A Head Full of Beauty

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 fel...

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'...

This blog is my crazy space. It is the only place in the world, where I can be crazy. - Or rather, it is the one place in the world where I can talk, uncensored, about my crazy behaviour in the real world. Sometimes - as with the story I am about to tell - some people see my crazy behaviour - but you guys get the full picture. I suppose, what I'm saying is that this blog is not just about my eating disorder. It's about the terrible insecurities in my head, the reckless behaviour and the irrationality that comes from my mental instability - All the things that have created my eating disorder and which are also borne from my eating disorder - Body dysmorphic disorder, need for male attention, shopping addiction, obsessions, reckless drunkeness ... the list of abnormalities goes on. Now, 'The Club'. I've mentioned it in posts before, but feel I should explain it better for the purpose of this story. I was a member of 'The Club' at my university in another par...

I've been drifting in and out of consciousness for the past two or three weeks - Consciousness between this world and that, between London and heaven, between then and now... My name is Ophelia ... sometimes Sometimes I'm drowning, sometimes I'm soaring, sometimes I'm so alive I can't feel anything except the pulse rushing through my head, sometimes I'm so dead I need a knife to make me bleed. . . On Thursday I was 'happy' and 'normal'. I was SO happy and normal. I went to law school, made it in for the 9am lecture start, sat between two of my girlfriends, giggled though the whole day with them, went out with my tutor group for drinks and a meal at the end of the day, laughed, chatted incessantly and finally took the first footprints in the thick, fresh snow as I wandered home in the early hours with a sweet smile on my face. And then I shut the door, and I'm drowning again, until the next time... * * * His name is "D". Yes - anoth...

You guys are so kind. Always - always - your comments mean so much to me. Never in a million years did I think... But it's been a bad week. I didn't go into college once. This is not university anymore. I'm doing the law conversion course. I can't just take a week off because I feel fat and ugly. But I... I know I can't go in when I am. And I am. I am fat and ugly. I couldn't bear to have to walk into that lecture theatre with everyones eyes on my fat thighs in jeans and then sit in the library where anyone can walk past and see my chubby and blotchy face. They'd all see me. My friends. M. Fuck M. Why the HELL do I have to have feelings for him?! I couldn't go into college because I was so scared he'd see me. I was so terrified he'd see how fat and ugly I was. So I hid away for a week and missed all my lectures. What-the-absolute-fuck-is-wrong-with-me! ... oh... yeah... And now I have fresh red lines on my arms and I'm even fatter after eati...

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...

So, it appears that the girls at law school still count me as a friend after my excessive drunkenness last week. But friends - female friends - they come at such a price for the eating disordered... I'm at the college all day, everyday - a lecture first thing in the morning and a workshop last thing in the afternoon - which means that we have a four-hour break in the middle. Since my very first day I've spent these four-hour breaks with a bunch of girls in my lecture group - and while they are really nice and I'm so grateful beyond belief that I made friends so quickly, it's a MASSIVE struggle for me. Having an eating disorder is so easy when you spend most of your time by yourself - no-one gives a damn if you ate and no-one knows any better if you did or you didn't. Having an eating disorder is shit when you have to pretend to be all smiley and normal all day long. It's shit when you have to spend lunchtime with your 'friends' who constantly talk about...

It was the Fresher's Party for my law school a few days ago. You can already tell I fucked it up can't you. I got drunk. I mean annihilated . Threw up everywhere. My new friends... superficial friends - don't like girls that behave like me. I told a girl I was bulimic - after I had to stick two fingers down my throat outside a new London club to get the liquid poison out. "I could tell," she said, "You never eat." I'd be amazed if those girls are still friendly with me on Monday. I hadn't planned on acting like trash, but I hadn't eaten for days and my starving body couldn't take the alcohol ...and as standard, drunk and blacked out from sickness, without a sensation in my body, I ate and ate and ate - until I thought my heart was going to stop - but I wasn't scared. Holly yes, I do believe. I've done it before. I'm doing it again. Stay with me. Be strong, you deserve happiness. The pretty, paper mask is crumbling. But it'...

I have returned from my overseas travels, sunburnt and pimply... yuck. Ok so I'm only sunburt on my shoulders and have like 3 spots but still, really, really not what I needed for my first day of law school. How was it? Better than expected to tell you the truth. I had this image that everyone one there would be really intelligent, really boring and really aloof, but actually everyone I met seemed really nice and down-to-earth. I met two girls at the start who were really lovely and I hope I stay friends with them for the rest of the year, we seemed to have a lot in common. Of course there are loads of beautiful, thin girls in my lecture group, but not overwhelmingly so, like I had imagined. In my class there are two pretty girls, one ugly large girl and the rest are average... (I know I'm a superficial bitch describing people this way.) There are two - maybe three - attractive guys, but none of them hit me in the face saying w-o-w, and that's probably a good thing as the l...

I'm on Camp. Somewhere in some bleak, uninhabited part of rural Northern England. Just under two weeks to go... I meant to post before I left but didn't have the time. God I hate being away from home and internet! I'm currently paying £1 for this 30 minute connection in the bar so I can write. I thought this camp would be a great opportunity for me to get away from all the temptations of the kitchen at home. I have to eat three meals a day with the rest of the people that I work with. So no snacks and no opportunities to buy or binge on food when I get weak. I get here and am given the itinery. Massive piss ups almost every night with my team, led by guys with beer guts three times the size of the rest of them. Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol - the most calorific thing on the planet... that makes my belly swell and makes me crave food and makes me lose control of my willpower to restrict. Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol... that is all these people do! Oh and when they're not drinki...

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...

Being away from home is not good for the soul. I feel like I've missed so much! Just spent the last few hours catching up with your blogs, you are such strong and inspirational ladies. So, Monday-Thursday in Paris and Friday-Sunday at some sports tournament in Surrey. So much to write. I suppose, I should start with the last post. It was a bit of a shock coming online and reading it because in my drunken state I had forgotten all about posting it! So Max...well, let's just say this is the last time I will ever be writing about him in a post as the whole thing was over almost as soon as it began. Like I said before, he had liked me since we met, but being the bitch that I am, I didn't consider him good enough for me, and rejected his advances back in September, soon after which he started going out with another girl and I began to regret my decision because he treated her like gold. They broke up two or three weeks ago. To cut a long story short, I went out that night with...