how do I keep ending up here?

Back in Pennsylvania again. Got back from Colombia at the end of June and after only a few weeks at home I'm already feeling kind of stir-crazy. I have a job waitressing at a restaurant across the street from my house. I don't have any friends in the area. I feel lost and worthless and stupid.

I weigh 143 again. Almost 15 pounds up from my low last August. Getting lots of motivation from my fitbit and the new pokemon go app to go outside and gain steps, but I need to get my food intake under control. I'm bored and smoking too much pot and lonely so all I want lately is to hide in a dark place and eat sweet things and chips for hours. I know sugar is enemy #1, but I'm so addicted to it, I can't stop. I just love sugar so much.

Today:

coffee with half and half

sweet cream iced coffee from starbucks (currently sitting in starbucks writing this and a few cover letters for internships I probably won't get because I'm not a student. I wasted so much fucking time while I was in school earning money when I should have been earning experience. I'm such a dumbass.)

walked around the park where my sister runs a day camp to find pokeballs and hunt new pokemon. feel like a nerd but I love it.

cried in the kitchen because I feel so trapped and like my life is being wasted while I sit in my house and do nothing and get fat.

I need to find some new resolved for my diet so at least I can lose weight while I'm home with nothing else to do. Get back into exercise videos and become vegan or something.

downward spiral

I thought I was a perfect applicant. They were practically begging people to apply. But I got rejected. The fact that there was a video part of the application makes me think maybe they didn't want me because I'm not pretty.

When am I going to stop doubting myself so much that I prohibit myself from actually accomplishing anything? I'm freaking out about my future and the fact that I have no job and no place to live come June. I don't even know which continent I'd like to live on once this contract is up. But yet I can't bring myself to even apply to any jobs or programs or schools because I feel like absolutely nobody will want to hire me. Or even let me volunteer with their organization. Because I'm uninteresting and dumb and have no skills and I'm not even pretty. 

Went on vacation alone this week. I went to Medellin and the coffee region and a park where they have the tallest palms trees in the world. I was in an absolutely stunning place and I cried everyday, for hours. I just feel so lost and pathetic and lonely.

It's despicable that I let appearance and beauty and weight matter this much to me. I believe that appearance is the thing that matters least about a person. But still I let myself cry and berate myself for hours that I'm not pretty or thin enough. I'm weak and can't stick to my principles. 

getting larger

Last post I wrote that I was doing alright. And that's still true, kinda.

Haven't weighed myself in a while, not since late January when I went with a friend for a free 2-day gym pass and I was at 63kg/138lbs. That number shocked me, cause I thought I was definitely still under 60. But nearly two months of vacation and travel put on some weight. I know I must be even heavier now.

I had a painful realization of it yesterday sitting in a plastic chair in shorts, seeing my pale thighs splayed out and enormous. Then another, even worse one when I was forced to watch a video of myself teaching. I made the mistake of wearing a tanktop and my ham arms were on full display. (ughhhh... just so completely gross. I'm so pink and copious and flabby.)

One day I want to know what it feels like to be super fit and thin and small. I bet it's the most amazing feeling in the world. Not just for the appearance, just for the ease of moving through the world in a smaller, tighter, more compact form. I want that. I need that. I just wish that food and my body shape weren't so inextricably connected.

I'm okay.

I've got a perfect body,
but sometimes I forget.
I've got a perfect body,
cause my eyelashes catch my sweat. 
-Regina Spektor, "Folding Chair"

I think I'm better. I want to be skinny still, but the overwhelming desire is gone. I can take a negative comment without opening a pit of despair inside myself and spiraling out of control. The feeling of fullness doesn't have me running for the bathroom. Eating better and exercising interests me more now as a way to be healthy, not simply to look that way.

Maybe this won't last. Maybe old thoughts will come crashing back into my mind and I'll fall into old ways. But for right now, I'm fine. Right now it's more important to do well in my job, to fall in love, to spend time with friends, to make creative things, to make money, to travel. And thank God for that. It's rather boring and sad to be stuck in that awful circle of self-hate and pity and curiously looking for other people who share my interest in self-destruction. After nearly ten years of that, I think I'm ready to move on and try something new.