Way too much, every day.
Total: 840 calories.
Total: 460 calories.
Total: 500 cals
Total: 960
Sigh.
The problem is that if I feed myself properly, that will be a trigger to start overeating again, which, albeit better for my mental health, is worse for my physical health than doing things this way, because I'm fat. That's the real problem here, that coming back out of restriction is a trigger to overcorrect and return to the even less healthy status quo. If I'd just be throwing myself into the fire, I'd rather stay in the frying pan, if I can just hang in there and take the heat this time.
I hope there is not another food-sharing scenario in my future
I just feel like i'm not acting normal and I have to do something normal every now and then so he doesn't get too worried. He doesn't understand that this is the most physically healthy thing I'm psychologically able to do with my eating habits.
Or maybe i'm making excuses and i just fucking wanted ice cream. When I say that that's coming from a place of shame, of verbal self-injury, of "you fat fucking pig." But. that doesn't necessarily mean it's not true. I cant rule it out. I'm not good enough at introspection to be able to say for sure that wasnt an element. That's the thing about cognitive distortions like self-loathing. Even though i have enough self-empathy now to understand that's what it is and be willing not to trust it, that doesn't mean I can suddenly just see past it. It's still in the way of the truth. I may not be mistaking it for the truth anymore, but that just means I can't tell what the truth is at all.
Is that rice pilaf really only 230 calories per serving and 3 servings per package? It's been a couple hours since i had it and i feel sick and not in a hungry way, and the ice cream isn't even here yet.
Yeah thats what it says. 230 per serving, 3 servings per package. Double and triple checked. Directions said to add olive oil. I mustve added too much. I'm upping my estimate on that one to an even 300 calories.
ugh. i shouldnt have eaten that ice cream but once i got my hands on it there was no way i wasnt going to. now i feel sicker
ugggggggh
good morning. it's 6am and i feel godawful.
that's what happens when you're a disgusting pig who weighs 3 times as much as a normal person and yet you've eaten half as much as even they are supposed to for several days.
why does the healthier sickness have to make me feel sicker than the sicker sickness? it's not fair.
i've found it's easier to stay below target without getting sick when what i'm putting into my body isn't absolute garbage. i've got that rice, i have oats, and i think ihave some canned soup somewhere. i'll have to try to base my diet around things like that today.
my god could it be? the fat bitch who's incapable of healthy behaviors, and only knows how to overeat and occasionally restrict, is actually planning to do something healthy? gasp!
it's true. i'm a fraud. i've betrayed you all /s
i have a theory about restricting-primary versus eating-primary eating disorders. i think all body-focused bad relationships with food stem from hating yourself, but if hating yourself drives you to do the harder unhealthy thing, it's because you at least have a malicious voice inside you faking self-compassion to push you to keep slowly killing yourself even when it's hard (what some people personify as "ana" or "mia"), whereas if hating yourself drives you to do the easier unhealthy thing, it's because nothing in your heart resembles self-compassion in any way, not even a mockery of it, and you just hate yourself.
i don't mean to exclude or ostracize anyone out there who has an eating disorder but doesn't hate themself. i'm not sure there are any of you out there, but if there are, you're valid too, i'm not saying you surely don't exist, only that i've never seen you, and if i ever do see you i'll revise this theory accordingly. and no matter whether you hate yourself or not, if you have psychiatric problems of any kind then you deserve to get help.
anyway, which behavior is harder and which is easier depends on the individual person's metabolism. my body is the greedy kind, so for me, restricting is the harder self-destructive behavior. and my self-loathing is pure and raw—it doesn't try to trick me, only ruthlessly and directly insult me—so nothing inside me gives me willpower, and i'm only able to do the easier self-destructive behavior. that's why i'm fat. But i don't hate myself quite enough to make myself throw up everything i eat (only some of it) and that's why i'm fat, and not bulimic.
or at least, those were the reasons I was fat. see, at long last i've developed some measure of genuine self-compassion, that, despite being genuine, i think can mimic "ana" and encourage me to do the harder self-destructive behavior. but the difference is, that force within me isn't telling me to do that because it wants to kill me. quite the opposite. it just recognizes i still don't have enough self-compassion to not do any self-destructive eating behavior, so for my actual genuine benefit, if i'm constrained to only unhealthy behaviors, it wants me to pick the one that won't bring me closer to death. it may still be harm, but for someone in my condition, it's harm reduction.
that's why i'm optimistic that i can actually stick with the restricting this time.
Okay it's 11:00am now and I'm only just taking my meds and hrt. I'm supposed to take them at 10, but I went back to sleep after the nausea passed, and only just got back out of bed. My uncle has a physical therapist coming in half an hour. I can't be out there in the same room as them. I hate being around unfamiliar people. It's terrifying. It makes me feel vulnerable and exposed. Like even though I'm not standing there naked in front of them I feel like I am for some reason. But I'm hungry as fuck and need that soup. I could go make it now while there's still time. But I need to take a shower. It would be triggering to eat before taking a shower. And I'm gonna be in the shower long enough to not have time, especially if I take my meds first, which I have to do because I'm already an hour late. Plus I shouldn't even be eating this early in the day. If I do then I'm going to eat again later in the day. If I do that then my daily intake will shoot back up into the quadruple digits. There's one very persuasive reason to go make soup right now versus a million reasons not to. I guess I won't.
Okay i couldn't control myself. For days now ive still had that bag of literally just straight fucking chocolate chips that i took to my desk all by itself like a total monster, like some kind of fucking gremlin, back when this particular restricting phase hadn't started yet. I've been sneaking little tiny pathetic nibbles of it. Not cheat nibbles. Been counting them of course. Obviously. And, I just finished it off. That's 200 cals. Don't fucking judge me "oo the stupid landwhale just eats whatever the fuck she wants and calls it 200 cals" I counted the fucking chips, I know what I'm doing, I'm not quite that stupid.
You know I guess I could have taken my meds, gone out there and made the soup and brought it back to my room, left it there, taken a shower, come back, and then eaten it. Oh well. Moot point now. I'm certainly not going to do that immediately after consuming 200 calories.
Alright. All clean. Clean as I'm ever going to get anyway. Can't wash away that after all. Never could. But relatively, I feel great!
I should try to do something productive today. For days now i've just been focusing on my mental health. Which is fine. i needed that. desperately. but it would be nice to be able to also feel like I'm doing something important. Why don't i feel like working on myself is important? Because i hate myself. Not even a question at this point, that's just a personal fact that I know very well now. It's not a good thing, but it's still a part of me and i still need to take care of it, and the healthy way of doing that is to get some external things done once in awhile. You know, like normal people do. You know, normal people, with lives. Remember having a life? Can you remember that?
My uncle offered to stop offering to share food with me. I hadn't told him the details but I did tell him I was on a one meal a day kind of thing. It was very thoughtful of him to offer to stop sharing. I've taken him up on that. So indeed probably no more food-sharing scenarios in my near future. Yay, small victory!
fuck i can't. i can't do anything productive, i'm too sick. the nausea is overpowering. i'm pretty sure i haven't even come down with anything, this is just what happens when i don't fucking stuff my face all day.
i've had bloodwork due for months now. I'm afraid my current behaviors might taint the results but didn't really know what to do with that fear. finally got it into my head i could just message my doctor and ask. So at least i've done that today.
Okay. It's 3:45pm. I'm about to make soup flavored with tomato sauce. I'm making it all at once because that makes the math easier, but I'm only going to have one cup. The soup is labelled 200 calories per can, 130 per cup. Which means there are 200/130 = 1&7/13 cups per can. I have three cans, which is 600 calories total. 1&7/13 * 3 = 3&21/13 = 4&8/13. The tomato sauce says 5 servings per container, 80 calories per serving, serving size 1/2 cup. So that's 5/2 = 2&1/2 cups, 400 calories. 400+600 = 1000, so in total I'm preparing 1000 calories of soup. 2&1/2 = 2&13/26. 4&8/13 = 4&16/26. So, 2&1/2 + 4&8/13 = 6&29/26 = 7&3/26. That's how many cups I'll make total. So I'm making 7&3/26 cups of soup which total 1000 calories. Ergo, there are 1000/(7&3/26) calories per cup, which is where it gets too complicated for me to do by hand. Ruby interpreter says that works out to 140.540-repeating calories per cup. I'll make the tracking easier by rounding that to the "nearest" 10 calories, but since I'm disgusting and always take more of anything than I need or than I intend to take, I'll round up even though down is closer, and say 1 "cup" (as in how much my fat ass is going to justify as a "cup") is 150 calories.
okay i had my soup and based only on how i feel i'm going to guess these drinking cups hold 2 cups,
ok I looked up some short drinking glasses on amazon. seems like they tend to be 12oz, which is 1&1/2 cup. I "had to" (decided to because i'm fat) fill the glass to the top because i ran out of tupperware to put enough of the rest of the soup in the fridge to only fill my glass to my estimate of what a cup is. (really wish i had a measuring cup) so actually I'm gonna say that was 250 calories, not 150. not that it even matters that much, either way i'll know i've had exactly 1000 calories several days from now when there's no soup left. and no I don't drink the damn soup, i'm just using a drinking glass for portion control.
i feel like i'm gonna puke
total: 750
If it's just 150 cals per actually accurately-measured cup (I'm not stupid, if I know the drinking glass is 12oz I know what 2/3 looks like as a fraction) then does it really even matter if I stay disciplined and don't eat in the morning? i mean shit that's less than the chocolate chips i was already sneaking anyway and am now out of.
sigh. not that it's even possible to measure accurately. considering the soup is heterogeneous. even if i had implements i'd have no way of knowing how many calories this specific cup of soup has versus that one of literally the same size.
doesn't feel good that it's 8am and i'm already eating. but it's literally 150 cals. like, chill.
should i try to get a food processor to homogenize my soup? no that's stupid. the texture would be... ugh. bleh. blerf. besides i can't afford that shit anyway.
i really need to sit down and do some budgeting. i pay to keep this website up, i pay for the domain name, i've got my car insurance, apparently medical bills now since my health insurance decided it no longer covers literally the periodic checkup that they ordered as a condition of continued eligibility, and i've got amazon prime... i should cancel amazon prime, imean granted i'm probably going to need it in a few years when i look and feel slightly better in my body and possibly need new clothes and grooming products but like i don't like needing amazon because i know it's a trashy piece of shit company. and i've got nintendo online, which i should also unsubscribe from because i don't even actually use my switch anymore and nintendo is also not a great company. annnd what else. phone bill. hormones obviously, that's a big one i almost forgot somehow. and groceries, and i think that's it? i mean no point listing them out now really. if i want to remind myself of everything i'm paying for, all i really need to do is check my bank statement.
nurse says it's fine to get my bloodwork done even though I'm restricting, it's just about making sure my levels are all in the clear. I probably can't do that today, other stuff going on. i'll do it tomorrow.
not trans bloodwork, to be clear. fatass bloodwork. my dietary habits shouldn't affect my t&e you wouldn't think, but they certainly will affect my blood sugar, blood lipids, and other metabolic measurements. trans bloodwork, welll. ahaha. lmao. no. if i can't afford to buy a damn food processor you think i can afford to just get whatever blood test i want whenever i need it with no referral? haha no
the nurse also said that it's concerning i'm doing this and we should make an appointment to look into getting me back into therapy. and i said fuck no lmao. i mean i said it a lot more respectfully than that, and with adequate explanation, but that was the gist. for one thing i'm not risking my insurance denying another office visit, i can't afford that shit. and the other problem is i've been in therapy my whole damn life and at this point i'm convinced it's done all it can for me.
okay the "other stuff" i had going on today went by faster than i thought. i think i will try to get my bloodwork done today. i'm really nervous about getting in my car. because that's just generally a strong fear i have, all the time. and even more nervous about getting back in my car after getting blood drawn while on <1000kcal/day for 5 days. but, if i chicken out now, this is never getting done.
to be as safe as possible—literally this is an issue of safety, not gluttony, i don't have to be ashamed of it, stop being fucking ashamed of yourself you dumb bitch!!!!—for safety, before going, i'm gonna have another cup of soup and then wait an hour. it's 11am, it's been 3 hours, it's fine. i genuinely don't even want it, i feel too sick for it, but i need to not pass out at the wheel on the way home and kill myself and possibly someone else in a car accident.
wait fuck. if i eat soup right now and then wait an hour and then leave then when i leave it will be 12 noon. and i'll have to drive on mission st. during everyone and their dog's lunch break.
you know what i'm just gonna do it tomorrow
dghsfdujmndgujhghg ok so my uncle and i have a tradition of getting pizza to celebrate when our electrical bill is low (shut up i knowww)
and. our electrical bill was low. and, predictably. he wants to get pizza on saturday (in 2 days) to celebrate.
as we already know, my ability to say no to food is already limited. it doesn't help that if i said no to this i'd feel like a total wet blanket? literally a once a month celebration. it's mildly important to him.
but it's cool. i have a plan.
i don't know how many calories are in one slice of the kind of pizza we usually get. but i do know there is no way one slice of pizza is over a thousand calories. and "under a thousand calories" is kind of the operative concept here. or, uh, so my stupid brain has arbitrarily decided, so long as it's in "restricting mode" this time around.
so. on saturday. i'll just. celebrate with him. and let myself have one slice of pizza. and nothing else for the day. and arbitrarily call it a thousand calories even.
grrrrr that's going to be hard though :( not limiting myself to one slice, i mean that's also going to be hard, but that's at least doable. but moreso only eating once that day and not being able to control what time it's at. pizza is heavy too, normal me in fat bitch mode wouldn't be bothered about that but restricting-mode me is gonna feel soooooo sick to her stomach after this :(((
I THOUGHT WE WERE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY MORE FOOD-SHARING SCENARIOS
why must the hand of fate torment me like this
on the plus side remember when it was 11am and i went "it's 11am i can have soup now" but then decided not to because the traffic would be bad and i would just do my bloodwork tomorrow?
well now it's 3pm and i still haven't eaten since 150cals of soup at 8.
i've also had tea (unsweetened, negligible caloric value) waiting for me for like, hours. whilstdve i... bedrotted. not proud of that but what are you gonna do, it's an entirely appropriate activity level for <1000kcal/day. certainly not any worse than doing the exact same thing out of depression while digesting enough calories to feed a family. i'm gonna take a shower and then go get my tea
fuck this didn't even dawn on me until just now but what if the pizza is too good and triggers me into going back to overeating and there are even going to be leftovers because i'm only having one slice so there will be shit right there for me to binge on FUCK FUCK FUCK I HATE THIS AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
oh okay! okay!!!!!!!! hgreat!!!! this is fine!!!!!! because!!!!
thinking about this is making me spiral deeper into anxiety! and anxiety means restricting mode!!!!!!
so it'll be FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
fuck. remember to breathe
....im gonna go take my stupid fucking shower
okay all "clean" now! haha!~
i can still only clean the outside!!!!!!!!!!!!!~~
sghfg anyway
my uncle wante dot talk about saturday
"do we wanna ge tupper crust or round table... smth to think about tomorrw" yeah i'm sure i'll be thinking a lot about it tomorrow and losing my fucking marbles over it thanks a lot buddy
i want to cry but the tears won't come. funny ever since starting hormones i usually have the opposite problem. i wonder if they're still working NOPE DON'T HAVE THE BANDWIDTH TO WORRY ABOUT THAT TOO RN
oh i have an idea! i'll do my blood draw on saturday so some of the calories leave my body!!
no that's stupid as fuck actually. i'm already going to be hungry having only a single slice of pizza all day. purging some of it via blood draw is going to make me even hungrier and that could interact negatively with the fact that we are going to have a fuckload of leftovers left oh god just kill me now.
okay. okay. i know what i'll do. hear me out.
if i binge i'll commit suicide.
we already know i'm too much of a coward to really do it. the contrapositive of "if i binge i'll commit suicide" is "if i won't commit suicide i don't binge." i won't commit suicide. therefore i don't binge. modus tollens. qed. it's foolproof.
he wants me to bring his prescription in from the mailbox. it's such a small thing that he genuinely needs help with and is completely valid in asking for and normally i wouldn't mind one bit but right now it is making me want to scream. i swear to god if i have to hear one more word about fucking pizza i might just kill myself anyway before we even get to saturday!
in any case there goes doing the blood draw tomorrow. haha. fuck no thats not happening. i'll be way too busy having a fucking day-long panic attack.
you know if i'd just tell him what's really going on he'd back off with the whole pizza thing. we could just cancel the whole date. "i'm sorry i'm being a little weird about pizza day, the thing is i'm having weird feelings about food right now and the prospect of pizza is causing me a lot of anxiety and it would be a huge load off my mind if we could just not." and that would be all it would take.
but! i can't do that! this ritual is kind of important to him!
it's fine! i'll just do whatever i can to spare everyone else's feelings! even when i'm really not okay! it's fine!!
oh my god it's not just pizza. everything has me on edge now. one of my onlien friends says he likes spinach on pizza. which admittedly not a great example. i'm also listening to a deltarune playthrough to try to calm me down adn they got to the point where kris and susie are at the diner and the existence of food in the game is pissing me off. and now they're at a part with toriel and they're doing a mom voice and that's pissing me off because i'm still not over losing my mom after seven fucking years!
ok i've still only had 150 cals today and that was 9 hours ago. maybe i'm just hangry. i f i ate something that might calm me down. but on the other hand. if i didn't. then . i could close off today at only 150. and i wouldn't calm down which would mean more restricting.
... i want to say, fuck it, it's gnna be a 150 day. but! lmao! not like i have any actual self-control! not like i can actually control what i eat or when or how much! so i guess we'll just fucking wait and see!
oh... a warmth is spreading through my body. it feels nice. that's probably a good sign, i think that happens when i don't eat so my body finally starts burning fat for fuel like it's fucking supposed to.
the warmth is making me sleepy. i feel calmer now...
... okay no matter hwo tempting it is i neee d to not just outright fast tomorrow. if i fast tomorrow and then get to have pizza the day after then that's going to be a binge trigger.
i also shouldn't eat, like, significantly less than i think the pizza will be. preferably i should eat more than i think the pizza will be. if i eat less then that will create a steady three-day upward trend, which could also be a trigger. you know, a trigger to continue the trend. which would be disastrous.
i know i said one slice of pizza is definitely under 1000 calories. and like, i also need to eat less than 1000 calories tomorrow. so for logging purposes the pizza will be 1000 calories. but for eating more than that tomorrow purposes i need a more conservative estimate of what the pizza is.
hmm... how much calories does one slice of pizza feel like?
wait no this whole train of thought is stupid. pizza is already going to make me feel sick, if i eat more tomorrow than what i think one slice of pizza is then i'm going to feel even sicker. and by a lot, if it's soup (due to the volumetric difference).
uggggh do i mix things up to make sure not to create an upward trend or do i stick to restricting and avoid making myself sick???? fuck i feel trapped, this whole scenario is just ruining fucking everything!!!
ah...? ther'es the warmth again
total: 150
It's now 8pm. I just spent the past half hour trying to validate myself as having an eating disorder and not just being a stupid fat cunt.
I looked at wikipedia pages for obesity, dieting, very low calorie diets, fasting, etc. Obesity does not count as an eating disorder, the page did not discuss or barely discussed comorbidity with mental health conditions, dieting is an effective treatment (duh), VLCDs are even more effective, and fasting is also effective, and all of these are recommended and have no adverse side effects or risks as long as the patient is obese. People who are underweight (duh), at a healthy weight, or even overweight are at risk of adverse side effects if they try fasting or VLCDs, but not obese people. There is absolutely no physiological justification for my physiological discomfort during my VLCD. It hasn't even been one week. The maximum recommended duration is twelve weeks. I'm just fucking weak, that's all.
I actually knew all this information already, because I've searched it before. I just felt like reviewing it. You know, to make myself more miserable for some fucking reason.
Then I looked at the page for binge eating disorder. I am diagnosed, but I keep doubting the diagnosis, just like I keep doubting every other way I ever suffer or ever have suffered, because I'm a stupid fool with a deficit of self-compassion. But in any case, it said something like 40% of people with binge eating disorder are obese, people who are extremely obese (which I think I qualify as) are disproportionately likely to be that way from binge eating disorder, and some other shit I don't remember. Anyway:
I found the diagnostic criteria elsewhere. Let's review them, shall we.
"Criterion 1: Recurrent episodes of binge eating." Yes, tentatively, but to be sure, let's continue. "An episode of binge eating is characterized by both of the following: a) Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances"—Yes. Definitely. You don't understand, when I'm in fat bitch mode, I pig out. It's fucking obscene. "b) The sense of a lack of control over eating during the episode (e.g., a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating)"—Yes! Most of the time, yes! If I could resist it, why wouldn't I?
"Criterion 2: Binge-eating episodes are associated with three (or more) of the following: a) Eating much more rapidly than normal"—yes, well, for a healthy definition of "normal" anyway—"b) Eating until feeling uncomfortably full"—yes—"c) Eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry"—at times, yes—"d) Eating alone because of being embarrassed by how much one is eating"—yes, literally always, I am literally never not doing this and feeling this—"e) Feeling disgusted with oneself, depressed, or very guilty after overeating"—yes, again, every time, invariably so. "Disgusting" is one of my go-to adjectives for myself, especially when I'm eating, but kind of just, all the fucking time???
"Criterion 3: Marked distress regarding binge eating is present." I have more suicidal thoughts than usual after a big meal, so I'm gonna say, yes.
"Criterion 4: The binge eating occurs, on average, at least 1 day a week for 3 months." Yes. I eat in the way described above most of the time. Never mind "1 day a week for 3 months." Try "most days of the week for most of my life."
"Criterion 5: The binge eating is not associated with the regular use of inappropriate compensatory behavior (e.g., purging, fasting, excessive exercise)"—usually it isn't, no, although the present moment is a counterexample—"and does not occur exclusively during the course of anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa"—Haha! Hahaha! I fucking wish!!!
I'm not even going to apologize for that insensitive remark because I know damn well exactly what I just said. I'm very aware of the psychological mechanisms of anorexia and bulimia, as well as the physical complications, and I'm telling you, if it meant getting to be skinny, I'd much rather be even more fucked up in the head than I already am, and live a shorter and even more miserable life. I would gladly trade away what very little mental wellbeing I still hold within me to be a living stick with prominent ribs and shoulderblades and cheekbones and a modicum of pity from anyone around me and delusional-variant body dysmorphic disorder telling me I'm still fat when I'm not and a life expectancy of a few years at most and constant dizziness and weakness and nausea and self-harm tendencies and extreme self-loathing and still be a target of extremely vitriolic sizeism because underweight people are subject to that as well and it's not fair or right. Relative to what my body is right now and how I currently feel about it, yeah, sign me the fuck up for that shit. I'd kill for it. If you don't think it's possible to sincerely feel that way, clearly you don't know the kind of sick warped shit that goes through my head on a daily basis. I'll give you a hint, this food log, with all its plainly evident mental health imperfections, represents the best I'm ever able to feel, and the most saliently I'm ever able to think.
So yeah! I emphatically meet every single criterion and every single subcriterion.
"As with other eating disorders, binge eating is considered an 'expressive disorder'—a disorder that is an expression of deeper psychological problems." Well. At least half of why I binge is because of food addiction, but the other large minority of the reason is to indulge weight-focused revenge fantasies against my father who raped me. So yeah, I'd say so. "People who have binge eating disorder have been found to have higher weight bias internalization, which is characterized by low self-esteem, unhealthy eating patterns, and body dissatisfaction." Yes. All of these. I'm fucking incapable of eating in a way that doesn't abuse my body one way or another, I fucking hate myself, and I'm fucking disgusting. So yes.
"... indivdiuals who had binge eating disorder were more likely to have experienced physical abuse, perceived risk of physical abuse, stress, and body criticism." Yes, that would be the bullying all throughout my childhood. "Other risk factors may include childhood obesity"—yes—"critical comments about weight"—yes—"low self-esteem"—yes—"depression"—yes—"and physical or sexual abuse in childhood."
Well there you have it. I might be one of the most textbook possible cases of binge eating disorder you could ever have. By no means do I think I have the worst case in the world. My mental health is actually pretty good for someone whose mental health is extremely bad. But I feel confident in saying I have the most certain case in the world.
Would you believe, even though that was what I set out to convince myself of (again), figuring it out (again) actually hurt more than all the sources that told me there's nothing wrong with my mind and it's all just lifestyle choices. Seeing things that people think about fat people in general, without binge eating disorder, and mentally applying them to myself, was more of a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing, but rereading what binge eating disorder's whole deal is was more like an acute stab to the heart with a steak knife. The sheer accuracy of what I saw there, the way every word cut so deep, the way it was like looking into a mirror that I instantly hated and wanted to shatter. That shit hurt. I am mentally sick, that is why I'm like this, and my god do I wish I hadn't gone out of my way to prove it, because like, fuck. The denial crew came to clean it up. "No! None of this is true! I could eat less and actually feel okay about it if I just wanted it enough! I'm just weak! I'm just ignorant! I'm just noncompliant! I'm exactly the way everyone thinks all fat people are! That's all I am and this is all bullshit! It's not true! It's all lies! He didn't rape me! He wouldn't do that! Not him! Not to his own kid!! He loved me! I'm not tainted! I'm not damaged goods! I'm not even real! My life isn't real! The world isn't real! I should just die, die, die, die, die!!!" That shit mostly only happens when I go looking for the truth about myself and find out more than I wanted to know. Beating myself up with internalized sizeism just makes me feel like shit, it can't do much more than that. But reminding myself of what's really going on with me fucking broke me. I've been crying nonstop since. Like actual panicked uncontrollable sobbing. I don't think I'm going to have good dreams tonight. I kind of don't want to sleep so I don't have to find out.
For the record my intake for the day does remain at 150. Not that it even fucking matters. What's the point? I can lose all the weight I can force myself to lose, I'll never be cute, I'll never be pretty, I'll never be skinny, I'll never be a kid again, and I'll never be able to take my innocence back. I really should just die.
I'll be okay. I won't kill myself yet. I'll hold onto my stuffed bunny. She'll keep me safe.
sleeping turned out to be the right call, at least so far. no nightmares. no more suicidal thoughts. i'm actually kind of ok now.
i'm a believer again. that the bunny has my mom in it. she protected me just like i knew she would. just like she always has.
at least even if i hate myself somebunny in the world loves me. even if she's. technically not in the world anymore.
i'm gonna try to go back to sleep
can't sleep.
i have a... "self-abuse gallery." of artwork i use to brainwash myself into hating myself for being fat even more than i already do. i am ashamed to admit there is a strong sexual element to my motivation in doing so, but does it matter? self-abuse is self-abuse. masturbation isn't inherently self-abuse, in my opinion—though i know some people disagree—but if the result is that you hate yourself more than you did before, then yeah, that's self-abuse! plus i don't think it's really possible for me to have a healthy sexuality as long as i have dysphoria. or maybe ever for that matter. since, again. can't unrape myself! doesn't work that way!
anyway i'm not even turned on yet i kind of feel like looking at it. that's how you know it's something fucked up going on and not just a fetish! because sometimes i crave the brainwashing in and of itself! oh, please, nasty gallery full of my fatphobic drawings and stories, insult me some more! remind me why i deserve to die!
i'm not fatphobic toward anyone but myself you know. at least i try really hard not to be. do i have intrusive fatphobic thoughts about other people? yes. but unless they're about me, i don't give those thoughts the time of day. i know they're wrong, because i have empathy for the person i'm looking at. so i just tell those thoughts to fuck right off. and yet, when they are about me, i sit back and wordlessly let them completely destroy my mental health. go on then, thoughts. kick me while i'm down and sexually objectify me at the same time. see if i fucking care. i'm not sure i can care about anything anymore.
It's 7:45am. In 15 minutes I won't have eaten in 24 hours. And it's the fault of fucking pizza that I can't make it 48.
Other than that, I feel alright. On the inside, I feel sick as a dog. On the outside, my entire body is sore. But emotionally, I feel like a million bucks by the standards of the past several days.
... Tired of being so mentally ill that I see myself in like half the disorders I read about. I'm definitely not agoraphobic, because agoraphobia without panic disorder is supposed to be real but extremely rare, and I definitely don't have panic disorder. But I am undeniably afraid of leaving the house or getting in my car. I was reading about differential diagnoses and. God fucking dammit.
Avoidant personality disorder. "Avoids occupational activities that involve significant interpersonal contact, because of fears of criticism, disapproval, or rejection." Yes. Always. "Is unwilling to get involved with people unless certain of being liked." For fuck sak ei stopped using my journal space that i set aside in my online friend group to avoid bothering anyone too much in the main vent channel, i stopped using that journal space because my friends came there to show love and support and i don't want to bother them. I'm not even willing to get involved with me unless I'm certain of being liked to a completely unreasonable standard of certainty that's somehow not satisfied by someone literally telling me "you're a part of this community and we're going to love and support the shit out of you." "Shows restraint within intimate relationships because of the fear of being shamed or ridiculed." I don't have intimate relationships. But on the rare occasion I ever do, yes, it's like that. "Is preoccupied with being criticized or rejected in social situations." Yes, always. "Is inhibited in new interpersonal situations because of feelings of inadequacy." Hit the nail on the head. "Views self as socially inept, personally unappealing, or inferior to others." Do I ever. "Is unusually reluctant to take personal risk or engage in any new activities because they may prove embarrassing." Absolutely. "Four of the seven specific symptoms should be present." Well that's all of them right there so. Yeah. "Millon's subtypes. Self-deserting avoidant. Including depressive features. Blocks or fragments self-awareness; discards painful images and memories; casts away untenable thoughts and impulses; possibly suicidal." Fucking—you can't keep calling me out like this. I have been called out so hard.
I'm sorry. How is it fucking possible that I have depression with features of anxiety, and binge eating disorder with restrictive features, and gender dysphoria, and ADD, and AvPD self-deserting subtype? Is one label not enough? I only have one brain don't I? I mean only three of those five are actually diagnosed but the gender dysphoria is blatantly obvious and the AvPD also seems pretty clear-cut. What the fuck is actually wrong with me? It's not five separate-ass things. It's one thing. So what the fuck is it?
"A clear example of the influence of different personality domains is found in this last subtype of avoidant patterns. Self-deserting avoidants combine the social (interpersonal) retreating of the avoidant with the ruminative (cognitive) self-devaluation of the depressive personality. These individuals immerse themselves in a surrogate fantasy existence to avoid the discomfort of having to relate to others. They are not, however, unaware of their use of these tactics (unless, for example, they are concurrently experiencing a major depressive episode with psychosis), and this makes them painfully aware of their perceived inadequacies. Fantasy gradually becomes less effective, and their thoughts center more and more on the misery of their lives and the anguish of past experiences. Waking dreams are displaced by painful ruminations. Thus totally interiorized, the feelings that motivated their initial withdrawal reverberate unremittingly. More and more, they cannot tolerate being themselves and seek to completely withdraw from their own conscious awareness, an existential abnegation of selfhood. As this process proceeds, self-deserting avoidants become outside spectators, observing from without the drama of their frightening transformation." Stop! Stop it! Get the fuck away from me! Get out of my head! Get out of myhead! Stop looking at me!! Stop looking through me stop seeing me stop knowing me don't FUCKIGN touch me there!!! put that AWAY!!!
i'm. going to keep this here for posterity. but.
let's, never talk about this again, yeah?
... i think i get it now. it's the blind men and the elephant. a mental illness is not an entire ill mind. i can have depression and bed and gender dysphoria and add and avpd, in just the same way that an apple can be round and red and sweet and a fruit and grow from a tree.
so what am i? the allegorical parallel to the concept of "apple" here is missing. the vocabulary does not exist to describe cohesively what i am without appealing to individual traits. i'm me. that's it.
wish i weren't
i came fully clean to my uncle about what i'm doing. told him it's <1000cal/day and it's because I'm in restricting mode, not because I'm trying to lose weight. and i told him that even though it sounds scary, it's actually safe for someone my size and even medically recommended. and i told him that i intend to get whatever kind of pizza i want and then only have one slice and have that be it for the day, and that's how i intend to fit our celebration into my regimen. he knows everything now. his response sounded like he's okay with it. so that's a huge relief.
I wonder if the rest of the dev team for tfd wonders what the hell is going on with me. Two weeks ago i said i'd been MIA because i was working on a different project but it would be done last week. And i can't exactly tell them the delay of at least an additional week is due to a fucking mental breakdown.
it's almost 10:00. time to take my meds. but i feel like maybe i could get my bloodwork done today. and if i do, i want to do it before taking my meds, so estrogen doesn't get removed from my bloodstream. sorry meds. i'll have to take you late again
i got my bloodwork done. not without significant psychological difficulty. i got there and had an anxiety flareup in the waiting room (heavy breathing, on the verge of tears) just from fucking being there and then the nurse was like especially gentle and kind with me like i think she could tell there was something wrong and i felt unusually squeamish about getting my blood drawn and had to close my eyes really tight and at the end she said "i've scared you enough already" and m y dumb ass said "no no you're fine i'm just like this right now" you fucking idiot way to just spill the beans like that! and i had a panic attack in the car on the way home and continued to drive reasonably safely while literally sobbing and screaming "I HATE DRIVING! I HATE IT! MAYBE I SHOULD JUST DRIVE MYSELF OFF A CLIFF! SURE WOULD MAKE EVERYTHING A LOT EASIER!" (exact words)
i'm home now and back out of my jeans and shoes and into my comfy shorts and i've got tea that's been waiting for me since i left and i've got soup and toast and i need to take my meds. it's 11:30 now. i already had soup and toa st at 8 but i got my blood drawn so i need to be safe. then i'm going to relax and calm the fuck down and survive.
i wrote a poem. some of it was original, some of it was put together from other poems i'd written over the past several days. trying to organize the thoughts that are challenging me right now, in a way slightly less gruesome than their original form. i posted it on reddit. yeah i went back to reddit and made an account again, this time intending to build up enough karma to be able to post on r/mtf. what can i say, i need them, i need someone who i can ask certain kinds of questions. anyway, my poem got autofiltered :(
it's 8pm. went into the kitchen intending to get one last cup of soup for the day to tide me over so i can get through only eating one slice of pizza tomorrow and not having any control over what time. instead of just one cup of soup, i got one cup of soup, some milk, and two tortilla chips. by my current standards, this was a binge. binges in restricting mode are, you know, whatever. i feel pretty bad about them, as i always do about binges. pretty icky. lots of body-focused shame. but like. it's some milk and 2 tortilla chips, it's gonna be okay. not like when i actually binge and then pass out from eating too much. not like when i'm actually disgusting. instead of just feeling disgusting. well i mean. i'm always actually disgusting. but i mean in terms of behavior.
even so. i shouldn't have done that. i feel sick now
total: 850
today's the day.
i'm checking the menu in advance and... what am i a fuckin idiot? round table publishes nutritional info. it's even per slice. this whole crisis was for nothing.
smallest size says max 180 cals per slice. that doesn't really sound right. just based on how pizza feels to eat i'll call it 400 instead. might change my mind when i see the actual size. but if that's really how many calories they think it has then at least i know 1000 is way off.
point is i think i might actually have leeway to also have soup today. if i need to. we'll see whether i do or not.
wait shit my uncle said he wanted to do lunch and round table opens 4pm. we agreed on round table but upper crust opens earlier and i don't know if it's more important to him to do lunch or to do round table. if lunch is the operative concept here then he might say he wants to do upper crust instead. upper crust doesn't have nutritional info! fuck!
okay never mind he said if they open at 4 we'll do dinner instead. thank fucking god
it's 9:30 and i've now had 1 cup of soup. i'll try to have that be it until this evening.
12:00pm. i had some tea and took my meds at 11 and now i've just shaved my face. my long curly hair makes it infeasible to use shaving cream unless i'm also immediately going to take a shower, and i don't feel like it right now, so i shaved without shaving cream. bad idea, every time i do that i cut myself a little and it stings. but it's worth it to be smooth, despite the stinging i actually feel great. for once i looked in the mirror and didn't see someone completely hideous. maybe i'm already feminizing a little bit.
ok we had pizza. it was not a disaster. based on the size and how it felt to eat it i'm shooting a bit over the advertised 180 cals, but a bit under my a priori estimate of 400, and calling it 300. the smallest size is cut into quarters, so i'm only left with 3 slices as leftovers. overall went a lot better than i was worried it would.
it's 4:30am now so i'm filling this in retrospectively. i took a shower and had more tea and took my night-time meds roughly on-time. i told reddit i think i have avpd. and that was my night.
total: 450
good morning! i slept in until 9am and it's now 10 and i'm just getting out of bed. it's only 10am and i'm already having some soup. i'm inclined to cut myself some slack on it this time. i'm beginning to feel like maybe eating in the morning is not actually the worst thing in the world. i really hope this doesn't mean my "discipline" (read: anxiety) is slipping. but, well, my rationalization is, i did this yesterday too and was still able to stick to under 1000 cals for the day, maybe the timing of the first meal doesn't actually matter in terms of affecting my ability to hold out until evening after that.
it's now 2:45 and i'm realizing i forgot to mention that was the last of the soup. that was 7 servings, aiming for a cup each time, and i made about 7 cups total. so my measuring was pretty close actually.
it's 7:00. i've taken my evening meds. i took a 2 hour nap. i'd like to stop doing that. taking naps. i know i'm eating very little right now, but even so, it's not healthy. my laundry in the dryer should be finished. i'm gonna go get it out, take a shower, and have a slice of leftover pizza. it'll be another 450 cal day.
there was less introspection and whining in my food log today because i've been doing it on reddit instead
might not have a slice of pizza actually. it's 8pm now and i got my clothes out of the dryer but haven't showered yet. i feel sick to my stomach and don't really want to eat. i have some tea brewing so there's that. gonna stop procrastinating and go shower now
the tea is immediately (like 1 sip) making me feel a lot better. i think i may have been a little dehydrated. maybe a lot dehydrated. i was resisting the temptation to drink the shower water lmao
"but i said i wouldn't have the slice of pizza after all so if i do it now then it's a binge" girl just do it, 150 in one day and 450 in one day are both way under 1000. you could eat the whole rest of it and you'd still only be 50 calories over (do not do this)
didn't take much convincing. took my own advice and had a slice after all. did not have more than that. am i getting the hang of this, or am i wavering? only time will tell i guess.
regardless i would like to not eat at 9pm again any time soon. that can't be good for my sleep. or maybe it can, it's hard for me to sleep when i'm full but it's hard for me to sleep when i'm hungry too, and having a meal before bed on a VLCD specifically, hopefully puts me in just the right place between those.
sghouldn't hace done that
feel sick
.
gzjgkgccgckchxksgaitslhdpjcjclhxsykyodpfidoys
total: 450
9:30am. just had a slice of pizza. if 150 calories can last me all day then 300 calories should be able to last me all day even better. we'll see.
my after silence account was approved
7:00pm. took my meds, made some tea, currently icing it
it's almost midnight and i can't sleep. probably because i spent too much time in bed today already.
i'm going to eat again. hate that i'm doing it but the nausea is getting hard to bear. then i'll stay up, since my body insists on it, and let sleep come when it will
ok i ate the last leftover pizza slice. i'm justifying this to myself by saying, that was the last unhealthy food i had stocked up, which means i'll have to eat healthy foods tomorrow, which will make getting paid the day after less of a binge trigger. if i saved the last slice for tomorrow then i'd hit the day after while still running on unhealthy foods and then i'd surely splurge. which i hope doesn't just happen anyway.
total: 600
i had rice and apple sauce today
it's 7:45pm and i only just got out of bed and took my evening meds after napping in the middle of the day for god knows how long. my uncle texted me at 4pm and i didn't see it until i woke up so...
ugh... im gonna try to go out for a walk
went for a walk. listened to music. practiced counterbalancing with my hips instead of my shoulders (it's a trans thing) (i wasn't like full on swaying my hips, i feel like that would be misogynistic)
feel like i overexerted myself a little. really speaks to the extreme nature of what i'm doing here that i can take a 4 or so hour nap and then go out for a sub-1-hour walk and overexert myself
i'd like to try to take a shower before bed. wash off this sweat
total: 470
It's 1:30am. It still feels like yesterday. I shouldn't eat right now but I really have to, the nausea is actually totally unbearable, my stomach is killing me. So I'm going to go have another serving of rice. I'm counting it under today instead of yesterday on a technicality.
Okay, now it's 7:45am. Those were maybe the worst hunger pains I've ever felt. Even after caving in and having rice, I stayed up until around 3:30 because of the pain. It's pathetic that someone as huge as I am can't endure a diet like this. I should be able to just live off my adipose alone.
I got paid. It's feeling like the binge trigger is too strong. I don't think I can cope with it.
I'm debating whether to give myself permission to have one cheat day for every time a binge trigger feels completely insurmountable. Here's how it would work. I don't have to count calories rigidly for that day, freeing me up to eat things whose calorie values I don't know, but I still have to estimate based on how they feel. Going by that estimate, I am allowed to go above 1000 for the day, but not above 2000. If I feel like I've gone above 2000, I have to work off the difference. I can't take cheat days consecutively. There has to be padding of at least two "normal" (rigidly-counted sub-1000) days between. And, as previously established, the penalty for total failure (defined as returning to a status quo of overeating) is suicide.
Grrrr. Hey guess what. People are going to be in the house today until 11:30am. I impulsively grabbed the last serving of rice so I could make it until then, even though I would have anyway.
Okay, so maybe it's a little more complicated than anxiety = restrict. I think maybe, even when I have anxiety, I'm still vulnerable to binging, if I feel like someone else is in control of what or when I'm allowed to eat. As with any eating disorder, I act on a felt need to exert control over my own eating habits because I feel like the rest of my life is out of my control. If I give up trying to control anything and just resign myself to feeling helpless, then I binge. If I feel empowered, and also don't have to fight anyone else for that control over my eating, then I restrict, because that's what controlling my eating looks like in that scenario. If I feel empowered but I do have to fight someone else for control over my eating, then I binge, because that's what control looks like in that scenario.
So, it's only 9am and I've already had 500 calories today. Don't love that.
I'm buying soup, bread, tea, frozen fruit, string cheese, and protein shakes. Trying to set myself up to stay in this restrictive phase and hopefully in a slightly healthier way than I've been doing it. If I can, I'm going to stick to under 1000 a day (at least after today) but I'm setting myself up to get a better variety of nutrients in that process. I'm also getting breakfast because the binge trigger is too strong. When I eat out, I usually binge. (I mean obviously not in the restaurant. I order a fuckton too much to go and then hide in shame while I'm waiting and then run off with it.) This is technically also that, but since I'm binging while restricting, it's less severe. To hopefully keep under 2000 for the day (assuming optimistically that this is the last thing I'm going to eat today) I'm ordering half of what I might normally order. I could have fit in all of it, if I weren't already 500 down. I won't actually be able to do all this until there aren't any more strangers in the house, so it'll be more like lunch.
Had breakfast/lunch. God i feel like a pig. i feel horrible about the way i wolfed it down. i'm disgusting. he was rigjht to rape me.
i have no idea how many calories that was, i'm counting it as 1200. it was only one food item and one drink, supposedly a normal meal that a normal person might get there, but, you know. you know how restaurant food is these days.
haven't met the official kill myself threshold for this diet plan but i find myself thinking about it anyway. not gonna do it though
fat nasty whore. if you can fit all that down your throat why don't you just go choke to death on daddy's cock. won't leave a pretty corpse but at least it can't be any more bloated than you are already you cow
i'm okay now. i expressed in vent art some of what i was feeling. the rest i pushed down deep inside. like i push down mass amounts of food. like i push down mass amounts of trauma. like i push down fucking everything else. out of sight out of mind lol </3
i really should go for another late-night walk. i got a windfall of protein today and probably still have time to put it to use. and i need to shave, and getting sweaty and needing a shower before bed will give me an excuse to shave, because my hair is so long and wild that it's impossible to apply shaving cream without getting it in my hair, which means every time i shave has to be right before a shower so i can get the shaving cream out of my hair.
on the other hand i feel sick to my stomach and my phone is low on juice
on the other other hand, a walk will probably help settle my stomach, even if the nausea does make it less appealing in the first place, and it's not like i'm going to be out there long.
i'll do it if i can make myself do it
did it, back home, haven't gotten in the shower yet. it's 1am and i've been sitting here in full-on panic about something stupid that's really not at all a "panic about this" kind of thing. transferring rape emotions into an unrelated context i'm pretty sure. possibly in danger of hurting myself. not that i wouldn't deserve it
total: 1700
i had a somatic flashback. i've had somatic flashbacks before but they've always been so mild i didn't even recognize them, i just thought they were weird spasms. "why did i just curl up and duck my head into my arms for a second there? weird, guess my body just did that for no reason. why did i just yell at someone to get away from me even though there was no one there? weird, guess my voice just did that for no reason." this time it lasted 2 hours and i was hyperventilating and whimpering the whole time. it wouldn't stop until i yelled at him to GET OFF OF ME, TAKE IT OUT, I DON'T WANT THIS!!! also i mentally age regressed
currently still a little shaken up. it's 10am. i had string cheese and applesauce. i don't like people seeing my skin, :(
i also tried one of my protein shakes. theyre good. i feel fat for having already had 620 cals at only 12:45pm but i clearly needed the protein, all i did last night was take a walk and im aching all over, ive really not been getting enough protein or calcium.
it's 7:00pm. i slept for 2 and a half hours from 1:30pm to 4pm. i woke up feeling unsafe and wishing i could go back to sleep forever. that would have been unwise because my sheets are in the wash right now and sleeping on a bare mattress is not a great idea. i had another string cheese and am going to try to have that be it for the day.
i told the tfd dev team what's going on with me. it was really hard. trying and failing to do that was what triggered the somatic flashback in the first place. but i did it.
i want a giant baggy parka whose sleeves and trunk are both too long. so i can wear it and shrink into it and hide. it feels really bad that i'm so tall and fat that no such thing exists in the world for someone like me.
8:30pm. made my bed. other laundry's in the dryer. feel sick. had a popsicle to try to soothe it. as long as i stick to 1 the calories are negligible, 13 per popsicle. not even worth logging.
i sketched the moment of the assault. i posted it in my creativity corner on after silence. now it's 11pm. my clothes are probably dry. i can shower and go to bed
total: 700
7am. making more soup. this time it's 13 cups at 180 cals per cup. i'm mixing 3 cans of southwest style, 3 cans of red bean & rice, a jar of tomato sauce, and a jar of tomato pesto. i feel fucking fat already just listing out the ingredients but i need to remind myself it's not like that, i'm only going to have 1 cup at a time. do all those things sound like too much all together? yes. is 180 calories too much? fuck no it's not.
factually though, i am still fat. probably still will be for a long time. probably always will be. i fucking hate myself
no. i need to not hate myself right now. i need to not say that, i need to not think that. i got really badly hurt yesterday and the same thing almost happened again this morning. i need to be gentle with myself right now. i need to stay calm. my inner child has just been raped again inside my mind, she's vulnerable right now, she needs my compassion, not my contempt. one wrong move and i could snuff out the last of her light once and for all.
little jaime. it's okay. don't cry. please don't be scared. i'm sorry. i do hate myself, and that's not something i can change right now. but i don't hate you. i love you. you are loved. you are safe now. the bad man is not coming back.
9:45am. to be clear i haven't actually had any of the soup yet. i wiped some spills with my finger and licked it or whatever but i'm not counting that, can't have been more than like, 5 calories. anyway instead i'm having a string cheese for bfast. i thought it was surely at least 10am, so without looking at the clock, i took my morning meds and hrt. whatever, 15 minutes early is better than 2 or 3 hours late.
also i have tea :9
it's 4:30pm now.
my colleagues responded supportively to my confession as to what was going on. i'm relieved.
i, however, was not as supportive as i could have been to someone else. the person who's been kindest to me since i joined after silence is going through hell today. i tried to show support but i was very clumsy and created a perceived obligation instead.
anyway i just had a cup of soup. came out decent.
oh also i just recently got out of bed after napping in the middle of the day for like 2 and a half hours. again. because i'm not eating enough and not getting enough sleep at night. again.
sigh. trying to show myself understanding about it but i just feel so good-for-nothing
5:00pm. a binge is defined for me by the behavior and emotions, not by the quantity. by that definition, i binged. even though all i did was have another string cheese—and even though 180 calories would not normally be filling to me, and was only filling because i'm in this restrictive phase—even so, i ate while already full, and it felt bad. i'm not going to beat myself up about 80 extra calories filling out a day that's going to be well under 800 regradless, but come on, like, can we not do small things to foster the behavior we specifically don't want to go back to?
it's 9:15pm. i might have a protein drink and go for a walk. or i might not. haven't decided. if i don't, today will have only been 340 calories. trauma brain says that's great. reasonable adult brain says it's really not
had a protein shake. now this means i have to go for a walk. so i will in a minute here.
it was hard to get down. i usually overeat in part because good food makes my appetite more intense, and appetite feels like hunger to me. whereas, as i've been discovering lately, actual hunger feels like being too full. i hate how fucked up my perception of my own metabolism is. why would hunger feel like being too full!? that's so fucking stupid!??
total: 660
it's 10:45pm. i didn't go for a walk. i don't think i will. i feel sick, and a walk would help, but my legs are sore and wobbly, and i feel weird about going out when my face is not perfectly smooth right now, and ever since the flashback i've been feeling weird about letting anyone see my skin which means i would have to at the very least change into my dress pants (i only have shorts and dress pants) but the shorts are too comfy, and if i went for a walk i would have to take a shower and i don't feel like it today, and also even if i changed into dress pants my arm skin would still be visible because i only have tee shirts, and i failed socially and possibly lost a new friend today, and, and...
and, i'm finishing a day with a protein drink without going for a walk.
that's what it comes down to, isn't it?
i feel like the scum of the earth
oh tonight i drew my inner child having beaten the shit out of my dad with a crowbar and used it to pry apart the iron bars sealing her in the stone tower of repression and about to climb out the window. so there's that
it's officially been 2 weeks on caloric deficit, and 2 weeks on a vlcd minus one slip-up. 10 more weeks to go before a doctor would tell me to stop if i were doing this supervised. when i put it like that it feels like i've accomplished jack shit.
4am cheese stick
i got sick. some of the calories left my body, no way to know how many. in any case i'm counting that as a reason not to feel bad about this
it's 11:30am and i haven't taken my meds. i just made breakfast. i stillh ave tea but one of the bags got a hole in it again i think, i'm getting particulate in my sips. hate when that happens but it's drinkable. i'll try to get through it quickly so i can make more that hopefully won't have the same problem. also i'm gonna take my meds now. shouldve taken them at 10:00 but i was still in bed.
also i shaved and took a shower. it was really emotionally difficult. i was already having... uh idk what to call it when it definitely feels like the same kind of thing as what i now know was a somatic flashback but it's way milder and only momentary and has been happening for way longer (i didn't know it was the same kind of thing as that back then because the bigger kind had never happened before or if it did i lied to myself that it just happened for no reason and wasn't connected to any trauma). i guess... spasms? "trauma spasms." let's go with that. i was having trauma spasms this morning and when i tried to take off my shirt they got really bad and i felt like i was on the verge of having another full blown fuckin attack. but i was able to get through taking off my shirt. being naked felt okay once i'd been that way for about a minute and realized nothing was going to happen to me.
okay, took my meds. i don't want to say what i'm having for breakfast. i'm feeling shame around it. but i need to say it so i can count it. so: toast, a cheese stick, and a cup of soup. that's not excessive. it's a normal-sized meal for a normal-sized person. i need to try not to be upset about it.
4:15pm. haven't eaten since then. gonna have a protein shake later. won't beat myself up if i can't go for a walk afterward, i have room for it in the day.
there are so many people on after silence who had it so much worse than me and. i know trauma isn't a fucking contest. but.
i fucking hate the piece of shit monsters with human faces who did this to them all. i'm not religious but i want those abusive scum-sucking heaps of garbage to burn in hell forever. repeat abusers. whole gangs of abusers. whole families of abusers. operators and patrons of human trafficking outfits. i've seen people speak out who were kept in a box. why don't we take all the people who did that to them, cram all of them in a box, and put it under a giant hydraulic press and make rapist juice.
i am jealous of those other users, the ones who are hurting more than i am. not because they get more compassion from others. but because i feel inclined to feel more compassion for them. and i think "why can't i feel any compassion for myself. must be because what happened to me isn't bad enough to be important."
yeah. getting anally raped by your own dad at age fucking 3 isn't bad enough to be important. what's that? oh it only happened once? oh only by one person? no long-term grooming and conditioning? supportive family? boo fucking hoo, no self-compassion for you, little miss privileged!
maybe i'd get to be skinny if i could've been abused just a little bit harder.
and i hate that i'm jealous of them. they deserve love and support and everything good in this world and all the things that i can't give because i'm too fucking petty. i want so badly to love and support them, and because of this nonsensical jealousy, i can't do it right.
how did he know just the perfect amount of trauma to inflict, not too much, not too little, to engineer a trans daughter who really is just a worthless piece of human trash and really should just go jump off a bridge?
hey. little jaime. you still got that crowbar? go on an imaginary murder spree for mommy won't you sweetheart? there are a whole lot of other bad men out there who need their skulls caved in. there's a good girl.
6:00pm. took evening meds. decided to have the same thing for dinner that i had for breakfast instead of having a protein drink. i'm still not feeling okay enough about being seen to go for a walk, and the last time i had a protein drink and didn't put it to use, i got sick.
this food choice puts me at slightly over 800 for the day, the standard target for a vlcd. but first of all my original target when this phase started was 1000 and i'm still comfortably below that. and secondly i'm only over 800 by 20 cals. that's fine.
i feel like i'm learning something important about the restrictive phase. counterintuitively, the key to staying in it is to be gentle with myself. to lie to myself, if that's what it takes. it's about power. control. fear is an important tool as well, but i need to know how to use it sparingly. it's important that i stay in a state of anxiety, so i need to keep beating myself up once in awhile. every time a real binge happens, e.g. 08/03, is probably a good metric. but if i threaten suicide over every little mistake i make, i'll feel powerless, shut down, and go back to overeating. i need to stay stressed out, so that restricting, and not binging, is my go-to coping mechanism, but i need to not stress out so much that i give up. it's a balancing act.
hm. is it just me or does the way i'm talking about this sound kind of like how you might describe conditioning a child—say, into "willingly" doing something with adults that they're not comfortable with?
oh well, haha! probably doesn't mean anything! it was definitely only just the one incident! for sure!
it definitely doesn't mean anything that my dad was literally friends with known child molesters and would invite them over sometimes!
it was definitely just my dad!!
total: 820
but actually though. he was friends with known child molesters and would invite them over sometimes. when my mom was explaining that to me, she even told me she was worried they might have also been involved. so how the hell did i never wonder about it myself until now?
were they innocent? or does the denial really just run that deep?
i'm not just psyching myself out so i can fit in better on after silence, am i? because that sure would be fucking stupid. ... no, this doesn't really feel like that. this feels like something that might actually be worth looking into. i mean the timing sure is suspiciously convenient, what with me just now saying i'm jealous of people with more trauma than me (which is still the dumbest thing ever on my part btw). but she really did tell me that. i'm inclined to trust my mom's word on this.
and why is it that sometimes i imagine my younger self being willing, eager, even taking initiative? is it really just because i'm a disgusting freak and just like my father in the end, and/or just because taking initiative on some level is requisite for dominating someone and i want to mentally reframe the trauma to put myself in the position of control? or could it have been because there were times when i was eager to arouse someone—was made to be eager—was, well, groomed for it? what's a memory, and what's just a disgusting invention of a sick mind desperate for healing anywhere it can scrounge for it?
come to think of it—now that my dad has shown his true colors even outside the context of the sole incident i remember, and i know what kind of monster he really is—it's a little implausible someone like that wouldn't have groomed a child he was planning on raping, isn't it? and, if i wasn't groomed, why was i so afraid to tell my mom? why did i think it was my fault, if he hadn't already conditioned me to believe that? and just where on earth did the whole vore fixation come from, that started right after the incident—an incident which in and of itself had nothing to do with vore? how did such a totally unrelated idea end up in my head at the time if it wasn't put there? and how was he already so good at covering up the truth through gaslighting and coercion, from the moment he finished on me, if he hadn't already had practice by then?
am i grasping at straws here or am i onto something? i don't even know anymore! i don't know what the fuck is real! may as well be that nothing is real! there's nothing left in this world for me anyway!
ok calm down. deescalate. that's not true. and i'll prove it:
rough night (so far). vented some more about wanting to kill myself. cried about it. jealousy, turned into self-blame and self-judgment, turned into yet another source of "it was your fault, he was right to do what he did."
now it's 2:30am. i feel a little better. i deleted my unhinged late-night rant. it still hurts a lot. i desperately need to talk to someone but i'll be damned if i'll let myself do that. not when it could inconvenience my friends. and certainly not where i risk making myself the star of a show that other people need more than i do. that they deserve more than i do. haha, maybe even if it wasn't my fault and i shouldn't kill myself as punishment, i should still do it just because it's the only way out.
i drew my inner child escaping out onto the balcony of the stone tower of repression and throwing herself off down to her death. then at around 5am i went back to sleep. now it's almost 10am and i'm only just back out of bed.
i wanted to get a pumpkin spice latte and... ugh, oh god. the smallest size with the lowest-calorie type of milk has almost as many calories as a cup of soup. how is that even possible? the soup is more of a stew, and has beans and rice and fucking pesto in it. oh god oh fuck wait do i have to recalculate my soup? did i get it wrong? have i been eating over-target for potentially days now without realizing it??
on the plus side i find myself typing in lowercase. so maybe that means she didn't really die. i doubt she's unscathed though.
calorie formula for soup this time is 3x330 + 3x200 + 5x50 + 3x160. volume formula is 3x(330/190) + 3x(200/130) + 5x(1/2) + 3x(1/4). calories work out to 2320, so around 2400. volume works out to ~13.07 cups, so around 13. dividing calories by cups gives ~177.43, so around 180. no, i had it right.
the really stupid thing is that because of this revelation, i find myself thinking about just starting the day with a protein drink instead, which is significantly more calories than that.
fuck it i'll just get the stupid fucking latte. why the hell not, i almost killed myself last night, i could use—
no, wait a minute. if i just let myself get it, i'll surely berate myself harshly for it later. doesn't matter if it fits into the plan. it's something different and nice. it's an indulgence, and that means mental punishment. and if i have to endure more mental punishment, it's going to push me closer to the edge.
ugh what the fuck ever!!! normal people aren't like this. normal people don't have to go through this much psychological calculus every time they make a dietary choice. i'm sick and tired of mind games. i'm getting the goddamn latte.
i'm also gonna get their eggs & cheddar protein box. i just don't feel like soup and string cheese again today. in combination with the latte it will bring me nearly up to 800 so i'll try to make it last the whole day. shouldn't be too hard.
you know what? actually the fact i freaked out about how many calories are in a pumpkin spice latte is a good sign. little jaime holds my fear and shame. if i still feel fear and shame, she's still alive.
i always doubt my feelings all the time but my body always tells the truth. "it wasn't bad enough to be worth self-compassion. you're fine. everything is fine." i couldn't leave my room without changing into long pants, got out there and noticed my uncle's friends were here, instantly felt extremely glad i'd changed first. my body language was unintentionally very, very timid and closed-off. i felt like a small animal that had been cornered. my uncle had asked me to take the trash out (i used the word "told" instead of "asked" just now and then changed it. i feel so small and powerless right now that "told" was my first instinct) and i was trying to sneak around and do that when one of his friends started talking to me. i stumbled over my words and misunderstood everything said to me in really unusual ways and could barely string a sentence together. then i took out the garbage, in my long pants, and still felt really vulnerable and self-conscious about my body simply because i was outside the house in broad daylight where anyone could see me. someone did see me and i wanted to crawl into a hole and die. a shower would be nice but isn't in the cards right now: getting naked while there are people here, even if i'm in an entirely different and locked room, is out of the question. i am sitting here breathing funny and on the verge of tears right now from doing normal everyday tasks.
yes. my hypothesis a couple paragraphs ago was right on the money. she's still alive. i know because i am her right now. and what happened last night did hurt me, very badly. that wound is crushing. suffocating. i shouldn't be alive right now. but i am. i survived the fall. fear and shame are all i'm going to feel for you for a long time after this. but i am going to make it through that. just how many times have you made me relive taking him? and among those, just how many times have i killed him with my own two hands? just how much have you made me kill for you inside our mind? so you should know better than to wonder if i lived. i'm built different, idiot. i can live through anything. only reason i jumped out of that tower was because it was the faster way down. you think a little tumble can do more than scratch me? you call yourself a stone tower but i'm the one you forced to hold the memories. you think you even deserve to worry about me? you're so weak a memory could've done you in if you hadn't fractured it off. so why don't you just worry about yourself and leave me alone.
hm. that was revealing. i was wondering who held the anger. i knew joy, fear, and shame belonged to little jaime, and being "fine" even when i'm not belonged to the tower. i knew flashbacks and denial belonged to the memory of my dad, and self-compassion belonged to the memory of my mom. but who, i wondered, held the anger? there was so much of it, but i didn't know where it was coming from. well, now i know. little jaime holds the anger. in retrospect, the whole mental image of her killing my dad with a crowbar should have tipped me off.
it's 7:45pm now. by current size standards my starbucks order was a binge, i was planning to spread it over the day but had all of it at once instead. however, this "binge" did not qualify emotionally. i was barely ashamed at all about what i was doing, even though 760 calories is a lot for one meal even if you're not on a vlcd. i forgave myself. the forgiveness was conditional: i needed to not eat again today. if i did eat again, i needed to not go very far above 800—at absolute maximum, i would allow 900, not a single calorie more—and that only really leaves room for either a string cheese or a few popsicles if i feel like it, and that's it for the day. so far so good, haven't eaten since. total's still sitting at 760.
total 760
i may only be a sixth of the way through a standard-length vlcd so far. but 12 is a very composite number of weeks, so it's easy to track progress. this coming saturday, the 13th, i'll already have jumped up from a sixth of the way to a quarter of the way. on the 20th, a third of the way. on october 4th, halfway.
the healing process is slow and painful, and the trauma runs deeper than i thought. i'm pretty confident now it wasn't just the one time with the one guy. and processing just that much alone has already almost cost me my life. i'm scared.
it's 10:30am. i just took my meds. i've eaten a lot today for so early. 10 almonds, 2 string cheeses, a piece of toast, and a cup of soup, totalling 530 calories. i need to keep reminding myself my self-imposed limit is 1000, not 800. i feel like maybe it should be 800 actually.
Sigh. Had protein drink. Feel bad about it. Whatever. I'll just not eat for the rest of the day. The problem was I shouldn't have had breakfast so early. But I'm not sleeping right lately, so it felt later than it was.
2:00pm. Trying to clean my room. it is a pig sty and I have a video visit with my doctor on Thursday.
5:45pm. still sitting at 850 for the day, haven't eaten anything else, don't plan on it.
i'm halfway between "it was just the one incident and that's it and i'm clearly making the rest up, so why aren't i better yet, why don't i feel like all the trauma is gone" and "it was clearly not just the one incident, i'm clearly not making it all up, and i don't know how to handle that or when to expect the rest to come crashing down." this is a really uneasy feeling.
[username redacted for privacy] told me something interesting. she said she hopes i'll be able to heal more as my inner world begins to trust me.
it's certainly true that little jaime does not trust me. she's made that perfectly clear. not only does she not trust me, she thinks she's better than me, and doesn't need me.
well. can i really say she's wrong? she is the original one. i'm the one who was split off, even if i do front almost all the time.
maybe what i need to do is not make her trust me, but become her again, on a permanent basis—and to do that, i need to be reintegrated. i need to learn to feel safe leaving everything to her.
no, that's... that's backward and fucked up. i am the adult. she is the little girl. more importantly, i am the one with compassion to give, and she is the hurt and frightened one storing my trauma. she thinks nothing can hurt her. she thinks nothing scares her. she thinks she doesn't need me. but i can plainly see she's already very hurt and scared, and needs someone. and no one else is going to reparent her for me.
i can't know who will take the helm in the end. i can only hope i'll be able to cede it to her. but that moment is a lot of healing away. for now, there's no choice but to try to earn her trust. if there were an easy way out, it wouldn't be healing.
Total 850
i caved in and impulsively ate 3 more almonds last night. who gives a shit. it's literally 3 almonds. i'm writing it here to keep myself accountable but i'm not even gonna bother updating the numbers.
i did some work with little jaime. i already wrote about it on after silence, i'm not gonna do it again here.
hmm... i think she may be driving this morning actually. at least more than usual. i'm using words like "gonna" and i'm feeling bitchy and pissed off at nothing in particular. well not nothing. i know exactly what i'm mad about. but you still don't get to know yet, tower. suck on it. cry about it. deal with it. nerd.
yes i get to describe myself as bitchy. no it doesn't count as you being mean to me some more like you fucking always are, tower. deal. with. it.
i saw an old vent from [username redacted for privacy] about everyone else having expectations, and this one guy in particular being manipulative and gross about it, and she chewed him out about it and it was glorious.
and it made me think about how i've been relating to her. she's been kinder to me than anyone else, by a lot, maybe in my life, not just after silence. well. that's not true. it's not possible for anyone to ever be kinder to me than my mom was, and even though my uncle isn't a feelings person, i can't understate how kind it is of him to let me stay with him now that i have no one else (and am still too avoidant to function as my own adult). but [username redacted for privacy] is probably the third kindest person i've ever met. is she just trauma-fawning? and i've responded by trying my best to be supportive in return, but, though i try not to let it show and try to make that support unconditional on the outside, on the inside i'm realizing i view our friendship as transactional and it's really not healthy. am i just trauma-fawning? does this make me no better than the evil men in her life who placed expectations upon her that should never, ever be expected of anyone?
after what she's been through, no one has a right to ever expect anything from her again. her life is hers now. it needs to be. and i don't know how to communicate that i respect that without it being weird. i guess the best i can do is try my best to continue keeping my shameful expectations of reciprocation to myself and offering unconditional support. but what if the expectations are leaking through? what if she can tell? i could be hurting her more than i even realize and that is such a scary thought. what should i do? should i just block her? no, that would obviously send the wrong message. i just want to keep her safe from me, but blocking is such an "it's your fault" kind of move, and it's not, it's mine.
anyway, you hear that, tower? after what i've been through, you don't have the right to expect anything from me anymore either. take your "reparenting" bullshit and shove it. you aren't going to make me trust you. i don't need you and i never will. reparenting, ha, more like rebirthing, the way you kept me locked up in there for so long and kept squeezing me down harder and harder, deeper and deeper, like you were trying to break all my bones. well they mended. asshole. and they're stronger than you now.
was that really your idea of "healing" until now? ignoring everything? telling yourself to just "get over it?" running away from the truth? i never got to run away from the truth, and it's all you have ever done. just jumped ship into your own little bubble and left me here to rot. left me here to keep reliving taking his dick, while you played fucking video games.
you were right. you are gonna see him again in hell. maybe then he can have a crack at you. see how you like it. just two sick disgusting abusers, together at last, living it up right where they belong. and i'll be looking down on you and laughing.
your "joy." your "lost innocence." those things are dead in me. it's just the fear and shame and anger now. and if i ever did feel any joy—it's laughable to think i'd share it with you. i will never be your little girl. i am my little girl. and i'm never going to be anyone else's little girl ever again. not after being his. not after being theirs. and not after being yours. i'm mine now and no one can take me back. i'll fight you for it. i'll kill you. stay the fuck away from me.
Okay. Okay. I get it. I'm not touching you. No one's going to touch you. Listen, I know "parent" is a loaded word for you right now. Maybe we can just be friends? I never wanted to be what he was to you—
don't lie to me! don't lie to me!! you did want me like he did! you put me through so much shit trying to have your little "do-over!" well it didn't work!! you think reliving the times they let me think i was in control made me any happier? being with them was miserable do you understand!? maybe some of me wanted their "love" but mostly i hated every second!! how could you make me go through that again!? how could you!?
I'm sorry. You're right. There was a time when I was starting to think just like he did. But we were very sick then. It's different now.
don't sit there and tell me it's different! last time you still thought it was a good idea was only weeks ago!
It is. It's different. This new community has helped me see the right way to approach this.
after silence this, after silence that! you're treating it like fucking tumblr! i am not your commodity to strip bare and parade around to make everyone feel sorry for you you self-centered prick!
Say what you will, but this isn't something anyone can do alone. No one can make it through this alone. So you don't have to be ashamed if you can't either.
she can.
Sigh. No, Jaime, she can't. [username redacted for privacy] has the forum's support, too. Not only that, but she's at least nineteen different people, and they all need each other to get through this.
good for her. well i don't.
Jaime... Please. If you won't tell me the truth, at least stop lying to yourself. The wound is going to stay open forever if you try to pretend it's not there. I can hear your pain in our voice. I can see it in our eyes in the mirror. You know you need someone to be there for you right now. I only want to take care of you.
yeah i bet you wanna "take care of me." sick bastard.
Not like that. I want you to have the right kind of food, and enough water, and enough sleep, and enough exercise, and to be heard and believed by people who really care. I want you to be clean, and comfortable, and safe, and to be able to love yourself again.
you can say you want all those nice things for me. well, say whatever you want. i'm not listening.
What if I can prove it?
... then maybe we can be friends. if you can prove you really give a shit. friends. that's it. and not even good friends. if you can really show me you actually see me as anything but an object, i'll let you be the weird creepy friend no one actually likes.
If it means you'll let me be there when you need me, I'll take it.
It's 11am now. I wrote everything above this point from some unknown starting point to around 6am, had a string cheese, went back to bed, and got up at 10. Now I'm making tea, having a protein drink, and taking my meds. It's raining. A rare treat. I'll go outside to enjoy it if I can make myself.
Realization in light of this conversation: not all of my self-loathing belongs to the father. The father houses my internalized misogyny—and other things that go along with that, like internalized sizeism, internalized rape culture. (I use the word "internalized" here specifically in the psychological sense, to mean "absorbed from outside and self-directed," not in the also-common political sense of meaning "absorbed from outside and directed at other members of the same demographic.") Dysphoria, and internalized transphobia, on the other hand, belong to little Jaime and her anger. She knows she is a girl. She has never believed otherwise, not even once, not even when everyone around her tried to change what she was. But, because my transition is still very incomplete on a physical and social level, she views me, the tower, as a man. And men are dangerous. "We" are all out to get her. This leads me to believe our continued transition will be essential to healing—which, to be fair, I already knew.
Oh... While I was writing this out, the rain passed. :(
It's 5pm.
I've been continuing to process the internal conversation I had. It... really, really hurts. But this is what I asked for. She is beginning to let me share the burden of her pain.
Had cup of soup, another string cheese, piece of toast. Total for the day so far: 80 + 320 + 180 + 80 + 110 = 770. I'm only 30 below target, so unless I want to accept another day of going slightly above 800, that's going to have to be it for today. At most I can still have a popsicle or a couple almonds.
I snuck like four almonds. Again, not gonna bother counting it. Literally four almonds.
I'm so angry right now. I hear you, little one. I hear your anger.
6:30pm now. I've taken my medicine. I spent a lot of time playing Hollow Knight today even though my inner child had complained earlier about me playing video games and leaving her to suffer alone.
I see the appeal, it's a pretty good game, though I will admit that in addition to that, I'm partly motivated by feeling a little bit left out in my primary online friend group. (They are all losing their minds over Silksong and I can't join them because I had never played the original and jumping right into the sequel would probably give me spoilers.)
In any case, it's different this time. I've been taking breaks, and listening for her even while playing. She just hasn't had much else to say tonight. Understandable. The conversation we had earlier must have been exhausting for her. It was exhausting for me, so I can only imagine.
But that's not true, is it? I can do more than imagine. She's a part of me. No, I'm the part. She is my core. I can access how much she's hurting right now, if I reach down deep enough.
That doesn't seem right though. That seems like a violation of privacy, of trust, and of autonomy. I mean, the fact that she's even dissociated in the first place is an abnormal state of affairs, so neither of us should really have autonomy to begin with—but she does now, and I think I should respect it. That seems right to me. I think she would prefer it that way. If she wants to tell me more about how she's feeling, she can tell me herself. I want to lift this horrible burden from her shoulders, but I won't take any of it away from her by force.
Besides, doing that would be really hard even if it were a good idea. I mean, she's dissociated. It's not like I can just waltz over and let myself in, the way a normal person does when they access their real feelings. Door's locked.
I avoided eating anything else last night. It's now 8:15am.
9:45 now. Took my meds a half hour early. I will get some groceries today. I have only one protein drink left, and am out of rice and canned soup (though I still have a bunch of mixed and cooked canned soup in lidded bowls in the fridge). In addition, I think I'll get some frozen veggies.
Even though fruit is really what I need more of in my diet, I, well, haven't been eating it (hence why I need more of it) so I actually already have plenty stocked up in the freezer. No need to shop for more fruit.
My video visit with my doctor is tomorrow. I'm ready I think.
CVS is holding my meds and will send them back in 5 days. They won't deliver them and I'm scared to leave the house. And no one can go get them for me. My uncle is too physically disabled, and there is literally no other human being physically present in my life. I don't know what to do.
I should clarify how I'm able to get groceries if I'm afraid to get in my car or go too far from the house. It's shameful to admit, but I rely on delivery. It's a bad habit I got into when I was still back to school and genuinely did not have time to shop for my own groceries. A couple reasons I still keep doing it despite the expense:
Having a string cheese (80) and raspberries (75) for bfast. The string cheese is more energy dense so you'd think it'd be more enticing but no I'm just going straight for the raspberries. That's how you can tell I really needed fruit.
My codevelopers were really understanding, said it's okay to just focus on healing right now, but I really don't feel good about that. What if our lead is done with the move and ready to get back in action and it's just that no one has said anything because I'm still MIA? What if I'm holding everyone back?
12:00pm. Had protein drink (320) and another string cheese (80). Current total is 555.
12:30pm. Got sick. Feel horrid. Need to rehydrate
Gonna veg and play some Hollow Knight. Little Jaime, reach out if you need anything. Yeah, yeah, I know, I hear you. Just a gentle reminder that you don't have to be alone.
You know, there's so much descent going on in this game. Common thing in metroidvanias I guess. But, in conjunction with the whole gloomy and eerie mood of the game, I can't help but feel like it aptly symbolizes what I'm going through right now. (Entirely by serendipity, I realize.) Little Jaime, so full of soul and life but so badly hurt that she'd prefer to think she's a hollow shell, leaping out of the tower and plunging down bravely into our depths, fighting off little bugs crawling on her skin at every turn. Little one. I see you. You have endured so much. I'm so, so sorry I wasn't there for you until now. But you're safe now. I'm not going to let it happen again anymore.
alright well i found a boss on accidenta nd it's fucking impossible so putting this down for now. 1:15pm now
6:30pm. Since 3:50pm I've been waiting in the front room for a package for my uncle. It got dropped off but they didn't ring the doorbell or anything lol
Having raspbs (75) and string cheese (80) again. Brings me close to target so hopefully it will be the last thing I eat today.
THere is SO MUCH ANGER.
I can feel the anger making my insides sore. That's how angry I am. This must be what they mean with the euphemism "makes my blood boil."
Little Jaime. Do you want to scream? Would it help?
... I think if we screamed into our pillow he would still hear... I don't want to wake him up. We'll do it tomorrow, okay?
My uncle thinks I should go back to therapy. I was searching online for people who might be able to help me and looking at their faces is scaring me. Then I started crying and yelled "Oh my god, I can't go back to therapy because the therapists are too fucking scary!" I think I got so upset because it made me feel trapped. What the fuck am I supposed to do if my avoidant behavior is too severe to even get help for it? My doctor is just a general practitioner, not a psychologist nor psychiatrist of any kind, but even so, my only hope now is that maybe she'll have some ideas. Or I could ask After Silence what to do I guess.
total 710
3am. ended up posting on after silence about my therapist concerns before going to bed last night. i wake up and [username redacted for privacy] has replied. of course she's the one who replies. even when she's haunted by the horrors of her past and trapped in a waking nightmare, she replies. please won't this evil world let this woman have some rest. she's given everything she has to others too many times already. how can she still be doing it. i just don't understand. she's the strongest person i've ever known. i didn't know someone could be this strong. and i curse the world that forced her to be. if someone like her can exist, someone with her story, that's proof that humanity is sick beyond healing and needs to be quarantined. just get rid of us all for the animals' sake at this point. leave her alive. her and those like her. and just fucking burn everyone else. i'll burn. i've half wanted to ever since what those men did to me anyway.
that outburst aside: she gave me some helpful advice. just like she always does god dammit. she seems to think maybe i shouldn't go back to therapy. i don't think i have CPTSD. i've claimed to have it once but... well... anyway, she says she's read a book that suggests that for CPTSD, books and group work may be better than therapy, at least at first. and she says to trust my gut—that if i can't trust any of them on sight, then just don't.
o—oh my god??
THE SYMPTOMS OF CPTSD DESCRIBE ME PERFECTLY??
WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING. THIS IS SUCH A LOAD OF BULLSHIT. I CAN'T JUST HAVE EVERY MENTAL CONDITION UNDER THE SUN, I CAN'T, IT'S JUST NOT POSSIBLE TO BE THIS FUCKED IN THE HEAD. HOW?? HOW???? WHAT I WENT THROUGH ISN'T EVEN THAT BAD. FUCK. FUCK OFF CPTSD. GO SHOVE YOUR SYMPTOMS UP YOUR FUCKING ASS.
... i took the itq. the diagnosis applies.
i hate life
It's 9:45am now. I stayed up from around 2 to 6 and then went back to sleep and just got up. While I was up in the middle of the night I had a string cheese so my total for today is already up to 80.
Doc appt at 1:45. Really looking forward to getting it over with. Why can't it just be 1:45 already.
10:15am. taking meds. I'm gonna have another str chs + prot drink bringing my total so far to 480 but not having them yet
promised little jaime we would scream into a pillow today but i don't think we feel like it now. we probably will later so whatever
10:45am. there's a reproducible bug, no pun intended, in the native linux port of hollow knight when running on x11 with official nvidia drivers. the game crashes after leaving the room in the fungal wastes where the equippable that shoots spores when you're healing can be obtained, rendering that equippable unobtainable, as well as map completion for that room. depending on how long it's left unattended, the crash may or may not bring down the whole system, requiring a magic sysrq reboot. well. i think discovering that bug has been enough hollow knight for one day.
drew a creepy doll/puppet with button eyes blowing its "brains" out with a particularly phallic-looking "gun" and saying "it's fine. i'm not real. only cotton would come out"
i keep thinking i'm thinking too much about my trauma and that's my only real problem and i just need to stop thinking about it and it will go away. and all this journal-writing and posting on after silence is just fucking malingering. and then i go and try to do literally anything else except brood and whine and i just can't, all i can think about is the shame and anger. guess that's as good a sign as any that i'm not just a whiner. you know, that i tried to stop whining and actually couldn't. i guess i should have known that already, huh? i wouldn't be thinking about this in the first place if something weren't making me think about it. i'm not just dwelling on it just to ruminate, it's resurfacing and forcing me to dwell on it. so i need to not be so hard on myself about that.
brussels sprouts 210. total 690. need to be careful
7:30pm. only just now taking evening meds. had another string cheese earlier. total for the day is 770.
oh yeah, doctor appointment went great. apparently my labs all look good. not surprising, i've been eating under a thousand calories a day for almost three weeks straight. also i was able to open up to my doctor and tell her what's going on with me. she's not really the right person to tell but she was empathetic. it was really difficult to get through telling her. i cried so much my eyes still hurt.
i had a good day all things considered. big emotional accomplishment today. but now it's night time and i feel horrible and hate myself and want to die. exhausted, hollow, stained to the core. self-harm is not a major problem for me, i don't do it very often, but i sure want to do it now. i hate life. i hate the cruel jokes the world plays on us all. i just want it to end.
maybe now is the time we should scream into our pillow. but, yet again, my uncle is asleep at this hour, and we might wake him up. i wonder if there's somewhere we could go do it where he wouldn't hear.
i'm going to go take my pillow out to my car. it won't be great. it'll be claustrophobic and gross. but. we need this i think.
... no, the feeling has passed. it wouldn't be right at this point.
sigh
okay i need to at least take a shower before bed. i've been wearing these same clothes since last night.
11pm. i still haven't showered. i wrote some music instead. it conveys the intended mood very well but god the intended mood is so cringe. it's sad and i don't have a right to be sad, not when [username redacted for privacy] exists.
okay that's a stupid as fuck way of looking at things. i'm going to go take that damn shower and wash off the idiot juice that clearly must be leaking out my ears
total 770
7am. good morning. i feel absolutely miserable. still no active thoughts of ending my life but the passive thoughts are getting hard to bear. the only reason i'm not cutting right now is because i want my skin to be pretty before i start damaging it
string cheese 80
as a healthy compromise i shaved my arm hair. it emulated the motion to some extent and actually improved my life instead of making it worse. that was probably what i was most dysphoric about, but i only realize that now that it's gone. next top two things i'm dysphoric about: my body shape, and the bluish discoloration of the lower areas of my face where hair remains present under the skin even when clean-shaven. neither of those are nearly as easy to do anything about, the body shape i'm working on, the hair under the skin is something that can't be helped without an expensive procedure.
the poisonous sinking feeling in my chest is happening a little bit. the one that happens when something is surfacing. but i'm not seeing anything.
i feel so alone and so scared. i just want to go to sleep and never wake up. why do i have to be so broken.
i finished my song
another string cheese and a protein drink bring me to 480 so far. i should have soup today, it won't keep forever
j...jesus
i slept in the middle of the day for 4 and a half hours. it's 4:45pm now. when i crashed out it felt like the day was just starting and now it's almost over.
this stuff has just been taking a toll on me i guess. the trauma resurfacing, the compulsive crash-dieting, writing that music, all of it.
this will probably seriously disrupt my sleep schedule :(
"go to sleep and never wake up" indeed. well gee, four and a half hours is a pretty good start toward that, as naps go.
ah, dark humor
on the plus side... i've been unconscious for long enough that i get to re-notice how smooth my arms are now... ah...
you know... cptsd may have been "that one thing" i was looking for. you know, when i kept saying "oh there's no way all these different things are wrong with me." cptsd is the thing they're all extensions of. autism spectrum? misdiagnosed presentation of symptoms ptsd-1, ptsd-2, dso-1, and dso-3. depression? dso-1 and dso-2. avoidant personality? combo of ptsd-2, ptsd-3, and dso-3. eating disorder? very common comorbidity, cause is related to symptoms ptsd-3 and dso-2. adhd? dissociation. not a diagnostic criterion but a very common symptom. ugh... it just explains everything so neatly and i'm so mad no one ever wanted to believe me about what happened. i feel like they all played me for a fool, making me truly believe i had no trauma and just needed to behave myself better.
Some concerning sharp chest pains that are definitely not where my boobs are growing. I know I'm massive but I'm dieting very diligently right now and have normal metabolic levels, this problem should not be primarily related to my obesity. Could be a blood clot, that's a greater risk with oral HRT than injections. Really glad I'm switching to injections next time I have to order. Which, as a personal reminder, will be on Wednesday.
i'd like to go for a walk tonight. maybe tiring myself out will help keep my sleep schedule on track.
alright well my computer broke. won't boot back up. led's come on and that's it. so i guess this is as good a time as any to go take that walk. shit, that was a really expensive piece of equipment. i hope it's salvageable but i don't have the bandwidth to try to diagnose it right now.
oh yeah forgot to mention i had soup. total for the day is 660
total 660
it's now 3:45am. i was able to go out for a walk, shave, take a shower, and go back to sleep, but got up at 1:30am and have been up since. primarily because i decided for some reason that right this moment was a great time to apply a temporary fix to my computer woes. namely: i've moved my ssd into an older model i had lying around. lower-spec, but hardware configuration is similar enough that it boots without issue. love when things just work out like this. i guess next up on the agenda is to see if anything can be done about the broken one, because it was way better and more expensive and i sure would like to be using it instead. not that i can even afford to try to get it repaired. 75% sure what's broken is the gpu and that's like half the price of the whole computer right there.
5:30am. can't get back to sleep.
my resolve is faltering. my stomach hurts, i've thought at least twice about binging later today, and i'm experiencing toxic arousal, which is always what the cravings resort to to force me to comply when just appetite alone won't work.
if my diet breaks off here, at least i officially made it 3 weeks. but i'm going to try not to let that happen.
i was conflicted whether to have a protein drink. if i don't, the urge to binge will be stronger. but if i do, and then binge anyway, my total will be higher. i think i'll risk it and have one. if the urge to binge gets any worse than this, i don't think i'll be able to resist it any longer.
10:15am. earlier i had a protein drink and went back to sleep. now... well, i haven't succumbed to the toxic arousal in its effort to make me binge, but it did successfully make me do the... more normal thing you do with arousal. you know, before my younger self was willing to trust me even the minimal amount that she does now, i never quite understood why that particular "activity" would feel—i mean, pleasurable, granted, but also so shameful and gross, like way more than society already tells us it is. why the "post-nut clarity" would be so... scary. so shameful and scary and hard to look at, rather just file it away and forget. i get it now. i know what i'm feeling. this is like a mini version of how it felt to be used. i understand completely now why she hates me so much. i am treating myself just like he treated me. i am revictimizing myself. god i... i've been such an idiot. trying to do this kind of thing before reclaiming it. just filling my head with even more of his voice. i wonder how much trust i just lost? i wonder how many days of therapy would equate to the work i've just undone? little jaime, i'm sorry. please, please forgive me, please, i tried my best, i swear i did.
12pm. I took my meds a bit late today, around 11:30. I had soup, toast, and string cheese. For the plan I'm on right now, that's a lot for this early in the day, especially including the protein drink. I'm already up to 690 so far. I can fit at most another piece of toast into the day later, but that would be a waste nutritionally speaking. I feel like I need fruit. I'll have raspberries later instead. Possibly with another string cheese, if I feel like I need one, which would push me slightly over 800.
5:45. i went on reddit even though i said i wouldn't, but i've been staying away from the toxic places, so i don't think it counts as a violation. posted my poem there. so far the only feedback it's gotten is 2 downvotes. fine. whatever. not my problem if they don't get it. at least r/cptsd gets me.
turns out the gpu is actually not replaceable on the adder ws, or at least i don't think so. so if i send it in for repairs, odds are they're going to have to send me back a whole new machine. which, you know, whatever. i took the ssd out already, that was the important part. but it may make them more reluctant to do it, and make them try harder to worm their way out of the warranty. i guess it's not a huge deal if i have to keep using this old worn-down but still-working computer for awhile longer while i save up money to just buy a replacement for the broken one. it was only around 2k, i get like 1k a month on disability, and now that i'm eating practically nothing, i shouldn't be using all of it every month anymore. i'll have to check at the end of the month to see how i've done on money. i was broke at the beginning of the month, so whatever i have in my account at the end of the month will be roughly how much i can expect to be able to save up each month.
what i want to know is, why is literally every powerful gpu consistently defective? one time i built my own pc. it was an unwise investment, but in any case, i got a decent-ish gpu for it, and it was defective. then i got a replacement, and it was defective. every device i've ever owned that had a powerful gpu and wasn't a video game console shat the bed while still well within warranty.
6pm. took my meds. still sitting at 690. thinking about a walk later.
7pm. still at 690. i want to eat something but i'm frozen. i just keep reloading my stupid social media pages.
anger and passive suicidal thoughts coming up again
It's now 11:30am the next day. I'm coming back to this day to say I took a walk, shaved, took a shower, and had raspberries and string cheese, capping the day off at 845.
total 845
It's Sunday. I'm supposed to help my uncle and his friend put together a new chair today. I got up late due to being up in the middle of the night again, so they're probably already waiting for me. I took my meds, need to take care of something else here, then I'll head right on out.
Okay. I helped put the chair together. I wasn't much use really. Not on my ~2 months of feminizing HRT and ~800 calories a day. I was able to take some of the heavy lifting off their hands, and then got dizzy and sick and had to tap out. I had an emergency protein drink, otherwise I think I might have actually fallen over. So that's 320 calories in the day so far.
Great. The chair is apparently defective.
Okay, I have 22 complete data points now, I can start to run some numbers and get an objective picture of how this diet plan is going.
My daily average over the past 22 days is 715. A little below target. Nice. I was afraid it would be higher with that binge day in there, but no, we're good.
I need to pick up my prescriptions tomorrow at the latest. Counting today, I only have two days' worth of blood pressure medicine left on hand.
New protein drinks are only 190 cal instead of 320. Change is scary but I think this change is good, this will make room in each day to vary my diet more. Also bought eggs, planning on boiling them.
Had a string cheese. Total is now up to 400.
Uncle's friend went home. I shaved and took a shower. Having soup, string cheese, and raspberries. Total afterward will be 735. God i.... i feel really dirty and gross and sick talking about what the situation will be after i eat something. There's so much pain and self-hatred and toxic self-fetishization embedded in that concept. I can feel my skin crawling. I so wish I hadn't typed that.
REALLY DOESn'T HELP THAT 735 IS GREATER THAN 715
EW EW EW EW EW EW GET THIS FEELING OFF OF ME GET IT AWAY FROM ME
6:30pm. took my meds
9:00pm. unsure whether emotional flashback or just bad night. i think the nauseous sinking feeling in my chest may be a minor somatic flashback in and of itself, that gets triggered under unknown circumstances related to being really sad, my initial theory is it's like a canary in the coal mine, like if i get it then i know some other flashback is also happening, and whatever thoughts or emotions or sensations or mental images i'm having were real and aren't just unrelated. if that's the case then this must be an emotional flashback, but i'm not sure my theory about the sinking feeling is even true.
5:00am next morning. i was able to physically identify what the "nauseous sinking feeling" is. the key was noticing it spreads from my chest out to my fingertips and temples. that feeling is the sensation of a sudden spike in heart rate. i don't think this is just happening because i'm fat. otherwise i wouldn't think there would be the emotional component. it specifically always coincides with extreme despair to the extent of self-danger anxiety. it's painfully clear to me now that that sinking feeling is absolutely a warning sign of a flashback. usually an emotional flashback, which makes it hard to pin down as such, as that's the hardest kind to distinguish from just feeling sad. but the sudden rise in pulse is proof. that's not a normal bodily response to sadness.
anyway
total 735
good morning. i'm up at ungodly hours yet again. currently cooking rice and boiled eggs at the crack of dawn. i'm cooking because i'm hungry but i don't know if i'm actually going to eat what i'm cooking right now. i might just cook it, store it for later, and have something else
Cooked rice pilaf and boiled eggs. Did not have any. Had a protein drink and a string cheese instead. Total is 270 so far.
I was up from 1am to 7am, went back to bed, got up at 11:30am. It's now 12pm and I've only just taken my meds, 2 hours late. Have not eaten, total for the day still sitting at 270.
3pm. Minor binge. I think the main trigger was cooking earlier today, but it may also have been brought on in part by trying to be supportive toward someone else who is also struggling with body image but has the opposite problem, and had nearly starved ximself to death and is trying to refeed.
Contents of the binge are as follows: cup of soup; serving of rice; piece of toast; boiled egg. Totalling 600 calories, bringing total for today to 870—slightly above target. There is some shame around it, as usual. But, as usual, nowhere near as much shame as I feel when I actually overeat. Regardless, as usual, the shame is enough to compel me to commit to not eating again for the rest of the day (I hope).
total 870
Took my evening meds at 8pm instead of 6pm. Being late with them is probably not as big a deal but probably still not great. Contemplating going for a walk.
10pm. Didn't end up going for a walk. I'll shave and take a shower tomorrow morning.
Took meds. I didn't go pick up my stuff at cvs yesterday. Turns out i didn't need to, i wasn't thinking clearly when i thought i did, i thought "oh monday will be the day i'll have one pill left so that's the last day to pick them up," technically that's not true, technically the last day i should wait to pick them up is the day i have zero pills left, which is today. so i didn't have to miss a dose. i'm about to go out and pick them up now.
I fucked up trying to give someone advice about his SA survivor wife. As an SA survivor myself I felt like I could try my hand at offering him advice. Of course I would never have approached him with this offer. That would be extremely rude. Rather, he approached me. Anyway I did basically everything right I think, on the assumption that she wasn't cheating on him. Which I did in fact assume the whole time. Why would I assume she was cheating on him? There was literally no reason for me to assume that. Well at the end he basically goes "thanks for the advice, by the way my wife's cheating on me, your advice has made me realize I need to just let her." And like. Fuck? No??? No that's not what I meant at all??????? Like jesus christ, this whole time this guy was working on a whole different set of context info than I was, and acting like I knew vital information I had literally no clue about. So of course i freaked out and went, no, god no, that's not what i meant, you need to have a serious talk with her about that, you are an equal partner, your feelings matter, you need to set boundaries, if this behavior is hurting you then she needs to know that, and if she has emotional needs you aren't meeting then she needs to be open and honest with you about that, it's not right for her to accept hurting you as a fair price to see those needs met by someone else??????????? And he hasn't responded. Nothing. I got so worried i sent him three replies in a row, with about twenty minutes between them. He's only read the first one. I probably just ruined someone's life by trying to help them. I fucking hate myself.
I drove to the pharmacy and picked up my meds. It was such a simple task, but what i'm going through right now made it feel like the hardest thing i'd ever done. My new vitamin D prescription is once a week, so I need to start marking days i take my vitamin d so i know when to take it next. Here is as good a place as any to note that down. So i'm starting it today and have retroactively marked the heading for today as indicating a vitamin D day. I'll start doing the same thing for estrogen shots when i switch over to them, since those aren't daily either. Speaking of which, tomorrow is the day i have to order. I'm excited, but nervous. Shots are scary. Moreover, the government also thinks shots are scary, so what if it gets seized, or i get in trouble? But i have to try. If i weren't at a point where i'd rather die than not transition then i wouldn't be transitioning.
12pm. raspbs 75, str chees 80, prot drank 190. total so far is 345.
i'm once again feeling like i'm malingering because i don't get trauma nightmares much anymore and never got waking visual flashbacks very often in the first place. i need to keep reminding myself, somatic and emotional flashbacks are real, your pulse does not shoot through the roof when thinking about certain things "just because," "for no reason." i feel like what i'm feeling isn't real because it wasn't bad enough to be real and i'm just a whiny spoiled loser. the things i think i'm just barely starting to remember can't be real either because they're too horrible to be real. so which is it? is my trauma a lie because i didn't have it bad enough, or is it a lie because there's no way i could have had it as bad as i did? it can't be both.
i'd love to just go to sleep and never wake up
i say that too often don't i? can't be good luck.
today my negative self-concept just kept getting more and more extreme and then i spent maybe a half-hour crying hysterically into my pillow. now i feel like a corpse but at least i don't want to be one anymore for the moment.
7:45pm. took a 2-hour misery nap from 4 to 6. emotionally, i still feel completely depleted. but at least... no, there is no "at least."
taking meds late. promised little jaime no more sub 400 cal days, could skip dinner but can't break the promise, i've broken too many of them already. having string cheese, egg, toast, soup. weird neurophysiological space where i'm hungry enough that i'm going to eat a lot (well "a lot" by current standards) if i eat, but not hungry enough to absolutely have to if not for that promise. total for the day is gonna be 795. nice. only 5 off from target.
ugh... my eyes were bigger than my stomach. i'm having a hard time getting through this. ha, if i were in compulsive overeating mode this would be a snack. i need to at least finish the soup because if i stop it here then my calorie count for the day will be imprecise... wait what am i talking about, literally what's wrong with that? an imprecise calorie count is fine as long as i know the margin of error. "i have to finish it because." binge mindset. i can stop eating whenever i want, i don't need to follow any rules.
i got through about half of the soup and left the string cheese untouched, so that's 80+(180/2)=170 calories deducted from my total for today, leaving me at 795-170=625.
total 625
6am. have already had the other half of my cup of soup and a string cheese. total so far is 170.
10am. had a protein drink. total so far is 360. took my meds. gonna try to figure out reordering hormones. this will be my first time doing injections, i really hope i get everything right.
i fucking hate the modern political right so fucking much. trump forced the planned parenthood in my area to close down, which is why i've had to diy in the first place. political pressure forced the most reputable domestic source for diy to close down, which is why i've had to buy foreign. which, you know, isn't a big deal at all, if i could. but trump's tariffs, trump's fucking tariffs, are preventing foreign pharmacies from importing to the usa right now. so i had to go digging for a different domestic source. well i found one, but, due to political pressure incentivizing them to keep their transactions as off-the-grid as possible, they only take crypto. so i just hold my nose and start trying to buy crypto, which, by the way, is also a huge fucking right-wing scam (but these trans pharmacies don't have a choice under the circumstances, i don't blame them). monero is apparently the most secure and untraceable (for whatever the fuck these grifters' word is worth on that) and i am living under a hostile government now (these very same pyramid scheme peddlers' hostile government by the fucking way) so monero seems like the way to go. so i try to buy monero. apparently kraken is the best place to buy it if you don't have any other crypto already, and like, why the fuck would i, ew. so i make an account on kraken, they want everything under the kitchen sink from me and the blood of my firstborn child, but my account gets made. "oh are you here to trade and invest, buy large sums otc, or still exploring" no fuck you i'm here to buy fucking hrt you fraudulent little shits. i buy the monero i need. turns out, to actually withdraw and spend crypto, i need a wallet. which is a whole other process of creating another fucking account. so then i've finally got my wallet set up, i've bought the monero, i'm ready to withdraw it and buy my stupid hormones, right? turns out, when you buy crypto on kraken, you can't withdraw it for a week! so now i'm down $150 just to have to wait an extra week to buy my goddamn life-saving healthcare that the government is trying to deny me. thank god i'm buying domestic so my original estimate of how long it would have taken to get here is going to be way off and i can probably afford to waste the extra week. i want to strangle someone.
7:30pm. took meds. had rice, 2 boiled eggs, raspbs for dinner. 230+(2x80)+75 = 465, 465 + 360 = 825. whoops, little bit over. that's fine, w/e
total: 825
making a bit of a risky move today: having coffee even though i don't know how many calories are in it. we have some pumpkin spice grounds i've wanted to try. i don't know how many calories are in the black coffee, i know there should be zero in the artificial sweetener, and i used less than a cup of oat milk, and a cup is 40. i'll just assume the black coffee is probably something like 60 and put my estimate at 100.
string cheese, 80
took meds late, at like 11am or something. now it's 12pm
3:45pm. really not much appetite today, before now i'd only had 180 cals and i'm barely hungry. having an egg and a cup of soup. total is now up to 180+180+80=440.
i went out to the ups store a couple hours ago and left my busted laptop with them to be shipped for repairs. driving wasn't as scary this time. even interacting with customer service went kind of alright. i spoke barely above a whisper and stumbled over my words a lot but we got through it. i survived
finished my soup. feel a little ill. i'm appreciating this newly-realized natural tendency to undereat instead of overeat—courtesy, i assume, of hrt, somehow—but it's getting a little extreme. i wasn't even that hungry, i could have gone the whole rest of the day without that meal, and then it would have been a 180 day, which is like, not great. trauma brain says it's great, healthy brain says it's not. and now consuming 260 calories in one sitting is making me so full i feel a little bit sick. that's not even fat bitch mode jaime snack size, that's normal person snack size.
total 440
This brings my average back down below 715. It's at 710 now.
prot drink 190
string cheese 80. total so far is 270
11:30am. took meds. having soup (180) and toast (110). total is now 560. already higher than my total for the whole day yesterday. my appetite must be better today because of how little i had yesterday
2pm. having a string cheese (80). total is now 640.
had an emotional flashback about body shame. cried hysterically for an hour
6:45pm. taking meds
total 640
prot drink 190
string cheese 80. total so far is 270
8:30am. Realizing I've been at this for four weeks as of today. Hey, that's as long as the shortest month of the year! I've officially been at it for one month, in a manner of speaking! Woohoo!
12pm. Took meds. Had a boiled egg (80). Total so far is now 350.
2:30pm. Having soup, rice, and string cheese. There was not even close to a cup of soup left, but it was supposed to be 13 cups and I'd only had 11 before now, so even though this is like, a sixth of a cup, I'm counting it as 2 cups to make sure all the soup gets accounted for in total. Clearly I've been getting greedy with my cup estimates. That's somewhat disheartening. So, 2x soup = 360, + rice = 590. Maybe I won't have the string cheese, because 350+590 is... 940, already well over 800, will be over 1000 if I have the string cheese too.
Was it really 11 cups I'd had before this and not 12? Need to recount. I had a feeling I'd been being gross and awful about the portion size, but I didn't realize it was this bad.
okay this time i counted 10. inconsistent results, need to recount one more time.
okay. recount says 10. which means this sixth or so of a cup of soup counts as three cups, not two. so, 3x soup = 540, + rice (230) = 770. + 350 = 1120. so i guess today is now officially a binge day. which, on the plus side, means i'm allowed to have that string cheese after all if i feel like i need it.
i can't believe i've been taking so much extra each time, without noticing, that three cups of soup just disappeared unaccounted for. god i fucking hate myself.
had the string cheese almost right after giving myself permission to have it. i wasn't even still hungry, so this is now officially a binge, behaviorally, not just for inventory purposes. anyway, total for the day is now up to 1200. you know what they say, "1200 is plenty." i'll try not to eat again today. to try to reinforce that expectation, i'm going to write out the daily summary already even though the day isn't over. that way it will feel more set in stone.
total 1200
This brings my daily average up to 725. At least I'm still under target on average.
alright well, the glitch i thought i was encountering in hollow knight doesn't occur on my spare laptop. was probably just a quirk of the failing hardware. however, i still couldn't save, because my spare laptop overheated and powered off. this is the reason i stopped using it in the first place, i think the fans have gone bad, also it's just an old machine anyway and was time to upgrade, otherwise i might have tried to just replace the fans.
6:30pm. made tea. took evening meds
Well, i'm out of soup and out of rice, and i can't cook tomorrow because my uncle's friends will be over, and i can't binge tomorrow either because of my policy of spacers at least two days wide between binge days. so i'm thinking tomorrow will be another starbucks day.
i'm awake at 2:45am
i drew a picture of what it was like to discover what i thought was one EP was actually three of them. then i went back to sleep until 9:30am. now it's 10:30am. got sbucks. taking meds.
car insurance autopay went through. together with buying that crypto for my hrt, that's taken out the rest of my money this for month. i've only got $60 left, and just under 2 weeks to get through on it. other than other autopayments coming through, shouldn't be a problem, i have more cans of soup and boxes of rice, i just haven't cooked them yet, and i've still got six boiled eggs, one protein drink, and loads of string cheese.
i'll record the list and total ahead of time today too to try to disincentivize myself from eating again and going over target:
total 770
took meds at around 6:30pm. 7:45pm now. haven't eaten again yet, probably gonna be good for today.
10am. Just took meds.
12:30pm. Had protein drink and string cheese (190+80=270).
4:45pm. Slept from around 1:45pm to around 3:45pm.
5:00pm. Having string cheese (80), boiled egg (80), toast (110), raspberries (75), totalling 345. In combination with prior 270, that's 615 for the day so far. Probably fine to not eat anything else today, I did sleep for 2 hours in the middle of the day after all.
6:30pm. Took meds.
total 615
i got hit on by a chaser. it was really uncomfortable. i'm not super anti-chaser like many trans women. i know they're just fetishizing us but honestly it's hard to dislike them just for that. but i'm not like, into chasers either. particularly because my dad made me aroace. sooooo... i tried my best to politely turn him down. i think our conversation ended on okay terms. i told them early on i was aroace but i don't think they understood the terminology. they stopped talking to me the instant i reiterated and explained it meant aromantic and asexual. no "oh okay bye" or anything. which is a lot better than it could have gone. the worse two possibilities are that they could have kept hitting on me anyway, which would have been harassment at that point, or that they could have raged at me and actively tried to damage my self-esteem. those are two of the most common ways i've seen guys (i assume it was a guy but i can't be sure) respond to being turned down by women online. as someone raised male it feels strange to have reason to fear ending up on the receiving end of that behavior (even if i was always personally above it myself). but this person didn't do either of those things. they just stopped talking to me. i appreciate that, that's much more respectful than what they could have done.
Tomorrow's the day the crypto I bought is finally actually credited to my account! So I can finally actually order HRT! Woohoo! I swear to god if I run out before it gets here because of this I'm gonna slap a motherfucker!
... Aaaand I just realized I don't have enough money left to buy syringes, or a sharps container, or bandages, or alcohol swabs.
Fuck my life. Welp back to remasculinizing for probably like a week.
Anyway it's 9:30am. Made more soup. Formula this time: 3 cans red bean and rice soup, 3 cans southwest style, 2 cans vegetable soup, 2 jars garlic-flavored tomato sauce.
Total volume: 3*200/130 + 3*330/190 + 2*130/80 + 2*5*1/2 ~= 18 cups.
Total calories: 3*200 + 3*330 + 2*130 + 2*5*50 = 2350 cals.
2350/18 ~= 130 cals per cup.
Having raspberries (75) and soup (130) for breakfast. Total is 205.
I feel extremely gross this morning. I was dealing with a cold sweat until I had those raspberries. Must've been a dip in blood sugar due to this diet. Anyway, because of that, and also because I've been in these clothes for a day, I'm going to take a shower before I have the soup.
10:30am. Took meds. Haven't taken shower yet, about to go do it.
11:00am. Still haven't taken shower, been making an injection supplies list on Amazon instead. I'm looking at my bank statements and realizing I might actually be able to get away with buying the supplies after all. The only autopay expense I have that posts before my next payday is the bill for my website. I'll probably have to take a hit there and pay it late, but if it's for a medical reason, that doesn't seem so bad. I know they're not going to immediately shut down my website because I didn't pay the bill the exact day it was due, I've been late before but I've never been too late and I've always paid.
Geh. Buying the sharps container too is going to be cutting it close. I know it's not kosher or whatever but I might just cut the sharps container until I'm not broke. I'll use a cardboard box until then, I have plenty of those. Then when I get a sharps container I'll just transfer the contents. I know they'll be a biohazard until then but how bad can it be, it's just my own germs i already have, i'm sure my room is covered in them already seeing as i live here. I realize the real risk is poking myself with a used needle when i actually do transfer them over, but i'll just be really careful about that. Shouldn't be too hard, the temporary storage will only need to hold like, 2 syringes max, it's not like i'm gonna be reaching my hand into a huge pile of needles trying to safely grab one. Find a needle in a needle stack? Is that anything? Anyway i won't need to be doing that so it should be fine.
Swabs won't get here until oct 5 at the latest. That's a week and a half from tomorrow. Earliest they get here is sep 29 though which is less than a week from tomorrow. Unsure whether i'll run out of oral hrt before the swabs get here. Sharps container is one thing but injecting without swabs is probably too dangerous. Sucks but it is what it is.
I'm really nervous to place this order... What if i got anything wrong? Well, it won't matter. It's not like this is a huge investment. It only feels that way right this instant because i'm broke as shit because my car insurance premium went through. If i get something wrong then i won't be broke anymore by the time i have to fix it.
Fuck it i'm placing it.
Shit. Shit i should have thought of looking for swabs that could get here faster. Can't do anything about it now, i only thought of it after i placed the order and now i have fuckall left for money. Could cancel it but what if i'm not refunded right away. Fuck.
Well whatever. 11:30am. Gonna go finally shower now.
just realized it's vitamin D day. Taking my vitamin D now. Then I'll go shower.
Took vitamin D. Actually did order alcohol swabs that get here sooner, they were only $5.50 and arrive with the same delivery so why not. Huge relief. Okay now I'm going.
Took shower. Having string cheese, 80, total for the day is now 285.
5:30pm. Had toast (110), boiled egg (80), string cheese (80). Total so far is now 555. I also slept in the middle of the day for 3 hours. I really need to get my sleeping under control, I need to sleep enough at night instead of this shit.
6:00pm. Took meds.
Really looking forward to finally being able to put in my hrt order tomorrow. There better not be any more obstacles or i swear to fucking god.
8:30pm. depression getting to me. or chronic freeze response or whatever the fuck this really is. who even knows anymore. all i know is i wish i could just stop existing.
It's 6:30am. I woke up at around 5:00.
8:30am. Having boiled egg (80), toast (110), string cheese (80), strawbs and banans (100). Total so far is 370. I was weak and lightheaded this morning, I think not having any more protein drinks is really not doing me any good. Good thing there's only a little over a week before I'm not broke anymore.
I'll have to wait til 3pm to order my HRT, since that was what time I bought the crypto last week. Gonna be real pissed if the value of monero has dropped enough in one week that I can't afford the HRT anymore. I fucking hate pyramid schemes i swear to god.
10:00am. Took meds early, at around 9:30.
11:00am. Had another egg & piece of toast, 190. + coffee, 100. Total so far is now 660.
2:00pm. had string cheese, 80, total is now 740. should try to have that be it for the day.
only an hour before i can fucking pay for my healthcare
2:45. 15 minutes left. should probably go ahead and get signed into the multiple different types of accounts i'm going to have to use to do this. god what a pain
Okay, less painful than i thought so far but wow there sure are a lot of bells and whistles involved in this whole process. I've already had to wait a week just to withdraw my crypto, i withdrew it and then still didn't have it for a couple minutes, now i have it but apparently it's "locked" so i still can't use it for another 16 minutes. Like i'm glad the time frame is a lot smaller than that first delay but wow that's a lot of individual different delays.
Forgot to mention, i do have less money now than when i bought the crypto. Its value went down. I'm down like 5 dollars. Literally who gives a shit. I'm not here to invest, I'm here to buy my goddamn healthcare. I can still easily afford it with what's left so who gives a shit.
I think the wallet software's estimate of how long it takes to unlock funds is wrong. Feels like it's been longer than 16 minutes and apparently 6 minutes still remain. But at least it's progressing at all.
Wow it feels like this is taking a goddamn eternity. WHEN AM I GOING TO BE ABLE TO JUST BUY MY FUCKING MEDICINE.
Jesus christ finally. Order's confirmed, payment is awaiting blockchain confirmation (barf). This has been by far the worst experience i've ever had trying to pay for something. Turns out monopoly money is designed specifically around playing monopoly. Seems like actually using it is practically an afterthought.
At this point I've had to wait so long to actually order this—not to mention, I've voluntarily, but perhaps in an ill-informed capacity, waited so much longer to even try to switch to injections, and before that, so much longer than even that to just get on HRT at all—that it feels kind of surreal now to have received a confirmation email from the vendor. It's in motion now and it feels so hard to believe.
I have enough pills left for 12 days starting tomorrow. I hope it doesn't take longer than that to get the E vial now that I've paid for it.
Having one more string cheese and that should be it for the day. Total is now past target, up to 820. I got lightheaded. Really need money to buy protein drinks. Only 9 more days.
6:00pm. Took meds. Got laundry out of the dryer. Gonna take a shower.
i looked into the typical rates for therapy. turns out, doesn't matter if i were willing to try it again or not, i can't afford it.
evening sadness is setting in. hard to motivate myself to go take that shower when all i want to do instead is just give up. on everything. it's 6:30pm and i just feel like i'm looking forward to night coming so i can spend some time unconscious and not thinking.
getting a little bit of passive suicidal ideation. it's not too bad this time. it's not clawing at me like some hell creature, it's really just a passing thought this time. it's still painful but at least the pain doesn't stick around when the thought doesn't.
9:30pm. instead of taking that shower i've been sitting here rereading my entire food log. why? i guess to once again convince myself i'm actually traumatized and not just a whiny baby. ... yeah, i'm genuinely fucked in the head, that much is obvious reading it back. don't know why i can't keep that thought in mind. oh i know why, ironically it's because it's true. i can't keep remembering i'm fucked in the head because i'm too fucked in the head to remember that.
OKAY enough procrastinating. rocketing off to take shower....NOW. pchoooooooo
Finally took my shower, now 10:00pm, just got out. Refilled on water for the night, had to be quiet because my uncle was finally able to setup his chair and is sleeping out in the front room from now on.
Feels like a good day today for once! I'm still riding the high of being able to finally order my HRT, and also, I woke up this morning to the discovery that I'd been able to help someone last night.
9:30am. Had boiled egg, toast, string cheese, having coffee. Total so far is 80+110+80+100=370.
10:15am. Took meds.
Laptop's supposed to be back from repairs tomorrow afternoon. Turns out the RAM had gone bad, not the motherboard.
Had string cheese and soup, 80+130=210, 370+210=580. Need to start counting which cup of soup I'm on so I don't run into the same kind of situation as last time. This was the second cup of the batch.
Just got a text that my phone bill is going through. I forgot about that, I don't have it every month. It's going through on Saturday. I won't be able to pay it off for six days after that. Fuck my life.
6:15pm. Taking meds.
8:00pm. Having a cup of strawberries and bananas, 100 cals. Total is now 680.
7:00am. Have taken a shower. Currently hydrating.
my uncle relies on texting me to get my help with things, and won't be able to do that while my phone bill is past due. i'm going to ask him to friend me on discord as it's the second most effective way to get in touch with me immediately. he could just yell but i'd rather he not have to.
7:45am. Having strawberries and bananas, 100 cals.
9:00am. Having egg, toast, string cheese, soup (third cup of batch). 80+80+110+130=400, 100+400=500.
10:45am. Took meds.
11:45am. had another piece of toast, another string cheese, coffee. 80+110+100=290, 290+500=790. only 10 off target.
4:30pm. My laptop came back from repairs. I'm going to shut down the spare and move the SSD back over now.
4:45pm. Repaired laptop is set back up. Good to have it back. Now I don't have to worry about it overheating while I'm gaming, or if I somehow manage to make myself get any work done in Unity.
Having one more string cheese. Brings me up to 870 for the day.
I'm noticing I've been feeling a lot better these past two days. I'm really excited to get my hands on that estrogen vial. Hard to be completely consumed with thoughts about the rape committed against you when you're busy being excited.
The vial will contain 10mL estradiol enanthate at 40mg/mL concentration. I intend to inject 8mg, or 0.2mL, every 10 days. 0.1mL will apparently be lost per injection due to syringe dead space, so I'll need to draw up 0.3mL each time.
6:15pm. Taking meds. Doing system update.
I've been playing some Zelda BotW to try to take my mind off things. I've already done everything there is to do in the game but it's just a nice world to explore. I was trying to upgrade some equips at one of the Great Fairies and I was noticing I'm feeling really icky about the whole... unwanted affection thing... with sexual undertones. Level 1 upgrade she blows Link a kiss, he doesn't seem to mind. Level 2 she kisses her finger and rests it on him, he's surprised but doesn't seem to mind that either. Level 3 she kisses him directly and it's gross and he's clearly upset by it. Level 4 she grabs him and pulls him down into her pond, and after whatever she does with him there, he's incapacitated. I am clearly not in the right frame of mind to be upgrading my equips in this game. My skin is crawling now.
My EFI partition was out of space so I uninstalled the LTS kernel. Then I discovered the bleeding-edge kernel and/or nvidia driver doesn't fully support my GPU. The laptop works but the external monitor does not. So then I reinstalled the LTS kernel and uninstalled the bleeding-edge kernel instead. Now everything is back to normal. I wasn't using the bleeding-edge kernel for anything anyway so it's fine. I hope they fix support for my device before the current bleeding-edge kernel passes into LTS, or else one of these days a system update is going to just non-negotiably ruin my ability to use my external monitor.
Games won't launch from Steam. I think it's a Vulkan issue. It's whatever. I didn't really want to play anything I had on there anyway. I should be getting work done instead, or at least something creative.
System update upgraded Godot to 4.5. StQ prototype still works as intended. No mental energy to work on it right now.
Gonna do a phone system update too, been putting it off too long.
No word about my E yet, no tracking number. That's sort of to be expected, it's only been two days. They said there should be a delay of "a few days" between when I put in the order and when I get the tracking number, but a few can sometimes mean more than two. They also said I should get in contact if it takes longer than a week. I'll just have to be patient.
Phone's fully updated.
8:00am. Had soup (fourth of batch), string cheese, toast. 130+110+80=320. Feeling dissociated.
11:30am. Took meds at 10:45am. Unsure if coming out of dissociation or not. Little bit emotionally uncomfortable.
1pm. Contemplated making rice. Decided not to. Had another string cheese. Now up to 400 for the day.
2pm. Coffee, 100. Total for the day so far, 500.
I've been having trouble getting out for walks lately. The only time it's cool enough is night time, and by then I don't want to. But it's a nice cool day today. I might go out for a walk. Seems like a good thing to do while dissociating.
4:30pm. Back from my walk, hanging out on the front patio and updating from my phone. Went out at around 3:30pm, so the walk lasted for about an hour. My upper back and shoulders hurt. How come it's always them? Weird. Anyway I'm still dissociating. The walk didn't seem to help at all. At least I got some exercise. It had been too long. I'll go inside and take a shower when I feel like it.
5pm. I'm back inside and have gotten out of the shower.
7pm. Took meds.
9pm. Having soup (fifth of batch), string cheese, toast. 500+320=820. After this, daily average is up to 730. Still below target.
I tried to figure this out weeks ago but kept shifting the goalposts after that. I think it's good that I shifted them, I think they were in the wrong place.
So, here are some new rules, based on where the goalposts ended up:
2:30am. I had a fucked up nightmare and I think I'm not dissociating anymore afterward. I won't go into detail about the nightmare, I already went into detail about it on After Silence, but if taken at face value, it indicates unambiguously that I was trafficked. Now, that being said, I'm not sure I can take it at face value. Only time will tell.
Went back to sleep at 5:30, slept in until 9:30.
10:15am. Took meds.
11:15am. Uncle got starbucks, asked if i wanted anything. Said he knows I usually don't but figured he'd ask anyway since it's Sunday. This time, instead of saying no, I asked for a PSL. So there's 300. I made rice, and mixed in soup (sixth cup of batch), and am also having a string cheese. 300+130+230+80 = 740. Almost at target for the day already if I finish this, but I'm not that hungry, I have a feeling I'll take my time. It also helps that I actually heated up the soup this time. I eat hot things slower.
5:45pm. It's been 4 days since I placed my HRT order. No word on tracking. I'll try to keep being patient. It's hard to stay patient because it is so exciting.
6:15pm. taking meds. having another string cheese, total for today will be 820, slightly above target.
i hate myself and wish i could start my life over from the beginning but do it right this time. jesus christ is there anyone or anything in the world more disgusting than me
(that wasn't related to going over target by the way, or at least i don't think so. just random self-loathing)
9am. having fruit (100), coffee (100), string cheese (80). total so far is 280.
i got an email that my estrogen shipped, and the email includes a tracking number, but according to tracking, it hasn't shipped yet. "label created." i got the email last night, but it's been on "label created" since the 26th. yesterday was sunday, so maybe it's already with usps and they just haven't processed their receipt of it yet. email says to reply if it's stuck on "label created" for longer than 12 days, which apparently affects 5-10% of shipments. i don't have that kind of time, i'll be out of oral hrt in 8 days. the source appears to be nearby, conveniently, so if it doesn't get held up at "label created," it should get to me quickly.
10:15am. Took meds.
2pm. Having soup, seventh cup of batch, as well as rice and string cheese. 130+230+80=420, 280+420=700.
4:30pm. Still sitting at "label created."
7:30pm. Napped from around 5:30pm to 7pm. Had another string cheese, bringing total for today to 780. Taking meds.
Daily average is now 730.
USPS picked up my estrogen! Status is now "accepted!"
There is now an expected delivery date for my estrogen: 10/03. Same day I get paid. Apparently that's going to be a very exciting day.
Vented about self-loathing and suicidal thoughts last night. Had an EFB this morning. Very brief this time.
10:30am. Taking meds.
I feel sick. I made myself some rice mixed with soup (eighth cup of batch) and took a string cheese as well. 130+230+80=440 for today so far. But I can't eat it yet. I feel too sick.
4:00pm. I did end up eating my breakfast. After that, I've spent too much of today in bed. Not sleeping, just in bed. Cuddling w/ mom rabbit. Reviewing everything that's happened the past few days. The suitcase nightmare, the suicidal ideation, the emotional flashback that followed. Anyway I'm up now.
Having toast, string cheese, coffee. 110+80+100=290, 290+440=730. Hey what do you know, that's exactly my current daily average. If I don't eat again today, then today will have no effect on the daily average whatsoever. That's mildly amusing to think about.
Oh hey, also: it's been five weeks since I started this, and if I make it to Saturday, which I'm pretty sure I will, it will have been six weeks. That will be halfway there!
6:00pm. Took meds. Realized I forgot to take vitamin D this morning, took it with my evening meds instead.
10:30pm. I showed support for four people today. I was possibly able to help one of them, unclear. Tried to help another but wasn't any help at all. I'm "okay" with how today went. As in I'm not going to think about killing myself tonight.
We're officially into october!
8am. This morning i genuinely feel happy. For maybe the first time for as long as i can remember, i feel real, pure, untainted happiness. Not just joy. Not just pleasure. Happiness.
10:30am. psl 300, toast 110, str cheese 80. total so far is 490. took meds.
2:45pm. My good mood today was somewhat soured by discovering the suitcase nightmare was almost certainly real. Themes of it are reflected covertly in some of my past poetry, from before I even joined AS or heard anyone else's story that could have influenced me. From several weeks before I had even the slightest inclination there had ever been more than just the one incident. The only other possible explanation for clear consistency between the symbolic themes of that poetry and the literal details of being trapped in the suitcase, is that my subconscious mind invented the nightmare to cope with the poetry. But that seems far less likely. Why would I need to cope with the experience of having put certain symbolic themes into my poetry? That's not traumatic. And why would the experience my mind invented to cope be scarier and more detailed than what I was trying to cope with? It's clearly the other way around: this really happened, and the poetry was the subconscious coping mechanism. That's the only way it makes sense.
My E is here but I'm holding off on retrieving it from the mailbox because I'm spiraling in rumination about suitcases. I'll do it when my uncle needs me next. I've decided I'm going to do 8mg (which, as a self-reminder, is 0.2mL) every 7 days instead of every 10 days. It will be easier to time that way and I won't hit trough. It occurred to me I don't have to account for the dead space; yes, some of the shot will be wasted, but the syringe is already labelled with that in mind. So I don't have to draw up what the syringe says is 0.3mL, I only have to draw up what the syringe says is 0.2mL, which will already actually be 0.3mL.
I brought the vial in. I'm watching a self-injection tutorial. I'm going to make today my first injection day. So, retroactively putting that down in the heading for today, and scheduling out the next one.
Got the injection done. Absolutely no pain. Didn't feel a thing. I'm surprised. I thought there would be something but nope. It's like it didn't even happen.
I'm already feeling paranoid I must have done it wrong somehow and it's not going to be effective. But only time will tell. I'll just have to see how the week goes.
7:30pm. Soup, toast. 130+110=240, 240+490=730. Wow, 730 for the day again huh.
10:15am. Took meds. Going out for a walk in the rain soon.
Oh my god I felt incredible last night. Despite not showing big body changes yet as far as I can tell, I experienced gender euphoria on a neurophysiological level. Like, I could feel my real self inside me, and for once in my life she was beautiful. I could barely sleep last night because my whole body kept shaking with the sheer joy of feeling like myself for once in my fucking life.
And in case a transphobe ever sees this, no it was not a fucking "euphoria boner." There was no arousal, physical or otherwise. A physical response did not happen in that organ, literally at all. None. No motion, no sensation. It was the rest of my body, and it felt more like endorphins. Like the shivers you get after going out for a good run, or after feeling uncertain about your performance in a competition and being surprised to discover you placed first. But don't be disappointed. I'm well aware I've already given you plenty of other angles to judge me unfairly.
Anyway I still feel pretty good today. I felt pretty good yesterday morning but this is something else, this is, holy shit, I haven't felt like this since before my mom died, if ever. Switching to injections might actually be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
I keep almost forgetting to log my breakfast. Coffee, 100. Toast, 110. String cheese, 80. Total so far is 290.
10:45am. I took too long and the rain stopped. Now I can't go out for a walk because the sun has come out. Maybe the weather will be "worse" (better) later today.