would like to run long distances, so I could forget myself.
I can’t really find a proper image of me, which is frustrating. Every mirror seems to tell a different story. In the changing rooms I shrink and grow from shop to shop. They are trying to fool me. I know their tricks. They make me appear taller and thinner, longer, more stretched out. I like to look at other girls in the changing rooms and examine their shapes, so that I can compare them to mine. It helps me think about how I must work harder to be more like them. I am sure that my real, true, perfect shape is out there somewhere, and one day I will get it, and fit into it, and be happy in it, and things will feel better.
It is just better to be lighter. I am sure that many people feel this. You feel so much clearer, as if nothing weighs you down. You can almost stop the thoughts of anything bad or scary (except the food, of course). You float along, and all the other silly fears evaporate around you. I know I don’t entirely see straight, but it’s the clearest sight I have had for a long time. It’s unimpinged on by other things – there is one direction and one focus, and everything else has sort of melted away.
The doctors and the well-wishers try to make me see things through their eyes, as if mine can’t be trusted. I can’t let that happen because I can’t see round the corner of their plans. With my way I know where I am going; I know that with every pound/stone/kilo/ounce that comes off, things feel better. The other way will feel bad. It will feel worse every day with every extra pound/stone/kilo/ounce that they make me put on. They will have to
make
me do it, because I won’t concede.
I don’t usually like breaking the rules like this. I don’t like getting told off. I got told off once or twice at school for putting on make-up or for wearing a round-neckedjumper instead of a V-necked one, and I didn’t like it. I tried to smirk and smile, and be disobedient to fit in, but I didn’t know how to do it, it’s not in me. Now people are treating me like a naughty girl. I let everyone down. I ruined their plans for me. I made everybody cry. But I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. I am not very good at fighting with the outside. The fight is inside, and it is with myself.
My English teacher from school even calls me up at home and asks me why have I done this to myself (people do, they can’t help but wonder). It is really embarrassing because I was always a really good student. He sounds vexed because I have spoiled things. The school sent me a book token with a special bookplate: a prize for being the best English A-level student. I wonder if they gave it to me as a badge of sympathy. I stuck the bookplate into a new, crisp, hardback book, but I don’t seem to be able to read it now. My teacher is kind, but I don’t want him to be like that, full of sympathy and confusion because I am quite clear, not confused. And he asks me, ‘How did this happen?’
And I tell him, ‘Well, the doctor thinks it is because I am a perfectionist.’
I think that this is a good interpretation of me, and one which my teacher will be pleased with (clever girl, I think to myself), but instead he says, ‘You wouldn’t think you were a perfectionist, not by looking at your handwriting.’
Then he sort of laughs a bit, because he is uncomfortable (I think), but he also thinks that he has made a good joke. I don’t laugh, because I think he is right; I don’t dot the ‘i’ on perfection and perhaps I should try harder to do so. I really should work on my handwriting. Then we say goodbye, and I think that this is all mixed up. I have left school, and I should be at university now. Then my teacher speaks to my mum, and it is embarrassing, for him to betalking to her about me, because I am no longer a school girl; that girl in the uniform is behind us both.
‘Get well soon,’ he says.
‘I will,’ I say.
Nine
The plan is as
I can’t really find a proper image of me, which is frustrating. Every mirror seems to tell a different story. In the changing rooms I shrink and grow from shop to shop. They are trying to fool me. I know their tricks. They make me appear taller and thinner, longer, more stretched out. I like to look at other girls in the changing rooms and examine their shapes, so that I can compare them to mine. It helps me think about how I must work harder to be more like them. I am sure that my real, true, perfect shape is out there somewhere, and one day I will get it, and fit into it, and be happy in it, and things will feel better.
It is just better to be lighter. I am sure that many people feel this. You feel so much clearer, as if nothing weighs you down. You can almost stop the thoughts of anything bad or scary (except the food, of course). You float along, and all the other silly fears evaporate around you. I know I don’t entirely see straight, but it’s the clearest sight I have had for a long time. It’s unimpinged on by other things – there is one direction and one focus, and everything else has sort of melted away.
The doctors and the well-wishers try to make me see things through their eyes, as if mine can’t be trusted. I can’t let that happen because I can’t see round the corner of their plans. With my way I know where I am going; I know that with every pound/stone/kilo/ounce that comes off, things feel better. The other way will feel bad. It will feel worse every day with every extra pound/stone/kilo/ounce that they make me put on. They will have to
make
me do it, because I won’t concede.
I don’t usually like breaking the rules like this. I don’t like getting told off. I got told off once or twice at school for putting on make-up or for wearing a round-neckedjumper instead of a V-necked one, and I didn’t like it. I tried to smirk and smile, and be disobedient to fit in, but I didn’t know how to do it, it’s not in me. Now people are treating me like a naughty girl. I let everyone down. I ruined their plans for me. I made everybody cry. But I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. I am not very good at fighting with the outside. The fight is inside, and it is with myself.
My English teacher from school even calls me up at home and asks me why have I done this to myself (people do, they can’t help but wonder). It is really embarrassing because I was always a really good student. He sounds vexed because I have spoiled things. The school sent me a book token with a special bookplate: a prize for being the best English A-level student. I wonder if they gave it to me as a badge of sympathy. I stuck the bookplate into a new, crisp, hardback book, but I don’t seem to be able to read it now. My teacher is kind, but I don’t want him to be like that, full of sympathy and confusion because I am quite clear, not confused. And he asks me, ‘How did this happen?’
And I tell him, ‘Well, the doctor thinks it is because I am a perfectionist.’
I think that this is a good interpretation of me, and one which my teacher will be pleased with (clever girl, I think to myself), but instead he says, ‘You wouldn’t think you were a perfectionist, not by looking at your handwriting.’
Then he sort of laughs a bit, because he is uncomfortable (I think), but he also thinks that he has made a good joke. I don’t laugh, because I think he is right; I don’t dot the ‘i’ on perfection and perhaps I should try harder to do so. I really should work on my handwriting. Then we say goodbye, and I think that this is all mixed up. I have left school, and I should be at university now. Then my teacher speaks to my mum, and it is embarrassing, for him to betalking to her about me, because I am no longer a school girl; that girl in the uniform is behind us both.
‘Get well soon,’ he says.
‘I will,’ I say.
Nine
The plan is as
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