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.