#he's out there sitting in his office eating ritz crackers and feeling like the FUCKING LOSER he is

[nothing-more-than-hot-leaf-juice]

#god I'm so relieved #he's out there sitting in his office eating ritz crackers and feeling like the FUCKING LOSER he is #good. #tw politics #atla #avatar the last airbender #tw election

[controversial-ships-anyone]

i’m lonely, so i’ll make my own company

(a/n): Made a Father’s Day fanfic for my favorite cartoon dad. Constructive criticism is greatly encouraged!

Word Count: 1,140

Summary: He may like companionship, but sometimes the solitude is much better.

“Phone, trail mix, water…” he muttered quietly to himself as he tossed the items in his backpack, paying the loud arguing coming from the living room little mind. It was probably none of his business, they would tell him. Probably just Summer and Morty fighting about one thing or another. Probably Rick being cynical about life.

Probably all of those things, actually, now that he thought about it.

“Mom!” Summer called. Jerry didn’t miss the annoyance in her voice, “Morty wont give me the remote!”

“I was here first!” Morty argued back, “Hey—!”

“Both of you shut the fuck up. As far as I’m concerned, I was here first,” Rick snapped bitterly.

Jerry couldn’t help but sigh as he slipped on his brown jacket. He should be used to the fighting, and he was, really. It was just, sometimes, it got old. Today it seemed even worse than usual, but that was just his imagination…

At least, that’s what he tried to tell himself. Deep down, he knew why it felt worse, but he stamped out the thought before it had the chance to make itself known. No, no point in worrying about it. He’d make today special all on his own. He’s been doing it since… since Rick showed up, he supposed.

Standing up from his seat in the chair, he did one last glance around the room as he pulled on his backpack, just to reassure himself that he wasn’t forgetting anything else. Once he was sure he had everything he needed, he stepped out of his office and made his way to the front door.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Jerry announced, pausing just for a moment to see if his family would bother acknowledging him.

“Pick up some more snacks,” Summer replied dully, barely giving her dad a second glance.

“Have fun,” Morty goodnaturedly added, smiling faintly at Jerry.

“Don’t do anything stupid. I have better things to do with my time than try to fix your fuck-ups,” Rick grumbled uncaringly, eyes focused strictly on the TV.

Well, at least they said something, he silently told himself, opening the front door and stepping outside without another word. He tossed his bag in his car and got in the front seat, starting his drive to the same place he always went to if he needed time to think.

[. . . .]

It had been about two hours since he started walking, and during that time, he hadn’t seen much. Mostly just the occasional animal scampering by in search of one thing or another. With the lack of activity, he figured it was about time to take a break by the creek, sitting down on a log and placing his bag at his feet.

Jerry watched the water rush by, occasionally being disrupted by a leaf that fluttered down into the stream and was promptly swept away. He smiled, content.

Some part of him, though he’d never say it out loud, enjoyed the little moments away from his family. It always left him feeling much more at peace with himself. There was no one yelling at him to get a job, telling him how pathetic he was, that he was just a parasit looking for sympathy he didn’t deserve.

It was hard to not be bitter about all of it, because he knew he wasn’t perfect. He knew he did make a lot of mistakes, but he tried. He tried to be better, to put in effort that always went unnoticed, because he knew that, even if his life wouldn’t amount to anything in the grand scheme of things, it still mattered to him. He still mattered to him, and sometimes that was enough.

He took a bite out of the apple he had grabbed from his bag, leaning forward slightly, eyes shifting around to see if there was any animal that might make itself unintentionally known. A doe galloped by in the distance, her little fawn trailing behind her.

His thoughts briefly wandered to his own kids, how little they once were. The looks on their small faces anytime he’d show them something new had to be his favorite part about being a parent. It was this wide-eyed curious stare that looked on with so much amazement, like he was a superhero.

He wasn’t though.

And as the years dragged on, the curious amazement turned into that of dull annoyance because, “I already know how to do it, Dad. I don’t need your help.”

… they were growing up.

Jerry frowned, taking another bite of his apple. It was Father’s Day and here he was, alone in the woods, not spending time with his family like a good father should.

“Did they even remember?” he asked the empty air around him, knowing he’d never get a reply. They didn’t. Why would they? As far as he knew, he didn’t matter in their lives. He was just someone to blame for this and that, even if it wasn’t his fault.

Yet he still loved Beth, he still cared about his kids, even Rick to some extent, because at the end of the day, they were his family, and he would do anything for them.

Suddenly, he found himself chuckling, “Jerry, you really are a piece of work,” he told himself, smiling sadly. He finished off the rest of his apple before standing up, digging his Walkman out of his bag as he turned back towards his usual path.

Distracting himself with his favorite mixtapes seemed like a good idea.

[. . . .]

He had gotten back home later than he originally intended, but he also hadn’t intended to swing by the store to grab a few snacks at Summer’s request. She probably didn’t even want them anymore, considering how much time had passed since he left.

“I’m back,” he said as he entered the house, kicking off his shoes by the door and entering the kitchen to put away the food he’d bought.

“Welcome back,” Summer replied from the stairs, attention focused on texting a reply to one of her friends as she stepped into the kitchen, “Have fun on your little adventure?”

He didn’t bother replying, simply handing her a box of Ritz crackers, “There’s Oreo’s and Twizzlers in the cabinets, don’t eat everything before next week,” he couldn’t help the amused tilt to his voice, giving his daughter a quick smile before walking past her to his office.

“Right, got it,” she replied, and then, to his surprise, with the faintest hint of sincerity, “Happy Father’s Day, Dad.”

Jerry blinked, turning to look at her in utter bewilderment, mouth agape, “... what?”

Summer looked up at him, smiling gently, “Happy Father’s Day,” she repeated.

Huh…

“Thanks…” was all he could manage before turning to continue towards his office.

Maybe his family cared more about him than he gave them credit for...

#happy fathers day to my favorite cartoon dad #rick and morty #rnm #jerry smith #summer smith #morty smith #rick sanchez #beth smith #rick and morty fanfiction #fathersday #fathers day #scheduled

[myaekingheart]

Let's Take a Moment to Talk about Eating Disorders

This is the only thing that's been running in the back of my mind for days, weeks, maybe even months so I think it's time I sat down and really talked about this for a second. First off, I really hate myself. Let's just get that out of the way. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't be putting myself through so much torture. Not that I can even control much of this. The issue is that I know I have an eating disorder, but I just don't know what the fuck it is. I feel like eating disorders are very hit-or-miss in the diagnosis department. There's a handful of really well-researched and apparently common ones and then anything that doesn't fit the bill gets tossed into a junk drawer full of wide spectrum scenarios. I am one of those people in the junk drawer. I don't fit into any of the other boxes. I am an outlier, an unusual suspect. Of all the cases in which I am the strange, uncategorized lowlife, I never thought that the same would apply to eating disorders, as well.

Should I see a doctor or a therapist or something for all of this? Probably. Will I ever? I guess we'll see what happens. The thought of sitting in a room with a stranger going over all of this just comes off as unnerving and intimidating. Granted, not that spewing all of this nonsense out onto the internet is any better. At least here, I'm not guaranteed anyone will listen. I can tell you all I'm carrying the child of a one-eyed alien and you'd all probably go about your business as normal. But in a doctor's office, that's another story.  They're staring at you taking notes on everything you're saying and the worst part is that you're shelling out tons of cash for them to do so. Then they'll look over everything they wrote down and overanalyze you, diagnose you with fifteen million different problems, and hand you a prescription and send you on your way. Probably. I've never done this sort of thing before so I wouldn't know, but that's how I assume it happens. Either that or it turns into a commitment where you're obligated to return once a week to chat about your problems and your pseudo progress. What a waste of time. Just like this entire paragraph.

Anyways, back to the important shit: the whole reason I'm even typing out all of this crap at 8am on a Wednesday. I have some unidentified problem and I don't know how to fix it. I've always had problems but I feel like more recently, they've only gotten worse and that scares me. When I was a kid, I had some mild eating issues but I don't ever remember it being anything too drastic. My earliest memory of disordered eating was when I was about three. My parents were having some kind of party and all I remember is sitting on the floor in the basement-turned-playroom among all the other kids while a marathon of Mr. Bean tapes was playing on the TV. I specifically remember the one where he meets the queen, the scene in which he's having trouble with his fly and has his finger sticking out of it to look as if he's whipped his dick out. Lovely to think that Rowan Atkinson gave me just the slightest first glimpse into understanding male genitalia. But anyways, I don't remember what exactly happened at this party to make me do this but somehow I must've spiralled into panic and that manifested itself in a refusal to eat. I went almost a full 24 hours without eating, if I remember correctly, and was fixed only when my mom whipped out a vintage Fisher Price nurse we fondly called Nurse Peggy who convinced me to nibble on some Ritz crackers. I don't have too many other wildly vivid memories of Nurse Peggy but according to my parents, she needed to be whipped out A LOT. I guess I was just one of those kids who didn't like to eat, or was a wildly picky eater. I remember panicking one time because my mom made tuna noodle casserole, one of my favorites, but there was a dark piece of mushroom in it that I swore was the missing leg off one of my little plastic ladybugs and it terrified the fuck out of me. But yeah, so this shit has evidently been going on for quite some time.

Ironically enough, around the same time this eating bullshit started, so did my anxiety. My very first panic attack had to have been when I was about three years old, as well. My mom and I were on ebay looking at a vintage Fisher Price castle when I guess I got so excited that I spiralled into a full-blown anxiety attack. I remember becoming suddenly overwhelmed with a loss of control over my body, shaking and hyperventilating and feeling like I was going to be sick. I have a very distinct memory of my mom tucking me into her bed and calling her own mother in an absolute panic, asking her what the hell she ought to do and being fully ready to drive me to the emergency room if need be. Obviously I calmed down after a while but it was the most terrifying experience of my young life. Little did I know that it was only the first of many panic attacks. Probably about ten or so years ago, I was officially diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. In fifth grade, I was having panic attacks every single night to the point where it became disgustingly routine. My doctor took what I told her into consideration, diagnosed me, and prescribed me some anti-anxiety meds. They didn't last very long. Sure, they made me feel great but all I could think about was what my doctor told me about there being a high risk of addiction. I've never been one for medications for that exact reason (when I was little, during Red Ribbon Week one year we were literally given a coloring page about how you shouldn't take medicine if you don't need it and that doing so can kill you-- I distinctly remember it was two panels of two kids in a bathroom and I'm pretty sure there was a medicine cabinet filled with drugs and it was all very Schoolhouse Rock-esque in style but carried a very dark and brooding message). That coupled with the fact that the medication gave me some pretty hefty bathroom issues, I gave up on it after a couple of days. I know you shouldn't quit any medication without a doctor's consent but quite frankly, I didn't give a fuck. I wanted off and I wanted off now. Looking back, sometimes I wonder if giving up on those pills was the wrong decision, if I would've been better off if I had continued them all these years. Sometimes I wonder if I needed them more than I was willing to admit. Anxiety has affected and influenced every aspect of my life from irrational panic attacks during college orientation to trichotillomania during times of stress or when I'm insomniatic to, you guessed it, eating disorders.

Sometimes I feel like my brain is a playground and all the disorders going on in my head are small children running rampant together at recess, playing tag and hide and go seek. They all work in conjunction with one another like the cogs of a clock, winding together and grinding together. Anxiety is the queen bee, the line leader, and everything else follows suit in response to it. I pull my hair out sometimes because I'm anxious. I don't sleep because I'm anxious. I don't like high ceilings because they make me anxious. I don't eat because I'm anxious. And if anxiety was to have a little sister, it would be called emetophobia. I've been emetophobic for as long as I can remember, even though for the longest time I didn't have a word for the disorder. It was just that terrible, debilitating fear of throwing up. There was one girl back in first and second grade who used to tease me about it. She'd just sit there at lunch and say puke or barf or vomit and I'd instantly lose my appetite and feel woozy. I wonder if she ever regrets doing that to me. I wonder if she even has any idea the affects that had on me as a kid. Obviously nobody thinks vomiting is pleasant, even those with the more well known eating disorders who induce themselves (I doubt they find the actual act pleasant, regardless of how purging themselves makes them feel) but with me, the hatred and discomfort toward it is so extreme that it-- you guessed it-- gives me panic attacks. This has been perhaps the most recent culprit of my eating issues as of late, this emetophobia. And unfortunately, this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

When I was a kid, during the time I was getting panic attacks every night, one of the big things I feared was vomiting. A few days after my birthday that year, I had eaten a slice of leftover cheesecake at 9:34pm while watching reruns of I Love Lucy and later that night, I violently threw up. I still even remember what it looked like ten years later if that gives you any indication of just how bad this vomit phobia is. The cheesecake tasted like coffee and because of this, I couldn't stand the smell of coffee for a year or two afterward, having massive freakouts when my parents would make their nightly cups and forcing them to spray Febreeze throughout the entire house to try and mask the scent. To this day, the smell of coffee still sends a shiver down my spine. One of the main reasons why I don't drink it. Because of this experience, however (and the fact that almost every time I have vomited, it's been at night), I quickly fell into this vicious cycle of situational restriction. I refused to eat after dark out of the absolute fear that nighttime alone would cause my vomiting. This honestly became incredibly debilitating, and was especially a nuisance when daylight savings time ended and it began to get darker earlier. I'd constantly try and get my family to cater to this irrational fear, begging for dinners as early as 4pm just so I could avoid the possibility of thowing it all up after dark. Eventually, this all somehow petered out and I got back onto a more normal eating schedule but for the longest time, this was a massive problem and I'm terrified to say that I think it may be making a comeback.

The past few months have been pivotal for me. I spent a year straight toiling away in college in order to get my associate's degree as quickly as possible, then literally the very next day after my last final exam, I moved 300 miles away into an apartment with my boyfriend. It's been taking a while to adjust and I still find myself having some troubles even now three months later. In a way, a part of me feels like perhaps I wasn't entirely ready to move out in the first place. I can't drive, I've never had a job. I basically fall behind in every single aspect of adulthood except academically. And even though my boyfriend and I had been planning this months ahead of time and spoke of moving in together very early in our relationship, it still feels like everything moved outrageously fast. Living on my own has been wildly different than living with my parents, as well, both for the good and the bad. The good involves a newfound sense of freedom and the excitement of starting a new life-- one in which my boyfriend and I are not long distance, the beginning of spending the rest of our lives together. The bad, however, includes a chaotic aimlessness, a lack of structure, and crippling reponsibility. In the short few months I've been living on my own, I've found myself spiraling into a series of strange habits that are probably good for my finances but bad for my mental health, and the majority of them revolve around eating. First and foremost is the comeback of the nighttime fears. Because my boyfriend works retail, he works a broad range of hours that can fall anywhere from early morning shifts at 6am to closing shifts where he doesn't come home until almost midnight. This makes our routine very unstable because things change every day. Some nights we'll eat dinner at a solid 7pm and other times, food won't even be a thought until almost one in the morning when he gets home and has taken some time to relax. In a perfect world, this would be great. I always wanted to live aimlessly with zero structure, just eat and sleep whenever I please. Now that I'm here, though, the implications are terrifying. I've been getting panic attacks every single night for the past month or two whenever I eat without fail. But they're not the normal types of panic attacks that involve hyperventilating and full-body trembling and sweaty palms. Instead, these are much quieter and more akin to a persistent fear than anything else. It's a rising in my chest, a lump in my throat, the feeling that I can't swallow or that the food is going to come back up like acid reflux. It's the constant feeling that at any second, my chair is going to tilt back or a giant hand is going to peel the ceiling away or the floor will cave in and an immense gravity wil suck me down to the earth's core. This isn't so much a problem with breakfast or lunch or whatever the fuck you can consider my daytime meals these days. It's only at night when things get heavy and I feel like everything is caving in. Because of this, I feel like I can't eat. Even if I wanted to, even if I'm starving, I physically cannot bring myself to overcome these feelings and just eat. Every time I try, my throat tightens up and I'm seized by this overwhelming sensation of something rising up within me and my body jolts in the same way as when someone sneaks up behind you and touches your shoulder or your back or your arm. I spend my nights hiding this as I glance at my food, shift uncomfortably in my seat, rub the back of my neck or tug on my earlobe or squeeze my foot, constantly chanting over and over again in my head to just breathe, that I'm fine, that I'm not going to be sick. For a while, I just attributed all of this to leftover symptoms of a cold I had a few months back. I had insane postnasal drip which, as an emetophobic, I refused to hock up and spit out so it just stayed in my system building up and circulating and choking me. A part of me is still convinced that's part of the problem. But now I know that it's also so much more than that. It's not just leftover phlegm, it's also anxiety and restriction and absolute fear.

The other big contributing issue here has to do with obsession. Obsession with ingredients, obsession with calories, obsession with body image. This is where the more textbook features of eating disorders come into play. I've always had a love-hate relationship with my body image. I've always been very petite, always the shortest kid in my elementary school classes and I could still fit into size 3T skirts when I was in, like, second grade. At first, it wasn't anything other than just being small. I was still a healthy weight for my height and age, I had some baby fat on me. I looked fine. Second grade, however, was when everything hit the fan. I think at the end of the day, it all boils down to my teacher. I remember her as this chubby woman with gray hair and glasses who kind of reminded me of Ursula from The Little Mermaid. She was the first teacher I ever had who never blatantly praised me. All my other teachers were incredibly kind and nurturing women who saw so much potential in me and made me feel like I was capable of anything. I'm not saying that this is entirely the greatest tactic just because I don't think we should teach our children that they are the best ever and that they can do absolutely anything no matter what (just hang on here, I'm not sadistic, I'm making a very valid point), but I'm not saying that being really tough on them is great either. I firmly believe in teaching our children that they can do whatever they set their minds on given that they work hard. That success is directly influenced by effort but that they can accomplish anything so long as they just work for it. It's a very Tiana-esque method (from The Princess and the Frog). My second grade teacher, however, was one of those really tough women. I always felt like nothing I did was ever good enough for her. I remember getting freaked out after she lectured us on the dangers of plaigiarism and watched us sinisterly as we worked on a classwork assignment about it, then graded us harshly and marked points off if even a snippet of a sentence was exactly like the passage. She also made us use those stupid rubber grips on our pencils that forced us to hold them a certain way and she'd yell at us if we took them off. Now, for some kids I understand that this kind of discipline is good for them but I was not like most kids. I started reading when I was two and always colored inside the lines. In third grade, I found out I was mentally gifted and spent the rest of my elementary school career spending one full day a week doing additional classwork in gifted programs. My mind has a very specific way of working that this bitch was not tolerant to. It was exactly like that quote about how you can't test a fish on it's ability to climb a tree and expect it to do well. No matter what I did, if I didn't do things her way, she wasn't satisfied and that was really detrimental to my self esteem. It was this year that I started really changing for the worst. I lost all my baby fat and became incredibly thin. I was still a super picky eater, restricting myself to things like carrots + dip and chicken nuggets. This was also about the time when I started becoming really moody and disagreeable, which has honestly never changed since. I used to come home from school in a really good mood, like my parents would pick me up and I'd be happy and bubbly and ramble on about my day. Instead, now I was snappy and rude and easily frustrated. School wasn't coming to me as easily as it used to. I'd spend hours staring at one homework page struggling to figure things out and breaking out into tears because I just couldn't grasp it. Granted, this was never an issue with vocabulary  homework, which I excelled at no matter what, but math homework was the devil. My dad and I would get into heated arguments about it because I just could not understand no matter how hard he tried to help me. I'd get angry with him because he'd try to show me the solution in a manner that was different than the way my teacher taught us in class and I was so hellbent on doing everything to cater to the teacher's methods that I would lose my mind if anyone even so much as considered forcing me to do things a different way. Again, this harkens back to that god-awful second grade teacher. This was a recurring thing throughout all of school, even to this day. I have constantly felt obligated to the best in everything I do, whether that's academically or socially or personally. Despite my academic success, socially I've hardly ever been fluent. There was a time as a young kid when I was very outgoing and unfiltered but after years of being bullied and just pushed around, I gradually crawled into my shell to the point where sometimes I can't even fully be myself around my own parents or boyfriend because I get nervous or second guess my decisions, overthinking reponses until it's too late. To everyone else not within my social circle, I'm just really quiet and perhaps a bit intimidating. The resting bitch face is strong with this one. I struggled to retaliate against the harsh words of classmates or the pressures of friends who craved popularity, attempting to force myself into a box in which I did not fit. I was that lanky nerdy kid with the glasses and crooked, oversized teeth who looked like a walking skeleton with pigtails. Sometimes I look back at picture of myself as a kid and wonder how the fuck I didn't even die, I was so goddamn skinny. My childhood best friend came from an Italian family who was very focused on good food. Looking back, it's no wonder I'd sometimes catch her mother glaring at me at the dinner table because I just never fucking ate. I'd take a few bites and then say I was done, then run back off with my friend to play. I don't know how I even had any energy, honestly. I swear I must have been running on empty.

High school, as I remember it, saw a brief intermission in my eating issues. There were a few instances where things were difficult for a time but they weren't anywhere near as monumental as my childhood eating issues, I don't think. Rather, my focus in high school was more on rejecting college, having fun with my friends, and obsessing over boys. Things didn't really hit the fan again until my first year as a full-time college student. As an adult, this is when I began to take things a little more seriously in regards to eating disorders. This was when my IBS started, which has remained a staple in my digestive issues ever since. Everything I ate made me double over in pain on the bathroom floor so I resolved to just not eat. Can't suffer from digestive cramps if you have nothing to digest. This was obviously directly linked to a lot of personal stresses I was facing in my life, what with all the changes that were getting tossed at me left and right. It was a very monumental time filled with a lot of new experiences and fears. I was trying to adjust to the fact that I was actually an adult now and that I'd never step foot in my high school again (which, even though I hated, I had grown rather attached to), never hang out with my friends again (because the majority of them left me), never pass my crush in the hallway ever again (granted, he graduated a year before me and I'm living with him now so that all worked out). The minute winter break started, I caught a nasty cold during which I was sleeping a lot and barely eating. It wasn't until after this that I realized something was seriously wrong with the way I looked. I had always been thin but this was like advanced thin. This was needing a belt on size zero jeans thin. This was dangerously thin. From that point onward, my obsession with my weight and eating habits has been an uphill battle of more adult proportions. I struggled for months afterward to get back on track, to gain the weight back, to push through the crazy intense IBS pains and start really eating again once and for all. It worked for a time and things went relatively well. I got back on track, I started adjusting to college, I got a boyfriend who cares deeply about me. Things were going well. Now, however, is when I feel like I'm slowly slipping off the wagon again.

Because of timing, I spent from August 2016 to August 2017 in school non-stop so I could get my degree and move in with my boyfriend when the lease on his old apartment expired and his roommate moved in with his own girlfriend. I didn't mind doing this. After all, it meant earning my degree quicker and moving in with my boyfriend sooner. A year straight of school wasn't all that awful anyways. Summer courses weren't really anything to write home about, I got through them and then I was done. It was no big deal. Or at least not until finals week. Things started out alright but I was on a massive time crunch. Everything was chaotic, a massive whirlwind. I felt so much pressure to do well, knowing that if I failed any of my tests it would drop my grades and I'd put myself at risk of having to retake classes and essentially ruining everything. I was really hard on myself about academics and added even more stress by procrastinating on packing. A part of me didn't quite register that all of this was really happening in the first place, not until I started moving all of my things into boxes and seeing my room grow barer and barer every day. The peak of the week came the night of my history final. My teacher was incredibly disorganized and let things overflow into the very last day of class so that not only did we have a final to worry about, but we had to wade through an hour and a half of boring presentations beforehand. I was suffering from a rather nasty headache that day, some jaw pain probably caused by a wisdom tooth coming in, so I took what I thought was plain ibuprofen before class. I gulped down two pills and thought I was good to go. What ensued was basically evidence as to why I always reject medication. As it turns out, the pills I took werent't actually ibuprofen but migraine meds with massive amounts of caffeine in them which, as I have recently discovered, I am intolerant to. This would further explain why the coffee flavored cheesecake as a kid sent me into a panic attack and made me puke, why premade brownies are potentially dangerous (my boyfriend and I bought organic brownies from Lucky's Market a few months back that had non-alkalized cocoa powder in them which, surprise surprise, has 4x the caffeine was cocoa powder processed with alkali. I had one fucking miniature brownie and within minutes I was shaking, hyperventilating, and ran to the bathroom on the verge of throwing up. I also realized just today that this also may have been the reason why I vomited a few years back after having eaten a brownie at a Disney resort), etc. I was struggling through the entire night, shaking uncontrollably with sweaty palms. I was dizzy and constantly felt like I was going to puke. I barely made it through my final exam but forced myself to finish because I knew I didn't have time to reschedule. This incident has drastically affected my own eating habits, however. Ever since, I have been wildly obsessed with what's in my food, shying away from sweets and always checking ingredients labels and refusing to drink any soda but Sprite (which, thank the lord, is both delicious and caffeine free). That moment has made me insanely paranoid, though, and a little too mindful (in the bad way) of everything I put into my body. I am so terrified of ever putting myself through something like that ever again that it leads me to restrict even more than normal. The same goes for the way my IBS affects my eating habits, as well. I'm constantly previewing menus for potential restaurants I might end up going to, thinking long and hard about the food I'm going to order. There are certain places where I don't even deviate on the menu, I stick to the same thing every single time I go there no matter what. I am terrified of trying something new and having an adverse reaction to it. With that in mind, I've just come to terms with the fact that restricting just seems easier. None of this is anything new, though. I've been restricting for as long as I can remember. There is, however, one other contributor that is new and that is finances.

Up until now, I have lived under my parents' roof where they paid for everything and I didn't have to worry one bit. They'd let me pick out whatever I wanted in the grocery store and the kitchen was free reign. I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and that was great. I didn't think about restricting as much back then, except for when it came to IBS. Now, however, things are different. My parents support me financially when it comes to bills and rent but other than that, I am basically on my own using whatever financial aid money I have leftover from my past year of school. I can afford things but I know that until I get a job or start school back up in January and get more financial aid, that that money is what is going to carry me through things like grocery trips and dinners out. It's incredible how much more analytical you become when it's your money that starts being spent on necessary things. Because of this, I've found myself and my relationship with food transforming and probably not for the better. My boyfriend and I are very aimless when it comes to grocery shopping. We don't meal plan, we haven't been couponing, we don't write shopping lists, and we don't seem to make a habit of rationing meat out for multiple meals. We basically just go to the grocery store, grab whatever we want, and hope for the best at the checkout counter. Coming from a home where my parents meticulously plan grocery store trips and buy certain things in bulk, this is a cold shock to me and it's difficult to figure out how to navigate. What I lack in physical lists, I try to make up for in overthinking during the trip itself which then only makes me come off as slow and confused. My boyfriend even described it like I was acting drunk once but it's all because my brain is trying to process so much all at once, like walking into a test after having not studied and never even attended a class. There's a lot going through my head and not a lot of time for me to process it. I don't like doing things this way but I don't know if I even have the motivation to work towards being a more organized shopper. But anyways, because of this our grocery costs tend to rack up pretty quickly which makes me feel guilty and almost uncomfortable since I know we only end up getting a limited number of meals out of that haul. This is where the restricting comes in. Grocery money is always in the back of my mind which essentially translates into this desire to make everything last as long as possible. I greatly ration my food and restrict myself out of the fear of running out and having nothing to eat. I live for leftovers and I make sure I eat just enough at restaurants or during homecooked meals for there to be something to put in the fridge at the end of the night. This doesn't always mean I eat until I'm full, though. Most often times, I'm not that full. Not that I could eat any more even if I wanted to (see a few paragraphs above). This would work great if not for the fact that I'm also obsessed with expiration dates. If something has passed it's expiration date or we have leftovers that have been in the fridge for a while, even if they are actually still good and safe to eat, I will not eat them. I threw out an entire pack of baby carrots the other day because they were one day past the expiration date and they looked dried out and therefore I considered them unsafe to eat. I have never had full-on food poisoning in my life before and I don't ever plan to because it seems my goal in life is to be as delicate and restrictive as possible so as to prevent myself from ever throwing up. If I do, I have failed and will overthink it for the next couple weeks. I get so paranoid every time I get sick that it's going to happen again that I just starve myself because I assume you can't throw up if there's nothing in your stomach (newsflash: you can and I learned that the hard way-- I went almost twenty four hours with barely eating something once and I ended up violently vomiting right before I had plans to go out with my best friend and ever since, I have also been terrified of not eating enough and doing the same exact thing to myself again. So basically, if I eat too much, I'm scared I'll throw up. If I don't eat enough, I'm scared I'll throw up. If I eat anything at all, I'm scared I'm going to throw up. It's real fun). The worst experience of this starvation-after-vomiting thing was in sixth grade. It was the day of a huge standardized test and I was not feeling good at all but I knew I couldn't afford to miss this and my mom refused to let me stay home so I sucked it up, did my best, and went to school. The doors hadn't even opened yet and I was already losing it. Literally a full minute before the teachers opened their doors, I started puking down the entire sixth grade hallway in front of EVERYONE. My friend immediately jumped into action and dragged me to the nurses office as I left a trail of vomit behind me. It was the most traumatizing experience of my life and I will never forget it. After this, I refused to eat for days. I went home, my mom gave me a bath, and I slept on the couch for hours until lunchtime when my mom brought me home a Subway sandwich that I could barely eat without feeling like I was going to be sick again. The day passed in a haze and the next morning, I guess I was looked upon with varying shades of disgust and humor. In a way, I think I kind of unwillingly became some sort of legend at that school because everyone remembers me as the girl who puked down the hallway. The next day was like the big celebration for finishing all of those rigorous standardized tests and as such, my teacher bought donuts for everyone. I love donuts so the normal part of my brain was rejoicing but the traumatized side was in a fetal position in the corner having a panic attack. I did end up grabbing a donut but whether I ate it or not was another story. Sometimes I wonder if deep down everyone in my class knew I had some sort of eating disorder because eating that donut the day after I got sick was like trying to teach a fish how to fly and everyone knew it. Everyone saw I was struggling, everyone knew I had a problem. I don't remember if this was an everyone thing or not but I do distinctly remember the boy sitting next to me was watching me eat and egging me on like I was running a marathon. It almost felt like I was the age I am now and attending a kegger where some frat guy is shouting "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" Just like that, it was simultaneously motivating and condescending. I swear, everyone was watching me as I struggled to just eat that goddamn fucking donut. I never did finish it. I think I ate about half before tossing it in the trash and making peace with failure. It all still haunts me to this day, though. Especially because I put myself through the same torture day in and day out with my eating nowadays. I stare at the food on my plate and I can hear the voices in my head screaming at me to down the damn thing, meanwhile inside my digestive tract is a bunch of blaring sirens and flashing lights for absolutely no goddamn reason.

Will any of this ever get better? Who fucking knows. By now, I've come to terms with the fact that this is an endless cycle and that it's something I will have to struggle through and face time and time again for the rest of my life. Do I enjoy that fact? Absolutely fucking not. But is it realistic? Yeah, I think so. I don't know if there's ever such a thing as true eating disorder recovery, or if I'll ever even find out what the fuck kind of disorder this even is. It's hard to try and treat something that's so complex and that also doesn't seem to fit into any of the commonplace categories. Sometimes I wish I had anorexia or bulimia instead solely so I could at least pin a name to this torture. Otherwise, I don't know how to cure what doesn't even have a name. Sometimes I wonder if this even actually is some sort of eating disorder or if it's just the conglomeration of multiple different issues combining into one giant super disorder that's wreaking havoc across my entire wellbeing. I have no goddamn idea but fuck, do I wish I knew. If only I fucking knew.

#this is just a bunch of personal bullshit #it's redundant and stupid but i just needed to get it all out #so you can happily avoid this if you'd like #eating disorders #ramblings