First post!

I’d start at the beginning, if I knew where that was! I only know that 2008 has been filled to bursting with joys and sorrows, anger, heartbreak, beauty, loss and gain. At the point where this chapter picks up, I was trying to leave an abusive relationship in which I’d aborted a child I yearned for, and with whom I longed to be - in heaven or in hell. I moved home for a new start and met a man who was and remains unlike anyone else I’ve met, only for my ex to turn up outside my office one evening. By the time the police found me, barefoot and hysterical, trying to jump onto the railway track to join the baby, he’d beaten me and dragged me down a staircase by my hair. There ensued months of death threats, police interviews, revelations and, humblingly, deep, unwavering wellsprings of grace and forgiveness from my family and boyfriend for having deceived them about my past. Even so, once you’ve lost someone’s trust it’s a slow, hard slog to earn it back, and though I’ve received love in undeserved measure, I’ve also forfeited - to a certain extent - my right to privacy and control. But just when I thought I was also losing my mind, Ana crept up so gently to embrace me, confused and unstable as I was, that I didn’t question it.

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After getting down to 110 last week and my previously tight trousers feeling loose around the waistband, I binged all weekend, including a bloody pig roast and bring-an-apple-pie lunch event at church on Sunday. Not that that’s any excuse, I was home alone on Saturday and therefore had zero reason to eat but started off with a bowl of cereal (my *biggest* weakness, I can’t have just one bowl) and it was downhill from there. I should have done some exercise on Saturday too but did nothing but housework, telling myself that “this needs to be done, and it’s still burning calories!” …yes… maybe, but not half as many as would be burned by going for a run. Back up to 114 this morning - most depressed I’ve been in weeks. Walked 5 miles yesterday, meant to do 8 this morning but opted for the extra 20 minutes in bed instead and only walked 5 again. If I’d known what the scales were going to say when I got up I might not have been such a lazy cow *sigh*.
Still, Thursday is my first session with Wendy, the psychologist, about the baby. When I first set it up I thought it was a good idea, but the closer it gets, the more hideous it sounds. I’m shitting myself about the lack of control that comes with “sharing your feelings” but the silver lining is reflected in my being extra control-freakish about my food, which will hopefully translate to the scales by the end of the week. I’d like to be back to 110 by Friday, I know that’s only back to Square 1, with no advance on last week, but I think it would be setting myself up for failure to aim for less than that, and the way I feel at the moment I don’t think I could deal with failing. By the end of lunchtime today I was up to 270 cals, not including a caramel shortcake that I couldn’t resist tasting, but chewed and spat out. I’m always a little wary of doing that; I’ve heard conflicting points of view as to whether you already absorb some of the sugar calories in your saliva before you spit it out, but I figure it’s got to be better than swallowing or even purging, right? At the very least it can’t be worse.