Down to Drown

I started this blog in January - just over six months ago - as a tool to vent my emotions, explore my motivations, reveal my weaknesses... to find a place in a community where I could let my social mask of normality fall and be truthful, above all else.

But my weight in this six months has pretty much maintained. Fasts being replaced by binges. Vomiting being followed by more eating. In the grip of bulimia, flirting with starvation, getting drunk until I fuck up.

I am not classed as 'overweight''.

I never have been.

Is it purely Body Dysmorphic Disorder that made me hate my body? What made my face, my arms, my legs, my torso, my tummy, my bottom, my whole entire white, fleshy, exterior shell become my nemesis?

As far as I can recall, I was 'normal' until the age of nine. That's when I decided I was fat. I wasn't. I can tell you that now, looking back at photos, I was absolutely tiny. But facts don't matter - I hated my body because I was fat. And that was that.

The depression and anxiety kicked in when I was about twelve. I don't even want to talk about that period of my life.

I didn't become anorexic until I was fifteen. It never even crossed my mind that I had an eating disorder. I was just fat and I was sorting it out by starving.

I got small.

I started eating again. I got heavier.

Plateau.

Bulimia. Restrict. Bulimia. Fast. Bulimia.

And here I am.

I will be twenty-two years old in a few months. I start law school in a few months. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life with my head down a toilet. Eventually I want a husband and two point four children. I want to hold down a successful job. I want to be able to walk outside without a panic attack. I want a decent quality of life and a life worth living. I can't do any of these things with an eating disorder.

Since I got caught up with anorexia at the age of fifteen I have never managed to find a way out of this web of disordered eating. That's six years of unadulterated misery at the hands of food, not to mention all the previous years of self-hatred fed by mirrors.

So why has this blog not been the key to getting my numbers down once and for all?

I suppose because I never posted my weight.

Shame, more than anything.

So, here it goes. For the first time, here are my numbers:

HW: 149

CW: 147

LW: 122

GW1: 110

I'm aiming to reach my goal weight by the end of September when I turn 22/start law school. Realistically, it probably won't be until October/November... but I'm gonna work like hell to get there as fast as I can. I see law school as my second chance. I screwed up uni because I was so ill and fucked up. This is really my last chance. If I'm not getting near to my goal weight by the end of Septemtber I'll know that bulimia and weight maintenance will rule my life forever and I'll never get married, never have kids, never be able to hold down a job, never be able to walk confidently out of my own front door.

These are not just words. There are not just hopes.

This is IT. Do it or die. This is my last chance at life.

Do not underestimate how serious I am.

I'm absolutely overwhelmed to have reached 100 followers this week. When I first started blogging I didn't imagine even one person would read my blog. I am always so touched and encouraged by your support, and I simply can't relate how much you all mean to me. Now, I need you more than ever. I'm entering the dark zone again - it's been 6 years since I was a starving machine - I craved no binges for ecstasy, no purging for relief - it was unconscious joy.

147 and sinking downwards.

It's time for Ophelia to drown again; and this time, I'm re-writing the tragic ending. It's time for Ophelia to sink; further than ever before. I'm cleansing my impure body, and slowly, like a chalk cliff face, I will be eroded and eaten away by the waves. Baptism of water, set me ablaze; only when I finally hit the rock-bottom sea-bed drowned and dead can I rise like a phoenix into a new life.

It's time for Ophelia to drown again. Except this time I will not be coming back up.

There is only one way out, and it's down....to drown.