food

[prismaticbleed]

All right, let’s try to type about this somehow.


Right around Pascha of this year, according to our food diary, specifically the first week of April, our diet changed. We cut out eggs because we tested positive on three different occasions for an allergy, and needed to find a new protein source. We tried cheese, but it triggered migraines and vomiting. Then for some reason we also started eating lettuce, cauliflower, cucumbers, and raisins? I’m assuming we were told to try FODMAP again. Regardless, the food diary is marked with symptoms of intense nausea and confusion and body twitches and vomiting. We ended up in the emergency room on the 6^th. We had to reintroduce eggs for a time but the photos indicate this was the “bean pasta week” which was hell. We could not stop throwing up. Sweet potatoes did the same. We cut both out quickly and went back to the normal pre-April diet, but now the diary is peppered with purgation records. Our calories hovered between 800 and 1100 tops. Then around April 26^th, green beans appear in the record, with the return of cucumbers, and now zucchini as well. I know this was also doctor’s orders. It went well for two days, and then the purging started again-- notably, because I remember getting unbelievably nauseous on a regular basis from the food. By May we had cut out broccoli completely and were now eating just those three other green vegetables, with some attempts at bok choy. It looks like we brought the broccoli back in mid-May and the purging stopped for a while.
May 23^rd was the gastric emptying study with the eggs and toast. After that our diet went completely back to normal again, no more zucchini cucumber hell. It also looks like this is when we definitively quit the Three Wishes cereal, and realized that’s what had been causing our intense abdominal bloating and constipation.
June began and on the 3^rd suddenly BOTH oat bran and hemp hearts reappear in the diet, and eggs disappear for good by the 9th. June 8^th was the MU women’s retreat day. There’s still some on and off purging, almost always after dinner-- we were eating three bags of broccoli for carbs and the sheer volume would set it off. We also started weighing our food by this time. Our daily calories increase to 1100 by July.
July 28^th is the colonoscopy prep period with the rice and green beans and babyfood turkey. This was a very difficult week psychologically and it set the stage for later compulsive binges.
I need to check the calendar to see how many we had over this time period, because sometimes we forget to list them in the food diary. All I know for sure is that there was a terrific spike in August, as I know that over half the days were binge-purge days, even if we just binged on broccoli.

So we’re struggling now. The cycle has gotten a grip around our throat and it is so difficult to stop. Even though our daily calories have gone up from ~900 in April to about 1400 in September-- a HUGE increase-- thanks to eating such a deficit for months, our weight is hovering around 90lbs and we still admittedly want it to drop lower. On good mornings, when we step on the scale, it’s 88lbs.
But the point is this. We want to stop bingeing and purging. We know it’s a sin. We also know it’s an addiction. We want to stop, but God help us we don’t want to stop either. We’re so bloody hungry. It’s nowhere near what it was like in North Carolina, or even up at the old house with grandma, that is true-- we were out of control back then, ravenous and destructive, insatiable and desperate. We didn’t know God back then. That’s what changed.
Now, we’re still starving, but…

It hit me today that we’re constantly angry. We’re miserable and exhausted and terrified. The OCD compulsions we used to have around the time the Julie days began, notably spitting and handwashing due to “contamination fear,” have returned for the first time in over a decade at the least. They’re debilitating. What triggered this? The feelings of shame and guilt and filth and evil are unbearable. It all feels tied to eating. Is it because our conscience is working again now? Is it because we know we’re sinning at least twice a week now, bingeing and purging, starving and stuffing this poor wrecked body, and although God knows we want to quit He also must know we’re so bloody hungry? What do we do?

We have a new nutritionist now, a male, a couple years younger than us. He’s actually accepting of our limitations and is willing to work with them-- when we told him dairy inevitably makes us uncontrollably vomit, he actually said “okay, then we won’t eat dairy,” which shocked us as we’re so used to being told to just eat it regardless and take a Zofran or something, which doesn’t help. The only trouble is this: he’s still giving us dietary recommendations, in order to increase our weight and fix our nutrient macros, and this triggers Iscah’s kneejerk “must be a good girl” food compulsions which means we KEEP forcing ourselves to “try eating normal people foods” even if they hurt, even if they make us sick, in order to be “good” and obedient and self-effacing. It’s just perpetuating the binge-purge hell loops. It feels like there is no end, no way out, until we CAN “do it.” So the forcing keeps happening until “one day we won’t get sick anymore.” But what if that never happens? We forced those bloody eggs for months, knowing we tested positive for an allergy but not taking it seriously until it was double confirmed, in the meantime just taking Benadryl twice a day and “getting used to” the hives and burning eyes and dizziness and runny noses. But the point is it wasn’t going away. No matter how much we forced, it couldn’t change the actual consequences. Same with the green beans, and the cheese, and the bean pasta. No matter how many attempts we made, we kept puking, because the nausea and stomach distress was so bad. We tried so hard, we really did. At what point is it “right” to “accept” the “fact” that maybe we “can’t” eat those foods? Right now we’re “not allowed to” even suggest such a thought. It’s “wrong.” It’s “evil” and “bad” and “disobedient.” You were told to eat that food, so you eat it, no matter how you feel, and one day you won’t feel anything anymore. Isn’t that “how it works”?
I’m typing all this out and it is just… exactly parallel to sexual abuse. No one is surprised.
It must be translating as this. We have no working memory of the abuse so our psyche must be funneling it into the food, because they’re practically the same thing in the end.

We’re not getting very far with most of our therapists with this. We’re seeing four of them right now, plus a psychiatrist and a case manager. Of them all, only one therapist is making real progress and thank God for her-- literally, I think the only reason why we’re getting somewhere there is because she is Christian and makes that an ACTIVE and PROMINENT part of our treatment, which is AMAZING and makes the whole process make so much more sense. But she and we are focusing on childhood trauma, which is hugely significant and deeply disturbing to be honest… you don’t realize how many bad seeds were planted back then, until you start tracing the rotten roots.
But… when will we ever get to discuss and heal from adult trauma? Will we have to one day actually, finally, honestly discuss the Julie Days with a therapist? How?

Right now, we’re haunted by food. That’s blinding us to everything else. The sense of shame and sin is devastating. We cannot escape it. It’s every waking moment. We’re haunted and hungry and horrified and hateful, which is an awful way to live, but honestly “we” despise “ourself” so much right now for this eating disorder, we wish we could just turn it off.
But we’re so hungry.
THAT’S the bizarre obstacle here. Something-- someone for sure-- in our psyche is resisting healing, in a sense refusing to “give up” bingeing because she’s so scared that if she does, she will starve to death. WHY. We’re getting 1400 calories a day now! We’re eating food, even if we don’t want to; we’re being obedient and accountable to the authorities that told us to eat! We’re a “good girl” in that sense, aren’t we? So why are we so miserable? Why do we still feel like no matter what we’re eating, we’re never satisfied? We’re always hollow and empty and want to cry. Even with binges, we hate them-- the only thing “enjoyable” about them is the ridiculously ritualistic and systematic and methodical hours that they involve, all the cooking and sorting and picking and ordering and cleaning. What is this doing for our mind that we “need”? What need is this trying to meet, however disastrously and misguidedly?

Another obstacle to healing is a recent and massive spike in daily anxiety and panic attacks. We weren’t like this back in July, I don’t think. Were we? I don’t know.
Back when Anxiety herself first appeared in June, at long last, I remember we were already promising ourself to “never binge again” after certain dates. We genuinely tried so hard to just cold-turkey quit, over and over and over. But all the travel, all the doctors, the consistent lack of sleep, the recurring financial crises, it just… some nights we would just be so exhausted and hungry and overstressed that we would just give up and give in. 7pm breakfast means you don’t even try to keep it down, so you might as well eat ten bags of broccoli so your body is tricked into thinking it ate something worthwhile. You get the idea.

It’s been so hard to “obey” the “rules” about food too. Someone started arbitrarily breaking them and now we can’t seem to stop again. They got a taste of the forbidden fruit and promptly became addicted, even it it tasted disgusting, even if they didn’t actually want it-- but they “HAD to want it”; they “HAD to try it again” for whatever reason.
I don’t understand it. What are they trying to prove? What answers are they trying to get? What end goal are they pursuing here? What is their actual motivation? Why can’t they just quit eating the foods we aren’t allowed to eat? Why are they so scared to let go again? What is the fear underlying all of this?

There’s so much music we can’t listen to anymore because music is always, always powerfully tied to “life eras”, however brief. We get flashbacks to them immediately and it can be terrifying. So much of this year’s music is tied to small periods of eating disorder wars, certain “food cycles” even if they only lasted for a few days, and even specific days that were psychologically harrowing enough to latch onto whatever music we had heard that day.
We haven’t listened to any new music in weeks, really. I think it’s a desperate coping mechanism. We’re trying so hard to escape from this hell; it’s better if there isn’t any future soundtrack tied to it. That way it won’t be remembered.

Right now, after weeks of grueling battles, the addiction has been pared down to the weirdly specific combination of beans+rice+oats+carrots, and chocolate chip granola bars. It’s so weird. But that’s it. Everything else is lingering around the edges, but the more rules we put up around them, and/or the more fear is tied to them, the easier it is to resist them.
Still. Chocolate is the oldest forbidden food. It’s a “sex food,” an abuse food, with real trauma tied to it. Granola is a “sworn off” food for penitential reasons. So why are “chocolate granola bars” allowed right now? ARE they? Or is someone just spitting hairs, like they do with everything else that’s edible?
In any case, I pray this ends soon. Chocolate is still so frightening it’s making me shake just thinking about it now. Maybe it’s the fact that granola bars have such tiny bits of chocolate in them that it “doesn’t register” as chocolate. But WHY are we “wanting” to eat them anyway? Granola bars themselves are a MASSIVE trauma food! You remember the bathroom events! What the heck are we trying to prove here? How did this even start? I hope it ends soon. It inevitably will, we just need the data and the consequences solid. Once its emptiness is tangible, it’ll stop.

Why are we so “hungry.”
If we just quit this all at once, if we stopped eating oats and beans and rice, why do “we” “fear” that it would “make us miserable”? That’s a blatant untruth. We’re MUCH happier when we’re NOT bingeing and purging. But… there is a fear of some sort of “loss.” So what is being mistranslated? What are we actually afraid of losing?
Additionally, why do we feel like we “HAVE to binge” on stress days? Why can’t we just fast? We WANT to, God knows-- so why won’t we? What is this fear that keeps coming up, this fear of not eating, even though we still really and consciously “hate” eating on any given day?

That’s the root of it, I think. If I had to point my finger at something that really felt like a siren going off, that would be it. We HATE eating. There is actual HATRED towards food. And yet, simultaneously, we are so hungry. We “want” to eat our carrots and hempseed and broccoli. But it’s unfulfilling and empty and frustrating and leaves us anxious and angry and wanting to cry and throw up.
What do we actually “want”? If we hate food, and we hate eating, then what are we actually looking for in our compulsive frightened “I have to eat” panic-- especially since we still want to starve?
The ambivalence is driving us insane. We have no clear answers yet.
Don’t forget all of this is still somehow tied to abuse and violation. We’re going to have to face that knot at
some point. Until we start to untangle that, we probably won’t get anywhere on the surface.

All the ICC lectures lately have been indispensable. They are literally rewiring our brain and our heart. Make sure you remember and study and pray about and reflect upon everything they’ve taught us.
But… don’t get crushed under the weight of guilt they deliver, either. Guilt is a sign that your conscience is working. Don’t shut it off. But don’t despair, either. God is walking you through these steps. You NEED to know WHERE and HOW you’re going wrong before you can fix it, and we COULDN’T know this spiritual side of it on our own, only through this revelation. So treasure it, take it seriously, and act on it with God’s grace. But… realistically we can’t expect to “fix this” overnight, or in one shot. We’re most likely going to struggle still. This is spiritual warfare after all. But do not despair. Don’t give up. Don’t try to pretend this is easy, or that we truly understand, or anything else the thriskefoni like to do. We have to be sober and realistic about this. No sugarcoating, no whitewashing. This is indeed hell we’re stuck in. But Christ keeps reaching down to us and dragging us out every time we fall back into this bloody open grave. Don’t give up. Keep reaching up to Him.
He doesn’t hate you because sometimes you think this grave is your doom. Sometimes we think this is all there is and we don’t fight very well at all. Sometimes we get comfortable and we settle in a little. But Christ never hates you. He never gives up on you. Don’t give up on Him. He’s not trying to crush you with this knowledge, He’s giving you sharp graces that will strengthen you to fight better. Trust Him. You’ve been praying for this.
What I’m trying to say is… we’ve been convicted so powerfully it feels like we’ve been stabbed in the chest. We’re afraid we’re going to die, forever, if we cannot or do not put that knowledge into practice immediately and perfectly. Is that pride? The fear is intense. I don’t want to choose hell. I’m so afraid of damnation because I’m too damn weak to give up eating rice and beans on Tuesday nights. Isn’t that asinine? What the heck is actually going on here?
Christ, please, don’t let me go to hell because I’m currently not strong enough to really, definitively say “no” to these hungry compulsions.

It’s terrifying, to KNOW that I’ve “already decided” to binge on Tuesday night. I don’t want to, but I “want to.” There’s a “have to” in there somewhere, concerning the “practice eating” to “get used to” certain foods and meals that we “have to” eat. Et cetera. Vomiting is inevitable at some point, so might as well force it now and get it over with-- it’s better to control its occasion than to be blindsided by it. Isn’t that sad?
There’s so much fear. It’s enough to make you want to give up on living. It feels like there’s no escape.
But that’s not God’s Spirit. Where is our fortitude? Or rather, what battle do we ACTUALLY need to fight here? What would fortitude look like in practice here? What would REAL justice be in this situation? What is ACTUALLY wise? How can we be prudent in TRUTH?

God I’m exhausted, please forgive me, I want to sleep. Tomorrow is church. I’m so tired. I do want to worship. Help us to do that, no matter what. Don’t ever lose us.
The Eucharist is the key to everything, somehow. Please don’t send us to hell. Help us understand, truly. Help us to not be afraid. Heal us somehow. Help us to let You heal us. Please, don’t give up on us. Get us to heaven one day, no matter what. But please, please don’t kill us in the meantime. Don’t let us end up dead because of our stupidity. Please help us. Open our eyes. Give us the grace to WANT to act healthily. Please. Restore our capacity for joy. I don’t know what I’m trying to ask but You do. Deep down somewhere we feel so dead that it’s hard to even want to be healthy, even though we do, because being healthy means having no broken coping mechanisms which means facing whatever they’re trying to numb and I don’t think we can handle facing that gravestone reality. Heal THAT, Lord, please. There are so many layers here. Still, You can fix it all. I know You can. Please do so, moment by moment, in Your good time, in Your real love. Don’t let us die in our weakness and sins. Please heal us for good, for real, gently but permanently. Please don’t hurt us. Please help us. Help us to love You more completely, and help us to not be afraid of Your love. Amen.

I’ve got to sleep. Thank You God for helping us to have at least typed something tonight. We’ll do more tomorrow hopefully. Until then, please bless and forgive and protect and heal us. May we be transformed day by day into Your likeness. May we be remade new in Your image, and may we never sin again. Amen. Good night.