Facing My Fear of the Scale

Got my weekend homework for IOP: Bring my scale to IOP on Monday.

Anyone with an ED can probably figure out why: we are getting rid of it.

Thing is this isn’t hard for me because I am getting rid of it, it’s hard because, well, I haven’t touched it in over 2 years. I haven’t weighed myself on it. Haven’t turned it on, haven’t anything.

Why?

(Trigger Warning Begin: Suicide, Depression, Self-Harm, Eating Disorder)

Because the last time I touched that scale I almost attempted suicide.

The number had gone up. I was a failure. I hated myself. My life. My body. Everything. I couldn’t live with myself anymore. I had to die. I wanted to die. I had failed and I deserved to die.

I prepped everything. I was in the bathroom, I figured it would be easier for them that way, easier to clean. Plus, there were no pictures, no reminders of what there was left of my life. I got the pills, I got the razors. I was done.

I didn’t go through with it. As I laid out the pills and brought the razor closer to my flesh I thought about them- my 4 year old niece and nephew. What would my family tell them? Would they remember me? Would they be at the funeral? Would they forget me eventually? Would they hate me for what I had done?

Touching the razor to my wrist and seeing the faces of those two little “babies” was all it took. I looked down at the razor, looked at myself, at that scale 2 feet away, at the pills in my palm and then fear surged through me, my thoughts racing through my mind so fast. It was like my mind was trying to get out everything that was rational before the depression, before Ed took back over.

(Trigger Warning End)

What are you doing? This is not okay? You need help. Don’t do this. They need you.

The fear coursed through my entire body so strongly that I threw up out of fear. I flushed the pills, I flushed the razor and then I turned and looked at that scale. I was hysterically crying at this point. Terrified to look at it, to touch it. Half of me was scared I couldn’t withstand the screaming voice in my head to stand on it, the other half was terrified that I would see the number again and not be able to stop myself against the suicidal thoughts.

I flipped the scale over with my foot, fumbled with the battery component because I was shaking so hard that I couldn’t steady my hands enough. I tore the battery out violently and flushed that too. And then I put the scale away, in the back of the closet. The “junk” closet. The one with the stuff we never use. And I NEVER touched it again.

Now, one of my IOP therapists wants me to bring it on Monday. Wants me to touch it during treatment and then get rid of it for good. I’m not even sure I can touch it to put it in the car so she said to have someone else do it for me and she’ll come get it out of the car.

That’s how bad my fear is.

Even getting weighed at the doctor’s office, daily in treatment and weekly now during IOP causes such anxiety that I have to take my anxiety medicine beforehand. And if it’s a scale that makes noise (like ones that aren’t digital) it’s almost too traumatizing to handle. (Case and point: Tuesday when I had to be weighed at IOP because my therapist wasn’t here to weigh me and it took my dietitian 15 minutes, music, stepping on the scale to hold it steady and a double dose of anxiety medicine to get me to even comply.

So that’s my homework. Bring my scale. Touch it on Monday. Getting it into my car will even be a challenge so I have to ask someone to do it for me- which is also hard because I feel like that’s embarrassing to admit and I hate asking for help but at least I have a few days to figure it out.

But oh gosh, I have to touch it. I don’t want to do it, I really don’t want to do it.

The REAL feelings I hide

My therapist is back in town (thank goodness) and I saw her today for the first time in 3 weeks which was a longgggg time considering I see her at least once a week typically.

I have a hard time with feelings. Like a really  hard time, in fact it is nothing short of hate toward feelings. Today, Dr. B asked me what feelings I am trying to avoid so much. After attempting to get around that conversation I reluctantly answered with two (of the many) feelings I try and avoid sadness and anger.

The truth is, those are only two of the feelings I am trying to avoid. And not even the top 2. The real emotions I hate, the ones that I am so embarrassed to really say out loud, I have yet to tell her, to tell anyone. Why? I don’t know. I guess it’s because I am so incredibly ashamed of the feelings and thoughts I have that I have a hard time bearing the idea of actually saying them out loud. I mean they are bad, really bad. Like think of the worst thing you’ve ever thought about yourself and then repeat that in your head 24/7 for dozens of years in a row.

The truth is, I have hated myself since I was 9.

The truth is, the feelings I harbor for myself are horrendous. I am self-loathing, hateful, spiteful, ashamed, embarrassed, appalled, disgusted, angry, sad, depressed, uncomfortable and anxious about my body.

When I was 9 I began picking on myself, self-bullying I guess it can be called, the first thing was about my epilepsy. I hated myself for it. I felt defective, like a freak and convinced that people would make fun of me at school if they ever found out. I wanted to keep it a secret, I was so ashamed of it I didn’t even want my teachers to know, couldn’t look them in the eye because they knew and refused to go to meetings with them and my mom where it was discussed.

Things only got worse when the medication I was on caused weight gain, a lot of it. Couple that with the changes of puberty and it was a firestorm for a disaster. I was shy, uncomfortable, insecure, self-hating and refused to acknowledge my true feelings about myself.

Time continued. The hate grew. Even after I was taken off the epilepsy medication and told my seizures and resolved and medication was no longer needed I still was highly insecure and mortified, disgusted and appalled at what I looked like, weighed, my personality, style, everything. Nothing escaped my self-hate. College brought tremendous growth in my personality. I became extremely outgoing, friends with everyone, involved in everything, willing to try new things and put myself out there. But the hate I harbored for my body and my intense shame about my past, my weight and my entire self was still there.

Festering. Growing. Being buried by myself. Forcing itself into every crevice of my soul.

And then came life, my eating disorder and everything finally had an outlet. But even in treatment, those 3+ months I spent with 24/7 care I couldn’t bring myself to really truly, honestly express how absolutely deep and bad my self-hate is.

Treatment now, at IOP, has touched on it recently. Forced it out of me. It makes me want to quit. It makes me feel SO awfully insecure and embarrassed. But maybe they are right. Maybe it’s time to deal with it. It is after all, as I identified it, the one thing that I know will 100% cause me to relapse.

The thing is, sometimes I am not sure I want to recover.

Still, after months and months of treatment. I am still ambivalent. And that, that just makes this self-hate infinitely worse.

So when my therapist asked me what feelings I want to hide from I said saddness and anger. I have other reasons why I don’t like those but I don’t know how to say it out loud. How to tell her how BAD it really is, what I am REALLY afraid of. I feel like a failure, an idiot, someone who is weak, can’t handle emotions, is overly conceited and like a loser. A loser. Something I have always considered myself to be. How do I admit that? How do I tell someone that out loud and not expect them to judge me. Or for me to judge myself so bad that it becomes unbearable. The truth is I can’t, which I guess is why I haven’t.

Just add that to the reasons why I hate myself.