Insanity

It's 12:30 in the morning, and you can't sleep yet. You know you have to get up early tomorrow, there are things to do. You have to make coffee, clean your room, do your hair, walk to the bus stop. Take the bus to school and see your friends and your boyfriend. You have a day of 300 calories to look forward too. Hopefully with no throwing up, unlike today and yesterday.

Your head aches from all the trips to the bathroom, the panicked minutes spent heaving into the glassy toilet bowl. Your eyes ache from the pressure, from the constant watering and wiping away smeared makeup. Your stomach complains from the sudden urge to eat, then to expel its contents. Your legs are shaky, your knee still sore from where you scraped it falling the other night on a walk.

You go out for a cigarette, hoping it will calm your headache and uneasy insides, taking a worn out copy of Wasted  by Marya Hornbacher with you. You sit and read and smoke. You say some words aloud. "A little too thin...and you cannot hide your smile."

You look up to see a house across the way with the lights on. There's a couple moving around in the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, having a discussion. For some reason, you feel the need to move closer. You get up on legs sore from the thousands of leg lifts you have forced upon yourself over the weekend. Silently, you move between your parents' cars and into the street. You notice empty alcohol bottles on the ground. You kick one lightly, for no reason. It rolls away, gleaming in the dim orange glow of street lamps.

You stand twenty feet from the house, watching. The woman in the kitchen is fat. You smirk at her, thinking yourself a better person for being thinner. You watch as the man, tall and muscular, as he leans in for a kiss. He rubs her arm, almost reassuringly, or lovingly. He gestures to the room behind him, where a TV light flickers. The woman wanders into the other room. The man reaches for a light switch beside the window. For a moment, it looks as though he sees you, and you back up hastily, nearly tripping over the bottle you just kicked. The lights go out, and you feel alone again.

Cigarette down to the filter, you flick it away from you. It lands on the sidewalk, smoldering and dying. You walk back to the door, pick up your book, and quietly slip back inside.

For some reason, you can't stop thinking about the happy couple, the beloved fat girl. It seems such a strange idea to you. How can anyone be fat and happy at the same time? It begins to dawn on you, how strange your behavior really is. Standing in the street, watching people in their houses. You worry about your sanity, but only slightly. Your main concern is getting through tomorrow on only 300 calories. Your boyfriend mentioned going to dinner. How will you be able to eat so little without offending? Or worse, how will you be able to throw up without him suspecting? He knows your past, it's only a matter of time before he catches on. However, even that doesn't worry you as much as the food you ate today. What you didn't throw up. Are those wayward calories finding their way to your hips, your stomach, your thighs? Better do some more leg lifts, perhaps some sit ups. No, you should really sleep.

The diet pill you forgot you took starts to make your stomach churn uneasily. You really want to sleep now, but you really want to exercise more. More than likely, when you finish this post on your silly little blog, you're going to go upstairs and push your body just a bit further before you lie down.

Such is the life you lead.

Changes

My body has returned to normal functioning. My digestive system is all in order. My tummy has the usual roundness to it that comes from eating normally. And I hate it.
I've been on such good behavior for the last couple months. I didn't want to scare my boyfriend, I didn't want to raise a fuss. Around the time of my last posts, everyone was beginning to whisper. "Is Lilly relapsing?" Everyone seems to know about my past. So I justified eating again. In truth, it's my own greed. The thought of endless restriction, again, seemed so unappealing. I just wanted to eat. It didn't appear to be such a sin. Until my good friend Nikki (Letters to Ana) began the ABC and started to lose weight faster than ever. I would get texts concerning her shrinking legs, fitting into smaller and smaller sizes...her decreased ring size (even her fingers are slimming down)...and where am I? Same size as I was. Same size as I will continue to be until I change it.

It's all up to me, I realize now. I can either indulge in the calorie-packed lunches my boyfriend and friends at the college love so much, or I can stay behind with a stomach ache and offer to watch their backpacks and laptops. "Are you sure you don't want me to bring you something back?" Tom will offer sweetly. "No, I'm fine. I had breakfast with my mom today." I'll reply. And simple as that, I have subtracted hundreds of calories from my lifestyle. It's all in what I choose to say, where I choose to go.

My family is moving to a new house, closer to the college, closer to where my parents work. A new environment, a new area to imprint with memories and rules. I have somehow managed to form a routine that revolves around eating where I live currently. Next to the stairwell (which leads to my room, and safety away from temptation) is the kitchen, and the door to the basement. It has become so easy to get home, make a sandwich, and go down to the basement to sit on my fat ass and watch TV.

New house, new layout, new rules.I may go to the basement, OR to my room. No visiting the kitchen. Eating will be rare, and recognized as a sin. New house, new me. It is a beautiful house. It deserves a beautiful thin girl to live in it.

Coffee for breakfast and laxatives for lunch, and those who skip dinner will end up thinner.

Quickie

I've spent the last two days in coffee shops playing games and writing on my laptop. Part of it is because I can't get internet service at home except on the family computer (which I prefer not to use), and part of it is because it keeps me out of the house. Away from my parents, away from food. I sit here and sip coffee for hours, occasionally ducking out for a cigarette in the frigid November weather.

I've been maintaining at 152 for the last 2 days, but my stomach and legs getting noticeably smaller. It's a small accomplishment, but an accomplishment nonetheless. Considering that I've been very good and haven't broken routine (keeping it under 200 calories every day for 4 days), I should see some weight loss by tomorrow. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll be in the 140's. *crossing fingers*

Nightmare

I'm in a car with two of my close friends, Chase and Stephanie. Chase is driving, white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel, peering forward into the darkness ahead of us. It's winter outside, the sleeping trees covered in ice and snow. The road is small and treacherous, curving around impossible bends. Where are we going? I ask. Nobody replies. Stephanie is singing softly to herself, a song I know very well. I need you to know, I'm not through the night. Sometimes I'm still fighting to walk towards the light... it's "Courage" by Superchick. A song about Anorexia. The words echo in my head and I look down at myself. My legs are spindly and small, my arms bony and white. I shiver suddenly, realizing that I am wearing only a baggy t-shirt and black tights. Where are we going?

Still no reply. I look out the window and try to figure out where I am, but everything is dark and unfamiliar. Then I see a large building ahead, a mansion of some kind. No, it's a hospital. You need this, Lilly, Stephanie says to me softly. Then it dawns on me. Treatment. I try to scream but I can't. I watch in terror as we speed toward the building. Suddenly the car hits a patch of ice on a turn. Chase tries to straighten out but it's too late. Shit! He yells, tugging madly on the E-brake. We spin out of control, headed straight for the trees along the road. And then, everything is silent. There is no sound of tires screeching on the icy road, no screams. Chase's mouth is still moving, his eyes wide in terror. Stephanie looks away from me, tears in her eyes. And then I'm alone in the car, still careening to my death. I put my arms up as if to block the impact. I'm too young! I'm only 19! Panicked thoughts race through my head. Only seconds to live.

I wake up with a start, my heart racing. I blink rapidly in the dark and see flashes of the dream, still shots, frame by frame, trees and glass, blood, my fragile body crushed in the impact. Stephanie crying over my frozen, broken body. I scramble to turn on the light and the dream dies.

What an odd thought, dying on my way to treatment. It seems ironic, if nothing else.

Thoughts

I feel, I feel, I feel. I think, I know, I wonder, I wish. I feel, I hope, I pray, I see, I hear, I feel. I cry, I stop, I run, I look, I listen, I scream. I feel. There are too many emotions, thoughts, desires, needs, and questions in my head. Often times I believe that if I allow myself one more thought I will explode. Something inside me will snap, the pressure gauge will slide into "OVERLOAD" and I will blow up. My body will shatter into little oozy bloody pieces, flying from where I stand and get on everything and everyone. People will freak out and wonder how the hell a person can spontaneously detonate like that.

Sometimes everything fades into a dark emptiness that presses me inwards, a suffocating silence that drowns out all thoughts and humanity. I find myself unable to speak, think, or breathe. I stare off into space while my insides scream to feel something, ANYTHING, think, remember, TRY, look, LOOK, THINK. These are not even coherent thoughts, only a wordless tightening in my chest demanding life, thought, emotion of me. But these are impossible demands, because I am dead. I am nothing but an empty shell. Soon the shell collapses, and the silence pushes me harder and harder into myself until there's nothing left. People will wonder how I imploded, like a dead star turned into a black hole, the pull so strong that nothing can escape.

I am terribly afraid of being alone, and I am hopelessly addicted to solitude. When I'm around people - the constant buzz of attention and frequent calls of my name, the people who need my time and my listening ears - I can't handle it. The tangible fear and pain of humanity calls to me and I can't ignore it. I am constantly aware of their need, their suffering. It is only made worse by the fact that I know they aren't aware of mine. I tend to share a fake set of troubles, a shallow pool of concerns that lead others to believe I am open. Nobody knows about the deepest parts of my soul, the cracks and crevices thousands of miles deep that lead to a broken person. It is not socially acceptable to be depressed beyond hope or reason. It is not normal to be fascinated with death to the extent that I am. My need to come as close to death as possible, teetering on the edge without going over, is not a suitable topic for conversation.

So I keep it all to myself.

What are friends for?

Now I remember why I'm trying to quit drinking.

I live in a suburban area with a poor night life. There's nothing for people under 21 to do here, because the only thing open at night is bars. So my little ratpack of friends tend to get cheap alcohol from one of our various 21+ friends and spread out a blanket in the woods to drink. It's dark and creepy and requires a lot of walking, but it's a routine. Last night I went drinking with the guys. My boyfriend Tom, my best friend, and two others - Chase and Charlie.

Some background information: My best friend's nickname is Bones, because he's skinny and the bones in his ribcage show very well. Not a lot of people know the reason for this, but I do. Bones has been struggling with anorexia for as long as I have. Lately he's been telling me insistently that he wants to get better, he's going to get over this.

I believed him.

So back to last night. We drank for a couple of hours in a patch of dark forest, but Bones was the only one who got drunk. He downed an entire bottle of wine by himself while everyone else sipped Smirnoff Ices. Then it started to rain. We packed up the rest of the booze and practically carried Bones to a playground nearby for shelter. Just as we did the sky opened up. We hid from the downpour in tunnels and under plastic roofs. I settled into a spot alone with Tom and decided to lie down and pull my shirt up to cool off. It was warm outside, despite the rain. Tom  reached over and ran his hand over my belly and up to my ribs, where he stopped suddenly.

"Holy shit, you have no fat on you. You're bony as fuck!" He whispered in a startled hiss. I shook my head vigorously and declared that I did indeed have fat all over me. Just then, Bones stumbled up the playground stairs into our shelter. He saw my ribs and mumbled something slurred and angry. Tom (always the joker of the group) declared, "dude, we can't call you Bones anymore, I'm pretty sure she stole that title from you."

Bones lost it.

I love Tom, but I don't think he realized what he was saying. Telling an anorexic (particularly a very drunk and very sensitive anorexic) that someone else (let alone their BEST FRIEND) stole their title as the skinny one...is probably one of the worst things you can say to them.

Before I knew it, Bones was going on about his plan to drink until he puked so he could get rid of the dinner he ate. He talked about how he hates his life and how I'm a stupid bitch for refusing to eat that day. He said it all with a cold, broken smile that made him look absolutely insane. I fought back. I told him that he was weak for having to drink until he puked. I could throw up whenever I wanted, because I was a "better" bulimic than him. I said he didn't know jack shit about the psychology of anorexia. He continued to slur and call me a bitch. He told me to "eat bitch, you can't be skinnier than me. Eat your fucking food." I had bought a 25 calorie side salad from a fast food place earlier that day. I had tucked it away in my bag for when I got terrifically hungry. Bones took  the salad out and set it in front of me. "Eat the salad bitch."

I took two bites of lettuce and chucked the rest of the salad into the woods. Bones looked like he was ready to kill me. I found Chase across the playground and told him to take me home. Charlie could tell I was upset, but he didn't know why. He hadn't heard the fight. He gave me a hug and said, "we'll get you home baby girl." Tom heard bits and pieces of the fight. He was annoyed at both me and Bones. He knows we have eating disorders but he doesn't like to talk about it.

I got home around 3AM and fell into bed. Despite the exhaustion from lack of food and the fight with Bones, I couldn't sleep for a while. I just looked up at my ceiling, thinking about nothing at all.

Weighed in this morning at 151.

9 pounds and one best friend down.

The Shakes

I haven't eaten since my last post (Saturday). Except for the occasional lettuce/broccoli bite to keep me going. I did eat tonight, a little bit more than I would like. I felt so bad I purged instantly. It all came up easy, no blood, no tears. I brushed my teeth, had a cigarette, and texted my Ana friend to let her know how my day went. My stomach is complaining now but it feels good. I'm praying I'll be 154 or less by tomorrow.

I started to feel it really bad today. I nearly blacked out twice and had the shakes so bad I could barely write in my journal. Bf asked if I was okay like a million times. I swore I was, and reported eating dinner when I got home via text message. Omit the fact that it didn't stay down...

I know I'm going to feel like shit in the morning, day 5 of a fast is always that way. Thank god for advil...so far coffee, cigarettes, and painkillers are what keep me going. Such is the life I lead, the life I choose. Just keeping my eye on the prize.