I hope you have all had a great few days! As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent the past weekend visiting 4 colleges with my mom. I am currently sitting at the St. Louis airport, absolutely exhausted! Y’all mentioned that you wanted to see some more personal posts, so I thought I would do a bit of a recap on the trip.
The first night, we flew/drove three hours to stay with my grandpa overnight and tour a local school the next morning. My grandma passed away in September, so this was our first time seeing my grandpa since her funeral. It was nice to see that he was handling things well on his own, although it was definitely sad to be without her. I had toured that college before (my grandpa used to work in its maintenance department), but hadn’t visited while school was in session so it was nice to get a feel of the campus when it was full of students.
The next day, we toured a college about 3 hours away. I feel in love with the campus and the students, although their nursing program wasn’t quite as strong as I would ideally like it to be.
Our third day was a free day, so we got to sleep in and take our time whilst driving. It was a super pretty; we went through the Wisconsin Dells and saw the lovely lakes and fall foliage. We spent the night in Milwaukee, a city I hadn’t travelled to before. That afternoon, we went to the Third Ward, a trendy little area of downtown that our hotel guide recommended we visit.
I cannot see myself attending the school I toured on the fourth day. We’re leaving it at that. But hey, there are schools out there for EVERYONE and we all have different likes/dislikes and needs. Unfortunately, the tension that had been building up as the trip went by ballooned up. It was about 1:30, we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. The school had a “refreshments station” set up with boxed sandwiches and chips. I do not handle spontaneous meals or unknown meal times/schedules/items. My mom was frustrated because she has been noticing that I’ve been restricting. It’s hard for her, I understand. I felt like she kept saying snarky comments throughout the trip like: “oh well, you wouldn’t eat that”. And I just popped. I don’t suffer from panic attacks, although what I had that afternoon is probably comparable. I literally wanted to run and hide and my anxiety was through the roof. I wanted to eat, but I didn’t want to eat in front of my mom. And the pressure of eating on the trip had just built up to the point where I burst out sobbing in the middle of campus and hid on a bench trying to hide from my mom. After that blow up, we had a 6 hour drive. That was not super fun, but I was able to gather myself together enough to handle it. I lived.
I’m still feeling a bit on edge.
I need to hang in there.
Today was insanely busy. We woke up fairly early, went to a college tour/event until the early afternoon. The schedule at the event was crazy: we didn’t have any free time until 2. So we grabbed some quickly after, and then drove about 15 minutes to go visit my friend Grace who is a freshman at a nearby school. I hadn’t seen her since this summer and it was so nice to catch up! I sat in on her class from 3-4 and then she gave me a quick tour of her dorm. Unfortunately the visit was rather short because my mom and I had to leave to go to the airport at 4:30.
So that was my busy weekend! I hope you all are doing well and that you had a fun weekend too!
What was your favorite thing that you did this weekend?
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Eep that sounds like a really difficult situation to be in. I can totally relate. Sometimes when you feel like you are eating to perform, it’s just easier not to. I have had times in the past where my mind is racing and I need to eat but I don’t know what to eat and everything feels so complicated and I feel like people are looking at me and I feel so overwhelmed. In the past I would just not eat because it was so stressful. However, I am glad I learned good strategies to get out of that mindset. I breathe deeply and pray a lot haha.
It is also hard to eat when you are anxious and the company you keep is making you feel small, worthless and weak. The biggest struggles in my relationship with food were when I lived with my family and they were almost working against me. It took a lot of work in building my self confidence to not harm myself just to spite them (i.e. not eating just to piss them off). I really had to learn that nurturing myself was the most important regardless of the company I keep.
I also moved out. That helped x1000000000
🙂 Stay strong ❤
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It’s interesting that you mentioned prayer. I grew up in the Lutheran faith, although my family doesn’t go to church much anymore and I haven’t really felt very attached to religion. But in that moment when I was feeling so overwhelmed, I had the thought to pray. I didn’t actually do it, but it surprised me. I would love to practice religious activities more often and regain my faith in God.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me Ellie! I hope that once I am ready to leave the home, that pressure to “preform eat” for my family will go away. It’s so stressful to eat when you feel like you have a bunch of eyes staring at you! It’s such a white elephant in my household at every meal and it only makes my anxiety worse.
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I totally get that! I promise when you leave home it does go away. It takes a long time (took me a couple years) but I am at the point where I eat what I want in front of family and friends no matter what it is. It took my family a long time not to comment on my food, but once I began to shrug them off and not engage, they stopped. It seriously took forever though, so do not give up hope. You just have to prove if to yourself first and the rest will fall into line 🙂
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Hello lovely,
I have just read your post now as I saw your most recent you tube update and it really worried me 😦 I won’t say to much here as I know you haven’t said everything here on your blog…but just know you are not in this alone…please do what is best for YOU. For your LONGTERM health and happiness.
Lots of love from Aoifs xxx
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I’m posting the vlog on here in a bit ♡ thank you for the love and support. It means so much to me that have you all to talk to. I swear. Yes, I really hope that I will have the strength to do what is best for my future.
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You can do it ❤ xxx
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