Beauty and the beast. Once, you said, looking into a mirror. And both knew which was which.

Calorific crap:

half a bowl of bran flakes and raisins (150)
a chicken thai wrap (250)
a vegetable stir fry (150)
sultanas (50)
two shortcake caramel squares (400)
meatballs and cranberry sauce and spinach (100g) (200)

I cannot shake the feeling that I ate something else, but I run through the contents of my cupboard in my mind and refute the evidence. Sultanas only it was. So today I am on target, and I have done the walk twice, which means I have created a deficit. I am still fat. I am still overweight, but now I know that I can, and I can tomorrow and the day after and the day after that as well.

My room is clear, though not clean, I need a dustpan and brush. I organised my draws tonight; they are neatly colour coded and folded. This is my favourite way for things to be.

I saw her again today. She does not want to spend excessive time with me because I bore her? Because I am not pretty? Not naturally pretty, that was what she said. Well, no. I twist. Her words were, "I like girls who don't know they're beautiful". Why must everyone subscribe to a rural idyll? What is it about artifice that is so ugly? If I do not look as I wish, why shouldn't I put on my ivory concealer and black mascara to make myself into what I wish? I draw on cheekbones and erase blemishes and spots. Artifice is what we are all doing all the time; if any of us cared to be truly au naturel, we'd stuff our faces and walk about in warm ponchos as well as never concealing our true feelings. But other's opinions count, nobody wants to be exiled from the protection of the herd, and they drive us towards appearing healthy, which is in nature's state. But e'en in that, there is some fakeness; it's this drive for dewy natural moisture that sends women to cosmetic surgeons begging to be facially poisoned and inexpressive so that they can look naturally young.

I suppose there is no difference in my application of makeup and these tautened and ageless creatures, only that I feel I am making up for myself and they for everyone else. Really, both categories are making up so that we can feel that what others believe of us is admiring. I, for example, would rather be the bone white rail thin girl that everyone worries about than the girl everyone thinks is immensley attractive, because I would know then that no matter what I would never be considered coarse. They want never to drop their presentation, never to be considered cluttered or lived in. There are no different motives, just differing perceptions of what beauty is.

I like my artifice. I need it. She, bombazine doll's intended, probably does not. Or she is too confident to need it. I wish I was naturally and innocently beautiful, but it is not the way. I must strive to be thin, strive for my face. It is naturally masculine, much to my malign. If I could choose any face, I would be Marchesa Luisa Casati, or Elyse Sewell, if I am forced to make my contemporary choices. I am obsessed with beauty; because if I can blame my face, the rest of me is exempt? No, not at all. I pause from a tirade on my countenance and move onwards to my behaviour, my acting skills, my intelligence; all reason enough for her not to love me. When I know that, put parsimoniously, she never was in love with me and that is all.