October 27

I finally know what it feels like to actually want to die.

I want to die.

This is killing me, slowly but surely.

October 26

"Close your eyes. Imagine that you're standing in a bakery. Not just any bakery--the best bakery in Paris, its windows fogged, crowded with people who jostle for space in front of its long glass cases. The room is fragrant and you can't take your eyes off the rows of cinnamon rolls and croissants, iced petits fours, flaky napoleons and elephant ears. Every counter holds at least one basket of crusty baguettes, still warm from the oven.

And you're hungry. In fact, you're starving. Hunger is a tornado whirling in your chest, a bottomless vortex at your core. Hunger is a tiger sharpening its claws on your tender insides. You stand in front of the glass cases, trying to swallow, but your throat is dry and your stomach clenches and contracts.

You want more than anything to lick the side of an eclair, swirl the custard and chocolate against your tongue. You dream about biting off the end of a cruller, feeling the give of the spongy dough, the brief molecular friction of the glaze against your teeth, flooding your mouth with sweetness. The woman beside you reaches into a white paper bag, pulls out a hunk of sourdough roll. You see the little puff of steam that flares from its soft center, breathe in its warm yeasty smell. She pops it into her mouth and chews and you chew along with her. You can almost taste the bread she's eating. Almost.

But you can't, not really, because how long has it been since you've tasted bread? A month? A year? And though your stomach grinds against your backbone and your cheeks are hollow, though the tiger flays your belly, you can't eat. You want to, you have to, but your fear is greater than your hunger. Because when you do--when you choke down a spoonful of plain yogurt, five pretzel sticks, a grape--that's when the voice in your head starts up, a whisper, a cajoling sigh: You don't need to eat, you're strong, so strong. That's right. Good girl.

Soon the whisper is a hiss filling the center of your head: You don't deserve to eat. You're weak, unworthy. You are disgusting. You don't deserve to live. You, you, you. The voice is a drumbeat, a howl, a knife stuck in your gut, twisting. It knows what you're thinking. It knows everything you do. The more you try to block it out, the louder it becomes, until it's screaming in your ear: You're fat. You're a pig. You make everyone sick. No one loves you and no one ever will. You don't deserve to be loved. You've sinned and now you must be punished.

So you don't eat, though the food is all you think about. Though all day long, wherever you are--doing homework, sitting with friends, trying to sleep--part of you is standing in the bakery, mesmerized with hunger and with fear, the voice growling and rumbling. You have to stand there, your insides in shreds, empty of everything but your own longing. There will be no bread for you, no warm buttery pastries. There's only the pitiless voice inside your head, high-pitched, insistent, insidious. There's only you, more alone than you've ever been. You, growing smaller and frailer. You, with nowhere else to go.

The voice is part of you now, your friend and your tormentor. You can't fight it and you don't want to. You're not so strong, after all. You can't take it and you can't get away. You don't deserve to live. You want to die.

This is what it feels like to have anorexia."

October 25

and I just got word that I have been accepted for Spring of 2011.

Three months from now.

3.

October 20

Still no letter. This is getting ridiculous. Everyone is already signing up for classes for next term and I'm still sitting here, waiting, for this little letter that determines so much.

I'm down five pounds or so. I never eat anymore. The hunger pains use to be so much that I had to lay down on my stomach to keep from crying, but now the pains from actual life are taking over the stomach pains.

Question: What is the longest you have ever fully fasted?

I'm thinking of doing a fast and I want to hear some feedback first.

Besides me waiting though, University has been going okay. It's really just a bunch of reading and studying and making sure you're always on time. Those are things I am good at. I like knowing where I have to be, what I have to be doing and when I need it to be done by. It keeps me on track.

Anyway, I hope you ladies are doing alright. Let me know how October is treating you.

October 17

Still no letter...oy vey! I just want to be able to pick my classes for next semester already and I want to have the satisfaction of getting all my stuff together for moving in and I want to know how my roommate would be but most of all I just want to know if I got accepted or not. I worked so fucking hard, so hard. Every single day, the only thought going through my head was how to NOT screw things up so this university would have no option but to accept me. I just hope that it worked. What bugs me is that it's Sunday and the letter could be sitting in some post office or in the back of a mail car waiting to be delivered. I wish I was a mail man right now.

I haven't eaten in two days or something. I've been too focused on work and trying to get everything done like the perfect student I am trying to be. Not eating so I can be the perfect woman. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

October 14

Binged today.

Binged today.

Binged today.

Binged today.

Binged today.

I have three papers due in the span of two weeks. How the fuck am I not suppose to have multiple anxiety attacks during the process of writing them? I feel like the world is trying to engulf me in its crevices but it can't because I'm too fat for even that.

I don't know.

October 12

I just had the most horrid internal food battle with myself...and in the end, food won.

I had not eaten for 15 hours, about to reach my 16th when a friend stopped by with a burger and fries. I literally excused myself to the bathroom and cried for almost 5 minutes trying to tell myself that I didn't have to eat it. One fucking, terrible panic attack later I washed my face and walked out of the bathroom and....I don't know how to explain it. It was as if I wasn't me. It wasn't me eating that burger and fries, but I was watching someone who looked like me eat it. And I couldn't stop her.

fast restarted at 2:30 p.m.

I just, want to lock myself in a room with no food forever.

I just want to drink water.

I just want to be happy.

I just want to sleep.

October 10

This weekend has been bad food wise. I'm not going to lie.

The good things that have been going on?

Boy and me are talking even more than usual, about apartments and school and places we plan on going etc etc, and I have gotten a lot of homework done this weekend along with some extra credit. Which is always a good thing.

I don't know what else to talk about right now, my head is kind of up in the clouds and I really should just sleep.

Tomorrow I am going to fax out my midterm grades and I guess Tuesday the waiting will start.

Fasting tomorrow.

Goodnight.

October 8

You guys are going to laugh laugh laugh when you read this. Well, it turns out that my midterm grades haven't gotten into the University I want to transfer to so they called me today so see if maybe I could send them again because they probably got lost in the mail. Fucking, what the fuck. I've been so worried and unable to focus all week waiting for this goddamn letter and it turns out that the waiting hasn't even really started yet.

Regardless, I do feel a tons times better now because my current GPA is 3.75 and I made the Dean's List so I feel like I will get accepted. I mean, there is still that chance that I wont but I feel like now I have something to show them that I mean business and that if I go to their school I will surely be the best I can be.

What's next? Well, I'll have to go Monday to classes and get all my professors to sign off on my midterm grades sheet once again, and then I will mail it off as soon as I get home. I want that thing out of here by Tuesday at the latest so they can start deciding.

On the food note, hmm, I haven't eaten anything today. Someone did tell me today that I am looking slimmer. I told them it was probably just because I am under a lot of stress. Tomorrow I am going to fast and hopefully get 3/4 of my homework done. I'm really glad that I took so many classes this semester because they've really been keeping me busy and my mind off of the food.

I hope the rest of you girls are doing alright. How are your fasting days/diets going?

October 7

Still no letter.

I've binged today. Really really horribly. I just can't seem to stop eating today. At this point I am trying to be calm about it. I'm trying to let my body intake what it wants because come tomorrow, she isn't getting one fucking thing for a whole week.

I am in such a terrible state of mind right now.

October 6

Setting: In the library, sitting in a small desk in the corner. It's cold, I have on a peach colored cardigan, sleeves pulled down tight. Pencil behind my right ear. I am shivering while I type.

I just finished my history midterm. I believe I answered all but a few questions right and I strongly feel I will at least make a 95, which is A-OK in my books because I will still have an A at the end of semester.

I had my coffee this morning. The blackest of black, and it smelled so good.

I guess I should talk about what's really on my mind. No letter yet. Everyday I come home I get this terrible churning feeling in my stomach. My eyes dart around like crazy. I can't decide whether I want to go check the mail or not. I have a mini anxiety attack thinking about rejection, about what I would do if I saw that one word typed so perfectly on a little piece of paper that I could just rip into shreds...but more often then not I grab the keys and go walk to the mail box and open that little mail slot to find nothing but bills and magazines I didn't subscribe to and junk. I then close that stupid little slot, lock it, bite back tears and walk back home thinking to myself "Fuck. They're probably trying to tell me in the sweetest way possible that I got rejected." What do I do when I get home? I go take a nap so I wont have to think. So I wont have to eat. So I wont cry.

It's terrible that it has only been a week and this is fucking me up so bad. I ask myself sometimes, "Why do you care so much?" My answer? I don't know. I think it's mostly because deep down I can feel that there is something so much bigger waiting for me out there. Something is waiting for me. I have something waiting for me, and I'm stuck here. Do you know what it is to feel stuck in a place? Stuck somewhere that you cannot get out of no matter how hard you run or how loud you scream or how little you eat? This letter, this 8in X 11in piece of paper is my ticket. It's my ticket out depression, out of guilt, out of worry, out of anxiety. I have so much riding on this. So much.

On a side note, I do realize that there are bigger problems people deal with every day. I do realize that. Sometimes I try to remind myself that this is a small problem in the midst of many bigger ones, but goddamn it is always so hard. Are any of you going through any troubles as of late?

I don't know what else to talk about. I kind of just want this day at University to be over so I can go home and check the mail and nap and not eat again which will make my fasting days go up to three. I have four more classes though, and I can feel that it is going to be a long, long, very long day.

If anything exciting happens, (AKA letter in the mail), I will edit this ASAP. Keep me in your thoughts. Starve away.

October 4

This past week has been going by terribly slow, but I know that it is just because I am waiting to receive the letter that is going to determine...well.....everything, and I've never been more scared in my life. This waiting has been hell.

To have to sit here all day and be left to wonder with thoughts inside my own head. To have to question my intelligence, my ability, my strength. To have to go through worst case scenarios over and over again in my mind until I am certain that everything has already gone horribly wrong, wrong, wrong. To have at least three anxiety attacks every day. To not eat. To starve. To want to cry so bad, but know you can't because no one will understand.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

I can't lose hope, but goddamn, it is so hard not to.

October 1

I feel like I could throw up. I fasted for 30 hours today, and I just had some boiled eggs for dinner (2). I'm working up to my two day fast because lately I just feel really weak and so I want to make sure that I don't faint when I am trying to complete my fast. If I tend to my body and shape it to be able to withstand two days without food, then I know I can go from there to three days and so on and so forth.

As far as everything else is going. I don't really know what to say. Acceptance committee is looking over my application. They called today to say they will be making their decision soon and that just makes me all the more uneasy. I just want to know already. For some reason I have this horrible sinking feeling in the back of my mind that I will not get in. I will be rejected. I will fall into depression. I wont eat for days on end. Of course if I do end up getting in, I still wont eat for days on end because I will be so happy. I'm sorry this has been a topic of the last kajillion of my posts, but this is the one thing that I have going for me right now that I hope turns out well. All I can do is hope anymore and I am so sick of it, I just want the waiting to be over. Regardless of outcome. I'm fucking tired of waiting.

This post is becoming more scattered as I keep writing, so I guess I'll stop. Tomorrow I am fasting for another 24 hours and maybe I'll go to sleep so I can just sleep through the next 8 hours of my fast to see if I can make it to 40 or something.

I hope you girls are doing okay, let me know how the diets are working for you guys. Stay strong.