fighting for me

I need someone to fight for me, to be disappointed when I skip doctor's appointments, to realize when I'm pulling bullshit to get through. It's like because I'm not visibly sick I'm not any cause for alarm. Right now I'm not accountable to anyone, if I win or lose it's all on me. What a terribly lonely feeling.

Last week I sent an email to my therapist at the eating disorder center saying I wanted to quit treatment. She responded just wanting to know if I was going to continue therapy, or stop that as well. She didn't try to convince me to stay, tell me I needed to try harder. I'm slipping though the cracks, no one is going to catch me. Part of me is wishing for a heart attack or something serious enough to take some of these decisions out of my hands.

the key

I think I know how I can win this game. Simple. Just spend more time on planning and strategy. If I plotted out each day in advance, when I would eat each meal and possible options, I'd never need to panic or spin out emotionally over whether or not to buy anything with carbs in it. But to plan, I must be more focused, and set time apart for the planning. That's the key, really.

But what if it works? What if I'm successful? Not just in this weight thing, this thing that really in the end only matters to me. What happens if I can get my shit together and venture into the larger world? I'm starting to realize that I'm always going to be me when I grow up. I'm not going to magically transform into wonder woman in order to be independent. Little me, feeble and frightened, has to do all the things I've dreamed up for myself. In my own skin, I have to chase a career and a relationship, to travel, to earn money and build a life, a family. How could I do any of those things? I'm just not capable, I'm inadequate.

I'm so fucking terrified of growing up and growing older. What happens when I'm 25 and 30 and 40? I'm only good at being young. Maybe I'll always be this emotional, but I hope not. I'd rather be peaceful, accepting. Confident. I want to be a lot of things.

xxx-xxx-xxxx

Each time I think of posting, I think but I just did that. And each time it has been more than a week. I miss posting regularly, and it's nice to be able to look back on. The trouble is that looking back makes me so sad. When I remember things in terms of time, last semester or October 2012 I tend only to remember the good things, the big things. Reading old posts brings back everything, the heartbreaking depressingasfuck details of my everyday life.

I'm so tired, and my legs are sore. But I'm excited to be thinner. I will be thinner, it's summer and I'm focused. I've been kicked out of IOP (my outpatient program) for poor attendance. Not that I was actually making any efforts towards getting better. Yes, I puke a little less now, but I'm also able to eat far fewer calories now that there is more sunlight and less self-hatred.

Actually, the depression isn't that bad lately. I'm feeling okay. I'm tired and missing having a man in my life, though. I'm seeing a therapist now, but I still have to find a nutritionist. Well, I guess I used to have to since that was a program requirement but I guess now that I'm not in IOP I don't have to find a nutritionist after all. Oh well. I think I'd just like to get very sick. Move into the land of thin and restriction, control and constantly getting smaller.

April now

I keep a journal of everything I eat and everything I do now. It used to be an app on my phone, now it's a little blue book. I like the book, I can write things exactly how they are supposed to be.

This morning I went for a run. I was planning to run towards the river, along the running path to Harvard, then back. I only made it half way, my ears were cold and my head hurt from the caffeine pills I've been taking on an irregular schedule.

I don't know when I've ever been so careful about what I eat. When I've ever measured and prodded my food with such precision. Writing this, I'm trying not to cry. I'm feeling smaller, prettier, but also so unbelievably constricted, hopeless. Skittering energy. Launching and crashing, hyper-active then hiding away from anything that involves movement or people. Only want to cry and have someone hold me. I want someone who loves me to take care of me. No, I will have to do that all myself.

What will you do? What will you be? How will you survive? What will your story be? They all want to know. I wish I had the answer, or at least a more convincing response. I wish I had the follow through, that my spoken-aloud dreams weren't straight lies.

Oh I'm so sick. I hurt so badly. I don't know where the cure is, how I will ever find it. I look and I try and I whisper, help. 

over stretched

I just want to yell at them that I couldn't make it to class because I'm so depressed. That one morning I missed class because I lost myself in a binge and purge episode. Dealing with food and all this sadness is driving me crazy. But no, I have to have documentation and meet with a hundred administrators which only makes me feel more dramatic and like such a fraud. I'm too fat to have an eating disorder, that's what they'll think. No, more likely they'll think, she's so fat, must be the puking kind.

For so long I've been operating on a just get through it mentality. I'm getting near the end of my rope. Last week and this week I've been working too much. The money is great, but my nerves are fried. This weekend was so much work, and the entire time I was just making myself sick. On Friday I restricted then drank then binged. All of Saturday was spent binging and purging (twice in the toilet at work) and thinking about binging and purging and the enormous gulf of self-hatred that's taken up residence in my gut. My enormous fucking gut.

Plateau on my weight, always 133 or 134, days with higher numbers were spent jittering on too much caffeine and under 600 calories. This life I've created for myself is some sort of personally designed torture.

But, Oh! I have so much to be thankful for. It's pathetic that I'm this unhappy with all my piles of blessings. And I have no more to say.

Mar. 16

Some days, when I'm listening to loud music in my headphones and zoning out, I scroll and scroll through tumblr or different blogs for thinspo. A lot of it scares me. I don't want to be scary thin, and I can never ever look like a VS Angel, none of it is relevant to what I want to be. I just want to be this magical "perfect", I don't even know what the goal looks like. Just smaller in general.

On monday I spent most of the day in the ER getting my blood drawn and my heart rate measured so I could be cleared medically to start treatment. I'm in an outpatient program that involves a lot of group therapy and eating a regulated meal. The meal is torture, I swear. We have to meet quantity requirements in a few food categories, and everything always feels like too much.

I've been so afraid of purging since treatment started, and since the dizzy spinning incident, that I've been avoiding anything that might make me purge. Which is most foods in any average portion size. On the days I go to the outpatient program I end up eating 1200 calories or so, and on the days I don't go it's been about 500-900 calories a day. And it's been working, which feels nice. On Sunday, when I got home from Philadelphia and Washington DC I weighed 138 pounds. Then on Thursday I weighed 132. And today 131. I want to be at 129 by next week, I need this.

Tonight I'm going on a date with a guy who runs the trivia at work. I'm nervous that it will be awkward, or that I will embarrass myself. I'm also nervous about the fact that I have to tell him I definitely can't see him again, I really am not up to dating or being with guys at all right now.

from down here

Rock bottom isn't a place I've seen, at least not yet. But I felt a little closer to it yesterday. Most of it I spent alone, wandering Boston eating everything I could think of and vomiting it back up before the magic 1 hour mark passes. I don't know if this is true, but in my head at least, the stomach doesn't start doing anything with all that food until about 1 hour after it's eaten.

Instead of class (which I don't really like to attend anymore) I went to go smoke with my friend. He and I have been friends only for a few weeks, but he's a really nice guy. Yesterday I had to finally tell him we can't sleep together anymore. It hurts me too much to sleep with someone who doesn't care about me and who I don't care about in that way either. We had that conversation and things were fine afterwards, at least until his roommates came home. They're all acting majors, and they're too much personality for me to keep up with. I freaked, and left in a hurry, I'm sure they noticed.

Thats when the wandering an eating started. And so much purging. My stomach muscles are actually sore from all of it. By the end of my day I was exhausted and sad. I ended up at a bar with my friends, and only 3 beers later I was vomiting again, not by choice though.

My current idea is that I was so low on electrolytes that my body just couldn't do it anymore. It was so embarrassing to lose control that way. And it almost scares me enough to call for help.