broken alice

Oh God, this is how it feels. Can’t go backwards. Can’t go forwards. Don’t want to gain weight, shouldn’t lose weight. Round and round, mouse in a wheel. Oh for some more ribs. Some hip bones. A thigh gap again. Oh for rules and counting and calories. Numbers, meal plans, diets, calorie counters, structure, calculators, scales, another food group to add to the forbidden list. Oh God. Oh God. I can only fight this constant hunger with more hunger. More rules. Backing myself into a corner. How do I keep going? I must do this now, or lose another two years. Do this now or lose my life. Please tell me what to do. 

(Source: joeydeangelis, via martinipistache)

Asked her about the rate of weight loss if you do what I’m doing. 

‘You twat,’ she said. ‘I’m just angry now.’

But oh I am so happy. So fixed. Everything is okay when there are so many rules I can barely eat. 

This morning I hardly had the energy to get dressed. Even that is worth it.

Just three weeks. Just three weeks. 

Ate well for seven days. Binged three times in five days. Vomited twice. Currently on a three week 1000cal-per-day diet, starting this morning. 

That’s my fortnight.

I was so close, though. I almost made it. Oh, it breaks your heart sometimes.

I’m learning that every now and then there is just no way you can keep within your calorie limit without someone noticing. To hide it, to keep the peace, to keep him happy, you have to break every rule sometimes. And when that happens there just seems no point in attempting to eat well at all. 

Mouse in a wheel. Rag doll round a tyre. Over and over. 

That’s all I said to myself today. I really really don’t like myself. But that’s okay. I’m allowed to. It was hard. I made it.

And then my boyfriend finished work and walked into the room looking at me like he couldn’t believe his eyes and he said the beautiful things he says to me and I felt almost okay. And proud, too, because I’d made it almost by myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to accept any of that if I hadn’t spent the whole day telling myself I’m allowed to feel what I feel.

What I’m hoping, is this: That by giving myself permission to hate, by letting go, by stopping the striving towards a love I’m never going to feel, it will cease to matter. That I’ll be able to look in the mirror and see someone ordinary. That I’ll look down at my legs on the bus and not feel that hot surge of panic and fear and anxiety and hate hate hate.

That this is the start of Everything.

Of course not. I know this by now. But it feels like I am. Feels like I’m stretching my limbs, caring a little less, unfolding.

Six days binge-free. Three days of not-starving-so-much. Am I returning to normal?

They say once you’ve been there, for the rest of your life you’re never not there. I guess I’ve only gone a little way, and it’s too soon to be pulled up short by the ropes.

Just for a moment, wind on my face, open sky, arms out like a sparrow.

Before I fall down in tangles.

I think that’s all I can put it down to.

Bending over the toilet, eyes streaming, an ache in the muscles behind my knees, hurry hurry hurry before the parents come home.

Oh, but it felt better then. Like I wasn’t just vomiting up my morning tea but the whole past two years. Every time I’ve looked in the mirror. The fear about being too fat. The binging. The starvation. The diets. The hate, shame, panic, anxiety. It was like everything that refused to leave me for the past two years had finally gone, disappearing down the toilet.

I didn’t know you could get rid of anything that easily.

Clean. I feel so clean. I could get addicted to feeling this way.

That’s it, I said afterwards. Starvation, now. No more throwing up. Just starvation. Because that is so much healthier.

Is it? I’ve either gotten a little better, or a whole lot worse.

I want it to stop. I want it to stop.

Please stop talking to me the way you do. Please look back at me in the mirror tomorrow and say Hello beautiful.

Just once?

Please.

Had two sachets of oats for breakfast. Thought about eating a milk arrowroot after church. Thought about it. That counts.

And then he brings out two types of salad for lunch - tabouleh and morrocan couscous - and I’m panicking. That itching anxiety clawing its way up my throat. I was acting crazy. Picking at my nails, running my fingers through my hair again and again. Bent over at the waist, hands blocking my ears when he practically inhaled a cupcake in front of me.

All over a couscous salad.

Times like these I think I need a padded cell. Times like these I realise that it’s not over. I’m not fixed. Not even close.

I ate fruit for breakfast. Cut back on coffee. Didn’t weigh a single item of food. Didn’t count calories (apart from having a general rack-up towards the end of the day). Ate as many veggies as I wanted. 

It’s strange the way the compulsion to eat almost disappears if you aren’t counting/weighing the whole day long. I feel clean and fresh. And yes, fat. But surely that will pass. Fit, strong and healthy, I keep saying to myself. That’s all that matters. Fit, strong and healthy.

But I bust into tears in front of Mum. It just doesn’t stop, I said. I feel fat, all the time. It never ends. It felt good to finally say it out loud. Even better to hear her say, ‘But you’re so thin.’ 

I reach down every so often to feel the way my bones stretch out the skin around my hips, that scoop of empty skin below my belly. I do it for reassurance.

Bones mean I’m still thin. Bones mean I’m beautiful. 

It was a new recipe (lemon butter pastry with cream cheese filling) and I wasn’t sure if they’d worked out, so I tried one. I also ate the leftover dough scraps. And part of the leftover filling. It wasn’t all that much. But I still feel scared and worried.

I need to lose weight. I need to lose weight.

I don’t want to focus on this anymore. But when I relax, all these other pressures bob to the surface. If I don’t beat myself up for everything I put in my mouth, then I eat too much. I didn’t count calories today or yesterday for the first time in over a year, and look where it got me. I’ve been trying to balance the four binge-ing episodes of the last week with more exercise and protein but I just can’t stomach it. Maybe I’ve been vegan for too long, but all that animal protein turns my stomach. I’ve been feeling sick since that first omelette. To-the-bottom-of-my-stomach sick.

So this it. Tomorrow, I am back to full veganism. Tomorrow, I am back to counting calories. Tomorrow, I am back to diet food - food that makes me feel well.

It’s always tomorrow.