Hey ladies. I'm kind of... lost right now...
I wanted to let you guys know I'm still alive and making it by.
But it's not the feeling I expected. I guess I thought I would be happy to be "maintaining" even though I know that's not what happens. I thought I would be happy to eat foods I like but I just feel guilty and fat. It's like I'm binging when I want to be starving, which is apparently entirely different from binging when I feel like binging. Anything close to 1000 calories is my definition of binging, by the way. And today I believe I ate 1000 calories. Which is what drove me to get on tonight...
I haven't weighed myself in a few days. I can't take the stress.
The comments from my family are getting overwhelming. Tonight I had seconds at dinner and everyone was like, "Way to go Rowan! Look at her eat!" Disgusting. I feel disgusting.
Also, I have a story for you.
I haven't had many friends in the past five or six years. I've alienated myself a lot. But I had one friend through all of it. We had been friends since third grade. We fought quite often, but we felt like sisters. It's weird to think that we're no longer friends.
She was always on the heavier side. When we got to highschool she started getting bigger and bigger. She weighed over 200lbs during most of our high school career. Her parents and I both worried about her. She refused to do anything to change. She even threw out all of the mirrors in her room and continued to wear clothes that were far, far too small for her. Her apathy towards her body began to plague ever aspect of her life. Her room was piled high with garbage. I was helping her clean it one day and I found a mostly empty giant tub of peanut butter with a knife in it under a stack of clothes. I was repulsed, horrified, and scared shitless for my friend. How had things gotten this bad? It was plain to see, she was filling a void with food.
Her parents signed her up for a diet program, which was mostly like weight watchers but less group-oriented. They had meal plans and weigh-ins and their own line of diet foods. I wanted to help, so I went along to some of the meetings, I gathered what experience I had from trying to lose weight and I made every effort to help her make better choices. We would walk everywhere, I would suggest workout DVDs and games to get us moving, I brought healthy snacks or refused to eat unhealthy stuff with her and even went shopping with her to help her make better choices. It didn't get her too far, but atleast she was slowly losing or not putting on anymore weight. Which was something.
We split ways our senior year of highschool. It's a long, complicated story, but basically she's just not a nice person. I swear to you, it had nothing to do with her weight, even though I was very frustrated with her for not caring about herself because it clearly led to her treating me and everyone else around her even worse. She had become a really rotten, abusive person.
But I think she made me realize just how badly I wanted to be thin, pretty, lovable, successful and not a giant waste of space. Seeing what could happen to a person who gave into food, yeah, it triggered me into some serious starving and purging. But it was never very successful, because I regularly had her to compare myself to - and next to her, I was the thin one. Which didn't encourage me to really work at being thin.
Being away from her has been the best thing I have done for myself in so many ways.
But, a few days ago I saw a picture taken of her recently. She has not only decided to be best friends with someone I was practically mortal enemies with for a very, very long time, but she has also put on so much weight I did not even RECOGNIZE her. And this is not me being a "skinny bitch". I literally passed over her in several photos, until finally I realized it was her. If she doesn't weigh almost 300lbs now I will eat my hat. She looks like she's been swallowed up by this mammoth body, her feet point outwards in opposite directions, her neck sticks out beyond her chin, her stomach hangs down inside of her pants.... I was shocked.
As much as I dislike her now... I feel responsible. I feel like without me to be a positive influence in her life she has just given up. But at the same time, part of me would absolutely love to flaunt my new body in front of her. For all of the crappy things she put me through those last years of our friendship, for her poor parents who got nothing but abuse and misery, for all of the friends she kept me from making or keeping, I just want to be a total bitch to her.
I am going straight to hell, but it's the dark, dirty truth of it all.
I want her to be so jealous that all she can talk about with her new BFF is how fabulous I look, how skinny and thin I am, how well my life is going, how handsome my man is, how exciting my life is. I just want her to know how well I am doing without her, and how I'm done letting her cruel words effect me.
But I feel like 109 lbs isn't thin enough to do that.
She makes me want to be 100lbs.
How can someone who is almost 300lbs trigger me?
Anyway, thanks Lottie and Olivia so much, I feel so bless to have your support, you're too sweet. I feel like I'm in limbo right now, waiting to make a choice about whether or not to lose more. I feel like it's inevitable, I feel like 109 is just too much, but we'll see. I am actually feeling pretty good, aside from feeling conflicted and confused about what to do and where I am.
I love you all so much. <3 Stay strong!
