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.