Anti-psychotics & peppermint tea.....

..... and I went to bed smiling and feeling VERY happy! We'd had an office curry night last night, to which I went and although things like that cause a massive amount of pre-thoughts and planning, yesterdays particular one I handled totally differently to usual.

I would normally not drive to the restaurant, for start, giving me the option to have some drinks, especially where food and social eating is involved. As someone aptly pointed out AT THE TABLE at our office xmas party 'You don't DO social eating do you?'

I COULD do social eating -if I picked round bits of food, eating practically none of the food put in front of me (I don't know whats in it, floating in suspicious amounts of oil!) and giving everyone else bits of my meal claiming it was offending me and knocking back glasses of anything strong enough for me to get through the meal to the point of the table being cleared and it's OVER.

NOT THE BEST OUTLOOK FOR ENJOYING MY LIFE...

I'd given some thought earlier in the day to this scenario and decided that I could do better than that.... I made the decision to drive there ensuring that 'drinking the food away' would not be possible.

I then analysed the type f food I would choose (was an Indian Restaurant) and how I would make my food choice....? I like most styles of Indian cooking, just get freaked out by what goes in it. There are 2 meats that I hate so much, I could NEVER put near my mouth and that is PORK and LAMB!! That is genuine dislike for the look/ taste and i'm not bothered by that at all- we must all have something we genuinely hate to eat based upon taste/ texture for non-ED reasons!!!

I ordered my favourite naan bread with amonds and sultanas and some chicken tikka and it was BEAUTIFUL!!!! I ate til I felt comfortable, sipped my iced water and listened to them chatting and laughing and just went with the flow.

On my way home I felt soooo good that it'd gone so well. The anxiety set in when I reached the house and I didn't want it to ruin the evening..... I was happy with what I had eaten but the ED voices started picking at me GRRRRRR.... so, I calmly made a big mug of peppermint tea- took my nightly dose of Seroquel and settled in front of TV to chill. I then began to tell my husband about the evening and I realised that, like the evening before, things had gone as I'd have liked and that I could do it if I wanted it enough (ok, a bit of help from mediation last night but AFTER the meal)

I felt so in control but control over something good happening not control in a damaging ED way. Hopefully, this is a real start of learning to live again with the things that have been so much out of control for so long. I know lots more work is needed and it will be hard sometimes but I'm going to keep at it and remember how good it feels to let myself experience being happy, healthy and alive.
AND... off the back of last nights success, I had a conversation with a work collegue this morning all about how tasty the food was and we discussed other restaurants and how we thought the food last night compared AND.. I actually enjoyed that I could feel comfortable and also be honest when I said how tasty it was and how nicer time I'd had... instead of wishing we weren't talking about it because of the things they 'didn't see' long after the meal was over- which unfortunately, sometimes wasn't pretty. A real GOOD, TOP one for me this time :)