Dear [friend],
After your last email, I thought maybe I put
forward that I had some question or some thing that required a reply. I didn't
really intend as such. I feel its really nice to have someone who is mature and
understanding. It's really rare, almost like, zero people are like that (but not
zero).
I try to be aware of myself, how I look, how I
feel, what I do, how much I weigh...how much I spend! I've noticed lots of
changes, and changes as small as buying skimmed milk and bread on a regular
basis says and means a lot for me from where I once was. I get broken down a
lot, in terms of my confidence, my self-esteem, my ability, my physical strength
and fatigue, my appearance; and now I suppose I just see it as a skill to be
able to get up again, and start from the beginning. I used to have a big beard,
because I didn't shave. While that may sound and seem obvious a thing to say, I
thought shaving was a really difficult daily task to do, so I didn't bother.
Getting up in the morning and having a shower regularly, or shaving, can
sometimes be such a chore. As such, I try to develop new habits. I spent £200 in
one go at buying man cosmetics a couple of months ago. Why? Well, one reason is
that I had the money at the time, and the other reason is that sometimes I make
an excuse for not doing things; oh I could eat healthy but I don't have any
vegetables or fruit. So, now, I regularly buy bananas. I like bananas because
they are quite low calorie and apparently they are called superfoods. I feel
better if I spend my calories on food that is healthy.
As such, I try to avoid making excuses, I bought
loads of shaving blades, shaving cream, proper facial scrubs, clay face mask,
moisturiser, post-shave cream, body butter, anti-wrinkle cream, and a travel bag
to keep it in. Perhaps you may think this is excessive, perhaps it is vain. I
did it so that I won't have an excuse for not shaving, not looking after myself,
not being hygenic, I shall try not to hide behind excuses like 'I don't have any
shaving cream so I can't shave'; because although I would need shaving cream or
blades to shave, it hides a real reason, my lack of will and lack of effort to
get to maintaining myself. I feel quite
self-conscious about my body, and until a few months ago I never really felt
attractive. Being attractive to someone makes me feel a sense of vindication,
like I am at least somehow similar to the rest of the world. I was in the pub
once with these guys talking about girlfriends and I could take part. People
think I am imposing because of the clothes I wear and I went to the gym quite a
bit of late. I feel confident about my body, and although I do definately think
there is room for improvement, I feel that I have come a long way.
I always bought food that either would be eaten
immediately or stuff that I end up never using. I bought food that was easy to
make and eat, because of the obvious reason of being quick and less effort. I
also felt anxious about buying perishable food. I was worried that I wouldn't
eat for a day or so, or not use the milk and it would go off and I would have
wasted my money. It was a hard habit to learn to buy perishable food;
vegetables, milk, fruit, bread etc. Because it was part of my anxiety about
leaving things in the house that I couldn't monitor all the time. Having bad
flatmates in my previous flat was also discouraging. I used to have flatmates
who stole my food and were very unfriendly and it was in an unsavoury university
residence. That made me upset and shyed away from my progress. Im now in a good
place and feel comfortable about buying perishable foods. I also enjoy just
going to sainsburys even if I don't necessarily have something on the list to
get; just to see what is around, or to top up on supplies or see what's on
reduced sale.
What I have learned is that progress can happen,
and it can also be reversed sometimes, its up to me to determine progress or
regress. Whether I am getting better or whether its a difficult time, depends on
what I do. On my personal organiser, I put a task every sunday and wednesday to
make my bed look tidy. I do this because it looks nice in my room to have a tidy
room, and it encourages me to do work and is conducive to doing work and
avoiding procrastinating or thinking about cleaning it up.
I feel like things are progressing in some ways,
but I also don't want things to move too fast. My girlfriend said that she would
love to have kids with me someday and she feels quite excited about the prospect
of having my baby. This did scare me a little bit; she did add the caveat that
she'd want to do it at some point in the future when things settles down in our
own lives and with the world at large. It forced me to think about the future.
Some things force me to think about the future, and I still am not quite there
yet. I want to do the PhD; three or four years it shall take up and I'm fine
with that. I'd feel more confident about my future and thinking about my life if
I had a PhD attached to me, I could apply to academic jobs maybe and be mobile
and have the security that I'll have a wage and might be doing some fun
teaching. I don't think I am ready to have a job, although teaching or research
doesn't really count as work for me. I find it is interesting that you got
married, it doesn't seem so much the ceremony itself that seems poignant, but
the stage in a relationship, and one's own maturity that one is in when they get
married. I'm far from there, and I don't really want to think about the future
in that way, it scares me and makes me anxious.
I do like to think about my thesis;
in that it is very prospective and can relate to all sorts of notions in
philosophy and the history of science. I think about it endlessly. I
think about things in such a way that I feel comfortable just being in silence
or not saying anything and just thinking for hours on end. Apparently most other
people don't really do that, and what I take for granted, people see as unusual.
Sometimes I play on the fact that I am unusual; I can reason about things or
think about things in seconds where people take minutes to contemplate. Loads of
things I have either already thought about before (but I don't rely on my past
judgment, just the past items of consideration), or have thought about things
which are so much harder that most things seem easy. I like to intimidate people
who think they are bigger than me (intellectually), and then I topple them;
medical doctors, managers, non-philosophers, academics. I like to pick on people
who are bigger than me, older than me, earn more money than me, people in
socially, non-disabled, non-minority positions, and showing how my defiance and
strength shines through all the things that hold me back when I compare myself
to their able-bodied selves.
Things have changed, but I'm scared of the future
despite all the improvements. A day can come where all of the things that I have
strived to improve can be undone, if I have a low day, or if I have a bad
trigger, it can ruin and tear through all the good habits and I shall regress to
eating fast food and having a messy room and just lying in my bed all day.
Sometimes it happens, and its hard to get up again.
I opened up to Marie. She was one of the few people,
one of the only people who knows me in person that I really opened up to, that
knew about my purging, about my lonliness, my incarceration, my interests, that
knew me for me. Marie is involved with someone else and she never seemed to tell
me that. I established a really special connection with her and sense of
honesty, and then I just felt it closed up again. I don't really think I can be
that open to someone again; not even with Antonia. I always feel a barrier,
emotional or something, when I'm with her, sometimes it goes down; like the one
time she stayed over at my parents place and she saw me in my childhood home; or
the time that we went to the GUM clinic because the condom burst and we were
both worried about her getting pregnant. Sometimes I think, and I feel this is
the most band-aid of my perspectives on it: being closed to everyone in the
world (including Marie) in some fundamental way isn't a bad thing, if it means
that I can get to be an original and serious philosopher; if I can be a person
who thinks in terms of Bach harmony and counterpoint when sitting in front of
the 48 preludes and fugues doing sight reading, if I am able to just improvise
12-bar blues by learning simple jazz rules, if I am able to read and sort of
understand papers in philosophical logic or metaphysics, if I am not only able
to understand Immanuel Kant's philosophy, but am an original interpreter of his
work and I have a competing and unique interpretation of his theoretical
philosophy, and that I am from a working class, ethnic minority background. That
I have dyspraxia and yet I can play chopin and rachmaninov; that I have anxiety
and I performed a piano recital and often do public speaking; that I have an
eating disorder and yet can be beautiful to one special person, makes me feel
special. Maybe that's the price of being completely alone. Sometimes its worth
it, other times it isn't. My girlfriend sometimes says that it looks like I am a
showoff when I list and catalogue all these eccentric things that I have done;
so I just don't think about it, and I just think about the next step, going to
sainsburys, writing an email, planning the weeks.
Oh did I mention that I created a facebook support
group for depression? I have had 3 interviews about it: one for a psychology
magazine for the USA, one for a student paper, and another for radio 1. I forget
about these random things. I have about 1400 members and I am always keen to
check up if any of them are distressed. I feel like i make some impact to help
others, I'm not a GP or a psychologist, or a healer, but I do just that little
bit.
Honestly, none of my achievements mean anything,
unless I get a PhD. Icing doesn't make a cake, a cake makes a cake!
I've not purged for a while. However, the effects
have made some damage. It feels like my throat is constantly dry and sore all
the time, furthermore, I've lost a lot of my rear molar...I probably need it
reconstructed or something. I want to purge because it feels like I am cheating
myself if I don't vomit. I need to do something drastic and effective to lose
weight and I feel like if I don't purge then I will undo all the weight loss I
have had. I gained a bit of weight after I did excercise and yet Im not sure if
i was 'fatter'; I feel a bit confused because my weight is apparently going down
but I am not looking as different.
Perhaps all of the stuff I said seems random and
irrelevant. Perhaps I shall say it in another way. I attempted to reinvent
myself...and it worked. I still have problems (who ever doesn't), but I feel so
much different now. I feel almost like I am living a fantasy sometimes; that I
am living the fantasy I had in my teens of living in some kind of noble poverty
as an intellectual, that being poor would not make me lazy even if I 'made it',
and that I am pursuing the doctoral dream that I have always had (not to mention
the hair, body, and the girl). Some of these changes are maybe not big, but all
together, the surface makes the ground. It feels like I am a new person and I am
always aftraid of going back to how it was. I put forward some safeguards in
anticipation of this: the most notable thing is that I ditched those bad friends
who were negative or made me who I used to be. I left them behind so that they
can chnage too if they are willing I think that I am a bit of a bastard in that
I abandoned some old friends, but I feel that they were no good for me in light
of where I wanted to be It is protecting myself to be away from certain
people.
What hurts is that some people refuse to see that
there is a new me. A thin me, a me who is different from before. Sometimes I
feel that there are some people who just want me to stay down becaues it makes
them feel better, or it doesn't affect the friendship in a negative way that I
am miserable. I don't like those people. I am moving on, moving forward and I am
struggling enough without those people. I don't like being seen in that light,
that I used to be fat. I hate it. I hate what I used to be. I am now willing to
change, especially as every day is different for me, and the challenges vary.
Thank you so much for reading this, Im not very
good at communicating myself, and no one really knows what's going on. Thank you :)
