Strategically Starving Since September 15th

Everything in my life right now is going about a million miles per hour and I can’t seem to get a foothold or a finger hold on anything.

I’ve opened the book my older sister sent me last year: “Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws” by Kate Bornstein. I was flipping through it last night, amidst emo-tears, and came across number 81: “Starve Yourself.” It says that “starving yourself is a valid alternative to killing yourself, but only just barely. If you’re starving yourself either by not eating or by throwing up what you eat – or if you’re thinking about doing that – it doesn’t make you a bad person, but you do need medical help. Use another alternative in this book to stay alive while you stop doing this one.”

The author of the book has “been an active anorexic for the past forty years,” and her anorexia has been “periodic, meaning it comes and goes.” She claims that her “anorexia has kept me alive on several occasions when I just wanted to die. It seems I can handle not eating like some people can handle alcohol…either way, there is no real payoff except the few more days it gives you to find some other reason to stay alive.”

I know, like my “Beauty Diary” (which has, at the moment, failed miserably and consists of one page, and dust in the bottom of a drawer) that this is a bad idea. But see, this is why I started this journal: I don’t care. Friday, my grandmother was out. So I went across the street to the grocery store and bought Pizza Pockets and chocolate and pop and binged and binged and binged. It was horrible. I’m a violently emotional eater. Number 61 is “Eat is all and Keep it Down.” She says “ a lot of people go through eating binges. I always have. It’s when we know what we’re eating isn’t good for us and that it’s too much to be eating. Often, we even pass the point of enjoying what we’re eating and anxiety about that starts to creep in.”

That’s what happened to me on Friday. I binged. Binged to the point where I felt like puking was the only was to feel better about the shit I had just eaten. I can’t throw up, though. I can’t stand it. I’ve had migraines since grade 2 and (in grade 2) was throwing up literally every other day. So, if I can help it, I refuse to let myself throw up. But the feeling…Friday, I felt like I betrayed myself. This happens every time I binge. I go on a radical guilt trip. So my grandmother came hone around 6 and spent the entire evening trying to get me to eat. I told her I had eaten leftovers in the fridge that she had left. I had actually thrown them out. I went to bed feeling sort of proud of myself. I opened my book, found number 61 first, then number 81. Saturday morning rolled around and my mother woke me up around 10AM (she had come to visit for the day and had arrived around 9). She and I went grocery shopping for my grandmother, and I complained of a headache. Mom told me she had brought a doughnut for me. I ate it in the car. We went home, and sat around for a bit, until after noon, when we went to meet relatives at Angelo’s for lunch (there’s a cafeteria style setup there). I ate nothing. I drank nothing. I complained of a headache and heartburn, and got away with it.

Mom and I then went to the mall, she kept suggesting cinnamon buns, cookies and Tim’s, “healthy food” at the food court, Orange Julius, and I kept telling her I just wasn’t hungry. Which was somewhat true. By the end of the mall trip, she was telling me to “stop playing games” and I kept telling her “what games?!”
Before we went home, though, she bought me some hot chocolate at Tim’s. Afterwards, throughout the entire day, was the first time since the morning that I had to go to the washroom. Bravo. Because I hadn’t eaten all day, I was more or less “Aww come onnnnn” forced into eating supper. Which I did.
Mom went home again, grandmother and I went for a walk, then (when we got back to the house) I went upstairs, on my computer.
I refused any fruits and the like.
I went to bed around 9PM, which is freakin’ early for me on a weekend! My head was killing me, though. I was out like a light and slept all night.
Today (Sunday) my grandmother went out with relatives again, and I went across the street and bought pre-made sandwiches and chocolate. I binged. I feel like throwing up. Tomorrow, I’m not going to eat again.
I’m calling it (and I’ve been repeating it to myself this entire weekend as a form of…mantra) “Strategically Starving Myself.”
I can control it. It’s pretty much the only thing I can control these days. I don’t care anymore.

Also, number 74 is “Frame Your Debate”
So I think I’ll take my problems and draw them out. It’ll be shitty, mind you. But who cares? This is for me. And she did say to “use another alternative in this book to stay alive while you stop doing this one.”
We’ll see how it goes. What with school, my grandmother and all.
Wish me S.S luck.