I cry and cry because I'm so lonely. I'm sick of crying at the slightest thing. Is it better to feel or not to feel? You know what I'm getting at. Should I let myself slip back into this sick world in order to numb myself, make myself oblivious to everything? It's weird because when you're starving you think you feel everything violently, but you go back to normal for a while and realize you weren't feeling anything at all... not really...

I can't pretend I decide to go in or out of health. It happens before I know it. I'm wavering without realizing. The more I actually think about it, the more I realize that this notion I've gotten on, the idea that I'm actually better, is a load of bullshit. Do I get hungry, want to eat, but can't? Do I walk around campus gazing longingly at all the restaurants telling myself it's OKAY to eat, I promise you're ALLOWED to do it, and I finish out the day hungry and exhausted? Do I open the fridge with intentions of eating but I'm too scared to touch anything? Am I terrified of certain foods, do I think they're dirty, impure, evil, dangerous? Do I find myself drawn to the grocery store, only to pace around forever, leaving with nothing but a diet coke and some random item? Do I groan in public, my head in my hands, grabbing at my hair, overwhelmed with anxiety any time I try and spend any amount of money because it feels so horribly like binging? I do, I do, I do.

Do I eat normally sometimes?
I do.

Do I overeat sometimes?
I do.

Do I binge?
I'm beginning to. But it's more like "Oh my god I can't believe I just ate a can of soup AND A PEACH AND A GRANOLA BAR!" which is... considerably less than my binge-mode binges but still unacceptable.

And is this unacceptable?
Maybe that's what a normal meal looks like!?
How the fuck am I supposed to know!?
Whoever fucking taught me what normal was!?

Am I eating normally?
Am I getting better?
Why should it matter?
Maybe my eating habits are getting more normal. Maybe they were normal for a little while just after I moved and then they slipped back into abnormality... I don't know. But I don't live completely immersed in this disorder any longer, which may be perceived as a good thing... but in its place, other things have manifested themselves to make me miserable. Recklessness, irresponsibility, the affinity for sleeping 16 hours a day just so I don't have to deal with people... violent perpetual tears... anxiety that keeps me up until ungodly hours of the morning... the tendency to isolate, to stay in my room all day. Today I built a sheet fort in my closet to keep things dark, so I can isolate even more. Awful social anxiety. Loneliness that's even worse. A desire to cut that I talk myself out of nightly. No desire to go to school. Only to stay cozy and safe in the small world I have created for myself in my bedroom. No friends. No identity. No life. I can deal with all of this, I know, just get out more, be more outgoing... but the fucking PHYSICAL anxiety I can't do ANYTHING about. It's so much easier to push all of my anxiety towards eating, so it's a filter, so it'll be the only think I ever get anxious about, on the surface at least. And that's considerably EASY to deal with. No food? No anxiety. Just don't eat.

...and the vicious cycle begins again.
This is almost funny.

Boooo

Sorry for lack of posting; I've been adjusting to college and whatnot. I had long assumed that the stark life transition would send me spiraling back into scary (yet warmly welcomed) disordered eating habits but much to my surprise I've been eating... norrrrrmaalllyyyyyy? D : In fact, more normally than I ever imagined I'd be able to. Ever. Three nutritious meals a day with the occasional banana thrown in as a snack. No binging, no late night snacking. I eat when I'm hungry--and only when I'm really, REALLY hungry. My usually-futile attempts to dive into veganism have, this time, been successful. That makes me suspicious. I haven't been working out and of course I have an excuse, only this time it's sort of a good one. I grossly underestimated how much I'd actually be walking--to the bus stop (I'd guess it at about a mile, uphill), from building to building (it's a huge campus)(uphill), then all the walking trying to catch trains/buses... I underestimated the number of staircases in this city (oh my god it's a lot) and severely underestimated how many miles I'd pack in just solely from getting lost nearly every time I try to veer even slightly off of my normal routine. I am, however, planning on using the workout room in the apartments because walking so much with my bookbag weighing me down is hurting my back so bad, so I want to do some things to strengthen/stretch my back/shoulders/arms. And a little more cardio never hurt anyone! Well, that's debatable. Anyway. I have no scale. I do plan on buying one.

This lifestyle seems like it could work well for me.

So why does it feel so awful awful awful? Part of me does love the idea of filling my belly up with beans and veggies after a ridiculously long day, but part of me still cherishes my late nights spent with a rumbling stomach and endless diet sodas and misses the intense feeling of euphoria that comes from studying hungry. I feel like I should fight this off, but... it hasn't gone away. I wish I could tell you that I feel like I'm getting better, because lately I've been viewing health as a projection, it's so close, but... it's just a vision. That awful voice is still there, reminding me oh, you're not supposed to do that. Don't let yourself have what you want, that isn't right, it's selfish. Be austere and inconsequential, fade into nothing and thus transcend everything.

Oh what to do, what to do. I only want two things, and they're polar opposites.
I seem to be drifting towards both at the same time.

Broke college student? Oh, yes.

I'm at the point where I officially can't afford to eat.
Let's celebrate with a nice cold glass of water.

Today was my first day at university. Alone in a big and unfamiliar city, anxiety anxiety anxiety, the compulsion to starve comes in right on cue. Don't worry how afraid you are about life, just worry about how afraid you are of food.

I decided I'll liquid fast Tuesdays and Thursdays.

You can start eating again but body dysmorphia never goes away, does it? I will never know what I really look like.

I foolishly decided that I could get better by simply going through the motions of normality. But that was dumb. I can't do it.

Part of me wants to be skinny, part of me wants to starve myself to death and part of me is a feminist who thinks it would be a meaningful and powerful social statement to be fat and to give no care to my appearance. We live in a society where a woman's appearance is esteemed so highly over her mind or her good works that many (if not most) women have become shells of human beings, so concerned with exuding femininity in all aspects of their lives rather that they concern their minds with little else. So these minds dwindle, leaving us vulnerable to those who scoff at the "feeble minds" of women. And of course our minds aren't feeble, and certainly we could be just as capable as anyone of exuding mental strength, that is, if we didn't allow our minds to dwindle. If we didn't spend more money on blow dryers than we do on books. If we didn't spend more time observing the flaws on our bodies than we do observing the flaws in the world and working on solutions. But I'm not silly enough to believe that my or anyone else's eating disorder is caused solely by misogyny or magazines; in fact I know very much from experience that they are as shallow as they are emotional, mathematical, metaphorical, intellectual, psychological, practical, spiritual, magical. They are a means to sift a life of a million different endlessly confusing and dangerous possibilities, grinding the particles until they eventually sift into piles of "FAT" and "NOT FAT" and then eventually (hopefully) into one homogeneous pile of specks labelled "THIN." Eating disorders can make sense to healthy people if only you explain their practical purposes. They make you the master of your universe, because they make your universe the size of your body, the size of a calorie, the size of a craving overcome. It's a very easy universe to control (considering its small size and considerably simplicity), and when you control it, you essentially feel god-like. They can call it euphoria, but it's something much more than that. But this deeper and frankly much more respectable aspect of the eating disorder is masked under a sea of doctors and talk show hosts who believe we are a slew of mindless teenage girls who flip through fashion magazines and seek to emulate airbrushed models because we have no minds to think for ourselves. Well, to put this frankly, FUCK society. Fuck being fat or skinny, fuck being healthy or anorexic. Be whatever you are naturally drawn to but be so for a good reason, be so because you are naturally that way, or be so because you have realized that your size, whether very small or very large, can be the biggest political and social statement you make in your whole life.

In an unrelated but more personal update, after three days of being out of town and eating way too good/way too caloric food, my body no longer desires food. In fact, I'm pretty sure that yesterday I ate the single most delicious thing I will ever have the opportunity of tasting, so all other food seems highly unappetizing. Better yet, I'm going to be out all day going college-shopping so eating will not be an issue and I can live off of ice water and be happy and too excited to eat... I'm so goddamn tired right now. Ooh, and I got out of that trip to NJ so that's like, what, four days with no parents making me eat and I'll be alone at home with my brother sooooo there won't even be any edible food in the house. I found the apartment I'll be living in and I have a long commute to school which involves a bus, train and a bit of a long walk too, so me = optimistic that while I really fucked up this summer in terms of losing weight, at least I know I'll almost definitely lose a ton at school. I'm so tired. I need to stop on here. Goodnight lovelies.