A Head Full of Beauty

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 o...

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...

My head never shuts down. If I could only find the switch, turn myself off, I could start living in the real world again, I'm convinced of it... but maybe there isn't a switch. Something I saw on jd's blog struck a real chord with me, I thought it was perfect: For a head so full of words and emotion, so much of my life is consumed by numbers. the numbers game Calories. I can't remember the last time I forgot about numbers in my head. I must have been so young. I wonder sometimes, about the whole genetics argument - that some people are more predisposed to eating disorders than others - we have the genes for it so to speak. Was I born this way? No... I'm sure I can't have been, but at the same time I'm acutely aware that I've always had the symptoms and the character and personality for it. I was never like other little girls. I tortured myself mentally for not looking perfect. I tortured myself for being 'fat' when I was a skinny littl...

Facebook says I am 'in a relationship' with Alex. So, everyone knows; it's not a secret, it's not being kept quite, it's not a rumour, it's not gossip. It's there now, in black and white. Ophelia is in a relationship with Alex There we go, dear readers, after all the endless posts of turmoil, lust and heartbreak, it's happened. Ophelia has a boyfriend. Sweet Jesus. Tonight I have cried. Uncontrollably weeping on my bedroom floor. Like the Drama Queen I am. Crying because I know I can't do this. I can't keep up the act. I can't keep up the lie. I'm trying to think up excuses not to see him this weekend because I am too fat, because I am too sad, because I am in too much pain. I've been spending almost every other night at his. And this week the cracks have begun to show... I can't keep it up - this happiness thing - it doesn't understand me. I should be the happiest girl in the world. For I am the luckiest girl in the world. I...

I think this has been the longest I have been away. Or it feels like the longest... A combination of event planning, essays, job - and an overwhelming sediment of stagnant weight - are my excuses for abandoning you all - and I am aware that they should not be excuses. I haven't posted, I haven't read, I haven't commented and I haven't replied - but I will do better, so please forgive me. In my last post I told you that I was being interviewed for a waitressing job - and I did indeed get the job - much to my joy and relief. I've done a couple of shifts so far and apart from my first night when I broke about 20 glasses and dropped cream cheese down a guest's jacket, it's been ok . The only downside is the food... every night the waiting staff get to eat all the leftovers - and there's a lot of leftovers, and it's all ridiculously incredible. I have never found it so hard to resist food. I'm not talking the urge you get for a midnight bread binge....

My mum wants me to go into town with her to sort out my bank account. I go only to avoid an argument. I wear my shittest fattest clothes. Glasses. Foundation. I look like a piece of shit, humiliated by my reflection, but its ok ...it'll be two minutes in public then home to hide my ugly reflection away. I would never, ever go out looking like this on any normal occasion. I walk right into my ex-boyfriend. Not seen him since we broke up 3 years ago. Panic attack. Sweating. Shaking. Retching. Fists clenched like a murderer. Knife, blood, help me cope. Walked in the door and screamed. I want to smash things up. I want to bleed into ecstasy . He got to laugh at how ugly I am.

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...

So, the weekend. On Saturday I took a walk into town where there was a little ethnic fair going on. Stall upon stall selling sweets, pancakes, barbeques, oriental ornaments, handmade jewellery etc. I spent ages looking at all the precious little cupcakes and sweets, lovingly crafted like miniature works of art. I loved it: just taking in their visual beauty, not tempted in the slighted at their taste. It makes me so happy when I can surround myself with delicious food and take delight in just looking at it. In the end I bought a little packet of caramel roasted almonds and ate a few as I took a walk around the town’s botanical gardens. More visual beauty. It was such a perfect day and the birdsong was ringing loud and clear. Everything was in bloom, and the flowers were calling to me, come join us, come join us. There wasn’t even the slightest gust of wind around…it was all just perfectly still perfection. I want to be a flower, tranquil and naturally beautiful. I felt a little bit gui...

"Men. They're just not worth it." "You're SO beautiful." "He's clearly blind." "You can do so much better than him." "He's not worth it." No. Dear friends, you're wrong, it's me. I'm not worth it. He's not blind, he just doesn't fancy girls with fat legs. I'm not beautiful. I'm dead. Oh the cliches. They come out thick and fast from my friends. Last night, prime example. So, in my last post but one 'further into ana's arms' I mentioned Sam and how I had started to become really attracted to him. Well we started chatting via facebook and texting etc, and it was all so lovely, and it made me so happy. I thought there might be something... Last night was a big social to the student union club, and naturally I persuaded him to come. Oh, I was so excited, so high, so full of desire to live. Our conversations had led me to believe he was coming out just to see me. So I let myself imag...

I have an assignment due in 7 hours. I have no intention of getting it done on time. I will hand it in late, like I always do, and be penalised for it. I am in my final year of university now - the most important year or some shit like that. Who knows...who cares. I'm under some sort of perverse illusion that in order to write an essay I need to eat shit loads. So I have eaten shit loads. I do not need to eat for fucks sake! Every day I am making the daily trip to the supermarket. I have no food whatsoever in my flat. I can't have any food around without binging on it - it doesn't matter what it is - I'll cook it, eat it raw, eat it all, not stop. So, every day, ravenously hungry, I go to the supermarket, walking up and down the isles, checking the back of every packet, choosing something, putting it back, wringing my hands in angst. "That nutter girl is back again." Yeah, I just walk up and down your supermarket looking at food because I'm bored and lone...

It has been a rough week to say the least. I haven't been into uni all week. Not once. Why? Because I'm a lazy, fat, drunken slut and I want to ruin my life as much as fucking possible. I need someone to fucking tread on me tonight and make me cry my eyes out. I really need to cry, get down on my knees and scream my lungs out, smash up all my posessions, slash my curtains and paint streaks of red acress my walls. Shit. It's fucking raging inside of me. I need to cut myself. but I have held off for so long...like 3/4 weeks or something I think? To try and get out some of this anger I have drawn red lines across my arms and legs. Apparently that is supposed to help because it looks like bleeding cuts, and I get that thrill and sense of satisfaction but without the permanent scars... but still, like I say, I need some pain, I need something to make me scream and cry and go crazy at. I have written the usual hate messages across my body in black marker pen: 'I will not eat...

I said the word to James. Two nights ago, via text message: “When are we starting the list?” I sent it at about 1 a.m. 48 hours later and he still hasn’t replied, which is most unlike him. I don’t think he’s ever not replied to me in the whole time that I know him. James is the kind of guy who prides himself on being a gentleman even though everyone knows he is nothing of the kind underneath his clear-cut English accent and polished charm. Perhaps this is how he wins so many girls into bed with him? Well, needless to say, I still expect a reply at some point; unless he was having sex at the time I sent it or was similarly engaged with a girl of some description and therefore did not register receiving my text. Well, anyway it’s not a big deal to me, it was only going to be a past time to keep me amused. Another guy that featured a lot in my life last year was Oliver. (Perhaps I should start using false names in this blog in case I get identified…but then I’d only start getting confused...

Bulimia is not an illness; it's a way of life. It is my life. That is how I live it. Scared of food, obsessed with food, intoxicated by food. Eating it knowing that I will throw it up in a minute. Eating with that knowledge that keeps me safe - the knowledge that keeps me fat. Bulimia is like any disease in that it begins to define you. I choose to be defined by bulimia, and yet, it is not a choice. I choose to cut myself. Sometimes I grapple with my emotions and force myself to stop...but if the knife is there, it's so easy and everything gets better. And yet, when people ask me why, I cannot explain it. To other people, I am just a girl on pills, a girl who can't sleep through the night, a girl that writes strange things and sees the world in a different way. I am a girl with scars on her arms. I am a girl who thinks she is fat. A girl who worries too much. I am an attention seeker. When I went to therapy last year for my eating disorder, I made progress, but still I didn...

It is 3am. I am sick. I have just been on another massive binge. My third of the day in fact. This time, however, I cannot throw up. The sound would echo like a siren through the silent house. It would wake my mother. My stomach is bursting with sickness and I have to hold it in and bear its swelling in order to keep my secret. I have a knife here, on my pillow. I scraped off my dried blood from it about an hour ago and held its newly sharpened blade up to the light. It was beautiful. I stuck it into my thigh, but it hurt too much. I just want the marks. And now, suddenly, I am tired. When I was a teenager it was a way of life; it was the way I lived my life. Depression, anxiety, anorexia - they were all just words used to label other people - ill people. I didn't know anything about them. Now, I am them. These words have become labels for me; my new name. I am now a mental illness. I am bulimia. I am ill. I am a liar. I tell people I am fine. I joke about my illness. "Yeah, y...