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Context

The head never shuts up. And everyday I think a little something and write it down, add a bit, think a bit. I hate Christmas. No, I don't hate it, I dread it. I find it the most depressing time of year. Empty and terribly depressing. Me and my Mum, pretending to be happy. A depressing meal. Disgusting 'treats'. Food at the centre of everything. Stuck in this sad house choking back the tears. Every year since I was 11 years old, it's been empty and unbearable. And this year, I'm running away. I'm leaving for Egypt tomorrow morning for a week. I'm sick of the cold and the emptiness. The most wonderful thing about travel is that you can become so far removed from your life back home that it's almost as if it doesn't exist. It's the most liberating feeling. I don't have to do Christmas. I don't have to do it! I don't have to curl up alone, stuffing my fat bulimic face, wishing there was something stimulating on the TV to distract me. ...

Old habits...

Anonymous said... stop binge eating stop throwing up stop taking laxatives and you'll be fine. eat a bit and starve the rest of the time. if you can't starve eat a little bit of fruit or veg. if you carry on like this, if you lose alex, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. get it together. 14 June 2010 13:18 I never forgot this comment - so I went back to search for it. I never forgot it because even at the time, I knew it was so true, and I wasn't strong enough - am not strong enough - to end the binge and purge cycle. Sometimes I get these pro-ana comments which are harsh but true. I like them. I noticed how many comments I have that I've never been able to respond to properly - and I apologise, because I haven't had the time to show how every single one has been read and taken into my heart. I'm going to catch up and write back this next week.   When I was at my most disciplined I was wonderfully thin. In the beginning of my second year o...

Packing up the dreams and moving on

I taught myself to hate food when I was 15. No - that's not entirely true. I didn't teach myself anything, I just learnt it... somehow, I learnt to hate food. I was asked in an interview last week: What makes you angry? I made up some "excellent interview answer" bullshit with a fake smile on my face. But the truth is, food makes me angry. I have to move seats on the train when someone in my view is eating a McDonalds out of a brown paper bag. I have to put on my earphones to block out the greasy crunching of crisps from the person sat behind me. The rustling of foil packets or the stench of fried foods makes ME feel gross. I feel so angry and disgusted it makes me want to scream. But do you know what is really the grossest thing ever? This is the highest figure on the scales I have ever seen in my entire life. I'm a lump. I'm a thing. When I lost Alex I let go of everything I had been fighting for. I let all my demons take over. I became everything...

Acting Lessons

So, as I mentioned in the previous post, last Friday, I went back to my university city for the big reunion dinner that evening. As is protocol now, fasting, laxatives, exercise preceded. This could not shift the scales from the undeniable fact that I was 5 kg fatter than when I went to this reunion dinner this time last year. Yes. Fucking Yes. I had my appointment with my psychologist in the morning before I got on the train. She helped me get through it. She is amazing. It's good to write down and map out all my irrationalities. I didn't crumble that evening - I went, I held my head up high, and I still looked nice. I did it. The immeasurable waste. It's always a waste isn't it, this stupid quest of mine. It's never made me happy. All the money and the hours of aching muscles and the nights of hunger and vomit... I do it for something grand, something wonderful, something I deserve... something I can't put my finger on, perhaps because it's not reall...

Fear

I do not burden myself on other people. I do not pick up my phone when I am crying my eyes out. I do not seek comfort. I do not ask for kindness. I cry on my own. I have done for years. Even when I was in a relationship, I never bothered him with it. And yet I lean on you. I come here to cry. I come here to find a shoulder. Because here, I can . I'm a wreck. I'm so petrified. I remember once, I must have been about 14, I was at school sitting, chatting to a friend during lunch, and she raised her arm suddenly and I flinched. I instinctively jerked away from her and raised my arm to cover my face. "Woah. Ophelia. Why did you flinch?" I laughed nervously. "I, er, I don't know, I, er, thought you were going to hit me." I don't flinch now. Strange, I still censor. I've blocked out pretty much all of my past. I've blocked out my childhood because it was so happy, and I've blocked out my teenage years because they were so dreadful. ...

People who want to live but don't know how

I was reading a random article about bulimia online. It was the comments on the article that struck me. There are so many of us - so many people addicted to dying. I'm supposed to be keeping a food diary for my therapy. I can't list how much I've eaten and thrown up, four, five times a day in the last week. Huge piles of food in and out, over and over. I'm doing it because I want to die, it's becoming quite conscious now. Below are the comments on the article I read. The article is not important, it's the list of nameless people living this hell, saying words I understand too well. So many. Nameless. We are all nameless. The nameless stories of people living through hell, knowing the damage, knowing the danger, and hopelessly praying that it will all get better. We're like broken records all droning the same nameless story... so many, so, so many... too many. How can this be stopped. How the hell can this be fixed? No one deserves this. I can't eve...
http://www.axisoffat.com/ Some really powerful posts. I think it's good to broaden our vision of the world and our understanding. I have got to get out of my head and into other peoples, because this head is suffocating me - and I want to write and feel and understand more than what is contained within it's distorted and confining walls.

SUBLIME

On Thursday I gave the keys back to the house in London I was supposed to be living in with my two friends. That door is shut now. It killed me to do it. It was great to go there on Thursday, and be with friends, to laugh, to forget about the pain. To be the girl I used to be. To laugh. And it killed me because I had to walk away from it and come back to this room in this house I hate . That door is shut. I got the job offer from the Investment Bank. But I can't take it - sorry - I won't take it - because I won't live this nightmare anymore. Living in this house, trapped, and working a job, trapped. dead. trapped. It's as I said in my last post - It was two choices - live or die - take the new job and move out or stay here and rot. And when I came back home my Mum saw that I wasn't kidding. I'd shut the last door that led out of here and back to life. And I resigned myself to suicide. I told her so, frankly, as I had warned her the day before she made me...

A Survey from a 'College Student'

I have been asked nicely via email to post this on my blog. Hoping that maybe some understanding of eating disorders will be bought to the 'outside' world as a result of this survey, I have obliged to post this request. I must reiterate this has nothing to do with me I am just doing it because, well, because I'm bloody nice and I hope it helps I suppose. She has asked for your responses to be given in the comment box as normal... Hello. My name is Sheila and I am a college student working on a research project. My study focuses on girls and women who consider themselves to be pro-anorexic. I hope to better understand the users of online, pro-anorexia websites. If you are willing to participate, I would like to ask some questions about what this website means to you. I am not here to judge or make assumptions, but to simply gather information on a group that many know little about. All participation will be anonymous. Please use screen names that do not identify you in an...

Live

http://suicide.com/suicidecrisiscenter/whylive.html I want the pain to stop. I just want the pain to stop. These last few months have been unbearable - the hardest period of my life. And the only option is to bear it. Anonymous said... ...Perhaps that's why we love the violence. We're not really alive in the real world. I often fantasize about the ex-boyfriend strangling me, this time for real, until everything stops. The terrifying thing is, when I allow reality and fantasy to mingle, I forget which is which and I forget to be scared. It's exhilarating. I know I'm meant to have given up blogging but I still read all your posts... I hate it when I can't reach back to Anonymous' - even just a name, a fake name to identify you apart. But that might be it, I never really looked at it that way. I forget which is which... reality and fantasy - who I am and who I fantasise being. I read too much, I think too much and I don't live enough.

Interim

I love having an eating disorder. I must do. Else why would I do it. You don't do something you don't want to. I didn't want to do my job. I quit. It's easy... If I take the job at the Investment Bank, I'm moving out, I'm going 'back on the crazy, fit men and alcohol' . If I turn the job down, I'm staying here with my Mum, and reading books. I choose to live. Or I choose to stop living. I told my Mum my choices. So after shouting at me for wasting money on rent she has stopped speaking to me and pretends I don't exist. (Yes. This is what I deal with.) If it wasn't for my Mum I'd have jumped. I live so that she doesn't have to bear anymore loss or suffering in her life. But she kills me in another way. Yeah. I never write much about her. I won't now. I want to live, you know. I want it back. I opened up my cupboard and ran my hands through my vast collection of beautiful dresses and clothes. Stacks of shoes, dai...

"I'm an arty person, ok, I write overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose - so fucking what?" Angela Carter

I must start off first of all, I suppose, with a remark: You will see now, in the top right hand corner, my little award. I... well, I... it meant a lot. I'm reading a fantastic book at the moment: The Golden Notebook  by a wonderful British author called Doris Lessing. I had never heard of her until she was mentioned on a programme chronicling the great British authors on television recently - I made a list of all the ones which sounded interesting - this book was top of the list. I had recently finished reading Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier - what a remarkable, all-consuming book. It became a necessity for me - I used it on my commutes to and from work, craving to just be taken away for those two hours a day, completely consumed in that world, that world of yearning. I could smell the fresh woodland of Manderley and the pure salt air of the sea... I could feel the chills of Mrs DeWinter - yes it was a book of feeling - wonderful feeling! It took me away from London, they gre...
Ana and Mia won. again. I'm quitting my job. I don't know what I'm going to do from here. I've pulled the plug on everything. If there is a God I'd be dead now. I will write something longer and more coherent soon. I just wanted to say - I quit my job. I am an eating disorder and nothing else. Edit: Thank you readers for reminding me: I am so much more than just an eating disorder.
I need a knife - a big, clean, sleek one - to slice these great chunks off my body. I have got to get out of here.

The week I grew up

I never imagined how I'd feel if that moment came, but I think, it didn't matter as much as I thought it would - because all this is the truth. But would I change it if I could? Of course. I feel like I'm nearing the time that all these blogs inevitably seem to face - permanent deletion - as if Ophelia had never written. It's going to come, I think, with my 'growing up'. One day, I will look back on my life, and be able to point to this week as the week that I grew up. I grew up the week I went back to school again. As most readers will know, I hate my job and I despise The City. That's simple. The more complicated issue is how I survive from hereon... I began to consider becoming a high school English teacher a few months back, and am now moving forwards with my application, potentially to start my training in September 2011. (Teaching being one of three courses of action I am currently pursuing - but I will not bore you with details). To be succes...

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time...

I don't understand the human instinct to survive. I don't know why I run across the road before the bus hits me... when I wish it would hit me. I don't know why I refuse to give in when I have witnessed over and over again that my dreams will never come true. There are people with worse lives than me. One of my mum's friends - consumed by cancer, knowing the time is so short and will only be full of pain. A colleague at work - married and divorced after a hellish marriage of one year - 30 years old. A friend of a friend - told by her husband that he just doesn't love her anymore - her financial support and life, all gone. When you have children, dependents, I believe it is different. I would never kill myself if I knew there were people in the world who needed me. But I, like the people above, have nothing. No children, now no lover, perhaps no future. I have no reason to bear my pain. And yet others with perhaps even less reason can still bear it. I loo...

"I have experienced love, sorrow, madness and if I cannot make these experiences meaningful, no new experience will help me"

"I have experienced love, sorrow, madness and if I cannot make these experiences meaningful, no new experience will help me." Sylvia Plath. I wrote about her before - several times. The first time I wrote when I was 19 I think - after reading 'The Bell Jar' - after realising that I didn't want to wear it anymore, like her... I didn't want a life like hers... not for all her genius. Maybe she could have stepped away; maybe she couldn't. Maybe it was her destiny to feel and write and suffer, all so intensely. Maybe I can step away; maybe I can't. Do I believe in destiny or do I believe in choice? There is no author whose work I have ever identified with more closely - except maybe Tennessee Williams. And this makes me sad. Sad, because I don't want to be like Sylvia Plath. I don't. I'm sure I don't... So why don't I just step away? Please, come on, step away... I must have a choice, because I swear, I never chose sadnes...

The Hardest Post...

. This is the hardest post I have ever had to write. I apologise if it's sporadic and raw. This is everything from the last two months. When I went away with Alex for a weekend on the 16th July and when we went away for the second time on the 13th August. How things became incredible. How things fell apart. The writing in red is what I have written today - my input now - the writing in black is what I wrote on the date stated. Written on 19th July 2010 The dream is not a dream. It exists. I tasted it. I lived it. The happiness of my childhood is not dead. It lives around me – in other children, in other families. I walked hand-in-hand with Alex through the gardens of Chatsworth House, listening to the laughter of children, watching old couples sitting on the wall eating huge cones of soft white ice cream. Seeing families all around me. Joy, happiness, laughter, innocence, contentment, fulfilment. I was right all along. I knew it. I knew it! I had known all along what...