until further notice

So I'm off away from home and back to the other city where I'm working. It was such a nice long weekend, nice to sleep more than 4hours a night for a change, nice to sleep at all really because we had a cyclone tear through the city (which is bad) but that means it's been uncharacteristically cold for the summer which means it's been cold enough for me to actually get some decent sleep! So nice to feel refreshed for a change!

For the past month and a half study and work and my personal life going to pot means I've been sleeping about 4 hours a night, if that so I'm thoroughly exhausted. Yesterday I had an amazing but tiring ballet class. My calves, butt and abs are aching today. I should mention here and now that I am by no means a ballet dancer. This is a very basic intro class albiet a private lesson. So my brilliant teacher IB was forcing me into these very tight and very controlled poses that involved isolation of muscle groups and very consciously relaxing other muscles groups, it was difficult. I have such respect for anyone who dances ballet. It takes extraordinary strength and dedication.

I'm loving living away from home, the only eating a small dinner and nothing else thing is going great! Hey, it I can keep up the 2lbs weight loss a week thing I'm going to be over the moon. Only thing is my stupid internet provider hasn't connected us yet (it's been 2 weeks) and they say it'll be another 5-10 days. Bitches! So it means that while I'm down there for the next 4 days I won't be able to post (especially because I can't post this at the uni computer labs in case someone reads it).

But with my resolve in learning ballet properly and eating one small meal a day and my cans and cans of energy drink (100cals a can ladies, but it does keep me going all day) I'm sure I'll get through! Wish me luck and hopefully when we next talk I'll be another 2lbs lighter!

THINSPIRATION!

Well so my first day back at home was not exactly a good one. Not only have my parents thoroughly gutted my room so that it no longer looks like I live there but I have also been binging. I've had 3 fried chicken nibbles and a cup of coffee today and I'm feeling like a huge pig of pigs.

Now the room thing might not sound like such a big deal but you must understand that my room is my safe place. It's a private place, just for me (and MH, my best friend), every now and then my parents intrude to wake me up but nothing else. So for me to come back and find that they have gone through, touched all my private things and moved everything out of order, it means that my room is no longer my safe place, it's worse than being homeless.

I feel so violated.

Jones hasn't contacted me yet. So yup, he's dead to me. I reckon I've been too hurt to face him so whatever.

Here is some thinspiration that I've been using to kick myself and keep myself focussed, hope it helps someone else!

I tried on an old shirt today, one I haven't worn for a long time. A few months ago it was so tight that I couldn't button it over my chest. Now it's so loose that I couldn't possibly wear it out. I'm so proud! I'm 15lbs lighter than my heaviest weight, slowly getting there!!!!!!!!

my voice just echoes off these walls

Okay so having moved to another city (back now for weekend), we have no internet at home. We signed up with the stupid internet provider 2 weeks ago and every time we call them they tell us it's 5-10 days until we will be connected. So we call up again today, which is when they promised to have it up, and they tell us there was a problem with our order and now we have to start all over again and it'll be another 5-10 days till we have internet. Thus my absence. My humblest apologies girls and I promise to whip this internet provider's ass until we have internet.

Not having internet is so very crippling that it's almost sad how much we depend on it.

So that being said, I have a lot to say and I'm also very tired so I shall be succinct, after all, brevity is the soul of wit.

Firstly, I have been on almost a liquid fast all week. Lost 2lbs!!!!!!!!!! YAAAAAAAAY!!!! PROGRESS!!!! I say almost because I've been eating dinner. This is because dinner is a communal thing at my flat (annoying!) and my flatmates would notice if I didn't eat it. They are already concerned about me not having breakfast and lunch so I would really turn heads if I went on a proper liquid fast. But that probably also explains why I'm so lethargic...I ate a lot today, a binge if you will, because I knew I had to drive for a long time this afternoon to get home so I thought I'd need the energy, backfired though, because it just made me sleepy.

Started work again, which is exhausting but it is good to be back, but now I feel like I have no time to do the stuff I wanted and after effectively having no holiday, I'm burnt out already.

I just got an invitation to go to a prizegiving for a prize that I desperately want but have almost no hope of getting. This year it is being awarded to a girl called KD. Now, KD is the epitome of perfection. She is amazingly beautiful, she is tall and model thin, she is intelligent and tops every subject at uni, she does about 5 extra-curricular activities and has a gorgeous boyfriend. She is everything I want to be and more. But you see, this prize is in a particular academic field that I'm very interested in, so for her to get it...well, when I found out she was getting it, I just wanted to cry.

Not that I missed out, she is in the year above me so next year is my chance to get it, but it still hurts, seeing how smart and perfect she is, I know that I have no hope to getting it. But that department loves me, and they mean the world to me, and they would be so disappointed in me if I didn't get it. They would hate me and turn me out. That can't happen, but I am also not capable of getting that prize. I'm stuck. I'm so depressed right now, after finally realising the calibre of person that prize entails, I know I'm not capable of it. I'm not good enough for it. Not smart enough nor skilled enough in that area for it.

Jones is now back in the country. He came back almost a full day ago and I haven't heard from him since. The thing is, I have been so unspeakably hurt by his absolute silence since he left a month ago. I feel so abandoned and uncared for, the one person who I actually trusted and let in has now turned on me and won't contact me. It makes me feel like utter crap. I don't want to ever see him again. All I have to say to him is, you have hurt me more than you'll ever be able to comprehend so now you are dead to me.

I'm not even considering what I'll do if he starts communicating again. To me, that is so very unlikely that I haven't prepared for that possibility.

So right now, I feel abandoned, unloved, unworthy, stupid, ugly, fat, like a failure in every aspect of my life. I just want to cry and cut and cry some more and cut some more and eventually cry and bleed myself to sleep.

the perfect instrument

I have been searching for the past hour for what I call "the perfect instrument". I've had an awful bloody day and binged several times and I've weighed myself and not lost any weight. Crap is not a strong enough word for how I'm feeling. Neither is shit. Now at times like these I need a little light relief and so as per usual I got my scalpel out then I had the idea of actually having some sort of crude design instead of just hacking away like I normally do.

Anyway, I ended up drawing some lines (because I can only cut in lines with blades, I'm not a fan of scratching away for various designs), 5 lines, 4 parallel to each other and the 5th line going through all 4 lines diagonally like a tally. But my scalpel isn't really shaped right to do that sort of cutting (so I've just ordered some more scalpel blades of a more appropriate shape online) and now I am on the hunt of something that will cut like that. But with an added dimension, I want these to scar. Scalpel blades give me immense control over direction and depth but they do not tend to scar. They leave a thin red line after the scab has fallen off and that eventually fades. I want a white scar after this and now I don't know what to cut with.

Scissors will definitely give me the scar I want but they offer much less control and so I don't think I'll be able to keep to the lines. I don't really know, I think my best bet is to just use the scissors really. The holy grail right now is that perfect instrument that will give me a nice scar without sacrificing my dexterity and control over the blade.

Jones has been back in Holland from Barcelona for 3 days now and I've heard no word from him. Frankly, I've given up but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt to think that he really doesn't care about me. I've been so busy lately that I haven't really thought about him much but today I got a whole lotta work heaped on me and this all at a time when I'm moving out of home for the first time, and going to live in a different city and about to start some serious training in the hospital. I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed to say the least but worst of all, I'm losing all perspective so I can no longer tell if I have any right to feel so stressed and overwhelmed or if I'm just being a whiney little bitch.

So, all in all, a shit end to a shit day. I've given up all hope on Jones and I'm not going to contact him until he contacts me first. I'm now going to grab the sharpest, biggest pair of scissors I can find. If they don't scar up enough then I'll just do it again later on, when I've had a look at the scar and evaluated if it needs redoing.

unlocking my wardrobe one dress at a time

It's hot, humid and sticky, in general it's pretty gross where I am. The heat of summer coupled with cyclones is seriously no fun. Nor is driving around in a cyclone in my little hatchback, feeling it sway from side to side. I haven't slept more than 3 hours per night for the past 5 nights at the very least and I haven't had a decent night's sleep (that's more than 6 hours for me) since the New Year. I'm pretty tired and so to stay motivated to exercise while I'm tired, sleepy, hot, humid, sticky and hungry is not easy. Now, at the end of a short work out I feel like I'm going to collapse.

Still, life isn't all doom and gloom right now. Prof CNM told me yesterday that he was very pleased with the work that I'd been doing so far. I was deliriously happy (yes, my life is that sad), I'd had no idea how he felt about me, as far as I knew he was secretly thinking that I was some useless tosser! So at least work is going okay at the moment.

For some reason the weight loss is going much slower than the rate at which I'm going down dress sizes. Not that I'm complaining about this, I'd rather have this than nothing at all, don't get me wrong, but the thing is, my scales don't say I've lost weight yet I continue to keep fitting clothes that were too small for me.

My wardrobe is possibly one of the most important things in my life and for such a long time I've not been able to wear what I like because I've not fit into my clothes or I've had to buy new, larger clothes to hide my growing weight. Now that I'm dropping weight again I can actually wear quite a lot of the stuff I used to be able to wear. I'm still quite a long way from fitting into the stuff I could wear when I was my lowest weight, and it just shows me how much I didn't appreciate how small I was when I was that weight. When I get to my goal weight of 49kg I will celebrate with a new dress! More incentive, I always want a new dress!

Short today, I've got to drive to another city this after and back, all in the name of moving out of home! (Even if it's only for 10 months, it's still awesome)

a particularly green streak

Well today was the first day back at uni and I guess it had it's ups and downs. On the up side the lectures were great, interesting and actually relatively okay to understand, it was great to see my friends again and I got quite a lot of my year sorted.

However. The big black mark all over today was a particular ex-friend who shall henceforth be refered to as SL. She and I used to be buddies, we're quite different and she was always very interested in my taste in fashion and make up and always asking to go shopping with me. I'm always happy to have a shopping buddy so that was all good. Then all of a sudden, with no warning, she hated everything I stood for. She called my clothes slutty (they're not, my style is strictly corporate and my outfits are almost without fail a pencil skirt with a shirt) and she thought make up was stupid and a waste of time. It was like she had the exact opposite view of what she had before and this literally happened overnight.

Anyway, we travel in the same social circles so we have been faux friends since then and after she got a boyfriend she sort of just dropped off my radar. I really only see her in between hospital rotations when we are doing on campus learning weeks. But when I saw her today, she had lost weight. I mean, she's always been thinner than me, but now, she's lost more weight and even I admit that she's looking great. Apparently it's all the belly dancing that she's been doing and the guys are all marvelling at her abs.

I can't tell you how much this makes sick with envy. For some reason I feel like she's my rival (even though we are in no way competing for any of the same things) but the fact that she's looking so great just drives me up the wall. I feel kinda worthless because if someone like her can lose weight then so can I.

I've now signed up for private ballet lessons once a week. They are freakishly expensive but I think that if I take private lessons then this will have several good effects:
1. I will feel obliged to practice ballet lots because the lessons cost me an arm and a leg.
2. Private lessons mean I get more attention to problem areas and can improve faster to do more complex dances.
3. Paying buckets of money for these lessons mean I will have no money for food. I get $160 a week to live off on, I am expecting to pay $100 a week for rent/bills etc and I am paying $60 an hour for these lessons so I will literally have no money for food. I will of course have to eat, but I have savings so I shall probably buy a little food each week and live off that.
4. Ballet and no food is a double pronged approach to weight loss.
5. I'm hoping that with my day choc a block with work, ballet and other forms of exercise I will be forced to stop procrastinating and start studying for my qualification exams and working on my paper.

I'm hoping that with this regime I will be a trim ballerina by the end of the year, or at least, much slimmer and more graceful with any luck.
I can't stand the fact that SL is thinner than me. I mean, she was always prettier, but I MUST BE THINNER! I don't care what it takes at this stage, I will be stick thin and thinner than her.

professional incompetence

No, that title doesn't herald some post about me doing something terrible in the hospital. That part of my life is still officially on holiday, at least, it is until tomorrow.

But what happened last night left me so outraged and drained of energy that I couldn't possibly behave properly. I just left and ran myself a hot bath and sat in it and bitched to one of my best friends about it. That probably all just meant nothing to anybody so I'll try to explain what happened even though it's still sort of a blur to me.

So I was sitting at my desk, working and trying to sort stuff out for when uni starts on Monday and my parents call me into their room. That only ever means that we are having a "meeting" where they discuss the things I'm not doing well enough and list the things that I needed to improve on. Needless to say that I hate these meetings but this one caught me off guard completely.

The opening statement was from dad and, it was (and I believe this is verbatim) "you are short, that's a disability, and you are unattractive and the only way a man will want to be with you is if he sees the value in you. You are rude and not polite enough and you need to get more valuable assests so that a man will want you." Firstly, I am not that short. I am 160cm tall and I have never found my height a problem. Secondly, height is inherited so if my parents have a problem with my height then it's all their fault.

Now that opening statement already had me completely fuming but it went on. He went on and on about how I need a boyfriend and how I need to make myself a better person for him. I need to be tidier because in future I will be cleaning up after myself and my boyfriend. I need to be polite and obedient because every man wants a quiet, obedient wife. But right now I am rude and unladylike and I need to change that for a man to want me.

This was followed by some shit about how I shouldn't do what I want to do, I should only do what I "should do" to further myself in life. And how even if I don't like what it is that I "should do", I must force myself to love it.

This was then followed by them saying I wasn't allowed to go to Hong Kong with one of my best friends at the end of the year. Now, they gave 3 reasons for this. The first was that I'm going to Germany next year so why don't I just transit HK when I go to Germany and save the money on the flight tickets (which is a valid enough point, I have no problem with this point). The second point was that the decision to go to HK wasn't "family oriented enough" and that I should be going to HK with my family and not with my friends (I'm 21 for fuck's sake! not 15!). The third point is possibly the most ridiculous of all 3 and it was that oh, but if I wanted to go to HK with my boyfriend (yes, the boyfriend that I don't have) then that would be absolutely fine.

So my friend who I was going to go with, she shares my anger and she suggests that I lie about going to HK with a boyfriend but actually jet off with her. Which is good except for the part that I would have to front up with a male as a fake boyfriend. I'm wondering if any of my gay friends would be happy to play the part.

Now considering I have summarised the main points of that talk into a few incoherent paragraphs, would it surprise anyone to learn that this talk took almost 2 hours, during which time I managed to scratch off all of the nail polish I was wearing in a desperate attempt to stop myself punching both my parents and storming out. I am so looking forward to not living at home. I don't know if I can get away with not coming home on weekend but my golly do I want to just never come home again.