A Head Full of Beauty

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...

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...

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 '...

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 f...

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 car...

. This is the hardest post I have ever had to write. I apologise if it's sporadic and raw. This is everything from the last two months. When I went away with Alex for a weekend on the 16th July and when we went away for the second time on the 13th August. How things became incredible. How things fell apart. The writing in red is what I have written today - my input now - the writing in black is what I wrote on the date stated. Written on 19th July 2010 The dream is not a dream. It exists. I tasted it. I lived it. The happiness of my childhood is not dead. It lives around me – in other children, in other families. I walked hand-in-hand with Alex through the gardens of Chatsworth House, listening to the laughter of children, watching old couples sitting on the wall eating huge cones of soft white ice cream. Seeing families all around me. Joy, happiness, laughter, innocence, contentment, fulfilment. I was right all along. I knew it. I knew it! I had known all along what...

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...

Does it get better? Does it ever go away? That emptiness in your head; that chill seeping through your blood; the coldness... I can't get rid of it. I sit myself on the edge of the sofa and draw my knees up to my chest. My huge legs, huge pink soft marshmallow legs, scrunching up the rolls on my tummy, big rolls. For all I have done, all week, all day, all night, is binge. Food is the narcotic. Eating is the addiction. I want to call him and hear his voice. I want to send him links to videos, to some of your blogs, to articles, to words, to pictures, to voices, to help him listen to mine. I want him to help me. But I don't want him to understand. I can't do it to him. Not only do I fear losing him (for what 19 year old boy wants to deal with a crying 22 year old falling to pieces on their shoulder?) But I fear I will destroy him as much as I have destroyed myself. "You don't see the world like I do." "What do you mean?" "You don'...

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 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...