UPDATE POST #1 - What really pushed me over the edge two years ago?

Apologies for being absent for so long. The past week has been... crazy, emotional, sleepless... exciting.

I've been writing everything in my notebook - It's been necessary for me to still write about everything even though I have been unable to sit down at a computer and update this blog. So, what follows are my entries and self-analysis from the past week, dated when they were originally written...


Sunday 21st March - Analysing the Past

You know, all of this would be so much easier if I had someone... If I had someone who loved me, I think I could cope. I think it would all be alright... If I had someone... someone who truly loved me.
I wish I had a rock; someone I could turn to when I was in need, someone to hold me tight, shield me, dote on me...
But I am too fussy - too much of a disaster - but most of all, I'm scared of the pain.
If he were to leave me or betray me, it would kill me. I know I could never take that pain of heartbreak.

What really pushed me over the edge two years ago? What made me so severely bulimic?
It was a boy.
Of course. His name was Jon.
Yes, I'd flirted passionately with anorexia when I was 15, I'd hated my body and tortured myself about it since I 'recovered', I'd been crazy and fragile and insecure, but I'd never actually gone back to a full blown ED. For all those years I'd wanted to, but I'd never managed it.
But it was Jon who finally pushed me back over the edge again.
I met him in October 2007 at the start of my second year at uni. By this time, I'd burnt off the 'Freshman 15' I'd horrifying held on to in my first year. I was working out regularly, and my body was in the best shape of my life. He was an absolute dream. 6'3", toned rugby-player arms, light brown tousled hair and a stunning chiseled jaw. He'd applied to be a model the last time I'd spoken to him. (But I'd imagine he's too deep into drugs now though for that career to have taken off.) He was my motivation to eat well and run further.
What was different about Jon compared to all the other guys I had fallen for in my first year (Pete, Olly, Neal, etc) was that he REALLY seemed to like me and it kept continuing and growing. I thought there was real affection there, because he never tried to sleep with me, he'd just kiss me and hold me all night long. He came out with me and my friends, he always wanted to see me again and again, night after night he was with me. It wasn't brief, it wasn't cheap. It felt like something real was developing...
So one night, while we were out, I asked him... 'Where is this going... what are WE exactly?...'
and he said those words: 'you're my girlfriend'.
Yes, it was in a Club, so in hindsight, he was probably drunk, probably high...
Afterwards, he claimed he never remembered it.

He completely and utterly broke my heart. I remember crying hysterically in the entrance of a Club a week or so later after he had ignored me all evening. He told me properly, soon after, when I demanded that he meet me: 'I just want to be friends'.

I cried myself sick every day.
I died.
I truly died.
Everything ended.
I cut myself off from the world and there was no one around to stop me or comfort me.
I deleted my facebook page, I didn't step outside my bedroom door. I didn't want to exist.
I cried and I cried... because I was just so empty and hollow. Everything was so grey and cold and I couldn't find anything to live for.

A few weeks later I went home for Christmas and destroyed the perfect body I had worked so hard for in the gym by binge-eating non-stop.
And then, the bulimia came.
A few times a week at first.
And then the anxiety.
Panic attacks in the street - because someone saw how ugly I was.
And finally the cutting - all the way up and down my arms and legs - because I wanted my body to reflect on the outside how much pain I was feeling on the inside.
The best bit, is that Jon had no idea about any of this. I never spoke to him again.

I was so severely depressed and my mood never lifted. I can class it easily as the worst period of my life.
I went to the doctor in mid February hoping to get some anti-depressants because I was so desperate. The bulimia had become so natural by now, and so easy, and an almost daily occurrence. I couldn't hide how fucked up I was, how frightened, how alone, how dead...
He sent me to the ED clinic.

For that whole 6 months or so afterwards, I never even looked at a guy. Every part of me was healing, and men frightened me because I knew how dangerous they could be to the health of my body and mind. Those 6 months are almost entirely black in my memory, for I was merely existing, sickly - I did not live.

All that changed in July. It was James, beautiful James. And I was foolish enough to think I had been saved. Truly. I thought he had saved me with his love.
I can never forgive him for making me believe that. Because he knew how ill I was. He knew about Jon, he knew about the bulimia, he touched the scars along my arms. AND THEN HE MADE ME BELIEVE THAT HE LOVED ME. He made me hope again. He fucking lied and fucked me up further.


So, for this whole period of over two years, through all of 2008, 2009 and now well into 2010, I have been throwing up every day.
Sometimes I have gone a day, a weekend, even a week without doing it... however on many occasions it can happen up to four times a day.

It was a guy who started this second wave of my ED and it's been guys who have been feeding it since. Since James, they've all been recorded in this blog... and you can see the fucking damage they keep doing - often without even knowing it.