Beautiful Things

I wish I was a beautiful thing. I wish my mind and body were pure and beautiful. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I want to be harsh and hurtful towards myself as well as others. Sometimes I am a bitch but most of the time I try hard to please everyone around me. I act the 'cute little girl'- it comes with the height. I laugh and smile and let people do as they please. But sometimes I become cold and hard and hurt people.

I hurt K all the time. K is waiting for me to get better so that we can 'be together'. He is the kindest and most fun person I know. But sometimes I shout at him and hurt him and sleep around and let him know. And refuse to eat to show him that no amount of 'just fight it' is going to work on a 4 year old eating disorder. He can't do anything to make me eat or stop me b/ping and I like that.

I also hate it. I hate that he knows. I hate that he cares. I hate that I still do it and I'm hurting everyone around me. I hate that I'm scared of the scale. I hate that I'm still like this and can't move on.

I trust JJ so much that I explain things to him - not face to face obviously - in a way I've never done before. He never really says anything about my angry text messages expressing my total hatred of myself. He just tells me I'm awesome and that he loves me. It's so good that I found him as a friend in all the idiots that walk about the world. I'm scared I'm going to push him away or that something will become too much like with my housemates. I can't have that and so I need to get better for him.

But I still want need to be thin.

Everyone loves a skinny girl because they're in control of their mind and body. So I will be thin. Whatever it takes.

Anna x

Right Back to the Starting Line

It happens slowly then quickly. One minute you're just you. The next your home with your family and everyone is whispering about where all your fat has gone.'Is it time to worry yet?' They don't want to believe it is. Your mum gets angry because that's the only emotion she knows. She can't bare to look at you unless she's shouting. Meal times are agony and you're running out of inventive ideas of where to throw up afterwards. You still believe you can fool everyone.

It's horrible and all I want to do is go back to university where my housemates hate me and I'm failing but at least I could b/p in peace. It's really hard to continue pretending you're in control when it's taken away so suddenly and you realise you need it so much.

I miss JJ. And K. I just want to be hugged and never let go.

Relapse

I'm turning to the internet for help again...

For such a long time I was fine. But then since the beginning of February I've relapsed pretty badly. Everything seems to have gone wrong in my life (oh drama queen - it's not that bad). I'm failing my modules miserably. I got really bad grades last semester and I don't seem to be able to get on top of the work. My housemates I was meant to be living with next year told me the day we got accepted for a house - and where I got to university it's pretty impossible to find accommodation - that they'd decided they couldn't live with me next year because I'm too crazy and it was too hard on them. For me it seemed to come out of nowhere and since then everything seems to have been catching up with me. My other housemates who are going for their year abroad and were the ones I really liked are avoiding talking to me. I feel like everyone is turning their back on me and avoiding me and as I result I've stopped trusting all my friends.

Except this one guy - let's call him JJ - in the last few weeks he's become my closest friend. Right now he's the only person I trust and spend time with (I've become pretty scared of the world). He's the mirror image of me and we've been through a lot of the same stuff and dealt with it in a similar way (i.e. not dealt with it). He doesn't have an eating disorder though. He's gay. But this is where I get all confused. Last Monday night we got totally pissed together and we were saying how wonderful our friendship was because it was totally platonic. Then we were cuddling in his bed and I felt really safe. Then suddenly he wanted to take all my clothes off and have sex with me and we did. Now, I don't do well with sex especially when slightly demanded from my gay best friend who's at the moment the only person I trust and especially when I'm in the midst of my eating disorder.

He felt really bad the next morning. I don't want him to feel bad and we're meeting for coffee later today to hang out before the holidays start tomorrow (I'm off to Skye with the hillwalking club I'm now president of! Argh responsibility!) I just now feel so alone.

My housemates and (would have been) future housemates are pressuring me to go and get help for the whole eating disorder thing but JJ thinks they take everything too seriously and the way that they're acting is never going to get me better. The thing is in the last few weeks I've lost a shit load of weight and I know soon it will plateau but right now it's hard for me to ever want to get help when (as disgusting and horrible and everything that bulimia is) I REALLY REALLY WANT TO BE THIN. There's nothing much else I want anymore. Just to be thin and to disappear.

Anna x

Babysitting

My little cousins (5yo and a 4yo) have come to stay with us for a while because their mother can't look after them. I look after them so my days are spent in the world of children. I run around with them, forget to eat because I'm so busy making their meals. Then once they're in bed and my parents and sister are away I binge on everything I can find and purge - no change there. But there definitively seems to be a different pattern to my days. I have to get up so early so I usually binge around midnight and then stay up a few hours because I always find it hard to sleep.
I feel if I could only sleep well I could be all better.

I learnt today that skipping is probably one of the best exercises and I'm going to try and do some every day.

I have this plan for when I go back to university. My plan is to have melon for breakfast, boiled down tinned tomatoes with herbs for lunch and then brown rice and boiled veggies for tea. I can't wait but now I don't have the time, energy or freedom to be a perfect little girl so I'm just starving all day and b/ping in the evening. I'm such a perfect role model.

My week of camping and hiking went really well. I was around people the whole time and the outdoors and vigorous exercise I think did me a lot of good. I had dried apricots and very plain and simple ham sandwiches in the day and then a vegetarian meal in the evening, which I had very little of because of my discomfort at eating in front of people. I'd eat slowly and seeing as we were serving ourselves in front of everyone I couldn't take very much without feeling like a fatass.

Sorry these posts are so irregular. Hopefully, I'll be on the road to skinniness before long and then I'll have lots to say all the time. At the moment I'm just to tired too fight not to b/p. I need time in the day to plan what I'll eat so that I don't end up bingeing and the food in the house at the moment is just so unreliable that I can't seem to plan at all.

Tomorrow I will try harder (oh there's a phrase I say daily).

Anna

Sweet Tooth

So I dropped 12 pounds in a week and a half and have been absolutely STARVING and holding off so well. I even baked for my sister's birthday yesterday and held away from even licking fingers. But then I went and had two fillings just out of the blue, when I was convinced my teeth were fine. I kept thinking 'ah shit' my teeth are falling apart what have I done and just vowing to carry on eating healthily for the rest of my life (by healthy I mean 300 calories of veg a day basically) and thinking next time I come to the dentist I'll be stick thin and getting so excited. Then my older sister arrived home with these fancy white chocolate chip mahoosive cookies. And I held off for so long I had a two dried apricots and was thinking 'I don't even want it anymore - I am just so strong' when suddenly I was left alone with them and I'd devoured one.

Now I know to me usually this is like nothing. But this morning I was up four pounds and feeling like it had all been for nothing. Especially as today is my little sister's birthday and there is going to be so much food and no healthy options at all. Please let me stay strong. I've got to go camping on Monday and I need my stomach to be flat from being starved even if I can't get my thighs to stop jiggling in that time.

Anna

Melon

It has been just under a month since I last purged. I'm not going to think too much about anything but just keep fighting through until I don't even need to fight the urge anymore. I'm on holiday with my family at the moment in Italy and it is really hot here and I've been living off melon and reading. I just finished The Golden Notebook such a good book. In two weeks some of my uni friends (maybe including MM - this hasn't been confirmed) are coming up to north Wales to climb the peaks of snowdonia over 5 days and camping. Every time I think of it I feel sick to the stomach. I've gained so much weight and don't feel fit enough. The only other girl doing it is the thinest, fittest person I know.

I feel like a blob.

On the other hand I feel kind of proud of myself that I've organised to see people over the summer that I'm not 100% comfortable with i.e. not my best friend. I'm also going to wolverhampton next week to stay with a friend. All very social and in my ED head completely dangerous and scary.

The other day I saw a photo of myself at 12 years old. I don't look like a kid but a full grown woman and I was treated as such. I remember that I never acted like a kid but tried to be mature and sensible always. And now at nearly 19 I feel exactly the same only pretending to be mature and tough but really feeling as fragile and vunrable as a child. I don't know. When things started to go wrong for everybody I was close to and the guilt set in I couldn't cope with not being able to help and look after everybody. And so I gave up and concentrated on destroying myself.

Anna

Four Days In

I've been home four days. I've kept myself busy jogging two miles each morning, spending time at the beach, seeing family. I didn't binge and I was doing well eating around 300 calories a day. Then today I just broke. I'd had a 160 calorie salad for lunch made up of a little chicken smothered in spices, cooked in foil with chopped up tomatoes, salad leaves, cucumber and a tiny amount of potato. I'd had two rhubarb and custard boiled sweets - 58 calories. I was at 218 calories for the day and not having tea. Then I made a batch of pasta sauce to put in the freezer for my mother. I make a fantastic pasta sauce. And then I just made a whole heap of pasta and then just had bowl after bowl. Simple as could be without thinking at all. It didn't feel like I was doing it. I didn't have the internal argument about the pros and cons of binging and then the internal dialogue during the binge of 'oh god oh god I want to die what am I doing to myself?' I just ate and ate. And then went for a shower and purged and purged until my throat felt raw.

So that was my first slip up this holiday. Otherwise being back is setting me straight back into the 'I hate me' ways of thinking. Although at uni I feel loathsomely ugly when I came back I got this wave of just pathetic-ness, isolation and the feeling of having no real friends at all (and why should I have any? (although I did have friends at school)). And it gave me a shock to realise just how far my self esteem has grown by being at uni. I can't decide if it's because I've been away from my mother or away from school.

Either way I am determined to not turn to bulimia but to restricting. This summer I am going to sit in the garden in the bright sunshine, reading and being sophisticated and never eating at all except the odd grape or tomato.

Anna