As far as my experience goes, weed is the best way to deal with chronic mental illness.
I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker. I, as many young women do, honest-to-god believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, somehow I would suddenly be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten. I would wear cool quasi-intellectual glasses and a man's oxford shirt in a sunny New York flat and sip coffee and say Mmmm and fold my paper neatly and He would come up behind me and look at me with an adoring gaze. I would swing sexily into my red coupe, and the wind would blow through my hair as I drove into some great big city, stepping off the elevator and striding (with a feminine but authoritative step) into my office where everyone would be impressed with my every feminine but authoritative word. In the evenings I would go home and make magical gourmet meals and eat three bites, and He would look at me in the candlelight and I would be a superwoman 1980s goddess, yes indeed. As soon as I left my hometown and lost a few pounds.
From Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
Ate a salad today and didn't puke it back up. Small victories, right?
But, as is always the case with bulimia, it is at once tempting, seductive, and terrifying. It divides the brain in half: you take in, you reject; you need, you do not need. It is not a comfortable split, even early on. But early on, its pros seem to outweigh its cons. You have a specific focus, your thoughts do not race as much. They stay in an orderly row: go home, eat, throw up. The problem in your life is your body. It is defined and has a beginning and an end. The problem will be solved by shrinking the body. Contain yourself.
From Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
From THIN by Lauren Greenfield
these are the diaries/journals of girls suffering from anorexia and/or bulimia at an eating disorder treatment facility. there was also a documentary, also called THIN, about the girls and their histories and recovery processes.
Words cannot transmit the nature of my hunger. It is a need to feel and a need to fill. An explosion. Each bite taken, fondled, tasted, lovingly chewed, incubated. I become a world. A an expanding cosmos. Then too much. A painful intensity. So I exorcise myself. Pour it all out, give it freedom and free my body of it. Release. I lie back wrapped in blissful serenity, sacrament fulfilled. It is everything for the price of nothing. And an awful punishment; Prometheus resigned to the eagle eating his liver every day. Resigned to the knowledge it will happen again, infinite repetition.
© Noha B.
The ideal of being thin
conceals the ideal
not to have a body
From Ellen West by Frank Bidart
the inability not to fear food
day-and-night; this unending hunger
ten minutes after I have eaten …
a childish
dread of eating; hunger which can have no cause.
From Ellen West by Frank Bidart
Even as a child,
I saw that the "natural" process of aging
is for one's middle to thicken—
one's skin to blotch;
as happened to my mother.
And her mother.
I loathed "Nature."
From Ellen West by Frank Bidart
hush-syrup reblogged
Paintings by Lee Price (via leslieseuffert)
I am not completely sure if this is the painter's intention (and I'm guessing it's not, these paintings are probably a take on consumerism), but these paintings embody the way I see bulimia. Specially because all of the subjects are eating junk food alone, in either a bedroom or a bathroom.
Source: leslieseuffert
What a strange thing, I thought, to take things from the outside world, mash them up in your mouth and push them down into your body so that some of it becomes part of you. It was enough to put anybody off their food.
From Catch Me When I Fall by Nicci French
hush-syrup reblogged
Hotel Graffiti (via nevver)
This made my day. Truly absolute epicness.
I'm dedicating my summer to systematic diminishing. Yea.
Remy; Part One
It is Remy and I and we're on one of our Binge & Barf sessions. Let me explain. About a year ago Remy and I were introduced to one another by her anorexic sister Jana, who thought it would be a "magnificent" (Jana had a great passion for speaking in words with more than three syllables) idea. She figured, you see, since we—Remy and I—were both bulimic, we'd surely "have a lot in common" and "hit it off".
Let me back-track further to a day a year and a half ago where I step out of quite a remote toilet stall at university—after an exhausting puking session (fucking pizza)— to find a minuscule girl with an auburn bob and peanut butter colored skin, dressed in what resembles a kimono that ended mid-thigh with ripped leggings underneath, waiting outside. She just stood there, by the left sink leaning against the wall and smoking a slim cigarette, staring at me—her expression a cross between curiosity and smugness. I decided to ignore her. Washed my hands. When I started for the dryer, she followed and leaned against the bathroom door. I was alarmed. Was she trying to block the exit? And did she even think she could? She was practically smaller than my thumb. And then, she spoke: "You were making yourself throw up," she proclaimed.
"Excuse me," says myself.
"I heard you," she ventured, "besides your face is all red and your eyes are watering," smiles as though she won an important debate.
Then, I recognized her from one of my literature courses; a girl who shows up as often as not and had proudly given Kurt Cobain's lyrics as an example of modern poetry.
"Food poisoning," I glare at her.
She shrugs, "hey, no need to get defensive. I do it too sometimes. Like, when I eat carbs or fats, ye know? I'm more of a part-time mia really. I prefer ana," she blabbed.
I was really irritated now; I hated girls who referred to eating disorders—which are complex and hard to treat—by female names, as though eating disorders were their buddies rather than serious psychological illnesses. Such dumb fuckers were also usually the ones who'd proclaim, "eating disorders are a life-style" and generally wouldn't recognize an ED if it bit them up their rather flabby fucking asses. They were girls who wanted to have an eating disorder, which to me was akin to wanting to live with Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster...
I digress. Where did I stop? Ah yes, I was also quiet pissed of that this imbecile was so jovially trespassing on my privacy; but then again it was my fault for purging in a public place. I hated to admit it to myself, but I was the one who gave her the chance.
I took a deep breath. It was my turn to study Jana appraisingly. And ok, aside from the dumb terminology, she was skinny enough to be anorexic. I couldn't decide though if her spontaneity was feigned or if she truly was so awkward and clueless. I couldn't make up my mind whether to respond or just storm out. I wanted to reply with some scathing, witty remark but in the end all I came up with was, "an eating disorder is not a preference."
"Aha!" she yelped like a dog with a bone, a child with a lollipop, "So you admit you were puking and what I meant was like I would rather just live off sugar-free soda and coffee rather than eat and purge, you know? Like, I've been living on Diet Coke—cause Diet Pepsi is like totally yikes—sugar-free popsicles and cucumbers for 6 days now and it totally feels great and cleansing, you know? I love it! Like it makes you feel pure, as if you're moping your insides, right?"
Okay, so I was beginning to notice the blabbing was a constant with her (I was to later discover that calling what she did "blabbing" was a gross understatement). I simply replied, "I like food." She went on about how she loved the taste of food but that calories were the enemy and how she used to be real fat (humongous was the word she used) and then became "ana and mia" and got skinny. I told her I never fasted but that I binged and purged every day—somewhat glad to finally meet another person with an ED and yet paranoid and wary. Anyway, that's when she told me her sister was just like me.
But I wouldn't meet Remy for another six months. I would be on my second day of my sophomore year and Remy would be a freshman. I'd be reading Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 when Jana would materialize out of thin air, grab my free hand screeching, "Eddie! Come meet my sister!" She would introduce us, give us a wink and vanish—as though she was setting us up on a date; though I don't think even Jana expected the effect Remy and I would have on one another's life for the years to come. Had she known, she probably would've made sure we were never within a 10 mile radius of one another…
At first seeing Remy, I noticed how her features were the antonym of mine. Where I was pale and freckled, she was dark with chiseled cheek-bones. Where I was ice blonde with waves spilling down my back, she had hair so black it was almost blue that ended above her shoulders. Where I was bird bones and soft tissue, she was thick bones and solid muscles. We were the exact same height though and—as luck would have it—the same weight and the same size. That, naturally, produced a competitive edge between us about ten minutes after we met. That edge would survive as long as our relationship. And how long would that be? I wish I could answer.
Where are you now, Remy and are you still working on your paintings with so much figures blended into one another it's like one of those shrink illustrations where they ask you what you see in the image? Remy, do you still arrange your diet pills by color and your uppers and your downers—a rainbow of temporal happiness? Do you still sniff star dust like flower pollen and rise like bread in the oven to melt like smoke from a chimney into the sky? How is that boyfriend of yours and what's it like after you've moved in with him? Are you still managing to convince yourself you love him? I miss you and I wish we could be around each other without destroying one another, without destroying ourselves together and relishing it. We were as addicted to each other as we were, are, will always be to the drugs. I'd love to hate you after all that happened. I'd love to pin all the damage on you since—after all—it was you who gave me that first line (making me swear on your life I would never try it again). I would be a hypocrite if I pegged you as my demon, but you sure did turn the volume up when my demons congregated. Still, when I go through my phone book, your number is still there.
(to be continued)
By Myself, from collection of short stories
hush-syrup reblogged
The number doesn’t matter. If I got down to 70.00, I’d want 65.00. If I weighed 10.0, I wouldn’t be happy until I got down to 5.00. The only number that would ever be enough would be 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size zero, double-zero, zero point.
From Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (via larmoyante)
hush-syrup reblogged
Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart.
By Geneen Roth (via pornandgore)