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?

My boyfriend and I broke my bed the other day whilst having quite *cough cough* forceful sex, and I haven’t been able to sleep on it for a few days. He’s coming over this weekend to help me make a new frame from an identical bed we have. Luckily, my bed was one half of a twin pair.

Other than that though, I don’t want to sleep. At night I can relax, and usually don’t sleep then anyway. It just doesn’t settle well with me. I don’t like sleeping alone, and I don’t like sleeping in silence or the dark really. Daytime is safer, more secure, and nighttime is a time for parties and fun.

I miss self harm. It’s the first time that I’ve missed cutting. A large part of me wants to start cutting my legs, and lying about it. If I did it in a certain place, on the inside of my thigh, not even my boyfriend might see it. The only reason I stopped was because it seemed right. It was what everyone wanted.

The scars are on my arm and they’ll be there forever. I have to cover them with make up next week because I’m in a play and can’t wear a bandage. Part of me feels like such a freak, but really, I’ve accepted myself for who I am. I’ve told a few friends now, and they still like me. They worry, of course they do, but they know that I would never go too far.

Although, that I’m not so sure….

My childhood best-friend told me the other day that a friend of his was rushed into hospital after taking a paracetamol overdose. She was trying to kill herself. I don’t know if I’ve told you this already, but even if I have, you can see it’s been playing on my mind. His reaction…he was so worried and concerned for her. She was just a friend he had made this year, he can’t have known her longer than six months. I’ve known him since I was a baby, we’re like brother and sister.

It would hurt him so much, him and my family, and everyone else.

But there I go again, stopping myself just because of other people’s feelings. It isn’t how it’s meant to be. I want to do what I want and not worry about their feelings. As long as what I’m doing is for me and not to purposely hurt them, then at least there is just cause for me to behave however.

I know I won’t kill myself. It’s just…the amount I think about it, it’s phenominal.

I took five laxatives today, and I purged food before too. Technically yesterday, but seeing as I’m not sleeping it makes little difference. Tomorrow (when the sun comes up), I’m going to do everything that I need to do. I’m going to tidy up the house, go down to the beach, ask for a job at the cafe and at the restaurant down there, and go for a run.

I’m going to have half an apple for breakfast, and half when I get back from the beach. I’m going to fake a big lunch. Because my diet is so bad, what with it not being regular, my weight goes up and down like a yoyo. I’ve put on half a stone just this week, and it’s getting towards the end of the month and I need to be lower for my personal weigh-in.

I’ve let myself accept that this month might not count, because it’s been a tough few weeks emotionally. I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been, and yet, I’ve also been the angriest. I’ve never felt rage such as this. The need to destroy.

Tomorrow is a new day, and although I won’t have lost much by the end of the week, I have until Tuesday. That’s…four full days between now and then. Today (Friday - seeing as it hasn’t started properly yet), Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Tomorrow is the only day I have to sneak around my mum.

On Saturday and Sunday I have day-long rehearsals, and on Monday and Tuesday the performances. This month I am not letting anything other than fruit and veg pass my lips. No sauces, condiments, fatty, salty or sugary foods will grace my plate. Hardly ‘grace’, more like ‘contaminate’.

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.

Today, well technically yesterday seeing as it’s just past midnight, I purged. I also exercised (although not as much as I should have) and cut. I only cut the once, but I so needed it. Needed it like an addict needs a hit.

Anyway, tomorrow (technically today yada yada) I’m starving completely and going to a hair dressers to fill my day. At least making the appointment. Tomorrow I’m also going to tidy the house, and sort some stuff out. Finish filling out job applications. Fun, fun, fun.

Keep myself busy, and I’ll be okay.

I’ve been talking to my boyfriend and my friends, and slowly things about me are seeping out. I mean, both my friends now know about the ED stuff and the depression, when they didn’t before. I tell my boyfriend everything (almost)… He said the other day about how I can be really drama-queen-ish about everything, and I guess I am. He doesn’t know the full extent of what I feel though, so he can’t fully judge…but I do over-act it, I guess…

Loads of girls purge and self harm, and although I may be worse on the self harming thing than anyone I know, it’s still a common outlet that people my age and older use. Even younger, but less often. What I’m trying to say, is maybe this isn’t something to worry over. Maybe I should just take it as it comes and accept that this is part of my life.

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.

Although the thoughts are still as fresh and strong in my mind, I haven’t killed myself yet.

It sounds so melodramatic and over the top but I can’t get the thoughts out of my head. I was at a party on Saturday night, and because of the amount of weed I had had, and the mixture of that and a bit of drink, not as much as usual, but it was the mixture which screwed me up, anyway, I got sick.

I’d been having a really deep conversation with two girls who I’m friends with, but had never been amazingly close to. We were party friends. Then I found out that they purge and self harm too, although not as bad as me (them saying that my self harm was bad really messed with my mind). My boyfriend was there, and he was really out of it. The whole episode confused and freaked him out.

Anyway, I heard what they felt, and then I just felt sick. I started to throw up, and I don’t even know if I did it on purpose or not. I wanted to throw up…I was thinking about purging, but knew I couldn’t because they were all there in the bathroom with me…and then I just threw up. I made the retching myself, and the sick followed.

As they talked about purging and self harming I cried into the toilet, and I tried to hide it because the hurt was so much. My boyfriend noticed, but didn’t say anything because he knew if I was hiding it I would be hiding it for a reason.

What he doesn’t know is that the whole time I was thinking about the drugs that I have collected, and when I could take them. Whether they had enough just at her house so I could start of then.

My boyfriend left, he had to take the car back. Thinking about it, he was probably wasted still from the weed. I don’t think he had drank. It would be the second or third time he drove stoned. He’s usually so sensible and careful…maybe I’m a bad influence. That and the weed.

Anyway, he’s left, and the girls changed me and washed my hair for me.

I don’t remember much of that period, and I know that I fell asleep pretty much as soon as they left. I was covered in bathroom towels to keep me warm, and I was wearing my friend’s boyfriend’s jumper. Why are guys hoodies so much more comfortable than girls?

Anyway, I woke up when everyone was settling down, and then went to bed with my boyfriend’s brother and one of my friends. I made a pact with my friend not to eat after Sunday. Nothing happened with the brother, but it wouldn’t have anyway. It was nice to sleep beside him. He makes me laugh. I needed that right then. I also needed the comfort of another body without having the worry of them trying anything on with me.

I didn’t cry that night. After the toilet incident, I didn’t cry. I felt out of it and completely messed up, but I didn’t cry.

I still feel out of it and the weed is out of my system.

I keep on going into trances and not caring about what people are saying to me, or what I’m saying to them. My head and my mouth are no longer connected and I’m watching myself disance myself from everyone else. I don’t know why I’m doing it, but maybe it’s because I want to die so badly.

I hate all of this…

The thing is, although I’m not religious, certainly not Christian (although I was brought up Methodist), I’m scared that if I kill myself, there will be a Heaven and a Hell, and that I was wrong. I’ll go to Hell, and there’ll be no escape from that. None. I’ll be lost and alone for all eternity with no chance of redemption.

But sometimes…even that fear (and it’s a real fear) isn’t enough to stop me wanting it. Lately, it hasn’t been enough.

Maybe I should self harm more…I haven’t lately, but maybe I should. Maybe it will help rid it out of my system.

Maybe.

Today I have eaten over one thousand kcals. I’ve only burnt off half off what I have eaten, and I haven’t purged. Although I know that later in the month, when my monthly deadline looms closer, I will regret this. But today is symbolic of the food that most people are satisfied with eating on a regular basis. I feel like I have binged and have gained a million pounds.

The reason for all this?

Sitting beside me on my bed, unopened, lies my results. The questionaires. The information on EDs.

In one hour, when my final meal has gone down and I cannot succumb to the urge to purge (which I will inevitably be driven to after seeing the results), I shall open the dreaded thing.

So long, I’ve waited for this, and still it feels too soon.

Tonight I went to a charity concert at my old school, and the acts were mindblowing. There was some talent that I couldn’t believe. My boyfriend, being part of the show, was amazing, and I was so proud. But there was this one guy…my first proper crush, ironically (because at the time he had been a sports guy, part of the ‘cool’ people, but now he’s a musician, and if I had known he had it in him then I might have shown a deeper interest in his personality and tried to get to know him); he was…the things he did with that acoustic guitar would put Newton Faulker to shame.

Anyway, back to food: I’m going to cook dinner tomorrow, but I’m not going to eat it because it won’t be at the table. I won’t eat anything. I will tidy the house, burn off at least 500 kcals on my stepper, and sort out my stuff for my trip with my boyfriend on Friday. On Friday I will have a banana for breakfast, burn off 1000 kcals in the gym throughout the day, and then have soup for dinner (I have to have something because I’ll be with my boyfriend and he needs to eat) - no bread.

Saturday…I starve. Sunday….I’m too ‘ill’ to eat, and yet again, I starve.

What I’m trying to do is break up the starvation sections so that my metabolism keeps going. This is very important in that I need it to actually process the foods and burn fat.

It’s getting hard to pass the time.

Half an hour has gone. Less, probably. I need more time. I feel like a bomb is ticking, ticking, ticking.

THIN IS BEAUTIFUL,

EVEN THINNER IS PERFECTION

Last night I dreamt that I went to Renfrew Centre, the American eating disorder centre from the documentory ‘Thin’. I was sitting at a table, and there were a few councellors and patients sitting with me. They were eating, slowly, precisely, and I just watched them for a bit.

The councellor asked why I was there, and I could feel myself about to cry. I told her about how I feel towards food, how I try never to eat, how I abuse laxatives, how I purge, and how only those I have told know. I felt ashamed and fat, sitting next to these beautifully thin girls, picking at their food.

She nodded, and with a slight smile, replied, “so you came here for some comfort, for some support”. I nodded weakly, slightly confused. I had gone there because I had finally acknowledged that I needed help. Then she looked at me, in a way that said, “you can leave now”. I was being brushed off. I wasn’t thin enough for saving.

I left, with one of the patients helping me with my coats (I had brought four because I had arrived so cold that one wasn’t enough), and we walked out towards the car. She hugged me tightly and said, “you can do it”. I didn’t know whether she meant recovery, or thinness. Then she said, “I’ll miss you, come back to us?”

She only whispered it in my ear, so that my friends putting my coats in the car didn’t hear. I nodded, and whispered back, “we can be beautiful together, just you and me”. Then I got into the car, with three guys that I have previously dated. They didn’t know what the centre was. They thought I was visiting a friend. They didn’t even ask.

As they joked about and played loud music, I covered my shaking hands and my ice cold fingers with one of the coats, and looking out of the window, I cried silently.

I’m feeling really low right now. I fell asleep and didn’t get up early enough to grab a lift with my mum into town. I was going to burn 2000 kcals today at the gym. It’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon now, and I’m at home, moping. I can’t believe I fell asleep! I couldn’t go in like I was, I needed to dye my hair first.

I dyed it blonde over red the other day and boy that didn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t but my boyfriend wanted me to try anyway so I did. Now I look like a SunnyD advert. White blonde roots (where it dyed my natural blonde hair) and red, blonde, orange and gingery tones everywhere else. It looks like fire. Or some strange bird of parasise.

I’m feeling really horrible. Everything is really bad at the moment and last night tops it all of really. After throwing up my desert, and keeping my dinner in (I figured that after five days fasting I could afford it and I was going to gym it away anyway), I ate five bananas. Bananas are my only weakness.

I still don’t want food.

There is nothing in it that appeals to me. What I do want, is to buy my own set of scales. That way I don’t have to creep into the bathroom and weigh myself. The scales we have make a noise when you stand on them because they are old, and so everyone upstairs knows what you are doing. I have to edge myself onto them when it’s late at night, otherwise they’ll guess about my obsession.

Today I’m not going to eat.

There aren’t amazing amount of kcals I can burn from the stepper in my room, not in my weakish state, but I’ll try for 1000. I’ll just keep hopping onto it all day. While on my break I’ll make a fake meal, and make it huge, like a full on binge. I won’t eat it of course, but I’ll leave it out so that it’s there waiting for them when they get home. Maybe I’ll open a can of macaroni cheese and have it with toast…then I’ll make a fake breakfast, cereals and toast. I’ll leave snack evidence in the living room.The banana skins, maybe.

I’ll also dye my hair just before they get back, and say that I was eating whilst waiting for it to settle. I don’t know. Anything to avoid eating. I feel really weird. My stomach is like relaxing, but at the same time it’s beginning to show the first signs of hunger. Which is stupid because after all the time, it should have got used to being hungry.

Although to be honest, I think that it’ll pass and it won’t be hungry for most of today. I mean with the amount I ate yesterday, compared to the four previous days? Come on! That was a feast! My stomach should have shrunk and be grateful for that for days!

Can’t believe I could have worked out 800 kcals already. Cannot believe it.

I’m such a loser.