Treatment: Redux

A funny thing happened on the way to insanity.

So. I went back to treatment. It was supposed to be 4-6 weeks. It ended up being 10. 10 weeks of residential treatment, followed by an indefinite number of weeks in Intensive Outpatient Treatment. How'd this happen, you ask? Hell if I know.

See, here's the thing. I lie exceptionally well. I have always had an uncanny ability to make people believe whatever I want them to believe (and, often, what they themselves want to believe). I had everyone convinced that my recovery was strong and reliable. That, though I still struggled with unhealthy thoughts, my behaviors had been under control for some time. That, my friends, was a collossal untruth.

The reality is, I've been in the midst of relapse for over two years. I have vacillated between periods of restricting (at times meeting full diagnostic criteria for anorexia) and binging and purging (nearly always meeting DSM-IV criteria for bulimia). My behaviors were easy to hide, my weight fluctuations easy to explain away. I even kept up this blog, extolling the virtues of healthy living. Oops.

The turning point came when my health began to really suffer and I could no longer deny the danger I was in. My heart, my stomach, my esophogus. All were ailing and teetering on the edge of disaster. I began to imagine dying on my bathroom floor (esophogus finally having ruptured or heart finally giving out), my husband or children finding my cold body covered in vomit. Terrifying, isn't it? Scared me shitless.

So I made the call to a treatment center. I only want a therapist and a dietician, I said. I'm not sick enough to need higher level care, I said. I met with said therapist and dietician, and was told in no uncertain terms that if I did not head immediately to residential treatment (do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars) I was risking my life. I looked at my family, considered their love and need for me. I threw in the towel.

Making the choice to return to treatment - this was my fourth go 'round - was perhaps the most difficult thing I have ever done. I have held tight to my eating disorder for half my life, believing at my very core that it was the only thing that could save me from the horrors in my mind. Living without it was impossible to envision. Giving it up was like giving up the very essence of who I am. I was scared to death. But I was also scared OF death. I knew I was on borrowed time and the end was imminent if I didn't change something drastically.

I will post more in the coming weeks on my experience in treatment, what I learned, what I gained (in knowledge, thank you very much), and how my appreciation for life has grown. Thank you for sticking with me. Please accept my sincere apology for misrepresenting my recovery as I have up until this point. Those of you familiar with eating disorders will understand that lying is part of the disease. To quote one of the many treatment-isms I have picked up, "Secrets keep us sick." No more secrets, my friends.