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I don’t even think I can count on two hands how many times I have started this post.  It has taken me almost a week to get it written and hit the post button.  My mind has been anywhere and everywhere it seems like.  I have barely been able to focus on anything this week.  I have three books on my kindle that I have been wanting to read for some time but I can’t get past more than a few pages because I’m so distracted that I don’t even remember what I’ve read.

The only thing I have been able to do is take pictures, but even that I could barely focus on and makes me slightly aggravated looking at them.

I feel like I have so much going on, and yet nothing all at the same time.  I’m trying to work on myself in so many ways that it makes me feel lost and unmotivated because I am not seeing any results.  For instance this week I got two job rejections that I was sure I had in the bag.  I know I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up because I feel like this happens to me all the time, but I did.  I thought for sure one of these was going to come through after not getting any call backs for a while.  But in the end, after making it through several rounds of interviews and sample submissions of work I got turned down.  I wanted to cry with the first rejection, and scream with the second.  I could not have felt more frustrated.  I took it out on my running and luckily I had a really long run this weekend that helped out immensely.  But then at the same time I was stressed out about other things…

This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, hosted by NEDA.  I have used a ton of their networking and information to help out myself and others as the struggle with an eating disorder, in any form, comes and goes through time.  All week I wanted to talk about how I am struggling again.  How I am constantly racked with guilt over anything and everything; how every glance in the mirror makes tears well in my eyes and the negative thoughts come back to haunt me.  One goal I’ve had lately with my photography is that I would take a picture of myself within the last week of a month because I am always taking pictures of everything else…but I feel like I need to document that I was there too.  I took several pictures at a lookout the other night and when I came home to look at them I was horrified.  And horrified is the right word; as crazy as it might sound, or exaggerated, it isn’t.  I was almost disgusted with the way I look.  What were these pictures you ask?

I can’t even begin to describe how I felt about the first two.  I took them and just about deleted them on the spot. But I told myself not to and instead took the third and fourth shot, the fourth one being the one I used for the month.  Basically I hid most aspects of myself from the camera.  I was so angry at the first two that I almost gave up taking anymore, but I made a goal and I’m going to stick with it.

I tried to rationalize with myself that my mind was in a bad place for whatever reason and that the pictures aren’t as bad I think they are.  Truthfully, part of me understands that my mentality is wrong and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way I look and my body is shaped.  But there is just that lingering part of me that throws all of that bit of strength and optimism out the window and lays down the law with every bad thought it can pull out of it’s nasty hat.

-“You want to know why you’re alone? Because you look like that!”

-“If you can’t control this simple thing, eating right and staying in shape, how will you ever be able to do anything in your life correctly? This is such a simple task and you’ve failed.”

-“You keep trying and failing at getting the body you want.  Good job you failure.”

And of course this ends up spreading into every other aspect of my life and makes me hate everything I already hated even more.  I’m trying to hard to fight it but it is simply exhausting and a huge part of me is tired of fighting.  I have given in a few times, my mentality going back to using exercise simply as a calorie burner and not as a training tool to attain my running goals.  Counting calories, fat, sugar…you name it, and I’m trying to restrict it.  Finding ways to exercise when I don’t have to.  Being consumed with guilt over eating certain foods and worrying about them the next morning when I wake up.  Weighing myself constantly and hating the number.

It’s a never ending cycle of debilitating frustration and I have yet to really talk to anyone about it.  I have hinted to some people about it, but I have not gone into this much detail.  I have kept my eating disorder to myself for all of these years and not because I am ashamed of or embarrassed of, but believe it is a burden to those who have to hear me talk about it.  I feel like such a child complaining about something that seems so vain, but I know in reality it is not about that; there is so much more and there always has been (my deeper issues are control and failure…).  Because believe me I wish I could talk to people about it as freely as I could and they could provide me with the right kind of motivation, but I hate putting something like that on my friends and family.  They don’t need to listen to my whining or have to worry if I’m going to go back to my old, destructive ways like I did over a decade ago.

So what do I do then?  I’m trying to stay busy.  I’m trying to do more photography.  I’m trying to visit my friends. I’m trying to help out friends that are having just as hard a time as me in other aspects of their lives.  I am trying…gosh I am trying, but I am so tired of trying.  I just want this damned disease to go away forever.  I know it never will, but I don’t have to let it control me…which I think is what kills me the most.

At this point though, I just want to stay in bed and listen to my music and not come out other than to go to work and make money for bills I have to pay.  Music makes me zone out and time will have passed by before I can even say stop and wonder where half the day has gone. But then I kick myself later for not getting done the things I need to get done…Never ending cycle I swear.  It all is…