Reih7’s Weblog

On couch, wrapped in robe, watching cheesy teen movies and updating my Palm.

Christ, I have too many damn interviews in the next two weeks. I can’t concentrate because I’m sitting on the couch feeling as if I just swallowed a small child who is now living in my stomach and playing the drums.

I made a decision today: At my physical on monday, I’m going to ask to see a nutritionist and possibly pay out of pocket for some therapy. This cannot go on. I have a horribly unhealthy relationship with food, made acutely worse by the fact that today I realized that my thighs don’t fit into pants I bought in May. That’s unnatural for someone who works out 1 – 1..5 hours a day, so obviously I’m eating too much.

It makes me feel so desperate and worthless. As I sit here with my bloated belly I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get down to my pre-eating disorder weight. I feel ashamed even knowing that I was once a 73-pound anorexic. I’m not even worth the title.

It’s with feelings like this that I have to go to the interview tomorrow, knowing that I’m a face stuffing pig with self control issues, probably a liability in any residency program and a failure to myself.

On the inside, I know who I am: I am completely the girl I was the year before senior year of undergrad, BEFORE I got out of control, when I was working out and eating right and having a great time with my friends and family. My mood was good and my energy level was through the roof and, dammit, my CLOTHES FIT. I was…so happy. I’m having problems finding that kind of happiness which is so intrinsically tied to my body.

This is beyond “feeling fat”. I feel “terribly worthless”. What a waste of resources. I can’t even go three days without having to buy more grocery because I ate my way through them.

What I need to explore with above said therapist and/or nutritionist is why I eat. Sometimes it’s because I’m hungry, other times it’s because I’m scared. Usually it’s at night, when I’m scared of going to be hungry because it makes me think of all those nights when I was starving myself. I eat dinner, then a small post-dinner snack, and then my stomach feels E-M-P-T-Y. I eat something else small, and then something else, and before I know it I’ve had an orange, a bowl of oatmeal, an apple and two pieces of string cheese. AFTER dinner. AFTER popcorn.

I’m a mess.

I’m watching this ridiculous teen movie on TV and of course there’s a gorgeous boy going after a pretty girl, and all I can do is admire her thighs and her confidence. I’m such a fucking disaster now; I want to find someone and be happy but I have no control over what goes in my mouth. Almost every other day I want to rip the flesh off my body and start getting crazy inside when I realize I can’t. I try to tell myself to focus: Take one day at a time, concentrate on the first 5 pounds, etc., etc….but it doesn’t work. Late at night, like now, my stomach starts grumbling again and it’s back to the beginning when I don’t know what I’m doing.

This is what I have to offer to people? What a fucking joke. I can hide it tomorrow, and on Saturday for the interview, but I’ll be taking comfort in the nearby Kroger, looking up the dinner menu beforehand, packing a protein bar so I don’t have to eat the AM muffins and taking the bread off my sandwich at the interview lunch. I’ll probably fly home, get in at 1:00am, and be ravenous and want to buy a box of cereal and a carton of milk and just finish the whole thing (because that’s what seems to happen when you leave me around cereal and milk).

The worst is when my stomach burns like my intestines are on fire, about a few times a week, when I can’t sit or run because it makes me feel like my insides will fall out. The only thing that helps is using a massager on my stomach and even that has limited benefit. Sometimes it helps if I eat something, but it takes about an hour before the pain goes away. The doctors said it’s ‘IBS’, which I am well aware means “I think it’s Bull Shit”.

I was an extrordinary restrictor. 85 pounds? No problem. 70 pounds? Did it in my sleep. Now, I can’t keep away from a carrot. The layman thought is that I’m “making up” for years of starvation, but I know that my mind is sick of being on the alert. I think about following a diet plan and get both scared and exhausted. Scared because I don’t want to slip into the dark abyss of my eating disorder, and exhausted because I just don’t want to spend the mental energy restricting anymore. Let me be. Let me eat in peace.

I need to do something though because this situation will quickly become worse. I’m dreading getting weighed on Monday (Geez, I’m aiming for 120 TOPS, but fear that it will be more…) and I’m getting damn sick of looking gross in everything I wear. I don’t want to be jealous of my sister or the Vicky’s Angels anymore. I just want to eat right, exercise, not be hungry and…be happy.

The quandary is: What do I do when I’m hungry? Especially at night, since in the day time I can ignore it and do something else, but if I go to sleep on an empty stomach I will definitely be waking up again in a few hours. Should I just get used to it? I have no idea. It’s completely horrible.

And *I* want to find a relationship!? Are you fucking kidding me. I’m such spoiled goods it’s not even funny. Who in their right MIND would want this kind of craziness in their lives?! Wondering why I’m staring at my salad, why I take off my glasses before taking a shower so I don’t see myself naked, why I don’t look below the neck in the mirror. How can I be close to someone if I’m so sure that I don’t love my own body?

I’m proud of the things I can do, namely run 9 minutes miles after only starting training again for the last 3 weeks. Lasting for an hour on the elliptical and not even noticing. Feeling my monstrous quads get me up and down steep hills, the ache in my arms that tells me I lifted that day, my sore abs after hardcore sit-ups. I can do so much, but I just don’t look like it.

I don’t know how to get back on track at all, but it all comes down to the fact that I have an interview to get to tomorrow, and I am up at almost midnight writing when I should be sleeping. I’ll wake up before 6:00, work out, drive to the airport, pick up my car, drive to my hotel, crash, go to the stupid social dinner where I’ll feel like a fat fool, spend the next day selling myself when all I want to do is crawl into a hole and…then fly home. All so I can repeat it again in two days.

My god. I need some help.