EU2

E has left treatment.  R is devastated and ready to write her out of his life.  I'm sure that a good-night's sleep will give him a new perspective, but at this moment he is distraught.  We don't know why she has chosen to leave...  she really seemed to be doing well.  He hasn't spoken with her.  She left him a message while he was teaching a fire safety class today, and it seemed as though all was well.  When he called UCLA during his break a few hours later, she had checked herself out.

She will have her reasons (excuses) of course... She always has reasons.  The reasons never seem particularly legitimate, but I suppose in her mind they have the legitimacy and weight of a granite mountain.

So the fact that she just learned from a top physician-researcher that the frontal lobe of her brain has decreased in size due to 5 plus years of starvation...  Not important enough to compel her to stay.  The fact that she now has back pain, and seems to have the beginnings of kyphosis due to oseteoporosis from the years when her body should have been building bone mass...  Not important.

Like I've said before, her disease is like the worst drug addiction.  She is the addict, and she exists in her own reality, far from the reality that the rest of us know.  I don't know whether to scream or cry about this latest turn of events.

I worry that maybe it's my fault...  Did she find out that I'm starting a weight loss treatment program?  Did it "trigger" her somehow?  We haven't mentioned anything to her.  We are careful.  Unless she reads this blog (doubtful), she has no idea.

Walking on eggshells gets tiresome.  Her dad and I do our best not to trigger her disorder, but at the same time, life must be lived.  When I see her, I try hard not to comment about my own appearance and weight, and I never say a word about her weight.  I try not to praise her appearance, but sometimes I slip up and tell her that I like what she's wearing or what she's done with her hair.  I would focus conversation on other things, like educational or career plans, but she doesn't have other plans or activities to focus on.  

R and I have probably failed in thousands of ways, as individuals interacting with her and as a team. At the end of the day, though, E is the only person who bears responsibility for her choices.  It is possible that she suffered some sort of trauma at a younger age, it's possible that her parents failed her somehow, but at the end of the day, she can choose to respond to those difficulties by making good choices going forward.  Entering UCLA was a good choice that she made on her own...  I can only hope that she'll realize she's done herself a disservice by leaving.  Maybe she can get back on the path to recovery and continue the positive momentum of the past few weeks.

I just hope she doesn't say to us that she chose to leave because she's "recovered" and can do what needs to be done on her own.  This is the ultimate lie that the addict tells him or herself.  She's done it before, and on her own the pounds fall off at mach speed.  A "recovered" person isn't a skeleton, too frail and tired to do anything besides sit wrapped up in a blanket or with the heater blasting.  That isn't a picture of health.  A "recovered" person doesn't subsist on gum, mints, tea, and the occasional salad.  That isn't the picture of health, either.