Thank you.

My dog has pee'd somewhere in my room and I can't find it. I try to sleep and occasionally catch the smell interrupting my attempt at dreaming. Down on hands and knees, I'm sniffing the carpet, my blankets, my clothes. I can't find it.

Gross.

For some reason, I'm feeling incredibly anxious. I haven't felt this way anytime in recent memory. I just don't want to sleep because I know as soon as I close my eyes it will be morning. The new day brings responsibilities. I can't handle them right now. My life seems too hard and I don't even have any real reason to feel this way. Currently, I have a part-time job that's so easy it hurts, while I complain about money the reality is I have very few bills to pay, my health is...

Wow. I just realized something. I changed my medication a few days ago. This has to be the source. Normally I would just delete everything you just read and start over, now that I know what's wrong this writing exercise seems futile.

But I avoid writing here. I often start something, decide it's stupid, delete it, and thus you never hear from me. My life just doesn't seem relevant. I'm not particularly a good example of how to behave nor am I screwed up enough that my trials seem like they would be much of an entertaining read.

I found some photographs of myself at my lowest weight. The other day, I was speaking to a friend who is a "recovered" bulimic. She's also a writer, and I told her about my desire to turn the past few years into something tangible. We were talking about my struggles and what made me decide to "eat again". Looking back on the conversation, I spoke almost admirably about how I saw a picture of myself with my ribs clearly visible through my shirt. Now at the sight of these photos tonight, I remember my life seemed to have a purpose. I felt accomplished.

To be fair, during this time, I was writing my undergraduate thesis (which was being funded by a $20,000 grant), recently accepted to UCL and Oxford for graduate school, progressing in my relationship from BF (boyfriend) to TR (the guy with the ring), finishing college, and moving.

Everything I've accomplished since then seems insignificant in comparison. My masters dissertation is a joke, I don't have a single professor I can ask for a recommendation from, my time in London was mostly spent watching television and eating cakes, and despite finishing graduate school at the 6th best university in the world, I have little to no prospects.

In my mind, I think this must be because I let myself go. I lost the control I had over myself, the control that my mind literally had over the rest of me. The discipline was gone and I let myself fail.

I'm up for a job, and it's the first one I feel nearly completely sure that I should get. Yet, I expect I will not. Even though the person hiring is a friend of mine who wants to give me the job, I feel certain something will happen to keep this from happening. I literally cannot sleep or eat properly because everything hinges on this two week period where my life may or may not change. I only know two ways to handle this kind of stress.

I could begin (more strictly) obsessing over my food, weighing literally 20 times a day, spending 4-5 hours on blogger, and leaving no room to worry over anything else.

I could call in sick to my part-time job, feign sickness, hole myself up in my room with snacks, watch 15 hours of television straight, and numb myself with food and the internet.

There's no tidy resolution to this predicament. In reality, I will likely "choose" to pursue a mix of the above, unsuccessfully handling my stress because I can't seem to commit to becoming selfishly delusional or an unfeeling escapist. I honestly don't know which is worse, being the physical embodiment of every problem and anxiety or being physically healthy but possibly worse off mentally. At least now, I can avoid the prying eyes that I know some of you are faced with, but now everyone expects things from me that I cannot always give.

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On a nearly unrelated note, my transcript arrived in the post. Remember more than a year back when I asked for feedback on shopping for a paper of mine? It earned me a distinction. So thank you every single one of my readers for assisting me in that. It's the one thing I'm really proud of and it's funny that it's directly related to this space. A small comfort in my life that may not be a constant source of joy or unconditional affection, but the most stable and possibly functional relationship I've had in years.