I'm reading a book called 'Biting Anorexia'. It's written by a girl from Sydney called Lucy that she wrote during her battle with anorexia and recovery. It's different because it was written during the process. That makes for quite a disordered read, but a much more honest one.
Sometimes I feel like screaming out that I need help, that I'm so crazy sad and messed up and out of control in my head, that I once tried to throw up and I binge so badly and how ashamed that makes me, and what if I'm bulimic? That sometimes I wish so fiercely to be thin, to have hollow bones and wide, protruding eyes and thin skin that I think I'd do anything for it?
Those desires do exist within me. And maybe once in a while they are about hating myself, but not like the girl in this book did, the way people with real, serious eating disorders do. I know I don't feel like that, I don't relate to it, for which I'm incredibly grateful. I don't want to disappear, I think I deserve to be here and be happy and I sing out loud every day, loud and unashamed and get wildly happy over hot sun on my skin and how loud and long did I laugh last night at basketball when my teammate went so hard for the ball that he crash landed so hilariously?
I've never had any dealings with depression. I've never had any kind of apathy that makes me simultaneously sad and dead inside. I have insecurity and sometimes that translates into negative feelings about my body, but I think my body takes a lot of the blame for things that aren't it's fault.
And I love my body sometimes. I always have. I used to love it more, that's all.
Right now I am at my lowest point in regards to how I see my body. It's rational to the extent that I am the biggest I've ever been, but I don't want to use 'rational' when I talk about hating my body.
I'm going to take serious steps towards feeling better about myself physically.
I don't think I'm going to document too much here. I get obsessed too easily and it's scary. I don't want to be the person obsessed with calories, guilty over eating an apple, ashamed over going a day without exercise. I don't want to get into a bulimic mindset because while I don't want to go there, part of me thinks, just a little, think what we could accomplish if I could get you that dedicated?
That's the worst bit. That fear that I could let that part win and I could end up so fucked up and struggling so badly and being so unhappy. Like Harry with the Horcrux in his scar, having something scary inside of you and not knowing if it is some malformation, some evil add on, or if that's truly you, deep down under and if you listen to it, you can uncover who you really are.
And it's so intensely personal and lonely, this struggle is. It's just me, dealing with the bad things in my head and that's hard. Weight and kilos and calories are just numbers that try to define it, to make it physical and tangible but it's just a cover.
So yes, I am trying to lose weight again.
Rationalising again, only I can't tell what's good logic and what's bad. Mum wants me slim so boys will want me, so I'm the best I can be, so I don't miss out on opportunity. Sometimes I see it as tough love, sometimes it makes me want to scream. She was the first person to tell me I needed to lose a few kilos, the first person who kickstarted me making a weight loss plan, who made me aware--
I want to feel good about my body, to slid my hands down my stomach and feel it flat, to the gap that used to be between my hip bone and my pajama shorts, to not see all the rolls when I get out of bed, for my jeans to fit properly again (and not my skinny jeans either- my normal ones).
I want all these abstract things so much. I want to skinny dip in the dark with someone, I want to kiss boys and girls and I want to be naked and be drunk and spin and laugh and be happy and confident. I want beautiful boys to chase me and touch them all over and wrap my legs around a pretty girl and kiss her in the ocean at 3am, my hands cupping her face and laughing against her skin.
It's not sexual, it's emotional. I want to bush walk alone up mountains and scream down the trees, in joy, in anger, in pure out-of-control adrenaline. I want to fly down the track with my hair whipping behind me, my legs pumping faster than the rest of me can keep up.
I want to really live, fast and hard and out there and emotionally.
I want more moments of ecstasy to balance out the tedium. I'm hoping living overseas is going to do that for me, but terrified it won't. And I am scared what I look like, what I feel like, how many kilograms I weigh will be the reason.
It's not half as important as I think it is, but then perhaps it is. Even if it's in my mind... if I go out with only a quarter the confidence, because I can't think about anything but how awful I feel in my dress, if I can't be myself because how could this girl I'm talking to be thinking of anything but how fat I am, if the boy is only kissing me cause I'm big and that must mean I'm easy...
I could go on forever.
I add more 'rational', only how much is just for the sake of agreeing with the disordered thinking...
I want to be fit, I want to be able to run around Exeter and join sports teams and be taken seriously and it's true, I would have more friends if I was skinny, and more boys would like me, it's just simple fact because so many more would talk to me, would consider it if I was normal weight, if I wasn't automatically in a special category called 'overweight'.
It leaves me mentally gasping, how vitally important being thin is, and fury at myself, for always forgetting, for letting it slip, for choosing to screw myself later.
I do this to feel good about myself but honestly, I don't either way. When I'm not losing weight, I feel helpless, out of control and ashamed, when I am losing weight badly, I bury my head in the sand, feelings of panic threatening to overwhelm... It's only when I am losing weight well that I breathe easier, and even then, it's only until it becomes my latest addiction, that I worry, not only about losing motivation, but deep in the back of my mind, about sinking deeper and losing myself.
That's why it always has to come back to me, away from weight loss. Like I said, it's never about my body, not really. That's not what self hate is. I don't really see my body. Out of everyone I know, I really see it the least. I see my hands and my fringe and if I look down I get a bit of an impression of my tits and my stomach and my feet but the rest? It's a moving impression in car doors, in shop windows, in security footage in petrol stations and it's done out of the corner of my eye, because I'm desperate to know but also terrified of what I'll see.
So as well as trying on moderation for size, I'm going to work on self love this next fifteen weeks before I leave.
I think that's really important.
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