back in control...

31 hours living on nothing but coffee and alcohol
Just had an apple now, but only because I need to do some chemistry
And I shouldn't be doing that unless I can concentrate perfectly.


This has me feeling more confident again
It's been so long since I've eaten so little,
I was afraid I couldn't do it anymore,
And now I know I can.

I should have remembered to take the vitamins yesterday though
Since I doubt coffee and alcohol have much (any) nutritional value
Must remember to take them tonight

someone else's anger

Yesterday was horrible.

I was looking forward to it at first. My parents had 4 free tickets to a Cirque show at Rama. I love cirque shows. Everyone in them is so lovely and graceful and the costumes are always amazing. So they gave the second pair to me and him, and we all went up to Rama together. But even before we'd left the city, I knew it wasn't going to go the way I wanted it to. I knew he wasn't so into cirque shows, that he only agreed to come because he knows I like them. But then the day of the show crept up on us and he didn't really want to go anymore and it was too late to back out. And Rama is far away, so it was a big trip out there and back again for something he didn't really want to do in the first place. So I felt horrible for asking him to come with me before we were even there yet, and I got more and more nervous just sitting in the car and wishing I'd never asked to go in the first place.

We went to dinner before the show. Buffet, of course. I managed to avoid anything fried or with breading on it, but I still ate far, far too much. Then we went to the show. Which wasn't quite as good as I'd expected it to be, but then again, that might have been just because I was so worried about him being angry at me that I couldn't really let myself relax and enjoy it. Then after the show my parents insisted we couldn't leave right away, that it would be a traffic jam trying to get out of the parking lot for at least half an hour, so we might as well stay there and gamble a bit. I hate gambling, ever since I watched my Dad lose $450 in the span of 15 minutes one night, so he and I just walked around the casino for awhile, him getting more angry and quiet and me getting more anxious. By the time we finally got back to the car to go home, I just wanted to crawl into a hole and cry.

We got back to Toronto just before 1 a.m. He wanted to go home, so I drove him, since it's faster than him taking the subway and I felt like I owed him for asking him to go to the show with me. I knew he was still angry, and he knew I knew that and it was making me anxious, and so that probably made him feel worse, and then I felt guilty for not being able to keep a poker face on my anxiety. And by the time I got home, it was too late to purge.

That was a total fail of a day in every sense that matters. Not only am I a pig of a human being, I can't keep the people that matter to me happy.

another change

I found something out about myself today. I'm overly passive. It makes sense now that I stop and think about it - I'd just never really stopped to think about it before.

I took a workshop at school called "verbal self defense for women." I signed up for it thinking, specifically, that I wanted to be able to deal with my dad better. We fight a lot. I'm told by other people that he loves me, but the only time he really has anything to say to me is when he deems I've done something wrong. Nearly every conversation turns into an argument, and normally I just stay quiet as he slowly shreds my self-esteem, in hopes of having it end quickly. Sometimes I shout back, but he always has the last word. And the end result is always the same. Every fight with him - and there are a lot - makes me feel completely worthless. Which makes me want to hurt myself, and sometimes I do. Whatever anger should be directed to him, inevitably I turn on myself. And I want to try to change that, because that's a messed-up way to react. So I signed up for the workshop.

We talked about passive, aggressive and assertive behaviour; about why we wanted to become more assertive and what was holding us back from doing that. And the more we talked, the more I realized that there have been a lot of times when I've let other people take advantage of me and treat me badly. I don't stop them from hurting me, and when they're done doing that, I get angry at myself for letting them. And eventually I take that out on myself, in one way or another.

I knew I was on the passive side of things; that much was obvious. I guess I just never realized how big that problem was, or how much that's affected my own opinion of myself. I didn't realize that being passive led to feeling worthless.

So here's something else to add to the list of things I want to change.

a new page

“I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I’m 24. I seem normal to most people; I’m good at pretending I’m ok. I’ve had years of practice.

That quote from Sylvia Plath resonates with something in me. If I were to draw a line through my life, and separate out the good from the bad, it would be at 7 years old. Before that, life was all candy and laughter. After that, things got…complicated.