This Crazy Life

I don’t know how better to title this post.  Coming home from the hospital was rough.  We met with her dietician and therapist both and she has no desire to participate was hostile, argumentative, and even rude.  She is not getting better.  We can’t force getting better on her.  Sending her away does nothing.  She won’t embrace any changes at home either.  But she wants to stay home through her birthday.  She can do it.  Except she can’t.  After we were done with our meetings, she then told me she thinks she needs to get really, really sick.  Sick to the point of almost dying, so then the eating disorder knows it succeeded and then maybe she can recover.  She’s heard of people doing this.  Of people weighing only 43 pounds.  I told her I could not sit back and watch her die.  And how would I ever know she was sick enough that the eating disorder would be happy.  I’ve said the entire time I’m not going to let her die.  I can’t.  Not now.  She has no answers.   A friend I was talking to commented on if we could find a way to make her think she was that sick.  Make the ER/hospital act even more urgently.  I have no idea how I could maneuver that, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea.  We then talked more about trying to stay home for 3 months to make it to her birthday.  She said that she knows she can eat that long without restricting, it’s just once she starts restricting it’s so addicting that she just can’t stop and must restrict more and more to chase that feeling.  The feeling of starvation?   I didn’t even ask.  I don’t know how to use this information to help her, but there has to be a way.  Can’t we chase some other feeling?  Maybe that’s what I can convince her.  Or maybe I can bet her I don’t think she can do it, she’s not that strong.  She can’t stay home for 3 months again.  This time was just a fluke.  See where she goes with that.  Maybe the competitive streak will come out and be helpful?  The main problem I see with letting this go on and on is we lose weight every time.  So, every time we are starting at a lower and lower weight.  Her body loses more and more of its reserves (if it even had any left at this point anyway).  It’ll take that much longer to get back to a healthy weight.  She does still want to lose weight.  But she wants to be stable while losing weight.  We’ve tried to explain to her that isn’t possible, that she can’t lose weight without it hurting her body.  But she thinks it is.  She thinks she can eat and drink enough to stay stable that she’ll be fine and can keep losing weight.  Until she isn’t.  Until she can’t.  Until the urges to restrict get too strong.