little thoughts

I'm having one of those moments. Right now the world looks like an uphill journey towards nothing. My dream was to be a big-shot reporter. But I can't report anything. I'm not good enough, I can't work hard enough, I don't have the necessary qualities. I've never written or created anything worth a second look. Whatever made me think I could amount to anything was a lunatic idea.

The depression is back. It's back for sure, stronger than I remember. But it's always stronger than I remember.

I wish I could stop blaming myself for all the ways I'm failing to fix my own problems. I wish I could turn off logic and perfectionism for a little while.

Today and yesterday I ate incredible quantities of food. I didn't purge any of it. I'm going to look so fat and hideous in my misery. I make a decent melodramatic at least. (that last bit was meant to be a joke, I hope I got some laughs.)

reduce me

I sobbed so hard and so loud that my roommate heard me from the other room. She hugged me and said it's okay. But it isn't okay. Everything fucking hurts. I just want to fucking break things, I want to punch things. I want to get in a fight with someone and win. I want to cause as much pain as I'm feeling right now. Maybe this is how people feel just before they do the stupidest thing they've ever done.

I'm binging terribly this week. Which also means I'm spending far too much time with my fingers in the back of my mouth, my eyes red and crying, my stomach aching. I hate this so much, it's gotta be some sort of punishment for something I did in a past life. Or a punishment for something I did in this life, Lord knows I've done enough terrible things.

bruised

The thing I never understood about self-harming was how a person could actually commit and make themselves hurt so much. It's the numbness, I know that now. When everything hurts so bad that you can't even feel anything anymore. Then you just need a shock to the system, something to force the tears out.

Rationally, inevitably, the sun will rise tomorrow and trees will grow taller, rivers will keep running. The world is so much bigger than me and my little crisis. The world is a big, beautiful place and I am just a small part of it. I am just another beautiful little piece of the universe. And when all the sadness is gone, I'll still be here, and the world will keep on spinning. I can go out and do things bigger than myself, this is all going to end okay.

But right now I'm hurting. When the train is coming, I have to keep my eyes averted so I don't think too much about what it would feel like to jump onto the tracks. And when I'm using a sharp kitchen knife, I try not to consider the temptation of an easy slice down my forearm.

cheers

Ladies, in honor of my new fake ID (Illinois in case you were wondering) I'd like to propose a toast. This toast is for all of us, the crazy ones, obsessed with food. This is for knowing how much you weighed this morning, and just before you last went to the bathroom, and just after, too, and to looking forward each morning to seeing the little number drop lower and lower. Here's to freakish knowledge of calories and nutritional content. Here's to purging with the shower running, having cut up knuckles and short finger nails. I honestly don't know how I could have survived the last few years without the support I get from this blog, so thank you- from the bottom of my heart.  Cheers to us, the girls who drink wine out of measuring cups.

on and on

The less you eat, the less you have to purge. It's a nice way to look at things when all you can think about is food and the lack of it. At least when I'm hungry my legs start to feel thinner, my thighs look just a little smaller in my dark-wash jeans that used to be too tight. Though I'm sure they're only looser from wearing them so much, it would take more than 5 pounds to make a real difference.

All weekend with my family I focused on staying away from food as much as possible. I ate only when others were eating, and ate in small quantities (mostly, I had too much pizza for lunch on Friday.) Everything that wasn't under 200 calories I purged. Of course I can never get everything back up, but I'm getting better at it. Practice makes perfect, they say.

On the drive home today I almost threw up from car sickness. So we stopped for hamburgers, a logical solution to my brother and my dad. They both had the burgers, I had a grilled cheese and cream soda, full calories. I got most of it up, but didn't want to take too long in the bathroom. Then my dad and I went to see the Hobbit. I had some popcorn during the pre-views and purged that, too. The rest of the movie I drank my diet coke and chewed winter fresh chewing gum. I used to hate diet coke, but now it makes me feel like a true girl-on-a-diet. The fake sugar and carbonation feel like such a rush.

I've been reading The Passion of Alice by Stephanie Grant, another eating disorder book, this one set in a recovery unit in 1984. The book is funny because you never know much about the narrator, mostly about her relationships with the other patients. No one's inner thoughts are discussed in too much detail, it's mostly about their actions and interactions. The book is okay, but I don't think I'll ever read it again.

I changed the passcode on my phone to my next goal weight. Every time I want to use my cell phone I get a little reminder of how much weight I have to lose. So far I think it's helping.

As if it mattered

I need an ana friend to text, someone to talk to when all I can think about is ed-related things. Like someone I could tell when I'm worried my roommate could hear me purging, or when I'm proud of myself for staying under my goal intake. comment if you'd like to, or message me somehow.

---

Finally had that appointment with the therapist. She was nice, but it still feels really weird to pay for someone to talk to. I don't think I like the idea of therapy, but I won't quit it yet. If I quit it now it would seem like I wasn't trying.

So may people know about my issues. All the roommates, my friends David, Matt, Sara, and probably a bunch of people I don't even realize. Everyone has such a huge mouth, including me. As if life is complicated enough and we don't already have enough to talk about without adding the drama of an eating disorder.

It's been weeks since a day when I didn't purge or didn't eat under 800 calories. My weight dropped 9 pounds in 4 days when I did the GM, I was briefly at 135, then went back up to 139, and now I'm going down again. Today I woke up to 137.5.  I'm going home to Pennsylvania today, flying in the evening. Then it's four days of family time, but I hope there's enough exercise and noise and distraction that I'll be under 136 when I arrive back. Under 135 is the dream, but I don't want to disappoint myself.

Last night was another big discussion with my roommate. I just started crying to her, I don't know what possessed me to tell her anything. The more I tell her, the more she worries. She cried because I cried, then we were both in her blankets whispering about life. I love her so much, and I wish my problem would go away so it wouldn't be her problem anymore. But I don't want to get better, I just want to lose weight.

meandering

I read in a few books about this behavior of bulimics. They wander the city, looking for the food that will satisfy them. They eat and eat, purging everything. They have to wander around because they are too embarrassed for anyone too see them eating too much in any one place. I do that. I do that all the time. I did it today, I think I spent over $40 today on food that ended up in the toilet. Such a colossal waste.

Tomorrow I have my appointment with a therapist. I've been waiting for this appointment for weeks, the woman seems very nice. I think if it weren't tomorrow I might burst. Someone besides me and this blog needs to know about this hell inside my head. I spent all day slightly worried that I might start crying and blabbing to a stranger on the street.

In the same area I have my current job I'm applying to a few different restaurants. I have an interview tomorrow at one of them and I'm waiting to hear back from the others. I also have a phone interview tomorrow with a news company that might pay me to actually use my skills in journalism. wahoo!

My face looks ridiculously round and fat, especially when I'm wearing lots winter gear.

I need a little help

When someone even brings up the idea of food, I start to get nervous. My life this week surprisingly and quickly dissolved into a full-bodied obsession with food and the lack of it.

I starved sunday to thursday, eating under 2,000 calories spread over all five days. Then yesterday and today I had two massive binges. I spent a large number of hours eating and throwing up, my throat is raw and burned. My stomach hurts, my head is aching, I feel like total shit. But it's like it wasn't me who did it. I was on autopilot, just a rational little robot inhaling food and vomiting it back out again. If I keep purging this often, (today I lost count at 4 times) it's going to start to show. A little blood actually came out an hour ago, I think maybe I scratched my tonsils with my finger nail. And my face is puffy, blood vessels in my face are broken, my hands always smell faintly of vomit.

This isn't what I want. I don't want to choose between eating nothing and everything. I don't want to rip myself to shreds. I just lost control, and I'm not sure how I'm going to get it back before these food problems destroy my life.

Today, I remember sitting and eating something, I don't know what, and crying alone in the dark. I was all alone in the house, no one could stop me from eating everything and from retching violently hour after hour. I was crying and wishing that someone would walk in, that somebody will come and save me. But I don't really think anyone will be able to save me. I have to do it myself, and I'm too pathetic to accomplish that task.

blizzard day

I can't sleep anymore. Every morning since I began this diet I wake up still thinking about frightening dreams, stomach grumbling, eyes hurting, legs weak. And to make it worse my weight went up since yesterday morning. I feel crushed, but I know I deserve this.

jan.1 intake:
b- 2 bananas, 1c strawberries, black tea (256)
l- 1 fruit leather (45)
d- "cauliflower pizza" (314)
s- 2 fl oz. red wine, 2 clementines (120)

Using the excuse of "feeling sick" doesn't work if you use it too often. I was "sick" on NYE, and I know my roommate would ask questions if I tried to use it again. She was excited about cooking dinner and eating all together last night, so I relented. We made "cauliflower pizza," I put another handful of mozzarella cheese, a 1/4c of pizza sauce, and 5 turkey pepperonis on mine. It was surprisingly low-calorie, but it wasn't allowed on the GM diet plan. yesterday was supposed to be bananas, milk, and vegetable soup. I could only rationalize the total change in plan by taking a two hour walk in the freezing cold on Carson Beach on the south shore. (I'd never been there before, I can't wait to go back in the summer.)

But this morning I weighed more than yesterday morning so I know that I was wrong to stray from the plan. I ate over 700 calories, double what I ate in the first two days. As a fix, I ate nothing today, just water and black tea. I'm head-spinning hungry, I'm wondering when my will is going to break and the binge will happen.

Clearly with today's fast, I'm not on the GM diet today. It was supposed to be beef and tomatoes, but I don't like either of those foods. So tomorrow I'm going to have brown rice sushi and fruit, and maybe a salad or something if I end up going out to eat with my roommate's parents like we planned a while ago.

This is so sad. I can't keep focusing all my energy on what I eat. It's so self-defeating. No one is ever happy if all they can think about is finding their own happiness. When you shift focus away from yourself and onto doing things for others, that's where happiness lies. But selfishness is my downfall, and right now this desire for self-perfection is a fire in me.

auld lang syne

Happy New Year my dear readers!! I'm so glad it's an even numbered year again, though 2013 was very good to me. I don't really want to list accomplishments or summarize anything, but I'd be happy if I had another year like this one. I want to keep moving forward, to keep gaining the things I want and leaving behind the things I don't need in my life. 

Today marks the 4th day of the GM diet. Yesterday was a really hard day. I woke up at 6am because my heart was racing and my stomach hurt. I got up and my legs were shaking, I got scared of what might happen so I ate an apple and a clementine. I immediately felt nauseous, but I thought it would pass. About 15 minutes late I had to leap out of bed to try to make it to the trashcan, but everything ended up on the floor.

What's funny is that I make myself throw up often, but when it happens naturally it hurts way more. My throat hurts less but everything else feels like an acid burn. The rest of the day I ate 6 clementines (210) and a whole jar of peaches in white grape juice (400) which is somehow the most calories I've eaten in three days.

The shaking hands and hazy thoughts have been worth it if you look at just the scale. I weighed 144 on the morning of day 1, 138.5 on the mornings of the two days after that, and this morning I weighed 135. One of my benchmark weights is 136, which is the high end of the "normal" bmi range for my height (5'2). It's sad that I'm still aiming to be normal after all these years of struggling. I should have made it to the bottom end of that range by now.

normal bmi range: 18.5-24.9

136 lbs- 24.9

101lbs- 18.5

I have this 35 pound ideal range I need to be within medically. But emotionally I want to be the weight that makes me feel light and pretty and worth wanting. I don't know what that is yet, but I'm going to keep dieting and burning calories until I find it. I wish that my weight didn't determine my worth, but it does. It plays into almost every part of my life- getting hired, keeping a job, finding a boyfriend, making new friends, being liked. Fat people have a hard time doing anything worthwhile in a world like this.

And now I'll make that list of New Year's resolutions:

-to be 121 by my 21st birthday

-go on a roadtrip

-travel out of the country

-make a film/radio piece I'm proud of

-get a killer internship or job prospect

-listen to more live music

-volunteer

-spend less money on silly things

-call my grandparents more often