bugger bugger bugger

Omg haven't witten in a while. Alrighty, life has been pretty hectic. I'm not the type to handle change well, so the whole "coming-of-age" thing is hitting me really hard. I turned 18 yesterday - it's really not that great. I feel exactly the same as I did before, only more tired. I'm doing my driver's licence exam today (we're only allowed to do it once we've turned 18, I think it's 16 in other countries) and I think it's safe to say that I'm PEEING myself. My parents say it's not such a big deal if I fail because I can redo it in December before I go to university, but that's not the point - they've spent so much money on lessons etc. etc. and even more importantly - I've NEVER FAILED ANYTHING IN MY LIFE!

On the 15th I recieved my acceptance letter from the university, which is a relief as I wasn't so sure I'd get in - the entrance exams were a bitch. I don't know why they made me write a maths paper if I'm doing a BA degree. I'm so numerically challenged, I have about as much mathematical ability as a jam doughnut.

Apart from that I finished my matric mock exams yesterday, so far my average is in the 90s. Yes, I am bragging.

I have a dress fitting for the matric dance today. Not as exited as I probably should be.

Oh, Jebus, I'm so nervous for this driver's exam. My friends who have passed theirs have being telling me how difficult the yard test is because it's on an incline, which is scaring me something terrible as I'm pretty awful at parking. On top of that it's raining cats and dogs here, I drove to the shop this morning and couldn't see out of the window even though the wipers were on full blast. Buggerit Buggerit. Fuck fuckity fuck.

Breathe

If I don't blog tomorrow or tonight then you'll know I've failed. Luckily it's school holiday now so I have the entire holiday to sulk and wallow in self-pity.

Wish me luck!

Over&out

Attention Seeker

Today in one of my classes the girls were gossiping about some girl one of them recently saw at the mall – she’d left the school a couple of years back – who was now anorexic. They were making such a fuss about it, and then they began speaking about who in the grade had recently lost weight. All the while I’m sitting there nodding politely, and in my head I’m doing a jig and flailing my arms and screaming “NOTICE ME!,” because that’s what all of us really want, isn’t it? We want to be noticed. We live for the day someone says to us, “wow, you’ve lost weight.”
When an acquaintance of mine said to me “You’ve gotten so thin” I was on such a high for the rest of the day. I mean, I see it in the way my clothes fit, I see it on the scale, I see the way my collar and hip bones ar beginning to show, so WHY for fuck’s sake does no one else notice? This is like a slow version of suicide: I starve, I freeze, I lose most of my true friends, I become bitchy and generally unhappy and I put myself through hell, and NO ONE NOTICES. I just want some attention.

[EndRant]

Good Advice

So it seems it’s only my country that has a matric “40 days.” It’s like a tradition at schools around the country. It’s the one day where the grade 12’s get to go crazy – we intimidate the teachers and bully the little ones, it’s rather amusing. At my school we cable-tied the grade 7’s bags together, and locked everyone in their classes at breaks. The girls stuffed their shirts with pillows and pretended to be pregnant – one of my friends “went into labour” in the entrance hall. We also hijacked the intercom and made the most ridiculous announcements. I think some of the boys planted a tree in the middle of our football field. At night grade 12’s from all the schools in the area go to Stellenbosch, which is sort of like a “party town,” where we party-party ‘till the next morning and go straight to school from there.
Now I become a recluse until mocks and finals are over!

It is amazingly cold here at the moment, though it might not seem like much to someone from the Northern hemisphere. We don’t get snow where I live, but our summers are hellishly hot. I think it was 13 degrees Celsius today, which is pretty damn cold for around here. I am currently wearing 3 pairs of stockings, leggings, pyjama pants, 2 long-sleeve shirts, 2 school jerseys, a hoodie and a fleecy top. AND fluffy slippers. With bunny ears. They’re pink.

I feel like I kind of fucked up these past few days regarding my diet. I don’t know why, I’m just not as enthusiastic. My will-power has gone out the window with all my tests and projects, and I can’t stop over-eating. Since I’m working and studying so much I can’t get my usual 10000 steps in, and I think my metabolism is really messed up because I have to rely on caffeine and apple cider to ‘make me go.’
So far (today) I haven’t actually eaten anything, but I’m not hungry at all. Is this a good thing? No, I like the hungry feeling. I’m CRAVING exercise, which is strange considering how terminally lazy I am. I’m incredibly hyper at the moment, so I’ve taken to skipping around the house.

My matric dance (I believe you guys call it “prom”) is on the 9th of October, and I’ve vowed to drop at least 3 kg’s by then. I want bony shoulders, damnit!

On the plus side, I got 96% for my business test, and 90% for my design project. Currently awaiting maths results – numbers aren’t my strong point.
My business teacher thinks he’s incredibly cool, so he gave me some brilliantly useless advice today: Number 1: There are only two solutions to weight loss; “linker tekkie, en regter tekkie.” (left trainer and right trainer).
Number 2: There is only one benefit to smoking, and that’s that when you’re older your yellow teeth will look good with your brown shoes.
He’s such a sweetheart, but he’s a little weird.

(I think I use a lot of South African slang words and terms in my posts, if it doesn’t make sense just let me know.)

Porker

Friday was out Matric 40 Days. I'm not sure if any of you guys have it - it's the day that marks 40 days(obviously) to the end of our school careers.
I honestly don’t know what’s so special about the number ’40,’ but there you have it.
I also managed to hand in my art term project by working through the night on Thursday. My deadline for my design project is tomorrow – I might need to pull another all-nighter. Damn procrastination.

I went to my friend’s 18th on Friday, where she made dinner for everyone. I got away with eating 2 lettuce leaves and a ring of aubergine, no questions asked.
When I got home that night I thought a lot about this pro-ana thing. It’s such a journey – such a process – and after a while it becomes part of everyday life. I can’t imagine NOT counting calories, NOT checking the scale 3 times every day etc. The irony is that we all have “goal weights.” When I reach mine, am I really just going to stop? Will it be that easy to give everything up and become “normal” again? There is no way in hell that I’ll be able to eat like I did before – I’ll balloon. Will I be happy when I reach my goal weight, or will I still see the imperfections? Fuckit, I don’t know.

Yesterday I went to a wedding, and they didn’t have ONE vegetarian item, so I had 3 pieces of salmon from my mother’s starter. The bride sat across from me, so I couldn’t NOT eat some of the dessert (terrible excuse, isn’t it?). Luckily the dessert portions were the size of sushi, so I had a little block of carrot cake. That was about it for the day. No, wait – I had 4 strawberries before we went.
I weighed myself this morning in a flat panic because I thought the carrot cake might have caused weight gain, but strangely enough I’d lost. I am now 45.6kg.(In pounds I think it’s 100.5).
Today I’ve had 6 strawberries, and I’ll have a sweet potato tonight.

Cold

I'm cold. Not the "oh, look - my nails are turning purple" kind of cold, but an internal icyness that shoots through my bones and renders me incapable of doing anything other than moving two index fingers.

I’m wearing such an insane amount of clothing that I look like a marshmallow.
What’s even more depressing than looking like a marshmallow, however, is the realization that there is no way in hell I’m going to finish my art project for tomorrow.

X

[10 minutes later]
Just had supper: half a gem squash, 2 button mushrooms, 10 green beans.
Unfortunately I’m forced to eat supper with my parents, because it’s “family time.” Luckily they’ve become used to my eating habits, and don’t even comment when I only eat half of what’s on my plate.
I missed dancing tonight. I think I have a torn ligament in my pelvis. I have to limp and waddle like a penguin.

Besides dinner, I haven’t had anything with a caloric value apart from a cup of coffee this morning (10 cal), so I’m convinced I’m under 200. Hopefully this will make up for lack of excersise.

Padam, Padam, Padam.

Yay! I have more followers!

Btw, the image is of Dakota Fanning - I love her shoulders.

Legs

These are some "leg-themed" pictures I like. I love Mary-Kate Olsen for thinspo, because she's pretty short ass well. I think looking to her for thinspo is more realistic than looking at an unnaturally tall model.

Anyway, I hope someone finds these helpful.

Technological Ineptitude

Shit, okay, I'm completely computer illiterate. I'm trying to figure out how to change my profile picture - it's not going so well.
http://skinniness.blogspot.com/ introduced me in one of her posts! Gosh, she is so awesome. I feel all warm and fuzzy.

Right, so I went to 3 dance classes today and felt like a complete heffalump because the girls' are so thin and tall, and here I am at 5'3 (I think, I usually use metric. It's 161cm).
On the plus side, someone at school today said that I had become "so thin" - and for once I believed her as she had nothing to gain by saying that.
My moods fluctuate so much - I felt good about myself at that moment, but at dancing I felt so incredibly fat. I told my dance instructor that I wasn't feeling well just so that I wouldn't have to do the split-leaps, because I hate the heavy "thud" I make when I land.
I nearly passed out at one point. Despite how "woe is me" it sounds, it was actually quite amusing. I felt as though I was on a ship, and I actually saw pretty stars like in the cartoons.

In anycase, I had a salad when I got home; just lettuce and cucumber, no funny stuff. It's amazing how full a small bowl of salad can make me feel. Does anyone know if the stomach shrinks? Why are fat people always hungry? Surely the more you feed your stomach, the more it must expand? It used to take an entire plate of food to make me full.

I have an enourmous art project to hand in on Friday. I should probably get started on that.

Recent photo's

This is me, about 1 month ago.

Let's start at the very beginning...well - maybe not that far back

I'd love to say how I started dieting because my parents got divorced, or because I was fat and people teased me, or because my goldfish died or because of some other such tragic occurence. Actually I'm a pretty well-off kid. As of next month, a pretty well off adult. My parents are together and incredibly lovey-dovey, my grades are good, I'm not a complete hippopotamous and my goldfish is still very much alive and kicking. Swimming.

The reason I diet, restrict, excersise compulsively and put myself through seven kinds of hell to be thin is just that - because I want to be thin. For me. I want to be thin for me - because I hate the way I look in my clothes, and because I love the feeling of my hip bones.

In anycase, a friend of mine introduced me to the "pro-ana" concept about 2 years ago. We both wanted to lose weight, so we decided to do it together. At that stage I had no knowledge of the cult (as I think of it) and was totally convinced that the only way to get thin was through not eating 3 ice-creams and an entire box of cookies in one sitting - I would limit myself to 2 ice-creams and maybe half the packet of cookies.

Now, I danced for an hour 3 times per week, so what I ate only affected me mildly, but I was gaining weight. My mother hinted, subtly at first. She would say thing like "those skinny jeans don't suit your build," but being completely self-absorbed, I took no heed. And I ballooned. I must have been about 7-8kg over my right weight.

At this point my friend told me about these sites she went to for tips to lose weight. Well, we were young and impressionable, and we were looking for a quick-fix.

I managed to convince myself that I would only use the "safe" tips, so with the help of my mother I started eating healthily. I would eat fruit during the day, vegetables for lunch, and a 300 calorie supper. I was eating about 1000-1200 calories per day - a normal amount for a growing girl.

I lost some weight, and I looked good. My mother noticed, my dance teacher noticed, and even my friends noticed.

I started finding it difficult to keep the weight off, so I (with much lecturing and groveling and explaining to my parents) became a vegetarian. It didn't help in the slightest (though I still refuse to eat animals and animal by-products). What did help was throwing up most of what I ate, either in the shower or down the toilet.

I took tips from the internet, and found that I could eat what I wanted, when I wanted, because now I had a quick-fix to keep the weight off. Because of this I started binging on cereals, cookies, and any sugary thing I could lay my hands on.

It lasted for about 2 months, when I saw an article outlining the health risks. The "chipmunk cheeks" was a drawback aswell, as I am very beauty-conscious.

I do not have an addictive personality - I managed to stop withing a couple of days, and have never gone back since.

I did, however, start restricting more seriously. I found the c&s (chew and spit) method, which helped tremendously when I felt a binge coming on.

By this time I was eating a fruit salad with fat-free yoghurt, and supper, which consisted of about 300 calories. That placed my calorie intake at around 800/day.

Grade 11 was a difficult year - I had to deal with my workload, as I take both art and design which requires much in terms of physical labour - I mean practical tasks - and my social life was going downhill. This was partly due to me, as I felt the friends I kept were heading in a different direction to me. Or rather, I was moving forward and tjey were standing still. They got together over weekends, drank and got shit-faced, and had absolutely no ambitions. They were content to watch the world pass them by, sticking out a hand occasionally to borrow money for another straight line. I disconnected myself from them to focus on my studies, and of course on my dieting.

These were the loves of my life. My calorie restriction controlled me as I tried to control it, and now I was weighing myself every day, 3 times a day, and excersising like nobody's business. I dropped to 46kg, which I think is about 102 pounds, and I was still not happy.

I don't recall what happened then, only that I stopped concentrating, and suddenly I weighed 4, 5, 6kg's more. That was 2 weeks ago.

I now eat nothing before 18:30. Then I eat a small bowl of steamed vegetables. I c&s everything else, and even that I hardly do anymore. I still dance twice/week for an hous, and I walk 10000 steps/day. I am back down to 46.4kg, but my perception seems to have altered. I'm taller, but somehow I look fatter. I have such a warped self image, I try to see myself as I am but I can't. I can't ask anyone, because like hell are they going to tell me I'm fat.

Now my mindset revolves around "just 5 more kg's, maybe just 6kg's, maybe 10kg's - yes, that's a nice, rounded number. Then I'll stop."

But that's just it - isn't it? Nothing is preventing me from walking to the cokkie cupboard and pigging out. I can easily take one of the cupcakes I baked for my friend's birthday, just as easily as I can stop restricting. Because I can stop. Any time I want.