There's no ease in PLEASE

So in one of my groups this week we discussed the acronym PLEASE as a foundation to taking care of our basic needs. Often times the basics get forgotten in all the craziness, but without them it is SO much harder to stay mindful and present, to focus thoughts away from the bad and towards somewhere safe, and just to keep from panicking all together. So PLEASE stands for

(Treat) PhysicaL Illness
(Balanced) Eating
Avoiding mood-Altering drugs
Sleep
Exercise

(And yes, it bothers me that the L doesn't have it's own word and has to share on physical. :-P )

As we went through this, I realized that the EASE part of PLEASE is the story of my life right now. I am having unbelievable struggles with all of those things. Thankfully I am not having to deal with any physical illnesses, but the rest are intense struggles for me. It's strange to think just how major they are.

In a sense, my experience in the hospital and now with getting sober have been like a rebirth. I have had plenty of down times before, but I have never been down in such an all-encompassing, scary, painful way as I was before I entered the hospital. I had made very serious plans to kill myself, and had thought through many of the "when I die..." scenarios. I had genuinely reached a point where I no longer saw a future for myself, and was convinced my life was over. Needless to say I cared little about doing much of anything or taking care of myself. After all, why bother?

But thankfully there was that little piece of me that wanted to fight, and was honest with people long enough to get to somewhere safe. From there I have been lucky enough to become a part of this incredible treatment program. This program woke me up to issues I didn't realize I had. I was convinced that my drinking wasn't a big deal....and that I was fully in control of it. But as the struggles in my life continued, it became quickly apparent (through my binging, lying, and getting completely and utterly sick when I quit for a day) that my drinking was far from healthy.

I started drinking when I was around 12 or 13. I've stopped drinking many times since then, but this time is different. Before, I just stopped, and I did what I could to resist drinking more. It was a battle of wills. Now, I'm quitting "for real." By that I mean that I am working with people who can help me, going to groups and talking to people, and reassessing my life. This time I'm willing to do the work. I'm not just stopping the drinking, I'm building a healthy, sober life by finding and fixing the internal damage that causes me to need it so badly. I feel that this time i'm in right now is my rebirth into this new life and away from the old. And, as is the idea, everything about the new life is...well...new. I'm learning how to live in a brand new way.

So...back to the original point of this...the basics no longer feel basic. I don't know how to eat well anymore. As my life took it's downslide over the past 6 months or so, I began to isolate more and more. The more I isolated, the less focus I put in making sure that I ate well. Add to that evil roommate over the summer who left me with even less desire to cook because I didn't want to be close to her, and I progressed from eating crap to hardly eating at all. By the time I went to the hospital, I was going most days with little or no food. I had reached a bizarre point of feeling I didn't deserve it, or that I didn't want it because it represented life which I didn't want, or many other things. Not to mention I was too depressed to care. So I ate on rare occasions and drank heavily to fill in some of the extra calories. Post hospital, when the suicidal thoughts had lessened, I started eating more by allowing myself to eat anything that sounded even remotely good. I didn't care if it was greasy fast food every day...at least it was food. Then...I quit drinking...which added all sorts of new fuel to the fire. For one, my body craved tons and tons of sugar to make up for the sugar I'd been getting from alcohol. Copious amounts of sugar was often the only way to keep those first major cravings from doing me in. Also, for some reason my appetite started coming back in epic proportions. Suddenly I was not only eating McDonalds, but I was eating giant meals, way bigger than I would normally eat, without a second thought. I don't really know what that's all about, but another girl I talked to in group said she was doing the exact same thing. So I went from losing weight and not eating to eating tons and tons of crap and comfort food and gaining a ton of weight back. Now i'm somewhere in the middle. I'm starting to slow down with the mega food binges, and the alcohol cravings have become manageable to the point that a few bites of sugar works rather than downing half a box of cookies. But it's still a daily fight. Well, I don't want to say fight because I don't want it to turn in to one. I guess I should say it's something that is still easing it's way towards balance. Yesterday was a really good eating day because I had 3 meals of real food. I ate oatmeal in the morning, Taco Bell for lunch, and macaroni and cheese with broccoli for dinner. So maybe not the model of health, but a big success for me because that's where I'm at right now. Today was a bit more of a struggle. I managed cereal for breakfast but I could only handle a few bites of popcorn before feeling sick at lunch. But more about that later. (Because yes, this story needs to be LONGER! lol Some day I'll figure out how to get to the point. :-P )

Avoiding mood-altering drugs. This one is pretty obvious. Not drinking is the most important priority right now. I'm trying to watch what I eat, but if gorging on a giant bag of candy is what I need to keep from drinking then so be it. I'd rather mess up the eating for a bit then risk a big backtrack on my path to getting better. Of course, looking at the PLEASE thing as a whole....losing the healthy eating will cause other struggles that will need to be dealt with later. But one thing at a time.

Sleep. Sleep is my nemesis right now. I recently started on new sleeping meds that seemed to be working wonders. I was getting on a good sleep routine and sleeping relatively regular hours and getting a consistent 5-6 hours/night. Again not perfect, but a huge success for me! Then I had a bad reaction to another medication I was on that ended up causing major sleep issues. It made me jittery and horribly paranoid, so I would end up up at night with these crazy thoughts...like being convinced that there were mice running all over the floor of my living room so I couldn't touch the floor. Clearly not relaxing. So not only was sleep not happening but instead I was spending the whole night in this crazed feeling. Got off of that med and instantly saw improvement. The sleep didn't come back right away, but I was once again able to let my body relax. This all took place last week. Sleep last week was off and on. Until Friday afternoon when I took a nap and ended up having a horrific nightmare. It was the type of nightmare that I couldn't get out of my head for a long, long time after. It was so vivid, and I was right back in that horrible place in childhood. When I woke up I felt all the feelings as though it had just happened. This ruined all chances of sleep on friday night. Saturday was better and I was able to sleep well. But since then it's been nearly non-existant and I have no idea why. Sunday I slept from about 4:30-7:30. I went to bed LONG before that but for some reason I don't start to fully be able to get to sleep until around 4 or 5:00. My suspicion is that that's when the first signs of morning light appear, making it no longer night time. Night time scares the hell outta me. In the morning I can relax. That's the theory anyway. Monday night I slept from about 5-8:00. Last night I didn't sleep at all. Nothing. Even though yesterday afternoon I was literally so tired it was painful. My eyes hurt from having to hold them open. My body just didn't want to move anymore. But no matter how tired I get, I just can't cross over into dreamland. I think of it like rocking a baby to help her fall asleep. In theory you don't want to let her fall asleep in your arms. Instead you want to put her in the crib when she's almost asleep so she can learn the feeling of falling asleep on her own. I feel like I can reach that almost asleep place no problem, but I don't know how to let myself fall asleep. When I begin to hit that point something in my body snaps. It's like my body is actively fighting it. Suddenly I am wide awake and alert. My eyes pop open like I'm expecting something to happen. I'm guessing this is a combination of lots of changing chemicals inside me, with losing the boos and adding the meds, being so used to drinking to fall asleep that I've lost all other methods, and the horrible things in my head that connect to laying down in a bed. I think the nightmare on friday really really set me back. I don't feel scared when I lay down, but I think I'm subconsciously very very afraid of giving in to sleep and risking going back to that place. If i'm awake, I can fight it off. Or maybe it's purely the trigger of laying down and a flashback of sorts. My issues with laying down cause more problems because I can't just lie down and close my eyes and wait for sleep to come. That only works if I am very, very tired. Otherwise, I lay there and begin to feel the creepy crawlies of the horrible memories coming back. I begin to see the bad things and can't seem to make them stop. Obviously not conducive to sleep. So yeah. My nemesis. I am so tired right now I can barely think straight. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this post is really just a hodge podge of random words and I only think I'm typing an entry. I'm about as tired as I've ever been...so much so that it's been making me sick all day long. I've been having horrible headaches, and feeling nautious, even when I wasn't actively feeling tired. It's become almost impossible to concentrate on anything, which is especially sucky because I have a ton of homework to get done for my class tomorrow...including studying for the midterm and doing the part of the midterm that's take-home. Which is actually a lot of it. Good except that right now I can't make sense of it one bit.

Oh and exercise. This is actually a place where I'm proud of myself. I've known for a while now that I want to get back into exercise...especially considering that my clothes are all getting tight again and I've lost the great progress I made years ago in de-couch-potatofying myself. I also remembered how much it helped my mood to work out regularly. But it was hard to get going because 1.) Detox gave me horrible headaches that lasted well past the first 3 days where the other detox stuff seemed to stay. They hurt like migraines, and any jostling of my head was enough to make me want to cry. Walking was a struggle sometimes and I'd have to move very slowly. Running or fast movements were out of the question. 2.) I put SO much work into progressing from out of shape couch potato into successful triathlete 4 years ago. It was an amazing and life-changing experience, and it kills me to think that I've made it pretty much back to where I started. At least I have more knowledge this time, but my weight is up, my eating is crap, and convincing myself to move is hard. I went back to visit the online forum that supported me in my first weight loss/become a triathlete endeavor. (Really I just wanted to borrow their "couch to 5k" training plan and become runner-like, but through a few random twists in life...and the fact that this happened to be a triathlon website, I ended up going not just for a 5k but a full triathlon. And then 3 more triathlons that summer because the first was so much fun.) I reintroduced myself on the forum and got a ton of support and welcomes, which was huge for me. It means so much to me to know ppl have my back in all of these struggles/attempts to change. I told a bit of my story and where i'd been over the last 4 years. Everyone was very supportive and again reminded me to take it slow...the thing I seem to struggle with most in all areas of life right now. I still get frustrated (and a bit embarrassed) by how much fitness I've lost, but yesterday evening when I got home from my appointment I went for a walk. I talked myself in to walking just far enough away from the building that when I walked back it'd be 15 minutes total. But once I was out there it actually felt good. It was this amazing, relaxing time to gather my thoughts. I ended up out for 30 minutes. Today I was ready to blow it off because it was cold and snowy and I didn't feel good, but when I pulled in to the parking lot I suddenly wanted to go (i've come up with the great plan of leaving from my car rather than coming to my apartment first. That way I can't get cozy/distracted and talk myself out of it). So I went out again aiming for 15 minutes. Hit 20 this time, but only because I ended up on the lost sidewalk to nowhere and had to backtrack quite a bit. But it just amazes me how even after one little walk, my sickly, crappy feeling body suddenly had a burst of energy to go do it again as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. I think once I can get the exercise into a really good routine it will solve a lot of problems.

Ok...ironically I had planned for this to be a short entry because i'm so tired. But alas my tiredness makes my verbal diarrhea run rampant! lol Sorry bout that.

The point to all this is that these "EASE" things are the major struggles I'm facing right now. My life has been, by necessity, simplified down to, Have I eaten? Have I slept? Have I moved/done anything active today? etc. The successes to these things are the major successes in my life to celebrate. That goes back to what i've said before about appreciating the little things. Sure it sounds silly to celebrate the fact that I had 3 "real" meals in a day, but that was a big new step for me. Same with the fact that I went out and walked. Each of these things are worth celebrating. In a way it's kind of a neat place to be because it really does feel like I'm building this amazing new life from the ground up. I picture myself placing these support blocks at the bottom of what will one day be a beautiful structure. And it feels good, because the EASE things are things that I can control...or at least begin to. They are tangible goals. Again another HUGE thing for me. When things got so bad, part of my frustration was that I felt like I was trapped in this horrible sea of darkness and I wanted to badly to fight but had absolutely no idea how. I didn't want to let the bad stuff win, but I felt too small to fight it and I couldn't find a therapist or anyone to work with me and to give me guidance on how to make my way out of the darkness. (Not to mention I was also lacking the meds that clear my head up enough to make it possible for me to act!) So, I love these goals that likely seem so silly to anyone on the outside. I love them because I have something to work towards, and something active that I can do every day and see real, visible, concrete progress in. And I so so so love that visible progress. Others see more progress in me but its hard to make that tangible. So yay for results and accomplishments that no one can take away! But regardless of the acronyms, there is no ease in EASE or PLEASE. This stuff is hard work!

Tonight I am grateful for: The amazing blue, purple, and pink (with just a hint of yellow) sunset reflecting over the beautiful snow covered pine trees that I can see from my living room window. I love the look of new fallen snow. It's like the earth has stood still, for just a moment. Soon it will turn into snowmen, foot prints, and melted slush, but for now it is a beautiful blanket atop the trees and ground, turned into such an incredible color by the color-changing sky. There's many reasons I love winter, but these moments on their own are enough to make it a wonderful season for me. Ok, done being sappy now!