I know the bottom she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Sylvia Plath.

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing - Sylvia Plath

I fucked up again.

I went to visit the Beautiful One (remember her? My impossibly beautiful best friend from school - the one all the boys were obsessed with) and we ended up getting very drunk at a house party. This was the third time I've been up to stay with her so I know all her (mostly male) friends quite well and things felt amazing - being surrounded by attractive men buzzing I remembered what it felt like to be the centre of attention. Mine and the Beautiful One playing our roles to her perfection - the men swarming around her, she smiles and pulls me to her in front of everyone and kisses me hard on the mouth to the alcohol soaked cheers of her friends. She goes into some dark corner to flirt with a guy, I start flirting with the nearest guy.
Minutes later, I'm leading him to the nearest empty room - the bathroom. Then we're stripping, he's lying on the floor, I'm kissing him against the wall. We can hear people banging on the door, yelling, we laugh hysterically. Then we emerge and I go to the Beautiful One's room to collect my stuff, we're all going out but the Beautiful One won't look at me and then she turns to me in front of all her friends -
You just fucked my ex-boyfriend.
Everyone leaves - I follow them. See the boy in the club - Nothing happened I whisper, he nods. But the Beautiful One won't look at me, won't talk to me, and her male friends are lining up to shout 'you filthy cunt' & 'treacherous slut' at me. The low point was crying on the pavement outside the club as the bouncer gave me a hug. And then the Beautiful One's house mate comes to my rescue and she takes me  back to the house, and we weep in the kitchen as I tell her about my eating disorder and how I felt that the Beautiful One just didn't care and that it was the only way to validate myself as worthy of being her friend - being thinner than her. And she wept as she told me about her anorexia and we cried together in the kitchen about wanting to disappear.
Then two men strolled in through the front door looking for the after-party - two guys from school who I hadn't spoken to since the end of sixth form. We drunkenly cry some more as we tell them about the whole situation and they invite us back to theirs - I can make my shameful retreat to theirs clutching my possessions. We dance in their living room throwing back shots - the Beautiful One's housemate goes into one of the guy's bedroom, I go into the other. I'd got with all of this guy from school's friends, why not him? We have sex. As we shower, the light is coming through the window, we collapse into bed and in the morning I leave.

The Beautiful One got with my ex, I got with her's.

Her housemate tells me that guy I made out with in the bathroom was not an ex-boyfriend - he was the only man to ever reject the Beautiful One. I feel victorious, and hollow and hungry.

The Beautiful One and I made up today over breakfast, more crying. We're the same person, we couldn't be apart - on this, we agree.

Clear as a crystal, sharp as a knife, I feel like I'm in the prime of my life

My sister is the same age as I was when I first started writing this blog - a fact I only realised a couple of days ago when my sister and I were talking about school. She told me how she used to call my cousin and the two of them would discuss different ways to persuade me to eat and would spend hours worrying about my weight but too frightened of actually speaking to me about it. At the time it felt like absolutely no one cared. My mother is still in complete denial about that whole period of my life. Its as if she sees it as a personal vendetta against her any time I try the raise the issue responding that she didn't want to say anything because she knew it wouldn't make any difference and she would ask my brother to speak to me. If there's been a 'breakthrough' moment then speaking to him was it but she deserves absolutely no credit for that intervention.
My mother is diabetic and a compulsive eater so food has always been an issue in my family. My sister and I are banned from bringing any form of sugar or carbohydrate into the house and any baking which I used to thank her for (until I felt the need to binge) but I think this is the reason I can't find a middle ground. It's always been all or nothing. For example, today my mother bought twelve doughnuts for me and her to gorge before she returns to strict atkins and I flail around trying to find some eating plan. At Christmas I'll be spending five weeks on the beach and need to some how lose all the fat I've accumulated from endless binges and I'm determined to do it the 'normal' way. I'm just not entirely sure what that is. I'm at home for another couple of weeks and then I'll be back in my own place where I can control what food is in my fridge and cupboards. I'm already set on joining the gym as soon as I'm back at uni but apart from that I'd really appreciate any suggestions, especially for recipes avoiding carbs whilst I'm at home and sharing a kitchen with my mother...
** I'm not entirely sure why I chose this photo - perhaps it reflects my other form of escapism, ironic given that I only heard the quote when reading an article about how Lindsay got it to celebrate new found sobriety**