drained

So I finally weighed myself this morning. ugh. not good. even after what is (so far) a 36 hour fast, I'm still 2 whole pounds heavier than i was before my sunday binge. which confuses the hell out of me because i calculated it to be about 1600 calories total for the day, which is awful for me, but not enough to gain even half a pound according to doctors and all. I must have gained about 5 since i still have 2 of them left. This is why i don't believe in all the 3,500 calories equals a pound nonsense. maybe it works for other people, but it definitely doesn't apply to me. I'm just sick of this. I'm sick of myself. I want to get back down to my low weight as quickly as possible. And I have to keep fasting until i reach my pre-binge weight. maybe longer. I hate how weak and tired i feel. and how absolutely exhausted i know i look. but i'll hate myself more if i eat even an apple or a cup of soup. I don't deserve any food. not yet. especially not at this weight. Last semester i fasted for a really really long time. i don't remember exactly what it was, 6 days? i'll go back and check. It would be pathetic of me to not make it for at least half of that. I just want to go to bed. sleep until i'm thin. I pretty much failed my calc test this morning. i had a 99 in the course before, so maybe i'll be ok, but it just sucks to be ruining all my hard work. in all areas of my life. I just want to press fast forward sometimes, but mostly i just want to press pause. take some time to breathe. and sleep. god i need sleep.

never have i ever

been so scared of my ED.
So as some of you may have suspected, i totally failed at recovery again. I've been restricting to under 200 or 300 calories for about 2 weeks. this weekend was really tough though and after my boyfriend making a bit of dinner for me on saturday night, i felt kind of like my whole life was out of control again. crazy overreaction, but it is what it is. anyway today was really really bad because i wast still emotionally dealing with yesterday, and not in a healthy way. i wrote a little bit about what happened. i'm thinking of writing a book, probably just for myself, like a diary or blog, only in a bit of a different style. anyway, here's a section of it to explain what happened.

"I felt that I had already failed. I’d already ruined everything. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get rid of cravings before I fasted my weight back down. I started the day with a full serving size of cereal. For months I hadn’t allowed myself more than maybe 4 squares, 8 on a good day. 180 calories. Just because I was allowing it didn’t mean I could stop counting it. Then chips and salsa, which I’d been craving daily for about a month. 300 calories. Two rice krispie treats. 200 calories. A cookie. 100 calories. A packet of cheese ritz bits. 220 calories. A spoonful of nutella. 200 calories. Then I made the box of cornbread stuffing that had been sitting in the pantry since November. A few mouthfuls in I was too stuffed to continue. I rounded up to 300 calories. Then I scraped the rest into the bin. I don’t believe in leftovers, because it’s not like I’d allow myself to eat it the next day anyway. About an hour later I felt I hadn’t fully taken advantage of my free day. What if I had a craving the next day? I certainly wasn’t allowed. I was supposed to stifle them all that day. I needed to eat just a bit more. One more cookie shoved into my mouth. 100 calories. It didn’t even taste good. I just felt sick. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, painfully sick. It felt like my stomach was going to burst out of my skin. I needed to shower. I needed to wash away the day, the calories, the food, the memories, the emotions, the unbearable agonizing pain. I turned the hot water on and stepped in. Cold water burns more calories, but the hot water burns away the thoughts. Maybe ten seconds in I realized everything was tilting. I had no idea which way was up or where the water was coming from, and soon I couldn’t see anything at all. I started grabbing madly at everything around me, knocking down shampoo bottles and body wash in a desperate attempt to stay upright. Then my head seemed to feel 20 pounds heavier, and it snapped back against the wall as I crumpled to the ground. I was aware of maybe a few seconds of panic, of trying to breathe normally as the water streamed over my body, lying motionless on the cold tile. Then I lost consciousness. When I came to, shaking on the ground, I thought that surely I was about to die, and a single word cycled through my brain repeatedly. Sorry. It was not a half-hearted wish for suicide. I did not want to die. I believed so deeply that I was a failure, that I was shockingly quick to come to the conclusion that I had failed at the most basic of things: living. I apologized to everyone. The voice whimpering in my head “I’m so sorry baby, it’s not your fault, you don’t deserve this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry mom, dad, I should’ve done better. I could’ve been more. I could’ve made you proud. I’m so so sorry”. The words swirled around in my thoughts, apologizing to everyone but myself."

So I'm feeling a bit better now. but i don't know. i'm just going to try to sleep it off. tomorrow's a new day.

try try try again

trying recovery again. I really really do want this, it just gets so hard. but i know i don't want to be miserable for the rest of my life. and more than anything i don't want to do this to my boyfriend, friends, and family. especially not my boyfriend. he doesn't deserve this.

halfway through

so it's wednesday night. I'm halfway through my week at home. only 3 more full days here. it's weird, i know i'm going to miss it as soon as i'm gone, but it's just so hard to be here. it's emotionally draining.
today I ate about 400 cals.
then I went to the gym and burned about 400 cals on the treadmill and the elliptical.
felt good to control my total a little bit more. especially since it's so hard to control my intake here.
plus i know i'm definitely getting malnourished because the cravings are back full force. i dreamed that i ate french fries last night. woke up absolutely panicked, trying to add it to my calorie log before i realized that I didn't actually eat them...goddamn. i'm fucking insane. i've been craving ice-cream pretty hardcore. and peanut butter. haven't eaten either though. i just have to keep telling myself that it's because i'm not eating enough that i want these foods so badly. and then i have internal battles like crazy because part of me still really wants to do the healthy thing and try to recover again. I know recovery is what i need, but i just can't let myself. because i got so huge these past few months being "recovered" and i just can't live with myself this big.
I miss my boyfriend heaps. Somehow he's the only person that can drown out all my internal panic. When i'm with him i'm just happy, I just *am*. simple as that. I never would have thought I could find someone who would make me feel like that. It's like he brings me peace, and honestly that's the best gift in the world.

never good enough

I sometimes wonder if i'll ever fully recover from this. if there will ever be a day where I don't feel guilty for eating. not overeating, but just eating at all. It's my spring break, so i'm home with my parents (i know, exciting, right?) and it's really hard for me. it always is. it's the combination of the stress of being around them with the difficulty of hiding my eating habits from them. I could deal with the stress better if i didn't have to eat. I'm still restricting. just not as much as i would like to. I've been at about 500 calories a day since i've been here. it feels like way too much. I really just want to fast until i can get rid of this gross heavy feeling. I can't wait until break is over and it's more likely that i can get away with a fast. I'd still have to hide it from my boyfriend, roommates, and sorority sisters, but somehow that's still significantly easier. I wonder if i'll ever be thin enough to be happy with my body. If i'll ever reach a point where i deserve to eat carbs, or, heaven forbid, ice cream or something. It's not like i'm doing this to please anyone else. I'm already in the sorority i want, I already have the perfect boyfriend. and he thinks i'm beautiful and hot and sexy and well, tiny. so i don't need to lose weight for him, but i need to for me. I just feel like i don't belong in my own body. there's too much of it. I want to feel light and airy and weightless so so badly, that's nothing new. what is new is that i want to not hate myself when i "give in" to an apple or a few baby carrots. That guilt...it's like i feel like a fraud. Like if i really had an ED i wouldn't be eating at all. I'm not disordered enough, and at the same time, i'm too disordered.

I'm never good enough. at anything.

and the world keeps turning

so it's been at least two months since I last posted. maybe three. I'm sorry. but then I'm not, because honestly I can't help but think that everyone would be better off without reading about my issues. I don't want to "inspire" anyone. I wish I could save you to be honest. but i'll be damned if I don't know as well as anyone that sometimes we just can't be saved. which is why I'm back. because I can't escape this.

so to get you up to speed, i'm going to give you a list of what happened in the past few months. a list because honestly i'm obsessed with lists, and because it's so much easier/faster to read that much info.

-went home for winter break (at 116 pounds)
-mother mildly freaked out about how "thin" i look
-doctor expressed concern over my weight and "suggested" i get up to 130 and stay there. um. ew.
-coach expressed concern over my weight, and my muscle deterioration and "suggested" i get to 125 and stay exactly there. that's the same bmi as an olympic gold medal backstroker. so he sees it as the ideal.
-mother sided with the doctor and decided i had to gain the weight all over break so she could make sure i did it
-ate. and ate. and ate. tried to avoid eating. didn't succeed.
-being home with friends and family (as much as my fam pisses me off sometimes) calmed down some of my rather psychotic tendencies and I guess i realized how blessed i am and how i need to just enjoy it like a normal person.
-decided to seriously try recovery again
-temporarily recovered. made my mother so happy. 130 pounds. so she stopped worrying.
-really truly believed that even though it was hard, maybe i could stay recovered.
-went back to school for sorority rush week.
-fasted all week.
-dropped down to 123
-accepted a bid to my top choice sorority
-tried to be normal around the girls
-gained back the 7 pounds
-the boy asked me to be his girlfriend
- I said no
-I realized I made a mistake and I said yes (we've been together for a month now)

I just can't do it anymore. recovery. it's too hard. I hate myself too much. I hate the way I look in the mirror. I hate the way I look in my mind. I hate the guilty feeling I get every time I eat a meal (that never went away). I hate the way I have love handles again and I can't feel my hipbones like I used to (at least I can still fit in my size 0 AE jeans...even if they don't look as good on me). I just can't live with myself like this. so i'm back. but this time it's all for me. feel free to read, but i'm not writing for you all. I'm writing to keep a smidgeon of sanity in the midst of all this. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. I'm probably going to whine and complain heaps. sorry not sorry. if you choose to read anyway, what i can offer you is realness. and a connection. you know i'm always there for you girls. not as inspiration, but as support. we go through hell every single day. no one realizes that more than i do. and i can never get away.

failed recovery number 2.

cycles of starvation, guilt, recovery, and more guilt. it keeps repeating.

and the world keeps turning.