Berry Abby Bert

Ok ya'll, normally, I would not announce this humongous event, but my mom sent me the cutest card ever. If some of you remember my Valentine's Day post you'll understand why she wrote what she did.

Yep, it's my birthday, and I turn the big 3-0! It's a bit exciting to be out of the 20s, but at the same time, a little scary to now be 3 decades old. I don't have solid plans of anything yet. I know my boss and her husband are taking me out to dinner this week. I may buy myself a new bamboo steamer, maybe a new vacuum too? See, how frugal I am?

My parents have sent me gifts, and apparently the one from my mom and her husband must be really special. They have both called me in the last 3 days to ask if I have received it yet. Suspense!

Anyway, I'll have another, more reflective post about this birthday later in the week. Stay tuned for that.

How deception affects us

On Mondays, usually I try to catch the show House. Some days I watch fully engaged while other times I'm multi-tasking with dinner and being online. Tonight was the latter, but I managed to get the gist of the episode about a woman who became ill (not sure why she came to the hospital initially) and was a blogger. Apparently, she blogged about everything in her life, and at one point, there was an argument between she and her boyfriend? (maybe husband?) about blogging every nuance of her life. He didn't want her to blog about what was going on in the hospital or what she might possibly have (he felt like her blogging had become a form of entertainment only for an audience), but she differed, feeling like she needed to let her readers know.

Fast forward to the end. The girl was no longer dying of lymphoma like everyone thought, but rather House found clues through her blog about her symptoms. Then, he promptly asked her about what kind of bowel movements she had. A bit mortified and puzzled why he was asking her this, she answered. House explained the diagnosis--the catalyst was switching to a vegan diet which caused gastrointestinal problems which just snowballed from there. Then, he asked her why she held this important information from them and her blog readers. Of course, the girl's answer to that was who wanted to read about her feces? Lastly, House said this (this is not completely verbatim but close) right before he walked out:

"It's okay to have secrets as long as they are not going to hurt you. They are what keep us warm and fuzzy."

So this brings me to my latest adventure. Over the course of the last few weeks, I had to be a bit of a "spy" at work. I had to visit some other nearby dog facilities to get an idea of how they were run, what they featured, how filled to capacity they were, and most importantly how our facility would be different. Though we had already done a CMA (comparison market analysis) and knew information from my boss's clients, you never get the full picture unless visibly touring the facilities.

After visiting the first facility, I had this horrible sense of guilt. I felt awful that I was disguising myself the way I was, because the girl giving me the tour seemed so nice. It was obvious she thought I seemed like a very thorough, concerned owner, and she mentioned that I was her longest tour. When I got back to the office, I really wondered whether I could tour another facility. It took me a full week to mull this over.

After thinking it over, I decided to go visit the other two facilities. This time around, I found it much easier. It was as if I convinced myself that this wasn't a bad thing. I felt like a sly, smooth pretender. There was no longer an unsettled feeling but rather a settled comfort. I was surprised at how easy it was for me to be "deceptive" the second and third times around. It was almost like everything I said rolled off my tongue, and I became the role I was playing so well. A true actress, indeed.

This whole experience reminded me of my early ED days. Despite treating my parents like sh$t, I still felt horribly guilty for lying to them about my behaviors, whether I ate or not, whether I was manically exercising or not, etc. I think there was an instance or two where my dad asked about purging, and I vehemently denied it. What happened as a result of this? I convinced myself that I had to lie, that the deception would only hurt them more than me, that I needed to be even more secretive--a better actress.

Clearly, the problem with this logic or lack there of it was that by continuously lying, I just furthered myself into more self-destructive ED'd behaviors. The deception hurt me worse than anyone else.

Obviously, there are differences between these two lies. In the first scenario, I was not hurting anyone nor myself, whereas, in the second one, there was a lot of damage done.

I don't have any enlightening comments but that it is important to realize how deceiving ourselves can hurt us. Whether it is that we will be happier at X pounds, that we really don't need nourishment of any kind, that just "getting by" is okay, that starvation and overexercise is an okay way to quell our anxieties and stress (in a sense neurochemically, yes, but in the long run, not), that an ED will not kill us, think again. It is often difficult when your head is just full of ED mess, but I think it's the little things that count. That by every lie we are able to thwart aside, that it is a step toward eventual healing.

Note: *My acting was not completely intentional--that I thought about everything I did and the outcomes. Rather, it just seemed "normal" to me, a way of survival. Much of this is a hindsight type thinking.

Geese inspiration

About a month or so ago, I posted about the geese. Well, yesterday just as I was about to walk one of my client's two dogs (same dogs as in previous post) + Tovah, the geese were there right on their lawn! The dogs barked, but I thought this was such a good photo opportunity. It was too bad I just had my phone, because otherwise, the photos would have been stunning. Another time hopefully.

I put the dogs up except for Tovah. I am always so curious what she will do, and remarkably for her young age has great impulse control (well except the cat she saw the other day, but that's another story). So to start the weekend, here are some geese photos. I was able to get pretty close which is always very exciting for me.

I think I've talked about animal totems before. If not, you can click to learn more about them. Right now, I just seem more drawn to the geese. I'm almost thinking maybe they are like my "recovery" animal totem since they remind me so much about support and reaching out. Plus, geese are considered "nurturers," and I'd say I definitely fit that category.

If you believe in animal totems or the like (they say we have 9 or so throughout our life), what would you say are yours? And what do they represent to you? Do any resemble something related to recovery for you?






Look how close she is!

Declaration to ourselves

Last week I ran across this blog post which seemed so fitting to recovery. It's called a "Good Little Girl's Declaration of Independence" from the blog Practices Makes Imperfect which has some great posts about dealing with/overcoming perfectionism.

I think a lot of us have lost ourselves along the way with eating disorders. For many of us, one part of recovery is an attempt to find our authentic selves, gain self-worth, and discover who we truly are.

If you were to make a declaration of independence, what would you write/include?

To do or not to do

I've been thinking for the last few weeks to re-instill my "To Do" lists. I haven't had any major To Do type list on any consistent basis in awhile. Of course, this has probably been a good thing knowing my history with To Do lists (listing my day in 15-30 minutes increments with no emphasis on basic necessities), however, I'm beginning to feel like I'm getting nothing done. It's like going from one extreme to the other, but I don't really like either end of the spectrum. Where to find the balance? (I'm beginning to realize this is a lot like my running debate post)

It's been said in commentaries by other bloggers and researchers about how our traits that make us vulnerable to eating disorders also are what drive us to excel. There is no doubt there. But sometimes, I feel like because those of us with eating disorders have these traits, it's almost like in recovery, we're not allowed to be that. Does that make sense? Like we can't have a little perfectionism or a little sense of need to accomplish (in terms of tasks), because it's just an accident waiting to happen. Maybe I'm wrong here and just projecting my own feelings.

I guess the question here is more whether I can do a "To Do" list and not go overboard. Can I write a task list and not feel like I must get these things done in one day, or else I'm a loser failure? See, this just goes back to all that black and white thinking.

Balance is so hard sometimes. How do other people deal with To Do lists? For those who are reformed To Do Listers, did you have to eliminate these type of lists all together or were you able to strike some balance?

Advocacy

Most of us know that this week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Whenever NEDAW rolled around in the past, there used to be a slight awkward, uneasiness feeling for me. It's not that I didn't think awareness for eating disorders was important (far from it), but it left a two-fold feeling of worrying that someone was going to find out/guess and also feeling like a fraud for not being more proactive at recovery.

I see now how much this thinking was flawed as NEDAW week is supposed to bring eating disorders to the forefront in talking about it rather than just beating around the bush.

There's been much support shown through twitter, facebook, various articles, college events, advocacy groups, news channels, etc. It's phenomenal actually! It's funny, because if you follow me on twitter, you know I post a number of articles related to eating disorders, body image, mental health, psychology, as well as just my own random thoughts and observations. But yet, sometimes, I still feel on the sidelines. Some may call me an advocate of sorts, though I feel uncomfortable with that label. In all honesty, I'm not sure what I'd call myself. Perhaps, I feel this way because I'm not truly in the public eye, putting myself out there or disclosing my own struggles with eating disorders. But in real life, how many of us are really? How many of us could include ourselves in the campaign to talk about it beyond just the medium of the internet?

I know there is more to advocating than simply talking about it. Advocating is about awareness, education, health, and recovery. It's about defending and supporting the cause. It's about connecting and reaching out to those who need help. I am always amazed at the wonderful eating disorder/body image/self esteem advocates out there. They each make a difference and place their own stamp on the world. Although I may not put myself in the category of "advocate," I am hopeful that I can make a small difference in this corner lot I have here.

Coffee and scrabble

This week has been very crazy, so I'm sorry for being a bit MIA here. After talking with my boss about the eventual plans for me and the business, work will not be slowing down any time soon. It's exciting but incredibly scary. Actually, I think the thing that scares me the most is that my name and photo is going to be on the business website, and that just causes a slight bit of paranoia. Not so much for my blog readers/twitter followers but just with former people I've worked with. This means that my name and picture are permanently there. It's not like an article that is there one day and gone the next.

Besides work, I've been trying to gather all my tax documents together to meet with the tax lady today. I don't know much about her, just going off a recommendation from someone. Due to the weather and my procrastination, we've had to reschedule our appointments several times. So today, I just knew I had to get my act together and not cancel again. I think a lot of this has to do with people viewing my financial crap and trying to explain my situation. I know as long as I get through this year, next year will be a lot easier.

Lastly, I met with a new match guy this past Friday. We met at a coffee place (different from Match guy1) which was cool except that as soon as I found it, I realized it was all parallel parking which I loathe. I actually drove around in circles to avoid this. Then, when I was in the coffee shop, I could not find the guy and had to text him asking where he was.

It was slightly funny, because when I went upstairs and walked passed a room, I heard someone say "where you going?" which was my date. I made my way back to the room, sat my coffee down, and then noticed a scrabble board. Match guy2 said whenever he comes here he plays scrabble or some board game. This was certainly different for a first date but I gave him points for creativity.

Match guy2 is very different from Match guy1. Match guy2 definitely has strong opinions about various topics. We actually got into talking about our impressions of match.com, whether a picture was necessary, what men and women were looking for, etc. It was interesting, but he went off on a lot of tangents. Much of his speech was the use of expletives as adjectives which is a turn off for me, but if I omit this, he does converse well.

Unfortunately , I lost the scrabble game. I hate making excuses, but I had a lot of vowels and 1 point letters. I managed to get the "z" at the end of the game but could do nothing with it. I do not like bragging, but clearly,
I had better words and used more letters allowing for the board to open up. If you play scrabble a lot, you know that it is easy to pigeon hole the board if you do not use a lot of letters or play off of them.

At the end of the night, we walked outside, talked about running a bit, and then left. The last thing he said to me was that he wanted me to add him on facebook. I'm debating. It probably doesn't matter much since this guy has over 1,000 friends, I'm just picky.

Comparing Match guy1 to Match guy2, they are truly really different. From the first date, I could tell you all about Match guy1 whereas all I could say about Match guy2 is what he does for a living. It's not bad or anything, just different. There was one question I did want to ask Match guy2 but couldn't get myself to. I wanted to know about his relationship with his mother as it seems like every time he e-mails me, he has taken his mother out to brunch, lunch, dinner, etc. I don't know the circumstances, so it's not fair to judge, but I do wonder.

The one thing I can give myself credit for with this dating thing is that I am putting myself out there. It's a huge improvement from the past of holing myself up in my house or attached to some piece of gym equipment. By actually dating, it does give me an idea of what I like, don't like, could put up with, couldn't put up with, what I actually WANT.

Note--*To my new followers: I hope you are able to get something out of this blog. Please don't feel shy to comment or leave me an e-mail through my profile.