A Head Full of Beauty

I know my posts are starting to become really sporadic. I apologise. I'm trying to live... trying to be busy... perhaps I'm trying to run Anyway. "I regret to inform you that the Medical Board has decided, having reviewed your medical history ....you do not meet the medical entry standards." I got turned away from two careers this week. The first I had to have an interview with a doctor. The second I had to have an interview with a psychiatrist. I couldn't lie my way out. I tried. I have to thank Mia. I have to thank my body. No one wants to employ someone with a 'history' of mental illness. Even though I lied and told them I was cured now. It's still there. It will always be a black mark by my name, no matter how I try to put a gloss on it. It's still a blip on my character. It says I'm unstable. It says I'm weak. It says unemployable . Anorexics are turned down because: "It is impossible to predict the 20% of sufferers who m...

I found out that 15 years before he died from cirrhosis of the liver, my dad was prescribed Antabuse - in other words, he was being treated for alcoholism. So he knew he was an alcoholic long before it killed him. I had always thought it was a secret. I questioned her about it. "If he knew, then why didn't he stop? Why didn't he get help?" She defended him, "It was an addiction. He tried, I know he did try, he really did try... but he couldn't stop." So she knew too. "But he knew! He should have got help!" I stopped myself from telling her she should have made him get help as well. "No, Ophelia, you don't understand. It's an addiction... like a drug addict... they know what they are doing is harmful, but they can't stop. I know he did try." So when I opened cupboard doors and found secret stashes of vodka, inconspicuous coke bottles filled with white liquid, cups of 'washing up water'...that was him trying was it?...

Apologies for the long, long absence. Well...it's been two weeks - but it feels like months! I have some SERIOUS catching up to do with you all, I hope you are all staying strong and I promise to read all your blogs in the next few days. I know I say it time and time again, but I couldn't do this without you all, you're all so kind and supportive to me and you've never even met me! It really means a lot. So, what has happened in these last two weeks then? Well, I guess I'd better start with that party I was preparing for when I wrote my last entry. All the weight I lost for that has gone straight back on. I don't even want to talk about it. I came home and binged constantly for three days straight. All that hard work. Thrown away. I dunno what I can write about that party anymore. Did I look thin? Did I look pretty? Did 'C' want me? I don't know. I can only tell you that in my head I looked fat, my belly stuck out, my cheeks were chubby, my calves we...

I hate the icky side effects of a starvation diet. My hands are cold and clammy; the skin on my arms is dull and papery. My shoulders droop with weakness, I couldn’t lift anything at the moment. I’m just so tired. I must apologise for not commenting/replying in the last few weeks, I've only been getting on the computer at work and am a bit paranoid about having a computer screen of ED sites. I'm finishing this week so I promise I will catch up!! I’ve had some incredible resolve recently in order to get these sickly starvation side-effects. There's a big party at work tonight. I knew I had to starve for it. I have to look thin tonight; have to look beautiful; have to look the best; have to look perfect; have to make ‘C’ want me. ...I didn’t think he would have been invited. Then he told me on Monday morning that had been invited and was indeed coming, so I haven’t eaten since except for some cucumbers, tomatoes and apples. I’ve been pumping the laxatives as well to clear tha...

I have to begin by saying thank you for all the positive comments. I was really moved. Things are still on a general low, and there have been lots more tears and screaming with my mum, but I'm staying strong through it all :) And the maintenance has finally broken!!!!! Oh so happy, oh so worth it. I feel very empty and numb at the moment, which is very unsual for me. I'm usually either bouncing off the walls or pumped with emotion, caught up in my own great big desructive tornado. I think it's my current job. 7am to 10pm at a desk...doing nothing...braindead...souldead. Go home to sleep and then do it all again. just over two weeks to go and then its over, thank God. Why haven't I blogged for a week? A head full of beauty numbed with boredom. At least when I'm chaotic I know I'm alive. My job, however, has taught me that I have another obsession which equals my obsession with food. To regular readers, this may come as no surprise. I need male attention. I need s...

I started this blog in January - just over six months ago - as a tool to vent my emotions, explore my motivations, reveal my weaknesses... to find a place in a community where I could let my social mask of normality fall and be truthful, above all else. But my weight in this six months has pretty much maintained. Fasts being replaced by binges. Vomiting being followed by more eating. In the grip of bulimia, flirting with starvation, getting drunk until I fuck up. I am not classed as 'overweight''. I never have been. Is it purely Body Dysmorphic Disorder that made me hate my body? What made my face, my arms, my legs, my torso, my tummy, my bottom, my whole entire white, fleshy, exterior shell become my nemesis? As far as I can recall, I was 'normal' until the age of nine. That's when I decided I was fat. I wasn't. I can tell you that now, looking back at photos, I was absolutely tiny. But facts don't matter - I hated my body because I was fat. And that ...

This is going to be a quick post. Laxatives. Never used them before. Am off to buy some tomorrow. Needless to say, my digestive system shuts down when I successfully fast/restrict and my belly sticks out a mile with all the backlog of food that won't move! I tried the natural way with 'Aloe Vera Colon Cleanse' from Holland & Barrett. Recommeded dose: 1 pill before bed. After a few weeks my desperate dose: 6 pills before bed. And no bowel movements. My period? Absent without leave. Last time I had it my stomach swelled up like a balloon, face broke out in spots and I felt like a massive piece of shit. I'd say I was fitting all those symptoms right now. I want to retch when I look in the mirror. Bad skin... seriously... that is up there with the weight issues when it comes to my paranoia and BDD. And no, no, I don't have acne, I know, just like I'm not overweight, I know, I know. But if it's not a clear, flawless complexion it's disguisting to me. Just...

Self harm is something that has always confused me. Before I started doing it, I didn't comprehend why anyone could possibly have a need for it. When I started doing, I couldn't rationalise my actions to others or to myself. Now that I can't stop doing it, I can't work out why I can't stop or what I need to do. It's a stupid, irrational addiction . I don't know why I started, or why I need it, or how to control it... I just know that I desperately want to stop. I go through cycles of this addiction - or this craving rather. I need to self harm right now. I need to sink a blade into my thigh; and then everything will be alright. I've been battling this craving for the last few days - since Friday to be precise - just hoping that it's suddenly going to fade... it's just because I'm stressed, just because I'm tired, just because... I'm at a loss to be honest with you. I'm fighting so hard and I'm just not winning. I'm at work...

I have, of late, been living a reversed life. Reversed in the sense that I stay up all night and go to bed in the morning. I've had a mountain of deadlines this week and more next week for all my university assessments, and for some reason, I just can't work during the daytime but work incredibly well at night. More than this, however, I think there is also an underlying fear of daylight. I've had this phobia since I was in my mid-teens. I remember in the morning before I went to school, I would spend so long getting ready, putting my make-up on, covering each single blemish, then re-covering it, then re-doing my hair, and then changing it again...I keep on and on amending myself until I looked bearable. I was frequently late for school, not because I overslept, but because I couldn't find the courage to step outside. In unnatural light or in the evening, I usually can cope with how I look. If I look in the mirror while I'm under daylight or very bright light, I a...

‘Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?’ I have no right to write this. This is a silent cry. The memory is a blur. But I remember his few sickening words. I can’t write them. The buzz that night set me alight and I was loving it. I set the part. I looked the part. I played my part – to perfection. I recall just two brief snapshots of it - but I can’t write them. I can’t put those two moments into words. They are just two images, engraved in the forefront of my mind, and every waking moment they haunt me. There I was, there’s my picture, there I am. Somebody help her, somebody get her out, somebody, please, anybody! Why didn’t you tuck me into bed and kiss me goodnight. Like a father would. Don’t you know that’s all I want. Perhaps I hope that if I don’t write it, it won’t be true. Perhaps I’ll forget. The spaces of blackness make me terrified. Sick. Horrified. Find me th...

In early 2008, I discoverd that I have Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Before I read up on it, I never knew it existed, and certainly never understood what it meant. Most of my friends were familiar with my insecurities and bad times over the years, and it had been such an established part of my life that I didn’t really question it or see it as a problem. I hated the way I looked and I was obsessed with losing weight - that was just the way it was. I didn’t see it as a problem; it was just the way I lived my life. Even when I was as young as 6 and 8 I remember specific instances when I broke down publicly because I felt so hideous and beat myself up for being fat. Those were the happiest times of my life, and I was super skinny then!! I should probably have picked up on my problems long before I reached 20. Of course High School was the ultimate horror for me. I would not get on the bus because I couldn’t bear people looking at me. I would cry in front of the mirror and claw at my...