accomplishments and rambles

This post is ridiculously long.
I keep meaning to make a post telling you guys how amazing I've been doing over the past couple of months. However, in the last three weeks or so, I've slowly been slipping. I feel like I'd be lying if I said I'm doing great. I do want to list what all I've accomplished before I type out my more negative thoughts.

Accomplishments this year-

1. I'll be cut free for 18 months on December 23rd. I no longer have urges to cut at all.
2. I've been off my medication since the end of April and haven't needed to go back on.
3. I haven't been hospitalized since April. (that means I've only been hospitalized once this year o.0)
4. I got a tattoo that is meaningful to me and has kept me grounded too many times to count.
5. I've reached the point where it's not just that I don't want to die, but that I actually want to live.
6. I'm enrolled to go back to school in January.
7. I got my license over the summer. I am finally driving on my own.
8. I am now able to go to a store by myself and check out by myself.
9. I got rid of all my pills for overdosing and I gave my last blade to my therapist.
10. I actually experienced happiness.
11. I've been working on only needing acceptance and love from myself.
12. I'm still purge free. I don't want to figure the exact time for that. It makes me too angry.

I have accomplished a lot this year, especially in the last couple of months. This is just some of the things that I've done. There are many more little things. I am proud of the progress I have made. My family is proud of me. My therapist is proud of me. To think that for most of life, people (including myself) thought I would never get better. I'm glad I was able to prove everybody wrong. I'm glad that I was wrong.

Here comes the less positive stuff. While I've been doing so well for the past couple of months, I'm noticing that I am slowly slipping. Noticing my change in mood is really scary. I do not want to fall back down to where I was. I do not want to slip even a little. Thankfully I haven't had any urges to cut or kill myself, but I do still have urges to self-destruct. It's hard not giving into the urges to punish myself. There are times when I don't succeed and I end up in pain for weeks. I'm trying my hardest not to give in to these destructive desires. I know that it won't make me feel any better to destroy myself. I will only be pulled down further. But until I deal with my hatred of myself (yes, that is back with a vengeance), I will not be able to rid myself of these urges.

I'm struggling with my eating disorder. There are days when I can eat and be totally fine. There are other days when it's a struggle just to drink water or a zero calorie drink of some form. My weight is fluctuating, but it is mainly declining. As much as it excites me to be losing weight, I know I need to stop. I wasn't any happier when I was at my lowest weight. Getting there again would be stupid on my part. I haven't been weighing myself often. For awhile, I wasn't weighing at all. As I've started declining, I've given into the urge to weigh and measure. I'm trying very hard to resist doing that because seeing the numbers is never a good thing, gain or lose. I have moments where I want nothing more than to purge. It is so hard to keep food in sometimes. It has been years since I have purged and these urges can hit me so hard that I curl up in a ball and cry. I sometimes have to keep myself out of the bathroom to reduce temptation. No matter how fat I think I am, purging won't make anything any better. Most days I barely eat enough to maintain. I shouldn't be worried about my weight. I'm trying not to do any hard exercise. That only results in me crying on the floor. It's a good and bad thing that I injured my leg. It prevents me from running, which is something I often want to do.

Going Christmas shopping is hard. Trying to find new clothes (which I desperately need) is such a challenge. I don't want to buy anything because I'm not sure if I'll weigh the same in a few weeks (whether that be more or less). It makes things difficult especially when I need bras that actually fit. But what good is bra shopping when you keep growing and shrinking with weight gain/loss? It's ridiculous that I don't know what clothes actually fit me anymore. I'm so constantly fluctuating in weight, there is no middle ground. It's either too tight or too loose.

I am more than aware that giving into my eating disorder will not make anything any easier, but as you all know, it's also not that easy to fight. Most of my behaviors are not even intentional. Lack of food in the house and lack of food I can actually eat at restaurants makes it easy to restrict. I'm somewhat trying to keep myself from slipping too far.

Enough ED talk.

I've noticed I've been more depressed. I don't have as much interest in things. I'm isolating even more than usual. I usually don't talk to my family, but now I'm starting to isolate from my friends too. It's very hard to re-develop friendships when I won't talk to people. Sometimes it's just too hard. Sometimes I can't say anything, but I feel reassured that the person is right there if I need them. I'm very irritable. Every little thing just seems to set me off. There are times when I just have to lock myself in the bathroom and self-soothe for however long it takes.

I think that losing my great grandma was the start of my downward spiral. That was a very hard thing to experience. Watching her slowly deteriorate like that was horrible. It is why I never want to get old. I don't want to die like that.

I think another thing that is contributing is the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on the 14th. I read an article written by the mother of someone with a mentally ill son. In her article, she said "I am Adam Lanza's mother". Reading that article made me realize just what exactly I put my mother through. I feel so much guilt for just how terrible I was. Reading that article also made me realize that I could have been Adam Lanza. My life could have been so much different had my mom not forced people to hospitalize me and keep me in treatment. While I may have resented her at the time, I am so glad she did what she did because thankfully, I didn't end up like Adam. I am glad that I have changed, but things could have been so much different. It scares me knowing just how different things could have been. Would I have shot up my school? I don't know. I do know that I have been truly homicidal, not just "oh I'm going to kill you" in a fit of rage, but full-blown plotting just how I would murder people homicidal. I don't admit that often because thankfully most of my rage turned towards myself as I grew older. I know it does no good to think of the past and think about what-ifs, but things could have been much different. I'm having a very hard time accepting just how different things could have been. I have so much guilt for all the things I put my family through. It makes sense why my self-hatred is so very strong right now.

Right now, I just need to find a way to keep myself from slipping further. I do not want to go back to the mess that I was. I need to focus on moving forward and not going back.

Sorry this was so incredibly long. doubt anyone actually read it, but that's ok.