I've fallen and I can't get up.

Ate somewhere around 1000 calories yesterday when I was aiming for 500, which makes me really pissed at myself. Oh well. Today I can b/p later if I need to, so HOPEFULLY I can stick to my 500 fucking calories and NOT screw up. *mutters angrily at self*

(Note that my 500 cals doesn't include anything I b/p on. I figure that even if some calories get left behind from a b/p [and not many will if I do it right] I can still lose weight on 500 cals plus b/ps with good purges.)

It's interesting how obsessed I'm starting to get with this again. Interesting, like watching someone pull their own fingernails off... but still, it is.

Today I am ridiculously and utterly wiped... shopping for an hour with my mom and sister took all the energy I had. I just had a two-hour nap/doze, and I'm still really effing tired.

Also, I can't really b/p tonight, because my aunt and uncle are coming over to play cards (I didn't ask, but they usually play cards) with my parents, and some girl who was recently in the hospital for anorexia is coming over to hang out with my sister. So all of them will be occupying two floors, and I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to use the shower to purge when the relatives are here. The funny thing was that I didn't even really want to b/p today, so it might actually work out. I'm so fucking tired that I don't really have the energy to b/p anyway.

I had forgotten how much this food restriction thing will drain your energy really really fast. I think my body is trying to make me rest or sleep a lot to try and conserve energy, since I'm not giving it that much through food. It's probably also trying to recover from the three b/ps of yesterday.

My main focus, and a lot of my thoughts, center around one thing lately: I have to lose this weight.

I finished making my 1/2 bagel with cream cheese and coffee, and I had just picked it up to leave the kitchen when I felt the oddest kind of vertigo. It was like there was something buzzing on the left side of my head, and it kept trying to make me lean to that side. When I walked a few steps it felt like my body was trying to make me walk sideways.

I can't figure out if I'm just dehydrated, or if maybe my electrolytes are fucked a bit these days, or what. I always seem to be tired or dizzy or orthostatic. I'd be more likely to say dehydrated, since I seem to have issues with hydration these days, but I get scared about potassium and shit. Last day or two my heart's been doing weird things, like beating REALLY hard and fast in the shower, or seeming to randomly speed up or get stronger for a couple dozen seconds. But then I think that maybe my anxiety's just being a bitch again, and starting to give me new-old physical symptoms. I don't know.

I'm probably going to Wal-Mart in the next hour or two, to shop for the rest of my Christmas presents, and I've been looking up the lowest-cal sandwiches on the McDonald's website, because I know I'll probably go there for a tidbit after I'm done. Surprisingly, the regular hamburger is one of the lowest-cal options, at 250. The grilled chicken snack wrap is also the same calories. I think the next lowest options were some other kinds of snack wrap... maybe the ones with breaded chicken, etc? The caesar chicken one was okay, too. Apparently the grilled buffalo chicken wrap is 240, but if I eat that thing my mouth will burn off. So I guess it's either a chicken wrap or a hamburger for me. I'll decide which one I feel more like having when I get there and have shopped for awhile. Or something.

I am scared of healthy eating, intuitive eating, eating to maintain my weight. I do not want to be this fat anymore, and I'm terrified of the idea of getting any fatter. So it really doesn't feel like I have that much of a choice anymore about keeping track of my food, counting calories, etc etc. I feel that if I do not do this NOW, I never will. And I'm very afraid of the idea that I will never ever get this extra weight off me. I need to get it off me.

Too fat too fat TOO FAT.

:(

Diuretic pills. The recommended dose is supposed to be one pill; I took two. But what's the difference between that and taking 3 ibuprofen instead of 2, which I've done to no ill effects? Or what about all the times I took 5 or 6 laxative pills at once instead of 2?

Why am I even bothering to try and justify my self-destruction? I took the pills in the first place precisely because I wanted self-destruction. I want to be more dehydrated, make my body suffer, give myself (the mental part of me, not just my body) exactly what I deserve. I know that diuretics do nothing for weight, but that isn't the point. The point is to cause more harm.

All I want to do right now is self-destruct. That is all I seem to care about. And exams are over now, so I currently have free reign to do whatever I wish. Which I am currently planning to take full advantage of.

SELF INJURY TRIGGERS. Read at your own discretion.

Today was a fucking awful day.

I binged and binged at suppertime, and yet didn't feel ill enough to purge. Didn't have the energy to purge, either, or even the desire. So all that food has been digesting for at least six hours, making me fat, making me a fucking whale.

I have been getting back into cutting, albeit kind of slowly compared to most, I am sure. Objectively it's not a good thing... so why do I feel as though it is good? Why does it feel natural and even soothing to be cutting again? I don't know. All I know is that it's like feelings I've been trying to restrain for so, so long are finally coming to the surface, and there is almost a kind of joy in discovering that this part of me is not gone -- that there is still something underneath all the apathy and anxiety that can feel, that can express the pain instead of suppressing it, that even realizes the pain is still there. And I revel in the self-injury itself. It is like an old, long-lost friend is finally returning to me. I know this probably all sounds ridiculous from an outside point of view, but in my head it's... not fully wonderful, but still, in its way, kind of wonderful.

I have stocked up on first aid supplies.
I bought some new binge food today, although it's not exactly a total supply... more like something to fill up the corners, after I grab whatever I want to eat from upstairs. Which is something I've been doing more and more often lately, because I never feel like binging solely on the food I have in my room.
I rediscovered a collection of utility knives and blades that has been sitting in my room for a good couple of years. Surprisingly, none of the blades are at all dirty or rusted. Probably because they've been kept in a closed container all this time, a container which yet aerates. (Hard to explain.) I never used a utility knife before yesterday, and I was surprised that I found it to be a good utensil. I remember not liking utility knives much before.

My exam studying... didn't happen today. At all. Which is really shitty, because my exams start on Wednesday, and I have one apiece on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Now is really NOT the time to be slacking in my study. So why, for the love of god, didn't I study today?? My only attempt at an answer is that, mentally, I was completely tuned out of school. I could not face the thought of devoting any time or energy to rereading material yet again. [I don't mean that I read it recently... just that I HAVE already read it before, weeks or months ago, and studied it in-depth for exams before this.] I guess... I just did not care.

And yet I HAVE to care. Because this is the final haul, and I need to do well on these exams, or I am going to freak out. And in the case of my calculus exam, this is my one last chance to redeem myself. I currently have a 59% average in the course, and the exam is worth 60% of my grade... and if we do a lot better on the exam than we've been doing in the course, the prof has said he will adjust the grade accordingly. If I do well enough, I could come out of the course with a B (65% minimum). That's a long shot, but I have to try, don't I? And I do NOT want to have shelled out a couple hundred bucks for tutorials just to end up doing really shitty in this course. I ABSOLUTELY do not want to have to retake this fucking course!!!

Just five more days. I can do this. I have to do this. I must do this. There is no option to not do this. I do this, or I lose what semblance of sanity I am still clinging to. This is goddamned necessary, and I really truly mean that.

I need to pummel this thing to the fucking ground.

My Johari window!

Do it? Please? You know you waaaanna. :)

http://kevan.org/johari?name=nosouvenirs

The Quest

This is extremely long, sort of academic, and probably rather boring. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't read it.


Part of me still thinks that the whole quest for weight loss is, essentially, stupid. It is superficial and shallow and hollow, and at its core it really doesn't mean anything. People look at your skinny body, wrapped in its popular clothing, the hair styled and the makeup done, nails polished and skin smooth and clean, and based on the choice you've made to be skinny, to conform to the popular styles, you are allowing them to judge you as a certain kind of person. You are allowing those who wish to have power to sedate you, to make you another compliant clone. If I was to become skinny, to follow the cultural trends, I think, it would be the same thing as allowing them to take my own power away from myself. Because they are saying: You are only worthy as a woman if you are small and fashionable and more like the masses. We have indicated that your most essential worth comes from your appearance, and if you do not follow this, we will mock you. We will berate you, and chastise you, until you once again become silent and do what we want. In other words, we have all the power in this situation, and you have none.

These kind of thoughts make me feel like the whole world is acting out a patriarchal and mysogynistic play, one where, even though we never voice it, men still want to have power over women. The group that has been dominant for a long time in a certain society wants to continue to remain dominant, to never have its supremacy questioned by the other groups. And when men feel that women hold all, or some of, the cards in areas where they have never before held cards, it is a challenge to their power and authority, and it rocks them at their very cores, and they become afraid that, because women now have some things, they might someday have the potential to take their own power away from them. They do not realize that most women do not necessarily have that agenda. They assume that because their own unconscious agenda is to keep power, women must have the agenda, as the less dominant ones, to snatch that power away. Why? Because that is what aggressors do -- attempt to seize power. So maybe every bid for real equality will be met with a strong and negative reaction, because of this fear of a usurping of control.

Maybe the heightening equality of women in the work force and in other places is being countered, not at the source of that specific issue, but in another way. In women's sublimation via the mass media. In telling a woman she is no good, in the work world or otherwise, unless she is skinny and beautiful and wears this makeup and buys clothing from these fashion labels. There are still so many factors at work to try and keep women down, even if advertisers' specific intents are not to keep women down. We don't have to state it out loud, because it's already there, screaming at us through the things we see and hear on a daily basis. We don't have to teach our children gender differences and roles, because they learn them through interaction with people who already have it ingrained within themselves and their behavior. If you don't believe me, let me ask you: Would a little boy voluntarily wear pink? Why not? What's wrong with pink? Why is it a "girls' color"?

Anyway, the real point here is that, when threatened with the possibility that a less powerful group might overtake them, it seems that the group already in power tries to strike back, only in a different way, through methods that started years or, in this case, decades ago. Methods that have now become so complex that it's harder to get to the root of the issue and deal with it. Fairly similar to how, the longer an adult has had a certain mental disorder, the more constructs they have built around it, and the harder it is to work through all the layers of disorganization and distortion to get to the real truth that started the whole castle building.

So if I am thinking all these things, and I can see them with my own two eyes, why do I still think weight loss is this great thing, and that if I managed to lose these damn 15 pounds that haunt me, I would somehow be a better person, a more perfect woman? Because factual analysis isn't enough, perhaps. The ideas that I've gotten in my head, through media and through my interactions with others, are so ingrained that even knowing the facts often isn't enough to make me do anything about it. And why? Because these intellectual facts do not seem relevant to my personal situation, perhaps. If everyone you know face-to-face is telling you a certain thing, and you grow up believing it, isn't it hard to just "shake it off" as if you never learned it, even if something you learn in your higher education calls into serious question the validity of the thing you learned? And it's even harder when you still feel that that mindset serves you well at least some of the time, and that you're truly accomplishing something through what you've learned. Which is how, I'm sure, a lot of us feel about weight loss. It really feels like you're doing something good and concrete for yourself, often, even without all the other issues that will go along with it if you have an ED -- control, deep insecurity, whatever.

The reason eating disorders are so damned hard to get rid of are that even once the distortions, the issues, that come along with the "disorder" part are gone, we still have to contend with all the social messages that everyone, everywhere, is telling us. Messages that a lot of people grew up believing were true. And it all serves to make an eating disorder look almost socially acceptable, especially in the early stages. There's an awful fucking lot of validation that goes on in eating disorder communities, particularly in pro-ana communities, about why an eating disorder is actually a good thing, a constructive thing, healthier than what the person was doing before. We know that a lot of it is just the warped thinking that the eating disorder needs to go on living, because the person, at a deeper level, doesn't think they can survive without it. But part of it also comes because we are taught by society that weight loss IS a good thing, a constructive thing, something that makes you healthier. And we're taught that skinnier IS better. And, of course, nobody in the mass media comments on how any of these celebrities actually got skinny, or whether it's really truly healthy. They just show you pictures of skinny celebs on the red carpet, on the runway, in performances, in movies, and you are left to glean the message for yourself. Intuitively. The way that humans learn so many of their social constructs.

There is a reason that socialization is so important when we consider the modern increases in diagnosed eating disorders. It's not because socialization causes eating disorders. That's an extremely stupid line of reasoning which, once used, gets you the utter disrespect and suddenly mute ears of people who actually have a clue what they're talking about. But it's hard to deny that socialization is a definite factor in eating disorders. It helps to provide that fertile soil for people who have had certain kinds of lives, who have certain personality types or traits, to dig themselves deeply into once they discover what it is. Professionals don't even come close to understanding yet how the pieces have fit together when an individual decides that first time to restrict, or throw up a meal, or whatever. They also don't understand why certain people diet and don't stick with it, and other people start a diet and go on to develop a serious eating disorder, anorexia or otherwise. But I really think you absolutely can't understand any of it without understanding causal factors... the way your brain is wired to create your basic personality (I don't think many would argue that different babies seem to be born with different personalities), how your environment interacts with your particular personality to create discord or harmony, how secondary socialization enters the picture both during and after primary socialization by caregivers (makes you wonder how secondary "secondary socialization" is, when a baby is surrounded by relatives and friends and videos and television and music from infancy), how it can all come together years and years down the road in a desire for eating disordered behavior. Mass media messages, messages from peers -- those are two things that would count under the label of secondary socialization. Can you, personally, deny that what other people do doesn't have an affect on you? If not, you cannot truly deny the impact of socialization.

None of this would even be a problem if everyone was the same. But of course no one is. So person A hears everywhere that she should lose weight, diets, and later on other factors intermingle to cause a restrictive eating disorder -- but social messages were clearly a primary trigger of her disorder. Person B hears those same messages and thinks they're utter bullshit, but years down the road she absolutely cannot cope with her life, and she needs something to obliterate her emotions, so she starts to restrict. Later, in her perusals of eating disorder communities, she discovers that there is an entire paradigm in mass media that validates her in her self-destructive intents, and so she seizes on it, makes it a part of her disorder, and then a part of herself. In the end, both girls' cases could look very much the same... but they certainly didn't come from the same place in the beginning. How the hell would a treatment provider know, from a clinical diagnosis or even one interview, which one of us was which? How would a provider go about figuring out what the primary etiology was in each of our distinctive cases, especially if we were both talking about wanting to be skinny and saying, "Look how many other people are skinny, and think that trying to be skinny is so great! How can you tell us we are wrong??" Or would a primary treatment provider even make that distinction, or care? I often think that a lot of them really don't care at all. After all, a therapy like CBT doesn't depend on knowing the etiology of a disease, does it? It says that if you change the though distortions or behaviors, you will change the person's life for the better. To a provider of CBT, the intuitive differences between person A and person B would not matter, because both clients would have to change the thought disortions that skinnier is always better, even when skinnier means really underweight and unhealthy, and change the behaviors, which would involve getting the underweight person to a normal weight.

For person A, this might actually help them a lot (though maybe not fully), because the primary cause of their disorder would have been addressed. But for person B, for whom this is a secondary, although eventually significant, effect... would CBT have a lasting impact on them? Would changing their eating disordered behavior and thought disortions actually ensure that such problems wouldn't come back in the future, as these therapists would claim? After behavioral modification, the person who used the eating disorder primarily to cope with unwanted emotions could easily still have all the unwanted emotions -- in short, the primary cause of their eating disorder would still be there. How long would such a person be able to go on using the behavioral modifications before the primary cause reared its ugly head, became too much to cope with yet again? Wouldn't such a person do better in another treatment, one that addresses the TRUE primary cause of the disorder... no matter how hard that primary cause, or those many primary causes, might be to discover?

But CBT therapists never see this. They think that the symptoms a person presents with MUST be the symptoms that need treatment, and they don't think it so necessary to look much further. They don't do dynamic work, and so they don't get any idea of what really caused the disorders of persons A and B. They don't deal with any underlying or more deep-seated issues -- maybe because they're uncomfortable with it, or because they are truly ignorant and do not think there is anything to see beyond the person as he or she is right now, or maybe for some other reason. As such, they are doing patient B an extremely huge disservice, because in patient B they are treating extremely superficial issues and so cannot possibly hope to cure the real disease. The metaphor I like to use is that CBT is akin to putting a Band-Aid on the wound, while completely ignoring the infection underneath; it looks fixed, but it most certainly is not fixed! And yet CBT therapists go on in blissful ignorance of how their work was wasted, and someone like patient B is left semi-fixed and semi-damaged, trying to search out therapist after therapist in hopes of finally finding another one that will address the true etiology. While, in the meantime, they are unhappy and discontent and also completely in limbo... and it is just as easy for them to go back to their disordered behaviors as it is for them to recover, if not easier. Logically speaking, why wouldn't such an individual go back to disordered behavior? Not only is it more immediately appealing and effective, but now they've been through the system and discovered exactly how much it does not help them, and how superficial and stupid the whole thing is.

If you haven't already guessed, I will now tell you: Patient B is me. And reasons like this are why I take such complete fucking offense to CBT. Honestly, I would estimate that far more people get EDs for reasons that are not primarily culturally-based than who get them because they really just wanted to look skinny and beautiful and somehow they lost control of it. CBT is the most common treatment of our day, and it's totally fucked up, because the sickest people are often the people who need therapy the most, but are often the ones who benefit from CBT the least... because their problems are simply too deep and complex for a course of shallow, idiotic CBT to handle.


I think I should probably end my rant now. Kudos to you if you actually read all that.

I'm really tired right now, but a lot of it is my own fault. I can't seem to let go of this stupid b/p train I've been on. I'm terrified that if I stop b/ping, and eat normally, I'm going to gain a lot of weight. This is probably utter foolishness... and I know it's probably easier and healthier to lose weight on a consistent diet... and yet I can't shake the idea. At this very moment, my brain is so warped that it really believes food is the enemy. God. When was the last time I thought like this?? Ridiculous.

In other news, I had my counseling appointment today. I was pleasantly surprised by the entire thing, actually. I was surprised, first of all, by how easy it was to talk to him... I mean, I didn't spill the entirety of my guts or anything, but I was pretty honest about most things. I was also surprised by some of the things he said. For example, near the end of the session, after I had told him about a lot of the self-destructive bullshit I've done to myself over the years, he said something about how he could see I was truly in pain... and the tone of voice, the sympathy in that voice, was something I hadn't expected at all. I guess I'm so used to being told by psychiatrists, or having it implied, that the self-destructive aspects are really not that big a deal, or that doing them somehow makes me lesser of a person. Of course, today I didn't exactly sit in that room with any bravado. I told him, even, that I felt shame about things like the cutting, because I truly felt that I should have been over it a long time ago, and here it is all starting to come back again. I am not at ALL proud that I've been SIing lately.

Anyway, after he sort of got an idea of what I had come in about -- which to me was rather confusing, and seemed to flip flip around all over the place, but perhaps he understood it all more rationally and objectively than I -- he asked me if I'd ever done any of the groups. So then he told me about a group for mood management that is ongoing there, and said he thought it might be a good idea for me to try it. (I talked more than once about how my mood never seems to stay the same, I often have trouble deciding if I need help because I "feel fine" for awhile, etc.) The plan we set up is that I will attend the mood management sessions for two weeks, then have a sort of follow-up session to see how things have been going, etc.

The group itself seems okay, from what I can tell. Apparently it may have as few as 2-3 people in it right now, and it relies a lot on group support, etc. The counselor told me that the essence of it was basically that people go in and talk about things in their life, how they've coped with those things, what has and hasn't worked for them, etc. "Mood management" is a pretty broad term, so it could mean anything from depression to bipolar to reactive borderline-esque mood swings such as I think I experience. According to the summary I read online, I think it can be for either situational reactions or longer-standing patterns of mood. I guess it all depends on the group members, etc.

In the past I have tended not to be able to open up all that much in group therapies, such as at Homewood, where I remember that I said nothing that seemed of any really large consequence to myself in interpersonal (the main group therapy). Opening up is hard for me in general, and the more people you put in a room the less likely I generally am to spill my guts, because I have a huge fear of rejection, plus in speaking about anything I must also confront my own shame, guilt, etc etc. I have hopes that if the group really IS as small as it's supposed to be, it might be easier to open up within it. On the other hand, I'm also afraid that because the group is small I may get pressured into speaking before I'm ready, or pressured to go in-depth faster than I feel comfortable with. Buuuut it's quite possible that I'm also overthinking this whole thing. I did that same thing with worrying about the fact that my counselor was a psychiatry resident, after all.

In any case, I hope something helps soon, if anything ever will. With each day that passes I seem to grow more and more apathetic, hating of life and of myself, and anxious about how "fat" I think I am. For now I'm not superbly restricting -- I still recognize that super restriction isn't a good thing to do. But I'm also getting more spells of depression and anxiety, am b/ping a lot more, and am cutting more, so I don't know if the fact that I'm not extremely restrictive yet really means that much. :|

I hope you've all had a lovely day. :)

Somewhat short update

I have an appointment at the counselling center on Monday. With a psychiatry resident. *groans* I don't know if it will be a good thing or a bad thing... but I guess I can give it a shot, right? I mean, will it really hurt anything all that much?

My shit is just getting to be a little too much for me. I keep purging, and I cut again the other day, and I keep thinking about cutting. Plus I'm finding motivation, energy, and concentration to be problems lately. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, but I would like to somehow make it go away, whatever it is, if I can.

I just hope this goes okay. I was hesitant enough about even making this counselling appointment... I'm afraid that if it really doesn't go well I may not be able to rev myself up to try yet again, and fail once again.

As a random last side note, there is a decent chance of me failing my calculus test today, and an even greater likelihood that if I pass I will do very badly. Read: I'm almost certain of it.

I hope you're all doing better than me. ♥

This is what it is to have an eating disorder.

my reflection... hurts me.

i am
a lump of lard,
a spewing, volcanic thing,
erupting out of all bounds
of what it means to be normal.

please tell me this isn't me.

i want to claw at it, break the glass,
smear my blood on the image,
obscure it from view.

my punishment: a desert island,
a few bananas a day, crazy running.
fat and burned i'd be, but maybe soon
the metamorphosis, skinny, tan,
running wild and free,
hoping the malaria mosquito doesn't find me.

i cannot face my disgust,
my scars, the stretching purple
of fat-swelled skin,
pores red and leaking.
somewhere, a roof is caving in;
a baby is wailing
for a heartbeat it will never feel.


this is not really a poem.
free verse, shitty free verse at that,
trying to describe an existence
no description can truly capture.
i am lost in myself,
myriad folds of axons, transmitters,
partitions and chemicals
and a damned fucking mess.

I have a Latin quiz tomorrow, but I have not been studying nearly enough. I still couldn't tell you what most of the nine special adjectives are, or what any of them mean, and I have to know them all for tomorrow morning at 10 AM. God, I am so fucked. And I don't even care.

I have spent this weekend trying to digest less calories, but I have also been b/ping. I did it twice today, at least once yesterday... maybe I did it on Friday also? I can't really remember. I've been b/ping a lot more in general lately, too. Sooo I guess the ED is a bit strong. I would really love to just stay home tomorrow, say fuck the Latin quiz, and my lectures and my volunteering too... although I know I won't, and I'll probably freak out and study like crazy tomorrow morning (although I guess we'll see how much it helps). But right now I am just so exhausted, physically from the b/ping and mentally from the constant thoughts about food and the ED generally, that I simply do not give a shit about any of this school shit.

The thing is, the "school shit" is actually not so bad at the moment. I'm finally learning some calculus... and I got an A on my first psych exam, which I did NOT expect. I'm not quite sure why I'm suddenly deciding to fuck everything up by starting on the ED train again. It's like -- I have this HUGE struggle to get by in school, to try and learn everything, and then once I finally get some confirmation that maybe I know one or two things, I start completely ignoring my work and diving headlong into the bulimia again? I mean, what gives? I don't understand this at all. You'd think doing well in school would motivate me to want to stay healthy, so I could continue to get good marks.

And yet... some part of me really thinks that all this is a fluke, that one false step and all my "good" grades are going to slide out from under me and become the shitty grades I know are just waiting to pounce on me the second I slack even the tiniest bit. It still feels like so much pressure -- to perform, to do well, so I can have a high GPA, so I can get into the psych degree, and later on get into university jobs, grad school, etc. It's like trying to get skinnier, b/ping, not studying, are my ways of saying "fuck you" to this world that expects me to do EVERYTHING NOW, when I feel like I just can't cope, or am going to go insane from trying to.

So basically... doing well makes me self-destruct, so I can have an excuse if I do poorly in the future? That's some fucked-up logic right there. And yet it all happened without me even being aware of what the trains of thought actually were. I just had some instincts, some impulses, some unconscious feelings, all of which I acted on before any of that intellectual stuff kicked in. The problems only seem to occur either when things fall apart, or the intellectual side kicks in. Until then, I just ride the happy oblivion train and do whatever the fuck I like.

Sometimes I really bloody hate reality, you know that.

I'm really starting to think I'm truly, a little bit, depressed right now, even though I seem to have none of my most usual symptoms.

I tried to make a YouTube video today, and couldn't add any oomph to any of it. I played back not even 30 seconds and decided to can it. I hated looking at myself in that video, and not just because I thought I was fat. I simply could not understand why anyone would be interested in such a thing -- and why post it if nobody is going to be interested in it?

I'm not motivated to do a lot of things actually. This unfortunately includes school. It is very, very hard to try and make yourself work and study and do assignments when you simply don't care, and you'd rather laze around the house all day surfing the Internet, watching YouTube videos, talking to your friends on MSN, and listening to music.

I don't know what happened to me, really. I used to be academically motivated to succeed. I used to love learning. Now... I don't seem to care. Honestly, most of the time I wouldn't care if I ever went to university again. It's just that there's nothing else in the world that I want to do, either. I don't want to go to college -- I don't want to move out and get a job -- I don't want to spend the rest of my life in some shitty minimum wage job. Plan #2 wouldn't work, anyway, because you can't get any good jobs without either college or university (here college = trades and university = bachelors), and you'd have to make at least semi-decent money in order to be able to make it living on your own. And if there's one thing I have no desire to deal with if I can ever help it, it's roommates.

Anyway, all this is null and void, because right now I live at home and am doing university full-time, and I have to keep doing that until I get a degree of some kind. There really is no other choice, not unless I want one of the other options I wrote above, which I don't. I don't like anything I could possibly do, so I might as well pick the one that used to make me happy, or that is broader in terms of what I can do afterwards. I never did like the idea of absolutely, finitely being tied to one specific career or set of careers after graduation, which is something college would ensure.

I am just... tired of life. Really fucking tired of life. And yet I have to force myself to slog through it, because there is absolutely nothing else that I can do.

I wonder if this actually sounds like depression, or if these are just the ramblings of someone who's just really, truly realized how stupid and boring and meaningless her life is.

Eating fucked-up-ness

What do I do?

Do I attempt, yet again, to try and eat normally -- to choose mostly healthy and nutrient-dense foods -- to maybe start going to the gym on campus again? I did feel better when I was doing that. Do I try it, knowing that the moment I get stressed out again, which is absolutely certain to happen because I'm a full-time student and school is a major stressor for me, I will probably revert back to old gluttonous or disordered habits, or maybe some combination of the two?

Do I ignore the fact that I've gained even more weight -- this heavy feeling of my thighs, the 95% absence of all bones or hints of bones -- or do I try to minimize some? Will getting fit be enough without losing weight? And, again, can I even possibly sustain any of it? It doesn't seem so likely, given my history, and the way my mood swings around at the least little change in my circumstances. Even if I try to lose a little weight, I am pretty sure, I will just gain it all back again the moment I get stressed, and things snap in my brain, and I start trying to inhale the whole house, the whole grocery store, the whole world. I have some major fucking willpower and control issues, I am convinced, which I lately take out on food in the most negative way possible: eating too much of it AND keeping most of it in.

Disgusting. Horrifying. And yet so much of the time I am just apathetic about how disgusting and horrifying it is. I don't have any concept that I am gaining weight until I suddenly notice that some body part feels heavier, that these clothes are a little tighter, that I have to retire this or that pair of my older jeans because they don't fit properly anymore. The thing that used to terrify me beyond belief a couple of years ago -- gaining weight, becoming overweight -- is happening to me right now, and I don't even care. I don't even fucking care.

Why don't I care? Is it because I am just so tired of the starve-binge cycles? So tired of the bulimia? So tired of restriction in and of itself? Is it because I am tired of the constant anxiety of restricting intake, the fear that slight deviation will make me gain a thousand pounds? Tired of the realization that all my starving and bulimic behaviors and overeating have altogether combined just to make me gain even MORE weight?

Well, maybe that's why I gave restriction, in the eating disordered sense, up. But why is it that I can't see a reduction in food intake and restriction in the disordered sense as separate entities? Why can't I see a healthy, lower-calorie meal plan, in which I actually track what I eat, as something healthy and good for my body, instead of as a ravaging, soul-sucking tormentor that will immediately and with great force bring me right back to the terror, the consuming obsession, of restrictive EDNOS?

Why can't I just eat healthier and in smaller portions? Why does that always, sooner or later, start to feel like restriction, like deprivation, like it's somehow "not the real me"? (The voice in the back of the head whispers: What, is the "real you" a gluttonous fat girl? Is the "real you" the one who eats until her stomach is ready to burst, until she feels incredibly nauseous and indulgent, and then leans over a toilet to relieve the pressure, to avoid the sticky heat and stomach upset of the incredible spike in blood sugar the binge will bring if it stays in? Is that what the "real you" is?)

I feel, somehow, that if I knew the answers to these questions -- if I could figure out the reasons for my fucked-up-ness -- that I could finally conquer the bulimia and COE and binge-eating once and for all. That I could finally figure out how to make the overeating child inside me happy, and she would finally stop trying to fill her emptiness and sorrow and pain with all the food she is able to get her hands on. And maybe then she would leave me alone and let me get on with the rest of my life.