Update on life and Spring semester

Wow, it's been a while.
How to sum up those last few months?
I was feeling really depressed and stuck in my recovery when I last posted. But after a while, things started getting better. I met a wonderful group of friends that showed me how to have fun. I wasn't always depressed. It was actually... enjoyable? That, and I went on an anti-depressant - best decision EVER!

Seriously, I'm feeling so much happier now. I'm enthusiastic about things, I'm bouncy, I enjoy spending time with people...

Oh, and big advent in my life: I'm taking the semester off. Yup, after much deliberation, I decided I needed to focus on my health right now. I realized that I wanted to enjoy college, to take advantage of it, instead of taking the minimum course load and spending my life in my therapist's office. Yeah, wouldn't that me a pleasant memory of college?

So I've started treatment, and it's going well, other than one girl in treatment who is extremely triggering. She doesn't want to recover, she switches out her foods for lower calorie ones, and she is so so so incredibly negative. She's just really mentally messed up. Not that I blame her, but she should be in a much more intensive program.

So yeah, little update on my life. I'm going to try to be a bit more consistent in my posting, because three month gaps just don't cut it.

Taking Spring off

Okay, my last few posts were extremely negative, I know.
But I'm feeling a lot better now.
I talked to my parents a bit more and told them what I was planning on doing if I were to take Spring Semester off, and they (or at least my mom) seem rather favorable to it now.
I'm just so caught up in my ED and recovery etc that I just can't concentrate on school, homework, studying... I just feel so disconnected. The prospect of going home for several months, relaxing, getting treatment for my ED, and just taking an art class at a nearby college is SO attractive right now. Brown is a great school, but I feel like I just can't get as much out of it as I could if I were healthy and mentally prepared for an academic challenge. Right now, I'm exhausted, mentally and physically, the prospect of learning more material is just so draining. And I just can't cope with the whole social aspect of college.
I just really hope the outcome, staying or leaving, will be for the best.

Health and Sanity

I've come to a realization.

My problem with recovery is my shifting perception of anorexia. Some days, I think: "Wow, anorexia really is a disease, an addiction like alcoholism or drug abuse. It's terrible - a sign of weakness, a sign of uncontrollable obsession and addiction to terrible things. What loonies they are! In need of mental support, why, not much better than someone psychologically deranged, and yet we would never glamorize a crazy person for being out of their mind. I see emaciated, gray-faced girls with feeding tubes up their noses and think: why on earth would anyone want that? That is the lowest of the low. I want to be healthy, happy, able to go for runs and eat foods that nourish me and make me strong."
Other days, I am enraptured by the thinness, the self-denial, the will-power - all so impressive, so "beautiful". And I am disgusted by my "fatness".

But really, that's the nature of the beast. The latter point of view is twisted. That's why this is not just a physical disease, but also a mental health issue. That fascination with thinness is sick, it's irrational, deranged.

Change your point of view. Change your perception. Realize that wanting to be emaciated is crazy! It's sick. So... embrace the wonders of recovery (wow, that sounded cheesy). And realize that really, being healthy is just a sane thing.

Ah, the wonders of having an egotistical, self-centered roommate!

Okay. I must admit I am quite pissed off at the moment. II just feel like my roomate is so presumptuous sometimes. This evening we somehow got onto the subject of boys (but, with her, when are we not on the subject of boys?) and the topic of sexiling came up. Now, I know I'm at college. I know that people have sex, a lot, at college. And I know that sometimes one person will want to have sex in the room. But the way she phrased it! She just acts so entitled! She was just like, "well, this is college, I mean, this is normal... I mean, when The guy I'm interested in is standing at my door and I want to have sex, I'm going to be thinkin about what's best for the relationship... You know... (implicitly: not you!) I mean, this is a shared space... And you have friends you can go stay with, right?"I just feel like she has no consideration whatsoever about me, and she will do whatever necessary in order to advance herself and benefit herself, even if it means stepping all over me.
Ugh!
I mean, why should I be punished just because she is a whore and wants to sleep around with every guy on campus? She just makes me feel like I'M the guilty one in every situation for deigning to consider that I have any rights in anything. I mean, IT IS a shared space, and I deserve to be able to sleep in my own bed at night, and get enough sleep (yes... She gets up at 6:30am every morning to go to the gym because she is freaked out about the freshmen fifteen... Irony. And she she's it's "unfair for her to change her schedule" (Aka go to the gym in the afternoon so I don't get sleep deprived because "this is a shared space").
Ugh. I just needed to vent my frustration. I should go to sleep now. It's nearly midnight, and of course :) I'll be waking up at 6:30 tomorrow because my roommate can't help herself and eats like a pig and then must go to he gym and thus deprives me of sleep for her gluttony. Ah, the wonders of having an egotistical, self-centered roommate!

Okay... So this is the most random place to be writing a post... After an evening of going to an Asian food market in Sayles hall and watching Knightley's Pride and Prejudice with my Champlin friends... I'm sitting in saferide, winging my way back to my dorm - on the most circuitous route possible !

Moving in to College

So, I've arrived at college.

Yes, it is kind of freaky, I must admit. I'm completely moved in, and everything looks pretty good, I must say. The only negative part of the environment is that my parents (and I) bought two large pieces of carpeting from this vendor who was selling rugs for dorms, and we lugged them into the room and set everything up.

I personally thought it was really nice (a wonderful change from Brown's sticky, cold, disgusting gray floors, in my opinion) but my roommate seems to be really displeased, saying "It'll be hell to clean," "I thought you were just getting an area rug..." and "Why don't we remove the rug when it starts to get warm again in Spring?"

So that kind of ruined my mood (and generosity, since my family was the one who payed for it!) But oh well. I like it. She can deal with it. The room looks pretty good, anyway.

I'm in two minds about the whole moving away from home thing. At first I was extremely excited to be studying away from home, living in the US again, and being independent. But now I feel extremely... odd. A feeling of loneliness is surreptitiously creeping up on me. I kind of miss my parents being around, hanging out with them, listening to poppy make dinner and listen to the news, talking with him about some random political issue I'm not interested in but that I talk with him about anyway because he likes it. I miss being able to cook food for myself, to wander around the house freely, and sit outside reading while having lunch.

I have a feeling I'll soon be annoyed with constantly being with other people. I am a very solitary person, really, so this should be a change. Random teens walking around the hallways, walking into our room, talking to my roommate J, etc etc. I'm used to living only with adults. The only teens I spent time with where my friends at school or at horse riding.

I also miss the luxuries of home - my own room and bathroom. The latter being clean, luxurious with nice soap, towels, perfumes; a space that was my own and which I could leave my stuff in - now I have to learn to live in a place that is not mine, that I do not own.

Anyway. I have to go to some mandatory meeting for my unit about alcohol and whatnot. So I leave you there.

I just hope the loneliness recedes and the joy of learning and being with new friends comes forth to replace it.

Birthday in boston

So today is my birthday, and I'm sitting at a Starbucks in Boston typing on my new iPhone(!) in a bad mood, actually. As usual on my b-day my mom spent forever getting ready, and my dad and I waited for hours for her to be ready. She didn't bother reServing our rental car till this morning (my bday) and it just all culminated in my familiar sense of my bday being ANOTHER disaster. Oh well.

I've been reading some inspiring and uplifting blogs, which have made me feel better, so that's good. Now I'm just waiting for my parents who decided to walk over to the car rental place and sort things out. I SHOULD be looking forward to school, and moving in to my dorm tomorrow! And I am excited about it. It's just that that excitement has been slightly eclipsed by this sudden and inevitable sense of disappointment on my birthday. Oh well.

Writing this has been cathartic, I must admit. So Hopefully my parents will return soon. We're planning on going to a museum this morning, and getting organic (yes organic!) facials this afternoon (my mom and I.) So hopefully the day will turn around. I'm also kind of annoyed we might bot go to this cool restaurant which had awesome lunch options (omelettes, bagels, spinach pasta...) because it's so late (11:00). We did go to a great restaurant last night though, and I had a diving baked spinach dish .