The Marie Celeste

Another day of over over over. Overeating; tomorrow will be better. I must work harder. Ich muss schwerer schaffen um mein Ziel zu erreichen.

I think I am falling for so many people at once, girls and boys. I find it easier to write of the girls, because they're forbidden and so... it's more of a flame, knowing they're unattainable. I suppose this is the way with many things; my weight. Other's perceptions of me.

I am starting to like her less. To adore her less; I do not think that she likes me in the slightest anymore, but I am ceasing to care. Maybe she will again in the future. I don't know. I used to feel, when she turned her back to me that I wanted to go, and hold her and kiss the nape of her neck. I can remember that desire, and something turns in the base of my stomach from the memory of it, of that flip... but it is only a memory. There are new ships on the horizon. Love, well, adoration unknown, is like... the Marie Celeste. It hovers on the waves waiting for great expedition, but is lost somewhere along the way or dragged by undercurrents; once it wanders into that territory, that intransgressible state, I never know how long it is until it returns to my life, the feel unchanged but someone new at the helm. I haven't got a choice; I am bound to it. I magnetise to the harbour every day to wait, to wave it back in. Sometimes it returns. That time is now.

The captain rested on my shoulder and leant her arm against mine. She has got a boyfriend, who she appears to love; so I do not think she will be so interested in me. We are great friends. I have told her my fat secret. I think she is wonderful; I don't have eating anxieties around her, and she doesn't compliment me or tell me constantly that she likes me, but she just is reassuring and kind. She said, once, "Thanks for being so kind and youish". Substitute my real name for you. That badge of appreciation glowed on me for days. Really, the reason I like people is because they make me feel needed. Everyone is a narcissist, aren't they? But I can't stop my self obsession, so I'll just wallow in it.

If I was a captain, and if she was waiting for me... she would look for a long rope of cable hair, all in one line, falling from beneath a tricornered hat I cannot stop without. She would touch that dint on my belt, just over my hipbone where my musket should be, but it has gone with the crew and with everything else. I am caked in the sea, in that salt that should wash me clearest clean to a crystallized gem, but instead I am fried, seasoned, baked, seasoned again so that the mould from last year, the year before... are all ingrained into me, as a map, creased into the very sockets of my eyes. Here, here is Constantinople, and that is an island noone saw save the seven savages and the sharks, and there is she, a constant memory behind my layers and layers of years elsewhere. She says I look sickly, and I think there has never been such a spirit as she, a spirit alive within a husk of a woman for all of these years, the shell worn so thin and papery I can almost see those courses of woe beneath the translucent browned hessian of her skirts. I adore her the more for adoring me, for waiting, and it is easiest to pretend that she adored me all the time, that the fragile leaf keeping body and soul together withstood the pressures of the earth for all that time and trembled only for I to smooth it out into a pale line pressed between two sheets, kept pure and old for my looking.

I suppose that's a bit My Last Duchess.

Just because you are you.

I saw the film Notes on a Scandal the other day, and Edward Scissorhands. I adored both.

I was also a fatty and consumed so much it isn't even worth writing down. I still feel stout, which is a neverending circle... feeling stout leads to a why-bother attitute, etcetera.

I worry I may become Barbara Covett if I don't tell someone soon.

Notes on a Scandal was sad. Though I felt that the characters surrounding Judi Dench were stupid, merely because she found them so easy to manipulate. If people are truly so easy to machinate, why not have some fun? Though, she was cutting off her own nose to spite her face. I still had a sympathetic urge to the psychotic one though; I kept trying to find where we differ. Well, I suppose I do not try to split up relationships. No, I am forgiving, let me at least tell myself that.

I am proud and independent. These are characteristics I appreciate in myself. I am also still young. People appear to like me, though I am forever teetering on a threshold between like and dislike. I feel that people's liking of me is akin to a gobstopper; it lasts a while, and it is unusual and very enjoyable, but ultimately ephemeral. Once you've finished your gobstopper there isn't much point in buying another one, not for a long time. Or some such metaphorical twaddle. It's more of a similie.

Big Girl, you are beautiful

It certainly doesn't feel that way. Well. I've had 1500 today including two drinks. I hate being described as sturdy. I detest the fact that this description came from a friend who knows me so well; she said "let the three sturdiest sit in the back." And undoubtedly I was one of them. Now, the friend I'm mentioning isn't sturdy; she classed me with herself. But it's hearing someone else say that I am that bothers me. It's the shrouding of the word big, or fat. Why not just say the three fattest? She said she'd act as my fat barometer... she hasn't. She lied and said I was slim. I'm not. I hate that I base so much of my self esteem on this fact I already knew to be true, and on the very motif; who cares? Does it honestly matter if I am fat or thin, within reason? No of course not. But to think that this is what everyone is secretly thinking... thank god I don't look like that... the ignonomy. The pity, worse.

Anyway. What else? I handed in an essay, I laughed. I saw a shoddy play. I am in a play. I am the heaviest girl. I am the tallest, widest, and ugliest... I hate being touched. If it isn't sex I know I am giving them nothing back, except dead weight. And who wants to feel a mollusc such as I? I should stop being so self pitiful. That is what makes me pitiful.

I am a sexual camel.

I detest and despise photographs. I didn't used to mind my face, but now...

Well.

At least my breasts are too small to go anywhere, not least south.

a brownie (200)
soup and some baguette (200)
a chicken wrap (400)
some pic n mix (200)
a brownie (200)
an apple (40)
coleslaw (50)
a crumpet with pesto (100)
ice cream (200)
raisins (40)

1440. Ho hum. Yesterday was all recorded as 1200, and the day before. I must, must be more careful. I have simply been too busy with rehearsals, doing essays, seeing people, living life.

Today she alluded to her lover; I felt a twist go through me, but it was more of jealousy, a why-don't-you adore me than a I adore you too much. I don't adore her anymore, but I want her to adore me... I am a narcissist. I suppose she's the only recent one I've felt it back towards, that's why.

Good things about today were that I laughed a lot. I made some headway educationally. I wore makeup.

Comments welcome.

Come into my bracken arms
And feel the tenderness sprout from dry bark
Dormant for so long denied behind a forest eyed glide
Hidden by pride, or flaws and social mores
But it germinates. Where your lily-white
Hand dares to trace a path through
Thorns or thistles, greying vapour dew
That fire scorched to produce that hue
Yet your floral aspect, a blush daisy glance
With open Tess eyes, all spring day skies
To mask the storms. Where I showcase frost
You conceal sores, bites and spores. So our
Season, the end of my discontent, is no merriment
As you need more. Branches retract to snap, sapped
In a new winter as blanched snow (cold, no
Woeful creak or noise) covers the parapet floor.

Well I know that it's a wonderful world, from the sky down to the sea, but I can only feel it when you're here, here with me.

Well, I have done some ridiculous eating today. Pasta for breakfast, so 400 straight off. Then a three course meal (camembert, pear salad and a tart of chocolate for pudding)- I think 900 at least. Then I made cakes and consumed chocolate with friends, so another 500, and lastly I've had a pear. Forty. 2000. I feel sick, just that I'm that full. Disgusting. I felt so fat as well, I always do at rehearsals. But I had a good day, with lots of laughing and fun.

Anyway. What is important about today? Three good things. I arose early (at eight thirty). I accomplished many things. Someone complimented me on my tie, we bought balloons for friends to eat with on their birthdays. I enjoyed my hair today. She spoke a little to me. Two people said they'd like to dress as I do- but are these just fake compliments?

I worry she thinks I am cliquey and ridiculous, or fake, a different person around others. Maybe this is me, reflecting back through her eyes? Oh how I construct. And I let her down today, that's the worst. I hate that some of my friendship groups are construed as cliques, I want people around, I don't care who they are. I hate that it's still got such a bearing on life after I thought such puerile things were left in school. Strange, that word puerile- it comes from puer, boy. But isn't it really women who are meant to be puerile, especially historically speaking? Does this mean that women, the quintessential boyish object, are simply waiting to grow into men, rapt with the concept of penis envy and desiring their own conscious active? Well, Freud would say so. Then again he was a crazy chauvinist. And women have gained autonomy and we're enfranchised. That disproves the point entirely.

So how would I like to appear? Intelligent, sepulchral, thin... brave. Beautiful, strong-featured, quirky. Decisive, respected, a good actress.

It's a funny feeling, realising you're no longer the heroine in your own life.

Today's consumption:

a chicken thai wrap (250)
a geo bar (150)
an apple (40)
pasta, beanfeast and tomatoes (350)
a piece of cheesecake (400)
sultanas (100)
two tangerines (30)
hot chocolate (40)

Ok. So 1370. Not so bad, as I have also walked and engaged myself with information. Today we got told about dissertations; I'd love to do one but I don't think I'm clever enough. If I did, I'd do it on George Orwell, but I'm not sure what about him, I think some sort of Jungian criticism of him, or trash horror books, possibly James Herbert's. I really enjoy trash horror- I'd look at how it changes for each era, embodying the fears of that time, and criticise it using Jung's, Frye's and Bodkin's theories. I'll apply for it and see how far I get.

I also saw her, and he has come round to see me. I don't really want to see him; this sounds horrible. I just find him boring, and cumbersome to be around. I'll have to find someone else. Anyway, she doesn't completely detest me. She said hello to me, and she spoke. She says she feels empty at the moment, but we were speaking on the telephone and I detest the telephone; I become strange on it, I can't see what people are saying and I don't know how to respond because they can't see me either. I don't think I responded so well, and we didn't talk today. She wanted to talk last night. I would have liked to see her face to face, so that she could tell me, instead of having a telephone raze my insubstantial intellect to the ground. She's beautiful; I sat across from her today and couldn't stop my staring. Today I wore no makeup and had greasy hair; I didn't look a pretty sight. Ah, the contrast.

I also went to a poetry reading and saw my tutors there. I did not read, as I always say, it's far too embarrassing.