Monday 26 April 2010

Some days I'm still fighting to walk towards the light

"Dreaming, dreaming of how it's supposed to be
But this tunic's spinning around my arms and knees
I feel like I'm disappearing, getting smaller every day
But when I open my mouth to sing I'm bigger in every way."
- 'Tunic (Song for Karen)' by Sonic Youth

For the first time in years I cried over something I've eaten. Actually, full-on, sobbing, running to the bathroom and getting everything ready to throw up before slapping myself around the face (metaphorically) about being so bloody stupid!

I have cried binging to throw up, I have cried after binging and not throwing up and I have cried when clothes haven't fitted or when I've gained weight but it has been long time since I have cried whilst eating something perfectly acceptable and 'normal'.

I am not that person anymore. I am not. I am not a seven stone kid who gets weighed and poked and prodded and needles stuck into every other day. I am not a 'client' on a psyche ward or EDU. I am nearly twenty fucking three and a student and a writer and I care about things over than weighing under a hundred pounds and being the skinniest girl in the street. I believe in things. I have friends who I am able to love and appreciate and not be a bitch to. I go out and get drunk and fall into and out of bed and do exciting, alive things rather than waiting around to die things. I eat and I drink like a 'normal person'. I don't buy my clothes from the kiddies section or else borrow my eleven year old nieces.

I am not someone who cries and gets hysterical over a bowl of fucking cereal.

"Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there." - Oscar Wilde

"This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone." - Chuck Palahniuk

"Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same." - Francesca Lia Block

"This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It’s hard to understand, when you are sitting there in your chair, having breakfast or whatever, that giving it up is stronger than holding on, that "letting yourself go" could mean you have succeeded rather than failed. You eat your goddamn Cheerios and bicker with the bitch in your head that keeps telling you you’re fat and weak: Shut up, you say, I’m busy, leave me alone. When she leaves you alone, there’s a silence and a solitude that will take some getting used to. You will miss her sometimes...There is, in the end, the letting go." - Mayra Hornbacher

"And you know that if anyone had a clue how wrong it felt to be sober, they wouldn't dream of asking you to stay that way. They would say oh geez, I didn't know. It's okay for you. Do that mound of cocaine. Have a drink. Have 20 drinks. Whatever you need to do to feel like a normal human being, you do it. And boy I did it. I drank and I snorted. I drank and snorted. I drank and snorted. And I did this day after day, day after day, night after night. I didn't care about the consequences because I knew they couldn't be half as bad as not using. And then one night something happened. I woke up. I woke up on a sidewalk and I had no idea where I was. I couldn't have told you what city I was in. And my head was pounding and I looked down and my shirt is covered in blood. And as I'm lying there wondering what happens next I heard a voice. And it said man, this is not a way to live. This is a way to die." - 28 Days

Sunday 18 April 2010

Angels for everyone

"And if you were with me tonight
I'd sing to you one last time
A song for a heart so big
God wouldn't let it life"
- Jimmy Eat World

It's been two years since the beautiful Elin Julie's suicide but not a single second that she's not missed or thought about. I feel so terribly sad, for all the times she said she was worried about me. I'm thinking of London and how much of a selfish bitch I was being so stupid and ill and inflicting myself on beautiful, wonderful people. I am thinking of my best friend of that time, an ex SH member, who pretty much dropped me as soon as she got what she wanted out of me. I am thinking of how different I look now, at my highest weight that technically makes me overweight and how people must be thinking I've let myself go or am greedy or have no self-control. Stupid thoughts. I am thinking of all the friendships I've fucked up through being ill, either not eating or just being drunk and drugged and not in control and making shit situations both for myself and people who I love. I am thinking that I don't deserve forgivness.

Most of all I am thinking that the world has lost someone truly beautiful, genuinely kind and altogether wonderful. My heart is with everyone that loved her and is thinking of her today. All we can do is make her proud.

Sunday 4 April 2010

When does a person who writes get to call themselves a writer?

"Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary."
- Kahlil Gibran

This is my answer to a question that was raised on a forum I frequent about the difference between making works of art and being an artist indetifying as such.

I consider myself to be a writer. I actively sumbit work for publication (whether it ends up published or not is besides the point) and I am a student of Creative Writing.

I don’t however consider myself to be a photographer, even though I take photos and sometimes like what I see, I see it a lot more as a hobby, something that I enjoy to do, rather than as part of my indentity.

If I didn’t write I don’t think I would be the same person. I know that sounds incredibly pretentious but I can’t help it. I came to writing firstly out of a need for some sort of healthy expression and then later as pleasure and then eventually it become something that I couldn’t see myself without.

Whether I ever end up published isn’t really the issue, I’m a poet because I want and need to write poems.

I think that if you believe in what you're doing than you are an artist, some people can paint but not want to be artists, same as some people can add up but don't want to be accountants (does that make any sense?) it's about what you feel you are or atleast what you would feel was missing from your indentity if you were without it.

Fame and money and publication are not the only measures of success, sometimes it's as simple as touching one person emotionally, bringing them joy with what you've created. Even if that person is yourself.

Thursday 1 April 2010

Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual.

“For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun. Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian.”
- Mabel Maney

I need a girlfriend more than I have ever needed anything in my life. I need to know, to feel, that I am attractive to women. I honestly, 100% do not give a shit about being found attractive by men, it means nothing to me, it's cheap, it's all about the fuck, I can't cope with it and I don't want it at the minute. Maybe I don't want it at all. I still find men attractive but I have no desire to be intimate with them. Fuck having a 'what does this mean sexuality crisis', that's not my style, I don't care who I want to love I just want someone of the female variety to fucking love me.

I feel ugly.