Do you ever feel like you have a whole hell of a lot of nothing to say?

I suppose nothing I say is nothing. Oh dear.
Anyway, Im done with this semester, as I said.
Ive actually been having a weird time without school. Ive found myself obsessing about food a lot more than usual, which is scary, and is also amidst a lot of "drama" with my nutritionist, if you will.
I talked to my first roomate/housemate/friend from treatment last night. I freakin love the girl. She, too, is doing eating disorder research, looking at a way to redesign the eating disorder screening systems to apply to men with eating disorders. Shes applying to PhD programs. Im so proud of us.

She and I have a lot of the same feelings regarding a lot of the same things currently... dietician... old treatment center where we are still involved, etc and it was REALLY good to talk to someone about it who has the same relationship to it as I do.

Oh! and to whoever asked what book I am reading now that I have time...

Emotional Awareness - By the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman .... its a series of dialogue between one of the foremost emotions experts/psychologists and the Dalai Lama, the foremost Buddhist expert about emotion...

I thought I would sleep better once finals were done, but as tired as I have been, sleeping hasnt been easy.
My (old?) nutritonist and I have been having an exchange... basically, things need to change between us... I need help in different ways and she doesnt really understand... it is kind of a long story, but one of her big things is that my relationship with feeding myself will change when my ability to love myself changes... an idea that is based on a misunderstanding of me...
My response back to her...
Thank you for your response. I will say "no" from now on if it means I would have to sacrifice something that involves me taking care of myself.
I dont have much of the kind of "fall out" that I believe you are refering to. I am curious about some of it, but it isnt an unhealthy curiousity. Im coming to this from a place of love and care and not of wanting a crash diet or a weight loss plan. I just want to find some way of living in a world with food that feels healthy and good and not like it does now. That is all I have ever wanted.... that and a true physical self perception.
There is one peice that is bothering me though. I hear you say over and over that it is about loving myself, and I have a problem with that. I feel like youre missing something about my true self when you go back to that each time as I vent my frustrations about attempting to learn to live with food in a normal context.
Kim, I do love myself very much. My relationship to food is in many ways a way that I have learned to love myself, and I am trying to untangle the impact of a million people who didnt know how best to love me.
The relationship I have to myself, is something very internal and important to me and isnt something I always give voice to, because I dont find it necessary. If this whole food thing were about not loving myself, then I would have given up long ago. It is my love and care and respect for myself that has ultimately gotten me through. If I didnt know I was someone worth caring for, I would have ever gone into treatment. I wouldnt have ever fought, tooth and nail, the last two years to get to a place where I could do what I am supposed to do in the world, follow my path. There have been times in my life where I have been very lonely, even amidst the crowds I often find myself in, and it is my love for myself that has cradeled me and kept me company until things could change.
It is my love for myself that knows I deserve a life without all of the dogma that has suction cupped itself onto my psyche about food and feeding. I know I deserve to be fed. I also I know I deserve the best fucking life I can possibly have and EVERYTHING I have done has been an attempt at that. I KNOW I was meant for big things. I knew that young. That was what got me through not being allowed to birthday parties with pizza. THAT is what got me through the moo's in the hallway as a teen. THAT is what got me through in the harsh world of theatre weighing what I did and THAT is what led me through a conscious journey to where I am.
I want everything life has to offer and I dont want it with food drama attached to it.
I love myself for my ability to hold to the ground when things are difficult and see beauty in the struggle, I love body for getting me through a long yoga class today, I love my brain and ambition for getting faculty sponsorship for my new research paper. I love my heart for being wide open and willing to cry and feel pain if it means I get to love and heal too.
And I even love myself when I dont do the "right" things with food... I love myself enough to ask for help doing what is best for myself.
So I am not sure what is lacking in my love for self as you see it. Perhaps it is my hesitancy to prove to anybody that I love myself, because I dont feel it necessary, but when it comes up time and time again, I do feel that you are mising an essential element of who I am..... and I wouldnt want that for you... I mean, after all... I AM pretty fucking amazing.

IM DONE WITH MY FIRST SEMESTER OF GRAD SCHOOL

I feel accomplished and also like ive been hit with a freight train.
*yawn* bedtime... but pleasure reading first :)

HAHAH

The Shoe Questions

Its 6:30 in the morning on sunday. Im sitting on the couch, tears streaming down my face, in the dark.
Its a long story. I have been carrying around a lot of pain about something... a group of people really, who used to care a lot for me in my roughest time and have since, more or less abandoned me, despite all the work Ive done for them. It is still a group I am associated with in many ways, and was planning on visiting while im home for 2 weeks this month. I mentioned this on somebody's facebook wall and received a note from somebody about how hurtful that was and how it was only going to push people away from me.
My instant response..... tears... because it made me realize how truly hurt I have been on top of being wrong for writing it out there.
Do you ever just feel stupid?
I have so many emotional responses....
one is this distinct yearning for the crisp clean edge of a razor... the next is that I would never numb myself after desperately searching for a life in which I can feel and cry...
I just hate being wrong. I hate being hurt. I dont know what to do about my relationship to these people. If I cut ties, it feels like cutting ties with a very important part of my journey and a home of sorts.
I dont know what I am going to do.... but for now, Im going to sit here and cry, because I suppose that is the largest testament of all to my recovery and strength of charactor.
I yearn so deeply to feel and I believe this is right....
But I am so hurt... so deeply hurt

I just returned home from Banana Republic's 40% off sale. I had a gift certificate inhand.
I returned home empty handed.

How do I stop fighting?
Why does the fact that my body doesnt look the way I think it should feel like a social justicy issue inwhich I was denied equity?

I recall thumbing through stacks of magazines as a teenager... Delia's, Girlfriends LA, Moxie and circling things, just like any other teen. I would sit on my friend's beds and we would play the game where you had to pick one thing from each page. Dance catalogs were my favorite.
I would circle things, excited as magazines arrived, but why?
I played a game in my head, hit a magical switch that let me pretend, that only in that moment that there was a chance in hell that those things would fit me. It was common knowledge that they would not. I recall imagining I had a daughter or a younger sister that I had to dress, or atleast a twin who was in the same situation so I would not feel so alone.
I recall, not living in a fantasy world, fore I knew it was untrue, but perhaps 5 or 15 minutes at a time where atleast in my head, I could chose to believe my body was different.
And as I write this, it seems so wrong. So dissacociative. But really, what was I supposed to do? Actually aknowledge the truth? All of the pain? Even now, I know it is there, underlying so much, but when I tap into it, it goes nowhere, because nobody can ever have a childhood reclaimed. Sure, Ive changed, ive grown, ive become the person ive always wanted to be, but I will NEVER have a childhood without what I went through. And in some ways I am thankful.... I do not regret it, but goddamnit I am tired of fighting whe people tell me is yesterday.