The higher you climb

I am happy.

I am so very happy.

But I'm also feeling the nigglings of doubt, of dread, of inevitable downward spiral. Because I still don't think I think I deserve to be happy. I still think I will make a fuck-up of anything good. I still think I will ruin things and hurt people and deny myself for the sake of isolation and cowardice and self-sabotage.

This is such a hard balance to find.

On the one hand, I have never felt so good. But on the other, I have to be prepared for it all to suddenly disappear, because it could. It very actually could, quite apart from anything I might do to ruin it. There is no guarantee here. There never has been. I can't depend on this. The very last thing you want is for me to depend on you.

On the one hand, it's so completely simple. But on the other, it couldn't be more confusing.

On the one hand, I'm okay.

On the other, I'm just waiting for disaster.

I need to remember

That it was real.

That good things do happen.

That I deserve to be happy as much as everyone else.

That it was real.

Dream a little dream

Hey you,

Dreamed of you last night. It's happened before, but this was more vivid. We didn't just kiss.

The worst (best?) thing is that it's not outside the realm of possibility.

You do treat me slightly different to other people.

We do occasionally overstep personal boundaries.

I did kiss you once, friendly, and you liked it.

You put up with my weird attempts at conversation.

You seem to want me around, at least some of the time.

You do talk quite a lot about being single. On Saturday you were even bemoaning that you're basically the only one in our group of friends who is. It was pointed out that I'm the other obvious one. As someone said, "there's a simple solution to that." Unfortunately, I was too busy trying to make sure my reaction wasn't incriminating to notice what your reaction was.

This is my problem. I've spent so so very long learning how to hide feelings, that I'm not sure I know how to show them. And I don't know if I should. Because, when I do, people get hurt.

Because in all likelihood I still wouldn't be what you want. What you deserve.

No matter how much you want someone, I can't expect you to be so desperate that you'd settle for me.

I'm a penny in a diamond mine.

Fuck, I want you though.

A penny can have dreams.

Lying Bastards

So the scales claim I gained five pounds this week.

If it were one or two, I'd be freaking out, but that much? I'm sure (well, 85% sure) that can't have happened.

It hasn't been a perfect week, but the desire not to eat has been pretty dominant. Even if I slipped up on a couple of days and ate more than I meant, there's no way I did it to the tune of 3500 x 5.

So fuck that.

It hasn't been a particularly good week emotionally either, but we can deal with that. Or rather, we can ignore that and pray that it goes away. Hilariously, I actually made an (admittedly pretty pitiful) effort to reach out to someone last weekend. I didn't actually tell them anything, because I they were obviously busy and knee-deep in other people's problems already, and I still haven't entirely shaken the feeling that they only put up with speaking to me because they're too nice. But, I think, if I ever found the courage or the right moment, I think I could tell them. If not everything, then a lot of it.

Until then, I remain a lying bastard.

Limbo

It could go either way.

I'm sitting high on a week of successful restriction. Old habits are like old friends, once you have them back you remember how good it feels to have them. But I'm more aware now too. I know I can't push myself too far. I'm not playing How Low Can I Go. There's no point running myself into the ground. I'm in the middle of a fucking degree here, I need my brain to work for me, I need the energy to concentrate on my academic work, else I risk failing at the one thing I've ever been good at. I also have sufficient of a social life that I can't risk going too hard and being noticed. If I start blacking out from blood sugar lows when I'm with friends, well, it's just not a situation I want to encounter. When all's said and done, I don't actually feel the need to starve myself into submission. It's enough to have control. It's enough to be able to set my own limits.

Fuck, it feels good.

I've been waiting for the inevitable moment when I screw up, when I push too low and enter a dangerous head space, or when I slip up and shoot too high and undo all my progress. It could go either way. A week is usually how long I can manage being good before I fail somehow. But it doesn't have to be that way. I can sit here happily in limbo. It's not completely healthy, I know, to do what I'm doing, but if it keeps me sane, if it keeps me in control, then it's the lesser of many evils. If I start getting good losses then I'll quite happily ease off a little, even. This week just proved I still had it in me. I'd been beginning to think it was all some freakish dream, all that strength of will I had before. I'd been beginning to think I was still my high weight, deep down, and the slightly-less-fat view in the mirror was just an illusion, another facet of my body dysmorphia. But I got up the guts to get back on the scales last weekend, and - miracle of miracles - apparently I'm the same weight as I was in January. I don't know how the fuck I managed that, given the disgusting way I've been eating and the complete lack of consistent exercise, but I'm too relieved to dare questioning it. Granted, it's still a good 20lb above my lowest weight. I'd like to knock off two stone, at least, but that's okay. It's a goal. I can work with goals. One of the reasons why everything went to shit last summer was that I met my goal. I met it and it didn't solve a fucking thing. It was a hard fact to face up to, which is why I haven't for so long. Even in my success I still managed to feel like a failure. And isn't that the fucking story of my life.

Breaking the Fourth Wall, or Method Acting

"Just be yourself," they say. And I am. When I'm with my friends, my family, I am myself. It's true, I don't tell them everything, I don't answer completely honestly, I hide and divert and avoid. But I still feel like me, like the me I properly am. I feel content and secure. I'm still full of self-doubt and self-criticism, but it doesn't hold me down, because I can't let it. Because if I let myself get dragged down, when I'm with them, they'll notice. And that's the one thing I can never let happen, even when I think I want to. Hiding the fact that anything's wrong has been primary objective from Day 1, so much so that it's not even an objective anymore. It's just automatic. Trying to change it is what feels like the act now. If ever I try to let someone know that something's wrong, it feels false, fake, artificial, attention-seeking, play-acting. As though the public me has become the real me. As though the act has become the reality.

The only trouble is that I've broken my own fourth wall. I no longer believe the act. I can almost believe it for as long as I'm in it, for as long as I'm with my friends and there, in that moment, in the group, where maybe they don't know me all that well but they accept me as I am and they don't ask, they don't question, they don't suspect, they just let me be me... there, all the crap that weighs me down just lightens. It doesn't vanish, but it takes a backseat for a while.

But it only lasts so long. The moment I leave, even for as long as it takes to go to the bathroom, when I'm alone, and I glance in the mirror, or look at myself, and there's no one left around me to drown out the internal monologue of shit, and it takes mere seconds, mere seconds, for me to crumple, to curl in on myself, to cry, to rake my nails across my skin as though they can scratch the disease of doubt right out of me.

Now, so long as I can wipe my face and open the door and smile and go back, it's all okay. I laugh again, and no one notices, and I slip effortlessly back into the act that is so ingrained that it has become reality. There's a method to the madness, you could say. It's wonderful. It's freeing. It's when I actually feel like there's hope for me yet.

But then it ends. And I go home. And shut myself back up in my bedroom. And then I'm alone with myself. The audience is gone and I'm back behind the curtain. There's no script anymore, or any chance for improvisation. All the props are gone. All the costumes. The stage lights, the microphones. All of it, gone. It's just me, only I don't feel like myself anymore. I don't feel as though I fit into my own body. I don't feel connected to myself, to anything that I was only a short time ago, to all the things I know I've done, all the successes I know I've had. It's as though they're not me anymore. As though I'm not me anymore. It's more than loneliness. I don't know what it is. Maybe dependency. Maybe neediness. Maybe selfishness. Maybe it is just loneliness, but in my self-obsession I think it's more than that, worse than that, that such a common word as that isn't enough. I hate it. I hate hating myself for it. But even writing this post is making my skin crawl, because how much of a selfish little fuck do I sound. How much of a whiny ungrateful brat. I know, that's the worst part. I know. I may not have a script here backstage, but I have a monologue, a constant chiseling rant that comes from inside me and all around me at the same time. Selfish, it says. Pathetic. Weak. Its lists go on and on, as though its swallowed a fucking thesaurus.

It only stops, briefly, when I'm with other people. Maybe because it can't risk them overhearing its ranting. Maybe because it fears, if they did, they'd start to believe it all too.

To Do List

1. Don't tell him.
2. Stop staring at him.
3. Don't make him deal with your crap.
4. Don't tell him.
5. Let him find someone else.
6. Don't let him know.
7. Don't tell him.
8. Don't make things even more awkward for him.
9. Stop laughing quite so hard.
10. Don't tell him.
11. Don't dream about him.
12. Don't kiss him.
13. Don't tell him.