Dearest Reader,
Here is another extract from my diary last summer, when I was going through an ‘almost breakup’ with my now ex-boyfriend. In brief, he had ended things with me in early June but we continued to see each other; a source of much grief which I dedicated a lot of time to writing about. In this entry I also write about making some progress with my eating disorder, psychologically. Reading the words back I feel like I am looking at something somebody else has written. I am so up and down with my remission from anorexia but I am proud of what I wrote about it here and it makes me believe I can get back to that place.
Saturday 28th June 2014
Today, I have no idea what I am feeling and, to some extent, who I am recently.
I’ve spent my first days back at my parents’ hiding out in my room, hoping that no one will talk to me. I honestly don’t know why. In between watching rubbish on Netflix, I stare into space and sigh a lot, asking myself what I’m going to do and wondering why I am so lost and miserable when things were so ok for so long, for the first time since I was an innocent, happy, trouble free child.
Nothing has changed between Gabriel and I in the literal sense, but we are barely talking and I feel that both he and I are beginning to properly let go. I’ve shed so many tears and felt so much intense grief around it all already that I think I am drained of all real emotion. There is even a part of me that wishes it will hurry up and end so I can live my life to the full once again, something I feel he has robbed from me throughout all this pain. When I am here, virtually alone, it’s easier to detach myself from him and not feel as petrified by the idea of losing him as I have been feeling when we’re physically together.
When I am so many miles away I can imagine what life without him at all would be like. I do feel sad and lonely but I don’t think that’s entirely because of him and I know it will eventually pass. He has hurt me so much that I think I will resent him for a very long time. I also don’t trust him anymore, and what kind of relationship can one build upon the foundations of mistrust?
At the moment I seem to be in a state of not caring about my weight so much that it would make me want to starve myself in order to feel confident with another man. I’m beginning to believe that it honestly isn’t the most important thing to men, for us women to be stick thin. I’ve been told that over and over by all my boyfriends as my weight fluctuated constantly. All of them said they prefer me at the upper end of my weight scale. I always assumed all of them were lying to make me feel better and so that I wouldn’t self-harm with food.
It makes me sad for my former self that, with many of the men I have been with, I have gone to such extreme lengths to be skinny for them, hoping they would really want me and find me sexy. With one guy, when I was a lot younger, I can remember not eating from the day he suggested we should meet to the day we did, and often I would binge when I got home that night. I mean, really, what for?! If someone only wants me and finds me attractive because I’m really skinny then there must be something wrong with them, not me! I think I’m beginning- finally- to realise that I am not only my body. In fact, I am least of all my body, and perhaps I shouldn’t even be with people that expect me to be physically perfect. I’m not going to deny that I hate and am disgusted by me weight and shape right now, but I don’t feel like I want to stick my fingers down my throat or take laxatives or exercise excessively or not eat for ten days just because there’s a possibility I’ll sleep with someone other than my sort-of boyfriend. I’m pretty sure that’s progress for me.
michaelayoung2014 