I am nothing if not a vehicle for life-affirming quotes

"Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again."

        Finn Butler 

Eating Disorder Revisited

This post could trigger some people. Please take care, but what I'll do is put all the tricky bits after a jump break, if you don't want to read anything that may upset you then stop there.

It comes as no surprise to you, I hope by now at least, that my relationship with food is not always a-ok. I thought I had everything relatively under control (aha I spend my life controlling myself) but living out this year - instead of in catered college accommodation like last year - is presenting me with new challenges. Now I don't mind a challenge, bring it on, but I won't pretend that I'm always enthusiastic about facing challenges related to eating head on. Some days, like today, are calamitous. Good word. Today was bad for specific reasons I won't go into now for fear of triggering someone but suffice it to say my diet was silly and that I'm now wide awake at quarter to 2 thinking about it incessantly.
 I can easily find myself wanting to throw things (preferably lots of pieces of paper-that always looks dramatic) into the air and scream 'To hell with this!' but that option isn't really there for me. If I run away from a problem today, I will only have to confront it tomorrow. I know I'll have good days and bad, but at times when every day is just plain average it quickly becomes demoralising.
The issues I'm having with food at the minute are complex. There are practical problems like how much I'm spending on food, it's so expensive-who knew? I tend to quell this worry by thinking that in the future when I am saddled with debt I highly doubt I'll be ruing the days I bought fresh meat and lots of fruit, more likely I'll be regretting buying quite as many jumpers/scarves. Seriously though, Durham is cold, I can justify those purchases.
Also fresh food needs to be used up quicker than I anticipate so perhaps some forward planning from me would help to map out what I'll eat when and ensure food doesn't go past its best sitting in my fridge. This could help get me to stick to eating full meals too, as if I've made the commitment in writing that I'll be eating salmon and veg on Thursday I'll be more likely to keep true to my plan and do it. The actual cooking of the food is fine, despite a few frantic calls home about how much spaghetti constitutes a portion. I'm impressed at my abilities, in particular my Thai Green lemongrass and ginger prawn curry. *Awkwardly waits for applause*

 On the whole I'm fine but I worry about how varied my diet is, in a way I suspect other students don't have to. If I have a day, or worse a few days, where I don't eat much I get intensely anxious that I'm getting ill, whereas my housemates given the same situation could just accept that they weren't particularly hungry. Some days, like today, I struggle to eat meals and instead just snack aimlessly in the hope I'll eventually take in enough. Obviously that's hard given the nutritional value of most snack foods. I can see that some of my habits aren't healthy, but don't necessarily know how to fix them, and quite frankly can't be bothered with the effort. If I can coast by like this, then should I? Equally - I worry that when I go back home my routine is going to be thrown way off course, having just settled into one here.
Overall I feel I've reacted to the stresses this term has given me pretty well, in fact I've gone full circle and have been eating more when I'm stressed than ordinarily. Shocker. I can't help fearing that as my tell-tale troublesome familiar stresses peak over the next two weeks (academic stress is the absolute worse for me) I won't be as successful with managing it. I can feel it happening already but don't feel able to do anything about it. Accepting a relapse as an inevitability seems like I am an utter failure though. I am so tired of it that I could cry. Hard times indeed.



This is why today was bad, don't read if you're going to find it difficult to see what I ate today, please please please.

Ch-Ch-Changes. The return of university, panic attacks and single life

Three months is a very long time.
It's (apparently) how long it takes for a baby to learn to roll over, and also the length of time it takes Mercury to orbit the Sun. It's also how long I neglected to post or update at all. May I extend my mega huge apologies to the hundreds of people left feeling bitterly disappointed, i.e. my dad who I suspect is the sole reader of this. Hi Dad.
Actually no, I've had 1300 views. *Does a jig of happiness*

Here is a really quick, really brief update of what 3 months has brought to/taken away from my life

• I went to Brussels for 4 days with my boyfriend (yay, truly beautiful city) 
• Said boyfriend and I broke up after 3 years (still getting used to it, huge adjustment, being single is both good and bad)
• I came back to uni (WOO) and was a fresher rep for all the new freshlings. (Double Woo) I'm in my new house (woo x3) where I'm having to cook and eat independently. (woo/boo) I'm feeling lonelier than ever (boo) but that might be because stresses and all my commitments are piling up and up and up (don't even go there)
• I decided to come off my anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills (not sure how this is gonna pan out)
• (Ignore this dad) I discovered I don't hate washing up after all
• I renounced all semblance of my feminist outlook and dressed up as Barbie in an all-in-one lycra unitard for a fancy dress formal.
• I saw Gabrielle Aplin, and then Jimmy Carr - cultured and outgoing person that I am.
• I started drinking Green Tea, and just drinking more alcohol in general. Fun. My alcohol tolerance levels have increased, watch in awe as I manage to have a vodka and coke without falling to the floor. Probably something to do with my weight gain. Hell yes.
• On that weighty note, I finally got the go ahead to help set up an eating disorder peer-support group at my university. Big woops all round.