Honesty Is The Best Policy?

Sometimes there comes a point in your life when you just have to stop trying to swallow down all the internal destructive demons you have and admit, both to yourself and others, that you have a problem. Many problems perhaps even. It's all too easy to try and focus on just one aspect of your mental health and try to ignore all the other issues, simmering away under the surface, because to admit to everything is scary; embarrassing even. But lately I've been reading the blog of another girl my age, (and yes, we can still legitimately call ourselves girls when we're in our 30's!) getting to know her a little, outside of her online presence and I'm in awe of her candid honesty when it comes to discussing all of her current mental health problems. I've kind of skirted around the issue of my own weirdly complicated eating disorder on here, Over the years I've flitted from periods of not eating, to times when I'd only eat certain weird things and most recently I went through years of a very despairing Binge Eating Disorder, that I would joke about to people saying I had Amnesiac Bulimia – i.e. I would binge like it was going out of style, only to 'forget' to throw it all up again afterwards.

It was no laughing matter though. It escalated during a period in my life when I was living with a man who had absolutely no respect for me and who would criticise my every move. To this day I still can't see why he decided to get together with and move in with a woman he seemed to despise so much, but I can only guess that he saw me as someone he could control, in an attempt to assuage his own feelings of low self worth. I'm a smart cookie for the most part and not someone who anyone would ever believe likely to allow a man to get under her skin, controlling her with a daily dose of mental torture. But the thing with emotional abuse is that is creeps up on you. The people who abuse their partners, don't make their true nature present right away. They're smarter than that. Charming, funny, charismatic...these people are sociopaths with no real concern for the hurt and pain they cause others. But they begin their relationships with those of us they choose, in a way that allows us to believe that they truly like/love/appreciate/respect us. We become drawn into their world with an act consisting sorely of lies, deception and a concerted attempt to gain our trust....merely so that they can break it.

My personal experience with my ex is probably both personal to me and yet textbook in the way in which these relationships develop. I was attracted to the guy because of his gregarious nature. His ability to work a room, make people laugh and engender a sense of fun and frivolity. Sure he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but I mistakenly thought that my being smarter than him would never be an issue. He befriended me before we got together as a couple, so I spent nearly a year getting to know the guy. I thought I knew everything about him, the things he liked, the things he disliked, the way he conducted himself around other people, the people in his life who were important to him....I genuinely felt as though I'd truly gotten to see the real him over the time we spent socialising and hanging out 'as friends'. 

I was also very touched at the way in which he had supported me, during the time I had to get a termination. When I first met my ex, I had just started work at a new job in a hotel. I'd only been there a couple of weeks when I discovered that I was pregnant. Now I've always been Pro-Choice and have always known that I didn't want children, so the decision to get an abortion wasn't a difficult one. I wasn't upset or distressed by the process – in fact of all the surgical procedures I've had to undergo in my life, I can honestly say that the abortion was probably the least stressful of all of them. However, being as the topic of abortion is such a controversial one, it can be difficult to open up and talk about it with people. I'm not ashamed of having had one and have never once regretted it, but at the time I felt as though I had to keep it a secret because of the potential for fall-out amongst friends, family members or work colleagues who didn't agree with it. But when I met my ex, he persuaded me to open up to him about whatever was on my mind, assuring me that he would never judge, regardless of the issue at hand. 

Now he's Irish Catholic, no naturally I was somewhat reluctant to discuss the subject with him. But I told him and he assured me that he was not at all shocked, disgusted or any of the negative persuasions I'd mistakenly assumed he would be feeling. It felt good to be able to discuss the matter with someone who did nothing but show me support. I wasn't able to discuss it with the guy who had gotten me pregnant as we were not on personable terms at the time and he himself was completely anti-abortion (he too was Irish Catholic and only went along with the idea because he couldn't face his family finding out that he was having sex before marriage and creating a child out of wedlock!). My ex became a firm friend over that period of time in my life and showed what I thought to be a caring, rational, genuine, decent side to his personality. 

After I'd had the procedure, he invited me to come and stay with him for a night so that there was someone there to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't develop any complications. I didn't feel too bad after it, but the after-effects are kind of like a really bad bout of PMT, combined with really bad cramps and bleeding; so I did feel a little out of sorts. But he acted like a real gentleman, taking care of me, fetching me whatever I wanted and making sure I got lots of rest before I was due to return to work. It was around that time I guess I first developed an attraction to him. I mean, what woman wouldn't? Despite many of our protestations, we females are a sucker for a 'knight in shining armour'. Even those of us who pride ourselves on independence, self-reliance, equality and an end to sexist ideas, deep down like the feeling of being rescued during our 'damsel in distress' moments; hell, it's still one of the tried and tested methods of actually securing a man's attention when trying to attract a potential mate and I don't think there's anything really wrong with that. Unfortunately for me however, the guy I thought was a real 'knight in shining armour' actually turned out to be a cruel, sadistic manipulator who for almost six years, systematically worked his way through my confidence, my self esteem, my intelligence and belief in myself, creating a shell of the person I'd once taken pride in being.

Like I said, these things don't just happen all at once or right at the beginning of a relationship. When we finally did get together as a couple, I really did believe that I'd snagged one of the 'good ones'. But after that initial 'honeymoon period' of having moved in together, he began his grand master plan of grinding me down, playing mind games and ultimately causing me to end up on a downward slide of binge eating that made me gain a lot of weight and develop another little issue that I haven't been honest with y'all up until now.

I probably wouldn't be admitting to all this if it wasn't for the candid honesty of another blogger making me realise that I wasn't being completely honest about all my little faults. Y'see, whilst I was with my toxic ex I injured my back and ended up being put on painkillers for a long period of time. The injury was pretty bad and I wasn't even able to sit down for three months. I still suffer with a lot of pain from it now, but the downside of having had to take those painkillers over such a long period of time, is that I slowly became addicted to them. I won't lie, as much as I needed (and still do) those painkillers to deal with the excruciating pain in my back, I also began to like the warm feelings of contentment that they gave me as soon as the narcotic induced haze of codeine whirled through my veins. 

Now I was no stranger to drugs. Hell, in my past I was a bit of a wild-child, experimenting with anything and everything going. I read the term 'dustbin junkie' in another blog – a term used to describe someone who will use and abuse pretty much any substance going. Well that was me, back in the day. I wasn't trying to escape reality or deal with any problems through drug use, I just had a curiosity for anything I didn't already know, that could only be satisfied by trying it. And, if after trying it, I found that I liked it, I'd do it again. Because it felt good, or it felt different. Like going to another country to soak up the temperature, scenery and culture, for me taking different drugs was like visiting a different state of mind for a while. A holiday from reality. Not because reality was anything bad, but because we all like to change things up a little now and again.

If I'm honest, a lot of the years from 17-22 are a bit of a blur. I initially started out as a bit of a weekend party animal, but liked the insanity so much, I ended up letting it encroach into weekdays too. My apartment became known as a drug-takers party paradise and was pretty much filled with strangers from one day to the next. It's probably easier to list the drugs I haven't taken, than the ones I have. I've never tried crack or meth (purely because there wasn't any of it going around in the area where I lived during my drug-taking days!) or that weird khat thing that you chew on. Everything else though was pretty much fair game. I also managed to fall in love/lust/fascination with a paranoid schizophrenic ex-heroin user who had an incredibly interesting prescription list. So I developed a bit of a taste for all kinds of downers too.

It was that same feeling I experienced, when I was first prescribed the co-codamol for my back. That familiar sense of being cushioned in cotton wool; of the edges of your nerves becoming dulled to the sensations of pain or stress or anger or frustration. It's hard to describe a narcotic high. It's sort of a high in that you get a wonderful warm glow begin to emanate from your gut or your solar plexus, radiating out through your body and blanketing your brain in duck down. It's not so much euphoria, but a sense of release; that nothing else matters, nothing is wrong and you are safely cocooned in your own little oblivion, nicely detached from the rest of the world. Depending on how much you take, you might 'take the nod' (fall asleep) sit gauching (basically slumped barely conscious, only having the tiniest grip on reality and what's going on around you, probably drooling and looking like a zombie to anyone who sees you, but feeling happily lost in your own little hedonistic heaven) or if you're alert enough to remain functioning, you might want to curl up with a hot drink, put on some music, try to watch a film - or if you're like me, you go to work and pretend like everything is okay and your eyes are not so pinned that your pupils are barely visible.

A narcotic buzz is different for everyone. Some people get nauseated and cannot abide the idea of eating, some crave the warm sensation of a hot drink or something like chocolate in their stomach's to mirror the external feelings of cushioned cosiness (although it's mostly those on a weaker buzz who can stomach the idea of food or drink because for many people it completely suppresses their appetite). It can disorient you or make you feel quite at home in whatever surroundings. It can make you fall asleep, or it can interfere with your sleep patterns causing you insomnia. It's different for everyone depending on their own physiology, the type of narcotic taken, the amount, the potency, the user's tolerance, other substances taken, the environment it's taken in.... everyone's mileage will vary. For me though, because I wasn't using anything as strong as diamorphine or morphine, I was always able to get just enough of a buzz to float about on my cloud of detachment, able to escape some of the pain and anger I was suffering on a daily basis, just living with and putting up with my brutal ex.

That's how it started becoming more than just a painkiller for me. It became a crutch, a barrier between me and the reality of living with an abusive partner. Sure it numbed the permanent pain in the base of my spine, allowing me to sit down and walk around unaided, but it also gave me something to look forward to every day. That little hit of happiness. That moment when I knew I would feel every little thing drift away and I would be smiling on the inside. I looked forward to that time when I'd mix up some soluble co-codamol, swallow it back and wait for the 'Reddy-Brek glow' to take effect. It's what got me through the day and made everyday life bearable. But of course, narcotics have a nasty way of losing their efficacy over a period of time. Two soluble's of 30/500mg might have given me that lovely warm feeling of escapism to begin with, but after a while that feeling just wasn't there any more. The dose wasn't cutting it. So I upped the dose to three of those little soluble tablets and once again found myself basking in the warm glow of narcotic ambivalence.

But y'all know what's coming next dontcha? Yup, that dose was also soon failing to hit the spot. Not just in dealing with the genuine pain-relief they were being prescribed for, but by failing to give me the sense of bliss I needed to deal with my inner turmoil. So I upped the dose again to 4 solubles. Now the maximum amount of paracetamol (acetaminophen) that you're supposed to ingest in any one day is 4000mg/4g, based on you taking 2 lots of 500mg, four times a day, six hours apart. And I was already doubling up the amount I was taking in a single dose. So I decided to supplement my intake with another source of codeine, that didn't also contain any paracetamol. 'Nurofen' brought out 'Nurofen Plus' at around the time I was beginning to abuse codeine (how fortuitous) so I was able to take a couple of those too at the same time to increase the amount of codeine I was taking. Each 'Nurofen Plus' tablet contains 12.8mg of codeine and 200mg of ibuprofen. The maximum amount of ibuprofen you can take in a day (unless under a medical setting where dosage can be increased slightly under doctor's supervision) is 3200mg, based on 4 doses of 800mg, six hours apart. So when the extra two 'Nurofen Plus' weren't doing it for me, I figured I was okay to take another two on top of what I was already taking. 

You can see where this is going right? Yeah, over the course of the next few years I had to keep upping my dose of these meds, another tablet at a time, until right now today, I'm currently taking a ridiculous amount. Like any addict I go through a load of internal dialogue, bartering with myself, trying to rationalise my increased doses, having myself on that I'm not doing myself any damage because whilst I'm taking a shitload of drugs all at the same time, I'm not exceeding my daily allowance. I know it's all bullshit, I'm not stupid (well, not in the knowledgeable sense, even if I'm dumb as fuck when it comes to allowing myself to cause all the internal damage I've undoubtedly done to my stomach and liver over the years.) I'm on anxiety meds for a breakdown I suffered around this time last year, which I fuck about with as well, but it's the codeine addiction that's gotten a little bit out of hand. I'm currently taking 8 soluble co-codamol at 30/500mg each, with 8 Nurofen Plus at 12.8/200mg of codeine/ibuprofen, 3 or 4 Diazepam at 5mg each, a beta-blocker, Venlafaxine (anti-depressant) and up to 10 Tramadol (from my boyfriend's prescription). I'm also prescribed Risperidone and Zopiclone to help with the periods of mania I can suffer which will keep me awake for up to 3 or 4 days in a row without sleep, but sometimes I slip one of them in to the mix too sometimes if I just want to fuck the whole of the world off for a bit and let myself drift into a bit of a trance. 

If I were to give any of you who weren't used to taking this amount of drugs altogether, it would undoubtedly kill you. Your central nervous system would become so massively compromised that you would suffocate, unable to breath and die – probably in a deep sleep or coma. But these have become my daily dose, taken every morning or whenever it is that I drag my lazy carcass from my pit. I rarely get any of the little hit of warmth or glow from taking it anymore – these days, it's all about managing the pain I still suffer from in my lower back, chronic pain I suffer from in my teeth and gums (I've got a jaw that's too small for all my teeth and need to have five removed surgically, but am a bit reluctant to have it carried out after the last bout of oral surgery left me with abscesses and infections for a year afterwards) and also to stop my body from going into withdrawal from the codeine I'm now addicted to.

If I go longer than 24 hours without a dose, I start to get flu-like symptoms, followed by aches in my stomach that make me double up in agony. There is nausea, dizziness, pain in every part of my body, changes in temperature ranging from shivering with cold and sweltering with overheating. You are exhausted from being in so much pain and completely disoriented, time slows right down and you feel every agonising second crawl by like an infinite torture. You can't sleep, but when it gets really bad you begin to hallucinate whilst awake, having confusing conversations with people who aren't there. And then there are the trips to the toilet. Narcotics cause your body to dehydrate making stools harder to pass, whilst also relaxing muscles so much that sphincters are unable to contract properly. As a result of this, you can become incredibly constipated. But when you are in withdrawal and there is no more of the narcotic in your system, the exact opposite happens. Those excruciating abdominal cramps give way to violent, repeated bouts of diarrhoea, causing you to spend huge amounts of time on the toilet passing watery mess and at the same time you will find yourself vomiting up whatever you happen to have in your stomach. You know that the one thing you can do to make every single one of these symptoms go away, is just take another dose of whatever your cocktail of choice happens to be. 

If you are trying to come off of the drug the detox is not only agonising, but incredibly dangerous. It should really never be attempted unless under medical supervision as the shock to the body of suddenly no longer being slowed down and depressed by the substances you have been abusing, can cause brain haemorrhages, strokes and even heart failure. It is not something you should ever try to undertake on your own. If you want to detox off of narcotic drug abuse, there are other drugs that can be prescribed to help assuage the symptoms of withdrawal and replacement medications that can be prescribed to help with the ongoing attempts to keep clean. 

If though, your withdrawal is unintentional and down to a miscalculation of how many tablets you think you have to get you through a weekend, or you're late in requesting a repeat prescription, you know that you can probably get to a chemist and buy some over the counter tablets to get you back to feeling human again. If you're addicted to prescription drugs and/or over the counter medications containing codeine, you will undoubtedly know where each and every single pharmacy in your area is located. You will have their opening hours memorised and if you're anything like me, will also have every single one of their phone numbers in your phone so you can always ring ahead to check that they have what you want in stock. Like me, you will also find yourself becoming well known to certain people who work in all these pharmacies and these people will start to become wary of you as you repeatedly come in to purchase medicines which are designed to only ever be used for up to three days at a time. The recent clamp down on the sale of codeine based medications to the public, because of the emerging knowledge about widespread misuse means that staff are now trained to keep an eye out for people just like you who come in to buy these products on a regular basis. They are told to refuse you if they think that you are abusing these medications. You find yourself in embarrassing situations where you have to tell a barrage of lies to the woman behind the counter in order to try and persuade her to give you the product you so desperately need. But she stands firm.

So you begin to learn the days and times of the staff rotations in each and every pharmacy too, so that you know when to time your visits to them and not be refused. You learn to rotate your visits to each pharmacy on certain days at certain times and then find yourself seeking out pharmacies in the next town where your face is yet to become a familiar sight. In order to get to these other pharmacies, you have to learn bus timetables so that you can get to the next town, do a sweep of every pharmacy in that town and get another bus back home in time for tea. You worry that you will also become recognisable in these pharmacies too, so you consider the other three towns on main bus routes from the town you live in, slowly building a mental database of up to 20 stores, 60 employees and their work rotas, a dozen or so bus timetables and the incredibly important duty chemist rotas which ascertain the pharmacies who will open for a few hours on Sundays and bank holidays, because you know that you can never allow yourself to get into the position of not being able to get hold of your drug of choice.

If you're receiving part of your fix through a prescription, you need to know which pharmacy to hit up to get that filled in and which other pharmacy to visit to buy the other subsequent medications that you're supplementing your addiction with. You need to work out a route that will allow you to visit both these pharmacies in good time, whilst still making sure that you remember to run all the other errands you need to do whilst out and about in town. Things start to get on top though because even though you think you're able to plan your week out and make sure you have enough tablets to see you through a certain period of time, you actually find that on certain days when you're really just looking to get that old familiar buzz, so you greedily taking more than you had allotted for that particular time period and you run out before you're due to get a prescription refilled or go buy more from a pharmacy. And more often than not, that will likely happen on a Sunday when most chemists are only open for a few hours and you need to seriously plan how to get out there in time before they close.

But what if that particular pharmacy, on that Sunday 4 hour rotation is one where you're already kind of well known by not only the staff behind the counter, but the pharmacists themselves who lurk in the background approving every codeine purchase the sales people are allowed to process? Then, you're fucked. So you wind up dragging other people into your sad little world of desperation and addiction. You get your partner, your friends or your family members to run little errands for you to pick up a packet of whatever it is you need, making out that you're suffering from terrible back/tooth/period pain and desperately need them to run to the chemist for you. You force them to become enablers. Whether willingly or unwillingly, they become participants in your addictive behaviours and when you first discover just how easy it is to get them to pick up some meds for you, once again you find yourself getting carried away with the amount you are taking because if you run out, well, you know that you can always rely on them to help you out. 

Then one day your other half comes home and tells you that he was refused service in one of the chemists he usually visits when running a drug errand for you. You feel guilty at first for having made him a part of this situation and for him having been embarrassed, but what you're also thinking – quite shamefully – is that you've perhaps lost one of your avenues to getting your regular fix. You worry that you won't be able to sustain the amount of meds you need in order to keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay and part of you gets mad at your other half for having always used the same pharmacy each time he picked some up for you. You expect him to have been thinking like you; like and addict. You expected him to rotate the different pharmacies he visited the way you do, because you expected him to anticipate being exposed as some kind of addict enabler. You're basically being an ignorant, selfish ungrateful bitch, but then that's what being an addict does to you: it causes you to lose sight of a lot of what's real and important in this world because first and foremost, your main concern is always being able to get your fix.

You're obsessed with making sure you have the one thing that is not only destroying you, but at the same time keeping you going. You can't even think about planning anything else in your life without first making sure that you have your drugs sorted. Going to stay overnight at a friend's house? You need to make sure you have a few doses worth with you, not only for the next day, but just in case plans end up changing at the last minute and you're away from home longer than you anticipate. Going away on holiday? Wow, well first of all you need to make sure that you not only have enough meds to see you through your trip in your suitcase, but you want to make sure that you have about three days worth of meds in your handbag and carry on luggage too, just in case your suitcase gets waylaid along the way and you need to have enough on you until you can get to a doctor or pharmacist. Going in to hospital for surgery? Yeah that can be a hard one, but what I remember doing was taking a large dose last thing at night, the day before the surgery, just before I had to stop eating or drinking so that I was going to be okay and not in withdrawal the next day when I was scheduled for surgery. I then had to make sure that I had three days worth of meds in my bag with me too, because I knew that I would not only be feeling absolutely no effect whatsoever from the morphine, paracetamol, Tramadol and Diclofenac mixture they'd be administering me post-surgery, but that there is always the possibility of being kept in longer than you expect, should there be complications. And I wasn't going to risk going into withdrawal in a fucking hospital ward.

This shit plays into every aspect of your life. At work, people start to get a bit suspicious if you're seen to be taking a large amount of medication all the time. I used to take my daily dose at my desk, first thing in the morning, along with the first coffee I would have at my desk, prior to starting through my daily to-do list. But then people started noticing and making comments, so I decided to make sure that I always took my cocktail just before I left the house to get the bus to work. So I always had to make sure that I was up in time to get that taken care of before leaving.....but you know how it is sometimes. You hit the 'snooze' button a few too many times and you linger in the bed a little too long because you're just so wonderfully ensconced in the arms of your other half who's hugs seem to be the most amazing, right at the time when you're due to haul your ass out of bed and into the cold harsh light of day. You know you can do your make-up on the bus, but you still need to take your cocktail of drugs and there's no time. So you end up having to book a taxi instead, which on it's own isn't all that expensive. But when you start to make a habit out of it, that £6 a day, slowly becomes £30 a week, which is £120 a month or about £1200 over a working year. And you're already spending £8 for a box of 'Nurofen Plus' every three days, which in a year becomes £976. So you're actually forking out £2000 a year to not only fund your little habit, but also to allow you to indulge in your habit, without being 'discovered' by the people you work with. 

And that's only beginning to tell the story. Because you know you buy more than that when you take into consideration all the times you decide to go mad and take more. Then there are all the taxis you have to take to get to a pharmacy in time to buy your fix before it closes, the bus fares to take you out of town to use unfamiliar pharmacies and then, as time goes by, the money you end up forking out when you begin to start ordering these drugs online. One day you wake up and realise that the reason you don't really have any money to do anything is because you're spending a fucking fortune buying stuff to keep you from ending up curled up in a ball, crying into your pillow whilst you agoinisingly vacillate between throwing up and shitting weird brown liquid out your ass at a 100mph.

And yet, if you're like me, you manage to allow all of this to go on in your life, without ever letting onto anyone that you're actually going through any of it. For the past six or seven years, I've been a functioning narcotic addict. I've invested so much time, money and energy in not only feeding this addiction, but doing everything I can to keep it a secret. I've lied to doctors, pharmacists, friends, family members and also my other half in a way too, by omission. I've kept this secret for so long it's just become part of who I am. I'm used to it. I can't remember life without it. And because I remained functioning up until last year (when I suffered a nervous breakdown due to the culmination of a whole number of factors coming together at once) I've never hit the kind of rock bottom addicts need to feel in order to become spurred on to do anything about it. I still live in my nice home, with my lovely fiance, in my little bubble of contentment, surrounded by nice things and I've never had to do anything desperately upsetting in order to obtain my fix. It's been too easy for me to develop this addiction and maintain my addiction for as long as I have. Hence my long term experience as a functioning addict.

I suppose you're all wondering if by my being so honest about all this, I'm planning on doing something about it. The main reason I allowed myself to slip so readily into abuse and addiction in the first place was because I felt as though I needed that artificial 'high' to counteract the nastiness and systematic undermining of my self worth, doled out to me by my cruel and controlling ex boyfriend. But he has been out of the picture ever since I grew a pair of balls and managed to gather enough strength to throw his ass out of the house, one cold November evening, back in 2007. Since dumping him I regained a sense of who I am and whilst the confidence and self-esteem still elude me, I somehow managed to attract and keep my current partner, who has made me happier than anyone else ever has in my entire life. I shouldn't need the crutch of this addiction any more, because I'm loved, liked, respected and practically worshiped by this guy. But that's not how addictions work. They creep in under the radar and latch onto any part of your psyche that's weak enough to convince you that you need that 'little something-something' to get through the day. 

I don't really get much of a high from the amount I take any more (and I'm already taking a dangerous amount, so upping the dose every now and then is seriously playing with fire) but on those occasions when I think I might need that crutch of inner warmth and comfort, it's usually because I’m feeling really down on myself for one reason or another. Maybe I'm eating too much, going off plan on my diet, gaining a little weight, not fitting into some item of clothes, feeling inadequate next to the girlfriends of my other half's friends, seeing myself in the mirror....all just central to my issues with self-esteem, self-confidence, self-hatred and ultimately my disordered eating too. My addiction didn't want to leave when my boyfriend did, so it found another bunch of issues to latch onto and allow itself to continue to fester under the surface.

Deep down I know that I should do something about it. Deep down I know that I'm damaging my stomach with all the ibuprofen and my liver with all the paracetamol. I also know that I'm messing up my mind too, because of the damage narcotic addiction does to a lot of your mental processes. I don't know which of my little brain fogs are down to the narcotic abuse or the current amount of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds I'm taking. I know that I keep having these weird little slips of memory, forgetting what I'm talking about in the middle of a sentence, struggling to remember certain words I want to use that seem to be on the tip of my tongue yet evade me at that particular moment, forgetting how to do basic mental arithmetic....all the kinds of things that someone of my intelligence would never normally suffer from. It's nothing major but it can be a bit annoying. I guess I should ask my doctor if the anti-depressants/anti-anxiety meds could be causing these mental blips, but if he says they shouldn't be, I could then be opening a whole can of worms by then having him worried enough to try and look into why it really is happening. Urgh...

I'm just not in the mood to give this shit up now. Just as I'm not in the right time or place to quite fucking about with my eating and start behaving like a normal person again. All this bullshit is so emeshed in the overall personality and persona of who I am, I don't know what I'd be like without it. And that kind of scares me. I might not like me much right now, but I'm used to being this way. If I get rid of all the crutches and crapness, what will be left? What if that makes things worse? Better the devil you know than the devil you don't right?

Wow. I can't believe I just wrote all that stuff. I didn't realise that I had so much to say about the subject. But I guess it was like a dam of thoughts and feelings that I'd kept all bottled up for so long, it turned out that there was a lot I had to say on the matter. Before today, the only other person I admitted any of this to was a friend I met through this blog, who shares a helluva lot of experiences, ideas, problems, thoughts, likes and dislikes with me. I opened up to her because her own candid honesty just blew me away and I had so much respect for her. I felt like if she could find the strength to open up, I needed to grow up and put on my big-girl panties and find the balls to tell at least one person the truth. If only to give me a sense of objective perspective and perhaps even a little support from a like-minded person. As it turned out, this person I told just made me feel completely at ease and so I felt that, seeing as how this blog is anonymous, I should really use the opportunity to speak freely about what I've been going through. 

Maybe it will explain a few things; maybe it will make for interesting reading; or maybe it'll serve as some kind of warning to anyone at risk of developing an addiction to prescription drugs, over the counter drugs or any other kind of drugs. I don't know. I just needed to be truly honest about stuff going on in my life, because if I'm willing to tell y'all about how I stick my fingers down my throat after eating my binges, I might as well tell y'all that I'm a fucking junkie too. Because like it or not, functioning or whatever, I AM an addict and it plays an even bigger part in my life than my disordered eating – I think. I dunno. It's all the same shit really. Just my fucked up head using whatever method it can to cope with getting through the days, be it via drug abuse, disordered eating or having anxiety issues. I guess I'm more of a mess than I like to let on and seeing it all here in print really makes me stop and think I should do something about it.

But just not right now. Just not today. I'm not ready to do anything to fix my fucked up brain at the moment. Right now I just want to carry on getting through the days as relatively unscathed as I can, existing in my pretend world of make believe perfection. Not to mention the fact that I still suffer from all the physical issues that actually require me to take painkillers for a genuine reason. Meh...I'm too tired to fight anything and too fat/ugly/far gone for anything to be remedied with ease anytime soon. So I guess I’ll just keep on keeping on, like a swan on a lake who glides along gracefully so that all onlookers think that their movements are effortless, whilst all the time the little legs are flailing like mad underwater, just struggling to keep their damn bodies afloat.

I'm both ugly duckling and swan, all at the same time. Funny huh? Oh well, I've said far too much for one day. I've gotta sign off for now and remove myself from all this soul-bearing. I've practically vomited my spleen all over the place telling y'all, all of this. I need to go eat an entire giant Toblerone with fruit and nut now to re-sully my recently cleansed conscience.

Sorry for blathering on at y'all for so long.

Stay awesome folks

x

Spooking Myself For Shits 'n Giggles

It's 3.38am and once again I'm sat up by myself as the other half sleeps soundly in our bedroom next door. I fell asleep today, somewhere around lunchtime, after my awesome boyfriend came back from town, having fetched up all the bits 'n bobs I'd requested. I know it might not sound like the most exciting shopping list ever, but he got everything I asked for and I immediately became much more relaxed, knowing I didn't have to worry about food for the next couple of days. I now have another little swag-bag of munch next to my side of the sofa, full of various types of chocolate bars, Dark Rye Ryvitas and Cheese Flavoured Snack-A-Jacks. He also got me tins of Tesco Finest Beech Smoked Mackerel Fillets, Princes Peppered Mackerel Fillets, John West Tuna in Spring Water, Spinach Ristorante Pizzas, Diet Coke and Tropicana Pure Orange Juice With Extra Bits. All good in the hood!

I know that there are going to be people reading that, who will probably be rolling their eyes or gagging at what I consider to be a balanced diet, but these are the foods that get me through the day without freaking out or having to purge. I might need to get some more yoghurts and grapefruit too, because I forgot to put them on my list, but I have enough to keep me happy for now. Himself also remembered to get me some cigarettes, painkillers and credit for my phone too, so maximum brownie points to him for being a good and dutiful boyfriend!

I have actually purged today, but it was a planned purge. I really wanted to have a Tuna Cheese Melt, because they're one of my favourite binge foods and something I crave if I haven't had fish for a while. I worked out the calorie count for it and the tuna, three slices of toasted white bread, 300g of mature cheddar cheese, mayonnaise and tomato ketchup, washed down with Tropicana Orange Juice, came in at somewhere around or over 1300 calories! Now that ain't any amount of lard I'm about to let loose on this arse anytime soon, so I know that whenever I eat this particular gluttonous binge, it is a guaranteed purge straight after. I'm okay with that as it's a small price to pay for a craving to be eradicated, dealt with and forgotten all about.... Until next time of course!

So yeah, I had my Tuna Cheese Melt and Orange Juice binge, threw it all back up, quickly and quietly, then returned to the sofa to sip water and smoke some cancer sticks, whilst watching the X-Factor. Nothing really blew me away on there tonight. Sam Bailey was beautifully pitch perfect as usual and ickle Nicholas was his adorable little self, but Rough Copy weren't quite on par this week. I didn't think Kingsland Road deserved to be in the bottom sing off after the Flash Vote, as they were pretty together and on-point. They're not my cup of tea and they do look like they're just waiting for the moment when Harry Styles dissolves One Direction to pursue a solo career in 'real music', but they're good at what they do and you can see how much work they put into their performances. I just wish that we had more of a stand-out act like we had in James Arthur last year. Hopefully someone will emerge as a credible artist soon and give us someone to get behind, before everyone blends into an amorphous collective blob of antipathy and vagueness.

I guess I really should get around to explaining the title of this post though, shouldn't I? Well y'all can thank Ms Ruby-Tuesday for my nighttime shenanigans this time round! Y'see I mentioned a few days ago that I had been watching 'Most Haunted' in an attempt to get myself a little bit more in the Halloween spirit and she suggested that I check out a show called 'Living With The Dead', which is a similar kind of show. So here I am, snuggled beneath a duvet in the dark, watching back to back episodes of this gloriously guilty pleasure, reveling in the whole spooky atmosphere as torrential rain thunders outside my living room window, creating rivers of water in the street below. It all just feels so totally appropriate for this time of year; so deliciously dark and almost ominous in a childishly exciting kind of way. 

I know I've said this before, but I'm a total skeptic when it comes to anything not scientifically and empirically proven in peer reviewed - preferably double blind - studies. I've been an atheist for as long as I can remember and have always thought that anything claimed to be 'paranormal' is just a load of delusional hokum. Whenever I'd hear someone tell me about some 'unexplained phenomenon' they'd allegedly experienced, I'd just chalk it up to them having an overactive imagination; that they were somewhat more inclined to want to believe in ghosts/spirits and therefore allowed themselves to believe they really were experiencing something. Especially when a group of people all tune into one another's subconscious perceptions and experience a kind of 'group hallucination'. I just never bought any of it. Even when people close to me - otherwise sane, rational, intelligent people whose opinions and beliefs I respected - claimed to have had a paranormal encounter. 

My mother - who is probably once of the most down to earth, rational, intelligent and pragmatic people I've ever known - told me of an experience she once had with a ghost who appeared at the foot of her bed. She swears blind that it really happened, but when she recounted the experience to me I just laughed at her, told her to get a grip and rolled my eyes. What was this intelligent, respectable woman doing telling me such a load of old bollocks? I think she probably regretted telling me about it, because she swiftly changed the subject and never brought it up again. I just remember feeling a mixture of disappointment and disgust at her for having let herself believe such a load of old shite.

Then there's my fiance. Again, another incredibly intelligent, logical, rational, skeptical, pragmatic, atheist person - he is the last person I would ever expect to claim to have had experienced 'unexplained' or 'paranormal' phenomena. This guy calls a spade a spade and has no time for so-called psychics, religious clap-trap or any kind of new-age, tree-hugging, hippy crap. So when he told me about an occasion in his old home with his ex girlfriend, when an object flew off of the television and across the room for no reason, I wasn't exactly over the moon. Great; he's supposed to be as level-headed as me. More so In fact. And In absolutely every other way, he truly is. He just has this 'one thing that he cannot explain'. I've taken the piss out of him so many times about it, I just find it funny that a man like him would believe in paranormal activity of any kind.

My ex boyfriend (who wound up being a nasty piece of work who really did a number on my self esteem) was raised as an Irish Catholic, so when he told me that he'd had a few experiences with ghosts, I wasn't that surprised. His mother and her sister's were all devout Catholics who also visited psychics and mediums, so he grew up in an environment that was much more open and receptive to the idea of a spiritual world and/or afterlife. Whilst I was just as skeptical of his experiences, I just chalked them up to a difference in cultural ideologies. He also wasn't the sharpest knife in the block either, so it seemed less of an anathema for him to believe in 'things that go bump in the night'! (Quite how I ended up being attracted to someone so intrinsically apposite to me and my own core values is beyond me. He was really only average looking, not that bright, drank too much, gambled excessively, treated me like shit, believed in ghosts and had a very average cock! I guess a sense of humour and a nice accent really is all you need to charm a woman into bed! But I digress...)

Despite having held fast to extremely skeptical beliefs - or lack thereof - since I was very young, in a weirdly contrasting conflict of opinions (for as far back as I can remember) I have always been oddly curious, fascinated even, by anything of a supernatural nature. Growing up I would read ghost and horror stories in abundance along with copies of publications like the Fortean Times, which focused on 'unexplained phenomena' and aspects of the paranormal. It was as if the two opposing sides of my brain were juxtaposed in their thirst for knowledge. The logical left hemisphere was all about science, facts, reality and rationale; yet the other emotional right hemisphere was excited, tantalised even, by the concept of 'supernatural phenomena'. I was fascinated by witches and witchcraft - something that resonates a little among the culture and community where I live. There is a strong link to our Celtic and Pagan or Druid ancestors where I come from, with many people still observing a lot of the old Pagan calendar, traditions and superstitions, that preceded all the Christian bullshit which tried to take over and eclipse it, a couple of thousand years ago. Right now we are in the Samhain part of the calendar, which is my favourite time of year. It always has been.

I can remember as far back as infant school, getting excited as soon as the new school year began, because not only were we saying goodbye to the uncomfortable sweltering temperatures of summer, but Halloween was on the horizon. I would spend weeks, planning my costume. I'd write ghost stories of my own, make little Halloween decorations and play games with my friends where we would pretend we were in a coven and try to put a hex or spells on people we didn't like.

It's weird that I would continue to have this fascination for all things 'spooky' throughout into my adult life, despite all the while maintaining complete skepticism that anything supernatural, paranormal or other-worldly exists. I'm a walking contradiction in terms. I think it's because that part of me who enjoyed the idea of there being a spooky side of life as a child, still secretly wishes that there were such things as ghosts; of a dark side to life which compliments my own personal darker side. Not because I have any great desire for there to be an afterlife, or for any religious bullshit to be true, but because the idea of a whole other dimension of existence is exciting. It would be interesting; a fascinating whole other facet of life to investigate, experience and learn about. It's not that I'm some empty headed person searching for some kind of reason or meaning to life, to make me feel complete. Far from it. I'm just the kind of person who loves to learn about stuff I don't already know. I'm excited by knowledge and another potential realm of existence, would just be awesome. I want it to be true - I just don't believe, deep down that it is. In the words of Fox Mulder's poster: I Want To Believe.

So...um...yeah, I've been watching back to back episodes of this 'Living With The Dead' show at Ruby's recommendation and I must confess, I'm happily hooked! And not just because the Bad-Boy Psychic Medium, Ian Lawman is rather easy on the eye, with his tattoos and New Rocks and fingernails painted black!

(Well, he did used to be a model in his younger days!) Is it real, or is it bullshit? Who knows. The logical part of my brain says it's all just a carnival show, laid on thick for maximum tv effect. But the other part of my brain that has been fascinated with the idea of anything supernatural since I was very small, really does hope that it's rooted in reality.

Well, I do believe I've bored you all to tears with my nonsense for too long again now, so I'm going to call it quits for now and get back to perving on the lovely leather-clad Mr Lawman for a bit.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend folks

X

Purge-atory

Feeling pretty 'meh' right now. It's 7.30am and I've been up since yesterday morning, so it looks like I'm going to be pulling another all-nighter. Again. The weather today was typical British Autumnal weather: blowing a hooley and pissing down with rain all day. Now I really like this kind of weather and this time of year, because it gives me an excuse to do absolutely nothing but scramble beneath a duvet and cozy up to the other half all day. He was rained off of work which was good, but we had no food in the house and only about £20 in cash on us, so rather than get the selection of 'good' foods I was planning on asking him to pick up on his way home, he ended up deciding to order a pizza from Domino's instead, which was most definitely NOT part of the plan today. All I had in to eat were some Cup-A-Soups, which would have been okay, if the annoying smell of someone else devouring pizza wasn't going to throw a spanner in the works. So he ended up buying this 'Deal' which consisted of two medium sized pizzas, a small cheesy garlic bread, a portion of wedges and a bottle of pop, for £19.99. That meant that I was going to have to have a pizza and some other side stuff myself.

I really didn't want all that crap in my body though, so when it all arrived, I started off by eating half a pizza, a piece of garlic bread and some wedges. Then, after glugging back a load of water I made my usual trek off to the bathroom to have Mia help make amends. I'm pretty good at the silent puke, so it didn't alert the other half, but for some reason it was even more messy than usual. Now if any of you are bulimic or have experience with purging, you'll know that it's not a nice, pleasant experience. In fact, despite the nice quick, clean experiences that are falsely portrayed in films, it's a grossly messy experience. You get splash back from the puke hitting the water and then spattering back into your face. Nice! You get gobs of puke, phlegm, spit and stuff all over your hand. Hot! If you're not careful, or if it's a particularly violent purge, you can end up with spew going all over the toilet, on the floor, down your chin, all over your clothes etc....Mmm real sexy! And then there's the odd occasion when some of it shoots up the back of your nasal passages and out your nose, leaving the smell of burning acid and barf up inside your face for the rest of the day. Yum!

And not only that....it can be exhausting. Your stomach muscles have to contract so violently and repeatedly for you to empty your gut, you can really feel as though you've been put through the mill afterwards. This is not something you want to be getting yourself involved in if you can help it, because it's really not good for you. Yes, there are things you can do to help make it easier to bring food up and neutralise stomach acid so it doesn't erode your teeth, but lets face it: throwing up is not nice. It makes me panic sometimes because I feel like I can't breathe and think I'm going to choke to death on my own vomit. The idea of having my death reported in the paper as being the result of self induced vomiting/bulimic behaviours freaks me out - just not enough to stop me from doing it though I guess, huh?

But yeah, I threw up the first intake of pizza and extras at around 9.30pm. Then about an hour later I decided to eat another couple of slices of the cheesy garlic bread, a small Milkybar and some wedges. They were promptly puked back up again at around 10.45pm. I thought I was okay after that and sipped a cup of tea for the next hour. But when the other half went to bed at about 2.00am, the hunger monster came back with a vengeance, so I munched through the rest of the pizza, the rest of the cheesy garlic bread and the rest of the wedges, dipped in barbecue sauce. I swilled a mixture of Diet Coke and water back before and after eating it all, but ultimately it was all just thrown back up again as soon as I'd swallowed down the last morsel.

So I've purged three times since 9.30pm, which might not sound like a lot to some people, but despite being silent pukes, they were pretty violent. This is probably TMI yet again, but hey, if you're reading a blog that refers to Ana or Mia, you pretty much know what you're going to get. I literally had to use half a roll of toilet paper to clean up all the mess I made bringing back up everything I'd eaten this evening, which wasn't a particularly glamorous experience. I don't know if it was because it takes more effort to heave up starchy carbs that have swollen up with liquids, than it is to puke other stuff, but I was a one-woman-vomit-comet this evening.

As a result, my entire abdomen feels as though I've been punched in the stomach, kicked in the kidneys and just generally worked over on by a mixed martial artist. My throat is all icky and scratchy from where my fingernails dragged across the back of it, I have the beginnings of a Russell's sign marking on my right hand knuckles....I could go on and on. The list of negatives associated with this kind of compulsion is waaaaay longer than the positives. Yes, I know that the food isn't going to be sitting, fermenting and working its way through my guts to deposit on my fat arse in the near future, but sometimes it's hard to tell whether or not it's really worth the effort. I feel like crap, there is a perpetual smell of vomit in my nose that I just can't seem to blow out into a tissue, my head hurts, I feel dehydrated, my knee is all wonky from kneeling in front of the porcelain god, my knuckle is fucked, my throat hurts, my stomach hurts, my back hurts and I feel incredibly guilty for having wasted all that food that my other half paid for....and for what? The fear of regaining another pound tomorrow when I way in again?

I've really only maintained since last weigh-in; probably because I've been subjected to a few of my other half's 'nice little surprises' which are difficult to refuse because he really does mean well. He thinks he's giving me little treats that comprise the 20% of bad eating I should be enjoying alongside the 80% of my well behaved restricting. And in reality that would be a pretty normal way to look at it. But I hate having unplanned food sprung on me. If I haven't had time to plan for it and account for it in my daily intake, it just sort of freaks me' out and throws me into a bit of a spin. I hate refusing him because he thinks he's being nice. Plus, he tends to choose stuff that I have a hard time saying no to! These past few days, he's sprung a cherry madeira cake, fish and chips and now today's little pizza party on me. All because in his eyes, I wasn't eating enough the week before and he didn't want me 'starving myself silly' - ha ha, as if!

I feel terrible keeping my true feelings about food from him. He's the only person I've been really honest with about so many other issues and things in my life. I trust him implicitly with any and all information - I just don't want him to know about me throwing up and restricting so much, because I know it will hurt and upset him to think of my putting myself through such a bizarre torment. And I know he'll want me to stop and I'm just not in the right place or frame of mind to start making decisions like that yet. I hate keeping secrets from him, because I'm just so blunt and honest with him regarding EVERYTHING else. I feel like I'm lying to him by omission and I never lie to him. I pride myself on my honesty to him - to the point of being really quite blunt and lacking in diplomacy at times. So this one tiny little secret burns inside me like a terrible wrong I'm doing him. It fills me with guilt and sadness, but I'm doing all this for him. To make myself into a better version of me for him. Because he deserves it. So I'm hoping that in the great universal scheme of karmic order, this one tiny secret will remain undiscovered until the time comes for it to no longer be happening at all, thus rendering it in no need of being kept as a secret anymore. And hopefully by that time, I will be the better, brighter, thinner, prettier, happier, all-smiling, version of myself that he deserves to have on his arm. At least that's how I hope it'll pan out anyway.

I know he's not trying to sabotage me, because he told me that he'd support me whatever I decided to do. Being the gentlemanly legend that he is, he told me that he loves me and would still love and be attractive to me if I gained a load more weight, just as he loves and is attracted to me now. But if I feel that I want to lose weight then he'll still love and be attracted to me either way and will do whatever he can to support and help me. Which is the absolute perfect response any girl could ask for. But in my head I'm kind of annoyed at him for being attracted to such an ugly fat bitch. He's too good looking to be settling for a fat, homely looking, frump. I just gotta try and convince him not to be so liberal with the naughty food treats as I try to starve my arse back into submission! He doesn't realise it yet, but when I do drop the weight he'll be glad I did. He'll eventually appreciate just how much better it is to have Thindarella version 2.1 to curl up with at night or be seen with about town. He's gonna love the new improved me - he just hasn't met me yet! But when he does, he'll be real glad he did.

I think the past couple of days have been harder to resist temptation because I ran out of little chocolate bars, so I didn't have any on hand for my regular daily dose of indulgence. They really do give me something to look forward to every day. When I have a stash of them, everything is so much easier. But himself raided my wee bag of treats a couple of days ago when he had the munchies, so I ran out. I was hoping to go and get some more today (or rather I was hoping I could get him to pick some more up for me when he went into town) but the weather put paid to any ideas either of us might have had about venturing outside today. Not having those little glimmers of light waiting for me at the end of the day just made it all a helluva lot harder to not give in to temptation. So I'm going to have to make sure either he or I gets some from somewhere today or I'm going to go mad. I'll end up eating all kinds of shit and then vomiting it all back up again, the second I've finished. Bleughhh!

On a happier note though, my new friend Ruby has just had her assessment to go into an in-patient treatment unit in the next coming week, so I'm really happy for her. She's not had an easy time of it lately and I think she's started to come around to the idea of getting better. Be sure to stop by her blog and wish her well on her journey - who knows, maybe in the not too distant future we'll see her changing the name of her blog to 'And The She Reappeared' as she slowly but surely begins her ascent back into wellness and contentment. I always feel terrible moaning on about my own problems when there are others going through things a lot worse than what I have the nerve to complain about; it does us all good to gain a little perspective from time to time. 

Wow, it's gone 8.00am already. Where did the night go? One minute I was watching dodgy old repeats of 'Most Haunted' to get me in the Halloween spirit, the next here I am watching early morning episodes of 'The Waltons' and being meowed at by two indignant pussy cats who are getting rather agitated at just how long they have been made to wait for their breakfast. They know in their heads, hearts and stomachs that it's way past the usual time we get up to serve them their morning munchables and right now as I type this, the girl cat is staring me down with an intensity normally reserved for the occasional moth that dares flutter in and bother them. I guess I'm going to have to capitulate to their insistence and go produce the goods before a full level 2 harassment ensues and I find myself trying to drown out the caterwauling of one, whilst the other stands on my laptop, obscuring the screen entirely. Little fuckers!

I think the other half said something about getting up at about 8.30am too today. I think he wants to get out and about early enough to hit the post office, do a bit of shopping and most importantly - get some cigarettes! He's been rationing out his tobacco in increasingly smaller roll-ups since he decided to stay indoors yesterday, so I know he'll be Jonesing for some smokes real soon. Maybe I should go put the kettle on and get him some coffee and porridge on the go, to welcome his comatose cadaver into the day! It's the least I can do if he's to be running around doing me errands and fetching me comestibles like a good little manservant! 

Yeah, that sounds like a good note to end things on for now. Yesterday might have been a bag of shite, but today is another day entirely. Here's to a Happy Saturday Y'all!

Stay awesome!

x 

p.s. So much for being positive! The second I wrote that, the bloody heavens opened and it started to pour down all over again! Grrr....going into town isn't going to be much fun today!

Post Pizza Pontification

Okay, so I'm now so full I think I can actually feel the food piled up from my stomach, halfway up my oesophagus. I have this awful feeling that if I were to bend over to tie my shoe laces or something (were I wearing shoes of course) that all the food would just pour straight out of me like a jug of junk-food. It's actually a term, me and the other half invented, when referring to feeling full: being ready to jug. Nice, huh? I'm serious though. I think I might actually end up throwing up before this night is over. I know I ate way more than I should have/wanted to, but I didn't want to be leaving any cold pizza leftover, tempting me to finish it off the following day. Everybody knows that cold pizza the next day is awesome (even nicer when you couple it with some nice KFC Spicy Mayonnaise to dip it into) but I'm back on the wagon of being a good girl again tomorrow, so I needed all evidence of today's naughtiness, over and done with now. That way there's nothing left sitting around when I get up in the morning, demanding that I eat it all and let nary a morsel go to waste.

I don't know how you were raised, but I come from a properly traditional family where all food was home-made, from the highest quality ingredients and portion sizes were measured by the size of the plate you were eating off, not the amount of food you actually needed for your age, size, gender or daily activity level. It didn't matter if you were a 30-something year old guy who had been out sweating on a construction site all day or a 7 year old schoolgirl who spent most of her free time either playing on her bike or sat with her nose in a book. You got your dinner on the same massive platter-esque plate as everyone else - piled high with a serious mixture of meat, veg and carbs - and you weren't allowed to leave the table until you had cleared it. There was probably somewhere in the region of 1500-2000 calories on each dinner plate alone, not including the obligatory portion of dessert which was either a home-made apple pie, rhubarb crumble or sticky-toffee pudding with custard or ice-cream - itself served in something resembling more of a basin than a bowl of any recognisable dimensions. 

You couldn't have pudding unless you ate all your main course and you couldn't leave the table until you'd cleared your plate. And naturally, being as this was back in the 80's, when kids actually played outside, you couldn't wait to be allowed to leave the table and get back outside to roam about like wild animals; so you ate everything you were given as fast as possible, before running out the front door to meet back up with your friends and raise hell for another few hours. Okay, so some of that food was burned off by playing outside, running about a bit and just generally being less like square-eyed couch potatoes than our modern day counterparts. But there really was no need for a child my age being served up food portions a navvy would've had a hard time putting away. And that was only weekday dinners. Breakfasts were sugary cereals and toast, whilst midday meals at school were home-made packed lunches containing about three rounds of sandwiches, crisps, a yoghurt, fruit, two biscuits, some pickled onions (yeah, I was - and still am - a bit of a stickler for a super-sharp pickled onion!) home-made cake and a bottle of juice.

Friday dinner time, was the one day we ate 'junk food' in the form of fish & chips from the local chippy, followed up with a treasure-trove of sugary booty from the sweet shop around the corner. Sunday dinner was a four course event, the likes of which most people only see at Christmas time, unless we were having a barbecue during summer, which in itself was basically just an excuse for my dad to see how much meat he could marinade and grill on his custom built, charcoal fueled, greed-machine.

Food was everywhere, all the time and it was always expected to be received with gratitude, consumed in abundance and avoided only if you were truly ill. And by truly ill, I'm talking stomach cancer, liver failure or need for dialysis, because as far as my family were concerned, if you were sick, you needed to keep your strength up, so even if you were barfing your ring up with an attack of projectile-vomiting-gastroenteritis, you were still expected to put away your own body weight in chicken soup, tea, toast and fruit salads. For real. My family didn't just use food to show love, they practically communicated every known human emotion through the medium of meat and two veg. 

And the weirdest thing about it? None of them thought that what they were doing was wrong. As far as they were concerned, they were taking care of us the best way they knew how. You were doing well to eat up all that home-cooked goodness. A hearty appetite was the mark of a healthy 'growing young girl' (yeah, growing outwards, mother dear!) and to refuse food was an insult that cut to the core of whichever matriarchal family member had slaved over a hot stove to produce it. I come from a large family and my mother, her mother (my grandmother) and her four sisters all made a habit of cooking up ridiculous amounts of food any time anyone so much as set foot over the threshold of their homes. I grew up thinking that it was normal to be given food as soon as you sat down in someone's sitting room, expected of you to finish everything on your plate and encouraged to ask for seconds.

Is it any wonder I ended up growing to the size of a house?

I've carried that mentality, that ethos when it comes to eating food, around with me for all of my life: Always finish your food. Clear your plate. Waste not, want not. It's rude to refuse food from someone who has taken the time to cook for you. Think of all the starving children in Ethiopia...blah blah blah. It's like it's so deeply ingrained in my consciousness, I can't not comply. I was trained to eat like a horse. It doesn't matter what it is I'm eating, I still feel obliged to eat all of it. I have zero concept of how much food my body actually wants or needs anymore, so I almost always end up ordering, buying, cooking or preparing far too much. My plate doesn't look right if I can see any of the white on it. And when I'm not actively restricting, I will feel compelled to procure enough to feed two or three people. It doesn't matter if it's a McDonalds, a KFC, a Chinese takeaway, a pizza, sweets, crisps, cake or a bowl of breakfast cereal. Once I've sat down with my allotted 'portion' I have to eat all of it. 

I can feel my stomach ready to burst and only be halfway through whatever's on my plate, but I have to make sure that I eat every last scrap of whatever's in front of me. It's like I've been pre-programmed to complete some sort of comestible mission. I can't rest until everything is eaten and I'm sat feeling bloated, nauseated and with a stomach now distended from having to accommodate far too much food than is good for anyone. Can't waste a single crumb. Not that food I or someone else paid good money for. I have to be a good girl and finish what's on my plate. It's so fucked up.

I know my parents and my family probably thought that they were doing the right thing by encouraging me to eat so much. They saw food as nourishment, as the key to making me grow up big and strong. For the most part they thought that they were helping me to grow, providing me with good, traditional home-cooked dinners and keeping my junk food intake to a minimum. I was given fresh fruit and vegetables, hardly any fried food, sweets only on a Friday and nothing but good, hearty, home-cooked fare. They thought that they were setting me up for life on a diet of wholesome foods, laden with love. But in reality, all they did was set in place a screwed up way of thinking that would plague me for the rest of my life. They created a binge-eating monster who equated the consumption of food with contentment; who saw wastefulness as wrong and a clean plate as something to aim for. I know they didn't mean to, but in their ignorance they created a monster. A monster I now have to fight; an inner demon I must struggle to vanquish. 

It reminds of one of my favourite poems actually. It's called 'This Be The Verse' and is by Philip Larkin:

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. 

They may not mean to, but they do. 

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats, 

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

It's a poem almost everyone can identify with and I've loved it from the moment I stumbled upon it, in a poetry anthology I found in our school library when I was about 13. The last two lines always make me laugh, because I have always known that I didn't want children and this merely adds credence to my decision not to push out any of my own womb-spawn. By not breeding, I'm not bringing another annoying drain on the planet's resources into this fucked up world; nor am I selfishly creating a plaything of my own genetic make-up to impose my ideas, beliefs, fucked up lifestyle or emotions onto. I mean, it's not just about these aforementioned philosophical reasonings, I do genuinely just detest children and would rather eat my own feet than have any. But a lot of would-be parents would do well to read this poem and take on board the sentiments echoed within it, before they begin their journey into enslavement parenthood. Not that anyone actually seems to 'plan' having children anymore. It's as if everyone who breeds just seems to do so by default, either by accident or the inevitability of apathy. But enough of my childfree-by-choice rantings for now; what was I talking about again?

Oh yes, eating like a fucking pig on my day off and feeling gross for it. I must confess actually: despite today being a specifically sanctioned 'cheat day' I couldn't bear the feeling of all that food just sitting there in my stomach, so I had to and purge it all. Then, I remembered the tube of Cream Cheese & Chive Pringles I had in my bag, along with some Maoam Joystix. They had to go too, so I quickly wolfed them down too with about a litre of water and made a second little trip to the bathroom with Mia. All done, bye-bye. I feel so much better for it now. Clean and calm and under control.

I have this bag next to the side of the sofa I sit on and it's full of chocolate. You'd think that I would have a problem keeping such a large stash of calorie-laden goodness at close hand; that the temptation to eat it all would be too great. But that's the weird thing. Because I promise myself that I can eat a single item of chocolate every day whilst on this diet, I'm not craving it the way I might do if I tried to eliminate it altogether. That little bag of chocolate is my lifeline. My little bag of daily rewards for being a good girl and restricting for the rest of the day. I look forward to eating my little bar of chocolate at the end of every day, with a nice hot cup of tea or coffee, feeling safe in the knowledge that I'm sticking to the plan and hopefully losing weight.

I don't feel remotely inclined to eat any of that chocolate right now. I just want to get through the rest of the night on cigarettes and water. And perhaps the odd cup of tea.

Oh shit, I just saw the time. 2.00am. I only got up at 5.00pm though, so it doesn't feel that late at all. I think when I finish up here I'll go back to reading the rest of Ruby-Tuesday's blog, which I've been working my way through from past beginnings to present, over the past couple of days. So much of what she posts resonates with me. I've found myself open-mouthed in awe reading it at times. Not just because of her enduring strength (even when she thinks she is at her weakest), but because of certain parallels both our lives seem to share. I highly recommend reading it, especially if you are someone flirting with the idea of pursuing an eating disorder. Hers is the real life tale of a girl for whom having an eating disorder is not some romantic notion of a desire to be thin and pretty; it's a harrowing account of the unglamorous, unpretty, unpleasant twin torments of substance addiction and an eating disorder, which is at times almost heartbreaking to read. But there is a beautiful spirit of a beautiful person - beautiful on the inside and out - to be found inbetween the words on this impassioned blog and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know what it's really like to live with mental illness. To read Ruby's story go to http://andthenshedisappeared.blogspot.com and perhaps stop by to offer her some words of support, because I'm sure she'd appreciate them.

But before I go, I just have to say how annoying the X-Factor was this evening. Out of all the categories, I honestly thought that Sharon's 'Overs' was the strongest, with each girl doing a brilliant job. That Shelley was the lowest scoring performer, based on that 10 minute Flash Vote, just seems so unfair. She sang an incredibly difficult song ('Alone' by Heart) and hit some pretty impressive high notes. I know she's not someone you can see as a marketable pop-star and it's supposed to be about the whole package of voice, personality and image, but there were some pure shite and totally forgettable performances this evening. That boy who sang 'Summer of 69' was crap. He didn't hit half the notes, had zero personality and picked a song that is so over-done in karaoke's it should never again be sang by anyone else other than Bryan Adams. And the great-unwashed mess Luke Friend was a bag of balls too. How come those two got more votes, in a singing competition than a woman who managed to sing one of the most difficult songs in the whole arena of soft rock power ballads? It really pisses me off. I just have to hope that tomorrow, the rest of the UK will wake up and vote for the other two girls in the 'Overs' category, along with Abi, Rough Copy and Nicholas. The rest just didn't stand out and I could easily forget their names, songs and overall performance. Lets hope Shelley kicks ass tomorrow against whoever she ends up having to go head to head with in the sing-off. Because she might not look like Taylor Swift or Rhianna, but by fuck that girl can sing.

Okay, rant over. I'm off to check in with Ruby.

Take care folks

Much Love

xx

"Because Your Good Girl's, Gonna Go Bad..."

Bit of a Tammy Wynette reference there in the title bar today, for all you oldies and fans of country music and dodgy karaoke performances. Don't worry though, I haven't gone completely 'bad' or off the wagon, I'm just having one of my pre-planned, sanctioned binge-days off. It's Saturday night, the X-Factor is on and the smell of Autumn-into-Winter is in the air. It's my favourite time of year, I'm hanging out with my lovely fiance and getting ready to tuck into pizza. And why the fuck not? I've done great this week. I found out I'd lost that six pounds about four days ago and I've since dropped another two (which will invariably go back on temporarily after tonight's munch-fest) but the minute I go back to serious restriction again, they'll fly off and I'll be back to losing once more.

I know it's really sad, but I love watching the X-Factor every year. I love it when you find one particular person who has the ability to make you sit up and take notice when they sing; the one who makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up on end and who can even cause the odd teary eye to well up with overwhelming emotion at how good they are. Last year it was James Arthur who I was blown away with every single week (that bluesy, authentic version of 'I'm Sexy And I Know It' was pure genius and his version of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'The Power of Love' nearly made me cry!). This year I'm not sure who is going to win, but I must confess to thinking that the young Scottish guy Nicholas is utterly adorable! I'm not a remotely maternal or motherly person, I actually hate kids - hell, I even got sterilised at the age of 29 to prevent myself from getting knocked up - but I just think he's so incredibly cute and I want to do that annoying cheek-grabbing thing to him, that old ladies do to little boys when they think they're cute. Maybe I'm biased, coming from a Scottish family, but I really want him to do well. 

I also loved how that woman prison guard sang Jennifer Rush's 'The Power of Love' better than the original, as well as that mad Devonshire Diva doing 'Alone' by Heart. Those two songs are proper tests of whether or not someone can sing. Great to see that so far, the two strongest performances are from Mrs O's 'Overs' category, because they can tend to me the forgotten group who always end up sounding cheesy. Anyway, we're only halfway through the show so far and I don't want this pizza to go cold, so I'll sign off on this post for now and come back later when I've watched the whole programme and devoured all of the cheesy, greasy goodness.

Back soon

x

You Know You're Fucked Up In The Head When....

....you give your boyfriend a blow-job and instantly start wondering what kind of impact the calorie count of semen will have on your weight loss.

I weighed myself earlier and I'm another six pounds down since the last time I weighed in (that is of course if my fucked up scales on my fucked up slanty apartment floor can be trusted). If I've gained when I come to weigh myself tomorrow, I think I'm going to have to start opting for the spit-not-swallow technique, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, I know, TMI, totally gross, but hey we all do it. At my age there ain't no point trying to play the Virgin Fucking Mary card anymore.

I've been round the block so many times I'm probably due a free fucking bus pass.

That made me sound like such a slut.

I'm really not.

Just er...mature...and....er...experienced.

I'll shut up now!

Ha ha

x

And So To Bread...

Okay, so it's lunchtime on a Tuesday afternoon. I'm home alone and having just read through an incredibly triggering blog, I've found myself, kind of on autopilot, planning a binge/purge session with an alarming velocity.

In my head I found myself mentally going through the contents of our cupboards and fridge/freezer. What did I want to eat? Soup? No, not filling enough. Chips? No too bland. What I really wanted was a KFC, but with no money and no way to go out and get one, I had to settle for the next best thing: two Birds Eye Chicken Breast Fillet Pieces on one of those baguettes that are part baked and take 10 mins to bake completely, slathered in spicy KFC mayonnaise (which we brought home the last time we were in there). Before I knew it, the food was in the oven and I was rifling through the rest of the house trying to chuck whatever I could find down my throat, prior to my chicken sandwich.

So far, I've had a weird popping candy covered ice cream lolly thing (75 calories) a packet of Wotsits (96 calories) a packet of orange & sultana Go Ahead snack bars (150 calories) all washed down with lots of water. I'm making my stomach ready for the necessary evacuation that will take place as soon as this chicken sandwich has cooked and slid down my oesophagus into my greedy gullet. It will stay there for less than a minute as I throw back even more water to soften the bread which will undoubtedly expand. It won't be a pleasant purge, maybe even a little painful. But I'm home alone, so the only witnesses to my food crime will be the cats and they're both asleep somewhere in the apartment. 

I've still to eat that chicken sandwich yet my stomach is already churning in anticipation of the eminent purging session. It knows not to try and hold onto that which I have already consumed. It is ready to evacuate its contents, yet it hasn't quite suffered the whole punishment it's about to receive.

I'm excited, nervous, anxious, hungry, nauseated, tired, annoyed and resigned to the decision I don't even remember making to do this. I just need to get it eaten, get it back up agan and get it all over with. Then I can rinse my insides out with litres of water, leave myself feeling clean and empty once more, as that familiar calm washes over me once more.

The things we do to ourselves in the name of vanity.

*****

It's done.

Why did I do it? Did I enjoy it? Did I savour the taste of each morsel of food that passed by my lips? Did the flavours satisfy some deep, dark longing for a particular taste sensation? Was it really an appetite that needed to be sated, or just an urge, like a burning itch under my skin that I needed to scratch? If I'm honest, I can't actually remember much about the way any of it tasted - merely the wave of fullness and nausea that washed over me, the second I swallowed down the final bite. I remember the way my swollen stomach bulged even more as I chugged back a litre of water, causing the bread to expand in my already groaning gut.

The purging was actually more pleasant than the bingeing, believe it or not. I garnered no pleasure from the act of consuming the food, but there was a violent, yet euphoric sense of redemption felt, with each satisfactory heave from my gullet.  Now that it's all gone and I sit here feeling empty, clean and calm once more, it's hard to say whether or not any of it was worth the time and effort, but as many of you will know, sometimes these compulsions just need to be acted on, then and there, or they'll plague your every waking thought until you eventually cave in and succumb. I knew if I tried to ignore the thoughts whirling through my mind, they wouldn't relent and I'd be plagued with them all day, unable to concentrate on anything else. Better to get it done and over with so I could carry on with doing whatever I needed to do.

And so it is that I now sit here feeling quite calm and serene. As if none of it ever happened. My heart has stopped racing, my thoughts have stopped whirling and I feel able to go about the rest of my day feeling quite content.

I'm sorry if this post has been triggering for some of you - I just felt the urge to get it all out of my mind and down in words. I'm sure a lot of you can sympathise or at the very least understand what I was going through.

Till next time

x

Gwen Stefani - Could she be any more beautiful?

 'Cool' - Gwen Stefani

I absolutely love this song and the video is just the ultimate thinspo, because Gwen looks just so utterly immaculate in it (when doesn't she?) but, I can't help but feel like a great, big, steaming pile of horseshit in comparison! There's also something about the video story that makes me cry though because it's about a relationship that didn't work out and then having to meet up with an ex and his new girlfriend, to hang out and be 'Cool' with each other. And for some reason it just makes me dread the thought of ever having to split up with my fiance and then see him out and about with anyone else. It would absolutely kill me. 

You know how you can be in a relationship and love someone and yet it's not the earth-shattering match you always wished a relationship would be, but then one day someone comes along and absolutely sweeps you off your feet, making you feel all the things you always wished a relationship would bring you? Well that's how I felt when I met my fiance. I knew he was the one for me, the day I met him. We became great friends instantly, started seeing each other properly after a month and then I moved him in a month later after we dropped the L-Bomb on one another and realised we both felt the same way. That was five years ago and we've been together ever since. We got engaged this year on my birthday and I can honestly say that it was the happiest moment of my life.

We haven't told anyone about it - apart from a couple of online friends who aren't connected to any of our friends and family at home - because I hate weddings and just want to run away to Gretna Green and have it done quickly, quietly and privately, without the glare of a billion fucking people watching an incredibly private and personal declaration of love, devotion and intent. I also refuse point blank to spend a fucking fortune on a shitty mass produced meal in some swanky fucking venue, followed by a crappy fucking disco playing none of the kind of music he or I like, just to get a load of Marks & Spencers vouchers and a day spent dressed up like a fucking meringue. No, I want a nice simple elopement followed by a weeks holiday/honeymoon on a canal boat, cruising down the waterways, stopping in at little pubs and restaurants, sleeping on the roof under the stars and just escaping the rest of the world. I have no desire to go on holiday to any hot resort, I just want a nice quiet wedding and a nice quiet break with my new husband, to celebrate us beginning the journey of our lives. 

I can't wait. I just need to make sure that I'm a helluva lot slimmer and prettier for him before it happens. I know there isn't a hope in hell that I'll ever look anywhere near as pretty and put together as Gwen the Goddess of Glamour and utter Gorgeousness, but I will forever look to her as ultimate thinspo, whenever I feel the urge to go off the rails and thwart my progress. 

As long as I never end up in the position she plays in that video, having to split with my man and then meet him with a future partner, then I can live happy ever after.

Well, as happy as one can be when plagued with perpetual self hatred.

Here's to trying to make oneself into the perfect wife-to-be....

xx