if it hadn't been for Cotton Eyed Joe.

"Digging to the rhythm and the echo of a solitary siren, one that pushes me along and leaves me so desperate and ravenous. I'm weak and powerless."

With the safety net pulled out from beneath my feet I find myself medically managing all the orthopaedic patients. And it is so scary. These past few days I've been running on nothing at all. I don't know how I keep going. I've made a few silly mistakes as well. Today I was so hungry and nauseated and dizzy and deluded I had to ask a friend to come bail me out for an hour while I drank hot tea. I'm effectively breaking a 24 hour coffee and tea fast with a small meal each day.

Thinking of Mark makes me sick. I don't want to see him or speak to him. But I feel even more sick if I don't see him or speak to him because I don't know how to manage my patients' infections without him. And that thought scares me more than I dare to admit. So I call him every ten minutes until he answers his phone, and I run after him on the wards. 

Tell me what to do Mark. I don't know if this man will live without your advice. I know I'm asking dumb questions, I know I'm pissing you off, I know you want my bosses to do things that I can't get them to do. I'm only a little junior doctor and I'm doing my best, even if you don't think it's enough. I'm doing all I can. Tell me off as much as you want, if you've had a bad day, take it all out on me. Take it out on me, let it all out. All the bad things my bosses have done to you, all the unreasonable demands that they make, all the annoying patients, all the other doctors, all of us that won't leave you alone. Say what you like to me, but don't make my patients pay for my incompetences when you can cover the holes I'm leaving. 

So I say sorry over and over again, apologising for mistakes that aren't even mine. And I say thank you, over and over, and I tell him how unfair it is for him, how difficult it must be for him, and how much I appreciate him. And I eventually get what I need. Bloody long phone calls for the one sentence answer that I need. 

I'm stretched so thin. So thin. When people don't answer your calls for help, what do you do? How much longer can I battle on myself? 

But I get it done. I don't care. I don't care who I have to call, I spend all day ringing if I have to. At the end of the day, my patients are prepped for theatre, they're stable after theatre, they're discharged with a solid plan. I might be dying, but they're not. I'm so tired. I can't sleep at night. 

If it wasn't for Joe I'd be crying in the cupboards by now. He might call me every ten minutes with new jobs, he might pull me with him to see patients, but it's only because he trusts me. He's the first person in 3 months to acknowledge how hard I'm working. It makes me want to curl up cry on his shoulder because until he pointed it out, I hadn't realised how much I'd done. Until he said thank you, I didn't realise I was doing anything worthy of thanks. Such a small gesture, but it's made everything feel justified. 

If this isn't trial by fire, I don't know what is. 

well fuck. this. shit.

"A little dream of mine, a little nightmare of yours to be us to take this plunge to forgive and forget. And be a better man, and be a better man, and be a better man."

Well, fuck. Guess who has a girlfriend? 

Well, no, it's not the blonde girl, even though I still feel nauseated seeing him with any other female. So in that sense she is perfect motivation. I've been fasting for 30 hours now, more than I've fasted in about 9 months or so. And I still don't want to eat but I know I have to. Tomorrow is going to be a shit day and if I don't eat now there is a real chance I'll pass out on the ward and that's just no good at all. 

Fuck. This. Shit. 

But I am somewhat relieved that I didn't make a move before finding this out. And I owe this knowledge to the network of gay guy friends I have who know everything about everyone and can find out anything within a day if need be. I told my gay best friend about Mark and he immediately went stalking with his boyfriend the night before last, and today, another gay guy told me that he had been out having dinner with his boyfriend when he'd seen Mark at the same place with his girlfriend. 

It must be magical to live in the gay world. It certainly sounds damned enchanted. I'm lucky to have an "in" I guess, not that this was the news I wanted. Well fuck. 

This sucks. Now I get to see Mark on a daily basis, but fate is a bitch and I'm now going to have to see him and know that I can't have him. I might be a lot of bad things but I am no home wrecker so I will have to suck it in and get on with life. 

On an upside, I'm loving orthopaedics on several levels. Firstly, THESE ARE SO MY KIND OF PEOPLE!!!! Christ, I'm loving it. Everyone is so nice to everyone else, and they all have the same sense of humour as me and we joke around and have coffee and they actually care about me and what I'm into outside of work. Yes, it is a boys club, that is traditionally the environment I flourish in. 

Secondly, I'm usually by myself. I don't have a team that chase me up around meal times, but they do buy me lots of coffee. I haven't had lunch with the team once. Today I got a sandwich to make it look like I was eating, but since my team weren't there, I just walked straight out of the canteen and threw it in the bin. I did consider eating it for a second but immediately knew that the knowledge of having fasted 30 hours would be more satisfying. 

I don't feel any lighter, after 3 days of restricting, I can't have lost any weight, but the feeling of being empty, and knowing that I had enough self control to fast makes me feel accomplished. 

If I keep this up, surely, surely I will lose weight. And if I keep seeing Mark everyday, knowing he's taken, will make me want to vomit everything. 

I know the pieces fit.

"Pure intention juxtaposed will set two lovers souls in motion. Disintegrating as it goes, testing our communication. "

Fuckity fuck fuck. I know the pieces fit, I just know it. Sammy baby and Miss Burton, fueled by your opinions, I thought I might try to make a move on Mark. I'm not exactly smooth, but hey, I thought I'd give it a go. So it is only when we try that we find the problems we would have never seen. Mark is always with his boss. ALWAYS. He's never alone. And I cannot bring myself to keep smiling at him in the middle of a busy orthopaedic ward while he stands with his boss, smiling back at me. 

You girls are probably a whole lot smoother than me...but I seriously cannot think of how I can do anything when he's always with his boss. Also, now, he's got a beautiful blonde tailing him everywhere. I think she's a student, but damn, she's beautiful. I'm not a lesbian, but I would so consider going gay for her. That's how pretty she is. And wow, I have never stayed so far away from him. 

Stayed so far away. I just don't know. But on that note, she's working wonders for my motivation. I ate one piece of white fish for lunch. And that's all I've had all day. I cannot bring myself to eat, not when I think of that gorgeous blonde with Mark. It honestly makes me want to vomit. Dammit. This is one of those times when I wish I could binge and purge. Binge and purge. But I can't. I'm really more of a restricting person. I'm so glad that I've barely eaten today. I really don't want to eat anything. God, when I think of that girl, part of me just wants to die. 

But part of me is so happy with my intake today, I'm thinking it was 250cal max. So good! The best intake I've had in ages really. Come on weight, time for you to fuck off. I swear, if I keep seeing Mark with that girl, I will never eat again. 

it's all in the eyes

"Some days I don't know if I am wrong or right...you mind is playing tricks on you, my dear. 'Cause when the truth may vary this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore." 

Someone once told me that you can always see the truth in someone's eyes. Okay, so everyone tells me that. Lovestruck friends, hate-filled friends, old ladies giving me advice and even my mother. And I very firmly believe in this. This is why I wear glasses all the time. Having a thick set of frames and glass between my eyes and the world makes me feel like I can somehow hide myself from it. 

Maybe I'm just being hopeful, or losing myself in flights of fancy, in fact, I'm 99% sure I am, but that little one percent in me thinks that Mark might be a bit into me. Truth is, I haven't seen him for weeks now. Our paths just didn't coincide, I didn't have any really complex patients to call him about. But our teams collided in the ward when our bosses stopped to chat to each other. 

By the time I spotted him, he was already looking at me and smiling. We didn't speak but oh my goodness we didn't break eye contact once. I just couldn't do it, couldn't stop myself looking at him. We were on the same ward for a while and so I went about doing my jobs, and each time I looked for him, he was already looking at me. As our bosses talked, we did this weird thing of moving throughout the ward, doing different things but somehow always looking at each other the whole time. 

I don't know how he felt about it all, but I am sure he was looking at me, I am sure he was interacting with me on some level and I am sure he definitely knows who I am. That time was so different to all the other times. It felt different, but I'm not exactly sure how. There have been times when I've seen him and wanted him to leap on me, rip my clothes off and just do me right there and then. This wasn't exactly that, but it was so INTENSE! 

Maybe I should stop dreaming and just hold onto what is constant. And try to get what I know I can get (which is losing weight) instead of using my energy for what I can't get, Mark. 

20kgs....for real???

"And I want to have faith to put away the dagger. But you lie, cheat and steal. And yet I tolerate you?"

Tonight is one of those hot summer nights where I'm lying in bed, sticky and sweating and exhausted but too hot to sleep. All the windows are open but there isn't a breeze and the only way for me to feel cooler is to go and sleep outside naked. So instead I start rifling around my room and I stumble across my old journals. And I mean OLD. From intermediate and high school...from 12 years ago. Makes me feel fucking old. 

They also make me feel fucking pained. The old hurt all comes back and I realise that I'm not over it, it's just been long enough ago for me to repress it. I also realised how fucked up I was, even back then. No wonder it is so hard for me to not want to cut, I was cutting myself 12 years ago. It's been 12 years. Okay, so I haven't really cut for the last year or so, and maybe 5 or 6 years ago I had a 2 year gap, but on and off, it's been 12 years now. I still haven't broken my not cutting streak...but for a week or so now I've been going to my box of blades, opening it and just looking at them. 

A part of me can't bear to throw them away. I don't even know what it is at this point in time, to be honest it feels more like an addiction that I can't quite kick. Miss Burton, you're right, it is pathetic, and I certainly thought it was during my breaks from cutting. I don't know about Mark, but when the professor found out about it he totally lost the plot. He hasn't mentioned it since then and I'm sure he hasn't forgotten. The fact that he will bring up my eating disorder but not my cutting speaks volumes. 

Maybe it's because it's been 12 years of me cutting...and cutting has become the norm. I can no longer imagine a life without it and even though I don't do it, I think about it on a daily basis. It isn't a big deal to me. It's like, get up in the morning, make toast, brush teeth, go to work. Another routine thing to do. It's just not a big deal. So I just don't get it when people make a big deal out of it. But the fact that the professor won't talk about it makes me wonder how big a deal it actually might be. 

I have no idea what Mark would think. None at all. I wouldn't dare tell him, not after how the professor reacted to it! Now that I think of it, I have 2 other friends who know about it, but they never mention it to me either. It's one of those things that people find hard to talk about...yeah, it probably is a bigger deal than I think. 

But to the crux of this post, and the reason for the title. 

I've always thought that my weight has always been stable at around 55kg. I've always told people that's my baseline weight. But I'm so wrong! As my journals prove. See, even at that age I was worried about my weight. My height hasn't changed an inch since 12 years old...isn't that sad, I haven't grown at all for the past 11 years. My height hasn't changed, but my weight has changed 20kg between my lowest weight and my highest weight. I'm stunned. 

Apparently, when I was 15 or 16 years old, I weighed 45kg! And within a few months, while I was depressed and comfort eating like mad, I gained 10kg. I mope about it an awful lot in my journals. I'm stunned. I was once 45kg???? Imagine if I hadn't started comfort eating, I might still be that size! Instead I ballooned to 65kg and then worked my way back down to 55kg and just stopped because "oh that's my baseline weight anyway so it's hard for me to get below that". 

Well turns out I'm full of bullshit. My baseline weight is 45kg and I've been too much of a fat, lazy pig to try to get back to that. I get to 55kg and start eating again. WTF brain! How could I forget the 10kg of weight I put on in one year at high school?! I'm in utter disbelief that I managed to put on 20kg of weight without even really trying. 

My brain feels like it hurts so much. I've got to rethink all my weight goals now. I thought 45kg would be quite skinny...but I remember how I looked at that age, I wasn't skinny at all! Admittedly, yes, I was skinnier than I am now, but 45kg is not a skinny weight on me. Dammit! The curses of being short! So if 45kg won't look good on me, and if when I weighed 45kg I wanted to lose weight, what should my goal weight be? 40kg? 37kg? I don't know anymore! All I know is, damn, I have to get to my baseline weight, not 55kg, but 45kg. So fucking far away. Best start now then. 

crawling back into the hole

"Head like a hole, black as your soul. I'd rather die than give you control."

I don't know what came over me. I don't know what happened but suddenly, suddenly I feel it all rushing back. 

There is an uncontrollable desire to look at thinspo, which I have been doing for hours. And all this is horribly triggering. I can't stop looking though. The bones. The collarbones, the ribs, the thigh gap. I'm drinking it all in. All of it, back into the space in my head that I've kept reserved for it. And now my whole body is itching, all of it itches to get rid of the fat. At whatever cost. 

I've got another problem. With the desire to lose weight comes the desire to self harm. Always, hand in hand, the two of them come walking. One is screaming "disgusting fatty, no more food" and the other is silent but smiling and hands me the knife. 

I need to cut, I need to cut, I need to cut. I can't sleep. I need to cut. I need to stop watching these goddamn anorexia documentaries. I need to cut it all out. 

This fucking sucks. It sucks. It's far too overwhelming, seeing how little I've progressed. It makes me hate myself even more. It makes all my flights of fancy seems stupid. Why should anyone like me. Fat, ugly me. Ugly, disgusting, fat me. 

Does anybody else get that? It's a kind or restlessness that fills you and stops you sleeping and stops you working and stops you doing anything but think about how fat and ugly you are. And what a failure you are. 

Input and output. Fucking hell. I need to stop shoving food in my gob and I need to run like the fat girl that I am. Fuck. I fucking hate myself. I need to cut. 

I need to cut and let the suicidal thoughts come and wash over me. In a strange way I've missed feeling like this. A part of me misses going to bed each night hoping to not wake up again in the morning. It misses the secret stash of blades, which I'm staring at right now, and the ability to reach out, grab one and peel open the metal packet and slice through my skin. I miss the stinging pain, the rush of warmth and the pearls of blood that bead up and up and up and then run, run, run. 

I miss the cold tears that can only be stopped by blood. I miss the fear and panic and misery and frustration that can only be put to rest by blood and thoughts of death. I miss fantasizing about stepping out in front of a train, about being in a car crash, about slitting my wrists in a bath after a bottle of benzos, about collapsing at work with a stopped heart that won't start again. 

I want to be thin. I want to die. I want to cut and bleed and die. I want to be boney and bruised and dying. 

Day 18: I'm gunning for you girl so watch your back.

"They tell you trust your head, be like men, but never feel like you're good enough."

Pumped up as hell. Pumped up and scared as hell. At the end of the next week I swap out of general medicine and into orthopaedic surgery. It's true, all the things they say about orthopaedic surgery are true. It's full of muscular jocks. So I'm about to slut it up. It'll be nice to slut it up and have somebody notice. 

I've also just met my offsider for the rotation. She's a lady called Elena, and she's a fully qualified radiologist from Romania but has to completely retrain to practice in a new country and so is starting at the bottom again. With me. Which makes me feel great and like crap at the same time. It makes me feel great because now I'll have an offsider who is competent and I can rely on to do her part. It makes me feel like crap because from the very start it is going to be so evident that she is better than me. 

Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. I just am never happy. I don't know. Elena, I just have to one up her somehow. I don't know why I feel like this. After all, we are all working for the same team, looking after the same patients. I should just be happy that I'm working with someone as good as she is. But far out, if I can't one up her with my work ethic and knowledge, I'll have to do it another way. Which brings me to my point. 

She's fat. And I'm not just saying that. She's taller than me and much older than me, sure, but she is also twice my size and I'm willing to guess her weight at being twice my weight. And hot damn, by the end of the next three months I want her to be three times my weight. For some reason, that makes me feel so secure. 

Fuck, Elena, I'm totally gunning for you. You'd better just watch it. With my night shifts and my insecurity I will starve myself until I feel better about everything. I will work my ass off at the gym until the fat melts off and I'm toned as a ballerina. I will be beautiful. And I will have the boys at my red stilettoed feet. When I'm doing the sit ups and the leg lifts, I will think of you Elena, and the awful way that you feel, and then the burning of my muscles won't feel so bad. And then, in 3 months time, Elena, I will knock you dead. 

I will eat clean and train dirty. Dirty as fuck. And damn, if I could get my little hands on Mark I would fuck him till I was skinny. But since that is not an option, I'll have to run it all off. 

On that note, I'm down 2kg. At this point I'm not sure if any of it is fat, it might all be food babies that are now gone, but hey, 2kg is something and I'll take it. 

Day 13: I'd rather chase your shadow all my life than be afraid of my own

"I'd rather be with you. I'd rather not know where I'll be than be alone and convinced that I know." 

Well in the space of 3 posts I've become completely and utterly lovestruck. This is bad news. Those of you who have been with me for quite a while will know that I absolutely hate it when this happens. Hate it. With a capital letter. 

Dammit Mark. Dammit. Damn it all to hell. 

But I just don't understand it. I don't know why I get so angry when this happens. Is it really such a bad thing? The majority of the world are able to be in relationships and completely lose the plot, why do I seem to think it will happen to me? This time it's so different as well. Mark isn't my usual guy. If I think back to all the guys that I've liked, and seriously wanted to be with, they're not like Mark. 

They're rascals. They are people I wanted to fuck and leave. Or I wanted them to fuck me then leave me. They were around the same age as me, they were people who I thought I could definitely get if I tried. They weren't bad boys who I thought I could change into good boys with my love, they were bad boys who I wanted to be bad to me. 

Sure, there have been good boys who liked me, but for whatever reason, I never really liked them back. And for whatever reason, I never tried with them, because...well, I don't know why I never tried. If I had tried, I would have definitely got them. What the fuck is wrong with me. 

But Mark, Mark is different. He's not like the rest. He represents something more. He represents stability. I can't imagine him ever doing something bad to me, or anybody else. I can't imagine him being mad, I can't imagine him treating me badly, I can't imagine him cheating. But I can imagine him being passionate, and caring, and considerate. I can, I can, I can. 

I don't remember liking anybody this much. And it's such a different sort of liking as well. When I think of him, I actually imagine things in the long term. The future, in two years, in five years, in ten. It's fucking scaring me. It's fucking scaring me. 

I have no idea if Mark is married, or has a partner or a girlfriend. He could be gay for all I know. That's how far he throws me off. Even my gaydar is fucking broke as around him. I don't know how old he is, although I know a few random, useless facts about him after our dinner conversation. Which really isn't very much to go by. 

He could think me a useless twat, or a foolish juvenile, or a dumbass ho. If someone came and told me that he thought I was one of those, I'd believe it without a shadow of a doubt. How can I know so little about someone yet feel so strongly about them. Am I just a fool?

This energy, this useless, directionless energy, I'm trying to make it something useful. Remember how I just couldn't eat in front of him, I'm naming the following diet after him. Hopefully it is something practical that I can definitely pull off at work and stick to for the rest of my working life without me getting into trouble. So here goes:

Morning: trim flat white coffee and a small bowel of porridge

Lunch: apple and water or coke zero

Dinner: (at work) one third of whatever they are serving in that cafeteria, (at home) one bag of instant noodles, of which I know the exact calories

-I will eat dinner if I am working a long day, because I know there is no way I can work a 16 hour day without dinner

-when I am having dinner at home, I can only do the noodle thing twice a week, on all other days, I will not have dinner

-on short days, I will do an afternoon workout. If I am eating noodles, I will run 8km. If I am not eating noodles, I will do an hour of yoga

-I will not eat anything fried, which happens to be at least half of everything served in the cafeteria

-on long days I will am allowed more than one cup of coffee

-and damn girls, I will stop snoozing my damn alarm clock and just get up on time and do the 30 day shred before my morning shower

The Mark Diet makes me feel slightly unsure because it is one of the harder diets to calorie count, but it is such a drastic change from what I'm doing now, I certainly think I will see some change in my weight. If I stick to it, my weight must go down, the fat must come off. 

It must work, it just has to. 

Day 10: when you love, love, love

"I want to know what love is. I want you to show me."

Mark smiles up at me over his dinner as I walk into the staff cafeteria, haggard. Another disgusting meal from this horrific place. It's late, the cafeteria is about to close and I've run in at the last minute. Out of the corner of my eye I see him look back at me as I scoop indeterminate coloured masses into my plate but he looks away when I greet other friends as they walk into the cafeteria. 

I see him turn to his own dinner as my friends settle themselves at another table, giggling as they chat. He seems somewhat surprised to see me sit down opposite him. Again he smiles at me and we end up sitting there and chatting for almost an hour. It's difficult for me to maintain as much eye contact as I'd like to because I don't want him to see me squirm and blush. Part of me wants to remind him that there are patients in ED that need to be seen, especially as I see the other doctors finish their dinner and leave, but Mark stays put, with me as I pick and pick at my meal. 

Thanking the lords that for some reason I've put my meal in a take out box instead of a plate, I close the lid, not wanting Mark to see that I've not really eaten anything. We talk about God knows what, laughing one minute, serious the next. The whole time I'm trying to see Mark's pupils, to see if they are dilated at all. At the end of the meal, I'm not sure, which probably means that they weren't and they were dead easy to see in his blue eyes. Luckily he definitely wouldn't be able to see my dinner plate sized pupils in my black eyes. 

I feel sick whenever I think about Mark. He makes me want to vomit. Because I like him so much. Yes, I know how weird that sounds.  

Day 9: another brick in the wall

"Threw you the obvious and you flew with it on your back."

To be honest, I had suspected her all along. I can smell Ana's stench from a mile away. I know just what she's like. I wanted to do nothing more than to leap out from behind the curtains around the bed, point my finger at her and shout "I know all of this is Ana, don't you keep telling me it's something else!" 

Nobody else knew what was going on, not until the episodes started to coincide with meals and with certain foods. But I knew. I knew all along. I knew exactly what I wanted to say to her. 

You may think she's gone but she's always with you. You may have gone to an inpatient unit, you may not have restricted for years, you may think you've left that side of you in the distant past but you have not. I know her tricks, I know where she hides, I know when she likes to come out and play. You may be able to fool your mother, you may be able to fool all the other doctors but you cannot fool me. I may be fat, I may be binge eating, but she's in my head every second of every day and I see her in you too. 

So I talked and talked and talked. I talked to her every day, I talked to her in lots of different ways. And she fought me and fought me until one day she just got it. She got it. She saw what Ana was doing, the weird ways that she was coming out, and now she's all better again. But that made me think. Do we ever shake her off? 

Sorry for being so fatalistic/nihilistic today. Sometimes I feel like we are all the same, all just another brick in the wall, the big, big wall that is ED and that is all we will ever be. 

Sometimes I think all my patients that are annoying and demanding and frustrating are just bricks in a wall that I keep running into. That's how I feel about my job sometimes. I have to get up in the morning, every morning and keep running into the same wall. 

Run, hit, bleed and binge. That's the cycle I'm in. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm so stuck. I'm stuck professionally, I'm stuck personally and I'm so stuck with my ever increasing weight. 

I want to die every time I see Mark because he's just so perfect. And now, to add insult to injury, there is a surgeon who makes me all hot and bothered as well. I don't even know what his name is. But I want to just jump on him. Dammit. I need a break from life. A permanent break from life.