Small (food) victories
CW: Depression, suicide, eating disorders, anxiety, safe foods.
Suicide, celebrity and reactions.
I started writing this Thursday night, a day after my last post. We all woke up Friday morning to news Anthony Bourdain had taken his life. Fuck last week was a rough and heavy one for mental illness and those of us that admired Kate Spade or Anthony Bourdain. We also heard last week that suicide rates went up 24% in the last fifteen years. I saw so many friends and friends of friends and public posts from people with mental illness about — if they cannot manage with their resources and money, what hope is there for me? I could guess that those of us with mental illness feel the same thing when it’s a person in our lives, on the public stage it is more jarring and real.
I was seeing so many reactions about reaching out. Say something. Look for signs. I just want to SCREAM. Asking for help can be almost as hard as “just be happy and it will be OK”. Sometimes asking for help is so quiet and misunderstood that loved ones cannot hear it, or recognize it’s a cry. So many of us have learned to mask it or hide or use different language. Mental illness is so misunderstood. And even more so, stigmatized. I’ve been at Microsoft for 12 years and 4 months. I told my team a year ago I have anxiety, depression, and live with an eating disorder. Two of those team members I’ve been working with for 8 years (at that point) So tell me again how I showed recognizable signs that I had anxiety attacks at work? Or depressive episodes just going through the motions?
I’m also conflicted in saying that. As much as I have hidden it in the past, or not known how to ask for help, or live with a Marlboro complex, I was dealing with it. And there are those that don’t yet know they have mental illness because they don’t see themselves as that bad. Or those that do make very outward asks for support. I suppose if you have met one person with mental illness, you have met one variety of a diagnosis many of us can related to but not exactly the same.
What is more hopeful are stories about reaching in. I have told those close to me that if I disappear something is going on. Not responding to texts or emails at all, not posting on social, canceling plans or hedging at making plans. I also told a friend last week that me writing here is an indicator that I’m somewhere on the spectrum of OK. Please do not take that to mean a delayed response means I’m in crisis, and sometimes I forget to reply (particularly text strings that are pushed down the screen) I have this sense that people are figuring it out, maybe I’m doing something else unconsciously that they see as a need for them to reach in. Early thoughts here, figuring this out as I go…
I often want to wrap these thoughts in a tidy bow. Today I don’t have a bow. More like a roll of wrapping paper with ripped edges, barely an inch of tape and just enough of one ribbon color and barely enough of the other.
And so on to what I originally wrote…
Eating disorder mindfuck and a surprisingly healthy response
I hit publish on my last post and headed to (another) full day Summit (Summit season is exhausting). Early morning was a very engaging conversation and was easy to get absorbed. The topic right before lunch wasn’t the best and my mind wandered. Which was not a good thing. Then we broke for lunch.
I went out to the catering table to see a large variety of dishes — Indian, Japanese, I actually don’t remember the rest because my vision was getting fuzzy. I was trying to read the menu list and it felt like I was looking at 6pt font. I realized that nothing on the table was Safe for me. I contemplated putting the plate down and going over to the café for something, it would be easy enough to explain away. Instead I put tofu rolls, veggie kabobs, salad with dried fruit and candied nuts, pasta salad and a dipped strawberry on my plate. Sound like a nice selection? I cannot eat processed soy, my body doesn’t tolerate it any longer. I don’t like Indian food. Who the fuck puts so much dried fruit and candied nuts on spinach — it’s a fucking sugar bomb. Pasta salad? So American picnic and likely tasted like plain watery pasta (our caterers don’t understand the concept of salt). I went back to my table, put the plate down, and started crying. So I left to pull myself together. As I came back into the room — I did something different.
I asked a friend if she would eat with me outside the room. She could see I was upset. We left and found a place to sit. I told her I was in a depression and none of the food was safe. All of it was triggering my anxiety and eating disorder. I didn’t want anything on the plate in my mouth or stomach. I think I was trembling a bit.
She offered to get me something else and asked what I wanted. Time slowed (in my head) as I thought about allowing someone to do that for me. I decided to risk it and say yes. She asked what. I said whatever vegetarian soup was downstairs. And a piece of bread.
I’m really glad I accepted that gift.
Part of it was allowing someone else to take care of me. Part of it was the one veggie soup downstairs is not one I would have picked (it was fine, tasted good, I just never would have considered it) I know enough about myself that if I had been the one to go downstairs and saw a soup I wouldn’t typically eat, that fuzzy spinning would have gotten much, much worse. I don’t know what I would have done about having food at that point. It would likely set me up for eating things I didn’t want just to eat, bingeing at night and feeling sick with myself until bedtime — obsessively thinking about calories and did I get enough protein and I want to exercise but haven’t eaten enough and more likely to make unsafe food choices and spiral further down into anxiety and depression.
But that didn’t happen.
I was reset. I had fed myself (with help) I could go back and finish my day without another thought to the turmoil I had just a few hours beforehand. I’m entirely and overly grateful she was there and offered that quarter for a gumball machine when I felt like it was an organ transplant (read my last post if that doesn’t make sense).
I’m still figuring out how I need support, self care, and asking. Although it does feel more like I’m just beyond figuring it out and trying on things to see how they feel and if it makes a difference. My therapist would say that is huge progress, to pause, take a breath, and recognize the accomplishment.
Next step is to keep telling others so they know how to reach in to me.
Followed closely by my taking their hand.
