Bulimia.

This is just a brief entry, but I was thinking about a young woman who died from Bulimia. Her name was Melissa Avrin, and after she had died her mother, Judy, found the following in her journal:

"Someday...

I'll eat breakfast.

I'll keep a job for more than three weeks.

I'll have a boyfriend for more than 10 days.

I'll love someone.

I'll travel wherever I want.

I'll make my family proud.

I'll make a movie that will change lives."

And her mother made a documentary about Melissa.

I'm already emotional this morning, and reading that has me tearful. I drove a couple of hours to go see it went it came out, and I remember being so grateful that someone had, at last, raised awareness of Bulimia specifically. As someone who has suffered primarily from Bulimia, it means a lot to me. All eating disorders are painful, and serious, devastating and potentially deadly. But for some reason many people don't see Bulimia as equivalent to Anorexia in its level of seriousness...maybe because a lot of people with Bulimia aren't underweight. Many people who suffer from Anorexia also binge and purge (that is called "Anorexia binge/purge subtype, which I suffered from for a stage of my disorder as well - however, for the majority of my disorder, you could not see it by my body size), but many people who suffer from Bulimia are of average or higher than average body weights. 

I was trying to write about what it's like in my journal to deal with Bulimia specifically. And I couldn't make myself. It was too much of a pain in the ass, and would take a tremendous amount of time and effort to explain all of the little but horrible ways it affected me, as well as the bigger things...I've been having a rough morning, and I just don't have the energy in this moment. But I promise to come back to this...I will contribute to the awareness of this particular eating disorder. I promise that to myself.

As for this morning, it's getting harder and harder to stay in treatment for such a long time. I've actually had longer stays at other places, and every time it begins to irritate me or get hard, I try to tell myself how privileged I am to have the resources to access care for as long as I need when the vast majority of patients do not. When I see people who have been here for two, maybe three months leaving, or people I feel like I'm in a better space than getting a discharge date, I try to tell myself I'm lucky. But there are times I just have to let myself be upset about it. I am so privileged in so many ways in my life, but no one would want to be away from home for ten months, never seeing their family or friends or cat, talking about difficult shit for eleven, twelve hours every single day, so controlled...it's just not an easy thing. And I really feel like I'm ready to step down, and if people insist that I still need to be in a program, I wish they'd at least let me do the one in my area at home, while living at home. I'll be living with my parents when I return to North Carolina; I've already given up my apartment, knowing that living alone in my one bedroom directly after such a long stay in treatment was a bad idea. My dad was the one that ended up helping me to see sense about that one.

Anyway, I'm in a super irritable mood this morning. It's happened a few times recently, and usually I feel more accepting of my situation by the time the afternoon rolls around. Oy vey...I'm just going to get through this day. And it's going to be alright, even though it isn't fun. 

That's all for now. Later, guys.