An overdue udate

I guess an update is due... well, probably over due...

I'm doing okay.  I think.  In general, life is satisfactory.  I enjoy my new job, the clients, (most of) my coworkers, and it is fulfilling in a way that retail never could be.  Also, it pays better and I have visions of a new(er) car in my near future.  Mine is quite possibly about to die a horrible death.

ED-wise...  I guess things aren't going as a-okay.  Behaviors/symptom use is happening, and I'm honestly not sure how much I want to stop.  I realize that I AM in fact sick of this whole thing.  It's just... I don't know. I'm still clinging.  For so many reasons, and I'm sure some have yet to be realized.  I feel like every therapy session I have lately I come up with another reason that I keep using my disorder; another purpose it serves, and why I feel that it is the only reasonable and safe way to fulfill that need in my life.

In art today I was expounding on a theme that came up in therapy this week about my "desire" to be sick.  I mean, obviously, being bulimic, I physically am making myself sick.  I bring this on myself.  I know this, and my disordered self welcomes this.  But I also have this weird desire to be ill.  I welcome sickness, even a cold, because it gives me an excuse to be lazy and not take as good care of myself and I wish others would care for me in these moments.  This is truly what I need. I didn't get that type of nurturing as a child in so many ways.

Anyways, I ended up getting frustrated during art while thinking about all of this and ended up throwing away my painting and just journaling for a bit, about my pursuit of illness as a way of obtaining care and compassion from others.

"You feed the illness because it feeds you.  You're numb without it.  You want to feel sick physically because it is something.  Something tangible, recognizable, visible. Realistically you know that you could deal with it, you know how.  But you choose not to because the other illnesses- the invisible ones - you don't want to feel, don't want to deal, don't know how. You don't feel like you can.

Maybe if you just stay sick, visibly sick, some body will see; will CARE.  Because you don't.  You don't care about yourself, you don't know how.  You just want someone else to care about you, care for you, take care of you.  You've been a burden on yourself for so long.  You want someone else to take the reigns."

Obviously the "you" that I refer to is myself here.  Anyone relate to this???  I feel like I'm the only one here, but I know I'm not.  I feel weird for wanting to be ill, even with just a cold or a broken bone.  Like some sort of munchausens thing.  But I know that in at least one group I really wasn't the only one.  I wan't the only one who felt strange in body image groups where everyone else was talking about their desire and pursuit of thinness and beauty, when all I've ever wanted to be throughout my disorder was SICK. I wanted to look disgusting and alarmingly ill.  I wanted someone to take notice to the fact that I was miserable and needed to be taken care of, but because the misery was so invisible, the only way to convey it was through my body.  Self injury, the eating disorder... call it a cry for attention, whatever.  It never worked anyways.  Nobody ever noticed, nobody came to my rescue, nobody gave a shit, and obviously I never did either.

That's the thing: if I can't care about myself, how will someone else?  How can someone else possibly like me if I don't? How can I receive love and care anyways, if I can't possibly believe that someone would ever care for me? Or that I even deserve it?

I mean, I keep uncovering more and more things about me and this disorder and what keeps me entrenched...  But what the hell am I supposed to do with this information? If anything, it just reminds me of how well the disorder works at keeping me unaware and removed from these problems...