I am moving back to school in 3 days.

Holy fucking fuck.

I am beyond excited.

Falling asleep in library sitting up with books open speaking about the mind-optics of spirituality and saying thinks like “the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey” and I am typing with bandaged hands from tea burns. Green tea, which splashed in slow motion.

It splashed probably because I was distracted, and it is the worst distraction ever, less than meaningless even, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the eight hours of reading for this research project I am doing it’s that the meaningless is everything. So I guess he is everything then; mostly he was a drunken encounter and now, for some awful reason, some cosmically ordained lesson I have to learn, every time I see him I freeze up and my mind flits away and wonders what I look like, how am I presenting myself, what is he thinking WHAT.

And worse yet, I am so melodramatic about it in the confines of my room. I have been melodramatic alone, supplicating in ridiculous prayers I know are ridiculous as I say them but I feel with the whole of my gut and one night I kneeled on the broken shards of my lamp in the corner of the room and prayed, please God please, as though doing it there would make my prayers all the more holy and all the more effective.

It didn’t cut my knees so I assumed that was why he didn’t come, randomly, knock on my door etc.; but then again, my prayers are answered to some regard because I am no longer hooking up (because I am so obsessed with him and have a slight, slight crush on another boy), I am drinking less (because I went on pills that made it so I couldn’t drink).

But that’s not what I asked for, I asked for him or someone else, someone please, that I could hold hands with and kiss and fuck and mostly I want to stop going out, or coming back, or studying and looking up & seeing him; and have my body freeze and my stomach drop out more than it already has and to make 1.5 seconds of eye contact and then think “what is he thinking!” for the rest of the time he is there and a little while afterwards, to stop interpreting every ridiculous thing as if it were something important, just to stop stop stop.

I have lost weight and am hungry now, but not in the denial of self way but the way you get after too long, when it starts to be worrisome sometimes but you can’t eat. When you know your stomach has shrunk and you can’t eat but you’re so hungry hungry hungry, and you won’t eat because of the dreaded c word (calories) but also because you can no longer physically handle it and sometimes that frightens me. But I am also hungry for affection and I am hungry for everything, carnalities and banalities and booze and drugs and fucking and staying up all night but also just sleeping, sleeping for a week maybe.

whatever, whatever, stop being upset. It's fine. ok, ok, it's fine. stop freaking out. so your idiot friend sent your mom an email, from your account, saying she was sexy. so you didn't get any homework done. so your idiot friends destroyed the hallway outside your room and you'll probably get in shit for it. so the boy you like walked away and your friend said he obviously wanted to get out of there. so you can't drink tonight because of adverse reactions and everyone you know is going to get drunk. just. you have to go to dinner with them now, and you can't be upset or crying or any of that.

and you have to eat.

just stop being ready to cry. please. please.

binge drinking is the devil. especially on a monday night. especially when one is on medication that specifically says "don't drink!" It doesn't say that because drinking will make it not work; it says that because drinking will make you sick until you think you are going to die. no joke. I think I sent my friend a facebook message to that effect also, which is going to bite me in the ass later today but hey! that's why I shouldn't binge drink anymore!

I would like to stop puking up all the water I drink now. it would be nice.

ok, fuck you alcohol. fuck you up the ass.

I need to be a better person, starting now. I need to. I can't let this shit get me down, ok, future self who is reading this? Do you understand? You need to be better.

1. Good job not crying in public. Very amiable. That's doing ok; earlier people saw you with red eyes though. That's not so hot. You need to get that under control. Sometimes it'll be unavoidable, and after effects are better than actually crying, but seriously, you shouldn't be feeling this bad anyway.
   
2. Everyone else is an insomniac. Probably that's bad for them, but you've got to get on that. Every morning they have all these stories and inside jokes that developed at 3am. You were asleep; you missed out. You can't miss out. You can't. So don't go to bed until everyone else has. Actually, that raises another point: you close your door to do work sometimes. No, then you miss out on things too. So when everyone else goes to bed then you do your homework and readings etc.
• Don't catch up on sleep in the mornings either. Today you missed a lecture: that is unacceptable. The new word you have to repeat at all times is perfect, and perfect people don't miss lectures.
3. Don't be needy. Asking that boy to stay after you made out for a few hours? No. You could tell he didn't want to, so don't. That just leads to him feeling uncomfortable, and you don't want people to feel uncomfortable around you. Like with friends: be present, but don't intrude. Initiate conversations sometimes, but not all the time. It's cool to study silently, but only if they already are. If they're having fun, don't leave.
   
4. Don't let him know anything about you. Nothing. He uses it against you, and this whole thing makes you look like a retarded whore, ok? And you're not. Not really. And don't be fucking nice to him either. Everyone else yeah, be nice to, but don't let last night happen again. You gave him tea, you hugged him and listened to him complain, and then he told everyone else how he talked to the other boy you really liked and he probably did that in the interim between when the boy left and when the boy blew you off entirely and it's probably his fault and he's just a bastard, ok? He took your tea and hugs and then he went and made everyone laugh at you. So don't. Don't, don't, don't. It doesn't matter if you just feel like you need a hug sometimes, because he uses that against you and you've already cried about this twice so you can't anymore. You just can't.
5. Stop fucking daydreaming. Stop it. Any scenario you come up with is never going to happen. There is no sunshine and happy endings for you unless you make them, and you don't make them by being constantly let down. Have no expectations, because life never meets them anyway and that way even when your life is shit (let's face it, it always is) this way you don't feel bad about it because you can anticipate it.
   
6. Your room has to be absolutely clean at all times. Perfect people are tidy. Perfect people show no weakness. Any mess means that you can't keep on top of everything, and you have to. You have to.
7. Don't be obvious about your crushes. As an addendum to part 5, they are pretty much guaranteed not to like you. But you don't want to put them in an awkard position (see also #3) so just. Be decent. Be nice and kind and attentive but not too attentive and present but not too present and just, don't be needy and obvious, ok? You look pathetic.
8. Don't get fat. Don't, don't, don't. No one likes fat girls. No one.
   

Sitting alone crying in a dorm room is pitiful. It's really a new low, I think. And now there's tears on my psych textbook. it's not that big of a deal, I mean it won't make the pages all crinkly or anything but it's still just all I need.

I'm such a fucking disaster. I think it's really obvious too. I know it's obvious. I don't know why I'm this upset about it, because everything seems fairly inconsequential but it all builds up and now I'm just so fucking upset. I just want to know people like me, that's all I want, I want to know why it's ok to fuck me and not call and I just.

the problem is I always think i've formed such deep connections but really it's just drunken rambling for half an hour about surrealist art and it doesn't mean shit, it never means shit, maybe we have the world in common but that's not enough because i'm me and that's just, that's not something boys want i guess. or it is, but just for an evening, and i always feel so fucking shitty the next day and i shouldn't, i should know what i'm getting into, i just keep thinking that it's different and maybe i'll have someone to just fucking hold hands with. that's all i fucking want, and i fucking prayed and that was probably my problem, because i always feel wrong bringing god into things like that, 'hey, please make this boy like me' and it was the shittiest prayer ever too. i promised that i would eat a full, healthy dinner tomorrow, and I wouldn't compensate for that by cutting back on breakfast and lunch. i was going to be healthy if things worked out just this once.

so no matter how you look at it that was shitty and now I'm all torn up and it's my fault really, because I spend forever thinking up everything good that could happen and it never does because everything I imagine is ridiculously unrealistic. like, sitting on his bed doing homework. i mean, it's realistic in a way, it's not like i'm thinking of us flying through the air together or anything, but it's still nothing that ever happens. and i should know that but i always let myself hope and that's the killer, that's it, it's not fair

i was back at my low weight from march but i spent the last three days binging so now i'm up 3.5 pounds so fuck it, fuck it, i need to get back on track i need to be better i need to spend more time studying and less time being a fucking optimistic whore and i just need to get better at my life

i need to stop dreaming i hate it i hate it because you can't be let down if you don't expect anything

Apparently, on what I like to call the Night of Drunken disasters, the head RA was informed that I "don't love myself" even though there wasn't really any empirical evidence for that, just intuition and having known someone for all of three days. Which explains why the next day he kept asking whether or not I was ok.

I got drunk Tuesday night. I don't even remember what I was talking about, but apparently I brought up (only to the boy, thank god thank god) that I purged and told him he was 'one to talk' when he tried to talk to me about it and seriously, fuck. I'm such a fucking train wreck lately.

I'm down to within a pound of my low weight. 0.5 and I am back in action.

I'm also being sued for a traffic accident that happened two years ago to the day. They served us on the last day before they couldn't anymore, and by us I mean me, so I'm understandably freaking the fuck out about that. It's ridiculous. And horrible, and terrifying, and seriously, seriously, what the fuck, what the fuck.

I worked out when I found out about the legal issue, for like an hour. My legs hurt all the time, but I have to keep telling myself it's worth it. I also know for a fact that I'm not eating as few calories as I was back in March, so I think I'm doing ok. Ok by my standards, but ok.

I am under so much stress, it is ridiculous. I want to change, I don't want to change, I want everyone to love me and I want a perfect dream relationship and I want to fix him and I want to spend all day being studious and brilliant and all night partying and never face any consequences and I know, I know that I am dreaming, beyond dreaming, but it would be so nice.

It would be beautiful.

I just need my thighs to go away, that's it, not even anything else. Just that.

I'm fucked. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, fucked. I can't take care of myself, not really, not the way I was being trained to. Probably not the way I deserve.

So I guess right now I might be in a relationship? It's a relationship of some kind, anyway. And we're both fucked over and it kills me to see him so fucking upset all the time. He got drunk and had a nervous breakdown in my room last Monday. I had to sleep across the hall and we had to get the RA and the head RA for our building to come talk to him, and now he's in counseling I think. I don't want to ask about that.

What I do know is that he "needs to be perfect" and hates himself and last night we talked about purging and trichotillomania (both of which he brought up as issues he's struggling with) and how his last girlfriend was in his words, "A 5'9" 90lbs orthorexic," and then he started freaking out. He couldn't go to sleep until he worked out, seriously seriously, he was starting to have a panic attack, so we went to the commons block at 1 am and worked out until I thought I would die. My heart was pounding and I could barely feel my leg muscles.

I didn't end up getting to sleep until three and I cried in the shower I took right before that. I don't really know what we're doing even, he doesn't want a completely committed relationship (he keeps saying that) so we just get together and freak out about our bodies and work out and, once, fuck. It's confusing and I can tell that this is going to fuck me over. I'm already backsliding. I bought a scale and was busy freaking the fuck out, until other kids weighed themselves on it (because they saw it and everyone is weight conscious, university is ridiculous) and they all said it was 10lbs too heavy so ok, I'm exactly where I was if not a pound lighter. He weighed himself too and that just led to more drama drama drama.

During orientation my guide said we have a freshman 15, but everyone loses 15lbs here because it's so far between classes, so I'm relieved/hopeful about that but I've been drinking a lot. Like, too much. We're all joking that we're alcoholics but seriously, seriously, it's only a week in and it's already getting out of hand. My new cellphone has a pedometer and I input my weight so that it gives me calories burned too, and I'm averaging 300 a day going between classes (not taking into account my book bag) so that's good? I think it is. I just have to take all the liquor into consideration.

In forty minutes I'm going exercising again with him and someone else, at the main gym I bought a membership to. Also good.

Aside from all of the aforementioned, I still love university so much. I don't have to account to my parents, I'm much calmer in general, I have new friends who are so far fan-fucking-tastic, we're all planning road trips etc already, my classes are hard but amazingly interesting. They all interconnect too, by fluke, so that the anthropology reading I do will have a quote that later comes up in my Religious Studies course, and sociology and psychology present alternatives to the ideas of how societies and the individual interact etc. German is kind of out on it's own, but it's still interesting, so I'm fine with that.

We went swimming at the nude beach in our underwear and had to walk past the rest of the residence soaking wet that night. We drank a 40 of Fireball in twenty minutes, we ate expensive dim sum downtown in the rain and made up nicknames and got in trouble for being too loud. I've been to a frat party and a dorm party where we had to hide from the cops and ok, I love it. I love it.

At the same time, I'm already fucking up and that sucks. It sucks. I just need to get under control.

We were driving in the car, a mini-break before the day after tomorrow when I move out, and all I could think about was what I could have become. Without an eating disorder, I mean. And normally, if normal is defined in Oprah & Dr. Phil specials and touching stories written out in magazines, what someone could have become is always better: more magnificent, more accomplished. But for me it's horrible. I would not have been two inches taller and a doctor. I would not have been valedictorian, or a star athlete, or any of those things.

I hated myself. I still hate that person, if it's possible to hate a twelve year old girl who, for all intents and purposes, is essentially dead. I can quote word for word from my twelve year old journal, written with tear stains and everything, the end of one of a thousand tear stained monologes which say things like "I am a loser, I will always be a loser, and fat, and ugly, and should just accept it. I'll probably die alone, unemployed, and bloated, because no one will ever ever ever love this, this bloated slut-bitch that is me, and that is forever alone." That is word for word, May 2001. What twelve year old says that? What sixth grader thinks that? That girl tried to kill herself. That girl who cut her wrists with a pilfered steak knife in the bathroom, who was ten pounds away from being obese, who cried in the bathroom every day, I hate her. I hated her then.

She would come home from school for lunches just so she could sit alone and not worry about the other kids pointing out to her that she was alone. She would come home from school every afternoon and eat an entire box of mac 'n' cheese, put extra Cheez Whiz on it, steal chocolates from her parents and hide them in her room. And she was fat. And she was ugly, and it is a constant struggle every day not to be her. With her lank mouse-brown hair and her granny panties and her fucking gut, her fucking fucking gut, her 38C's in the sixth fucking grade, her shit music and most of all the way she tried to kill herself. She did.

The way I was thinking about it last week was to imagine a family tree of all the different versions of me which could have existed. It starts with that girl, and even though there's no way to include this on the family tree the first branch is a dead version of her. Because I would have. All throughout the sixth grade I wished for it, I dreamed for it, I prayed for death so hard. So that's the first. Then there is everything I became, and all the ways I could have turned away.

First there is the me who kept eating, and the journal entries would have been similar for awhile. "I've lost twenty pounds and no one notices, fuck I'm so fat" followed by a detailed discription of crying alone in the bathroom and then one of the many (40?) days a year I plead sick and stayed home in the seventh grade, except I wouldn't have been moaning about no one noticing my weight loss, I would just be calling myself fat more. And I never want to imagine that girl. Not ever, not even once. That girl is a failure, that girl is the type of girl I would laught at in the street, shallow as that makes me. That girl is the first girl grown older and more miserable and maladjusted.

There are so many, after that. The girl who never dyed her hair the colour which defines me. The girl who never bought i-D with the money she had from not buying lunches, which stretches into the girl who never went to fashion design camp and discovered the Scene, the underage riotous punk shows that defined a year of my life, that made me grow into the me of today. There is the girl who confessed in her ninth grade gym teacher when he noticed I was down 50 pounds from where I had been in the seventh grade and tried to have a chat with me. That girl would have gone to the high school she was designated to, with the same toxic people who had made her cry every day in the seventh grade, who had laughed when she puked yellow bile and blood in the ninth because she was so fucking hungry, so fucking hungry. That girl would have turned to drugs, but not fun drugs. Not casual weight loss drugs. Meth, probably. The kids who went there ended up doing that anyway.

I could go on. I have gone on. I spent five hours sitting in the car, driving or in the passenger seat, imagining this people, the little decisions which would have left me that girl I fucking hate, the girl I would spit in the face of. I am so different from her. But I imagined them all, every me I could have been, and I hated every one of them. Every last one. I am not perfect. I am not pretty enough, not thin enough, not smart enough, but aside from a few things I would change I am better than 95% of the different people I could have been.

Where I'm going with this is that I am terrified. I am on my own in two days, and that's not what I'm terrified of. I am ok with that. I am ecstatic, I am going to the city I love, I am going to one of the top 50 universities in the world, I am ridiculously excited for the libraries even. But I am terrified of what will happen if I recover, if I continue to eat as I have been when under my parents and my therapist, nutritionist and doctor's watchful eyes. Because if I had done what they wanted right from the start, I would be her or I would be dead. I am so, so terrified that I could somehow turn into that girl again, that I will be sitting in my dorm fat and the girl that every whispers and laughs at as they walk past. That all the friends I ever possibly could have will be pulled aside by everyone else and told they could do so much better within earshot again. As it stands now, I make friends easily. I am apparently hot. Boys in clubs try to pick me up every few minutes, and always boys I think are out of my league. I've been told I taste good, I smell good, I'm so fucking hot, I'm such an amazing person, and not always as pick up lines. I could be a good person.

but i always think that if i eat i will become the me who would rather die then live another moment and rightfully so and that terrifies me and i'm so scared that's what i'll become this year, that instead of going off and writing papers till three in the morning living off of red bull and pure force of will, drinking with a fake i.d. and laughing with friends and everything i imagine could happen i will be fat and alone and not worth the space  i take up again. i'm so scared of that

Friday: acid, hash, pot, beer, vodka, some rum. Video games till 4am,  guy who drove home drunk when I refused to sleep with him. Hugged a cat for an hour, I think. Got distracted sending a text message by the beeps it made, sent many illegible nonsense words to a boy who was equally as drunk and thinking of me.

Saturday: Vodka+ Red Bull, Whisky Sours, a date with a boy. Boys asking me out whenever he went to the washroom and, on one notable occasion saying "Is this your girlfriend or can I dance with her?" Back to his for wine (parents catch us sneaking in), marathon sex session. Breakfast with his parents and little brother.

Sunday: House party; coolers, pina coladas, swimming in my underwear and meeting what amounts to my Jewish, male identical twin.

Yesterday: pass out in own bed, thank God.

Today: haircut, bikini wax, new jeans and jacket and sexy bra/underwear set. Now, Punk Rock Bingo at a pub with a boy.

Tomorrow: doctors appointment (water loaded weigh-in), dinner with family, date with boy from Saturday.


I think I no longer have higher brain functions.

I saw customers at supermarkets called Johns in a story once. I thought it kind of romanticizes them; I don't care what people say, but no amount of unhappy endings make books and movies about whores less engrossing, less oddly desirable. But then other peoples suffering always seems romantic, to me at least. Because I'm removed from it, probably. Even when things get sad for them, even when books and movies and everything make you cry, when they reach into you and wrap your ventricles in their fingers. Even then it's not the same as real suffering, as tangible suffering, as verisimilitude and your own life being torn to shreds and shoved face down into hotel mattresses. Even other real people, if it doesn't touch you, if it doesn't somehow directly impact your life, it's romanticized suffering and I live for it. I breathe it.

So this one story, this one stupid story, made me apply for a job as a cashier in a supermarket. That's something I never admit out loud, or even really think about. Sometimes I'll catch myself doing stupid, idiotic things like that, basing my life off of what fake people have done before me, or what real people do but that's still laughable. If someone I knew applied for their crappy job because it seemed glamorous in a completely-unglamorous way in a story once, because they fell in love with the thought of smoking breaks in the cold and bitch fights with the people in the deli department, the long hours spent ringing through purchases until their fingers hurt and their nails were all broken down to the pink, then I would probably laugh at them. Tell them they should make up their mind based on what they want.

I was servicing a John, a middle aged woman buying buffalo meat and $12 organic sausages and nuts at $30/kg, the usual stuff that makes me grit my teeth when I ring it through. There was another woman in line behind her, a bit older, and they didn't know each other. You can tell when they know each other, mainly because there is eye contact or a tense, aggressive lack of eye contact, and there is always some kind of talk. So they were strangers, and this story is actually going somewhere, because two strangers both buying groceries is pretty par for the course. The second pulled the first one aside after she paid, over by the kettlecorn display, and they whispered for a minute, staring at me with little sideways glances. The tense muscles beside their eyes slid into wrinkles. I checked myself: apron a bit loose, but double belted as always, hip bones standing at attention, collarbones out and brastraps in, hair fine, eyes sad and (as always, genetic mutation) different colours, my teeth gritted a bit but not enough that anyone would notice, not enough that I had any jaw ticks or anything. So I figure it's one of those psychic things that happen in the evening in nearly empty grocery stores. It's just a momentary flash where you see something in another person, something in their eyes, a little too raw and personal but evident in the slight space between their lips, the just-so pupil-to-iris  ratio telling you what you want to know. And Johns throw that back at you, take your gradeschool moments and throw them back at you years down the line when the only people who remember that version of you are your parents. And Johns will shove it down your throat with their askance glances and the downturned corners of their mouths, the way they gesture with their wrinkled hands, nails painted blood red and eyes fixed on you until you go to the washroom to almost cry. It's like juniour high all over again, but without the puking.

And for you this is probably romantic; not in a star-struck lovers kind of way, but a "Byron starved himself," kind of way, the way where you read that all great artists were a bit insane, at least a bit, had things that were wrong with them and afflictions and addictions and it's so goddamn beautiful, abstractly. It makes you want to fuck yourself over. If I didn't write this I'd find it amazing. I would want to be a cashier, to have those momentary interactions and glimpses into peoples lives. I would live for it.

Instead, I have two shifts left and a lifetime of loathing for customer service. And a new, exciting knowledge of how long it takes for Prozac to leave your system until you have twenty newsletter sign-up forms in your till with scrawled observational notes and you feel a complete removal from the entire situation and a desire to go home and lock yourself in your room with your typewriter, like you did that entire summer once. Before Prozac.

All the stories about prescription drugs I've read recently haven't been emulatable, so I guess I need a new story to subvert into my own.

I don't really have words anymore. I don't know, I should have some long drawn-out metaphor for this, but I feel like I can't articulate anything anymore.

I've felt like crying for the last five hours. I keep wanting to do things, but then I don't. I want to paint my nails, but they're already painted. I want to eat the strawberries I saw in the fridge but I had dinner and I had a bad day earlier this week, so, so I can't.

Maybe it's my hoodie. I wore it yesterday, because it's cold, and today, and both days I've been miserable. I have a completely lame theory about how the guy who designed it is depressed, or was (he might not be anymore, lately he's seemed pretty happy in all media showings) and it was transferred. I always think objects have those tangible remainders, like places and objects and even people. People most of all get their family history shoved on them in spades. It accumulates in the pressure behind your eyes and the way you subside on coffee. The way you read  facial expressions like books and have to teach yourself how to converse because you didn't learn proper interaction because you were so busy being a fuck up. But it wasn't you being a fuck up, it was the weight of it all.

Or that's just be, blaming my fucking clothing and strangers on things that have nothing to do with them.

I keep flinching when I see things I don't like on television, just. Even fake food things, on the Simpsons, or someone cleaning pots or someone embarrassing themselves, anything. Someone embarrassing themselves on television, even in cartoons, that's always made me feel horrible. When I was little I would bury my head between the couch cushions, behind my parents shoulders, my hands clenched over my ears and maybe humming if I could still here someone making a fool of themselves. Usually they weren't really, everything worked out fine, but it was never something I would have done so they were fools.

I still feel like crying, kind of. I wish I could go back to when I thought I was going to grow up to be a writer. I would get that version of me to write everything out, the me from every moment where I am perfectly articulate in my head, because I have them. Moments away from any peace to write with and I get flashes of exactly what I want to say and I can never get them out.

If I could take the me from all of those moments I would be the person I always wish I could be.

Hey, guess what, fuck off! I really, really can't stand this shit anymore, seriously. I feel like jumping out of my skin at any given moment. If not for the fact that in 30 days I will be out of this shit hole and in 3 days my parents will be gone for a week, I would be finding somewhere else to live or else spending more time out of the house than I already do.

I go out and I have to call from a home phone so my mum can caller-id verify that I'm not lying. Tomorrow we have a therapist mandated intervention so that she can be told how batshit insane she is. I apparently have to pay my own room and board next year, so after the check I just cut I am stone cold broke.

I can't even articulate things anymore, I just sit here all day and she touches me and comments on whatever I'm doing and watches me always, every second, and sits here and there's no respite, there's nothing, and if I go out she'll spend half an hour quizzing me on everything that happens and it is driving me insane, more insane, I can't deal.

It used to be a funny joke, "I wish I was Queen of the Universe!" until I realized that she wasn't joking and that the universe was impossible but I was the next best thing. Yeah, I hung out with a friend yesterday that you haven't seen in awhile. Yeah, I didn't ask her the questions you would have asked; yeah, I can see that when you pointed that out you were trying to joke but it didn't work, it fell cold, and I could tell that you were hurt that I'm not you.

I've never wanted to be you. I will never be you.

And she works at home so I don't even have a place to hide alone. Coming from work, even if it's a shitty day, 8 hours where people (and this actually happened) bitch me out and make me call a manager because of a one cent price discrepancy, I'd still rather go out and get shitfaced until I think I'm going to die of alcohol poisening before I would come home and relax on the couch. I can't do this anymore I can't. I just can't. Even my father, he says, "Let's take a trip!" and I go, "I don't want a family vacation," because any time in a car with you would kill me and when he says just me and him ok. Yeah. Let's go for the rest of the summer, let's go now.

I don't even care about hurt feelings anymore because this is killing me and yes, let's interrupt this so you can tell me the different things you want from me today, so you can ask me questions about what I'm doing now, so you can give me a lecture on a nutritional deficiency you're sure I'll get. Let's do this. It's bonding time!

Fuck off fuck off I can't take it anymore.

It's the touches that really kill, the constant touches of sweaty fat arms all over me, hugs randomly, that have increased exponentially since she said I was killing her. Stop it. I don't want to sit here with you rubbing my shoulder, grabbing my hand, clutching me close. It's getting pathetic but most of all it's horrible because you're doing this to keep me close, you're physically forcing me to stay close so that I can never leave and I have to leave. I HAVE TO LEAVE.

On the plus side when I thought I was dying from alcohol poisening and that the bathroom floor would be where they found my corpse the next day because I couldn't breathe or move and was just lying in my own puke I discovered that I really don't want to die. I kept thinking how much I didn't want to die, so there's that. I am officially not suicidal, and it shouldn't be hard to tell that until you do almost die, but hey, whatever, now I know.

I just have to make it through. I need to make it through.

My eyes are all crusty, and this time it's not from a bacterial infection. Instead, my mother ruined her birthday (as usual) but this time she turned it into being my fault, and I spent two hours sitting on the couch half crying, half shaking. I was actually just shaking, full body, almost like seizures, which is something I don't think I've ever really done before.

It started with her telling me that I was selfish, that my eating disorder is so selfish, that she hates the present we got her for her birthday and why couldn't I buy her a present on my own, instead of going in on the present from my dad? Which is an iPod, by the way. Which she asked for. But from there it got to how I'm killing her with this and I don't even care, and she won't let me go to university because it would kill her and me, etc.

I just. I was going to type this all out last night, and then it would have had everything, the way she needs to be in therapy and my therapist said so and our doctor said so and she decided to wait until I'm gone (I think that's code for "no way in hell") and she really, really needs it. Seriously, fucking hell. And she said I had to prove that I was ready but didn't have any ways I could do that and I was fucking breaking down from it all, just sitting there shaking and apologizing over and over and over and my dad even knew that she was being ridiculous. He got upset when I apologized and kept telling her I was really working at it, that he didn't understand what she wanted me to do, and it just kept going and going and a lot of shit was said and I apologized so much and said things like, "I don't want to leave if that will kill you!" and it was just. The fucking worst.

It ended with her saying I could go to university, but really passive aggressive. Like, "Ok, fine, I'll see you at Thanksgiving then," no shit, that's what she said, and I just started to cry harder. Eventually we were all just sitting there, silent except for my sobs and the sounds of me shaking on the couch.

So basically, my plan is thus: I went downstairs earlier this morning and took all my stuff out of the living room, because that was part of her "you're so selfish!" beginning, was all my stuff downstairs. I'm going to basically hide up here unless I have to go downstairs for food. I'm cooking all my own meals now, because that was briefly part of it. Even though she couldn't actually say that's what she wants me to do, she just kept saying she wants me to take initiative so ok, I'll cook my own meals. I'm also going to go downstairs when it's time for yoga, because at least then I'll be getting out of the fucking house. And also, I'm going to pick up more shifts at work. That's doubly good: initiative, and I get out of here.

I just. I should have typed this yesterday. I had so much to say then. The whole thing is that my therapist always tells me that I take care of my family too much, and yesterday was just one big validation of all that, and at one point I actually thought, "I hope they do get divorced" because it's not fair that my dad's stuck in this but even then I couldn't, because I know that would destroy my mom and fuck, I don't even know about university anymore, because I don't want to destroy her I don't that's never my intention but she says that's what I'm doing and I don't know what to do about that I just don't know what to do.

and she made up numbers, like she made me tell her what I weigh now and it's more than when I got back from greece but she mixed up numbers in her head and thought that I weighed 10 pounds more than now when I got back and go so angry about it and I just kept saying but I didn't because I didn't.

and my dad said we only have five weeks left together and he wants to spend time with me but not if there's a constant fight because I said how I'm always nervous that she'll go through my stuff, because she has before and I just sit there waiting, I always think she will and that'll be that and she'll find a reason not to let me go to university and then she said I'm not ready. and then when she changed it, at the end of the whole thing and sure you can go but I still don't believe her because of how she decided and I just

I don't even have enough words for it I don't and I fucking hate this, I can't stand it, I just wanted to spend today playing guitar hero and relaxing and instead i'm a selfish bitch and i'm hiding in my room and i should really go clean. that was part of it, with my leaving my stuff everywhere, so i'll just go clean and i'll prove that i have the initiative.

I usually get myself in a shitty but pensive mood before I update this, a kind of indescribable mood that I've always been able to go into but never been able to articulate. I'd say "being in the zone" if I thought that would get it across, and maybe it does, but I'm not sure if that's what one should call it.

I'm not really in that mood right now though. It's been a long month since I last updated this. I got a laptop, a sweet 17" Macbook Pro that I am using right now, and loving, but mostly I'm using it as I am hiding in my room, window open fan going headphones on. Downstairs an alcoholic is arguing with my mum, every now and then I can hear a tearful exchange over the sounds of traffic and whistling metal blades and remorseful folk singers.

We were supposed to go shopping, but his wife left him and he reminds my mum of her father, who I was not conceived until the death of for a reason, so instead of my purchasing my "Hey, you did so good on your exams that you already have 12 credits for next year, so buy yourself something!" present (a new outfit; toothpaste from a brand I know is not tested on animals) I get this. Which is ok. I shouldn't be complaining, I should be helping instead of hiding, I should be lending a shoulder to cry on and doing good works and being more compassionate.

I kind of shut down though. My mum's ex-roomate died, and today her husband took my mom to lunch and showed her the slideshow his kids put together and played at the memorial service, and she cried. This afternoon I made her iced coffee and watched cartoons with her and offered to make dinner, etc., but I never once mentioned her roomate or death or really talked about it. I can never talk about things.

Hence my tattoo. Did I have that yet when I last updated? I don't remember, I'm not checking, but I got it, and the only symbolism of it that I explain to people when they ask (and it always sounds retarded, because I don't go into details), is that the lock represents that I keep things to myself. And god, god I do.

Here's something only one person knows, and they only know it because I freaked out and texted them because they live 3 hours away and I haven't seen them in a year so I knew they were safe: removed, kept out of my life except for bi-monthly facebook exchanges. I picked up a guy in a bar, wearing a little white dress that looked like something out of the Jetsons and a bright, golden belt. All night everyone said I looked hot, boys and girls, strangers I passed on the street and boys I danced with who I could feel pressing against my hip. So I picked up a guy and we went back to his shithole apartment and I lost my virginity coldly and anonymously.  The condom broke, which I have taken as a sign that I knew I was doing wrong and God knew I was doing wrong, and, you know, that's what happens when you fuck up. My cab driver has a masters in pharmacology or something, from the university in the town the boy (ok, man, he was 10 years older than me at least) was from, and the 4-am ride home was spent discussing the chemical properties of asprin and how his day job is running a consultant and testing company that does freelance work for drug companies. We also talked about where I will go to university. He didn't mention that I was obviously young and he had picked me up kissing a man across town wearing a skirt that barely covered my underwear.

Here's where it goes to what no-one knows. I had to get a morning after pill. The first place I called didn't have anyone who could dispense them, so I had to go somewhere else. This week I have my chemically induced period, which is stronger than any I've had since I was 12, and yesterday. Yesterday a piece of the fucking condom was in the fucking toilet. So there's that. That's how I am.

I've also been crazily sick twice since I last updated. I just lost my voice for three days. I also had some kind of bacterial thing that caused my throat to ache, my appetite to go, and my eyes to crust shut.

I don't know how much I weigh, and I stopped booking doctors appointments. I am going to university though. 99% for sure, which is good enough for me, I am out of here and I am going to be someone different once I'm their. I ordered my sheets and my wall decor and I am planning everything, I am going to be perfect and artsy and I'm going to be happy and content and fit and ok, lose some weight, because this recovery shit is bullshit, it's bullshit. I hate feeling full so much, I fucking. I have to physically stop myself from puking, because I need to make it to my dream city and my dream university, and I registered for courses and I have everything going for me now finally finally and I can't keep fucking it up with my fucking self destructive tendencies.

I think I'm a step away from being fired because I keep missing huge amounts of work so I can sit grimly on my couch and have lots of fluids, but oh well. I like sitting around with my laptop, watching television and not thinking about anything related to anything.

Well, it's that time of year again. Every six months or so I seem to become suddenly, inexplicably devout. Like a kind of awkward clockwork, except it's always just that much different. For the first 15-or-so years of my life, it was devoutly atheist. Incredibly atheist, belligerantly so. I looked down on anyone who was religious, I destroyed a friendship in the sixth grade about it - It made my parents proud. Then there was the month when I decided that new age spiritualism was for me: this made my father proud, and made my mother cry. And then, suddenly and equally as inexplicably as the urges came, I found G-d. I had my moment of salvation; I lay in bed, accepted Jesus, and cried. I listened to podcast sermons loudly on the commute to school, I read tips on the internet, I bought books about the Catholic church until I realized catholicism isn't for me. I made my parents buy me a Bible for Christmas, and went with my grandmother to her church service. My parents exchanged glances, and my other grandmother riles against the church as an institution and religion as a concept.

Just as quickly as it came, it was gone again. By January, I stopped listening to my podcast, until iTunes unsubscribed me due to inactivity. I stopped reading the Bible every night before bed, I stopped checking my bookmarks in the G-d subfolder.

And then a book I had placed on hold in October came in at the library, and there I was, right back where I'd started. Fantasizing about secret outings to church before my parents wake up, taking out new books from the library and reading them, and the Bible again, and an abridged volume of every speech Luther ever made. Taking notes, even. Listening only to Christian music, but then only Sufjan Stevens, The Hold Steady, Pedro the Lion, and songs that mention G-d in a favourable context by other bands I like, because seriously, otherwise I would stab out my own ears.

But this time it's coupled with my new devout veganism, which I proselytize about much more than I ever would about G-d. I found stencils about the evils of meat and fast food institutions in general, and I bought spraypaint secretly and plan on going out and tagging buildings which are especially evil as soon as I have the house to myself and 3am outings will go unnoticed. I sent away for an action pack from PETA. I refuse cheese, I sneer at dairy. I more than sneer at diary: at work I flinch when I ring through meat, fresh from the freezer and cold against my hands. My boss mentioned that we're going to start stocking pork, and I had to stop myself from saying something about how that's the worst of all meats. When milk drops are left on the conveyor belt after I ring it through, I sanitize my hands surreptitiously. At the farmers market yesterday I described how cruel the factory farms eggs are produced on are. My sentences finished with things like, "...and then their bones fall apart due to lack of calcium, and they get made into the torn up chicken you find in chicken noodle soups, because they're not good for anything else!" and my mother's friends stared at me, then at each other.

Anyway, my mother is going away tomorrow and my father the day after that, and I am doing the following: I am eating only the freshest of vegetables and drinking only water and coffee. I don't know if I'm getting better at the whole anorexia (I have an official diagnosis from my doctor of that, now, did I mention?) thing, or if I'm just putting all my energy into being Holy and Pure, but I'm keeping my weight where it is until I go off next year. I have to. If I don't get out of here, I'm still fully planning on starving myself to death. In the next week and a half I am also, as mentioned, tagging buildings with loud messages. I am switching my nose stud to a ring. I am getting my tattoo, finally, a large cartoonish heart complete with ventricles and, in the center, a lock with crosses beside the keyhole. I am possibly getting my lip pierced. I am going to go out clubbing and get shitfaced and, if I can, do cocaine for the very first time.

So that's that, I suppose.

Yeah, I lost weight. 1.5kg, and because the nurse was a dumbass and forgot to weigh me my doctor did and I couldn't change the scale to pounds, but that's like, 3? Something like that. I know it's ridiculous that I can't actually measure my own weight accurately in metric, considering that I live in Canada and everything is officially in Metric, but I'm trying. I don't use imperial for anything else, so I figure I'm doing ok.

By which I mean I'm doing ok with something that doesn't really matter at all. I'm not deluding myself into thinking anyone really gives a shit how I measure anything. I sure don't. Otherwise things are going to shit. My weight was lower, so my doctor gave me one of Those Looks, you know. The judgmental, failure, not-going-to-uni kind of glare. And then we took my pulse and blood-pressure, which was worrisome. Lets just say it reflects my recent weightloss. I get dizzy everytime I stand up. I've almost blacked out once a day for the last while. So things aren't looking up but I actually had two days this week where I was like, "Fuck it, just eat!" and did, except obviously there is no magical "scare myself straight" type of cure for this shit, so today I mostly sat around feeling like my thighs are touching.

That's a thing I've been doing lately, and luckily I can catch myself at it, but it's unnerving all the same. I mean, I can see that my thighs are not, in fact, touching. There is space between them. But it always feels like they are, which is so fucked up but so, so triggering. I can feel it right now and I'm sitting fucking crosslegged, it's ridiculous. At yoga there's poses where they tell you to press your thighs together and I try, but my knees just grind into each other, and yet I can feel them pushing pushing pushing with all their fucking fat, my fucking thunderthighs, fuck them.

Anyway, if I lose anymore weight I have to go for an echocardiogram. I'm not telling my parents about that. If it comes to that, I'll make my friend come with me because I'm fucking terrified, but at the same time today I just can't, I can not, imagine maintaining or gaining at all, period.

I'm starting to think I can't bullshit my way to university, that I won't actually have a future, and I'd be so fucking terrified right now except for the fact that I've started drinking everyday to numb it out. These words took effort to type, beyond my hands shaking and my constant desire to grin because I'm always a happy drunk. I bubble.

I missed a doctors appointment accidentally. I think that my mother thinks it was on purpose, but it wasn't. I slept through it then went to get my extra grad ceremony tickets.

Let me start again:

Every day has been the same for the last month, varying degrees of apathy and anger and always such grandoise plans. I won't eat anything! Not a bite! They can't make me! Until they do, and I eat, and I loathe, and I don't binge because they are watching me.

Except for the incident with the chocolate bar. That was a new low, I think. I thought at the time, throughout the whole thing, "this is a new low, Lily" as I shoved my finger down my throat beside a dumpster. It wasn't even in an alley, but a sunlit parking lot. There's a little fence enclosure around the recycling and garbage. A sign saying the gate had to be closed at all times, city bylaw. I destroyed maybe $30 worth of merchandise, ate maybe an eighth of a chocolate bar, maybe, and then attempted desperately to throw it up in streams of spittle and brown behind the recycling bin and an old banana peel. Maybe 100 calories, maybe, maybe, and I just threw up and threw up. My finger had spit trailing down it to my wrist, I left my finger in as I gagged to eliminate that two second safety lag time usually designed to protect my hand.

So then there's this: I almost want to tell the truth, but I'm not going to. That's the bitch of it. I think I could really, really get help. I could talk about things. I could say, "I ate fucking three bites of chocolate, desperate, without any control, not even a kind I liked, then tried to throw it up and took a washroom break when I went back inside so I could be sure that every single one of those three was out," but I won't because I'm so terrified of losing.

Losing this game, not losing weight. That's the downside of missing my doctors appointment, another day before I know what I weigh. The too-small jeans I bought fit. I'm wearing them right now. Still tight, but on. And already, my brain is saying it's a fluke. Even though I've been trying them on every day since I bought them and today was the first day they fit, my brain says no! No!

Yesterday my father put mayo on my sandwich and I ate it, because I'm a fucking pig, but I also tried to tell them not to do it again and my mum said, "But why don't you like mayo?" and it's not that I don't like it. It tasted so fucking good. But it's mayo.

I'mdesperatedesperatedesperate

But I am also going back to classes, my brief respite over, so I can avoid lunches again, maybe. For awhile. I will, I will.

I hate not knowing. I can't stand not knowing. Where am I at, right now? With this, with this constant unknowing, I could be higher. Maybe I am. I probably am. I have, three times, torn my parents bedroom upside-down looking for where they hid the scales. That's sad. That's beyond sad. I spent a desperate time there, not even going methodically but crazily. Under the bed? In a drawer? Here, behind the bookcase? And I didn't find them, they are still hidden, and I am going so fucking insane, so so so fucking insane. I think I'm getting worse than I was at the beginning of this whole fucking recovery thing. So, so, so much worse. I can't stop and I am shaking and I am FAT and I am a PIG and this is so awful. I can't do it I can't.

I only update this when I'm fucking up, it seems. But I am, I am. I have two dialogues in my head at any given point: "fat fat fat, lardass, don't eat, DON'T!" and "Ok, just wait three months, just three, then you can get thin, just be patient," and I realize that neither of those is any good. I am supposed to be working towards being better. I am supposed to be trying my hardest to recover so that I can go to university. Instead, I am maintaining so that I can go to university and then go right back to restricting heavily. Only sometimes I think I should bring that up. Mention it, maybe.

"Hey, so I'm working towards going to university, but I don't intend on actually getting better once I'm there."

I never say that though. That's the downside to their method: yeah, threats of witholding what is arguably the most important thing in my life work well, but they work too well. I'm eager to lie so that they think I'm good so that I can go. I'm so terrified of failure, of being stuck here until next March (when, according to the wait-list, I could actually get treatment) that I'm willing to say anything. And I tread the line so carefully. I allow out enough truths that it's not a miracle, I'm not cured overnight. I admit to purges, I admit to restricting, but less than I used to. I'm increasing my daily caloric intake! I'm working with a therapist! See, see me trying!

I think I gained weight. My measures for this are ridiculously imprecise. My clothing still fits fine. At the doctors last week I was at my low weight still, maintaining it. But the last two days I think the gap between my thighs when I put them in the air is less. Stepping outside myself, that's retarded. That's a ridiculous way to measure anything. But I just feel so fat. I can't handle it.

Yesterday I spent most of my work shift carefully planning out what I would eat on my breaks. I had half a sandwhich in my locker. Originally it was nothing: then I almost passed out, and it became the whole thing, but that was too much, so I settled on half of it, but only if I prolonged each bite for as long as possible, at least 40 chews.

I bought new jeans, the smallest size I've ever been, which is pretty damn small since I wear 0s everyday. They fit my thighs but my stupid hips are what's killing me. So that, again, is another problem. Now not only do my thighs need immediate attention, but my hips are too huge. I pulled my shirt down over them, so my mother doesn't know they don't button and bought them for me, and now I have a concrete goal. As soon as I can fit in them, I will maintain. That's what I'm telling myself.

It's always "as soon as."

Also, new co-worker is a germaphobe. And I always, always determine that I have to be the most quietly fucked up person in any given place, so if she can sanitize her hands after every customer (harsh, considering we're cashiers) then I can be the epitome of an eating disorder!

Yeah. I know. I know.

I binge on shopping. Anytime I have any money it flows out of me, like I'm a sieve. I feel shitty and I starve and spend. This week it's been a Playstation, magazines, video games, shirts and games online, and a shopping trip today to the new H&M. I buy shoes and piercings and makeup, cds, useless things I won't use, magazines I'll never look at again with exorbitant costs.

It's been a shitty week. Last week I thought things were looking up. Boys paid attention to me: more than that, one invited me over to his house. He made vegetarian sushi, lent me a book, and we smoked up and talked about music. Another girl was there though, a friend of his from out of town who was visiting, so I wasn't sure. But I thought it was probably a date. I worked myself into thinking it was a date and I was so happy. At work he ruffled my hair and then, later, introduced me to his girlfriend, said he 'wanted to make it clear' that he wasn't flirting, and took an extra break for some afternoon delight.

Then I fucked up at work, bad enough that tomorrow I am either being fired or owe the company $100, but either way I have a meeting with my boss and her boss. And don't forget that corporate has been notified.

Two days of tests: an hour to answer five long questions and write an essay, then an hour and a half to write two essays, and today 2.5 hours to write three essays.

After my test today my friends and I made it just in time, 12 o'clock on the dot, for the opening of the new H&M. We dodged strollers and crazed shoppers. I picked out a thousand items, found clothing I loved that was size 10 and up and thus had to be discarded, and fit into childrens clothes. The line for the fitting rooms was longer than the one to cash out, so we stripped down to tank tops and tried our clothing on in front of a mirror. I felt cosmopolitan in the way that only those who aren't actually grown up can. Like I was at a sample sale in New York or something, grabbing items away from competition and changing in the middle of the store. The fact that I was not didn't sink in until later, but that was my desperate capitalism at it's best.

When I brought my purchases home my mother said they made me look like Lindsay Lohan. It wasn't a compliment. The crisp white linen of my mod dress is no longer attractive to me. The joy of new clothes is always, always ruined somehow. A shirt I buy and later see a picture of myself in, fat arms fat stomach, and leave in a drawer for years because I loved it enough that I can't get rid of it, but I can never wear it again.

I had a doctors appointment. I have one every two weeks. The inpatient wait-list is 40 weeks, I forget if I mentioned that. I guess 39 weeks now. I'm maintaining my weight, which is still at my lowest ever, but. But this week has been so horrible, and my therapist is out of town. I convinced myself that no matter what happens tomorrow re: work, I won't cry or let anyone see that I care. But I do care. I keep thinking about it, every day. The only time I didn't was while I was writing tests, and those had their own problems, hand cramps aside. My coworkers make me feel human. They take me out for drinks and flirt and I was doing so well. I was doing so well.

My next doctors appointment, I don't want to come out the same. I'm going to be lower. I'm going to do better.

And they should probably move the scale out of the waiting room, and they should tell the nurse not to show me how to switch it to pounds so I know my weight in two separate measurements. Just a suggestion.