Thursday 22 March 2012

The Road

So my uni course has a mandatory creative writing paper. And I can't write about sex or starvation. They say write about what you know, but I'm not sure anyone would believe the things I know. I really want to win but I'm not sure where to start either.
My childhood? The people who left me? The anger, hatred and desire for revenge that's always there, every day, every night, in every person I meet the suspicion that they too will leave. I can't write about that - bare my soul on the page for some marker to shred to pieces and award me a 2:2 for some cliched story about a traumatic childhood. Didn't we all have one?
And reading back this blog, all I can see is some pathetic, drunken girl wandering from man to man looking for some form of self-transcendence and then running away sober in the morning desperate to purge myself of the filth, and the sadness. I've drifted so far. The year I began this blog I was so focused, 800 calories a day or less. That was all that mattered. Now I'm in recovery, I sometimes go to the gym, I occasionally add up the calories in everything I eat but then I don't stress. I go to sleep at night because I don't have hunger cramps and I'm on track to graduate this year. I think when I decided to get better, I had to lose part of me. It was the exchange - life for creativity. A fair exchange. I don't write any more. I don't take photos. I don't explore or dream. I gave up on the dream of being a model. I gave up on being an actress. Gave up on being a journalist. Gave up on going into broadcasting. Gave up on being 50kg.
It's my finals in a few months. There is no way I'm going to sacrifice the chance of getting a first to be thin. I nearly gave up going to university to achieve that - and then I realised I'd be stuck at home with my mum for the next ten years or worse, be in a hospital with people thinner than me making me feel like even more of a failure. So I know that it was worth it. I really do.
I just wish I could still write. And dream a bit, too.