frustration

frustrating frustrating frustrating. looking at old pics of myself and i realise how fat i've become. i don't even know who i am anymore when i look into the mirror and see my own reflection. i don't understand; how can someone just gain so much weight all of a sudden and can't shake it loose? i feel fat and horrible.

report: jan 30th 2010

I want to believe that I'm on my way to recovery. Had a meeting with the psychiatrist on Thursday, and he wanted to know how I was feeling so I told him that I was feeling too "flat". He explained that I had perhaps finally reached a sense of normalcy (though normalcy may be overrated) but that I was reacting the way I was because I was so used to the ups and downs to consider that "normal".

So all in all, I'm finally normal. *claps*

But on a serious note, I was quite desperate to feel the way I used to, because I feel along with mania, for example, came creativity and anger and passion, and with depression came loneliness, sadness and guilt. I needed to feel all those to live; without them I felt like I was simply surviving and empty.

So he toggled with the medications a little, and hopefully I could feel a little on the "high" side. I don't know if it's working, but I did wake up yesterday feeling a little anxious and today I had need for less sleep (signs of mania). But I wouldn't call this mania at all, not even close to hypomania.

But what I do know is that I'm on my way to recovery. And this is probably one of the most positive moments in the history of my life. So why do I feel so empty?

I realise while browsing through Jobstreet.com yesterday that if I had to get a corporate job, the only corporate job that would make me happy was if I could be a lawyer. I abandoned my law plans when I hit depression, and now I'm thinking of going back. Money is of course, an issue, but I hope I could find a way to work things out. In the meantime, the best course of action for me is to stay home and work until I feel much better. So writing it is then. And I may start teaching again in March.

I wanted to do an overall report, so in the case of my bloating, I'm getting worse these days. I took a fiber drink last night and I hope it's going to work. In any case, I'm going to take on Herbalife which I've heard good reviews of. It'll also help in my weight management which is going out the window these days (the good news is I haven't been bulimic for at least a month now). Wish me luck!

addiction

I'm sitting here after lunch/dinner and I feel like puking. I think it's wired in my brain that I need to, although logically my brain tells me I shouldn't. Breathing exercises help me control the urges, but I also know I should stay away from the bathroom, just in case I lose control. A lot of people think that we choose this, but more often than not, it is difficult to simply stop it. It's like an addiction, I need to do it to feel better. And I feel nauseous and jittery waiting for the wave to pass.

For some reason, I am feeling a little down today. When I am on the downs of my bipolar disorder, I sometimes feel like I don't want to do anything - I usually end up just lying in bed, waiting for the feeling to go away. The clock ticks ever so slowly, and time seems to pass by so slowly. But you know it's going to go away. The only question is when. And it's just so hard to wait. I think I'm just being impatient. That is how I ended up sleeping the entire day, waking up at 5pm and feeling a heavy pull in my heart. I want to know the medications are working, but there is no indication that it is. JJ says he notices some changes, but I hardly feel any changes at all. I still feel the same.

I've been having dreams that are violently sexually charged. I've yet to act out on them, I'm being celibate after all. But these dreams drive me crazy. I wake up, and they instantly disappear - the urges as well as the repressed feelings. I need to wake up and see the world as it is. That, however, is too painful to bear.

i have nothing

The end of the year bites me like a scorpion. It really stings, and hurts for days, if not weeks. I look back at past achievements, and often feel so small, like I've done nothing at all. I woke up this morning with a nightmare; I remembered something many others may have forgotten. December 2004, the day my car was stolen from me by a person I considered friend and trusted; the same day the Indian Ocean tsunami hit most of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand and several other countries including Malaysia. It was Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. Every year, I am reminded of this incident and I feel instantly down. While everyone else is celebrating around the world, there are people who are reminded of their lost loved ones, and are feeling sad around the world. How do we really move on?

The Christmas lights blink in front of my eyes. I see them clearly, even when I am not looking. The path of emptiness is one I have to travel alone. So maybe I can help what I think, but I can't help what I feel. But life has to go on, even if betrayal and hurt line my past and eat into my soul day after day. I have loved and lost. I have trusted friends and been hurt. But today, I am loved. Shouldn't I be thankful and just be happy? But why can't I?

It's raining outside and my stomach hurts like crazy. I woke up bloated again today, possibly from consuming a lot of food yesterday. There's not a day without bloating and it really gets to me. It may seem like a normal thing, but seriously, when my stomach is bloated I can sometimes look like I'm at least three months pregnant. It's really demotivating, and pulls me down, and everything I try on doesn't seem to help. I can't wear most of my clothes; either they don't fit or they make me look pregnant. I've been hiding them under loose and baggy clothes. The weight gain doesn't help too, really. I really can't wear at least 70% of the clothes in my closet and I feel so hopeless. I just want to be cured of everything. I want my bipolar disorder to go away so I can be happy and really enjoy Christmas and all the other days in the year. I want my weight to go away, so I can be thin and enjoy looking at myself again, and I don't have to resort to vomiting to be thin. I want my bloating to go away, so I can wear clothes that are tight around the tummy, or to be able to show off my cute belly button ring.

But God doesn't seem to listen. And I am beginning to feel impatient. So really, what do I do now?

purging

I forced myself to puke again today. Stuck my finger down my throat, and it felt really good after. I started off the day wanting to change, hoping that I could somehow hold it all in. But whenever I eat, I feel guilty for eating. I can't help how I feel.

Battling bulimia is not something new for me. It started when I was about 14 in secondary school. I had to take steroids to cure my asthma (which still bothers me till today), and my weight just ballooned uncontrollably. I discovered bulimia via the beauty of the internet. I was on Bolt.com (which is now dysfunctional) and found out that someone forced herself to vomit to lose weight and that it really worked. The best thing about it was that it was hard for people to notice what you were doing unless you told them. But back then, it was an occasional purge once in a while, anytime I felt too fat or if I felt like I ate too much.

The condition became worse when I was 19. I had just finished STPM, and the stress of waiting for the results killed me. I felt like a piece of Chipsmore cookie in a cup of milk, just melting away with few trace of ever being. That was the way my body worked too. I would vomit after every meal, until one day I weighed myself and realised I was a bare 33kgs at the height of 153cms. I knew I needed help. Together with my troubled mind at the time (the stress of waiting for my STPM results made me depressed), I had to see a psychiatrist who told me, like everyone else, that forcing myself to puke was wrong. But how do I tell myself that it is wrong when it feels so right?

Being bulimic to me is no big deal, really. I would occasionally throw up when I feel like I've overeaten, but I haven't been doing it for a long, long time until recently. I recently put on 14kgs in one year, and started going into a downward spiral (which was also due to my law degree pursuit that ended with me going into depression mode). About a week ago, I just decided I would throw up to try to lose some weight. But once I started, I couldn't stop. I made a mistake my mentioning it to me fiance and mother on Sunday, because now I feel paranoid that they will try to stop me. A part of me, though, wants to stop. But today I just couldn't help it. I had eaten a lot of pizza and dessert and the best way was to purge my body of them. It seemed so easy to just puke these days, sometimes I don't even have to put my fingers in my throat. It feels like second nature sometimes.

A part of me knows that I am wrong, but I hate making excuses for myself and I am guilty as charged. I feel fat whenever I look at myself in the mirror, and I see my arms as being huge tree trunks and watching the TV or going out make me feel horrible. I look around and everywhere I see thin people, who seem so happy. I am just plain slouchy, fat and ugly. Some people say otherwise, but how can I help how I feel? This is what I see, and that's the end of the story.

I am willing to try other methods to rid myself of this fat, but how much do I need to lose to feel okay again? And what if I'll never feel okay? I am so worried about the future, I feel like I'm losing grip sometimes. I don't need help or reassurance. I need someone to look at me and say, "You are so fat you deserve to die."

Right now, I am feeling faint. I feel weak everytime after I force myself to puke. I'd feel dizzy sometimes, and I'd just go lie down. I sleep more because I feel more tired, and the antidepressants don't help, at least not in convincing me that I will be okay, even if I were fat.

I just long for the day when I could be thin again, and then I can stop this bullshit of a habit.

holding it in

I know this isn't much of a start or an introduction, but I suppose I'll start off by explaining a little about this blog. I want to write about the conditions I am forced to live with. I call them the three B's - bipolar disorder, bulimia, and bloating (or Irritable Bowel Syndrome).

Today's post is about the bipolar disorder I have to live with. It's now 12.53am, and the past two days have been eventful. You see, I never asked for bipolar disorder to happen to me; I was chosen instead. All my life, it has been my constant companion.

I don't want to start at the very beginning, but I will write as I go along, and see where this takes me. I want people to know more about my condition, and how it affects me and the people around me, especially the ones I love.

The most recent attack happened on Sunday. On Sunday, I woke up feeling low. I tried to shrug the feeling away but I just couldn't. See, the funny thing is, even as I'm writing this, I have somehow blocked off the memory of the events that have taken place. I simply cannot remember. I have to really squeeze my memory to try to remember the sequence of events. So I woke up on Sunday and felt really low. This is the kind of low one feels when feeling squeamish and sick in the guts. To avoid feeling horrible, I tried to put my mind off things by working. I thought that if I cleaned the house, I would be able to put the feeling aside. But I couldn't. I cried in the arms of my fiance, JJ, but what really ticked me off was the moment when I complained about my weight, he said, "You are not gaining weight. You are a constant 54 (kg)."

God knows what happened next but something like a time bomb just went off. I kicked him hard and a struggle ensued. I wanted to open the door to the balcony and jump off but he tried to stop me. That made me even madder. He said, "Grow up. Stop having all these fits". That really upset me even more. I knew I had to get away, and I locked myself in the room.

Suddenly it felt as if I could make a rational decision. I called my friend and told her to pick me up so I could check myself into the hospital. I thought a few days away would fix things or make me feel better. Then she came, and I was reluctant of staying away. But I went to the hospital anyway with the hopes of seeing my psychiatrist. They couldn't summon him, and I didn't feel like going home. The thought of seeing JJ repulsed me. It made me sick to the stomach. I was hurt and didn't want to face him.

We went to watch a play instead, and I went home, thinking I would just ignore him. But he didn't leave me alone and asked me a whole bunch of questions instead. So I lost it, and blurted it all out. "I have been throwing up for an entire week everytime after I ate", "I hate you, and I feel sick when I see you", "You disgust me". I ran out the door and my mum called. A lengthy conversation didn't make me feel better, it just made me feel worse. A friend came to my rescue, and we sat in his car for hours just talking. I felt better, but this wasn't the first time I felt that way. It would come and go, come and go, without my control. This was something I have very little control of.

Everyone says we go through ups and downs every now and then, but it is hard to explain to people what I feel. I don't control the ups or downs, they come as they like and go as they like. I could wake up one morning feeling numb, then feeling ecstatic, then going from happy to sad like there's a switch in my head. I would do things one day, and wake up the next day feeling regretful over what I've done. I had my nose pierced three weeks ago during a bout of high; I knew getting a piercing with a gun was dangerous, but I did it anyway. I couldn't rationalise when I am riding on my high, or even on my low. I have thought of suicide, swallowing pills just to make it all go away. I would think that if I died, I would go someplace else where everyone is happy. But who am I kidding? Soon after, the door opens and I have to face the world again. I have tried to look for others like me out there, but I have yet to know another (at least not very well). I have looked up "support groups" online, but all I read is about people who have to give up their jobs and lives to deal with this condition. This is not what I want for myself.

I know famous people like Vincent van Gogh and Virginia Woolf lived with it, and created beautiful works. But let's look at Vincent; he cut off his own ear and sent it to his lover, and Virginia; she drowned herself to death by putting pebbles in her pockets. I don't want to end up like either of them, even if it meant I would produce great works in my life (which, due to my low self confidence, I doubt every day). I need people to know that there are people like me in this world, and we try everyday to be happy but it's just harder. Believe me, if we had a choice, we would want to be happy.

Perhaps it is not sympathy that we want. This is not self-pity. I simply want people to understand that sometimes, I really don't have a choice. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night crying and I cannot understand why. I only know one thing's for sure: I have to live with it, or die with it. I want to be cured, and I'm hoping that this blog will chronicle my conquering of this disease, and if I will never be fully cured, I hope that people like me are able to read this blog and understand themselves better, and for people who love them to try to know what they are facing. Perhaps all I hope from this is some awareness. I am hopeful; I want to be cured, and I want to write (hopefully) every day until I finally am able to be cured of this condition.

I want to be hopeful. I want to live. Today, I managed to hold in food for the first time in at least one week. I ate a meal and naturally instincts kicked in to throw up, but with support from JJ, I managed to sit down, sip a little water, while telling myself not to. It's not easy, everyday's a struggle, but I know I will try. As you can see, today's note ends on a high, but I dare not say the same for tomorrow. But I will just be hopeful.

Goodnight, world. And I hope that if you read this and know someone living with bipolar disorder or bulimia, give your loved one/friend/family member a hug, because they really need it. More than anything, they need your patience and understanding and love.

Love,
Sharon