wanting

My EDNOS is 19 years old. It started with Anorexia when I was fifteen. Then I progressed to Bulimia, otherwise known to some as a failed anorexic. You do the maths. I’m too ashamed to get my calculator out.

My weight fluctuates between slightly overweight, slightly underweight and somewhere in between. Which proves that my methods of losing weight aren’t that efficient, but this is not about logic. This is not about doing the right things like eating less or exercising more. This is not about being sensible or healthy or a shining example of mental health. This is not Jamie Oliver and his organic pig testicles.

This is not about looking good on the beach or wanting to be a supermodel. This is not about wanting the cute guy in the coffee shop to beg for your telephone number. This is not about sliding a pair of skinny jeans over your hipbones and laughing all the way to the check out till.

This is not about wanting attention until complete strangers force feed you Black Forest Gateau and siphon double cream into your skinny latte. It is not about deliberately pissing off the nurses by hiding your peas under your fork and stashing butter in the bed pans. It is not about starving for all the children in Africa. It is not about reading the magazines and pining for the Body Mass Index of Paris Hilton’s pet Chihuahua. This is not a conspiracy created by the Patriarchal system to oppress women.

This is about having the self-esteem of a gnat’s arse. This is the polite way of committing suicide. This is about having no life because it’s impossible to order a bowl of dry cereal in a restaurant and ask them to hold the raisins. This is about weighing pasta, cereal, raisins and anything that passes your lips, including toothpaste. This is about secrets and lies and shame. This is about not wanting to admit that you need to eat. That you deserve to live.

This is about being scared. This is about being terrified. Of everything.

This is about control. This is about sex. This is about putting relationships on hold until your thighs don’t meet in the middle and by then you have no libido anyway. This is about hiding under layers of clothing that are mostly black. This is about “Please don’t look at me and cover all the mirrors with black crepe.” This is about avoiding the camera, even at your sister’s wedding. This is about intense self hatred.

This is about needing so much that you can’t stand it. This is about having emotions that bubble up and spill out all over the carpet and stink up the whole house. This is about having too many choices and too much pressure and isn’t it easier just to keep it simple and obsess about the amount of calories in a small cantaloupe? Instead of making big scary choices that might crush you to a pulp?

This is about wanting to be safe. This is about wanting to curl up in a nutshell like Thumbelina and ignore the big bad world that’s too noisy and dangerous and can’t be trusted. This is about not trusting anyone and relying on food (or lack of) to give you an all enveloping comfort blanket when the medication bloats you up like a corpse in a river.

This is about really crappy coping methods. This is about making a choice that will quite possibly kill you. This is about failed relationships, waiting lists, devastated families, waiting lists, becoming vegetarian, becoming vegan, becoming lactose intolerant, developing a wheat allergy and more waiting lists. This is about infertility, rotten teeth, and hollow bones. This is about cardiac arrest in a shopping centre. This is about being sick. This is about not being sick enough. This is about finally being sick enough for a bed in a unit until you drop down dead and you get a mention in the local paper for being such a model student.

This is not about food

(found on this tumblr: http://-shine-a-light-.tumblr.com/

I was doing my normal stalking on Tumblr just a few minutes ago and i stumbled upon something i really...well, let's just say it took me by surprise. At first, i saw that stupid first part and thought, 'oh for god sake. not another one', half expecting to click the link and see yet another one of those pro-ed related posts where there are a load of 'thin commandments' or something along those lines.
However, upon clicking, what i found was quite different. It sort of surprised me like a bullet in the head. I read it. I re-read it and then i read it again, not quite believing what i just read.
I know that it might all be cliche and that we will have all heard snippets of things like this before and thought 'yeah yeah, course i feel like that. don't we all. big wow.' but i honestly do feel like i have been wowed; like someone has just come along and rammed something in to my stomach and pushed the wind right out of me, blasted up from my oesophagus and sent it spewing out of my throat. I feel like i need to gasp for breath.
I mean, come on...we all know i have been in this game long enough to know that its not all about food and its not all about weight. We all know that 'its not about food, its about feelings' but sometimes, for one small piece of writing to 'get you' like this...it sort of brings things back in to perspective.


My life at the moment is literally a constant pattern of one disordered habit followed by another. I eat in a structured way, beat myself up afterwards, make plans to change it, take a bucket load of laxatives, feel bad, eat in a structured way...


It is like once this spin cycle is over, i just rinse and repeat it...I don't get anywhere, i don't move forward but it feels like that is my goal. It feels like by my doing this and by me repeating these behaviours, one day it will change. That's what i keep telling myself; what i keep telling my disorder. And i sometimes even find myself saying that i will be able to change things when i want to.
I want to fucking change things now but i aint doing shit about it.


I guess i don't want to.
I want to want it. I don't know...it sounds like its all much of a muchness but i guess you really do have to want change enough. And i guess i don't. Eurgh. God thats depressing...
Sorry.