So I've not been coping very well....

September 20th: hit highest weight = panic and took an overdose
Spent the night in the hospital. Out at 6:30 in the morning.

September 27th: Mood swings lead from a high to a major low...desperately wanted to take an overdose to stop the horrid thoughts. Took my medications to the hospital gave them to the nurse. Waited in the waiting room for 2 and a half hours...panicstruck, snuck back into the nurses station and took the pills I wanted from the bag and took too many...overdose AGAIN. SPent night in the hospital. Out next day.

Wedding last weekend: Very fun. I sang and played my guitar at the reception and dedicated a song to the bride and groom. All my cousins are so thin and pretty. Not only are they blonde twins, they are 5'11" and 6' tall...they are so thin they could be models. They have the amazing gap between their long thighs.

Monday, Oct 3: I was elevated all weekend from the wedding and being happy, and then I completely crashed Monday night. I started writing my goodbye letters to friends and family, I cleaned my room and packed some things, threw out garbage. Took 5 clonazepam and went to bed. (My usual dose is 2)

Tuesday I was really down and called my counsellor and left a message that said "I am not doing very well". He called me back about an hour later and by that point I mood swinged into a mania and I thought suicide was the best decision I've ever made. I thought of it like an economist. The cost of me living outweighed the benefits. I was a burden on my friends and family and the health care system. I would no longer have to feel aweful and fat all the time. Or have crazy moodswings. It's perfect! Ya...my counsellor didn't think so and he and I decided to meet at the hospital. He wouldn't budge and I was pissed to be there. I also took 5 clonazepam before I left to go.

I was admitted and slept in the ER from Tuesday night until Friday morning before being brought down to the psych unit Friday around lunch. Thursday night I escaped from the hospital because I was freaking out, I had been doing nothing waiting in the ER and was getting worse. So I ran out the ER entrance and continued to run all the way around the hospital. Then I saw the parkade, aka the parking garage. I went to the top and stood and contemplated whether to jump off. I thought about a lot of things. My family, my friends who just visited me an hour earlier, my counsellor bringing me in....the manic mood began to fade...I felt tired. I took off my second layer of hospital gown and laid it on the concrete and then laid down on it and tried to sleep. I suddenly felt so tired. I had hospital pants and gown on but I began to get cold. I didn't know how long I had been gone and I had decided to not jump...so I put my gown back on and then I walked back to the ER. I went in and nobody said a thing. The security gaurds didn't seem surprised to see me. The nurses either.

Nobody even noticed I was gone.

Reinforcement is a bitch...

Ana, I'm back!

So I haven't blogged in a while...I orginally started this blog to document my struggles with mental illness and to keep myself accountable to losing weight.

Lately my life has been pretty stable. I haven't had many ups and downs to write about. I have also been in recovery from eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS)and terrible binge episodes.

Let me fill you in on what I haven't been blogging:

In the mental health department, I was in the hospital the last week of February till March 2nd. I was having a manic episode with severe suicidal tendencies. I had pack my bags and had this elaborate plan to go to Ottawa, which is about 6 hrs away, spend the week being reckless (drinking and having promiscuous sex) and then kill myself at the end of the week. I had this glorious idea of what death would be like and I was soo excited for the afterlife. I thought I would finally be at peace. It was fuct up. My counsellor brought me to the hospital where I took an overdose in the waiting room and then had to drink charcoal and get an IV. Then I tried to suffocate myself with a garbage bag in the ER bathroom...it was a shit show. My clothes were all taken away and I had to sleep on a stretcher in the hallway so the security gaurds could keep an eye on me. I was so messed up from the pills I took (Ativan and sleeping pills, ~60) I was crying histerically and arguing with the nurses because they wouldn't give me my medications. It was ridiculous.

Then a couple weeks later, I had anther "high" episode where I was extremely horney and ended up sending sexually provacative texts to guy friends and spending my rent on items from the stag shop. This is very out of character for me. Usually I have no sexdrive because of the medications I am on...this was very out of the blue.

Since then things have been pretty stable with some down days.

On the "recovery" side...fuck. I couldn't work out for January or February because I had a knee injury, which didn't help, but I ended up gaining FIFTEEN POUNDS in the first three months of this year. FUCK. I came within 3 lbs of my heaviest weight ever of 200 lbs. I was fine wearing sweatpants and hoodies...but now that the warm weather has been around I am fretting. I have nothing to wear because nothign fits. Fuck. The "healthy way" to lose weight is obviously NOT working...sooo that leaves me one option. I have decided I am going to give way to old habits. It's been surprisingly easy this week to eat less and less. I am aiming to eat less than 1000 cals a day and burning a minimum of 600cals a day at the gym. I have cut out all junk, and I primarily eat veggies. I have managed to stay around 500-700cals every day and still have energy. I am hoping this shock to the system will help me drop 5lbs this week. When I weighed in on Wednesday I was 192. Fuck.

I feel a bit alone in this. I generally talk to my friends about everything going on in my life. I hate lying and keeping secrets from them...but I want this to work...I NEED this to work. So I decided, when I need to talk about it...I will talk on here. At least it won't eat me up inside.

Challenge...since I just started, and my really close friend just left to Maui today for ten days, I thought of a little competition for myself:

TEN LBS IN TEN DAYS

This is going to sound aweful, but I saw my counsellor on Monday and I will see him again in one month and I want him to be shocked by how much weight I have lost. I want him to be concerned. He can't stop me. I feel like I am in control and I feel a bit powerful. It's a really strange feeling to have...I don't fully understand it.

Well, from here on out I will be checking in often, at least weekly when I weigh in. My weigh ins, right now, are on Wednesdays. This might change when I get a job for the summer.

I feel so empowered right now. I know that this way works for me and right now I don't even know why I have been fighting it...and I am soo looking forward to stepping on the scale next week and FINALLY being down.

Fuck what everyone else says is healthy. I am doing what works.

"I want a perfect body...I want a perfect soul"...gotta love radiohead :)

I used to think only the past could haunt you...

Update: Halloween was a fucking success! It was amazing. I don't think I have ever had that much fun while hosting a party or danced that hard while pretty much sober. I was sweating so bad from the dancing that the sideburns I drew on my face with marker (for Elvis) were melting down my face. I laughed soo hard when I saw them in the mirror. Unfortunately there is a lot of food left over...all deadly goodies....but luckily my roommates said they would be happy to take care of it. Problem solved.

So today I was up at 6:00 bright-eyed and bushey-tailed. It was fucked. I partied like an f-ing rockstar last night and expected to sleep in till late afternoon. Thanx again depression, you always find ways to bug me just when I begin to think you are gone.

On that note, this is really hard for me to accept, but I think my depression may be coming back. Lately I have been feeling low more often and just sad. The only thing is it doesn't feel like the depression I know. The one that warped my thoughts so severly that even my close friends didn't recognize me. I guess when I think of my depression I think of me at my worst. I don't remember getting depressed, just suddenly being severely depressed. Suicidal thoughts accompanied my depression so completely that I don't feel that I am depressed unless I have them. Also, all my senses are skewed. The world seems tinted slightly indigo and it even has a scent....I don't feel safe anywhere that most people feel safe. I feel safe when I am being self-destructive, or acting out parts of my suicide plan, like visiting the place I would do it. I used to go to thie bridge by the train station and wait for trains. Of course this is only when I am in that frame of mind, that world.
Last month a friend of mine visited me and she took the train. When I dropped her off there and left to go catch the bus I was standing on that bridge. Just looking down to where I used to go made me feel uneasy. It was the middle of the day, sunny, and you couldn't pay me to go down there. There was tons of garbage and debris and most likely a homeless person. It is funny...I never noticed those things before and I have visited that place at least a hundred times and in the middle of the night no less. How I felt safe there I will only understand when I am in that frame of mind. So knowing that it seems scary makes me feel safe today, because that means I am still somewhat sane.

Maybe I am just feeling down because of Halloween. The last few weeks have been filled with thoughts and preparations and planning for this event. Although it was awesome, now that it is done I feel empty. A one night stand with unbridaled euphoria leaves you feeling cheap and lonelier than before. I don't know what to do with myself now. I feel restless. I feel like I have nothing to look forward to. I want the days to pass by quickly but at the same time I want time to stand still. It is such a contradiction....I don't know what to do about it. I guess there really isn't anything that I can do about it. It is usually this feeling that I feel the urge to cut. I am trying my best to find other solutions but nothing comes close to how cutting takes away that feeling, temporarily at least. If I find an healthy solution, I will be sure to scream it at the top of my lungs...and post it on here of course.

On the plus side, I burned 700 cals on a cardio machine at the gym today. I tried to burn off those Halloween treats that I wasn't suppose to have....I will pay for them all week in the gym.

My story so far:

So I have had depression on and off since I was 10. At 10 I wanted to die, I hated life and I was miserable. One day a friend of mine pointed it out and I was shocked. I had no idea anyone could truly see me and what I was like. From that day forward I vowed I wouldn't be that person anymore. I would be that happy, sociable, beautiful person people want to get to know. From then on, I was definitely the happiest sad person you could ever meet.
I had some eating problems throughout those years and had major performance and social anxiety throughout highschool but I was never officially diagnosed.

Not until my third year of university (2006) did I seek therapy or see a psychiatrist. I have some trauma in my past and in the fall my friends persuaded me that it was essential for me to get over this trauma so I could live a normal life. I definitely avoided contact with the opposite sex as well as any type of relationships with them. I started seeing a counsellor, who I still see today, and that was the beginning of the end. I started cutting, a lot. In a month I had two hospital visits and six stitches and 3 staples from cutting. On my second visit I was given an ultimatum to be hospitalized on the spot or ensure my safety if I wasn't. I wasn't admitted but days later, after an incident unsuccessfully running for knives, my friends took me to the hospital and I was admitted for a 9 days. Because I was admitted I lost my job and then I spent the rest of the month trying to get it back. I did, but it really wasn't what I should have been focusing on at the time.

In February 2007, was when I began to feel suicidal and would continue to feel suicidal for two more years. I became obsessed with death and planning my demise. My suicide plan involved laying on train tracks and being run over, chopping off my head. I would walk to this spot by the train station and think and wait for trains, but none ever came.

I was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts in December 2007 and May 2008. Finally in August 2008 I was sent to an inpatient facility for three months. It definitely addressed many of my issues and I learned to not hate myself anymore. I truly believe that without that experience I would not be alive today. That year since I was in the hospital I had to take a year off of university and move home. My hometown is a hole. I basically spent 10 months by myself and working.
In February 2009, while I was living at home, I was really suicidal again and something extremely bizarre happened. I went to bed one night and the next thing I know I am downing a bottle of pills and I heard someone say "It is time to do to the emergency room now, Dr. Roy said so". The next thing I remember I am skipping across the hospital parking lot in my slippers and pajamas. These memories are just fragments until much later when I am in the hospital, very confused, and trying to go home. I was admitted to the psych unit because apparently when I got there I talked to the crisis counsellor and told them I was trying to kill myself and I would do it again if I got the chance. SO FUCKED UP. They didn't believe me it wasn't a suicide attempt. When I told them I don't remember any of it they thought I was lying. That is when my suicidal thoughts stopped.
A month later the same thing happened except I was pulled over by the police on my way to the hospital. I didn't get admitted this time because I was able to tell the crisis nurse that I didn't know what happened. After this time all my medications were taken away and my mom had to give them to me daily as well as I wasn't allowed to drive anymore.

After more months of recuperating, I finally was well enough to start working and driving again. In May I got a full time job and worked all the way until September 2009 when I came back to school.

Now I am here, back at university and as stressed as ever. I see my psychiatrist once a month, my counsellor once a month and my support worker once a week. It really is a full time job trying to keep yourself well. I think so many people take it for granted that they are well and able to be well without effort.

Although I am doing much better than I have been at any point in the last three years, I am still struggling to stay well and encounter ups and downs on a daily basis.

As it stand, my diagnoses are depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder.

I plan on using this blog as an outlet and a place where I can drain my head of its thoughts no matter how disturbing or ridiculous. Time to go to class...

Have a lovely day. Stay safe.