Ambition

I'm not one for following trends, I've always had a very particular style which has been built up around my eating disorder/body distortions. I like what I like and what I like works on me... well so I think....
A standard day sees me wearing a floral pattern or plain dress, mid-thigh, usually with short sleeves and a long cardigan. Variations from this are rare and stressful.

However, I am aware that - well - that I can't go on like this forever. I went into Levis' thinking that their new 'Curve' fitting would find me a pair of jeans that could make me look wonderful.
I tried on pair after pair.
Impossible.

'My bum... I can't... I can't...'
'There's nothing wrong with your bum', the staff kept saying
I kept turning and turning, this angle and that, taking chunks of my thighs in my hands.
'Don't you know some women would kill for curves like yours? Men don't like skinny girls, seriously!'
I privately rolled my eyes and held my tongue before I said something I would regret. Black guys like curves. Black girls have idols like Beyonce and Nikki Minaj.
But no white boy has ever lusted for my curves. And although I grew up listening to Beyonce and stuck posters of Serena Williams on my bedroom walls, I don't have a choice in the matter - I live in a white culture, I am classed as 'white', I have to live up to different ideals.
I couldn't buy a pair of fucking jeans, because my arse was too huge. Although, it isn't huge at all - it's the same as the average woman, or something like that, it's fine, but it's not, it's not, I refuse to believe it.

The fact is, I will not walk around in a pair of jeans until I can stop traffic in that pair of jeans. Until then, I'm not good enough.

"I have higher expectations than other people" I said to my therapist, sounding like the bitch I am. "I don't think average is good enough, ever."
She's working on correcting my perfectionism and elitism, attempting to reduce my 'higher expectations', but I fear she is fighting a losing battle.

The moment I left the Levis store I felt the unbearable heat rising up, I walked disorientated and in a panic, the blood pumping through my veins with anxiety, I wanted to sink onto my knees and weep, I wanted to sink down and be swallowed up, I wanted to sink on my knees and scream out to a God I didn't understand.

And all I could think was : I am too fat to buy a pair of jeans. I'm trapped.
I wanted to stand in the middle of the street and scream.

"I bet you looked perfectly normal in jeans," my therapist said.
"Yeah, like the average fat woman. Great."

My therapist asked me to describe the word 'average'.
"Worthless", I said.
"Try again."
"Nothing. Non-descript."



There's some hysteria rising at the moment that a number of girls at the school have an eating disorder. Several cases of vomit being found in the toilets have been reported, with one girl already being singled out as not eating at dinner. What can I say? I was 15 once.
...And when I was 15, I starved without experiencing any physical effects at all except the cessation of my period and the growth of lanugo. I watched the numbers on the scale fall every day and felt nothing except the feeling of watching numbers fall.


There's been too much sadness - and I simply won't have any more.
I understand why my Mother always pushed me so hard - she wanted me to have the education and the opportunities that she never had. I understand because I feel it to - I want my children, in turn, to have even more than me. In my current job I work with children who have no idea how privileged they are, whose parents can afford to send them to top boarding schools with suitcases of designer shoes and personal ipads. And I look out of the window at the world the rest of us grew up in, and I don't want my child to grow up in that world - not now I've seen the alternative. I want my children to be part of the privileged elite, like I never could be.
And even as my heart desires that for them, I know it's the evil part of me talking, the evil, insatiable ambition that grows within me to achieve what most people hardly dare to dream of.

This silly evil voice. Silly. Silly because it's driven me to despair - even though I keep on failing, I still can't shake the endless ambition.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Having an eating disorder is like having an evil demon inside of you. And evil always triumphs over good. And sin always feels pleasurable.
What can I say?
What can I say that I already haven't said before?

I've been exercising like mad. I don't think I've ever had the exercising bug this bad before. And I'm ever so tired, I keep getting run down and weak, keep longing to put my trainers on a run again, I'm ever so tired...

and just, ever so fat.


I'm going back to London in July...
I don't know what job I'll get yet, but I'm going back.
Of course I'm petrified, but I've always had more ambition than fear.

I have to go back and I have to be thin. I have to surpass my best. My best was pretty good.
I've got a pretty bad wound on my foot from the running at the moment so I'm having to make do with resistance training and the like - and some good old restriction :)

I'm halfway through my 6 month rehab. Get ready, July.