skin tight biker pants

"A name in your recollection, down among a million same. Difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed and passed over."

With some trepidation I pull out the black, faux leather, biker pants that I bought in the UK on one of my spending sprees. I didn't really fit them at the time, but it was one of those things that I bought with the hope of one day fitting them. And I do! Well, sort of. I can put them on, with a bit of unflattering tugging and pulling and for the most part I can spend the day in them. They would be a hell of a lot more comfortable if I were a few pounds less, but at least I know I'm making some sort of progress. 

It is a small success in my world that is not so much full of successes. I don't know what the matter is with me. I've been feeling incredibly down. Ancient feelings that I thought were dead and buried are stirring up inside me again. The professor has sent me a rather terse email, telling me not to pester him, he's doing much more important things than my research. And although I know it's true, and I knew I shouldn't have reminded him about my research, it's hard for me not to feel just a little bit shit. 

I worried about how it might affect my career for about half a second when something inside me corrected that track of thinking. Hang on, I'm now 23, going to be 24 at the end of the year. I have always planned to be dead by 27, which is only 3-4 years away. Why worry about a career? I'll be dead before any of that can happen. 

It has been a long time since I seriously thought about suicide. I will always have moments when I toy with the idea of death, but it has been probably years since I last seriously wanted to die and to take my own life. I don't know what changed. Maybe it's because I met all these men...Ben, Mark, Michael, all these guys who gave me a fleeting moment of hope and when I had crushes on them, I felt like I could see some sort of future. I could see marriage, and travel and a family, and a home and I wanted to perhaps be with them and spend life with them. 

Now, for some inexplicable reason, all that has disappeared. Just gone. I don't want any of that anymore. I'm back to where I've started. I don't want those flights of fancy anymore. I don't particularly care if I'm never kissed, never touched, never fucked, never loved. I just want to die, be burned and forgotten. Resources shouldn't really be wasted on me. I've wasted enough as it is and I'm trying my best to balance it out a bit before I bite the dust. 

Mark, Mark, part of me still wants him, but I know he's taken. Last night I had a dream where he was talking to me and told me he was gay. Well, I don't suppose it makes a difference, I can't have him either way. Still, when I'm with him, part of me just hopes and hopes that he will put his arm around me. 

Been thinking that I should just bite the bullet and get my next tattoo. If you look at the two pictures above, I want an anchor on my left thigh, sort of where those girls have tattoos, although not at all like the anchor tattoo she has. It might help to cover the ugly cut mark I have on my thigh. I want something more simple for my other thigh, maybe a barcode or something. 

I've been subconsciously holding back on getting a tattoo. I know not all guys like them and I've been not getting them in case I fall in love with a guy who doesn't like them. But fuck that. I'm not falling in love. I'm getting the tattoos because I want them, not to impress some guy. So fuck it. When I go on night shifts, I'm getting this done. 

I'm still debating what I want to get done on my back. When I touch my spine, I can feel the bones much more easily...I don't know, I will think on that one a bit longer. 

sliding downwards in more ways than one.

"Not enough. I need more. Nothing seems to satisfy. I said, I don't want it, I just need it to breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive."

Thanks for all the comments you've all been leaving me lately. I'm struggling at work but it will get better and things are already starting to settle down. Just a bit. And well, Mark, Mark isn't a bad guy. He really isn't. And I do need him, every doctor in this hospital needs him because we can't access certain medications without his permission. The ID registrar literally holds the key to the door of some antibiotics. I try to give him credit, it's not an easy job. Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe his phone had been ringing off the hook. I don't know. I haven't seen him since that day, and that seems fine to me. 

Something has flipped inside me, flipped out completely. I haven't felt this level of anxiety for a very long time. I'm so anxious, I can't sleep, and I can't focus at work. A lot of it is because of the stress at work, and another portion of it is the weight. Today I had the biggest freak about about eating. I had a completely normal meal. It was a slightly big one, but one that was completely normal for me to eat a few times a week. 

And I felt so ill afterwards. I wanted to throw it up, I have been absolutely riddled with anxiety for several hours now. I'm so tired, I feel like my head is falling asleep but my body wants to run around widely to burn it all off. 

I'm currently caving to cravings. I've got one of my knives out and I'm just running it back and forth across my skin. I'm not cutting but just the feel of the blade against my skin is so good. Just the feel of it is relaxing me...relaxing me. GOD, I WANT TO CUT SO BADLY. But no, for now, it's enough. 

I'm so scared of meal times now. It's really odd, how fast the fear and anxiety sets in. I've started my old habits again...not sleeping at night, trying on outfit after outfit and squinting at myself in the mirror. I'm loving skipping all the meals, and I've ever had days of nothing when I've gone home after having nothing to eat and just going straight to bed. 

This week I've lost 4lbs. Not as much as I'd like. I've gone from 127lbs to 123lbs. I know that the majority of this is food that I've just pooed out. In terms of actual weight loss, it probably is only a pound, two at most. But it's a loss, and I'll take any loss. 

I look in the mirror and I see lots and lots bumps and lumps that I want to get rid of. When I look at myself I think I look fucking pregnant. And to me (and I know just about all of you will disagree) there is nothing more ugly than a pregnant woman. There is something so absolutely grotesque about a huge belly sticking out. Do when I say I look pregnant, what I am saying is that I look disgusting and repugnant. 

I look in the mirror and I can't believe how ugly I am. Fat and ugly and fat and ugly and fat and ugly. Why can't I just be ugly. 

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. 

battle plans 2013

"I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride and I'm wanted dead or alive."

That's what it feels like working the holidays. They want me, dead or alive. When everyone else is with family and friends and enjoying the summer sun and the beach and barbecues and all the things that summer should be, I'm hidden from the sun, in a hospital. Dead or alive, sometimes I don't really feel like either. 

It's an eerie feeling, driving the motorways early in the morning without another car in sight.  But worst of all is listening to my colleagues talk about their Christmas and New Year plans. It makes me feel lonelier than ever. Never thought I would miss my family this much. So what do I do? I eat and I eat and I eat. I come home and I eat some more. I guess it's filling me up, not in the way that I need, but it does do the trick. Even if I do hate myself afterwards. 

But this can't go on. It just can't. I will balloon at an alarming rate and then I will have to go kill myself somehow. By some miracle I haven't yet resorted to cutting, but a big part of that is that it is now summer and so I have a lot of skin showing. The places that I can cut are so reduced and I really can't have anybody else knowing that about me. It is the one thing that the professor never asks me about (maybe because his wife is around all the time) and I'd like to keep it that way. 

I'm fairly sure his wife knows about my eating issues. She's noticed herself, but he got to me before she did. The look she gave him when he told me that he couldn't feel my ribs anymore was quite priceless. She probably would have hit him if she had less self control. In retrospect, that's probably why he back tracked so quickly and instead of saying that I'd gained weight, he said I was perfect. Still, everyone knows what he means. I have gotten fat. 

So this must stop. I've been skimming blogs recently and I found one where the girl has started on Jillian Michael's 30 day shred. I have that DVD somewhere in my house. So I think I will start it. On Tuesday, because I am working till 11pm on Monday and so that's not a good time to start anything. And I need to tone down what I'm eating at work. The amounts that I'm eating are so stupid. So stupid. I need to eat less, work out more. There is no secret to weight loss, that's it. 

I don't know anymore girls, I just don't know. Failure isn't a strong enough word to sum up how I feel right now. I'm so down in every single way and my new found fatness is just the buttercream icing on a big ass cake. I must improve. 

Seriously, I've been all talk, all year and achieved nothing. Time to lose weight. Time for this BMI to finally drop below 20, time for some bones to start sticking out and some clothes to start hanging off them. 

Come on girls, let's make 2013 our year. 

shattered and defeated and making decisions

"So make all your last demands for I will forsake you and I'll meet your eyes for the very first time, for the very last." 

NB: I apologise if I've not been commenting on your blogs of late. Blogger is doing that weird thing again where it doesn't tell me when the blogs I follow update. I comment on the posts that I see pop up!

I've worked too long, too many long days, too many long hours. I've been afraid, too many moments of insecurity, of panic, of feeling shattered and defeated. Too many thoughts run through my head, my patients, my boss, my future, my body. Yes, I've lost weight, but only about 4lbs, and only the weight that I had put on when I was eating like some freak. So now I am back to my baseline 122lbs. I haven't moved forwards at all and I hate it.

The flurry of clothes that I had bought for myself, all a few sizes too small, hoping I'd fit into them by now still sit on hangers, taunting me and reminding me that I have failed in another aspect of my life. I must try harder. I must eat less. I must just buckled down and do what I need to do. From deep down inside me an old desire is rising, the desire to cut. I swore so many times that I would never go back there. I swore that no matter what, I would handle it and I would not take myself back there. But let's face it, it's an easy way out and right now, that's all I'm looking for. 

A gush of blood and I can sleep. A gush of blood and I can focus and study. A gush of blood and I am no longer hungry. All I need is to bleed out my anger and frustration and fears and anxiety and insecurity and hatred. Bleed it all out, then I can be just me. Calm. 

But I swore I wouldn't go back there. But I swore. 

It's not the only aspect of me that is being questioned. Every aspect of me is being questioned. I don't know what I want to do anymore. So much for wanting to do ophthalmology. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I can't do it. The intake is too low, 2 per year. With the amount of stress that I feel just working an ordinary job, I can't imagine what it would be to live for 5-7 years desperately trying to get onto a training scheme. And then I think of Alex. Perfect Alex. Thin, beautiful, talented, not a bad molecule in her body. She speaks fluent French and is half Japanese and is femininity personified. She's a warm spring morning in Paris with a black coffee and croissant. I try so hard to be like her, but I just can't. 

I'm not that person. I'm fat and bitchy. I'm spontaneous shopping and designer labels and consumerism with all the letters capitalised and italicised. I'm wobbly cellulite and a lazy slob and a liar and an absolute cow with a bad attitude. I'm full of badness and rock and roll and whiskey and port. I'm full Chinese and I only speak English. I'm a cold, wet morning in the Scottish highlands with black pudding and a fried egg. 

How can I pretend anymore. I can't do it anymore. I think of the professor, and how much I adore him and how much I've let him down. I can't possibly face him again. I can't do it. I can't spend the next decade or more of my life with someone who hates me as he must hate me. I can't be with someone who knows all my problems and wants to solve them. I can't spend my doing something that constantly reminds me of how inadequate and unworthy I am, no matter how much I love it. 

I will do general surgery and be worked to the bone. And be yelled at by my bosses and sleep 2 hours a night in my car and slice my own body to pieces and feel like I'm finally in my place. 

Time to do what I must. Book another tattoo, cut as deep as I want to, eat nothing at all and buy the biggest bottle of port and whiskey I can get my hands on. Fuck what other people think. Fuck "taking care of myself". Fuck it all. I don't care if I'm self destructive, maybe that's how I've always been. But it's the only way I know how to get by and right now, all I want to do is get by, one day at a time. 

If that means being hungry but thin, drunk but calm, put together but cut up then so be it. 

didn't want a day without you but somehow I've lived through another one

And the heart she feared frozen still beats and marches on. 

Each night I sit and listen to the old brag of my heart. I am. I am. I am. The dullness echoes through me and once again it is the only thing to fill me. How can I feel so empty when I am chock full of food. It seems ironic. The more I eat, the more empty I feel. The more I starve, the more full I get. 

Like a tsunami tide that chills to the very core of me, it bursts forth from the pits of my stomach and sweeps through to my extremities and it makes me hyperextend everything. Then it becomes so cold that it all starts to burn and I coil into a ball. Coil into a ball and savour the warmth. 

Pain and nuture mixing together, mingling into a cacophony of sensation, a weird LSD trip of a soundtrack to the flood of images flickering behind my eyes. Ribs showing, hip bones sticking out, a waist small enough to wrap my hands around, a gap between the thighs, slender gazelle legs, collarbones as sharp as razor blades and concavities everywhere. 

I don't want the touch or love of another person. I don't want the success of a medical career. I don't want anything anymore. Just thinness. That's all I want. Surely it's not too much to ask for. 

I hate myself for wanting food. I hate myself when I feel faint. I just want to lock myself in a room with a set of scales and a computer and be by myself to get thin. Wallow in my own bell jar. 

Then I think of the professor. And the warmth that I find in his embrace. The safety I find in his voice. The joy I find in his company. Is it enough? 

No. Love is not enough. 

you and me. we're in this together now. none of them can stop us now.

...we will make it through somehow. 

Before I launch into this post I want to start off by tying up a few ends. 

Firstly, I want to say hello to any new followers! I looked today and suddenly realised that I have 91 followers now. I'm stunned. Hello, thank you so much for following my blog, please leave a comment and I will follow your blog right back. 

Secondly, I want to say a big thank you to everybody. I really do. I must admit that Andrea's comments threw me wildly. I went to a really low place for a while after reading them. I felt so useless. Reading what she said, well, I'm already miserable, and I know that what I am doing is bad, but if getting a boyfriend and perking up would be enough to snap me out of this, then why wasn't I good enough to do just that? I felt like such a worthless, useless, incompetent mess that I would be better off not existing. I have never known such strong suicidal urges. 

I can't say I'm over it, I can't say I'm not still suicidal. I've been cutting more and more and I can feel the old grip of depression creeping in. But. I've also made myself a plan to lose weight. For now, if I can get a grip on my weight, then I can start to get a grip on other things. For now, I need to focus on one small thing at a time to drag myself through thiss. 

Thirdly, I want to say sorry for my absence. For a while there I really did think I was going to end my life and I didn't want to come here and be talked out of it by anyone. I didn't want to post any sort of message that some people might think to be attention seeking. When I end my life, it will be my choice, and there will be no apologies to anyone. 

At any rate, I return to you all with renewed vigor and determination. Just like the way I've titled this post. This is you and me. We're in this together now. None of them can stop us now. We will make it through somehow. We're fighting a battle that no one can see. That doesn't make it any less real. We are all doing it together. Though we are apart physically, we are all striving for the same thing, we live and breath for the same thing. We are linked together by a common thread that separates us from the rest of the world. And I know for sure that I cannot do this without the knowledge that you are all out there, sending me love, wishing me the best. And I do the same for you all, every second of every day. 

In a strange way, this blog has prolonged my life significantly. This knowledge makes me want to wake up in the morning and give it all another go. And I can't thank you all enough for that. I hope that you all can appreciate that. 

I think this is all I can say for now. I am still struggling with the cutting, and the can of worms that comes with that. I am still somewhat scared and wary of posting anything on this blog because I don't want to read comments like that again. I'm scared by how they affected me and I'm scared of how I may react in the future. When you can no longer trust your one outlet of self expression, everything gets thrown up in the air. 

So I bid you goodbye from this post, with the promise that I will post again, and that like you, each fibre of my being longs to be thin and fears food and the consequences of eating. 

ana driven thoughts

midnight in the city, bleary eyed and clouded mind. the fat on my body, I can feel it expanding. I know that I am getting fatter. I can feel the real me, buried under layer after layer after layer of disgusting, putrid fat. I hate it. I hate feeling it. I hate how I can pinch a layer of fat between my fingers. I hate how I can't see my bones. 


it is the witching hour and I can't sleep. My fat is keeping me awake. it's all I can think about. 


my mind is so awake. but my body is crying out for some form of rest. there is so much for me to think about, how can I possibly rest? 


binge. binge. binge. binge. that has been the theme of this week. I think my boobs are bigger. they are already DD. yes, that is how fat I am. fucking fat. some part of me says "I just need to be fat for a while." but I hate the fat. I don't feel cuter, cuddlier or healthier. I feel disgusting. 


I spend hours of each day watching diet and anorexia shows on youtube. and I can feel my grip on reality slipping more. I think that those girls in the anorexia documentaries, the ones in the inpatient centres, the ones with BMIs of 15 and 16, I think they are fat. they look fat to me. not all the bones are visible. and this makes me realise that I am fatter than ever. and it disgusts me. 


I would love to look like one of them. and when I do, I shall plan to lose more. more and more and more. I want to lose more weight. I am desperate. there is so much fat. 


purging. the magic word. I would give anything for the ability to purge. then I would spend the rest of my life locked inside, binging and purging and binging and purging. I would never keep anything down. 


midnight in the city. it's quiet. it's dark. it's cold. and all I can think about are laxatives. right now, I would kill for a packet of laxatives. I knew I did the whole laxie thing a while back and forced myself to stop. but now I want nothing more. 


there is nothing more upsetting in this world than gaining weight. 


winter is coming. it's getting colder. long sleeves are coming. finally I can cut my arms again. 


there is nothing more pure than the feeling of being empty. there is nothing that makes me feel more accomplished than restricting and fasting. there is nothing more triumphant than being the thinnest of all your friends. there is nothing more beautiful than a gap between the thighs. there is nothing uglier than fat, fat, fat everywhere. 


there is nothing in this world that I want more than to be thin and boney. there is nothing I need more in this world than Ana. 

H-E-L-P help me, help me

I wish I had a gentle mind and a spine made of iron. 

Oh my fellow skinny-lovers, you have guided me thus far in my journey and have not lead me astray. Lead me not into temptation! 

I need help. Muscle connects to the bone and bone to the marrow and ire. I wish I had a gentle mind and a spine made of iron. H-E-L-P. Help me. Help me. 

It's currently one of my favourite songs and the mantra the defines how I feel about my current situation. 

A recent change in circumstance has sent me spiraling into a world of confusion and I can't even begin to think straight. I don't know what to do. Help me. 

Today, one of my friends, let's call him Ben, asked me out. I don't quite understand what this means. I thought he was joking for the longest time, but then he just flat out told me that he's interested and that now it's just up for me to respond however I want to. I don't quite understand what that means either. 

All I know is that I am filled with a sense of dread. For the first time in a very long time, I have absolutely no idea what is going on. I don't even know what to think of it. 

My first instinct is of course to say NOOOOOOOOOO. But then again, I think a bit more about the situation. Ben is a really nice guy. A REALLY nice guy. And we get along quite well. And he's kind of cute, in a little boy sort of way. It's not as if I haven't thought about dating him. On the more boring moments on the ward round, when he is joking with me and standing really close, I can imagine him wrapping an arm around me and giving me a quick hug. 

But I also know that Ben is the sort of guy who falls for girls really easily. REALLY easily. I also know that he really wants a girlfriend. And out of the people that he sees most often, in our rotation group, there are a few couples, the only single girls are me and my flatmate and I know she isn't his type. So he almost has to like me by default. 

I don't trust that he likes me for me. I think that he likes me because there is no one else to like. I don't want to hurt him because he is my friend and a really nice guy, but I also don't want to lead him on and then upset him later. 

Yet at the same time some crazy part of me is in a frenzy. I'd love to know what it feels like to have a boyfriend. I know Ben would be a great boyfriend. He would be so caring and supportive. I'd love to know what it feels like to be cuddled and kissed. 

I would not be so cruel as to drop him in the middle of my weight loss attempts and the cutting and the depression and the suicidal ideation. I don't know. 

H-E-L-P. 

Help me. Help me. 

half the calories and be still my beating heart.

Several rather different topics to rant about...please bear with my schizoaffective self. 

I've often heard people say that eating slowly halves the number of calories that you take in. I've always thought that it was such a ridiculous notion, but even so, rather a cute thought in itself. Today I discovered that it is very much true. SO TRUE! WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN EARLIER! My calorie intake has been hovering at 800-900cal per day. Today, we had some friends over to our place and so I ate dinner slowly, and I only had about 350cal before I felt really full and decided to leave the rest for tomorrow. 

I was so surprised at how full I was. This really explains why I always eat less when I go out with my friends. I'm usually too distracted by conversation to eat properly and even though I know I'm eating less, I always feel much more full. Gosh. Who would have though that conversation would literally halve my calorie intake. Magic. Can't wait to keep utilising this. 

Also, so much for recovering from my bout of illness and eating 3 meals a day. Back to one meal a day and it feels great! I'm still pretty light headed but I don't feel so guilty anymore. Am I just incredibly stupid to be coming across this eat slowly thing now? Honestly, if you haven't tried it yet, try it. It works without you realising it is working. 

And now for something completely different!!!!!

A few days ago I cut a treble cleff into my left ankle. Today my flatmate saw it. She asked me about it. She's getting really suspicious. I passed it off as scarification and now she thinks I'm really weird and I'm not entirely sure if she believed me. 

Another issue is that we now have 4th year students and we have been doing quite a lot of teaching with them to prepare them for their surgical exams. But this is their first ever hospital rotation and they want to practice on us instead of real patients. It's actually a really reasonable request seeing as the "patients" in their exam will be final year students like us. But the surgical exam is the surgical abdomen exam and I cannot show them my abdomen. Or they will see my scars. 

Sometimes this habit is incredibly annoying and isolating. 

And now for something completely different again!!!!

My scumbag brain has decided to strike again. Yesterday, it decided that I was to have a crush on one of my surgical registrars. And I am less than pleased about it. He's a really nice guy, as most surgeons are, contrary to popular belief. And I like him because he's only a first year registrar and he's really quite playful. Spare time is spent teasing everyone in sight. Yesterday he hit me over the head with some patient notes and stuck patient labels all over me because I was using his dictation log in. 


And he's pretty damn ripped as well. It seems that I have a very specific type. Guys with totally ripped bodies but rather cute and sensible looking faces. Kind of like, he must be strong but also smart enough to make enough money to support me! Not that I'll need it though because I will hopefully be making buckets of money myself. 


Ah, he's so cute and sweet. *sigh* stupid, stupid, scumbag brain. I loathe having crushes on people! I shall stop writing about him now. Don't want to bore your ladies with my trivialities. 


Hope you are all doing well and dropping weight and dress sizes! I love you all. 

feed my will to feel my moment, drawing way outside the lines.

Reaching out to embrace the random, reaching out to embrace whatever may come. 

Firstly, thank you Christina for that advice. I do try to do that sometimes and while I must say I never fully understand it, it does temporarily provide me with enough insight to at least know on a superficial level that people care about me. I might not take it in at all, but knowing it at all does help. 

There is a lot that I've been thinking about recently. And for the sake of my own sanity and ability to understand a life that is starting to spiral out in all directions, I will list the things that I have been pondering. 

1. My recent weight gain/lack of weight loss. 

There are not too many ways that I can look at this in a positive light. While I'd like to say that this was largely because I have been forcing myself to eat 3 meals a day in an attempt to stave off the collapsing episodes that I have been having, I have to admit that it is also because that I have been using a legitimate attempt to recover from illness as an excuse to eat. 

By default, I am not allowed to eat. And this is the setting that I have operated on for the past year and a half. There are times that I am allowed to eat, mostly these are times where I must eat in order to stop people worrying. Being on a setting where I am allowed to eat all the time, especially when I feel faint (which was all the time) meant I suddenly started eating everything that I wanted to. 

Like I was trying to make up for a year and a half of holding back. I lost all control and just ate like a little pig. And so I gained weight. I'm not surprised. I knew I was going to gain weight. But I allowed myself to slip, all under the guise of recovering from fainting spells. 

2. What I am going to do about this backward slide. 

At the end of the day, the basis of my entire problem can be reduced to a simple equation. If I eat more than I burn off, I will gain weight. As far as concepts go, it doesn't get much simpler than that. So the answer to this question is simple as well. Eat less. Work out more. 

How to fit that in is a rather different issue. Now that I've had an episode of binging, I'm stuck on that mode. I'm always hungry. All I can think about is food. And what else I can cook and what else I can eat and how I can scrimp on money to buy more food. It's ruining me financially. I have to just buy food once a week, and no more and just eat what I have. 

It's not much, but it's step one towards control. 

3. The cutting. 

Now this is probably the one that is the hardest fix of all. I'm writing this post as I pluck my eyebrows and I remember the first time I did it. It hurt so much that it made my eyes water and I wondered why women put themselves through this hell regularly just to have better eyebrows. Now I barely feel it and plucking my eyebrows is just part of my routine. Cutting is just like that. Now it is just part of my routine. 

There is no doubt that I cut more as I get more stressed out. As far as I am concerned, it is a really effective method of stress control. I don't really see a problem with it. My problem is that society doesn't seem to hold the same view as me. I'm running out of places to cut. My abdomen is bearing the brunt of it, but my scars aren't fading at all and I find myself cutting deeper and deeper. So much for the many sets of bikinis that I own. But at least winter is approaching. 

4. The help/the temptation/the burden/the professor. 

Those things are all and the same to me. There are so many issues around this that I don't even know how to start thinking about it. 

You will know that the professor offered to help me. But since I put on such a happy performance, he seems to have happily forgotten about it. I'm sure that the only reason I think that is because I don't see him very often. I'm sure that if I saw him every day I would realise that he has very much not forgotten and is carefully watching me. I think he thinks I am slowly getting myself better. And that pleases him. 

I don't want to worry him. But as I cut and binge and restrict and exercise, all I want to do is to go crawling to him and ask for help. No. It doesn't even go that far. All I want to do is to go crawling to him and have him pick me up and hold me so that I will feel safe. 

He is busy. Very busy. And to ask for time, to ask to be part of his personal life, to let him into the dark, dark depths that I dwell in is just too much. On some level, one more thing added to a million things to worry about isn't very significant. But I don't want to be "not very significant". But I also don't want to be a burden. 

Each day I am more and more tempted to write to him. And tell him that I'm not doing so well. To be held and comforted by a daddy, a different daddy to the one who caused me so much pain. But when I am in front of him, I can't help but smile and say that I am okay. It's not in my programming to tell people that I'm not okay. 

I want him to know. But I don't want to tell him. I want him to know without me telling him anything. 

Each day I feel like I am pinning too much hope on him. He can't be expected to fix me. Only I can fix me. 

5. The end of days.

When you realise how easy it can be to take your own life, in that moment the world seems to pause for you and you are filled with terror and power at the same time. I try to think of all the people who might give a toss. What would my flatmate do? She'd have to give up our current flat and go somewhere else because she certainly wouldn't afford a place like this on her own. 

My parents would be lumbered with the massive debt that I've accumulated during my education. My co-authors would be lumbered with the papers I've left half finished. 

Once that is sorted out, I will have a clearer mind. But on some nights, I don't think the guilt of letting people down is enough. Some nights, at some ungodly hour, I am awake in bed, literally twitching with the desire to drive out and find my train. It would be so easy. But no. I won't. Not just yet. Right now, there are other things that I have to take care of. 

The Tale of Tom the Orthopod

This is the story of meeting Tom the Orthopaedic Surgeon. 

I'm slouching around ED, fiddling with the numerous useless items that I've stuffed into the pockets of my scrubs to keep me occupied. I'm so angry about having to spend a week in ED when I could be in surgery. Convinced nothing will ever cheer me up. Then she gets carried through the door. A beautiful 6 year old girl with her forearm in the shape of a wave. Even she knows that her arm isn't supposed to bend that way. 

Ah, what it must feel like to be 6 years old. A time when weight and calories and metabolic rate aren't things that matter at all. Plus, she's thin as a rake. I'm jealous of how thin she is. How fucked up is that? The first thing I notice about a girl who has broken both bones in her forearm is how thin she is. 

The x-ray is horrific. We grimace as we look at it. That's when he walks in. Tom the Orthopod. I stare at him like some sort of idiot. He's HUNKY. And that's not a word that I usually use at all. His dark brown hair poke out of the sides of his theatre hat and he stares back at me with his chocolate brown eyes through his hipster glasses. You can tell how muscular he is, even though he is wearing shapeless scrubs. 

"Hi..." he glances at my name tag, "...Judith Marie, do you want to help out?"

I hold the unconscious little girl's arm as he reduces the fracture. The quiet room is filled with the sound of the crunching of bone grinding against bone. Slowly he massages her arm back into a straight line and plasters it in place. 

The entire time I'm thinking what it would be like to have a him as a boyfriend. And at the same time hoping that he's not standing close enough to me to see how fat I am. The bandage on my stomach itches. It covers the cuts that I did last night. I'm pretty sure I will never ever wear a bikini again because of all the scars. 

I'd been thinking that I can't ever need abdominal surgery, because I don't want any surgeon ever examining my abdomen and seeing all the cuts. 

After meeting Tom I had one of the best days ever in the gym. I ran for longer than I have for a long time, rowed 2000m and did over 100 crunches and some other upper body strength stuff. I haven't worked that hard for a long time. 

Because I want a boyfriend like Tom one day. And I don't want to ashamed and I don't want him to be ashamed of me. Someone as ripped and nice like that should have a beautiful, thin girlfriend. Shouldn't have to have some lumpy, dumpy fat girl like me. I've always talked about wanting to date an orthopod. About time I made myself worthy of one. 

as I formulate denials of your effect on me

To start off with, thank you to Rachel, Fat Piggy, strive4perfection and Christina for your lovely comments on my last blog post. 

It's raining outside. I'm upset but I forget exactly why. All I know is that I feel as though the world is ending. Melodramatic? Yes. 

I rush through many sets of double doors, down vomit-beige coloured corridors and I know that I'm in an unnamed hospital somewhere. I'm running and running down my vomit coloured hospital corridors and somehow it is raining inside now. The stinging icy shards of rain melt into the hot tears streaming down my face. I'm cold and tired and devastated.

In that way that can only happen in dreams, I am suddenly redirected from my Newtonian method of running to walking down carpeted floors and richly painted walls. It takes me a while to notice that I am no longer where I used to be. His arm is draped across my shoulders as we walk and then he picks me up and I am being carried through time, and I know I am going to somewhere safe. 

I find myself standing in his living room. He's sitting on his leather couch and he pats his lap. I squirm a bit and shake my head. "Why not?" I shake my head again. "Are you scared you'll be too heavy for me?" 

I sit in between his legs because no force on this earth and in the land of dreams will compel me to sit on his lap. He cradles me and softly croons to me in that deep, melodic voice of his. I slowly drift off...

...I look around my room to find what has woken me. 

My phone is buzzing. New Text Message. I curse it for waking me from such a nice cream. I look at the time and find that it's some ungodly hour of the morning. Who on earth is texting me at this time? 

The professor. The shock of seeing his name immediately after that dream causes me to fumble and drop my new iPhone. His text says that he's in Abu Dhabi. At least that explains the time difference. 

The past week has been an unmitigated disaster. I can't even bring myself to stand on the scales because I know I've gained weight and I really, REALLY don't want to know how much I've gained. And I know it is A LOT. 

I started the week off with binging. I stained my bedsheets with blood from all the cutting and I snuck around at night cleaning them. I felt so full that I was dying for some laxies. And by the time Wednesday swung round, I resolved to fast and go to the gym. Good plan. I was looking forward to getting back on track. That morning, I rush to theatre, scrub in for the first case of the day and faint within the first half hour. Fainting in theatre. I will never live down the shame. 

And this brought on an amazing amount of binging. Endless binging. More and more food. Clothes are tighter, things cease to fit me. I can see the fat piling on. And that's not a turn of phrase. I can actually see that I am fatter. I hate it. I hate it so much. But I brought it upon myself. I am so ashamed of myself. I didn't want to open this blog because I don't deserve to post here and have you lovely ladies read what I write when I am such a failure. 

I miss the professor so much. Somehow, knowing that he is in Abu Dhabi makes me miss him more. I wish he was here. I want to do what I did in my dream and sit in his embrace and tell him about how I hate everything that I have become. I can't even lose weight properly. I want to hear him to tell me that it's okay and that I am a good person and not a complete waste of space and energy. 

But that scenario is really one that only exists in dreams. 

Then I think of J, the professor's wife. She's slightly taller than me. Maybe by an inch. And she weighs 56kg. He told me this. And so it makes me think. J is like a mother to me. So if my mother is going to be 56kg, then I should be well and safely tucked in the 40s. The ideal would be for me to be 10kg smaller than her. I'm not sure why, but I feel like being smaller than her will make them both like me more. 

Flawed logic, yes. 

Next week will be better. Next week.