Love. Sick.

And finally, today, I cried; soaked the tissues and pillowcase like I had been longing to do for weeks. The most I had been able to manage recently had been dry crying with a scrunched up face and aching heart. Such relief now to be able to physically release emotions other than vomit.

What words do I use to write about the last few weeks? Crippling, torturous anxiety, studying for finance exams, exercising and exercising, bingeing and vomiting, seeing Gareth, fucking Gareth, hating Gareth, exercising and exercising, bingeing and vomiting. Overcome by the fear and confusion and heartache. Studying for finance exams, but really just exercising and bingeing and vomiting.

By Banksy - a perfect representation of how I felt

The exams are done now and I have been free from those chains for a week - definitely alleviating a great deal of the pressure from my mental crumbling. I was close to slipping back under into the darkness. The darkness of having complete loss of control, complete loss of everything to the sickness in my brain.
days when it's a struggle
and the reoccurring thought is 'what's the point? why carry on?'
feeling helpless, recurringly helpless, empty, lonely, lost

Staying late to study after work or going in the office at weekends led to taking my illness to the office, emptying my stomach metres from the desks of my colleagues. On study days off from work, for the fourth time that day I stood, overcome, staring at the piles of protein bar wrappers and bread crumbs in dismayed horror. The wreckage, like the remains of my brains, splattered across the kitchen. I'm not going to lie, I was so frightened. I couldn't believe or understand how I had spiralled so quickly and so devastatingly. I thought I might die.
I haven't thought that in a very, very long time.

Somehow I am at a new low weight, incredible when you think of the amounts that I was bingeing on, even if I was constantly throwing up and exercising. I can't lie that's it's wonderful and liberating to walk around in tiny denim hot pants and not feel sick with embarrassment.

***

Since I last posted, Gareth and I have gotten together three more times: the week after that first time on another night out with work colleagues, and then twice this week since my exam has been over.
There's such a lot to fill you in on with Gareth, but I find myself with so very little to say. I kept trying to tell him that I didn't want to do it, calling him out for being a liar, for using me... and then just letting myself be used by him. Because I kept fucking wanting it, like the fucked up, lonely, desperate child I am. I feel like I should record the hours of talks, the anger I spat at him, the ignorance and confusion he feigned... but it seems so pointless, recording shitty conversations, words of no power.

Anyway, I think it is over now - although he is still desperate for us to remain friends. I stayed at his last night after some of us went to his place to watch the England football match, but I slept in another room despite us having his flat to ourselves. I think it had finally sunk in for him how much it was hurting me, and how serious I was about wanting to stop my feelings for him. In an ideal world I'd cut him out of my life and never see him again - but of course because he is at work that will never be 100% possible, and he is so adamant that he wants our friendship to continue just as it has before.

 

I really wanted to believe him, I really wanted to believe it could work out. But of course it can't. It would have burnt out anyway. He knows everything now, my history, my fragility, I told him it all hoping it might make him understand - or care.
It's like something finally clicked today, watching something on TV - a death, loss, hurt and sadness - which triggered the tears. The trigger is all I needed to remember what matters to me: to love and to be loved.
Gareth - shit, he's so cold, his heart is so cold. He's never laid a hand on me to give affection, he's only ever laid a hand to feel pleasure. He's a child who can't ever give me what I need: love and stability and strength.
 

It made sense: he thought I was a feisty, tough alpha-female, capable of eating men for breakfast - because that's how I talk and act. So I set him straight about who I am: "Through my fear and fragility I create the opposite image of not wanting the only thing I've ever wanted. It's so sad and ironic. It's sad that the tough girl act that's supposed to protect me from hurt, really doesn't protect me at all." It just makes people like him think that I don't need love and care.

I don't want to let another cold bastard near me again - the act just keeps attracting them. I have to drop the fake pretence and make it clear who I really am.