Right and Wrong

It's been a funny day or so, really. I had meant to update last night as per usual, but I ended up with such a headache and felt queasy as heck with it, so I decided to once again call it an early night. It still took me two hours to fall asleep. And this, I suppose, is the crux of the matter. I went into work yesterday and I felt so much better than I had on Thursday, and I started wondering if I hadn't made some sort of mistake. But then I talked to the retail manager and another staff member out the back and we all got weepy, and it's just...I don't know. It's hard.

I'm giving something up here and I can't be sure that it is the right choice. But then it's not as if I am convinced that staying on this diet and forcing myself through another seven or eight weeks? Is going to help me either. One of the reasons I couldn't fall asleep last night was because my stomach feels awful. My whole digestion system is rebelling against me, actually, and it's uncomfortable as hell. I'm also just in general concerned about myself. My hair is falling out in massive amounts. My skin is like paper. I have huge dark circles. Even though I am tired all the time -- tired to the point where I get into the shower and can't see how I'm going to manage to get out, tired to the point where I can't carry boxes -- I don't sleep properly or well. But what scares me more, I think, is that I get dressed or changed and see the bones beneath my skin and think: "Wow, imagine what I would see if I just kept going!" And this is even when I broke down in tears on Thursday multiple times because I can't sleep, because I can't study, because I can't work.

My aunt made the comment the other night about anorexia. I'm not sure how serious she was being, but the fact stands that she is a mental health worker and has been for longer than I've been alive. And while I would take exception to the "anorexia" label, I think it's entirely accurate to say that I have, or am developing, an eating disorder. Quite what this means, I am not sure, but I do not think it is sensible for me to continue on this diet. The fact that I am having such trouble letting it go is testament enough, I think. I mean, I spent most of yesterday daydreaming of my favourite restaurant -- which I have booked a table at for Monday next -- and while trying to sleep I contemplated buying some little things with which to augment the diet food over the coming week (baby carrots, avocado, bean sprouts, that sort of malarkey), but I got up this morning and had my diet breakfast and I honestly don't know if I can bring myself to break it. It's the bones-beneath-the-skin thing all over again. The desire to be thin isn't about being healthy anymore. It's tilting slowly towards some sort of obsession, even though it's destroying my mental and my physical health. For god's sake, I can't even get up from my bed these days without the world spinning around me.

So, in the end...maybe it's not about right or wrong. I've always had lifelong problems with commitment, because I tend to see decisions as black and white when they're in fact myriad shades of grey. I live in terror of making the wrong decision, and thus often never make the decision at all. This time I need to take the bull by the horns and just do it. Admittedly it's been very very fast -- perhaps too quick, and maybe that's why I've scared myself. But the truth of the matter is that normal people do not start crying for no reason. They don't sleepwalk through their lives the way I have for the last four weeks.

I have also got to trust myself. I'm not ditching the diet to go back to the way things were. Since December I have collected books and knowledge and I understand so much more about food and my body than I ever did. I also have learned that I enjoy exercise when I am not treating it as the be-all and end-all of a weightloss regime, and with a bit of luck and a hell of a lot of work...I should be able to maintain a sensible weight. It's a lifelong goal, but then this was never just a diet. It was a lifestyle change. And in the end, the fact remains that I never wanted to weigh fifty kilograms while living my life in fear of every single carbohydrate that passed my lips.

I could be wrong -- but then in some way, I know I'm right. And in the end it's all about the living, anyway.