A Head Full of Beauty

I am so tired of failure

2012-01-14T12:54:00.002Z

Again, too much has happened that I don't know where to begin.
Sometimes I wish my life would just slow right down again.

I will just have to write it in bits, a full monologue is too much for me right now.
Last Friday I nearly ended it with Theo.
As I said, he was taking me out for my Christmas present. I took the afternoon off to get a massage, sit in the sauna, get my hair done and make sure I looked my best.
It was the leaving drinks of someone at work so we both went along to that. Theo told me we would leave at 8:30pm. The time came and went, he did not make a move. He was drinking with him mates, I was standing with my friends, sipping my one glass of wine so I stayed sober to enjoy our dinner. I sent him a text - when are we going? He didn't check his phone. I went to sit upstairs trying to fight back the tears. I read back my last post on my blackberry... I must not take his cluelessness for lack of care, I must not act like a child and ruin this, I must not throw this away....
I made a note:
"It was 8:42pm when I messaged him to ask when we were going, and 9:08pm when I decided that it was over. This was supposed to be our special night. I hadn't taken the afternoon off to get my hair done for my work colleagues Theo, I did it for you. You should be holding on to me like I'm precious gold. I can't do it. I'm walking. Walk Ophelia, don't be weak. Walk. Don't be weak. Even if I stayed tonight, you couldn't change my mood now, it would be impossible, you've spoilt it."

At 9:15pm he called me. I didn't answer, but remained where I was in the upstairs section of the bar. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I'd been gone for 45 minutes and he hadn't even noticed.
I wandered down when my friend called me and left a voicemail.
"Where have you been? We've been looking for you! Theo didn't know where you were!"
"Yeah, I was upstairs."
They told Theo I was there now but he still stayed with his friends outside, drinking and smoking, ignoring me. Finally he came back in and asked my friend, "So what's the plan next? On to the next bar?" I was sat, jacket on, with all my bags ready to go, eyes brimming with tears. Now he was out drunk with his friends, he didn't want me any more, he didn't care about our evening together.
He beckoned me over. I got up reluctantly.
"Are we going?!", I asked.
"Um yeah...we can still make it... you ready to go?"
"Yes!"

We left and got a taxi. I could barely talk. I was choking back the tears. I couldn't look at him. I pushed his hands off me.
We got to the restaurant and ate. He was drunk. But I started to forgive him as his moved over to my side between every course and ran his hands through my hair and told me all the most wonderful, beautiful things.
Shit.
I realised he could only say them when he was drunk.
He couldn't keep his hands off me.
I realised he loved me most for sex.
At the end of the meal he told me to meet him in the toilets and sauntered off. I sat there in disbelief. I was imagining this. But I was drunk too. Why not. Cross it off my list.
I went.
He pushed me to me knees like a doll. He pressed me hard against the wall like a worthless slut. He didn't even know who I was. His face of inebriated pleasure disgusted me.

We left and he called up his friend from work.
"Where are you guys now? Who's there? How long you staying?"
I couldn't believe it. I stood on the pavement in the freezing cold while he floundered, drunk. He hadn't got us a hotel, he didn't know what to do, he dragged me into an Irish pub so he could drink more. I wanted to go home, but I knew the only option was to stay it out for this night.
"What do you want to do?", he kept asking me repeatedly.
"I want to be with YOU. I want to get out of the cold and go to bed."
I didn't know where we were, we walked for ages to some bus stop where we waited for a bus. He wouldn't even get a taxi. When we got to Kings Cross we tried hotel after hotel until we found one with rooms free. I was broken, I couldn't bear to look at him. I got straight into bed and curled up in a ball.

Tonight was supposed to be so special. I'd made myself look stunning for him, drank juice all week, brought my best underwear, sexy new shoes, fucking hell I would do everything for that boy. And look at the love I got in return.

* * *

On Tuesday I had my internal interview for the new position I wanted. I had studied every day over Christmas and every weekend and evening since I knew they were going to interview me.
They turned me down.
Shit, somehow this is even harder to write than the above.

I feel humiliated.
I lay in bed crying myself to sleep, tears flowing down the sides of my face.
Theo said nothing to comfort me.

On Thursday morning I received an email to officially tell me that I had been turned down from the other department and that my current department would excuse me from travel for two months only so there will be a meeting to discuss what is to be done. (I had asked when I went back into treatment to take one afternoon off a week to go to my appointments and to not have to travel so much because I wasn't able to eat any safe foods.)

My current manager is now trying to force me to resign from my current position because in interviewing for the other department I have proven that I am not committed to my current role.
We had the meeting yesterday morning.
"For the business, we want someone who is committed to the role for several years."
"Everyone on that floor is going to move on at some point," I argued back. (In fact, there are only three people in the whole of the department who have stuck around for more than a year.)
"You don't want a career in this, you want to move to the other department. We can't have that in this role. We need someone who is fully committed."
"I am happy where I am and I don't want to leave. I have studied in my spare time, been fully committed to the role during work hours and have given excellent results as proof of that."
"That's not the point. You want to move to the other department if an opportunity arises. I can't have that in my team."

They were doing everything they could to force me to resign.
I signed a document to allow them to have a letter from my doctor.
They are going to ask for a letter explaining my ability to do my job and what effects it has on my health.
"If I choose to do a job that is detrimental to my health then that's my choice." I said angrily.
"Yes, it is, but we need to know, from a 'duty of care' perspective how best to accommodate you."
So they are expecting the letter to come back saying that I shouldn't be working in a high-pressure environment and should not travel. (All of which is absolutely true, I will never get better in this job and my doctor of all people is the one who is most aware of how true that is.)

And they will then use my illness as a way of forcing me out of my job - by way of their 'duty of care' towards me.
My eating disorder took away years of my life, it was the reason I got turned away from jobs in the past, it destroyed friendships, it destroyed relationships, it destroyed opportunities and hope. The great hurricane of destruction clearly hasn't finished it's rampage yet.

This is the most depressed I've felt for over 12 months. All my motivation and lust for life has been sucked out of me again, I cry at the smallest thing, I can't go to the gym, I can't restrict, I can't smile at people. I've gone back to the dark, cold place.
Theo, still in contact with me all week, knows all that happened above, and has not offered a single word of comfort.

Two weeks ago I was dreaming for everything finally falling into place. And now I am standing where I stood just over a year ago. Frightened, empty, alone and humiliated. The girl that everyone wanted to beat at school, the girl who worked so hard, won every award, was going to be great at whatever she chose to be.
Lost
It
All
All I know now is failure.

This is the year

2012-01-01T16:07:00.002Z

The problem with not posting for two weeks is that my life moves very quickly, and it is now impossible for me to accurately transfer my emotions from the first week (which were very different to this week) into the written word. However, I will do my best.

After the drama of the work Christmas Party, I spent the final week in the lead up to the holidays waiting for Theo to ask to see me. He was going to France with his family over Christmas and I expected him to suggest we go out one evening that week before he went away.
I'd eaten atrociously in the aftermath of the anxiety and stress of the Christmas party season and started the week half a stone heavier than when I had graced the floors of the dinner hall in my beautiful dress on Friday evening. The scales were now showing me a weight that I had not seen since August. I kid you not.
Naturally I was tearing my hair out, and in my deep stupor of depression was unable to drag my sorry arse to the gym and run like crazy to burn off this weight which I had bingeed my way to in the last week or so. Although I was desperate to see Theo again before Christmas, I was also acutely aware that there was no way I could bear him seeing me in such a state of fatness. However, everyday that he did not suggest we go out was another day that I binged in despair.

But really, this was just me being insecure and crazy again. We were talking every day over messages, we'd just had an incredible weekend together - there was nothing wrong. I was the stubborn one who wanted to see him that week but was too proud to ask. I was unfairly testing him without his knowledge and was furious and distraught that he was failing. The poor boy was sitting a few minutes away from me in another department of the office, completely ignorant of the angst and pain that was reverberating through my body as a result of his inaction in this psychotic test of commitment that I was secretly putting him through.

I remember very little of Monday 19th December now, except that I ended up crying and throwing up all night long. This was the effect that the number on the scales had had that day. To see a number I dreaded seeing again, to pinch new fat along my waist, to remember all the food I had stuffed into my face and to know that I alone was responsible for this catastrophe.
I had to take the morning off work to patch myself up. I called up the hospital responsible for my treatment to learn confirmation that I was able to start treatment again on Monday 9th January. Theo still did not ask to meet up with me. So I binged and did it all again.
Wednesday was even worse. I ate nothing all day and then when everyone else left the office to go for drinks, I stayed and attacked the vending machine. Chocolate bar after chocolate bar after chocolate bar, then left the office to buy more, bread, cakes, to eat and then throw up in the toilets at work - only the second time I've ever purged there. As I choked in agony, forcing my fingers harder down my throat, I wondered for a split second what my colleagues would say if I were to be found the next day, dead over a toilet full of vomit.
"So terribly sad...you'd never have known..."
I was so angry at Theo. Again. Irrationality. The voice of my evil eating disordered sister. Poor Theo, all my anger directed at him while he remained ignorant of it all.
Again, he had still not asked to see me this week before he left for France. I was nothing to him. It was over. I was stuffing my face.
I deleted his number from my phone. I would never contact him again.

He messaged me that evening, he messaged me the next day. No, he is not a heartless monster, he never was. He just never thought to suggest we went out that week.

If I had written this post at the time it would have been full of anger - at him and at my fat self - full of anxiety, pain, heartache and destructive despair. But I am writing it now - nearly two weeks later - calm, secure and at peace - so I write it with a different sadness. I look at the raging monster who was ripping her insides to shreds, walking with a clenched fist and her hands clawing out her hair and I can see that girl was not me, but the monster I turn into when my insecurities and body dysmorphic disorder gets out of check. I cried and hurt myself over a boy who did no wrong to me. I did further damage to a body I hated because I hated it.
Who was that girl?
12 months ago, that was the girl I used to be everyday. Seeing her come back was frightening. But at the time, for those string of five days of so, I couldn't control her, I couldn't banish her, I had completely lost sight of all my rational thoughts and concerns.

I cried uncontrollably on the floor of the kitchen while my Mum helplessly looked over me.
"There's nothing you can do. I can't stop when I'm like this."
I pulled out all the drawers and cupboards to find the knife I used to use. It's been taken or lost. At least there is an active part of my brain now that forbids me from buying another, but I am still unable to control the part of my brain that craves the sharp sensation of blood letting when I am on an edge.

A terrible week. It has been several months since I have had a breakdown on that scale for so many consecutive days.

So Theo went to France on Christmas Eve and I didn't get to see him. He did ask in the end - on the Friday - but I was unable to leave work as early as him and he was unable to stay for longer. He passed my silly little test after all, and I had ripped myself to sheds because I had decided that he was breaking my heart.

I started to mend and transform back into a human being over Christmas. I eased back into restricting and running again, and though my body was still a far cry from the figure I had earlier in the month, it was becoming more at peace with itself. This week I eased off the exercise and into a juice fast. Theo was coming back on Friday and we were going out in the evening so I had to make sure I was back to my best.
I had a slight crisis at the realisation that although I was back at work, much of The City was still at home with their families this week. Everywhere in the square mile that made fresh juice was closed. Faced with the prospect of only high sugar fruit juices and smoothies from the supermarket shelves, I had to resort to shady ancient bottles of wheatgrass and carrot juice from Holland and Barrett.

Friday came at last and I had forced my weight back down to a more acceptable figure. In my mind there was still no doubt that I had extra inches on my tummy, but there was not much I could about it now. I was somewhat comforted by the fact that Theo would almost certainly have put a few extra kilos from the excess of food on his family dinner table over Christmas and I was still going to be in better shape than him. I barely felt the hunger all day, and after sitting in the half empty office makeupless and drab for the last few days, I delighted in getting my hair done at lunchtime and making myself look pretty for him.

I almost ran out the doors of the office when he finished work and called me to say he was ready to go. He was waiting for me by the road with a huge umbrella ready. Although I wanted to remain composed and perfect, I couldn't help but burst into a huge smile at the sight of him. I tumbled into his arms and kissed him.
I was with Theo again.

We went to the same bar where we had our first date and I snuggled up to him happily.
He stroked my hair lovingly, "I've missed you a lot you know."
I looked at him, half surprised. "Not as much as I've missed you!"
"I'm sorry I left you for so long."
I smiled. I had been such an idiot for wanting to believe that he didn't like me. "I'm just glad you're back now."
He ran his hands through my hair and gazed at me. "Beauty."
Shit I'm going to start crying like a fool.
"I've been thinking about you a lot you know, and that never happens...you're gorgeous, intelligent, driven, sexy, good in bed... gorgeous". Gorgeous. He kept saying it.

I melted away in his fingers that evening. He said all the things that I had spent years dreaming someone would say to me one day. No man has ever looked at me in the way that he does or loved the things about me that he does.

The talk turned to eating disorders again when he asked me what I would spend my excess money on if I won the lottery.
"I'd use the money to raise awareness of eating disorders and make more treatment facilities available for those that need it. But I know it's controversial and people would never see it as a worthwhile cause."
I told him about the NHS waiting lists, I told him about the blogs I had read of girls in their early teens, I told him of the terrible underground hideaway that so many run to, the unknown number of people that suffer without understanding their illness or being able to find help or kindness.
He asked me again if I still had problems.
I looked at him and didn't say a word. I loved him and trusted him and wanted to tell him, but I had promised myself that he was never going to know.
"If I did, I would never tell you," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because it's not your problem - it's mine. It has nothing to do with you, why would it matter?"
"Because I care about you..."
I stared at the table. "Let me tell you something..." I paused, unable to find the words. He sat silently and intently. I had to say it. "My ex... he broke up with me because of my eating disorder. He couldn't handle it."
"Did he know?"
"Yes, he knew, he knew I was very ill at the time... but there is a very big difference between knowing about it and seeing it. And when he saw it, he couldn't handle it, and he walked away."
He pulled me close to his chest and tenderly kissed me on the top of my head.

We couldn't keep our hands off each other, but after a few cocktails, things were starting to get blurry. I hadn't eaten anything solid for several days and I simply couldn't handle the alcohol.
I apologised, "I can't drink anymore... I'm too drunk. I need to eat."
I told him I hadn't eaten all day and he was shocked. "Let's go find a place to eat."
We found a little Vietnamese restaurant and he let me order. I tucked into the dishes, sobering up almost as soon and the food touched my lips.
"Have some more," I told him, not wanting to look like a glutton. He shook his head, "No, you haven't eaten all day, you need it." He wasn't hungry at all and I understood that he had taken me to the restaurant only to see me eat.
After a few more drinks at another bar, we went back to our usual hotel. I wasn't my usual confident, sexy self at first. I knew that I had extra inches on my tummy and was scared about him seeing it. My old fears of bright lighting started creeping back in case he saw how flawed my skin was underneath the makeup. And as a result it was missing a spark.
But he is Theo, and Theo tells me I am beautiful. I finally let all the fears and insecurities go. And just enjoyed the sensation of holding him again.

I looked at myself in the mirror the next day and wondered what it was that he saw and prayed that he always continued to see it. Even when my mind goes black and I see a monster before me, I prayed that he never saw it too. All evening and all the next day we behaved like a couple in love. Holding hands, kissing, playing with each other. It was simply wonderful. We haven't discussed the status of our relationship, but I know that we are a couple in everything but words now.

I went to bed, sound and happy, welcoming in the new year of 2012 with a heart bursting with happiness and love.
Thank you, Theo.

I wish I could end the post there, but unfortunately, the eating disorder has to rear its ugly head again. This coming Friday, Theo is taking me out. Being the slightly rubbish, disorganised man that he is, he didn't get me a Christmas present before Christmas, but is organising something for Friday instead. He won't tell me what it is, but I suspect he's going to take me to a nice restaurant (I'd be surprised if he has the ability to organise something more than that.) So after eating with him this weekend, it is back to the juice diet until Friday.

I know that everything between us is perfect at the moment, I know that he thinks I am beautiful, and I know that he is falling for me, but I can't help it. I don't want to be enough for him, I want to be exceptional.
The irony is that in wanting so desperately to be perfect for Alex, I fed the eating disorder and sickness which made him leave me. Of course I don't want to make that same mistake with Theo now, but I also don't want to lose him, I want him to think that I am beautiful forever.

A number of you commented some perfect truths in response to my last post. Theo is not Alex, I must not and should not have the same fears concerning him. Theo is pretty clueless - sweet, wonderful, caring - but nonetheless clueless. I must not mistake that cluelessness for lack of care, because when I am with him, I can see so clearly that no one has ever cared for me as intently as he does.
So why can't I let go?
Well I guess that's the nature of eating disorders isn't it. You can't let go. I will always put pressure on myself to be thin and beautiful for Theo. In a sense, it's my way of showing him how much he means to me. More importantly, I am going back into treatment on the 9th January. I will go back to having weekly weigh-in sessions, eating diaries, and work hard at maintaining a proper diet. I want to do that for Theo as well - and for myself - because I know, especially after seeing my frightening, old behaviour come back in the last few weeks, that our relationship will never withstand the destructive force of my full-blown eating disorder. I want to commit to this properly, I want to be with Theo, I want to be happy, I want to love and be loved. I do not want to destroy myself or my chances at happiness anymore. I believe that I deserve this.

I read back all my old posts today. I was horrified and heartbroken to remember the sadness that reverberated in the words I wrote and to remember so clearly all the dreadful things I had written about. I was a wreck at university, I lived in a terrible world and lived a terrible life. And this blog only covers a tiny part of my life trapped in a torturous bubble. I ruined a great deal of my life, I could have been magnificent.

But I've still come a long way from the girl who started writing in this blog three years ago. I am not full of self-hate and pain. I have broken out of the cold, empty prison. The bleak four walls of my insecure, body dysmorphic, eating disordered brain do not keep me trapped me any more. I've come so far from the numb teenager who couldn't look at herself in the mirror or walk out the door in the mornings. I've fought some fucking horrendous battles to get where I am, and I'm not going to lie, I very nearly didn't make it, I very nearly burnt everything to the ground and gave in.
I don't know what it was that gave me the strength to start standing tall again in 2011, but I'm so glad it did. I believe in recovery. I believe that others have done it, and I believe that I can too.

I just have to reach my goal weight before I start treatment. And then I promise, it will be easy for me to work hard in therapy and learn to be healthy and 'maintain'. I promise, 2012, this is the year.

Logical Conclusions

2011-12-18T13:47:00.002Z

I came home on Wednesday night realising that I had fallen hard.

It was the leaving drinks of one of the management team and much of the office was out for the party - Theo included.

I nervously watched the door of the venue until he came, the girls I worked with laughing at me for my childishness.
When he finally arrived it was a while before we spoke to each other, and when we did it was just casual and normal as it would be between any work colleagues. As the evening began to wear on we became more flirty and more separate from the rest of the crowd. He looked gorgeous as ever, his big brown eyes burning into mine and making me so hungry for him. I wanted to hold his hand, wanted to cuddle up close to him, I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to be open about our relationship, but I couldn't because people that we worked with were around. It killed me. It made me anxious.

At one point I turned wild with jealousy when I saw him talking to another girl from my department who I was not friends with and didn't particularly like. She was just talking to him. I turned flustered and paranoid to Luke, "Look! He's flirting with Sarah! Look! Fuck him!"
"Woah, woah, Ophelia, calm down, it's nothing ok, it's harmless. Listen, you are hot, ok. He's not going to flirt with other girls."
"But look!"
"Ok, listen, I'll have a word in his ear and be like, Ophelia's here, what are you doing, don't flirt with other girls - alright?"
"Oh would you do that?!"
And without me being able to think about it or stop him, he barged over and had a word in Theo's ear. I followed behind anxiously, and apologised, shocked that I had resorted to such a desperate measure.

As the bar started to clear out, I was briefly left behind inside putting on my jacket. Through the windows across the floor I could see Theo outside talking animatedly to Sarah again. The red mist descended immediately and I stood frozen to the spot, glaring at them from afar. A slimy guy approached me and I gave him a foul look. Theo should be with me to stop dickheads like that getting close to me. But no, he wasn't even thinking about where I was, he was outside talking to that fucking bitch again. I stormed out and grabbed hold of Rhianna's arm rushing away to follow everyone else walking ahead.
"Where are you going?" She asked, "What about Theo?"
"Fuck him!" I said loudly, "he's busy flirting with Sarah, I'm done, I'm going!"

"Ophelia!"
It was Theo, rushing up behind me.
"What."
"Hey, hey, where are you going?! What's the matter?!"
I stared at him angrily.
"You can fucking talk to who you want, ok, it's fine! Do what you want!"
"I'm sorry! She was flirting with me, she was asking what a CDS was!"
"It doesn't matter ok, you're free to talk to who you want."
"No, no it does matter, I'm sorry. When I saw you storm off like that..." he trailed off and held my face in his hands.
I looked away.

I felt awful. I had overreacted like a jealous, mental, freak. I'd shown him my true colours. I was the one in the wrong - not him. We left everyone else and walked, finding bars that were still open, kissing, walking, finding fast food to eat.
"You look really cute tonight," he said, "really cute."
He told me that he admired me for the things I had been through. He admired that I was a fighter, he admired that I was so strong. I shook my head. "Look at me, I'm fucking insecure, I'm not strong - I pretend."
"You have a really messed up view of men," he said. "You've only ever known stereotypical boarding school boys, army boys, lads that see women for one thing." He was trying to tell me he was not one of them. But I couldn't believe him.

...and yet...
I did....

...He ran after me when I stormed off because I saw him talking to another girl. He comforted me, he told me I was beautiful, he made me feel so safe and happy and loved.
Yes, fuck it all, yes, I felt loved.

* * *

It hurts to write about this next part. I will write it down and then try and erase it from my memory - try to pretend that it never happened and neither of us will remember it.

* * *

So Friday was the office Christmas Party. Lots of things happened that are blog-worthy, but I will stick to the bear essentials so that I do not have to endure the pain of remembering and analysing too much of this night.

Of course I put in all the effort I could to make sure I looked perfect, including running for three hours on an empty stomach the day before and making myself feel immeasurably ill.
All evening I just watched him.
Became paranoid when I lost him.
Avoided talking to him if I could.

I just wanted him. I wanted him to come and find me, come and get me, come and claim me.

I can't write about this coherently.

Towards the end we were outside talking to one of his friends, James, who was asking about how we managed to keep our relationship separate from work. We didn't know what to say.
At one point my boss had come up to him and explicitly said, "Are you fucking Ophelia?!" It was apparent by now that everyone knew.
We left the party venue to go to a nearby club in the City.
I saw him pause and watch to check that I was coming along with the crowd. I was pleased.

But then, when we finally got in to the club he didn't come in with us.
I flipped. I was so angry. He hadn't come in with me, he was with other people, I didn't know where he was, had he gone home, had he left without me, how could there be other people he wanted to be with, how could I not be the most important thing for him.
I went to the toilets and cried. Another girl I worked with comforted me.
I was so angry.
He had proved Rhianna right. I was angry because he had proved her right. He didn't like me enough to stay with me, to claim me.
I picked up my phone to text him, "Goodbye, hope you have fun." I stopped myself and instead wrote, "Are u coming."

He came.
(Of course he fucking came.)
He was just outside, smoking and talking to a group of others - like I had known deep-down all along he was.
But the damage was done. I'd been broken.
I ignored him.
I was in so much pain. The anxiety had twisted me up into a knot and I was choking.
I couldn't control it, I couldn't reign it in, I needed him, I needed him all or nothing. I couldn't control the ridiculous, irrational, anxiety and it was impossible to make me see reason.

Theo slowly began to calm me down again and put the smile back on my face. We were outside smoking when the club closed and everyone remaining began to gather outside with us deciding what to do next. Theo knew what I wanted, we had made the decision on Wednesday to stay in a hotel together. And yet he wasn't making a move to leave them.
I got left talking to the dickhead of the office, John, who I had fallen out with one night back in October when he ignorantly made a joke about bulimia.
That pushed me over the edge.
Fuck Theo.
He was doing it again, he wasn't claiming me.
"I'm going," I said bluntly to John.

And I walked off, tears brimming in my eyes. I wanted Theo, we were supposed to have a lovely night together.

Halfway down the road, I stopped.
I was being stupid.
This behaviour wasn't going to get me what I wanted.
I walked back.
I had a missed call from Theo. I was too embarrassed to answer.
I walked back over to him. John laughed in my face. I probably swore at him.
I ran over to the little shop across the road, intent on buying food to stuff my face. Theo stood outside anxiously watching me. I probably swore at him too.
he came inside the shop and I put my hands to my head to agony. "I want to eat. But I can't."
He took me outside and calmed me down. John was standing across the road staring at us. I was on edge and flipped. Theo was clearly upset by my behaviour and anxiously held on to me as he asked me what was wrong.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm so sorry. Please, can we just get away from here?"
"Where to?"
"Can we just go away from here!"
"A hotel"
"Yes!"

How hard was it to understand what I needed Theo? I needed you. I just needed you.

He did his best to comfort me, "You're so gorgeous, how do you not see that?"
"I just don't ok."
"How can you not wake up in the morning and see how beautiful you are. How can you not wake up and think, yeah, I'd fuck that - I would."
I couldn't even laugh, I just hung my head with sadness.
It was - it is - incredibly sad, that a guy can sit there, hold her hand, care about her, tell her she is beautiful, believe that she is beautiful, and yet the girl he speaks to is fighting back the tears because she cannot believe him.

When we got back to the hotel, I was still incredibly tense and anxious. I looked in the mirror and saw the ugliness. I wanted to smash it, I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. But I would spoil everything.
my memory is patchy now. We had sex, but then I fell apart. I cried.
Fuck it, I cried in front of him again. I turned away and refused to explain why I was so upset.
I think I told him something about being really insecure. I can't remember. I probably told him it doesn't matter, he wouldn't understand. Nothing. It's nothing.
All I could think about was how ugly I was, and how he had seen that now, especially now I had cried.

I woke up in the morning feeling cold, empty and horribly sober. I peeled myself out from underneath his arm and hid my face as I ran off to the bathroom to shower and fix the damage. I banged and crashed around the bathroom, still full of anger, huffing and puffing like a spoilt child, anxious in case he woke up and saw my face. With sober eyes it really wasn't that bad.
I remembered my behaviour last night and felt cold.

This was how I lost Alex. Exactly the same. That morning with him I had woken up insecure about the way I looked and acted like a spoilt child who hadn't got her way. I had hidden away and refused to go to breakfast with him.
I had done the same with Theo. I had gotten insecure because he (understandably and naturally!) hadn't stayed by my side all night and I had cried, run off down the road, come back and acted like an insecure freak.

I crept back into bed silently, full of shame. His back was turned to me.
It broke my heart.
His back was turned to me the way Alex's back had been turned to me on the morning when our relationship had come crashing down.
I looked at Theo's cold back and knew that I had lost him. I had lost him because of my insecure, irrational and childish behaviour - exactly the same way that I had lost Alex. I cuddled up to him and tried to get him to put his arm around me again. He wouldn't. He was fast asleep.

I needed him to wake up, I needed to know that it was all ok.
I had no one but myself to blame. Theo had done nothing wrong. It was my insecurity that had painted him as the bad guy. I had acted completely out of line when all he had done was act normal and kind to me.
I slowly woke him up with kisses - maybe I can cure this with sex, I thought - maybe I can pretend like nothing happened, maybe he will not remember, maybe I can say that someone else upset me, that there was a reason for it which had nothing to do with him, or with me being mental.

Somehow, thank God, it was alright. I apologised and everything went back to normal. I hadn't lost him, he wasn't cold to me, he was lovely, I still had him. We laughed and talked and played and had the most perfect sex, thank God, thank God. It was alright.

It is still going to be alright though? I don't know. He won't forget the way I behaved. He won't forget the tears rolling down my cheeks and the pain that was reflected in them. He's smart in the way that he sees these things.

Later he asked me again if I was completely over my eating disorder. I told him again that I was, yes, but it was going to be something that I would always have to fight.
"You saw what happened last night. Sometimes I have a bad moment and I have to fight the insecurities again. That will never go away. I will never wake up and love what I see, I will always have to fight this."

Ultimately, I nearly lost him because of my insecurity and my eating disorder. If I learnt anything from my relationship with Alex it is that I cannot hide my problems from someone forever. They will find out because it will come out, and they will not be able to handle what they see. Friday night was proof that I still do not have control over my anxiety and irrational, insecure behaviour. And I have got to get a grip. I have got to work hard to fight it. I cannot brush this under the carpet any longer. I cannot be an actress on a stage for one night at a time. If I want anything more with Theo I will have to drop the act because I could never hold out a long term role like that. So, I either let him see the real, broken, torn and unhappy side of me and the horrible, sick world I live in; or I stop behaving like a reckless hedonist and mend, and heal and become a real human girl in a real human world.

While I sit in bed at my laptop writing this, he is probably sitting in bed analysing everything as well. I only have myself to blame if he comes to a logical conclusion and walks away.

In a crazy way, I probably acted as badly as I did on Friday because I realised that I was falling in love with him.
I am.
I'm falling in love with Theo.
And that makes me petrified, because the logical conclusion... is not a pretty one. If he doesn't ruin it, I will.

I want to keep smiling

2011-12-14T00:08:00.001Z

It nearly didn't happen. Millie and Rhianna spent all of Tuesday trying to convince me that Theo didn't really like me. I was devastated and broken, but mostly I was angry. How dare they tell me who I should or shouldn't date, telling me that I'm nothing to him, just another girl he can fuck, that he should be behaving in a way that they deem more appropriate, chasing me like a lovesick puppy. I was furious and my self-esteem was in shatters again. Sure, he was rubbish at replying to my messages and never gushed his feelings towards me, but I'd only really known the guy a few weeks! They sat me down and told me that taking him out on Friday would be a terrible mistake because he didn't like me and would only hurt me.

But I am a rebel. I rebel against anyone who tells me what to do, and my God, thank goodness that I do! I remembered the way we had talked for hours, I remembered the way we had laughed, I remembered he had made me feel something I hadn't felt for such a long time.
I ignored their words and went ahead with my surprise, took him to the Light Bar on St Martins Lane in Leicester Square and then a bright, glamorous hotel off Oxford Street.

And yes, yes dear readers, I was right, everything about it was perfect, perfect, perfect!

"Why do you like me?" he asked.
"Because you make me smile - and I like smiling."
"...You have a beautiful smile."
I touched his hand and looked at him intently to express my thanks. His eyes told me he was telling me the truth.
He carried on, " I don't know why you worry about your weight, your body is perfect, don't ever change. You look gorgeous tonight. You must know you do."
I melted inside. "Thank you... so do you."

I gave him a Christmas card with the room key and room number. "Happy Christmas".

"This is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me - and the sexiest. Thank you, seriously, I don't deserve this."
I beamed. "Yes you do."

I made it clear that this surprise night out and hotel was a Christmas present, but he still made the gesture to take me to a restaurant for dinner during the night and then out to lunch the next morning. We sat down to lunch at 12 noon and stayed in the same seats for 7 hours straight. Its incredible to say, but the time just passed so fast and so wonderfully as we talked and talked, learning about each other.

Yes, we met after work at 6pm on Friday and left each other at 7pm on Saturday - over 24 hours together, and every moment just so wonderful.

He wanted to know what I had been doing since I graduated and what the big secret that I kept about it was.
I asked him what his inclin was. He hesitated. Somehow I knew that he had worked it out.
"Go on, tell me what you think it might be," I demanded.
He shook his head, clearly troubled. I kept pushing him, it was going to be better if he worked it out than if I told him cold.
After more hesitation, he finally chose his words, "...Something to do with an eating disorder..."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it's something you've spoken about a fair amount."
I took a deep breath and nodded slowly. I trusted him now, I had let him in, he knew me and he cared about me. So I nodded and told him about my eating disorder - I explained where I had been since I graduated, why I had left London, how long I was in treatment. He took it so well, never saying a word to interrupt me, just remaining so sincere and kind. He let me in too - he let me see the softer side of him, the gentle sensitiveness that he kept hidden to the rest of the world.

I felt like even though he knew nothing about eating disorders, he understood, he was different. I saw the way he looked at me had changed. I wasn't just some pretty girl to him. I wasn't even just some pretty, intelligent girl or just some pretty, intelligent and fun girl. He did something that Alex had never been able to do - he looked at me and saw all my scars, my bruises, my battle wounds - and he saw that they had made me beautiful inside.
I always said about Alex that I was beautiful in ways he could never understand until he experienced pain - and it was true - what makes me so beautiful and special is the side of me that I can express here, my head full of beauty, my heart full of love, my body full of scars. Alex had never felt my beauty. He was cold, scientific and unemotional. Theo is not like that. Intelligent, masculine, practical, yes, all those things that Alex was, and yet still capable of looking at me in a way I'd never seen anyone look at me before. He looked at me like I was beautiful - inside.

Of course I didn't tell him that I was still bulimic now. He is never going to know about that.
I cheerfully told him I was better now as I stuffed my face with fish and chips and helped myself to his chips too.
"Look at what I eat, obviously I'm ok now! I never want to go back to feeling like I did when I was at my worst, ever."

I should feel bad for lying to his face. But I don't. I will not let my eating disorder ruin what I have with Theo. I will lose him if he knows, just as I lost Alex, and lost every other guy I'd ever liked. People can't handle it.
After an incredible night out, incredible sex, incredible intimacy, it was wonderful to spend those seven hours with him where we just chatted and laughed and smiled.

Millie and Rhianna had been calling me all day and I didn't answer them. When I finally picked up my phone, Rhianna shouted out me and told me I was out of order for ignoring them when I was Theo. I put the phone down and burst into tears, turning away from him so he couldn't see my face.
"I'm sorry," I said "I have to go."
They were making me go out to Public in Chelsea with Millie's boyfriend and his friends. After everything we had talked about - my illness, my Mum, my circumstances, I only finally burst into tears when Rhianna spoke to me like I was a piece of shit over the phone in front of him.

He pulled me close at the tube station as we said goodbye and kissed me tenderly. He thanked me again, and I smiled, "You're so welcome, I'm glad you had a good time."

I was so angry and hurt and upset by the way Rhianna had spoken to me on the phone. I went home, stuffed my face, threw up, put on a little tea dress and flats and went to meet them. As I walked over Millie looked at me in poorly disguised horror. Everyone else was dressed up to the overdone maximum. I shrugged, sure I felt like crap but I was making a point. I wasn't here to attract a bunch of random men I didn't give a fuck about. I wasn't going to make her happy by getting with someone she deemed more appropriate.
"I'm bring Jimmy's single friends for you to meet, 'Real men'," she had said.
Real fucking men? I wasn't attracted to a single one, there wasn't one under the age of 29. Who did she think she was trying to tell me what was good or bad about a guy. She had treated Theo so unfairly considering she didn't even know him at all and made both me and him feel like shit. I made friends with 'the mean girls', what did I expect. Rhianna spent all of today telling me how hot the guy she got with was and how skinny everyone kept saying she was. Even Millie's boyfriend was lusting after her 'body of a 6 year old'.

I went to my therapist yesterday for my last 'follow up' session since leaving treatment in June. And as a result I am now going back into treatment again. Sad isn't it. I couldn't get better, I still treat my body like shit, I still have no control over my bulimia, I still want to be thin more than anything else. I will find out later this week if I have to go to the bottom of the waiting list again or if I can start straight away.

It is our work Christmas Party on Friday, and that date - Friday 16th December - is ruling my life. I am petrified and sick inside at the idea of looking fat and ugly especially standing next to my two ultra-gorgeous, ultra-stick-thin friends. I will be the ugly, fat brunette one.
I ended my friendship with Rob in the office because he was bad for my recovery and self-esteem. I have to put myself first again, I have to stay away from people that make me feel like shit about myself. Fighting to block out my own voice is hard enough.

"What do you want from me Ophelia?"
"You make me smile. I want to keep smiling."

"All little girls should be told they are pretty"

2011-12-05T01:49:00.000Z

It's funny, the way the world works out.
Theo and I had an incredibly fun time last Thursday when we went out - an undeniably incredible time.
So you can understand why I was very confused when he became extremely flakey afterwards and refused to commit to another night when we could go out again. I have always been very straight up and direct when asking him out and was so again.
He told me that he was busy all this week after work and when I tried to suggest a date of next Friday, I was told that this was too far in the future to know if he was free or not! I was fuming with anger.
That's it, I decided, just like all the other guys, you get one chance with me, and if you can't show me that you want me, then I do not have the time to waste.

I imagined that for my next blog post I'd be sitting here at my laptop bitter and bitching about his behaviour towards me, but I'm glad to say that from this point onwards, this post takes a much more positive turn...

The only time Theo and I ever really come into contact at work is when our teams have our Friday afternoon meeting. This Friday was no exception, and because I had taken the morning off, I also indulged in the luxury of having a blow dry at a hair salon near to the office. He had turned down a date with me and ignored me this week, so I had to make sure that when he saw me in this meeting I blew his little public schoolboy socks off.

Hoping that I did, I checked my phone again after the meeting was over, just like I had been checking it incessantly all week, in the hope that he would have seen sense and would text to ask me out. Nothing.
So I decided to thow my dignity out of the window and text him one last time.
"Sooo any idea if you're free next Friday yet?"
"Haha why, what's happening?"
"Nothing special, just me."
"What did you have in mind?"
"A surprise..."
And then no reply.

Fuck.

Rhianna and I decided to go out for a drink after work, and as I waited for her by the lifts I saw the group of them leave: Theo, Cassio and two other guys from their department.
A cheeky glint formed in my eye. 'Let's go find them', I suggested to Rhianna. She grinned and agreed, knowing the fun that could ensue...

The office boys always stuck to the same Friday night watering holes so it was easy to find them. Overcome and giggling like schoolgirls we bought our drinks and settled in another area, chatting comfortably. Once an acceptable amount of time had passed we went over and started chatting to them, pretending to be surprised to bump into them. It was all fine, all normal, all fun. Me and Theo were easy and normal, but we quickly broke away from the group. As we smoked outside one of the other guys, James, came out to join us.
"I'll be gone in a minute", he said to us jokingly, "and leave you two to your sexual tension".
Assuming that he already knew and Theo had told him, I pretended to cheekily laugh it off.
"Haha, what! I have no idea what you're talking about!"
"Look, it's obvious, I'm very good at picking up on these things," he said.

As the bar started to close up, we decided to move on to a club in The City called Abacus. Theo was already very drunk. We lost Rhianna and Cassio briefly, and as we waited for James by the toilets, Theo finally forgot his inhibitions, pulled me close and kissed me. James came out and saw and ran off from us, grinning but slightly embarrassed. I shrugged at Theo, oh well!

The rest of the night was somewhat awkward, Theo and I were blatantly together and Cassio was there to witness me with my arm tightly and comfortably around him. I should have felt bad, but I didn't. I didn't like Cassio, and now that he knew the type of girl I was, there was no way he would like me either. He already hated Theo, so it all made very little difference.
It was great being with him. He made me feel so happy and so bright. I loved holding his hand, I loved his hands on me, I loved having his body close.
I spoke to him bluntly:
"So are you free next Friday or not? Why are you so difficult?"
He apologised, "I just really didn't want things to interfere with work, I didn't want it to be an issue."
"Ok, I understand. But listen, work is work, it's completely separate to your social and personal life. At work we are just colleagues who barely see each other, outside work, we can be whatever we want."
He nodded. "Ok, next Friday. I'm free."
I smiled cheekily. "Good, its going to be fantastic."

After everyone else had left the bar, Theo and I chilled for a little longer, kissing in a seating area downstairs. Eventually as this club began to close up as well, we left and began walking North. We both knew what we wanted, and although I wanted it more than anything, I found it impossible to admit.

He walked me to an open newsagent so I could buy some chocolate. As usual, I hadn't eaten all day and was in desperate need of something to give me energy. As we walked past the same hotel we had stayed in two weeks ago, we stopped and lingered.

"Let's just do it," I said.
I paid for the room and in we went.

We had been outside, walking and kissing in the late night rain and my first instict was to lock myself in the bathroom and refresh my hair and makeup.
"Don't put anymore makeup on!" he demanded.
"No!"
"I mean it, don't, it won't change a thing. You look gorgeous."
"Shut up."
"You look gorgeous. Make up doesn't make you look prettier. It doesn't change your features."
I looked at him with big, grateful eyes. He thought I was gorgeous as I was.

In the morning it was the same. Sex, conversations and laughter. We play-fighted and laughed like people who had known each other for years. He talked to me about work, economics, education. We sat in bed looking at my 'Introduction to the Financial Markets' textbook as he explained yield curves to me. We laughed and joked about silly, childish things. We talked about things so effortless that I can't even remember what they were.

He ran his hands across my back, his fingertips lingering.
"Look at your shoulder blades..." He said adoringly.
"What?!"
"They're just... You just have like no body fat on you..."
I melted inside. Of course he was exaggerating, but it meant so much. He liked my body. It was worth it, everything I had done, all the running, all the pain, all the time, all the effort.
He will never know how much it meant to me that he lay in bed with me and my naked body and adored it in the way he did.

We checked out at noon and he suggested we go and get some 'breakfast'. Only when we got to the street of restaurants and eateries did we realise that for the rest of the world it was actually lunchtime.

We stopped by a really cute, cosy place which did homely British food. He had a burger and chips while I tucked into a fish pie and chips. I smiled the whole way through, not caring about my expanding waistline, but enjoying the lovely warm food and flavours, and of course, enjoying his company most of all. Even when we had finished eating and paid and the restaurant began to clear out around us, we stayed chatting incessantly. It was 4.30pm when I finally had to tell him I needed to leave and go home.
It was me that had to say it.
After we had finished eating, at every next moment, I expected him to say we should get going and leave. But he didn't, he just sat there, happy being with me. It meant the world to me that he did that. It's not just sex. It's more. And that makes me smile. We sat there talking while the restaurant cleared out and emptied around us, until we were the only table left.

I never want him to know about my eating disorder. He can know it was in my past but I never want him to know about the shit I do now. I don't want what destroyed my relationship with Alex to destroy what I have with Theo.

So I'm seeing him again on Friday. I'm surprising him - It's his Christmas present. I'm taking him to a restaurant at one of the best hotels in Mayfair and have booked a room for us to stay there afterwards. I want a date where I can dress up and pretend to be rich and glamorous for a day. So yes, while I am blowing loads of money on him, I'm also blowing loads of money on treating myself to having my own little fantasy come true as well.

It's going to be magnificent. I'm going to feel like a rich princess for an evening. Of course it would be a little more perfect if it was a surprise that he had planned and he was paying for, but that's slightly irrelevant. My only fear is that he might be overwhelmed and run from me thinking that I'm too in love with him or something.

Millie called me once I had left Theo on Saturday afternoon and shouted at me. She doesn't think that he likes me because he wouldn't give me an answer about our next date and she believes that he should be the one chasing me. She told me I made a big mistake in sleeping with him for a second time and that I was goning to get hurt. I know she said those things because she cares about me, but at the same time she doesn't understand who I am and my philosophy on life.
I might die tomorrow. I can't take my money with me, so I'm gonna spend it all on looking my best and having the time of my life. What happened with Theo on Friday made me happy. I felt so alive and was smiling from the heart. Next Friday is gonna cost me well over £400 but I don't care because I'm gonna have the time of my life.
I don't live for the future, I live for the moment. I live for the extreme highs. I do not do mediocre in-between.

The only way Theo will truely hurt me is if he makes me think our relationship is more than it is - if he makes me think he's in love with me when he's not - or if he stops seeing me for another girl instead.
At the moment I'm still in control, we're still just having fun, still just getting to know each other.

Of course this week is gonna be intense because I'm gonna have to look my absolute thinnest and absolute best for Friday night. But you know, when I'm doing it for something like this - for someone who I know appreciates it - it's enjoyable. I love it. Burning calories becomes my ultimate high because I know how thrilling and wonderful it will feel when he sees me looking stunning on Friday. No feeling compares to that.

"All little girls should be told they are pretty, even if they aren't," said Marylin Monroe.
I thoroughly agree. It has made me the happiest girl in the world to be told the things that Theo told me, and to be told them by Theo, because his opinion means everything to me. It makes my eating disorder a happy thing, that gave me happiness, and will give me even more.

Hungry for The Boy

2011-11-29T22:03:00.001Z

The main point I need to make from my behaviour in my last post is a very strong and clear one:

I am not a role model.
I am not a role model in any physical way, shape or form.

This is physically the most ill I have ever been. And there's no denying that. Even though I feel on top of the world, even though mentally I've never felt better, that's all kind of irrelevant. It's irrelevant because my body won't last - and what's the point of being happy and being so alive inside when you know the physical medium that's holding it all together won't last for too long.

I am either starving and over-exercising; bingeing and purgeing multiple times a day; or abusing laxatives, or several of these at once.
The weekend after I slept with Theo I started to get scared. I pumped my body full of junk food after ripping my digestive system to shreds. I began to be afraid for the first time that what I'd been doing was going to see me end up in hospital - and that is a new fear I've genuinely never seriously contemplated before.

Fact is, this 'success' is coming at a heavy price - I'm pushing my body further than I've ever done, I'm living a life that's zooming by at top speed, not caring about the consequences of anything as long as I'm having a good time.

I'm living like someone who knows her time is short. I want to live as fully as possible, I want to get squeeze everything out of life while I can.
It's wonderful to live like that, to not think about consequences, but its scary too.
My digestive system is about to give up on me, I know I simply must not take any more laxatives now. I was frightened for the first time in my life that my insides had stopped working. I spent four days stuffing myself with food and nothing moved. Relief came at last. All the parts still work.

Millie and I had a good heart to heart the following Monday and she told me some home truths. Millie and Rhianna are actually two of the best friends I have ever had.
Millie told me that I was in no position to have a relationship. And when she said it, I realised it was totally true. None of these guys have a fucking clue who I really am.

Our chat prompted me to call up Alex and speak to him for the first time since we broke up last year. I asked him why he broke up with me. Although he originally tried to say again that the eating disorder had nothing to do with it, but I was relieved when he finally stood tall like a man and told me the truth.
He said he saw no future for us because he never believed I could get better. He hated that there were two sides of me. The happy, fun girl I was when I was with him and the crazy broken girl with the eating disorder who he had never met. That was the truth - he had no clue who I really was - and that was the deal breaker.

Despite all this I decided to pursue Theo. We had been texting since that night, initiated by me of course, and often getting very flirty and pushing the boarders of acceptable. I asked him out for a drink one eve after work and was very surprised when he agreed. I was almost certain he wouldn't have wanted to start dating anyone from work, simply because he'd been quite anxious for there to be no awkwardness or bad feelings between us which would distract him from work or get him into shit.

We set the date for Thursday.

...

"So for him, I'll do it again."

I walked to the train station the next morning after our date in a daze. It was pitch black with a slight drizzle, and judging by everyone's coats and scarves it was probably freezing cold too, but being so steaming drunk I was still burning like a furnace inside.

I walked with an odd sense of pride in my step.
Now, I felt like a real City Girl.
Just like the ones I'd been reading about who rolled into work still drunk and wearing makeup from the night before.

I had left the office just after 5pm that Thursday evening in the City of London. I stood delicately outside the entrance doors and looked around vulnerably. I couldn't see him anywhere.
Then I looked across the street.
He was crossing towards me.
I smiled, my eyes misty.
My God.
He was crossing towards me in perfect City Boy gear, white shirt and red tie to complete the suit ensemble.
An hour later I sent Rihanna and Millie a joyous message: "Omg he's so pretty. Kill me now."
It was only 6pm and I was already drunk - clearly not eating for two days had been a great idea...

The evening started off pleasantly, we got on, despite my nerves, there were never any awkward moments. Things started to get more heated as we got more drunk. We had our own table on an upper balcony, he made me smile and laugh and burn with joy. His hands ran along my body with so much desire and pleasure. His kisses were long and hungry. Once we started making out, it was impossible to stop. It was like we were in our own world again.

That evening I started to see a shred of vulnerability which I was drawn to immediately.
Outside the bar as we smoked, the bouncer commented on the way I looked and jokingly said to Theo, "Woah mate you are punching WAY above your weight with her!" I smiled but at the same time felt uneasy. He was openly attacking Theo in front of me and I didn't want him to think for an instance that he wasn't good enough for me. Too late. The seed of doubt had been planted.
"Why do you like me?" he asked when we were back inside.
I looked at him tenderly and shrugged, "I don't know, I just do. I either like someone or I don't." And I took him through all the moments that had led to me falling for him more and more.
He then began to worry about his figure. "You have such a good body - it's motivation for me to get in shape. I have to start working out more. When I look at myself naked it's horrible. What do you find attractive about me?!"
I reassured him. "Look, I'm very fussy, you know that, I don't just go for anyone. It takes a lot for me to like someone. And I like you."

I didn't ever want him to remember the words that bouncer had told him. I'm not in an objective position to say whether Theo is in 'the same league' as me, but I do know for certain that is absolutely not the way I feel. I feel like his equal, on a level with him in so many ways, on so many wavelengths. I don't care if he's not perfect. I don't care. I don't ever want him to think he's not good enough for me - because fucking hell I know exactly what that feels like.

When it got to midnight I looked at the rosy pink cocktail in front of me and shook my head.
"I can't drink it. I'm really sorry, I need to eat."
We left and walked again, several minutes later perched on a ledge enjoying a chicken burger like it was the most beautiful experience in the world. I apologised profusely but it didn't even seem to matter. A deserted street, intimate moments in the silent night.
He held me so tight, I could feel the vibrations of how much he wanted me and I wanted him to have me, completely.

I got in a taxi home at 1.30am. We had work the next day. I was so sad to leave him.

The next morning I couldn't stop smiling, I was glowing with happiness. I'd found someone that made me feel alive and excited about living again. It had been so long.

Ophelia is smiling. Ophelia is smiling. Daydreaming about the boy she kissed and held on to all last night. Ophelia is too happy to be scared about what pain might ensue.

He told me I had an amazing body.
My God, it's like a fucking drug.
I want to hear it over and over again, I want to feel his hands tasting every inch of me in bliss.
I drank juice and laxatives for two days before our date that Thursday evening. This whole weekend afterwards I've faced the terrible aftermath, my digestive system keeping me up all night getting rid of the death inside me.
Ran for 3 hours on Saturday, gym and swimming pool on Sunday.
For the man that loves me enough I will kill myself with joy. I will make sure that he never wants to let my body go.

Praying for a survivor out there

2011-11-15T20:45:00.001Z

If there is ANYONE out there who has recovered from an eating disorder...
And I mean COMPLETEY recovered, back to the pure, normal, natural way of eating and thinking that you were when you were first born...

PLEASE, I need you to reach out to me. And tell me it can be done. Because I simply cannot believe it otherwise.

"When I want something, I go after it"

2011-11-13T19:25:00.002Z

Ok. Long story short. I slept with Theo on Friday night.

In a hotel room.
In Kings Cross.

I'm not really sure how to continue with this story, but I suppose I must find a way to express it all and come to terms with it...

Theo works in the same department as Gareth and Cassio - in the same team as Cassio in fact. And I've said it before, I fancied him the first day I saw him, and even more so when I spent much of the evening chatting to him at the usual office drinks one Friday after work. In terms of character and background he is exactly the type I always go for - exactly the type of boy I hung out with at University, exactly the type of boy I eye up in their suits on the way to work, exactly the type of boy I click with and have banter with and laugh with...
plus it helped that he was easily one of the best looking guys in the office. 'Geek chic', Rhianna calls it, 'with those geeky glasses, but it totally works for him, he's cute.' I smiled at this remark - it's very rare for Rhianna to approve of a guy, her standards are very high.

So, look, I'll be completely blunt. I wanted him, I wanted him when I saw him, I wanted him when I chatted to him, I never stopped wanting him. The only problem was, how to get him... I needed to get him in a situation where it might be possible for something to happen between us. The usual after work drinks on a Friday was never any good - always too many people, standing around in a bar... but this Friday it was Rhianna and Millie's joint birthday celebrations - a few people from the office were coming out and then we were going to go on to a club. It was the perfect opportunity, I knew it, the perfect opportunity to get him out, get talking again, get drunk, dance...

Easy. On Thursday I sent him an email at work: You free tomorrow after work? Millie and Rhianna's birthday drinks... be awesome if you come! Let me know.
He replied: Sure - sounds good. I'm not in work tomorrow, drop me your number and I'll meet you guys there.

Oh God, finally. I cleaned out my bloated body with laxatives and didn't eat or drink a drop. Standard procedure.

On Thursday afternoon Cassio sent me a message telling me he had got me a present and asked me to go for a drink with him after work so he could give it to me.
I ignored his message guiltily.
I wanted to keep my body empty and go to bed early so that I was perfect for Friday night. He sent me another message asking for a reply. The guy had got me a present. Fuck. I couldn't say no.
I told him I would come for one drink and that it would have to be a simple fruit juice.
We chatted as we always did, it was nice as it always is. There is nothing between us though, at least not for me, I simply am not attracted to him, and it's purely a mis-match of personality and character - so there are no sparks, there is no lust. He had got me a Lawyers Latin Dictionary and he had written a little message in the front, in Latin. It was an incredibly sweet gesture, and served to only make me feel even more guilty. I finished up my drink and made my excuses to go. As soon as I walked away I forgot about him instantly. All I could think about was Theo and Friday night.

I spent Friday in agony. I wouldn't even allow myself water, I wanted to dry out and be as thin as possible. When 5:30 finally came we went to the bathroom to start getting ready. I slipped on a new dress I had bought earlier that week, my blowdried hair in tumbling curls over my shoulders. I'd sneaked off to have a massage at lunchtime to get me in the mood and open up my shoulders...

When I walked back out the reaction was amazing. I'd never been so complimented in my life. I walked through the office knowing all eyes were on me. And I loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it. This is what I lived for, this was what I was killing myself for, this was everything I had worked so hard for and been through so much blood, sweat and tears for. And you know I'm not going to lie, you know I'm not going to pretend to be modest. It is SO worth it. Being THAT girl.
Finally.

"Wow!"
"Seriously, Ophelia, fucking hell!"
"Shit!"
"Oh my God... you look Stunning."

"Aw. Thanks hun, bless you."

I felt so strong, invincible almost, all I needed was a guy to play this out on. Where was he?
Being the girl with all eyes on me wasn't enough, I needed a guy to make me feel it inside too.
Where was he?

I chatted and laughed and drank with the usual crowd from work, Chris was there, flirting as we always did. We'd been out since 6:00pm... by 6:30, 7:00, still no word from Theo, I'd sent him my number but I didn't have his so I couldn't chase him up.
"He's not coming is he..."
Rhianna shook her head. "Probably not."

At 7:30, my phone, which I'd been holding in my hand in anticipation all evening, began to ring.
"Sorry, hun," I said to Chris mid-conversation, "I have to take this..."
It was Theo. He'd he told me he'd be there in 45 mins.

Beaming and full of adrenaline, I took my usual spot in front of the mirrors in the toilets. On rare occasions, I can look in the mirror and adore what I see; maybe it was the alcohol burning in my eyes, but this was one of those times. I loved what I saw, this was the best I'd ever looked, surely, and he was coming, he was coming, I could play my game out!

He arrived and I told him to wait for me outside. He was having a cigarette. I handed him a drink. It wasn't long till other members of the crowd wandered outside for a cigarette too and another girl latched straight on to him. I made my excuses and went back to the mirrors in the toilets. I must have gone and stood in front of the mirrors about 10 times in the short time we were in that one location.
When I came back out he was at the bar chatting to another girl from work. I was pissed off, but I wasn't bothered, none of these other girls from work had anything on me. My only competition in that department was Millie and Rhianna, and they both had their own men and would never tread on my toes if I liked a guy. So I chatted with Chris again, and other guys from work that I got on with. It was all fun and easy, me and Rhianna were laughing, then suddenly, in came a group of guys. Guys from Theo's department, Gareth in the middle.
I swore.
"Oh my God."
Rhianna laughed loudly, "Fuck!" She turned to explain to her friend, "Ophelia went out with him once" she pointed to Gareth, "and now shes trying to get with him" she pointed to Theo.

I played it cool, welcomed the group of guys and stood my ground cooly.
"Gareth! Hey! How are you? Long time no see!"
He bumbled and mumbled.
"Good! Cool!" I gushed confidently and passionately.
I had no idea what he was saying and I had no interest in what he was saying. The fact is, he was here now and it was slightly unfortunate - for him. He got to see how hot I was, and think about how he had missed his little chance of having me. I'd moved on.

People were starting to move on to the next bar, a City favourite. Theo was still holding the drink I'd given him when he first arrived.
"Oh my God - drink up!" I exclaimed to both him and Gareth in unison. "Come on, come on, we're moving on! I'm way more drunk than you!"
I left without him in tow. I couldn't be that obvious and that desperate. In the next bar I thought I'd lost him, and then I saw him through the crowd, standing at the bar with one of the other girls from work. I hesitated for a split second, before realising that actually, I didn't give a damn. I pushed my way through the throng and over to them.
"Ophelia!" said the girl as I reached them, "What's your star sign?"
"Libra..."
"Excellent!! There you go, perfect match!" And she gave us both a knowing wink and sauntered off.
I looked at Theo awkwardly, "er well..."
"Drink?"
"Of course!"

Millie came over and gave Theo a dirty look. "I don't like him, he's an arrogant cock. And I'm not coming to Mayfair , I don't want to go and pay for expensive drinks in some pretentious place."
I defended Theo, particularly because she didn't even know him and was judging him on gossip. One of the guys from work, James, had got us a table at a club in Mayfair but was keeping it on the low as he could only get a small number of us in. Since Millie was refusing to go, it was just going to be James, his two mates, Rhianna and her friend, and me and Theo. I told James I wasn't going unless he got Theo in too.

As Theo slipped away to the toilet briefly, Rhianna came over. "Ophelia, we're moving on, James has got us the table at the club in Mayfair, but we have to go now, get Theo and come. We'll wait for you outside."
When he came back I told him to drink up. "We're moving on again." I didn't give him a choice, I didn't give him a chance to say no. "Rhianna and the others are waiting for us outside, come on."
I boldly took hold of his hand and led him across the bar to the exit. I didn't care who saw me leading him out. I loved the feel of his hand in mine and I loved letting the world know that he was with me.

Much of the night from here on was a blur. Inside the club, the atmosphere was perfect, I was with Theo, we drank, we danced, I didn't shy away from making it clear that we were together.
"I'm so glad you came! I didn't think you'd come." It was true, I didn't think he would come. Why would he come out with a girl he barely knew, why would he spend the evening dancing with me...

The music was loud, I could feel the beat pulsing through my body, my brain couldn't think about anything, it could only feel. I could feel Theo and I could feel the music and I could feel the alcohol numbing my inhibitions. I felt free as a wild bird in the wilderness.
"Why haven't you kissed him yet!" Rhianna exclaimed pushing us together.

We danced, his hands around my waist, feeling my body, the body I wanted him to feel, he loved it, I know he loved it. I wanted to believe that he'd never been with a girl with a body as good as mine, I wanted him to think that he would never have sex with anyone as good as me, I wanted him to believe that, I wanted him to know that.
I stopped against a pillar and smiled at him. I looked straight into his eyes and held his gaze. I wasn't going to make a move on him. He had to be the man, he had to do it.
I saw the same thought flash across his mind. She wants me to kiss her.
He put his hands on my waist and drew me in
and kissed me.

For the rest of the night we danced and kissed and smoked and kissed.
It was perfect.
"So where do you have to go home to?" he asked.
"South London."
"Wow, bit of a trek."
I shrugged. "It's ok I do it all the time, besides I don't have a choice."
"Yes you do."
"Really? What?" I stared at him.
"We could get a hotel room."
I said nothing.

Theo was in the middle of moving out and was staying with his parents in the meantime. I couldn't take him back to mine and he couldn't take me back to his.
I was both pleased and taken aback by his forwardness. He wasn't afraid to ask and put it out there.
I looked at him in anguish.
"I..."
"It's up to you. If you want to go home, I'll see you on to your night bus," he said reassuringly.
I put my hands to my head in shame. "Good girls don't behave like I do. When I want something, I go after it. And good girls don't do that."
"It's fine, don't be silly. But I don't want you to do something you'll regret."
"I won't regret it... but... I don't know that I can have sex with you and then for nothing to happen after that."
I was honest. I didn't want a one night stand with Theo, I liked him way more than that.

We walked through London while I battled with myself, eventually conceding that I wanted to have sex with him more than I wanted or was able to think about the consequences. As much as I successfully played the confident, straight-talking girl who knew what she wanted, the truth was a lot different. I wasn't able to ask him outright if he wanted to sleep with me and then for nothing to ever happen between us again. I wasn't able to ask him because I was too afraid of the answer.

We got in a cab and went to a hotel in Kings Cross.
The room cost £140. We split the payment.

In the morning we cuddled and chatted, laughed and played. It was beautiful to lie in his arms, just like I did once with the boy I loved.
I wanted to stay in that bed with him forever.
I wanted what I had had with Alex back.
He wasn't Alex, but we still had it. Something different, but still something that made me feel good.

I wanted to speak to him about the situation but I couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to ask the questions that needed to be asked.
And I sit here writing this still not knowing.
We checked out of the hotel at noon and I called Rhianna as soon as I was on the train home.
"It's fine," I said, "we're totally cool, it's not going to be awkward at all."
"Well ok, if you're sure. I know you've wanted him for absolutely ages so good for you!"

So these are the questions I am faced with:
Do I really like Theo? Do I really want him? Is he just another guy, another game, or do I really like him more than that?
Do I want to pursue him? Do I want to face the risk of rejection and the inevitable awkwardness that will ensue at work?

After a week of restricting, exercise and laxatives to ensure I fitted into my tiny dress on Friday, I spent the whole weekend eating again. This trend is frustrating me. Starving during the week and then bingeing and purging all weekend after a drunken Friday night. It has to stop. It has to stop. I'm killing myself. I'm living fast and dying pretty.
I'm killing myself so I can live the life I always dreamed of.
At school I wasn't attractive, I wasn't confident and I wasn't popular. And all my life since then I have dremed of being one of the elite, a 'popular girl'.
That evening, one of the guys at work jokingly called me, Millie and Rhianna the 'Mean Girls' because we were the popular party girls, always out, everyone knew our names and everyone knew we ruled the roost. I beamed because I realised that I'd finally become the girl I'd spent my teenage years wishing I could be. I'd moulded myself to fit that character perfectly.
I'm finally sitting pretty at the top and I love it there.

The only problem is what comes with that. All the guys at work think I'm a fun-loving bitch, a party girl who loves being single, loves playing the game, loves going out and having a good time.
"You give out that impression Ophelia, and guys don't want that, sometimes being shy and vulnerable is good. Theo won't see you as girlfriend material - unless he thinks he can be the one to tame you," said Millie to me the morning after.
I hung my head sadly. I played that character in front of all the guys at work. I played that character in front of guys full stop.
"I play that girl because I'm so insecure. I want them to believe that I have the power and that I'm in control."
"But you don't - the truth is that you would love a boyfriend and to be treated well."
"I know... but I don't like showing guys that side of me. I don't want them to feel that I'm weaker than them and that they have the power to make me feel loved."
"I think you should show him who you really are. Text him and say that the girl you played on Friday isn't the real you and that you want him to know that. At least that way, if he rejects you, you'll know he's rejecting the real you, rather than some fake character you played."

Theo. Theo has brown hair, a cute face and personality that caused us to click the moment we first spoke. He's not perfect.
But I don't care. He doesn't have the perfect body, and we didn't have the most mind-blowing sex. And ironically, even though that's what I value myself by, I don't care about that with him.
I want him in a deeper way. He makes me crave the relationship I had with Alex, the time we spent laughing and cuddling in bed, the comfort, lying there under the sheets, blissfully cut off from the rest of the world.

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls.

I killed myself for him, yes, pushed my body to the physical limits over the week, for him, stuffed myself into the little perfect mould. I wanted to be the best for him, I wanted him to want me more than anything.
It was the first time that I had killed myself for a guy and felt his hands and eyes appreciate it.
So for him, I'll do it again.
(Also, for those of you who were wondering, Aiden bailed last Sunday. Had to have dinner with his sister.
Whatever. Not bothered. Moved on.)

Who is Ophelia now?

2011-11-06T13:09:00.007Z

I studied a book at University called ‘Spasm’ in which the author suggests that someone might create an illness because she ‘knows no other way of telling her life’s tale...the illness a conduit to convey real pain.’
Is that what my eating disorder is to me? The desire to stuff my face and throw up, the need to run until my feet are blistered raw, the buzz from fasting and curling up in a ball locked in the toilet cubical - are these desires created or born from the inner pain I had for so many years and had no way of expressing or feeling physically?

Cassio is in the dangerous position of making me remember who I am. I am the girl who devoured books and poetry, wandered around the galleries alone, writing, dreaming, opening up her bare, raw soul to the harsh elements of Art. He is a culture snob. Fine dining, classical music, expensive clothes, European languages, European cities. He could never love London like I do, even as an Italian, his heart will always belong, not to Rome or Venice, but to Paris. We talk about all these things, all the things I used to hold so close to my heart. That’s why I studied English Literature at University. But I chose to walk away from it all.

I came home, exhausted and emotional last Friday night and pulled out Sylvia Plath from my bookshelf and went to sleep listening to her recording of ‘Fever 103’. It was the first time I’d touched literature since I started in The City back in July and it reminded me that literature was the only thing that could make me feel what I was feeling. At least the last time I was working in The City I used to have time during my journey in and out of work to read a couple of chapters. Now all I read are the business pages, reports and analysis, news journals and magazines. I walked away from everything I used to love, everything in my heart, everything I am – was.

Of course I still love it. But I’m not going back. When I speak to people now, I tell them my biggest regret was letting my love take over me. I tell them I wasted three years of my life studying something pointless. Who cares that I have views on Shakespeare and Romantic Literature? That won’t make me money, that won’t get me a job, that won’t earn me respect.

But Cassio brings it back to me. He talks of his friends in the large investment banks with disdain. He tells me that the glamour I dream of is a lie. It’s all sleeplessness and overwork. He speaks of the beauty of Paris, the importance of culture and beauty. He makes me miss all the things I used to love and treasure.

My business trip to Dubai has been amazing. I was so anxious in the run up to going as I was travelling and meeting clients on my own, but I did it. The little girl from South London held her own; fearless. I walked away realising that there was simply nothing I could be afraid of now, nothing. I flew out alone, held meetings at funds and banks alone, holding court with men twice my age and experience. I did it. Brimming over with pride and relief after every day came to an end. I did it. I'm doing it. I've done it. There is nothing I can be afraid of now.

A year ago I wrote in this blog that I had lost everything, I shut my eyes at night praying that I wouldn’t wake up the next day. And honestly, I don’t know what it was inside me, but I didn’t die, I didn’t give up, I came back and I’ve achieved things I never even dared to dream. I achieved all this because I walked away from the avant garde, the love of Art, beauty. I would have been a penniless author like those I read about on Grub Street. There’s a reason why all the greatest writers and artists were mad or depressed – that’s what philosophy does to you. Living in the real world, cutting off those sensations, numbing the desire to read and write and feel... that is what has enabled me to take flight in the world of business.

So you see, I can’t go back. I can’t go back to that girl that you probably used to love to read about. Ophelia, the classic form, tragically broken and fragile, clambering for beauty, for the flowers which I hung about my room in ecstasy. That Ophelia was also the girl in the dressing gown, underneath her duvet, alone in an ice cold house, a floor strewn with images in magazines and a laptop full of written dreams. That is not my vision of success.

The only downside to the 'success' I've felt in the last few months is that once a bulimic, always a bulimic. The events of last Friday night threw me off the edge and into a spiral of uncontrollable bingeing and purging. Over and over and over again. During my time in the Middle East I dined on 5* food every night. And threw up 5* food every night. I came back to London looking like a whale, unable to control my intake, unable to put the fork down and say no. A typical poor person’s attitude to food; put me in front of a buffet that I don’t have to pay for and I want to make sure I get everything I can out of it. “I’ll never get to eat like this again when I go back home...” straight back to my hotel room, clean out the mini bar and stick my fingers down my throat until it’s all gone.

* * *

On Friday the lawyer, Aiden, sent me a message telling me he was finally going to be in town on Sunday. ‘Passing through' London, and his first port of call is to let me know.
Shame that I feel like a gross monster after a week of bingeing and purging extremis. But who knows when he will be 'passing through' next? I had to say yes, I'll be around on Sunday and I'll meet you for a coffee (lame on the coffee front but I take what I can get). Besides, it's nice to be chased for a change.
I was supposed to be knockout beautiful when I met up with him. I'm not going to be. But I have to get it over and done with.

I ran for two and a half hours yesterday to prepare, to try and deflate some of the weight which I had put on in the last week. I ran along the Embankment, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Green Park... back round to my gym in the square mile. I hobbled into the sauna and came out clutching at the handrail along the stairs, the world reeling about me. I felt so sick. Locked myself into the private changing cubicle, laid out my towel and sat on the floor. Horrified. I put my body through this, and look, still a roll of fat on my tummy, look, look. There is still fat on your body. All the miles you've run, all the good work, the bulimia will always undo it. Bulimia will always keep you fat. Last Friday I reached my lowest weight since I was 15. Lost control, binged for a week, and saw a dial on the scales go right back up again.
On the train back home I had to press my hand to my mouth to stop myself from vomiting all over the floor. Vomiting on public transport during the day is just so not done. I nearly didn’t make it. It was the cocktail of a banana smoothie and lucozade drink which I had after my run. Internal violence.

It’s Sunday lunchtime now and I have heard no word from Aiden. Poor form either way. To keep me hanging and waiting around or to pull out and bail on me. I don’t know which yet, but both are just as bad.

Today I feel very numb. And it’s almost as if I couldn’t give a damn. He is just some guy I put my body through hell for yesterday. So what. Even if he does message me now, I’m tempted to say it’s too late notice, made other plans now, sorry. My life moves at 100 miles an hour, you get one chance to catch me. I'll kill myself for you, but I'll only do it once.

The City Girl with no Class

2011-10-29T23:29:00.000+01:00

Thursday 27th October

It has become a rule to binge - to eat myself to death - after a night out. Why. Why not. I am the queen of throwing up.
I'd had an intense few days at work - travelling abroad and then pushing myself to the limit in the office overtime. It was nearing the end of a long Thursday afternoon and I needed to smile, laugh, feel good, feel power, feel - feel something.
I knew where to get it.
Cassio.

I sent him an email. Dinner?
He said no.
Already had dinner plans.
But drinks was a yes.

I pranced over to his desk when I finished. Tony saw us, smiling knowingly at me. The good looking young kids always found each other.
It was lovely. I loved friendliness, I loved chatting, discussing, questioning. When the time came for him to go to dinner with his friend he asked me to join him and I beamed. Of course. We had dinner with two of his friends and one of their other colleagues - all Europeans. He told me I was the first English girl he'd made friends with. I smiled. That was me; I was always the exception to guys' rules.

It was fun, it was easy, I was so relaxed, so fun, so easy, as if he were an old friend. And then it started to come, the wandering of my eye, wandering over his face and body, wondering what it would be like to kiss him, hold him, thinking that it was what I wanted, thinking that it would feel so good.
Gareth was gone. I hope he doesn't try and talk to me again, it's gone, gone.

Cassio. It would never work, he'd never commit, it would never be the sound, stable, security I want, but it would feel good. He'd feel good, big brown eyes, thick dark hair, golden skin, beautiful features, softness, caressing...
And yet so free and fun and easy...

Shame that after dinner I stopped at the train station and ate my weight in junk food. Shame I had to go and throw up, make my face puffy, swallow a load of laxatives. Shame.
I will see him again tomorrow in a meeting and afterwork drinks. Shame.

Friday 30th October

No man is worth killing yourself for. And yet I will kill myself for anyone. A different guy a different week.

I left the party at 2:00am and wanted to do something stupid. Wanted to jump. Wanted to run in front of a car. Wanted to be beaten, bleeding. Here's what happened on another Friday night out with work colleagues...

All day in the office I kept holding out the underside of my arms in front of me, staring at the pure white and unmarked skin. I sat in the meeting, Cassio in front of me, wanting to draw lines across my forearm in red pen to pretend they were bleeding. All I could see were my fat legs sticking out in front of me, exposed where I sat. I caught Theo's eye and we shared a blushing smile. I'd pissed Cassio off last Friday night by spending the entire evening talking and flirting with Theo. Who was, in all honesty, the nearest to the type of guy I usually go for. I wanted him. I probably wanted him more than Cassio.

In the bar later on that evening though Theo left early with another girl - not someone from work - someone I didn't know. I was pissed off. I should have moved in earlier. When Cassio left a little while later I texted him to come back. And he came back. Only for me to keep talking to others, and he left again. Didn't come back when I asked the second time. Stupidity. Desperation. Crying out for attention. Fuck this, fuck this.

"I heard there was a bet going on as to whether you'd get with Cassio or Theo first," said Bill. I swore. I had to be careful now. I didn't want to be 'that girl' in the office. I was a mess. Talking about things I shouldn't, too liberal, too bad, too classless.
Classless - that's what I was. I dressed in a chic, sleek, black dress, new lowest weight, the lowest number I'd seen for years and years, perfect flowing hair, classic makeup, expensive shoes and bag, I was the perfect, archetypal London City Girl image.... except I was fucking classless, foul-mouthed, loud, flirtatious and dangerous.

I've lost a stone in weight since I started this job in July. Rob commented - "I don't know what you've done but you look fucking amazing. You must love walking around the office and having everyone staring at you. Have you been killing it in the gym? Because it's fucking paid off whatever you've done."
I smiled sadly. "Thank you."
Rob was a bastard. He believed no girl was good enough until she was model thin. However much I despised him, his words meant a lot.
Restriction, laxatives, vomiting, running, running and running. That's how I did it babe.

"Ophelia is so fucking fit, why's she with that little Italian guy?"
"You look fucking gorgeous, you always do, what's the matter with you?"
"You can't get with him... you're way out of his league, seriously."
We left the bar at closing time and a group of us headed back to a house party. I found myself with Chris, undeniably, a man with a heart of gold. I should be grateful and thankful for the kindness he has shown me, even when I've been a bitch towards him. I spilled my guts out to him, I spilled it all out in great floods of blood red emotion, pouring over the pavement before us, holding out my forearms and watching the skin break open and bleed. What did I have to lie about. I needed to tell someone. I needed to talk, I needed a human being to put his hand against my heart and feel the pain beating inside. And he was able to do that, his eyes looked at me the closest thing I can remember to a father.

We got to the house party and I made a cup of tea. I'd stuffed myself with junk food en route and was almost completely sober now. Why was I here? I was here because Rihanna had begged me to come. I was here because I hadn't had the nerve to be a classy woman and leave with dignity to get the last train home. I wanted to go home but I didn't know where we were or where to go. Idiot.

Standing on the balcony chatting to another girl and guy from the office I explained why I was drinking tea.
"If I drink any more alcohol I'll be sick."
"So what?"
"I don't really want to make myself sick that way." I hadn't realised the error in my sentence there. I should have said "I don't want to make myself sick." But having just stuffed my face with food my only desire was to get away from people and find a quiet place to throw up.
"How else can you make yourself sick?"
I looked at him as if he were stupid.
"Err obviously there are other ways."
"No there's not!"
What the fuck, I thought, is he that ignorant? "You stick your fingers down your throat idiot."
"Ha yeah but who'd do that?"
I just continued glaring at him like he was a fool.
"Shit, you're supposed to be like hahaha no way John as if I'd do that."
"Fuck you."
The girl with us looked horrified. "John, oh my God, what the fuck!" she chased him back into the flat, "Fuck! Are you ok?" she looked at me in shock, "Fuck!"
I shrugged my shoulders, unmoved, "What. It's fine."
"Fuck!"
I turned round to Chris who had witnessed the whole scene play out and raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah... you're right," he said, "People really don't react well to it."

I talked to a few more people and then gathered my stuff up to go. I would find a way home somehow. I wasn't afraid being alone on dark streets. As I reached the gate I heard John's loud, brash American accent booming down over the silent night. I looked up and could see their shadows on the flat balcony above me. He was talking about me. I paused and stood facing the gate, holding the railings, silent and still, listening to catch what words I could ringing in my ears.
"... I said you're really thin... kidding... she said you stick your fingers down your throat..."
"...bulimic!..."
"no! I didn't say that... like, fuck... expected her to laugh or something"
"oh my God, John!..."
I turned around as they stopped speaking and looked right up at him, two dark shadows on the balcony. I glared at him through the darkness. I know they were looking right at me. I know they had seen me. I glared at him wanting him to know I had heard. He was motionless. I know they knew.

I pulled open the gate and walked to the nearest main road. I scrunched up my face and tried to cry but there was nothing. I didn't know where the fuck I was but I knew getting a taxi home would be outrageously expensive.
Luckily I found a bus stop where I could get a night bus to take me back to Trafalgar Square and then got my usual night bus from there. I bought a chicken burger and chips, more food, shoved it into my mouth like a monster, ketchup and mayonnaise smeared around my mouth and chin, not caring.
I had reached a new low weight today, wore the tightest dress to show off it off, what for?! what the fuck for?! for stupid fucking Cassio, for Theo, for Gareth, for the boys I didn't give a fuck about in Sales, the men I didn't look twice at in Research, I did this to myself for Him, for Them, for attention, for a kiss, for sex, for love. AND I WALK AWAY WITH NOTHING.

I can't lie now. I've pushed all the way. There's only one way out. Push till you break. No way back.
I saw my therapist on Monday for a 'follow-up session' since I officially left treatment back in June. She told me to leave The City because it will kill me.
I know. And I love it. I don't care that it will kill me.
I want it.
"It's up to you now. You have to make a choice about what you want. Do you want to be safe and happy or do you want to be in this environment full of chavanism, superficiality, greed, mirrors, lust, pressure..."

I stood firm and I know I broke her heart in doing so. I wanted to be the ultimate success story for her, I really did, but I wasn't going to lie about who I was. I could have stayed in the school, in floral dresses and comfy cardigans, away from men and alcohol and the bright lights. But I've never wanted that. I love killing myself to reach the top of The City, The Square Mile, the darkest side of Capitalism, work hard, play hard, money, alcohol, mirrors, friends on coke, men wanting to fuck you, knowing they want to fuck you, running my hands along my shrinking body, feeling my hip bones beneath my dress, stretching in the mirror to see a concave stomach like the pictures I look at online.

I sat on the night bus, a guy several rows back throwing up over the floor. Whores in Halloween costumes, sitting in fountains, women bent double on the street while a friend holds their hair back, drunk kids groping at the bus stop, men passed out and snoring. I turned my nose up at them, but really I was no better.
I don't think this is fun, this stupid shit, this staying out late, this alcohol and getting drunk. I hate it. Been doing it for years. Hating it, every time I crawl home at 4am. I wanted to jump. I should be curled up on the sofa, fresh-faced and makeup-less, wrapped in a dressing-gown with the man I love and a box of chocolates.
HAHAHAHA
What an image. I despise people who live in that picture. I'd despise myself. And yet I want it.

I ate about 4000 calories last night. 3000 calories today.

I fly to Dubai tomorrow for a week of business.

Diary entries from a City Girl - Power Struggle

2011-10-20T22:58:00.005+01:00

Apologies for being away for so long and thank you to the 'lurkers'. I've been writing in my notebook meaning to post it up... :

Friday 23rd September

Playing games. I've been trying to stop myself all week. Every time I wanted to call Chris, email, message, accidentally bump into him in the kitchen... I kept having to keep myself in check, kept having to remind myself that I was only doing it for attention, only doing it for The Game. It wasn't fair on him or right to play with a person in that way.

I restricted all week and rounded it off with a triumphant binge.
Paraded around the office all day flirting and flitting from one guy to another, fake and bouncy, charming, pouting, batting my eyelids. Walked out the office door at the end of the day, scraped back my hair and walked the walk of shame to buy a weeks worth of food and shove it down my grotesque throat. Disgusting.
The little girl wants to call the 30 year old man, wants to feel his arms around her, wants to feel his love, any love, anyone. Love. Attention. Stopping herself because she knows she only wants to use him, doesn't really care, only wants to use him.
Sitting on the train, counting down the minutes until she can throw up.
Please.
I only ate because I know I can throw up.
Why could I just not starve.
Am running a race.
Must eat carbs. Can't eat carbs. Or rather can't keep carbs down.
Want to call him and tell him.

I spent all day flirting with all the other men in the office in front of Chris. I know he saw and I know he was pissed off and I know he knows what I was doing. But its his fault.
It must be, because it’s not my fault.

I want to put a new plan together.
Tony. One of the big swinging dicks. I sat in the front row of his presentation today and imagined undressing him.
He knows I'm attracted to him, I make it as obvious as I can. But that's not enough, the girlish giggling and blushing is not enough entertainment for me. I want to push for more, I want a real game here, I want a real challenge- and the second I know I can win, I'll back down I won't go all the way, I swear.
I have to play this one.
"I'm a banker - I like risk."

I love risk. I love putting myself in dangerous situations, playing Russian roulette with my body, pushing myself to the limit, reaching for extremes.

It makes winning so much sweeter.

Tony is the only man in the office that I do not feel more powerful than. He is the only one I cannot flirt and ooze confidence with. I want him because I want to overturn that. I want the power.

Secrets.
I will tell you I have an eating disorder, that's not a secret, but no one understands the extent to which that evilness inside me extends.
I am not thin enough. Don't tell me I am, because I'm not fucking deluded, I am a harsh critic, and most of the world is just too fucking soft.

I am obsessed with ambition and I do not understand anything else. I do not understand people who are not ambitious and driven by adrenaline.

If you are not getting up off your lazy arse and fighting to win, I do not understand you. The fight will almost certainly destroy me in the end - I will crash and burn in flames soon - but I understand destruction, I understand putting my mind and body through hell and pain. I have never just sat and been happy. Comfort makes me hurt more.

My eating disorder is part of that fight - because I believe that in order to win I must be beautiful. Getting up at the crack of dawn is part of that fight. Working late in the gym is part of that fight. Studying all weekend is part of that fight. Spending time networking and building a strong circle male city friends is part of that fight. Putting my body through late nights, overwork and under eating means I'll probably be dead by the time I'm 30 - but that's ok. Because I will have won - or died trying.

Think Nina in Black Swan. Except I am not a dancer, I am a City Girl with a deadly and evil ambitiousness out to destroy no one but herself.

And you know what the most frightening this is? - that girl should be so frightened - but she isn't. She is so consumed by ambition that she only sees the end goal and cares for nothing beyond that.

Friday 30th September 2011

“I hate that women derive so much power from their looks. But you know what I hate more? That I know that and I play to that anyway. I hate that I use my looks for power.”

He nodded. Another new boy in the office that I was flirting with as much as possible at Friday’s after work drinks – Henry – a poor Cambridge grad who had to listen to me going on about my ambition and desire to reach the top. And then there was Gareth, sweet, bumbling Gareth, finally talking to the girl he had seen around the office in the pretty dress with long brown hair.

I lapped it up. I loved it. I loved it so much. I loved the fucking power he was laying at my feet.

I stayed because I fucking loved it so much.

Chris was pissed off because I wasn’t flirting with him. But I didn’t care, he knew what I was, he knew that I’d been flirting my way round the office long before he’d arrived. He had no reason to be jealous because he’d always known he couldn’t have me – I wasn’t that type.

I am – I suppose – what we would call ‘a cock tease’. I flirt outrageously to give men the impression that I’m all over them- but I only flirt because I love their attention and being able to hold the power.

It’s just fun. This is the game I play – my hobby – my pastime. This is how I get my kicks. In the long-term, I’m waiting for my lawyer, my banker, I’m waiting for the man that challenges me, the man that I have to work for and fight for.

Rihanna and I have become firm friends with Mils in the last few weeks – and no – it isn’t a case of keeping your enemies closer – she is a genuinely nice girl who I get along with fantastically. She was as amused as Rihanna at my office antics and as a fellow single girl flirting her way though life, she has since become a close friend and great confidant.

The evening ended with more drinks, dancing, a walk through London, Rihanna and Mils doing crazy shit, trying to break into Rihanna’s house after we arrived and realised she had forgotten her keys, drinking a vintage bottle of wine Mils had swiped from somewhere, me passing out at Rihanna’s kitchen table and finally waking up at 7am with all three of us in bed together.

Thursday 6th October

This week I was abroad on business. It’s been a great experience for me, getting more business meetings under my belt and networking as much as possible.

Yesterday I received a random email from an Italian analyst called Cassio who I had met briefly in training – a friendly but formal email asking me for the contact details of someone I was connected to on LinkenIn.

Well, what can I say – he’s Italian – beautiful, glowing and utterly out of my league – I’d look like a fat, flaky, greasy pale slob of a human being next to him – not something I had had any interest in pursuing. But hey – part of my long-term strategy involves networking my way though every and any potentially valuable male in The City of London. At the end of the day, sure, I love flirting, but that’s not my only agenda – I want to know everyone and be known by everyone – popularity can open doors. And I’ve had doors shut to me my whole life because I didn’t know the right people.

So I responded to the email politely, leaving it open for a reply – and before you know it, a multitude of chatty emails have passed between us and we’re good friends attending a business conference together. Wait – ok – he mentioned the conference to me in one of his emails and added “join me”. So I seized the opportunity and ran with it, emailed the contact and got myself on the attendance list too...

I hate business travel. I hate that I need energy for meetings. I hate that we have hotel breakfast, that I have to go out for dinner, that I can’t eat what I want, that I can’t spend all evening in the gym, that I lose the strict and safe routine that I need to keep myself remotely sane. Every evening after dinner I came back, cleared out the mini bar of junk food and threw everything up.

I just wanted to be beautiful – and I couldn’t do that if I couldn’t be in control.

Back in the London office and the emails between Cassio and I continued so I decided to add Henry and Gareth to my emailing list. Although Henry dwindled off, Gareth was keen and I started to become drawn by his awkward sense of humour and sweetness. His emails made me smile.

Saturday 8th October 2011

I met up with an old friend from university who was passing through London and told him about my recent exploits. He encouraged me to think about Gareth

“That’s the type of guy you should be with,” he said, “a nice, geeky, genuine guy who will look after you.”

I nodded, “Well we’ll see. But you know the way I am, you know I play with men and you know why I do it. For all the times my heart was broken and I was made to feel worthless for not being good enough, pretty enough, thin enough – I was always the weak one, trodden on and used. This is my revenge now: I am the one they want, I am the one who breaks hearts and walks over those foolish enough to fall into my trap. I’m the one that makes them feel worthless for not being good enough to hold my interest after I’ve won the chase and played the game.”

He shook his head sadly and I just shrugged in reply. “I know I’m a bitch. At least I’m honest about it.”

Monday 10th October 2011

The effects of being abroad for work last week with a shit diet, bulimia, no exercise and almost no sleep had finally caught up with me. Over the weekend, my face had broken out into a plethora of spots which even my dedicated make-up routine could only partly disguise. As a result, I went to work with my self-esteem in shatters – I was unable to look anyone in the face and hid behind my computer screen in shame. Thank God all Cassio and Gareth saw of me was the words I sent them over work email.

It was days like this that I cried tears knowing that I would never be able to carry on much longer with this head on my shoulders. The only prevailing thought that I couldn’t break free of was that I was hideous and unlovable. Tears streamed down my face as I hid in the toilets and I walked past people with my long hair shrouding my face like a curtain, covering my ugliness. I was shaking and tense, pulling at my hair in anguish. At one point during the afternoon I crept into the kitchen to get a drink only to find Chris there doing the same.

“Hi Ophelia! How’s things?!”

“Fine thanks.” I kept my back to him and made my drink without another word before rushing out again as quickly as I could. I felt awful. I’d been a bitch to him because I couldn’t bear him looking at me. So I sent him an email apologising. He understood and was kind to me. I appreciated the kindness.

Meanwhile, every email I received from Gareth melted my heart a little bit more. My friend was right - he was exactly the kind of guy I should be with. So I made a decision: I was going to ask him out for a drink. I wasn’t sure if this was part of the game or not - all I knew was that I wanted to spend time with him.

So I asked. And he agreed. We were going for a drink after work on Thursday.

Thursday 13th October

I sat at my desk, my starving stomach doing somersaults.

My face and confidence were hardly back to their best by Thursday, but it had to be good enough.

At 6pm I stood in front of the mirror in the toilets knowing that he was sitting at his desk on the other side of the office waiting for me. I reapplied the makeup, redid the hair, checked my figure from every angle. Starving stomach doing somersaults.

He suggested a bar round the corner from where we work and so we went there. I was extremely drunk very quickly. Too much alcohol in an empty body. I can’t remember what we talked about too much, but I’m convinced it hadn’t gone well. He didn’t like my ambition; he didn’t need to be explicit about it. We were opposites. And yet I wanted him.

I took in the toned forearms showing under the rolled up sleeves of his pink shirt, the brown eyes, the awkward quirkiness, the humour, the smile. I started to feel the weakness seeping through my body. I was too drunk, shit, I was too drunk, it was too obvious. I was so tired, hadn’t slept properly for weeks, I was breaking, in front of his eyes. He didn’t know me, he knew the confident, fiery, strong girl that I performed. He didn’t know my beauty. And I couldn’t show it to him. I couldn’t drop the act, even though I knew he didn’t find it attractive. I texted a friend: “I wish someone like him could love me but he won’t and I can’t change who I’ve been for so long... He would never love me, they never do. I’m never enough, there are prettier, nicer girls.”

As I walked away from him at the tube station I felt the pain rise up from my heart. I cried and stuffed my face with food because I had lost the power. I liked him, so now he could destroy me.

I can’t even put down in words anymore... I can’t even drag this emotion out of me. It all went so wrong.

Friday 14th October

All day I had not heard not a word from Gareth. I expected something, I had a good time last night, or fancy going out again? Fuck, just something. I wasn’t going to speak to him first, it had to come from him. I’d initiated everything, the emailing, the drinks. He had to give me something back now, he had to prove that he liked me. I got nothing.

Today I’d arranged to go for lunch with Cassio. He was as good as his word, at 1:15pm, as Mils was perched on my desk chatting to me about my men, I saw him appear at the end of the floor, walking towards where I sat. I looked down covertly and whispered, “He’s coming.” Mils looked round and jumped off the desk with an elegant flick of her legs, “Have fun, tell me all about it when you get back!” I gave him a warm smile as he came over, “Ready to go?” I stood up and immediately cringed, I was wearing my highest set of heels and was noticeably taller than him. Although slightly thrown by his Italian accent (I’d never actually spoken to the guy except over email) the initial awkwardness quickly wore away thanks to my easy acting. To him I was like every other front office girl, confident and strong, so I played that part and everything was easy, I was chatty and fun and there was nothing to be awkward about. Despite his undeniable good looks I felt nothing for him. I found it impossible to connect with someone who I couldn’t fully communicate with. As English was his second language, I could never give him the depths of my emotions and fears and passions. I needed to be able to give that and feel that back, and I’d never be able to have that with him. Perhaps the situation would have been different if I had not started to fall for Gareth the night before. With my heart and mind so preoccupied it was impossible to find room for Cassio in my affections.

At the end of the day as people began to leave I was talked into going to the local Friday night drinking spot for one drink. I wasn’t really in the mood after the stress of the week and the last two days in particular, but found the temptation of being able to see Gareth and talk to him too hard to resist. He wasn’t there, he’d gone straight home. I couldn’t hide my disappointment. I hadn’t heard a word from him all day and I couldn’t let go of that. Cassio was there, talking to some others in his department but I wasn’t bothered, I ignored him. I began speaking to Bill, the guy who had introduced me to Gareth at the same Friday night drinking spot two weeks ago. I told Bill that I’d gone out with Gareth the night before and that I liked him. He gave me advice.

“He’s a really nice guy, but he’s shy - he’s not confident and outgoing like you. Plus he recently split up with his girlfriend so he’s probably been out of the game for a while and doesn’t really know what to do.”

Mils chirped up, “No, but a woman should be chased, she shouldn’t have to make the next move.”

I agreed, “At the end of the day, I’ve done all the work up till now. I intiated everything, I need to get something back from him, I need him to show me that he’s keen.”

Bill shook his head, “No, trust me, from what I know of him, you’re going to have to give him a push, he isn’t that sort of guy. You’re going to have to help him along, because he won’t make a move. If you want my opinion, you should just ask him and then you’ll know either way. Just say, I had a really good time yesterday, would you like to do it again? And then at least you’ll know and you can move on.”

It made sense. I was neither shy nor scared of asking him, I had just refused on principle. But at the end of the day, all I needed was to be able to break free of the sickly feeling inside my heart. I either fell for him and got the love I needed, or I found out that there was nothing there and no point caring about him and erased him from my memory.

I resolved to message him when I got home.

One drink turned into several and before I knew it I was one of the last people standing – again. As the numbers dwindled, it became impossible to ignore Cassio and we started to talk again. Soon we were in our own little conversation and one or two people had started to give us suggestive looks. I scowled back at them and shook my head, even though I knew deep down what we were doing. Eventually we were the last two left. I suggested we leave and he suggested we went to get something to eat. We walked to Leicester Square and found a Chinese restaurant that was open late. By the time we were finished it was half past two. I was exceptionally drunk from being bought drinks all evening and had probably been chatting shit to him the whole evening. However, he hadn’t seemed that phased by it and I was incredibly impressed that he seemed to like me enough to spend so much time with me and even take me for a meal. I was worried though. He was Italian, and he’d said it himself, he liked women. I couldn’t believe that I wasn’t going to try and pull him, but I couldn’t be untrue to my feelings. I didn’t want anything to happen between us. So before anything could even become suggested, I made it clear that I was getting a night bus home after the meal. He walked me to the bus stop in Trafalgar Square and waited with me giving me a hug and a peck on the cheek when my bus eventually came. “See you Monday, have a good weekend,” I said, just as I would have to any of my work colleagues on a Friday night.

By the time I got back home it was 4am. Remembering Bill’s words I logged on to facebook and sent Gareth a message. (We had not exchanged phone numbers and other than work email this was the only was I could contact him). "So I've just returned from drinks and dinner slightly worse for wear. Am going to sleep for two days straight! Anyway I enjoyed spending time with you yesterday and if you fancy doing it again soon let me know x"

That was his push. If I got no response asking me to go out with him then I was shutting the door on him and fixing the little wound that he had reopened. One chance, handed to him on a silver plate. If he doesn’t take it, that’s good - I will not spare another thought on him.

Monday 16th October

After leaving me to feel shit all weekend, he finally responded to my message yesterday afternoon: “enjoyed myself too the other night so would certainly be up for doing it again.”

I was livid. Even though the response was positive, I couldn’t believe that he’d still left it up to me to arrange everything again. I needed him to ask me out, I needed him to show me that he was interested in me. Once I was back in the office I sent him an email giving him my number and telling him to let me know when he was free. I gave him the benefit of the doubt for simply being a shy guy.

As painful as ever, the rubbish reply came flying back two hours later: “I’ll let you know then. Things are still pretty frantic with house searching this week so could be a bit spontaneous.”

Rihanna was blunt: “That is a shit response and he has no idea how to flirt – LAME”

I agreed. It was ridiculous. As if I had time for this, and as if I had time for someone who I had more balls than.

I emailed Cassio and told him I wasn’t going to the Conference with him on Wednesday – there was no point – I was not bothered or interested in spending time with him, especially if it meant taking time off work to go.

The excitement here has fizzled out. New target needed.

I’ve been invited to a Charity Ball on Saturday – if I don’t hear by then Gareth, you will have lost me.

Thursday 20th October

I went out for a long run in a tiny top in the freezing cold yesterday evening to calm my anger. This was my new method of ‘self harming for calming purposes”. I was angry at the world again, angry at my face, at my body, at work, at Gareth.

By the time I'd got back from my run, he had texted me. “Fancy hooking up after work tomorrow then?”

Perfect, I replied and immediately took three laxatives, worked out some more and glugged down as much water as I could manage. It was fine, I had today off work so I could take ages getting ready and cleaning my body out.

Thank God though, he finally asked me. I smiled for the first time in days.

Today it was the usual. Laxatives, coffee, water, a cheeky apple and some juice. My body looked good, I liked looking in the mirror and smiling at my body when it was so empty. I hit a new low on the scales – a number I haven’t seen since I was 16, no word of a lie. I was pleased, good work, Ophelia, you’re getting there...

I was glad that I’d already chosen to take today off work, it meant that I could pamper myself all day and make sure I looked perfect, just like I used to when I was a student.

I slept in, took a long bath, used all my special body scrubs, body butters, etc, went to the hairdressers, went to the beautician, looked perfect, sitting on the train, on my way to meet him at the office...
got a message...
“I’m really sorry but I think I might have to bail on you tonight. Just been called for a second viewing (I know, ridiculous!) on a house I saw a couple of days ago and am pretty keen to get this sorted as it’s been a massive pain in the ass. Hopefully things should be less manic next week if you are ok to ‘take a rain check’ until then?”

I barely reacted as I got off the train at the next stop and turned around to go back home. I was angry that I’d wasted my time. I had so much work for law school to do. I’d been so keen to waste my time on him, to waste my time trying to look good for him. Fuck him.

I sent him four words: “Of course, no problem.”

And those are the last four words he’ll ever hear from me, even if he is stupid enough to try and rearrange things for next week.

I am the one with the power. I am the one in control.

...Which is why I just ate my body weight in food and then threw up. And then ate my body weight in food and threw up. Every last bit.

Because I’m the one with power, the one with control. NOT.

He’s the one in control. Even though he doesn’t know it and doesn’t have a clue, he causes me pain that pains my body. My body won’t last it. I know I’ve been lucky so far, I know, more laxatives tomorrow. I hate myself for eating. Good girls don’t eat.

He’s the one in control. Because now I have to be so thin, so beautiful, so perfect that I can make him hurt more than I do, I want him to hurt because he can’t have me and I hope it kills him the way it will kill me.

He’s probably just some normal, nice, innocent guy. And look at what I’ve turned him in to here.

As for me,

I’ve turned into a monster, I can make guys want me, but can't make them love me.

I’m a monster, I’m a bitch, I’ve turned myself into a City Girl caricature, an unfeeling actress who can’t remember the girl she buried deep down inside.

At the end of the day, perhaps I just want to make a statement. I want to faint at work, I want to die young, I want to be tragic and painful, but I want everyone to know.

My hair was so beautiful today. My skin was so soft. My body was so empty.

Tomorrow I will be back to being a bloated ogre again.

No. I will not let that happen. I will do whatever it takes now. I will not be the one that feels the pain. I will be the one with power, the one with control.

I remember, being too big.

2011-09-20T23:05:00.001+01:00

I woke up to the sound of my blackberry alarm in pitch darkness.

What... Why was it so dark?
Fuck.
Welcome to winter.
I dragged out my coat from the cupboard and pulled it on as I shut the front door behind me. Memories came flooding back. As a teenager, I pulled on my frumpy school fleece or jacket as I went to the bus stop. A huge cloak of ugliness and foul shapelessness - years ago I felt the disgusting poison of my blood seeping out the pores of my face, ugliness, fatness. Why couldn't I be fresh and pure and lovely, why did I have to be an unclean lump?
I pulled on my jacket on the morning of the new season to feel these same emotions flooding back - covering up the pretty pencil skirt and fitted blouse with a woollen jacket and woollen discomfort. I felt the cold daylight burning my skin as it had been for years, harshly highlighting the foulness of my skin, my attempts to patch over my natural ugliness - but nature is harsh, is cruel is TRUE - the natural daylight shows you who I really am.

I felt a sense of blunt despair, an autumn grimness. I had been feeling this for years - since I was a little girl - years of self disgust - would take a lifetime to change - it would never change.

I feel power when I feel beautiful.
I've lost it with Chris now. I avoid him because I don't want him to realise what a mistake he made in finding me attractive. I know he got it wrong. I know he's going to see that. So I ignore him and hide from him. So he gets the wrong impression. Again. I told him, so he knows, I'm a horrible person.

I sit here in bed craving him, craving his comfort, the tightness of his arms around me.
That's all.
I crave a father. I want love - the unconditional kind - the fatherly kind - the kind where I can cry and the only thing that matters is that I stop.
Oh hell, oh hell, I am a grown woman and I write like a child,
think like a child, dream like a child, cry like a child.

Shed tears for a daddy I lost a lifetime ago. Little child. Little child who shed a tear drop on the card she wrote to partner the flowers on his coffin.

I run to the arms of a man - with an ever-changing face, knowing that I'm not running to him, but to who I want him to be, who he never will be, a face across the room that I cannot see but always feel.

And now, I have no understanding of l-o-v-e. I only know the way men feel for me is something else, something I do everything in my power to control,

control

control

control

but I have no power

I want to shrink and have his arms about me.

I am too big now.

Arrogant

2011-09-17T17:49:00.006+01:00

Tuesday

Scrolling down my emails on my work blackberry something is very clear- the last few days I have spent far too much of my time in the office flirting and far too little time working.
After a fair amount of flirting and copious amounts of emails being pinged across the row of desks, I'm going out with the new guy in our department on Friday for drinks.
As I explained guiltily to Rhianna:
"I've been email flirting with Chris... But I don't fancy him - he's just SO good to flirt with!"
And all of that statement is true- I don't fancy him, I just like pretending that I do... And I imagine he's the same - his asking me out for drinks wasn't asking me on a date, after all, banter is banter, banter isn't a relationship. So hopefully it won't be awkward and I won't get carried away beyond the bounds of flirting.

As for Sam, I seem to be more attracted to the older brother everyday. All I keep thinking is of his arms underneath that shirt - the rugby player, gym addict body that I crave for. Hell, that's all I want. He's sweet though, we are awkward together, like two shy people trying so hard to be cool and confident in front of each other - totally different to me with Chris where I'm an excess of bubbly, easy extrovertedness. Thing is though, I know I'm not his type and he's not mine, but apparently physical attraction counts for a lot. Is Sam attracted to me? Possibly, but we both know we would have nothing in common beyond sex.

Wednesday
Today I am in The Hague - the virtual, sleek city where cars and bicycles speed along cleanly down the wide open streets.
While most people might think business travel is glamorous, I can already say that the opposite is true for me. I lose control of my food. I lose control of my exercise regime. And those two little things make for a very stressed Ophelia.
Lunch was client entertainment. I ate half of the bread roll which had come with the rest of my extravagant salmon salad - which meant I had to go back to my hotel room before my next meeting to throw up. I danced around my two-floor luxury suite and sang jazz songs aloud.
Dinner was another work affair - a sit down meal with my boss: the woman who hired me knowing that I'd just come straight from 'treatment' for an eating disorder. Of course she believes that I am better now, but the cracks in the mask are impossible to hide sometimes, and I could feel the brave exterior begin to crumble in front of her eyes across the table. 'I have issues with potatoes... is it weird if I just have a starter and a soup? ...' I could feel myself losing control of the situation.
I cursed the fact that I had to eat. Why did people consider this mealtime shit normal? Why did we have to do it?
The second it was over I went back to my room, threw up again and hurriedly pulled on my trainers and headed to the hotel gym for an hour on the treadmill.
Client entertainment. Business Travel. Impossible to live cleanly.
I just want to be CLEAN.
The second I landed back at London City airport on Thursday evening I began to binge.

Friday
I was stressed. I was in my favourite black dress and heels. It was Mike's last day. He was going out with a few people from his department - no one from our side of the office got an invite.
I'd spent the whole of last night throwing up and drinking down laxatives knowing that I had to look good for the last time Mike saw me and had to look good for when I went out with Chris that evening.
Why? Why did I care about Chris?
He hadn't spoken to me yet all day. What if he'd changed his mind or forgotten?
I pinged him an email: "Space in your schedule for lunch?"
He walked past and nodded covertly. I gave a little nod to say I'd seen.
So we went for lunch together and sat by St Pauls. I had half a pot of soup. He questioned this but did not push it.
I came back to my desk worried. I had started to really become attracted to him now. I sent Rhianna a BBM:
"I shouldn't have gone for lunch with Chris... I think we flirt more than is good, and now I worry about my conduct tonight."
"It's his wit and charm - he is soooo nice - like you can tell - but his looks are ok - he is cute - he is skinny though - not your type!"
"I know - but I'm going to get drunk and do something silly. I get really up for it after a few."
She was right, Chris isn't my type - I'd said that numerous times. He's a good looking guy, charming, easy-going and straight-talking. He's fairly older than me, 30 at least, and would probably never be making a six figure salary. I loved flirting with him and I loved the attention he gave me. I loved that he was forward enough and confident enough to do that.

We left work after everyone else. I suppose it was good that no one saw us.
The City bar we were in was a hive of men in expensive suits. My eyes were wondering all evening and I had to keep forcing myself to keep my eyes in his direction. Despite this, it started to become clear after a few hours that it wasn't just friendship on the cards.
"Does Rhianna know you're here?"
"Yes."
He raised a surprised eyebrow. He clearly hadn't told anyone else - which made me feel conscious that this was a bigger deal than I'd anticipated. This was a date. This was him figuring out if there was potential for more.
I had been kidding myself that this was two mates having a drink, deep down I knew he must have been attracted to me. There's no such thing as harmless flirting - not to the extent that we had been. He asked me outright to go for drinks with him. I knew it wasn't innocent, I knew he didn't just want friendship, that was never the agenda, and I never behaved as if it was either. And yet, I'd walked into this situation telling myself that that I was going for drinks with the new guy for a bit fun.

We talked openly. I talked too much. He had me pegged. I felt sad. I feel sad. He's front office for a reason. He's charming and persuasive, a confidence trickster, a talker, and pusher, a passive aggressive.
I did everything to hold things back from him but he coerced it all out of me.
I told him about Mike and Sam, I told him I was an uncontrollable flirt, that I loved sex, that I was ashamed of my behaviour, that I wasn't a nice girl.
I told him why I only ate half a pot of soup all day.
"Looking at you from behind while you stood at the bar just now - I don't get it - you have an amazing body and incredible legs."
I sighed. "But you know that means nothing to me."
"I know," he replied. "My first impression of you when I met you was that you were really arrogant...But I kind of understood why you would be."
I raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Well, you walked past the desk and I couldn't help but turn my head secretly to watch you. You had an amazing body and were arrogant about it, which was understandable and to be honest, I liked that, it was hot."
I felt slightly sick. I knew people had this impression of me and I hated it. People see me as a bitch, as a snob, as someone who thinks she is amazing, an untouchable princess who parades with her nose stuck up in the air. I know. But it's a barrier, it's a barrier. God dammit, I spent all evening bent over a toilet and all day pulling at myself in front of a mirror to walk across the room like that.

I would have needed to be a lot more drunk to get with Chis that evening. I liked him a lot, but I didn't want anything more. I am certain of that.
Nonetheless, I had led him on.
"I want to have sex in the office before I leave," he said. "Either at a desk or in the toilets. It would be easy, in the evening after everyone has gone."
I looked at him shocked. I knew why he was saying this to me. I'd told him I loved sex, I'd told him I loved the risk of getting caught. I'd listed him as one of the people in the office I'd sleep with.

"Ophelia...Maybe next time xx" he texted me as soon as we parted. I knew what he meant although I pretended I didn't. He hadn't asked me back to his, but he thought that's what I wanted and felt the need to reassure me. Next time.
I walked to find my night bus. Shit, shit, shit I murmered to myself. Shit. How was I going to get myself out of this.
"I think you are awesome." He sent minutes later.
Shit, shit, shit.
"Haha, I think you're sweet." I replied.
"That's the nicest thing you've said to me all evening!"
I felt guilty. He wasn't joking. He'd paid me compliments all evening and I'd given him nothing back. I hadn't said anything like 'I think you're hot', or 'I fancy you', or 'thanks I had a great evening, let's do it again'. I'd given him nothing.
Because I'm not a liar.
I didn't want this. I don't want more with him. I adore him - as a friend. And I shouldn't have been so desperate for attention that I led him on in the way I have.

He sent me a text the next morning:
"Fancy doing it again next week or weekend?"
I'm running a half marathon next Sunday so I was able to use that as an excuse. I told him I wasn't able to go drinking until afterwards. Hopefully in a week he will have forgotten about me...

I'm turning into something uncontrollable. I'm in a dangerous City where I'm finding a power I never had before or never knew how to use. This job has taught me how to perfect my front office game. I can get a guy to go out with me, I can twist my words, I can pitch, I can charm, I can perform my act, and I'm so addicted to ambition that I can't stop playing to win. I'm at risk of turning into a different kind of monster. A monster that uses men for her own needs, plays games that hurt others, walks across the room like a stuck-up bitch and means it.
"I'm ashamed of the person that I am. Nice girls aren't flirty, aren't sexual, aren't overtly confident," I had told Chris.
"There's nothing wrong with that," he replied.

But you know what, the one lesson I have learnt, blunt and irresponsible as this is to say, I do not lie on this blog, I show you all the good and terrible things about me, so here's the truth:
A woman derives so much power from her looks. I have an eating disorder because I have experienced how true this is. I will never let go of the importance of beauty or the power it brings.

The City Girl Made of Glass

2011-09-11T23:30:00.000+01:00

I'm bringing the new blog back to this site... (if I can work out how...)
I've realised that what I'm writing isn't actually a new story, it's just an extension - my history is the shaping of my present and future, I cannot pretend to have forgotten it.

And I don't manage to merge the two blogs, here it is:
http://www.glasscitygirl.blogspot.com/

Part Two: A lawyer and the office cutie...brothers

2011-09-11T23:10:00.000+01:00

See Part One here.

I sit down at my desk first thing on Wednesday morning to find an email waiting for me from Aiden, the City Lawyer.
I read it hurridly and smiled.
"Aw, so sweet...he's so sweet." This is the standard reaction I seem to have from every message he sends me. He's incredibly thoughtful and sincere, a textbook nice guy.

He had no reason to email me and I wasn't expecting to hear from him until he was back in the UK at the end of the month. His unsolicited email indicated that he'd been thinking about me.
His emails were getting more personal, he was talking about emotions, things he likes, experiences and dreams...
With every email he sent I began to recoil from him further. Of course in my replies I gave him just as much back, but I couldn't help thinking that he was giving too much to start with and being too keen. I would never have sent him emails like that - and I'm queen of keen.
The final nail in the coffin came with: "I'm quite looking forward to meeting up when I am back. It's refreshing to find somebody who is equally enthusiastic about the world as I am!"

I told you. It's The Game. It's the the thrill of the chase, it's the need to put myself under intense pressure to be incredible enough to get what I want. That's what made Aiden so exciting the first time I spoke to him, that's what made it something to look forward to. Without a battle, without a challenge... I lose interest. I don't want to be with a guy who worships me however average I am, I want to be with a guy who wants the best, and who wants me because I am the best. This is something that feeds into the second problem I began to have - the nice guy issue. So, you'd think that him sending long emails about lovely, sweet, thoughtful, personal things would make a girl think she'd hit the jackpot. With me... I'm thinking... yes, long-term material, the kind of guy you should be with... but I am just not finding it remotely attractive.

I have a craving - a constant craving - for intense feeling and emotion. If he can't give me drama and pain and euphoria and ecstasy all with dramatic intensity, I'll never feel anything for him. I don't just want to be content with life.

So I decided to take things back into my own hands again and find a new Game and new challenges to push myself.

Rhianna has been going through a tough time recently and was keen to go out on Friday to cheer herself up. As her closest friends at work, Rob and I and another guy called Adam had promised to go out to her favourite club, Koko. However, that Wednesday, Rob had told her that he and Adam weren't going - and made up a load of crap excuses which she saw right through.
Pissed off as I was at Rob for being his usual selfish self, I knew that I had to find other people to come out instead.
...The office cutie... obviously... I had to ask him and his equally office cutie friend.
I'd taken the plunge the other day to talk to the friend while we were in the kitchen, so the ice had been broken there... I just needed to ask both of them, and ask in a way that didn't sound like I was asking them on a date.

It was Thursday and nearing the 4pm time when they both left the office. As far as I could tell, they worked in the same department and were really close friends - I often saw them going for lunch together. For ages I had thought there was just one office cutie as they looked really similar and I had only begun to distinguish between the two of them in the last few weeks. I hadn't been able to find the balls to go and ask either of them at their desks so this was my last chance... I watched as I saw one of them get up to leave and made my move to the lifts. I would wait there and catch him as he left.
As I hovered by the lift area he came out...with his friend...both of them together - perfect... but they got in the lift with another person... I bottled it. I paced outside the lifts and then decided to take the next one. I was going to do this. This was my last chance. I was going to follow them and ask them.
As I got out the lift, through the glass doors I could see them standing outside the entrance together, obviously waiting for someone. I paced around the reception some more. Shit, shit, shit. There were still there.

I turned on my heels and strode out the building. Performance mode.

"Hey guys - "
They turned around.
"Hey, can I ask you guys a favour...what are you doing tomorrow night?"
They looked at each other awkwardly, "Errr.."
"Well, ok, my friend Rhianna has been having a pretty shit time recently and we're going out tomorrow to cheer her up but our other friend has dropped out so I need to find some other people to come along, so if you guys aren't doing anything it would be great if you could join us?!"
They looked at each other again. "Ok..." "Yeah, ok that's cool..." "Where are you going to?"
"Really! Awesome! Well she wants to go to Koko - is that cool?"
"Yeah, I'd probably have been going there anyway..."
"Oh amazing! ... So um, I know I've sorta met both of you in and around the kitchen as we're making our cups of tea... but I don't actually know your names?"
"Mike" - "Sam"
"Ok awesome - I'm Ophelia - so you're definitely up for it then, yes?"
"Yeah definitely," said Sam, "Just let us know the details..."
"Perfect, I'll send you over an email... have a good evening!"

And back on my heels I turned and strode back into the office, brimming over with hysterics.
"Guess what!" I gushed down the phone to Rhianna,
"They're coming!"
"Noooooo they're not! Seriously!"
She couldn't believe I'd had the balls to go and ask them. Honestly, neither could I...

Laxatives and two days of juice fasting. Up at 5am to try on dresses. I spent the whole of Friday in the office buzzing off adrenaline, unable to focus on anything but the night ahead.
By lunchtime, Rob and Adam had been guilt-tripped into coming.
This was fucking important - I didn't know why, I just knew it was fucking important that I looked my absolute best for Mike and Sam. Sure, I fancied both of them like hell, but I didn't really want anything from it other than for them to want me. That was the only thing I needed.

So straight after work I went back to Rhianna's and we got ready - by the time we left I was already drunk from too much wine on an empty stomach. Mike and Sam were already in Camden waiting for us,
Mike was perfect, relaxed and easy, fun and sweet.
Sam less so... more awkward, too sober, too serious.
Rhianna wasn't a fan: "Mike's seriously cute, but Sam is just weird, like stuck up almost."
Mike and Sam, it transpired, were brothers. I kicked myself for not making the link before - that was why they looked so similar. Another bombshell was that Mike was only 19 - he was just at the company on an internship and would be going back to uni in a few weeks. Although I have a history of going for younger men, I knew letting anything happen with him would be a mistake - as is the fact that I am attracted to brothers. (Awkward...)
I was drunk and probably behaved way too flirtateously with Mark. Simon left and went to meet up with two other girls. We went to find him. Then I practically forced them to come to Koko with us... and they came all the way up to the entrance only to stand me up. For whatever reason - the truth of which I will probably never know.
Rhianna: "Ophelia! Stop it! You're coming to Koko! They don't want you - they've got those two girls - they've both been checking you out all night - they're losers! Come on!"

....

I stood on the balcony with Adam, staring out over the lights. I had a sudden urge to climb on the railings and jump off, I saw my body lying in the street below, my huge arse in my blue lace underwear exposed to the world. The tears fell down my face and I didn't try and stop them - Adam had his arm around me - "What's up Ophelia? Hey, you didn't care about those guys did you?!"
"I just want someone to find me loveable, I just want someone... I judge my worth solely on what guys think of me - that's it - that's all the self worth I have... I just want someone to find me loveable. What's so wrong about me?"

...
The night ended up being a disaster. Adam and Rhianna were dirty dancing and then he ran off. Rob followed. Rhianna went mental and pulled me off the dancefloor in pursuit. She caught hold of Rob and yelled at him.
"You fucking left us! - You were just going to fucking run off, follow Adam and fucking leave us!"
I was silent. I had to stand by Rhianna on this but I wasn't going to join in the argument. I just held her hand and stood by her side.
We went back out on to the balcony again. They continued arguing.
"I don't need two fucking crazy girls to deal with. I've got Ophelia already - fucking crazy - I'll deal with her later."
... It's ok when I call myself crazy, it's not ok when someone else does.
As I stood over the balcony again he lifted up my dress.
"What the fuck!" I screamed,
"I was just giving you attention - making you feel loved!"
I should have slapped him. I should have smacked him to the ground and screamed at him.
I just turned my back on him and continued staring out at the black sky.
My eyes welled up again. Giving me attention - making me feel loved. It's true, I embarassed myself, I debased myself, I made myself nothing but a sexual being for men to lust over, I had no further self-worth than that. I poured all my energy into that, I held that out as my bait. What did Aiden like about me? He liked me for the words he read in his emails, the things I told him about my life and my ambitions, the person he saw in the heart and mind of my words... and I couldn't like him for that.

Finally Rob left us alone.
"You should never have told him about your eating," Rhianna said, "I know you thought you could trust him - so did I - but he's a cock, he's an areshole."
We stood talking for ages, her crying about her pain, me crying about mine.
"I'm sorry," I said, "I just really wanted you to come out and have a good time tonight and be able to forget about everything and look at what a disaster it's been."

I put her in a taxi and found myself a night bus to sit on for an hour.

I did all this drama while I was at university. This wasn't the life I wanted now at 24 - why was I still doing it? Why was I so driven by the need for chaos and crazy behaviour? Why was the idea of settling with Aiden, older and mature, smart and kind, safe and grounded - why was that such a terrible idea to imagine?

I don't know how things will be with Mike and Sam on Monday morning. I don't know how things will be with Rob.
I don't know who I am, I don't know why I can't stop the desperate acting, the desperate drama. I made myself look like a fool infront of Mike and Sam, a drunk and desperate flirt.
I want to stop this behaviour - but I can't - because I need it, I still need male attention - it's the only form of love I know.

I'm in the kind of mood where I don't want to sleep. I want to write and write. I want to read Plath and Lessing. I want to bleed my heart onto paper. The City has made me forget so much of myself, so much of my heart and head full of beauty.

The new girl is a smoke show

2011-09-05T23:30:00.000+01:00

07:30 on a Monday morning in The Square Mile.
A girl wanders up and down the isles of a food store,
nothing I can eat, nothing I can eat, as she wrings her hands, flustered, getting in the way of impatient men in suits

I managed in the end. Three packets of microwave-in-the-bag mixed vegetables, three mini packets of cooked chicken breast and one packet of plain mixed nuts.
I've decided I'm allowed plain nuts now after reading a few Paleo blogs - which also means fruit is back in the diet - hurray! (The Dukan Diet which I followed strictly a few months back was utterly depressing in it's lack of fruit).

So, for all those who are interested here is the new plan of what Ophelia is eating and keeping down happily:
All vegetables (except beans)
All fruit (except dried fruits)
Plain nuts and seeds (not peanuts)
Chicken
Fish and Seafood
Skimmed milk
- A diet which is my own personal hybrid of Paleo and Dukan, which is restrictive enough to have the right effects, but lenient enough to be easy to stick to.

At 10:00 Rhianna sent me a BBM across the office: "The new girl is a smoke show."
And indeed she was. 110 lbs, straight blond hair, tanned, sleek black suit and a a string of white pearls to match her string of white teeth.
It seems silly writing it now, but at the time I felt all my confidence come crashing down around me. I sat at my desk in agony.
It became very clear all of a sudden: It wasn’t a question of if I’d crumble and have a breakdown, it was a question of when. A new, stunning girl walks onto the office floor and suddenly I’m on the verge of a tearful hysterics, feeling like a disgusting piece of whore.
What?!
What the fuck?
What an insanely insecure, irrational meltdown.
And that just summed it up: it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. I am going to breakdown at some point, I’m still Ophelia, I’m still fucked-up. Something is going to go wrong one day and I won’t be able to handle it....

For the time being though, this crisis situation was manageable. As she was joining Rhianna’s desk, she invited her along for lunch. I of course was only too eager to learn more about my new threat. And that’s when I finally got my brains back into my aching skull. She was 28, old compared to me, her skin wasn’t just tanned but aged- too much sun, not enough protection – her features were pretty but normal, her lips too big, her face made-up. She was nothing like me with my long dark hair, big brown eyes and fair skin, not to mention the difference in personality. As my manager would say: in a similar market but not a direct competitor. What made me beautiful and amazing were qualities completely different to her – you couldn’t compare us, we were different breeds of women.
There will be guys in the office who fancy her over me, and that’s fine, because I don’t want to be like her. I like the market I’m in – niche and slightly exotic. Men either like it or they don’t.

Blunt conversations over lunch

2011-09-03T18:25:00.000+01:00

"Do you hate Harry?" asked Rob,
"No."
"Well, I just thought... you just said you hated men, that Harry might be one... because you haven't seen him since..."
"I don't know the guy. How can I hate him." I retorted aggressively.
"Ok, ok" he said, surrendering,
"I only have myself to blame for everything with Harry. I only have myself to blame."

We were sitting on the top of One New Change again eating our salads. I was angry. Talking about relationships always made me angry. I hate men, it's true, I hate them, I hate them for the power they have over me, the desire that I can't control, the need that I have for them. I hate men. I hate all the men that I have starved for, thrown up for, taken laxatives for, exercised for, wasted my money for and wasted my precious time on. I hate them all for leaving me with nothing but a sick, empty, worthless feeling in the pit of my rotten stomach. All the men that I have never meant anything to except a kiss or a shag. Fuck them all.

Rob's words confirmed that Harry was over. The door that closed behind me on that Saturday morning was never to open up for me again. I knew it, but I still wanted to hope, wanted to believe, that maybe, maybe someone found me loveable.

I was in an appalling mood for the rest of the day. The mirrors were my worst enemy. I stood in the toilets repeatedly staring at my puffy face. There was nothing I could do.
There was nothing I could do.

"He's an investment banker," Rob had said, "He can have anyone he wants."

I wanted to rip my body to shreds.

What a shit week.
No days spent in the gym, lots of bingeing and lots of throwing up followed of course by bingeing.
No pencil skirts this week.
My body has been clogged up, my tummy swollen beyond disguise. Filthy. Disgusting.

Yesterday I told Rob and Rhianna the truth. I'd already told them a few weeks back that I "used to have a severe eating disorder". It started when Rhianna began to push me to come out after work:
"Come on... just one drink!"
"No, I'm really not in the mood, I feel like shit, look like shit and have had a shit week."
"Aww really?"
"I've not felt this bad in a long time. A long time." I said grimly.
"Why - because of me?" added Rob,
"Because of a lot of things."

Yeah, Rob had been an arsehole, he'd been an arsehole for weeks, mocking me for eating only soup at lunch, mocking me about Harry, objectifying every woman that walked past, talking about them as if they were pieces of meat, calling them names if they were anything less than stunning. I'd had the final straw the day before. Not only did I have to endure lunch at a gourmet burger restaurant while he made crass comments about the waitresses, he ended the lunch break with a stupid joke about Harry not calling me. I sat at my desk raging, wanting to pick up the nearest heavy item and hurl it at the wall. I was so mad. I wanted to scream abuse at him.
Men like him were the reason I felt all this pain.
This was a stupid friendship. Spending time with him was not going to help me become the strong, confident, happy woman I want to be.

Rhianna knew, and as she quizzed me about my problems, I found no need to lie.
"It's good that you can be so open about it", she said.
"Well, you know what? The reason why eating disorders are such a secretive illness, the reason why so many people never get help, the reason why there's so much shame affiliated with them is because people don't talk about it. It's such a taboo subject, it's something to be ashamed of. Well I'm not ashamed. Why should I be."
Rob was silent, head down and staring at his shoes. I'd never seen him with nothing to say. I should have felt bad for making him feel uncomfortable but I wasn't at all. I was being so brazen and blunt about my eating disorder because I had had to put up with his constant insensitive 'joking' about my obsession with healthy eating and my weight. Yesterday had been the final straw and I was so angry with him for being the creature misogynist he is. There is a lot about Rob that I hate. A filthy, male creature - and as his best friend, Harry was obviously going to have been the same.
Rhianna talked about her friend back home who was still suffering, I understood all she told me.
"You can tell," she said, "when they're throwing up, their face swells."
I smiled. "Like mine."
"You still do it?"
"I throw up every day."

I explained to them that I don't believe I'll ever fully recover.
"My eating disorder is like many illnesses, like asthma for example, you can't get rid of it, you just have to learn how to control it so that it doesn't take over and destroy your life. I have no intention of giving it up. It's a way of life, it's normal for me, I have no idea how to live without an eating disorder, I can't remember what it's like.
But honestly, this is the happiest I've been in years."

"Your BBM picture", said Rhianna, "that's when you were really thin?"
I nodded.

A lawyer and the office cutie

2011-08-27T09:45:00.000+01:00

It was early on Tuesday morning and the grey rain had begun to pour down on London. I walked into the office kitchen. He was standing by the window, tucking his soaking shirt into his trousers. I tiptoed behind him, trying to avert my eyes, and reached for the paper bag with my days worth of juice on the table beside him.
It's not the first time we'd met in the kitchen, but every time we met we just blanked each other.
Mark is hot - I mean, he's not just my office cutie, he is fantastically hot - but he works in a different department - a department which is not considered to be as sexy as mine - and departments don't mix in our corporate hierarchy.

But this time I dropped the cool act and mustered up the courage to speak. The silence was too awkward to ignore.
'So, er, you got a bit wet then...'
He laughed, 'Yeah, it caught me unexpected',
I smiled and held my breath. He was standing at the other end of the kitchen, sopping wet. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I wanted to push him up against the wall there and then and fuck him.
'I was gonna take a shower but I don't think I'm gonna bother.
I laughed again, 'Nah, you definitely don't need a shower...'

Shit. I wanted to fuck him right there. He's so classically beautiful, all sleek lines and fresh skin. God I was hungry.

It's a shame that the different departments never mix socially or otherwise - it makes cross-departmental hook-ups very hard to initiate. I've passed him in the kitchen again since, but I've been such a puffy, bulimic bitch this last week that I couldn't bear to talk to him. I didn't want him looking at me. If I spoke to him, he'd have to look at me. So to my relief, we continued to ignore each other all over again.

I need - I have primal needs.

This week I had my first business trip for the company. I woke up to a beautiful bright morning in Copenhagen to find an email on my work Blackberry:
Exotic is one word for it! Top work with getting some experience out this side of the world, it will definitely speak volumes on your application.
Speak soon,
Aiden
...I had called him exotic in my last email the day before. Well he's an exotic mixed race guy - I didn't lie. Aiden works for an International Law Firm and is currently out doing a seat in Singapore - hence 'this part of the world'. He'll be back in the greyness of England in a month, and as soon as he is, he has promised to let me know so we can meet up. The London Office of his law firm is just a one minute walk from mine in the Square Mile.
I've actually never met the guy, I've simply spoken to him once on the phone and exchanged a few emails. To be honest, I'm pretty amazed he's so keen to meet me - I had no idea I had it in me. I suppose it helps that my LinkedIn picture is deceivingly attractive. Men are men after all, and sadly I know how they tend to work.

So we'll see what happens with Aiden I guess. For all I know I'll meet him briefly, shake his hand and it will be purely business. I know he already sees himself as a bit of a mentor to me in my quest to join the ranks at a City Law Firm. In my little dream world however, he'll take me for cocktails and dinner at a glittering restaurant and turn out to be the man of my dreams. (I'll have to update you in a month or two to let you know which one it turns out to be...)
As for Mark - well, it's pretty incredible to watch me switch from shy and cold to confident and flirtatious. All I know is that I have to look my best to bring out that latter side of me. I have to stop throwing up and puffing up like a bloated toad so that the next time we're silently making cups of tea in the kitchen I can say hey and invite him out to lunch.
Easy right?
Fuck, everything would be so easy if I were just drop dead gorgeous.

So it would seem for the moment then that bankers are out of season. God knows what's happened to Harry, he's probably chained to some shiny desk up in his tower in Canary Wharf. I wonder if he'd be up for a booty call? Even Rob hasn't mentioned him for a while - I thought he might have been cheering for us at one point.

Ah Rob... I nearly forgot to write about this: it was a good job I left 'early' at 4am last Saturday night. At Monday lunchtime I learnt that Rob (who by midnight already had eyes popping all over the place he was so high) and the rest of the group decided to take a further cocktail of Class A drugs.
Now I'm a self-confessed drug hater - I knew Rob and Rihanna were big users and I couldn't care less about that - but having to see them in a disgusting state is... well.. it made me feel pretty sick to be honest. I'll never look at Rob the same way ever again. It made me want to puke to look at him on Saturday night. I found it foul and rancid. Even the fucking toilets stank of whatever shit people had been smoking in there. I couldn't escape it, it was horrendous, it was vile. I hadn't let any of that shit into my body and yet I still felt toxic and unclean, like it was managing to seep in through my pores and nostrils.
As we sat on the rooftop of One New Change that following Monday lunchtime, eating our salads, they told me all that had happened after I left. I left like the most boring and sober person ever, I felt like I didn't know these people anymore, I felt like so many of the bonds we had had were broken. And it's true, I didn't understand them - I just had no desire to do it - I couldn't think of anything worse than taking strange powders than make you retch and sweat.
But then I suppose I fuck my body up in my own little way and nobody understands me for that.

This City. I wanted to respect this world, I wanted to be at home here among like-minded people.
I guess I haven't seen anything yet. I guess there's more filth and revulsion to come.

As they talked, I stared out over the view of St Pauls, all the beautiful banks and polished suits, remaining tight-lipped and silent. I come here to tell you what I really think of all the things I see.

"I'm not afraid of any conventional fears"

2011-08-21T20:32:00.000+01:00

So it didn't really matter that Harry wasn't there in the end. All it meant was that it was a pretty uneventful night in which I drank far more than I needed and... well, nothing happened.

My friends have always expressed concern about my lack of fear in walking the streets at night, but I've been doing it for years. Sure, I've had to run off from a few shady characters, I've been jumped on by a licenced London Black Cab driver, I've searched desperately for a friendly taxi on dark streets I didn't recognise, but it says a lot about me really - and as I said in my first post: 'I'm not afraid of any conventional fears.'

We ended up in club called Fabric up in North London. It was gone 4am and I was done for the night. I vanished before anyone could start lecturing me. Naturally I hadn't eaten all day to ensure that my body was empty and at its thinnest, so my first stop was to buy food.
Alcohol impairs judgement : half a pizza, half a subway sandwich, a slice of cake, a packet of crisps and a tube of chocolate HobNob Biscuits which I mechanically fed into my mouth as I began my walk to find a bus to take me home. I didn't actually have a clue where I was, so like a tourist, I followed the street signs to Trafalgar Square where I knew I could get a night bus near to where I lived. It was now just after 5am - the night bus for my destination had stopped running already. I decided to get on the next night bus that came which took me to a destination that I recognised as being 'on the way' to where I lived and was woken up in the daylight when the bus terminated. I got off. Now I really had no idea in hell where I was. I felt the tears begin to well up in my eyes. "I just want to go home." I'd pay £100 for a taxi right now. "I just want to go home."
There was a bus station nearby and I recognised one of the buses which would take me to the next town to where I lived, so I took it in relief and made the final 15 minute walk to my front door, arriving finally at 7am.
All in one piece and at minimal price.

I felt the same emotions that I did when I woke up next to Harry three weeks ago - "I'm too old for this." This is not the life I want anymore. I would much rather have spent the weekend in the gym, reading books, cleansing my body and mind... I don't find this fun anymore - I'm not sure I ever really did.
I was pumped about seeing Harry - that's where the fun is for me - in the game, in the attraction, in the stakes and risk. But getting drunk and ruining my body? - it just feels like a completely wasted weekend. If I spend hours making myself look my best then I want to be in an environment where it can be appreciated.

Anyway, fact is, in a month I will not have time for much of a social life. It's official, I am going back to Law School (or re-starting Law School since I left without taking any exams). I'll be working full-time 7am-6pm and studying a full-time course (in the evenings). A controversial decision I know.
Anonymous commented a few posts back that I should do an MBA instead but for one thing, I would never get onto an MBA course at a decent university and for another, I'm not really sure that it's the path I want to take. One author of a Wall Street Novel reaffirmed Anonymous's opinion: "As junior bankers, whenever we were feeling low, we'd watch the junior lawyers and start feeling better. They worked just as many hours as we did, they made a lot less money, and their work was even more boring than ours." Even Harry told me, if I wanted to work for a City Law Firm, I'd work longer hours than him. He saw the horror in my face when he told me he typically works from 8am to 8pm. The only thought in my head was: but when do you have time to go to the gym?! Even though I wake up at 5:30am, I still go to the gym almost every day after I finish work at 6pm, and the thought of going a week without exercise is simply unthinkable to me.

But the reality is, once I start my law studies in the evening, my working day will extend to 9pm - not to mention the homework and assessments I'll be doing on my nights off. I'm not going to be able to live in the gym anymore. I find it ... honestly...I find the thought terrifying.
My life revolves around working out - I mean... that's what I do, that's my thing, that's my hobby, that's the thing I love more than anything - burning calories.
I'm afraid of not being able to exercise every day.

I'm running the London Half-Marathon in a month and although I've been working out consistently, I haven't been doing enough long runs and specific half-marathon training. This coupled with the fact that my gym membership usage is going to be significantly reduced come the end of September when I go back to Law School, means I need to be really maximising my workouts over the next four weeks. If I can just lose one stone in those four weeks - one stone - 6.5kg - then I could rest a bit easier. The last time I was studying I consistently skipped all my lectures and study lessons to go to the gym. I cannot let my obsession hold me back like that again, I have to learn to let go of the gym, I have to learn to eat without craving the need to burn it off.
It's a fucking scary thought. I'm going to have to let go of the one thing that gives me comfort and makes me feel good...

"All the women I've met from Magic Circle Law Firms are seriously hot."
"Yeah, I know, it's like a requirement."
"They're not nice though..."
I rolled my eyes and raised an eyebrow, "Why, because none of them would sleep with you?"
He pursed his lips together bitterly. "Yeah."

Well Harry, I'll be one of those women soon.

That kind of love

2011-08-17T21:35:00.000+01:00

I'm on the train home and the woman opposite me is eating a homemade sandwich from white bread. My face is scrunched up in disgust and I keep giving her snide glances as if she were a filthy person dirtying a spotless carriage. I can't help it. I'm a nasty person. I think she's disgusting and I don't mind letting her know that.
I'm so tense and angry that I want to stand up and smash my blackberry on the floor. I hate her because I can't eat a sandwich from white bread but I can still taste it and smell it so potently... oh so potently...

I'm a bitch at work too, I ignore people,
I wish I could be the kind of person that smiles and is cheerful and lovely to everyone.
I'm not. I'm so wrapped up in my own little world, so self-conscious, so tense, so focused on the fabulous act I have to put on for the next 'person who matters'.

If you don't matter, I don't care what you think of me, so you don't exist to me. I haven't got the energy to waste.
I hate myself for it. When the pretty boy from the other department walks past me, I don't smile and say hello, I look at the floor as if I didn't see him. People don't mistake it for shyness, they mistake it for rudeness.
I was the only one in my class who understood how Mr Darcy was misjudged with 'pride'.

At lunch today Rob told me Harry wasn't coming out on Saturday anymore. Family issues. I got back to my desk completely drained and devastated and stared at my 80 calorie miso soup.
What was the point?
I wolfed it down in one, not caring how vulgar I looked to anyone who noticed. I needed more food, what was the fucking point of starving and making myself look perfect if my target wasn't gonna be there. Without a second thought I snuck out to the kitchen and bought a chocolate bar from the vending machine - 330 calories, moments later sneaked back again to make a large bowl of porridge -400 calories.
My worthlessness surrounded me like a thick shadow. I had rendered myself and my body worthless without him to appreciate it; I didn't want to go to Rob's birthday because he was my friend or because I wanted to have fun - I wanted to go so that I could play a game and feel a shred of self-worth in the only way I know how - male attention.

I wanted to curl up and cry. No, I wanted to curl up with someones arms around me. I wanted to tell someone, I wanted someone, I wanted someone to feel a shred of love for me, spare a word, something, someone,
I battered through my routine on the crosstrainer after work, eyes scrunched up, wanting to cry but no tears inside me to fall.
I got home and ate again. As I stood over the kitchen counter, shoving piece of toast after piece of toast into my mouth, I knew what I was doing - I was trying to fill up the emptiness inside. I was looking for love at the bottom of a box of chocolates.

But all the money, all the shoes and dresses, all the success and reward, it all means nothing. Because what I crave and what I lack - what I have always lacked but never been able to fight for - is love.
I bend over the toilet with my fingers down my throat and just like routine, bang on schedule, I vomit everything back up. Routine.

Harry wasn't coming because his father was ill. A stroke. I don't know how bad he is.
All I know is that I lost that man in my life - father - so I understand. And even though I don't really know Harry, even though he probably thinks I'm cheap and worthless, I just want - more than anything - to tell him that I care and that I send my love.

The kind of love that one human instinctively feels for another when they need it most.
That's all.

2011-08-14T18:45:00.000+01:00

I nearly had a breakdown at work on Tuesday - nearly. I overcame it by eating a bowl of porridge (damn fucking weak).
I sat at my desk, mid-afternoon, feeling the anxiety building up in me. My head was reeling, I was so hungry - no I wasn't - I just thought I was hungry - all I'd had was juice and a bowl of vegetable soup - I wasn't hungry. Then the panic set in. Panic about what I'm not sure. I had to get rid of the fat - but how? How! Shit, shit, shit.
I was sitting at my desk completely still and yet completely frantic. I had work to do; I had to eat. I stole off to the kitchen and made myself a bowl of porridge, taking it back to my desk to slowly feed it into my body as one would feed a pooly child their medicine.
Crisis averted.

The highlight of my day is often - believe it or not - lunchtime, when I get to stroll around the City with my two best friends in the office, Rob and Rihanna. It's the highlight of my day for the laughter and banter and gossip. Yes, lunchtimes make me smile, even if all I have is soup. But on Friday, with both my firends out of the office, I wandered the noisy streets alone... trying to find a soup that I could eat... wringing my hands, scruitinising the food nutrition labels, walking in and out of every eatery... until I found my way back to the office empty handed.
I felt sad... that I was still so controlled by... whatever this shit is

So, Saturday is Rob's birthday. A number of work people with a number of his friends from uni and home, all in one of Chelsea's hotspot nightclubs. Harry, of course. Harry.
The object of whatever this shit is not Harry, he is just my little excuse to be extreme in my restriction and exercise. I've put "Harry" on a little pedalstal to give me something to strive for, something to convince myself that all this hunger and hours in the gym are necessary. Because I cannot lose the game of Harry, I will not lose. I will not lose. I enjoyed playing this game too much.

"An investment banker is at stake."
That is how I persuaded myself to buy this £160 dress yesterday.

I don't need it. I have more dresses than I know what to do with.
I'm stupid and materialistic and immature.
Stupid girl.

And yet, for this guy, or for whatever I have decided he stands for, I throw my money away on an expensive new outfit, on hairstyling, waste my hours away starving, sweating in the gym.
And what if Harry doesn't want me? What if I go home alone?
I don't know, I don't know. I've put everything into ensuring I look flawless this coming Saturday. It has to mean something.

This all HAS to mean SOMETHING.
Surely.

And how did I become so reckless with money? The girl who comes from simple roots, who grew up on the humble streets that have been burning in the riots last week.
I started working part-time when I was 16, I've never not been earning money since then. I couldn't.
I grew up without a penny for frivolous things, I was never allowed anything nice, anything beyond basic necessities.
And so now that I have a good job and earn enough money, when I want something, I buy it. I dress myself in clothes that make me look like I come from the wealthy side of London. I even lost my accent, polished my vowels up, softened the image. I feel disconnected from the teenage girl that stood at the bus stop, one of the locals. I feel completely out of place, I stick out like a sore thumb there now, I see poverty, I see the rioters in their hoodies and trainers, I see the girl at 16, I see the girl at 23 - unrecognisable and alien.

My home is Central London now, places dripping with wealth and glamour, Oxford Street and Kings Road, Cheapside and Bank, a home that's a thousand miles away from the place I grew up, an outer London Borough dripping with deprivation and violence.
I am not ashamed of my roots, I am ashamed that I have so proudly cut myself from them.

Stupid girl.

I've put so much pressure on myself for Saturday now. This week is going to be tough, I intend to juice fast which is just as well because I wouldn't let myself eat even if I wanted to.
This pressure is ridiculous.
All for one investment banker,
all for the Game,
all for the fun and adrenaline of putting on a show and rolling the dice

and I know what the stakes are: shattered glass everywhere

'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting'

2011-08-07T20:31:00.000+01:00

Thank you to all the old followers of my previous blog for joining me in this new chapter, and welcome to all those who are starting this new journey with me.

My age is creeping up on me. I will 24 in a few weeks.
"I'm too old to do shit like this," I told Harry when I woke up in his bed a week ago. It's true, I am, it's not the life I want to lead anymore - it never was.
The problem with me is that in all my 24 years of life, I don't think I've ever learnt any lessons from my multitude of mistakes. I am disappointed in myself, because I know that Harry will become one in a long line of men who wanted a piece of me, but didn't want all of me - and like all the men before him, I will blindly continue in my teenage fantasy that he will put a ring on my finger.

- Ok I don't want to marry the guy after having spent one night with him - but it doesn't mean to say that I haven't thought about him every day and obsessed about when I will see him next.

It's Rob's birthday in two weeks, and although he hasn't confirmed the plans, as one of his best mates, it's pretty much a dead cert that Harry will be there.
This has sparked off the player in me - the Game player that is.
I mentioned the Game two posts back, and here is a prime example. A target, a strategy, a challenge: Harry, starve, get the guy.

The foundations of my eating disorder grew out of these little games I played - the challenge of attracting a new man, the thrill of squeezing into a brand new dress, the adrenaline of looking my best and winning. I've never been able to starve just for the sake of it, I have to have an end goal in sight with a prize to win if I can be thin and beautiful enough.

And I love it. I can't say I don't love it, because I do, I love it so much. I live for this.
It's fucked up, I know, but... I love it.

Game plan until Rob's birthday: Week One - Vegetables and Juice, Week Two - Juice only.
Yeah I'll probably have one or two patchy days, but I'm going to love every second of it, buzzing off the energy of knowing that in two weeks I'll be wearing that dress, making Harry's head turn, thinking only of that end goal to get me through.... and when it all comes crashing down, well, then I pick up the shattered pieces and sick myself back together again, wobbling precariously until another target promises me another exciting challenge.

I've started reading 'Liar's Poker', which is about a trader's experience working for Salomon Brothers Investment Bank back in the '80s. I've read other books of a similar genre before and was disgusted at the caricatures I found between the pages - and although I know these monsters do exist in those high-rise glassy offices, I also seem to have convinced myself that such sickeningly greedy and immoral fat-cats are so rare they are the stuff of legend. Perhaps I am too naive.
The curious cat in me wants to dig down deeper into this world. I want to meet more of them, I want to understand their culture, their mindset, I want to see that they are human...
And
truth be told,
I want to be a part of it.

So I have this job, and it's great. I get to travel across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa meeting clients, I get to learn about trade and investment, I get to talk with Senior Economists, Strategists and Policy Makers, I get to understand how the players play risk and ratings in their card games to build empires. And sure, I absolutely love it.
I jump out of bed at the crack of dawn wired for the start of another day. I can't believe it. I used to be impossible to drag out of bed. Of course there are shitty boring parts to the job as well, but it's not enough to hinder my energy.
But... who am I really, what do I do?... I don't work for an Investment Bank, I don't work for a City Law Firm, therefore I am nobody.
In my opinion, because I am neither a banker or a lawyer, I am nothing. I have not made it.
This job, for which I worked so hard for and for which I feel so incredibly blessed to have been given is just a stepping stone to where I eventually want to be.
All I ever dreamt of since I was a little girl was 'making it'.
But I fucked up my life, I concentrated too hard on having fun and looking my best while the graduates who have now passed through the gates of these prestigeous institutions were concentrating on completing internships and winning academic prizes.
Losing years of myself to depression and an eating disorder was unfortunate. But I can't change the past. The way I look at it now is simply that I just have to wait a few years extra before I too can pass through those gates of success and status. This job is my stepping stone.

But the job itself is not enough. I have a 2:1 Literature degree. Even with the experience I will gain in this job, my degree means that in the world of big-swinging dicks I am qualified for nothing. So I have to go back and study part time. As much as I'd love to study Finance and get myself into an Investment Bank I know I don't have a good enough head for figures. So I'm going back to study Law and to get myself into a top City Law Firm and maybe once I'm there I can specialise in Banking and Finance Law.

Everything is in the right place now, everything is in the right place.
Harry has spurred me on in this game too. Because deep down, I know he'll reject me, and in a few years time, I want to meet him again across a boardroom table and look him in the eyes with a look that says: You thought you ran this City and could walk all over me - but anything you can do I can do better.

I have so much to prove.
to everyone

Is it a game or is this my own personal war?

"I like risk - I'm a banker"

2011-07-30T16:57:00.001+01:00

"Do you think I'm thin, average or fat?" I asked Rob as we walked out of the tube and towards the nightclub.
"Thin!" he said. "God, average is horrible! I like women thin, proper model thin, that's what it's about. None of this junk in the trunk shit. I look at some girls that guys really fancy and I'm just like - Put down the fork love!"
"Wow," I said, genuinely shocked at the way he then went on to talk about a number of my healthy-sized colleagues. "It's refreshing to not have to listen to the age-old 'men like women with curves' story that most men feel necessary to go on about."
"Yeah, I don't know why girls don't work hard to be thin! Seriously, put down the fork!"

I had indeed put down the fork that day, so no doubt, Rob would have approved. After a dosage of laxatives I'd only had a small bowl of soup at lunch in order to keep my tummy flat for that evening. Most of the people from the office were hitting the local bar to celebrate a strong monthly performance and some were intending to take it all the way to a nightclub afterwards. Looking anything less than perfect was not an option.

Rob started at the company on the same day as me so we've been through a lot of our training together and get on exceptionally well. The typical lad's lad, cocky, arrogant, outgoing, obscene... but a damn good laugh if that's what you're up for - and on most nights out, that is definitely what I'm up for.
He had invited along to the bar a good friend of his called Harry who worked in one of the biggest investment banks in Canary Wharf. The second he walked in and put his lips to a straw in the pitcher we were all sharing I knew had to have him. Now if I'm completely honest, my hit rate with men is probably only about 50%. While I used to be highly successful at university, my success has certainly dwindled greatly since then and I was fully prepared for nothing to happen between us. However, being a huge fan of the chase and a huge fan of doing extreme things, I had absolutely no fears about going for him.

Was I attracted to Harry physically? Well, he wasn't the most attractive man in the bar that night that's for certain. Fine to look at but certainly nothing that would make me look twice in normal circumstances. I know, and I have no shame in admitting here, that I was far more attracted to the idea of him. I wanted a banker, I wanted to know what it was like to get underneath the blue suit.
"She likes bankers," I saw Rob whisper to Harry. I inwardly groaned. It's a long-standing piece of banter between us that I have a massive thing for bankers and fancy an ex-trader at work. Harry was going to think what most bankers think - that I wanted him for the money and sex-appeal of his work. I had to play my cards just right to get this one.

We chatted a great deal and began to get on pretty well although I made sure that I was never too explicit in my intentions. Eventually, a small crowd of us moved on to the Ministry of Sound and I knew that was when I would strike.
One of our crowd was a City Boy Salesperson, I spent much of the night watching him cold calling through the surrounding women without any hesitation or fear and not batting an eyelid in the face of rejection. He was a good looking guy. He knew one of them would bite eventually. I have to say that I actually watched with slight admiration at his determination and resilience.
As we gathered around the bar Harry was glued to his phone. I was frustrated. He was being so utterly unengaging. Eventually I had had enough and covered his phone with my hand.
"Stop it! We're in a club!"
It worked, we started talking again, laughing, pressing up close to hear each other over the din of the music. Suddenly he leaned in and held me close. I knew he wanted to kiss me. I put my hands on his chest to hold him back. A thought flashed through my mind - Do I really want to do this?

I grabbed hold of the collar of his City Boy shirt and pulled him towards me.

We kissed and danced for a few minutes before he made it clear that he wanted us to leave, or rather, "I wanna take your dress off and fuck you." As we walked towards the exit I pulled him back.
"I..."
"What?"
"I.... um...." I squirmed uncomfortably and pulled faces. "Oh God... um..."
I had only just met this guy tonight. I didn't even know his surname. I wasn't even orgasmically attracted to him.
Sure, I've had one night stands before, but it has always been with a guy that I already knew and was also extremely attracted to. Although I'd spent a good deal of time talking to Harry throughout the evening and he wasn't a completely random guy, I still felt very uncomfortable. I didn't do this kind of thing, especially not now that I was grown up and out of university. I'd promised myself that this wild behaviour was behind me when I took this job. I needed to be stable and healthy and grounded.
I grimaced apologetically. I didn't know how to say it. "I'm not a slut..."
He understood and we went back to the main floor. He kissed me seductively, pressing me against a pillar, running his hands up my dress. He was relentless. I made him work for it. But I loved every second. I slipped into ecstasy as he kissed my neck and I thought about how much I craved the physical act of love.
Desperate to make the deed acceptable in my head I began to question him.
"What's my name?" I demanded, narrowing my eyes.
He said my initials.
"Fucking hell, you don't even know my name," I exclaimed, hurt but sadly not surprised.
"Yes I do! I was introduced to you by your initials!"
"Yeah but that's not my name is it! Seriously, you don't even know my name! That's fucking awful."
"Ok so what is it then?"
"Ophelia."

Eventually, after finding out all the essentials I felt I needed to know and after lots more seduction on his part, I gave him the nod. I wanted it. I was going to cover my eyes and let go of my morals.
In the taxi I looked out at the city I loved. We drove past the London Eye, Westminster, Big Ben, illuminated, The Thames twinkling gold and black.
"London is so beautiful", I said.
"It is."
I was going to have sex with this guy. I was in this taxi on the way back to his flat so that he could fuck me. It wasn't the feeling I wanted.

I've not slept with a guy since I broke up with my ex-boyfriend Alex in August, but I hadn't forgotten how wonderful it had been with him.
I wanted to tell Harry that loved him. I wanted to hear him say it back to me breathlessly. I wanted to say his name - Alex
- I fucked Harry pretending he was Alex. Because in truth, I didn't have a clue who Harry was - I couldn't feel anything for him.

We chatted about his work at the Investment Bank. He'd been working on a big deal during the week,
"And I just took all that stress out on you," he said casually.
I turned away.
But I couldn't feel sad because I had known all along that this was a casual one night stand and I had given it my blessing when I stepped into the taxi with him.
He scratched his itch, I scratched mine.
I should just forget him. But of course, all I want to do is see him again.

As he saw me out of the front door we shared a kiss but he didn't ask for my number or say anything at all - but then again, neither did I.
I looked at him properly in the glare of the bright early morning sunlight as he stood in the doorway.
He had blue eyes.

The Game

2011-07-24T13:12:00.001+01:00

I am the biggest gameplayer in the world. I treat my whole fucking life as a game.
Like every game I have a goal and a strategy and I play to win. When I feel the rush of success coursing through my veins it simply sends me spinning.

Work is a game with two prizes - men and career success. I know that if I play my cards right in this job and work hard over the next two years, the City will be my oyster. I also know that with all the attractive men in my office I'll never get bored.

The City is my stage. Like every actress I love an audience, I love performing, I love having a strong presence. The roaring streets, the shiny office, the City winebar - all such wonderful stages, danced on by my high heels.
I live for every new morning so I can sit cross legged in front of my full length mirror and preen my long hair and paint my face carefully, a cup of coffee and a bowl of porridge at my side. I open the wardrobe of lovely dresses and shoes which I had once feared I'd never wear again and delight in selecting my costume for the day.
I love the game, I love it.
Holding my head high with an air of self-confidence and a glint of arrogance. I am a City Girl. This is my city.

Nearly a year ago now, my then boyfriend Alex called me up to tell me that he had changed overnight from "I love you" to "it doesn't feel like it used to, sorry".
It has taken me all that time since to forget him, but I can finally stand up and say with complete conviction that the idea of me ever being interested in him now is utterly laughable. I'm so far out of his league it's hilarious. But it took me a hell of a long time and a hell of a lot of pain to believe that.
Now I parade around my new office with a smirk on my lips. I admire the way the bespoke suits fit the boys as their expensive watches and glittering cuff links wink at me seductively.

"So how long have you worked here?" I asked one of the Heads of Department.
"11 years now."
"Wow, so did you join as a grad?"
"Oh... well yeah, but not here... I started out as a graduate trader at a big Investment Bank called Salomon Brothers. 1989 it was I started."
"Woah, you really don't look old enough," I said, genuinely shocked and a little embarrassed.
"I'm 43!"
"Oh... you really don't look it," I flushed red, "...you have like... really good skin..."
My friend cringed for me as I busied myself in my notes and someone else changed the subject. "I wonder what it would be like to sleep with a 43 year old," she said later. We giggled uncontrollably like schoolgirls.

On Friday I had some extra work to finish so I was one of the last to leave the office. Everyone else had gone to the bar. I was alone, I didn't know which one they'd gone to and no one I knew there was answering their phone. The emptiness that I hid so well on stage was so consuming when I sat down and stopped acting. The huge gaping chasm of emptiness inside me opened up and sucked me down. I was wearing my nicest work dress and had painstakingly perfected my hair and makeup - I had to perform - to be denied my audience now would be devastating.
I imagine that when an actress comes off the stage having played an phenomenal character she must fall back to her reality with a terrible bump, she must feel the wanting in her own character a thousand times more, it must be hard to have to go back to being someone inferior again.
Because that's what it feels like for me.

I sat down on a ledge outside my office clutching my Blackberry, willing it to ring.
I watched the City Boys stroll past with a combination of longing and loathing. I wanted one to hold me, I wanted one to take me to dinner and dote on me, I wanted one to put his arms around me and keep me safe; but I hated them, I hated them for not even giving me a glance, for owning this city, for owning me, for being the people who put the value on my head both sexually and in terms of my career. I wanted every single one to respect me as being their equal in terms of intelligence and attraction. But I knew and I accepted the truth that I am horribly inferior. I looked at my fat legs, round face and disgusting skin. Fat. People in the city are ambitious and always aim for the best - I'm proof of that - therefore no City Boy would ever, ever aim for me.

I watch the City Girls too and I wonder if they feel as trapped in their bodies as I do. I wonder if they hate the way their suit jacket fits too snugly, the unrelenting constraint of their pencil skirt, the painful teetering heels, wobbling with a desperate instability to try and be sexy. I wonder if they feel the disgust at themselves that I do. I wonder if they hate themselves for putting on a show like I do.
It would comfort me if they did.

My phone rang. It was Rob, one of the guys who started the same day as me. Finally.
I sprung to life, hastily stuffed my flats into my bag and changed into my heels. As I reached the bar, every last detail was in place. I drank, I laughed, I swore, I flirted, I danced. I did not know the girl who had been sitting on the ledge, I'd never met her.
By midnight I was extremely drunk. An Analyst who I had had my eye on was outside with another girl from the office. I cursed myself for not acting faster when I had been alone with him earlier. I got Rob and we barged in on their conversation. I felt completely in control, I loved it.
And then he left, and I found myself on my way home, stuffing my face with crisps and biscuits and bread which I had bought from a nearby store. Dangerously drunk and unable to think coherently - someone else again. I wasn't frightened, I was just drunk and hungry.

So what I am? A fraud? Yeah
Immature? Desperate?

"I'm a nasty person," I had told my therapist when I was in treatment a little while ago. "I have this need to be the best, to be admired and envied. I'm horrible."
"I don't think you're a nasty person. Look at our diagram - where does all this striving and desperation for approval come from?"
I looked at the flowchart that represented my fucked-up mind. "Insecurity and self-loathing," I said.

I've started reading a book called "Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives" by Anna Fels. In the first chapter she talks about 'recognition'.
"An evaluating, encouraging audience must be present for skills and talents to develop... Ambitions involve a public arena, even if that arena is as small as a classroom or an office."

I covert recognition and approval more than anything. The game I play is called Ambition.

Handshake

2011-07-16T22:04:00.001+01:00

I am a City Girl.

I work in the City of London, in the hub of the financial district, out-striding traders and stockbrokers in my patent heels. I don’t work for a bank so maybe some would say I’m stretching the definition of City Girl slightly here, but I’m a money-maker in a business that sits like an octopus in the centre of the financial and business worlds.

I’ve been on a long and dramatic road to get here. I’ve lived my life to the full, I’m not afraid of any conventional fears and beneath my smart office suit and neat office hair I’m as wild as they come.

I started my new job on Monday. Monday 11th July 2011. I'd been counting down to that day for the past month. The initial delirium when I received the job offer quickly turned to dread once I received the employment contract in the post. You see, I’d done the daily walk across London Bridge before and it had sucked all the life and happiness out of me. I was afraid of going back and feeling that depression again.

I needn’t have worried. My new office is sleek and shiny, vast and filled with brains and balls. The incredible pace of work, intellectual challenge and constant hammering pressure is what I want, it’s what fuels me and it’s what makes me smile from ear to ear. I didn’t have that in my last job.

This blog is a commentary of my return, or rather, my new beginning. You see I graduated two years ago now in June 2009, but I graduated with a uncontrollable eating disorder which I had agressively developed during my time at University and which only continued to rage and burn and consume me completely. I went on to Law School and dropped out, then took a job in the City and crumbled. So in the Autumn of 2010, at the absolute peak of my despair and illness, trampled and empty, ripped apart by a boy who couldn’t face my sickness, consumed with thoughts of suicide, I decided the only way I could save myself was to burn all my bridges and run.

I left my job, I left London, I cut all ties with the people I used to know.

I started weekly psychotherapy sessions at hospital.

I took an easy assistant job in a school in another part of the country.

I didn’t focus on anything apart from getting better. It took the whole six months to find the strength to hold my head up high again. The truth is that I still have an eating disorder, it’s just not the aggressive, possessive monster that it used to be. A year ago, my eating disorder was ALL I had but now it is just a thing in the background, a part of me yes, but not the defining, disabling thing it used to be - and I can live with that.

I was totally honest about my eating disorder with all the people who interviewed me over the stages for this job (I had to justify why the hell I've just spent 6 months in a school...) and they were all unbelievably accepting. I was ill, I went to get better, and now I'm back with hunger in my eyes and fire in my belly. And what I said was very true:
"I've always aimed for the best in life, I've always pushed myself to be the top. In fact, that's where my eating disorder stemmed from to a great extent. I set myself a goal and I pushed and pushed until I could reach it. But obviously that was something that got out of hand and I had to learn to reign in and control...but that's me - I work hard to be the best in everything.”

I will never stop being ambitious. Most jobs won't give me the adrenaline and pressure that I need. My job at the school made me realise that content, comfortable, relaxed and average isn't what I want. Ambition, competitiveness, drive, pressure, hunger, materialism have always inspired the best in me, and you know what? Being those things didn't make me a bad person. I believe in hard work and I believe in striving to be the best. Outside of The City, people think that ambition is a terrible thing. Why put so much pressure on yourself? Why not just be average and content? But for me, being a nothing, being a nobody is the worst thing imaginable and being recognised for my success means everything.

I’ve been blogging in another blog for two and a half years, and although that blog charting the hell of my eating disorder has now come to a close, I still feel that I need a voice. In the real world I am completely mute. There is no one I can speak to openly about what I feel and experience – perhaps because what I feel and experience is often very extreme or contentious. Blogging gives me a voice that I don’t have to censor for fear of upsetting people I know or having them judge me.

In my job I am polished and corporate, bright, confident and self-assured. I am The City Girl Image my company and clients expect. Here on the pages of this blog I am The City Girl Made of Glass – fragile and transparent.

Come and see what it’s like on the inside....

With all my everlasting love, Goodbye...

2011-06-14T02:02:00.003+01:00

Well, I got the job.
I spent the last three weeks living and breathing the company and the role, preparing myself completely for the onslaught of interviews. Every spare moment pouring over economics textbooks, business journals and newspapers, paperbacks and online resources. I did everything I could to get that job.
I sat on the train on my journey home with my eyes closed and sent my thoughts up to the sky please let me get it, please, please

I start in 4 weeks, straight after I finish at the school.
Right back in the centre of the City of London. where I belong. where I can thrive, work hard and play hard

back to my best
whatever that best is

I got the call to say I'd been offered the job in the middle of my therapy session. I was overjoyed. My therapist congratulated me. We talked about the incredible progress I had made. We talked about the end... We decided that my last session will be the week before I start my new job.
The sun was shining outside, I felt invincible.
I was doing it. I am doing this. Ready or not, this is the end now - I'm choosing life, I'm choosing to take the opportunity I have been given, I'm choosing to grab hold of everything I have and run with it.

Maybe I will always have an eating disorder, but somehow it feels irrelevant because I've dragged myself out of the hell and depression that once consumed me and I know I'm never going back there so long as I live.

"7 months ago, I had nothing. I had no life, no hope.
I have hope now, I have a whole life of opportunity in the City of London waiting for me if I want it."
I WANT IT.

You see what I've written in my 'About Me' section on the right hand side of this page? Well that day came today. I've been through the hottest fires, I'm made of the strongest steel.
I've made it; I'm ready.

I've been writing for two and a half years - but it's been a lifetime on these pages.
That lifetime in my head full of beauty is over now.
I'm going to live for real. My dreams and ambitions are calling me.

With all my everlasting love,
Goodbye,

Ophelia

Blurred Sweet Nothings

2011-06-11T00:22:00.004+01:00

I have a final interview on Monday for the company I desperately want to work for. Final round interview. Role play business meeting and pitch.

Less than a year ago - seven months ago in fact, I was sitting in a bitterly cold, dark London suburb. I wanted to die. I wanted to feel pain. I wanted the body I hated so much to be ripped apart, ripped to shreds. I binged and threw up, binged and threw up, binged and threw up... I felt nothing else other than the desire for pain and death.

I do not feel like that anymore. In fact I cannot even put myself into that headspace. I do not want to die. I no longer have that deadly chilling sadness running through my blood.

A few moments ago I lay in my bathroom cured up in a ball on the floor. A floor splattered with blood and vomit. Every time I coughed up food my nose began to bleed. I had to get every last morsel out, bending as far over as I could until I was almost bent double. Again. Again. Again. Fuck you. Fuck you YOU MONSTER.

I haven't self harmed for 7 months. I haven't cut myself with a blade since December. i havent got a knife
havent got a knife
You can only see the patterns now if you look very closely. I haven't got a knife.
i run my hand under the hot water tap. It's not hot enough to scald me. Hot shower then.
I haven't got a mother fucking knife anymore. Else it wouldn't be 7 months, believe me.

On the other side of my bathroom wall is a bedroom with 4 girls in. there's only 3 now. One got sent home two weeks ago. anorexia.
There's bulimia here too. Some do it in the showers.

Everyone who knows about my eating disorder thinks I'm in recovery. No matter, even if they knew the truth and wanted to support me, I'd never call. Pride. I'm fine. I'm so fucking fine. I'd have no idea how to turn to a shoulder to cry on even if it was there for me.
I wanted to call my Mum. She thinks I'm better.
I wanted to call my friend. I'm far too proud.

7 months ago, I had nothing. I had no life, no hope.
I have hope now, I have a whole life of opportunity in the City of London waiting for me if I want it.
IF I WANT IT.
But the fact is, the only thing I'm certain I want is to be thin. And for as long as I want to be thin, I will always have an eating disorder. And as long as I have an eating disorder, I will never have anything else.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/06/03/bulimia-laid-bare/

http://dropitandeat.blogspot.com/2011/05/eating-disorder-denial-missing-big.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0&feature=youtu.be

Made in Chelsea : Destroyed in The City

2011-05-29T02:04:00.007+01:00

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Made in Chelsea
'...the scandalous lives of London's elite'

Well, I was certainly not made in Chelsea.
My friend Harriet however, is a purebred 'Sloaney'. Her mission in life (and she won't mind me saying this because she admits it herself) is to find her perfect Sloaney husband - signet ring compulsory.
(A signet ring, I had to learn, is a ring with the family crest, and according to Harriet a true Chelsea Boy hallmark.)

I wrote a few posts back that I was going to become more like the girl I had made friends with at law school a year ago who had dug her claws into all the right people to drag herself to the top. Socially, I have already been a climber. I've cut almost all my ties to my working class South London roots - everything from my accent, to my clothes, to the friends I have made, has been changed to reflect my move up the social ladder - albeit superficially.

If I were to 'class' myself today then I'd put myself quite comfortably into the 'young graduate professionals' crowd of London - the 20-30 somethings who work and play in and around Central just as they did at University.

Last night, Harriet invited me to join her at her favourite haunt on Kings Road, Chelsea. Never one to turn down a new adventure I accepted and anticipated what was in store...

Now, I'm not usually one to be outwardly intimidated once I've put on my costume, but this stage was one I'd never walked onto before. Sure, last year at 'The Club' I was friends with a lot of extremely wealthy, upper class people who had been educated at the best boarding schools in the country (Alex being one) - boys who wore tweed jackets and red corduroy trousers, chinos and pink shirts - girls who rode horses, played polo and wore Barbour jackets. I wasn't one of them, but I still fitted in somehow and had the confidence to wind the boys around my little finger regardless of what school I went to. I guess it was a University thing, and maybe University is a world of its own.
But last night, as I walked into the Chelsea Venue, walking behind Harriet and holding her hand gingerly, I felt all my confidence and black swan plumage fall flat. This was out of my comfort zone - I didn't belong here, this wasn't a stage with an audience I could hold.

I had put myself through my usual paces of course - fasting, exercise - my legs and bum were toned within an inch of their life and I wore a clingy pale pink wrap dress with a clinch belt and pale pink studded designer shoes. Harriet informed me this wasn't really 'Sloaney' and I should wear a more casual dress. I told her I wear casual dresses all day everyday.

I spent most of the evening wondering if the men could tell I was a fraud. Harriet definitely got more attention than me - I realised my hair was wrong, it wasn't big enough.
I did get my fair share of attention I suppose but I was in super bitch mode. I wasn't having any of it. I turned my back, pulled my arm away, removed hands from round my waist, scrunched up my nose, shook my head and pointed to Harriett. No.... no... no... NO.
Am I so ridiculously fussy or have I just completely lost all interest in men? No, to be honest, I don't like getting with guys I don't know in clubs, simply because I hate being objectified and targeted only because of how I look. I mean, I want to look good and I want to be wanted because I like power/ego trip rather than because I want a man to grope me and stick his tongue down my throat.

Here's what happens when a Chelsea Boy puts his hands away and actually tries to talk to me:

"You come from a really rich family don't you - a really wealthy background - I can tell."
"Err... ok."
"Yes, you're from a long line of bankers - am I right?"
"Right... Whatever."

"Do you like polo?"
"Oh...um...I like it - but I don't play."
"Are you going to The Veuve Clicquot?"
"Err... the what?"
"The Veuve Clicquot."
"Erm...no...When is it?"

Fucking hell. This was one act I was not interested in putting on. Just as Harriet wouldn't settle for anything less than a man with a signet ring and a country estate, I knew some of these men would recoil in horror if they knew the only photo I have of my ancestors is of them standing outside their corner shop.

I was haunted all night about my weight. Despite stepping out having reached a new low number on the scale, I still saw myself in the mirror and knew it wasn't enough. Sure, I had a 'good figure', but I wasn't fucking skinny. I wasn't fucking skinny. I was muscular and fit and toned, curved arse and a flat tummy. Nope. I'm not settling for that. Good Chelsea girls are thinner.

Destroyed in The City

There is a pretty good argument to say that I was destroyed in The City - London's financial district. But, as you all know, I'm utterly desperate to go back and work there again. I hate the heartless greed of that world, and yet it is that greed culture which makes it the only profession that can feed my ambition.
The last week I've been interviewing non-stop...

On Monday I came out of the interview and held my hands over my face. It was lunch hour and the cobbles of Leadenhall Market were teeming with rich boys in crisp banker-blue suits. I tugged at my bun to pull all my hair loose over my shoulders - I was pinned in, I had to break free.
The image was immediately ruined.
45 minutes earlier I had strode up in patent heels and my own well-worn blue suit.
"Great body darling!"
"Nice legs!"
It's just a fucking image. Fucking men.

As I stepped out of the interview and back on the street it hit me clear as day. I couldn't maintain the image. That's why I had had to leave The City 7 months ago - because I didn't have the strength to be that girl every day. I can act for 45 minutes, shiny, professional, confident and polished, but I can't keep it up.

All those old feelings of failure and worthlessness came flooding back. I wouldn't get that job. I'd seen a man look at me that way before - my old boss - looking at me like I'm a pathetic, naive little girl who will never have what it takes to be as successful as him. Disdain and arrogance. And I couldn't hate him because I knew he was right to feel those things.

I was starving. I walked in and out of every salad bar and coffee shop I passed, round Liverpool Street, Monument, Bank, Moorgate... The voice in my head wouldn't let me eat anything. I was starving and miserable but I couldn't eat. I press my fingers to the space between my eyebrows and scrunch up my eyes repeating under my breath, fuck this... fuck this...
I couldn't bear feeling those emotions of worthlessness again.
Everything wasn't supposed to get this fucked up. My life was supposed to be perfect.

The boys in blue suits. I wanted one. I wanted to play them at their own game. Fuck them. Fuck them.

The next day; another interview. I sat for an hour being attacked over everything on my CV and every answer I gave. I asked questions at the end only to be told to my face that they were stupid - why would you want to know that? - what's it to you? - I live on Kensington High Street, do you even know what a mortgage there costs?
I came out stunned. Even if they begged me to take the job (which of course they didn't) there was no way in hell I would ever work there and be subjected to abuse from such an utter bastard. The experience highlighted to me how I was still not mentally ready to face the harsh dog-eat-dog-greed-is-good world of Commercial London. I want to be ready, I can pretend to be ready, but the truth is that I am still so incredibly fragile.

For the last six months I've been so far away from that world. I've been living in a lovely Boarding School and I've been so completely safe from the world - from men, from society, from expectations and pressure. I've been able to repair my body and mind - not to being 'cured' but certainly to being the happiest I can ever remember in my adult life.

But I said everything I needed to say in my last post. Something drives me, a voice I can't ignore. Something unspeakable.

In my last session with my therapist I had it out with her.
"I need to achieve. I don't understand why that's considered wrong."
We drew up a list of what my life would be like if it was average, good and perfect.
"Is that perfect life really achievable?" she asked me.
"Yes," I said defiantly. "It is!"
Somehow she managed to convince me I was wrong... I could make concessions, I could aim for some of it but also let go of some it.
She gave me a book called 'Overcoming Perfectionism' which I will write more about in my next post. On what I've read so far, it has become clear that I don't have an Eating Disorder, I'm simply a Perfectionist aiming for the top.

I wish I could let go of The City, but that's definitely not one of my concessions. More interviews this week...

The best version of who I am

2011-05-21T23:25:00.003+01:00

When I was 15, I used to wear a laminated tag around my neck, tucked inside my school blouse to remind me of how fat and worthless I was. I must still have it somewhere, hidden away in my cupboard, even though a few years ago I made an effort to throw out all my old notebooks and memories of self-hatred.
I made the tag myself, put a picture of the beautiful Scarlett O'Hara on it, wrote about how I could be like her if I tried hard enough, laminated it, ran a long piece of string through to make a necklace. I wore it every day for months.
When I was 13 I had to get dressed in the dark, never exposing my body while I changed. I had to lie face down in the bath - I couldn't stand and shower. I had to wear jumpers everywhere to swamp the curve of my growing breasts.
When I was 8 I cried alone and in agony because I wasn't pretty. I decided I was the fattest in my class and I never let go of that.

However high I hold my head, the truth is that this eating disorder has destroyed me. It destroys me now, it will destroy me further. And yet I believe, I will always believe, that it will bring the happiness that I've longed for my whole life.
In all the years that I've had an eating disorder in one form or another, I have never gotten better. Even though at 23, I have never managed to reach this glory of happiness, I cannot help but fall for the promises that my evil angel whispers in my ear.

Clytie summed up something perfectly in a comment a few posts back saying: "You are the unattainable in view, but out of view you are so alone and fragile."
When I put on my dress and make up, when I perform on my public stage, I am powerful, smart, strong, brave, confident, aloof, desirable, fearless, envied. But it is an act. I tortured myself to play the part. The other side of me cuts everyone out, exercises, avoids people, never smiles, never chats, never socialises, never goes to meals, weak and shy, dark, tearful, nothing.
The people I work with here at the school would never recognise the bold and shining girl who has been interviewing back in London this week.

Yes... I'm going back to London in one and a half months.
I was born to wear a suit and high heels.
It felt so good to be out of cardigans.
I am desperate to go back to London, absolutely desperate, So much of me wishes I had stayed, that I was working in the great shiny Investment Bank, being taken out on dates by bankers, working out in the swankiest gyms. So I'm interviewing again and I'll be back in July, thinner, fitter, stronger, fuck it all, I BELIEVE in the unattainable. I didn't take the job in the Investment Bank back in December because I was fat and suicidal. I'm not fat and suicidal anymore - I'm thinner, fitter, stronger.
I will never stop being ambitious. Most jobs won't give me the adrenaline and pressure that I need. Being happy and enjoying my job has nothing to do with the girl you see at interview in a polished suit and polished hair. My job at the school has made me realise that content, comfortable, relaxed and average isn't what I want. Ambition, competitiveness, drive, pressure, hunger, materialism. I shouldn't have tried to change who I was and what I wanted. Being those things didn't make me a bad person. I'm sick of my therapist trying to make me believe that it's good to be average. I'm sick of it. Why the hell should I change who I am and who I want to be. I worked so hard at school to be the top of every class, I work so hard in the gym to keep my body toned and strong, I put myself through hell so I don't get fat. And doing those things are who I am, who I understand and who I need to be to achieve my ambitions.

I was supposed to come here to work in this boarding school to 'recover'. From a medical point of view, I've got worse. I still have a full blown eating disorder, just a different kind.
The latest piece of paper stuck on my bedroom wall reads:
"For as long as you maintain any of your BULIMIC characteristics, you will always be FAT and SECOND-RATE."
I had a period of bingeing last weekend because I ran my 10k race on Sunday. Although I'd done most of my training over the last two months without any carbs, getting a good time in the actual race was paramount to me, so I made the decision to eat well and fuel my muscles for race day.
I ate well. I fueled my muscles. I even replenished them afterwards. I ran the best and most comfortable I'd ever run. It was simply fabulous, having glucose in my body made such a difference to my stamina and I ran the whole circuit comfortably in 53:30. Although I had been aiming for 45-50 mins I feel happy because it was just so comfortable and I loved every second of it. I've got a half marathon set for September, but I might do another 10k before then just to meet that target of 45-50 mins.

Now that my race is over I've decided to cut back on the treadmill and running slightly and branch out a bit more. This week has also included a Ballet Class, Tennis Lesson, Swimming, Spin Classes and Bike, and the only word I can possibly use to describe it is glorious. Exercise is the greatest cure for feeling like shit - which in all honesty is how I feel most days. Once the endorphins kick in I feel invincible.

Nothing will stop me or change me.
I am who I am - and my eating disorder and ambition are a part of that.

The morning walk I miss so much...

Finally, I remember how nothing tastes as good as thin feels

2011-05-08T02:15:00.007+01:00

Let me start this post by saying this is not the thinnest I have ever been. But I'm not too far off.
As I get thinner, the rate at which I'm losing is slowing down dreadfully. It's hard not to beat myself up when I step on the scales in the morning and see the same number as the day before. It's hard not to feel disappointed because I know that I'm working so hard and doing the maths so well.

I sat with a child at breakfast this morning. "Could you have eaten as much as I did?" she asked me when she had finished.
"Oh yes", I said, "Of course!"
"But how can you be so skinny?!"
"I'm not skinny!"
"Yes you are!"
I tried to contain my joy. "Oh, well, I eat loads, I promise. I eat loads."

At night I run my hands along my body with glee, feeling my rib cage grow closer and closer to the surface all the time. There was a fabulous quote which Harlow posted from Crystal Renn's book 'Hungry' in which she says: "I wore my hip bones like a trophy. At night, in bed, I'd hold them as if they were the handles of a loving cup."
At night I hold on to my hip bones as if they are the handles of my trophy.
My dresses hang more loosely off my body and I nip in my cardigan about my waist to show the world how much it has shrunk.

I've been doing well, the strength has returned, the bulimia has been banished. I am the girl I used to be. Now I'm going to surpass the girl I used to be.

I workout every day burning between 200-800 calories depending on the exercise and I consume less than 1000 calories in lean protein/vegetables every day on the Dukan Diet (which I am happy to report is clearly going very well!).
I'm not sure if I just don't feel hungry anymore or if I just can't understand what the feeling of hunger is; all I know is that I couldn't eat more even if I wanted to. I can say with certainty that I am far more hungry for success than I am for food. It is ambition that drives me, the hunger in my heart and soul and not my stomach that controls my actions.

How Did I Get Here?

I have to be honest, for almost all of 2010 and until very recently, I would never have thought it possible for me to get back to the wondrous realm of restriction. I just wanted to get rid of the bulimia and the binge and purge monster than infested me. I think the turning point was starting the Dukan Diet, because I am a lazy cook and all I can eat is plain chicken and fish and skimmed milk. I found the ecstasy of control again and embraced it. Control, wonderful, serene control.
Maybe returning to restriction was the only choice for me once I got rid of the bulimia - perhaps I refuse to give up having an eating disorder of one kind or another because without it I am nothing and have nothing. Perhaps it is just another form of my rebellion against being controlled and adhering to convention. Nothing makes the anger boil up in me faster than hearing someone try and tell someone else they should be eating. Having an eating disorder is my secret rebellion against everyone - everyone wants to destroy me.
Then again maybe I'm completely wrong. I was thinking today that if I were a child in a school, the teachers would be worried about me, but because I am an adult, I shouldn't need looking after, I should know better, and so, no one cares. But the fact is, I've never been looked after by anyone, and I think it's possible that deep down I want to be cared for and looked after more than anything. Perhaps that explains why I've never gone to great lengths to hide my disorder.
Maybe I have an eating disorder because I'm a bitch. I want to succeed so much that I'll destroy anyone who stands in my way - even myself. At law school I was friends with a dreadful girl who had no shame in using people to climb the social ladder and get to where she wanted. She now works for arguably the best law firm in London and frequents the guest lists at all the most exclusive clubs. I find myself being inspired by her. Being nice never got me anywhere, being nice was a weakness and has made me a failure. Ambition rears it's beautiful head.

And yet, as I write all this, I dread the look of disappointment on my therapist's face when she next weighs me.
It's true, I did want to get better, the bulimia and depression made me suicidal. But now I've got hold of something better than the recovery she offered me - I've got hold of control and exercise and restriction.
When I reach my ultimate goal weight - I swear when I reach my ultimate goal weight I'll stop and be normal and happy - I swear. But until then, I must remain unrelenting and closed off in my little world of control.
I have another stone to lose.
at least

Performance Review
Last night was the date in my diary - scrawled in red pen across my bathroom mirror to remind me of my goal.
Last night was the night that I stepped back on the stage, floodlit by the lights of The Strand, after nearly a year away.
The whole week in the lead up I stayed serene and controlled, pushed my body to it's limits, worked out solidly and then fasted for the last 48 hours, clearing everything else out with diuretics and laxatives. The night before I sat on the floor of my bathroom crying uncontrollably with anxiety and fear. All I could think was: what if I suddenly become bloated tomorrow morning, what if the ugly ducking shows up, what if I can't cope with the pressure, what if I still look ugly - it would be impossible. I was petrified of failure.
But the day came and it was fine, my tummy didn't curve out even slightly, my waist was the smallest I've measured, I was doing this, I was holding my head high. I put on my brand new five inch heels and strode.

Before I went out with my old friends from 'The Club' I had agreed to meet a guy for a quick drink first- I suppose if you were being official it was 'a date' - the first time I had agreed to such a thing since I've been single. The idea that I was going on a date would have been a really big deal were it not for the fact that I didn't really know this guy and didn't really care what happened.
As it was, it was much better than I expected. My readers across the Atlantic will be interested to know that he is an American boy, a trader for a US company based in their offices here in the City of London. I felt at ease with him as I leaned happily against the railing, one hand holding my wine glass, the other gently caressing the hip bone I could feel through my dress.
At 27, he's only slightly older than me, but old enough for me to feel the need to be on my best and most professional behaviour... and at times it almost felt as if I was having a drink with a client. For this reason, while I think we got on, I'm not confident of a second date, simply because - as I put it to my friend afterwards - I am more used to the cheeky and flirtatious kind of getting on... In addition, I almost certainly came across as being ordinary, nice and dull - which is really false marketing on my part. But he was nice and it annoys me that I can't seem to get him out of my head now.

Anyway, after I left the American I headed over to where the gang were. This was the main role.
Relief.
Familiar faces chimed that I was looking 'really well', men wanted their hands about my waist, the head held high, the eyes flashed, Odile danced.
"You've proven to everyone you've lost a load of weight you didn't need to lose," one longtime admirer told me. I beamed. "Hard work and dedication," I replied.
"Every time I see you, you get thinner and more beautiful," said another.
I thanked God; it was noticeable, it wasn't just numbers on a scale, it was visible in the flesh too...

And that's it really, I wasn't there to pull a guy or give the gossips any gossip. I was there to prove a point, to prove that I had made it back to where I used to be, to prove that I was strong enough to fight hard for what I wanted and to win.
I made my way back to the train station on my own, stuffed my starving body with pasta and bread and McDonalds, ran away from a taxi driver who got in the back seat and tried to kiss me, apologetically stuck my fingers down my throat to throw up my binge in front of a nice office, sat hunched at the train station with a newly bloated stomach for two painful hours. But it was ok. All that is irrelevant. Because I can say with complete confidence, nothing tastes as good as thin feels. And that is all that matters and all I will remember now.

I carry on, I want more, I'm ravenous.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" - I love my Black Swan

2011-04-29T22:32:00.006+01:00

Something amazing has been happening. In three weeks I've lost 4kg.
I even had a small binge last night on rice cakes and peanut butter only to find that the numbers were still down on the scales this morning.

How I have missed this feeling.

I feel sick. Hunched up as my stomach churns with acidity. I'm not walking, I'm shuffling. Another 10k run in the sun has re-blistered the weeping wounds on my feet. Pain.
I feel so sick... but, if i threw up what the hell would come out? Some chicken breast, coffee, acid...

But I can't stop, because I'm falling, at last, I'm falling, falling, rising back up to my best.
God help me, I couldn't eat even if I wanted to.

I've finally dragged my sorry, fat corpse right out of the mud at the bottom of the river and now I can be rational again. Last year I let myself be consumed by bulimia, by a stupid little boy, by social conventions which choked and smothered me.
Well, here I am, it took me a fucking long time, but here I am, phoenix from the ashes, brighter and bolder, stronger and more determined, braver, harder... crueler.

There's a date in my diary and it's given me that evil glint in my eyes again, the glint of a woman who knows her power and ambition, a glint fed by heartbreak and sadness and the memory of what it feels like to be worthless.
I lift my head, jut out my chin, harden my eyes... because I know, I'm the one in control.
There's a date in my diary - in one week - I'm going back to London for a night out with some of the people I used to know at 'the Club' last year. Alex, I've been reliably informed, will not be there, but other guys I've had on my list will. And that's what I want, a show, a great, spectacular show just like the ones I used to stage.
Of course I won't reach my goal weight in one week but I will still look painfully good, I know I can do it in that time. And what is my motivation? The fact that Alex won't be there, but people who know him will. And I have to look so perfect that they will all be talking about it to him. I know I can do it.

I'm going to be back to my best: the untouchable girl who breezes by with a superior air. I'm going to act and play and feed off men. God, how I used to love it, the taste of power. The perfect, controlled white swan Odette will become the black swan Odile, who dances for show, for lust and desire, parading and prancing across her London stage, spinning, spinning, triumphantly daring you to keep up.

But then, I know it's not always going to be Odile who shows up in the mirror. There's every chance I will see a vile, fat, ugly duckling reflected back at me, the men will scorn me, I will be my own worst enemy, a bulimic monster. And even if Odile does play her part, I always know that I will have to shed the costume and sink into the oblivion of loneliness and emptiness that waits for me backstage.

We celebrated the Royal Wedding today, and I can't remember when the loneliness last hit me so badly. I imagined the life me and Alex would have had.
Recently, there have been a few nice guys on the horizon, but I can't go through with it, I can't even think of trying to go on a date. Even though initially I might be really attracted to them, I just don't want to get to know them, I don't want to make myself look good for them, I don't want to waste my time on them. I hadn't realised how much the breakup with Alex had affected my ability to let a man in. I can't let a man in, even slightly, because I could not bear to be rejected, even slightly.
I'm too fragile.
On my own I can do this, I can stand strong, I can stay in control and in command of myself. I cannot and will not let a man open the floodgates and let all the food in. I will not let anyone take away this complete control.
There's a wonderful part towards the end of Margaret Atwood's novel The Edible Woman where the main character, Marian, presents her fiance with a cake in the shape of a woman, accusing him of trying to destroy her and asking him to destroy and consume the cake instead. And how did she believe he was trying to 'destroy' her? By controlling her identity, giving her a role, a duty, putting her in a box, labelled by others... I cannot bear the thought of being even slightly controlled. I believe everyone wants to destroy me.

We had a special tea today in celebration of the wedding. I sat down with all my colleagues at a table laden with sandwiches, cakes, scones, jam and cream. I wasn't even slightly panicked or tempted - I felt nothing but nausea and anger at the sight. I sat politely sipping a cup of tea in silence.
That's when I knew I'd won the battle against the threat of a junk food binge, and all that is left now is to keep sailing along as I am. All I can think of is how much I hate food.

I wish I had someone that I could say that out loud to. I feel desperately alone.
Despite the ecstasy of stepping on the scales every morning to see a lower number, I find myself constantly choking back tears throughout the rest of the day.

"Obsession is a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated" - I love my White Swan

2011-04-20T21:12:00.004+01:00

Of course, thank you to Anonymous who commented in the last post - I forgot Natalie Portman!
Natalie is one of those actresses who I've adored since the first time I saw her for having such flawless and dainty features - I mean, the woman still looked stunning when she shaved all her hair off for V for Vendetta.
I went to see Black Swan twice at the cinema and am counting down the days for it to be released on DVD here in the UK.

I love that you can see all her ribs in this picture and she has practically no breasts (I would give anything to be totally flat-chested).

Anyway, not only am a big fan of Natalie Portman, the film and its ridiculously sky-high thinspirational quality, I am also a big lover of ballet. This Spring I've been to see Swan Lake and Cinderella and have also booked to see Manon and Anna Karenina in London later this Summer.

I just love ballet...for all the obvious reasons. And yes, I am the only person I know who likes ballet, and yes, I go on my own.

As I mentioned before, I've started classes and once a week you will find my hefty, muscular thighs and thick set arms and neck waving around, out of time, trying to be floaty and elegant. What a picture.
...Ok I'm not that appalling, but I still have the widest hips in my class.
If you've ever seen a professional ballet dancer close up in the flesh you will know what I mean when I talk about incredible muscle tone and carves that jut out like cheekbones whilst also being some of the skinniest people I've ever laid eyes on. I mean, I drool with envy. It's sobering to see bodies like that in front of you, kinda like meeting a famous person whose poster you have on your wall and realising they really EXIST in the living flesh.

My progression with the Dukan Diet is still going ok, although I had a massive wobbly patch last week which saw me eat a series of cakes/bread and throw up continually in a mini-return to the dark days of bulimia. However, I am completely back on track and riding high on the wave of strong control and exercise. To be honest I am absolutely sick to death of chicken, fish, eggs, skimmed milk and low fat yoghurt. But... well... the obsessive in me can't seem to stray, and if I do, my fingers will go straight down my throat anyway, so the Dukan Diet is the lesser of two evils.

I've been pushing myself really hard with the training recently - probably the most dedicated I've been, although I was pretty obsessive in early 2010 - and as a consequence I think I'm definitely back to my personal best level of fitness. This personal best is something I hope to surpass in the next couple of weeks or so as I start to put my foot down on the gas even harder. I have two 10k races scheduled for May - one city and one off-road and I've got a target time which I'm pretty unrelenting about.

Only problem is that my feet - which I totally blistered and bleed to pieces when I went for a long run in new trainers a little while back - are still blistering in the same places even with heavy plastering and zinc oxide tape and although it's not stopping me from going to the gym or out running (nothing short of a apocalypse would stop me) it's really making things a bit miserable. My only hope is that the more I run, the more comfortable the trainers will get.

In the last two weeks as I have maintained my strict Dukan Diet eating and have been exercising almost every day, I've felt utterly in control and completely euphoric. My calculations told me that some days I was burning off nearly as many calories as I was consuming,
and I loved it.
The white swan, Odette, is perfect and pure and elegant. By mirroring the hardwork, strength and control of a ballet dancer, I can look like one too.
I have become aware that there are two very distinct sides of my ED - obsessive restriction/exercising (I don't call it Anorexia because it's not) and Bulimia. I was totally consumed with Bulimia for the best part of 2010 - the very worst, disgusting kind which made me depressed and want to die - and now I'm back in the obsessive restriction/exercising perfect pure 'white swan' which makes me feel on top of the world and stronger than ever.
*shrugs shoulders*
What can you do?

My therapist of course is not impressed. She thinks it's all about my need for control - something we've never touched on before. And it makes sense I suppose - I can't stand being told what to eat. She asked me, "Do you feel like I'm holding you back?" and I choked up, because I do. Although on the one hand I love her for caring about me, she knew that I also hated her for making me be 'good' and 'obedient' and not letting her see the numbers on the scale fall.
I've started to regain the side of the eating disorder that I fell in love with - the restriction and exercise and falling numbers - and somehow that feels like recovery for me. This side of the ED makes me feel superior, makes me feel like I can achieve what I want to... My aim for going into treatment was always primarily to stop the binges as I knew that was the key to finally getting to the low weight I wanted. I know I will never be fully 'cured' because I don't want to let go of the behaviours that will make me thin, just the behaviours that make me fat.
But there have been other changes too... I don't hate myself so much, I want to eat the right things... and honestly everyone comments on how much I look and sound healthier (I try to convince myself this is not just due to the exercising and sunshine).

The girl who was writing this blog back in the dark times of October/November has gone.
I'm happy. I keep myself busy.

Thanks to the Easter Holidays I've been back in London the last two weeks reminding myself of the dreams I long to come back and fulfill...

Yesterday I went walking through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park - a regular haunt of Alex and mine when we were together. It didn't hurt to back, it was just beautiful and full of sunshine, and though I walked the paths alone, I felt completely at peace - because I was alone.

Today, I rose early and upon hearing that it would be an even sunnier day than yesterday, I hopped onto the train to Hampton Court and bought myself entry to the gardens. I used to love coming to Hampton Court when I was younger and I was hungry for more beautiful scenery to keep myself at peace. After walking 3 miles along the river bank, I stopped in the at little restaurant to find some water. As I passed tables of people sitting down to have their lunch my stomach twisted with revulsion. Trays full of food, plates with potatoes and pasta, bread rolls, cakes and fancies. I thanked God I didn't have to sit down with anyone and look at that or be expected to eat it.
As I inspected all the bottled drinks to find one which used only sweeteners I felt a pang of sadness. I was never going to be one of those people sitting down for lunch without feeling hatred towards the person I was with for making me feel like I had to eat things I didn't want to or without feeling out of control and full of anxiety.
But. The fact is, I'm managing my eating disorder by not putting myself in situations where other people see what I eat. And I'm managing it well. I'm happy this way.
If you were at Hampton Court today, you'd have spotted me in the afternoon, sitting on a bench in the Privy Garden, politely eating a chicken breast with a knife and fork which I had dry baked in the morning and put into a little plastic tub to take with me. I was happy.

I cannot resist sharing some of the happiness that I felt today:

A Body Full of Beauty

2011-04-07T01:09:00.006+01:00

Funny, isn't it, the effect alcohol seems to have on my writing. I suppose that's when I feel and write at my most intense, 100% raw and 100% real - no craft. All night I was conscious of the words and paragraphs forming in my head as I danced, as I stood in front of the mirror, as I kissed, as I drank... all I was thinking was how to write it down and speaking it aloud in my head.

I don't know when I will stop hating Alex or when I will stop remembering how it felt to touch him. I don't know if I could ever let another man back into my life or if I'll ever want to.
History dictates that I always do anyway.

It was a shame that I had to drink on Thursday night, and that the drink inevitably led to eating foods that I had cut out of my diet with my Dukan Diet regime. But I'm back on track again, eating only chicken, fish and seafood and drinking only water and skimmed milk.
The new gym I joined is totally worth the £100 a month that I am paying. However, I'm aware that I think that because I am mad... but it is totally mind-numbingly awesome... even though, really, it's just a bloody gym...

Anyway, point is, I feel fabulous. I've been put on a fat blasting, supreme workout plan, which is quite frankly painfully, achingly body changing. And I love my instructor for giving me kudos on my fitness and attitude and giving me the super-challenging regime I need to lose the fat. Usually I'll get set some pansy 30 mins on a treadmill workout by an instructor who gives every girl the same standard training plan - lame. With this new plan, even when my legs are screaming, I do my intervals on the treadmill with a kind of euphoria I've never felt before because I'm so inspired.

And do I look fabulous? Ha, don't be silly. Not yet, anyway. But I damn well will be. Three months, tops, until I see the number I want on the scale - that's what Dr Dukan and my trainer say separately. So imagine the effect now I'm putting them together.
Also, it's amazing what a bit of good PR does to boost my motivation to lose weight even further. Tell a friend or anyone who doesn't know you that you want to lose weight and they say: "But you're fine!" "Lose weight from where?!", "Don't be silly!". But tell Dr Dukan or a personal trainer that you want to lose enough weight to give you a superwoman BMI and they want to offer you support and planning to make your dreams come true.
"I love working with clients who are so determined and driven," my trainer said, "You're gonna be great fun to work with."
I beamed.

To top it all off, on Monday I went for my first Ballet Class and my already tight legs now feel like steel - absolutely fabulous. I must admit I was a little disheartened at being the curviest girl in the class with hips at least 5 inches bigger than anyone elses (I swear!) but I can at least be comforted by the numbers on the scales going steadily down everyday and knowing that I'll be as sleek and gazelle-like as the rest of them soon.

But don't let me put a gloss on my hard work and let you think it's been a delightful journey. Yes, I've loved working out at a higher level, and yes I've been eating well under 1,000 calories a day, and yes the scales are behaving accordingly... but today, for example, I walked and ran and ate only 180g of smoked salmon and it began to catch up with me. I'd never felt so physically sick in my life from under eating. The only way I could stabilise myself was with a bread roll with peanut butter. It killed to do it because it means totally messing up my Dukan Diet plan, but I didn't have a choice, my stomach was full of acid and making it unbearable for me to cope even though I tried to just sleep it off. It was stupid of me, I went from 7am to 4pm without any food and then wolfed down the smoked salmon and went for a run in the sunshine. When I got back I decided I still didn't need to eat and my body rebelled and I had to eat bread which was even worse! Argh! I can't be stupid about this, I have to be strict but I have to be realistic too.

So, to round off my super body issue, just as I did a post about Who's in my Head Full of Beauty, I would also like to give you a quick guide to Ophelia's Bodies Full of Beauty:

1. Victoria's Secret Models. All of them. Wow.

2. Ciara. I'm thinking 'Love, Sex and Magic' video and I'm thinking 'she must have put her body through serious pain for it to look like that'. My ex was a big fan of Shakira who did a similarly acrobatic pop video, "Have you seen the She Wolf video?!" he says like a little boy with eyes as round as saucepans. Shakira, however, has too big a bum for me, sorry Alex.

3. Nicole Sherzinger. Another athlete.

4. Megan Fox. I've never seen this lady act, and from all accounts am not missing much, but I do know, I'd give anything to look like her.

5. Jessica Alba. She's just painfully perfect.

So I know I've missed out a lot of celebs that have pretty perfect bodies, but these are my handful of women that make me sick with envy. As you can probably tell from this little selection, I have a thing about sleek athleticism, thin but strong and toned thighs, a washboard stomach and abs, mini delts on the arms even...

That's basically what I want my body to do - not just shrink, but look fabulous and healthy and strong as well. Shrinking is the easy part - it's getting the combination that really hurts.

Are there any bodies you think I've overlooked? Let me know and tell me why x x x

Look How I Fell

2011-04-01T04:23:00.006+01:00

I think that sometimes, my drunken posts (which have been few) are some of the best. So here is my two pence drunken thoughts for this evening (morning).

I have just completed three days of the Dukan Diet (my three days of the attack phase of pure protein only.)
Day one, admittedly was a struggle. I smelt like protein - fish scent and poultry odour pouring from my very pores. It was hard. But I did it. Day two was easier, but still smelt like a piece of rotton protein. Day three and I'm thinking I could go on like this forever were it apart from the fact that I would kill for an apple.
At lunch, I swished the food around my plate to make it look like I was eating and maintained the most wonderful air of superiority and self control - just like the good old days.

Originially, several years ago, the bulimia spread from this girl who couldn't handle nightclubs and men and mirrors all in one go. I used to do it over and over and over again to myself, the torture, boys and music and reflections. But I have been safe since I've been here - no alcohol, no men, no deviation from the straight and narrow rails.
But this evening, I went out, and drank, and have binged. Two bowls of cereal, peanut butter, 3 kitkats, chocolate spread...
On the dancefloor the rage spread through me. If Alex had been there I'd have grabbed him by the neck and strangled him to death, screaming my anger at him. As it was, I stood in front of the mirror, over and over again, just like all those nights at university, same, never changing... never changing. There was nothing in my makeup bag to change the relfection in the mirror, no matter how many times I went in, no matter how long I stood there.

I pulled a guy, kissed him hungrily, ran my hands through his hair and spread my hands across his chest just like I used to do with Alex, felt his abs and biceps beneath his shirt, hungered for him, hungered so bad. Fed.

I was craving.

Wait, make that 4 bowls of cereal.

Oh God I was so hungry. Am so hungry. He tasted of beer and man, just like I remember boys used to taste. I didn't care a damn except that he tasted good, felt good, satisfied me.
I need to be sick - am going to be sick - when I've finished this. But it will feel wonderful, it will be the best feeling I've had all night,
and then tomorrow I go to Dukan
and the gym
and more and more and more
because I just wanted to be one of those girls, I wanted to put my hand around Alex's throat, I wanted all the boys down on their knees.

You want to know what kind of a person I am? That's the kind of person I am.
I hungered for the days when I played with men in my hand like putty. When I walked like a priceless untouchable through a room full of men, when Hugh and Rowan fought their Public School Boy wars over me, when Alex was just one of so many impressionable little boys that I dangled from my little finger.
Look how I fell.

Bulimia is a purging of the evil. fed by my nights as a girl

You Can Dukan

2011-03-28T02:23:00.004+01:00

Exercise and weight loss are expensive hobbies - or addictions.
I have blown serious amounts of money over the years on diet pills, diet foods, gym memberships... but in the last few months I have definitely outdone myself and wasted money I really cannot afford to waste.
I pay £56 a month for a gym membership in London - despite not actually living there anymore. I have a free gym on site where I work - but have still signed up to another super fly gym for £100 a month...(but it has incredible indoor and outdoor pools, sauna, steamroom, powerplates(!) and general all round luxury equipment and surroundings....)
I order and drink boxes of overpriced Maxitone shakes and just forked out for a pair of specially measured and fitted running trainers - costing another £100 (which then blistered and tore my feet to shreds which means my feet are out of action until the painful scabs heal)

And now, to top it all off... A subscription to the DUKAN DIET! at a lump sum price of £90.

Now, I only first heard about the Dukan Diet today as I was reading an interview with Dr Dukan in The Times Saturday Magazine talking about his revolutionary diet plan which has been helping French women maintain supremacy over us all. It's similar to Atkins in that it promotes protein, but different in that it still cuts out fat as well as carbs.
Why not.
Why the bloody hell not. I need regime, I need strictness, I need rules.
And most of all, I need a body that sings... "You have no choice about when you enter this world and when you will exit it. All you can do is do something with the life that you have. You can control that, so why not make it the best life you have? Why not take your body and make it sing?" says Dukan in the interview.

According to my 'assessment', I'll reach my 'true weight' in the middle of June.
And how will my therapist react? Well considering I'm not allowed to lose or put on weight...
she won't know
I've discovered those strap on ankle weights... perfect for keeping the weight consistent at "weigh-ins".

So I suppose over the next few weeks/months I will keep you informed about how I am fairing under the watchful eye of Dr Dukan....

*edit* Just did my supermarket shop - hello oatbran and a fridge full of 0% fat yoghurts, chicken breast and tinned tuna in brine. Excited for day one tomorrow!

Ambition

2011-03-24T21:30:00.004Z

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.

2011-03-06T22:43:00.002Z

I feel so alone.
Can't get rid of the eating disorder - it won't budge.
Can't tell anyone about it.
Don't have a shoulder to cry on.

I wanted to tell my two friends here. Couldn't.

Can't stop the eating disorder, I can't stop it.
I can't stop it.

Ran and ran and ran, ignored my screaming calves, sweated in the gym, more and more, further, further, HARDER. Vegetables, soya milk, protein shake. Again.
Up and down the supermarket isles, up and down the canteen, up and down, panic, run. Can't run.

please, someone tell me starving is the best sensation in the world, tell me, scream it to me!

Watched a group of girls celebrate a 17th birthday, all long limbs, fresh faces, beauty and youth. And me, fat, dumpy old person.

Handfuls of cake in front of the fridge.

Knowing I've got to stand on that fucking scale tomorrow and be asked "how do you feel about that?"

I shrug my shoulders.

Stuck together with glue

2011-03-05T11:21:00.002Z

They warned me before I went - but warnings are just words. I wasn't prepared in any way for what I witnessed last weekend.
My Mum and I went to see my Grandad.
My Grandad lives in another part of the country close to my Aunt and Uncle - from my Dad's side of the family - and went into hospital in December having deteriorated drastically. We monitored the situation over the phone as the snow at the time made it impossible to travel the long distance to see him. They didn't think he would make it.
Since being in hospital, his condition has improved but he had to move into a home where he could get full 24-hour care.
We had lunch with my Aunt and Uncle before we visited him together.
"It's incredible," said my Aunt, "the ability of the human spirit to cling on - even when the body is at then end, that spirit still clings on." I nodded, not really understanding.
"It's awful where your Grandad is now", she continued, "Just old people sitting around waiting to die. They have no interest in doing anything except eating and sleeping. I couldn't bear it. I've already told my daughter, if I reach that stage, pack me off to Switzerland..." I had to concur completely. "I want to die before I'm 40," I said resolutely.
My Uncle laughed, "I remember saying that when I was 20 as well."
But I meant it and I've been saying it for as long as I can remember. I have tortured and abused myself for my ugliness as a teenager and a young woman 'in my prime' so there is no way I'd survive getting wrinkles, grey hair and saggy breasts.

As family often do, my Uncle showered my Mum and I with a flood of family photo albums. Neither of us could bear to look at the ones of us, it hurt too much to look at how happy our little family unit had been when I was young. There were photos going back even further, photos of my great-grandparents and both my Grandad and Grandma during the war years when they were married. My Grandad was incredibly handsome. In his prime I think he was a fair-haired version of Laurence Olivier. Dressed in his British Army uniform as he was in most of the photos, it's no wonder my Grandma swooned.

I visited him that same afternoon, and oh, how the years had passed. He was sat in the lounge with a number of the other residents, all propped up in great armchairs and cushions yet somehow remaining completely suken. Looking across into the kitchen I saw two men sat at the table bent over and drooping completely motionless in front of mugs of tea while in the living room the TV was blasting weekend breakfast shows to a deaf room of ladies staring into their laps or at the opposite walls.
Grandad didn't recognise me and my Mum when we first walked in, my Uncle had to prompt him.
"Oh! Ha! I though we were just having a visit from the Chinese!" Tears rolled quietly down my cheek and I couldn't fight them back. I prayed his eyesight was too bad to notice. I tried desperately to distract myself in order to suppress the need to run out into the corridor and cry uncontrollably. I had to sit there and choke. I could barely say two words when he spoke to me.
"What are you doing now then?" he asked me.
"I work in a school," I croaked, blowing my nose for the tenth time.
"You got a cold?" he asked. I nodded.
It was barely possible to make conversation, though my Mum and Uncle tried repeatedly. But there were still sparks of him, that dirty English humour, that dry laugh... he was still in there,
just a bit lost

And I was reminded of something I had felt once before. I was so fit and healthy, sitting in that room, my skin almost glowing and radiating with health that it make me feel self conscious. My stride was long and easy, my limbs where loose and flowing. My skin was warm and smooth, my face youthful. I, who was so healthy of mind and body - those two most precious, precious things in life - I had been hacking away at them, wearing them down to the best of my abilities, treating my body like an abscess that needed to be drained, my mind like a furnace that needed to be dulled.
Perspective is a wonderful thing.

a wonderful thing

* * *

I've been a massive drama whore recently. On Monday I sat through two films on my own at the cinema and on Tuesday I went to see the new production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre. It blew my socks off. Best piece of theatre I've seen, possibly ever.
The question of creation was particularly pertinent in this interpretaion; Frankenstein, an arrogant scientist who thinks himself so much of a genius that he can play God is obsessed with creating 'perfection' yet disgusted with what he finally produces.
Creature: "Why did you make me?"
Frankenstein: "To prove that I could!"
To prove that I could.
I have so much that I desperately want to prove to the world, to my peers, to the people I used to know at school and universtity, people I don't even know anymore... desperate to prove, to make a name, to...

a monster, The Creature, "But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue"

Upcoming theatre trips include: Swan Lake and Aida at the Royal Opera House (cheapo bench seats alas), Matthew Bourne's Cinderalla, Hamlet at the Globe Theatre (splashed out on best seats for this as I've been praying every season it will finally come to the Globe!!) and The Cherry Orchard at the National Theatre... if you have any more suggestions please send them over!

Thanks also for comments on the last post - very touching - a special thank you in particular to those who don't have a link and I cannot post back to xxx

Write Now

2011-02-23T00:22:00.003Z

I've been dreaming about Alex again. This makes me angry. My dreams keep on suggesting I want him back.
I do not.
I wish I could turn off my dreams and not have to experience them.

I want to start today with a comment from Anonymous (gotta love them) which said "You say the same things over again."
Yes. Of course I do. It's called having an eating disorder. What better way to express the hell of this cycle in which it is impossible to escape than with prose that is itself on a cycle. RESTRICT - BINGE - PURGE - CRY - PROMISE TO GET BETTER - RESTRICT - BINGE - PURGE - CRY - PROMISE TO GET BETTER etc etc.
I have a message written on my cupboard wall which is still visible if you look closely. It says: This is THE LAST TIME signed by me and dated 11th August 2008. It refers to the last time I will throw up. I've said it everyday since.

"I hate that I can't get better," I told my therapist last week. "It's so frustrating. I've wanted it for so long, and now I have the support and I have all the resources I need and I can't do it. And I hate myself for it. Every time I fuck up, I know it's because I didn't try hard enough."
"How long have you had an eating disorder?" she asked in reply.
"Since I was 15 - for 8 years."
"And how many sessions have we had?"
"I dunno... like, 12?"
"11.... If you could get better on your own and without any trouble, you wouldn't be here. We've had 11 sessions, and you've had this disorder for years. It's going to take time."

I wrote a letter to my Dad today. It said:
Dear Dad,
I miss you.

Dear Dad, I miss you. There's so much more I need and want to say. But I can't write it, I can only say it to you, ask you, listen to you, discuss with you. Screw you for leaving. Screw you for putting me and my mother through all this pain. You got out easy but we stick it out. But I can't blame you, because I understand, I am your daughter, I have your blood, I have your sadness... I am one half of you.
They say shit like this can be genetic, if so, I know I got it from you.

It wasn't so long ago that all I wanted was to die. My Mum had to sit helplessly and listen to me crying myself sick half begging to let me die. I just don't want to live anymore! I've had enough! I'm sorry. I just want to die. No Mother should have to listen to that and I can't take it back.

Who'd have predicted that years ago? When I was a popular star pupil with a Mum and Dad that took me to the park on Sundays.
I went all wrong.

If I were to pinpoint the very worst month of my life it would be...November 2010. Couldn't leave the house, couldn't stop eating, couldn't stop throwing up, couldn't stop crying...

I am out of the very darkest times now. If someone were to threaten with me a gun I wouldn't be too bothered, but I can safely say that thanks to my new job I no longer want to kill myself. The fact that I am happy and safe in my new location and new job is a huge deal and it makes me pleased to say it.
But I'm only staying in this job until July - this always has been a temporary situation - it is not what I want to do for any longer than my contract. So what do I do afterwards? Every grad scheme I've applied to has rejected me and now I've run out of time...

For my whole life I have wanted to be a journalist and a writer. My whole life. That's why I chose the A levels and the degree that I did. On my personal statement for my undergraduate course in English Literature I wrote about how I wanted to write and all the projects that I was working on. Writing is all I've ever wanted to do. It's the only thing I've ever been remotely talented at. It's the only thing I love.
So... why did I leave uni and go to law school? Why have I not done any journalism work experience or a post grad course? Why?
Because I decided I was a failure. I wasn't good enough, I'd never make it, I'd never be published, I'm second rate, I'll never make it to the top. It's too much of a risky career, no stable income, no regular working hours, I'm not tough enough, I'm not good enough.

Low self-esteem and eating disorders go hand in hand - they feed each other. Only when you hate yourself enough can you convince yourself that you need to be punished and starved and purged. I perfected my eating disorder because I perfected my self-hatred. I think I'm a worthless piece of shit, so I never even tried to become a journalist or writer. I knew, or rather I decided, that I wasn't good enough to make it.

The only thing I could put effort into and the only thing I believed in was getting thin and being successful in the eyes of society. I wanted to be perfect and polished in a perfect and polished suit, not running around in flat shoes with scribbled notes chasing stories about cats stuck up trees for the local newspaper. But no, that's NOT true, I don't want the perfect and polished 9-5 in a grey office in the grey city - I've never been that person and when I had a taste of it I found myself going mad with boredom.
Sure, I don't want to work on the local paper my whole life, but I have to if I want to reach the dizzying heights of the BBC or The Times. And at least, AT LEAST, I'll be doing what I want to do even if my Mum and society think I'm a failure in the meantime.

I gave up on my dreams before I had even tried because all I knew was how to hate myself and all I believed was that I had to please others.

I want to write.

Recovery

2011-02-12T20:21:00.001Z

So, I have recived this Honesty Award from both Harlow and Flushed :

very touched, thank you :)
I've always attributed my brutal honesty to the fact that in my real life and towards real people I have to be so fake. This is the only medium through which I have the freedom to be able to tell everything as it is. As protocol is to give10 facts, and I feel in a 10 facts mood, here are 10 facts:

1. I regularly photoshop my photos on facebook to make myself thinner.
2. Yesterday I threw up three times after eating an uncountable amount of calories. Today I have burnt 500 cals, eaten 1,000 cals in protein/veg/fruit and kept it all down.
3. I'm going to watch Black Swan for the second time on Monday because looking at Natalie Portman's ballet body makes me hyper with the desire to starve.
4. I haven't had sex since I broke up with Alex in August and I'm probably not going to have sex for the whole of 2011. (Watch this space).
5. I miss hot sex. But not as much as I miss having a hot body to match.
6. My success at interview ratio has just gone down. It used to be a kickass ratio because I could act my arse off to employers.
7. Strangers always think I'm 18/19. I put this down to my chubby face.
8. I saw a picture of Lindsay Lohan today and thought she was so thin she looked disgusting.
9. I hate the fact that when I was at my super thinnest I was torturing myself worse than I do now. It should be the other way round.
10. It was exactly three years ago that I went to my Doctor at University and told him I was depressed. I asked him for medication and was signed up to the Eating Disorders Service. I didn't realise what an eating disorder was; I thought it would be over in 6 months.

Do you ever get that feeling like your brain is shrinking and drying up from too much exercise and not enough food? I'm feeling that right now, that tight feeling across my forehead - my poor starving brain.
Today was a good workout but nowhere near the levels I'm capable of. Tomorrow and Tuesday are marathon gym days. Can't wait. Nothing makes me more ecastic than sweat dripping off my body and feeling my legs burning brightly.
I went back home for a few days last week to find a Crosstrainer standing in our hallway. I nearly died with joy whilst being bemused that my mother clearly has no idea how much this helps my disorder. Plus I'm going to start tennis lessons in a few weeks. Ah, I'll be wearing shorts this summer ladies!

What is recovery?
I had an interview back in the City on Tuesday, just round the corner from where I used to work. One of the questions was: "Tell me about a time when you've had to make a difficult decision."
I spluttered and racked my brains in a panic. All I could come up with was: "When I was younger, I had an eating disorder. Deciding to get better was the toughest decision I ever made." I used buzz words like "self-discipline", "determination"...
"It would have been so easy to just let it be," I continued, "I wasn't on my deathbed, but I knew I couldn't work for a company like this, or have a family, or be the person I wanted to be if I didn't recover from my eating disorder..."

That's the third time I've lied about my eating disorder in an interview and pretended that I have recovered and "learnt so much!" The last two times I promptly got my rejection letter, one even stated that as the reason why. It was a stupid example to use and I regretted it the second I said it, but oh well, the City doesn't miss me anyway.

Instinctively, people don't give you a second chance once they know. They think I will have a mental illness for the rest of my life. And to be honest, I haven't done anything to prove that theory wrong.

I can't shake it off.

I have no idea how people recover from eating disorders. However many articles and books I read, I still don't understand my illness. I'd give anything for pills or medication or prayers to make it go away, but I can't... it's that elusive 'self discipline' that I talked about so proudly. I don't have the self-discipline to turn my back on who I am and what I believe in and desire. I don't have the self-discipline to eat like a normal person.
I'm sorry, I can't let the fat hang off my body and do nothing about it. Give me free range of the gym, give me woodland and paths to run, give me a crosstrainer in front of the TV, give me weights and protein shakes, give me that tight feeling across my forehead.
And I feel so happy, inside and out... and nothing in the world could make me eat 2,000 calories and lose this wonderful feeling. Nothing.

Recovery. Recovery to me means getting rid of the bulimia, getting rid of the manic binges and purging. Recovery means finally reaching my goal weight with controlled healthy foods and lots of exercise. That's why I left London and came here; to concentrate on my recovery.

Who is she?

2011-02-03T01:46:00.005Z

A low point hits
and I have no way to express it.

I realise this is the only place where I can cry or scream or speak.

I am not a great conversationalist. This is something I have noticed in this job - where I have to sit with people every mealtime, make small talk, engage in conversation, every goddamn day. Sad to say, this is new to me. This is too much.
It is this constant requirement to talk that has shown me something interesting: that I internalise pretty much all my thoughts and feelings. I must come across as the most boring and uninteresting person with absolutely no views whatsoever - because I just don't like talking. I can sit and listen. I can nod. I can sympathise. But I can't talk. I'm not a talker. I'll sit and think, I'll write, I'll think some more. But I don't talk about what passes through my thoughts. I just... don't.

And this blog was a gift. It gave me the voice I never had - not just to voice my eating disorder and my fears and anxieties, but also to simply voice my opinion, my everyday trivialities and heartaches...

When I feel sad, I don't tell anyone - even if I wanted to I can never seem to find the words in speech - and yet I come here and the words flow. Perhaps it is because I think the people I speak to will judge me, perhaps, it sounds stupid when I say it aloud, perhaps I'm simply just a poor verbal communicator... I don't know.

This evening has been bad.
The demons started to come back two weeks ago - when I wrote that last post. Visions of self harm started to flash across my thoughts again.
Overall, the eating has been controlled and my mood has been stable.
Protein. Vegetables. Fruit.
SAFE.
No carbs. No dairy. No wheat.
Running, gym, DVD workouts.
And the figures on the scale are going down again. Soon I will have to start putting weights in my pockets when I go for my weekly therapy sessions. She weighs me every week and I am not allowed to lose. I have to maintain. I wonder if she sees the victory dancing furtively in my eyes as I watch her draw the line on my weight graph downwards.

When I got off the train to London for my most recent appointment I took a mini detour to the Tate Gallery to stop by and see two of my favourite paintings. Ophelia by Millais and The Lady of Shalott by Waterhouse.
Two characters and two paintings that I have loved even as a child, before I understood the depth of their meaning.

The Lady of Shalott

http://www.tate.org.uk/ophelia/

Why do I love to go to that small London Gallery to stare at these two women? What do they represent? Why do I feel a connection to them?

And yet, why do they feel like they belong to another world? - is it death that separates us? imagination? dreams? or something else?

Both these women, in literature and art, were created by men. Funny. If I created a heroine would she die?

This evening has been bad.

The memories have come back to haunt me.

2010. London. The worst year of my life. That horrible, horrible chill in my heart.

I innocently looked at the facebook profile of a friend from the Club and then I couldn't get rid of the chill. That place. Those people. The mirrors. The alcohol. The sexism. The pressure. Alex. That horrible, horrible place. Why did I go there. Why didn't I just stay away from all the things I knew would only hurt me, all the things that had destroyed me while I was at uni. Why did I come back to London and put myself through it all again?

I don't want to remember that place and those people and those memories. It just... there's just a horrible chill, a twisted, sickly chill deep inside. I feel the black clouds rumble over my head and suddenly it's dark again, and I want to starve, just want to feel light and thin and in control, I want to feel glorious, I want to feel powerful, like a winner...

and the moment I got back to my room tonight, I snuck out and ate. Bread, toast, peanut butter, honey, jam.

Throw up. I throw up so it all comes out, all the binge food, all the dinner, all the feelings, all the sadness, all that twisted cold stuff deep inside, out, out, OUT,

damned spot.

I did this, I did this! And I can't scream, I can't say a word, I can't do anything, except sit here and type... and wait for morning. Because no one here knows. I can't even breathe the slightest syllable.

No one here knows Ophelia,

they just see a little girl who says yes and no with a simple smile

I don't know if I can fight this.

One side of me longs to give in, to curl up in a ball and sleep forever.

One side of me wants to fight and live and go back to the world.

And I know I can do one,

But I am not convinced I can do the other.

People like me, we're always haunted aren't we? I've read about them, they couldn't get better, they couldn't shake off the darkness. It's just... the way.

I want to smash my cup against my desk and use the broken pieces to cut my arms.

I need more water to help me throw up. There's still more to come.

I'm not going to sleep tonight. I have to write and work. Must work, must write, like a fever, must not sleep. Sleeping means fatness.

My body will be drained tomorrow. And that will feel good. Then my bed will feel so good. Weak and empty, dragging my limbs behind me. That's good.

I can feel the pressure of the water around my head. My ears still ache.

A dummy at the bottom of the pool. I ducked, kicked furiously and somehow propelled myself to the bottom. Panicking, I grabbed frantically at the body, finally getting a hold and shooting up to the surface in slow motion. Spluttering. Relief.

But what if the dummy was real?

I don't know how to escape my memories.

People say you must learn to deal with them, learn to cope, talk about them, blah blah blah. But I do face up to my memories, I don't suppress them - they are always haunting me. The problem is that I feel constantly haunted. And it's not 'the Club', it's not the memories, it's not the sadness, it's not Alex...

it's the darkness.

The eating disorder came out of the darkness - perhaps it wasn't just a consequence but a way of coping with it - I don't know. But I do know, the darkness came first.

I'm always going to be this way, wherever in the world you put me, however many new chances and new beginnings I get. ~~I am who I am.~~ I am what I am.

I don't know if I should accept that or fight it. I don't know if I believe in fate.

2011-01-24T01:06:00.000Z

I hate food. I hate food.
Food destroys people.

I ate cake. And cake.
Cake.
Seriously, I ate cake and then cake.

I want to starve more than anything.
If I'm happy here why is that not enough?

I thought this was gonna be so easy.
And I long for the days when I just didn't eat, and it was wonderful.

It's control, wonderful, wonderful control

i want to stop eating

i just... i just don't see another option

Boarding School

2011-01-20T01:06:00.001Z

So I've been at school for nearly two weeks now.

I eat three meals a day.

Like a heroine addict gone cold turkey I sit there after dinner tense and twitching... food in my stomach, a full stomach,
totalling up the calories in my head over and over, add on an extra 100 just in case... overestimating everything, still too much... it would have been so easy not to eat those potatoes, so easy to have eaten less, shit, shit, shit...
...it's ok, it's ok, normal people eat this, IT'S OK, don't you dare throw up, I must not throw up, I have not over-eaten, I have not even had 2000 calories yet, people eat 2000 calories!, I need this food, I am allowed this food, don't you dare throw up...

And most times I manage it. And it's ok.
Last Wednesday I bought a packet of dried fruit and a packet of fruit and nuts for my room. And after dinner I came back, ate the lot and threw everything up. And I felt calm and in control again.

So now I'm not allowed any food in my room. The only food I have is in that canteen.
Like a fucking child. Because I fucked up so much I have to be treated like a child.

I went home on Sunday evening for my day off. And in that 24 hours I ate a loaf and a half of bread, a packet of peanuts, a box of chocolates, two chocolate bars, a packet of crisps, rice, noodles and threw up 5 times.
The second I walked into that kitchen.
I ate all the stuff and gave in to all the demons I had kept at bay since I got to school.

Sigh.

This is shit.

But it's wonderful as well. I started with all the negative stuff, sorry.
It really is a world away form my last job here. It was absolutely the right decision to come, to run away. My mood has improved beyond recognition and it's almost as if I was never depressed and suicidal. All the black clouds around my head have lifted away, all the misery and darkness – and it’s only now that they've gone that I can see how stressed and unhappy I was before in London. It's really difficult to describe, but it just feels so alien to feel so light and free – like this isn’t really my life, like I’m on holiday and I’ve got to go back to my real life soon…

And I suppose it’s because I do see this as a rehab break – I want and I have to go back to London and follow the path I always intended to follow. Rightly or wrongly I will feel like a failure if I do not.

The point of realisation came when we had staff training in the first week and had a session on children's mental health. Of course they covered all the usual stuff, but it was the part on self harm that was most pertinent:
I've been self harming for the best part of three years, and I always described the need to self harm as an addiction or a craving - craving the release that it brings, the calming effect. But I sat there, in that staff training session, finding it absolutely impossible to put myself back into that situation or that feeling. I couldn't remember what it felt like to crave the need to self harm, and yet until recently I was having to fight it so much. I used to break down in hysterics, I used to be so distraught and depressed that I wanted to smash everything up and make every piece of flesh on my body bleed.
I could not put myself back into that body and mind and understand it.
It was gone. I was free.
I'm free here.
It was remarkable, to sit there, free.
It was brought up in the meeting how all the girls were so academic and had so much pressure to succeed from their parents, peers and themselves.
I choked up.
It was that need for perfection that destroyed me; to the extent that now I have ended up being the exact opposite of everything I worked so hard to be. But how do you voice that – how do you explain that to someone? If a girl came to me going through all the hell I did, could I help her? I don't think so. I'm not sure it's possible; you can’t stop it. No one could have changed the path I was on. I must have been told a thousand times that I'm not fat and that no one is perfect, blah, blah, blah. But no one could have told me anything that would have made a difference, because this is who I am and who I will always be.
And that makes me feel dreadful. Because there has to be a cure for this. Too many people suffer for there not to be a bottled cure, a pill, something, that makes this go away.
Because it ruins lives.
And I... I would simply give anything to stop a girl throwing away her life like I have.

I'm starting to crack. Sneaking food. Food that isn't mine to eat.
Throwing up. Eating.
Fuck this.
Why.
This is so fucking HARD.

Tomorrow morning I'll be sober and i'll sit and eat a big bowl of cereal.
Like everything's ok.
Because I'm supposed to have a bowl of cereal. Well done. Carbs and fibre from the cereal and protein in the milk. blah blah blah well done

But watch me walk up and down the options in the canteen.
Watch me fill up my plate full of vegetables.
Watch me leave the carbs till last.
Watch my hand shake.
Watch my eyes mist over and well up for no apparent reason.
Watch me sneak out of my room and into the kitchen at midnight.

Listen to me when I shut the door.
Look carefully and you just might see the scars.

I'm trying. I am.
I just didn't try enough today.

A decade of sadness, goodbye

2011-01-03T14:00:00.011Z

As to the man whose heart obeys his belly, he causes disgust in place of love. His heart is wretched, his body is gross, he is insolent toward those endowed of the God. He that obeys his belly has an enemy.
Instruction of Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

I arrived back from Egypt a week ago - feeling better than I have since... since I can remember.
It's a breath of fresh anonymity, travelling on a boat with strangers you will never see again. The sunshine agreed with me - the food less so, but never mind.
I have always wanted to go to Egypt since I was a little girl for the culture and history, and while that side of the trip was nonetheless amazing, it was getting away that made all the difference. I physically felt all the tension and hate draining away from my body - whenever a terrible thought or anxiety about my life came into my head, it blew away again - because my life was so far away in a distant land. The beauty of landscape, the stillness of the mystical Nile, the hot sun caressing my skin that had not seen light for months... it was medicine and I feel so thankful for it.

The eating was difficult. 3 meals a day. Every plate of food leaving behind a thick residue of grease. There were tears. But I did it. And I didn't gain weight thanks to the walking excursions and tours.
Coming back to the plain, bland food in my kitchen was heaven though - my blood must have been oilier than a car engine.

After so much bright sunshine, my eyes have yet to become accustomed to the gloom that welcomes me back to England.
England is so ugly this time of the year. Miles upon miles of damp concrete, grey roads, long lines of grey houses, grey earth, grey sky. Impossible to think it was the same sky that I had seen so shining blue just days before. Everything here looks as if the colour and life has been drained from it. Grey, hanging faces. A terrible grey society.
I don't want to live here anymore. I feel terrible saying what I do about my country - but we are not a great nation anymore for we are not a happy nation.

What I see when I walk along the South London High Streets is an obese poverty. A poverty of fried convenience foods, cheap alcohol, endless TV channels and broken homes - Urban poverty supplied with a wealthy nation's luxury. The people don't long for running water or pray for a bountiful harvest - they long for meaning and pray for a soul.

Felluca Boatman

I know what I say will anger people, and I agree that poverty in the third world is true poverty, yes. But arguably, it is a healthier poverty.
For example, a Nubian Felluca Boatman I saw in Egypt who had laboured all his life into an old age of bone and sinew - eating only food from the earth and darkened by the sun. Of course I can never imagine the hardship he has endured - but arguably he is healthier and happier and purer - physically and mentally - than most of the comparably wealthy tourists who he takes across the Nile.
When I visited my poorest relatives in a little village in South East Asia I felt it as well. They didn't hang mirrors on their walls, they didn't read magazines, they didn't have excess, they didn't have a society that demands impossible ideals. They were poor but had such a very basic and happier way of living. But it's terrible and ignorant for me to say that isn't it: to believe that people without first class healthcare and education and housing are happier - but I can't help but think it would be a tragedy if they became like us, depressed and empty and fat. But then I am making sweeping generalisations; I forget, not everyone is depressed and empty and fat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12209.shtml

My local high streets and supermarkets are packed with women who never 'made it'. Women dressed in thick, shapeless jackets, pushing trolleys and prams, no makeup, overweight... That's not the life I want - and that's not the life that girls of our generation were bought up to want... and since I left my job in the City and have been at home, I walk down the high street in the middle of a working weekday and see myself turning into those women, and it makes me so afraid.

But take away the make up and the dresses and the heels, scrape back the hair - and I am one of them, so easily. My Mum lays into me all the time: you lost all your ambitions, all your drive, you were going to earn big bucks, you were so hungry for success...
And what am I now I've turned my back on all that? I'm everything I always dreaded being and fought so hard to be better than. Is plain Jane happy? Probably. She doesn't need to act or dress up or vie for attention from men, she's happy in her own skin. But, I'm not plain Jane, I've never been happy in my average skin.
I aimed for the top and crumbled to the lowest depths because I couldn't handle not having it all. I stripped away everything to try and find myself, only to realise that the one thing that was missing and was ruining all my dreams, was me - because I'd become my ugly eating disorder. I'd let all my fears and insecurities and self-hatred consume me and take everything else with it.

2010 has been, without a doubt, the worst year of my life. The sickest, emptiest, most painful experience.
Everything I went through is being erased from my heart and I swear I will never go through anything like that again. EVER. It was the hardest but most incredible learning curve. I understand my weakness, I understand my mistakes and I understand why it all happened - it's all logged here on these pages.

I'm leaving London and going to a different part of the country to start my job at the Boarding School in a few days. The truth is, it's intensive rehab. I'm travelling back to London one day a week to carry on with my weekly treatment here whilst living full time in a school boarding house, sitting down three times a day to eat healthy meals made for me. I have to wake up everyday with an open smile on my face. I have learn how to be a nice person. I can't be dark and closed and lock myself away to do my job.
This experience is going to change me and rid me of all the demons that have ruined my life. When I come back to the world in 7 months, I'll be ready.
You can take the girl out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the girl. Like it or not, I live in a 'wealthy' world with mirrors hanging on every wall, where image and money and success matter. I am not a sweet, innocent girl who is happy with a plain face and a plain life because I don't live in a world where that is possible - to be like that means I fall into that obese, urban poverty.
This is part of my plan. Intensive. Three wholesome healthy meals, no junk, no bingeing and purging even possible, no alcohol, more exercise and more exercise, intense healthy living, happy, smiley... shrinking and becoming the girl I always wanted to be. I'm going to lose at least 20 lbs, get fitter and have a sane, happy head.
In 7 months I'll appear from this bootcamp ready to take on the world.

Context

2010-12-19T17:15:00.003Z

The head never shuts up. And everyday I think a little something and write it down, add a bit, think a bit.

I hate Christmas. No, I don't hate it, I dread it. I find it the most depressing time of year. Empty and terribly depressing. Me and my Mum, pretending to be happy. A depressing meal. Disgusting 'treats'. Food at the centre of everything. Stuck in this sad house choking back the tears. Every year since I was 11 years old, it's been empty and unbearable.
And this year, I'm running away. I'm leaving for Egypt tomorrow morning for a week. I'm sick of the cold and the emptiness. The most wonderful thing about travel is that you can become so far removed from your life back home that it's almost as if it doesn't exist. It's the most liberating feeling.
I don't have to do Christmas. I don't have to do it! I don't have to curl up alone, stuffing my fat bulimic face, wishing there was something stimulating on the TV to distract me.
I cannot put into words how relieved I am to be running away from Christmas.

Anyway, my point is, I felt compelled to post before I went away, although I have not been able to write to all the people I want to and need to... argh! Anyway, as I was saying. I have all this stuff which I jotted down and needs posting, so this post is a bit of a blotch of stuff I just need to put down before I go away and have not had time to make coherent and flowing....

The lovely Cally C commented on my last post how eating disorders are like abusive relationships. Now, there are a lot of songs with a lot of quotable lyrics, but these lyrics really seemed worth putting down in writing. It's exactly what I'd say to Ana/Mia.
Love The Way You Lie Part II - Rihanna ft Eminem

On the first page of our story,
The future seemed so bright,
Then this thing turned out so evil,
I don't know why I'm still surprised.
Even angels have their wicked schemes
And you take that to new extremes,
But you'll always be my hero
Even though you've lost your mind.

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn,
But that's all right because I like the way it hurts.
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry,
But that's all right because I love the way you lie.

Now there's gravel in our voices,
Glass is shattered from the fight.
In this tug of war, you'll always win,
Even when I'm right.
'Cause you feed me fables from your hand.
With violent words and empty threats.
And it's sick that all these battles.
Are what keeps me satisfied.

...So maybe I'm a masochist
I try to run but I don't wanna ever leave...

And some notes on my decision to leave the City and its monetary rewards and move to another part of the country to work in a boarding school - I still don't know if I made the right decision:
Sylvia Plath in her journals states, "I am still young. Even twenty-three and a half is not too late to live anew".
If she says it, it must be true. I must force myself to believe it because so much of my current despair comes from being twenty-three, from my belief that my life is over now, because I have failed to make it, and will never make it, and will only grow older and fatter... because at twenty-three I am finished.
I am still young.

One of my favourite parts in the journals are in the section entitled "Notes on Interviews with RB: Friday, December 12th". These notes reflect a lot of my own thoughts on mothers, men and writing. I could bore you with quotes from the whole thing, but here are the keys ones for now:
On choosing writing as a profession:
"We can't now and maybe never will earn a living by our writing... Weren't the mothers and businessmen right after all? Shouldn't we have avoided these disquieting questions and taken steady jobs and secured a good future for our kiddies? Not unless we want to be bitter all our lives. Not unless we want to feel wistfully: What a writer I might have been, if only....
What do [society] seem to want? Concern with a steady job that earns money, cars, good school, TV, iceboxes and dishwashers and security First. With us these things are nice enough, but they come second. Yet we are scared. We do need money to eat and have a place to live and children, and writing may never and doesn't now give us enough. Society sticks its so-there tongue out at us."

I was bought up in a household where everything was 'too expensive', where my mother bent over backwards to save pennies on her weekly shopping, where I never asked for any presents unless they were 'educational', where I wasn't allowed new clothes unless I desperately needed them and they were massively reduced in the sale.
Needless to say, my financial independence was the best thing that ever happened to me. And the biggest thing I regret in taking the job at the boarding school is losing that. I will have to pinch and save again.

I'm afraid, just so afraid. Afraid of being poor, afraid of never getting better, afraid of loneliness, afraid of sadness, afraid of failure, afraid of sickness, afraid of living, afraid of the world outside, afraid, afraid, afraid,
because every decision I make always seems to be the wrong one - always makes my life worse.
Everything always comes back to this: FEAR

When I was a teenager, I thought after leaving school everything in my life would come together, because I had suffered so much so early on. I've had my share of sadness, I thought, it's gonna be all uphill from here... and I cannot believe, I genuinely, cannot believe that aged 23, every year, it has become progressively worse.
The sickest time of my life aged 20 - unable to leave my bed, unable to leave my room, unable to stop crying, unable to stop self-harming and vomiting. I never, never imagined I'd go through that again, let alone go through worse.
And here I am - worse. Haven't seen anyone I know other than my Mum since the beginning of November. Too afraid. Too fat. Too afraid.

But there's nothing wrong with the world, or other people. There's something wrong with me. I accept that.
...So maybe I'm a masochist

I try to run but I don't wanna ever leave...

There's something very wrong with me.

And I'm very afraid.

I have to believe that I am running away to find happiness. I have to believe that it will be ok. I have to believe that I'm not a failure just because I don't work in the City anymore. I have to believe that it's ok to still be working out what I want to be at the age of 23. I have to believe, STILL, I have to keep believing that I will get better and I will never experience sadness like this again.

And in the words of dear Betty Suarez as she turns down a New York fashion column in the final series of Ugly Betty: "I know it was the right thing to do, but it's still scary... I mean, maybe I was on the wrong path, but at least it was a path."

I can't help but wonder, if I wasn't ill, would I be working in the investment bank, strutting around in new Louboutins I bought with my own money? Or would I still have made this choice and left it all behind... because it was the right choice for me?

Sending you all lots of extra love over Christmas,
for I really love you all so much x x x x

Old habits...

2010-12-02T22:25:00.005Z

Anonymous said...

stop binge eating stop throwing up stop taking laxatives and you'll be fine. eat a bit and starve the rest of the time. if you can't starve eat a little bit of fruit or veg. if you carry on like this, if you lose alex, you'll regret it for the rest of your life.
get it together. 14 June 2010 13:18

I never forgot this comment - so I went back to search for it. I never forgot it because even at the time, I knew it was so true, and I wasn't strong enough - am not strong enough - to end the binge and purge cycle.
Sometimes I get these pro-ana comments which are harsh but true. I like them.
I noticed how many comments I have that I've never been able to respond to properly - and I apologise, because I haven't had the time to show how every single one has been read and taken into my heart. I'm going to catch up and write back this next week.

When I was at my most disciplined I was wonderfully thin.
In the beginning of my second year of uni, I ate a small bowl of porridge in the morning, hit the gym for 800 calories, ate noodles and veg for lunch and snacked on fruit for dinner. I'll never forget when I went back to Jon's for the first time. He ran his hands down my naked torso and he said wow.
I used to be able to do that.
Men used to want me and be intimidated by me. I used to feel sexy and powerful. I used to be out of their league.

I'm in a league of my own now - alone. I should join over-eaters anonymous for company.
Even if I go back to being thin, I'll never get that life back. I'm 23 now, not 18. I'm taking a job in a girls boarding school not a thriving testosterone filled city. I'll have no chance to kiss a guy or sleep with a guy for a year at least. That's just the life I've chosen now in this job.

I crave.

I crave my old life back.

I want to take all these cravings away - not by giving in to them - but by just erasing them. I don't want to crave these things. But I can't seem to shake the things that have given me my highs over the years - they're like drugs.

I took a little dose on Tuesday. Burnt 800 calories in the gym on an empty stomach. Just like the old days. High, high as a kite I flew, couldn't even bear the thought of eating...
came home and shut the door. No pretty dress, no party, no fit guy to target.
I needed a high dammit, I needed to do it again and again, I needed to fly... but there's no motivation, for the first time in my life.
And I chose that - I took away all the motivation so that I could get better. Cold turkey.

I miss those days. When I dedicated day upon day to the gym, dragging my aching legs up the stairs, starving and drained of everything, feeling my body glowing, feeling my muscles tighter and toned. I can't explain that euphoria and I am craving it so badly. I used to lie to my Mum - saying I was going to the library and go to the gym instead. I loved it dammit. I always did it with a picture of a guy in my mind - or a date of a party. There was always an end goal.
Without those goals I am nothing and I let myself be nothing.

It's almost as if living was just too hard in the end, and I had to kill myself in one way or another. So I chose this: I killed off my friends, my love interests and my social life, I killed off my name in the public sphere in the hope that it would kill off whatever was feeding my eating disorder and kill off the monster itself. Instead, it has fed the monster I hated most of all - the one that eats and binges and does not care.

...

I've lost my train of thought. My arms are bleeding.
I just sat on my bed as my Mum trashed my room. Screaming
You're a waste. You're a failure. Sitting on your big fat arse 24 hours a day in that corner. You're not sick you're lazy. You eat everything. You're a failure. You don't have an eating disorder. You don't have depression. YOU'RE JUST LAZY. FAILURE. Wanting to be 'pretty'! You'll never be pretty!
trashed my room.
When I was younger I used to cry in front of her.
Now I never.
When she slams the door in my face then I break. I cry, shaking, cutting, chasing pills with alcohol stashed in my cupboard.

I just went downstairs to take all the pills I could find.
And I stopped after a few. Because i want to live, I believe it will get better, I believe I will get out, I believe I will be happy, I believe I can get out, I believe, I have to believe... I've been believing for the last ten years. It will come, it will come, it will come, you'll get out, you'll get better, year after year, from childhood into adulthood...

There you go. The post, live as it happened.

This picture would be perfect if I was deadly stick thin. then it would be like some beautiful, tortured tragedy.
Actually, I'm fat. And listening to a video of me and Alex laughing in the Malvern hills. Crying still while the wounds on my arms sting.

My combats have dust on them.

Packing up the dreams and moving on

2010-11-28T01:12:00.005Z

I taught myself to hate food when I was 15.
No - that's not entirely true. I didn't teach myself anything, I just learnt it... somehow, I learnt to hate food.

I was asked in an interview last week: What makes you angry?
I made up some "excellent interview answer" bullshit with a fake smile on my face. But the truth is, food makes me angry.
I have to move seats on the train when someone in my view is eating a McDonalds out of a brown paper bag. I have to put on my earphones to block out the greasy crunching of crisps from the person sat behind me. The rustling of foil packets or the stench of fried foods makes ME feel gross. I feel so angry and disgusted it makes me want to scream.

But do you know what is really the grossest thing ever? This is the highest figure on the scales I have ever seen in my entire life.
I'm a lump. I'm a thing.

When I lost Alex I let go of everything I had been fighting for. I let all my demons take over. I became everything I loathed. I am everything I hated and despised. I am fat and greasy.
And I Did This.

I had a relationship with a Mr Perfect - top boarding school, flawless grades, star pupil, Senior Prefect, top university, champion cadet, strong athlete and the unequivocal "really nice guy".
And then there was me - an unstable liar, body and mind stuck together with a cheap glue.
I'm not sad that we broke up - I'm sad that I let my dreams and imagination get carried away. He wasn't my ideal man - perfection has no depth or emotion, perfection is plastic. Perfect people are plastic people. Alex was plastic-hearted through and through. He felt nothing, while I felt everything.
I put him into a mould labeled "The Man Who Loves Me" and didn't question if he fitted or not. I convinced myself that it was perfectly alright for me to be crying myself sick on my bedroom floor, unable to lift the phone to hear a caring, loving voice comforting me at the other end. He felt nothing, while I felt everything.

It was four weeks ago when I walked out of my job in the City. I have done nothing productive in this time - I cannot lie - except make my way through all the DVD box sets of Gossip Girl. When I looked at the online prospectus of Yale I was confused - why was everyone in the pictures plain and unattractive? Oh... yes, that's right, I was watching fantasy in Gossip Girl, it is not reality. In the real world, there are very, very few beautiful people. I looked around me today on the bus and train and high street - and I genuinely did not see one person who could be cast on Gossip Girl.

A few posts back, an old blogger, Daisy, made the connection for me. I have always read books or watched film and embedded myself in one fantastical world or another. While my feet stand on the cold, hard land of reality, my head has always been spinning up in the clouds of my imagination. I have never accepted the world in which my feet stood, only the one I dream of standing in.
So like now, I dream that the land of Gossip Girl exists, and I too could prance around beautiful men like a gazelle in designer dresses.
And I have to force myself to accept that my imagination is just that - however vivid and alive it may be, it is not real, it is my imagination. I will not survive if I keep trying to live in it and live up to it.
Do you know, I have spent my whole life trying to be something I am not. and never will be

The fact that I am still talking about Alex and am still haunted by him three months after I last saw or spoke to him goes to show how unable I have been to move on. If I took the job in the investment bank, I'd still be here, living the same life, with the same emptiness, and months later I would still be writing the same old shit. So, I have to get out of London and burn all my bridges. This has been the worst period of my life, and I want to erase every single memory of it.

For whatever I have said about Alex, there's really only one way that I can sum it up. These are my final words on him:
When I was with him, I was happy. Happy in a way I had wished for for so long and happy in a way that I never genuinely believed I deserved. When I was with him I was happy.

He will never know that. He will never know any of what I have written in this blog. Just like every other guy that came before, he will never know.

So I'm uprooting my life and I'm saving it. I'm going to go to work in a boarding school where I will get three meals a day set down in front of me, where I will be around decent, cheerful people, where I will have no temptations to go off the rails, where I will have nobody to put on a show for. I'm getting out of the place that promises dreams and never delivers. I'm getting out of the lifestyle that has ground me down into nothing. Yes, I am running away, but I'm running away to somewhere that promises a healthy and grounded way of life - I'm going back to school - to learn how to be a genuine, honest, loving, decent human being again.

Also:

Thank you for the comments and advice on the last post, I am truly grateful.

I would also like to point you in the direction of a new blogger on the scene who I think is very special: http://ireadabookaday.blogspot.com/

Acting Lessons

2010-11-20T19:18:00.005Z

So, as I mentioned in the previous post, last Friday, I went back to my university city for the big reunion dinner that evening. As is protocol now, fasting, laxatives, exercise preceded. This could not shift the scales from the undeniable fact that I was 5 kg fatter than when I went to this reunion dinner this time last year. Yes. Fucking Yes.

I had my appointment with my psychologist in the morning before I got on the train. She helped me get through it. She is amazing. It's good to write down and map out all my irrationalities.
I didn't crumble that evening - I went, I held my head up high, and I still looked nice. I did it.

The immeasurable waste. It's always a waste isn't it, this stupid quest of mine. It's never made me happy. All the money and the hours of aching muscles and the nights of hunger and vomit... I do it for something grand, something wonderful, something I deserve... something I can't put my finger on, perhaps because it's not really there...

This was my first big performance on the public stage since Alex left and I fell apart. Tonight I was going to be a glittering diva again. I spent £50 on a new dress. £88 on new shoes. £75 on getting my hair styled. £10 on lashes and makeup. £60 on a hotel room so I could get ready in private. £40 on trains. £10 on taxis. £30 on dinner. £10 on drinks. £10 on binge food.
All that for... for what? So I could turn up at an event with people I used to know and new people and look beautiful. That's it. I chatted and laughed loudly with old friends, did the polite rounds of old acquaintances, happy, quirky, vibrant Ophelia, danced a little, ranted, drank, screamed in joy, had a cigarette... and felt unequivocally empty - because I did all this, I spent all that money, I put in all that effort, took all those laxatives, forbid all that food... for something, for sparks, for fireworks, for love, for passion, for SOMETHING...
I spent pretty much the entire evening talking about 'my ex-boyfriend' and how 'i hate men'. All I kept thinking was that I wanted Alex to see how wonderful a show I had put on, and how beautiful I looked on the public stage again after hair and makeup and costume had done their work. His ghost stood over me, completely.

I left on my own in a taxi at 5am without saying goodbye to anyone. I silently undressed in my hotel room, slipped under the cold sheets and ate a cheese and pickle sandwich.
That university and that life of drinking and flirting was who I was - and is not who I am now. I am past all the charades.
I was supposed to be staying for the Saturday night as well to see some other uni friends who couldn't come on the Friday - but I'd had enough. My skin was tired and so was my soul.
And so I gave my body shitloads of food - as is habit and protocol after every big, draining performance.

I seemed to have a lot more to say about the whole situation when I was thinking about this post last weekend - but now, a week later, that's all I have to write. I found out yesterday that one of my friends pulled two guys that weekend - both of whom have girlfriends. So I politely told her off. There are enough cold-hearted cheats and assholes in this world without us helping them along. Women should all be on the same side.

I'm struggling to get over this infatuation I have in thinking that men are the enemy. I've been reading lots of feminist literature and theory, trying to get at some understanding of the link between femininity and madness. I feel like so much of what is wrong with me stems from that - from being a woman - and from being utterly unable to cope with the demands of being such.
At the core of my illness lies this simple fact - I want to be a perfect woman with all the fairytale ideals that come with it. I want to be beautiful, I want to be thin, I want to be glamorous, I want the beautiful dress and beautiful shoes, I want the charming prince, I want to be loved, I want to be adored, I want to be kind and lovely, I want to be dainty and demure, I want to be intelligent and witty, I want to be well-spoken and well-educated, I want to be charming and individual. And everything I have done to try to fit the damn plastic mould has made me mad. And not even mad for myself, but mad for society, for men, for the everyone else to see I am well moulded.

The story of Kate Middleton's engagement to Prince William has been interesting to me in a way. She (or her parents) have been social climbers. To look at her and hear her speak, you'd think she could quite easily have come from an Aristocratic background because she is well-dressed in a quintessentially English manner, has a posh voice and comes across in a very elegant and sophisticated way. That's how you get by in this world - you carve yourself out into what you need to be - you force yourself into a certain mould that's gonna get you places.
I taught myself to speak with a well-spoken English accent, I chose my fashion tastes to reflect my femininity and elegance, I taught myself the way to act and come across in a corporate, polished manner so that I could become an asset to a team in an Investment Bank.
I am a daughter of a single immigrant mother on basic wage in South London - but people who meet me think I went to an excellent private school, come from a well-off family and have always been confident and charming and happy. Because I moulded myself that way. And because of that moulding I can get a job in an Investment Bank, and I can have friends with huge trust funds and I can be the girlfriend of a wealthy ex-boarding school boy who attends black tie dinners.
It's not who I am, but who I have moulded and presented myself as being, which has brought me everything I got.

I have to sign the contract for the job at the Investment Bank on Monday or I lose it.
I went for an interview for an assistant position at a Boarding School in the countryside on Thursday and got the job - of course. Great if I want to continue with my 'ideal' career into teaching. But I don't know. The countryside is beautiful. I will have so much spare time for long walks and runs, I can wear whatever clothes I feel comfortable in and plain makeup... but I'm afraid I'll get bored, I'm afraid I will still crave the city and the stage and bright lights too much... and it will be too late for me to return once I have cut these ties, I know.
And where, where would I ever meet a man to love me if I'm hidden in the countryside...

I feel like, I have this great opportunity to be "successful" in the eyes of others. I mean - I care so much (too much) about what people think of me. Telling people I work as an assistant in a boarding school says to them that I am weak, unambitious and couldn't get a better job OR to tell people that I work in the city, I deal with big people, work on big deals and make loads of money says to them that I am smart, driven and successful. When I went back to see my old uni friends I was shocked at how many graduates were shop assistants/unemployed/working in a call centre... they would kill for the opportunity I have.

If I turn down the Investment Bank and go to the boarding school, I will have to be a teacher. It's a big career move and you cant go back. I'd be on half the wage as well. But I might be happy. And I'm sure I said, the pursuit of happiness is everything. Fuck the social standards and the social hierarcy.
...But casting all that aside means casting aside the mould of social perfection I have been striving for all my life... a mould which I know gets you 'places'... and which I believe will earn you 'love'.

Fear

2010-11-11T01:08:00.008Z

I do not burden myself on other people.
I do not pick up my phone when I am crying my eyes out. I do not seek comfort. I do not ask for kindness.
I cry on my own. I have done for years. Even when I was in a relationship, I never bothered him with it.

And yet I lean on you. I come here to cry. I come here to find a shoulder. Because here, I can.

I'm a wreck. I'm so petrified.
I remember once, I must have been about 14, I was at school sitting, chatting to a friend during lunch, and she raised her arm suddenly and I flinched. I instinctively jerked away from her and raised my arm to cover my face.
"Woah. Ophelia. Why did you flinch?"
I laughed nervously. "I, er, I don't know, I, er, thought you were going to hit me."
I don't flinch now. Strange, I still censor.

I've blocked out pretty much all of my past. I've blocked out my childhood because it was so happy, and I've blocked out my teenage years because they were so dreadful. Looking back, when I was 13-18, I was living through a worse hell than I am now - aside from the fact that I didn't have a ridiculous eating disorder, I was completely... dead. The hatred I had for myself was unbelievable. I had to get dressed in the dark. I never looked at my naked body. I would only take baths not showers because I couldn't bare standing up so exposed. I wouldn't wear t-shirts - I had to wear a jumper so you couldn't make out the outline of my breasts. Look at the pictures of me when I was 14. I was so sick. Sicker than I am now. Believe it or not, I can accept my body more now. When I was with Alex, he almost made me begin to love it. But the idea of suicide never became a serious contemplation for me in those days. And I can't remember much of what it was like. Maybe I am more sick now. The experiences in childhood are so different to adulthood. I'm 23 now. No one can help me and no one should help me. It's a different loneliness. I think I am more frightened now.

I have to go back to my university city on Friday, and the university Club to see all my old friends, the close girlfriends I love, girls who loved me... And I am so consumed with fear, because I am so fat, and I really, really don't think I can do it - because I've lost her, I've lost the girl who was brave enough and hungry enough to laugh. I don't want to go - but I miss them, I want to see them... I don't know why I want to hide.

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tightly closed in a bud, was more painful than the risk it took to bloom."
make it true

I did a stupid thing today. I met a friend from the Club, and I went there to meet him.
I had a new costume, but the mask was beyond repair. That's when I realised it was gone, the sparkling pretty girl mask was gone. 'I don't think it's a mask; I think it's just one side of you.' I loved that mark. I mean mask.
I wish I hadn't gone back there. The memories, the smell, the staircase, the clothes. I looked at the spot where I had laid out the tables for my ball back in December, I stood at the entrance where I walked into D and charmed him to come out one evening, I looked at the board where Alex was. Alex. The friends I made and lost in a year. Alex.
It's been two months since I saw him and not a day - not a single fucking day - has he left my mind. I want him out of my head. I want him OUT OF MY HEAD. I want someone to flush out my mind of all the decaying memories.
please

I'm haunted, day and night. Every night i want to pick up the phone and tell him how much im dying i want to just send a message but hes gone hes gone i know where he is but hes gone
And I don't even care! This isn't even about him anymore.
What is it? WHAT IS ALL OF THIS ABOUT? WHY? just WHY. why cant it just stop
I don't want to feel anything anymore.

I cry now from despair. I want to curl up in a ball with someone's arms around me. "I want to be held in someone's arms"
I have pushed away so many friends.
I have isolated myself.
And all that remains to comfort me are memories and ghosts

I want to hide and I want to run - but neither will give me an escape... and yet, living - "blossoming/blooming" - it hurts as much.

record. going round and round...

"and all that consumes me is fear. Just fear"

I have structured scribbles in my notebook for a different post. And this is all I can give you today.