Savory & Sick

Off the wagon

2011-04-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

I let myself fall. It makes me so mad at myself.

Basically there's a hole in the wall that I have to fix. My laptop screen is completely broken and looks shattered, which I'm sure is going to get worse. And every time I take off my shirt I'll see how incapable I am of taking care of myself.

To be honest though, I am amazed at how creative I can be when it comes down to finding things to hurt myself with. I guess it's from getting my shoelaces taken away and being forced to use plastic utensils for too long. I adapt.

In all seriousness though, I haven't done this in such a long time, it felt like maybe I had rid myself of it forever. I suppose I just hadn't let all the bullshit and fucked up people affect me as much as I thought. Nothing's changed and I still can't deal with conflict like a healthy person.

The worst part is the incredible guilt I feel. The incident that caused this wasn't even worth the amount of shame I'll feel every time I look at my broken laptop, trying to see around the black shattered bits. Every time I bend in a way that stretches my skin in such a way as if to say, "Hey remember me? I'm hurting."

I'd tell you the long drawn out story but it really doesn't matter and the whole thing was stupid anyway. Isn't it always? I can think of a million different times when I dealt with something so fucked up but didn't let it get to me. Then something idiotic happens and I go into this dark terrible place. I don't know how to get out.

I just want to crawl into a corner and sleep for 8 days.

The job.

2011-03-03T14:35:00.000-08:00

I feel like things are going to change. They have to, that's all there is to it. I got the job I've been chasing after and start in a little more than one week.

It's thrilling and terrifying. Of course, first thing I did was figure out all the lovely things I'm going to buy with my nice paycheck. Those of you who have read my less-than-grand narrative know that I'm a binge shopper for lack of a better word.

I also hate myself and somehow feel that if I can just transform my looks, better myself, my life will be OK. I don't know what exactly I need anymore. I've snagged a job that should make me feel less like a failure, I'm in a healthy relationship, I have good friends and do incredible things for fun.

A little voice tells me it's just me. I'm finding things to fix because I can't deal with things going right. I have to fixate on the fact that my skin isn't perfect or my stomach isn't flat. There's a desire to upgrade the material possessions in my life. My car, my clothes, my things.

What am I chasing? Why?

Perhaps this is why I wasn't more excited when I knew I had secured the position. At the time, I thought I was just in shock. Now, I just feel empty. It seems as though this was finally supposed to fill a void. This was supposed to fix things.

It didn't and I'm left with a gaping hole with the urge to find something else with which to fill it.

Thank you.

2011-02-09T03:05:00.001-08:00

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.

---

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.

Newsflash

2011-01-26T02:22:00.000-08:00

I
Need
A
Job

EDIT: This needs to be amended to "I need a job that doesn't make me want to kill myself"

I want to write a book. Think I could do it? What would I write about?

Soliloquy

2011-01-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

Even though my encounter with Anonymous was entirely harmless and mostly misunderstood, it still made me reflect on the state of things in my life. Because even if she (who has now revealed herself as chasingsecrets! Remember when you were starting out and take a minute to check out her blog!) didn't mean anything negative, I automatically extrapolated all my fears and concerns about blogging and projected them onto someone else. Projecting is such an awful thing to realize about yourself, isn't it? Such a low-brow psychological tool of manipulation.

Nonetheless, she's right. And by she, I mean I'm right because I perceived her comment as how I genuinely feel about myself.

Today I planned to scribble down some kind of hilarious entry that would win me adoration and new followers and internet fame. As is the case more often than not, I put that aside to be mopey. Seriously guys, I am sorry that you have to see this garbage so often. I'd stop reading if I were you. But then again, my whole point here is that I really am the shallow dream-chaser I'm afraid I'll become. Of course I'd stop reading if it was someone else's plight. There's a feisty little hamster running a wheel where my heart is supposed to be, I think.

OK shelving this line of thought because it's not going anywhere...

---

I don't normally address comments so often and so blatantly, but I also haven't been blogging regularly in who knows how long so I suppose there's a time for everything. Hanna wrote a lovely, thoughtful comment. However, she's semi-anonymous so I can't go stalk her, which is sad; social media and networking have given me an incredibly unrealistic expectation that I can learn anything about someone with a few key strokes. But getting to the point...

First of all, "low calorie tapas" are indeed my secret source of dragging the unknowing into my web of mostly unpleasant things, with some delightful surprises thrown in to break up the monotony (like playing a record backwards to reveal the backmasked messages! Go on then, try it yourself!). Anyway, I've trapped you Hanna. Here's what she says:

"I am so happy that you are doing so much better now. That is something you should be really proud of... Anyway, when you were really into ana I was looking out for you but I wouldn't have commented because you and the community might've seen me as an outsider, as the weak person which I am. Somehow now that has changed and I am taking this opportunity to wish you all the best, and surely keep blogging..."

And she and chasingsecrets are right. I started a journey into madness that coincided with a large number of other people. We went into hell together. It was inevitable that we could only stare at the face of death, from a moderately safe distance, before we lost it completely or decided to change. I would say most of us haven't found true safety, but I am also not in touch with many girls who still maintain that level of sickness.

The other thing is this: being completely fucked up-batshit crazy and self-obsessed is only so interesting for so long. Seriously, no one except your therapist will put up with it, other than people feeding off your insanity. Normal people, the people we want to interact with and share our lives without an immediate fear of judgment, they just don't understand.

They don't understand that we would choose, on some level, to be this unhappy and destructive. It doesn't make sense that we become more important than everyone and everything we love. It's alienating. It's stupid.

---

But even now with all that I know... Long discussions with recovered friends who tell me it's such a selfish and childish disease. Remembering my mother comparing my illness to a drug addict. Knowing that at one point TR, the one person I am supposed to look good for, thought I looked like a genocide victim. Those things should keep me on the straight and narrow path.

I want more, though. I crave for something that I can't find anywhere else. I want to be recognized, and contributing something, and making a difference, and achieving. There's only one way I know how to succeed. I can't even form the sentence grammatically.

And yet, I was ill during my most productive times. Perhaps my recent string of mostly-perceived but somewhat justified notions of failure are a sign that I've gotten lazy and slovenly. The reflection in the mirror is a desperate attempt to obliquely alert me that part of me needs to shape up or ship out. Get fit. Not too thin, not too fat.

I just wish it could happen without my brain knowing. My brain and the crazy it is supposed to keep locked up.

---

I argue with myself about this, back and forth. Who needs external conflict, when I have this to think about? For that matter, who needs other people if I can debate against me so well.

My mind is a theatrical production, and I play all the parts.

Elitist Bullshit

2011-01-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER: This is a horribly written post but I'm too bummed out to fix it.

Someone wrote a comment that I can't get out of my head:

Anonymous said...

Your post was a massive downer. I think that the community you speak of (which I wasn't apart of, but have a vague idea of) had to disappear a little bit. If everyone was as obsessed with the same shit still...THAT would be depressing. Maybe blogging with people who are going down a different route might be good for you? I've read every post you've written, and I would like to discuss and talk with everyone...but I feel like me and my blog are not "disordered enough" for your "community" which even sounds ludicrous to me.(Hence the anonymous label).
What I'm trying to say is that communities change, and maybe you should embrace a new group of people.

I feel awful that someone's read ever post I've written but doesn't feel comfortable to link their blog back. Even if it doesn't seem like it, I treasure every single reader I get and live for comments. I haven't started following people back because it's such a daunting task. When I first started, I just randomly followed a lot of different people because I didn't know any better.

I thought the only thing I was interested in was getting more people to read my blog and reading about things that would keep me motivated. Now I'm not interested in either. I just want to have a meaningful conversation with someone about something I can't talk about to anyone else. Anyone else. At all. And to think that the vibe someone gets from my blog is that they have to be some level of fucked up to be in dialogue is sad.

I don't want to be fucked up. I don't want people to have to relate to me just because they're fucked up too. In a perfect world, I wouldn't be mostly-anonymous and you would get to see the rest of my world. And the rest of the world would see this too. But if I was completely open to the people I know, I'd get labeled as crazy or attention-seeking. I'd hurt my already slim chances at getting a job and I'd alienate people who were my friends because now they no longer know me.

At the base level, I'm just happy for myself that I even started blogging again. I'm not ready to dedicate time to following more people and commenting, but I want to get there soon.

The last thing I want is for people here to think I'm an elitist because if someone who read my blog thought that then that must really be me. Nothing is more stripped down and raw than what you read here.

Right now blogger is the only thing I'm happy about in my life. Literally everything else around me seems to be going to shit. It's the reason I started blogging in the first place. Just be a little patient with me while I get sorted out, and please dear God send me your blog. Or blogs you like to read. Or etc.

This really had no meaning except to try and expel my worries about this comment from my head. It didn't help. I'm sorry Anonymous. And to everyone else, thanks for following me. I stalk all of you, but I'll try to be less creepy and more open about it.

Toodle pip,
Savory

No I'm not pregnant, just fat.

2011-01-07T19:51:00.000-08:00

Once you've stopped having certain a period (i.e. your body's rather un-subtle hint that something is wrong and you need to start fucking putting some food to your lips), you begin to forget that it's a necessary function. So once you're at the point that you're having them again, and should have them, when they stop, you sometimes don't realize it.

You may even be a little happy about it. Then you remember that you can't fit in your jeans anymore.

Possibly, you're pregnant.

---

My dumbfounded realization at this simple statement came after I legitimately couldn't remember when I had my last {insert asinine menstration metaphor here}.

It was like a scene from a movie. I had an overly complicated transaction at CVS Pharmacy, buying a pregnancy test with a bottle of hair dye so I didn't look too concerned about the former. Long story short, I tried to use a Maestro card (it apparently never wants to work) and no one behind me wanted to go to the self-check out--they proceeded to act like I was the one holding up their day. I withdrew cash using said card, loudly proclaimed that indeed had money to pay for the damn pregnancy test and I wasn't some kind of hobo with hypocondria or sexual-impulse problems, and shoved a twenty dollar bill at the check-out girl, mumbling that she should have the card reader checked.

Then I popped into the nearest hipster coffee shop and ordered black tea. As it was brewing, I snuck into the toilets to play the baby lotto. Peed on the stick like a pro as the Shins piped through the speakers.

Negative!

Happily, I burst open the door to the privvy, grabbed my now-tepid tea, and whistled along to "Caring is Creepy."

As I arrived at my car, the thought suddenly dawned on me, "FUCK!? Now I have no explanation for why I'm getting so fat!"

Curses.

A Clever Title

2011-01-03T04:14:00.001-08:00

I think about you every day. Just so you know. And yes, I am talking about you.

Part Two of Intake History will continue another time. I just need to ramble tonight.

---

It's early morning and of course I haven't slept. Outside the window is some kind of owl. I can hear it. Something about the presence of owls feels spiritual to me, in this urban wasteland, like inexplicably finding a smooth river rock at the bottom of clothes pile. It doesn't belong. It speaks of something foreign and natural in a largely artificial environment. Something deep inside you that you've forgotten long before you were born.

Owls make me wistful I suppose. I get a similar feeling when I'm driving and a deer or coyote skirts by my path. I feel as if I've encountered a ghost.

The only light in the room is the faint glow of computer LEDs and the shine of my laptop monitor. It casts forgiving shadows on my arms that would lead me to believe I am much smaller than the mirror would report. For now, that is enough.

I am visiting TR. We rarely see each other now that we are living on opposite ends of the state, for reasons complicated with choice and responsibility and willfulness. He is silently sleeping next to me, and I envy how easy he makes it look. My relationship with slumber is turbulent and bitter. We make poor bedfellows, pardon the pun. I either rejoice at the prospect of sleep as an escape from reality or shun the idea as it seems to quicken my inevitable encounter with another day. Tonight, I avoid sleep to avoid dreaming. I can't bear to relive my worst pains or unfulfilled wishes. Not tonight.

---

I recently thought about how easy it would be to slip back into the mindset I had early on in the blog. A mindset that tapered away a little over one year ago. Part of me wants it back. It dawned on me that even if I became as obsessed and dedicated to the task, it would never be the same.

Everything has changed. The community is so different. Those who remain, like me, have moved beyond the thrill of watching numbers decrease, and instead see how little control they have left in the matter. Many who have gone are those I relied on for comfort, laughter, and hope. I've seen the same shift in my own life. My postgraduate course is finished and I can't find a job to reliably pay the bills. Of course, my mind races at the thought of simply returning to school. But the only thing that kept me from ripping out my hair was the companionship of my cohort (and even then, as witnessed by my multiple hospitalizations last year, it was not a guarantee). School was awful. The 'real world' is equally terrible.

I boast to others that I loathe people and shun socialization. It would seem, however, that I am completely lost without it.

Coming to this somber realization, I have little advice left for myself as to how I should progress. Where do I go from here? I welcome the day when my life is no longer a perpetual exercise in existential philosophizing nor a reluctant reliance on others.

---

In other news, I still hate myself and think I'm useless, so at least some things don't change.

Intake History

2010-12-06T02:31:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who tells everyone about his problems. All our acquaintances know about his latest bruise or bump, relationship drama, and family issues. Admittedly, he's gone through some pretty fucked up nonsense and doesn't always live a charmed life.

I have to retreat to the bowels of the internet and create a fake persona to share the things that are troubling me. In fact, I don't know that any one person (other than perhaps TR but probably not even him) knows the true extent of the ridiculous things I've gone through.

I have reasonable evidence to support this. By this count, I've seen... 8 therapists. Those of you who have been to the shrink know the drill. First session: History. Every single therapist I've seen has given me that look of "Oh yeah you definitely need therapy" or "Why are you so functional?" or "JESUS".

I have known for a long time that everyone suffers in life through one form or another. When I was younger, I used to look to the sky and ask why I had been forced to live such a life when others were so fortunate? But now I know better. It isn't what's happened to you but how you deal with it.

---

Sometimes I just want to be that person who can't deal with it so everyone else has to deal with it too. Distribute the burden so it hurts a little less. Sit and listen to people tell me how they feel bad for me and tell me exactly what I should do. Hold my hand.

I'll never be that person.

But I want to get it all off my chest. I have to tell someone about the baggage I carry. Someone who isn't paid to care about me.

So here it is.

---

I have to start the story of my life before it begins. I have to tell you the story of my mother. It needs to be done this way because my mother lives through stories. Something reminds her of some other thing. She needs to relay her motivations by explaining what event caused her to feel that way. And sometimes, she just talks. And talks.

My grandmother is and was a wicked woman. She married a soldier going into WWII fully expecting he would die in the war and she'd be given a widow's pension, set for life. Unfortunately for her, he lived. And through that union, my mother was born. It was made very clear to her that my grandmother did not want her. When my mother was 3 years old, my grandmother (let's call her Petunia) took her door to door asking the neighbors if they'd like to adopt her. When this strategy didn't work, she told my mother (let's call her Rose) that she'd tried to have an abortion to prevent this entirely.

Several important events happened to Rose during these formative years. Most significantly, she almost died at age five.

Rose followed a trail of candy that the local newspaper boy, of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, was leaving behind along his way. The trail led into a barn. She was brutally raped and beaten. Her teeth were kicked out, her nasal cavity collapsed, and bones broken. The attacker buried her in a shallow grave and left her for dead. Rose softly cried out and was eventually found by a neighbor. She spent months in the hospital.

My mother had two younger siblings. Petunia's displeasure at having given birth to Rose never relented. Rose endured punishments like having her head shaved for wearing make up. Being a religious nut, Petunia told Rose that fiction books like Lassie were from the devil. More things than not were sins. Rose could quote scripture and play the organ in church, but she could barely read or write. She did poorly in school and other children teased her.

When she was 13, Rose became ill with the German measles because of which she contracted viral arthritis. She was hospitalized for almost a year, wheelchair bound. At one point, doctors told her she would never walk again. That night she attempted suicide. Her father wouldn't allow her to use the wheelchair in the house and made her crawl if necessary. Rose attributes his brand of tough love as the reason she was able to walk again.

Rose married at 16 and was pregnant at 17. Her husband was abusive (himself having been physically and sexually abused by his mother) but she gave the marriage 5 years, not wanting to return home to her former life. Her life was incredibly sheltered and her husband allowed her to have no friends. She couldn't drive a car and she hadn't finished high school, neither of which he allowed. He had a PhD. They divorced and she quickly remarried for financial security and to avoid Petunia. The only person she knew was her ex-husband's brother. So they married.

Husband #2 turned out to be even worse, but she would not know this immediately. She would have another child, a second daughter, by this man. Rose discovered later that Husband2 was sexually and physically abusing her children. He beat Rose and mentally tortured her. It was during this time she weighed 80 pounds at 5'3". Still, he called her fat and ugly. This husband was the principle of a private school. He was later accused to be sexually molesting children, but being a church run establishment, was relocated to a different area (after they divorced). My mother met another man, slowly but eventually, divorced husband number 2 and married husband number 3.

Number 3 was my father. By this time, my sisters were 13 and 17. I was born shortly after they married and a younger sister was born 2 years later.

Four years after they married, my father was killed in a plane crash.

---

I think this is a good place to rest our eyes and continue another day.

Moderation

2010-11-22T15:42:00.001-08:00

Have you ever felt really thin and looked at yourself in the mirror and said, "I am definitely like 20 pounds lighter. Sleep really does wonders!" Then you go on the scale and you actually weigh more? And it cannot be explained by water-retention or the weight of your ever lengthening hair (whenever I'm growing my hair out, I always think to myself, "If you would just cut your hair short again you'd probably weigh like 5 pounds less!") or the weight of tiny robots that may be camping out in your spleen!

Anyway, I'm still going to call it a victory. I feel less revolting so win! Actually, I'm incredibly proud of myself. My family has been spreading out Thanksgiving so we don't eat everything in one day and want to die. This has a downside for me because I'll be going to TR's parents house for Thanksgiving (aaah the first holiday spent with in-laws! My life is turning into a romantic comedy!) so basically I'll be eating Thanksgiving food at my house for 3 days then go to his house and have a huge dinner and then 3 days worth of leftovers.

The only thing saving me is that his mom isn't a great cook (fucking would it kill you to maybe season your food?! WOULD IT!?!!?) and I'm incredibly picky. So hopefully I'll just eat the pie I'm bringing and push some of her food around on the plate until it looks like I enjoyed her hospital food.

But anyway, I'm proud of myself. Today I was all set to make candied yams so my mother put out everything for me to make it. I LOVE my yams. I really love most Thanksgiving food actually but only if it was made by me or my mother. Otherwise Thanksgiving and most holiday food can go fuck itself.

So I decided that after my mashed potato overload yesterday (and midnight snack of hummus and pita) that perhaps today should be one of moderation. I put the yams back in the cabinet and ran upstairs to avoid the kitchen all together.

HOORAY FOR ME! I've done something that normal people have no problem doing on a daily basis.

*smug*

Ugh!

2010-11-20T01:38:00.000-08:00

... That was the story of my life!

Savory gets "real"

2010-11-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

OK, I've decided a few things. These are a few things that I have to be open about if I want to keep blogging. They might sound (and be) incredibly selfish and make you think less of me, but what the hell I've talked about my bathroom habits and you haven't run away or slapped me in the face yet.

There are several reasons why I blog infrequently. Let's list them:

1. I feel I am inadequately thin and/or disordered. Now this may sound silly coming from the person who locked herself in her room today and denied herself any food or drink (water included) until she saw a number on the scale she liked, but whatever. I'm not skinny and I don't feel like anyone wants to read about an average girl whining about her average problems.
2. My life is at a point where I sometimes can find the time to blog, but I don't find the time to contribute to the community in other meaningful ways. This is entirely my fault and I feel incredibly guilty that I never comment and hardly take the time to read other blogs. In my mind, it's incredibly selfish for me to expect my readers to keep checking on me when I don't have the common courtesy to do the same. But isn't that what a blog is? You write and other people read it? This is where it gets into existential gray areas.
3. ......... actually there might be only two reasons. Sorry for getting you hyped up about reading an in-depth list.

So there you have it. Basically I'm too inconsiderate to read your blogs but I still want you to read mine and comment because that's how I evaluate my self worth.

Now that I've said it, maybe we can have a more honest relationship. I apologize.

And as much as the proper Southern-bred lady in me wants to say "I'm so sorry, I promise to blog more and be more active in the community" that would be a lie. I'll try to be more active in the community, but I'm just not in that place anymore and as much as I try something's keeping me from going back there.

So there you have it. Probably the most honest I've ever been to the people I've always been able to be the most honest with.

[I have to write something here because I can't end a blog post with a preposition-grammatical-error because that's embarrassingly awkward]

In defense of my dog.

2010-11-07T20:30:00.000-08:00

Ouch, lost a follower. Message received.

---

Does anyone else have an unnatural attachment toward animals? I don't mean this in the "furry" kind of sense (shudder) but I find that an injured animal upsets me more than an injured person. I hate watching movies where there's a battle with people on horse because something happens and the horse falls over (probably crushing whoever was riding it) and I get incredibly worried about the horse. The fictional horse.

I've always felt this way about animals. Something about people I just can't connect with. Maybe I feel like people will inevitably choose to leave me. Maybe I sense that people are morally corrupt and too ambiguous in their motives. Animals are incredibly predictable. The rules are clear and engagement is simple.

The other thing is that an animal, specifically a pet, needs me. There is an obligation to care for it. If I disappeared, it wouldn't understand.

It wouldn't endeavor to harm me out of spite or hurt me for revenge.

They remind me of everything I am not.

Another Survey

2010-11-03T20:53:00.001-07:00

OK first off, I apologize that this is going to be the second time I bombard you with something asking you to do something, but I recieved this email and I'd love to participate but I dropped out of the program before I even started. Oops. But it's an important study because I hated the UK mental health services.

Also it supports a charity!!

We are currently conducting a study which is looking at treatment experiences of people who have had eating disorders. The findings will improve our understanding of what treatments people are currently getting and how helpful they find them. The ultimate aim is to improve access to effective NHS treatments for everyone with eating disorders. We will donate £2 for every questionnaire completed to B-eat, the eating disorders charity, until our target of 130 completed questionnaires is reached.

We are looking for people to take part in the study who have received psychological therapy in the UK for bulimia nervosa or a binge-eating problem. If this applies to you, please click on the link below. If not, please forward this email on to as many people as possible. We know that eating disorders are often kept secret so you might not know which of your friends could help us - so circulating this email widely is likely to be the best way to help.

Taking part involves filling out an on-line questionnaire about your eating problems and treatment experiences, which can be accessed via this link:
http://www.b-eat.co.uk/Supportingbeat/ResearchRequests/BulimiaBingeEating

It should take 15-30 mins to complete, and we will be incredibly grateful for your help.

Here's the small print: The study is being conducted at UCL as part of Rachel van Schaick's doctoral thesis. The study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of University College London. To find out more about B-eat, the Eating Disorders Charity, or to make a donation, please visit http://www.b-eat.co.uk.

Many, many thanks,

Rachel van Schaick
Trainee Clinical Psychologist
Research Dept of Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology
University College London

Supervised by Lucy Serpell
Lecturer, Doctorate in Clinical Psychology Research Dept of Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology
University College London

Clinical Psychologist, Eating Disorder Service, North East London Foundation Trust

Real post soon my dearest readers. Don't abandon me!

An Outside Query

2010-11-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to pass along the contents of a survey:

Hello. My name is Sheila and I am a college student working on a research project. My study focuses on girls and women who consider themselves to be pro-anorexic. I hope to better understand the users of online, pro-anorexia websites. If you are willing to participate, I would like to ask some questions about what this website means to you. I am not here to judge or make assumptions, but to simply gather information on a group that many know little about. All participation will be anonymous. Please use screen names that do not identify you in any way. If you are willing to participate, please post a reply to the following questions. If not, thank you for just taking the time to read this.

Questions:

1.) How did you first come to join this website and what keeps you participating in it?
2.) Do you consider others on this website to be your friends? What kinds of support do they give you?
3.) How does your family support -- or not support, --you?
4.) Are you closer to your friends who are online or to those who are offline? Why?
5.) Do you see a difference between anorexics, “anas,” and “rexies”? What term do you use to refer to yourself?

The researcher prefers to remain anonymous but if you have any questions, I believe she will be monitoring any comments and will respond to any concerns or questions in my comment form. I don't think I have to caution anyone here about protecting your identity (are we paranoid enough?) but be aware that anything you say may be published or widely disseminated.

---

Actually, I've been meaning to mention that for some time now. Intellectual property on the internet is incredibly tricky. Basically, a good means to know whether your speech/writing is protected is via the website you are using. Is a username and password required to gain access to your work? If not, it's probably up for grabs (this includes artwork and photographs) and considered in the public domain. Just a thought.

---

I'll write a proper post soon. I've had a visitor from the UK for two weeks so that's taken the bulk of my time! I've missed you all loads though. Can't wait to catch up.

Cheers,
Savory

God's Wrath and a Cryptic Rant

2010-10-18T02:58:00.001-07:00

I hate when other people complain to me.

I hate more that I think I have the right to be a complainer.

Isn't that always the case though? Someone tells you how awful their life and you think "Well at least you aren't going through this this and this. I'm the one who has it bad!" And then you realize, that you're them, except worse because you can be self-aware and still not give a damn about changing your mindset.

It's so much easier to think that the world is against you. And it's even easier to think that everyone else is floating in rainbow bubble slush while you are getting kicked in the teeth. What do I have to do to shake that part of me? The part of me that always laments over getting dealt the bad cards. The part of me that scoffs at a God who might intervene on our lives (if there is a God, he is surely uninterested in anything but deep time) but secretly thinks that I must have done something horribly wrong to be punished so profusely.

The worst part is I probably wouldn't feel anything like this, and definitely not this profoundly, except that obviously I've skipped my medication several days too many. It makes me wonder if my meds keep me emotionally regulated but complacent and blind to the true nature of the world. And if so the question remains...

Is ignorance bliss?

I obviously wouldn't be nearly as upset about a topic (that I can't even reveal to my readers because I have no idea who might read this from my offline life) except I accidentally found out about it. And I definitely would feel less bad if I had stayed on the medication that keeps me emotionally drained.

At least most of my day went well. Exceedingly well.

---

"On the ignorance of learned men:
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
(Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, 124)

And we come full circle again.

Shock Therapy

2010-10-07T01:43:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen this yet (I meant to mention it before it went viral but meh), this should turn you off from a good percentage of food you shouldn't be eating:

Let me know if it doesn't.

Battenburg and Bakewell

2010-10-04T00:37:00.001-07:00

Today was strange.

We went to visit my sister who is in San Diego doing some freelance work right now. That city is so emotionally charged. It isn't neutral for me like Los Angeles or Seattle. I associate it with Comic-Con and TR (who is obsessed with his home town and like practically every San Diego native thinks it's the best city in the world. Weirdo.) So I always feel a little sad going there, it's like walking into an old memory. Seeing ghosts everywhere.

But today it was compounded. We were trying to figure out things to do, and I suggested we stop in this British imported goods shop.

Literally everything in there made me so wistful. In the back of my mind, I tried to remind myself "When you lived in London you were hospitalized or at A&E 3 different times in 8 months... it wasn't as great as you remember it now". But I just kept thinking to myself, as I gazed at the Cadbury chocolates and Twinnings tea boxes, that my life would be so much better if I was still there.

Obviously with some minor details like my own kitchen and a job, but still.

I don't know. I'm just now coming to grips with the notion that my life there is over. It all feels like a dream. And if I didn't know that Anise, Lulu, and Lola-Rose would quickly remind me, I might think that perhaps it never happened.

During that time, I walked down the lane, looking at myself at my absolute thinnest and later at my loathsome stubborn neutral weight. At different points, I wore size 4/6 and 10/12. Sometimes I liked to put my teeny tiny Topshop skinny jeans on top of my fat cheap Primark jeans. Like it told a story. In reverse.

At the import shop, I bought a box of Mr. Kipling's Battenburg cakes (which may find itself atop the fourth plinth in Trafalgar apparently) and Cherry Bakewell Tarts. Some of you may remember they comforted me many a night during my kitchen boycotts.

They're still sitting in the bag on a countertop. I don't think they've ever lasted this long before. Perhaps I'll freeze them. It was lovely to see them and though I almost cried at the thought of my favorite delights, I have utterly no desire to eat them.

Maybe it truly is an emotional addiction I have to food. It's not that I don't want to eat anything, but I'm worried that I'll eat a battenburg cake and it just won't taste as frantically good. It wouldn't be associated with lonely nights in my 8x20 room watching TV and spending 16 hours in bed. I didn't have to throw on clothes and an awful hat, doing a walk-of-shame to Sainsbury's just to get them before the shop closed so I could survive another evening.

It would just be food. It would just be the remnants of a memory.

And it's not really about food. Never really. It's about thoughts, and desires, and obsessions, and sadness and loss. It's about eating my ups and downs. It's about finding something that doesn't want to be found. It's about filling up a bottomless hole. A gaping wound. It's about love. Hate.

It's just a cake now.

Relinquished

2010-10-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

I fucking hate how out of control I feel. It's like I'm sitting here watching my life happen.

Even if I wanted to start fasting right now, I can't, because I live at home. And I'm too old to sneak around pretending I ate somewhere else with someone else. Emptying out food into the trash and leaving bowls around. If I don't fucking want to eat something, why do I not have a choice in that? It's my fucking body. I'm not doing anything illegal. Yeah, I know I should at least eat 1300 calories a day, but I also shouldn't be eating the chemicals that get poured into all my food. No one cares about that (except for obnoxious "green" people who shove their lifestyle down your throat... no offense to any of my granola readers).

I'm just so mad at my mother for constantly pointing out that the meal I have planned out won't be enough calories. But she doesn't say anything to my fat sister about her meal which is her day's worth of calories on a plate.

Sometimes it feels like I don't make the decisions in my life. Either someone else does it or shit just happens and takes control away from me. I don't even want to be here anymore. I can't believe this is my life.

I have to take control back.

Homogenous

2010-10-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

I don't understand why food is so important to me. I mean, we need it to live so yeah it's one of the most important things in the whole world.

But why can't I just eat potatoes and oatmeal and oranges (which apparently contains enough nutrients to keep you alive -- no scurvy for you!) for the rest of my life? I mean, I don't think I'd have a breakdown if I had to wear the same outfit forever, assuming it was comfortable yet fashionably acceptable (btw, I would choose a gray hoodie, green cap sleeve t-shirt, push-up bra, skinny jeans, and ballet flats).

Sometimes I find food and eating completely repulsive, but even then I'm obsessed with the idea of food and eating. I used to think that it because I was bored and it was something to do. Kept my hands occupied.

The smoking excuse, if you will.

It's really pathetic.

I need to figure it out. I want to dream about great sex, and buying fabulous clothes, and visiting magical places...... not spaghetti. I'm not even talking about amazing 4-star restaurant pasta, but plain jane spaghetti with sauce from a jar.

I don't want that to be the thing I'm longing for.

My life has to be more than what I'm not eating and what I want to see on a scale.

There has to be more. There has to be.

Harbinger

2010-09-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

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.

---

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

2010-09-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

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

---

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.

---

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

2010-09-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

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.

---

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

2010-09-17T12:58:00.001-07:00

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

2010-09-16T18:59:00.001-07:00

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

2010-09-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

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.

---

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."

---

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.

Ambition

2010-08-26T07:27:00.001-07:00

It's 7:27 in the morning. AM if you will. I haven't gone to sleep yet. This has become a regular occurrence. And yes, we're going to ignore the fact that I've been absent for far too long.

Now that I'm writing it all out, talking again to the only people I can be truly (mostly) honest with (if anyone still even reads this), I suspect I know the true reason behind this insomnia.

Everyone says I'm still adjusting to the time zone. What they don't realize is if this is true, I should be going to bed earlier, not later. I should be getting tired in the afternoon, waking in the early hours of the morning. Instead, I wait until the sun has risen, and tuck myself into bed for a good part of the day.

The other thing that complicates matters is I was doing the same thing in England. I slept when I saw the first rays of sunshine light up that horrible little room I lived in.

Something about me has fundamentally changed. I don't feel the same and I don't have the same feelings. I think I just want to be alone. I sleep during the day to avoid company and responsibility and I live my days when everyone else is asleep. Just leave me alone please. It's almost a little alarming. I don't feel terribly strong about much anything, unless you count the ache of my imagined failures.

But I don't need to tell you what imagined failure feels like. It's pathetic how it has become a recurring theme in my lifetime.

I haven't forgotten about anyone, but sometimes I don't think I have enough emotional energy to lift my head. To put things in perspective, my master's dissertation is due on September 15th and I haven't written a word. I just can't bear to put my thoughts into anything productive. I wish you all could just poke around inside my head and pull out something that looks interesting to you. Mental yard sale. I'm probably full of bad records and plastic furniture.

I have a bad cold. I remember the days when I could turn it into a positive and think, "At least I won't be hungry." Right now, sick or healthy, I don't even care. I've come to the realization that fat or thin, hungry or full, I don't feel pretty or happy or successful and nothing is going to change that. What does that leave me with?

If you need to find me, I'll be the one sleeping until dusk. Like a vampire, only less cliche.

Fellini

2010-06-29T03:30:00.000-07:00

I believe this will be attempt number four at beginning this post. Something about me got discarded somehow and I'm useless. Everything about me lately seems awkward, contrived, and forced. What happened to the words that used to flow so easily, the creativity and the drive?

I want everything and nothing. And it seems I can't have either.

This state, thereby, is making me loathe everyone with an ounce of creativity within them. I'm avoiding all mediums of social networking, where I might glance upon someone else's success, and I couldn't even read many blogs because I kept saying, "Why can't I be brilliant like _____ is so effortlessly."

I want to sleep all the time and never sleep. And that is impossible as well.

What is it about myself that I can't accept? That really should be a why question, I suppose, because it seems I reject nearly everything about me that makes me. What does the world have in store for someone like me? Someone broken... but so broken that no one else can know about it?

I want to scream at everyone and be silent forever.

The desk I'm currently using is an antique school desk, with built-in inkwell. I'm looking at the stains and scribbles as if something written there might hold the answers to all my problems. I wonder what the children who sat here before me were like. Did they share my fears and dreams about life? Why can't I just surround myself with old cabinets and pottery for friends. Ask them to tell me stories to put my life in perspective. Stories about days when butter churns were more than just umbrella stands. When your shoes were lined with cardboard because they had holes, but you needed to keep walking. Not for exercise. Just because you had to.

I want to live and I want to die.

The house is creaking as if to tell me I need to sleep. It's saying, "Listen to me settle. Why don't you do the same?" I can't sleep. I keep losing pieces of myself every day. Something about my bed steals bits of my soul, and I wake up less functional, more tired, and without hope.

The days seem too long but I don't want tomorrow to come.

rambling along

2010-06-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be the bitch and say it, even though I know I'm not the only one thinking it.

I hate thin men.

Something about them makes me feel huge, even when I'm comparatively not. TR used to be very thin but then he discovered that he liked food. I'm too exhausted to write a proper treatise on the whole male thin phenomenon. Plus, I feel a bit slighted as I don't believe I have any male followers. Prove me wrong, make yourself known! Shelving this for now...

---

I'm going to try and start writing more often again. Not because I think you all are just sitting and waiting for an update from me, but because it might keep me away from those damn meringues that made my evening the other day.

Also, I've become dependent on diet soda. Welcome me into the fold.

Hot dogs and eggs are being plated. Seriously people, I must say, high protein, low everything else has shockingly proved effective. Fuller longer on less calories? Why didn't I think to do this sooner? I'll discuss the incredibly unhealthy but helpful benefits later.

I woke up at 3:00pm today so forgive my lackluster nature.

Cheers,
Savory

More diazapam please?

2010-06-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

If I could have a second skin, I'd probably dress up in you.

Oh, Hello!

2010-06-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Guess what? I'm on another diet. Surprised? I'm not.

Trying the Dukan diet, and if I just stayed at home all the time, I'm sure I'd have lost like 194 pounds by now. Temptation lies beyond my doorstep, away from my fridge of safe foods. I've still lost like 5 pounds in a little more than a week, and I can at least say I'm being pseudo-healthy.

Just getting that boring stuff out of the way.

---

I've just gotten confirmation that I'll be appearing in a feature-film documentary. It's a secret, but my identity is supposed to be a secret to my readers, so I figure I'm not really telling anyone anything. Besides, it's not really featuring me, but my best friend... I'm a supporting character as usual. I'll probably end up on the cutting room floor.

I wouldn't care so much if I had prospects in my life beyond finishing my MA in September. However, it looks like I've taken the wrong turn in the backroads of life and ended up on a dead end street.

It's not even a street at this point, it's like a dirt road. No, not even that nice. It's the little patch of dead grass where people take a shortcut off the main path.

That's where I am, and the shortcut abruptly stops and I'm stuck in the middle of a forest.

It's kind of pathetic that after hearing people say, "You should do stand-up.... why don't you write a book?..... you are a really talented writer" blah blah bullshit blah blah, that the most I have to show for my talents are the random things that come out of my mouth too quickly for me to remember, or the writing on my anonymous blog on a topic that I can't share with anyone.

I'm stuck in the forest.

The only bright spot may be that being on camera (before I get cut out of the entire movie) might motivate me to get back to a respectable---but not skeletal---weight again.

I am obviously rusty, because I can't think of a way to end this rant. So I'm just cutting the transmission. Ah pun!

Silence

2010-06-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

I've written about 4 really mopey posts this week, but I delete them right before I publish.

Like flipping on a lightbulb.

2010-06-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

Last year, writing my dissertation fueled the flames of the fire that was my compulsion to lose weight.

This year is an entirely different matter.

I'd be really happy if things fell into place and I reached an equilibrium, but I still don't have a healthy relationship with food and my self-image. Today I ate a whole pizza. The only good thing about it is I washed it down with Diet Coke, which actually makes me feel pathetic. Like snickering at my fat friends who guzzle it down. What good does it do when your fridge is stocked with full fat milk and pudding snacks! Just drink goddamned regular Coke.

Diet Coke is for skinny people. Just like frappuccinos....

No, seriously, listen to my logic here for just a second. You and I both know that every time you see someone drinking one who isn't pathetically slim, you think "Well, that's why she's not a super model." You can seriously only get away with one if you're tiny. You might as well be eating a tub of butter in public, otherwise.

But the irony is when you're small, you will *never* ever want to drink one. Because like a McDonald's burger, you know that your indulgence is basically one day's worth of calories (possibly even for a normal person!).

I don't know why this dissertation has me flipped in the opposite direction. Possibly because I'm home by myself all the time. Even with my mother and TR, who have to love me no matter what, I would never ever eat a whole fucking pizza.

But when I'm alone, I trick myself into thinking that the calories don't count, because no one saw me. I can eat chow mein and cake at the same time without feeling grossed out. My bed becomes a dinner table. I basically lose all remnants of what makes me a human and not a pot-bellied pig rolling in its own muck.

My face is constantly broken out, posture ruined, I feel like I need to shower like 3 times a day, I get winded from how fast I'm accustomed to walking. My clothes all hang horribly. I'm embarrassed to even let myself see me naked.

Last week, I had a good few days. But of course, something replaced the food. Shopping. I spent about half of what was in my bank account. Now I'm saving money again, and somehow food keeps entering my mouth.

Something about keeping my hands busy, I think. When I'm not eating, I feel this urge to play tetris all the time. I'd take up smoking if I was less neurotic about smells.

I just need that flip to switch and stay there. Cast light on the dark, gross corners of my life. Compulsively read and write instead of eat. Be a starving artist.

Sphere? Triangle?

2010-05-28T00:38:00.001-07:00

I keep trying to deny it, but I can't avoid the truth any longer.

My body has become... shapes.

That's the only word I can think to describe the unnatural weirdness that is encasing me.

I'm going to water fast for at least 3 days.

I will not break down and eat.

That is all.

Absence of God

2010-05-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

	Rilo Kiley - The Absence Of God

	Found at skreemr.org

And I'm not my body or how I choose to destroy it.

I don't feel like talking about my failures or my next plan. Sadly, I haven't neglected this safe little space because I've been doing amazing things, or even because I have been spiraling into a horrible decent toward madness, but rather because my life has come to resemble a stagnant pool in a dip of grassy lawn after heavy rain. Unwanted but not particularly noticed. Just sitting there hatching mosquito eggs.

Thursday morning I'm supposed to go to Paris. I am the only 20-something in the world who apparently doesn't give a shit about doing it. Can't I just stay in my room? Better yet, can't someone please please fucking get me some diazapam so I can just dream my life away?

I've decided, last night actually as I was attempting to fall asleep, that I know what the afterlife must be. It's so simple, I don't know why I hadn't previously figured it all out. One of my biggest fears is eternity. Seriously, either way you believe, it's fucking horrible. An eternal Heaven? I distinctly remember, as a child, telling my mother that it must get very boring, and what do you do after the novelty wears off? On the other hand, just try to imagine nothingness. Sure, if you prescribe to that understanding of the world, you die and then you don't exist, but it's still FOREVER. No matter what you believe. There was time before us and time after, and even after time ends there will be an eternity of timelessness.

Time is fucking fucking scary.

That can't be the afterlife. Or the non-afterlife. It must be some kind of dream state forever. You die, you no longer exist as you know it, and then you just dream. And it's a perceived reality. And perhaps there's multiple dreams over this eternity (creating a false sense of beginning, middle, and end) like when you have several distinct dreams in one night. Fade to black. Curtain rises to reveal a new scene. If you aren't a vivid dreamer, I don't think you can quite comprehend how amazing a lifetime of dreaming would be. For instance, if I found out I was going to be in a coma for 30 years, but I'd dream the whole time, I think I'd be OK with it. But then again, I'm convinced I'd be just fine in solitary confinement because could I just retreat into my head and entertain myself for years. Staring at the wall. Paradise.

So that's basically an option that works for believers and non-believers alike. You want to believe your dreams are Heaven? Go right ahead. You want to believe Heaven is actually a fanciful creation of your cerebral cortex? Ok, I'd buy it.

This gives me something to look forward to since eternity is just too fucking much to handle. I can't emphasize the fucking aspect enough.

To get back to my original thought, I don't want to go to Paris. And I'm tired of people trying to reassure me and say, "Oh you know, I'm sure you'll have fun! Just don't worry now and go anyway. You'll be glad you did!" Yeah well screw you. Obviously, you aren't very good at being able to ruin your own prospective enjoyment based on irrational concerns. If I don't want to go, then I don't want to go and that should be the end of it.

Maybe I'm just broken and the part of my heart that's supposed to melt over baguettes and poodles and the Eiffel Tower and brie is just not there. I must have a hole in that spot. I knew there had to be at least one somewhere.

And I'm not my perspective or the lies I tell you every time.

P.S. Thank you Flushed and Ophelia. I'm sorry I haven't responded Pasco. I've started to about 27 times. That last bit applies to almost every aspect of my life, including here.

Addicted

2010-04-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Food is my addiction.

I'm sure I've known this for awhile, but today it seemed like a revelation.

As soon as I was finished eating, all my troubles came rushing back at me, full speed. And then I realized that while I was shopping for food, bringing the food home, eating the food.... all I thought about was the food.

And afterward, it was like the worst crash you could ever experience. Everything came back, and I almost couldn't remember eating at all. The memory, the feeling, was just out of my reach.

All I wanted to do, at that point, was eat something again. Numb myself. Focus, completely focus, on one single tangible thing in my life.

Is this what heroin is like? Am I a junkie? Of course, I mean that last bit without any hint of the humor it so glaringly implies.

How do you break an addiction that you need to survive? How do I give up food?

I don't even care about losing weight anymore. I just don't want to be that girl who needs her fix, a sugary fattening fix, to get through the day.

I don't want to think about food. I don't want it to solve my problems for a few minutes while being its own problem all together.

Someone please tell me how to detox from one of the few things I need to keep me alive.

What time is it? Berlin Time!

2010-04-17T03:24:00.001-07:00

I went to Poland for what was supposed to be a lovely holiday last week.

Then there was the plane crash. That was sad but it was interesting to see the country's reaction.

NOW Iceland decides to blow up the day I'm supposed to come back home. So now I'm stuck in Europe until next Wednesday when I can get a BUS back to England from Berlin.

Berlin for 5 days! I think I'm getting sick. Stress and all the indoor smoking in Poland I think. I have no appetite.

Thank God for small favors.

If any of my readers are Berliners and would like to meet up for a Tasse Kaffee I would love that. Send me an email (savory1sick@gmail.com). Love for at least some happiness to come out of this mess.

Any advice on awesome Berlin things are appreciated as well :)

Time to go practice my German.

xxxxxxxxxxxXXXXXxxxxxxxx

A Proclamation

2010-04-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

I declare that today shall forever be known as

Savory Day

A moment for fasting and reflection
---

Give your heart to starvation.

Ouch.

2010-04-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

I have just seriously messed up my arms and shoulders from tensing up while dry heaving. My inability to purge is a blessing and a curse.

Lessons from the Second Great World War

2010-04-09T12:09:00.000-07:00

Conversations in Passing

2010-04-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, most of the time, I don't take seriously the gravity of my situation.

I'll be watching a television program or movie with and adorable little elderly couple. Or see them on a park bench squabbling. And I smile to myself and turn to TR.

"Do you see us growing old together?"
"Yes."
"Sitting on a little porch laughing and bickering?"
"Of course."
"Who do you think will die first? Me or you?"
"You will."
"Why do you think that?"
"How many times have you already come close to dying?"

I live in a world where my partner doesn't actually see me sitting with him on the little porch. In a life where it will be a success just to survive the times. I'm not in a third world country. This isn't a time when there isn't proper medical care.

I live in my own private Hell. It is slowly killing me.

Pet Peeve

2010-04-05T18:41:00.000-07:00

So facebook keeps suggesting this fan page to me: "Not saying 'gay' as a synonym for 'stupid' "

Aside from the really poor wording choice, I have several problems with this campaign. Note, I do not use the word gay to mean anything other than homosexual. Major movie stars are making public service announcements about this like we're talking about getting tested for chlamydia (the silent epidemic!).

Who is making campaigns about using the word "retard" ? Here's why I find that word more offensive. People who are mentally deficient can't always stand up for themselves. Most people know that 'gay' doesn't actually make sense as a synonym for stupid, just like 'wicked' doesn't actually make sense as a synonym for something amazing or impressive. They are just cultural appropriations of our lexicon.

But retard or retarded IS a word meaning lower IQ, less able to function normally, impaired cognition. The "insult" is making a juxtaposition by comparing someone who is obviously not mentally retarded with their behavior which may be reckless, careless, thoughtless, or impulsive. I know many individuals who have adapted to homosexuality but I can't think of anyone I know (and I do know many) that doesn't have a lower quality of life with mental and behavioral deficiencies. And their family suffers even more.

For that matter, how many of your friends get corrected when they say "Why are you acting so crazy?" "Are you insane?" And we know how often people joke about eating disorders. Who is standing up for those minorities?

People might respond to this argument with the case that homosexuals have been persecuted for centuries and it is only within recent history they are not regarded as diseased. But many people don't know that the mentally retarded and disordered people were also sent to concentration camps to die. That until very recently (and only in 1st world countries) psychiatric facilities were prisons, sites of experimentation, and places to die. People with mental disorders were killed for being witches or possessed by Satanic forces. And they are still regarded with suspicion.

The homosexual community, while still marginalized, has made significant strides within the past few decades. People with impaired mental capabilities are still treated as if it's medieval England. Sure, we may know that masturbating or the moon don't cause people to develop mental illnesses... but we don't treat people with schizophrenia as victims. We treat them as possible perpetrators, individuals that will harm us if we let them. Eating Disordered individuals can't speak out about their illness unless he or she is in recovery because we can't expose our children to that kind of perverse thinking. They might just catch anorexia and become infected too.

I understand when my gay friends complain about their co-workers or family members using "gay" with little regard to their feelings. But I don't understand how someone who knows persecution can't see the suffering of people in the same situation. A situation worsened by the fact that the majority of us can't even talk about this major aspect of ourselves. Our families are ashamed. We might get turned down for a job. Rejected for health insurance. And those of us who know someone with mental retardation know that you don't need to say anything. People just stare.

It is the silent minorities, suppressed by the times, that can't help themselves nor expect sympathy from others.

Law of Diminishing Returns

2010-04-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

"We are always in danger of overeating, if only because we cannot escape from the idea that if one portion gives pleasure, two portions will give twice as much pleasure and four portions twice as much again. Alternatively, we imagine that the delight of the first mouthful - or first drink - is infinitely repeatable. Even when we have direct sensory experience to the contrary, we cannot be disabused of this seductive idea. Sometimes the search is less for repeatable pleasure than for an imagined pleasure that eludes us. We eat a second orange in the hope that we shall this time taste the warm sunlight it promises, feel the color orange in the mouth rather than the slightly acid sweetness we crush out of the slices as they die between our teeth, our palate and our tongue. The pleasure may be entirely in the idea - in the anticipation. I remember as a child looking forward all day to the Sunday evening roast dinner, my anticipation being wound up by the delicious aroma pervading the house, and then finding the pleasure I had looked forward to proving curiously elusive. Each mouthful was a mini-disappointment, that sent me on to the next mouthful in pursuit of the experience that eluded me. For Gustave Flaubert this was at the root of his commitment to art: 'wine has a taste unknown to those who drink it'. Taste can be savored only through art."
Raymond Tallis Hunger pg 54

2010-04-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

My life is infested with ants.
This is not a metaphor whatsoever I am sad to say.

It's a sign. I'm sure of it. Nature is saying to me, "Savory, if you bring even one bakewell tart in here, we will make your life miserable. Ants will crawl all over you in bed to remind you of your earthly sins."

I missed a party to clean out drawers and squish bugs.

---

So here's some requests I have for people who are interested in contributing to a website.
- Photography or graphics
- Short fiction or prose (your choice... just nothing overwhelmingly gushy you'd find on fanfiction.net)
- Articles (these can be on a wide range of subjects as long as it's intelligent, makes some sort of argument/position and relates to something like mental health, popular culture, gender, medicine/science, consumerism, or related etc)

It would be great to have a section similar to the Post Secret type thing, where people can anonymously submit short worries/fears/secrets/desires/concerns to share. Anyone who has ideas for setting that up, let me know.

I'd also like some kind of "Dear Abby" feature.

Anyone with ideas other than what I've listed definitely contact me as I have a limited imagination :) I've found a good company to do the hosting so I just need to research into buying a domain name.... and find the money to invest in it!

Cheers,
Savory

savory1sick@gmail.com

A "zine"

2010-04-01T23:43:00.001-07:00

Here is how the website is evolving and taking shape in my mind.

The way I'm imagining it being successful is sort of a web magazine. I'll be the "editor" but the site will rely on outside contributions, creating a multi-vocal experience. I say magazine because the content will change, but at an orderly interval (once or twice? a month? With interactive aspects/forum/etc to keep the visitors returning).

Ideally, I'd like to have a photography, poetry, fiction, and personal account as the main sections. It would be lovely to have an advice column as well, with 2-4 consistent individuals responding to written in questions (about life not tips or tricks).

The content doesn't need to be ED focused, but rather this will be a place where disordered individuals feel they can lower their normally heightened defense, be his or herself, in a supportive non-judgmental environment.

Because I'd like to make sure this is feasible before I invest in domain purchases and web hosting, if anyone has content they'd like to contribute or an idea for something, please send it over to me so I can begin to compile the foundation. Of course, your personal blog will be linked and your online persona appropriately credited.

I would really like to see this work out, so please spread the word and let people to get in touch with me: savory1sick@gmail.com

All my love!

206

2010-04-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

Frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, sphenoid, ethmoid. Mandible, maxilla, palatine, zygomatic, nasal, lacrimal, vomer, inferior nasal conchae. Malleus, incus, stapes. Hyoid. Scapula, clavicle. Sternum (manubrium, gladiolus, xiphoid process). Rib. Cervical vertebrae, thoracic vertebrae, lumbar vertebrae. Humerus, radius, ulna. Scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate. Coccyx, sacrum, coxal. Femur, patella, tibia, fibula. Calcaneus, talus, navicular, medial cuneiform, intermediate cuneiform, lateral cuneiform, cuboid bone. Metatarsal. Proximal phalanges, intermediate phalanges, distal phalanges.

Pages and print

2010-03-30T23:56:00.000-07:00

Some books on my bookshelf right now:

"Foul Bodies: Hygiene in Colonial America"

"Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand: Curious Adventures of a CSI"

"The Cultures of Collecting"

"Archaeologies of Sexuality"

"Comic Art Now"

"The Way We Live: Things We Love"

"Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India"

"Design for Shopping"

"The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook"

"Prostitution and Victorian Society"

"Inventing the American Dream"

"The Wonderful and Surprising History of Sweeny Todd"

"Phenomenology of Landscapes"

Among others.

I picked up a book today specifically with you all in mind. "The Art of Living: Hunger" Haven't done a proper philosophical, long-winded thoughtful post in some time. Been mulling an idea around in my head about starting a real website. With guest writers. And a place for outside contributions like art and poetry. Not that bad stuff you see on all the pro-ana websites. A site for the eating disorder that shouts "We are eating disordered, but we are more than that."

Just the thought of doing it makes me realize that it would still have to be an underground off the grid kind of thing. It makes me get a little taste of discrimination and prejudice.

---

Random thoughts for a random day.

Oh bother.

2010-03-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

Time flies when you're avoiding Mondays.

Not that I have anything particularly important to do other than make 2 public appearances, but I know it's the week and I shouldn't be hanging around my apartment in my PJs ignoring calls to go out. I just can't be bothered to get myself out.

I've been thinking a lot about infatuation vs. true love. Can't say much more than that because I know TR occasionally reads this and as much a he pretends to be non-judgmental and sagely, he's anything but. Sigh, I wish there was true anonymity on this thing but I don't want to start all over and hope everyone finds me again. Can't be bothered to do that.

Today I ate nothing. Well at about 4:00am I had 2 pears, but the rest of the day I really just went without food (and drink) out of pure laziness. This I am ok with. Say it with me again, "just can't be bothered..."

Maybe I'm in a rut. I just don't particularly feel strongly about anything right now. The dissertation is at a dead end, I don't think the way I want to do things is the way my supervisors want me to. This makes me wonder if I'm truly heading in the right direction for my future career. I love writing, I just don't like other people telling me how to write, what to write, and being cynical at me for wanting to do something purely because I find it "interesting." I don't want to "make something interesting" merely because it has analytical value and I can attach it to stupid philosophers and researchers more successfully.

I want to write about things that I am so passionate about that I do research without it even feeling like work. Get up in the middle of the night to write something on a scrap paper because I've just had an idea.

But perhaps that doesn't really exist. We all have to do things we don't want to do or don't particularly like.

Is it selfish of me to expect more of myself? To expect that due to my self-critical eye and drive to always be better than yesterday, that perhaps I deserve to do something I actually want to do? That I've achieved this little reward?

And if we all just do settle for the good and the bad, then why do we try so hard anyway? To achieve something that apparently doesn't exist. We could all just be fat and be a cog in the assembly line of production. We could be indifferent.

But we reach for the stars. We know we are better and perhaps even gifted at something. And we know that our way of cognition is one that society claims as an ideal, but shuns as reality. We are exemplary and because of that we cannot assimilate.

Right now though, I can't really be bothered to make society bend to my will or become more acceptable to society. Today, I will remain different.

I can hear the birds chirping.

2010-03-26T21:09:00.001-07:00

Intake:
handful jelly beans
Percy Pigs & Friends
2 ciders
Juice

(You can see a pattern with me and sugar. No brown things! And finally under 1000cals again!)

I have THE best idea for a cheesy sap sap romantic comedy. But I'm also high as a kite, so I might wake up tomorrow and realize I was talking about 2 people falling in love because they love the same color. Although there could be an angle to that one!

I'm back.

2010-03-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

And I mean business.

I've been shying around, hiding and isolating myself for too long. Come on, when you avoid your blog, that's hitting a sad sad state of things.

I don't want to talk about my failures in the past weeks (though I will tell you that I learned how incredible "fondant" truly is) because I just want to focus on now and tomorrow.

Baby steps baby steps baby steps.

Here are the new rules:

1. Try to stick by the "Anti-Brown" if possible. Exceptions can be made for truly healthy brown food... but even this should be in moderation.

2. No more food in my room. In fact, I'm going to eat everything in public. This serves 2 purposes: there won't be any food at home to comfortably binge on AND I hate to eat in public. Today I ate a salad in the middle of a plaza and it felt like everyone was staring at me. I couldn't eat like I do when I'm alone (inhaling food, stuffing face, eating to the point of exploding) and this forced me to eat slow and thoughtfully. No distractions. Just me and the meal. I had to keep reminding myself that only 20% or so of the people who passed by me actually noticed me at all... if you aren't familiar with this psychology finding, definitely check out these lab demos and case studies. It helps me to try and remember this when I think everyone's looking at my fat legs.

3. One meal a day. I'm looking into meal replacement shakes for emergencies since I used to do well with those.

3a. Nothing goes into mouth without knowing calories. If it's not listed or I don't know off the top of my head, I don't eat it. Only eat salad with dressing on the side at restaurants.

3b. Don't do anything else while eating this meal. Eat and focus on eating.

3c. Drink a cup of hot tea with the meal. Hot liquids make you feel more full.

4. Juice is ok in moderation. Tea is preferable.

5. Weigh and take measurements regularly.

---

So as an added bonus to you all, I'm going to finally reveal just how huge I've gotten. It needs to be said out loud, I can't run from it.

Weight: 134lbs or 9 stone 8

Measurements-

Thighs (at biggest part): 23

Butt: 38

Hips: 34

Waist: 28.5

Bust: 31 and 33

Upper Arm: 10

OK, I didn't catch on fire and die. I can't believe how I've let myself go. My thigh is almost as big as my waist used to be just months ago. I've put on this weight rapidly and through an equally unhealthy means as starving.

---

6. I'm going to have to also be boring and start recording what I eat on here, but I'll put it at the end so you can skip!

7. I promise I WILL start commenting and religiously reading blogs again.

8. Little rewards for good behavior. Haven't figured out what the rewards are yet.

So there you have it. I'm moving back into Savoryville!

---

1 cherry bakewell (198)

1 waitrose italian salad (101)

1 serving watermelon (50)

Juice (not doing calories of juice)

Cheers!

Savory

I feel

2010-03-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Fleshy.

Tesco

2010-03-13T15:13:00.001-08:00

I should be really horrified by this, but I can't help but feeling smug and pleased with myself.

After a few pints (I know, I'm eventually going to cut them out.... eventually) I walked home with a friend and decided to pop into the Tesco across the street--it's not a big problem normally because I loathe the whole Tesco corporation--and pick up something I really didn't need, and my stomach REALLY didn't need.

The automatic doors won't open. I think to myself, "Shit, it's almost 11 and they're closing up." Then I think, "Shit, it's not quite 11 they shouldn't lock me out when it's still technically open!" So I start knocking on the window. I get the brilliant idea to wait for a customer to walk out and then I'll dash in and grab that *thing* I didn't need. So I made a break for it, and apparently let in a couple who followed my lead as well.

So I grab this thing and am ready to go queue up, when this ridiculous completely uneducated man-boy says to the couple (who aren't nearly as fast as me, and still at the door) "No no, we're closed."

They look crushed and ask, "But we can't even get milk?"
"No" is his reply.
Then they kind of gesture toward me, and he looks and sees me and my thing in hand and says "No no we're closed."

And I, feeling brazen and full of Dutch Courage, show him my cellphone and say, "It's 10:58. You aren't closed. I'm buying this." And I walk to the queue. He says the same thing again but I don't budge and then the couple went and grabbed their milk and broccoli (at least someone was eating veggies in this story!).

So after waiting for this ridiculous man who was buying a cart full of groceries (UH, this is a Tesco "Express" who does full shopping at the chain-version of a corner store?!), I throw down ₤1.50 and say "Keep the change."

During the previous incredible wait, I did manage to have a lovely conversation with the broccoli woman next to me, who then decided to make her guy (who was on crutches) go an grab the thing that I just got. I'm so influential.

So I should feel horrible that I got completely rude in order to satisfy my bulging tummy, but I'm not. And you shouldn't either.

The moral of the story is... always do something that makes you a stronger person, even if your figure doesn't agree.

I'm watching "Notting Hill" because I was there today...

2010-03-12T13:08:00.001-08:00

... the movie isn't terribly good. But I don't have high expectations for either Hugh Grant or Julia Roberts, both of whom I find terribly terrible. But "Notting Hill" the place is lovely, while simultaneously reminding me of my poverty and impending doom.

---

I can't tell if this makes me hungry or revolted, but I suppose the moral of the story is I would probably be thinner if it was 1974.

Today I'm going to keep my eating habits a secret, as I'm afraid I'll jinx myself. I might have already done it just in this last sentence. eeee!

The only thing I will tell you is I can't fit into my teeny tiny ultra skinny jeans anymore. Size 6 or even size 8. Lord, I can probably barely manage a size 10 these days... but in my defense I like my skin-tight jeans to be ironically comfortable.

In other news, cheers to skirts that cover up wobbly bits and swishing thighs.

With all my heart,
Savory Sweet

P.S. I'm going to list off every British phrase/word that I've started to pick up in my every day language: "cheers" "can't be bothered" "brilliant" "mates" "tosser" "rubbish" "the bin" "queue" "fair enough" "wellies" "trousers" "jumper" "crap (as in 'these are crap directions')" "gorgeous (as in the way good food tastes...)" "sweetie" "lads" "slag" "chips" "crisps" "cheap and cheerful" "clever" "gobsmacked" "tuck in" "knackered" "mental" "tanked" "wanker" "nosh"

I have never been able to say "bloody" without sounding like an idiot. Yes, I sometimes practice aloud at home. Don't pretend you haven't ever thought about wearing one of those stupid bluetooth headpieces so you could talk to yourself without looking "mental." Whatever mates, I can't be bothered. Fairenoughcheersthnxbi.

"Resolve to Dissolve"

2010-03-08T03:25:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else still wonder what happened to Jenna? I still worry about her.

A mop of hair

2010-03-06T08:04:00.001-08:00

This is a manifestation of what I can only think to describe as a "food hangover." Note the distress and lethargy.

---

2 more things and then I'll get out of your hair.

1) I just started reading Cinderella's blog and I'm her only follower! She's got a few archived posts so it'll be a good read. I suggest you check out her site. She's very articulate and no one should struggle alone.

2) Question for you to debate in the comments section: Eating Disorders as we know them now were first documented during the Industrial Age and have become worse ever since, affecting people in 1st and 3rd world countries. As we know the disease isn't just about the media infestation of thin and pretty in our everyday lives, what are contributing factors that progress eating disorders around the globe today?

too much sleep and too little sleep.

2010-03-06T07:26:00.000-08:00

uuuugh. Today I'm a slug. It's finally caught up to me. The starvation and lack of sleep.

The monster is unleashed!

That's being relatively over-dramatic. My stomach, however, is quite distended and would argue with that statement. Here's me again thinking I could grocery shop and pick up a nice little lunch. Nope. I eat the lunch. Then I eat what I had planned for dinner. Then I eat a box of biscuits and bag of Percy Piglets I was going to send over to TR. There was a cream soda somewhere in there too. At least, I think so because there's an empty can next to my bed.

This past week has been one of the most productive, but ludicrously insane, weeks of my life. I averaged about 3 hours of sleep every night. It wasn't even forcing myself to wake up, I'd go to sleep at midnight and open my eyes at 3AM.

Then I started my task. Two tasks actually. One being the obvious, taking advantage of this energy source and doing some work. Two being a marathon of horror films that seems to be never-ending. I freak out relatively easily. Well, at least I used to. I haven't yet seen something that makes me afraid of sleeping facing toward the wall (everyone knows that's when someone sneaks up on you!). Maybe I've just become completely numb.

Anyway, the lack of sleep was great except I was always yawning, disinterested in other people (more than usual, I guess), and at 2PM every day I thought I would fall asleep no matter where I happened to be. I would also get really nauseated and start gagging every now and again. Kept a reserve of crackers for that. Weird.

It didn't really bother me so much until I became noticeably irritable, withdrawn, and... well started hallucinating. Nothing exciting, for better or for worse, and I wouldn't even have known I was hallucinating were it not for a psychology class I'd taken years ago.

I kept seeing spiders crawling up the wall. After I realized this was not actually happening, I realized I don't think I've ever seen a spider here.

This post doesn't really have any purpose except to let you all know I'm alive and functioning, at a snail's pace.

Over and out.

Loads Of Liquids Day 1

2010-02-26T16:42:00.000-08:00

Alright kiddos, here's how it's going to work.

Because I hate my kitchen, there's no way I can rely on keeping anything in there. So boxed juice it is!!

I'm going to cut the juice as much as possible, and I've got diet 7Up to mix with it now and then to spice things up. For every cup of juice I drink, I'm going to drink a cup of tea before I can have more juice.

I usually get cravings for savory things and sweet things. Juice for sweet. And I've figured out how I can have more juice for savory!

Tomato juice. Some hot sauce and pepper and I've got juice soup.

Tonight I'm taking some laxatives just to cleanse out my system and I'll think about taking a daily diuretic just to counter-act fluid retention. No abusing pills.

---

I also took pictures of myself in those hideous leggings. Not very good at the whole "before" and "after" thing so we'll see if there's noticeable results.

Buuuuut because I hate myself (preaching to the choir?) I'm not ready to show you... so here's my lower legs and feet!

Loads of Liquid 'til We're Light!

2010-02-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

I'm liquid fasting. I've only ever done a water fast before, so this will be a new and different adventure.

I've just thrown allllll my food away in the trash. Emptied my cabinets. Everything is garbage. For safety, I'll keep my emergency baby food jars just in case.

So I'm about to put on a hat and sweatpants to walk over to Tesco and the corner store to pick up loads and loads of liquids.

It's Loads of Liquid 'til We're Light! People. Anyone who wants to join me should :)

Here are the rules:
You can consume *anything* you choose as long as it is liquidy enough to be drank from a straw out of the box (that means no sneaky cheating with milk shakes or something... juicing is ok though).
You HAVE to write down everything that's gone into your mouth. Keep a tally of calories.
Weigh yourself no more than once per day.

Additional Rules I'm setting for myself:
If you begin to feel sick or nauseated, you can slowly chew on a cream cracker or saltine. That's the only reason to break the fast.
Do something productive every single day, even if it's little, and keep track of this as well.
Alcohol is forbidden. This is a cleansing detox.
Unless you're going out to buy more liquids, leave your wallet at home to keep yourself out of temptation's way. If you feel it is absolutely necessary to have some money, put a few small bills on your person for emergencies.

---

OK people. Wish me luck.

With Liquid Love,
Savory

Swizzle

2010-02-25T15:18:00.000-08:00

Hah, last night I wrote a drunk post but was apparently too drunk to publish it!

You know the best way to feel completely horrible and ugly and fat?

Wet Look Leggings.

Buy them. Wear them. Never go out in them. When you want to eat cheese and fat and sugar, picture your ass and thighs in those damn leggings.

And if that doesn't work, walk around in them and listen to the swish sizzle sound of your legs as you walk. It's creepy and disgusting.

This has been a disordered tip brought to you by the mind of Savory Sweet.

End Transmission.

Just OK

2010-02-22T11:33:00.000-08:00

I'm such a bitch.

When I was really scary thin, TR used to talk to me about it and I would quip back that I thought he was fat. He's never been fat. Sometimes he and I have been on the higher range of healthy, with lots of squish but never fat.

But for some reason, stupid shallow me sometimes makes remarks about TR losing weight or working out. I know it's judgmental and mean. But in my mind, I judge everyone else pretty harshly and then I judge myself ten times as tough.

I guess that's how I got to a completely dangerous BMI... Obviously I need to rethink what kind of lens through which I want to view the world.

It would just be nice to let go of that ideal that if you try hard enough you can make everything perfect. If I work at it, I can be rich and beautiful and successful and famous. Is it weird that I didn't say "Happy" ? That didn't even cross my mind as I was thinking about my perfection list.

---

The other day I was super bored and taking personality quizzes. One question was about some kind of genie in a bottle and what would I wish for:

1. $100,000,000 dollars
2. Fix the Environment
3. World Peace
4. To Be Completely Healthy For the Rest of My Life

As much as I know I would be a different person, I thought about how brilliant my life would be if I was just healthy. Physically and mentally. No worries about "pre-existing conditions" or what time to take my medication.... or the fact that if I miss my meds for one weekend so I can sleep in, I completely freak out on Monday. It would be nice to wake up and worry about something else. But not worry more than the average person does.

I wonder if being healthy equates to being average? Things aren't terrible or particularly wonderful. They just are, and that's ok. Doesn't that just make me sound so egotistical? I'm so above the world because my emotions swing like a pendulum and I'm as unpredictable as the weather. Routines are beneath me. I am closer to perfection because I am flawed.

Neither seems right. But what is right? And why do we care so much?

Why can't we just settle for things being just the way they are? Nothing more, nothing less.

Taste and Toilet

2010-02-21T15:23:00.001-08:00

UGH. This has been a horrible weekend.

It all started with getting drunk. Doesn't it always?

Long story short, I got sick in my bathroom while still super drunk and knocked my little toilet freshener thingy into the bowl.... AND proceeded to forget about this until the next morning.

Wake up with a hoooorible hangover and realize I have completely blocked up my toilet. Oops. So because I live in the wonders of Graduate Student Housing, no one particularly cares and is of the mindset that "Well, someone will fix it on Monday..." FUCK YOU that's 3 days from now! I'll have the plague by then from the airborne bacteria (not really, but I kept the door closed just in case).

So stupid me has to call a plumber--not even thinking to do price comparisons--and this stereotypical filthy guy comes to fix it and puts the plunger in my shower after he's done with it. Needless to say there was much bleaching to be done and even so I didn't trust the shower for 2 days.

I'm not really sure what the moral of the story is here. Since I had basically alcohol-flushed my system, I was like "Well, I feel super dead.... AND kind of thin!" Out comes the scale. What do you know, but I've lost a ridiculous amount of weight! I can't say how much for sure because I have been avoiding the scale.

This was the only dim light shining on an otherwise horrible horrible weekend. When I get hungover, I turn into a mopey sicky sick needy person. And I feel said-sickness for at least a whole day. Then I hate the world for allowing me to drink in the first place. It's someone else's problem, definitely.

---

A weird thing about being here in the UK is that my taste has completely changed. It's kind of sad but good. My mother sent me red vines in the mail and at first they tasted SUPER spiced and herbal-y.... eventually I ate enough of the 1lb pack that I got the old taste again but still.

Then yesterday, I got strawberry Hagen-Daz and it seriously tasted like cheese. My mouth couldn't even manage to eat 1/4 of the pint. My comfort food is ruined.

So if you want to completely betray your senses, go into a foreign country for a few months. That ought to do it.

I swear I'm going to go shower right... now

2010-02-18T05:44:00.000-08:00

I feel fat today. Fat and useless.

Been watching "Desperate Housewives" like it's nobody's business (anyone who is friends with me on Facebook will notice I was rockin' the "Bree" 'do at a recent party like it was 1956)... and I really don't feel encouraged to do anything else until my bandwidth on Megavideo needs an hour to cool down.

I need to get my act together today because I've got a meeting with an especially intimidating professor. He just loves big big words. Ridiculous lexicon. So that by itself makes my palms sweaty when I go in to see him. Plus, his hipster black plastic frames are so intrusive he just looks like a portly pair of glasses with a mustache and leather jacket. It's slightly too tight, which is endearing.

Whenever I see this guy, I just want to break down and tell him all my troubles. But I know that no academic, especially a middle-aged man, wants some girl weeping in the office. That's what school counselors are for yo! So I'll psych myself up to be like, "OK today I'm going to really open up and talk about the problems I've been having..." and as soon as I walk in I start blubbering incoherently and look plain stupid and unprepared.

And my television affinity doesn't help me much on the looking prepared part.

I wanna step on the scale. It won't be a pretty number but deep inside I feel like if I can just see something little, it will be a relief. One thing I'm doing right in my world. At the same time, I know--being the glutton for pain and tragedy--if I do get on the scale, it's going to be something I don't like, and I'll sabotage any hope of a good day.

Being functional sucks. There's no real good excuse for me to go batshit crazy, but I know (and if I let the cracks show through other people see it too) that I'm just not pulled together. I'm a lot of loose threads. Damaged goods. Then, when I finally motivate myself to get out of my crumb-filled, smelly, warm bed and take a shower that I really have no reason to logically feel this way. I can get out of bed. I can shower. I can smile. I can function.

I suppose it's why I do the things I do. Binging, drinking, cutting, shopping, watching copious amounts of internet television. These are the only times I feel free from the prison of my mind. It's nice to focus on something besides myself. The taste of food, the feeling of being tipsy, the excitement of a new purchase, the satisfaction of seeing blood.

The fantasy of voyeristically watching someone else's life for thirty minutes. Or an hour.

I wonder if the great people of the world are plagued with similar problems. Being too thoughtful. Stuck in one's head. Tormented artists had to get that way somehow, right? So absorbed in the hyperreality of one's own imagination that the world seems distant and blurry.

Is this why we push ourselves so hard? Do we have a similar mindset? Something brilliant lies dormant within, but we just don't know how to channel it? Or is it all just another manic thought too keep ourselves going every day? That we tell ourselves we are better. Martyrs. Being an average person who can't seem to handle the world, let alone a single day, seems so pathetic.

Today, however, I feel fat and useless.

The Grass is Always Greener

2010-02-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

You know, it's not even about losing weight anymore.

I just really hate having to stop and eat. Or think about what I'm going to eat. Or have that stomach ache from over eating.

Mostly I hate spending money on food.

Life would just be so much easier if I didn't get cravings for things and could simply take a little nutrition pill and get on with my day.

---

I'm looking at water bottles right now. Mine smells from not washing it after using it for juice. Can't get another aluminum (by the way, Americans... we have been saying it "wrong" apparently. As strange as it sounds, it does actually make sense to say it "AL-U-MINI-yum!" like you say other things on the periodic table. Still, it sounds ridiculous to my ears) bottle because last one I had ended up getting rusty because I left a little puddle in the bottom for too long.

Really, I just need a dish washer. This would save countless wasted bottles.

Another recent occurrence is that I've gotten back on the meat train. I usually don't have a second thought about eating meat, so when I start to crave it obsessively, something inside me thinks I must be super protein deprived and anemic so I let it happen for a bit. Get it out of my system so I won't bruise as easily.

Anyway the reason I need the water bottle and I'm mentioning about the meat is I feel like if I can start carrying around tons of H2O and bring a packed lunch I'll be more temptation free.

I just really miss the days of eating frozen grapes for lunch.

---

Yesterday I went to get a refill on my Prozac. Haven't seen my GP in months since I had my own little supply going for awhile. She started doing the "ooh looks like you overdosed on paracetamol... would you like to talk about it?"

No. Not particularly. Jesus, this is when I start getting bitter and annoyed. I know where this conversation leads... "Well, do you have any thoughts of hurting yourself now?"

Yes. I always do, idiot. I'm just not going to do it right now. Let's focus on fixing my head and not pretending to worry about me just so you can cover your ass, liability wise.

"I wonder, do you have a plan? Do you know what you would do?"

OK, this is the stupidest part. I always smile and answer, "I know what will and won't work if that's what you're asking." BLANK STARE. Obviously that wasn't but now he or she looks concerned.

"Well do you have access to a gun? Or medication?"

Lady, I hate to break it to you, but the world is a dangerous place. Why would I bother finding a gun when I could walk down to my local underground station and save myself time and money. Dumbshit.

I think by this point people are so shocked at my candid nature and sheer disinterest that things start to get awkward and uncomfortable. The topic gets changed. Alas, they won't give me refills on my crazy medication because they are suckers for pain and like to squirm in their chair once a month to reassure themselves I'm not rotting away somewhere or causing society too much trouble.

Blah.

---

Sorry I haven't been around lately. I just don't feel like I have anything intelligent to contribute. My days consist of struggling not to stand on the scale and finding that balance between malnourishment and binge eating.

Doesn't seem like anyone would want to hear the woes of a girl who can't decide the next path for her life. Straddling the fence between blissful recovery and comforting insanity.

Lackadasical

2010-02-11T23:28:00.000-08:00

Where should I start?

It's not the first time I've felt this way. If I really wanted to, I could go find my high school Xanga and quote a particularly sadsack entry.

But INSTEAD I'm probably just going to repeat myself unintentionally like a broken iPod...

---

You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I'm incredibly insecure. This is probably why I over compensate with a booming personality and in-you-face obnoxious presence. I don't dislike myself, it's just that I can't find something about me that is incredible. My problem is I don't feel talented. I feel average.

Everyone's good at something, right? Some people are brilliant at lots of things. I'm. Just. Not. Don't think I'm feeling sorry for myself, it's just that I've tried loads of things and never found my niche. Artist, musician, vocalist, academic, dancer, comedienne, athlete, writer, corporate pig, laborer. I can do all these things, and pull off most of them.... but it's like all my skills are pooled into too many buckets. I'm not beautiful. But I'm not particularly unattractive. Just average.

This has a point, I promise.

So due to this insecurity, I'm pretty tightly wound, and perhaps I underachieve subconsciously because I'm afraid if I put in all my effort, I'll still fall short. The easier option is just to tell myself, "If I only tried harder, _________ would have been amazing!"

My grades last term are coming in. Fine, nothing to complain about. This term I won't just tell myself to try harder, I actually will put in the effort. Instead of doing my papers at the last minute, I'll start them over a month early. Draft, outline, properly research. This feels very productive.

Yesterday, I met with my adviser to throw ideas off him and show him six pages of citations for various projects that will eventually be handed in. He probably hadn't had a good day because he wasn't his usual cheery, grandfatherly self... but that's not even why I left his office later on with a quivering lip and watery eyes. It wasn't my research process that was lacking, it was my ideas. He told me to come back when I'd better developed something. I didn't tell him that I'd been working on this concept for over two years. It was as close to what It was as close to a substancial research question as I could manage, I thought.

Then I realized I've never really been able to be more than vague and overly general about anything I write about. I am not a person who can look at a text critically and ask, "What are the current tensions in blah blah blah and what does this imply?" My take is to say, "I'm interested in such and such and I'll be exploring blah blah notions" then wander around with words and examples until I've reached my work count.

I arrived to my next lecture late, and it was one of those horrible moments. The room was dark and I tried so hard to put my own troubles on the back burner to focus on the pretty pictures or the seemingly natural way my professor could incorporate obscure words into his lexicon. I realized I was crying. Then I became angry at myself for crying, silently wiping tears away from my face. This was futile because fat little water droplets kept running down my cheeks. Since I was already late for lecture, I couldn't disrupt the class for a second time to leave for the bathroom. I just prayed that no one noticed me in the darkness of the room.

No one did. In fact, after using my scarf to periodically scrub my face and nose (yes, it's in the hamper to get washed) by the end of lecture, I looked as fresh as a daisy, if not a little worn and tired. There I was again, personable and social surrounded by people who had no idea what was inside me. I felt incredibly distanced. Alone in a crowded room.

---

Long story short, I knew something had to be done. If I didn't handle my emotions, I would resent my advisor and I couldn't afford to avoid him for the next seven months. My only option, it seemed, was to stuff my feelings down. Literally. Punishment.

This would not be a normal binge. I had to torture myself for allowing my carefully constructed facade to crack. On my way home, I used my last few coins to buy a hamburger.

And chicken nuggets.

Ask me when I ate these last. I ate and cried. It was disgusting and sad. But I accomplished what I set out to do: instead of loathing my professor, I hated myself for eating meat.

---

The worst part is that today it all feels like a fading dream.

anonymous monster

2010-02-11T02:27:00.000-08:00

Also, I've started getting some super weird crazy spam as of late... this happening to you all?

Spike and the Shivers

2010-02-11T01:40:00.001-08:00

Made the mistake of taking Ritalin this morning on an empty stomach.

It makes me wonder though... Watch at 3:20 if you want to skip ahead.

Can I shiver the fat away?

Gray

2010-02-01T03:54:00.000-08:00

The world is not black and white.

I am a vampire bat. Sleeping during the day and awakening for moonlight adventures.

No but seriously, I think I've just been watching "Intervention" (via youtube) videos for at least twelve hours. I'm sure more. That stuff is insidious.

Last week I listened to a curious voicemail informing me I had finally reached the top of the list for an eating disorder clinic my GP referred me to ages ago. Meanwhile, I spend the rest of the week making excuses for not returning the call and pinching my wobbly bits in scorn. I decided after watching a particularly queer "Intervention"--where the supposed addict looked healthier than her clearly anorexic friend who was begging her to seek treatment--that despite feeling too fat to have an eating disorder, I should probably go ahead and give them a ring.

I have until March 23 to get my ducks in a row or completely get back down to my emaciated self. Haven't decided which side of the coin toss it'll be yet. But resting my arm on my little Buddha belly makes me worry it will be the later.

---
"In movies. Crazy, quirky, art student types are portrayed as these free spirits that teach 'nebbishy dorky Jon Stewart'ish'-type guys how to live and love. Yet in reality are complete psychological train wrecks. I can personally attest to that. As I have fallen into that trap, being a nebbishy dorky type myself. The sex really doesn't even come close to making up for the perpetual batshit insanity either."
-Some random guy on a forum

But it is true, yes? How many times do I need to see my life projected on screen to realize this. Someone was recently talking to me about how their current brush with emotional instability was not anywhere near as exciting as the movies.

Well, yes, I'm well aware. I do live that every day. But....... I'm not. I live inside my own head. No matter how many times TR and I fight, I always think that this one time he will do the "I love you because you're so crazy you make me crazy and I can't live with you or without you" kind of speech we all gush over in "10 Things I Hate About You" or "When Harry Met Sally."

What actually happens, every God darned time, is I instigate a chase and he doesn't take the bait. Then I'm sitting at a train station crying 3 hours later because he never actually came back to get me. THEN I'm calling him immediately upon this realization and yelling, then crying, then breaking up, then apologising and saying how much I miss him.

I guess that just wouldn't make for good cinematic narrative.

But I live in my head and this will never occur to me. The other day, I was telling a friend how I'm never underwhelmed by my surroundings because my imagination and head games always manage to keep me entertained and curious no matter how lackluster the landscape.

And for both the above reasons, random guy on the forum would not be able to deal with my kind. Even though I am actually quite a catch in the sack. Believe you me.

---

But getting back to my original point. I've been thinking recently and mulling over the idea of my current state of existence. It really is cliche how dramatic and pre-teen my life has become. Seriously? An eating disorder? Cutting? How 7th grade of me. Very original. Especially when Marya Hornbacher, after slaying her anorexia demon, gushes about how trite it all is. That we all fit in a neat little box. A broken taped up little box.

And yet... when I quit the Wellbutrin what do I end up doing? Currently, I'm skipping class. The side of my tongue is burned from all the sour candy I've been eating, which has also made my teeth painfully sensitive. I keep shoving something down my throat every few hours though. All the while thinking how misunderstood and alone I am.

Seriously? Record the thoughts in my head and play them aloud. You'll hear the same bullshit we all say. Textbook. Little box. "I control food because the world is so chaotic..... I cut so I feel alive..... I binge so I feel something other than empty.... Guilty..... I'm fat and ugly..... I hate myself..... I'm afraid you'll abandon me...... Sometimes I think I won't ever be able to cry again...... Sometimes I think I can't stop crying...... I have to be perfect...... blah blah blah."

I'm just so done with myself. Done sharing a brain and body with something so fractured, and so unoriginal. Like toast always falling butter side down. Predictable.

Being an addict is completely the most conformist thing about me. As much as I'd like to think of myself as that different sparkly girl who is eccentric and free and misunderstood like in the films, I know that deep down, I am a faceless drone. A drone operating a program with other drones in a compartmentalized world.

Where will I end up at the end of March? It's a vicious cycle of choice and predestiny feeding one another.

---

The world is not black and white... but in the spectrum of gray. And in the spectrum, if you look closely you can reduce it all down to pixels. A neat little box.

Dinner

2010-01-26T03:21:00.000-08:00

All I could think about was what I wasn't going to eat. My professor's voice grazed my ears, bringing me back to the lecture... but even as I dutifully took notes, nodded along, my mind was elsewhere:

Do I eat something today? Am I allowed? Maybe just one little thing... I have 2 pounds in my bag that I have scraped together. No no, I'm not hungry.

After doing all the readings this weekend, I felt compelled to contribute something during discussion, even though the reading was never mentioned in lecture (pathetic). I raised my hand and felt very timid, nervous. Then I realized my hands were shaking and this was the third mint I'd eaten in an hour. Clearly, this wasn't working, I told myself.

I ate half a sandwich on wheat bread. Drank a lot lot lot of water.

There. That will get me through until tomorrow.

---

Except I went home and made rice. Tried to sleep. Then I made soup, having totally given up.

Two and a half dinners in one night. What will the scale say?

No Title.

2010-01-25T12:36:00.000-08:00

Pick up a stone. Feel its weight. Keep it in your pocket.

At the end of the day, take it out and discard the stone. Leave with it, one Worry.

Disconnect

2010-01-24T06:08:00.000-08:00

It smells like skunk in my room. While I need to do a thorough scrubbing of the place (right now I'm cleaning out my email inbox) I think it's coming from the kitchen. I like to blame *that* place for most of the upsetting smells.

I've lost quite a bit, quite quickly on my citrus fast. Told myself I wouldn't mess around with laxatives and make myself more dehydrated than I already am.

---

As I was cleaning out my inbox, I came across a mass email invite for some kind of symposium about obesity. I've never been obese. I've never even been overweight. But I, like many people who read this blog, am deathly afraid that I will one day have thighs that are bigger than some people's waists. That I won't be able to see my feet.

I asked myself, as I envisioned these things.... "Well, what's wrong with being fat? A lot of people are fat and healthy. A lot of people are happy that way."

This was my reply: "That is the worst thing that could ever happen."

Then I thought about this statement. I say that about a lot of things. Dropping out of school. Getting stuck in a remedial job. Having to cancel my wedding plans. Moving back home. Being less than perfect.

All of these things equate to one simple thing in my mind: Failure. Perceived Failure.

And external judgment. I got back on my American medications and I finally feel a bit normal again. I can do homework. Eat without going insane. Keep food in the house. Go to school. Not wind up in the hospital once a month. My academic adviser asked me how I got through last term in hindsight.

Easy. It was either die or succeed. Going home was not an option. With my shield or on it.

I think, at least for me, there's some sort of disconnect. You are perfect or you are a failure? That doesn't even remotely correspond. I don't even believe in binary opposition in other aspects of life or theoretical philosophy. Everything works on a spectrum. Or more likely, a Euclidean space with an x-y-z axis. Finely plotted out.

Nothing can be so starkly contrasted as to say: here or there, up or down. What about the betwixt and between?

But yet, here I am with some sort of missing link in my mind, knowing that when it comes to myself I am the expert on catastrophizing and control.

Someone recently posted this video on my facebook, and though it wasn't his intention, it made me wonder how this related to me and this community.

Are we like these "deranged" penguins? Disobeying our instinctual survival mechanisms to rebel against food, nourishment and natural order? Even though we are inundated with knowledge that this "choice" "lifestyle" "disease" is devastating our bodies, why do we continue on this path? We share a disconnect. Something missing. Disoriented.

Taffy and Cuties

2010-01-23T06:47:00.001-08:00

OK. Anise has successfully dragged me out of my hidey hole. That and I'm incredibly frustrated with this book chapter I'm trying to read that is mostly describing some inane dull plastics invention that is supposed to teach me about materials and technology for lecture on Monday.

I couldn't care less.

But dear readers, I hope you believe me when I say that I've been writing little blogs in my head almost every day, I just haven't signed on to compose them because when I get near my computer they just seem so much less poetic than they did when I was walking along the streets looking at my reflection in shop windows. Shallow in many aspects, I know.

Anise is warning me about taffy. It is, my dear readers, a very slippery slope. In fact, I'm a bit worried because my teeth are getting a bit sensitive. But I'm more worried because they're starting to shift and I really don't want Ugly Betty adult braces.

---

Anyway, I've run out of money and my student loans don't come in for a few weeks. So I've decided to eat clementine cuties, watered down juice concentrate, and the occasional chewy candy (hence the taffy for breakfast!).

I technically have some soup and things, but when I eat things that are flavorful it gets my appetite worked up and I really only have about 80 American dollars to my so I'm just going to stick to citrus.

Sending you all little fairy kisses. Think about something other than food.

Today, I'm going to do the reading for Monday. Usually I make grand plans to get all these things done, and then I crash and burn and nothing gets done. So, today, I *just* want to get my readings done. What small but achievable task will you be doing?

EDIT: Jess just informed me she changed her blog address so if you're following her, make sure she's still on you're blog roll http://thehealthywaytoday.blogspot.com/ If you aren't following her, be sure you check out her blog, it's fantastic and wise, and she's been all over the world doing real cleanses!

Baby Steps

2010-01-12T21:55:00.000-08:00

Don't be so hard on yourself.

You have to walk before you can run.

THANK YOU!

2010-01-12T02:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, just when I think the whole world is rotten and rubbish (!) people show me true kindness and friendship.

You all came through, and I am SO grateful. Originally, I meant to spend my Winter break looking through everyone's old old blog entries picking out the perfect little quotes and examples to sprinkle throughout my paper.... but of course life, laziness, and my own tendency to shoot myself in the foot took the forefront and that didn't happen.

So I tried to use my own posts as examples, since I have a good memory for what I write, but that seemed SUPER lame. Thanks for being super awesome readers and people!

---

Just to satiate anyone's curiosity, the paper I wrote was about juxtaposing current scholar's theories about shopping (that people are devoted to shop in love for their family) to my idea of how eating disordered individuals shop for themselves (devoted-yes, love-no). I think that 3,000 words really wasn't enough to fully express myself, especially since I wanted to use your own words and passages from "Wasted" but hopefully it turned out ok.

I think the strong part of the paper talks about "Ana" as a deity, with EDs making sacrificial rites and ritualistic gestures in their shopping and consumption to appease this personification of their disordered self.

---

In terms of my shopping..... I have probably three strong tendencies. My first is to do what most of you mentioned and make a list, trying to stick to that. Usually that ends the best in terms of what I actually go home and eat until my next shopping trip. My second tendency is to say "fuck it" and just put things in my basket, and then get home and mindlessly eat until I snap out of it. Then I realize I have nothing really that I actually want, just a bunch of shit I wanted for 5 minutes of my life.

My third tendency is one that occurred last night. Kind of a hybridization. I don't go in with a list, but I know I have the best intentions in mind. I buy mostly fruit, boring carb stuff to keep me full but I won't binge on (oatmeal/porridge is my go to.... I cannot possibly over eat porridge), and something savory to counter the fruit (in this case, soup).

In this particular shopping trip, I also tried to buy things I could keep in my room instead of putting in the kitchen because I hate hate hate going to the kitchen. I just feel like the weird smells stick to me. Ugh.

This morning started out good. Pear. Porridge. A teeny bit of juice and then I switched to tea, black. Then I started getting munchy. What did I decide to eat during my sheer boredom? The greek olives I bought thinking, "Oh these are basically zero cal when you eat like one or two!"

Nope, ate almost the whole little jar. And then I found some hidden crackers to go with. I would also eat an apple and a nectarine.

Grr. Well, I'm tossing the remaining olives and crackers. I feel sick. At least all that didn't amount to thaaaat much in comparison to what I could have eaten if I shopped worse.

---

Sorry for the uninspired entry but I feel lethargic from lack of sleep and then too much sleep! Plus too much food!

I'll write a better deserved post later ;)

I need your assistance!

2010-01-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

Hurry!

I need as many responses as possible about your experiences in the grocery store and how it makes you feel (if this wasn't for a paper, I swear I wouldn't give you such a lame set-up question):

Everyone's already anonymous screen name will be changed along with identifying features.

I WILL REWARD YOU WITH SOMETHING AS OF NOW UNDECIDED.

This is due in 24 hours sooooooooo please?

A word of advice...

2010-01-07T19:53:00.000-08:00

... Your dress size should always be smaller than your shoe size. Ideally half or less.

That is all.

7 drinks later

2010-01-07T16:13:00.001-08:00

On the plane I wrote a post that I don't even remember writing.

Deciding to get drunk on a long haul flight isn't a good idea. Really shit actually. Basically ruined the idea of business class forever and I left the lavatory in a disgusting state.

After I sobered up however, I did realize something else besides my tendency towards alcoholism was up. I've got some kind of bad cold or food poisoning or dehydration or something. But sleeping 16 hours has been a definite help hah.

I'm only going to post a few things from this strange post because most of it is just too weird:

"I’m watching “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” on the airplane DVD. I don’t really know the world my British readers live in (despite the fact I’ve been inundated with it for the past three months) but Harry Potter always reminds me of a world within I don’t belong. Loo? Lavatory? It’s still very foreign to me. If I have to, I’ll call it a “toilet.”

(cut out a bunch of strange rubbish)

"This leads me to my main point, readers. We see ourselves with less merit than the rest of the world. Having an opinion that doesn’t matter in comparison. I say, fight that inner turmoil. Tell the universe that YOU matter. I’m sure there would be a decreased number of suicides and self-harm if people just told you: YOU COUNT, YOU MATTER.

"I’ve met TWO girls in my graduate course of thirty who have admitted to an eating disorder without prompting. I’m grinding my teeth now (think of this as a post-modern, stream-of-consciousness post please). This makes me think…………. Are our problems really unique? Or are they a manifestation of a larger segment of people who suffer but haven’t found the internet to vent?"

---

And that's where I stopped. By the way, DUH on the last part. I don't know why I thought that was profound!

I feel gross still and I've nothing in the house except loads and loads of herbal tea. Suppose I'll just go switch on the kettle (hooray for breaking down and buying an electric kettle!) and nurse some hot tea for a bit. If I get incredibly desperate I think I have a few jars of baby food somewhere that I haven't eaten because they don't taste like lovely applesauce as they do in the states. It tastes a bit like mushy porridge and fruit.

Do something not stupid today readers! Follow not my example but my penitent words :)

Waiter, another drink please?

2010-01-05T20:10:00.000-08:00

I'm going to tell you all the same thing I told a friend I hadn't spoken to in quite some time:

Apologies sound like a broken record.

I'm drinking a very strange version of "Sex on the Beach," not that it's a cocktail I ever order anyway so I suppose this midori and lime substitute suits me just fine.

Officially, my journey back to Londonland has begun and I'm hoping to get drunk between LA and London to pass the time and make the most of it. Obviously, my gluttonous ways haven't quite left me yet, but I have high hopes (broken record #2).

My current fashion look consists of riding boots, leggings, and size 2X sweaters (soon to be jumpers). Add to the fact that I'm 10 pounds more than I'd like to be ideally, and 20 pounds more than I'd like to be in my dreams... aaaaaaaaaand this sentence is going no where. Much like my glorious food plans (broken record #3).

Dyed my hair again (BR #4). Red now for those of you who are one the edge of your seats to know. This decision occurred about an hour before I needed to leave for the airport.

See? This is a rubbish post. No words of wisdom, no stories to horrify you, and nothing really exciting to say.

There's a 12 year old walking around in a giant 10-galloon hat. I hope he passes my way so I can accidentally trip him and knock some Republican out before it's completely too late. Nothing wrong with being a Republican except the party has taken a scary turn in the past year that frankly makes me wish I could annex off San Francisco and start my own country.

Savoryberg. Home of the crazy.

What was I talking about? Oh right, Cocktails.

Ew. I just got down to the last 3rd of this thing and I swear even though I stirred the damn glass, it's all vodka and lime from here on out.

---

So NYResolutions. From here on out, I told you all I would become a Vegan. Do I still want to do this? Hmm... I suppose I really want to do whatever costs me the least amount of calories and money, also requiring little to no trips to the fridge/kitchen. Can it be done?

I figure I've got my amazing electric kettle to join me on journeys towards herbal tea and tranquility. So juice can be safely erased from my grocery list.

JESUS CHRIST stop filing your nails right next to me?!!!!!! Ugh. Most upsetting noise I can think of. That and the enviously thin 8 year old boy shouting "Mam. Mam. MAM. MAAM!" Stop it. Now.

Uh, it's probably safe to say I can go without the carby fatty shit I've been surviving on for the past few months. Goodbye sandwiches, pizza, and bready cheesy bread bread.

Hmm. What's that leave? Fruits, veggies and the occasional sushi roll? haha.

I just chugged down the rest of the drink and I'm making a very upset face. Wish you could see it.

---

Normally, I would never post this kind of rambling garbage, but you all haven't heard from me in so long that I question whether some of you think I might be locked up in a basement somewhere. Or a rotting corpse waiting to be discovered or eaten by stray dogs.

When did this turn so morbid? In short, I'm alive and definitely not drunk enough. A skinny pretty bitch in heels (WHO CAN WEAR HEELS TO THE AIRPORT!?) just walked by and I'm definitely jealous (BR #5).

This must be remedied. More alchohol and less food please.

I don't have a title today.

2009-12-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

Well between the British system and the American, I'm covered on my meds. Hooray! This means you all won't have to hear the rants anymore.

---

I have been playing Dragon Age at my friend's house for the past few days. It's completely intense. But it led to yet another awkward conversation this morning with Paula Deen (this is after she tried to talk me into seeing some nurse practitioner who does "great pap smears..." UH overshare.).

PD: "Is Dragon Age the really bloody one?"
Me: "Oh my gosh yes. It's crazy."
PD: "I know you have had a problem with cutting in the past. Does the game make you have urges to do it? Or does it replace the urge?"
Me: ".... Jesus Mom it has nothing to do with that..."
PD: "Oh well I was just wondering because of the violence. It doesn't hurt to ask, that's how I know!"

Ugh. I appreciate her trying to understand me or whatever, but it's like more awkward than if she talked about sex positions or something. At least I wouldn't feel like a freakshow. I shouldn't complain though, I sometimes forget that she knows some things about me I would rather forget myself and usually she doesn't say anything. That I really appreciate.

---

Be safe during the next few days, we'll all make it! After January 6th when I'm back in England, I can leave all this food behind me... I seriously am not liking the abundance of food. Break please?

Paula Deen is calling me to dinner. What irony.

French Philosophy

2009-12-22T15:53:00.000-08:00

Me: "Why are you afraid of the hospital?"
Holly: "Because it has a weird smell..."
Me: "It really does have a distinctive smell. Offputting..."
Holly: "It's because people go there to die."

I have to go to the hospital tomorrow to try and convince a new doctor to take me seriously. Honestly though, I've kind of reached that inevitable point I get to every now and again where I'm like, "There's NOTHING wrong with me! The problem lies within society! FOUCAULT BITCHES!"

But eventually I'll take like a sheet of sleeping pills for a "headache" or start throwing plates against the wall and I have to rethink this philosophy.

The hospital freaks me out in a number of different ways (hello deadly bacteria on elevator buttons!?) and I always feel like my clothes I've worn there aren't really clean until 3-4 washes/I've forgotten I wore those particular ones. But there's something comforting about it too. It's like, "Hello this is the one chance you get at a real vacation. All you have to do is sacrifice order, basic hygiene, and control over your destiny..."

Maybe what is so appealing is that relinquishing of control. Knowing everything is futile and just lying there while you get poked and prodded by bad-cop and coo'd over by good-cop.

I suppose it's why you can't really ever "recover" from an eating disorder. Something hard wired within you made that particular disease an outlet. You can take away the behavior, but your personality, the gears that wind your inner clock, still remain.

Oftentimes I say that despite my destructive behaviors, suicidal tendencies, all I really want to do is escape. I'm usually thinking the external burdens upon me that I feel are to overwhelming to control. But now and again, I wonder if I just want to escape being stuck with the broken parts of me. The parts of me that are my weakness and my strength.

Then again, where does the problem lie? Within one's mind or amidst one's cultural entrapping?

---

"Death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret."
- Michel Foucault (The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception)

Control.

2009-12-20T22:44:00.000-08:00

Flying back to America for the holiday in a few hours. Am super neurotic about traveling and TR isn't here to hold my hand through being crazy and resistant about it.

I don't know why I developed this fear of traveling. It happened some time a few years ago. Used to be that airports and train stations were exciting and maybe a bit romantic... but I've come to realize despite the price tag, I am in a vehicle that is a glorified city bus. And after living where I've lived, the city bus is disgusting no matter what allure they try to paint with "Red busses" in London to win me over. Nope, it's filthy and smelly and no one on there can be trusted not to have the flu or be rude.

There are also too many variables about the airport I can't control. Delayed flights. Gross people sitting next to me. Getting to the airport on time (must rely on other forms of public transport which are equally unreliable). It's all too stressful.

It's the same reason that while I like to drive, I find driving to be a stress-inducing activity. I'm a great driver, but everyone else on the road is probably trying to kill me at any given point. Most of them shouldn't have a license.

---

So I'll be fat for Christmas and New Years. Hopefully this period will give me some time to widdle myself back to a respectable weight because I never over-eat when I'm with other people and food is continuously flowing. I flip out and don't want to eat much.

Must avoid the scale because my thighs are telling me I won't like the number I see. However, I know that everyone will be pleased at my weight gain. This will keep people from bothering me about things while I try to sort my body-philosophy out for myself.

---

Thank you to my readers, new (hello there!) and those of you who have been with me for a bit. You all have stuck it out when my blog has veered in many directions and always been helpful, supportive, kind, and loving.

Hope the upcoming holidays are the least stressful as possible!

...Like a Sailor

2009-12-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

Sweet baby Jesus on a bicycle!

http://cursebird.com/savory1sick

Clearly I need to bump up my twitter @#$(*#($...

I didn't realize this existed until I googled my blogger alias and it was the 3rd thing to pop up. Immediately I thought, "OH NO YOU DIDN'T! Someone is fucking stealing *my* completely unique persona for some stupid feed." Then I realized the potential of this situation and felt relieved and a little pleased with myself.

They say that cursing cheapens language, I say "they" just don't fucking know how to correctly use it. A swear with the right placement is better than the best jargon, the most eloquently placed semi-colon.

---

Today I met someone I haven't seen in months. Was told the following:

"You look great. Slim but not anorexic."

This made me wonder two things... did she know? At what point did I decide that skeletal was beautiful?

Don't get me wrong, a huge part of me is still mourning the loss of my protruding spine. But I know that it looked disgusting. I could see things that you shouldn't even see on an X-Ray. And because of it, I have lost all sense of beauty. TR and I get in fights about what it is (even though he's male, I automatically think I am a better judge of aesthetic).

"What? No no no. Collarbones are beautiful! And everyone thinks hipbones are sexy! They don't? Are you sure? You don't think that little articulated bump on the collarbone is amazing? You aren't lying to me because you want me to eat pizza, are you? Ok well I don't believe you but I'll try to believe you. But I don't."

(P.S. I blame pizza for my weight gain. Cheese is Satan. It's not animal friendly and it's decidedly sneaky)

No one. NO ONE starts out at the beginning stages of an eating disorder wanting to be 70 lbs. If you do, you have other issues going on.

Something happens, and the mind flips everything around. We get trapped in the mirror we're so entranced by, and the world doesn't seem to work by the same rules anymore. Left is right.

---

In other news, as healthy as I've spouted off being lately, I just realized today that I still completely don't know how to eat. This occurred when I ordered lunch and did fine. Then we had to get dinner and I realized I was NOT not not hungry nor had any desire to eat.

Shit.

English Breakfast

2009-12-15T00:43:00.000-08:00

My sleep schedule is horrible. Woke up yesterday at 3:00pm after going to sleep at 6:00am.... It's 8:43 now and I still haven't slept.

I even ate breakfast (I never eat breakfast) to try and make myself full and tired. Now I'm full and confused about why I just ate beans and tomatoes. English breakfast is weird.

---

Hope you'll all take a look at a blog that's just popped up, and I'm lucky to be the first follower. Lillie Flower is lovely; her writing is soft and delicate like her name.

---

So I haven't stuck to my eating plan and it's mostly been intentional. I realized that I have company coming on Wednesday, and we're taking a trip up North for a few days. So I'll be spending 24/7 with them and my friend already hates how thin I've gotten. Then I go home, and honestly, I really want to eat my mom's food :(

But there's two sides to this coin. I had the brilliant idea of going Vegan again after I come back from the States in January as a "New Year's Resolution." I already don't really eat eggs or yogurt anymore so the only thing I really have to cut out is cheese.

The other side is I am physically not doing too well with this re-feeding. I'm above a underweight BMI in the first time in ages, so I should have more energy and blah blah. Instead, I'm breaking out. Like worst worst worst breakout ever. My hair is meh, and I'm always puffy. Like retaining fluids.

WTF? Being healthy sucks.

I do think it's important that I stay like this even though my trousers are moaning when I pull them on. At least through the holidays so people stop worrying and get off my case.

The other day TR said something to the extent of "because of the eating disorder you refuse to acknowledge, you've rendered your body fucked up for life."

They say you know you have a problem when you can't admit it.

---

I keep thinking about a quote from Wasted (cliche I know) as I hop between trying to eat normally and then freaking out and starving again:

"When you eventually begin to get well, health will feel wrong, it will make you dizzy, it will confuse you, you will get sick again because sick is what you know."

I think I'm stuck between two worlds. There's this inability for me to be around food without over-thinking, and yet I can't properly starve. I'm not well. I'm not yet sick again.

Limbo.

Skinny Chant

2009-12-11T17:32:00.001-08:00

If I can gain weight, I can lose it.

(repeat this until you believe it.)

Welcome back?

2009-12-11T09:45:00.001-08:00

shit shit shit.

Why did I buy a scale? It was fine until I see a sudden huge scary spike this morning.

snap snap snap.

Time to start popping pills out of their metallic and plastic enclosures...

Hello eating disorder! I've allowed you to take a backseat to my nasty eating habits, but now I need you join me again to fight the terrible beast weighing me down on the scale.

---

Must go about this slowly, otherwise I'll have set myself up for failure and a bad binge. Tonight I'll finish or throw away all the gross shit I have in my kitchen and tomorrow it's grocery shopping.

I'm writing out my list just so I have to stick to it:

bananas
clementines
porridge
carrots
mustard
tea
squash

I'm also back to "The Anti-Brown" diet. Porridge and tea aren't brown because I say so. Eventually though, porridge will be out as well. I'll be doing my version of 2-4-6-8, which is going to be 1-3-5-1. Tomorrow we start at 3.

OK. Doable. I'll ease myself back into fasting, one day at a time. Write down everything that enters my mouth. Grr, where did I put my notebook!?!

................... found it!

I'm going to try something I like to call: "Plan everything out the day before and don't even dare to falter from the plan." Sounds good. I can even schedule in homework (that I don't ever do, but I must if it's on the plan lol!) and chores.

OMG I'm so excited. I love being organized.

---

It will take a little bit of time to start counting calories before they enter my mouth, not accidentally pick something up and eat it, or be basically neurotic about everything, but it's better than eating until I feel sick and then feeling guilty and promising that tomorrow is another day.

I know it's pretty stupid to talk myself back into starving after I've been working really hard to eat, and more importantly eat without freaking out... but it doesn't seem like the later really happened. I just ate, ate more, felt guilty and sick, waited for that to subside, and ate more.

...I hate that food controls me even when I'm controlling it.

Shopping.

2009-12-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

"I have a horrible problem with shopaholism too. I realise what my life has boiled down too - the superficial and desperate need for quick fixes. I am the quintessential consumer, with no real ability to feel joy anymore and with the constant need to blot it out by the millions of brief flicks of satisfaction caused by purchasing something or shoving something in my gob."
-- Pasco

I want to hear about your experiences with shopping. Grocery shopping. Clothes shopping. Corner store shopping.

What kind of consumers are anoretics and bulimics? This is part of a larger discourse I'm working on, so I want to know how you shop and what shopping does to you.

Cheers,
Savory

(P.S. if you write about it on your lovely blogs, send me a link pleeease!)

Reflection Symmetry

2009-12-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

I only ever seem to think about my money problems realistically right before I'm about to run out of toilet paper.

"Damn," I mutter to myself, "It's time to buy more. There really are so many things I need to reserve my money for and don't. Don't."

Then, noting the irony of my ways, I step over a pizza box--haphazardly thrown on the floor--and think about where exactly I spend my money.

Oh. Food. Lots and lots of food. Followed by periods of no food but equally ridiculous purchases (clove ciggys, more clothes, online gaming, "Christmas presents" which are a thinly veiled excuse for me to buy things and try to remember they aren't for me). The online gaming has to be the saddest because it's basically throwing money into a vortex, knowing it will go somewhere, but not really benefiting yourself or showing the fruits of its labor.

---

I have 2 options for tonight. Things can either shape up, involving me doing a rigorous bout of cleaning and making up for any lapses in personal care.... or I can take some sleeping pills and know that tomorrow is another day.

I've only got *shakes can* 2/3 left of my Orange Tango, so if I stay awake too much longer (note it's only 8:30pm and I woke up around 3:00pm today) I'll have to ignore my thirst or bundle up to get soda again.

The sleeping pills are looking inviting. Plus, when I'm asleep, I can't possibly be eating or buying shit. I'm running out of TV programs to stream, and I can't do homework unless I take care of the physical mess. Everything in order, you know.

Trying to do some math in my head to see how long I can sleep before I have responsibilities tomorrow. Ugh, Thursday is always a long day... maybe I should just stay awake now so I don't sleep and get to the grind of tomorrow any sooner.

---

Sometimes, my favorite things to do are those I am fully aware I shouldn't be for ethical/medical/moral/safety reasons. I like to breath deeply and rub my eyes until it's like looking into a kaleidoscope. Your brain can't differentiate between light and pressure, so it thinks it's looking at something (and tries to interpret it with colors etc) when actually, you're just ramming your fingers against your eye making a "I'm so sleepy" motion.

Meditation never works for me, but there's something soothing about closing your eyes and seeing things among the murky blackness.

It's times like this when I distract myself away from the mundane things in life, like when I'll make time to buy more sodding toilet paper.

I can't function.

2009-12-08T15:58:00.000-08:00

I'm on hold with my American insurance company, listening to a looping message about managing stress.

This makes me want to punch a hole in the wall.

---

I have nothing witty or supportive to say today. Officially, I am drained and more than a little discouraged. Don't feel like talking about it... for once, har har.

P.S. I tried to get private insurance in the UK but I can't even be treated for pre-existing conditions for 5 years. FML. I've run out of options.

Old Record

2009-12-06T11:33:00.000-08:00

Spent the night in the hospital.

How many times can shit like this go down before it's completely tiresome?

Nothing to whine about. Don't drink cough syrup though... the next morning isn't pleasant. I also learned that what we Yankees call acetaminophen is called paracetamol everywhere else in the world. Oops.

Food intake at the hospital is always great. When they're worried about your kidneys failing, they don't give a shit if you eat the gravied pork (after you've already slurred your vegetarian ways) that's gathering significant precipitation under the now-swampy plastic hospital cover. So my intake was 80cal of cheese and 30cal of cracker and negative calories for whatever it was I managed to purge from the day before.

When I got out of the hospital, my mood immediately elevated despite lacking a good reason, and I bought a Subway to pretend I was in America where I wouldn't have just been sent home with a pat on the head.

---

Seriously though, the one thing that is good about the hospital is that it's the shittiest hotel you'll ever stay in. This is fine if you've got nationalized health care and you aren't paying for it, but I do get a bit irked when I think about how much I'm shelling out to be mentally sodomized in the US.

But back to my original point. I like to be taken care of and know that there's a routine and a schedule that I have to follow. It's like vacation.

(omg, side note for a good paper)

Sometimes I'll say to people, "If I had it my way, I just wouldn't ever do anything. Ever." I always get the same response: "Oh doesn't everyone want that?"

No. Lock me in a room without windows and external stimuli forever and I think I'd be ok. People creep me out more than they comfort me. Too much stuff is overwhelming. Just leave me alone with my craziness and my thoughts and the promise of no responsibility to anyone or anything and I would be happy.

When you tell people that you don't want to do anything, they think you mean 1) Quit your job 2) Be rich 3) Live on some kind of fancy deserted island where you still have access to everything you want and desire.

People actually need to do meaningful things in their lives. Well most people. People like us find meaning from within. From staring down at our bodies... blobs of skin... for hours. Letting our mind race from topic to topic, conversations of the past, and things that need to be done. A mental checklist.

The only people who actually don't want to do anything are the people who are so exhausted from themselves it's hard to live in both the real world and the one that's going on inward.

---

Integrating back into society after a brief hospital holiday. Remembering how to successfully lead two lives.

Update On the State that I Am In

2009-12-02T23:46:00.000-08:00

What Ho, Readers!

I may or may not be losing my job soon. This is really shitty because I want to quit. It's also really stupid because this is the first time I've ever not been able to juggle school, social life, and hold down a job. I'm obviously less high functioning than I look ;)

-

Managed to do what I have decided to be THE stupidest method of self harm YET (Oh and there have been plenty... I always get asked about "cutting" and "overdosing" but I want to say, "Wait, you don't want to hear about the really clever ones??"). I'm going to tell you about it only because I can't think of anyone as stupid as I am who would actually go through with this.

Decided to color my hair because I'm sick of the auburn color it is. Bought bleach and bleached it. Realized the stupid pink I colored it months and months ago was underneath the auburn and black I had on top that bleached out perfectly.... so fully knowing I should wait to bleach it again, I bleached it 2 days later AND put another color on after the bleach to get the yellow out.

The bleaching went fine but the color started burning my head. That's when I started getting very, "pain is gain" about the whole thing and wanted to see how long I could last.

Now my head is raw and weeping and I can already envision the scabs. This was dumb.

The pink didn't come out. It's kind of interesting looking though. Just wish I didn't effing burn my head so I could actually use toner to get the yellows out.

-

Term papers are due on the 14th and I haven't started a single one. Oops.

-

A care package arrived with all my favorite American Christmas candy. Damn. I think I'm going to dole them out to friends and be like "Look how kitchy this is!"

-

I need to replace my toothbrush. Very anal about when they start to get old (after like a month lol!) but I can't find where I put the damn replacements.

-

I have a negative balance in my bank account and my American health insurance just went up. FML

---

The best thing of all though is that yesterday I came home and went straight to bed at 7PM and woke up at 7AM. Now all the shitty things in the world don't seem to bother me.

Have a restful day. Zone out on the bigger things for a bit with me!

Toodle pip,
Savory

Ham-gate

2009-11-30T18:51:00.000-08:00

Me to my mother (PD): "So what do you think about Paula Deen getting hit in the face with a frozen ham?"
My mother (PD): *In her best Southern drawl* "Oh at her age? That's just awful!"
Me: "What does age have to do with it?"
PD: "Hun, your face just doesn't hold up as well... If she were 30 it'd be a different story."

Then she proceeded to talk about how the dog must be starving and the plan to buy him hamburger tomorrow because she could see his ribs. Hunger strike and all that.

Uh right.

---

I do wonder if the rest of America came to the immediate conclusion that I came before I got all the facts (what? it was an accident?? oh, not as interesting!):

Was the Paula Deen "Ham Throwing" incident to Food as the George W. Bush "Shoe Throwing" incident was to Politics?

You might not get my subtle standardized testing rhetoric. I think the world is similarly weary of seeing poor Paula shove her hand in BBQ sauce like it's........ jesus, I can't even find anything to compare that to... You shouldn't dip your whole hand in a bowl of *anything* then proceed to lick it off your fingers. "More butter" and phrases of the like aren't cheeky anymore. We're getting a little grossed out.

The Food Network has made me realize something after so many years of being on TV. We have fucking dedicated an entire NETWORK OF TELEVISION to something that we're only supposed to be doing to keep us alive.

I think the world is sick of Paula and Jamie (shit, I am sick of Jamie, and I just learned who the hell he was 2 months ago) and even Top Chef (sorry Padma). Please tell Gordon Ramsey, he's not scary except for what all that yelling has done for his face.

Seriously... you all have ruined food. Bush has ruined the world, and you all have ruined cuisine.

Thanks.

---

Hope your nose isn't broken Paula. You're a tough cookie (damn it!).

To The Girl In the Stripes

2009-11-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

... sitting across the aisle from me every Friday in lecture.

I don't know if you are intentionally choosing to sit there--juxtaposing yourself to me, if we are magnetically attracted to one another, or if we keep magically finding ourselves sitting adjacent to each other each week.

But it fucking pisses me off. Stop doing it.

I know you are thinner than me. And if I'm looking at you, I know you are looking at me. You can't be thinner than me and doing it by some force of nature. You are starving yourself. By putting yourself in my line of sight, and especially draping yourself week after week in stripes and baggy clothes, you thrust your thinness in my face. Reminding me that I've failed a little bit.

You have the perfect jawbone and I know I stare at you sometimes. It makes me wonder looking over at you, intently jotting down notes... did I ever look like that? I pinch my index finger and my thumb around my upper arm to mentally gauge the size difference.

Was someone ever looking at me like that, when I was at my smallest? Sitting, staring, spitefully wishing to trade places?

And yet, I know I look a bit better now that I've put on some weight. Does my Striped Friend with whom I have a Silent Shared Secret like the way she looks? This achievement in svelte.

Or do we sit adjacent because she longs something from me too...

Just when I think the media can't get stupider...

2009-11-29T21:06:00.000-08:00

Drunkorexia.

This offends me on several levels.

1. I think tries to compare itself erroneously to anorexia nervosa which actually kills people.
2. What's next? Cakeorexia?
3. This is something that EVERYONE does. Eating disordered or not.

For those of you that don't know what this is, the media will try and make this sound really complicated, but basically it's saving calories so you can drink more. And if cakorexia does exist (which I argue it does), we already do this. Save calories to make room for cake.

I have a severe form of drunkorexia which I've come to realize deeply concerns my fellow cohort in the pub. While everyone is ordering crisps and cider and beer, I come upstairs with my drink of choice. A wise one in my opinion.

A shot of vodka and a glass of water.

Efficiency in its highest form. Saving you on money, calories, and time spent getting drunk (which is the only reason to drink in the first place... to get buzzed. Don't argue with me about taste, drink god-damned grape juice if you want something that tastes good, alcohol is juice that's sat out too long).

Perhaps I'm jaded because I've gone for a week consuming water alone and not died so when people tell me things are dangerous, I tut tut and have decided that there are worse things I can do.

That Lemon is Moldy

2009-11-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

Can I just say I hate my roommates?

Like every single one of them.

(P.S. I'm going to try something I call leaving out obscenities... some people think it cheapens things! We'll see.)

---

I have a love hate relationship with the location of my room on the cell block that is my flat. I'm 2 doors down from the kitchen. Bad. BUT, I can look through my peephole and see if the light is on in said kitchen.

Obviously I like to sneak in there when no one else is around because I don't want anyone to see what I'm consuming and I hate making stupid small talk with them.

But being so close to the kitchen, I'm always smelling their shitty food. Being eating disordered, I think I have a pretty damn good idea what good food is. People can lie all they want, fast food tastes absolutely delicious if you know what to get. Turn your nose up if you want, but everyone who secretly says its gross and munches on edamame like it's chocolate can just go stuff themselves into a rabbit cage. So I think I'm a pretty good judge of gastronomy (and I've had 5 star cuisine that was to die for and really amazing hole in the wall stuff).

Let's begin the rant though.
It's never ever ok to leave your leftovers overnight in the pot on the stove for 36 hours. It didn't even look good to begin with and now it smells like rotting. If you are going to let your dish soak, please rinse it first. Close the trash can. These things waft into my room and I can't do anything to stop it except open the window and smell cigarette smoke which seems like the better option of the two.

I have never met anyone who doesn't know how to properly store food. If you want to freeze your bread, why are you going to leave the bag ripped open? And for that matter, why are you going to put your ripped open bag of frozen bread and crumbs in the freezer bin that has been MINE the whole term? The fact that I haven't used it in 3 weeks doesn't mean I've moved out. I should still get 1 fridge rack and 1 freezer bin (by the way, I've moved your disgusting tupperware off my shelf from my clementine oranges before you could infect them with whatever was inside).

It is NEVER ever ok to put something in the fridge without a lid. And I mean things like yogurt. Like "Oh I didn't finish this, I'm just going to stick it in here." And yogurt is being kind. I really mean curry and chinese take out (that most certainly once had a lid). Things that permeate through the fridge and my food absorbs the smells. Making me have to change what I buy to only things that have an inch of plastic encasing them or things that never ever have to enter the horrible refrigerator in the first place.

When you are leaving the kitchen, are you so angry with what you have just cooked and eaten that you feel the need to slam the door? Because even when I try I can't figure out how to slam that stupid thing. I just don't know how the six of you do it. Slam the door and walk by my room in what sounds like steel-toed Doc Martin shoes, mumbling something loudly when I KNOW there isn't anyone in the hallway talking to you.

Then you have the nerve to ask me why I'm never in the kitchen! Because you all came from families and countries where apparently the sacred place of the kitchen is your toilet. I bet your bathroom is cleaner than our kitchen is.

Sometimes I want to do my dishes in my bathroom sink because you all disgust me so much.

---

So I thoroughly blame you, neighbors whose names I for the most part do not remember so I don't even have to make up pseudonyms, for the fluctuations in my weight. I either have to eat gross over-processed food (not the same as fast food... the later actually expires where as "Twinkies" are good to stockpile if you are worried about a nuclear attack) which causes a spike on the scale, or I drink squash to keep myself away from that horrible war torn country that is my kitchen. Squash diluted with large amounts of water and the occasional cheese sandwich is a surprisingly affective weight loss regime. That and a horrible horrible cluster of roommates with bad manners and poor cleaning habits.

---

fuck fuck fuck. OK I had to get that out.

Ode to A Seedling, Struggling to Grow

2009-11-28T05:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm shouting at the wind. Typing away and no one is really reading except the echoes wooshed and swirled back at me--tossing around my hair and kissing my chapped nose--reminding me that there are bigger forces than myself out there.

---

Oh, Sapling outside my window
You have lost most your leaves and I imagine you are quite cold
For you, I enviously note when I walk by, are so gracefully thin
And if I am shivering... you must be frozen

Yet in the breezes and harshness of the elements
You sway gently and stand proud
Slight and lithe and beautiful
If I could, I would only ever look like you

Someday, I hope to find shelter under your sparse branches
You will hide and inspire me with your striking foliage
But in order to do so, we should both make a pact:
You must grow a bit,
And I must dwindle.

Illusions of Grandeur

2009-11-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

There's just something about me that screams "rebel." If I show you the me at my messiest self... I must clean up my room the next day and show you proof that I can live in something other than complete squalor.

Actually, there's method to my madness. If you look by the computer, you can see a large stack of books. Those are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.... 17 books I just got between today and yesterday that I absolutely cannot bear to display and use (for my end of term essays) without knowing that they aren't going to get lost in my room.

No, that's not true. I'm really one of those people who has to like clean everything before she gets down to the dirty deed of doing work. There's something oddly gratifying about housework. Maybe that's why I let my room get so filthy before I clean it all up?

---

Maybe I should clue you all in on what I'm actually going to be doing one of my term papers on? No, I have something else I want to talk about today. I'll talk about the term paper another time. Remind me about the term paper though... it actually is important!

---

I went into the A&E (ER for you Yankies HAR HAR) after getting sexually assaulted and I was pretty shaken up. Like I was pulling out my own hair, shaken up (which is pretty shitty now that I look back on it, because my hair is considerably less asymmetrical now that I take a good look... which was the look I had going for me). Had a long drawn out conversation with this ridiculous "crisis team" [seriously, ever single fucking day I learn that the UK system and the US system of health care are like god damn apples and oranges mind-fucking-blowing] and the lead guy was this really intense Jamaican man. Now I don't feel bad for singling him out as Jamaican because he was one of those guys who was obviously super proud of being a Jamacian export. He had no less than 3 pieces of jewelry (ring, bracelet, necklace) with a Jamaican flag, so I found this humorous.

What was the point? Oh yes. So during this long-drawn out conversation that numerous times led to "What do you want us to do for you?" At which point I always want to scream "FUCKING FIX ME OR JUST KILL ME NOW!" There was one point where I'm-refraining-from-going-to-every-cultural-stereotype-I-can-think-of-to-call-this-guy-but-it's-hard-not-to-go-there! is like "Oh I don't know that you really need the Crisis Team right now, since you're high functioning."

Seriously?

I just told you that I can't take the Underground because I'm afraid I'll step in front of the train but I mostly refrain myself because I don't want other people to see that and be scarred and as fucked up as I am. And there's a pile of my hair... A PILE... of my hair on the floor.

So later they offer to drive me home since pretty much that's all they can offer to do other than tell me to come back to A&E if I want to kill myself (great help, kthnkxbi) and the woman who is like the Robin to the Jamaican Batman turns to me and says "So how long have you been here and how long are you staying?"

"Oh.... um, I got here end of September and I'll be here about a year."

*Dead Silence and then...* "Oh no hun. You've only been here two months and you're already having so many problems! You poor thing!"

UH YEAH! High functioning my ass.

---

But then it made me think. I've never really attributed that term to myself. High/low functioning has been something that people like my autistic cousin get labeled with because there's all these complicated factors and usually other people involved. Who will look after them when their parents die? Can they take care of themselves? Who will support them? Can they hold down a job? Legal issues legal issues jargon jargon blah blah boring I'm bored.

That doesn't really seem like me. But I guess sometimes it seems like things that affect me sometimes counter one another. I will spend all of my semester in bed, but blow me down if I will allow myself to drop out of school. That would mean failure (for me)... that is unacceptable. I will sleep in until that last minute possible and then I will wear myself raw to achieve what I have to, to get it done. BUT, I don't live in a vacuum, my success largely relies on other people. BUT, I am also aware that some of my biggest faults are also aspects to my greatest strengths. SO am I high functioning?

Are we even talking about the right spectrum, or is there some other range or category that better applies?

---

In case you wonder: the starkness of the room is not my choice, the management has very strong opinions about sticking things to the painted surfaces and I rebelled but for some reason my tape didn't even stick... so God was telling me it wasn't worth the fine I suppose. So I guess I'm going for a bland mashed potatoes look until the end of Spring!

A Case Study

2009-11-25T14:37:00.000-08:00

My room is turning into an assemblage of trash. It's horrible. Should I list off some of the things I can see from the vantage point of the writing spot on my bed?

On The Night Stand
Twix Bar
Doritos Bag
Guava Juice Box
2 straw wrappers (insinuating there was once another juice box... probably around here somewhere)
The corner of a bag of Haribo Cola Fizzys under a book (I'd tell you the book, but it'd give my alias away dead on! Though I'm sure my face has done that time after time *wink*)
Bag of Haribo Sour Cherries
Hubba Bubba chewing gum package... cool cola flavor (on that note, I love cola flavored things, but I hate cola the drink)
Bottle of spilled nail polish (I'm including this because it very obviously needs to be cleaned up but hasn't been)

In My Chair
Bottle of laundry detergent
Wacom bamboo tablet (I still haven't opened it!!! I can't open new fancy things I buy until my room is clean... it's a rule I generally stick to)
tuperware container
shirt

On My Computer Desk
Absense of Computer (It's been here on my bed for ages... I've been sleeping with it too, since there's no room on said nightstand)
2 takeaway boxes
Doritos bag
napkin
spoon
Dr. Pepper (It's new unlike everything else, I'm planning on using it for breakfast tomorrow since I've just spent today sleeping all day and I'll likely not sleep at all tonight and thus need the caffeine)
Bottle of "Brut Spumante" (I opened it, spilled it everywhere, then realized I hate champagne and sparkling wine... bought it when I was drunk and stumbled into Waitrose. Stupid "Scrumpy Jack and its suprisingly high alcohol content!)
Old Jamaica Ginger Beer (gross)
Reese's Peanut Butter cup (present from the States, thank you Holly! If she's reading this, she's probably so grossed out becuase it's definitely from Halloween)
Toffee Crisp (omg new favorite candy bar)
Sainsbury bag full of what I presume to be a lot of trash
coffee mug and spoon (from lunch... my bowl was dirty so I had to use the coffee mug, sad I know. Even sadder that I ate lunch!)
Birthday card from a long time ago
perfume that belongs not there

On The Floor
Piles and Piles of clothes and shoes
No less than 4 bags of trash (Oh I can see the other juice box!)
Ewww a fruit fly just flew by... that must mean there's a fruit peel somewhere in here
Febreeze
A care package for a friend (I bought a bunch of Cadbury bars for said friend, but I haven't mailed the package for two reasons 1) I've run out of money 2) While waiting to get more money I ate the Cadbury..... oops)
Books and books and books

----

I like to think that when my room is organized my life is better organized (<-- a made bed makes all the difference!). When I can pull things together and things are tidy, and I've showered and put on make up, and gotten out of the house, I think my outlook on life is generally a little bit better. You can see that clearly I need to clean my room. It's really not as gross as it sounds, but it's kind of gross. Kind of a lot. I just started typing something else, but I'm saving it for tomorrow. It's heavy ;) Loving you all to pieces. Tiny pieces that are scattered about my disgusting room.

EDIT: You can all thank What If Summer... because now I feel compelled to describe the bathroom :)

Bathroom
Stack of newspapers and magazines the oldest dating to October 15 (they like force them on me on my walk home and I don't know what to do with them!)
An orchid that I impulsively bought that never gets watered except by hairspray but somehow is doing quite well
The dreaded scale (trademark Boots)
A "Habitat" paper bag that serves as my trashcan
make up that's on the sink and the floor and in a galloon size ziplock bag (again on the floor)

See that wasn't SO bad. I'm not like living in complete filth.

P.S: I lost a follower during the night and I wonder if they decided I was too gross to justify reading :)

Miss Me Yet?

2009-11-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

You damn well better have. I am glad to report that in my long absence, I was not disappointing you. Well, I was disappointing you in the sense that I binged a lot, gained some weight, felt shitty, moped, and bought a scaled, and freaked out. Even wrote a post about said scale and never got around to publishing it.

When I look at "Borderline Personality Disorder" traits, I like to think that I don't do all the reckless, dangerous behavior that's carefully listed in a bit of a "You're up shit creek if you're ever unfortunate enough to have this," kind of way. For better or worse, I can now say I've crossed a line.

"The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well."

I'm having money problems. Like, I'm really not sure how I'm going to stretch out about ₤100 pounds over the next month when it seems like I spend about 20 every time I turn around. Must figure out what this "overdraft" business is all about. Thus, I'm getting increasingly desperate for cash. I started doing research for a paper I was going to entitle: "Sex, Money, Beauty, and Power: Gold Diggers or Material Girls." This lead me to various places, including a very interesting little blogger community, not too different from ours. Except they are filled with 20somethings that call themselves "sugar babies" not to be confused with "sugar gliders" (google search likes to bring up the later when you search for the former!).

My research and reading these blogger accounts started making me long for Alexander McQueen dresses and Jimmy Choo heels... and more importantly, the idea of a ₤5000 month allowance. I joined a website promising me the allure of rich men who wanted to spoil me just for the joy of having me as brilliant conversation and not-too-shabby-looking arm candy. I easily lined up dates with men that you could google and know who they are. Men whose clothes are in your closets and are CFOs at banks you shop in. Cocktails at Harvey Nichols. The best Dim Sum in London. Promises to holiday in the Alps. Too good to be true, right? It was. I realized that the more and more I delved into this, that all the finger wagging from the media was right. It was softcore prostitution, and I didn't even notice until I was very nearly raped. Raped in a multi-millionare's mansion by Primrose Hill.

It was all very well to say "Drink me," but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said, "and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not"; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

Anyway, after getting past the initial shock of it all, I realize that my perspective on it all has completely changed. Yes, I'm still compulsively shopping... but I'm happy to be in my economic situation. You have no idea how disgusting and sadsack these men are despite being surrounded by fame and wealth. This is probably the only thing that makes me feel better about being a high-class hooker. That and the fact that all my flaws, everything I worry about, how ugly I feel all the time, seemed--for maybe the first time--a little more than a little excessive. I really am pretty. And every single girl in this community who has ever been brave enough to show us a glimpse of her in the real world astounds me. It's like I expect us to all be the sorrowful little homely things, but everyone is so beautiful and we are wasting our lives, tearing away at our souls.

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'

I also started cutting again. People accept the stupidest rationalizations for these things. Used a razor again and my side from the top of my low-rise-ultimate-skinny-jean-line (thanks Lulu) to the bottom of my bra-line there's these hideous slashes, with the prominent ones almost making this kind of macabre artistic corseting pattern.

Someone got a glimpse when I was taking off my sweatshirt and I made a quick cover up, "OH jesus. I was helping a friend in the art school a few weeks ago with a project he was doing and I lost control of the hand saw... so yeah." Questions Questions. UM. Yeah, that's not how that would look. And who loses control of a hand saw and slices up their side? People are dumb. It's like the time that I "caught my calf on the stray metal of a chain link fence..." I guess you have to be like oddly specific and people just buy the story.

"Curiouser and curiouser" thought Alice.

Well my dears, I give you my leave. It's time to catch up on readings. If you're curious, I'm satisfied with my weight for now and am focusing on maintaining and toning my stomach. I love you all dearly.

Regards, Savory

The Ayes Have It

2009-11-11T11:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks for coming out to vote everyone! And I blush at the compliments about my arms... you aren't seeing them when they're squished up against my sides though, different story ;)

---

So I realized this morning I can wear the wig when I'm having a HORRIBLE hair day. I can't wear a hat to work, and sometimes my hair is just a hot mess... so that's what happened this morning. If anyone asks, I've already got a sad "Oh, I had skin cancer in high school so I still have the wig and I wear it sometimes when I feel funky" story. No one can think bad things about someone who had cancer. Though in reality, I just bought the wig... but I did actually have melanoma in high school (I had to wear this ridiculous bucket hat for like 2 months because hats were against "dress code"... so in hind sight, I really should have gone for a wig back then). So it's only a half lie.

---

Tonight I've gotta get caught up with blogs because I'm a terrible person, so I'm going to cut this off now. The comic may or may not happen this week... I kind of want to blow the money in my bank account and get a Wacom Tablet. My national insurance number needs to come soon so I can get paid. Eek!

Loving you, each and every one.

--Savory