Sun

In the 'Valley', the sun has come out.
It brings such a lightness to the world and fills your soul with light.
I feel lifted, enchanted, and in love with nature.
The snow, despite its beauty, it is a fleeting love. It makes the world bleak, cold, and it hides all the wonders of the world underneath a blanket of bright white.
It reminds me of a song in Thumbelina, 'once there was the sun':


Once there was the sunBright and warm and wonderfulJust like the love within my heartNow there's no more sunWinter has killed everythingAlthough it's dark DecemberForever I'll remember sun

Its beautiful. I love the sun and what it brings to me.

I am in the midsts of an episode of depression, and I am fighting the darkness this brings me.

I broke down yesterday, after weeks of not crying or showing emotion, I broke.

Once I break, I can't stop the floods of emotions it brings.

But waking up to the sun, well its just given me hope.

Things are very hard at the moment, and it seems my family do not understand everything that is going on and the responsibility I have on my shoulders. They have lived through so many experiences, and no matter how much they lecture, I have to live them as well. The good and the bad. And learn. I cannot grow if I do not live, make mistakes and learn.

The problem with recovery is once your weight is healthy, people assume you are 'cured'.

That you are now well, with no bad thoughts and no difficulties.

On the contrary, this part of recovery is the hardest as you are now trying to challenge thoughts.

My mind is still sick, its still a painting of dark blues, reds and greens. Its a splatter of darkness. And I am trying to start a new painting of bright colours, and its hard to move away from the paint brush I know and have used so often.

Life is a canvas, and it is hard when you can't control what the paintings is.

But you can, you can take control. Notice everything good in life and paint.

The sun has come. The light is here. And I feel like I can use this light within me, through adoring the world and realising that the world is magical, and it shows you this in the most unexpected ways and at times when you simply can't imagine hope to shine through.

I have hope. And that is all we need sometimes.

xxxx

Dippy Eggs and Trees

Nothing else can epitomize your childhood like dippy eggs.
Someone in front of me orders them and I smile.

Yet my smile today is weak.
I am filled of regret, regret of myself and who I have become.
I used to look within me and see magic.
I used to have hopes and dreams in my purse, ready to be made at any given time.
I have now put them dreams in a drawer, and sometimes I go and admire then. But the drawer, it still remains shut.

I had a dream, a daft dream, that I wanted to travel the world to go across the world and meet all of the wonderful trees, talk to them, be near to them, feel their energy, be amazing, be astounded, be made to cry by the beauty of it all.
Is this daft? No dream, however little, big, weird, its still a dream.
And dreams are the roads to our soul. We need to listen to them and follow them.

I am going to start my dream. I am going to start with Yorkshire and get to know english trees in the local areas.
I was inspired by a certain woman yesterday who reminded me of this dream. And I cannot thank her enough for giving me the key to myself.
I don't need a notebook, or camera, or any footage to document this dream.
I don't need to prove it. I am just going to live it. And love living.

xxxx

Responsibility

In life we are given choices.
These choices thereafter define our existence.
But, I often stop and ask myself whether I did have a choice.
Did I?
Do we have a choice about everything?
There must be some structural forces which shape and mould our lives, pave the path, put up the signs and directions to the way we must go.
I feel I do not have any choices at the moment.
I am feeling trapped without them, yet I feel I never had them in the first place.
Today was the first day in a very long time I purged.
I just freaked out that my life has been fashioned by external forces and I feel cornered.
Responsibility. Responsibility. Responsibility.
Echos in my mind.
Responsibility is something I have a lot of, and I take it very seriously.
And it scares me shitless.
I get scared that because I fear it people will think I'm bad. That I am not mature. That I don't deserve anything. They will hate me. Think little of me. Think I am a messed up freak.
This is mainly because I have the words 'mentally ill' tattooed on my head for all to see.
People think that because of this, I am just going to crumble and will not recover.
So I purged today, as if it cleansed me. It punished me.

But then I got up and looked in the mirror. My hands trembling as I wiped my mouth and the tears on my cheek. I cried, for a minute, then put my responsible face back on.
I don't cry. Ever. I now have a facade that I hide behind each day.
Yet I know, I know they are wrong. I know people do mess up.
People screw up. Its life. You don't have to be mentally ill to slip up now and then.
I shouldn't feel bad for making mistakes.
So, for once, I wipe off my act.
I cry. I shout. I scream.
It may be in the comfort of my living room, alone (apart from Tolkien the cat), but this is a big step.

I am going to stand up to myself.

xxx

Peter Pan Syndrome

For all my life I have suffered from what I call 'peter pan syndrome'.
An immense fear of growing up.
I have tried to cling on to my fleeting childhood through keeping my body in a child-like form.
My eating disorder has been my access to neverland, to stay child-like, to stay safe.
I sometimes wonder whether my eating disorder triggered this, as it entered my life at the age of 8.
It stole my childhood, and ironically it has been my way of holding on to a lost childhood and to regain it.
I do not know why growing up scares me.
In recent years this fear has grown. Recovery has forced my body to evolve, to change, to grow.
I look in the mirror now and see a woman.
I see curves. I see breasts. I see hips.
I used to see a young girl, scared of the world. I now see a young girl trapped in a womans body.
I spend my time trying to embrace my new womanhood and face this fear.

Neverland to me has always been real. In a way that its a place to escape and run away from the world. Thats what Peter did, and if you read the book properly you will notice it is tainted and he is actually trapped there in his youth. The wonderful experiences of growing up are stolen from him. He is trapped in time, and the ticking clock of the crocodile haunts him as well as Hook.

People who know me, know that I love anything magical. Its part of my being. Who I am.
But its sort of a curse.
I am growing up. I have a child. A fiance. A home. A job.
'Will they send me to school?'
'Yes'.
'And then to an office?'
'Yes'
'Someday I will be a man. You can't make me a man and grow up'.

So what is it about growing up?
All these things I have longed for. Now they are here, I am scared.
And I can't run away with my ed anymore. I am no longer a little girl. On the contrary, I have a little boy.
I get angry at my body, as if it is the reason I am now grown up.
But its the inevitability of time.
Time is chasing all of us.

So yes, I suffer from peter pan syndrome.
I am stuck at a cross roads of wanting to grow up and wanting to stay young.
I can't claim back them lost years of childhood. Thats the hard truth.
But I can breath the new experiences that await me. To be excited for them and everything they bring.
I need to grow up.
I need to live my life rather then get myself stuck in a time-warp.
As I always say, to live will be an awfully big adventure.

So let the adventure begin. 
Goodbye to that scared child within me. I can't protect her anymore. 

xxx

And here I sit.

And here I sit.
By the coffee shop window with my world of Phd spread out across the table and the outside world resumes around me in an orderly fashion.
People come and go, chat and laugh, and I smile that I know I am in this world.
Getting out and working provides me with much spirit, as I think seeing and talking to people is an important medicine that should be taken daily.
I used to think people were all bad. They all presented me with such hurt which I internalised, and made visible through cuts and bruises on my body. Wounds that would scar and be forever on me.
Yet it is not forever in me.
Some people did things to me that caused so much pain and anguish, so much hurt.
Men abused me. My body. My soul. And most scarily, my mind.
Abuse is a difficult thing, as it is the sad truth that in this world are abusers.
For me I have been subject to two different events of abuse in my life, one when I was 12 and happened once, and one when I was 18 and went on for months.
This made me think and feel everyone was an abuser. I became scared of people.
I would hide in the house, I couldn't go to lectures or socialise. I'd sit in the lecture theatre and think everyone was writing about me, nasty, awful things that I could not bare. Of course, this isn't true.
But it was real. So real. And I feared going there, so I didn't. I hid.

However, the world has abusers in it, yet it also is full of beautiful, wonderful, inspiring people.
The latter makes it worth being a part of.
A stranger can remind you of this. A smile. A 'hello'.
And this is world has more good than bad, and its important you stop the bad from taking over.

So I sit here and smile. I drink my earl grey with my eyes full of life.

Good morning starshine

There are always triggers to our mood. Experiences and events which have made core beliefs about ourselves, and these effect our mood massively.
But part of it isn't.
Part of it can be due to chemicals and the way we are.
I read the other day, diets don't cause eating disorders but those born with obsessive traits are more like to end up with an eating disorder.
And I think its true for me. I am sort of, just, programmed this way. My mood right now is incredibly low. I have fleeting thoughts of disappearing. Of wanting to run away from my life.
I get so frustrated with myself, as everything in my life is fine. Nothing I can complain of. But still, my mood just takes over me.
I want to hibernate. Hide under the covers and pretend I'm in neverland.
Luckily thats not a choice for me. I have to get up, take Travis to nursery. And most of the time the walk by the countryside helps me be able to deal with the day. Without this structure, I would 100% just stay in bed. Sleep the day away. Void of dreams. Void of nightmares. Void of anything.
I would be nothing.

I am not nothing. I know I am not.
But I can't help but feel helpless.
Travis is at the age when he is challenging everything. And he challenges me, and I have to be strong for him. And that keeps me alive. Knowing that my ed would rip me away from him and hurt him. Knowing that any self harm would also be harming him.
So I wake up. I get up. And I live.
I am alive.
And thats how it should be and how its meant to be.

I am challenging food like never before! I had an indian and tonight I have made a spinach, butternut squash and coconut curry :)
I have chocolate every night, not because I have to but because I want to. I eat it, and I enjoy it.

But right now there are people I miss so much, and I want them back in my life.
Sadly, the truth is eating disorders, mood disorders and self-harm can take people away from you.
It turned me into a person I did not like, and those around me didn't like. It was not Kate. That person was NOT me. It was as if an evil spirit took over me and I was possessed. The days after my suicide attempt, well I was a mess. I could barely articulate myself, I couldn't get up or think. I was empty of any emotion. And it destroyed some really important relationships in my life.

It saved some too though. For example, my dad.
He begun to realise something had happened to me I didn't speak of.
He listened to me, comforted me, loved me. And I can't thank him enough for the support he gave me.
Every time I think a bad thought I say no, as I love my dad and I want him to see me well and happy. Truly well and happy. No ed. No self harm. No destructive moods.
As some of you may no, I have a mood disorder which causes me to get destructive in ways which I hate to say. I get something good, and as I have such hatred towards myself I take it upon myself to destroy it in every way possible.
And it leads me to do awful things.
The scary thing is, I can't use it as an excuse, as it's not. I have to take responsibility for my actions. But I feel like I apologise for someone I don't know. As its not me. Its not who I am. But I still feel immense guilt for my actions.

Mood disorders are difficult and complex things. What mine is yet, I do not know.
I am being diagnosed on an ongoing basis.
Some have said its rapid bi-polar disorder. Others, borderline personality disorder.

I don't care much for the diagnosis. I care about becoming a healthy, better person.
A person who is free.


xxxx