A Head Full of Beauty

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...

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. ...

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 reall...

On Thursday I gave the keys back to the house in London I was supposed to be living in with my two friends. That door is shut now. It killed me to do it. It was great to go there on Thursday, and be with friends, to laugh, to forget about the pain. To be the girl I used to be. To laugh. And it killed me because I had to walk away from it and come back to this room in this house I hate . That door is shut. I got the job offer from the Investment Bank. But I can't take it - sorry - I won't take it - because I won't live this nightmare anymore. Living in this house, trapped, and working a job, trapped. dead. trapped. It's as I said in my last post - It was two choices - live or die - take the new job and move out or stay here and rot. And when I came back home my Mum saw that I wasn't kidding. I'd shut the last door that led out of here and back to life. And I resigned myself to suicide. I told her so, frankly, as I had warned her the day before she made me...

I love having an eating disorder. I must do. Else why would I do it. You don't do something you don't want to. I didn't want to do my job. I quit. It's easy... If I take the job at the Investment Bank, I'm moving out, I'm going 'back on the crazy, fit men and alcohol' . If I turn the job down, I'm staying here with my Mum, and reading books. I choose to live. Or I choose to stop living. I told my Mum my choices. So after shouting at me for wasting money on rent she has stopped speaking to me and pretends I don't exist. (Yes. This is what I deal with.) If it wasn't for my Mum I'd have jumped. I live so that she doesn't have to bear anymore loss or suffering in her life. But she kills me in another way. Yeah. I never write much about her. I won't now. I want to live, you know. I want it back. I opened up my cupboard and ran my hands through my vast collection of beautiful dresses and clothes. Stacks of shoes, dai...

I don't understand the human instinct to survive. I don't know why I run across the road before the bus hits me... when I wish it would hit me. I don't know why I refuse to give in when I have witnessed over and over again that my dreams will never come true. There are people with worse lives than me. One of my mum's friends - consumed by cancer, knowing the time is so short and will only be full of pain. A colleague at work - married and divorced after a hellish marriage of one year - 30 years old. A friend of a friend - told by her husband that he just doesn't love her anymore - her financial support and life, all gone. When you have children, dependents, I believe it is different. I would never kill myself if I knew there were people in the world who needed me. But I, like the people above, have nothing. No children, now no lover, perhaps no future. I have no reason to bear my pain. And yet others with perhaps even less reason can still bear it. I loo...

"I have experienced love, sorrow, madness and if I cannot make these experiences meaningful, no new experience will help me." Sylvia Plath. I wrote about her before - several times. The first time I wrote when I was 19 I think - after reading 'The Bell Jar' - after realising that I didn't want to wear it anymore, like her... I didn't want a life like hers... not for all her genius. Maybe she could have stepped away; maybe she couldn't. Maybe it was her destiny to feel and write and suffer, all so intensely. Maybe I can step away; maybe I can't. Do I believe in destiny or do I believe in choice? There is no author whose work I have ever identified with more closely - except maybe Tennessee Williams. And this makes me sad. Sad, because I don't want to be like Sylvia Plath. I don't. I'm sure I don't... So why don't I just step away? Please, come on, step away... I must have a choice, because I swear, I never chose sadnes...

I haven't logged on since I wrote my last post three weeks ago. I think I thought it was my last post. It would have been a nice note to end on wouldn't it. I want to thank you for all your kind and positive comments. I will find the time to comment back I promise. The first thing I noticed when I logged back in was the number of followers I have. 456. Four hundred and fifty-six people thought my words were worth following. I'd never really thought about what an extensive number that is. Of course I can't leave. And I can't leave for many reasons - this blog is like blood letting. Take that to mean everything that blood letting can do and for every reason that it is done. But more than that, this blog gives me a connection to people who understand me, people with the same wires crossed in their brain, the same creatures crawling underneath their skin, the same heart beating the same desires to the same rhythm... I'm part of a community and a family whe...

Let me fill in some gaps. Everything has been so strained and emotional lately that I haven't had time to talk about my life - not my head - my life. It's just been depressing, emotional, despondent post after post without a word on what has been actually going on around me - outside my swirling mind. So I need to tell you what has been happening. I didn't do my exams. In fact, I didn't do a day of revision. So, nearly two weeks ago, at 9am, as everyone else in my class opened up their first exam paper, I was sitting waiting for my first interview.  I'd had enough. I couldn't do it. Weak. Yes. I was weak - I had no intention of fighting or trying. I was too exhausted by everything. I had stopped caring about myself and my life. Alex had been doing his exams for the two weeks before this, I was on 'revision leave', and I was sitting at home, dying. No really, really, just dying. I let it be. Yes, I let it be. Sit and rot. Do nothing except watch your...

I got an extension for a piece of coursework I was doing for law school and I had to get my doctor to sign the medical reasons on my ‘concessions form’. You want to know what I think of the fucking health care in this country? Well this should say it all: He wrote my first name wrong and mis-spelt my surname. Under medical problems, he wrote ‘Anorexia and Depression’. I' ve been diagnosed with Bulimia for fucks sake. The rest of the questions he barely answered or ignored. And I paid £19 for this proof of apathy. My exams start at the beginning of June. If I do them, I will fail. I have the option... to not turn up to exams and then give in a concession form like the one I did for my coursework. If they accept the bulimia as a reason for not doing exams then I will get the chance to retake them in August. Do I do it? My life is eating, throwing up, exercising, restricting, thinking about food, crying over my body, worrying... I can't do anything else, and I’m never g...

I don't know what I'd do without you all. How on earth could I possibly get by without this blog? Without the love and support I receive through this medium? I just don't know. My physical 'friends' hate me whenever they see a glimpse of my true tortured soul. I am so sick of this aching, brave facade, but it's not a choice, it's a necessity. I went away this weekend with 'the club' - one of our weekend camps if you like. Of course D was there. He spoke to me once or twice in passing, but that was it. It wasn't as if he ignored me exactly, but there was none of the sweet friendliness and enthusiasm that he had shown towards me before. It seems he hadn't told anyone about me visiting him last week, or in fact acknowledged to anyone that we had become anything closer than mere acquaintances. Perhaps on the weekend he felt that he couldn't let the others see him being overly friendly with me? Perhaps he felt awkward? Perhaps he just wanted n...

According to the scales, on Monday I lost half a stone (7 pounds) in 12 hours. Yeah. ERM. I wish?! But seriously. That's what both of my goddam scales told me. Seriously. Are my scales posessed or is my body just THAT ridiculous?! After a lovely 700 calorie session in the gym on Monday and a negative amount of food, I decided to do the same on Tuesday. I hit the gym at around 5pm on an empty tummy. 700 calories later, I left the gym, completely drained of life. I felt like zombie. On the train home it struck me: Stomach-churning nausea. The most intense and disgusting nausea I have ever experienced. I had to press my hand to my mouth to hold it in. My body was rebelling. My stomach was being vile. It was screaming at me to eat. I don't remember walking through the front door, I just remember the bread crumbs when it was over. According to ABC I was only supposed to consume 100 calories. I had burnt off 700, which meant that strictly speaking I could eat 800 calories. But I lost...

A narrative of the last few days… So Friday was the big day. I went back to my university town for the Annual Dinner Night of my old society. All present members and all alumni – all my best friends, all my old lovers, and the place that made and broke my reputation. Thursday: all I ate all day were two sweets. And I only ate them because M offered them to me on two separate occasions in the library. (M – the law school guy I can’t stop myself from being besotted with.) I was convinced that I looked terrible that day so I hid in the library at law school during our break. I hadn’t seen M all week, but that day, I left my desk for two minutes and returned to find he had sat himself two seats away. I was mortified and pretended not to see him… although from that point on I found it impossible to concentrate on my books… He spoke to me first, and obviously when he offered me a sweet I couldn’t say no for fear of looking weird / seeming rude. Anyway, straight after my day at college was ov...

I AM SICK OF BEING MADE TO EAT ENDLESS AMOUNTS OF SHIT. for fucks sake. I had to eat a MASSIVE lunch that should have been for three people and then half a pizza - a pizza - that's not even real food! It's fucking sickening. No wonder I'm so disgusting at the moment. I can't even seem to throw it all up any more its just all sticking to my body as fat. I really have had enough of keeping up this act of eating shit so that people don't think I'm a freak. I'm gonna eat the bare minimum on this camp. Just bits of fruit and veg at one meal maybe. And if they don't like it they can bitch about me all they want. I do not care anymore. I'm an adult. I should be able to eat what I want. I am so frustrated with everything. How did I let myself get so fat again. SO FAT OPHELIA AGAIN. SO FAT. No, no, no, they can stick their fatty food into their own oppressive mouths. Why should they have any control over mine. I wish I could just be with people who supported ...

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It doesn't matter how pretty your friends think you are. It doesn't matter how many guys praise your figure. YOU ARE FAT. What's keeping you from being happy? What's stopping you from living the life you want? What is the cause of all your misery? Like I even need to reply... The answer is sitting on your thighs...The problem is hanging on your hips... Most people go through their lives being "average", " mediocre ", " ok ". Is that what you want? To be a "normal-sized" girl at a "healthy-weight" with "natural curves"? Or a STUNNING girl, the HEAD-TURNER, the PERFECT one? Most people accept themselves as God made them. Most people are happy with being average and ok . And do you know why? Because they are too weak, too lazy and too happy to sit on their over-sized arses to try to change. NOT US. You, me, us. We look upon them with pity, because they will never be a...