A Head Full of Beauty

I'm putting myself back on anti-depressants (Fluoxetine). I watched The Iron Lady last night and there were about two 10 minute intervals in which I did not cry. Throughout the rest of the film I just sobbed manically, tears dripping off my cheeks. I'm raw these days. It's like there's no flesh on me, just touch me and you go straight to the nerve. Everything hurts and everything makes me cry. I sobbed all the way through The Iron Lady because it reminded me of my own mother - or how she will be in a few years. The film perfectly depicted the heartbreak of losing a husband - God knows I have no idea what it feels like, and yet I cry my eyes out for my Mum - am sitting here crying my eyes out for her now. And that was it really. The old, deep-seated inability to deal with death and loss and grief. My mother who lost a husband and has only known pain and heartache since, who is getting more and more fragile and frail by the day. And what can I do except give her a ...

I woke up to the sound of my blackberry alarm in pitch darkness. What... Why was it so dark? Fuck. Welcome to winter. I dragged out my coat from the cupboard and pulled it on as I shut the front door behind me. Memories came flooding back. As a teenager, I pulled on my frumpy school fleece or jacket as I went to the bus stop. A huge cloak of ugliness and foul shapelessness - years ago I felt the disgusting poison of my blood seeping out the pores of my face, ugliness, fatness. Why couldn't I be fresh and pure and lovely, why did I have to be an unclean lump? I pulled on my jacket on the morning of the new season to feel these same emotions flooding back - covering up the pretty pencil skirt and fitted blouse with a woollen jacket and woollen discomfort. I felt the cold daylight burning my skin as it had been for years, harshly highlighting the foulness of my skin, my attempts to patch over my natural ugliness - but nature is harsh, is cruel is TRUE - the natural daylight show...

When I was 15, I used to wear a laminated tag around my neck, tucked inside my school blouse to remind me of how fat and worthless I was. I must still have it somewhere, hidden away in my cupboard, even though a few years ago I made an effort to throw out all my old notebooks and memories of self-hatred. I made the tag myself, put a picture of the beautiful Scarlett O'Hara on it, wrote about how I could be like her if I tried hard enough, laminated it, ran a long piece of string through to make a necklace. I wore it every day for months. When I was 13 I had to get dressed in the dark, never exposing my body while I changed. I had to lie face down in the bath - I couldn't stand and shower. I had to wear jumpers everywhere to swamp the curve of my growing breasts. When I was 8 I cried alone and in agony because I wasn't pretty. I decided I was the fattest in my class and I never let go of that. However high I hold my head, the truth is that this eating disorder has destr...

A low point hits and I have no way to express it. I realise this is the only place where I can cry or scream or speak. I am not a great conversationalist. This is something I have noticed in this job - where I have to sit with people every mealtime, make small talk, engage in conversation, every goddamn day. Sad to say, this is new to me. This is too much. It is this constant requirement to talk that has shown me something interesting: that I internalise pretty much all my thoughts and feelings. I must come across as the most boring and uninteresting person with absolutely no views whatsoever - because I just don't like talking. I can sit and listen. I can nod. I can sympathise. But I can't talk. I'm not a talker. I'll sit and think, I'll write, I'll think some more. But I don't talk about what passes through my thoughts. I just... don't. And this blog was a gift. It gave me the voice I never had - not just to voice my eating disorder and my fears a...

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 do not burden myself on other people. I do not pick up my phone when I am crying my eyes out. I do not seek comfort. I do not ask for kindness. I cry on my own. I have done for years. Even when I was in a relationship, I never bothered him with it. And yet I lean on you. I come here to cry. I come here to find a shoulder. Because here, I can . I'm a wreck. I'm so petrified. I remember once, I must have been about 14, I was at school sitting, chatting to a friend during lunch, and she raised her arm suddenly and I flinched. I instinctively jerked away from her and raised my arm to cover my face. "Woah. Ophelia. Why did you flinch?" I laughed nervously. "I, er, I don't know, I, er, thought you were going to hit me." I don't flinch now. Strange, I still censor. I've blocked out pretty much all of my past. I've blocked out my childhood because it was so happy, and I've blocked out my teenage years because they were so dreadful. ...

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 wanted to try and get away. Everything has been hard. The two people in my life who know about my eating disorder, who know I see a lady once a week, are the two people feeding it. If I wrote about the things my mother says to me... well I can’t . I can't leave. I have to write. If I don’t write... if I don’t write, it’s because I’m cured and my mind is empty and emotionless. I watched a fictional TV programme this evening where the characters travelled back in time to meet Vincent Van Gogh. The exploration of Van Gogh wasn’t deep by any means, but it touched the nerve of his genius quite simply: The Doctor to Van Gogh: “I’ve seen wonderful things, my friend, but you’re right, nothing quite as wonderful as the things you see.” His madness was so beautiful. What a mind, what an exceptional mind. Of course I would never compare myself with Van Gogh’s artistic genius, but it brought me back to the name of this blog: A Head Full of Beauty . I may have an eating disorder, I m...

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...

How far back does my pain go? I forget sometimes, how long I have lived with this... and no, my pain didn't always manifest itself in the shape of an eating disorder - or at least as ferocious an eating disorder as I have now. I was trying to remember a poem I used to love... and it led me to search back into my old computer files to look through the poems and writing that I produced when I was 17 and 18. It struck a chord with me. The pain was the same back then. I just hadn't learnt to channel it through my relationship with food. I never got better, I never got happier, I never found what I was looking for... I just got worse; I just got older; I just wasted more of my life. 19th May 2006 I am so scared. I am so lost, and so confused. So many times I have been falling, and sometimes I have even been soaring, but right now, I’m on the outskirts of a whirlpool, spinning rapidly, awaiting to be sucked into oblivion. I’m just swirling round and round, feeling sick, ...

Why, oh why has Ophelia been posting so much? I drifted so far away recently, posting once a week, once a fortnight.... Well, truth be told, Alex has locked me out of my facebook account in an attempt to get me to concentrate on revision. Oh yes - exams! Exams... seven to be precise - three hours each - the day after each other. excellent... So instead of sitting at my laptop pressing the 'refresh' button on my facebook homepage and seeing what uninteresting things my 480 'friends' have been doing, I have been sitting on blogger, reading old blogs, reading new blogs, commenting here and there, and of course, posting my usual rubbish! I used to be a good blogger - good to read, good at replying - an attentive blogger, a caring blogger. I think it's the slide from Ana to Mia. Ana makes for a good blogger, and Mia makes for a very bad one. Lets face it, what is inspirational about a wobbly white girl stuffing her face and spewing? This is the most messed up my li...

I've been out of control for too long. I am on the waiting list. Waiting for someone to save me It has been months since I took that first step into the GP's office and said, quite plainly, 'I am bulimic. I binge and throw up everyday, often several times a day.' They assessed me and agreed: I'm fucked. So they wrote the name Ophelia on the end of a line of other names. And have left me to get on with it. I know there's nothing more they can do. THEY. Them... the ones I want to save me. because I can't do it on my own I wish that you could save me, I wish that more than anything, because I'm so afraid. It's not going to be Alex; he's never met the girl that writes this blog. He never will. I've put on the act far too successfully. I found the winning formula and I crafted a porcelain mask from it - a mask that sits far too comfortably and fits far too well. Alex would never love Ophelia. And I would never burden myself upon him, because I kno...

Apologies for being absent for so long. The past week has been... crazy, emotional, sleepless... exciting . I've been writing everything in my notebook - It's been necessary for me to still write about everything even though I have been unable to sit down at a computer and update this blog. So, what follows are my entries and self-analysis from the past week, dated when they were originally written... Sunday 21st March - Analysing the Past You know, all of this would be so much easier if I had someone... If I had someone who loved me, I think I could cope. I think it would all be alright... If I had someone... someone who truly loved me. I wish I had a rock; someone I could turn to when I was in need, someone to hold me tight, shield me, dote on me... But I am too fussy - too much of a disaster - but most of all, I'm scared of the pain. If he were to leave me or betray me, it would kill me. I know I could never take that pain of heartbreak. What really push...

I mentioned a few posts back that I was off to have an assessment for psychotherapy on the NHS . So I feel I should update you on how it all went. Diagnosis: Bulimia Nervosa (How enlightening!) Ok , let me stop myself there. I need to say at this point that anything sarcastic/rude/mean that I say about my therapist or my session is just my frustration talking. She actually turned out to be one of the nicest people I've ever had to talk to (out of several doctors, nurses, councillors and other random do- gooders ). She was the first person that I have ever spoken to who I did not feel was judging me. I would even go so far as to say that she understood. My words made sense to another human being - it was incredible - in an odd way, for the first time, I felt sane. So, it was quite revealing - all the stuff I had to talk about. My non-existent, fucked-up relationship with my Mum. My alcoholic Dad drinking himself to the grave when I was a child. As a teenager, the hated ...

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 ...