120

Hardly cause for celebration, but it's lower that it's been for a long time. Puts my bmi at 19.4, which still qualifies as "normal" but I'll be out of there soon. "Normal"? Who wants that? To be unexceptional, average, run-of-the-mill. My husband said to me the other day, "you're not fat; you have a normal body". I wanted to run to the bathroom and purge everything I've eaten for the last month. It's not his fault I'm like this. He tells me time and again that he thinks I'm beautiful, and sometimes I believe him. This isn't what he signed up for, and yet he's so patient with me.

I've always chosen Ana over any man. She always comes first - that's how it's been and how I thought it would always be. But I know that has to change now; I just don't know how to do it. A told me before we were married that he would leave me if I came back here. No, maybe that's not quite right. I think he said he would leave me if I became anorexic again. And there's a good 20lbs between me and anorexia. I don't want to go back to that. I don't miss nightmares about being force-fed, I don't miss constant, dull pain in my legs as my muscles waste away, I don't miss watching my hair fall out in the shower. I miss being little and lovely and light. That's not such a bad thing, right?

Sex and Bones

The baby's father forced himself on me once. I've never told anyone. We were in an old building he told me had been a nunnery once, but all I remember was that it was freezing cold, and it had a pool table in it. We had been to a party on a boat on the River Thames. We'd both had a little too much to drink, then he disappeared somewhere with a girl, and came back high. He told me she'd spiked his drink, and I slapped him repeatedly in the face and started screaming at him a) for taking drugs when he'd promised he was getting cleaned up, and b) for not taking responsibility for what he'd done.

When the boat docked, we hadn't booked anywhere to spend the night, so we found this old building - wandering around it the next morning I deduced it was now used as an office by a deaf charity - which we broke into to spend the night. We were still angry with each other, but it was November, and the building wasn't heated, so we lay close on the floor for warmth, both trying to huddle under my coat. Later he pushed me up against the pool table and forced himself into me. But it's not rape if you don't scream, right? I'm still not sure. I was crying, and I told him no, I asked him to stop, I tried to wriggle free and to push him off me, but I never screamed for help. Maybe he thought I was playing. Maybe I gave him the wrong signals; maybe if I'd been a better person I wouldn't have lain so close, like a dirty whore.

It's been years since I even thought about that. Now, in bed with my husband, the memory creeps into my mind and spills shame and mistrust across our sheets. When I come onto him and he doesn't reciprocate, I feel like a whore again. Maybe if I was better, prettier, purer, thinner, he would want me. Later he touches me, but I turn away because I feel ashamed.

All my flesh feels soiled, and I wish to be clean and pure, bleached like bones in the sun. Solid and defined; unquestionable. A skeleton, stripped of flesh to leave only the most fundamental framework of a person. My husband is an architect. In the back of my mind I wonder if he would be proud of me for understanding this basic structural principle.

Sweden, Comfort, and Hunger

This is how I know I'm a monster: my 6' 3" husband is scared of me. He says my sudden, violent changes in mood scare him, that he nevers knows who I'm going to be in the next minute. It must feel to him like he's living with a mental patient, but without the consolation of a diagnosable illness. I'm not crazy, I'm just too much and not enough all at the same time. I know he's losing patience with me, but I don't know how to fix it. There must be a way for me to control this.

We had a big argument last night, about a trip he went on to Sweden about 6 months before we were married. Admittedly it wasn't entirely his fault; when they got to the hotel they found their booking had been cocked up so there weren't enough rooms. All the other guys had wives or girlfriends, whom they stood up for, opting to room with other men. But he roomed with a girl. On what he'd told me was an all-male trip. Apparently her name is George and when he saw her name on the list he thought she was a boy. It was months ago, and I still feel so angry and betrayed, but he doesn't understand why. He's a good, kind person, but I'm just so disappointed in him for this. Part of me believes him and part of me feels stupid for doing so. And always, part of me thinks, "this is your fault. If you were thinner, better, he would love you too much to betray you. In your weakness you made this happen."

We lay apart in bed spewing venom, and I felt such fear, such inadequacy, such a tight sticky darkness inside me that I needed to let out. So I lay awake in the night beside my warm, solid, hurting husband, and made a thousand tiny cuts in my stomach until there was space inside myself for us both. And this is how I know it was right: he didn't know what I had done but he felt the space, and reached for me, and we lay in comfort together in the dark.

I'm not going back to Ana; I told him I wouldn't. But I just need to be hungry for a while. Hunger is calming. It leaves space inside you to breathe, and think, and be. This will make things better; it will make me a better person. Just temporarily, until I've figured out another way.

Wife

It's funny and it's not. This time last year, all I wanted was to lose myself, to become invisible. Now, as a wife, that's exactly what I've done, and I realise it wasn't what I wanted at all.

Don't get me wrong, marriage is amazing; I love my husband, I love that we get to be together always, and I'd never wish to undo this thing that we're making together. But it's also really, really, really hard. And after trying to lose myself for so long, I feel like it's finally happening, but so fast. And suddenly I want myself back again. My life no longer feels like my own. And I promised m husband I'd do everything in mypower not to come back here, but it's the only place I know to come when everything starts feeling like this.

If ever you read this, love (and I hope you don't), I'm sorry. I think you'll leave me soon, though I've no proof of it. But I'll make it easier for you by being a little bitch.

A little boredom

Bored at work today, devised a new game. Anything I eat has a minimum time limit assigned to it, so an apple has to last me at least 45 minutes, a fat free yoghurt 75 minutes, a stick of celery 30 minutes etc. I can feel (and, more importantly, look) as though I'm always eating, without racking up more than about 200 calories.

Thats 200 calories *in theory* Today I'm pretty sure I hit 1,000, greedy cow. Partly I'm blaming my Mom - I was at 350 already by the time I left the house since she prepared and dished up fruit salad with yoghurt and muesli for breakfast. I just can't bring myself to refuse to eat it, knowing that she's woken up about 2 hours earlier than she needs to, to get it for me. I don't ask her to do this though. *sigh*

Today I weigh 132lb.

Fat fat fat. I can't lose it fast enough.

Oh Lord...

Somehow, I only remembered the thinness from last year. I didn't remember the levels to which one can loath oneself; to which one must loath oneself to achieve that thinness.

I'm furious with everyone who told me it would be okay -necessary even! - to put on weight. I'm furious with every man who's ever voted for "self confidence" in those "What's a woman's sexiest feature?" polls in womens' magazines. Ultimately though, I'm furious with myself for believing any of it. This time last month I was so happy with myself. I don't think I was particularly arrogant, I didn't think I was gorgeous or anything, I was just loving being a woman, and looking like a woman. Today I can't even look down at myself in the shower. If self-confidence was the sexiest feature, being thinner wouldn't have made me perfect to BF. Being confident would have. It's not even been two weeks and I've already forgotten what confident feels like.

Marya Hornbacher says you have to be a diametric thinker to live this life, and I suppose I can see the truth in that. There's no middle ground - either total acceptance of yourself or total hatred. I don't understand how I *ever* saw this in the mirror and thought it was remotely okay!! I must have been fat for months and been oblivious. There can't possibly anyone who looks at me and sees past this mass of flesh. Everyone who looks at me is wondering how I've got the nerve to come out in public looking like this. Suddenly, I'm one of those girls who "would be really pretty if only she was thinner", and I feel so ashamed. So giant and so small all at the same time.

Thank you to anyone who reads this. I know to anyone who's never been disordered I sound like a crazy person, narcissistic and affected, attention-seeking. That's the worst label of them all. How can you be an attention-seeker when all you want is to disappear? But it means the absolute world to me that there are other girls and guys out there having the same thoughts, with the same intensity.

Every day we're getting smaller guys. We're getting there :)

behemoth

So. The last few months have been good. I've been "normal". I've put on 2 stone. My male friends constantly complement me on having boobs and looking like a woman. I've felt reasonably attractive, as long as I don't touch the squidgy bits or look at any of my clothes from this time last year. I'm in the lower half of my healthy weight range.

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I were talking about what qualities were imortant in a partner. One of his was "it's important to me that my partner stays in shape and doesn't get fat."
"Uh... in shape?" I reply. "What kind of size did you have in mind?"
He hummed and hawed a little, then finally, "Well, when I first met you, I thought you were absolutely perfect. And then at your sister's wedding, you were so beautiful. Now... well... you're still quite pretty... But before, you were perfect."
My chest, I swear, collapsed. I hadn't felt such a tightness inside myself, tasted the bile of such panic, since ana.

On Monday I spent over an hour sitting on my bedroom floor, surrounded by clothes I was too scared to try and put on in case they didn't fit. Knowing that no amount of layers could contain this mass of flesh. Eventually I called my sister in floods of tears and she talked me into a loose dress.

I don't want to be womanly, I don't want to be healthy. I want to be little and light and lovely. How can you be so big, so solid, and feel so empty?

For a moment, I thought I might be beautiful. How did I think I could ever get away with this?

I bought some alli this afternoon (think in the US this goes by the name of the active ingredient - orlistat). Has anyone tried it? I know it doesn't work if you cut all the fat out of your diet, but I'm living back home with my parents now so it's a little harder to restrict effectively.

I guess the beauty of the ana life is that it's always there, and never too late to start again.