA meeting this morning. For those of you not hip to addiction lingo, that means Overeaters Anonymous. It was my favorite meeting so far. I just felt like "YEAH! These are my PEOPLE!" Granted, I don't think they barfed up their food, but they know what the urge is like. They gave these little inspirational token things to new members, but I didn't raise my hand as a new member because I felt stupid. Not in front of them, because they know what it's like, but because of one girl that's in treatment here. Let's call her Georgia. Georgia's leaving tomorrow, and I'm comforted by this fact. She's a bulimic and is all "Oh, my life's so much better now! I love my body!" which is obviously good, but I don't know if she means it. She told me the other day (after I'd shared in group therapy that I couldn't look in the mirror anymore), "Seriously, I haven't gained a pound since I've been here. I've gained 1/4 of one. That's it!" Umm...shouldn't someone who's recovered not be concerned about weight? And after every meal when we say a new positive behavior we've done, the other night I said, "I added milk to my meal when I didn't need to," since the meal itself already had dairy. Well, little Miss Georgia comes up to me THE NEXT MORNING and says "Oh, and I also noticed that you added extra fruit to your meal. You only need like, a couple of cranberries, and you had way more. I was gonna tell you last night, but I forgot!"

....umm, thanks? I mean, you're obviously very excited about this. I swear to God, for some reason I think she wants me to get fat. And I'm getting paranoid, thinking she's planning all these secret ways of getting me to eat extra calories. Like she'll look at my bowl of cottage cheese and say "Oh, you need at least a half cup more" or something like that. And when it's her night to cook, I start thinking she's sneaking in extra butter or cheese or something to my portion of the food. Fuck. Rehab's got me paranoid.

It was another good day though. Wow, two days of feeling positive in a row. Yeeeah, baby. Part of it was obviously due to the fact that it was STARBUCKS DAY!!! Mucho gusto! And we went for a walk by the bay (yet another one of my grandmotherly activities), which I throughly enjoyed. I don't know. They told me that once you get used to the physical stuff, your mental state starts to improve as well. I'm not feeling so God-awfully full after each meal (well, not always breakfast. The other ones are still painful), but that worries me too. It makes me think "Oh, fuck! The reason I'm more comfortable is that my stomach is fucking expanding and it can hold more food." That's the thing I envy about alcoholics and drug addicts--yeah, they have an addiction, and yeah, it fucking sucks. But once they learn to avoid it, they're good. I can't AVOID food. I need it to live. So that means I have to learn to view it as just a substance that keeps me alive rather than this weird source of power thing that I use when I feel like I'm losing control.

I was such a fucking bitch before. Seriously. I remember, a couple of months ago, my mom pissed me off, and I said to her "If you do that again (insert action here), I'm not fucking eating tomorrow."

I did kind of have a "I hate life" moment though. I was talking to my mom on the phone, and I was just thinking of how honestly, even if I wasn't shut off from the rest of the world like this, it doesn't fucking feel like Christmas to me. There's no snow, it's not cold. Ugh. I hate it. I miss the seasons. It feels so wrong here. And my mom was talking about how my dad is going back to Wisconsin for Christmas and I just started getting really homesick. I don't really know anymore where to consider my home. It's not Wisconsin, but sometimes I feel it's not here either. It's like I don't fit it anywhere.

Talking with friends who are back in Wisco is so weird because I realize even though all our lives changed when we started college, I feel like mine was so drastic and huge that it seriously like cut part of me out and left me like that for so long. I lost a lot when I moved, but looking back, I feel like I've gained even more. If nothing else, at least I have something interesting to tell people at parties.

"So, over winter break my freshmen year of college, it was the craziest thing..."

Eck. Seeing as it's 8:35, I better rap it up so I get some down time before I fall asleep ;-).

24 more days.