A Head Full of Beauty

My head never shuts down. If I could only find the switch, turn myself off, I could start living in the real world again, I'm convinced of it... but maybe there isn't a switch. Something I saw on jd's blog struck a real chord with me, I thought it was perfect: For a head so full of words and emotion, so much of my life is consumed by numbers. the numbers game Calories. I can't remember the last time I forgot about numbers in my head. I must have been so young. I wonder sometimes, about the whole genetics argument - that some people are more predisposed to eating disorders than others - we have the genes for it so to speak. Was I born this way? No... I'm sure I can't have been, but at the same time I'm acutely aware that I've always had the symptoms and the character and personality for it. I was never like other little girls. I tortured myself mentally for not looking perfect. I tortured myself for being 'fat' when I was a skinny littl...

Dear Anonymous, Please tell me. I need to know, who and what. So I know I'm not crazy. I cannot fast. I need to eat. I have decided on two apples a day. A quarter of an apple, eight times a day. 9am 11am 1pm 3pm 6pm 8pm 10pm midnight.

How far back does my pain go? I forget sometimes, how long I have lived with this... and no, my pain didn't always manifest itself in the shape of an eating disorder - or at least as ferocious an eating disorder as I have now. I was trying to remember a poem I used to love... and it led me to search back into my old computer files to look through the poems and writing that I produced when I was 17 and 18. It struck a chord with me. The pain was the same back then. I just hadn't learnt to channel it through my relationship with food. I never got better, I never got happier, I never found what I was looking for... I just got worse; I just got older; I just wasted more of my life. 19th May 2006 I am so scared. I am so lost, and so confused. So many times I have been falling, and sometimes I have even been soaring, but right now, I’m on the outskirts of a whirlpool, spinning rapidly, awaiting to be sucked into oblivion. I’m just swirling round and round, feeling sick, ...

"You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and no one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad." I don't want to go to my psychiatrist and put on a brave face anymore. I don't want to tell Alex how much I want to get better. I don't want to look into the future and see a happy, glowing, successful mother of two. Because I don't want to be a failure. I wrote a letter to Alex: ...There are several reasons why I made the decision to ask my Mum to use the private healthcare cover to see a private psychiatrist... ...you; because you made me realise that I can be happy, I can be hopeful, there is more to life; it is worth fighting my demons for, and because you definitely, definitely deserve be...

Have you seen the fasting? It's beautiful. There's a light on in the kitchen. She's trying to get out. The fake sugar chemicals turn black inside me - blacker than blood. I shut my eyes last night and felt a feeling in my hands. The feeling travelled up my arm and I thought... this was it, I was going, everything was shutting down at last. I put down my writing pad and pencil and shed tears for him. But I didn't care if I was leaving - he is young, he'll forget - I didn't mind if I didn't wake up. I positively wanted it. I'm terrible, and I'm horrible, I know, but recovery is not an option. I can't believe people recover from this. I'm so far away. I want to call you. Alex. I want to tell you the truth about how bad it is. What's wrong with me. I took photos of myself on my phone today. I couldn't believe it. I really, couldn't believe how true it was. The mirror is kinder than the camera. The mirror has angle...

Why, oh why has Ophelia been posting so much? I drifted so far away recently, posting once a week, once a fortnight.... Well, truth be told, Alex has locked me out of my facebook account in an attempt to get me to concentrate on revision. Oh yes - exams! Exams... seven to be precise - three hours each - the day after each other. excellent... So instead of sitting at my laptop pressing the 'refresh' button on my facebook homepage and seeing what uninteresting things my 480 'friends' have been doing, I have been sitting on blogger, reading old blogs, reading new blogs, commenting here and there, and of course, posting my usual rubbish! I used to be a good blogger - good to read, good at replying - an attentive blogger, a caring blogger. I think it's the slide from Ana to Mia. Ana makes for a good blogger, and Mia makes for a very bad one. Lets face it, what is inspirational about a wobbly white girl stuffing her face and spewing? This is the most messed up my li...

I have a new training program in place - a 10k training programme to be precise. It's hard to have an eating disorder whilst trying to train intensively at the same time - the two things really do conflict... But the fact is, I'm going to be running some races with Alex and some other super fit guys in the Autumn - after a Summer away on the LDAC that is. Yes, for any American readers, I am coming over to the US for a month to take part in the ROTC Leader Development Assessment Course. I have very little idea as to what it all entails exactly... other than it is something similar to the Territorial Army Commissioning Course we have here in the UK at Sandhurst...? If any of you out there have any info or experience of it I'd love to hear! So, my fitness is pretty good - in fact I can meet the male entry standards for Sandhurst (well on the run and situps anyway - my pressups are sill rather feeble!!) so I know physically I'm in pretty good shape... however it's...

Does it get better? Does it ever go away? That emptiness in your head; that chill seeping through your blood; the coldness... I can't get rid of it. I sit myself on the edge of the sofa and draw my knees up to my chest. My huge legs, huge pink soft marshmallow legs, scrunching up the rolls on my tummy, big rolls. For all I have done, all week, all day, all night, is binge. Food is the narcotic. Eating is the addiction. I want to call him and hear his voice. I want to send him links to videos, to some of your blogs, to articles, to words, to pictures, to voices, to help him listen to mine. I want him to help me. But I don't want him to understand. I can't do it to him. Not only do I fear losing him (for what 19 year old boy wants to deal with a crying 22 year old falling to pieces on their shoulder?) But I fear I will destroy him as much as I have destroyed myself. "You don't see the world like I do." "What do you mean?" "You don'...

The 100th Post. I'm tired today. And eating. The fight is draining from me. It's him. I was with Alex last night. And at the weekend. 4th Weekend in a row. I eat when I'm with him. I eat. I don't worry, I eat, I'm happy... with him . We've only really been 'together' for three weeks. This is insane. I keep pinching myself - surely this can't last. We think we love each other. Maybe we do. I... I've had to stop to cry here. He has just sent me a message in reply to a link I sent him earlier - a link to the psychiatrist I'm due to see: He seems like he knows what he's talking about so no doubt you'll be in safe hands! Good luck! If you ever need someone to chat to, just give me a ring...I probably won't know what to say, but I'll do what I can! In fact, if there's ever anything I can do, just let me know. I want to help you get better and understand as much as I can. Love you xxxx What else can I do but...

I got an extension for a piece of coursework I was doing for law school and I had to get my doctor to sign the medical reasons on my ‘concessions form’. You want to know what I think of the fucking health care in this country? Well this should say it all: He wrote my first name wrong and mis-spelt my surname. Under medical problems, he wrote ‘Anorexia and Depression’. I' ve been diagnosed with Bulimia for fucks sake. The rest of the questions he barely answered or ignored. And I paid £19 for this proof of apathy. My exams start at the beginning of June. If I do them, I will fail. I have the option... to not turn up to exams and then give in a concession form like the one I did for my coursework. If they accept the bulimia as a reason for not doing exams then I will get the chance to retake them in August. Do I do it? My life is eating, throwing up, exercising, restricting, thinking about food, crying over my body, worrying... I can't do anything else, and I’m never g...