No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself & another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true

Hey everyone,

I couldn't find any photographs to put with this post - I haven't taken a photo in months and haven't yet scanned in the negatives from my diana mini. I've debated giving up this blog a hundred times but I find myself coming back here most days, but most times it's to remind myself that I'm not sick anymore.

I had one slip up recently. I went to the doctor's for a routine prescription and she weighed me. Every nerve in my body felt taught with the strain of not looking down at the abstract figure. And the stupid bitch muttered some obscene, shocking figure. I could hear the surprise in her voice and then the concerted effort to appear nonchalant. I smiled, clutched my prescription and fled. Walking home, mantras hollow in my ears, I'm fine, I'm healthy, I'm fine, it's a number, it's only a fucking number. Once my door was locked, I could feel the hot bile in my throat, the rising panic, the overwhelming heaviness in every limb. My friend called me, she came to see me. I've never let anyone see that side of me. The irrational, the really crazy, psychotic me. She usually only emerges after a litre of vodka. You're possessed. This isn't you speaking. This is someone else, she kept saying. After a night's sleep I realised how right she was.

I found a list I made when I was nine. Powerful, interesting, an Oxford degree, beautiful, loved. That was what I wanted to be when I grew up.

My friend showed me a photo of a girl she went to school with, she's now been sectioned and been in hospital in for the last three years. Everyone's moved on and she's stuck, regressed, weak, dying. I used to think eating was the weakness. As long as I believed that hunger validated me I was absolutely trapped.

I'm the largest in my group of my friends. I haven't had sex in two months. I'm not a size 6 anymore. I still care.