The eating disorder gene.

If I was a scientist I could make a fortune, write a bunch of technical papers to get published. I would isolate the eating disorder gene in a strand of DNA. It's a shame I don't like or have a future in science. My mum spent about a year taking half an ecstasy pill every morning so she wouldn't gain weight, filling her mind with grotesque thoughts every time she saw a dirty plate or food to make herself throw up. My grandma considered a tablespoon of peanut butter to be lunch, my great grandma never weighed over 90lb and like the rest of my family could not deal with fat people. I had never seen eating disorders as genetic. It seemed so wholly mine, such a personal thing to me that I never thought there could actually be a link through the family line. My mother just told me that when I'm her age I won't even think about it, like her. It seems so far away to her now that she had never put it in to context that she had an eating disorder. My response was 'maybe, if it doesn't entirely fuck me up before I get to your age.'

xo

Just another Sunday morning.

I haven’t slept. I had a minor freak out at 5 this morning, during a rush of abandon I put on a pot of pasta, took the cheese out of the fridge and waited, bubbling with some kind of strange excitement I shuttled back and forth from the kitchen to my room. A few hours earlier I had logged on to Pretty Thin chat for the first time in over a year so I spilled this horrible confession and someone managed to talk me down. I drained the pasta, dumped it in to a plastic bag, put the cheese back in the fridge and made noodles. The very idea of shovelling the pasta, drowned in butter and cheese in to my mouth drove me to the gym, the Sunday 8am crown all running and cycling and jumping wildly about me. I stretched, I twisted, I lifted, I flexed and I did my half run, half speed walk up the mechanical hill towards the disappearing point in my head. Sweating, I sat down in the stretching area and I stared absent minded out of the windows that looked over the white and pink blossoms that lined the garden, decorating the water fountain, reminding me that it’s spring. I momentarily heard my own thoughts - that’s the wonder of going to the gym, it’s an hour or two or three where all thoughts are muted and replaced with music and panting – and I wondered if I could realistically lose 20lb in 2 and a half months. All my excitement about going to Ibiza has a thin layer of fear over it; I can’t look like this when I go. I can’t smile and laugh in the sun whilst hearing myself silently scream because I’m looking at myself in a bikini, all ugly scars and body taking up more than its allotted space.

xo

Impatience.

I'm on PrettyThin chat, a serious blast from the past. Anyhow I just lay in the bath for an hour, sentimentally reading Wasted searching for a kind of trigger, yes, actually looking for something to speed up this disease. Never mind that I ate 171 calories yesterday, never mind that I'm increasingly dizzy, never mind that I'm forgetting what it feels like to feel alright. My pure lack of patience is driving me deeper, I want to be thinner, now. I should be scared but I'm not. Where is the self protective part in my psyche?

xo

Time for a plan?

I am looking through blogs, yours and others and I keep seeing 'stats' and plans, people seemingly committed who are following some kind of system, I wonder if they're losing more than me, if their plans are working. I'm just eating very little, do I need to devise a plan? Honestly I'm a little worried that following some strictly plotted out design will remind me that I'm actually back here.. Plus with limitations I might repeatedly fall off the wagon which as trial and error has proved only results in me berating myself over and over again. I don't know what to do. Any suggestions?

This relapse seems to be uncertain, I want to be back at 84 but I know that I wouldn't stop at 84, I'd go lower again which had me looking a little like golem..

No awkward introductions.

Last night I got very high with an old friend, we hadn't seen each other in almost three years and consequently I headed over to her place to smoke and catch up. We laughed the night away and bathed in nostalgia, filled our lungs with smoke and told each other about all that had happened. We spoke about our various problems, we had conversations about my scars and then on too how much better we were doing now, finally landing on our 'previous' problems with food, each nosing around, wondering if the other was really 'well.' Then I ate a cookie. Having eaten a grand total of 859 calories in 4 days, this slight omission of hunger, 'committing this cardinal sin' caused me to go in to a complete frenzy, to the shop and back we went and then we ate, we ravished each packet, each mini meal but nothing I ate sated me, in fact it all left me pathetically dissatisfied.

When the morning rolled around I was crumpled and rancid on the inside, my shrunken stomach bursting with an amount of food it just can't handle. Having not slept, I left, craving my own home with it's skimmed milk and safe foods. The world was too bright, too much, I shied away from such a glare, I squinted and kept my eyes on the floor. Getting on the tube, a crush of bodies, all pressing inwards, I got too hot, I got too dizzy, an astonishing pain was and is encompassing my stomach - I don't think I can accurately describe the pain of a genuine binge on a withered stomach to anyone who hasn't felt it - the floor began to fly up at me and I put my arm up to rest against the cold stone wall. This didn't make sense, my mind was spinning with DIY statistics and its too soon, this isn't fair.

There is no where like a tube station to disappear, to blend in, everyone is far too busy and far too important and has to get where they're going and they're all going to be late, this faceless, bustling crowd is where I was and for a whole 5 minutes I felt just like everyone else, I was just a woman in heels with a handbag, walking at her usual speedy pace, fighting desperately with her gag reflex and trying not to pass out. Okay so maybe not just like everyone else.

Finally home I fling off my clothes and crawl in to bed. I wonder how someone so painfully full can be so desperately hungry and write to you. No awkward introductions, I'm Anooshka, I'm 16 and this is my life.

xo