I have this dream and I’m eighteen. I grow my hair until it sweeps down my back. I walk a thousand miles over mountains to find my sanity. I work all Summer then in fall I attend College. It all runs like clock work and I know it is because I can hear it ticking. I shed the emotional burden I’ve been carrying, I learn to speak French and play my guitar without inhibitions. I don’t need alcohol or drugs to smile, because in Imogen’s world the sun always shines. Every once in a while I’ll go and visit Alice, because in Brighton the city beats through my heart. I can sit by the shore and find a heart shaped pebble, or find hidden treasures in that shop in the lanes. Every day is different, yet I find my own way. The time keeps turning, but I don’t feel like trying to escape. Maybe there’ll be a boy, and maybe he’ll like my eyes. And maybe I’ll meet some real nice interesting people.

 sitting here watching the seconds tick by on the clock as my life seems to undo itself all over again.

:(

 So things are going well at the moment, i'm as high as a kite and it's fucking wonderful. Today I felt sexy for the first time in a good few months, and it feels pretty freakin' sweet. 

2000 calories every three days, i'm doing it and it's ace. 

Cant explain it, but it's like there's ecstacy running through me.

and i feel like shit. utter shit. i can see myself getting fatter, wasting even more precious time. and all i allow myself to do is sit on my fat ass and make excuses.
 

An appointment at 9:00a.m with Dr T as it's what the doctor ordered, he recognised that I am a huge perfectionist. Is it that obvious even when I do fuck all? I'm glad he notices the little things like that though - perhaps it will make it easier with treatment for whatever it is I'm being treated for. Negative use of my perfectionisms? Apparently anyway.. 

Woke up this morning and felt like an utter turd. Yesterday was shit - I ate too much and too often - even after my incredible exercise effort in the morning! Back to black, but I'm trying to be a little more hopeful as opposed to hopeless today. My belly is empty (bar one coffee) and the day is mine.. well mine and my monster's.. but I'm still proud. Today I got up, I washed and dressed, and I went to my doctors appointment despite feeling paranoid and anxious and sick and not wanting to leave the house. I did it, and I can do anything else.

( view from the afternoon )
 This Wednesday and the sun’s not shining

But my eyes are still done crying

I think I’ll be just fine.

 

It’s still suck ass that I didn’t go to College this year, but I know I can and want to next year, so in the mean time I can prepare myself as best I can to do so. My hopes are high enough for me to plough on through the mess I’ve made myself in the last year, and the rational voice in my head gets clearer every single day. The autumn showers have begun, I’m aware of it before I even lift my head to the window to see as I hear the children screaming from the playground beyond one house over from ours.  And doesn’t the rain look mighty beautiful this Wednesday afternoon.

 

It’s frustrating accepting that for a while I might have to tell myself “no Imogen, that’s enough food. You’re full and satisfied, and eating twenty of the same thing won’t make it taste any better ”. But if by accepting that sometimes I have to do things a little differently to keep afloat it helps me to sustain my moods and ultimately achieve normality, then so be it. It’s like a disabled person refusing to accept their legs don’t work and trying continually to walk and fall on their lifeless limbs. So what if I don’t think the way other people think, or at least what I perceive other people to think.  I may have no legs, but I am still determined to walk – even if I have to start crawling.

first goal weight: 9 stone 4
second goal weight: 8 stone 12
third goal weight: 8 stone 6
ultimate goal weight: 8 stone

ultimate goal measurements: (bust/waist/hips) 32/24.5/34

Like the new colours of my journal? I jazzed it up a bit to reflect the jazzing up of myself I intend to do. Or rather that I am in the process of doing right now. Today I hit another major low as I ate my sixth or so apple, I was miserable, fat and stinking depressed. I've become so lazy and lethargic about everything and I intend to get to the bottom of it, whilst continuing to build myself up and build onwards. It's hard not eating my feelings, but it's even harder eating them.. it makes me so fucking miserable. It's absurd.

Have been looking over at photos of when I was nine stone and under, whilst exercising properly and eating much less than I do these days. I'm hoping to get back to that by 2010, and then to continue the good work there on out. It's believable and achievable.

When I feel the urge to binge I'm going to drink a lot of water or juice to satisfy the need to put something to my mouth.

I hate starting at the bottom again. but the quicker i get the beginning over, the sooner i'll be further away from the bottom.

Simples :)

I'm all out of sorts, and I'm not sure whether it's because of my meds or just because I've been stuffing my face and I'm a hot mess. Fuck this.

i look into the mirror, the dodgy light in the bathroom of my mind flickers on and off. the face in the mirror doesn't fit the face i envisaged i would see three weeks beyond eighteen; the post-flapjack gorged junkie excuse of a woman looks tired,and haggered. her make-up is smudged and her eyes vacant. she no longer feels the numbing sensation as her stomach fills, or sits empty. she no longer feels.

breakfast: 10 minutes arm exercises
pot of coffee with milk
3 bananas

lunch: 2 cups instant coffee with milk
a banana

i don't want to braoden my horizons and eat too many kinds of food. so today is banana and coffee day. the milk will fuck me up, damn you slight allerigies. I hate knowing I've made plans I don't want to keep, and I hate when I feel to fat to even go to work. It's this silly cycle, the less I do the more useless I feel, yet the more useless I feel the less I do. Doctors appointment booked for Tuesday to fix things up.

When I'm fine I think my 'down' state was just a silly phase, a bit of melodrama to chop and change things. But when I am sitting here, numb, and in the dark, it does not feel so silly. I find my mind drifting over the options; the many ways I can twist this numbness into something that I can feel. The tools I can use freely: food or a lack of, cutting, social exclusion, alcohol, drugs. Today I choose social exclusion and one of my preffered drugs, the big c.

I wish I felt this passion to write it all out all the time, documenting the stages of my mental well being helps me put things into perspective, and helps me to understand it even when I'm far away from it.

 When awake it's kaleidoscopic mind

I never meant to hurt you

I never meant to lie

So this is goodbye 

Saturday morning/afternoon and I feel buzzed on caffeine, then the realisation that I have to squeeze into my tight black skinnies that once barely fit the other end of the scale, and I feel numb again. 

 hold on tight motherfucker, because you are in for one hell of a ride.

be good, and the world will be good to you. simples.

that's a new and unpleasant experience I sure wish to never experience again. My aunt has invited me to go and live with her scott free until I go to China as there are more jobs in Liverpool going. I really want to escape this, I really want to escape me.  

Florence + the machine save me. My imagination please save me. Anything please, please. 

 i started amazingly well, feeling on fire after last nights depressive insomnia episode. Then at 9:40a.m I decided to have something to eat for breakfast even though I wasn't hungry. And I ate. and I ate and I ate because I was bored and nervous about silly things. 
Then I worked on my CBT book, doing collages and sticking feathers and glitter to things, generally making mess. And now it's 7p.m. How did that happen? Today disappeared so quickly, and I still feel uselessly upset that I binged this morning when I did well yesterday, eating enough but not too much. 

Seeing with my above eye: a day, is just a day and I wont have gained a huge amount of weight just with a few bad moments here and there. At the very least I was productive and worked pretty much all day.. in between changing the music and face-booking here and there..  

fix up, look sharp.

 she makes everything wonderfully easy again, reminds me of who I am and what is real. I love adore her.

My mind frame might change, but events cannot change my circumstance so drastically in a week or even two. Downs and ups alike. But little by little I am heading in the right direction. 

Today I am excited about...

-feeling comfortable enough in my skin to meet the some lovely boys and party skinny chique
-growing my hair longer again (because it did look hot)
-getting healthy
-visiting Alice in Brighton for her 21st
-Christmas
-doing the TEFL course and going to china 
-moving out in the Summer when I get home
-attending Exeter next fall, finally getting my a-levels!

losing this part of myself that I loathe, that stops me from being the best version of myself! From here on out, I'm making a contract with myself to commit to loving my life, and my body, and my mind. 

 ''Bipolar is something you will fight your entire life''

I am so scared, I don't want to be restricted by this forever. Eternity seems an awful long time =(

eat lots, throw up, feel worthless, fail.

 

 sick sick sick. if only i could be