I’m graduating today! It’s been rough at times but I made it through. I might not be getting the honors other people are getting, but I’m alive and proud.

And then I also ate ice cream in my bikini because I refuse to live a limited life.

I have decided to go to the pool party after all even though my gastroparisis is back and I’ve gained.

I actually think that I look kind of acceptable.  I don’t look “anorexic” anymore by a longshot but maybe I can still look okay?  Photos under the read more.

Read More

Fuck.

Senior week.  Too much drinking.  Eating at weird times makes my digestion stop.  I have never weighed this much in my life.  Trying to stave off a melt down.

I went to Goodwill to shop for work clothes to wear to my new internship (and whatever comes after).  Clothing shopping has been a bit rough recently and has frequently sent me into tailspins.  

I was looking at the suits and this woman who was also shopping asked me if I was looking at suits, and I said yes.  Somehow she decided to be my personal shopping assistant and start pulling things for me to try, without asking my size.  I felt my head start screaming because she was pulling sizes that were larger than my actual size and she thought I was 4 inches shorter than I am.

 I freaked out because it was like a confirmation that other people really do see me as being just as fat as I see myself.

Somehow, I managed not to cry in the store, though.  I made it through the rest of the shopping trip and even tried things on after that.  I didn’t manage any pants, but I got some other things that I can wear and feel good in.  Also, some woman when I was leaving the Goodwill approached me and said, “Now, don’t think I’m a lesbian or something, but you have a fantastic figure!”

WTF people.

coooode:

And that’s the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn’t always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn’t even something — it’s nothing. And you can’t combat nothing. You can’t fill it up. You can’t cover it. It’s just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared. 
(x)

You know when you read something that’s so accurate that you don’t know how to words?
Yeah.

(via beccabeargrr)

1. I am convinced that I am too much for people to want to deal with from the start. 
2. I shut people out and clearly keep myself from opening up.
3. When they push me to open up, I open up too much to prove to them that they shouldn’t want to be with me because I am too much to handle.
4. They feel good that I have opened up to them and feel strongly about our relationship.
5. Repeat step 3 until person believes I am too much to handle and needs space.
6. Take request for space as complete rejection and become too embarrassed to talk to the person again.
7. Look for reassurance from them anyway.

(via courageisgraceunderpressure)

Would it help to look at other people’s pictures and how they aren’t perfect (because nobody is, really)? I did that for my linkedin picture.

It’s not so much that I think that the picture needs to be perfect.  I looked at the pictures that past interns have posted and it’s really not about us being pretty.  It’s mainly that in order to go through my photos to find one for the website, I have to wade through an ocean of photos of different weights, including low weight pictures.

AHHHHHHGHHHH!  Run away!!!  Ahhhhhh!

repetition-is-holy:

In a humiliating blow to the American Psychiatric Association, Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the NIMH, made clear the agency would no longer fund research projects that rely exclusively on DSM criteria. Henceforth, the NIMH, which had thrown its weight and funding behind earlier editions of the manual, would be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.” “The weakness” of the manual, he explained in a sharply worded statement, “is its lack of validity.” “Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure nsensus is now clearly missing. Whether it ever really existed remains in doubt. As one consultant for DSM-III conceded to the New Yorker magazine about the amount of horsetrading driving that supposedly “evidenced-based” edition from 1980: “There was very little systematic research, and much of the research that existed was really a hodgepodge—scattered, inconsistent, ambiguous.”

According to Insel, too much of that problem remains. As he cautionedof a manual whose precision and reliability has been overstated for decades, “While DSM has been described as a ‘Bible’ for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each.” And not even a particularly good dictionary, apparently. Of the decision to steer research in mental health away from the manual and its parameters, Insel states: “Patients with mental disorders deserve better.”

Starting Over (Macklemore and Ryan Lewis)

1,2, Now…
Those 3 plus years, I was so proud of
Then I threw them all away, for two Styrofoam cups
The irony - everyone will think that “he lied to me.”
Made my sobriety so public there’s no fucking privacy
If I don’t talk about it then I carry a date
08/10/08 - now that has been changed
And everyone that put me in some box is ashamed
That I never was - just a false prophet that never came
And will they think that everything that I’ve written has all been fake?
Or will I just take my slip to the grave?
What the fuck are my parents gonna say?
The success story that got his life together and changed
And you know, what pain looks like
When you tell your dad you relapsed and look at him directly into his face
The seat on your shoulders, the seemingly heavy weight
Haven’t seen tears like this on my girl in a while
The trust that I once built has been betrayed
But I’d rather live tellin’ the truth and be judged for my mistakes
Than falsely held up, given props, loved and praised
I guess, I gotta get this on the page
Feelin’, sick and helpless
Lost the compass where self is
I know what I’ve gotta do, and I can’t help it
One day at a time is what they tell us
Now I’ve gotta find a way to tell them…
God help him…

We fell, so hard
Now we gotta get back what we lost
Lost
I thought you’d go
But you were with me all along
Along

And every kid that came up to me
And said I was the music they listened to when they first got clean
Now look at me - a couple days sober, I’m fighting demons
Back of that meeting on the East Side, shakin’ tweakin’
Hope that they don’t see it, hope that no one is lookin’
That no one recognizes that failure under that hoodie
Just posted in the back with my hands crossed, shook-en
If they call on me I’m passin’ it, they talk to me I’m bookin’
Out that door, but before, I can make it
Somebody stops me and says “Are you Macklemore?
“Maybe this isn’t the place or time, I just wanted to say that…
If it wasn’t for ‘Otherside’ I wouldn’t have made it…”
I just looked down at the ground and say “Thank you.”
She tells me she has 9 months and that she’s so grateful
Tears in her eyes lookin’ like she’s gonna cry, fuck
I barely got forty-eight hours, treated like I’m some wise monk
I want to tell her I relapsed, but I can’t
I just shake her hand and tell her “Congrats”
Get back to my car, and I think I’m trippin’, yeah
Cause God wrote ‘Otherside’, that pen was in my hand
I’m just a flawed man - Man, I fucked up…
Like so many others, I just never thought I would
I never thought I would, didn’t pick up the book
Doin’ it by myself didn’t turn out that good

If I can be an example of gettin’ sober
Then I can be an example of startin’ over
If I can be an example of gettin’ sober
Then I can be an example of startin’ over