My 21st Birthday

Just returned from a trip to Martha's Vineyard with my friends. 3 of my roommates, 1 friend from school and 1 friend from work. Two of my roommates grew up on MV and we stayed at E's house with her lovely parents and brother. We had a really great time in that classic girly vacation kind of way. Singing Beyonce and J-Lo in E's Dad's huge truck, three in the front row, three in the back row. It was what I imagined having friends would be like when I was a kid.

Luckily I wasn't the fattest girl on the trip this time, only the second fattest. One of my friends, who I love more than words, has let herself balloon since last summer. She complains about it all the time but she eats so much food constantly and hates to exercise (hmmm... sounds a lot like me, except without the purging.) The great thing about being with people constantly is there's not much time to eat secretly. I ate too much for sure, but it was in more reasonable quantities than I usually eat. 1.5 cups of pasta instead of 4, 2 cookies instead of 10, etc.

Today my weight was 135.5, higher than I'd like but not outrageous. But it's a huge mark of failure this year. I swore to myself I'd be 121 by my 21st birthday, but that's tomorrow and I'm still 15 pounds away. All I care about is eating, where I can get my next food fix from. I plan in my head where I'll go and where I can purge. How much I can eat and where I can eat it without anyone seeing me. I wish more than anything that this could all stop. That I could just be normal and eat healthy and be the person I should be. But I can't. Because I'm hopeless. I have zero potential to be anything worthwhile at all.

Karma

My work crush kissed me on Saturday night. I was so happy about it, I was in a good mood for days after. Now I'm pretty sure it was all alcohol induced. We both have the day off today and I asked him last night if he'd like to do anything. He said no and immediately my cheeks went hot and pink. My stomach hurt so much from embarrassment that I thought I was going to throw up.

But then karma kicked in, because 10 minutes later this guy who's been trying to ask me out for ages gave it another shot and I was so shocked that I said yes. I mean, how weird is that coincidence? Then, I think because the universe was trying to give me an ego boost, the guy who runs the trivia night gave me his number on his way out. How about that? 

And yes, I'm still fat. I'm still puking. Life goes on and it hurts every damn day.

53

On my family vacation in Charleston, SC this week.  I flew from Boston to Charleston on Tuesday and arrived here just in time for a pulled pork dinner. Everything here is junk food, but somehow everyone but me is skinny. Dad took our pictures on the beach last night, the whole white shirt and jean shorts thing. I'm editing them for him to give prints to the grandparents. I was in the middle of working on a group shot when just I had to stop because I was crying too much to focus. I'm so fat and ugly it's hard to even see anything else. I wish I could just stop eating and fix this so I could move on with my life but dieting is so hard. I'm eating around 1200 calories a day every day this week, walking a lot on the beach and swimming. I really hope I'm under 134 when I get back to Boston.

I hate my body and my skin and my face. Everything is so hideous. And the worst part is that I'm not even a nice person, I'm mean and gossipy and boastful and lazy and judgmental. I don't want to be this person anymore, I'd rather be dead than to keep being me.

Anyway, enough pity and tears. Today is my mother's birthday, she would have been 53. I wish she were here so I could ask her everything I've always wanted to know about her and hug her and make her a pretty pink birthday cake. She'll have been dead for 13 years on the 11th, I can't believe it's been so long. Everyone says I look like her, but I know they mean that I would look like her if only I were 25 pounds lighter. She was tiny and beautiful, I can only ever dream of being like her.

headphones, bookmarks

Yesterday went a bit better than the day before. I actually made it to the gym where I burned 550 calories according to the exercise machines. Plus I only ended up only eating about 300 calories (peach, cabbage, dressing, strawberries, iced tea) until just before work when I ate an entire bag of popcorners chips (they're dangerously addictive to me for some reason) and immediately purged them. It was 600 calories in the bag, but I'll count 200 since I got everything up. Then I worked 7 hours, only pissed off two customers, and had a good day for sales. I wouldn't say it was a good day, I was still really sad and lonely, but it was better than the rest of my week was.

I've finished a few good audiobooks recently. Here's the few that I'd suggest:

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty: The story revolves around the miniature dramas of a picturesque Australian primary school, all leading to the murder of one of the parents. Themes of domestic violence and sexual assault are explored through the lives of three mothers who all have children in the same kindergarten class.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: Amy is missing and all the evidence says her husband Nick killed her. But of course, nothing is ever as it seems. (this one was my favorite, and it's movie being released in the States in October)

The Silo Series by Hugh Howey: Book 1, Wool explores a society that exists inside an underground silo that stretches 150 stories into the earth. You'll have to read book 2, Shift, and book 3, Dust to figure out how they came to live there and to reach the conclusion of a story you won't be able to put down.

The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood: It's 1923 and Rose Baker's job as a typist at the upper west side police precinct has gotten a lot busier with all the new prohibition-related crimes. To handle the new workload another typist is hired, a graceful and sparkling girl called Odalie. The other typist changes everything for Rose before she even knows what's happened.

Any suggestions for me? I'm always searching for a new book!

fat ass

Gaining, gaining, can't stop gaining. This morning 137, 1 pound over my "healthy range." Just a few weeks ago I weighed 133, it's so soul crushing to gain weight and know that I'm moving in the opposite direction from all my goals. I really wanted to weigh 121 by my 21st birthday, but that definitely can't happen now. My birthday is in less than a month and I am failing astronomically. It's not that I'm just eating badly, making poor choices and whatever. It's that I'm choosing the wrong foods for meals and also adding thousands of calories daily with these monstrous secret binges. For example, yesterday:

• BREAKFAST peach
• practiced driving stick shift with my friend, hated myself intensely the whole time
• LUNCH very fatty mac and cheese
• SNACKwent to a movie and ate reese's pieces and gummies and diet soda
• came home from the movie and smoked with my roommate
• went out to buy binge food
• SNACK ate whole bag of chips, rest of gummies

It was probably 3,000 calories by the time I went to sleep. I know if I could only do the GM diet fully I could lose 10 pounds in a week. But I can never complete it properly because I'm surrounded by temptation. Fatty food in the restaurant, fatty foods in the store, roommate who love to order in and drink a lot of tequila and beer.

The depression is pretty bad this week. All my energy to do things that I normally love is just gone. Maybe I should quit smoking pot. It's making me too slow and hungry and sad. I love it, but I need to stop. I also wish I could quit my job but I need the money. Lately I just dread going and hate being there. I feel like I'm constantly messing up and I'm so sensitive about every tiny thing I do wrong. I've cried during the past 4 shifts.

In less than a week I'm flying to South Carolina for a vacation with my extended family on my mother's side. It just so happens that it'll be my mother's birthday while we're there. I wonder if anyone will make it a big deal, who will talk about her. It seems like no one mentions her at all anymore, she's almost completely gone now. That must be true death, when no one remembers you anymore.

Pity Party

Chatting with my dad, sitting with one leg tucked under the other on the couch. He's asking about our day trip to the beach and detailing the logistics for our up-coming camping vacation with our cousins. I look down in my lap for a moment, but my eyes stop on my thighs bulging out of my denim shorts. I'm so pale I practically glow-in-the-dark and everyone knows white makes everything look bigger, kitchens and waistlines alike. My thighs don't look like they belong to a 20-year-old, they look grotesque and way too old for me.

My stomach is a huge jiggling lump. It juts off my abdomen in the most disgusting way. Handfuls of flesh on my sides, innie belly button, rolls when I lean over. Big bubble butt, cellulite thighs, ugly wonky knees, short legs, pale too-wide feet. Fat wrists, no visible bones, fleshy forearms, pudgy childlike fingers, untoned biceps, round fat shoulders. Double chin, baby fat cheeks, The stretch marks on my hips and breasts are shameful white lines on my pale pink body, only making the fat more obvious. I am the fattest girl in the apartment, fattest member of my family, the ugliest person in every damn picture.

At the beach I spent all my time watching the people walk by and judging their bodies. The skinny girls made me jealous, the fat ones got my pity, scorn, and empathy. The kids made me wish I hadn't grown up fat. My life would be so much better, so much happier, if I hadn't been addicted to junk food, if I'd grown up pretty and likable. My personality is so bland, it's not fair that I have to look ugly too. Aren't fat girls supposed to be funny and smart? I got the worst of everything. It's so hard to keep up conversation when your head is full of self-comparisons and self-pity. There's no socially acceptable way to talk about the thoughts that plague me day in and day out.

Looking down at my thighs, I felt the chicken and diet dr pepper churn in my stomach. I excused myself from the couch to go chug a glass of water and throw up everything left in my stomach. This life is torture. 

A little self-hate for good measure

Lots of adventure in the past few weeks. I made a lot of friends and did a lot of fun things. But I've also gained. Not a ton, but enough to make me feel like absolute shit. I was maintaining 132 for a month or so, but then about 2 weeks ago I bounced back up to 135. I can tell on my body, too. I feel larger, like I'm constantly bloated. But unfortunately, feeling like shit always leads me to more binge eating. I binge maybe a third of what I eat, but I'm trying really hard to stop the purging. I need to protect my teeth and get healthy so I can move on with my freaking life.

My big goal for the year was to be 121 on my 21st birthday. That's only a little over a month away, I don't think it's going to happen. I eat way too much, smoke too much, drink too much. I don't like who I am or what I do, I need to become another person entirely. So I'm joining the Peace Corps. At least, I'm applying, I don't know if I'll actually get in. I can do some good in the world and find myself, or rather, find a better version of myself and learn how to live in that skin.

I wish I could peel away the fat like a heavy coat. This isn't me, this pudgy, ugly person. I'm a beautiful slight creature, small and worthy of love. I am just not who I'm meant to be at this size. Right now I'm a huge bulging girl, average and unattractive. I hate me so much this way.