Well, it’s been a while since I posted. Since my last post I did go home for Christmas, I had an OK Christmas followed by a tiring boxing day dealing with the horrors of the sales, in which I did not get everything I needed, although since I have managed to put together a decent interview outfit. Wearing formal clothes makes me feel desperately uncomfortable, I look in the mirror and think gosh, I’m getting old. I guess that means I am dressing appropriately. I have spent the last few weeks mostly revising. I am trying to take breaks – by watching dramas. I’m currently watching Miss Korea, which is amazing, and Man from the Stars, which is the sort of drama where you can see the drama writer pulling the strings to make it popular, but Gianna Jun is lovely. I am also halfway through Pursuit of Happiness, which started of amazing but sadly began to drag in later episodes. I even took a whole evening off and went to the cinema, to see Long Walk to Freedom, which was very emotional and made me cry. Its incredible to think that Apartheid ended when I was 2 years old, that my parents and grandparents lived through that.

(Ever since my Grandmother died I have been so homesick. I long to reconnect with my culture – I long to go back, to see my living Grandparents… one last time, I think, which is painful. I want to experience Cape Town as a person living there, again, too. It doesn’t help that South Africa/Cape Town has been everywhere – with recent events, and its recent status of design capital.)

Time is passing quickly. I am struggling to feel in control. I feel like everything is just passing me by.

I had my first exam today. Woke up at 7:00am and left the house at 8:00am, feeling pretty optimistic about getting there on time, and strangely relaxed. Then the 8:10 bus did not come, neither did the 8:20 and finally, a bus arrived at 8:35. Well, I was definitely going to be late, and so I was panicking. Its the little things that set my anxiety off – this was one of them. I got off the bus at the entrance to the university that is the opposite to the central campus – the bus does not go into the campus, and the point where I usually get off near central campus is a very heavy traffic area, so it seemed a good idea to escape the hell of unreliable public transport and cut through campus on foot. I ran most of the way and shocked myself by the fact that I could. I was breathing hard, but I did not feel dizzy and my chest didn’t hurt. Living without anaemia is great. Nonetheless I was not in a great way when I finally got to my exam – just after 9am. One of the invigilators was outside and she was very nice about me being late, the exam had only just started, and she helped me find my seat. I was breathing hard and my hands were frozen cold and my anxiety was high – and so the exam got off to a very shaky start. I settled down surprisingly quickly though. My counsellor introduced me to a relaxation breathing technique and I find it useful for getting my anxiety levels down – it cannot remove the anxiety completely nor does it help me sleep, but it usually does OK in keeping me from panicking. I couldn’t implement it fully in the exam – no time – but I had sure to pay attention to my breathing, to keep breathing deeply, slowly, to try and focus, read the questions carefully.

Honestly, the exam wasn’t great – I left feeling like I made a lot of stupid little mistakes, like I missed some sneaky trick I should know for several of the questions. I did not answer all the questions properly – though I did half answer or put random guesses for the ones I did not know. I tried though, and so I cannot help but hope. The thing is – this was one of the exams I was feeling most confident about, and its unsettling that it did not go as well as I hoped. If this is how my good exam went, then what about the rest? This is exactly the sort of way I shouldn’t be thinking, I know. My counsellor picked up on it to – the way I use the bad things in the past, no matter how distant, how I use my mistakes to justify my bad thoughts. I’m working on it. Its hard to be optimistic, when you feel like once you do, will be the point you lose everything you’ve worked so hard for.

Counselling is going quite well actually. Its really good to talk to someone, and to work through this. I don’t think my anxiety will ever go away fully, but I am hopeful that I’ll learn to live with it better. My eating is still all over the place, and I am still waiting for my first appointment with the psychologist for that. After my exam today I was desperate for chocolate but I took a deep breath – and well, I still bought junk food, just not dairy containing junk. Its really pathetic. Giving up dairy has been a fantastic choice for me in one way – I eat a wider variety of foods. In another, its also highlighted my issues with food. Every month I tally up my receipts and its always food that pushes over budget – sneaky trips to convenience stores or supermarkets to buy binging foods, but always buying staples like fruit or something else healthy, because I feel ashamed of my true intentions. The thing is, without chocolate, I need to eat more to get the same ‘satisfaction’, and I rarely do. I really hate this. I’m really scared for that appointment though- these are my habits, and thinking about changing them is so scary. As it gets closer and closer, I just get more afraid.

I also had another doctors appointment and that was a little awkward. I admit, now that I’ve gone through the scary part of admitting to it all, and had it all brought into perspective with various health professionals, I now feel a certain…not regret. But I do wonder if I’m wasting their time. It feels a bit awkward. Like I’m not anxious enough, my eating not disordered enough, to warrant this attention. I especially wonder why my doctor keeps wanting to see me – he suggested I come back to him after exams and that is the thing – is it a suggestion or is he telling me this? What would happen if I don’t? And how long am I going to be going back to see him? He’s busy and I feel bad taking up his tome to essentially just chat about how I am. I guess he’ll stop asking me when he feels like there’s no problem? So there is a problem, right? Its hard to know what’s going on. I feel very uncertain about this all. Am I doing the right thing? I think about it often, too much.

Things aren’t OK right now. I’m not going to lie. This is why I have eased off on blogging – there is only so much you can whine on the internet. And there is only so much I want to put up here – I am quite open on this blog, but I do have certain things I don’t feel comfortable sharing. And these days, my off line diary entries are filled with these things. I have renewed my domain for another three whole years though! So even if I end up blogging once a month, I’ll still be around.

I’ve got another exam tomorrow, and the day after that. Then three more next week. Then there is my job interview. Then finally, I’m taking a three day holiday to Edinburgh. My doctor suggested I give myself something to look forward to after exams – and I decided to take to the extreme. For three days I am going to not study or think about university and I am going to take a holiday. It feels indulgent, but then I think – people take time off work don’t they? So its OK I “take time off” from university right? I’m just so tired, so fed up. I just want a tiny break. I feel guilty, but I am also looking forward to it immensely. Its my little light at the end of the tunnel.

I best get back to revising now.

The first week of December has gone by, already. At the beginning of the week there was just one house with its lights up – now there are a dozen, some houses have gone ballistic with lights on every window and gaudy glowing reindeers, and the lights and trees are up in the town centre. The supermarket has long been packed with the usual assortment of Christmas food in gold and red packaging. I don’t feel much excitement about Christmas though, never have, and now more than ever. We’ll get to why in a moment. Just a moment. This entry is hard to write. Carrying on the theme lately, my thoughts remain messy.

On Wednesday I went to see the psychologist. Or rather, my university’s eating disorder help service. There, I said it.

I overslept and although I had meant to go in at 10 to the drop in clinic, I ended up there at 11. I lingered outside the door, not sure whether just to go in or not, not sure if I even wanted to. What was I doing? I wanted to flee from the situation I had put myself in, to turn tail and run, to just forget about it all and try my best to go back to denial. But as I stood there I felt a strange calm overtake me. I was nervous, I was reluctant, I was embarrassed, but I wasn’t panicked. 15 minutes after I arrived, I knocked on the door and walked in. There was one woman there. I started off awkwardly, not sure where to begin, but as the session went on I felt it all spilling out of me. It was not like the doctors, where I was so terrified and panicked that I could hardly speak. I was still weirdly calm, almost detached from the situation. I talked about the dark places inside me as if they were small, meaningless things. As if they did not scare me, or make me feel ashamed. The woman listened, and asked all the right leading questions, which was what probably made it so easy, because responding is so much easier than free talk, and as she in turn responded to me, to help me out, to clarify, I thought to myself “She gets it”. I felt relieved. She summed it all up so well, and it made so much sense, and it was such a relief to speak to someone who got it.

Then, as the session began to wrap up she started to advise me, and I grew quiet, subdued, as it begun to sink in the weight of what I was doing. There was going to be no magic wand to wipe this out, there was going to have to be changes, I was going to have to work to make this better. I was going to have to drag myself out of this, and it would not be the first time to go through this fight. I knew that, but feeling like this, I cannot help but long for something foolish – some kind of saviour. How am I going to save myself, this time? I felt my throat grow tight but thankfully I was still detached enough from the situation to not cry. She told me, looking at me sadly, that it worried her how isolated I was – and I did not know what to say. Its been at least 4 years, possibly longer, that this has all been going on. When I left CBT the first time I was supposed to be better, and I was so happy. I thought it was over. But it wasn’t. Wounds not quite healed festered and now here I am, with all these bad habits and nasty thoughts, all tangled up with my being. I’ve been using food as a comfort for at least 4 years. Which I say loosely, as it is no longer a comfort to me. As the psychologist said, much more eloquently, you just keep up with the habit, looking for what it once gave you, searching for that relief you found (Once, when I was depressed, I would starve myself and binge on chocolate and the like, because it was one of the few things that would make me happy – no matter how fleeting, no matter how I kept needing more to get that same rush). Its become a part of me, of my lifestyle – a very secret, private part of my lifestyle. I have mentioned it on this blog in passing, light hearted, how I bought some chocolate to eat, how I eat too much but I am working it, how I binge but I am working on it. Always working on it. Recently, I had to face that I was in denial and I was not working on it, I was letting it consume me. Meanwhile, my anxieties and my fears are worsening, and I draw away from everything that could possibly hurt me – mainly, people. Isolating myself, barricading myself inside me. I am once again, slowly, surely, messing up my life, in my own little ways. At least my university work isn’t suffering, but with my grades falling last year, I worry I should be using the word “yet.”

I really don’t know how to fix this. And even though I long to, I am so comfortably set in my ways that no matter how much I know its wrong, and its not healthy, I still cannot help but fear change, because that involves leaving that comfort behind – becoming uncomfortable. Facing the unknown.

Anyway, I’ll be starting counselling for this in the new year. In the mean time, I have a diet plan to help me and a food and mood diary to stop lying to (two days in, and I cannot bring myself to admit – today I binged – and why.)

I had a project meeting at 12:20 the same day. I wandered down from the health centre to the bus stop, dazed, lost in thought, still in that weird, faraway place that I had been since that morning. I stood at the bus stop for a long moment before I realised I should check the bus schedule, and it was then I saw the time – 12:20. Oh shit, I thought. It was like oversleeping – it takes a moment for you to realise that yes, you are awake, and no, you are not reading the clock wrong. I felt immediately guilty and slightly panicked. This was a meeting with our supervisor aka a big important meeting. And I had missed it, just like that. I felt awful but what could I do? I hope my group members are not annoyed with me – I tend to be late to most meetings, and now I even missed one of the most important ones. I really cannot believe how long I was at the doctors though – it had not felt like such a long talk with the psychologist. I was, despite myself, amazed that I had managed to stay so calm for it all.

I’ve been in a daze since, struggling to get things done, again. I start off all my days with good intentions – with plans and goals, but somehow I always feel myself getting distracted, and I am struggling to make progress – revision is going so slowly and I am getting increasingly frustrated, which in turn does not help my eating disorder, which in turn does not help my revision, and so forth. Really, my modules are hard, there are so many of them and there is so much to remember, and it just makes me feel stressed. That and everything else. As of now I am juggling: six exams, one language course, one external mooc (online course), one group project, one eating disorder (and a possible anxiety problem). I feel like I’m being crushed under the weight of it all.

I’m not depressed, again. At least there is that. The psychologist asked me that and I had to think about it for a moment and finally I said “no, I’m not sad.” Because I am not. I’m just overwhelmed, afraid, and lost.

(I wondered about how much detail to write about my eating disorder – in the end I decided not to go into too much detail, but not to shy away from it either. I am still not sure if this is the right way to write about it. I still feel vaguely uncomfortable admitting to it. It feels strange, to have something like this.)

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