Sunday 19 September 2010

"The end is where we start from" T.S. Eliot

I search for patterns in everything, in numbers, lists, initials, letters, shapes, time. Any way to impose meaning on the arbitrary events that shape my life. And some times I see the pattern leading me through the chaos. I got back from holiday with a close friend, just me and her and our suitcases in a beautiful foreign city. I felt free for the first time in months, away from the memories of failure and a summer totally saturated in apathy. I thought maybe I was really free. I ate without the numbers, the guilt, the fear, the planning, the purge. It was beautiful. Total sober silence.
It always seems the kindest people I know unleash the demons inside me, the ones who try to destroy everything I've built. Or maybe being around these people just lets me be myself. I haven't made up my mind yet. We had been off the plane for about 12 hours before I noticed that she was deliberately skipping meals, insisting we walked everywhere, the way she scrutinised every packet and how she couldn't resist reading every menu we passed out loud before insisting she was still full from the raisins she'd eaten four hours before. And I saw what I used to be. Yet, what disturbed me most was the smugness I felt. She was thin but not skinny. And clueless. She'd starve herself and then eat ridiculous high calorie, low vitamin shit. She told me about her diet and how all she wanted to be was thin and I smiled and told her she looked gorgeous. I didn't tell her the breakfast bars she munched were a waste of calories, that her hatred of fruit and vegetables was a joke and that she'd never be really thin. Not the way I know I can be. I felt so arrogant - enriched, empowered by my knowledge, by the blogs I read, by the weight goals I achieved back in the 'bad old days'. And I knew then and there that I couldn't be normal.
I want to scream - I was getting better - and she ruined everything. Or maybe she just reminded me what I'm meant to do. The patterns I'm meant to fulfill.

9 comments:

  1. You are such a wonderful poet.
    This amost filled me with tears.
    I understand how hard it must have been not to speak up.
    You probably wanted to share knowledge, but at the same time you probably didn't want to help her hurt herself...
    Wow, your strength is inspiring.
    Xoxox

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  2. It's OK to know yourself, you shouldn't fear that!

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  3. I always feel the same arrogance when my friends are trying to lose weight.

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  4. Just found the blog, beautiful. It gives me hope to know someone else feels the same things.

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  5. I so wish recovery for you.
    But it's hypocritical, when I can't wish it for me.
    You're beautiful.

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  6. This is pure beauty <3

    xx

    http://lady-cocoheart.blogspot.com/

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  7. I don't care how you think of yourself on the outside. Your words, god they're absolute magic. Beautiful. How is it that I've never seen you yet still think you're beautiful? That's amazing. More than anything.

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  8. im the same... its ironic maybe- my obscene weight, considering how knowledgeable i presume myself to be on these topics when my friends bring them up... i made a joke about self harm the other day... not something i usually do, and when my friend (who has a friend who's anorexic, and therefore thinks she knows it all) tells me in a serious voice that it's "not funny", i look her in the eyes and make a sly smile before disagreeing with her...."just trust me, its funny"

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