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...

I am the biggest gameplayer in the world. I treat my whole fucking life as a game. Like every game I have a goal and a strategy and I play to win. When I feel the rush of success coursing through my veins it simply sends me spinning. Work is a game with two prizes - men and career success. I know that if I play my cards right in this job and work hard over the next two years, the City will be my oyster. I also know that with all the attractive men in my office I'll never get bored. The City is my stage. Like every actress I love an audience, I love performing, I love having a strong presence. The roaring streets, the shiny office, the City winebar - all such wonderful stages, danced on by my high heels. I live for every new morning so I can sit cross legged in front of my full length mirror and preen my long hair and paint my face carefully, a cup of coffee and a bowl of porridge at my side. I open the wardrobe of lovely dresses and shoes which I had once feared I'd nev...

This is the bare bones: I want to recover. But I want to be thin first. It's been a bad week. Uncontrolled crying. In public. I can't I can't Why can't I get better. Alex. I cried myself sick, over and over again. I couldn't stop it. Crying hysterically in front of everyone and anyone... because of him. Not because he upset me - no. Quite the opposite. He's perfect. And his perfection, his beauty, his innocence, it hurts me so much. I don't know why. Or maybe, it's because I know: I have to end it. I have to. He's killing me. It's all killing me. Starving. Eating. Throwing Up. Binging. Laxatives. Restricting. Exercising. Sick. Sick. Sick I'm supposed to be going to a posh dinner as his guest tomorrow evening. And I can't. I can't. I can't put on a pretty dress that exposes the fat on my back, my huge arms and a tummy that sticks out 5 inches. I can't do my hair nice when it frames such a podgy and puffy...

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....

I've been wanting to write for days now. But it's all been quite depressing. And everything I wanted to write about... has somehow disappeared from my head... All I know is that I feel quite dead. This week is going to be hell. Quite simply, full on, full throttle, burning hell. Ok. I've got to submit my first assessment next Monday - one week away. Ok. That's ok, you know, it's ok. A week is ages. I used to knock out essays in a day at uni. I know my topic, I know what I have to do, I just have to do it. And I will. Fuck the rest of the shit in my life. I WANT TO BE TOP OF MY CLASS IN EVERY SINGLE ASSESSMENT. Perhaps more than anything I want to prove a point. Ask any member of my class who the least intelligent person is and I guarantee every single one would say me (yes I know I have an inferiority complex/paranoia anyway but I still think they genuinely believe this.) And I know it's my fault that they and my tutors all probably think this - because of the w...

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 ...

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...

That would be the exam I took today. And then my whole ABC plan. Honestly, English Literature exams...why...just why! Today my exam was on Modern Literature (Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot etc) and well, yeah it was even shitter than I had anticipated. Honestly, I went into an exam once without having read any of the books, did terribly, but even that exam felt better than the one I did today! I have one final assignment due on Tuesday...and then I'm finished with University, thank God. Except I have a real fear now of ending up with a 2:2 after that exam went so badly...and I can't get a 2:2, I just can't, I won't be able to go into any of the careers I want... So I came home, feeling like I'd thrown away everything, and that sick, empty, worthless, there's-no-point, feeling crept over my heart...and I went out, bought two big cookies, a double chocolate muffin and a pack of indian nan bread (hey - I don't choose what my binge voice tells me I crave!) Then made...

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...

My father died when I was 11 years old. I suppose you could say that that’s where it all started to go wrong. Somehow, between then and now – a period of ten years – I have managed to leave behind one life for another and grow into a woman that I deny is truly me. When my Dad died, I was left with no-one but a mother who oppressed and domineered over every part of my life. I had no other family to turn to when in need. A few months later, I left the only friends I had ever known behind at Primary School and went to a new High School. This is when I also left behind the bright-eyed and confident child I had always been. It’s a difficult time for most children, but when I came home in tears, I found there was no one there to help dry them. Making new friends was hard, simply because I had never felt so lost in my life. The death of my best friend, my father, had hit me harder than I had ever realised. If I could go back, I would have taken the support and counselling that was offered to ...