It's Official

The trembling walk across the flagstones.

I'm fashionably late.

I don't realise at the time, but the man in the thick designer glasses and the understated floral shirt, watches from somewhere within the brick hexagon and says to his (note scribbling) trainee, "Ah. Here comes a skinny person. This must be her".

This man, I've met him before. About sixteen years ago.
I almost want to gag at the memory of a tortured, teenage me; hunched, shaking in the back of dad's car after a one off meeting with this man, my sister's consultant, in the unit where she was incarcerated.

I remember he was kind to me.
Finally: someone who wanted to know how it was for a sibling.
Muscles held taut in my gut, I clamp my jaw; frightened his listening will force a desperate stream of projectile grief.

My mother, dressed in the small laughter of middle class embarrassment, rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue.
Stupid daughter... Doesn't know WHAT she's saying..! As if WE ever lived in denial..! As if WE would ever overlook such a thing! OF COURSE we knew what was happening! OF COURSE we knew ALL ALONG!

Choking on the words forced back down my throat, I shook all the way home.
Shook as dad glanced apologetically in the rearview mirror.
Shook as dad worriedly concurred that PERHAPS it WAS possible that I had known, long before them, the reality of my sister's terrible death wish.

I didn't recognise the man, even as I tried to remember something concrete about the session we had had all those years ago.

I would never have dreamed I would end up in front of him again. And certainly not for this reason.

*****
At the end of today's assessment: the words, "Anorexia Nervosa".

Every syllable ricocheted off the wall of my chest.

How can I know and yet not know?

"You believe me? You take me seriously?"

I am frightened and shocked and ashamed and relieved and disgusted.


The question is not, whether I believe you, he says. The question is whether you can believe yourself and take this illness seriously.

Again. Bullets.

I'm not well.

I knew that.

I need another assessment appointment. We haven't quite covered everything.

We haven't?
God.

Worst thing?

I double booked it for the woman's appointment next Monday.
THAT'S how screwed my mind was.

Now what?

Before I leave, he comments on the dryness of my hands. Says he noticed as we met and shook hands.
He noticed that? What kind of person IS this?
He suggests creams.
I admit I am frightened of absorbing calories through my skin.
"Not possible", he persuades.
I nod, gritting my teeth and flashing untrusting smile.

"Ok", I lie. "I'll start using cream on the splits".
(I have eczema)
Next he'll tell me vitamins can't make you put on weight, but they can. I read up on water soluble and fat soluble vitamins. I know my stuff.

"I'm seeing ..... (my sister's name...)... this afternoon..."
Something in me freezes over
"I won't tell her I've seen you of course... confidentiality and all that..." He tails off.

"I have no idea what she thinks or feels", I offer, lamely because I am at a loss.
He looks at me, studied, careful.
"I think she's been very worried about you". Somehow, his hand is stretched out to me.
"I think she's been very jealous of me", I sink my teeth into his hand and bite down hard. "Jealous that she's in hospital and I'm not"...

He laughs (uneasily?). Blood drips from my mouth...

"...That's the only reason she gives a toss".

I walk away, my throat and eyes stinging and swelling; the metallic taste on my bottom lip.

He hates me. he hates me. He hates me.
He loves her. He loves her. He loves her.

I want to wring my own neck as I get into the car.
Maybe her neck too.

It's eleven o'clock.

The sun shines bright and I need to do a number of very bad things to get through the despair of the day.

I do all of them but still, thirteen or so hours later, I am sinking.

Corm Before The Storm

Beautiful Cornwall.

The unexpected warmth of the late October sun; the flat, brilliantly clear light; the depth of blue... This is a place I'd really love to live someday.
My friends have been great. True friends. No terrible questions. Just simple observations and a couple of honest conversations, which in all fairness, is a lot more than I have had with most people in recent months.

I hadn't meant to eat or drink tonight, yet having succumbed to the call of alcohol, I've given in to both. I feel absolute despair right now.
I'm sure I must weigh so much.
I will never go away again without my scales.

Tomorrow I drive home and in some ways, I dread all that is waiting for me.
I wish I never needed anything but oxygen again.

Bloody Therapy

To The Woman,

This hurts me more than it hurts you.



(I hope you feel it though)

This Little Piggy Went To Therapy.

It's been a pretty bad few days.

I paused as I wondered how I could possibly put this across to The Woman who sat, eyes cast down quietly, waiting for me to be ready.

I started with the weekend, which, FYI, I drank my way through.

I lost time on both evenings. I explained that on Saturday it was as though someone pressed the 'pause' button at around eleven thirty in the evening and neglected to press it again until around four in the morning.
What happened in those four and a half hours is anyone's guess. My guess is that I fell through a portal of the whisky kind.

My memory is bad enough, but add alcohol and I no longer exist at all.

The Woman listens to the story far too kindly.
My"pre emptive strike," she reflects.
"No. It's all my own stupid fault," I kick at a wall in my mind.
"Interesting word, 'fault'" she returns, and I break my toe against the wall.

Doesn't she want me to take responsibility for my actions? Hate me. Go on. Be disgusted. Tell me I'm pathetic.

(I'm suddenly very tired as I try to recall something from the session today. Another blank. Swiss cheese has nothing on my memory).

I told her about the dreams I had last night. She interprets them to be sexual. Apparently my unconscious mind is leading us to roads that need to be travelled down; roads which I am frightened of.

I wondered if she is actually a direct descendant of Freud.

Ok. So I'm part jesting, but twenty six cuts later, I can afford a little humour.

The desperation and despair that I have felt over the past three days have, at times, blown through me with a strength that has left me bent double.

i didn't make the gym once and as a consequence, combined with the calories I have consumed in alcohol, I managed to put on two pounds. Today I have barely lived a minute without sucking a piece of chocolate. It's compulsive.
Tonight I stood on the scales, hands over my face, registering the higher numbers through the gaps between my fingers.
I wanted to take a wood plane to my thighs.
A double edged blade had to suffice.

Normally a safe haven for my mind, even my workspace was invaded by the swooshing compulsion to lock myself in the second floor toilet and shred my skin with the scissors.
And all of this because of the desperation at not being able to stay in control of my body.
I need to be small enough to feel all my bones and yet, pathetically, I am sabotaging my own attempts to get thinner. More than that, I am actually putting ON weight again.

In a fit of frustration at this absurd part of myself, i declared that I could just 'give it all up'. I could eat normally again. i could just stop all this nonsense and eat.
The words even sounded hollow to me, but I carried on asserting it because a part of me wants to feel that it really could be that simple.

The Woman explains so gently, "it's a manifestation of your distress... BLANK BLANK BLANK... the extreme self loathing... BLANK BLANK...."

She goes on but I've shut my eyes and I'm holding my insides so tight against her words because her kindness is making my breath ache and my eyes sting and I can't let go, i just can't.

"Shutting me out?".

I don't know and I can't answer because loosening one part of me is all it will take for everything to split and fall apart.

I can't remember what she said then, but the pressure of her kindness leaves bruises around my eyes.

Today as I left the little house in the woods, I carried the heavy sense that I had spoken too much.
I have that same feeling about this post.

It's About Time...

... that I quit being a chicken and actually wrote something that someone might read (as opposed to small, scrawled phrases in old notebooks; and tense, over-inked lines etching some sort of representation of the way a part of me might be feeling).

So. An update, then.

The holiday.
I won't say too much. Best not to.
I flew back 5 days early.
Panic I guess.

I've had to sit very tight.
I'm desperate at having put on 5 pounds.
It feels as though I am have gone into an extreme place of desperation.

The cave within which I dwell is a dark and lonely place to be.
Unless you have had an eating disorder, I don't think you could ever understand the waves of complete hysteria lapping at my hunched body.
I am terrified.

I realise this post is profoundly lacking in anything positive but in all honesty, right now, I am desperate enough to take drastic measures.

You can't hear me but if you could, you'd hear my insides gasping and retching and groaning with the horror of having to eat and not exercise.
My stomach is swollen, bloated, distended.
I haven't had my period, AGAIN.
I am in constant pain on my right hand side (my liver I suspect) - so much so that it gets hard to stand up straight.
Despite the fact that it's not particularly warm, I wake up every night absolutely drenched in sweat. Night sweats? I'm thinking this MUST be to do with my oestrogen levels? My hormones? Does my body think that amenorrhea means the menopause?

Nobody knows.

In My Defence

I'm not going to even begin to try to analyse the 'whys' in terms of why I feel the urge to somehow protect and defend myself; mainly because I want to continue dwelling safely within the confines of the (disturbingly teenage) brick walls across which, the slogan, "you will never hurt me as much as I can hurt me" is emblazoned in dripping, white spray paint. Did I mention how safe it is here? No? Well then... allow me to explain that when I am here, nothing and no one can touch me. Even if they could cut my skin I wouldn't feel it.

In therapy today I discovered that the reason I binge (an, oh God, I'm still in the midst of a two day, non stop binge) may be similar to one of the reasons I cut. (And yes, I know you feel disgust).

It is just another attempt to do something physical in order to somehow correct / comfort / smother what is at heart, emotional

When it feels like the emotional pain is unbearable, I attempt to put it on my skin... to literally, put it on the outside of me.

When it feels as though the inner emptiness will make me implode, I attempt to physically fill the abyss.

I might be talking crap (yeah... I know. what's new?) but it's something that was discussed this evening.

Another thing was the theme of 'explosion' being the main feature of my recurrent dreams right now.

"Except," she said, "you don't EXplode, you IMplode"

"Yeah" I agree. "Yeah. Nobody would see anything had happened"

"No. All the debris is on your inside"

I thought about the blackened landscape and almost mentioned (and then thought better of it) the countless little deaths I have died and the piles of little corpses that I contain.

What am I saying? How is this a defence?

Well... you might well ask.

As per usual, I seem to have strayed from the path...

It is important to me that you guys (those reading) know that, although you may think me the number one favourite for winning the "Little Miss Can't Appreciate The Blessings She Has Cos She Is So Busy Being A Pitiful Misery Award 2010", in real life (and by that I mean, anywhere except the world of cyber - and the woman's room , which is almost as unreal) I am fully functioning, well respected young lady who you would have to be exceptionally sneaky to catch without a smile or a quip.

Part of the reason I made this space is because there is little or no space for this level of honesty in my real life. The position I hold at work, the responsibility I have for others, the fear of disgust... all contribute towards making it near impossible to show any of the stuff I write about here.

As I explained in a response to ABM, I have two very separate parts with this stuff. The first is covered in long spikes and says, 'if you don't like it, get lost'. It's an angry part that wants to lash out at you, but will instead, tear deeply into flesh that cannot be seen.

The other part of me recoils, disgusted at myself, horrified that I am daring to write, revolted by the fact that anyone would read here and say ANYTHING other than, 'WS you are a vile, Godless, self obsessed, self centred, selfish, miserable, ingrate worthy only of disgust'.

I am frightened of this response and yet, I think I deserve it. I'm angry before you say it, and yet I know it is true. In short, nobody who reads here will EVER feel the same degree of disgust towards me as I do.

I HATE the person I am on the inside.

This person you hear here.

It's a big part of the problem because, whilst nobody knows I'm like this, I am, and whilst I am, I can never be known.

I realise that people can see an issue with my weight, but I can fool them as soon as I open my mouth. Nobody who hears me sounding SO sound minded and wise would ever believe I have a disorder.

Trust me, if you KNEW me, I'd have you fooled too.

So, don't go thinking that I am some pathetic, hapless, little creature who you could slap some sense into.

You wouldn't ever see the need for that if you didn't read here.

Loser

Welcome To Hell...

...It's where I have been since Friday's therapy session.


I've scoured Google Images. Searched all the most horrible words I can think of in, a vain attempt to find a picture that captures even a tendril of the mass of ... mass of what? I don't even have the vocab for it... the mass of whatever it is that lies throbbing and bleeding inside.

It's a mass of hot, white unknowns which twist in me; sometimes surging in violent, murderous ire, sometimes burning slow and orange. Other times the mass is suddenly pain in a cold, black ache.

It's all to do with the hell that is an eating disorder.
The aftermath of a purgeless binge.
The clawing desperation to tear huge chunks of flesh from my body just to weigh less.
It's the pathetic despair of facing a future with nothing better than this.
It's the dull agony of depression.

I'm screaming but the screaming isn't a sound. It's the absence of sound. It's the silence that becomes an unbearable pressure on ears that ring, desperate for noise, desperate to be freed from oppressive quiet.

Therapy must have really been huge in Friday, right?

You'd think.

You'd think there would be some profound reason for the fact that I've spent the weekend under duvet, trying to stem the bleeding from my finger which ended up getting the raw deal from the double edged blade.

All it was, so far as I can work out, was that the woman didn't really seem to understand.

I'm stuck for words to explain and my head is screaming at me to stop typing this. Such resistance.

The woman suggested that when I have my own place (I'm trying to buy a house) it will be easier for me and my eating disorder (my need for control) will die down.
She said that many people just found a weight they could live with and then got on with living.
She mentioned the gym and said maybe I'd just enjoy the healthy exercise. She talked about food and suggested that I would find a balance.

(My face is threatening to collapse as I type)

Okay so I have typed and deleted in circles for five minutes so I'll just be done with it now.

I heard her say that
your life will be a struggle forever
your ED will never really go away.
and it all basically amounts to
this is the best that you can hope for

...and the words of an old favourite ring in my ears, as they so often do when death feels the best chocolate in the box...

"and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep"

(K. Rogers. The Gambler)

I predict a heart attack.
Or diabetes.

And
I found this which, I suppose, isn't too bad a representation when it's all said and done.

Writing About Therapy.

Aside from the obvious prerequisite that one can actually recall something about a therapy session, I've discovered that writing about therapy makes at least two demands on a person.
The first is that the victim (did I just say 'victim'? Obviously, I meant 'client') is able to find words for what he or she is experiencing or has, in the past, experienced, and the second is that he or she has the guts to engage with some of the things that are being looked at.
Suffice to say, I've not really had much of either lately. More to the point, as a previous post explained, dissociation has made the act of recalling sessions somewhat impossible.

Today I was grateful not to be continuing in the same vein as last Monday's session, which, predictably (some might even say, conveniently) , my little chicken mind can't remember at this very moment in time.
We did however, end up talking about school days and white knuckle bus journeys and terror and little girls who cried in the mirror because they held so much hatred for the image that stared back at them.

We've been talking lately about the parts and, she has also thrown in the term, 'splits'.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of 'splits' (gleaned from a friend and a little bit of surf power) is that they are very similar to parts except that they are formed at a younger age and have to do with the inability to recognise that good and bad can exist alongside each other. So for instance, in my case, I may glorify someone, unable to see the 'bad' that they may have done because a part of me that contains memories of anyhing negative about the person is split off.
I might be SO wrong here. In all honesty, the woman may have explained but I can't remember, let alone get my head around the concept so...

Sometimes I wonder whether therapy is actually unhealthy...

I remember the days when a "split" was a spliced banana draped in velvet chocolate with sprinkles that were bad for my eczema; when "parts" were things like arms and legs and ears, and "dissociation" meant 'to quit hanging about with'... or... actually, a word that wouldn't even have been in my vocabulary.

Okay. I know I would still have been terrified that the mind thing is early onset Alzheimer's, and I know that I would still have been in pain... I know it's not a simple as all that... But still...

Still.

Beyond Friday.

After Friday's session, being the mature adult that I am, I drank myself stupid.

And what better way of dealing with the desperation I was feeling?

(OK. You may not hear the irony that question is heavily weighted with... You'll just have to take my word for it. It is).

Although it feels as though almost every cell in my body has been screaming, the cries have been largely unintelligible. Trying to translate has been like walking down the street past people's conversations, catching snippets, exclamations, disjointed and unrelated.

I seem to be in very separate parts.

One part has been in agony.

Some nights have seen me curled, clutching my bear against my stomach, pressing into the pain in a fruitless attempt to make it subside.

Applying pressure to the wound, is what springs to mind as I type.

The writhing and the breathless, empty pain, reminiscent of the twisting nights where my sister's illness was so new and the loss was so raw and immediate.

That same deep and desperate ache.

The ungroaned, churning and building in the middle of me.

So, one part agony... Another, disgust and hatred.

It started the following afternoon when, despite the alcohol - induced drum, beating in my head, I stood under the shower, my inside no more than a shell. Sans feeling.

Suddenly and unaccountably, a photograph appeared in my head.

Dad and three little girls wearing white spotted, cotton sundresses.

One little girl is standing slightly in front of the others three figures. She has her arms folded across her, clutching her arms as though cold; and her face is a picture of frowning discontent.

Perhaps I was cold. Perhaps sulking.

But in less than a second, I was flooded with a disgust and self hatred so strong it might have split me in half, my body the tower of Babel and my horror as powerful as God's own rage.

It's my fault. I was the sister from hell. If I hadn't existed, she would have been ok. It must have been cold there in my shadow, playing in my head.
And that little girl, THAT little girl, she needs to be starved to death.

And she is.
I'm at my lowest weight in a long time today. It feels good to be in control of her.

A third part experiences rage.

Monday's session, which I can't much recall, stoked a fire of anger at myself.

How dare I have this... How dare I?

Everyday I work with children who have suffered the most unimaginable trauma.

Torture, rape, abuse, terrible loss.

I go and see the woman, I tell her and she listens.

She talks about me. My pain. Things that may or may not have happened and I am so, so, so angry.

Like me, this woman hears the most awful things. Atrocities. People who have suffered beyond what I would consider to be bearable.

And here I am. And here she is listening.

I can't get past the fact she must be disgusted by me.

I am invalid. INvalid. There are no explanations or excuses that justify my pain.

My propensity for weakness is astounding.

On Monday my anger and my fear is too much, and I vow not to go back to her and I am absolutely certain that I won't, because I can't justify it.

I consider an email which will ensure I am too ashamed to ever return, just in case my will were to weaken.

And now, come Wednesday, I am not sure how I will cope with not having a place to take this pain. Because I can hate it, deny it, minimise it, rage and resent it all I like. But it's still there and

it still makes me fold in half.

And I hate myself with all the raw passion of an angst ridden teenager, and all the weary loneliness of a man at the end of an unfulfilled life.

Today has mostly been a series of blanks inside.

My Very Sad Case came into my room first thing. She wanted to talk about a shock she had had.

I listened and spoke carefully. I wanted her to feel the care.

I taught my lessons, I ate some lettuce and tomatoes, I wrote my plans and I came home and curled up and slept.

Writing this post, I am again struck by the wave of disgust at myself.

There is no end to it.

Difficulty and Disgust

Even a master of understatement would struggle to say that therapy had been anything less than "extremely difficult" this week.

Difficult.

Difficult to find words to write about it.
Difficult to find anything concrete to hang the words on.
Difficult to be in my body right now.
Difficult to feel anything other than utter disgust for myself.

On Friday night I sat in her room and tried my best to stay still as my insides curled and contorted and twisted at the touch of her words.

It's hard to remember what she said.
My despair was so great and she pounded on with her search for meaning... the whys. The effing whys.
My only why is often, 'why does it matter?'
Why does it matter why my parents transfer things onto me?
Why does it matter if Dad's doing this or that ?
Why does it matter if .........

At times, her questions and her wondering lead me to a place where I no longer exist. Where nothing matters and I doubt that anything I have ever felt is real.

On Friday, she told me I had been silently furious in the previous session.
I think she may have been right but I can't recall feeling anything at all.
She had 'threatened' to call my doctor.
I told her she wouldn't see me for dust if she ever did that.
And I mean it.

I was angry on Friday too.
She didn't understand how hard it is for a single person (who doesn't even know whether or not "the future" is a possibility) to buy a house and live with the pressure of being solely responsible for mortgage repayments.
To be fair, she did admit that she hadn't really thought about how hard it might be.

I felt she was disgusted by me.
I heard her mind screaming at me underneath her carefully restrained words.

"Pathetic.
Weak.
Pull yourself together.
Stop being so lame.
Don't be such a wuss.
For fucks sake, get over it.
You are wasting my time.
Grow up.
I want to slap you.
You disgust me.
You're revolting.
You pathetic little victim.
Stop your whining.
I can't deal with your ridiculous feelings.
You are irrational and absurd.
Stop being so complicated.
Don' be so negative.
I could wring your neck.
You need a good smack."

That's what I heard.

I asked her if she was disgusted.

No. She SAID.
Quite categorically.
No.
(But then she would wouldn't she)
Instead she reeled off some disgusting, pity laden bull about how I was wretched and suffering. She took advantage of my choked inability to argue to tell me that no matter how much I didn't want to know it, my parents had not "cloaked me" enough (go figure).
And I cried out of the sheer anger at her, the utter exhaustion and pointlessness of it all.

So what?

So what if this happened, or that didn't happen? So what?
It still leaves me where I am now.
I need to change that.
Not look at why or how or when.

My middle sister is in hospital again and my youngest sister doesn't want to be anywhere near me because she can't bear to see me losing weight.

I feel like I have somehow lost everyone.

My skin screams that it is almost unbearable.

Therapy

If you like to read careful, well thought out, balanced thoughts, penned by the dim glow of understanding and hindsight which therapy allegedly affords us, please look away now.
In fact, look away anyway.

My therapy session...

I don't even think I can find words.
I haven't been able to think about any words she said.

She spoke about "mentalising".
(Don't ask me, never heard of it)

Apparently, according to her with the giant therapeutic crystal ball, my parents were unable to do this with my / our feelings.

So nobody heard them and nobody bore them.

Woe is me, I cry in mock distress.

What does she want me to do?
Throw a pity party for myself? The much loved, much encouraged, much adored eldest child who, by comparison to most of the population on earth, barely knows what it IS to suffer?
Does she want me to be upset because my parents, in their love and their desperation to bring us u to be moral and responsible members of society, deemed it okay to smack us sometimes?
Does she want me, in my comfortable Western world lifestyle, to weep and wail because things didn't work out quite the way they would have done in an ideal world?

I disgust myself and today, she disgusted me too.

I walked in today and she just pointed a gun at me and fired repeatedly until I told her that I couldn't take it anymore and I wanted to leave.

She stopped firing but somewhere, something had curled u during the shoot, hands over ears, feet drawn in tightly.
I don't even know what I felt, or if I felt at all.

I'm a mass of contradictions, she says.
I nod.
I'm caught in absolute extremes, she says.
I nod.
My parts are totally opposite extremes, she says.
Haven't you already said that? I nod.

It's because nobody could hear the feelings.
I stop nodding.
Nobody could bear them or make them manageable.

I don't believe this.

Okay, look at the evidence.
So I do.
And yes, it seems to be there, but I CAN'T reconcile it. Not with what I know about how loved we are.
I can't.

I'm not even touching the throbbing pain I have in my chest.
It sickens me as it pulses.
I breathe through my nose as nausea beats in waves, my mouth shut tightly.

Today her kindness made me want to snap myself into small, sharp pieces.
I hate her for it.
I don't want it. It will make me ill.
She will take it away and I will be left, a small, curled skeleton in the back of an hollow shell.

Sitting Tight

Sometimes I have to stay very still and keep away from reflection... From my reflection, I guess.

It's been like that lately.

Even in therapy I have stayed as far away as I can.

I call it, "staying on my outside".

It can be a strange place to be because, once I'm there, I find it very hard to believe in any of the things I struggle with. I even believe that I am lying and that nothing inside really exists.

At the moment, I am not sure.

What I have been struggling with a lot is the selfishness I see in myself.

I feel as though therapy, with its emphasis on me, has caused an increasing preoccupation with SELF.

I have reached new levels of self disgust lately.

Again, SELF.

Hence I have been staying on my outside.

On the outside I function very well because it is all about the needs of others.

I haven't been here at all lately and so haven't read anything. I'm trying to catch up on lots of blogs posts I have missed.

Bear with me...

And Gail...

yes.

Warning.

If you could see beyond the iron,

the posion spikes, curling wires

the skin ripped red and white

gashed, gnashed, wept upon

in fury, in agony, in hatred

raw, numb nothing

numb

nothing



You think your kindness

your prayer, your touch

would soothe

would stay

would answer.



Ha!



If you saw beneath my skin

Your lip would curl in the corner

and then twist,

Your tongue screaming in surprise

expecting citrus sweetness

sucking, now curling,

rancid overflow of bitter scorn.

Your hand would scream

scaulded, scabbed, scarred

whipped away, withdrawn

revulsed, repulsed

spattered with acrid pus of greed,

of need.



Inside,

I am putrid

How can truth exist

in such decay?



Stay away

I will infect those

who refuse to stay

on the outside.

I am afraid

that if kindness doesn't kill me,

Me will kill kindness.

Circling at One Thousand Feet

It's ironic that as I sit down once again, to tackle the subject of eating disorders, and in particular, anorexia, I have an image of me circling my subject like a very hungry animal circles a potential feed; warily and full of tentative, watchful suspicion that what is being circled might suddenly retaliate with a defensive blow from a place which went unnoticed.

This topic. I'm afraid it has the potential to do that.

I have written a fair bit about my sister. In fact, there are a few posts here about her and although it is not easy to write about, it's more because of my sense of hopelessness around making others understand than any deep pain at the memories of the experiences.
In fact, if anything, I have very few memories and the ones I do have are almost totally devoid of any feeling.
Giant pools of nothingness swill and wash around my insides much of the time. I feel that underneath everything... under all the angst and the pain and the upset, there is nothing.
Just an empty, black void.

Hopping out of that void for a minute, it's fair to say I have been circling my own feed for a while now.
I've burnt a lot of calories with my circling.

I don't expect understanding.
In fact, if anything, I expect to be met with the same level of horror and disgust that I feel about myself.

Having such an intimate knowledge of what it is to have to stand by and watch a loved one scream and twist in an unreachable cage, shredding themselves against the razor bars, you'd think that:

1. I would have more common sense and


2. I would never be as selfish as to inflict it on those who are already so broken.

But no.
It seems that I lack the ability to apply the logic I am such close friends with and that I am clearly so completely wrapped up in myself, that I care very little that others will suffer.

I have developed an eating problem.

I don't want to call it Anorexia because that is what my sister has suffered from for over half of her years on earth, and any similarities between us disappeared long ago.
It also just feels fundamentally wrong to be "anorexic".
I'm just not LIKE that.
It's not me.
I'm not the type.

And... at any given moment, I feel in grave danger of all my control slipping away from me. In other words, I don't know if I can keep up the starvation, the denial, the ferocity of the exercise regime BUT if I even think about going easier on myself, I will be unable to stop the gorging and the uncontollable binging that will follow.

I recognise that wht I have just written lacks balance.

It is a problem I can't find an answer to.

I need extreme lack.

Hollow

Anger has burned through me and left a black, hollow space of silent ash and dust.

It's a story I won't be able to tell.

Silence is heavy but safer.

If I could place a pillow over the hurt, I would suffocate it. Sit on it until it stopped moving.

I hate it that I sound this pathetic right now. I disgust myself.