misunderstandings & things I wasn't able to explain (discusses mental health, eating disorders, trauma, etc.).

there are multiple cases like this where, in certain situations, I wasn't able to say/explain something (like when you don't or "can't" say/explain something due to anxiety/fear/etc.), and I still think about it sometimes. I've thought about posting something like this here and there for a while. I'll be discussing (venting about) some such times here.

one time, when I was a kid, I was around a group of kids, and they were talking about what to play, mentioning playing "bop-it", and one of them was saying that I probably didn't even know how to play. I hadn't played it before, but it was really obvious how it worked and how to play it, so, of course, I knew what the right thing to press was when the kid held the game out to me, but I purposely pushed the wrong thing. maybe I might've rolled my eyes and/or maybe sighed or something? but I just reached out and pushed the wrong thing, and the kid was like "see?", I believe. I could've just pressed the right thing, but it was annoying to be treated like that, and I think that I just wanted to get the situation over with.

one time years later, as a teenager, when I was in the hospital for eating disorder reasons, a paper that I had been "tracking" some of my personal stuff on was found. it was claimed that it was found on the floor / under the bed, but I'm not totally sure if that was true. I'd heard people working at that hospital talking about going through my stuff, including a possible phone (I just had my ds), so they could've gone through my things and found the paper hidden there. the evil psychiatrist was being horrible about the paper and the fact that I'd been keeping track, and was asking me if that's all that I was "allowing myself" to eat. I was just keeping track of the amount that I was eating, and I'd literally heard from a nurse who was working there a while before this situation that that same evil psychiatrist planned for me to eat a certain amount of calories (per day), and at the point of that confrontation, I'd been eating around that amount. imagine if they'd actually tried diagnosing any other mental struggles (such as the ocd that I've dealt with since childhood), then they would've realized that it was compulsive. but would it really have changed how they treated me that much? who knows? also, I hadn't even been tracking right before the rude drama that they started.

another time, in hospital for edo reasons, I was asked if I was counting calories in my notebook, and I put my hand on my notebook to prevent it being looked (snooped) through. I wasn't able to say that I *had been* calorie counting, but that I had stopped. again, I compulsively tracked things (and I still do at times to this day, just not calories for a while now).

another situation at that hospital (which I think might've been part of the last situation, actually), involved when I'd asked my mom to bring a journal (a black-and-white composition notebook) to the hospital for me. this notebook was actually an "intake/output diary" where I tracked food, drink, fasting, calories, exercise, etc. my mom brought it to the hospital and questioned someone / people there about it. they looked through my journal. it was brought up to me (I believe in association with the last situation), and they said incorrect info about one of the days' entries. they claimed that one day that I'd tracked, all I'd eaten was like 1/4 of a bell pepper that I roasted. as I mentioned, incorrect. that was not all I'd eaten that day. I'd actually ended up binging that day. but I didn't really talk about binging, let alone in the sense of actually having done so. the subject of binging was discussed at some point, but moreso in the sense of it being normal to sometimes eat a lot, such as in social situations, although that's not necessarily a binge (and the idea of what a "binge" is can differ from person to person and can change over time). although I dealt with both anorexia and bulimia, I didn't talk about binging, and I didn't talk about purging (until the second stay at that hospital, which was even more hostile, and said that I'd been purging like every day since leaving the first time, and I think it still wasn't really discussed much after that). I didn't purge in the hospital, but I did get sick at one point, and the other end of the feeding tube in my nose / down my throat ended up coming out of my mouth. someone assumed that I pulled it out, but someone else told them that I didn't, that I'd thrown up (which, again, was not on purpose). I also didn't talk about purging in outpatient until after I'd graduated from the program and was going to follow-up meetings -- then I basically talked about feeling like I couldn't stop. it did eventually become more rare, sometimes increasing and decreasing in frequency, but didn't actually completely stop -- until eventually ... I actually just recently went over a whole year without purging. it's been around 15-16 months now (it's currently the 28th of January 2023, I stopped in late 2021). and I haven't really restricted to lose weight in quite a while, either.

another time, years later, was when I was discussing 2 different topics:

ONE, intermittent fasting / "trying to do IF" (which I had already been doing for a while before the conversation -- I also have a post about IF on this blog, I'll link it here). I was told "it's not that good", but what I meant was that I was trying to do IF AGAIN, and my personal experience was that I'd found intermittent fasting to be helpful/beneficial. I'd already been doing intermittent fasting for around 6 months and then hadn't really been doing IF anymore for a li'l while before the conversation, and I was trying to do intermittent fasting AGAIN.

and, TWO, feeling like turmeric might/would stain my teeth yellow. I was told that it "wouldn't", but I was speaking from personal experience -- I know that turmeric is used for brightening skin and whitening teeth, and I already knew this before the conversation and had previously done homemade turmeric masks (and maybe I might've also tried turmeric teeth whitening, too? maybe not, I'm not totally sure) as well as cooking with turmeric (I actually use this spice in cooking super regularly), but I still think there's a chance of teeth yellowing/staining with turmeric to whatever extent, from my personal experience. when doing turmeric masks, it did stain my skin kind of yellowy/orange-ey, even if only temporarily, and I felt and still feel like it could've contributed to some yellowish appearance of my teeth. by the way, a quick Internet search of this topic would show that it can and does indeed stain teeth over time and other things. as my personal experience and suppositions show.

"Turmeric Spice

The bold deep yellow pigments in this spice can turn your teeth just as yellow over time. Turmeric can also stain anything it touches, so be careful when using it."