I'd love to climb a mountain and reach the highest peak, but I don't enjoy it half as much as dancing cheek to cheek

I detest that all I can write about is you, but if I'm truly pathetic here, I won't be in actuality.

So.

When I curl up on the sofa, I like to pretend you're there, but I know it's not the real you I'm pretending, it's you but you're not you because I'm pretending that you'll say things in a different tone to how you do now, it's a tone I've seldom heard you ever use. I'm adoring a manifestation of my own making. I might resolve to sort it out after the holiday when we are face to face.

You know all about this, and I think you don't feel the same way. I shouldn't fantasise because it isn't harmless. I used to feel like I was iron among glass, crack crack crack, and now you make me feel like someone else is iron too. Then again, sometimes I can't stand you.

I don't know why I have to keep reworking this by writing it out. I know exactly how it is, and how I'm floundering utterly.

Here's how it would go:

I'd come round to yours and we'd sit about for a while, chatting about nothing in particular and everything as usual. We'd tease each other. We usually end up stretched out on your bed in reality, only you always push me away after a bit, even if you're the one that's initiated it.

This time you wouldn't push me away. You'd nudge my head a bit and kiss my cheek, and I'd respond by kissing you back. Then I'd smile a bit. You'd say, in your tired happy voice, something like, "Oh, you're so hideously ugly". I'd respond with, "At least I'm not growing back testicles," but I'd say it softly. Then I'd stroke your face and kiss you again.

I like that little noise you make when you're tired and you sit down, or when you're frustrated with yourself. You're too goddamn beautiful for your own good, and I'd like to be able to tell you that, even if it's only by intonation when I tell you you're hideous.

Smile for a while and let's be jolly, you don't have to be so melancholy.

Ah, but he wouldn't do anything for me. I wonder sometimes if he's got a deep dark fetish that he won't tell me because he's so reluctant to divulge. I'm worried he won't like me anymore because I've got fatter over Christmas, as always happens when I go home, because I snack and eat my body weight in chocolate and crap. He says he doesn't like to comment on appearance, or judge on it, but he does notice it nevertheless, and I'm not standing much of a chance anyway.

Here are some good things about today

1. I managed to get my Dad a birthday present I know he wants.

2. I did some more of my essay, and it'll be simple to stick some more quotes in, synopsise and link together.

3. I know a bit about workhouses.

4. I got a phonecall from him late last night and I didn't find it hard to talk to him, like I usually do on the phone with people.

My brother said I had a phone voice today. I don't want to be the sort of person that has a particular voice just for the phone, I want to be me all the time.

He just said:


You do have self confident to a degree. You just work yourself up into weird frenzies of insecurity every so often for no seeming reason, but overall I'd say you were pretty confident.

They're contradictory.

Abortion.

I am currently undecided as to whether I am pro-life or pro-choice. I wouldn't picket, either way, I don't think it's for me to force my beliefs on someone else.

I vote liberal democrat, I'm agnostic and I was brought up pro-choice. I always wonder what I'd do if I got pregnant; abortion would be a real option. I'm not sure what I'd do.

Equally, I feel that it isn't my place to judge other's decisions. What it comes down to is whether or not I believe the foetus is alive. I think it is alive, but then I think about rape pregnancies, or teenage pregnancies, and it seems ridiculous to say that they should be forced to carry the foetus full term, even if it's adopted afterwards. I think really, that in any circumstance, nine months and a child at the end is a life-changing thing, and that some people aren't ready for it.

Abortion is a taboo; I just read an article by a pro-lifer that says that it shouldn't be called pro-choice because the foetus hasn't got a choice. A foetus hasn't got a choice on whether it was conceived, but noone's out there campaigning for foetuses not to be conceived or not, to give them that choice. Pro-abortion sounds like you're pro-aborting every foetus, like some kind of rampant Harold Shipman. It hasn't affected me personally (for all I know).

I probably would, at this time in my life, have an abortion if I got pregnant, touch wood I won't. I don't think I'd feel bad about it either. I do want kids at some point, but I wouldn't align myself with the pro-life faction just yet.

Good things

1. I've done all of the planning for an essay, now just to write it.

2. My workload is slowly becoming feasible.

3. My family is great.

4. Last night we were talking about people, me and him, and we were joking about one truly hideous girl. He said she'd have to learn to dance. I asked him why dance, and he didn't answer, he just changed the topic. He said to me once that I was a natural mover, a natural dancer. I hope he doesn't know how much I like him, because then he'd hate me, he's fickle like that. We talked about love. He thinks love is like a warm slipper. I said it was like writing an essay. I don't think it is, really. I said it was just boring in the end, just something everyone ends up doing.

Neither of us said I love you, but that's a stupid thing to say anyway at this stage. I don't think there's any such thing as unrequited love, it has to be two way, especially the non platonic kind. Love has to have some sort of power balance on both sides. I don't think I'd like him to say I love you, I like it when he says "oh, I hate you," and he doesn't mean it at all. I like disagreeing with him, to be disagreeable, but it's agreeable in the end because he likes disagreement and I like playing devil's advocate. I'd hate it if he started to say I love you all the time, it's so tedious and worryingly clingy. I think I could deal with someone never saying it, as long as I knew they did feel it.

Good things that happened today

1. I saw him and gave him some cake. It wasn't as good as last night.

2. I chatted to housemates.

3. I was resourceful with plard.

4. I organised going home tomorrow. I've done half the packing.

God, the irritating thing is that he apologised for being harsh. I hate harsh apologies- that's like saying, "I'm sorry you're such a pussy." I'm not a pussy, and I detest the inference that I am one. I'm so irritated. He also thought my script was bad, but he's written worse and was probably jealous. It wasn't that bad for something I knocked off in two hours, including conceptualising it.

Here's the list:

10 minstrels
chocolate cake
chocolate ice cream
an apple
pasta, tuna, broccoli and tomato

this is a shit eating list. I have ate utter crap, I feel tired, I've probably gained a few stones. Chocolate cake alone is about 750, so all in all it's probably been about 1500.

1984, arguments over.

I just had an argument with him about 1984. I think it's implicit that the proles will eventually overthrow the regime in the end (though for good or bad we can't tell). He thinks it's just a dire warning about the future, and that nothing will ever change. He kept saying he's read biographies of Orwell, and that that's what Orwell thinks. History tells us differently- regimes are toppled, and people do win.

We had this debate on the internet whereas usually we'd have it face to face. I got infuriated. I felt like screaming by the end, though it is touchy subject matter because I adore dystopian fiction, and the idea of anyone thinking they know more about it when they're not even an academic irks me. That's arrogant in itself, really. It's one of my favourite books, and I don't mind other people having opinions on it, but I hate it when people consider their opinions are of a higher standard than my own.

This all reads ridiculously. It's just because I like being the best all the time at everything and I can't handle it when I'm not, especially on something I care about so much. I care about him so much too.

I beat him on Ovid. No I didn't, he used not to like it, I said I did, now he's re-read it and acquiesces.

Well, I like being stubborn. It's one of my saving graces. No, it's a fault I like in myself.

Pictures of me.

There's a picture of me as a child on my wall. I'm sitting in the garden reading Matilda by Roald Dahl, a fitting choice because I'm around four in the picture and thus am emulating the eponymous heroine. I'm wearing a white frilly t-shirt, white socks and sandals and blue stripey shorts. I've got a visor on, it's also blue and I'm wearing it like a tennis pro. I've just turned round to see who's disturbing my reading, I think someone probably shouted because I zoned out when I read.

I remember wishing desperately that I could sprout long hair like sleeping beauty and the little mermaid. I'd have liked it to be blonde or black instead of my own colour. I always want what I don't have, and I have since I was a child. Now I want to be thin, which it seems I was looking at the picture. I have come some way on convincing myself that my body shape is the best, there's simply too much of it. I carry weight round my bottom half- this means that my legs look strong. I'm tall and broad, so I look strong and sporty rather than squat and chubby; my build tends to athleticism though I'm not at all athletic, so I look thinner than others my size or weight by virtue of having large bones, though they poke through my decollete more than I would like. I am flat-chested, but I can deal with this because it means I'll never ever look matronly; he keeps describing people as matronly, and I know that I am not. I am always fidgeting so I can't be. I could be a man, from behind, or in front.... but that is better than being matronly.

I wonder what my five year old self would think if she saw me in a line-up of girls, and was asked to pick which one she'd want to be out of them. I'd love to know what other people really and truly think of my body, or of me, but uncertainty is what makes us.

Pope Joan.

It occurs to me that I like the idea of loving you for your car crash body, or in spite of. I have contracted the saviour complex, akin to that of my Grandma. It's disturbing that I feel the need to render someone so passive, in order that I can be the saviour.

I read about Pope Joan the other day. She's a legendary female pope. She dressed as a boy to continue her learning, she was promoted to Pope and all went swimmingly until she gave birth in a public procession (or mounting a horse, depending on which version you read). They tied her to the horse and dragged her through town, or stoned her to death, or sent her to a nunnery and the baby became a bishop, according to legend. That's why popes have to sit on the seat and someone proclaims, "testes habet and pendulous something", "he has testicles and they dangle stupendously". People are bastards. I don't think it's a real, true legend, apparently the dates are wrong, but I'm sure something like that has happened because people are continually terrible to each other. Reading it made my insides contract, and I couldn't sleep after because it seems so terrible.

And what a brave new world it is we live in.

The black dog stalked me down the road today. It has become his habit, he seems to enjoy it. There is a certain terrifying elegance about his quill-sharpened teeth and the lope of his soft foot falling silently on the floor.

Hug me till you drug me, honey
Put me in a coma
Hold me honey, snuggly bunny
Love's as good as soma.

I love those five lines. If I was a musician, I'd put them to music, or I'd sing them or something. Aldous Huxley's not a patch on Orwell, but he's still fantastic.

Someone else I love is still confusing me. Sometimes he wants me to touch him, sometimes he doesn't, never in a sexual way. He eked out of me today how I really and truly think about myself, and I think he finds me dour. I can't always be lively.

I've got a hairbrush I'm desperate to clean and I just can't work out, for the life of me, how to get the dust out of the roots of it. I'm reluctant to placate consumerism by buying a new one. What on earth should I do?

I will have to dust soon because a thin layer of my own dead skin is coating my room.

I finished a book that detailed the inside of someone's upper lip. I wonder what your upper lip is like. I wonder what your car crash body is like. It's none so terrible from the outside, with your three protective layers against the world. It's your torso. Maybe you're just like me underneath, and you're worried about the size of your waist, or your stomach, or anything else.

Here are today's.

one and a half scones with creme fraiche-450
a tuna baguette-500
oranges-50
stir fry-100
half a scone-150
raisins-50

1300. Unlucky because I'm a triskaidekaphobe, but alright.

I adore looking at people's parents, because one person's face is suddenly two faces. I adore tracing.

raisins-50
some cereal-50
stir fry with peanut butter-130
apple-40
oranges-40
smoothie-115
sandwich-300
wispa-210
cranberry and brie panini-550

1480

I wore a shirt today, and it felt tight all day. It was a fat day today, really and truly. I need to start exercising, then I could stop food fixating.

What was I going to write about?

Maybe an Irish myth.

Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, went to train with Scatchath, a scottish warrior queen, who offered him the "comfort of her thighs". I wonder why? Was there some sort of Irish-scottish allegiance so far back? People always think I'm irish, because I've got red hair, an irish nose and a penchant for green. I'm a little scottish, but not at all Irish.

Calories today-1630

And I don't like it. I need some fruit and vegetables, desperately. Today I had four portions, it should be over five.

He does like me? He's always saying I'm ugly, teasing me. This can be good or bad. He doesn't like spotty people, and I am spotty at the moment.

I nearly thought he might say something tonight. We were sitting and touching our feet together, or our knees. Sometimes hand and knee. God, he's beautiful, pompous, ridiculous, and wonderful. I spent the time mentally fitting myself round him, thinking how I could so easily grow into that space under his arm, how I could grain my head into the stoop of his back.

I feel like I'm writing to him sometimes, though I'd die if he saw this because I whine so much in it. If it's not about him it's about how I look, both utterly superficial. I'd consider myself intelligent, yet most of my time I'm morose, supposing about maudlin things.

I'd write him a letter beginning, "dearest".

He said that his body was a car crash again today. Every time he says it makes me wonder what is wrong; or if there is anything at all. He's such a perfectionist, I'd bet there isn't. If there was, i would kiss every scar. I'd cast a hand over whatever it is that lies beneath the three habitual layers he wears and I'd tell him that it didn't matter, or that it did but only to make me like him more. It shows what he has been; I know he hates being anchored to anything, but I like it. It makes him surer. And I'd never tell anyone. It would be for us, together, like our secret.

Everyone can see my fat, but I wonder how I'd feel if he said he liked it. I don't like the thought at all of it being acknowledged as me, or as part of me. I don't want to be a person that is a fat girl. I don't accept it because it is not me; that is not who I really am. Maybe this is how he feels about himself. I don't think I'd like it more, even if he did.

There's a place your mother goes when everybody else is softly sleeping, they're sleeping.

I'd like to write a book about someone being insane in a workhouse. I think it would be a good idea.

I want to go to Russia.

I want to look like Annie Lennox.

I don't know if I still want you after today, not that that matters because you never wanted me. Noone ever really does, do they. I'm always the androgynous one in the corner, looking strange, looking around to see if anyone will acknowledge me. I don't really have anything at all to contribute.

There once upon a time lay a girl in a transitory state, waiting to awaken herself....

Fat fat fat.

A bad day today, for two reasons.

You always tease me but you were harsh. You were annoyed with me, for eating in a certain way- and it was embarrassing, I didn't like you after it. I felt like I'd won because I finished it with, "if you don't like it get your own". You can be such an arse sometimes. You're petty, and manipulative because it makes you feel bigger to knock other people down. We got over it and I wanted to touch you, like I always do. Why do I only ever pick people that hate me? Or that pretend to hate me. Or that don't like me at all and just use me for a while till someone better comes along.

I wouldn't have minded if it hadn't been something that I've constructed so many problems around. Food is such a shaky area. That isn't the right word. I did the food ok today though. And if you're always teasing me about being fat, does it mean you think I'm thin? You tease me for being practically chestless as well.

That was another bad thing- I saw some photographs of me from last nights party and I look hideously fat. They're disgusting. I feel disgusting. I felt fine last night, then I saw these and I thought, oh no.

I want to make a film that looks like an Annie Lennox video. I saw her on TV tonight; I really admired her, till I found out how strangely intense she is. I suppose you have to be to get things done. I wish I could have some conviction about anything other than my own hideousness. That's really the only certain thing for me. It means I'm not judgemental, and I'm not a horrible person; but I seem always to come off worse in arguments, and I hate that. Actually, I don't know if I am not a horrible person. I could well be. I'm just having a dull phase at the moment; I always feel a lack when I'm not involved in drama stuff.

I like you. Another one of those.

Darling, I wish I could call you that. I never would because it would sound so strange falling from my lips, I'd get the accent wrong and it never would be so magical.

Brown skin, you know I love your brown skin. It's so true. If we're together and I'm bored, watching a play or something ludicrous, I always look at your hands. I like to imagine slipping my arm under yours and stroking your fingers. You've got delicate hands really; they're big, but they're so clean. You're so clean, and your fingers are long and tapered. Your nails are perfect.

You were ill this week. If you wanted me to I would feed you gherkins and hot water and orange juice. I'd wait till you coughed and hold your head against my chest, and stroke your hair to soothe your headache. I'd smooth down the tops of your eyelids as you slept and kiss your forehead whilst I traced your perfect lips.

Hmmmm

I went to her party tonight; the girl I liked. I still like her, but I can be angry with her sometimes too, and I don't know what to think. She's lovely but I don't think she really truly cares; she's rubbish at handing people their stuff back, for example. And of course, the way she treated me was awful. I shouldn't have read her online diary, but she was so cagey about everything. That doesn't mean it was my only recourse though.

I felt really hideous for the first part of today, and then at night I felt far better. Probably because I was wearing makeup and different clothes. I don't know what it is that governs my feeling hideous or pretty. I woke up feeling fat and disgusting- I've ate more than ever today, it's disgusting, I've just been on a rampage as concerns food lately. That could be it. Anyway, I got back, still in full regalia (I was dressed as a cat) and I felt so much better about the way I looked. I was socially awkward at the party, I think people probably noticed. But I felt so much better once I'd had a look at myself.

Fallen seraphims and other whims

I did the calories ok today.

I miss the play, though I'm not sure it was that good.

I handed in an essay. I don't think it was very good.

I saw him. We'd seen each other every day for quite a while, and I didn't realise how much time we'd spent together. I missed him. He might have missed me- he said it was strange not seeing me all day. Then he called me fat and told me I was ugly. I like it when he does that. Sadomasochist.

I asked him whether he was gay or not, but we were with other people and he said he wouldn't say. Does that mean don't try me, or I'm not sure? We sat close and his fingers touched my thigh. I was happy like that for a good while. He's so beautiful; he's tall, and he's got blue blue eyes and long dark eyelashes. His hair's tipped with auburn at the fringe, and dark everywhere else, I sifted glass from it. I used to put foundation on, when we were in the play; I don't know if he knew I was always more delicate with him than I was with the others, because I liked touching his face so much.

This crush is getting ridiculous.

I wish I'd achieved more

because Alexander the Great would have conquered most of Europe by now, so I don't feel like celebrating.

Today's eating.

2 cubes of chocolate-140
tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese and bread-300
half a brownie-200
an apple-40
a chicken burger-550

Things we do and things we don't.

We stay at each other's houses till three in the morning, not talking about anything in particular.

Last night you asked me why my foot was touching yours, and I said it was because I was cold... which I was, but I don't know if you knew.

I've started referring to things said when we're together as "we".

You taught me how to waltz (I didn't know that I already knew how, I just didn't know it was called a waltz).

You nearly knocked me off a ladder, and I nearly knocked you.

We insult each other constantly.

We went for a drink and talked to other people; you didn't speak at me for nearly five minutes, preferring to look at someone else that had travelled to similar places that you had. It was irrational, but I got worried. I talked to people too.

We went to yours and talked to your housemate. I kept staring at your hands.

You made me touch the scar on your leg, but I don't think you like it when our feet touch. I re-plastered your thumb and drew another black ring round your wedding finger, and though I don't believe in anything like that, or even that we'd be together that long, I did like holding your hand in mine whilst I did it.

I feel like I'm constantly being tested by you... and maybe always falling short as well. I know where we stand as friends, but I'm sure that I don't just want to be friends. But I would rather we were friends than entirely awkward. And I don't want you to use Jane Austen lines against me like you did on that other girl.

Heathcliff and Kathy on the Moors.

Here is something wonderful: we go off together and I wear his coat. I give him my scarf and we sing silly Kate Bush songs and jump about outside in the dark, I am Heathcliff because his coat is so eighties, and he can be Kathy for the time being.

I'm glad

I'm not a fat girl. And someone said to me recently that they couldn't imagine me being a porky kid, which was lovely. He said I had broad shoulders, but I don't think he means it as an insult. Does he like girls with broad shoulders? Does he like girls?

Superstitions.

I'm creating lots around my play so that it'll be good. It was a good first night, and the second night will be alright, but I want it all to be amazing. I don't think I kept under the count yesterday.

What I ate yesterday

A cheese and carrot sandwich-400
an apple-40
a bacon and onion sandwich-300
a bag of salt and vineager crisps
a piece of cake

In short, utter crap. Today so far I've had two cubes of chocolate and cheese on toast with tomatoes and mushrooms. Which is better.

Under the count.

I need to eat more fruit, I'm getting loads of spots.

I asked him if he wanted dinner tonight; not as a date, just as in an I'd-cook sort of thing. I spoke to one of my friends about him, and she said that once he'd said to her that he'd only ever had a real thing for one girl, and that he thought he might be gay or asexual. This doesn't bode well for me. Unless I count the fact that I look a little mannish. I think I'm too spotty for him to like me properly, and he's really clean. I'm probably not clean enough. Or too clingy. He said he'd have dinner tomorrow night, but replaying it, I can't tell if he meant it or if he was just desperate not to talk to me anymore.

I think sometimes that he's a self-promoting geek, and at others I just want to hold his hand. I worry about whether my friends consider him strange, because he is, but then again I am nowhere near normal myself. I'm usually happy in the real world, I just let it all out here.

I am worried about the play, and my schoolwork, and various things. Whether my familial relationships are disintegrating, whether I'll have a fulfilling life etcetera etcetera.

I am in a play with a girl who is really petite. I say this every time I'm in a play, I think that what I mean is that they're petite compared to me. This girl is about five feet three tall, and she's slim. I am obviously a good half a foot taller; this makes for a comedic stage partnership, because we look so very different. She looks young, I look old. She is tan and blonde, I am pale and wan with dark hair, like a vampire. I am tired of this distinction being made; it was made in last year's play. I was told I looked like the girl that was my daughter (who was also small and slim). Anyway, I'm sick of being the mother because I'm taller and wider. I'm never the love interest, or the pretty girl. I get callbacks for those parts but I never actually get them. I can't do anything about being tall, or about my face or the general breadth of my shoulders, which are indeed very broad. I think my collarbones can look stupid; I just look like a man, and I'm tired of it. When people say that we look so different, I think what they're really saying is, "you're huge! Far larger than her!" I don't want to accept it as me, because I want to be the pretty girl. I've felt like this since I was about three and I thought I'd have grown out of it by now.

I was never a bridesmaid. I always thought, in some way, that that was because I wasn't pretty enough.

I wonder if that one girl was slim and pretty? She probably was. They always are; the fatties are never the love interests.

OK. Boring, boring- I'm under 1200 today, so that's good.

My family is annoying me a little, but not for a reason, just because they're usually late, and they nag, but only about things I do wrong anyway, like driving. So really I'm just annoyed because I'm a brat.

I adore him more.

I saw him today, and he talks to me but I don't think he finds me as interesting as other people. It would usually be that I'm not pretty that would get me, but today I wasn't the ugliest, just the stupidest. No, I'm just... less amusing? I don't know, it's something about presence and integrity and wanting far too badly to please. Now I seem to just insult him because that's our language (we both agreed today that we find compliments discomforting).

Today he talked about constantly being perceived as gay. It's because he's clean and well-dressed and camp. I listed these for him; I didn't tell him that I want to bury my face in his clean clothes, and to get so close to him I can smell even better, and that every time he flourishes a hand I'm desperate to slip mine into it. We're friends, and friends don't say things like that. I say all of the tiny niggling bits and leave out the huge parts that are forcing those bits to the surface. I can't help being a complete drip about it.

I joined an acting society that does loads of improvisation games, it was excellent. I can make people laugh.

So here are three bad things about today

1. I didn't do any work
2. I didn't make any headway with him
3. I insulted my parents and they were late for me.

But here are the good things

1. My parents love me a lot.
2. I ate under 1200.
3. I made people properly laugh.

Love of mine

I like your hair and your round face. I like your flushed skin, and your long lean brown hands. I like the hair that starts a little after your wrist. I like your facial hair, and I never thought I would. The first time I saw you I was incredibly impressed, and I am now still but in a different way because I can touch you now.

They say couples look alike; they're your mirror. We look nothing at all alike, but if we were considered similarly, I would have no qualms. You're maybe the first I feel equal to... not above or beneath.

In that play, when you leant forward, I leant back just to see you thinking and frozen in that position. You looked so noble, and I wanted to sink my head to match yours there and then.

If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the "No" on their vacancy signs; if I am sat beside you when your soul embarks

I will follow you into the dark.

Blah blah blah. I could say so many other things about my life- about the play, new acquaintances that I like, and about the fact I stank today because my deodorant didn't work.

But instead I'm drawn back to calories and you. Penance and reward. So here is the total:

A bacon, brie and cranberry baguette-400
An apple-40
Two tangerines-40
A bowl of oats, seeds and raisins-400
A pint of lager-150
An apple-40
some pine nuts-100
A white wine spritzer-150

Tonight, he invited me to his because he was going to a sort-of party. At first I said yes, then I thought, what if he's just being polite? It was the sort of scenario it could have gone with. Ugh, I think everyone might think I'm strange in a bad way.

Anyway... before, we saw this play with friends. In the second half I sat next to him and our knees touched. Sometimes elbows. The point is that I can never gauge if it's reciprocal, or if not, or if he's really annoying, or anything else- even if he's gay or not, and thus completely uninterested in me. I don't care to repeat that experience.

I kept toying with my hands during the play because I imagined he'd hold them.

I'm terrified that it wouldn't live up to expectations if I did get him. But then, I spend a lot of time picturing us...

I keep testing him by insulting him. If he responds this way, he's like the first man, if not, he isn't.

He is just... marvellous. I could write reams. As noone sees this except myself, I will willingly.

It's all relative.

I know a girl that tried to take an overdose, and she's the last person I'd have expected to do it. I might feel bad about myself at times- I have "death days", when everything feels like... I'm dead, and I'm kind of revisiting a time that I remember, but I'm not alive for it. I've had those for as long as I can remember.



Anyway, the point is that though I'm weird and odd, I never actually have felt like killing myself. I know a lot of people are supposed to contemplate it, I'm just not one of them. This girl is always ridiculously garrulous, and usually smiling. It sounds horrible to say so, but I honestly didn't think she was clever enough to commit suicide- it's always seen as the way out of the artist, someone who has grasped the world and dropped it immediately because it's so horrifically disgusting or some such metaphorical allegory. I didn't think she was bright enough to get close to even touching the world. Apparently her parents hit her and she's got no real friends- I can almost see why. She's so garrulous that I'd never invite her to any confidences, and it's a nervous sort of energy that she displaces onto everyone that makes you feel uncomfortable. She'll never let a silence be. She's got a speech impediment and she's fat with a hump. She hasn't got a pretty face. I've met her around four times, and she'll trail me just because I look amenable to being trailed at parties and so on. She's jewish, and she lived with some girls that used to put bacon in her food because she didn't get on with them (she's an easy target). All of these examples show how she pushes people away, or how they shit all over her. I know that someone ought to do something- she's already got two therapists- but one of my friends pointed out earlier, you can't be friends with someone just because you pity them- the strain shows sooner than you might think.



This little tale made me feel astounded, and then fortunate. I whine about my weight and sometimes my interpersonal relationships, but really, I've got no huge problems. I'm not lonely. My family love me, and I them. I am incredibly lucky not to be needy. I really think that this is one of my best attributes. It's a shame that it takes a suicidal acquaintance to bring that home to me.

Suppositions on impositions.

I wonder why you don't like Jack Johnson, and why you keep encouraging me to smoke. Do you like how I look when I smoke? It's only once a week. Tomorrow's the day.

Did you kept saying, "I should go", because you didn't want to annoy me... or, more likely that you really did want to go. Maybe I disgust you a little.

It just kills me, la petite mort, to think of running a finger down your shoulder. I jumped when you laid your head so close it was almost next to mine, black and red together. We might have looked like children together, you and I, another of our own little jokes.

Or even if you realised that your foot kept tapping mine, or that I edged a bit closer to you on purpose. I might even like it that you breathe heavily when you read, it's just you.

That it wasn't a quizzical look when you threw yourself onto my bed, it was just me, thinking how nice it was.

When you left I huddled into the place that you were.

And I laugh more when you're around.

I like that we're agnostic and sit in churchyards to eat.

It's pathetic that I worry that doing anything about this would sour it because I worry that I've overhyped you to myself. I know that there are things about you that annoy me... but when we are together I seem to tease them away, when we are on our own anyway.

Boring, boring calories.

Here is what I have eaten:

A pasta and pesto salad=430
A smoothie=125
An apple=40
A bar of chocolate=210
A subway sandwich=400
A subway cookie=150

fourteen hundred. Shit. I thought I'd done better. This is why I shouldn't count, it just makes me fractious and depressed.

Cigarettes and god's heads.

In ancient Rome and Greece, they thought that Gods ate smoke and incense, or rather survived off them. Animals ate each other in a cannibalistic sort of fashion, and humans came in between; we cook but we're no ethereal beings, we have to eat something. Between gods and beasts, some might say.

Maybe this is why, every time I smoke my weekly cigarette, I feel like a god. It's due tomorrow. It's something of the smoke, of the ether at least. I wonder what it's like to survive on nectar and smoke. Spiralling foods.


A tacky purple lighter and a half crushed packet of cigarettes seem light years away from the hellenic era, though.

I am not so sure anymore....

I feel a little out of control, with work and eating, just when everything was going so well. And the crux of it is my performance in this play. I am relying on this man I like to save me when I'm not so certain of myself. I need to be perfect before relying on others to be.

I am not so sure the play is going to be a storming success; I am saying all of my lines the same, I'm not being very good at it. It could be, if I could get my arse in gear. I'm waiting for the director of the play to get his in gear, so that he can direct me and make it better. He can't because I'm the one doing it...

I like him, but I worry that he's as bad as someone I used to go out with; arrogant and awful at what he does simultaneously. I'd rather he was arrogant and excellent at what he did. He wears a lot of leather hats. I'm not sure why, or why he'd want to because his face is perfectly lovely.

I should stop using the word perfect.

I can talk to him.

And I do still want so much to touch him.

Before I go to bed at night

I wish that it was you I was lying next to. I fantasise that I'd roll over, sleepily, and it would be your chest that I'd find to lie on. We'd fit together perfectly, with my head in the nook of your shoulder and you'd slowly begin to touch the nape of my neck, or maybe my hair. I'd stroke your neck and the side of your face, between the sideburn and the skin whilst we talked of esoteric things. The other noise would be the wind from the open window rushing over this silence when we sleep.

I would have taken off your jacket earlier, like a housewife, and laid on your shoulder to nibble on your ear, then you would take my hand and kiss it before we slowly undressed...

But there are no insects through the window, and no sweat or disgusting elements that I know would creep into this vision, and that is why it's a dream, and only a dream.

You might not desire me at all.

And I am sabotaging it before I've even begun to think of fulfilling it.

I'd love to know what's under that jacket you always wear, or why you've got medical cream, and why you sometimes touch me with your foot. Do you feel the same for me as I do for you, is that why you chose the end scene, just so that you could hold my hand, or was I imagining that little extra pressure? Have you got too many problems for me to deal with, or could I deal with them? Are you sometimes silent with me because you are sickened by me, or bored by me, or because we are well known to each other and we don't need to have any hairdresser talk between us? Have you got similar questions for me? Do you sometimes worry that you hate me? Are you truly and utterly confident about this play?

Your hands are so soft and you always smell beautiful.

Cling cling

I saw Ratatouille tonight; I thought the postmodern sentiments behind it were admirable. It was Nietzschean in its philosophy that, distilled into pure elements, one can reconstitute the self (for example, a rat deciding that he would be a chef) and that these elements can ultimately sit comfortably with one another.

I decided that Anton Ego is the persona I wish to emulate for the play I'm doing; he is a tall, thin critic that looks suitably ravaged by time, yet still has a heart. I imagine the character that I am playing to be similar. I'm practising the gestures and ways of being so that I can do her justice; my fingers are short and broad, but hopefully by tutoring myself I'll be able to emulate that sense of thinness and length.

He has a saying (Anton Ego) that he will only swallow if he loves it. I may take this on myself, it's a good rule to have.

Today I ate:

half a sandwich
half a flapjack

an apple
some pringles

two bread rolls with tomato puree, cheese and pesto, with spinach and mushrooms.
two cubes of chocolate
some sultanas

And I measured myself- 35-28-39

Which is slowly getting better. I feel I may have ate something else, something dire.

One, two, three, four, you're the one that I adore.

I've developed a thing for my director in this play. This is encumbered because I think he may be gay (I have a habit of falling for gay men). The play isn't amazing, and that could annoy me. People I fall for have to be perfect. I am going to wait until the play is over and then, if this holds, try to make a move.

I sat close to one of my friends last night and it felt so comfortable. I think I just want someone at the moment.

My director is tall and broad. He's got penetrating eyes but he's so gentle. He laughs at me sometimes and I am starting to fear that he hates me because I want to spend so much time around him. His skin is so soft, for a man, and so healthy. He stood in for a part today, so I held his head on my lap, and his hand in mine. He's got long slim fingers.

I don't know what I ate today but it's been a bit too much for a few days now. So I must try harder.

Three good things, three bad things

1. I didn't get that part. Though it was yesterday it still hurts.
2. Consequently I feel fat and ugly.
3. So I wore crap clothes and no makeup.

1. I did a lot of work and accomplished a lot.
2. My friend came over and cheered me up. She's lovely.
3. I didn't overeat, but that would have been impossible with the way I feel at the moment.

Sittin' in an armchair with my head between my hands.

Today I ate:

three cookies
an apple
mushroom, broccoli, onion and pine nut with pasta dinner
two biscuits
half a fudge bar

My friend made me eat the fudge, but I threw it away when she wasn't looking. I didn't want to cause problems.

I feel shit about the parts still. Everyone seems to have these wonderfully complex parts, and I'm just a posh old finicky woman. I know I can take this and make it more, and make it better. But the thing is that I really, really wanted to be the pretty girl, the sought after one for once. I just wanted to be the first choice, because I feel like I never am. I thought that I really could be, just that once, just then. I thought I'd done it, but I hadn't. I must have looked so stupid in all of those auditions. I tried my best but it still wasn't good enough, and that makes me one of lifes great losers.

I wanted to be Lady Macbeth. Someone is going to do it better. I don't know what to do about this nagging sick feeling at the back of my throat.

Big fucking emo rant that I'll be embarrassed by in a week.

Ok. This is going to be petty, self pitiful and spoilt. I'm perfectly aware that people out there are starving in Africa or suicidal, but here are my whingings.

I didn't get a part in Lady Macbeth. I got my fourth choice of part and I feel like a complete failure. I feel like for all of the other recalls I had, they were probably laughing at or feeling sorry for me, both of which I detest. I want to cry until I vomit, but I can do neither because I am in the habit of stifling both. I am being stupid because this is student theatre and noone really cares, but it just seems like I'm perpetually second best, second choice, the dreg at the bottom of the barrel and I was really hoping that for once I'd be someone's first choice. This happens all the time. I don't begrudge the girl that got the part- she's a fantastic actress, and she's one of my really good friends. This makes my rejection worse- I feel nauseatingly jealous of her, and then shit that I'm such a bad friend that I can't be happy for her. She's a brilliant actress, so I can't blame it on that.

I just hate feeling so talentless, like I've got nothing to offer. I feel ugly. I've thrown my only chance to do that role away. I'll not be going to drama school- who wants a girl that can't even get cast in a student play she wants so badly?

I'm so stupid. I'm not clever, I'm not pretty, I can't act, I can't write. I wrote on paper last night that I didn't care that I wasn't visibly the prettiest because it sorted the wheat from the chaff, but that's shit. I care an awful lot. There's something about me that just lets everyone else pip me to the post. My siblings are cleverer or more socially adept, or just goddamn better than me. I'm not the cleverest. I'm not sought after romantically; my last entanglement was thrown off because she was already with someone she loved far more, and before that he'd just chucked me for a girl that looked like a fucking chipmunk.

Why don't things go right for me? Why is my life such a struggle? I try my fucking hardest and push push push and I get fucking nowhere. I could say it's because I'm not pretty or whatever, but I'm starting to think it's just because I'm fucking cursed, or so self pitiful that everyone can see it stamped straight through me like a stick of rock and keeps well away.

I am going to cut my hair and just change. I just don't want to be this stupid fat ugly girl that never gets what or where she wants anymore. The only thing I like about myself is that I can put on a front, and that's getting me nowhere. It's barely letting me survive.

Anyway

I auditioned for some more things today, recalls mainly. It's stupid, I know these are only student productions but some of them I want so badly it's ridiculous. I feel like I'm jinxing my chances writing about it, yet I don't want not to write about it.

I shall talk about the ridiculous ones- two really emo productions, which are well known but I'm sure will be badly done because the writing's so ludicrously self pitiful. If I wanted to listen to piteous droning I'd become a psychotherapist. I wouldn't pay for it.

I'm doing really well with eating-I think I will just keep thinking of myself as a thin person. Someone said to me the other day that I "kept looking really pretty", or was it that, "You look prettier every day". I wasn't quite sure why.

Anyway, I have to really learn how to think thin. Number one, I must stop totting up calories at the end of every day- I'm not eating much, and the occasional excess will do me no harm. Having said that, I've not eaten excessively since I've been back- I've kept to the "still-be-full-enough-for-a-brisk-walk" rule. The second thing is not, when I see fat people, to think "God, I could easily be like that". I frequently see people weighing about 20st and think it's only a matter of time before it catches up with me. Currently I weigh 10st 7. Noone in my nuclear family weighs 20st, so I don't think it will happen so soon, but I have to guard against this fear that I'll wake up morbidly obese. I shouldn't fear my appetite so much. The third is to stop thinking that people are born lucky- it is a great hindrance to see "naturally" thin people eat loads. I think that actually, thin people think they're eating loads, but they're actually not. And if they are, they're burning it off somehow. It's the same as fat people who think they don't eat that much. Essentially, thin people don't eat so much. If I eat like a thin person, I'll do that.

I've been eating slower lately, even when I'm hungry, and waiting till I'm really hungry to eat. This is also helpful.

Craving cravings

For a certain role. This will be my 113th post, so I'll write another soon. Today I ate:

2/3 a brownie
2 apples
a smoothie
half a chicken wrap
Broccoli and pasta in pesto and tomato puree sauce
a cookie.

I think this adds to under 1200 and I've been rushing around as well.

I have to hand in my rent tomorrow, so moving is probably off the cards.

Tomorrow begins my first week of study proper. I plan to work for two hours on my dissertation- I will most probably devote this to reading and note making.

I ate today:

A bowl of cereal
2 squares of chocolate
some sweets (less than 85p of Pic and mix)
A two egg omlette with mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes and half a slice of bread.
two forkfuls of tuna mayonnaise with sweetcorn and gherkins (at a friends).

I drank two cups of coffee. And water and squash.

Looking at this, it isn't much, but I still feel pretty fat. This is something to guard against. I've been feeling hungrier also today. Anyway, tomorrow I need to find some critics for mediaeval studies and to buy some ingredients for the cakes I'm making with friends on Tuesday for one of my friend's birthdays on Wednesday. Wednesday is play audition day....

The song I needed to hear was the Eels- Flyswatter. That's the one I wanted.

I measured my waist this morning- it's always an inch less than it is at night. Isn't that strange? Maybe we're all farters in our sleep.

I'm researching workhouses at the moment, with a view to writing some sort of historical fiction about them. I'd want to write about someone slightly mystical, maybe almost a sort of sci-fi thing. Or a circus freak who escapes. I'd like to visit one really, they were usually in and around city centres, which is strange- I'd have thought they'd have kept it secret, but it was fairly open.

I'm frozen still. Heartbroken still. I'm dying, remembering something I forgot.

I'm a bit worried that I've said something horrendously confessional or offensive to some of my friends when I was drunk, because they haven't contacted me for a while. I just hope they're busy instead.

I'm not hungry lately- I don't know if I'm ill or if this is normal eating:

Baked potato with beans and cheese
a tangerine
pasta with mushrooms, spinach and tuna
a cube of chocolate
and two coffees.

Written down it clearly isn't. I don't want to have weight dips and swings all over the place, but I am feeling better and in control at the moment. It's a self esteem thing, and at the moment I'm holding myself in higher esteem. Two square meals a day isn't going to kill me, I will eat three tomorrow, I will. I'm not excluding food groups or avoiding bad food. I am fine.

Current measurements:
Chest- 36
Waist- 28.5
Hips-39.5
Upper arm-12

Height- 5' 8.5

I feel nervous and fidgety, because of term starting and new plays coming on. I want this one play so badly, the Macbeth. I can't say it's the only one I'd want, but it would be terrible to have to play a nurse, or Lady Macduff to another Lady Macbeth. I do want that, but if I can't have that I want a big role in another play.

Lucky in love?

Just as I was hating my house, it doesn't seem so bad and I'm enjoying being here. Should I upset the equilibrium by moving?

My ex-girlfriend that I've written about below has split up with her girlfriend. I thought that if this happened, I'd feel a sense of retribution- even though we're friends, I thought I'd be a bitch, not that I'd have said anything. She hadn't even told me about going out with this girl, but then again I'd never told her about my dalliances after we split up. We'd always been friends, and she's a good friend, so I didn't want to ruin it any more than I already had. Anyway, I felt sad for her instead- she's nice and she could do with someone lovely, not someone that mucks her about. I suppose that this must mean I'm well and truly over it. For a split second I imagined us getting back together, but then I flapped it away- it didn't have the same pull on me as before.

It's the morning. I'm probably going to go into town, buy a present for my friend and possibly two members of my famille that are coming up for birthdays. I do adore Saturdays- well, I did, when I had enough school that I could appreciate the difference.

In less than a week I've got thinner. My jeans are fitting better, I might even be into my skinny jeans, and I've got a little waistcoat that's not as tight. I can't believe how easy it's been- I'm still on tenterhooks, will I go back to how I was? Last night I had a bit of chocolate for dinner, then ate a tub of tomatoes and some houmous when I came in- it was a bit of a binge, I know it wasn't calorific but even so. That sort of behaviour worries me. Ah well, once, when I was drunk in a week- that's not so bad. Not so bad at all.

Ho Hum.

Well well, I could be moving. One of my friends has a spare room in her house. Here are the cons of moving:

1. What will her housemates be like?
2. Can she stand living with me?
3. Is the room OK- it's the front of the house room
4. Moving will be hassle
5. It's ages from University.

But here are the pros:

1. I'm not loving this house- I dislike three of the people here, and the house has no character.
2. It would be a bigger room
3. It's nearer a lot of my friends and there's less risk of date rape.
4. It's cheaper.
5. There would be more exercise because it's further from University.

Half of the cons could be gone though, if I meet her housemates and see the room. I want to make sure it's a clean house- this house is really clean, but I only like two of my housemates. If I could get to know my friend's housemates, I'd see about it.

Also, someone said that they'd really fancied me for a while today. I can't shake the feeling that they're joking with me- when they were younger, they treated one of my friends really badly. It's this guy who's skinny and ginger- and I think he would make me feel fat (by accident) and crap (by mucking me around). Actually, I don't really get mucked around. I suppose you have to give everyone a try. However, it is nice to be sought after.

I'm doing really well with eating lately- I don't seem to be as obsessed with it as I usually am. In fact, this is the least fixated I've been in years- I'm not eating much, probably less than I should be eating. Two meals and a little meal a day, for instance today:

a smoothie
a mocha coffee
a bean wrap with cheese and salad
another coffee
an apple.

I'll probably drink a bit tonight, and see what I fancy later- it's about half six here in merry old England. I think most of it is because of worrying about my course, my house, if I'll get a role in the next play, if I'll succeed in life, and missing my family. I do miss them, which is pretty tragic to admit.

There is going to be a modern adaptation of Macbeth on this year at the theatre, done by a director that I've got a lot of respect for. I so badly want to be Lady Macbeth that I could be sick just thinking of it. I was going to write how it'll probably go to someone else here, but I think instead that I will write how perfect I am for the part. I have to start thinking better of myself. So, I've got red hair, and I can do a mean scottish accent. I can do brooding and intense, and I can turn my hand to a lot of parts. I want it very badly. There. That has to be enough for me to get it. I shall see.

Today I found out that...

Not as many people detest and despise me as believed. But if they know I think that will they detest and despise me more?

I desperately want to be an actress.

Return's so like the first, of all of them that was the worst, but this one's going to come first, it's not bad and it won't hurt.

A synopsis of my return to University follows above. I want a bigger room, I might get one, but that's all being worked over and it's very boring for me to record.

I am not lusting after anyone at the moment, but I am craving a part in a play. The meeting is on Wednesday, next Wednesday, and I am desperate to act again. If I'm honest, it's the most exciting bit of university for me.

Since getting back to University I've been out a lot and eaten out a lot. Eating doesn't have the same hold over me here, at least not when I'm unpacking and making a room, creating a bolthole or whatever you'd call it. I get excited, I get distracted, I eat less, which makes me happier ultimately. I know this gain and loss will bite me on the arse in a few years when my metabolism is shot to pieces- or maybe it won't, maybe it won't.

My main concerns this term are my degree and my career path shortly after. In my wildest fantasies, I'd be an actress. I'd be discovered, I'd be in low-key classical pieces and dramas, and heralded as a one-to-watch. I want Emma Thompson's career.

Other paths I'm considering are film directing, illustrating, journalism, publishing, working for the foreign office and a police force job. I'd like to be an investigator, or a detective, I'd like to earn those sorts of merits off my own back. Of course I want to work to the top in all of those areas, doesn't everyone? The thing is, aside from the police force, they're heavily governed by who you know. But I have to keep telling myself that I am charismatic enough to make it there. If I keep blowing criticism into my own face I've got noone else to blame if I don't succeed.

Battle Royale mimics the real world.

I watched this film yesterday, and it was brilliant. It was beautifully done, despite the bad acting, and very visceral as well as having a dystopian undercurrent. I need to watch some more japanese films, not necessarily thriller- on the list are Spirited Away, the Ring and the Grudge.

But it mimics real life because this is what the working world is about; these past two weeks I tried work experience at a large publishing house and they all stamp on each other to get to the top. I spent much of the week stuffing envelopes. They've asked me back; doubtless they need another free envelope stuffer.

I also want to learn how to pole dance, not for the raunchiness because I think a pack of women wiggling about a pole is stomach-churningly embarrassing, but because I like acrobatics. Maybe I could sit out of the warm-ups, when they're trying and failing utterly to be charismatic and desirable.

I think I might send in some of my drawings to an illustrating agency, just to see how far I get. I wonder how many constitute a portfolio? I am going to stop putting constraints on myself and just go for things, like drama school. I will apply and see what happens. I won't tell anyone, because failure would then be consolidated.

Size fourteen leggings don't make me happy.

My mother says they look nice on me, but I am rankling at the idea of defeat- I should be wearing size twelve, ten, eight, not size fourteen. I am disgusted with myself and she is happy at my choice of clothing that I had no choice in really at all.

Sometimes I do wonder if I am schizophrenic.

I write this at work, it's a rainy day. If someone peers in through the pane of glass at my window, they can see a red haired girl (woman) in a pair of black culottes, black tights and a cashmere white jumper, shrunken in the washing machine that used to belong to her mother. She hasn't bothered with makeup today and her skin looks dull and blotchy, jewellery is also absent. She sometimes straightens her posture, or takes a swig of water from her bottle. I am very bored, and boring probably.

A thousand beautiful things.

Not quite a thousand, but definitely a single one. My parents love me, and I think they respect me as well. I used to think that they were always a little bit ashamed of me; I've never been the prettiest child, I've never been the most sociable. I suppose that I thought that they were embarrassed by my lack of social ability, though I have friends, I can't work them out like my brother can. I am clever, but not so astronomically that this excuses my other failings. I took to drama and dance, which are things that showcase chubbiness, and my other shortcomings instead of eschewing them. I think my parents would have liked me to be sporty, and well liked by everyone, out in the world. And I am out in the world, but this happens to be my own world. I do know that they are proud of me and that they love me; it's just the way they react to my brother's guitar playing, and they don't seem to care about what I do. I mentioned I'm writing two stories, and they just became silent. They're not as happy with my academia as they were, I'm not a shining star anymore. Who am I kidding? The more I analyse it, the more of a disappointment I feel I am. I feel that I estrange myself from them every time I talk about drama, when my brother brings them closer. I still do feel embarrassed, about dancing and drama, I feel that any performances I am in they are dragged into because they love me, but honestly, if I'm not onstage I know they'll be hating it. They say on the night that it's good, but they never mention it again. I'm always saying that I wish I was an actress like..., but they never say, "you could be" or anything like that. So I am either a bad actress or so ugly that it would be futile for me to attempt.

They're always saying they think I'm beautiful, and how proud they are. But it's a different pride, a pride that I'm out in the world, or just that I can be nice. I detest nice people, they're so vulnerable. I don't think that they think I'll succeed; they always worry that I'll be lonely, or that my money is running out, or that I'm not running my life as effectively as I should.

And I've got silly ambitions. I do want to be an actress, it's true, and I daren't tell them. I don't know how because I won't have money to go to drama school, and if I've not been noticed yet I never will be. I want it so much, there are thousands who do as well, and thousands that are better than me. I don't know what to do. I don't want to be one of those girls that tragically gets ideas above her station, but my time is running out to decide what to do.

Things to be thankful for.

I am a Pollyanna at heart. I enjoy playing the glad game, which is very simple. Whenever you like, one must think of things to make one glad. I am not thanking anyone, such as God. I am just appreciating the world. Anything can do.

1. I am glad that I am at University
2. I am glad for opportunities
3. I am glad I found acting.
4. I am glad for my health, and that of those I love.
5. I am glad for my eyebrows, and the dark spot in my eye.
6. I am glad for the tolerant state of Britain.
7. I am glad I have got friends I love.
8. I am glad I am not heavier. (I don't know if this one counts because it is a negative).
9. I am glad of my independence.

Shrek and child abduction.

This is about the Madeleine Mc Cann furore, of the abduction being publicised before Shrek three.

I don't think it was at all necessary. Apparently the advert was given a rating of U, which I don't concur with. The difference between a video dealing with child abduction and Shrek is that abduction represents an actual threat to the child, whereas Shrek operates at a vague remove from reality, as a safe way for children to experience scary situations. Children are exposed to enough without being exposed to this as well.

That, and I don't think that Madeleine McCann needs any more publication, she has permeated every section of society recently. She is in newspapers, on television and in shop windows. We don't need constant awareness of her plight forced to the forefront of our minds, and I'm tempted to say that it might be some sort of scam to make us more thankful for what we have, that we don't have a child that is god-knows where.

The national grief-mongering is simply disgraceful. I like to think of myself as left-wing, but I am reminded of 1984 when I hear of some events surrounding it; a child of ten in my sister's class sold ribbons at a wedding to make money for the McCann appeal. This reeks of sanctimony and smugness, of an emotional competing- my child is more sensitive than yours- when in fact, it is merely that one child is out to grasp a fragment of fame that comes with the emotional pornography so readily distributed in daily papers. The Diana debacle also reeks of whining; she is dead. Let's all get on with it instead of this yearly catharsis that blights my summer. And if we must have some sort of morbid festival, why on earth not for someone truly deserving, such as Mother Teresa, instead of a woman who was pretty and possibly kind? Nobody knows what Diana was like behind closed doors except her family, and it should fall to them to mourn her as they choose instead of the whimpering handed out in chunks to the whole nation. Britain is becoming disgustingly emotional.

I feel that I have done enough whining, and I acknowledge the irony of this post being a diatribe, and a catharsis in itself, whinging about other's whinging. So let us speak of happier things. I have been offered both work experience and a job interview today, both of which bode well. I managed to stay under my calorie count, and off sugar for today, which are wonderful and make me feel less spotty and slightly less bloated already. Britain, though terribly hand-wringing, is far more tolerant of racial and sexual ambiguity than previously. More people are entering higher education. I am headed for a 2.1 degree, possibly a first. I am healthy, touch wood, as is my family, touch wood. I have got a set of friends, a few sets, that I completely adore.

Sluggish.

I've had an ugly day today. There has been too much consumption and too little moving, things just aren't exciting here. I eat moderately when I'm not bored, or feeling bad about myself. I am going to give up sugar again, from tomorrow, because what I'm eating is getting ridiculous. I feel sluggish and lethargic and none of my clothes fit right either. I hate the beginning of summer, it marks a slow descent of weight maintenance. My Mum took me shopping, and though she said I looked lovely in lots of things, I didn't feel quite right.

I was thinking about this. I only like to buy clothes when I am reasonably sized. This means that I don't consider myself worth the investment when I'm not. I desperately need to do some more exercise.

Beautiful

There is something intrinsically beautiful about the pallid woman. Pallidity is meant to suggest a weakness, yet somehow the pale flat limbs and body radiate strength instead. Maybe it is the sinew, or the veins that can be seen beneath that watery surface. It is impossible to believe that a network that advertises itself for inspection could be in any way faulty. She is broad, yet slender, as if her body has been jointed together like a machine. Her face seems as if it is hewn rather than finely cut, yet somehow it suits her. Its chalky surface and rouged lips slowly rotate to circumspeculate upon the world she reigns over.

This world is a world that she is both Queen and terror of. It is a parallel, you see, I am telling a fairytale. It was decided long ago that worlds should be compartmentalized, and as such, terrors cannot cross between them. Better the devil you know. This world, Edisreal, is alone. It must mimic its ruler. It is flat, and pale, reflective of the various suns and moons that orbit it and balanced in between a web of huge trees, huge ones. The citizens of this planet wait each month for the queen to change, for one night each month when she becomes different and they all must mimic her for fear of being attacked by her. She is so strong, and floats over the city covering it with her cape of darkness. The Queen ages. She becomes ghoulish. The legend goes that any person unchanged on that night must be consumed by her, in order that she can change back to her usual state, though there are those who say they see the ghoul on the other side even when she is her pallid self.

So the town celebrates this monthly purge. A carnival, that they almost enjoy, despite the thieving and murdering that goes on the rest of the time. A more honest time, because when they are spirits they are one, and there is no spirit for or against his other spirit. Under her cloak they form one conglomerate mass, protected in anonymity. But she cannot survive so forever, and if she senses feeling under her, in her world she must consume the perpetrator in order to sustain the delicate balance. Noone can feel in that time threshold. They are reduced to pulsating masses. And she is forgiven. And each month, it happens again.

Fretwork.

I feel like I might cry tonight, and for no other reason than I have had what can only be termed as a discussion with my Father. It began quite easily- Mum and Dad asked my sister to play something on her guitar for my Grandma. She did, very well. She learns the guitar. Then I started to fool about on it- I don't know chords or anything, I was just strumming a bit. My Dad, whenever he sees me do this, attempts to teach me chords or songs. I know that my reaction to this should be that it's lovely, how wonderful, he wants to involve me in something he likes. But instead I feel as if he's inflicting his enjoyments upon me. I don't know if I want to learn the guitar or not, but he was on about buying one for me. Our house is crowded with four guitars, and I don't need another one. I always had to ask for dancing kit, and it irks me that he would so readily throw money on this and not at another hobby.

I think that the main reason I don't want to learn the guitar is because I resent the amount of praise my brother and sister get for it; they are always asked to play something for visitors. I used to dance, and I like to act and read but I am never, nor have I ever been, encouraged to recite a verse or poem, or to show off what I'd learnt. They never asked if they could help me learn my lines for various plays. I feel like they find it boring. I feel that my family are almost ignoring my interests, when they aren't. They come to see my plays, and they always say how proud they are of me, and they don't exclude me from social gatherings. They're coming to see Macbeth with me. I said that I felt that they were slightly embarrassed of my dancing and acting, and Dad said no, they were proud, but it was difficult for them to get into it because he is already interested in the guitar, as are my other siblings. This deteriorated into a debate on why I feel I have to be different. I don't feel I have to be different. It's just that I'm more interested in acting than music; I don't feel that the effort I'd put in would equal the pleasure I'd get out. Then my Dad moved on to discussing why I want two weeks work experience in a big publishers in London as opposed to six weeks work experience here. I know that it would be cheaper, but I want to aim high as opposed to working on a little paper. I'd rather work for an international brand, and form contacts and gauge what I might want to do after leaving university than while away the summer at a smaller outlet. I don't think it's out of my league to try for this.

At the end of this debate my Dad said, again, that it was hard for him to get across how much he loved me without coming across as stifling. I said he didn't come across as stifling, and added that I loved him too. Which I do, but I said it in such a flat monotone that I might as well have muttered "oh well". I just wasn't into happy resolutions and peachy resolvings. I come out of exchanges of this nature with my Dad feeling that he has won, even if he hasn't, because I am always on the brink of tears, and the way I control that is to be monotone and immovable. I don't want a hug. I want independence and respect. I can't get that if I don't communicate effectively, or if I break down in tears. Those are pathetic things to do.

Dad also pointed out that I am very defensive. I said that this was because I felt that any suggestion he made that was not met with approval on my behalf would be pushed until it was, such as the small job versus big job situation. It isn't just that either, he never used to believe that I was working hard at school unless I was achieving top marks. It doesn't really matter what we do so long as it compares with everyone else. My ten year old sister came home from her first gym session today and said that she'd beaten her personal best, to which my father said well done and then enquired how that ranked with everyone else. She didn't know. It's always a competition with everyone else, and he wonders why I'm so defensive. So I have to put up a big defence in order not to be pushed into something somebody else wants in the first place. I always have to defend my decision if it isn't one that he would have come to. Just saying that I don't want to work on this small paper isn't good enough for him, no reason is, it has to be defended and explained.

I come across as such a whiny brat. Well, I am. I want for nothing, and I've got both my parents who are both wonderful, generous, caring and attend my plays and festivals even if it's not their first choice of hobby. What more can I ask for? It isn't as if they want me to give up acting to play the guitar. I'd hate it if they simply acquiesced to my every request. Some people have a terrible time growing up, and I am not one of them and this rambling post should be deleted and consigned to the back passages of my mind.

Cross Examination

The valiance post was a description of a friend I know who is maybe an English size fourteen, or size sixteen tops, who I think is beautiful. Her beauty is not an ideal I would attempt to conform to; it is not my own ideal, nor is it hers. She would like to be thinner, I would like to be thinner. As such I do not wish to conform to the ideal of Valiance. I could not; I know that whatever I do I will not be a soft proportioned person, and my face is unlike hers anyway. There is something blunt about my face and tough about my limbs. I am of an athletic build; euphemistically. This means, otherwise, that I am broad shouldered and as such carry excess weight well but have a tendency to look masculine as opposed to feminine. I can handle this. If I was describing myself, what would I say? Well, I too am pale. Masculinity is no bad thing. I am as strong as a piece of steel, flexible and coiled like a spring. Tensile strength is one of my best attributes. Yes, then. I am a sheet of steel that repells the sun, that glints as it shimmers softly over water, that can bend and stretch and do.

I watched TV the other day and four women with normal bodies swam the channel. That they could do that, that their bodies, though aged, were capable of that gave me enormous respect for what my body can do, what its potential is and why I should be neither over nor under loading it with food or subjecting it to constant criticism because it is a useful tool, nothing more and nothing less.

Valiance

There is a doe-like softness about her eye which is beautiful, the dark pool of the centre contrasted with the white, and the pale lashes fluttering about the lagoon of the pupil. She herself is tender and malleable, skittish even, yet she portrays an exterior of harshness and people mistake the perceptive shrewdness of those milky eyes for dominance and betrayal. Maybe they are right. It could be the cut of her jaw, or her pink mouth that quirks slowly at the edges, or even her voice that sounds like honey running over and dripping off the back of a spoon, oh so slowly uphill and then drop drop drop down. Any of those give the impression of quiet confidence in oneself that could easily be adapted to a weapon against others, or of power.


The animation in the turn of her wrist is wonderful. She is wonderful, her body is soft and quick to move. The joints, the waist are concave to the hips and chest. Everything is gradual and undulating, and pale. She is a creamy shade, a full beauty with no mark of palpitation on her, no protruding bone or bursting vein upon her leg, about her decollete or around her arm. She is whole like the glowing moon, in perfect proportion to herself.

Hades

Or Pluto, or any of the other names.

Hades drew the short straw when it came to dividing the realms. I wonder what he thought? I wonder if he simply wanted to make the best of what he had, dividing the underworld into three, and taking a Queen for it. Did he have any choice except for to take Proserpine by force? Was he simply so downtrodden by the monotony of it, by the sheer neutrality, that he needed some consort from the living, some mediator to expound his love upon?

I read that Hades, contrary to popular representation, is not evil but neutral. Then again, aren't these inextricable from each other? It is doing nothing that allows evil to flourish. But I do not think that Hades is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, no. Hades, Pluto is a fair man. Death itself is the most neutral state, as one is inert and completely subject to other's opinions which are given without contradiction from oneself. Autonomy disappears. Hades is not evil, he is simply an overseer of souls, a doler-out of the God's punishments. I wonder what he was like before, before he was the God of the Underworld with his part-time Queen. Idealistic, possibly, and full of the arrogance of Victory and Youth. I would like to write a story, perhaps a play, about Hades, about Proserpine, his neice and half-bride, about his domain and his court.

Prelude to weight loss

I am at home for the summer, planning to get some work and get on in the world. I am missing my academic life, friends as well as others. I will get so fat over this summer, with no plays to be in and no work to do. I must rectify the second. My waist is about 27 inches at the moment, smaller than I thought it would be and the smallest in my family household. Smaller than my ten year old sister's, which shouldn't be I suppose. She should be smaller. I should not be larger.

Anyway. It was fathers day yesterday, and I'd purchased a moleskine (yes the spelling is correct) notebook for mine, and written a poem inside it. He didn't like it as much as I'd thought he would, but he had spent most of the day writing code and he was tired. Besides which, I should know him better- I did have inklings that the notebook, however well intended, would languish in a corner because my father has more important things to do. He's very clever, tenacious and dogmatic. He thinks I have a wealth of information, but this is simply because I have read slightly more- he reads philosophy, but his career is in computing, which he excels at. He believes that the best use he can be to us is to make money rather than be around a lot, which is not true. He seeks me out to discuss philosophy with because I am the echelons of education (this in itself is a farce), and exhausts my potential for such debates. I thought that with the notebook, he could record his musings (which are usually cantankerous ones about society going down the pan) and alleviate them somewhat. In retrospect, it is too bulky and too much fuss for him to carry about everywhere- I should have bought him a real book, he loves real books. I think he would do a philosophy degree if left to his own devices. My parents are potential cut short- both were bright, but my Mum wasn't expected to do A Levels and my Dad wasn't pushed enough so they didn't do as well as they could have done. They've both got careers now, but it would have been accelerated if they'd been encouraged. I am glad that they are encouraging of me, well, with common sense things. They wouldn't want me to be an artist or an actress, for example. They'd see it as futile I think, because I'm no Nicole Kidman or otherwise and wouldn't earn any money henceforth. I'd stunt my potential for other things by spending my life waiting tables. I've never spoken to them about drama school or anything, and I wouldn't because I don't want them to pay out any more than they have, they've put me through university and that is enough. And they are right.

Dancing at Lughnasa

I read the aforementioned play the other day, and I find it captivating. It has stayed with me despite my reading other books in the interim; the role of Maggie is a role I would very much like myself. Albeit I can't do an irish accent, but I would love it.

It's so sad, and I can't put my finger on why. Usually the tragedy comes from a great height (especially the shakespearean); there must be a descent. There is a descent here, but the thing that amplifies it most is the inevitability of the whole affair, and the potential of these women; it is a fall from a height, but a height that was never attained. It's a tragedy before the reader enters into the text world.

Meryl Streep played Kate once, which made me think I wanted to as well but my gut instinct was that I'd like to be Maggie, or possibly Rose. I think playing a character with special needs would be a really good experience, because it's so hard to do well, and convincingly without seeming an utter twat.

I ate loads today, of sugar as well, because I was in London and my usual life rules were temporarily suspended. They're affixed now though.

Frustration and panic.

Well. Yesterday I went on a run and ate 1340, which isn't as bad as it could be but nowhere near as good either.

Today I have ate: an apple
two tangerines
a brie and roast vegetable panini

I estimate about 600 calories. I've also had tea but I tend to discount that. So six hundred left, and it's nearly seven, which isn't so bad. I think now I could eat... at home, a vegetable stir fry, and maybe later I could have muesli as well. That would be good. A vegetable stir fry with egg, or meat maybe. This thinking of food isn't good because I won't keep it up. I'm so scared of getting fatter, and I know that it's inevitable. Not if I keep off sugar, no. This isn't for tricks, this is for life.

My friends say I have lost weight. It's easier than the five hundred a day as well. Actually, that was really easy once I got into it. I am worried that because I don't feel nervous anymore (about the play or work) I'm not going to lose it anymore. I twitch more and eat less when I'm nervous which can only be a good thing.

I'm about a third of the way through writing an essay at the moment. It's horrendous. I hate it, and it hates me. I'm getting to the stage where I can't read properly anymore and all it is is bullet point after bullet point to discuss. This, then the exam, and it's all over, and I'm free. This essay is so hard that I'm looking forward to exam prep.

Tragic fatties.

Well, two things scared me weight wise today. I've ate a vegetable stir fry with egg and raisins and yoghurt- that was scary because I felt like before, I didn't want to stop snacking and I hate that feeling. The answer is to eat more regularly. That resulted in my waist increasing to 28.5 inches, but I remeasured without clothes and it was 27 again, so no spontaneous weight gain has occured. And my arse was 38.5. Unfortunately my chest is 36.5. I don't know why I expect my chest to increase when I lose weight, because it's never been well endowed. I suppose I do want this perfect physique... not that I want huge, page three girl boobs, but just a C cup instead of an A might be nice. 34A is such a depressing size; broad and flat like a prairie. Come on. If I wasn't flat chested I might not be as bendy, and I'd only find that boobs got in the way eventually.

The other thing was a woman today. She wasn't scary, just tragic. I tried not to stare. On campus there is a building which houses two shops that sell food and a cafe. I saw her first in one of the shops and then in the cafe. She had to weigh at least twenty stones. The tragedy was that she was wearing thin girl clothes. The feminist in me hates that I speak like this. Leggings, denim miniskirt, hoodie. It was all very... deluded? No, I think she knew how she looked. I am a bitch. Anyway, I only think like this because I worry that it could happen to me. I could be that one that everyone's staring at, it would only take a few cakes and bang, there I am, not a point of admiration but merely one of reference and disgust. It's difficult for fat people to be tragic as thin ones are.

I know another girl that's fat and has the silliest voice. That only serves to exacerbate the situation.

Planning, planning, only 3000 words and an exam left.

I've had a pretty good few days. I'm doing alright in the play, an improvement from the first night. I've also done one of my essays, which leaves one to go and an exam to revise for on the eighteenth, then it's over.

I don't know what I'm going to do without my play. It is the main reason I've been able to keep under 1200 a day, not only because it renders me permanently busy, but because when I am nervous I don't eat. It doesn't hurt that all the other girls are incredibly thin (comparatively) and so I feel that eating less is better for me. I tried on some clothes today that have become looser. I have ate today:

a bowl of muesli (300)
a smoothie (150)
an apple (40)
half a chicken wrap (150)
pasta tuna and tomato (400)

What happens when I go home for summer and all that food is on offer, and I'm a bit bored? I won't be doing as much exercise either. I'll get fat. Horribly fat. I need to divert, divert. I'll get a job. I'll go and exercise. I'll work on my dissertation.

My friends came to see the play on Tuesday (and said it was wonderful, but they're friends, aren't they?) and it's had a good review. I went to the library with two of them after and they said I'd got thin. I'd been feeling thin till then, but when they said it it was almost as if they'd jinxed me, and now I feel fatter than ever. Three of my essays are finished, and this is what is important.

I miss my friends and my social life. This play is eating into it, as are exams- I can't go out because of the time I must devote to my studies. If I'd done better earlier I wouldn't be in such a state now. It's all of my own making.

Let's institute some order on my disordered thoughts. Tomorrow there are two performances. So.

10am- be in the library and get some books
1pm-arrive for the matinee
5pm- back in the library for two hours
7pm- last performance
11pm- go out with cast.

Yes. That is my plan. And on campus I will drink a smoothie for breakfast at eleven, and have a boots meal for lunch. This could be substituted by soup or some such. I must take with me the dress, the books to return, I must wear my good luck necklace (because I wore it by accident tonight and I performed well. It must be the necklace). Yes.

My first run of the play.

Today was our first night of the play. It was hideous; not for everyone else, merely for me. It is horrible being talentless within a myriad of talent, and knowledge of this makes it worse.

My stage daughter was, inevitably, brilliant. She keeps saying how we could actually be related; I think she means that we could be mother and daughter, I the matronly elder and she the sprightly young thing. She is right; we are both pale. My features are a coarsened, thickened daguerrotype to her refined wrists and doll-like face. Of course, I am her elder. I detest this role, I know that anyone could play it better than I do. I just have to be more natural with it, and less nervous. I've got four more runs to make it right.

The worst thing? That everyone was brilliant, and this meant our director couldn't be honest with me about my shambling; he said he enjoyed watching me, but this is a face-saver as he couldn't say, "everyone was brilliant except you". I think she came tonight- I saw her in the audience, I think- and she hasn't spoken to me about it. If she'd loved it she would have texted. At the moment, I wish I was anyone apart from my fat old self. All the other girls onstage are beautiful, and petite. Even if I was to dye my hair blonde and wear lovely makeup, there is no way that I could be small or slim. I hate her seeing me act badly, and I hate this because I use her as a barometer. I hate the repercussion that this has on me, though it shouldn't.

Let's say I was the girl that plays my daughter. What then?

I would be academic and beautiful, and slim, and an amazing actress. I would be well liked and respected.

What have I got going for me that she hasn't? I'm down to earth, and sensible. Those are not characteristics I prize in myself. She doesn't need to be down to earth; her possibilities are spinning away off into the clouds, and she can go with them, whereas mine are securely tethered to boring topsoil. I can draw. She probably can as well. I'm flexible. So? I am proud and independent. She isn't exactly a doormat. I can't ever win.

I feel as if I want to cry with the hopelessness of competing against this. Then I remember that there are starving children with AIDS in Africa, so I should suck it up. I am so feeble.

Atheist Rosaries and snuff.

Well, today I ate:

sultanas, oats and milk breakfast (350)
a plum (20)
a chicken wrap (400)
pasta and tuna with tomato (300)
sultanas and yoghurt (200)

So in the 1200s. Being in a play where I constantly worry about my acting, the standard of which languishes below that of my contemporaries, and my physical shape, which much can be said the same of, is doing good things for my eating patterns.

I tried on a dress today which was tight, but a jacket that I think has loosened slightly. My measurements are: 37-28-39. I hate, hate hate that my bust is smaller than my hips. That's not how a woman should be.

Anyway, atheist rosary. I wear a rosary in the play. It's a simple wooden thing with a metal cross tied to it. There are only thirty five beads, so it isn't a real one, but I adore it. It makes me feel safer when I have it hanging about my wrist; I loop it twice, and it feels as if it might fall off so I clutch the crucifix. It's something soothing to stroke. I decided that my character has only this and her daughter to keep her going; I will describe her life as if it's me:

This wood is warm, and he gave it to me, not that he believes at all in religion. The thing was that I could no longer hold his hand. My simple parochial bloom does not compare to worlds, worlds away. I found another hand to hold, but it never wrapped around mine in quite the same way, so I wrapped that warm wooden strand around it instead, knowing that the prayers I made were not for anything except my own reassurance.

My daughter, the one that he gave to me, she is beautiful. She isn't happy, poor dear. She's cold and strange, because she drowns her sorrows. She is that cross; made of cheap stuff, but infinitely precious. She is the only thing I can touch of his, his last reminder in her face. Me and he and her, we are all there. All warm wood and cold metal, in a house on a lake.

Costumes.

I am in a play (as I have mentioned before). I've got a small part that I am determined to make the most of, as the rehearsals are taking over my life at the moment. I adore acting.

For this play, we need costumes that are in the style of 1920s parochial Russia. I am (in the play) around fifty five, and a farm steward's disgruntled wife. Yesterday we went to try the costumes. The girl playing my melancholic daughter is a brilliant actress, and blasts me off the stage every time we do a scene together. She's also very pretty, very petite and very slim, but not very nice; I get the distinct impression that she detests me. The changing room was communal, and the conditions for our sharing it unfavourable.

Needless to say, I felt a colossal giant when trying on things next to her; she wears black lace, which looks perfect on her. She looks like a china doll. I wear long dresses which are in navy serge, with ruffles and high necklines, making me Juliet's sad old matron. Ah well, my character is a sad old matron. The only thing is, I'm not sure I want to be a sad old matron. I worry that I am typecast. When I went to nursery school we used to sing a nursery rhyme, about a witch and a princess. One of the blonde girls was always the princess; I longed to be the princess. I was, a few times; but I was more often cast the witch. I realise now the dramatic potential of this part, but the Princess got to be beautiful and to have the Prince, and the witch was always the loser.

One of my friends is in a gay relationship- the one I spoke about a while ago- and she's freaked out about it. She doesn't want to tell people, but she has; she's very brave. I gave her a hug tonight, which is unlike me; I don't do physical affection, I don't want people to be able to put a finger (or more) on my flaws. But she was so relieved that I was on board- I can't believe she'd think I wouldn't be, or that I'd treat her differently. Anyway, she's fine, we're fine. Me and my other friends are checking if this girl she's going out with is good enough for her, as usual.

Back to the kalorien;

muesli (400)
soup and 1.5 slices of bread (260)
a chicken wrap (500)
muesli (100)

I might have gone a bit over, portion wise. I also ate two tangerines.

I am just like everyone else in that I want someone; but the last person I wanted most of all did not want me. I cannot have what I want, so I want what I cannot have. Wanting what I've got means that what I've got is not worth wanting. If someone wants me, why would they want me, because if they want someone as shit as me they must be truly shit. I never get what I want.

That's very applicable to me. It's from a dance thing I saw in Edinburgh, which was amazing.

Malleability.

Today instead of working I procrastinated to the extreme, which leaves me with 2 and 1/2 essays to do. I ate:

flapjack
soup and a bun
muesli
pasta and pesto
an orange
a smoothie

Which is probably, all in all, well over 1200. I shall do better. I think the smoothie tips it to about 1450. Why must I consume so much? I'm ridiculous.

I consume and do nothing.

I scraped a 2.1 in an essay I got back today; I feel like I could have done better. But I got better marks than one of my friends.

I'm worried that trying on our costumes will be a communal situation in which the other girls in my play, with perfect tiny statures, will see my various imperfections and detest me even more. If I had a perfect body they'd be in awe of me. Well... what would Beth Ditto say?

She'd say... act them off the stage. Who cares? If they can't see past your flaws then they're not worth it are they? You haven't got anything to prove to them.

I don't want my sister to be the same as me. I don't want her to feel that being petite is the be all and end all. I don't want her thinking that she has to prove something to the skinny girls. That attitude is dangerous; I think that I can stop her doing this by being a good example, of being confident and happy in my own skin. I am fairly healthy and hale.

One of my friends today made an astonishing confession; that sometimes she doesn't go out because she doesn't feel confident enough about her body. She's funny and clever, and very pretty; all of my friends are. She's probably a UK size fourteen, and I can't believe that she thinks this; she's got so many friends. I get like that sometimes though. I admitted to her that I am terrified of everyone when I first meet them; until I get to know them properly, I'm sure that they're judging and hating every single thing that comes out of my mouth. I keep speaking because I assume that they'll judge me whether or not I say anything, so I may as well be judged for what I say. She said she was shocked, because I get on so easily with everyone and seem to make friends with all of the groups in our lessons. This just goes to show how much lurks below the first impression you get of someone. Seriously, the first thing I'd have said about my friend wouldn't have been to comment on her weight; she's no oddity. People are strange creatures.

There's a wall around me that you can't even see. It took a little time, to get close to me.

Ho hum. Well, today I ate

a bowl of muesli I'd made myself
two tangerines
a chicken wrap
more muesli
two more tangerines.

I am unsure of how much the second lot of muesli came to. I felt sick after eating it, maybe this is because I've ate too much of it. I think so. Anyway, it's better than yesterday when I ate 1400; I don't need that many calories.

I'm denying the amount of work I've got to do at the moment.

The director of the play I'm in asked me not to be so late to a rehearsal he hadn't told me about today. He apologised later. He's nice but I don't really get on with him; we have all these weird silences, which make me feel weird because he's so perky with everyone else. And it's a hangover from my schooldays that I don't enjoy being reproved; I feel embarrassed, even if I haven't done anything wrong and I find it difficult to stick up for myself, resorting to a surly monotone.

Here are a list of things I shall do after my last exam:

wax my armpits
get very drunk
have a completely leisurely sunday with no prospect of work hanging over my head.

I can't think of anymore. This is how bad it's gotten. And that is all I want, at the moment. Here are some things I must do

1. Three essays
2. Exam revision
3. Learn my lines properly and emotively
4. Contact work experience for summer.

Deprivation

Today I kept to the calories, which was surprising; I went down to the kitchen and I was sure I'd crack, but no, 1200 it was.

Tortellini and pesto
an apple and yoghurt
a brie and cranberry roll, of which I left a little
porridge with yoghurt, sultanas and pumpkin seeds

There.

Deprivation isn't the title of that. Deprivation is what I am going through socially; a group of my friends went out tonight, but I can't go as I've got work. I went to the pre-going out get together, which was lovely. One of my friends kissed a girl last night, and thinks she might go out with her; I had an inkling she was bisexual but wasn't really sure. I had a crush on her when we first met, but it's dwindled. I've got a problem in that if I meet someone I like, I build up this perfect image of them and then when they don't conform my opinions of them are shaken; I'm not speaking of appearances, they don't bother me in the slightest, it's the actions or thoughts they have which penetrate my consciousness. She, for example (this girl) is very self centred; she thinks so much of herself she doesn't realise what else is going on, not in a nasty way, just in a dozy sort of way. She chatters an awful lot because she's terrified of being seen as ignorant or not driven, because intelligence and drive are (she believes) her saving characteristics. I know she'd do a lot for me though. I'm jealous of how easy it was for her just to say that she liked this girl; I should make things easier for myself but I hide everything. Anyway, they all trundled off to dance and drink somewhere fun and I'm in my room with an unmade bed, rambling at a blog which noone reads. It could be worse.

Anyway, I'm not going out until the eighteenth. This is when the workload eases, then I only have to think about my dissertation, which is really exciting, but also terrifying. Tomorrow I will get my arse to a library and work properly on my essay. Nineteen days before The End of Work. I'd enjoy it if there weren't such a magnitude of it.

Cupidity.

I am writing this to stop myself eating. I am in the middle of researching an essay, and I'm tense and bored. I don't need food but it provides a break. It's seven pm and I've eaten nine hundred calories so far today; no sugar. So I don't need anything else for an hour and a half at least.

I was asked if something on this blog could appear in a book. It's dealing with my father. The thing is, I don't know if my skewed point of view going into a book is a necessarily good thing; I've never been committed, or sent to psychologists, but I think I do write from a biased perspective, as does everyone, which gets incredibly self indulgent. I'm not sure that I want that view of my father paraded around, albeit anonymously. I feel that I should have the guts to tell him what I've written before I allow it to be published overseas. Here I am overanalysing everything, all over again.

Anyway, I thought I would write some nice things about my Dad, as usually I only ever whine about him and everything else.

1. He is always proud of us, and says that when I was born was the happiest day of his life. He drew a graph to illustrate this; it's middling, then when I'm born it shoots up.

2. He loves us so much that he wants to give us all the opportunity he can. He'd never leave us, like some Dads do; if he and Mum split up, they'd both be there, no questions asked.

3. There's a video of us all on holiday; we'd rented a caravan. I'm about seven, my brother is two, and my Dad is making us laugh so much by doing silly voices for all of my brother's trains. Remembering it makes me really happy. I can remember my stomach aching, from where I laughed so much. I am sure that there must be so many moments like this, it's just that the bad ones stick in my head easier. And the bad ones aren't that bad- it's usually him pushing me too far academically, I wish I'd remember the better ones like these.

4. He once watched a dance show I was in and tried hard to say positive things about it, though neither of my parents can abide dancing (they think it leads to eating disorders and deformed feet).

5. He offers me money but wants me to be independent as well, and never likes to meddle, though he does want to be involved. He learns his lesson; he used to push me a lot at school, but eventually (when I was fifteen, after tears and many arguments about why he wouldn 't trust me to push myself) he left off. And apologised when my marks went up, for annoying me.

6. He can admit when he's wrong. We were having an argument, or he and Mum were- I can't remember. And I said, "God, you love playing the martyr don't you?" He said he realised then that maybe he did, and that he's been on his guard about it ever since.

I am guilty of cupidity. I want everything; a perfect figure, a perfect grade, a perfect relationship- without putting in a lot of graft. It feels like I graft away, but I know really that it's not enough. I should do more exercise, and more work. I can admit when I'm wrong too.

Here is a list of things I like about myself:

My untidy eyebrows
My hair
My long fingernails
I am very independent, and proud.

I'll think of more.