my BFF is amazing

In 2001, while in the throes of untreated mental illness, a friend guided me to a website called Kip's Garage that she was a member of. It was a site specifically created for teens and young adults that suffered from mental illness. This website served as a safe haven. A place we could all go and not feel alienated because we weren't the societal norm; a place we could go and commiserate with others like us; a place for advice, comfort, caring. I think any teen with mental illness will tell you that's really all they want. It's all we ever wanted.

I was barely a member of this website when I ran into a girl that, for some reason or another, liked to keep the same hours as me despite being nine hours behind time-wise. She lived in California, I lived in southeastern Germany.

Really, we couldn't possibly be more different. Our tastes in music, food, clothing, hobbies... the list is endless... are complete polar opposites. The only thing that we knew for sure was that we made awesome friends. We shared some commonalities that we helped one another through. In October of 2001 during our usual daily AIM chat session she invited me to fly out to California for Thanksgiving. Hesitant to fly across the globe to not only meet someone I'd never met but to stay with her for two weeks, I looked for reasons why I couldn't (shouldn't?) go. I came up empty handed. I had the vacation time. I had the money. I was single and all my bills were probably paid. (Probably.) So I priced airline tickets. When they turned out to be dirt-stinkin-cheap, I bought them and told her that I'd be arriving on November 17th, I'd be arriving at SFO and that I would be there to pester her for two whole weeks.

Best. Vacation. EVER.

She showed me every inch of Sacramento and every inch of San Francisco that time allowed. We spent hours in her mom's car zooming up and down I5 singing bad girl rock music at the tops of our lungs. The world was ours and that was the way it was supposed to be. Except I had to go back home [to Germany] and get back to reality. A part of me wishes that I'd just stayed; wonders how different my life would be if I'd never gotten on that return flight "home".

Unfortunately our lives don't "cross paths" much these days. I haven't seen her since her visit in June of 2005. I'm trying to gather resources to make a trip out to San Diego to see her this summer. Hoping that it will come to pass.

But I digress. The title of this post is "My BFF is Amazing" because, well, she really is. She moved to San Diego six months ago and immediately through her mind, heart, and soul into the fight against Prop 8 in California. She's led countless [peaceful] protests since then. I can Google her name and she comes up in the news. Amazing. I always knew that she was meant to change the world. That she was meant for something more, something bigger than a life of domesticus and book keeping. And she is doing her part to make big changes in this world of ours.

And I just think she's great. A fan-fucking-tastic person that I just can't imagine my life without.

a long December

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last...

December. What a month. A month that most view as joyous, exciting. A month that most long for; a month full of hope, wonderment, anticipation.

You'd think I'd be among the "most" being a December baby and all that but I look forward December with all the enthrallment of looking forward to an annual gynecological exam. A necessary evil; an unavoidable annoyance. It's not a fear of getting older; it's not the stress of the impending holidays. I think it is, more or less, the year coming to an end. Another chapter of my life closing without my permission. It's a time of reflection on the year passed and wondering what could've been had you done something just a little differently.

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls...

December grew to a new level of suck-tastic-ness last year. Being infertile makes you acutely aware of you body. It's inevitable, really. You learn your body's quirks; learn how and when to react to impending ovulation. Where most women go "Huh. I missed my period. Maybe I should take a pregnancy test?" there are those of us that research which home pregnancy tests register the lowest amounts of hCG so we can test days before our period is even due. In such, if we're fortunate enough to see two lines on one of those wretched pee sticks, we can immediately calculate where we are in our pregnancy, and thus, our expected due date. The guess work is all but completely removed. We know the exact day, perhaps even the hour, that we ovulated and thus can predict when to expect the arrival of a little bundle of joy better than any nurse or doctor on the face of this earth. This is a blessing and a curse. A blessing for those who go on to have happy, healthy, normal pregnancies and actually end up bringing home a new baby roughly 36 weeks later; a curse for those of us who only experience the joy of a new pregnancy fleetingly.

December 30, 2007. That was my due date. From the moment I saw those two glorious pink lines I began subconciously mapping out pregnancy milestones in my head. By summer, when I planned to attend my best friend's bridal shower, I would be around 15 weeks. I had visions of my west-coast buddies poking my [maybe by then] protruding tummy and giggling. I pictured myself waddling around the streets of San Francisco with a few of my good friends in tow; smiling in the sunshine of my favorite city. I saw myself in a costume on Halloween that would make my belly the center of attention. I saw myself happily helping myself to seconds at Thanksgiving dinner because I really and truly was still hungry. And then I saw myself in December. Oh glorious month of December; month of hope and happiness and anticipation! I saw myself struggling fruitlessly to bake Christmas cookies and my family chastising me for doing so. I saw myself on Christmas day hoping that I wouldn't disrupt the holiday festivities by going into labor a few days early. I even saw myself on New Year's Eve, still full of baby, wondering how much longer I'd go overdue.

It's not like I was doing any of this purposefully. I knew, long before I found out I was pregnant, that having PCOS carries with it a higher risk of miscarriage. I'd been around the infertile [online] community long enough to know that just because you got pregnant did not mean you were going to stay that way long enough to bring home a baby. However, the subconcious mind is not a rational creature. It is the part of our collective conciousness that thwarts the more rational and endlessly more predictive (and stable) concious mind. It betrays us at every turn. Our concious mind builds up these nice, safe walls of logic and certainties only to have our subconcious mind push us off the ledge of those walls with a little nudge of unwanted hope. A quiet utterance of but what if? But I've come to realize that it's all but impossible to keep my subconcious mind under wraps. Try as I may -- and believe me, I DO try -- I just can't seem to do it. It was my subconcious mind that put all these thoughts into my head thus setting me up for eventual failure.

Five weeks, two days pregnant and it was over. All those subconcious fantasies gone up in smoke in the instant the nurse returned to my ER room and muttered the words "I'm sorry. Your beta dropped." Those words left a gaping hole in my chest; in my heart. While the hole has healed a great deal in the past 19 months, it is still a hole underneath. When poked, the surface reopens revealing a fresh, unhealed wound that takes days, weeks, months to reheal. It doesn't help that I have a daily, living, breathing reminder of the hole. My niece was born a mere month before her cousin should have been born. As much as I love my sister, watching her pregnancy progress along the 'natural' course was like hearing those words over and over and over again. And now, every milestone my niece passes, I watch with mixed emotions. I watch with the pure, unadulterated joy and unconditional love of the aunt that I am. And I watch, simultaneously, with the raw emotion of a should-have-been parent; of an infertile.

I do still have some inkling of hope that, someday, I will not dread December. That the end of another year will not mean another year that we failed to get (and stay) pregnant. That one December, someday, will mean our baby's first Christmas. And if it doesn't happen I still have hope that someday, some December will not mean agonizing over what could have -- should have -- been. That someday, some December I'll find that the hole isn't so much a hole anymore.

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

resolve: i want MY body back!

I look in the mirror these days and I am frightened at what stares back at me. PCOS really wreaks havoc on the body but, in truth, I know I haven't done much to stave off its effects. I have always, always been heavy. I remember being horribly self-concious as an early teen because I could easily fit into my mom's size 14 jeans. None of my friends could even dream of fitting into their mom's jeans. But, even being as overweight as I was, I always managed to carry my weight well. In fact, I've always been told that until recently.

I have horrible body image issues. They started at a very young age. I've always been quite round in my midsection, even as a young child. I remember my step-sister teasing me and calling me 'rolley polley' and 'fat back'. I don't have many memories from my childhood. Abuse, trama, yada yada. I blocked the majority of it out, I imagine, for self preservation sake. But I do have a few choice memories, most of which aren't very pleasant. One particular memory I have is of a camping trip we took in the summer of 1989. Or maybe it was 1990. I would've been 8 or 9 years old. My mom bought my sister and I matching bikini swimsuits. Hers was purple polka dots, mine was red. I distinctly remember feeling extremely awkward in my bikini. I remember thinking how inexplicably round my tummy was in comparison to my [six years older] sister's. Of course I didn't have boobs yet; another source of self-conciousness. To be honest, I was probably a [mostly] regular looking eight (or nine) year old. But I couldn't help but feel ugly; fat; different. I have been criticizing and scrutinizing my poor body ever since.

Things culminated in Junior High. Not only did I feel different, I was different. All of my friends and both of my sisters were shaped nicely with perky breasts and hour glass figures. I was cursed with broad shoulders, breasts that seemed to literally repel each other (I've never had much in the way of cleavage without some serious push-up bra action), a flabby, protruding stomach, and a double chin. I had a horrible wardrobe because of my size and shape. This was long before Plus Size was a common household term, mind you, and as a result, I bought most, if not all of my jeans from the men's section. I went through High School suffering the stigma of being overweight. I never dated; I was never asked to go to any dances. By my senior year I was somewhere around a size 20 and weighed in the 240 range.

In the years following High School I resolved to lose the weight that was holding me hostage in my own skin. I set a goal to get down to 145 pounds (my health weight for my height and bone structure) and I vowed that once the scale boasted that glorious number that I would finally be happy. It took me four years to do it but I finally did get the scale to say 145. Try as I may, I still couldn't force my brain to recognize the acheivement.



That was me at 145 pounds. A healthy, reasonable weight; wearing a clothing size FINALLY in the single digits.

I thought I was fat. Not just a little overweight or pudgy or even just a little soft and out of shape. No, I was fat and I was sure of it.

Looking in the mirror today it is abundantly clear that this was completely ludicrous; bordering on completely insane, even.

I really have no one but myself to blame for gaining every pound of weight I lost back; and then some. PCOS definitely plays a large factor. It's hard to get and stay motivated to lose weight when you put in an immense amount of effort and barely see any results. The perpetuating cycle of insulin resistance causing weight gain and making weight loss difficult but being worsened by being overweight is proof positive that Mother Nature can be a cruel, sadistic bitch. But I am determined to beat the bitch at her own game. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, but I know that I absolutely MUST get my body back.

I will stop at nothing.

insaney days - old and new

I'm having one of those rapid cycle days. Sometimes my mood cycles last for weeks, even months. Here lately, though, I've been cycling daily. I wake up in the morning and I can't even fathom getting out of bed/off the couch. So I don't. Then, I make the switch. Sometime in the afternoon (or late evening) I start feeling energetic (or very irritated) and suddenly I'm motivated to do things. I want to get out of the house and go somewhere, anywhere. Inevitably, the looming fact that we are strapped for cash comes back to bite me in the rear-end and I wind up spending the night alternately frolicking on the Internet, feverishly doing school work, and channel surfing. Thoughts zip through my mind at neck-breaking speed. I don't bother even trying to keep up. Go with the flow. I bring things to a screeching halt with a milligram of Xanax which might account for my early morning lethargy. But it's that, or stay up all night with the thoughts.


Lately my thoughts have been drifting back to the turn of the century. I was approaching my 20s in a bad state. Coming off of a year of near non-stop binge drinking, I made the decision to move back in with my parents. I can't even begin to describe the unrelenting feelings of doom that moving back to Germany gave me. But everyone had convinced me that if I stayed in Kentucky my life would never amount to anything. Even if they were right, it still seems like they were wrong because my life still hasn't amounted to much of anything. From 2001 to 2003 I did lots of things that, depending on your personal point-of-view, could be seen as normal things that people my age did or completely insane/stupid/irrational. Maybe both. Knowing what I know now, I realize that I was coming into bipolar disorder.


I spent two and a half years on Zoloft. The maximum dosage of Zoloft, at that. Between the self injury, the depression, the suicidality, the frequent mood swings, the intense and irrational fears of abandonment, and my complete social awkwardness - my pdoc (whom I loved and adored and trusted without a shadow of a doubt) diagnosed me with Borderline Personality Disorder. It seemed to explain everything about me, especially my self-destructive nature. And when something fits, we wear it, right? It did not, however, explain why I failed to get any better after two years of regular treatment. In fact, it seemed like I kept getting worse. I was making a ridiculous amount of money ($13.70 an hour, tax free, 70+ hours a week) for someone with no bills except for rent and car insurance yet there were several months that I found myself reeling, praying my landlord wouldn't kick me out when I told him, again, that I'd be late with the rent. (Towards the end of my stay at that apartment, I blew off paying the rent all together and wound up moving on New Years Eve in the middle of the night.) I was constantly going on crazy spending sprees but never seemed to buy anything substantial. I regularly overdrew my account for something I had to have but never needed. I always drove at least 20 MPH over the speed limit. (Which, since I lived in Germany, meant I frequently drove at least 80 MPH even on the twisted, dangerous back roads.) Nevermind when I could come up with an excuse to go somewhere that involved getting on the Autobahn. My friends hated riding with me because I embraced the complete lack of speed limit. Most everything that gave me a rush paled in comparison to the exhilaration of pushing my gas pedal to the floorboard wishing I had a car that went faster than 90 MPH. (Once, in January of 2002, I actually rented a brand new Mercedes sedan to pick up my best friend at the Frankfurt airport. I managed to get the damn thing up to 140 MPH. Fortunately I had a friend riding with me and she was terrified and made me slow down after a few minutes. It's the closest I've ever been to flying.)


I wish I could say that was the extent of my recklessness but, alas, no. I was a complete pot head and experimented with other drugs regularly. I can't say that I drank much because I always preferred getting high to getting drunk. Still do, in fact, though I haven't smoked pot in well over a year. (See, my lack of self control always catches up with me when I drink but there is no such thing as smoking too much pot. And the intoxiciations are comparable so I've always opted to smoke rather than drink when the option was there.) Looking back, I'm amazed that I have never been arrested. I often associated with people that were being watched by CID for dealing and/or using drugs. But I was invincible I tell you! It never occurred to me that I could be arrested. It never occurred to me that having sex with random guys could result in an unwanted pregnancy (oh, the irony) or, worse, an STD. (I did wind up with a bad reputation, but really didn't care.) I never gave the statistics that Autobahn accidents were almost always FATAL a second thought. And the fact that I was consistently estranged from my family comforted me instead of bothering me. After all, who wanted to be like those up tight, self-absorbed, righteous, holier-than-thou assholes, anyway? They weren't invincible like me. They didn't have my talent, smarts, or charm. They were boring, to say the least! And when I did find myself wishing our relationship was different, it was nothing more than something to bitch about in therapy.


Okay, so by now, you're probably wondering why on earth I was on such a high dose of antidepressants when I clearly wasn't depressed, right? Well, I've only told part of the story. Certainly, according to the DSM-IV, by the aforementioned behaviors, I was clearly manic. But I haven't mentioned the relentless depression yet. Nights that I sat up smoking cigarettes and writing morbid entries in my paper journals, drowning myself in depressing music, desperately fighting the urge to raid my fridge and cabinets for something, anything to eat. Those were nights that I wanted nothing more than to sleep but sleep just wouldn't come. I'd lie awake in my freezing cold bedroom, tangled in my sheets and comforter, surrounded by pillows, Olivia perched and purring on my stomach, trying to ignore what sounded like soft conversation coming from my living room. What on earth were they talking about?? Sometimes I had to shut my eyes tightly to chase away the spiders crawling on the ceiling and walls. If they made it into the bed, forget it. I ran screaming into the living room where I'd proceed to sit on my couch, wide awake and vigilant. Antidepressant-induced psychosis.

I continually wished for death, almost never finding a good enough reason to keep on living. I dissociated a lot; feeling that I wasn't real, that nothing was real. Those nights were the worst and inevitably ended bloody. After enduring months of this hellish torture, I finally fessed up to Doc who proceeded to prescribe me an antipsychotic (first Risperdal, then Seroquel) and a sleep aid (Restoril). I blame myself for things getting worse after that. Vanity before sanity had me 86ing the Risperdal after a few weeks when I noted marked weight gain. I gave up on Seroquel after I returned from my vacation in California because my friends were always commenting on how I turned into a complete zombie after I took my dose. I agreed, obviously. The sleep aid was the danger factor in this equation. When I wasn't self-medicating with pot, alcohol, or other street drugs, I abused my prescriptions. Shortly after I was released from the psych ward I was fired from my cushy, well-paying job and I just snapped. To me, it was the end of the world and one night I decided it was over.

I downed every pill from a leftover prescription of Trazodone (probably seven or eight pills) and poured out my freshly filled bottle of Restoril onto my end table. I then proceeded to alternate taking a pill with slicing my forearm. The sting of the cuts kept me alert and focused on the task at hand. Thankfully Restoril is relatively fast-acting so after roughly nine or ten pills I was in a fog and noticed that the cutting was no longer snapping me back to reality like it had when I started. Curious, I pressed harder and harder with the razorblade but still, nothing. This was it. I'd reached a state of complete nirvana where pain no longer existed. Not only was I completely oblivious to my emotional pain, physical pain had vanished along with it. Content, I swallowed another mouthful of pills before passing out. (I only know now that I took 15 pills because I counted what was left of my prescription several days later.) The next couple of days are hazy. A pounding on my door. Blood soaked rags. At some point I'd apparently woken up long enough to fix a bowl of cream of wheat (which was crusting on my couch when I awoke a second time to the pounding on my door). My sister and mom drug me off to the ER where things are yet more hazy. An inept Army "doctor" poking a needle into my arm and mumbling something about subcutaneous fat, tendons, and an artery. Plenty of tears, whys, and attempts at comfort by my mom and sister. The ER tried to force me into a German psych ward but I managed to talk them out of it. They notified the on-call pdoc since Doc was TDY. I talked her out of sending me back to Landstuhl by promising to stay with my sister for a while. Soon after, Doc PCS'd, ending my long-standing relationship with therapy. When my logistical support from my dad ran out a month later, I was forced to stop taking medication all together.

I don't know if it was stopping the meds, surrounding myself with understanding friends, my blooming social life, landing the best job on earth, or all of the above that kept me mostly sane for my remainder in Germany. For the first time since I'd been back I felt like I was in control of things. Yes, I still had my mood swings but they weren't nearly as debilitating as they had been while I was on Zoloft. (There's a monumental difference between being manic or depressed and being in a mixed state - a dangerous combination of the two - which is what I'd spent the previous two years dealing with: a perpetual mixed state.) My new job at Outdoor Recreation kept me active and accomodated my social awkwardness nicely. It had fantastic perks like white water rafting trips in the summer and ski trips in the winter. Not to mention early AM airport shuttles to quell my need for speed and to disguise the fact that I was back to not sleeping, or sleeping very little. My boss adored me, my coworkers thought I was interesting, and best of all, I was good at and enjoyed what I was doing. But almost all good things come to an end. When I decided to move to Alabama it was really a no brainer. It was supposed to be temporary; a weigh station on my way to a bigger, better, more exciting life! My plan was to stay with my parents long enough to get a job and save up enough money to move out to California with my best friend where we would take on the world as a fiercesome duet. We made plans to attend college together in the winter and road trip and/or travel the globe during the summer. All that changed when I fell in love. Isn't it strange how something so volatile can be so can be so compelling? Compelling enough to change the course of your entire life.

These last six years have had their perks and quirks. My loving husband accepted me and all my disordered ways long before, I believe, he really knew what he was getting himself into. I know he loves me and I know I love him. But more than that, I think we're heavily dependant on one another which may be what truly keeps our relationship from falling apart at the seams. Mental illness is trying. It's a strain on every relationship I forge. Most of my family members have come to understand bipolar disorder and how it works. This makes our relationships much easier to manage. Instead of seeing me as pathetic and lazy for staying in bed for days on end, they try to understand the severity and all-encompassing symptoms of my depressive states. Instead of making me feel worthless and irresponsible when I spend money we don't have (or otherwise act with reckless abandon) they try to understand that I'm feeling invincible.

I can't really say whether things are better or worse than they were almost nine years ago. Mostly things are just different. The scenery has changed. I'll always be as different as I've always been. My imagination will surely on occasion run away with me as its hostage. It's almost guaranteed that, for the rest of my life, I'll experience times of intense despair that are all too familiar to me. It's just part of who I am; part of who I'll always be.

drawing a blank

I've found that my unemployed life is not so much better than my employed life. It's still ridiculously routine and horribly mundane. I do enjoy spending the extra time with my husband but I find myself waking in the morning and going "now what?" This isn't a feeling I particularly enjoy. I just don't know what to do with myself. I know that sounds cliché but I can't really think of any other way to put it.

Is it really possible that, at almost @28 years old, I still have no idea who I really am? I mean, really. Looking back, it seems I knew more about myself when I was @21 than I do now. How is that even remotely possible? Maybe I'm approaching an early mid-life crisis. Maybe I'm just fucked in the head. Both seem logical explanations for how I feel.

After spending five years on a crusade to become a mother and then suddenly halting all efforts, I just feel completely lost. How could I have let something with such uncertain results consume me? Define me, even? Maybe I've never really known who I am and maybe becoming a mom was a way to finally firmly define myself.

I spend so much time bemused by thoughts of what the outcome of my life is going to be. There's an underlying problem and that problem is the urge to self destruct. I began my self destructive behavior at a very young age and carried it, possibly, to a point of no return. This sounds strange, so let me explain. I had no ambitions in High School. I remember having some ambition as a @12 year old to write. And sometime around the 8th grade I suddenly had an ambition to become a pediatrician. But somewhere after the 8th grade, I just started to implode. And I've been on this slow-as-fuck self destruct sequence ever since. But I digress. I had no ambitions in High School to become anything. I didn't take my SAT's. I didn't talk to my counselor about colleges or careers. Then I got booted out of my High School in Germany and sent to Fort Knox to try and finish there. Eventually, I dropped out in favor of drinking and hanging out with my new degenerate "friends". Truth be told, I never expected to make it past @21, thus, I never planned for my future.

I guess it appears, on the surface, that I'm trying to make something of my life now. After all, I am pursuing a college degree, right? But there are times that I'm not even sure I want to work in IT for the rest of my life. Like I said, I can't really tell you what it is that I want to spend the rest of my life doing. When I was younger, I was too absorbed in the now to really think about the future (living in a constant state of suicidality does that to a person, you know) and now that I'm older I am afraid that I'm simply running out of time. I guess that's part of the reason I decided to pursue a degree in Information Technology. It's a widespread, ever growing industry and I knew the career and earning potential were there. (In all honesty, what I'd really love to do is just be a freelance web developer and work from home but I haven't the experience or the credibility to do so. It takes years of experience in coding to really earn any kind of money in web development. It's a very competitive field and you have to be the best of the best to just get a job doing web development, much less do freelance work. Still, this has been my pipe dream since I was @20 and introduced to the spectacular world of HTML.)

Like anyone else in this world, I just want to be (and stay) happy. But at this juncture, I am completely obvlivious as to what it's going to take to get me there.

Confessions...

I have always been self destructive. It started at a very, very young age. At the time, I think I mostly wanted attention but eventually it grew beyond that. And now, here I sit, the fucked up adult that I am.

As I've gotten older I've progressively kicked most of my self-destructive habits. Self-injury was the first to go. For years I turned to the sting of a razorblade for comfort. Some people exercise, some people just cry, some people go to talk therapy, some people go off the deep end and shoot a dozen innocent people; for me, it was always a nice piece of sharpened steel that brought the inner calm that I tried desperately to cling to. Self-injury is so odd. People look at you like you're some crazy freak that needs to be locked up. I never saw it as any less self-destructive than being an alcoholic or a drug addict. After all, cut yourself open and your body releases endorphins. The best natural high there is. How is that different from taking in harmful substances to get a high or to shut your brain off for a while? Self-injury was my heroin.

The only other self-destructive behavior that has ever been significant in my life has been an eating disorder. [gasp!] At age 19, I returned to Germany quite a bit smaller than I had been when I left. Somewhere around 50 pounds smaller, in fact. Still, I wasn't small enough. (And really, I never have been. Even at my smallest (size 8/10, 150ish pounds) I still constantly looked in the mirror in disgust. This is the very nature of eating disorders, yes?) But it was at age 19, when I started working at my old High School cafeteria (yes, I am the biggest dropout cliché) I started eating bad food for lunch every day. Cookies for breakfast (and sometimes I took some home), french fries (drenched in cheese sauce and sometimes chili), pizza, fried chicken patties, white bread GALORE. (Looking back now I can't imagine WHY the school lunch program allows this trash to be fed to children!) I went back to drinking all sorts of soda, as well. It was bad all around. I felt horrible for doing it but it was cheap and readily available. It was then that I decided to try purging. I never considered it a problem because, after all, purging couldn't be much worse than the crap I was putting into my body. My logic was twisted, yes, but it's how I saw things. (I acknowledge that changing my eating habits would have been the ideal solution, but I simply couldn't stop eating all those horrible foods!) If I ate a salad for lunch I didn't feel the need to purge. After all, salads are healthy. But when I indulged in my craving for cheese fries and a Coke, my sorrows and guilt headed straight for the sewers. No one knew about it. By looking at me, you never would have guessed that I had an eating disorder of any variety. (I was relatively plump, after all.) I've never 100% admitted to anyone (except my BFF) that I had have an ED. Sometimes I don't even admit it to myself. "I don't have a problem! I can stop any time I want to!" The words of a true addict in denial.

At any rate, the problem waxed and waned over the years. I'd go through spurts where I wanted to throw up everything I ate and other times I'd throw up simply when I over ate or ate the wrong things. Sometimes I didn't even bother.

My last fasting insulin revealed that my metformin isn't working as efficiently as it once was. Or maybe I just haven't been eating as well as I should. (Option B, yes.) Regardless, the results not only prompted this hellatious break from trying to get pregnant but it also spawned more Google searches than you can begin to imagine. So this morning, I got to thinking about my past (and, to be perfectly honest, my present) and I Googled "bulimia and insulin resistance" and the results floored me. Studies have been done and experts have discovered a very probable link between bulimia and PCOS.

Bulimia is a mental disorder frequently associated with menstrual disturbances
and low estradiol levels although most bulimic women are of normal weight. Low
bone mass has also been reported in these women. Furthermore, increased androgen levels and polycystic ovaries (PCO) have been described in bulimic women. Little is known about the mechanisms of these hormonal disturbances and the role of sex hormones in the etiology of the disease has not been fully explored. Androgens
may promote bulimic behavior by influencing food craving or impulse control.

Now there's an interesting fact to chew on (haha.. pun not intended). I have both of those problems (cravings and especially impulse control). Not just with food, either. My shiny new eyeshadow collection can attest for my complete and total lack of impulse control.

So these are all things I am working on in therapy. Eee gads! Yes, I finally admitted to someone, a professional someone, that I have a binging/purging issue. So we were working on that but today we got to the root of my problem: it's not that I purge, it's the overeating part. That is where the root of my problem lies. Even further analysis would be my impulse control and need for instant gratification. I'm both glad and terrified to be working on these issues. It has been my way of life for years. It's going to be hard work.

stories of Christmas past

I have this tendency to reinvent myself every so often. I don't know if it's because I am living with a serious identity crisis or whether it's part of my being mentally interesting or what...

About six and a half years ago I met my best friend through a website called The Garage. It was an online refuge for teens struggling with all flavors of mental illness from bipolar disorder to multiple personality disorder to "simple" clinical depression and anxiety. My BFF and I shared a common thread before we ever realized it - we both have bipolar disorder. She fought off any sort of treatment and thus diagnosis for years and years until she finally gave in and started seeing a therapist and shrink on a regular basis. Now she's on appropriate meds and seeing a talk therapist regularly.

I, on the other hand, have been medicated since I turned 19. (Courtesy of my paranoid parents who thought happiness came in pill form. Personally, at the time, I felt happiness came in a bottle. A vodka bottle to be specific. I spent a year of my late teens perpetually wasted to the point when people would ask about me they would refer to me as "that drunk girl". Nice, huh?)

I was a pretty screwed up kid and an even more screwed up teenager. When I became a 'young adult' and moved into my own place, things just got worse. I was seeing a shrink and took my meds faithfully but I still seemed to be spiraling out of control. I had no one to monitor me 24/7 anymore so I pretty much did what ever the hell I wanted. I got mixed up in all sorts of bad relationships, some that I'm not very proud of. I replaced alcohol with weed and ecstasy. Oh, yeah, and lots of sex. I stayed suicidal and depressed for the most part. But sometimes I felt on top of the world and loved everything and everyone in sight! Nothing could stop me! Those were the days that I loved to gather up all my friends in my 1982 Mercedes (aka The Green Beast) and fly down the Autobahn to Nürnburg to blow my entire paycheck. Oftentimes I spent my rent money.

If I knew then what I know now, life may not have gotten so out of control. Maybe I wouldn't have had to spend a week on the crazy ward in 2001 for a suicide attempt. Maybe I wouldn't have as many scars as I have now because maybe, just maybe, I would've stopped cutting a lot sooner than I did.

Then again.

These former selves of mine like to remind me that they're still a part of me. I still long to be that punk-rocker, crazy girl that blows bubbles at random strangers and dances in the snow at 3:00 AM in the middle of January. I'm still that girl I'm just a little bit older, a tiny bit wiser, and a lot less selfish than she used to be.

To be perfectly honest... I'm doing nothing more than waiting to break free.