They don’t know why I did it. I don’t really think I know why I did it. But none of that changes the fact that…well, I did it. I took the 80 paracetamol pills and I sat down, ready to wait for a week for death to come. Everyone is baffled as to why I did it, because it was a normal day, and there was nothing to provoke it, nothing at all.

There were no arguements, nothing happened that would upset me; it was a very average, normal day. The rage inside me had been building but it was at a plateau at that point. I didn’t feel anything particular that would make me make such a decision. Yet, I did make the decision.

To me, it was just a game. Once I opened the first pill wrapper, I wouldn’t be allowed to stop. Once that first one had been opened, I had to take them all. It wasn’t questionable. I didn’t even think that I had a choice about that. Once the first one had been breached, the rest would follow, that was how it would be and there was nothing I could do to stop it, even though I was the one initiating it all, even though I was the one in control.

There is nothing like attempted suicide to realise your own mortality, and your own power.

I sat on my bedroom floor, and I had a plan. It was easy and it had already formulated itself before I had even thought it out properly. I would take them in tens, and I would unwrap them first, and then swallow them together. Once the first pill was unwrapped it was easy to unwrap the others, and place them beside each other, one by one. Before I knew it, there were ten pills in front of me, waiting to be swallowed. It was just a game, so swallowing them down was easy. There were no tears.

I had cried before I had started the game, in my clear moment, but they had quickly subsided.

I went through the eighty pills easily. It didn’t hurt. I didn’t feel scared or worried or upset. I was fine. This was how it was meant to be. This was how you played the game.

I waited for half an hour, thinking about what I had done. Then I waited for another half hour, accepting my choice. You see, the game was this: if I died; I died. If I lived; I lived. It wasn’t about the end result, because I didn’t care enough about my life to care about that. It was about my strength, and the fight in me.

If I got to a point where I decided I wanted to live, I would have to fight for it. I would have to fight hard, and I would have to give all my secrets and my previous life up to live again. I would have to sacrifice and be honest and I would have to go through pain and humiliation to live. It would be my punishment, but it was in the rules. If I decided that I wanted to die, then I would die a painful, slow death, and that in itself would be punishment before I was finally let go. Let out of my misery.

I would have to fight to live. Or suffer to die.

Both seemed fitting.

Only it didn’t work out that way. I have a thing about my eyes; I don’t like them being messed with. So when after an hour, my eyes started burning and blurring and the light in the room (which was dull) burning into my eyes, I freaked. I realised what I had done; how the game had turned on me.

I sat on the stairs, staring at the banisters - it was midnight on a Friday night and my parents and sister had gone to bed but my sister was wandering about for water. The light between the banisters was burning into my eyes and my head felt like it was about to explode. I sat there, rocking myself, thinking how stupid I was. Then my sister came past, and seeing my in such a state she asked what was wrong, and all I could say was, “I’ve done something really stupid”.

I showed her the empty packets, and she was horrified when she realised that I had taken them all. She got my mum, my mum got my dad because she couldn’t drive - drinking - and they ran me to the hospital. I felt sick. I threw up in the waiting room a little bit because the drive had been bendy and fast and had turned my stomach. No pills came up.

I was numb. Delirious. I hadn’t slept for weeks, and I couldn’t think straight. I kept seeing things. I was confused. I was laughing at nothing, talking to my worried parents about colours and shoes. They would stare at me teary eyed, and hold my hand tightly as they made me drink charcoal in a hospital bed in A&E. Hours of drinking and throwing up went by. Blood tests, pulse rate, throwing up, more charcoal, and then there was the drip.

The two hour drip, and then the four hour. Neither was enough, I’d taken too much. So they put me on a 16 hour drip and wheeled me into a ward. I couldn’t think straight, let alone see straight. This wasn’t anything to do witht he drugs, it was sleep derivation mixing with the situation and my conveniently deranged mind.

On Sunday, the last day I was there in the hospital, my mum told me how she and my sister had gone through my room. They’d found the broken glass, the razors and the blades. They’d found hidden alcohol and laxatives. Sitting there, my organs and muscles aching because they were trying to work without assistance, I just breathed. I didn’t feel it.

I still don’t feel it. To me, it’s all surreal. Yes, they know. They also know about the food stuff, because as well as the laxatives they found my eating disorder questionaire and read the answers. Yes, they know all that. But I can’t let myself feel it. If I do, I might do it again. But this time, I wouldn’t do it as a game, to test myself. Because I don’t think I would need a test anymore.

Since then, all I can think about, is how I need my secrets back. How they make me who I am, and how I miss them. How I miss the double life, as much as it caused me pain. I had just found acceptance within myself for who I was, and then this happened and it went away and I have to work to get that back.

In a way, the challenge makes it even more fun. I cut myself yesterday, but on the leg. No one knows, and they won’t look, because they think I cut on my arm. To them, I’ll be getting better, but to me, I’ll be getting my old life back, slowly, slowly, but still. If they are looking at me, then maybe that’s good. As long as they are looking in the wrong place.

I keep thinking that I should have waited longer, waited for the eye thing to normalise. I know it will now. It went when I was at the hospital. Ironically. I wish I had waited longer. I didn’t fight hard enough. I chickened out. I was a coward. A stupid, scared little girl who didn’t know what she was doing. It won’t be paracetamol next time, but next time, I won’t wait an hour and then freak out. I’ll wait until I know that I could die, and then I’ll decide if dying is worth it. Then I’ll decide if I’m going to fight hard or give in to the pain.

The doctors said I was “past councelling”. They’re deciding my treatment now. This should be fun. Just another game, right?

Oh my god.

There is this drug called spice, which is a blend of herbs and, you guessed it, spices. It’s one of many ‘alternative’ drugs. It is similar to weed, except lighter, fluffier and without the underlying paranoia and heaviness. It isn’t as deep as weed, it’s more playful and you feel interested in everything you see, rather than feel like everything is okay in the world and that you understand everything like weed. It’s also weirder in that although your head is completely spaced out, you appear normal exteriorly, and your body is normal and your responses normal - but it’s like your body is actually on autopilot and controlling all your reactions.

I took the biggest two drags I have ever taken before, but I only took four drags altogether of it. That was at two this afternoon. That was…ten hours ago. I’m still high.

The greatest thing, the very greatest thing, is that once you are over 18, it is completely legal.

This week and last week I have been eating normally. I’ve been talking normally. I’ve been acting normally. I haven’t self harmed. The more I eat, the more I feel normal. But it’s horrible. A double edged sword and it confuses like nothing I could imagine. I’m eating normally, and I know that it’s a healthy and good thing. That everyone I know thinks that it is a good thing. So why do I find myself crying for no reason, thinking of the food I’ve eaten, and wondering why I’m bothering?

I fell into this, I don’t even remember making the decision. I made a conscious, spontaneous decision not to self harm, and I think that I’ll stick with that. Scars are ugly and scabs and dried blood is inconvenient. I’ve stopped cutting but every now and then I find myself hitting or scratching myself. Punching things. There is so much anger there. It’s almost as if stopping the self-destruction has brought forth the need to destroy…but something other than myself.

I’m sick of being ugly. Being ashamed of my skin. Scars and scabs, blood and bruises.

Although I know eating normally makes other people feel better, I just feel fatter and fatter and uglier. I can stop cutting, stop self harming, but I’m going to get thin. If I need an obsession, this is better than weed, alcohol and self harm.

P.S If you are in England and have been watching Skins on E4, how amazing is it?! I love Effie.

I have to say to all those people online who have given me support: thank you.

I needed to do that first because they have been so warm and supportive, and they could never understand how much it has touched me. I come online knowing that I have to write, because if I don’t, they might worry whether I am still here or not. Just being here…and they don’t even know me. They took the time to write because they thought that my life was worth something and they don’t even know me.

That’s beautiful.

So I have eaten loads in the last couple of days. Without purging. Like, the amount an obese person would eat in a week, that is how much. Anyway, I had the munchies so there wasn’t much anyone could do. I’m strangely blase’ about it. I had a bit of a panic attack last night, about food, that is, and so I took some laxatives…

I don’t regret taking them. I just don’t want to get addicted to them again. My body was so screwed up after that. Before, I would be having at least three laxatives every morning, and an average dosage throughout the day would be about…eight? Anyway, I was solidly abusing laxatives daily for about six months. There was a few times when I would take 20 in one go…or was it 40? I think I’ve done both, actually.

The whole thing was painful, unnecessary (they don’t make you thin), but slightly rewarding mentally. Until I actually changed tact and thought about the biology of what I was doing and how screwed up my body was from it.

As long as I don’t get addicted, I’ll be fine.

Talking of addiction, I have been feeling really weird since having that weed. I mean, I’ve smoked weed before, but this was something else. I think I was high for two days straight. I think my body got used to it or something, because since then, and it’s been about three days now, I have felt really…odd.

I’ve been really scarily honest with people, my anxiety about the truth is slightly gone, I’ve been wandering around laughing to myself, imagining the weirdest things, staring for hours, having really bad headaches (I never get headaches), and being really eerily calm…but then it twists and I feel really paranoid about everything because I know that something has messed my brain up…and I’m not thinking normally. I’m not being myself.

I don’t feel like myself, and I’m being too open and not caring. I went to the bathroom and when I was leaving it, I saw a disposable razor that no one had used. I picked it up and held it in my hand, intending to keep it for the next time I self - harm because (although I tend not to use them anymore) my other one is getting a bit horrible. Anyway, I walked straight out of the bathroom, it just hanging in my hand, and had a brief conversation with my mum. She knows that I don’t use disposables, but she probably made an excuse in her mind.

Then there was when my dad kept coming into my room this morning to talk to me, and I swear I was half asleep but with my arm on show. Either way, usually I would hide the razor in my trousers, or up my sleeve, and I NEVER let my arm out on show. No matter how conscious I am.

The thing is, my friend (one you’ve not heard about before) is a bit like this. It’s not about not caring, it’s about not even thinking about it. You don’t really care about your life enough to care about the reactions you get. Sometimes, I do things just to shock. Make life a little more interesting. Not that I don’t have enough to think about…but I still do it. I guess in a way it’s a way of me bringing people into my world. Giving them a window into my head.

I don’t know whether this strange behaviour and feelings is because I chose to commit suicide, or because of the weed. But although the things that I’m doing and feeling are quite in my normal boundaries, there is something not right there. I can’t pinpoint it, but it bothers me.