The world keeps changing on around me and within me.  I feel if my live has completely changed on me.  I just recently turned 30, I became an aunt, and I’m working the 9-5 lifestyle.  I barely recognize my life anymore.  It’s all a beautiful wonderful thing and I can feel some momentum behind me moving me forward.  Then again maybe it’s all of this routine.  My weekdays are locked into the same thing at the same time day after day after day.  I haven’t had this kind of stringent routine since High School.  It’s like a warm blanket.  Slipping into it is comforting and content, though sometimes a little chaffing.  Somehow life is easier now with everything being so structured and I feel better and happier.

I’m on this new path where I don’t plan out everything and suck the fun out of it by over thinking.  I’m so good at that.  I could suck the essence of a smile out of something, something that I love till I don’t love it.  Why is it so difficult to find fun things to do?  Shouldn’t this be easy and automatic?  It’s hard, but I think it is boring and unsatisfying and I’m determined to change that.  I can change things.  I can do this.  I search back through my life and remember things that I loved.  For a time a loved photography, so much that I wanted to make a career out of it.  I love looking close at something and finding something special about it, especially flowers.  I know that’s crazy girly of me, but I love to explore why each individual flower is uniquely beautiful.  I love great literature.  I love a well written story.  It’s hard for me to concentrate and read.  My mind wants to wander.  In fact I rarely read something entirely.  I am Expert Skimmer!  Sometimes I read out loud so that I’m forced to read every word.  It also makes me sound like a lunatic, but I get the essence I miss skimming.  Okay, that’s two things.  We’re running with this.  I’ll report back with more.

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                My pride’s taking a hit this week.  It’s hard to admit when you really can’t handle something.  When you know that you won’t be able to stop yourself from doing things that are actions you best interest.  Today’s example is a financial problem.  Something people don’t talk about when it comes to binge eating is how frickin’ expensive a habit is.  I can go through $400 on Fast Food and superfluous Grocery store visits a month.  I’m actually not going to get into how much frickin’ food that is, but that’s $400 I don’t have.  I have plans I want to get out of my parents’ house, I want to go back to school and neither of those plans involves me spending all the money I should be saving on food.  So, Friday I did the only thing I know to stop spending.

                About a year ago I set up an extra checking account with my Mom.  It has certain limitations attached to it such as I can’t withdraw from the account.  In fact despite the fact that it’s my money I only appear as a secondary on the account.  We originally established a system that I just restarted with my paycheck on Friday.  I get my check and then take care of any immediate expenses I have.  The rest of my check gets transferred into this joint account.  I also handed the one credit card I have over to my mother, so that I don’t start racking up food expenses on it because my checking account is empty.  It’s nerve wracking, because I have no money.  Already I can tell that I’m eating less and the financials are great.  The only money I’ve spent on food since Friday was one 20 ounce Coke. 

                This is such a crutch.  Right now I could not sustain this outside of this system and that’s frustrating.  My food issues seem to be taking forever to work through.  I just don’t want to sabotage my future plans while I’m working those issues.  Everything I want requires some basic savings.  My school and moving plans require more than that.  My point is that this doesn’t fix my food problem, and I know that, but it’s the best thing I’ve got right and I’m going with it.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to work through the dissociation and then come out integrated and able to handle food in a reasonably healthy fashion.

Filed under: Updates

A couple weeks ago I finally decided that I wasn’t meant to work in the fine jewelry department and since getting out of the department is easier said than done I’m working on a permanent exit strategy from this good old department store.  Salesman I am not and this job seems to be triggering a lot of anxiety.   So, I’m saying to hell with it and looking for a new job, though for the first time in my life I’m being really smart and finding another job before I leave the one I don’t like.  I’m working with the employment specialist at Hero House (local ICCD clubhouse) and also applying to DVR (Division of Vocational Rehabilitation) for some assistance (one of the few plus points to being disabled is there is assistance for finding employment).  So, we’re on the hunt to find me a not just a job, but something that better me and doesn’t cause me unnecessary stress.  We’ll see how it goes.

My regular piano practice just got all screwed up at Christmas.  We had my sisters and their husband and fiancée here as well and finding time when I wasn’t working that didn’t interfere with someone’s sleep schedule or our social plans was very difficult and sometimes impossible.  I guess all that’s understandable, what’s irritating me is that I didn’t pop back in January.   What I was doing at the beginning of December seems to be impossible in the beginning of January.  If I’m being completely honest though I think I always, or at least usually, have a bit of a slump in January.  I’m feeling it elsewhere too.  I guess I have to give myself a break and remember I couldn’t do this at all six months ago.  So, I’m going back to practicing 30 minutes a day.  So, I’m moving forward working on this and that, and reading about slow practice and getting the most bang for your buck while doing it.  Ah, the joys of being a musician.

I haven’t been talking much about my weight problem, because I don’t know what to say.  Apparently, when I binge I’m really dissociating.  Dealing with that is extremely difficult.  A portion of me is trying to comfort me and maybe more that’s only what we can tell right now.  All I can say this part of me is very young.  She wants what she wants when she wants it, but she’s sweet.  She’s really trying to make things better for me, but doesn’t think it through to see how this really hurts me.  I have conversations with her where I try to reason with her (yes I know how crazy that sounds).  I’ve occasionally gotten mad at her and started yelling at her, particularly in the car.   That’s me the crazy person screaming at herself while driving down the road.  My therapist and I are working on it.  I’ve got a workbook I’m working through and we’re discovering exactly what my disintegration looks like.  I’ll keep you informed, but this makes me think I’m completely nuts.

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Okay, I’m undergoing a rather important experiment tonight.  Can Christina cook three meals, freeze them in individual portions, and then eat them over the course of the next week or so.  I can handle the cooking part, but I can’t plan meals to save my soul.  I’m trying this so I always know there is something easy to put together, and tasty, at home for me.  I’m using my Eating Well on a Budget cookbook that my younger sister was kind enough to get me for Christmas.   “Sausage, Pepper, and Mushroom Pizza” is up first.  I have the pizza sauce from a pizza I made for me and my parents last week.  Other then dealing with pizza dough it should be relatively easy to put together.  2^nd I’m making “Chicken in Garlic-Vinegar Sauce” and lastly from the Food Network website I’m making “Poached Ginger Chicken”.  I will report back later and tell you how it all went.

Cardinal Lesson I learned today: always read the ENTIRE recipe before you start working on it.  Then you don’t all of the sudden have surprise “must simmer for 50 minutes” and you’re standing their looking like an idiot saying “oh shit!”

Well, things look good.  I didn’t even taste it, by the time I was done I didn’t care.  I was tired and just wanted this project to be over.  I think I need to find some quick and easy meals though the pizza didn’t take long once I had everything together.  I also need to double check my ingredients, so that I can avoid made dashes to Safeway to get tomatoes and garlic.  I think the only thing that was rather daunting was how long it took.  I think from start to clean up it was at least four hours.  Of course I had three new recipes and if I was more familiar with them it would have gone faster.  I will think more on this and I still think I need to find some quick and dirty meals.  Well, all said and done I have 15 meals that are either in my fridge or freezer.  The idea of coming home from work and not worrying about food is nice. 

Till next time!

Filed under: Updates

December has been a busy month.  My work hours got boosted up to full time hours for the Holiday season.  It’s been a long time since I’ve worked full time and it’s been a difficult adjustment.  The extended store hours didn’t help and having to go from closing at 11pm or midnight to sometimes having to be there for an opening shift at 6:30am was tiring.  Sometimes I can feel that anxious feeling creep into me.  There’s this resistance to going to work inside me that flares up and is hard to fight.  The only thing that’s kept me going is fear of the place I’d go back to if I didn’t go to work or just got up and left, as I sometimes think about.  I don’t want to be unemployed again.  It goes against my plans.  I don’t want to have to deal with disappointed parents and family again who just don’t understand.  Mostly I don’t want to have to look for another job.  So I look at every shift as something to survive, something to endure.  I just have to live through that shift, nothing more.  That’s all I can handle right now.  It probably doesn’t make me the greatest employee in the world, but it keeps me working.  That’s the most important thing right now.

December has also been filled with social commitments and family commitments.  Commitments, commitments, commitments.  I went to a couple friends Christmas Party, which is really more of a festive cocktail party.  I’m not very good at the whole talking to people I’ve never met and most likely never will meet again thing.  It’s beyond me how to start that conversation and it’s beyond me as to why I would.  Is it suppose fun getting drunk and talking to people you don’t know?  I just don’t seem to get it.  I spent most of the time talking to a friend of mine whom I believe has Cerebral Palsy.  He’s talkative and amusing and I was quite content for the most part, except when I realized he was counting my drinks.  I was glad I went, because last year I was supposed to go and just couldn’t get myself together that day, so I didn’t go.  I want to remove flakiness from being an apt description of me.  If I say I do it I do.  If I say I’m going to go I do.  That’s who I want to be.  I removing the bipolar-trauma caused traits in my life.  I’m going to be Christina Miller the person, not the molested person, not the mentally ill person.  No, I’m going to be Christina Miller the stable, happy, responsible person.  It’s something I aspire to.

Filed under: Updates

I have something new to toss into the messed up cauldron that contains the pieces that make up my sometimes disturbed brain.  I am now mildly dissociative.  I’m still learning what exactly that means, but I can see it’s going to take my therapy in a whole new direction.  My therapist and I have discussed the possibility of this before, but couldn’t conclusively say I was or wasn’t.  Well, the other night I had a dissociative episode in the middle of our session.  She asked me to do something and part of me suddenly heavily resisted.  All of the sudden this room I have had many sessions in seemed strange and unfamiliar.  I knew I was suppose to speak or explain myself, but it was so difficult to get the words out coherently.  My therapist said my voice got very child-like.  It was odd and unnerving to do that in front of another person, but aspects of this I had experienced before.   It felt like I wasn’t entirely there.  Like 20% of me was just somewhere else.  It sounds weirder than it really was. 

So I’m getting a big workbook on the subject.  My therapist and I are going to work thru it.  The book is Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists by Boon, Sheele, and Van der Hart.  It’s kind of a thick one and it even has apart on food issues too (always want to think about that some more).  I’m hopeful that this will be a way to deal with the problems whose existence I’ve already been made aware of.  I spend my life lost in distractions and daydreams.  I want to live in this world for better or for worse.   My fantasy world is not satisfying.

I think this will be my first binge and overeating free day in quite a while.  I’m now doing a mental push to make it through the day this way.  I’m trying to turn my racking up number of consecutive days obsession into keeping track daily and being able to look over a month and see how well things are going.  This is actually what I do for my piano practicing.  I can tell how much I practiced on what day.  Now I simply say the day was successful by marking it with a smiley face sticker.   Hopefully this suits me better.  It’s simplistic,  but for now I think it does the job.

Filed under: Updates

Today was nice.  I may be weird, but I just love being able to do things.  I had the vacuum out before 9am today.  I’m probably the only person who thinks that’s absolutely amazing.  It’s just that it’s been such a foreign thing in my life.  To just plan on doing things during the day and doing them without a long intense internal battle and some good old self hatred mixed in.  I think this is what life is supposed to be like.  I think this is how I could live my life and I smile writing that.  All of the sudden the world is an endless supply of possibilities and I’m just trying to orient myself into exploring them. 

I bumped my practice up to an hour today and that’s significant to me.  I started at 30 minutes in the middle of September.  Then I bumped it up to 45 minutes at the start of November and now with December I’m starting an hour.  The slow build up is actually really good for my hands from a muscular standpoint.  I’ve slowly and regularly been working to build back the muscles in my hands.  I imagine it’s similar to strength training.   Not to mention I’m making practicing a habitual thing in my life and I’m slowly seeing progress.  It’s taking longer than I’d like, but it is happening.  I suppose that’s what’s supposed to happen.  Now, I’m actually going back and reading an article my piano professor recommended (http://lifehacker.com/5939374/a-better-way-to-practice), which has me rethinking my entire approach to practicing period.  It’s smarter though and smarter is always better.  It’s all about maximizing your time and not striving to become a mindless practice zombie doing the same thing over and over.  How many pianists out there can boost impressive hours of practicing like mindless zombies?  Yeah, it sucks to admit.

I started this job in the Fine Jewelry department of a department store.  It’s only part-time, which I’m not pleased about, but they offered me a position and I wasn’t in the position to say no.  I’ve done this kind of commission sales work before, but the stacks are higher here.  I’m started to feel deficient, like I don’t know what I’m doing.  I hate feeling incompetent and stupid.  Sales is hard.  When I see someone is going to say no I let it go, because I think that’s the right thing to do.  I like respecting people’s wishes.  My employer does not agree with me.  So, I need to find a way to put this boundary respecting part of me aside and learn how to push and counter people’s objections.  There’s a part of me that likes pleasing people and this goes completely against that.  So, I’m nervous.  I’m worried that I could eventually get moved into a different department and then I’d go from commission to minimum wage.  Then I think this job would go from not my favorite to completely sucky. 

It’s time to get creative.  It’s time to come up with a solution.  Good thing my mood is high and I seem to be ready to do it.  Till next time!

Filed under: Updates

Well there comes a time when you have to admit something isn’t working.  This 90 day food challenge is not working.  Plus, I don’t think there is any good reason for me to completely abstain from sugar for 90 days.  I can do a week long detox and work on handling it in moderation.  Moderation makes me happy.  Being able to have some sugar keeps me from feeling deprived.  Not just with food, my blog could use some moderation.  I didn’t mean for it to become an ode to my food problems.  The Bipolar and Pianist are getting lost behind my Eating Disorder.  Enough of that!  It’s time for some of that moderation and balance.  There is so much I haven’t told you about because I’ve been worried about my food issues.

I’m on a new drug called Risperidone.  It’s an anti-psychotic.  I don’t have psychotic features, but my psychiatrist thinks this could help stabilize my bipolar symptoms.  I seem to be anti-depressant resistant, so we’re going to see if this works.  It’s been 2-3 weeks now and I’m started to get hopeful.  I’m sleeping better.  That’s always important.  It use to take me thirty minutes to an hour to get to sleep at night and if I woke up to go to the bathroom it’d take me two hours to get back to sleep.  Those annoying little problems have vanished from my life and anything that makes me sleep better is a godsend in my book.  My mood also seems higher.  I had a busy stressful week last week and I felt down, but that down wasn’t anything compared to my depression ridden world.  Do I dare hope?  This could be the last piece of medication I need to stabilize me. 

I should be cautious.  Risperidone comes with one well known and problematic side effect dramatic weight gain.  I have a friend who use to be on it and his doctor told him he’d gain 80 pounds on that drug.   You either get this side effect or you don’t.  If I get it I’ll be ripped off this drug.  No doctor wants me gaining a pound.  Then I’m looking at financial issues, the joys of being uninsured.  It’d be complicated and difficult for me to get on one of the other anti-psychotics.  Risperidone is generic and very affordable.  So, I’m praying, hoping, crossing my fingers and just begging God.  I need this break.  I need this to work.   I need to be stable so I can worry about other things.  Please.

Filed under: Updates

So, I’m starting over again.  My goal for today is to get through today on plan.  I need to take this in smaller pieces.  This 90 day goal is too big for me to fathom.  I can’t seem to make it past two and a half weeks, which I’m jokingly calling the two and half week itch.  I want to make it to three weeks!!!  21 days!  Right now I’m just focusing on today.  So far I’m having a good day.  I got up early and I’ve been doing things I need to, which always makes me happy.  I’ve got to go work later, which from a food standpoint is actually nice.   I have 8 hours where I can’t eat.  I have to make myself a lunch (really dinner) later, but I’m feeling good about today.  Nervous about tomorrow, but I’m going to think about that tomorrow morning.  Nice to be talking to you guys again.  Putting these thoughts in writing for someone to read helps me. 

Filed under: 90 Day Challenge

My apologies!  It’s been a busy, good, and not so good couple of weeks.  Food has been not so good.  I’m employed.  We made another change in my meds.  Adjusting to working full-time is easier said than done.  Needless to say it’s been a tiring couple of weeks and my poor blog has not been receiving proper attention.  I’ll make this quick, because I need to get to bed.  I’m still committed to this website and I will make sure it is regularly updated.  I have lots to tell you all and look forward to sharing and maybe even hearing from you guys.

Filed under: Uncategorized