It's okay. Sylvia Plath was crazy, and everything turned out alright for her too...

Here are the thoughts that are overwhelming me right now:

"I am such a complete and utter fucking failure. Not acting. Not writing. Not doing anything that eight years of my life were aimed at forwarding. I am a one hundred and twenty thousand dollar waste. I am worth nothing.

"I'm lazy and useless. A blob of fat that can't connect with the blob of grey matter above it even clearly enough to execute the easiest plan of action: Just stop it all.

"Don't keep eating after 3 ounces of protein, 1/2 cup of starch and 1/2 cup of vegetables. Don't throw up unless stricken with a stomach flu.

"I am a failure in every way. Why can't I stop being a complete failure and loser?

"I don't deserve to ever have children. I want children so badly. But I don't deserve them. Especially not a daughter. Please, God, if you give me a child, don't give me a daughter. In five or however many years, give me a son. Someone who won't judge himself summarily on body mass index. Someone who won't equate morality with daily caloric intake. Someone who will understand that food and weight aren't the be all, end all."

Those are my thoughts.

Sometimes I hate the people who made me think this, including myself. It's mostly directed at myself, actually, since I'm the only one whose thoughts are indisputably planted in my own brain. The other people? I don't want to name them here. They would know who they are, if they read this. Sometimes I hate them. Weight isn't everything. Fat isn't everything. Calories aren't everything. Shape isn't everything.

But, God, I think they are. Not for anyone else. Just for me. I will defend to the death anyone over or underweight who is the target of categorically cruel or uninformed assumptions. But not really me. After all, I'm in that nebulous area. That not-fat-not-thin... AREA. Not perfect, not evil. But always holding off... EVIL.

Do you know that I wake up almost every day absolutely shocked that my food-oriented behavior over the last day or two or fourteen hasn't resulted in me gaining ten inches on my waist? No matter how many times, or how many times in a row, over the last six years I've starved or gorged or vomited or all damn three... after a certain point, things haven't really changed. But still, I'm not convinced that that's the reality. It's not that I think my doctors are lying to me. It's not that I think I'm completely psychotic to the point where I don't know how I look (discounting periods of BDD). It's that I feel I'm constantly on the verge of something. Something terrible. "Becoming fat." But psychologically, eating disorder experts would say, it's nothing to do with becoming fat. It's to do with something else.

Being a failure. Becoming a full, incontrovertible failure. Being beyond redemption. Being unsavable. Being damned.

But not in that stupid Catholic way. I'm an unofficial Buddhist. So there. (So much for giving up material suffering.)