FeedingOnFever Posted January 15, 2009 Posted January 15, 2009 I really am losing it. I dream every night in vibrant, technicolor detail. Either way it's bad, whether he's back and we're in love again, or we're fighting, or he's changed into an abusive prick, or I have to watch him from afar. Either way I feel so vividly in my dreams that when I wake up, I am exhausted. I've run a marathon in my sleep and I can't cope with the waking hours. I get at least 6 hours or more most nights (which is good for me usually) but nothing helps when I'm dreaming like that. I wake up like a sledge hammer has been driven into my core. I need to trick myself into eating. My stomach will growl, but my throat will close up when I try to eat, and I'll feel instantly queasy at the sight of any food. When I finally feel that I can stomach food, I eat as much as I am able before the supply is shut off again by my stomach/throat/brain. I've dropped almost 10 pounds in the past month, which for me is not good. I'm not saying I'm super-model skinny and can't afford the weightloss. I was all over the spectrum of what one would call "average, pretty, but doesn't exercise enough" before this. But here's the catch: I was one of the 2 girls in this world who was HAPPY the way I WAS. Yeah, I wasn't at the magical weight ratio for my height. But it was MY body, and I didn't want to shed pounds... I just wanted to boost my cardio and get in shape. Not start to shed pounds out of depression. People come up to me and go, "Oh wow! You've lost weight!" and it makes me feel sick and broken instead of happy, the way it would make many other girls. When I do eat, I regret it a few hours later. My digestive track is on strike. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING upsets my stomach. So far I haven't been throwing up, but I've had close calls. Strangely, my headaches have vanished... I used to have migraines occasionally and regular eye-strain headaches a few times a week, but basically nothing since the break-up. Instead I've had anxiety-waves, on the teetering edge of my panic-attacks, almost every single day. I breathe deeply and struggle through each day until I can return to my home. My place is still a mess. I want to clean it, but I've figured out why I can't; the clutter is keeping me company. It's a task to do that sits with me and lets me think about it, plan on when to do it and how to do it. If I clean everything up, which wouldn't take that long, I'll be even more alone in a tidy, neat, and utterly, utterly empty home. I'd miss him so much more, if that were possible. I wake up from sleep with fists clenched so tight, and teeth ground so firmly together that it takes me a few moments to work my frozen muscles enough to unclench. My poor freaking enamel. I shake like I'm going to fall apart at any time, and multiple times I day I detach from my head and imagine myself screaming at the top of my lungs in the middle of public, trashing anything I touch, getting into fights with people who cross me, spilling every secret I ever had to everyone in the vicinity and absolutely, utterly letting go and losing my mind. Doing exactly what I feel exactly when I feel it and reveling in the feeling of not having to hide anything anymore, not giving a **** that people are startled and scared around me. I'm co-dependent. I came to this realization a few weeks ago, on this forum in fact. It scares the crap out of me because I wonder if a co-dependent ever REALLY gets better. It might well be an uphill struggle for the rest of my life. I set my boundaries and I try so hard to keep them. It feels like I try harder than anyone else I've ever met. I either know people who don't have issues with boundaries, or who are co-dependent and don't even try to change. Every single day is a temptation, a fight with myself, a struggle to stop from self-sabotaging, harder than the day before, full of tiny battles with few victories, confusion, pain, panic, worry, irrational imaginings of insane scenarios, beating myself up for caring so much, telling myself conflicting messages. "You can do better," "It's too little too late," "It's okay to care for him," "Healing has to wait," "Maybe one day you can find him again and do it right," "You might always love him, so accept that fact," "You will find someone new and he will treat you better," "Make sure you treat the next guy better than you treated him," "Fix your flaws," "He needs to fix his flaws," "Find someone who will accept and work with your flaws," "You are not ready for him again, or anyone else either," "Casual dating isn't the end of the world, you can go have fun." I want the static and the buzz to just stop. I can't stand the head-rush of panic I feel every day, or the sledge blow of waking up from dreams. I hate my stomach pains, my nausea, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing actual changes to my physical body. For the past 6 years of my life I have been comfortably between 115 - 121. I never ever went out of that weight range. I'm now heading rapidly into the 107 and under range, and although I'm only 5"2 and this isn't a health hazard, it makes me so sad. I don't look like me anymore. I don't feel like me anymore. The only parts I recognize are my tooth-and-nail determination to keep trying, even through insane amounts of pain, and my intense emotions that overwhelm and change frequently. Those two aspects are me, but all of these thoughts are foreign and hurtful. I don't want to forgive that girl. But every day it gets harder to keep my anger. I think, what must have happened to her to make her behave this way? To go through guys like this, many times multiple guys at the same time? To let herself be used with delight, and to be so utterly unhealthy for herself and everyone around her? ****, it must have been something bad. I know because I've had friends like her... not to her degree, but with those traits emerging. Father vanished and now no man is good enough to keep for more than a few days. Parents abusive, and now abuse is comfortable, something to be sought out. And I feel bad for her. And it kills me to say that, because I don't want to. I want to feel bad for ME. I want to hate, and I want my richeous indignation, and I want to hold on to that anger because it's all I have. But it's going away so fast now. I can't be angry at either of them. I can only feel this stupid, vastly-growing compassion and feel sorry that they have gone through such crap to make them so confused. And I still love my ex. If it wasn't obvious from this whole deluge. I love him so much that I'm willing to wait until we're both ready to be together again. Thing is, I bet you it would happen. If I worked on my life and he worked on his, and we keep the same group of friends (which we will) and we eventually start to co-exist on outings, and have conversations again, I know that a few years down the line the possibility will arise again. It kills me that it most likely will. It ruins me. Every co-dependent urge in my body, and even the non-codependent ones, the ones that just miss and love my first and only boyfriend, are pushing me to improve myself and live my life, but shun any romance and keep him in the back of my mind. To be happy with friends, take positive steps for me, ignore any opportunities with nice guys, and wait until something clicks and he and I ask each other about trying again. Right now, I don't want anyone else. I won't for a long, long time and I realize that and am okay with the wait. But I am scared of waiting for him. Because it might not happen. It most likely will, but it might not. The chances are still there, and I am tired of wasting myself. But my uphill struggle always looks so impossible. It's so much harder for me than most people to do STUPID LITTLE THINGS like say "No thanks man, I don't think I want to go out today," or "Hey, let's do this very small simple thing because it's not self-sabotage." It's a Herculean effort for me, and I'm tired of feeling alone. Any breakup pain is the ****tiest, most f*cked up feeling. But the fear of your codependency making it last for years and years is utterly crushing. I don't want to be this way anymore. They say that's step 2. Step 1 is admitting there's something wrong, step 2 is being hurt and beaten and demoralized to the point where you desperately want to change. It doesn't feel like step 2. It feels like helplessness. I want to be healthy. I want to sleep and not dream EVERY night, so I can sleep well every so often. I want to exercise and be in shape, not lose any more weight due to anxiety, depression or illness. I want to be strong by myself, on my own two feet. I want my opinion of myself to matter more than anyone else's. I want to be happy again. I want some inkling that if I stay on this path, that just might happen sometime down the road. I want to stop sabotaging, and not just in the surface-level, but all the way down deep to my thoughts. I want to change them so they don't hurt me every single day. I want to be someone I've never been able to be yet in my life.
gldngirl Posted January 15, 2009 Posted January 15, 2009 You and me, same place. It sucks, not eating, not sleeping. I can't even see the floor of my room and that is NOT normal, yet I can't seem to clean it. I was referred to by my ex as the most independent/dependent person he'd ever met. I'm still trying to work that one out. It does get better, the hurt, eventually. The co-dependency, well you're aware of it now and at least with that you can learn to become aware of the cycles you fall into and the behavior that leads to trouble. Just keep trying and live each day as it's own day. Focus on the present and on yourself.
electriclove Posted January 15, 2009 Posted January 15, 2009 How long have you been broken up? The first few weeks were the worst for me. I related to everything you said in your post: the weight loss, sleepless nights, nightmares, anxiety, feeling both ambivalence and anger. I thought that was what my life would be like from that point onwards… hell on earth every day. My dad said at the time that it was just my body’s way of reacting to the shock and the heartbreak I was feeling. But he said that eventually it would stop because the human body can only take so much suffering/exhaustion. He was right, after a few weeks of this I started to return back to some sort of physical normality. God knows how, but I did. You’re going through a grieving process right now, do don’t be so hard on yourself. Everyone on this board has been through this at some point and can relate to what you are saying. Take one day at a time and know that ‘this too shall pass’. Believe me.
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