Harbinger

I've been thinking about it. About what it is that turned me around to something that started out as a positive change in my life. A swooping down and tearing me away from my dysfunctional eating habits. For awhile I could put something in my mouth without thinking. I even forgot to count calories.

Now if I don't count the calories it's because I loathe everything I ate and know I won't like the number. But I know the number in the back of my head anyway.

I remember there was a day back at my lowest weight. For just a few fleeting seconds I saw how awful I looked. Sometimes, I come across a picture (I think something like five exist from that time because I was too fat to photograph at 105 pounds) and I can see it again.

The good thing about the whole experience and my fucked up body is that everyone always thinks I'm a smaller size or weight than I really am. Girls working in retail are absolutely useless because they always hand me a size that I know literally won't fit but they are convinced that it'll fit me perfect. I even had an argument with a friend who weighed more than me but we wore the same size trousers 8 UK, at the time. If I was actually 105, what must people have thought I weighed? How horrible would I have looked if I let myself get smaller.

I guess it's the reason why people get so annoyed with me about my weight whining now. I don't look fat. I'm not fat, I guess. They think I weigh far less than I do and can wear clothes that haven't fit in some time. Blessing and a curse?

But anyway, as usual that's not what this is about at all.

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So I know that glimpse in the mirror got me started in a different direction. I promised TR that I would try and get healthy, and I mostly meant that. But I think the biggest factor in my short-lived-recovery was a friendship I made.

I think I've mentioned her before. We all got incredibly drunk when I first moved to England and she walked me home because she was British and could hold her liqueur while I was a belligerent American who had over indulged in cider and possibly that's all for the day. Most of the night is a blur except I clearly remember one question she asked me on our walk home. She asked if I had an eating disorder. Now that I think about it, I believe we were walking by the ED clinic that was about 5 minutes from my flat (how things seem to come together after the fact). Everything's fuzzy but I know she confided in me that she was a recovered anorexic.

Her friendship prevented me from truly allowing myself to fall back into my compulsive behaviors and neurotic thought processes that encouraged my previous self-destruction. It was for the sole reason that while I trusted her word that she felt recovered and sure of herself, I would not be the guide that led someone back into that life. I tried to recover to make sure she continued to remain healthy.

She's still very much part of my life but countless time zones and countries away. I can compulse without fear of triggering her former life. My impact on her disease has become minimal. What I chose to do to myself has become almost entirely my own again (I can't say I'm completely free as I always have TR and Paula Deen carefully monitoring my every whim).

All in all, it was wonderful to have someone to be fairly healthily disordered with. I loved telling her that I really felt guilty for eating whatever we were indulging in but because she was doing it too, it felt ok. Anyone else would cock their eyebrow at me and mutter something about co-dependency. But she and I could openly talk in pubs or on park benches about something that had previously been relegated to clandestine internet blogging, forum posts, or pen-pal letters.

I don't know what I'll do without her. From what I know, her disease progressed far worse than mine ever got, and I feel she's so much wiser and healthier than I. But maybe its because even as I recovered and forgot how to be disordered, I never really wanted to.

What is to come?

The Chase

Hello new followers. What a pleasant thing to see when I logged onto blogger. Thanks for making my morning.

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This place seems like an old friend or a relative. That person that you love talking to and telling stories with. The person who listens to all those little things you find interesting, and you get to the point where you think, "Have I said this already?"

I'm sure I repeat myself constantly. In my head, I outline the nonsense I want to say, the message I want to convey in each post. Sometimes I have a little story to go along with it or sagely advice. Then I think to myself, "How embarrassing would it be to realize later I've basically repeated a blog from 8 months ago?"

There are bigger things in the world to worry about but these are the things I choose to spend my time fretting over.

Needless to say, we may have reached the point in our relationship where you have to tell me that we've already talked about that. I've told you this particular thing. You know that already.

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Those of you who have hung around for awhile know how I feel about the show Dexter. One of my most popular rants (which I can tell is a high traffic post because almost all 39 comments are spam bots!) is about him. That time feels so far removed. I remember what it was like to be so little, the obsessions that ran through my mind 24/7, and the lengths I went to just to get through a day.

I felt so far gone that I could relate to a serial killer. A likable one, albeit, but still. Which is worse, the fact that my thinking was so disordered or the fact that I miss it now?

Television is one of the most important things to me in the world. It's a real escape. I can't stand film because you know it's going to be over in 2 hours. My favorite shows provide the promise that if I can just hold on for one more week, I can transport myself back into that world once again. Suppose fiction books are the same, but I've been in school for so long without time to read that I don't really know how to pick the habit up again.

Television is the same as food. It numbs me out. The first few minutes, the first bite are addicting. I never want it to end. I chase that feeling, knowing that the remaining time, what's left on the plate, won't be as satisfying. But I just want to experience that first taste again. The sheer joy of escape.

Dexter started again last Sunday. I waited as long as possible to track it down and watch. I knew that watching it would lead to inevitably seeing its conclusion. Dancing with the notion of its promise was more exciting. I couldn't wait anymore. It was an hour well spent. But I noticed that I no longer understood the motives of our protagonist. He hadn't changed but I had.

But I haven't. Not really. I talk about food constantly. I never want to go outside because it means putting on clothes which means thinking about a wardrobe full of garments that don't fit me. It's my longing to be back to a time where I felt fat with a BMI that flirted with underweight (that seems like a healthier ideal than skeletal thin, right?). Despite this ache and cravings and good (bad?) intentions, I can't seem to stand behind them with any conviction. I've lost the drive. It's just too hard.

In the end though, I'm not fighting with some "recovered" part of myself. None of you in my position are. We got thin, painfully thin, disgustingly frail. We let ourselves eat again, gain weight. Played with the idea of control and who had it. And now we are just as unhappy as ever. But we aren't better. We are just fleshy versions of the same self. And the person that we wish to be isn't who we used to be. Our memories are distorted and we have become nostalgic for a time that didn't exist. We want something that, looking back at it, seemed so effortless.

I lost how much weight? How fast? Why can't I do that again?

I can't because I haven't come to terms with the agony I was in before. It wasn't easy. I'm chasing that first bite, the allure of thin. Running after a version of myself that is as real as the television world I long to be in.

Of course, as usual, I have no answers. No words of wisdom to impart. Nothing I can say will make you step away from your computer thinking, I am enlightened and I know what I must do now. The best I can hope is you will sit and read these words, silently nodding to yourself. I can relate. You know what I'm thinking. We're in this together.

Stop chasing that escape.

God and his Rath

FUCK!

So I'm looking through this girl's facebook, lalala. She's this super thin girl who isn't that pretty (I love it when naturally thin girls are kind of homely, makes me feel like there is a God and he looks out for me now and again) and she's pregnant.

Looking through her pictures because she was in grad school when I was at uni and I always think its weird to imagine people I know having babies. It just doesn't seem right. So I'm looking at her photos trying to absorb the idea of her pregnancy.

Then I realize it. Minus her gigantic belly, she looks like my size. Like her arms could be my arms.

I might as well be fucking pregnant!!! God smites me again.

inside my head

I literally said this to myself today before I had a chance to think about what I was saying... well thinking...

"My whole life depends on me getting thin."

Melodramatic, a little? Then why does it seem to ring so true?

Be Relevant

So I'm sure you all know what the economy is like...

It's hard enough to get a job you're qualified for these days, but it's 100x more difficult when you live in the bowels of Hell. A desert wasteland where dinosaurs go to die. The only places that have anything for me are in LA or SF... and since money makes the world go around, I'm stuck at home until I can fly away with a trail of green Washingtons following me.

I've been thinking about something for awhile now. As far back as I can remember, I felt I was a performer. An artist. An actor. It kept me thriving. My life on the stage was a drug. In the fifth grade, I remember my teacher signing my yearbook with "We'll see you on the silverscreen someday!" And I really thought it would happen.

There's something strange about being a child. Everyone tells you that if you believe in yourself, anything can happen. You can achieve whatever you want. People praise and nurture your talents. Then, you reach an odd stage in high school. The mailbox starts getting packed with college pamphlets recruiting you, and your teachers tell you its time to start thinking about your future. Your schedule is packed with classes like biology, calculus, literature, foreign language, trigonometry, chemistry, and psychology... and after you graduate, you will probably use less than half of what you learned in your coursework.

Your teachers, school counselors, parents, and loved ones start to groom you for a respectable career. Maybe you'll be a nurse, or an insurance adjuster. If you're lucky, you might be encouraged to go for graduate school and be an academic. But those dreams that were instilled in you are forgotten and discarded. If you're like me, still hungry for stage time, it becomes "community service" and everyone tells you that this will be a great activity for college applications.

Go to college, grow up, work in an office, retire at 65, cash in your social security, play golf or bridge, think about how great it was when you could walk with a spring in your step, start to deteriorate, die. If you're fortunate.

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I can't get a good job. It seems so funny because I could have been a working actor by now. Even if I wasn't remotely successful, I wouldn't be saddled with over $60,000 in debt. I keep telling myself that it's never too late, I can start acting tomorrow if I wanted to. But something happened to me in college. I'm no longer the confident, assured person I used to be. I'm riddled with insecurity, I feel fat and ugly and talentless. It takes every ounce of me not to let anyone else see that.

I don't know. There's something about me that I want to fix. I need to change. When I was 8, 12, or 17 I couldn't wait to get out of my small town, with its horrible resident townies, and make something of myself. I suppose I've done that, but I want to get back that spark, the drive, and the passion that kept me going every day. Nostalgia is killer.

But honestly, it wouldn't even matter except this tiny voice in the back of my head keeps telling me that I'm meant for more. Something about me is destined to be great. I battle my emotional insecurities and the hubris that tells me I could be famous if I only tried. And I can honestly tell you, I have no idea why this is important to me. If I'm doing something I love, I should be perfectly content to live in utter obscurity. My wise Irish friend once said to me, "Don't strive to be famous, strive to be relevant."

What does that even mean?
"The relation of something to the matter at hand."

How vague. I suppose that's my life though. Blindly, I wander my world, following a trail whose destination of which I am not aware. Sometimes, I wish I could escape and move into a tiny town in the middle of no where, somewhere in the heartland of America. I'd live in an imaginary town where everyone knows each other.

I just want to get away from this desire for greatness because I'm afraid it will never happen.

Nothing is Happening

I feel like my life is so busy but nothing is happening.
Does that make sense?

I just want to be back in the place where all I did was sit in my giant bed (RIP bed) and read blogs all day and watch TV. I have a legitimate (aka whiny) post written out in my head but of course I have to go meet someone for coffee.

Do I still have readers? I feel like I have 3 people reading.

Ugh I hate that I can't write on here anymore without sounding pathetic.

End transmission.

Dumb words strung together

I don't have time to write anything profound because I have to make dinner for my mother (which sounds awful but it means I can tell her exactly what we're having and feel satisfied that no one is telling me what to eat... tonight, a scrambled egg and vegetarian protein patty).

So I finished my masters degree--yes my dissertation is awful--and now I have to look for jobs. I hate the world. Going out there, I feel unqualified for everything and I don't want to the jobs I could easily get. I have 200 dollars to my name.

I need to go back to the psychiatrist and convince him that I need the following:
150 Wellbutrin (currently taking)
100 Topamax
80 Prozac

It's the magic combination.

This was an awful post, but I had to throw something up there so you all know I'm honestly trying to contribute again.

Cheers (I can say it again now that I'm back in California)!
Savory

late night punishments

I ate a jar of pickles.

5 calories per pickle 16 pickles in the jar. Overall, an amazing way to stuff your face, except now I feel sick and puffy and sorry for myself. I just don't understand why I can't do it anymore. Why am I broken?

I think its partially the lack of diet root beer in the house. Seriously I adore it. I almost want to tell my mom I have to go back to the grocery store (we already made a trip today and filled the cart with safe things to eat!) even though its 9:00pm.

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My friend and I are trying to make our dreams come true. She knows exactly what that means for her. My problem is that I like a lot of things, and I don't think I'm good enough at any of them. How can I chase a dream that's broken into a thousand pieces?

She and I were driving in her car and I remember myself saying, almost as if I was outside the car watching the whole thing, "If I could just lose 20 pounds everything else would fall into place."

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I've eaten 900 calories today. I weigh 142. Yes, you read that right. Say all the awful things I know you're thinking. Honestly, I'd think them too if I was reading someone else's blog that had gotten so far and then just thrown it all away.

The really pathetic bit, is I'm going to go look back at my blog and find out what the fuck I was doing back then that I'm not doing now.

Also, I smell like pickles.

EDIT: I'm pulling on pants and going to the grocery store. Pray I don't get anything else besides the joyful diet soda. Pray that if I do, God immediatly smites my ass in the parking lot.