Something is happening to me and I cannot stop it...

...and I think it is happiness.


It is very strange. It has been coming on for weeks. Maybe months. Gradually, gradually. That slow chemical neuron shift. I kind of realised it as I was coming down from the pills I took at the ball. And I felt that deep-down almost-catatonic misery. And it occurred to me that I used to ALWAYS feel like that. And now I don't.

And I can meter it by the infrequency of my blogging. I am light years behind. And I miss everyone but I don't NEED everyone.

This should be good. It IS good. Of course it's good. But it is so uncomfortable. The unfamiliar. My excuse and security blanket gone. I'm eating more easily, binging less, starving less, still throwing up quite a bit. Less distressed about food. I know that most of my emerging happiness is chemical and biological, but I think it is also contingent on being thin. I feel better, so I'm eating more, so I'll get fat, so I'll become miserable.

I just don't really know what to think. What to do. The sadness and obsessiveness that have gone hand in hand to make me thin have slowly backed off... I don't know how to live without them.

hearts and love and a snuggle puss

Oh you are all so immensely wonderful!
I've been self-defeatist and blog-avoidant lately. Haphazard eating and throwing up. Never really binging. Never really putting my heart into purging. Not sad. But not really living either. And when you're not really living, you may as well be getting skinny. One day I'll start living and stop caring, but while I can't live I suppose I must at least starve. I'll sleep tonight with a triple dose of laxatives and tomorrow and Friday I'll go hungry. By Friday night I hope to be hungry enough to feel pretty.

Your comments and well wishes mean the world to me. Silent strangers who are my most caring and understanding friends in all the world. Please don't go anywhere! I'll try to be more attentive! Lately things have been so blah. Everything just seems to be getting heavy, impossible to manage, crushing down on me. Claustrophobia. I need to shake it off my back again. You all help so much. I heart you all to bits.


Now my purring communist is telling me it's bedtime. He is quite persistent.

Lights out
Pasco
x

belle of NOTHING

I haven't been eating terribly since my weigh in Wednesday. Not toooo terribly. Perhaps I wasn't quite so starving as I should have been but I thought I was doing OK.

Sneaked a peak this morning... 53.5 kg... FAIL!

FAIL FAIL FAIL
There is no way I can be 50 by Friday unless I lop of a limb and therefore I FAIL.

Pasco will not be belle of the ball after all.
Just another ugly face in the throng of mediocre cows with their orangey spray tanned skin and body shimmer and tasteless up-dos.


Now I'm going to go nuzzle up against the lovely buttery softness of Marc Jacobs and let it soothe away my pain.

x

Beauty, Poverty

I am never eating again.
I cannot afford to.

I'm not sure what happened today, suffice to say all of a sudden I have no money and a Marc Jacobs bag.


WHOOPSY!

So, um, yeah. Never eating again. Ever.

Why would you pay for pizza you aren't even going to eat?

"So people think I'm eating it"

... So, you're one of those

"yyyyyeah"

on track to laze away another day

51.9kg - I lost the 2kg I needed to lose in week one, so to be 50kg for the ball I now have 9 days to lose another 2. Goodness... could it really be true that in only 9 days time I might see something in the 40s? My ticket is in the mail, my dress is all picked out, and my fingers are crossed!


Another nothing day today, wiling away the time and feeling horribly guilty about it. As much as I am loathed to repeat tacky pro-ana expressions, sometimes is makes me a feel a little better to think of the ol' faithful: Time spent wasting is not a waste of time. I just wish that the time I spent wasting was spent on other productive things simultaneously.

Oh well, I'm going to recline on my day bed, eat fresh fruit, paint my nails and try my darnedest to be guiltlessly indulgent. *sigh* c'est la vie

x

surreal

I haven't eaten since the park.

Coming on for 48 hours. The longest I've fasted. And again, sort of accidentally. It happens insipidly and easily. Once I realise I haven't eaten for a while I figure I may as well just keep going. And when the morning sickness that usually hits me after day one doesn't hit me, I figure I may as well just keep going.

I may as well just keep on going

The sickness is hitting me now. I can't stand up without fainting. I do love that feeling, but it has become beyond practical. My limbs move slowly, my head is fuzzy and kind of euphoric. My heart rate is down around 44. That's some serious bradycardia right there. I'm freezing. Painfully numbingly freezing. I can't feel my feet. The whole thing is rather nice. A slow and surreal state of dreaminess.


I'd like to just keep on going. And going. And melt away to nothing. But there's a binge in my mind that's creeping in at the edges. And a wisp of rational thought fighting with the forces of starve and binge that says "eat a healthy meal, your body is sad and hungry".

I am tense and poised. To starve? To eat? To binge?

I can't decide.

I really can't even move.

SHAME

Last night I threw up in a public park.

Let's rewind to how this whole mess started: I received a comment on my blog from Anise yesterday telling me to put down the cookbook. My jaw dropped. And I promptly closed my edition of "1001 Cupcakes, Cookies and Other Tempting Treats" and threw it across the room. I'm not kidding. How did she know? Anise, HOW DID YOU KNOW? And what the fuck am I doing having a book by that title? Pure insanity.

Anise, unfortunately, was too late. I was in fact perusing the book for a fourth recipe, having already baked THREE different batches of "tempting treats". I was staying with my parents and bonding with my mother over food. I had managed to avoid eating anything all day while I was baking except for vast numbers of carrots, cucumbers, celery and other phallic vegetables (OK, so I'm not saying a celery stick would make for a particularly awesome phallus, but the others maybe). So I was full and doing well but I KNEW the sugary baked comestibles would find their way in, and by evening time they did.

Then it was panic stations. Of course. I'd only had a few bits and pieces, maybe 500 calories worth, which was roughly my total calorie count for the whole day. Still, I couldn't possibly face the thought of those empty calories diving into my blood stream and I knew I had to puke. Which meant I had to eat MORE to make puking worthwhile. And which meant I had to LEAVE because I'm concerned my parents are maybe-slightly-possibly catching on to my vomiting (I mean, their daughter is wasting away before their eyes yet continues to visit to make and eat copious quantities of cake and pastry - what would YOU think?).

So I bundled up a box of goodies for my housemates (read: to eat in the car) and hurried out the door. On the way home I went via a Mcdonalds drive through to buy a mcflurry. I sat in the car park in the dark, mashed a cupcake into it then crammed it down with a few cookies. I probably had about 2000 calories in total, which isn't a disaster for me.

Then I started freaking out about how to throw up. I didn't really want to do it at home, because I'm worried my sister and housemates are probably cluing in along the same lines as my folks. I thought about the toilet in Mcdonalds, but worried they might expect me to buy something and I couldn't face the attention. I drove around for a bit and pulled over by a park. It was cold and dark with lots of trees and no other people. I wandered around until I find a nice big tree and I vomited in a huge neat pile beside it. Everything came up so neatly, easily, comfortably. The mcflurry was a calculated move to get ice cream amalgamated with my stomach contents, and it worked wonderfully. I washed my face and hands in a water fountain, then tottered back to my care in a dizzy haze.

Then it hit: shame


SHAME

My hands shaky on the wheel. My body limp, exhausted and aching from the effort of vomiting. Tears streaked down my face. The smell of it, caked inside my nostrils. The self-pity mingled with self loathing. On the brink of bursting into tears. I started fantasizing about the conversation I would have with the boy who likes me about how I can't be in a relationship because I have "issues" that I need to deal with in my life before I can really let anyone else in...

Then I had an epiphany: No. no no NO. That's not true at all. I don't want to be in a relationship with him because I don't LIKE him. The "issues" are just an excuse I'm using with myself to escape anything uncomfortable in my life. I don't ACTUALLY feel like bursting into tears. I feel sort of... proud. Relieved. Yes, my body is exhausted, but I was confusing physical feelings with emotional ones. My tear stained face was from throwing up, NOT crying. I was empty and clean now and on my way home. And some lucky dog would find istelf a delicious treat beside a tree in a park tomorrow!

I think the worst part of this disorder, and the most self-perpetuating part, is shame. And I think I only feel shame because it is what I think I SHOULD feel. Fuck it. Fuck shame. I knew what I was doing and I did it on purpose and it felt fucking great! I still know it isn't mentally or physically healthy, I still know I have to try and limit this behaviour, but it IS going to happen, and when it does I am going to resist the pressure to hate myself for it.

In other news, I was 52.4kg this morning. My goal of 52 by Wednesday then 50 by the 25th is looking imminently more achievable. Today I have to be careful. I don't think my body will let me throw up again. I think I may fast.

Be well, my lovlies,

FEEL NO SHAME

Pasco
x

let me eat cake...

Yesterday I fasted. I didn't go into the day intending to fast. But I skipped breakfast, then I was busy and lunchtime passed by, and thence forth it seemed logical not to eat anything at all seeing as I was on a roll.

I've only ever fasted one day at a time before. Usually when I wake up the following day I feel wretched and I need to eat to feel better. This morning though I woke up feeling light as air. Not plagued by the headache and nausea that usually accompany my post-fast mornings. I considered extending my fast and making it 2 days. Then I decided against it. Probably because I am weakling, but the rationale I tried to use with myself was that I really don't want to enter ketoacidosis and stuff my metabolism.

So it is late afternoon now and I've eaten about 350 calories today, in the form of fruit and chicken salad. By all accounts this should be pretty freaking BRILLIANT. But I don't feel brilliant. I feel uncomfortably full. Uncomfortably full yet far from satisfied. Now all I can think about is eating. I want to eat more. I want to bake an entire batch of cookies or cupcakes and eat the lot. And ice cream. And choc chip banana muffins. It is nightmarish and outrageous! I just want cake cake CAKE!

I'm trying, really trying, to take my mind off it.

Strange Flowers

Sooooo...

I was just pulling out of the supermarket car park this evening, having been to buy icecream to eat and throw up, when I heard a tap at my window. It was the guy from behind me at the checkout. I opened the door, expecting to be told my lights weren't working or something, and instead was handed a bunch of flowers - "here, these are for you". Me, bewildered: "ummmm, why?" Him, earnestly: "because I thought you were pretty and looked nice". I thanked him and he sped off in the opposite direction.

Crazy. I smiled and shook my head the whole way home
(Then ate the tub of icecream and threw up)

The odd thing is that I was given flowers by a complete stranger at the supermarket YESTERDAY too. A disheveled old man who worked collecting trolleys saw me deliberating over the flower stand. He told me to stop being so indecisive, grabbed a big bunch and marched to the counter with them, slapping down a 20. I refused, he insisted, and he told me if he could make one person happy that day it was all he could hope for.

It is the most bizarre and delightful coincidence. My house, which is finally becoming clean and ordered, is filled with beautiful flowers from kind strangers.




As for the ice cream... well, let's just not go there. I'm just not particularly strong, I guess. If I can manage to limit it to every few days it will be an improvement. And I can throw up so easily when I'm only doing it occasionally. My body is kind to me and supports me.

But enough of that, just happy thoughts and strange flowers

Pasco
x

4kg, 16days

I weighed 54kg this morning
To be 50 by the 25th I need to lose 4kg in 16 days
16 / 4 = 4
That's 1kg every 4 days

Can I do it?
Maybe
I think I will need to lose at least 2kg in the first week to have a chance. So I will weigh in exactly 1 week from now and see how I've done. Then I have a week and a half to lose the rest.

I'm counting down from 16 to 1. Today was 16. I did quite well. About 500 calories, a little light walking. Nothing incredible. Excellent for me, for now. And no purging, not once.
Yesterday was also good
Tomorrow will be better still



On the 25th I will be a vision

Belle of the Ball

The medical students' society's annual ball is on Friday 25th September. As a final year student I make it my duty to attend. As a social outcast I make it my duty to blow everyone away. It's a fairly cliched Cinderella fantasy - the ugly duckling emerging as a beautiful swan. OK, so I'm mingling my fairytales here, but you get the picture.

It is one of those rare occasions where I have an actual event, a public appearance, a proper reason to really strive for a goal.

So, the goal?

50kg

17days

Really I suppose it is 16 days, because I'm about to go to sleep. And I have no idea how much weight I need to lose to reach 50kg because I haven't weighed myself at all in days or properly in weeks. I'd guess anywhere between 53kg and 55kg. If I'm 55 my goal is pretty impossible. If I'm 53, doable. Thing is, I don't know if I'll even be able to bring myself to weigh in tomorrow morning. I've had awful scalephobia lately. I'm considering not weighing myself at all up until the 25th and just holding my breath and hoping like crap I've hit 50.

It's ridiculous! I'm ridiculous! OK, so I think I'd better just suck it up and check my weight in the morning. Then it'll be time to get serious. I've got a few good days behind me now. If I work my butt of I can do it.

I'm seeing my psych tomorrow, I suspect he would disapprove.

xx

Drunk on Fashion...

...and free fashion show champagne.

Actually the fashion was shit. The champagne was fabulous.

My mother, with whom I attended, proceeded to tell everyone who would listen that I didn't turn down a single canape, that I practically CHASED the canapes around the room. She then hugged me goodbye and told me I was too thin. In fact I turned down all but 3 canapes (which were all I ate today aside from about 5 glasses of champagne) and I'm too fat. Go figure. And go figure how I managed to develop such bad body image when I have such a supportive and unconditionally loving mother.

Having said that, I do love my mum, and we did have a good bitch together about all the models and how not-that-great they were. In Perth, all you have to do to be a model is be very tall and very thin, even if you are very ugly.

Am I just pissed because, despite my immensely privileged existence and medical education, all I really want is to be pretty, skinny, and a model? Yeah.



Lame, right?

PS: How hot is Lulu? Pretty damn hot!

...still feelin good

Breakthrough! Woke up this morning and the shine hasn't worn off yesterday.


Perhaps an opportune time to work a little more on operation: be less disgusting. If I feel this good in my state of filthy morning disgustingness then surely a shower and a bit of lippy will set me skyrocketing to the moon!

(Yep, definitely crack in the water supply)

I have a couple of days of bad eating to compensate for, so I'm pretty much starving myself for the next couple of days. Needless to say my brain will probably be pissed for the lack of glucose and throw me into bouts of depression again. If a were less retarded I'd probably make a correlation between eating food and feeling happy, but unfortunately this is not the case.

feelin good

Not sure why.

Still pretty fat, but not quite as fat as I thought. Phew!

For the last few days I've felt tiny pieces of myself coming back to me. Feeling REAL, which I haven't felt in years. I'm excited, if a little apprehensive. I know I'll most likely feel shit again soon. But if I keep getting these little bits of fleeting ME flying back momentarily here and there, maybe the jigsaw puzzle will all come together eventually. I can be patient.

It's so weird. It's not happiness. It's just not nothing. Like my eyes are opening and I can breathe and things are made of hope.

Or someone's tainting the water supply with crack.

Hey, I'll take whatever I can get!

"she hates everyone"

As I escaped the party those words trailed out the door behind me.

Sure, I hate everyone, but no one so much as I hate myself. My hostility clouds around me where ever I go. The people who see through it think they are special, or that they are somehow entitled to some part of me. It stifles me more than the cloud itself. I don't want to be confronted, I find it frightening. Leave me be. I'm not ready for the world yet.

I ate badly, but not too badly, and tomorrow is a new day.
Just me,
my cats,
and my cloud.

Operation: BE LESS DISGUSTING

Off to a flying start!

After many blogular insights from the delightful likes of Lulu, Flushed and my new favourite Anise, I have made large strides in trying to create momentum. I showered, scrubbed, shaved and moisturised every inch of my body from the neck down. Washed and blow dried my hair. Cut, buffed and candy-pink-polished my nails. Put on my most carefully applied face. Finished off with fresh clean underpants, pretty floral dress and a spritz of fragrance. I've performed every tiny act I can possibly think of to feel more pretty, and now I'm feeling fractionally more inspired DESPITE the mammoth number I saw on the scales this morning.


Tonight is scary chocolate fondue party and I have devised a plan that Lulu and I have already discussed. I'm going to fill up on vegetable material before leaving, and lots of caffeine for extra appetite suppression. I'm going to take the most expensive and prettily presented sparkling mineral water I can find. I will drink that instead of alcohol and it will make me feel sexy rather than deprived. I will stick to fruit-based dippables and avoid the act of actually dipping wherever possible. And I will base my social activity AWAY from the chocolate fountain. I may fail, but I have set myself in the best possible stead for success. Also, I will do my darndest not to throw up. I'm trying, TRYING, to change.

You know what? I feel pretty good. Pretty pretty. I'm going to walk to the shops now to peruse the water supply. I think my plan may be working.

xx

Obsessive Compulsive Anarchist

I am not your typical eating disorder sufferer.

Girls who develop eating disorders generally possess a fairly predictable set of personality traits - things like perfectionism, fastidiousness, obsessiveness and cleanliness. And might I add a spark of downright brilliance too!

I don't. I am a pig and a slob. Reading through everyone's blogs, you talk about how other people's mess disgusts you. My mess disgusts other people. I have been meaning for weeks to clean my room and I CAN NOT DO IT. The dishes are piled high in the sink and I know most of them are mine. The bin needs to go out. My house stinks. I stink. Every time I shower I just eat and throw up again. So why bother? I can't stand the sight of myself, I can't leave the house, so why bother washing my hair or getting dressed either? My skin is breaking out. I am developing a monobrow. My toenails are growing long and my nail polish is chipped and ugly. My head hurts. I am disgusting disgusting DISGUSTING.


I loathe it too. I long to be surrounded by bright, crisp beauty. Light, clean, fragrant airiness. I feel trapped under my oppressive filth. So why the hell am I so powerless to change? I can't for the life of me find the impetus to actually DO anything. Sometimes I feel as though a vein of all of those eating disorder personality traits runs through me. I'm a perfectionist. I'm obsessive. But almost so much so that I know I'll never reach my own standards of perfection so I don't try. Why bother if I can't do it right? I may as well just rot away in my own stench. My life is this ugly dichotomy of extreme chaos and extreme order. They are mutually exclusive for me. Half of my expansive wardrobe is immaculately colour coded, displayed on matching coat hangers. The other half is all over my floor in haphazard piles that give off vague putrid wafts of cat pee. My food is either a perfect rainbow of neatly chopped vegetables on crystal platters, or it is binged straight from the bag, often in the dark in my car.

I wish I could cut myself in half, keep only the good and purge the anarchy. Failing that, I think I would almost accept an amalgamation of both sides such that they evened out into a normal person. The chaos is killing me.

In other news my body is refusing to purge again and my ex took me out for brunch, which was pancakes, which meant secret muffins and icecream when I got home. Once your day is wrecked you may as well seriously fucking destroy it, right? So I have 2000 calories sitting in my stomach right now. And they won't come up. And a birthday dinner tonight. And a chocolate fondue party tomorrow night. And I'm just about ready to kill myself. I won't of course, but god I can't wait for it to be Saturday.

Love you all, please may you be doing better than me!
Pasco
xx