Well the first upsetting bit.. the rather large one, is that my sponsor shows up with her daughter. Her daughter is 13 (I think? or 14) and I have definitely met her before.. I've eaten with them.. I've gone to her daughter's choir concert once. I've slept on their couch before. But I would have liked some choice in her showing up at my apartment. I was worried enough about how much judgment my sponsor would have about it, but her daughter has never been inside it before and this was just not something I was expecting.. anyway.. yeah. I wasn't happy with that but couldn't really make them turn around and leave. My friend came too. My friend started in the kitchen and my sponsor and her daughter started in the living room.. I hovered in the kitchen because I really did not want to be around my sponsor during this.. so it stayed like that for a while except when I needed to give opinions on things being kept. Her daughter mainly organized the bookshelves and was in charge of carrying trash bags..
Oh and when it came time, her daughter (being the strongest of us oddly.. ) got the honor of shoving the couch down the stairs. Yes.. we did just shove it down the stairs. Then of course retrieved it and quickly carried to the dumpster area because really I could get in trouble for that but nobody was watching.. and it's not like nobody else in the complex ditches furniture (though nobody has loudly slid anything down the stairs before).
So the couch is gone.. my fridge is cleaned out.. it looks fairly empty except the big pile of food by the kitchen that needs to be put away or thrown away. I am leaning toward thrown away.. but my sponsor suggested maybe only an item a day and no rash decisions (it's nothing that will spoil). Dishes are washed and just need to be taken out of the dishwasher. I have one chair left in the living room that I actually sat in tonight.. first time I've sat anywhere other than my computer desk in god knows how long.
So progress..
The other upsetting things though.. my sponsor.. I very much wanted to smack her a couple times today, and this was again in part because her daughter was there. At various points while we were doing things or talking about things (like food in the apartment or kitchen things) she'd say "You don't eat" or "But you don't eat" and I would stop whatever I was doing and look at her and say "I eat!" because it fucking pisses me off. I don't know why it bothered me so much.. but 1. it clearly isn't true 2. I don't want my eating disorder to be the topic of discussion randomly and I definitely don't want false things to be said about it. Then there were other things.. like her daughter found my old FitBit on the bookshelves.. and she asked if it was a Fitbit and my sponsor was like "Yes, have you met Beth?" which I am guessing is again a reference to the eating disorder or some related obsession? But again joking about the eating disorder to her daughter.. and I tried VERY hard when I ate at their house or stayed at their house to act normally so as not to pass on unhealthy behaviors. Then one of them found a pair of jeans in the living room.. that were originally hanging on the exercise bike but I think had fallen off. My sponsor commented on how small they were and how skinny I am. I said that they don't fit yet. I said I bought them too small for when they would fit (didn't include that the reason that they're hanging there is as a constant reminder of how fat I am). Well then she's like "Oh they will fit." and goes on about how skinny I am and how they wouldn't even fit her daughter.. and I'm sure her daughter is thinner and the jeans are a US size 9, so not a small size. .. Fast forward though to tonight, and I finally tried them on after months and months of not touching them because they wouldn't have fit (I couldn't even fit my size 10s) and they do fit.. so I guess she wins that argument. Not going to tell her because it still wasn't appropriate.
Well, I go to a meeting after this.. and I decide not to share because my head is kinda in a fucked up place. My sponsor decides to announce "I just want to share the Beth did something really brave and awesome today" or similar wording.. and didn't say what I did obviously because this was not something people were meant to know about. My apartment was a personal thing. But then a woman asks me what it was, and I have to say in the meeting that i don't want to talk about it.. and I feel worse. If I explained that i cleaned the apartment, I would have to explain why that was significant.. and explaining why that was significant involves telling people that I'm a worthless pig.. so no.. I don't want that to be discussed in a meeting.
After the meeting I was upset and started crying.. and it wasn't that. My sponsor asked what the fear was about (she keeps asking that). I said I don't know, but that was kind of a lie. The real answer is that I didn't think I should tell her. The only honest thing I said is that I'm afraid of myself.
I complained about the things my sponsor said about me eating to my friend after my sponsor had left the apartment. My friend said to me that she didn't know what to do to help, but that I needed to keep telling people things so that they would know when they need to help (paraphrasing obviously).
And that's where the fear comes from.. because I'm not doing that. I am too scared or feel too worthless to tell people a lot of the shit that goes through my head.. sometimes because I just don't know what I need to tell them. These days I have all kinds of recurring thoughts that I know are not normal. Like I was staring at my wrists in the car thinking "My wrists are skinny. They would be pretty if I cut them" and I've thought that before.. thought repeatedly that I have such little wrists and that I should cut them.. and then it passes.. and I don't tell anyone, and I don't do it because it would show and people would notice, so instead I cut where they can't see.
The thought that has come to me a couple times since we started talking about cleaning is that I used to lay in bed thinking that I wouldn't want to kill myself and have my parents come to my apartment and see it like it was. I wouldn't want them to have to clean it. I wondered at night if I could hire someone to clean it when I died.. or if they would.. or if they would forever remember me for that mess. Well, now it isn't going to be that mess anymore. I need to clean a few more things (sweep and vacuum and put food away) but then I don't think it will be the kind of mess that changes how you remember your daughter. And I don't know how to feel about that.
So I was at my sponsor's house for a little while.. and then she left to go to a meeting and I went to Target. I went to look at chairs and ended up just buying binge food. I got home and parked my car and started crying before I even got out. So I texted her that.. what my friend said about telling people things.. and the thought about cleaning.. and that. She said that change is difficult. She asked later if I needed to sleep at her house, but I said I was fine.. honestly I was in the middle of binging and purging by then and all I cared about was the food in front of me (and the adorable kitten trying to steal it too).
Then go figure.. a while later (while still binging because this went on a while) my friend called.. and I had trouble hearing exactly what she said but she said when she wanted to kill herself or when she tried to kill herself she thought about her parents finding her stuff.. and she wondered if I was feeling the same way. It is remarkable how similar our brains are.. so I had to explain that yes I had those thoughts but I had texted my sponsor and I was doing ok and I promised I would call someone before I ever did anything.. but it was reassuring in a way to know I wasn't alone in that thought.. and also in a way to feel like I got caught thinking that? if that makes any sense.. like she figured it out.. so even if I hadn't been able to say anything.
Because definitely lately my brain is fucked up. The only way to silence it seems to be binging and purging.. and I just can't afford to do that all the time. Starving at least seems to change the topic to less dangerous things.
But on a less terribly depressing note.. here's the kitten when she was falling asleep on my back. Then she slid off onto my lap, woke up, and started trying to eat the muffin I was eating..
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