It started out a bitter day. Up at 5:30 to take Husband to ECT treatments. I’ve discovered I’m ill-equipped to be his nurse. Husband’s being ill brings out the child in me. Perhaps it was from years of playing mother and nurse to the birth mother. I was her caregiver, not the other way around. I was her mother, her nurse, her caregiver, her everything.

But as we were waiting for all the paperwork nonsense and the IV’s and the ever late doctor to arrive, I sat and cried. Not because I was worried for Husband (which I am), but because I feel overwhelmed and lacking in resources to give him the attention that deserves but I feel I need. Which sounds selfish, I KNOW. I realize I’m NOT the one being induced with a seizure in order to scare away my depression temporarily.

But it is what it is. I was reduced to tears and hiding internally, which he noticed and only served to stress him more. So I’ve decided to have birth mother take him so I can take care of myself while I’m still trying to recover and find the internal part that can take better care of him than I can.

After we brought him home and he retired to bed with fatigue, grogginess, and a headache, we had a decision to make: We could continue to lock ourselves away inside our head, go to bed, binge/purge, or we could do something positive for ourselves.
So we decided to go for a run. We made sure Husband was okay, and we put on our running gear and fled the scene. The run was a little more than our usual 10k; that was our E.D. talking and trying to make up for the debacle of binging/purging that ensued yesterday. But we were well fueled and could tolerate the extra mileage with ease. The only problem we encountered was our slow pace. Running is as much mental as it is physical, and our depression dominated the first part of our run, insisting that we run at a slower pace than usual.

But the beauty of a run is that the world slips away and you get lost in the pounding of your feet on the pavement, the allure of the mile markers waving goodbye, the thump of the music in your ear. Soon we were running at a pace faster than normal. . . and it felt therapeutic.

The run saved us from ourselves.

We came home to the same Husband tied to his bed, which would normally drag us down. But while he is recovering from his ECT and depression, we are in recovery, too, and can not forget to take care of ourselves.

So we showered, applied our face, which we have neglected lately, feeling all too ugly, and endeavored the thirty minute drive to Secondary Therapist’s office for our scheduled appointment. Why is this an accomplishment, you ask? Because yesterday we could not pull ourselves together to save our life. We canceled Primary Therapist’s appointment and reduced ourselves to a brief phone session with Dietician.

In retrospect, we’ve realized what a mistake we made. We realized that we only take ourselves to our therapy appointments when we are doing well. What sense does that make? It is because we don’t want others (our treatment team) to see us at our worst for fear of embarrassment and judgement, especially of Primary Therapist. However, it’s when we are in the deepest pits of hell, as we were yesterday, that we should have taken our tear stained face, pajama clad body, and blistered knuckles from purging and hauled ass to Therapist and Dietitian’s office. A lesson learned indeed. If they can’t handle our lowest of our lows, then they aren’t the treatment team for us. However, I think they can handle it and would have welcomed it over missed appointments.

So, for today, nothing changed but us and the way we reacted to Husband’s ECT treatment. For our recovery, we went for a run and made it to Secondary Therapist’s appointment. Score two for us! Go Team!

What positive step did you make today toward recovery, whether it was your eating disorder, your depression, your cutting, your anything?