Get Pretty Or Die Trying

I just want to say something.

I’ve received a lot more messages because of all this than I ever expected to get. I read them all. If someone is going to spend the time and effort to say something to me, a complete stranger, then the very least I can do is give up a minute or two of my time to hear them out.

I’ve heard almost everything. Hate. Help. Stories. Preaching. People looking for advice. People giving it.

But this last one, it’s sticking with me. Maybe it’s the timing, or maybe it’s just the words themselves. But it’s sticking with me.

Someone else who has gone through this, because if I have learned nothing else from all this, I’ve learned that I’m not alone. And neither are you.

But this person, this anonymous person, they struck a chord with me. I thought I had heard it all before, all the pleas for me to stop, the reasons why I should. None of them have swayed my stubborn mind.

Until this.

Maybe she (I assume she, because of the parting name) has taken the time to figure out what words would get through my thick skull, or maybe she can just relate more so than I thought anyone could. Regardless, she did.

See, I have a lot of issues, far beyond just the diabulimia. I’m insecure, I self-harm, I battle depression, I struggle with suicide.

But she made me realize something. I don’t want to die, not this way, not like this. I’m unhappy with my life, that’s for sure, but maybe turning to diabulimia isn’t my solution; it’s part of the problem. My life is miserable because that’s how I’m making it.

I can change. I have the power to change. I want to change.

So thank you, for anonymously telling your story and speaking my twisted language in a way that I could actually take to heart. Because I don’t want to keep doing this. I want to be happy, and I think the first step towards that wondrous concept is taking care of myself.

I’m not going to find happiness in skipped insulin or being deathly thin. I’m not entirely sure where I’ll find happiness or satisfaction, but I at least know that I wont find it here.

So today I’m going to start a new chapter, a new challenge: taking my insulin, keeping myself healthy. Today I’m going to start living again.

Well, I’m going to fight like hell to try.

I look in the mirror and I’m starting to like what I see.

A flat stomach, arms that don’t jiggle, no double chin. My body has shrunk to a much better size.

But I can’t stop. If I go back to taking my insulin, taking care of myself, I’m afraid the weight will simply creep back on. Slowly but surely, an unstoppable force.

Yet, I look in the mirror and I see the damage.

The bags under my eyes, the yellowish tone to my skin. The way it’s hard to breathe sometimes, how everyday life exhausts me.

I used to care about my appearance; that’s what started this. Sure, I used to be overweight, but I looked okay. I knew how to dress well for my body, how to do my makeup to highlight the few things i liked. I always looked put together and polished.

Now, I’m thinner but I don’t care as much. I’m too exhausted to go through the effort of putting on makeup. My clothes don’t even really fit anymore, so I wear baggy shirts and baggy jeans. I look rough. Thin, sure, but pretty? Not really.

I look more like a cancer patient than the beautiful girl I wanted to become. All this damage, this stress, and it doesn’t even seem worth it.

Maybe I would have been better off just accepting a bigger size, instead of destroying my body, sacrificing years of my life, and still not finding happiness in the mirror.

Maybe this was a mistake, one I can’t take back.

The damage is done.

I don’t want to stop. I want to go further, push this even more.

I want to waste away until there’s nothing left. Become so small that I actually disappear.

No one sees how sick am; they just praise how good I luck when I’m losing weight. They don’t see that their encouragement is feeding the beast. They don’t see that their words are making it more apparent that they see nothing wrong. They don’t see that I’m drowning in this and I’m getting tired of trying to stay afloat.

Maybe if I push it far enough they’ll have to admit that maybe I’m not okay. Maybe I’m having a hard time. Maybe someone will realize that I’m not going to save myself. That I’m falling and there’s no one there to catch me, or even slow down the fall.

But I can’t count on them. I can’t count someone else saving me when I can’t even save myself.

The worse it gets, the more I’m afraid to tell anyone, because it’s just too much to handle. So I take it out on myself, and then it’s just another reason not to involve anyone else.

It’s just a matter of time before there’s nothing left of myself to destroy.

Tick. Tock.

I’m tired. So tired, all the time. When I’m awake, all I want to do is crawl into bed, and once I’m in bed I never want to leave.

I don’t have the energy to deal with life. It’s taking all of the little energy I have just to keep up this facade of being fine so that no one realizes what’s actually going on with me.

My friends, they don’t understand diabetes. Most of them don’t even realize the difference between type one and type two, let alone how my feeling constantly ill could be connected.

Only one friend is even familiar with diabulimia. But not from me, at least not knowingly. He said he had two diabetic friends in high school, one who kept strict control and another who abused diabetes to lower his weight for sports. This friend, he doesn’t even realize that there’s a term for that abuse, and that he knows someone else with it.

But maybe I could actually tell him. I’ve toyed around with that thought, explaining things to him and maybe I could have someone to talk to, to confide in. Someone to help, to make sure this doesn’t kill me.

I’m just afraid to. I love this friend though, he’s my family. Well, we’re in the same professional fraternity and share a pledge father, so he really is my brother. And I love him, and trust him.

I just don’t trust myself. I don’t trust that I won’t scare him off or be too much to handle. Because while he is family, and I know that he is always willing to help me, this isn’t his problem; it’s mine.

I created this mess for myself. Me. Alone, no help. I did this. I am responsible, I take full blame. I was the one who was idiotic enough to begin this downward spiral, so I’m the only one obligated to deal with the consequences. I’m the one who has to get myself out of this or die trying.

And I don’t mean that last bit in a melodramatic way. I mean it in a very real way. In that, if I keep this up for too long, this diabulimia will kill me. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, maybe not for a few years. But every day this diabulimia is bringing my death closer and closer. It’s speeding up my life while I’m simply wasting away.

I realize that this is no way to live. This is a sad excuse for a life. But it’s all I have right now, and I’m so tired. I don’t know if I have the energy left to save myself.

It’d be so much easier to just give up.

It’s hard for me to believe that anyone finds me attractive, because I see myself everyday and I have yet to find anything that would lead me to the conclusion that I’m attractive. It’s absurd.

Yet some people seem to believe it. Like now; there’s this boy. He’s a genuinely nice guy, and funny and sweet and cute. He says he likes me, and he’s done a good job of proving it by always being around. But when he starts to call me ‘cute’ or ‘beautiful’ I cover up his mouth or laugh and call him insane.

I can’t believe those words. Because I’m not cute. I’m not beautiful. I’m me.

It doesn’t matter how persistent he is, or how clearly I can see that he believes what he’s saying. I don’t believe him, and I don’t think I can.

I’m incapable of relating the concepts of beauty and attractiveness to myself. They just don’t fit together right.

It doesn’t help that his ex-girlfriend was gorgeous. She was tall and lean, smart and tan.

Very different from me. Short and fat. Idiotic and pale. Insane and unstable. A cutter. A failure. A diabulimic. A lost cause. A waste of life. Nothing more than suicide waiting to happen.

I don’t know what he sees in me. I truly wish I could understand it, but I don’t. I’m starting to think that maybe this is an eating disorder. Or rather, that I actually have it and I can’t just flirt with bad ideas without getting caught up in their snare.

I don’t know though. Because I really am unattractive. It’s not a distortion in the mirror—I’m fat. Thunder-thighs, cellulite, pot-belly, fat rolls. I’m not an attractive girl. So maybe it isn’t a ‘disorder’, it’s just the sharp truth.

This guy, he can’t really like me. I must be just a rebound from his beautiful ex. Yeah, there’s no way I could mean more than just a rebound.

So I guess it’ll be fun while it lasts, and there’s always cutting and diabulimia to help me through when reality crashes down.

Some of my friends started a ‘no-carb’ diet this summer, and they’re still on it. It’s all they’ll talk about it seems. And I just sit there quietly while they go on and on about losing weight.

At least, I sit there quietly for as long as I can. Because this last time, I got sick of it and told them that if they hate their diet so much, why not quit or find a better one. Then one friend pointed out that I too have lost a decent amount of weight recently, and he asked what diet I was on.

As a reflex I said that I wasn’t on one. But that’s not really true I suppose. If diabulimia counts as a ‘diet’. So why they’re challenging themselves, I’m slowly wasting away and killing myself in the process.

But in a way I still felt almost superior as they talked about foods they could no longer eat. Because I can eat whatever I want and as much as I want and still watch the weight melt away.

But I can also feel the exhaustion, the lower quality of life, the constant aches. I know that I’m killing myself but i just don’t care. I don’t care.

I want to feel miserable, because at least that’s feeling something. At least that’s an actual sensation, and not just a numb nothing. I’m trying to get away from the self harm, so I’m choosing internal damage instead. I’ll kill myself from the inside out. And at least this has the added benefit of making me more attractive. Or at least less unattractive.

Cause I don’t care how bad this is for me. I don’t care how much I get hurt. I don’t care if I end up in the hospital again. I just want to feel something. Feel alive. Feel human. Even if that feeling sucks, or hurts, or is miserable. At least it’s something to hold onto.

It’s been a while. It’s been a whole year and then some since this all started. So much has happened since I began, so much has changed and yet, I feel like I’m stuck in the same place.

I’m not taking my insulin, but it’s not even an active habit, I’ve just stopped caring. I no longer bolus. I’ve kept my basal rates the same so that I don’t get too sick, but I’ve just stopped actively caring.

I can’t even remember the last time I bolused, or tested my blood sugar. All I know is that it was more than three months ago.

I think that I’ve just given up. I’m not doing this to lose weight or be attractive. I’m doing this because I want an out. I know I’m going to die someday, and I’m just helping that day arrive a bit sooner.

I’m just tired of it all. Tired of life I suppose. Now, I’m not actually suicidal, at least not in the traditional sense. I’m not going to do anything to kill myself immediately, because I can’t put my parents through that, not again. And I don’t want people to think that I merely gave up.

Except that I have. That’s exactly what’s happening. I have such apathy for life. I used to have this immense zest for life. I used to be always laughing, playing, feeling. Now I just feel numb; it’s like on the inside I’ve already died.

I don’t want to be dead. But I don’t want to be alive either. I don’t want to be stopped and I don’t want to be saved. I just want to fade away into obscurity. I want to disappear, to cease to exist.

I want nothing. I crave nothing. Not in the sense of nothing being a lack of things I could want, but that I want the idea of nothing itself. The limbo of being less than even a memory, wiped clean from the world. Solitude from even myself.

And so, I’m not going to act on this. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not actively trying to kill myself except that I’ve also stopped trying to keep myself alive. I’ve given up control and just waiting for death to take the lead from life.

So maybe this path started out as something much different, but it’s changed everything. I wonder sometimes if I would be in this state now if I had simply never started the diabulimia in the first place.

But who knows? Maybe the diabulimia kept the apathy at bay until apathy could take control over everything else.

But then again, who cares?