J-Lo, It’s been a busy week and I wanted to sit down properly and reply, so here goes. I am making my way through your videos and your site and the information is tremendously helpful. I also just find your story so encouraging. This isn’t my first rodeo on an online eating disorder forum but somehow I think we have such a similar history and so I find myself actually believing that if you could do it, maybe I could do it too.
I’ve been coasting through this week due to the fact that work and travel got kind of hectic and forced me to cancel some of my appointments; I gave myself subconscious permission to backslide because I didn’t have the support I needed to continue properly. I just fell right back into autopilot and started again with the running, and with cutting out a couple of things here and there, the isolating, the lying-by-omission (to myself and others). I cannot keep doing this. I feel like I am really waking up to the sick and horrific loop I’ve been replaying in my life for a decade now and I can no longer ignore it. Maybe the timing is right, too, because (1) I woke up feeling a bit sick, like maybe I’m coming down with a cold or something (and I never get sick) and (2) it is a terribly rainy dreary day. Normally one of these things alone would not stop me from running but the two together mean that if I were to go, I would have to admit to myself that I was being absolutely insane, and I would look the part too, all skeletal and soaked out there on the road. So my plans for a 10-miler are thwarted by circumstances beyond my control. Thankfully I am no longer welcome at any gym in town.
On top of it all, I was to meet a friend for coffee this morning but she canceled due to the miserable weather. So I feel like I am being forced to sit here with myself today for a reason. I feel like it is time to just turn off my brain and start acting. And by acting, maybe I mean eating and, ironically, sleeping. My plan today is to hit the grocery store with a new agenda. I’ll let you know how it goes. But I am writing it down as a commitment to try something new. I have such a routine in the store that I’ve probably worn down a path in the vinyl floor the way my dog has developed a track along the fenceline. My receipts for each weekly trip over the past 4 months are probably nearly identical down to the order in which I scan them at the self-scanner. So I guess it’s time to develop some new neural pathways.
