Super cool, laidback chick

Well, it has been a year since I came here to write.
I put the blog to sleep - made it private - couldn't bear to delete it permanently of course (it would be like deleting pages and pages of my life - pages that have made me who I am today).

Why am I back? I suppose I was feeling my mind start to disintegrate again, the edges wearing down, another day spent not able to get out of bed, another night of bad dreams and waking up in a sweat, another binge and purge too many...

So the last time I saw you, I had got everything I wanted - the boyfriend, the job. You'll be pleased to know that I still have the job at The Bank. But the relationship with Joe crumbled. He decided to take a 4 month trip to South America to 'travel'. I don't know what I thought would happen - but at any rate, it happened that I fell out of love - or perhaps it confirmed I wasn't in love.

Since he left at the end of January, my weekends turned into long, dark days hiding in my room. He was the only reason I usually got out of the house and now that he was gone there was nothing to replace him, nothing to distract me from the vortex of my brain. To top it off, I developed a horrible rash on my face that still persists today - at its worst, bright red and burning skin enveloped my eyes and forehead, forcing me to go to work in glasses and no make-up. I felt disgusting - and logically justified in my sentiment.

It felt like God was teaching me a lesson and punishing me for being so obsessed with how I look. I had no choice but to turn up to work and go to meetings looking like an ugly mess. I had to hold my head up and pretend that I didn't care how I looked. I had to pretend that I didn't care. But fuck, how I fucking cared. How it fucking ripped me up everyday to look in the mirror and despair that I couldn't fix it. On top of this I had started weight training sessions with a personal trainer - too ashamed to tell her my eating disorder history, she put on me a manic high-protein, low cal diet, making me write down everything I ate - I mean obviously I just spiralled completely out of control. The reigeme pressed every single big red button that I had and my head exploded with the pressure. I stopped the personal training.

I was supposed to go and visit Joe in Peru at the end of February. I didn't go - I didn't want to waste the money on seeing him, I didn't want to have to have sex with him, I didn't want to go and pretend that I loved him. He wasn't here when I needed him.

I pulled the plug officially 3 weeks ago today. I didn't cry and I don't miss him.

I miss having a boyfriend, but I don't miss him.

Two weeks after the break up I found myself sitting in a bar by Bank with my work colleagues to be 'set up' with a friend of one of the guys I work with. It had seemed like a great idea at the time; so exiting to have a reason to get dressed up again, so thrilling to feel the buzz in my body and my pulse racing. When it came to it though I choked. Aware that all eyes were on us all the time, I found it impossible to flirt or be my usual forward self. What was wrong with me? Flirting was my forte, this was what I loved to do...

His name was Josh. Tall, tanned, lovely dark eyes and dark hair, a bit too on the skinny side for me, but hey, you can't have everything. We spoke briefly - the usual things, what do you do, where do you live, etc. And then I left it. I couldn't do it. It didn't help that he was also extremely shy, so if I wasn't going to get the ball rolling, he almost certainly wasn't. This has been proven by the fact that although he has my number, he still has not contacted me. According to my work friend Sam, this is because he was busy all last week - so will text this week. Right...so a message to me saying that would have been far too difficult?

As usual, being the super-cool, laidback chick that I am, I have been mental about it. Barely able to sleep for the first few days afterwards hoping that a message would come in the middle of the night, dreaming that my phone had vibrated, hating myself for being so useless and such an undesirable failure. Fuck. Why could he not just message me. If he had ANY idea of how mental this was making me...

So let's see what happens...

Oh I forgot to mention, I'm not actually even sure if I even like him yet.


So the last week has been particularly hard on the old mental health. Thursday was the first time that I threw up in the toilets at The Bank - having made it a good 6 months at my new workplace without this occurring was pretty good (I'm pretty much exclusively an evening vomiter - apart from weekends where anything goes).

I feel at this point, I should mention goings on at work a bit. On Thursday I was due to be going out for some drinks, etc with a few people at work - more specifically a dreadfully good-looking 22 year-old called Gareth who works in my department and is notoriously cheating on his girlfriend. Basically the eating of chocolate and then vomiting in the basement toilets at work put an end to that - but I was also conscious that it was an extremely bad idea to go out and have a wild night with a guy with whom there was some (albeit fucked up) sexual tension. We had gone out just over a month ago to a friend's party at Cargo in Shoreditch and were the last two left at the end - dancing way too close and way too provocatively - and God help me, I don't know how we didn't end up kissing.

And Sam, the work friend that set me up with Josh. Not drop-dead handsome like Gareth, but (somebody help me!) I feel myself getting more and more attracted to him every day and it SUCKS because I can't go there and would never go there.

So like I said, chilled, laidback. Nothing going on here.