But The Quest for Beauty is a Beast.

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Uh-Oh Oreos

Today, another difficult day. Another failure.
I was awoken by a phone call from a friend, and we talked for some time. My best friend, Bailey, is out of town for the next eleven days on a ski trip. I have nothing to do, no expectations, nothing�
I am a prisoner in my mind. And my mind says, "Your only job is to lose weight. You have nothing else to do. It isn�t that hard. You ugly fat bitch! You can at least do that much. Look at you, what a glutton you are! A hideous being. Do something about it. Anything."
Logically I know the price is too high to pay, possibly deadly. Shiko comes in my room crying, because the lady at the insurance company is told her that she does understand what is being said, and that she is only saying she doesn�t because she doesn�t want to. They get into a battle on the phone, and Shiko starts to swear at her.
"Shiko, you can�t do that!" I say, "They won�t listen to you if you cuss at them." But she persists. The woman is throwing insults by the minute about Shiko�s English skills, which are rather good, considering she just moved here last semester.
"Gwen, you know I don�t always understand. I try to but I don�t. And she tells me that I do! If she went to Japan she wouldn�t be able to understand all the time either. I hate English!" She is sobbing, tears pouring down her face. We are all strained for money in this apartment, and the last thing Shiko needed was to rear-ended. I try to talk to her, to calm her down, but it doesn�t do much good. I call the auto body shop, and they listen to me, (they didn�t listen to her) and promptly come tow the car.
I grab a package of Uh-Oh Oreos, and think how hard it must be to not know the language. How lucky I am to live here and to speak English. And how I do nothing productive with my life. She also talks about our neighbor, who currently is working. "In Japan, that is so bad. I can�t believe it. How can he not be working? He just sits home all day!"
And I think of how much that statement reflects me. I am nothing. I do nothing. I sit around all day, and if I am doing poorly I just consume more funds, more food, more energy. I am a drain on society, and few will say it to my face, excepting my mother.
Everyone I went to school with got into top colleges. Berkeley, UCLA, Loyola, NYU, University of Boston� The funny thing was that a few called me the day they moved into their dorms, when we hadn�t spoken in years. I had quit going to school regularly by 7th grade, and by 11th grade I was on independent study. Even though I graduated with As in every subject, I still couldn�t apply to any major schools, because the SATs, which I took at the last minute, had been lost.
I know that every day I allow myself to slip up, to not care, to let my glucometer read "Hi", that I skip my insulin, binge and purge� I know that it will make each coming day so much more difficult. Part of me says, "You don�t even have to go to school next semester. You could just stay home all day and lose weight. No expectations, nothing to do� just that�" And in a way it sounds perfect. But I know it would make me feel like such a failure, and I simply cannot do it. I must become something more than my eating disorder. It is too painful, to consuming, too detrimental. Even as I type this I am nauseous and tired. My last glucose reading was 459, not too bad considering� But it took eight liters of diet soda to get it down to that.
And Shiko bought me more soda. She knows that I drink lots of it, because when I get this way it is because I am "sick." And somehow she knows that the soda helps me. I felt so guilty, knowing that I am doing this to myself, but some days it feels like I am standing on the tracks, waiving my hands to stop the train.
It seems impossible. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will make myself a meal plan and I will follow it. I will take my insulin and I won't purge. Tomorrow..."
But if I lose weight tomorrow...
Tomorrow will remain today.

2:22 AM - Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005
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dying - living