June 4th 2013

This time last year I was sick, but now I can say I am a lot better. I haven't posted lately because I have been focused on recovery, friendships, relationships, workouts and eating. I hate to use the word diet...because a diet is what I was on...now I just eat. I still think about anorexia. It's like an old friend that stabs you in the back. You believe it's faithful, making you better; stronger. It's slowly killing you. But you miss it. You miss the dysfunctional relationship you've had with it. The mirrors and cigarettes and fasted 10 mile run. You miss eating whatever you want because you'll throw it up later. You miss doing whatever you want; unsafe sex and wild parties and getting high because you may die from a heart attack. You miss not caring. But now you have life. You have health. You have sanity. You have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in your right hand and a glass for 2% milk y in the other.

November 29th

I ate as usual today, following my rigid diet that I claim is for bodybuilding, however I believe it is partly for bodybuilding and partly eating disordered. I am hungry now, but I don't want to eat. I'm not anxious about it, I just don't want to. I have thought about purging when I downed 6 candy bars and chips. I only exercised and returned to my "normal" diet.
A few weeks ago I slept over my grandparents house and binged off of an entire half gallon of icecream within 12 hours. I didn't puke, I didn't starve to compensate, however I did exercise compulsively and dieted until my diet felt as if I'd been on it for years. I was ashamed of my binge and refused to see family on thanksgiving, family parties, and dinners. Shame is a very powerful emotion; it isolates you from everything and everyone.
Sometimes I am too ashamed to write this, to admit my binges.

November 10th

Lately I have been isolating myself. When I am surrounded by a group of people I feel alone, different and when I am alone I feel safe. When alone I begin to wonder why I'm alone, why noone reaches out to me, a contradiction between safety and insecurity. I push people away, run from lovers but wonder why I'm alone.  Sometimes I run away to see who will follow and when noone does I believe I'd be better off dead. How dramatic. Without the drama I'd be bored, I'd be dull. I live such a boring life, all alone, in solitude that I need drama. I create my own drama. I pity myself and sulk and complain, "Why me."

Eating disordered people love attention; they crave it. We hookup with strangers for attention, because we want attention to feel secure and because we want to feel good enough. We want to feel wanted. Maybe if we're being fucked, fingers running down the bear boney back we'll be wanted. We don't want to be alone, but yet we isolate ourselves because of fear. Fear of rejection and fear of feeling like an outcast; the reasons why we isolate ourselves in the first place. We hate ourselves for that; why aren't we normal? We trade in all of our pain, insecurity, self loathe, shame, confusion for puking, starving, needles and cigarettes thinking it may teach us to not feel or need. It does though; eating disorders are all about needing, like reassurance and love we need food...or we die.

Eating disorders are simply a way to cope with the dull and painful and lonely parts of life. We create drama to think about something other than other feelings; how fucking pathetic and alone we really are. We need to cope with hating ourselves and feeling worthless. We do; we call ourselves fat and diet down to 300 calories a day until we're in the pantry gorging down everything from candy bars to cereal and ice-cream. We magically appear over a toilet with a glass of water, sink running, shower running, fan on - our procedures for when we are about to vomit up everything we binged off of. We stare into the mirror, bloodshot eyes "fat, fat, fat, you're fat and disgust and pathetic. I hate you," we tell ourselves. We cry because we cannot comprehend hating ourselves. We should be the one loving ourselves unconditionally because nobody in this world will ever love us. We know this and without self-love we have nobody, nothing except a diminishing waistline, uncontrollable heartbeat, and an empty soul.

November 7th

Madness is defined as the state of being mentally ill, esp. severely and extremely foolish behavior. Madness is waking crying, pulling out your hair, throwing a fresh bowl of pasta in garbage because your workout that night wasn't good enough. Madness is skipping school, smoking cigarette after cigarette trying to decide if you want to be recovered, if you want to be well.

Madness is leaving everyone; detaching yourself from society because you're not good enough. You see whispering and think it's about you; you hear voices of insecurity in your head about who you are, how you look. You are mad. You miss dangerously fast pounding of your heart, waiting to explode out of your chest.  Hating yourself, in a way is madness. How can you of all people hate yourself? You do not understand this.

You yell at the mirror, throwing something at it breaking it, "You're pathetic and ugly and gross. Nobody likes you. Faggot. God hates faggots." You cry. The glass falls out of the mirror, you don't have to see yourself now; seven years of bad luck, but it doesn't matter because when you've been this low you do not need luck, nor have you ever had it. This is madness.

Now, an hour later you go to the kitchen, anxious as hell, fill a bowl of something - any food. You take small bites. You hate it but you need to eat - you're a bodybuilder. Bodybuilding for me is a way to recover; it forces me to eat, trading the obsession of thinness for muscle. I need to eat now.  

November 1st

I haven't posted lately..partly because I am doing a lot better. Working out, eating a lot, enjoying life, friends, and family. Today, however, was different. It has been a few months since I've starved, purged, and exercised compulsively. Today I ate 2 apples, some chicken, and wheat pasta with olive oil and veggies (all under or around 1,000 calories). I go to the gym, high off of a preworkout drink, twitching, I run for 9 minutes. Stop. Too tired. I fail. I cry. I leave gym. Buy cigarettes, smoke cigarettes, binge off of 20 candy bars, puke, cry.

I live in a world of sadness and pain and hate and confusion. I provide myself with my own little drama called an eating disorder so I don't have to face reality. I don't have to face confrontation, hatred, and pain. I don't have to deal with criticisms of highschool snobs for my shoes not matching my shirt, and my hair too thick, too thin,, too short, too long. An eating disorder provides me with a way to cope with life; people with eating disorders can't cope or, in my extreme opinion, handle life.

I am working very hard on trying to focus on my feelings and let myself feel emotional pain. An eating disorder is a coping mechanism. It's a way to forget reality. We are deep thinkers - that's why we are eating disordered - we aren't in denial - we don't want to think - we want to forget. We are afraid of everything. We are afraid of living and loving and being happy and being judged and being hated and maybe even being loved. We cheat, lie, run, binge, purge, snort. We are not happy. 

October 13th

My eating disorder turned my life around; it changed me in every way. I feel like free. There's a certain freedom in knowing you could die after taking diet pill after diet pill until you're in the emergency room, dehydrated, with IVs hooked up to you and nurses running around as you sit there smiling - nibbling on a bag of pretzels that you'll throw up as soon as poison control let's you leave. You smile because you're getting exactly what you want. You get everyone around your hospital bedside crying over you. You're special. There's freedom in knowing you could die from organ failure and heart failure. It becomes exciting. Your life becomes unpredictable - which is a contradiction because you are a perfectionist; everything needs to be in order, on time. You think in all-or-nothing terms. You are either starving, organized and structured or you fall off binging, purging, snorting cocaine, running from guy to guy leaving their bed before they wake. You can't sustain perfection so you lose control. That to us is freedom - for a short time - until anxiety makes us go back. We are anxious people. That could be why we have an eating disorder; anxiety could drive us to starve our bodies. Anxiety could makes us ill.

We never fully recover. The anxiety never leaves. We take a bit of a burger on a bun, scoop up some mashed potatoes soaked in butter - take a bite. Chew. Swallow. That for us is success. We finish it all. We do not purge or exercise compulsively or take 30 laxatives and 10 diet pills. We however are not recovered. People look at us, they smile, we walk away - we cry. It's so hard to bring that burger to the mouth. It's harder to chew. It's even harder to shallow. For some it might be even harder to not purge. But we consumed the food and it stays down. We feel out of control, anxious, imperfect. We have lost. We cry ourselves to sleep holding on to the waist; a size 0, hoping our hips don't grow, hoping the ass doesn't expand and the stomach doesn't blow up like a balloon. Impossible is what rationality tells us; however the disorder, our mental illness that we do not recover fully from tells us we are worthless, we lose, we are imperfect. We believe it so we isolate ourselves. This is not recovery. There is no recovery. 

October 11th

How can something so innocent become an addiction. How can being ashamed of yourself turn into fucking hating yourself so much. When you hate yourself so much, when you're so lonely the human mind can not comprehend this. You do not understand how you can have everything and yet something is missing. At 18 you can't analyze this; it's too hard. You begin to innocently cut calories to lose weight, because maybe something superficial can give you what you need. That, however, is only in the short term. Cutting calories turns into starving the body. The starving turns into puking, drugs, cigarettes, sex, cheating, lying. It's a way to cope with being gay, being imperfect, hating your flaws. You do not understand. Being lonely is an awful feeling. If you don't understand - how can anyone else? You begin to get close to someone because you are lonely. It's unbearable. You need to fill the void. Maybe that's what will help you recover. Maybe a piece of you doesn't want to recover though; however if you don't, you die. Maybe that's what we want somedays, most days it's not. You getting close to someone doesn't make you feel any less lonely; it in fact makes you more lonely because not being understood by someone that should understand is worse than not being understood and being alone. So we fuck, we leave, we don't call back. We feel nobody understands. We get into relationships for support, reassurance, affection, attention, love; however we cheat because we don't get the reassurance we are looking for. Our views on relationships are fucked up, we are mentally sick. Without this reassurance we are looking for and cannot find, we become lonelier. We cheat, we fuck, we cry, we purge, we leave. We blame then punish ourselves. We want to feel pain because we deserve it.

We smoke a cigarette, go to sleep, wake up, run, eat two eggs, drink a glass of milk, puke, pop 12 diet pills. You forget what normal is. You begin to go insane. People take sanity for granted. Sometimes the crazy person isn't the old woman walking down the street with a shopping cart filled with cans in a plastic garbage bag; it's a boy walking, wearing fur boots on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette waiting until the street is empty so he can go behind a tree a throw up his lunch.

Keeping this a secret makes us lonelier. We hate keeping secrets.. we want to tell, but telling would get us in the hospital. It would be admitting there's a problem - and in the beginning when it's innocent there is no problem - it's good. People look at us and smile because we've lost weight (weight we didn't need to lose - but society is so fucked up that when someone who's already underweight loses more weight, we congratulate them.) After awhile we become sick; 68 pounds and 5 foot 11. People look a way. We become skeletons. We are lonelier than before. Telling isn't an option - at least not right away.