Fuck This Week

 

And last week. And the week before that. And while we're at it, fuck next week, too. It's not like anything's getting any better.

Grotesque

 The digital clock on my microwave reads 1:38. It is actually shortly after 8 PM; the time there is still frozen from when I impatiently snatched an oatmeal binge--6 packets--from the clutches of heat, searing my fingertips and spilling it all over the side of my microfridge.

This weekend I have not bothered to shave or shower, nothing new. I haven't bothered to leave my room save for jaunts to get more food, nothing new. I have done no work, made no art, written nothing for my quickly approaching creative writing deadline--again, nothing new.

What kills me is this weekend could have been totally different. I had done so well that week. I was so convinced that I had gained weight during a lovely excursion on a beautiful day with my mother, so obsessed with the memory of an unfinished organic cheddar and tomato quesadilla, so angry that I was out of control, so sad that I am so lonely and such a lecher, that I was giving my parents the silent treatment on the way back to campus Sunday morning (too busy thinking about my fuck-it binge). I could have gotten a ~real meal~, a garden burger and maybe some natural Sierra Mist, but I didn't. When I entered my room I stripped naked and jumped on my scale--and I hadn't gained anything. In fact, I had lost .2 lbs. I was in shock, with no idea of what to do with myself or the feel-sorry-for-yourself binge food sitting on my dresser. I checked my email--I got the interview I wanted for a holiday job at a major department store. Everything could have gone so differently if only I just threw out the food then.

Instead I am a pound-plus-some heavier in waterweight, with a sore throat losenges can't help and a lost voice. I reek of vomit and body odor. I have said no more than a sentence to anyone today--the most probably being "Yes, I want fries with that."

I really hate myself sometimes.

Try Hard

The school clinician looks me deep in the eyes, all serious.

"If we are going to do this--if you really want to make it through the semester--you can't half-ass this. You are going to need to try harder than you've ever tried before. I'm giving it a month--if nothing's getting better, than the deal if off."

I am going to try harder than I ever have before. I promise.

Undead, Undead

I wish I could come back from this unexplained, accidental absence victorious. I could share success and joy and good things and not falling asleep naked, caked in my own vomit. Not heart palpitations or the threat of leaving school entirely.

I am not sick enough. I am not sick. I am not.

I feel broken. I feel failed. I feel like I am a waste of space and money and time. I am nothing special; nobody should be bothered wasting their breath on me.

I went to an OA meeting on Friday, and I was at least thirty years younger than everyone. And aside from my lack of faith in God, in anything, what disheartened me the most was the thought that this will be me for the next ten, fifteen, twenty years; forever. It will never go away. It will always be a miserable, Godawful struggle to perform a basic human function--nourishment. Feeding myself. I will always be this way, so why bother trying to fight it.

This Isn't a Contest

I'm popular... at least, in my little mind. :) Two thousand of you who aren't me (not on a Firefox browser, at least) have been kind enough to click on my little corner of the internet, mostly by way of Scarlett who runs a far more eloquent and articulate shindig than I've got over here. Even still, I appreciate it. Though I'd like to pretend that this personal weblog is just that, personal, I would obviously be lying. If I didn't want anyone to read it or to notice me, I wouldn't be putting it on the internet in the first place.

I have a love-hate-love relationship with my eating disorder's relationship to the world wide web. Like a lot of kids self-isolating with an eating disorder, I didn't have any friends to confide in about all of this. I was very lonely in that I felt like I was the only one going through what I was going through. I wouldn't dare ask any of my friends about it--bulimia is the gross kind of eating disorder, you know. So, '87, Heather. To me, it was nothing short of a miracle to be roomed in the psych ward with a same weight, same height, same sort of high pressure prep schooled girl who also baked entire pans of brownies just for herself and her toilet. Ever since I've craved that connection, the kind you get with someone else who "gets" it. I've found it through re-watching documentaries like Thin and reading Wasted and, eventually, logging on to some of the more disordered (or imitation disordered) corners of the internet. I was a faithful member of Fading Obsession for several years, and this past summer I found a solid, wonderful, genuine group of girls through a muck of pro-Ana message boards.

I love my "girls," these girls who I've only "known" for less than half a year, like they are my soul sisters and closest friends. When they struggle I hurt, and when they succeed I am overjoyed. I follow their weblogs and chat correspondence religiously, hungry for the details of their lives. I laugh at the ridiculousness of this disease with them, and I cry with them when things are hard. I cannot imagine having made it through the past few months without their unyielding love and support.

That said... it is hard for these relationships not to turn competitive. Not in any malicious way, I'm sure of it--the last thing I would harbor toward any of these girls are ill intentions. But it is hard not for me to want to be thinner, or sicker, or more in recovery with any one of these girls dependent on my mood. I try to repress any malevolence or schadenfreude, but secretly I wonder if their failures or weight gains only serve to make me feel better. Or worse. It is so hard, so desperately difficult not to compare myself to them when making comparisons is what my brain does best. I want to be better than them. I want to be worse than them. I want to be the same as them, and that makes our differences in symptoms and recovery so hard to bear.

I love having a clique with in jokes and secrets. I love that they like me.

I hate that they aren't tangible people. Though I have been more honest and intimate with them than anyone "IRL," I have yet to hug them or hold their hands. Or hear their voices. Connecting with people in real life is so different than these relationships I've forged on the internet, and I wonder how our bonds would be if we knew each other in the real world. Would they still like me? Would I be too irritating, too self absorbed, too young, too stupid? Would they think I was too fat? Would you?

I am being real here, honestly, I swear. But maybe the film of my computer screen is a safety net.

So that we all can be winners, or I won't have to see the score.

Friday

I am too drained to even make an inarticulate, rambling, stream of consciousness post about my evaluation on Friday. Have an excerpt from the explanation I gave to Scarlett during a chat instead:

[9/25/11 12:15:10 PM] Cheeks: okay, assessment. they did a brief medical eval, and a longer psych/ed eval.
[9/25/11 12:15:24 PM] Cheeks: i would need to get a thorough medical eval with an ekg, bloodwork, etc. elsewhere
[9/25/11 12:15:59 PM] Cheeks: it was one of those times where you don't realize how fucked up you are until you start saying "yes" to everything
[9/25/11 12:16:16 PM] Cheeks: especially concerning medical symptoms

[9/25/11 12:16:44 PM] Cheeks: it was a smaller facility, and everyone on staff knew my name when i came in. i only saw a couple of other girls, very quickly, and they were near skeletal and being hustled from one room to another
[9/25/11 12:17:47 PM] Cheeks: i think i accidentally insinuated that i used oxycontin instead of oxyelite, haha
[9/25/11 12:18:03 PM] Cheeks: oh well, might as well add one more thing
[9/25/11 12:18:46 PM] Cheeks: the woman in charge of my assessment still had to talk to the "team" afterwards (ah! i'm in teamland!)

but she said that she felt that i was barely medically stable enough for intensive ip, and that just the evening program alone would not be enough
[9/25/11 12:20:18 PM] Cheeks: apparently my heartbeat was not cooperating that morning

[9/25/11 12:25:44 PM] Cheeks: disordered me wants to stop binging. and to keep losing weight. and to be superwarrioranagirl.
[9/25/11 12:26:09 PM] Cheeks: and trying to get better me wants to stop binging. but also wants to start being able to have a normal life without thinking about food all the time, when i can just eat when i'm hungry and idk have a boyfriend and go out binge drinking like you're supposed to in college
[9/25/11 12:27:13 PM] Cheeks: they did a blind weight for me, fully clothed. and they said i was XXX% of my ~ideal body weight~. which i'm guessing means a 20 bmi
[9/25/11 12:28:24 PM] Cheeks: i don't feel sick enough to stop school though. and i don't feel sick enough that my school work isn't getting done, or i'm not socializing at all. i do both of those things, they are just very, very hard.

[9/25/11 12:56:59 PM] Cheeks: and i am just now starting to feel the satisfaction of weight loss, and that is one of the first things about my ed to make me feel proud and accomplished in a while
[9/25/11 12:57:16 PM] Cheeks: one of the first things in general to make me feel proud and accomplished
[9/25/11 12:58:10 PM] Cheeks: i was skyping with a friend at uchicago last night. and i had to get up and get some water and when i came back she had seen a full body shot and was kind of angry i had lost so much weight
[9/25/11 12:58:40 PM] Cheeks: and i tried to play it off but inside i was so happy and proud that someone noticed.

Evaluation

 

In two hours I will be evaluated. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier and better at this than me. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier and better at this than me, five pounds heavier than when I called for my appointment. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier than me and better at this than me, five pounds heavier than when I called for my appointment, seven pounds heavier than I was on Monday. 

In two hours I will be evaluated in a room full of girls skinnier than me and better at this than me, five pounds heavier than when I called for my appointment, seven pounds heavier than I was on Monday, terrified.

In two hours I will fail, at everything.

Warsong

I'm at battle with my body, and it's fighting back.

My arsenal of laxatives and starvation is no match for my beast of a body, which seems only to exist to return fire a hundred fold. Its weapons are my fat and my hunger pangs and the pain that wreaks havoc on my body nearly daily in a multitude of locations. Today's target is my bowels and urinary tract; the former feels as if it is constantly about to burst, the latter as if it is on a slow and cool fire.

It is a losing battle, but one I keep fighting with hasty attacks and ill-planned strategies. I keep fighting, because I am desperate to win, no matter how shoddy my odds.

If I win I will have beaten it, and I will be perfect, and I will probably be dead.

For now I'm K.O., and my body is doing a victory dance.

Hoarders

Hello, my name is _____, and I have a problem. No, not that problem, not the one with the purging and the counting and the measuring tape. I have a new problem, one with hoarding food.

I haven't been eating very much these first few weeks in school--I've dropped six pounds in five days (mostly water weight, the voice in my head says), and today, a "binge," came out to around 850 calories. I haven't been binging, truly, but I've sure been buying food like I am.

My microfridge--meant to supplement my meal plan, to contain maybe a liter of soda and some cashews--is filled to the brim with Powerbars and Lunabars and Larabars and Jocolats and Cliff bars. Even though I purchased over twenty-five in bulk before I left for campus, and the most of those are still stacked neatly by flavor and calorie count, I compulsively need to buy these things when ever I see them. I have over forty now, all weighing in at around 100-250 calories per, and sometimes they fall out of my fridge if I open the door too suddenly. Besides today when I chew and spat and swallowed three sadly, alone in my room, they stay untouched. I have become obsessed with them, and finding my favorite flavors, and planning my 350 calorie days around them (tomorrow, and Sunday, will be fasts, to make up for the mistake that was today). I spent over sixty dollars of my own hard-earned summer money at Whole Foods the other day, and there was no other excuse than a compulsive urge.

There are plenty of other places to graze on campus, salad bars and fruit bars and 0% Greek yogurt bars. There is a vegan cafe and even a Starbucks. All safe foods, all fresh-enough foods, all foods that can easily be beneath my caloric limit. All of which is covered by my parent's own, hard-earned dollars. I feel so guilty and so sad. This is the kind of thing an elderly woman surrounded by cats would do, not a freshman ingenue. Does it make me feel safe, to have these protein bars gaze at me in neat rows that overflow their fragile wire shelves? Does it really?