Here
I go again. A new day, waking up in a strange bed. I wish there were
a more exciting circumstance but, no, I get up, shower and experience
a different walk of shame. No wondering about whether some guy will
text me, no worrying that this is just a one-off. I have absolute
certainty that I’ll wake up in the same bed tomorrow and the
morning after that. It will be the same routine for the next fourteen
weeks. And then, for better or for worse, it will all be over.
There’s
no other guy involved. This is my own doing. I moved into a group
home yesterday for another crack at treating my eating disorder. On
the surface, it’s all perfectly tolerable, possibly even a great
gig. I’m only five kilometers from my condo but now, instead of
being in the bustle of the seedier part of downtown Vancouver, I’m
smack in the middle of a charming neighborhood of older character
homes and shaded parks. I’m a block from Commercial Drive, the
city’s Little Italy, dotted with cafes competing to serve up the
best cappuccino and all sorts of trendy new restaurants that have
strayed from the lasagne-fettucine script and now offer Lebanese,
Ethiopian and Japanese fare. If only eating out had some appeal.
As
good as it may all seem, I can’t shake the fact that this is not
normal. Fifty-somethings don’t flit off to three months of summer camp in
the city. They get to sleep in their own bed whenever they want. They
don’t go for programming at a hospital four days a week. They don’t
have their meals monitored. They don’t have restrictions placed on
how much exercise is acceptable. What fifty-year-old man has his exercise limited?!
The
confusing thing to others—and even to me—is that I don’t look
the part of someone with an eating disorder. I’m not eerily thin.
I’d say I’m
actually having to fight that middle-aged belly bulge that most men
get. I’m consumed with fear that I am repulsively fat. I obsess
over belly watching when in public, noting all the stomachs that may
be bigger than mine, trying to take some comfort in the notion that mine
might be less prominent and desperately wanting to assure myself that
my tummy is normal for a guy my age. But the sense I have, at least
now, is it will never be okay.
Prior
to my group home gig, I spent an inordinate amount of time each day
ignoring hunger cues and pushing myself to exercise longer, harder.
In a way, I’m an eating disorder failure—massively blistered
feet, worn out body, significant food deprivation and still no
results. Not enough weight loss, not a trace of muscle gain. So much
effort with nothing to show for it. A rational person would abandon a
regimen that doesn’t produce results.
Drastic
thoughts about my body image directly chip away at my self-esteem.
Being in a group home for three months—regardless of the pleasant
surroundings—is wildly threatening. With my exercise reduced to
only five one-hour sessions per week and a meal plan that requires me
to eat three meals and three snacks per day, it pokes at all my fears
of gaining belly weight, going flabby and never being able to correct
the “damage” done.
There’s
another fear, a deeper one. What if I don’t see significant weight
gain and, despite the encouraging evidence, I return to my extreme
routines anyway? After all, this eating disorder is a fierce beast.
In the spring, I spent six weeks in hospital for another treatment
program. Upon discharge, I immediately went back to my eating
disordered routines. I fretted that I’d gone flabby. I lost five
pounds in the month between programs and the news made me giddy. This
from a guy who, due to medications and moods, had thought he’d lost
his ability to laugh. “It will never be enough,” the dietitian
told me, referring to my weight loss intentions. Still, I wonder if
the same goes for treatment.
Much
of the work in program is intended to examine the underlying
thoughts, emotions and events that brought on the eating disorder and
continue to feed into it. I meet one-on-one each week with a
psychiatrist, a psychologist and a dietitian and participate in
multiple group sessions with the other residents each day. The
feedback I got from the team working with me in hospital was that I’m
a tough nut to crack. There were no insights, no breakthroughs. What
if I can’t dig deeper? What if my sharing remains vague and
evasive? How successful can I be at changing entrenched habits if I
never chip away at what drives them?
I
feel great pressure for treatment to work while also having no
confidence that it will. What if I go through all this—the
hospitalization, the group home experience, essentially half a year
of intervention—and nothing changes? My eating disorder behaviors
go back more than forty years and, while I’ve only been receiving
treatment for the past two years, this feels like my last shot.
Please don’t let this extended adult camp experiment be all for
naught.
