About
I’m Apples. No, Gwyneth didn’t do it – I have another name, but my Invisible Girl doesn’t want to share – yet.
I’m 38ish, with the nice bloke and the almost nice house and the fabulous kids that ‘people’ expect from someone of my age. I’m studying for a better career and I don’t have to work unless I want too, if I want a holiday or something. I like beautiful clothes, books, comedy shows, my dog, swimming with fishes.
I think.
I should be hap hap happyyyy! But I’m not, just between me & you.
I don’t talk to anyone but my counsellor about it, but life just ain’t cutting it for me, and The Invisible Girl is kind of why. I’ve been dragging around this Girl – my name for a complicated load of low self esteem/ bad parenting/ sex abuse and isolation that all boiled down to obsessive perfectionism and eating disorders about 15 years ago – for too long. And so I will be blogging about why it has been so difficult to ‘get better’ sooner, what I have done about it, (hopefully) what works, what doesn’t.
I live in a teeny tiny town in the Bay of Plenty, even though I’m really a city girl. (Hence ‘Apples’. Everyone knows everyone here. Apples is the nickname an elderly neighbour gave me many years ago, a pleasant reminder of one person who once told me I was pretty.)
Finding treatment here has been impossible, so I must help myself.
I am ‘officially’ overweight, but terrified to diet again. I do overeat and binge, but there is no OA to attend. Food, right now, is a soft hearted friend, and it breaks my heart to think of it as an unhealthy addiction to be broken – which I must.
It used to be my most dread enemy.
I don’t keep laxatives in the house anymore, for fear of what I might do (minor victory, there.) I’ve never vomited, for fear that if I started I might never stop. (Major victory, there.)
I’ve tried a lot of stuff – hypnotism to stifle urges (works briefly), Weight Watchers to ‘normalise’ the way I eat with a bit of healthy structure (every time I try it, I morph back to being anorexic-ish/bulimic-ish and full of anxiety, and with each attempt, the morphing is quicker), anti-depressants (or they could have been sugar pills for all they did!) I find books difficult to source and expensive to buy, so I will be blogging about what’s good & where to find them too.
Counselling is good. Don’t let anyone tell you its not, if you’re reading this, it just takes time to find the right one. I’m on to my 4th therapist and all the others sucked. This one is great, but, of course, as I’m in Hicksville, sadly not an expert on the subject of ED.
She tells me there is no silver bullet to kill Invisible Girl…. just slow healing, but that eventually I can be just Me again.
I hope she’s bloody right about that, anyway.