Mini-update on T. and a small treatise on Romance

Thanks for everyone's comments on my last post; it fills me with unabashed gladness and glee that you took some entertainment value from my dating fiasco, and that you actually applauded my slightly inappropriate but liberating move of Leaving Without Looking Back, instead of chiding me for my childish behaviour.

T. texted me again yesterday, a completely passive aggressive text of "Yeah, must have been really hard to be stuck with such a douchebag, right?".

I had absolutely nothing to add to that sudden spot of self-awareness, apart from utter agreement, so I didn't respond.
For once, I thought, let's just keep to the adage of not saying anything at all if you don't have anything nice to say.

On the whole, I'm just getting tired of the romance game.

I'm a lost cause.

On the one hand, I am fairly anti social, I can't stand people more often than not and I sometimes despair of the feeling that I'm incapable of forming a relevant connection to anyone, with the possible exception of a few close friends none of whom I would want to date.

On the other hand, romance seems an important part of life to me - I do crave it, I crave the chemistry, I crave touch, I crave the rush and the excitement, that tingling sensation that you get along the edges of your spine when you suspect that things might be Developing Into A Certain Direction.

It's not just the sex I am interested in, either - I crave the intimacy, the mental connection, the build-up, the entire package.

Which is a shame, because a craving for just sex would always be easier to satisfy.
I am a sensual person at the core, but I am also, in addition to that, somewhat of an incurable romantic.

Throw that in with being uncontrollably impatient and misanthropic towards people who I find do not meet my standards of at least semi-coherent conversation (and there seem to be a lot of them these days), and you get someone who is haughty and desperate all at once; Too High Standards and yet Starving For Anything At All.

I tire of romantic partners easily, even prospective ones.
Yet I wish for and dream of someone whom I'd not tire of ever again, nor him of me.

And finally, on top of everything else, there is also that voice - that voice that I can never for the life of me shut up, that voice that whispers to me constantly: "You are a fat fuck. No one's ever gonna love you unless you stop being such a fat fuck."

Put together, it doesn't amount to very much by way of being able to develop or maintain a healthy relationship; or even a fling-tastic casual one.

I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this - I guess I just needed a good old rant, and I thank you all for listening to this soon-to-be old spinster and crooked crone raving about her inability to Get On Good Terms With Romance.

Oh well, I figure if I do make it to spinsterish Old Crone status some day, at least I'll have one entertaining story to tell - the story of T. and the night when I Disappeared Through The Backdoor.

I take morbid delight in my inability to learn from mistakes.

First of all, I have a confession to make: I DID weigh myself, at some point after starting this blog, despite saying that I really couldn't bear to know.

I did weigh myself, pretty much exactly a week ago, just two days after the "Serious Business" post were I still said I hadn't and wouldn't.

I did step on the scales, and kept the result to myself, because it was just as I had feared - not quite 60 kg, but a solid 59, hovering in between 58.9 and 59.2 as I stood there, shifting around on my feet to see whether that number wouldn't yet, magically, go down.

The good news in the matter, however, is today's revelation: I step on the scales this morning, not even entirely empty, not having been to the bathroom yet, already having had a bit of water - and it tells me 57.1.

I step off and on again, can't believe this stroke of luck.
Seems like the on-off ABC, the exercise, the one day of proper fasting have already done some good.

The bad news is the fact that I still look like a freaking whale of course, unchanged, 2 kg do not make a difference in the monstrously appalling dimensions of my thighs, the not-quite-flat-enough-ness of my belly.

Although I have seen some progress there; since I've started working out properly again, there are already teensy tiny changes and improvements in muscle definition along the legs, the abs.

I even imagine that I am already starting to feel a shift in the monstrosity that is my hips, but that might be wishful thinking entirely.

Still, wishful thinking is what fuels me to go on, and a little bit of a starting enthusiasm never hurts.

On the downside, I did eat today, although I wasn't really hungry - I went on fasting for most of the day and it wasn't even hard, it felt natural and easy.

Still, I was feeling suspicious for some reason, distrustful of my own ability to fast because I hadn't done this in so long.
So as the day wore on, I convinced myself that having a little something to eat would be "safest".

And there I went, eating, and immediately regretting it the second I had swallowed it down. It felt wrong, my high was destroyed, my belly full and my sense of peace and centered calm shattered to a thousand glittering pieces.

I am feeling shitty right now, on the verge of depression, but I will keep it together.

I have learned a valuable lesson; one that I already knew but apparently have to re-learn once more:
That I shouldn't eat when my body isn't even telling me to, that I should trust my body to handle itself and warn me by outrageous hunger or dizziness should the fasting become too much to bear, that I should trust my mind to handle the slightly heightened mental stress of running on empty for a while, that I shouldn't feel compelled to feed them in advance just because I fear they might not be able to deal.

I have learned, as I already knew, that it is very easy for myself to achieve a little happiness through careful fasting, and very easy to completely ruin the mood by eating when I do not need to.

I will try to keep these lessons in mind once again, to ease back into the confidence that I can handle a little hunger, a little silence, a little stillness of the body and mind.

I will try to listen to my instincts next time, to be patient and relaxed instead of nervous, to trust myself and discard the automated voice that insists a human being must have food to survive, and going without it for over 24 hours still feeling no hunger must be unnatural.

(Of course, that voice is technically right - a human DOES need nutrition in the long run, but that is not the point of a fast, and going without it for a few days will not kill you - so I need to shut that voice up for a little bit in order to concentrate on the void inside of me, to let it nourish me, replenish me during some food-free days of peace and silence.)

I hope I didn't ruin my progress too much; on the scale and in my emotional landscape, by tripping up my confidence and breaking the fast.

... and because I don't want this post to be filled with purely negative raving, I'm adding a little something from the "inspirational" department, a lovely fictional being with blue hair and blue tears, by the name of Jill, a creation of formidable genius Enki Bilal.

That image of her seemed to fit the mood of my post, and I'm using it with all due respect and copyright acknowledgement to Monsieur Bilal himself.
I love all of his graphic novels almost equally, but La Trilogie Nikopol was the first of his works I fell in love with, and of course first love lasts a lifetime.

If you haven't read them I can only encourage you to do so; it is worthwhile also to work your way through the French original, even if your French is as poor as mine.

Or, if you want a quick introduction to his world, I recommend the loosely-based movie adaptation Immortel, where Linda Hardy delivers quite a watchable, and incidentally rater skinny performance as Jill.





PS: Don't you just love the ironic juxtaposition created by those last two, completely unrelated panels when you put them together in this fashion?
Yeah, I'm deep like that...

Serious Business

After a week of so-so restricting, I've decided I need a plan.

I need a firm and serious regime to adhere to, instead of starting my day without a definite maximum level of calorie intake in mind.

Restricting "into the Blue" has led to some fairly good days, where I stayed around 500 to 650 - but also to a major binge day and a few so-so ones, like yesterday.

I didn't binge yesterday, not exactly.
Rather, some friends of mine quite spontaneously invited themselves over to my place for brunch, bringing most components of said brunch with them and only asking me to supply a few more missing pieces.

I was thrilled about them coming over - they are wonderful friends, more so than I deserve really, for not being mad but wanting to cheer me up after I have pretty much hidden under the duvet, given in to depression and not answered the phone to anyone for weeks.

I was less thrilled about the "brunch"-part, obviously... I made a fruit salad and an omelet, supplied freshly pressed orange juice and a lot of low-cal snacks like baby tomatoes and chicory leaves.

Still, I couldn't get by eating nothing but small tomatoes - not only would it have caused attention, it would have been infinitely hurtful of me to reject all the food they made and brought for me, and to reject their thoughtful idea of a comfy and relaxed day of eating and chatting together.

So I ate - I didn't go overboard but I couldn't exactly weight and measure the food I consumed either, and with some of the more fancy stuff they brought I have no idea what the calorie content might have been.

Although I did try to minimize the damage - they ended up staying over til midnight, and at various points throughout the day the others would get up and get themselves a fresh plate full of left-overs from the brunch, as a snack, a late lunch, dinner, second dinner, whatever.

I, however, maintained that I was still full from the morning's eating, and politely refused every third and second helping I was offered after the initial brunch-period was over, so in principle I only ate once all day.
Still, because that "one" meal was a lengthy and copious one, I strongly assume the calorie intake was enough to gain, in the end.

I still haven't weighed myself yet - but from the way I look, I strongly assume it hasn't budged from the 60 or at least 59 I estimated it to be.

So, to get on track, I have decided to make up an individual plan for myself detailing how much I want to consume over the next 20 days.
It should incorporate a fast about once a week, as it has been too long since I've done that, but I'm not doing ABC or 2468 or any other existing plan.
I think I need to find something individual for myself that I can stick to right now, and that might provide results in the time-frame I have in mind.

Stay tuned, I'll keep you updated.

Tonight, I am invited to a party and will later go out clubbing with my friends, probably, so I have to take care to limit my alcohol intake (actually, I'll see whether it will be possible to get away with not drinking at all), and of course to not eat any party snacks.

I think it won't be too hard though - at the fist party, I will say that a) I have already eaten at home and b) I cannot drink too much because I will be going out later. Meeting up with my friends, the excuse will be that I already drank a lot at the previous party and am feeling rather tipsy now, so no more alcohol for a while, please.

... actually, I think today will be a good day. I also think this was a rather uneventful post; I do apologize, I simply had to think aloud and organise my thoughts on how I want to proceed in relation to food and weight.

In other, possibly slightly more exciting news: My mother called this morning, and actually apologized for her behaviour the other day, saying she should have perhaps been a bit more understanding.

She friggin apologized, people!

Knowing my mother, that is quite a big deal, and a rather pleasant surprise at that.
I'm deciding to feel happy about this, as despite the rocky nature of our relationship I do prefer to be on good terms with her.

Have a wonderful Saturday everyone, I hope you all get to do something you like. <3

Update, late afternoon of the same day:

All right, change of plans - I think I'm doing the ABC after all.

Two main factors were my inspiration in this change of heart:
1) I just read Bella's post, where she said she would be starting abc tomorrow, and it inspired me to go along (humans are gregarious animals, ain't that the truth..) and "inspiration" number 2:

I literally just met a "friend" I hadn't seen in a while, and he asked me whether I had put on weight.

... yeah. I think well can all imagine how ecstatic that made me feel.

So, I decided I need to stop dicking around and making excuses - a 20 day plan won't even cut it, I need to think way more long term than that and abc seems like a good start.

Plus, I haven't been doing too well in coming up with my own plan anyway, so I will focus my creative endeavors elsewhere and go with what is tried and tested in the restricting department.

It's settled; I'll continue trying to be good today (hopefully, 280 cals so far), and then officially get on the abc wagon tomorrow...

Goals

To update; I did finally manage to calm down last night, although it took forever.
Blogging proved to be quite cathartic though, and major thanks to Ancora and Athanasy for your helpful and supportive comments, love you guys to bits! <3

Despite no sleep and feeling utterly shitty, I also passed an oral exam today - but it was rather gruesomely embarrassing, I only just made it by a narrow margin.
Did I feel relieved when it was done with, anyway?

Let me put it like this - say you spend several months being brutally tortured in a dungeon by some absolutely merciless abomination straight from the depths of hell; you might rightfully abound in joy when you are finally freed and the entire ordeal is over.
Much more likely though, you will be too scarred and traumatised by the experience to feel any relief at all - and that was what that exam felt like.

(obligatory PC addendum: I am not a complete moron, and I do realize no actual real-life torture experience compares to something as trite and mundane as an exam. I'm doing this for comedic hyperbole, obviously - and because, in my crazy pathetic mind, it really felt THAT bad to get another chance to show myself just how much of a worthless worthless loser I really am.)

Anyway, I digress, so on the topic of goals:

I want to be carful about setting them weight-wise - disappointment is already a major theme in my wretched little brain, and I don't want to set myself up for more of the same.

Still, there is this:
In less than a month, less than three weeks really, I will be attending a concert of a band I adore.
I happen to have reasonable cause to suspect, nay fear, that this concert might also be attended by The Coward, the Boy That I Still Long For Despite Knowing That I REALLY Shouldn't.

And his new girlfriend, of course.

From what I hear through mutual friends, they never do anything separately anymore.
So if either of them is there, the other will be.

And then I will be meeting a personalized nightmare of loss and rejection in double force, instead of enjoying a relaxing evening where I shut everything out of my brain except for the music.

The thing is (and I use that phrase way too often lately), that I know weight is pretty much the one issue where I can get to her.

I happen to know that she is equally messed up as I am in the food department, that weight and clothes sizes hold the same morbid appeal for her, and that she defines herself, much as I do, through the space that is or isn't visible between her thighs.

So of course, the petty bitter side of me dictates that I have to be super skinny, that I have to fuel her insecurities by nourishing my own, that I have to beat her at being thin at least if I can't beat her at winning his love.

If I have to run the risk of running into her, into them, then I would love for her to be shocked and envious at the sight of me.
I know that I am grasping for straws and that my attempt at physical superiority to her is petty; but that's what you would expect from a bitter person, it's the best I can do.

I am unsure what my goal for those three weeks should be though, how much I would want to have lost by then.
I'm out of touch with what is even realistic, what I am actually capable of achieving.

So, I think I'm going to give it a few more days, see how I'm doing and where I'm at, then try to decide what goal would be achievable and sufficient for my petty revenge.

Operation Skinny For The Wrong Reasons starts tomorrow... (There's always another reason to starve, isn't there? And right now I'm damn glad about it, I need incentive to stay on track; I could pretty much use incentive for a lot of things these days.)

Positive Thought of the Day:

I absolutely adore the girl I'm stealing for today's picture, her outlandish glamorousness, her almost inhumane body posture in that glittering suit - very David Bowie Ziggy-Stardust-era; also reminds me of the foam-spilling poise of his alien character in The Man Who Fell to Earth in a way.

(Bowie himself never seems to eat, does he? Certainly didn't during the seventies, when he lived on "red peppers, milk and cocaine"...
Alas, that doesn't really seem like a recommendable long-term plan either.... still, I wouldn't mind to posses the otherworldly razor-blade-ish grace of the Thin White Duke.)

Cal count standing at 550 and I'm actually going to bed now, because I feel like a walking trainwreck - so that's quite agreeable!

Sunday's essay rant: Food and I, the endless dance

I know that my relationship with food isn't exactly "normal" or healthy, that it hasn't been for ages - certainly not since I was a 12-year old kid, with my parents begging, yelling, threatening, pleading with me to have "just a few spoonfuls of soup, please!", and me crying into my soup as if that was the end of the world, wailing like there was no tomorrow, thinking that they were torturing me, trying to destroy my life; that they wanted to purposefully turn me into a fat and hideous monster.

Here's the thing though - I have never felt "hindered" by that, I have never felt restricted in my liberty by the desire to be slim, the desire not to eat.

I have felt, instead - perhaps falsely - that the times I was most at liberty, most at peace with myself, were those where that desire came to fruition.

Times when I was fasting every other day and going to the gym often twice in 24 hours, were the times when I felt "right" and freed from the oppression and restriction that masses of fat and the crushing failure associated with them impose.

Really, it is the other end of the scale, no pun intended, that has always made me feel trapped, imprisoned.
The moments when I'm bingeing, eating far too much although I'm not even hungry, eating and eating because if I'm not eating nothing then, hey, I might just as well eat everything.
Because I am unable to distinguish a margin of "just right" in between extremes, because there's either all or nothing, so every bite that passes my lips seems "too much".

And once that first bite of too-much, of more-than-nothing has been consumed, the day has turned into a bad day anyway, and I might as well, no I actively need to make it official by wrecking it with ridiculous amounts of food, so as to punish my transgression, so as to show myself just how properly I have messed up.

I am sure a lot of you are all too familiar with the mechanisms I am talking about...
The thing is, that I cannot bring myself to see the restricting/starving side of things as the oppressive, abusive partner in that dance.
I realize it is a masochism tango on the whole, still only one participant seems hurtful, the other endlessly liberating.

The days were I actually manage to consume few enough calories so as not to trigger that switch in my brain to flip, as not to trigger a binge because "it has all gone wrong, anyway" - those are the good days.
I feel proud then, like a bulimic who has manged to keep their food down for a change, has managed to eat little enough so they won't feel the need to purge.

Only I don't purge when that switch gets flipped, when I've had that one piece of fruit salad too many, I simply start bingeing where I have been eating "reasonably" before.
I've always hated the thought of purging enough to avoid it on most occasions (I go out of my way not to throw up out of "natural" causes even), which I guess is some kind of blessing - and still I engage in that ridiculous "all or nothing" scheme, where everything spins out of control as soon as I feel I haven't stayed completely in the straight and narrow with restricting my intake.

I don't know what that makes me or where it will lead; all I know is that I want to go back to the good days, where I keep myself in check and keep my intake in check, where I starve myself just enough to be skinny and free.

And I know that am unable, at this point, to see those days as anything other than liberating, highly desirable.

PS: Getting graphic on the subject of food, I'll add today's estimated calorie intake which stands at about 620 (Half a grapefruit, a cup of steamed veggies, 170g of soy yogurt mixed with applesauce - they incidentally list the same calorie content per 100g -, a 70g piece of a boiled potato, a smoothie at 133 cals, 2 cocktail gherkins, half a slice of brown bread and 40 g of Gouda).

Meh, that's ok, about same as yesterday; yet I feel full and vaguely guilty.

So much for the no-binge-days being liberating, eh? I guess it only makes me feel that way when I am already skinny, otherwise the hideousness of the bod cancels everything out.

Oh well, gotta think positive though, and a moderately successful restricting day is certainly good news.

Ineffectual Musings

Perfection... I've always been obsessed with that little world, and I know I am far far from alone in that.

It is often curious to me why human beings work the way we do, and why that little word holds so much power over us.

How it is that the concept of perfection can motivate us so much, elevate us, crush us, excite us.

How the thought, that every little part, every centimeter of our bodies, minds, even souls could be perfect, seems so liberating and promising, and daunting all at once.

Still, it is all that sustains me often.

My life is far from perfect right now.
My flat isn't perfect - it's a bloody mess.
My mind isn't perfect - it is equally messed up.
My "career prospects" aren't perfect - I am letting it all go to hell, and I'm not even sure I have chosen the right direction with what I'm doing at uni.
My "love life" isn't perfect - I am still painfully in love with a boy who doesn't even deserve it, King of Cowards that he is.

And finally, my body isn't perfect - it is farther from perfection than it ever was.

I dare not even step on the scales at this moment, but I reckon (and I am an unfortunately gifted soothsayer in that regard) it might be as high as 60kg, 132 lbs, a BMI of a square and scary 20 (defined, of course, as perfectly "normal and healthy for your age". Blech. Whoever comes up with these definitions obviously hasn't seen the state of my thighs. Or my behind for that matter.).

60kg would be the absolute highest I have weighed since the day I was born, and I swear I'm going to die if it goes any higher than this right now.
I need to regain control but I am struggling, pitifully, to rediscover any fragment of my former strength, any semblance of my old composure.

And yet, amidst all this chaos, I hope and dream of a state where perfection can be attained.
No matter how unrealistic it may seem - if I didn't cling to the abstract hope that perfection was possible, I would have thrown in the towel on life long ago.

It is all that keeps me from giving up when submerged in the darkest, dankest recesses of my personal Void... the possibility of perfection.

PS: re: first picture - that sunrise, on that day, was perfection to me.
Nothing quite like watching the sun rise from aboard a boat...

The girl below, of course, displays a different form of perfection. And yet she seems so forlorn - the atmosphere in that image is pretty much how I'm feeling right now, so I like it.