Almost A Year Has Passed…

It’s been almost a year now, and although the environment which brings me down so much hasn’t changed, I have done something about it. Over the summer following the last entry, I had some of the best days in a long time. The relationship between me and my boyfriend really took off, and we are still together now. I’ve been with him for just over a year and four months now. I turned 17 in August, and where I have never been able to commit to someone, somehow I have found a stability and safety in him. He makes me smile and I feel warm when I’m with him.

My eating habits are still as bad as they were, probably more disordered actually, but I’m more accepting of it now, and it’s a coping mechanism which I can turn on and off. I don’t think about calories every second of every day, but I do fast sometimes for over a week without anything more than a drop of water. But I know when to stop. I smoke a little now, and a lot of weed. I think it has helped with the transitions between how I was then and how I was now.

I get more panic attacks than before, but I’m not as depressed. I have a week in about two months where I’ll go into a slump and feel shit and not get out of bed, but that’s a massive improvement on before. Sometimes I don’t even get that  – I only get depressed at home. I realised that, and so I moved out.

I live with my family in the holidays but in term time I live with my boyfriend in his University halls. The Uni he goes to is really close to where my family live and it’s really easy to get to college from there because there are direct buses. The system works perfectly. My dad let me live with him when I said I needed to go, because he realised how hard it would be for me to go back to college with the situation at home as it was. My parents are splitting up officially now, and I have to say I’m relieved.  I feel guilty that I’ve left my sister with the whole thing, but I think she can cope. I just know that I can’t.

My mum has always had a drinking problem but it’s just got so much worse that I can barely look at her. My dad however, who I never got along with and who always treated me like I was never good enough, seems to have been kicked in the backside my ”suicide attempt” and has been wonderful. He tells me he loves me and worries. The worrying isn’t great, but when you come from a family who never say “I love you”, it means a hell of a lot.

I put “suicide attempt” in marks because I don’t really consider it as such. I think it is far more insane than any ‘normal’ suicide attempt. I don’t think that I’m insane – don’t all mad people say that? anyway – but ‘normal’ suicides can be done by any desperate person. You only have to find yourself on the edge to have the courage to jump. A perfectly stable person could go through an experience which just leaves them shattered and teetering on the brink of darkness, and they might just decide in that fatal moment of desperation that the prospect of fighting through it is too bleak. Mine wasn’t like that. I was clear-headed and calm, I hadn’t taken anything or drank anything, I wasn’t unhappy, I wasn’t angry…I wasn’t really anything associated with suicidal.

I just decided that I felt nothing for my life. I had a little tiny bit of wonderful in it – my boyfriend – and a lot of shitty in it – my family and college and me. It countered each other out in the end and I just felt numb. There was nothing there at all, and all I wanted was to feel some sort of passion for my life. Whether that passion was to die, or to live, it didn’t matter – as long as I FELT and WANTED something. The depression had killed all of my dreams and my hopes and I had nothing to wish for. Nothing seemed worth getting out of bed for. So I decided to force myself to choose. To place myself on the edge of death, with a breathing space of time in which I could back out. I would wait an hour or two for the pills to kick in, and then choose. If I didn’t choose then, I would die, and if I decided that I didn’t want that to happen, then I would tell someone and get myself pumped.

It was even more masochistic than that though, because I wanted to feel pain either way. If I had wanted to die I would have had to go through such prolonged, agonising pain that would last days until I finally died. It would be slow and it would make me regret it. I would suffer – that was the point. If I was to put the people around me through my suicide, I would damn well suffer for it. Not because I wanted to be a martyr, but because that was the logic of the time. Of course I was too self-involved to realised that an agonising death would only hurt those that loved me more. But the logic of the time was that they would be hurt either way, and at least this way I paid for it and there wasn’t any mess. If I chose to live, then I would have to suffer having my stomach pumped or such like, and I would have to have all of my secrets revealed and go through psychiatrists and psychologists and have my family know everything. This was almost harder to deal with than the first punishment.

I did go through the councelling, even though it was me and my parents that sorted it out – the hospital took one look at me and assumed that it was attention seeking and left it at that – they didn’t listen to my story at all. I went through all that hassle – they never found out that much about the E.D. stuff; they found a form I’d been sent to fill out, but didn’t read the whole thing and only got as far as ‘personal image’. They thought I was the same as every other teenage girl thinking she was fat. I was somewhat disappointed that they didn’t care enough to bother to read the whole thing. They might have learnt something. All this, and because I have a fear of things going wrong with my eyes. When I’d waited an hour and a half, my eyes went blind with white spots and I couldn’t see. It was this that made me ask for help. Not because I wanted to live. It was the reactions I got from my boyfriend and my family that made me want to live. Mainly from my boyfriend. Because he’s the one that really loves me and accepts me. He saved me really.

I haven’t cut in months, and the last time I did was only the one session and before that there were months where I didn’t either. That seems to have passed. I won’t say it’s gone because I don’t know what might happen to provoke it, but for now, I feel okay. Not great, but okay. As long as I’m away from that environment, I can survive it.

Sleep Is For The Weak

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’.

Tasting Normality…Will I Eat Or Will I Purge?

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.

Gooseberry and the Rainbow Diet

I just found the Rainbow Diet, and it looks like something I want to do. Starving for a whole week is fun and all, but it f**ks your metabolism up. This is less than 700 kcals per week, but it looks really yummy (if sparse – but better than starving, right?).

Last night my friend and her boyfriend stayed the night (my boyfriend came along too but had to leave in the evening). It was…awful. He got drunk off hardly anything, and got really touchy with her, which made her really uncomfrotable. They didn’t do anything whilst I was in the room, thank god, but it was enough to feel uncomfortable. I hadn’t wanted him to come in the first place, but if it was going to be the four of us I didn’t mind.

But obviously I wasn’t thinking, because I knew that my bf had to leave, it just slipped my mind and I found myself in a hole. I just kept digging it and digging it. I had had such a bad day.

I had been at my grandparents, and had my results back. They want me to have extensive medicals and a joint session with me and my mum so that I can ”tell her how I feel”. I need blood tests and everything to check that my health hasn’t been affected by the laxatives. I was living off them for like, six months…

I bought a pretty dress yesterday though, to make me feel better. I shouldn’t have because it was from money that I owe my mum, but I needed a pick-me-up. Although I’m a little worried that my legs will look fat. But that’s just me being silly, I know that people don’t give a s**t what I look like. It’s just me. The dress is too pretty for them to care. There are bigger girls in my drama group anyway, and they wear dresses and look goreous, so why can’t I?

I got back yesterday with my friends, and my dad was home from abroad. He had just arrived and was in an awful mood. Really surly and rude. He humiliated me in front of my friends, asking them rhetorical questions that made me sound like a horrible person. He made me sound like a complete bitch, and he slagged off our family to them in a really sly way. They felt really uncomfortable and I felt like crying.

Talk about the good of the dress fizzling out.

He had a go at me, for nothing may I add, and when I got angry and told him how he humiliated me in front of my friends, he just said, “I know, you deserve it.” For what?! Seriously? The cat had ‘gone’ on the floor by the bottom of the stairs, and someone had APARANTLY stepped in it. We got back when he was cleaning it up in a foul mood. Well, I said, mum and I weren’t the last to be at the house, my sister was, and so he should ask her when she gets back. He wouldn’t listen. He’d made the assumption that it was me in his head, and he wouldn’t let it go.

He was SO rude!

I haven’t seen him so rude and angry in such a long time and this was NOT the right time, day, place for it. I said to him after he said about me deserving humiliation, “look, ive had a bad day and i DO NOT deserve this”. I wanted to cry the entire evening.

I was so glad that my boyfriend was there, even if just at the beginning. He held me so tightly and kissed me. He let me press my face in his shoulder and not breathe for a little bit. I didn’t cry on him, but only because he was there. I wasn’t alone. Then he left, and I have never missed someone more.

Then this morning once my friend & bf left, my mum accused me of lying to her and “duping” her into having my friend’s bf back just so that they could have sex! They aren’t allowed to sleep at each other’s houses, but it doesn’t stop them having sex! Their parents know full well what they are doing! He stays at hers til one in the morning every day, and I can’t imagine them being quiet.

Mum accused me of “letting people use our house as a shagpad”. How f***ing ridiculous!!

I’m not eating today. Tomorrow neither. Then on Monday, I’m starting the Rainbow Diet. I don’t care what they think anymore. They don’t trust me, and I have done nothing wrong. That anger that has been building that I talked of? It has burst, and I am externally angry as well as internally. And this time, I’m not going to focus on cutting my arms up to look like I’ve been tortured by some sadist, but I’m going to be angry with them. Because they are why I am angry, and I don’t see why I should take the brunt of it anymore. I’m not angry at myself like usual. I am angry at them, and it has been a long time since I have been angry with ANYONE let alone both parents at once.

I’m usually so contained. So, in myself. I hate myself and I punish myself.

Now I hate them too, and they will feel it. They will feel it like a lead bullet to the brain, because the one thing they can’t stand is not getting their way, and I’m not following their rules anymore. I don’t want anything to do with them. Consider me done.

Feeling A Bit…Odd

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.

Not Even A Craving But…

I really want a banana.

The Last Meal

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.

Depression Causes Failure

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.

Depression

I’m feeling a bit low now. I feel empty.

It’s half three in the morning, and I haven’t slept. I figured that there wasn’t enough time; there are so many things that I need to do before I leave the house tomorrow (I’m leaving early).

I’ve been reading mini-biographies from people suffering depression, and so much of what they say rings true. Since not going to college, I haven’t had anything specific to get up for. So I haven’t stayed in bed all day, knowing that I’m meant to be somewhere else. I haven’t had that guilt.

I haven’t got out of bed either. Before I would sleep continually, but now…I spend the entire time on my laptop. Surfing pro ana/mia sites, blogging, playing games, writing poems, writing songs…anything and everything. I hardly leave my room except to pee. These past few weeks…I’ve more or less spent the entire time alone.

Facing people scares me far more than being alone worries me. I’m getting used to my own company now, and with the new approach to my strange form of eating disorder, I get to spend alone time with my food.

There are some days when I really want to kill myself. I was so ready today. So ready… I cut instead, but I wanted more. I knew that I had dinner coming up and I just had to cut. I was hyperventilating, crying, gasping, pulling my hair…I was grabbing at my flesh and trying to tear it off of my body. I even tried to bite off the little pocket of fat (which is nothing really) on the underside of my fingers.

I had to stay in one place; I had to stay still. For a long time I just didn’t move because I knew that if I did, I would reach for my box of sharp objects, and slice through my veins. All because of a pasta meal.

My Stomach Hurts And I Can’t Stop Crying

I ate dinner. The dinner was at the table, I had no choice. It gets worse. There was desert, and no break in between. I feel like I have eaten an entire animal. A cow or horse or similar. My stomach is on fire, I’ve self-harmed already, more to come I’m sure, and I feel like killing myself.

It was a gorgeous pasta dish, followed by an even more gorgeous lemon desert.

The desert though…was made from CREAM.

I was willing to not purge. Then came the moment that they told me about desert, and I knew that I would. It’s too late to purge up dinner now really, and I feel too weak to. Tomorrow and that week, I’m going over-drive on the exercise and starvation. I’m cooking on Thursday, but that’s okay because I’ll have it as a non-table meal.

I feel sick. I actually feel sick.

My stomach hurts, my eyes hurt, my muscles ache…I feel like sh*t.

…….

Just been to the loo, had to run because my stomach hurt so much. After a long period of abusing laxatives, I recognised the feeling, lets put it that way. The only worrying thing about it, was that it was red. Is that like blood or something??

I am really messing my body up.

I cried when I realised that I had to eat. I almost screamed, actually. I searched frantically for ED support lines to call, but it’s a Sunday, so it wasn’t to be. I talked to my boyfriend, and he didn’t help.

I needed help in that moment and I had no where to turn. It was the first time I have ever asked for help, and no one was there to hear it.