A Whiter Shade of Pale

So it's been, like, five months of keeping quiet here.  I don't know why, in a way: I like blogging.  On the other hand, I went through a rough patch that I nodded toward and then, as I began to come out of it, I watched with fascination what my moods do when they have free play.

I should add that my psychiatrist, when I was finally able to crawl to the phone and call her, increased my meds.  I also got kind of abstinent.  These things together have put some distance between me and my inner life that I am more a spectator of than participant.  In general however, the black dog has rolled off my chest and curled up in a corner and the white dog with its own dangers has taken its place as my close emotional companion.
 

There came a day when I decided to fast for 24 hours from the binge the night before.  That led to a second abstinent day.  The relief of waking up in the morning without hating myself for what I'd eaten the day before gave me space to think about what I should do that day & what I might actually, in fact, get done.  It gave me space to think about what else I hated myself for.

As the increased medication kicked in, I was able to measure my obsessiveness as it dwindled.  The one really productive thing I did this winter was to get rid of all clothes that don't fit or aren't within a size of fitting.  I donated, I packed off the smallest and best to my nieces and sister-in-law, I sold some on eBay.  Because my VCR doesn't work, I donated all of my VHS movies and started to replace them with DVDs...until I realized I had tapped out a credit card.

Tapping out a credit card brought me up so short that I began obsessing about paying off debt, which I did a lot of until recently, when my dogs went away for the summer, moved away or died.  In ten days, I'm taking over a colleague's roster of dogs and will get back to it.  Currently I'm determined to get rid of one bookcase & am in the process of donating books or putting them out on the street on fair weather weekends.  It's a good way to develop an interest in life because every time I leave the house on weekends, I'm curious to see what's been taken and refresh my drop-off points if they've been cleared out.

In that sentence are two leading features of my interior life that a more elevated mood and sort-of abstinence force me to deal with: my near-agoraphobia and my generalized ennui.

Which leaves me with three things to explain, because who knows what "sort-of" abstinence is?

Here is what I'm doing about abstinence.

The Stepfords of the 12-step program I wish I went to more often count days of back-to-back adherence to whatever food plan they are on.  The last ten years or so have proven to me that if I try to live that way, when I do fall off and lose the Almighty Day Count, I will simply be off and running with the food.  So on days when I screw up, I am detracting a day from my day count and moving on.  I've been doing that since late April and have seriously messed up with sugar twice.  I've messed up with other things -- flour and chips -- another dozen or so times.  In nearly 70 days, then, I've averaged nearly 90% adherence to sort of planless plan.

Planless?  Oi.  Blame menopause, that ennui I mentioned, Prozac for having no plan.  I eat when I'm hungry, usually twice a day or twice a day with a yogurt/fruit at night.

Whatever.  I'm sick of food.  I can be starving & my indifference won't move me to do anything about it.  I don't want to write about the nuts & bolts so I'll leave it that.  The important thing is how much more space there is (or isn't) for everything else in my brain.

With a clearer head, I seem to cycle through spells of OCD, ennui, depression and massive anxiety.  I may have three days of one of these and then move on, or go through the cycle day-by-day.  I suspect they may be fewer actual states of mind.  Do I develop ennui and exhaustion instead of anxiety, for instance?  If I'm indifferent or too tired, then I can shelve ambitions of leaving the house and allay my anxiety.

I don't know which mood is more painful.  Probably the occasional days of the Black Dog because I really do feel helpless.  The other moods can be coped with, although anxiety is the physically most painful and emotionally most taxing -- it makes me impatient when I go out or something stupid, like dropping a bowl of salad on the floor, happens.

The anxiety takes a mild form of agoraphobia.  My particular species makes going downstairs to the trash or washing machines difficult.  Getting proper groceries in can be a week's berating of myself as I survive on take-out salads or wrap sandwiches that aren't hideous to purchase because it's only a little out of my way on dog walks.  The dog walks require a mantra, "Be here now," to survive because I want to get it done and be home again quickly.

I've got as much or more work to do on anxiety as I do on depression.  A lot of it is shame: shame of gaining weight, shame of having been fired all those years ago that settled into a sense of being unwantable.  It's weird, too, because when I go to Key Food, the bank, the pet stores, Housing Works to donate stuff, to buy cigarettes, to the doorman buildings where my dogs live or simply to walk Daisy, I am known and always marvel at the banter I share with all those people.  They don't hate me.  They don't think of me as being some unhireable slacker.  There is a tiny bit of social life I engage in when I get a carton of yogurt or bag of kibble, sometimes more than tiny.

When I can, I impress one of my few friends into escorting me beyond my comfort zone, which is pretty tight.  I think of those excursions as something I did when I was thin and I was frantic to get away from the Bat Cave.  I spent a lot of money in those days.  Now I spend it on having salads delivered.  Sigh.......

There's a lot from That Time -- the thin time -- I have yet to process.  I failed to learn how to have fun and then everything exploded and I saw how frail the life I'd created was.  I think I'm terrified I'll run into someone who knew me when I was thin.  Shame is such a powerful and pointless emotion, isn't it?  I mean, who cares?

The other day I saw one of the Stepfords who has left my 12-step program for a harsher one.  She is super thin.  She gave me The Look.  You know: pity based on disapproval.  I wanted to laugh -- really: shame did not kick in -- because she knows nothing.  She doesn't know I'm crafting my own abstinence, that I could not do that without what I learned in the Rooms.  She doesn't know anything beyond her own reality.  & in my hidden life, I am still speaking daily to people struggling with the hopeless form of obesity, handing out information, suggestions, gentleness, urging self-acceptance, small steps, clapping my hands at success.  Much of what strength I have comes from the Rooms I'm afraid to go to.

The last meeting I went to, I was greeted by the leader as though it were my first, as though I'd never attended a meeting in my life.  That's what a stranger I've become.  Later, someone told me how much they like my Psychology Today blogs and I thought, well, there goes anonymity.  So I'll continue to be lackadaisical about meetings.  Something in the Rooms broke for me, or I broke for the Rooms.

On the OCD days, I do 80 things at once or obsess at books.  On good ennui days, I read.  Yesterday & today are ennui days, it seems.  I haven't brushed my teeth since Wednesday although I did manage to get to the grocery store yesterday & to put some books out for the high pedestrian traffic of a long weekend.

I feel really bad for Daisy in all of this.  There are a couple of people even my much "better" mood hurts, but day-to-day it's Daisy.

Who is ten years old today.  Which makes me want to cry in fear of what THAT means.

So there you go.  Talk soon.  Or not.