Just a quick note, Nikki-chan. To quote from Go Ask Alice: "I'm going to start a diet this very day... Not one more bite of chocolate or nary a french fried potato will pass my lips till I've lost (my number inserted) 20 globby pounds of lumpy lard."
I gained back two or three pounds, so I'm going to not eat a single snack until I've at least gone back to 154, or so! How could I possible have gained so much weight?! I haven't been exercising less (I'm going to start doing that every day as soon as exams end), nor eating more, except for a little lapse today. How can I be getting fat again?! I'll lose at least 18 pounds, though, and get down to my ideal weight of 140 pounds! That would be wonderful! And, I'll stick to my "one sweet thing per day" rule religiously from now on! Once I allow myself to snack again, that is--none at all, until I'm back to what I should be for now: 154!!
I don't like how I look, now--I can see the excess fat on my body. I know that I still weigh less than I did before the 20-whateverth of December, but that's so not the point! Just being less than 160 isn't good enough. I need to be thin!!! Or muscular--both, preferably! Gym membership, here I come!
Now, though, I have to get back to studying for exams.
Wish me luck, Nikki-chan!
- Vale
Showing posts with label Go Ask Alice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Go Ask Alice. Show all posts
Friday, May 7, 2010
Notes from 2010: January 6, 1999.
I mention Go Ask Alice again in this entry. Despite being a complete teetotaler (lame as hell word for it, but I've never felt like it would be quite truthful to call myself straight edge, so there it is), I identified deeply with some of the shit Alice goes through as an addict: how lost she is for most of the book, and how her diary is sometimes her only friend and all that keeps her sane. I know now that the book has been heavily edited and fictionalized to drive home the "drugs are evil & wrong" message, but despite having to take it all with a grain of salt, it's still a book that means a lot to me because it was so close to my heart back then. I still have a copy of it around somewhere, and it'll probably always have a home on my bookshelf.
ED trigger alert: The dieting stuff. I've had body image issues pretty much since puberty, and I definitely ate to comfort myself as a teenager, though I didn't think of it that way at the time. I always felt fat and unattractive, and had no confidence whatsoever in my looks. I was constantly making resolutions to diet and exercise more, following them for a short time, then giving up. I did tend to lose weight during musical, since rehearsals kept me busy and I probably didn't have as much time to sit around and eat, but I gained it all back as soon as the musical ended. I was also a late bloomer with fashion and makeup, so I was just starting to get into that in tenth and eleventh grades. Sadly, my body image bullshit hasn't changed significantly in the past decade, and has been compounded by an ED-NOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified--i.e. doesn't quite fit into any of the official eating disorder categories--for those of you lucky enough not to know the lingo) that I'm somewhat recovered from. Logically, I'm aware that I'm in much better shape now than I was as a teenager. But I still feel fat and ugly most of the time.
ED trigger alert: The dieting stuff. I've had body image issues pretty much since puberty, and I definitely ate to comfort myself as a teenager, though I didn't think of it that way at the time. I always felt fat and unattractive, and had no confidence whatsoever in my looks. I was constantly making resolutions to diet and exercise more, following them for a short time, then giving up. I did tend to lose weight during musical, since rehearsals kept me busy and I probably didn't have as much time to sit around and eat, but I gained it all back as soon as the musical ended. I was also a late bloomer with fashion and makeup, so I was just starting to get into that in tenth and eleventh grades. Sadly, my body image bullshit hasn't changed significantly in the past decade, and has been compounded by an ED-NOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified--i.e. doesn't quite fit into any of the official eating disorder categories--for those of you lucky enough not to know the lingo) that I'm somewhat recovered from. Logically, I'm aware that I'm in much better shape now than I was as a teenager. But I still feel fat and ugly most of the time.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Notes from 2010: October 28, 1998. TRIGGER WARNING
TRIGGER WARNING:
So this is the first entry where I talk blatantly, if briefly, about cutting myself. I'm fairly certain I started self-injuring as a coping method near the beginning of eleventh grade, so it would still have been a pretty new thing for me when I wrote this entry.
Full disclosure: I got the idea to start cutting from a magazine article I read about people who did cut and why it was a bad thing. So even stories intended to deter people from engaging in unhealthy behaviours--which is part of what I'm trying to do here--don't necessarily have the effect the writer hopes they will. Nonetheless, I think it's important to admit that, while I recognize that cutting was (and, in the moments when I give in, still is) an addictive behaviour and a terrible, self-defeating coping mechanism, I also have to admit that in the worst moments of my pain--it did sometimes help. Not always. And it did nothing to deal with the underlying issues. It was a prime example of treating the symptom--the pain in that moment--but not the disease--the underlying depression that cutting couldn't take away.
I would never, never recommend self-injury of any kind as a way of trying to handle pain, for many reasons: Any relief is very temporary, and, if you draw blood, not worth the messy clean up. I was always afraid of the consequences (being forced into therapy? institutionalization? being forced to take medication? my family and few friends being horrified by me?) if someone caught me in the act or saw fresh cuts on my body. The scars--believe me--never go away. It is not bullshit to call SI addictive, and once you start it is very, very difficult to stop: it took me more than a decade to almost never cut anymore, and in bad moments the temptation is always there. The act of cutting can trigger suicidal thoughts at moments when you weren't actually thinking them yet. And, as I said, it does absolutely nothing to help you work through and move past the pain that makes you feel like hurting yourself in the first place.
But at the time... it was the only way I knew to help myself, as sad and awful and pathetic as that is. So I did it. I don't advocate it, and if you can convince yourself to never start at all, you'll save yourself the never-ending battle to stop for good. But SI was and is a part of me, for good or for ill. And I'm not going to hedge about that in this blog.
This is also the first entry where I mention finding it difficult to cry, even when I feel like I need to. I've read since then that that's not so unusual for a person who is severely depressed. I've never gotten back to that point again, and I'm thankful for that, because it would scare the hell out of me if I did. For me, it was a sign of how bad things were getting inside my head.
On a slightly lighter note, naming my diary and referring to it as "you" is something I picked up from the book Go Ask Alice. I read that for the first time when I was 12, and re-read it any number of times as a teenager. It broke my heart and left a huge impression on me, and even though drugs have never been my issue, I felt a huge affinity for Alice and the shit she was going through. Hell, maybe that's part of why I'm blogging my diaries today, since reading her journals meant so much to me at the time.
Finally: Yes, I did actually write out anime-style happy faces by hand in my diary. Yes, I do have to snicker at just how frigging nerdy that is.
So this is the first entry where I talk blatantly, if briefly, about cutting myself. I'm fairly certain I started self-injuring as a coping method near the beginning of eleventh grade, so it would still have been a pretty new thing for me when I wrote this entry.
Full disclosure: I got the idea to start cutting from a magazine article I read about people who did cut and why it was a bad thing. So even stories intended to deter people from engaging in unhealthy behaviours--which is part of what I'm trying to do here--don't necessarily have the effect the writer hopes they will. Nonetheless, I think it's important to admit that, while I recognize that cutting was (and, in the moments when I give in, still is) an addictive behaviour and a terrible, self-defeating coping mechanism, I also have to admit that in the worst moments of my pain--it did sometimes help. Not always. And it did nothing to deal with the underlying issues. It was a prime example of treating the symptom--the pain in that moment--but not the disease--the underlying depression that cutting couldn't take away.
I would never, never recommend self-injury of any kind as a way of trying to handle pain, for many reasons: Any relief is very temporary, and, if you draw blood, not worth the messy clean up. I was always afraid of the consequences (being forced into therapy? institutionalization? being forced to take medication? my family and few friends being horrified by me?) if someone caught me in the act or saw fresh cuts on my body. The scars--believe me--never go away. It is not bullshit to call SI addictive, and once you start it is very, very difficult to stop: it took me more than a decade to almost never cut anymore, and in bad moments the temptation is always there. The act of cutting can trigger suicidal thoughts at moments when you weren't actually thinking them yet. And, as I said, it does absolutely nothing to help you work through and move past the pain that makes you feel like hurting yourself in the first place.
But at the time... it was the only way I knew to help myself, as sad and awful and pathetic as that is. So I did it. I don't advocate it, and if you can convince yourself to never start at all, you'll save yourself the never-ending battle to stop for good. But SI was and is a part of me, for good or for ill. And I'm not going to hedge about that in this blog.
This is also the first entry where I mention finding it difficult to cry, even when I feel like I need to. I've read since then that that's not so unusual for a person who is severely depressed. I've never gotten back to that point again, and I'm thankful for that, because it would scare the hell out of me if I did. For me, it was a sign of how bad things were getting inside my head.
On a slightly lighter note, naming my diary and referring to it as "you" is something I picked up from the book Go Ask Alice. I read that for the first time when I was 12, and re-read it any number of times as a teenager. It broke my heart and left a huge impression on me, and even though drugs have never been my issue, I felt a huge affinity for Alice and the shit she was going through. Hell, maybe that's part of why I'm blogging my diaries today, since reading her journals meant so much to me at the time.
Finally: Yes, I did actually write out anime-style happy faces by hand in my diary. Yes, I do have to snicker at just how frigging nerdy that is.
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