Bring on May

I'm trying to pull things together. It's not easy, but I'm trying my damned best to stop being so hard on myself. It's time to reclaim my life and put myself back together. I've been watching Felicity, and dreaming about New York. Bash, her eyes filling with some sort of spark, tells me she's looking at apartments there. She got her first offer the other day. Somehow, it seems, her state of mind might be salvaged. She had a stressful year, down, in part, to the fact that she hated Boston, along with an accident that left her mother paralysed in January. But she's getting through. 

I weighed 155 this morning. An improvement. Yesterday I had about a pint of blood sucked out of me at the hospital, so in a week I'll find out if there's anything wrong with my thyroid. I'm half-hoping there is, and half-hoping there isn't. Another disorder would probably drain me completely, however I would be able to rest assured that there was some other explanation for my weight gain, depression and fatigue besides... well, my own head.

For now, I'm putting myself on a high-protein, low-carb diet. I don't want to eliminate carbs altogether, but 'white' carbs can definitely go, I'll be sticking to whole grains for the time being. And I'm going to start working out again, 15-20 minutes every day, because I've fallen out of my cardio workouts and conditioning and it feels terrible. I guess, in a nutshell, I'm going to start treating my body and my mind better than I have been doing. Eventually I want to cut out smoking altogether, but for now I might just limit it to social smoking, then when I feel ready I'll start on the nicotine patches/gum and find some other habit to satisfy my oral fixation (do they sell sugar free lollipops?) - either way, I'm getting healthy. May is going to be a month of health. And I'd like to say happiness, but that might be a bit far-fetched. I am working on my self-annihilation, though, because it doesn't help things at all. I realise through my recent blog posts I've been sounding more and more depressive. And while that's often my default, I should work harder to move away from the negative mindset. It does me no favours.

I've decided to take before and after photos this month, because I think it's time for me to stare my weight gain in its big ugly face, and get some motivation to do something about it. Hopefully these will be improved, after 4 weeks of working out, eating clean, and thinking more positively.

I know. My legs are so chunky, my stomach and hips are bloated, and my thigh gap is basically non-existent these days when I'm not in heels. My aim is to lose 10-15 lbs, and tone up by the 1st June. A big motivation is that I'll be flying back to LA - this time for 3 weeks - at the end of June, and straight after that I'm going to Portugal with my mum. So the real deal starts from the second I wake up tomorrow, no excuses this time.   

Sharks

Everything is shit. I'm 157 lbs, and there's no way I can get out of that one. I have to face the facts. Things at home are miserable. I'm happiest when I'm asleep or in bed, away from reality. I'm broke and it sucks because one of my best friends is back from the states and I couldn't even afford to get on a tube to meet her tonight, along with all my other friends who were welcoming her home. My mum finds any way to get at me about my current lack of employment. I've booked numerous waitressing shifts for next month, I'll be working my butt off but even then, the money I earn doing that won't be transferred to my card until June (and besides, I need it to go towards savings for uni, let alone my plans for this summer, so it won't be money to live off). I listen to songs I used to love and find inspiration from, but now all they do is make me cry. In fact, everything is making me cry at the moment. I cried after I finished dinner, not because I felt guilty about the food I'd eaten, but because I thought the empty plate and glass looked tragic, sitting there alone on the table, compared to the night I should have had.

I'd like to be 120 lbs. I'd like to be 140 even, anything but this. This is disgusting, obscene, wrong. I'm debating in my head whether or not to cut to a measured 600 calories a day, or take advantage of being fat and 'diet steadily' at a safe, controlled 1200. It probably doesn't matter what I plan anyway, because we all know my track record with sticking to things.

I want to be free. I want to be free of weight worries, calorie worries, health worries, money worries, friendship worries, life worries in general. Having Kit here was lovely, but in other ways, it depressed me to no end, because she has everything I envy. She's in a long-term relationship with a man who loves her to pieces, and they're moving into a beautiful seaside cottage together this Autumn while she attends art college. Even though she's only 19 like me, she's going to be living in this perfect blissful idyll with someone who adores her for the next three years, and after that she'll be off travelling, doing what she loves best, and being free. Her family all get on, and they rarely have arguments - unlike my own family, who started tearing each other apart before I was born. She lives in the country, where the kids are free to explore as they please. She even has her own art studio that she can escape to if things get too stressful, along with all the land they own out there. And it's not just her wealth and personal relationship I envy - I haven't mentioned that she's also incredibly beautiful, toned, and slim, and hasn't once watched her weight, having been a dedicated swimmer for the past six years. I'm not saying she's perfectly happy. Of course not. She has plenty of anxieties of her own, as does any young person trying to find their footing in the world. But she's cushioned, and she always will be. I was thrown off the cushion and in to the deep end so long ago I can't even remember what it felt like to be on the cushion. Ironically, being pushed in with the sharks didn't make me any freer. It just made me more depressed because I realised what my life, as me, embodied, and probably would continue to embody as I grew older.

Who knows. This is just a meaningless rant, one of many. All I know is that I cannot be 157 anymore. Cannot and will not. This time last year I weighed 141 lbs. If it takes my last energy to get back there by the end of May, so be it.

Farewell to the fairground

That feeling where you can't control your own body, your weight, or what it's doing in general, is probably one of the scariest feelings a person who has suffered with an eating disorder can experience. I've had that feeling for weeks now, and it's one of the major reasons I haven't posted since I got back from holiday. The direction my weight goes in is so at odds with the way I eat that I've begun to suspect I might have developed some kind of underactive-thyroid problem. I go over 1,200 calories and suddenly I'm a kilo heavier, regardless of the fact that those 1,200 calories have undoubtedly been healthy ones, regardless of the fact that I will have worked out for 45 minutes at the gym and done a further 15 minutes of conditioning at home.

I'm still bouncing around the 152-154 mark on the scales. I hate it. It makes me sick that last summer I could eat double the amount I'm eating now, and maintain weights as low as 137. It makes me regretful that I deemed that weight "fat" at the time. And it makes me confused as to how I ended up here, at a number I once thought I would never, ever see again.

More than anything, it makes me want to starve again.

And starve I will, if that's what it takes. This time I'm armed with multiple sachets of cup-a-soup, fruit tea, fat-free cheese, and truckloads of olives, because they're small and manageable and delicious and CHEAP.

The good thing is the weather's looking up, so no more stuffing my face purely because it's cold. The annual funfair's been set up on our local common, and Kit, an old friend, is coming down to London to stay the night. Tomorrow will be spent at the fair, and tomorrow night will involve wine, and possibly a movie. I've missed her so much, and I'm praying I won't have to eat majorly while she stays with me. Her company will be enough.

Lastly, I've realised I don't want Alfie in my life anymore. He's been super insensitive about stuff lately, and messed with my head big time. I had an emotionally abusive relationship with my father for years, and I am not going to let history repeat itself by making myself vulnerable to another man intent on toying with my emotions. That's the long and short of it. Maybe I'll elaborate later. For now I'm feeling pretty beaten up about it.