The Word Cloud

Sorry if the formatting isn't all it could be, but my MW decided to give up the other day so I had to find an alternative to work with :/ Bad luck.



Food diary

Monday 6th September, 16:57

- 1 bag of ready salted crisp (174c)

- 1 glass of orange juice (88c)

Inspirational phrase of the day: ‘I am someone, and beautiful to boot!’

Honestly. That alone makes me want to be sick.

My mother’s insistent though, she reckons that out of all the doctors and phsychiatrists positive thinking is going to do it for me.

Her personal favorite is one she picked up from some daytime chat show ‘goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement’ She likes to throw that one at me whenever she thinks I’m being ‘unreasonable’

It never made sense to me though, like people who talk to their cancer cells and ask them politely to go away, now they are crazy.

Of course, when I said this to Dr Jenkins, my nutritionist, he was quick to point out that anyone who measures their dry cereal out each morning to half a cup exactly isn’t, as such, sane either.

My mum took the lock off my bedroom door when she found the diet pills stuffed in Harry - my child hood teddy, so if I ever want some privacy, God forbid, I have to drag my nightstand across the length of the room and jam it in front of the door.

My wardrobe has a full length mirror built into it that I used to live in front of, that now I only use once a day.

I’m still tired from dragging my night stand across the room, so I have to sit on my bed to pull my jeans and jumper off to save me from keeling over from exhaustion.

I look stupid, stood in my socks and underwear in front of the mirror, Polaroid camera in hand ready to take the snap shot, but it’s become my ritual. I’m so tired and frustrated at working toward a goal that people want for me, that I’ve taken to this habit like it’s my new lover.

I have tonnes of these photos, starting from the first day I came home from the hospital. Sometimes I like to line them up, make a time line out of them and just watch the fat pile on. It makes it real. But for the most part I keep them in a shoe box buried in the bottom of my wardrobe. I don’t know what my mum would think if she ever found them, but I like to have them there. If the only control I have left over my body is to document it, then I damn well will.

My illness can loosly be defined as an addiction. Or as my doctor put it, ‘being abnormaly tolerant to and dependant on somthing that is phsychologically or physically habit forming.’

So with that logic there’s no difference between alcoholism, drug abuse or annorexia.

Only, I don’t get tokens for my progress, and finding a plate of assorted cakes and cookies at one of my meetings is just bad manners.

Tuesday 7th September, 07:12

-Shredded wheat (325c)

Inspirational phrase of the day: ‘You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind’ (whatever)

Today’s a pretty big day in my house, so everyone’s trying to pretend everything’s normal, which kind’a just makes it worse if I’m honest.

It’s my first day back at school since I was hospitalised and everyone’s worried that my nerves are going to send me over the edge. Mum tried handing me a packed lunch before and she practically burst into tears when I turned the barbie clad sandwitches down, saying I’d prefer to get somthing from the canteen.

Somtimes I wish she could be more like dad, he’s quiet and calm and I can have a laugh with him, but with mum - well, lets just say that the only thing we have in common is that food is never far from either of our minds.

08:05

Sinade was waiting for me.

She’d balanced herself on the gate and was swinging it open and closed out of bordeom. I think she feels awkward because she’s the one the rang the hospital in the first place. I probably owe her my life, but I’ll never thank her for it. Deep down I know she didn’t do me any favours.

She smiled brightly when she saw me and jumped down off the gate, burying me in her fat arms, "Hey!"

"Alright?"

She grinned cheerfully, fishing in her bag and pulling out a bananna, "Snack?"

I frowned. I suppose this is somthing I should have expected, "I just ate thanks."

When she didn’t speak I glanced over and saw her face creased with worry. She has a right to be, probably, I haven’t seen anyone in weeks, but I’d kind of hoped that the throbbing viens of fat clinging to my body would be enough proof as to the fact that I am getting ‘better.’ I grinned cheekily, pressing my fingers to my lips, "I can prove it to you if you like."

Her eyes bulged and she threw the bannana at me with an outraged cry of, "You’re vile Lissa!"

"And you’ve gotten stronger." I huffed, rubbing the impact sight hard.

She laughed lightly as we set off down the road, and as we got to the main streets people started to stare, but not at me. Sinade was a special kind of person, she could pile on as much weight as she wanted and it suited her. She wore the right clothes, and knew the right colours and she moved her hips in just the right way to make the boys do a double take. She talked to the right people and bitched about the rest. I think I should be greatful, to have such a huge personality to hide behind, but I’m not. I don’t see her in the adoring, blind way everybody else does. I see what she is, fat.

"Are you nervous about going back then?" She jolts me out of reverie and I blush guiltily. The thing with having an illness like mine is, it has it’s own personality. It’s own thoughts.

I shrugged, "The doctors say the routine will be good for me."

She studied me in side-long glances before declareing, "You should have put some make-up on or somthing. You look ill."

"I am ill."

"Yeah," She shrugged, and I could practically see the cellulite bouncing on her arms, the fat under her skin being manipulated by the movement. "But the whole school dosn’t need to know about it do they?"

"Why?" I asked dryly, "Who haven’t you told?"