Spiritual encounters

Spiritual encounters, revelations and the rest

I went to see a medium yesterday, now I know this will be met with a variety of faces. Some will roll their eyes claiming its a load of tosh, others will be curious and a few will frown, however before you make up,your mind as to whether I was silly to have gone hear me out first.

I had booked the appointment two weeks ago, the man I went to see is renowned for working with the police and helping to solve murder investigations- he has assisted Scotland Yard and been of use. He came highly recommended. Secondly, I withheld my number when I made the appointment over the phone and used a fake name, I didn't give a last name just an alternate to my first name. I also paid upfront with cash- there was no exchanging of personal or financial details in any way, shape or form. 

He also asked me to not tell him anything, just to listen- some people who proclaim to be 'psychic' lie and 'hot' read people depending on what the person tells them. This guy was not interested in any of that.

I sat down, and instantly the man told me that he had 'a gentleman with him, who was telling him he was my mothers father and his name is Ronald but everyone calls him Ron, he's telling me he died of cancer very young and it all happened very quickly'. I was flabbergasted, my grandad died when I was two years old his name was Ronald and everyone did call him Ron, and yes he died of cancer within 6 weeks. The man went on To say that my grandad was showing him his wedding photo and told him that his wife was called Irene- my nan is called Irene. All the time I sat there and listened. He knows you have not been well he said, that you have been very unhappy, that you still aren't, that you have a lot of ups and downs but he wants you to know he never left you. The psychic got very emotional at this point, he sounded like he was going to cry. 'You nearly passed on he said' at this point I was nearly In tears. This is true, I did nearly die, I had been given 48 hours to live when I was at my worst with my illness and spent some time in the ICU. ' he wasn't going to let that happen', the psychic said. We both took a deep breath at this point. 

He told me plenty of Information that related to my family which was true, and even some friends who weren't related to me that had passed on came through. I was shocked. I hadn't gone for the purpose of hearing from those who had passed on, I thought the reading was going to be for spiritual guidance. What astounded me was the accuracy of the  description of people and their names and the things he knew, anecdotes that only my family knew.

Anyway as I left, I knew that I was unhappy, going through constant ups and downs- I didn't need a psychic to tell me that. It made me realise I have to try to eat regularly again even if its just a little bit. I haven't been able to be honest with my dietician for fear of what she will do or impose on me. But I have made a deal with myself. Eat a little bit and regularly and not compensate and if I haven't made progress in a week I am going to write a letter To my dietician and explain everything and at least know then that everything is out in the open. Weight gain is out of the question but at least honest is something I want. 

Have you ever seen a psychic? Did it ever provide new perspective??

Comments always welcome.

Xxx

V

Exercise, excess and everything else

Trying to look on the bright side

Looking forward to tomorrow! I have an appointment at a Virgin Active gym to look around but I already know I am going to join. Previously when I was a member of a gym I was less scared to eat because I always felt secure with the knowledge that I had exercise to make me feel safe. It also did help me. To lose weight so bonus point.

I realise things have been bad lately, and I desperately want to be stable- able to eat without having to compensate because I am scared of what might happen if I don't use safety measures. Christmas is coming and I really want to be in a position to know my maintenance level, to be able to relax with the knowledge that I can eat something without gaining weight. The paranoia has been getting on top of me lately. 

Going to the gym helps me, and hopefully will. For one thing it gives me something g structurally consistent to do everyday. It also helps with the depression, endorphins get going and I feel calmer and I get out of the house for a bit. 

They also offer yoga, and I find that so calming, so I think after doing an hor in the gym,I could go to yoga! 

I figure exercise is a safer compensator than other  methods I have used, rather this devil than another one.

Xxx

V

Updates and the irony of Alice Adventures in Wonderland

Updates and the endless irony of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventure In

Wonderland'.

So I went to my appointment this week, monotony seems to be the cycle I am going through with my local services. Theresa my dietician, asks me 'how I am?', I tell her 'fine', I lie a bit more about how I am coping. She weighs me tells me it's my business if I want to stand on the edge of a cliff, as long as I don't throw myself off completely, then they'll settle with monitoring me. She tells Me how it astounds her that i have Normal  blood pressure, body temperature, And am somewhat of an anomalies to the typical  pattern;- the usual spiel. 

She asks me about body image. She tells me the lack of eye contact tells her I am depressed. Before treatment when I was okay with my weight I use to make eye contact. Now I am so Embarrassed and ashamed of myself, I don't feel capable, I finally tell her that treatment made me feel dirty, violated, angry and hateful. That it just created a new set of problems in my mind. I am not dying like I was, but I feel dead on the inside. 

She tells me she thinks I am in this for the long haul, that my eating disorder has claimed my life and my body. She asks me 'do I like this', this makes me angry, anyone who has truly suffered does not enjoy their existence with it, but sees it as the best of a bad situation- the better if two evils. Fat and miserable or just miserable but a belief that you are fat- I know which one i would and will always choose. 

Anyways today's lecture at uni was on 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. Well, as I am sure you are aware Lewis Carrol's dream child is a figure that is reinterpreted by generations focusing on the authors obsession with the pre pubescent girl. However as I sat in this lecture, I felt I was the one in the dream world not just Alice, as I noticed a never ending dichotomy between the text and myself.

Ironically Alice opens the second chapter with a question that only a dream world could possibly attempt to contain and consider, as she asks  'Who in the World am I?' Fuck. This theological, ponderous and endless question hit me like a bucket of cold water at 9am on a cold morning. It is not just Alice's exaggerated desire to desperately know who she is in relation to herself, but also to the universe- Carroll's reference to the world was not undertaken lightly or simply as a turn of phrase; This girl, in this unknown dream world wants to know not only, Who it is that she is, but on a myopic scale, her relation to it. Ever so interestingly Lewis Carroll related the insecurity of all people to be placed in a children's novel, posing a question that every mother, nanny, governess, daughter and sister would be smacked with as they read this novel for themselves or to others in their care. It made me realise, we are all in a dream world, treading unknown territory like Alice-constantly questioning who were are, what we are and what space we would, should or could inhabit in this world.  It's not just adults who question who they are, but children too- the only difference being as adults we are conscious of our actions as opposed to a child who may not even realise they are reacting to a conundrum situated within their conscience. 

My lecturer then went on to state that the question of identity; for Alice's exploration of identity is inherently written and explored through her body. I sit in the lecture relating to the entirety of what she was saying. I feel as though my body is 'who I am', my identity, my communication of control, not in control, happy, sad, strong or weak. Only now the dialogue has become fuzzy, with my body being written on through the projections of individuals who fed me in treatment, but the speech I recite is the same as always. Same girl, different disguise. Ironically As readers to Carroll's novel we are all constantly privy to the multitude of disguises that Alice inhibits, even if only for a short while.

The question of who 'in the world' Alice is, is explored, questioned and essentially scrutinised through the continuous state of transformation she is in- her growth and subsequent shrinking.  It is the very act of consumption that places her existence as suspicious, particularly for others that inhabit this dream world. This could not be clearer than when a pigeon proclaims Alice is a serpent, despite her less that convincing assertion that she is'a little girl'. The pigeon quickly dismisses this feeble attempt at persuasion by stating 'he had seen a good many little girls in his time but none with such a neck'. (A consequence of Alice's hunger sees her neck extending like a giraffe! ) i couldn't help but wonder, if it was as notable to others as it was to me that Alice through the consumption of something the dream world has offered results in a regard for her as something demonic, possessed- MIlton's snake!! For an anorexic who feels,obsessed, possessed, demonic and evil for eating, Carroll sure knew how to pack a punch when contemplating the issues of food, ingestion and their resulting consequences for women.

Subsequently this led to consideration of 'The fallen woman' just as Alice literally falls into the dream world, Eve falls from the grace of God, through the act of consumption. It can clearly be seen that there was a massive anxiety for Carroll and even his audience concerning the undesirable nature of growth stemming from the act of eating and how such choice was disruptive for women . Even as I sit  here now in the 21st century not just the 19th in my usual cafe spot, I see a sea of people, women, men, all alike. But with women drinking their soya light, non fat lattes as opposed to the men who are taking advantage of international week at the cafe and the array of croissants on offer. Carroll may have designed a dream world but i live in an alternate one, ALice is not the only one concerned with what message eating projects to others.

Expectations seem to be a calculated  consideration in the novel . Alice as a child is expected to grow- only not too much as we are warned by the psychological messages of excess. It is my view that Carroll's constant enlargement and descaling of Alice's size stems from the anxiety of maturation when understood in relation to pre-pubescent girls; in a limbo state- no longer child but not ready to be woman either. The growth and shrinking an act of transformation serves as a rehearsal for both Alice and Carroll, a rehearsal for growing up. Yet capable of returning to size, not ready for the response of others to Alice as woman. If only real life could be this way with a return guarantee or a try before you buy with an ability to return to our previous states. 

Inevitably Carroll is concerned with the moral gain and potential loss that may occur for women (embodied through Alice) in the process of growing up; which is sadly echoed through the transformation of Alice's  body. The dream world is littered with appealing and tempting references, I.e. 'eat me' spelled out 'onto a cake in currants', but to do so results in an undesirable transformation in image. Such contrast sees Alice as the reflective image of Carroll's concerns, is it possible for a female consumer to also be one of conformity, when living in a world of plenty? Moving from the physical domestic space to a consumer in society, Carroll highlights female actions have consequences in the realm of the domestic. Take Alice's desire for the marmalade in a jar which is empty she has to be careful to not 'drop it' so it doesn't 'kill anyone on its way down'. The message of curbing female desire for the safety of others was never so greatly highlighted in the novel as it is here. Evidently the desire of Alice and all women alike is aligned in Carroll's mind with the ability to endanger even to cause fatality. I couldn't help but see how this relates to eating disorders, we are all so believing that if we make the wrong choice society will judge us,hate us and perhaps reject us. We are all under the judgement of others all the time, when every decision seems so crucial, it's hard not to feel like we are our very own Alice in Wonderland.

'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are full of riddles, conundrums and puzzles. For someone with an eating disorder my life is its own oxymoron and riddle, maybe one day I'll figure out 'Why [it is that] a raven is like a writing desk'.

Comments always welcome. 

Xxxx

V

Anger, fear and everything in between

Anger, and its sister Fear

So back at uni today, after heaving myself out of bed to brave the m25 at 6am, I made it to campus at 8:45am, tired, cold and not in the mood to be messed about. In honesty I suppose the crap at home isn't helping.

My mum and I are not seeing eye to eye at the moment, 'you've lot weight haven't you?' She asks in an aggressive hostile tone. I haven't. I wish I had,I am annoyed and pissed off by her accusation, for a variety of reasons.

1) I do not appreciate her tone, it is rude, accusatory and confrontational, she manages to keep her mouth shut for a few weeks before she starts spurting her toxic poison. She uses this as a starting point to launch herself like an Inter galactic missile, she is about as subtle as a gun and the game she plays is both predictable and transparent to me. I tell her I haven't lost weight. This enables her to spur her second point 'well your not the same weight as when you left treatment are you?' This is phrased as a question but unveiled as a statement. I tell her it's none of her business, I have seen the local services and they have said the same as always. My mother hates this, being shut out, unknowing of my weight, out of the loop, she wants to control me but I just want to control myself. I realise I am doing this as a way of rejecting her, punishing her, hurting her. In a way I want to shut her out because I felt as though my opinion when  In treatment mattered very little to her. She shut me out, watched as people did things to me that I didn't want. Being a predator and aggressor doesn't always have to be first hand, if you exist as a witness you are involved, you are not removed from responsibility. I want to hurt her in a way that she and others have hurt me. They made me into a person i do not know, with a body I not only don't know but hate. I equate what they did to me as a moral rape, manipulating, moulding and shaping me into a fat suicidal mess. It took time to lose the weight, they destroyed me. As a consequence I have destroyed the relationship with my mother.

2) This leads me to my second point, the question she asks are not out of concern for me but for herself, she cares what people think of her. She states 'this has been going on too long now, I thought you would get over it by now and just put on the weight'. Six months in a treatment facility and she still speaks like a foreigner to anorexia.  Her comment makes me angry, really angry to the point where I want to wrap my hands around her throat and throttle her. Throttle her for what they did to me, for how unhappy they have made me, for the selfishness that stands behind her desire for me to change and her disregard for how I feel. She had as always prioritised her own feelings above my own. 

3) she then decides having no joy from her previous comments to pull out the big guns.also known as emotional blackmail.  This portion of the game she is has coerced me into playing involved demeaning me, reinforcing how awful a human being she thinks I am in a hope of me having some kind of wake up call, she calls me deluded, she should take a look at herself. She hopes by stating 'we have no family life because of you' will make me want to change. As if this sudden knife to the heart will make me come to some epiphany like something out of a Jane Austen novel, declare my deepest sympathy for my behaviour and conform to societal ideal. Please it may have been like that for Marianne in 'Sense and Sensibility' but we're living in the book of reality not fiction. S the response is simply met with anger, as I ask her whether she should perhaps consider her own faults in this situation. My uncle and his family do not want to see me now that I have the label of 'anorexia' on me, despite socialising with me at a lower weight, the label appears to superficially changed everything, this annoys me as much as it frustrates me.  The irony of this statement is, my family at home want me to eat with them, why would I want to partake in the act I find most disgusting in front of people who not only incur my anger and hate but who blame me for everything. It is my mothers opinion I should be martyr myself for the sake of everyone else's happiness. She stupidly states 'As you put on weight you would be happier', what an idiot, when I left treatment at a bmi of 15, I was the most unhappy I had ever been, angry, sad, hateful, why would I want to do something that makes me so unhappy? I already feel like I have been massacred, what they did to me made me more fearful of gaining weight than my fears before treatment, they have made me afraid of my own body, fearful I can't eat anything without gaining weight, the experience was entirely negative, I do not see one aspect of it that made me feel any better.  I have told her this but it is ignored. When I was a bmi of 15 when I left treatment my mum was ecstatic she made comments like 'you look normal now'. This elation was for herself, but was bad for me. It further fuelled my core belief that I look heavier than others at my weight or when I put on weight and therefore need to be lighter in weight in order to look thin. And also that if that was the case there was no way I would ever put on more weight ever again. I felt as though my label, identity and the essence that I had been comfortable with had been stripped away. Stupidly my mother assumed as I put on weight that my anorexia 'just went away' that the desire to lose weight wasn't there any more, that my fear of weight gain disappeared and that I was no longer entitled to the feelings that I had initially because I was 'better', the mental side of it remained the same for me throughout treatment. At the end of my stay though I just felt like an anorexic inside sewn into a fat suit, I was and Amin a disguise that hides the real me, and I wish I could take off. The only way to take it off is to lose weight.

'Go and see someone' she urges to talk about how you feel. This change in tactics  is often deployed when my mother realises she has taken a wrong tern much like a fault in monopoly ' she cannot pass go'. No. Way. I will never be honest or talk openly with any professional again. They threaten section or weight gain and I'd rather chop off my own fingers than face that ever again. Why would I do that? When I can keep it to myself and not live in the fear. I will never share anything with Any of those psychopaths ever again. 

Another game my mother and I have taken to playing is 'hide and sneak'. The local services write letters to me, and i sometimes write a diary and she then attempts to find them and read them, sneaking through my drawers and wardrobe in order to find any kind of ammunition or information she can use against me and to control me.  I confront her about this ' I was just tidying up'. Pretty feeble move. ' really I ask her, what exactly needed tidying in my shoe boxes above my cupboard? I didn't know shoes in boxes created mess'. Busted. Her response is that 'she cares', you are a liar and a nosy bitch I tell her.  I do not trust her at all, I give her nothing and she can drive herself mad with it. As a result of her snooping, I have come to carrying everything on me, letters, the diary and of course an online blog.  The game ends with me leaving, as I tell her ' have you achieved anything by saying what you have said?', 'well it's got it off my chest' she tells me, we both know this is nothing the treasure she wanted the prize as the end of this game we play has ended as it began full circle. A power struggle, a game she cannot win, a tug of war that she can only engage in for a limited time.

In this game of life that we all play, willingly or not, we all probably feel we have someone or something we need to defeat. I feel like the treatment centre, have one up on me, they are winning- I have not lost all the weight they put on me. Tey have planted doubt in my mind about whether i can eat and not gain weight or eat and lose weight. But as the local services told me ' weare not plants we cannot make our own food' , so 'out of nothing, nothing can be made'. I know that for the rest of my life I am going to try to lose this weight. Hoping to lose 4/5lbs this week, on a diet of 140-200 locals a day, restricting liquid to 1700mls. No weighing in until 5 days have passed, seeing no loss can be demotivating, frightening and discouraging. The scales use to be my best friend now they reveal a number that makes me feel at war with my body and the world. 

Now that, that rant is over I can get back to uni, so I went to the lecture it was fine, discussing female autonomy, how ironic? Next week is Alice in Wonderland, considering satiety, hunger and female consumption. Something that I am sure will be acutely uncomfortable for me. Maybe I will have a lot to say, having spent all of my life confused by female consumption and attitudes towards it,  and at least 5 years trying to ignore hunger. 

I guess my question is, do you have a turbulent relationship with your mother? Do you play similar games? Are you resentful or angry of putting their comfort and desires above your own?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

V

Xxx

Getting involved?

Getting involved

So, I think I really need some other endeavours other than just my 1 day at Uni. I have registered with a job agency for some part time work; but that really could take a while. Regardless I think keeping busy would be really good for me, the distraction from the nasty thoughts that are plaguing me would be really nice. 

So I emailed an amateur dramatics group in my area and I am waiting to hear back. I am kinda stuck with what other things I could do. I would volunteer but doing what? I live in Suburbia, so I am trying to think of other things I could do. 

I am not arty, but I would volunteer reading to the blind, or doing meals on wheels. Brownies guide? I mean I just don't know. How do I go about finding these things?

What about clubs that aren't philanthropic but are out there? 

When everything seems hidden, where do you even begin to look?

Any advice?

V X