Sunday, May 30, 2010

Things are getting strange. I woke up at five til six pm today... Yesterday it was nearly four pm, the day before that nearly three, and the day before that it was 1:55pm.... Why am I sleeping so damn late now? I'm sleeping my entire daytimes away!

I went to bed this morning, approximately 1:07am, at 114.8 pounds due to my own familiar folly. I woke up, 6pm, at 112.4 pounds. I haven't weighed myself in the last thirty-four minutes, but I went outside into the raging heat and probably sweated myself down some... I'll check real fast... Same.

I need to put some really serious thought into fasting again. I've given myself too much leeway, when I thought I was giving myself just enough to get by.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but I took the telltale tea last night, two cups, two separate tea bags. And when I weighed in at 114.8 I had just finished drinking them, so had about 16oz of water in my stomach when I stepped on the scale. Not the smartest way to weigh myself I know.

I made a chart the other day, about projected weight loss if I keep fucking up. Here it is, hopefully it is somewhat accurate:

May 30th = 111.8
May 31st = 112.0 to 110.8
June 1st = 109.6
June 2nd = 110.0 to 109.4
June 3rd = 108.0
June 4th = 108.8 to 108.0
June 5th = 107.0
June 6th = 108.0 to 107.2
June 7th = 106.0
June 8th = 105.0

Conversely, if I fast and lose weight for every one of those ten days (ten days until the 8th when my summer class starts), this is what it might look like:

May 30th = 111.8
May 31st = 110.8
June 1st = 109.8
June 2nd = 108.8
June 3rd = 107.8
June 4th = 106.8
June 5th = 105.8
June 6th = 104.8
June 7th = 103.8
June 8th = 102.8

I could either be 105.0 pounds and have a BMI of 18.6 or I could be 102.8 pounds and have a BMI of 18.2... not that big of a difference, but the difference in my physicality and physical size will be enormous because on of these methods has me eating and failing, thus keeping a certain appearance and non-invisibility, while the other has me fasting constantly and thus sort of disappearing much faster. And that's what I want. I want to disappear. I will try to fast for the next ten days.

Wish me luck,

-Run With Me

p.s. 112.4 pounds

Saturday, May 29, 2010

I woke up this afternoon at around 3pm at 113.8 pounds. I am now 113.0 pounds. The day is being okay to me. I am in a fasting-mode today, meaning I don't feel like consuming and am determined, almost helplessly, not to do so. I wish I hadn't given in the way I did last night with the bread and cheese, but what is done is done. Not something I should dwell over or beat myself up (anymore than I already did) for.

I will be fine. That is what I keep telling myself. In this losing weight, I will be just fine. I will get where I want to be, even if it takes some minor ups and some more reliable downs. The downs (meaning weightloss) will win out because I want them to.

-Run With Me

p.s. 113.0 pounds

For insight into me, A paper-journal post...

Cirque Du Soleil is one of the crowning points of human beauty, fitness and inspiration. They always awe me, make me wish that I was one of them despite the obvious reasons why I never could be.

I never could be because, at almost nineteen years of age, my legs move beneath my like I have Parkinson's and my hands are growing weaker with every day that I open my eyes upon how beautiful this world still is to me. My joints are suffering, despite my having slowed my movements and toned down the daily exercises of walking from building to building and standing up to ward off boredom. My right knee and ankle refuse to take any shocks or abuses, including me hopping over a two inch tall ledge. Stairs are no longer a good idea, they make my entire body shake and pivot in weird directions. My wrists are very strong, just as good as they have always been, but my fingers and palms are letting me down - fingers dislocating at the joints closest to the nails, or otherwise not allowing me to hold my pen for more than two minutes without either dropping it or having to change the way or hand with which I am writing. I can't have that... Writing is my life. Without it, I might crumble.

Ultimately, though... I will not crumble. I will adapt, as I have always adapted. No matter what is wrong surrounding my body's ability to function as it usually has, no matter what is standing in my way this time, no matter who tries to tell me I wont make it (even if that person is myself), I know that I will. I am a survivor of a million and one shipwrecks. I have come to tell my tale. And whether it can no longer be written, or my words pour from my pen like rain, that story will be told. Eventually. When I am ready. When it is complete. And that story is far from complete now. I can feel it. Every day, I can feel it in me - the ability to just stop breathing in my sleep. And I can tell when I'm not ready. And every day so far, despite how bad it has been, I haven't been ready. And I won't be ready. Not for years. And I certainly won't go silently. I will go with an explosion of passion and life that tells the whole world "I'm ready to go, and you will be okay when I am gone. That's a promise." Until I can fulfill that promise, I'm stuck to this world like it's own naked skin. I guarantee you that.

I'm almost nineteen years old and my body thinks it's time to go... My mind and my body have always been very separate beings. My body thinks it's getting decades and decades older than it is. It thinks it might be approaching it's 70s. I can feel that. My back is always sore in ways it didn't used to be, arthritic ways of constant inflammation. My left eye is simultaneously getting worse and getting better - worse in that there is always a headache, redness or incredible itch in or behind it now; better in that it is adapting to life in darkness - my blind spot is much bigger, the rest is colorless and grey, but I know how to purport myself as though I can see everything clearly. I have dizziness and vertigo that are not caused by any sort of blood sugar deficit because they happen at random times when I am completely still, and never when I am standing from sitting, or sitting from lying. I thought that the bus I was on yesterday was rolling backward three times when it was staying completely still at a stop light. I have nausea when I eat or drink too much and I'm sleeping far too much and far too little in alternates. Fatigue, muscle spasms, my neck is very stiff when I tilt my head down or to the left (painfully so). I have the urge to move (as in to walk for miles and miles and never stop), but no physical ability to do it anymore. My body parts fall asleep at random moments, sometimes when pressure is on them, sometimes when they sit still for too long, sometimes in the middle of use. All of these things get worse the hotter it gets outside.

But you know what, that's okay! I have my rambling record of my bodily woes, just in case they all come out to mean something in the end, but I don't mind. Whether I can use my body at all, or not, does not influence my ability to perceive greatness, variety, beauty in this world and in the people in it. Don't get me wrong, I know the extent to which there is evil in this world. But I also know that I refuse to see only that part of the cloud - I refuse only silver lining or black void filled with rain without also perceiving that it is lightning that makes the lining shine and lightning kills. Or water that fills the cloud, and water nourishes all of life on this planet. The only planet we have.

Nothing is ever what it seems. Never is a thing only a thing - it is multifaceted, multicolored, hiding itself, always. I believe that. And I try to see it all.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Somedays, I am a failure. I went to the organic foods store here and bought a giant loaf of bread and muenster cheese. I ate 2 out of 7 pieces of that bread and probably 2 out of eight pieces of the cheese... the cheese alone is about 200 calories. I have no concept of what the bread is. I feel really stupid right now. I was hungry, so I thought I would just go downtown and get a fruit smoothie that I know is only apples, bananas, and a blueberry/pomegranate juice that adds up to about 300 calories. But with this little escapade of mine, this little stupid fucking meal, I probably am up to 1000 calories in it alone. I think the bread by itself was 750 calories or more. It was garlic/parmesan ciabatta (the ciabatta part is a guess).

So... my 111.2 is very likely gone down the drain with the rest of my day. What I'm worrying about now is tomorrow. What will tomorrow look like now that absolutely everyone I know is out of town? I will be bored out of my mind, which makes for a dangerous time of craving food. FUCK! What can I do about this?

I plan to watch some cirque du soleil online. I can write in this blog. Smoke out in the defying heat... play pool... loaf around and eventually get to sleep. I don't know what else to tell you other than, yikes. This doesn't look good.
Fri, May 28 2010
Day Intake Analysis

Food Cals
Pickles, Cucumber, Dill 4
White Tuna in Water - Canned Tuna 100
Classic Yellow - Mustard 0
Strawberries 9
Apples - Gala 75
Total Calories Consumed: 188

I ate probably 150 calories of those listen above. That was the meal I made for myself in my dorm room and very purposefully ate. I don't feel too guilty about it, but I still feel mad at myself. Even though I told myself that I could eat it, I feel mad that I actually did.

I weigh 111.2 as of 6:10 pm tonight. I've been walking out in the sun, very minorly. Mostly just sitting. Then I went to the tobacco parlor that is the one building which allows you to smoke inside. It was a nice day. I spoke to some people from this summer dorm about their military service. I spoke with an old lady on the bus back to this dorm about randomness but brightened my own day and hopefully hers with the opportunity of friendly conversation.

I've been trying to hold friendly conversations with people as much as I see that they are willing. Only really people that I don't know and may never see again. I start with, "How are you doing today?" and a smile. It leads to the most interesting revelations and small happinesses I've ever really had. Some days, I'm glad to reach out, even when I don't feel like doing it. Even when I'm having a bad day. Other days, it doesn't go very well and I'm trying too hard (that is usually the culprit). I prefer to be casual anyway. Have casual conversations that make me happy like poetry over tea.

-Run With Me

p.s. 111.2
Life is hectic. Last night from 9:20pm to 1:06am I trudged it out with a friend. They and I went to a restaurant that is open 24/7 and I had coffee while they ate something spicy and chicken... then we went to a Walmart for the sole purpose of buying plates that we could smash. We drove out into the middle of bumfuck nowhere while talking in the car for hours about our lives and both new and old developments in them. Then we parked, wrote all our shit onto each plate, them using a fantastic code language they came up with when they were three years old and still use with fluency. Me writing in plain english all my woes and angry ravings, words that, for both of us, could never be repeated. Then, we left the car, walked for a ways and smashed each plate to oblivion. The only thing missing was raving, raging yelling from either of us. We couldn't do that because we were in a place where sound travels to human ears from a distance. After that, I stupidly said aloud: "I kinda wanna shake". We went back to the all-night diner and I had to order a shake... turtle carmel nut. I drank probably 5/6ths of it. Then I did the stupid nausea dance because I haven't had anything that rich, sugary or fatty in my stomach for a long ass time and threw up all over the parking lot (not of my own accord, mind you). It was a fucking show to be sure, me retching all over the place and my friend saying: "Dude, are you okay? What the fuck is happening?"... And throughout it all, I feel I can actually say that I am happy I threw it up. I wouldn't have done it on purpose but I would have felt like shit if it had stayed in my stomach for me to absorb and use. I don't know how to count that as fasting though, so on my calendar I marked it as a period during day one in which I failed. Ah, well... such is life.

I weighed myself last night as 112.0 when I got back from these shenanigans... this morning I weighed in again at exactly 112.0. I guess that's what I'm fated to be for most of today... I won't fake my life and say I don't mind, because I do mind. But it is still the lowest weight I have been in a year.

My whole body feels weak this afternoon. I don't know why that is because I didn't do any working out (intentionally or unintentionally)...

More updates to be posted later...

-Run With Me

p.s. 112.0 Pounds

Thursday, May 27, 2010

This is going to take me so much longer if I can't just fast solidly for more than two days...

I was 112.6 this afternoon when I weighed myself (1:55pm). Now, as of 4:06pm, I am 112.0 exactly. I broke my lowest weight in over a year! YAHOOO!

I have come to a conclusion. I will not be able to, at this time, fast for ten days in a row. I will change my course of action, under that assumption, so that I can stop feeling so absolutely ridiculous when I 'fail' at the very end of every Day Two.

New Course Of Action: I will fast for an entire day and 3/4 of the next day. At 10pm on the second day, I will evaluate whether or not I can make it through to day three of fasting, or whether I cannot. Then I will eat healthy things, only, among which are 50 calorie cans of tuna, 80 calorie each apples, strawberries (that are actually enormous - bigger than any I've ever seen before, the size of fists), and 2-5 calorie pickles. Some people say that pickles have no calories, but I don't believe that there is a food in this world that has zero or negative calories in actuality. Argue me if you will... I doubt that anyone is reading this, though.

In that way, I will be alternating fasting one day, eating minor amounts at the very end of the next, and then fasting again. I should be able to lose weight even while eating that way. Not as much as in a total fast, mind you, but enough that I can count it. Enough that I can eventually get to my goal weight of 86 pounds.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Difficulties exist to be surmounted - Ralph Waldo Emerson


There's quite a bit happening around me, amongst my friends who are shutting me out because they are so wrapped up in their own drama. I know that I could help, but they won't let me in to spread a little perspective and logic around. Oh well. I guess I really don't need to get into it anyway. It isn't worth it sometimes to put myself out like that. But if any of them call me up tonight, you better believe I'll be jumping in and trying to do the best I can for them all.


If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may know peace. - Thomas Paine


I don't really know what to write at the moment. I have a few new developments, but none of them really matter. Among them, I now weigh 112.6 pounds. I have taken my telltale tea as well, even though I have nothing in my stomach. I have successfully not eaten for just about two days. I think. I've gotten confused somewhere along the line. I can't remember quite when I started my fast... I'll have to look back over the posts. I'm so distracted by the shitstorms that are happening just beyond my reach.

I should probably go to sleep soon. I know it's only 9pm, but I still feel the need to get some rest. It's been very hectic here. I will revel in the day that classes start up again and I can get some of this shit out of my brain and some of the boredom off of my back and just focus on one thing - college...

Good luck in all your endeavors,

-Run With Me

p.s. 112.6 pounds tonight.
I saw two things today which I wish to chronicle here because they really made an impression on me. The First was an old man. I was sitting, writing away and smoking in a tobacco shop and across from me, one table diagonally to my right, was this man who moved more slowly than I've ever seen any human being attempt to move before. He rose from his table, reached out, shoved his wallet into his pocket and by that time five minutes (roughly) had passed. He had to be nearing or in his 90's. He struck me as the sloth embodiment of human age.

The second occurrence was actually a conversation I had with a man who must have been in his early 30's who was partially paralyzed on his left side. We got to talking and he told me that when he was 19 years old, he had a hemorrhage in his brain that caused him to go into a coma for two weeks and wake up completely paralyzed and unable to speak. Now he can walk on his own with only a brace on his left calf-to-toe and a shuffle. He carries his left arm without any coordination or proof of much control over it, yet still he is a functioning human being with what seemed to me (at least at the moment) to be a very peaceful, optimistic attitude.

I am very close to the lowest weight I have been in over a year. That weight is, embarrassingly, 112.2 pounds. I have not weighed myself since 113.6 pounds this morning so I may actually be in the 112's right now - I plan to take a nap and weigh myself after. I also may not have lost any weight at all. That is a distinct possibility that I am keeping in the front of my mind so that I am not disappointed when I finally do weigh myself later.

I realize that it has been a very long time since I have been in the double digits weight-wise. I am looking forward to being there again. I think I have tracked that last time to being January and early February of 2009. There is a lot that I used to be or have or do that I am not or haven't had or done in over a year. I think in this last stretch of time between then and now so much has changed that my life now is practically unrecognizable as the same life I breathed then. I don't even know where to begin to track all of the changes. But I can feel them now, when I come across something familiar that is not a part of my life anymore. That sticks out to me, and is even sometimes painful - even when that familiar thing was ultimately the worst thing for me. I still miss what I have lost... I don't know what I have lost though.

Sitting in that tobacco parlor a couple of hours ago, I had this overwhelming sense that I was losing something at that very moment. Something worth grieving over. Something that I will spend the rest of my life missing and longing for. But I don't know what that could possibly be!? I was just sitting there, writing. I wasn't doing anything, making any decisions, changing my life in any radical way. I was simply feeling an awful, charbroiling, conflagration of grief absolutely booming in my sternum. I don't want that again. I've lost and grieved so much in my life, and still do - I really don't need anything fresh to grieve for. There is only so much I can afford to feel before my body is too full of it all and it has nowhere to go but out.
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you have conquered human nature.
-charles dickens


Life is complicated. I want to enumerate on here a promise I made to a friend, who may someday read this blog. I want her to be reassured that I meant what I told her. So, to T. I do plan on fasting for three sets of ten days, however, there is a huge caveat to this decision. If I start to feel as though anything is going wrong - medically - I will stop fasting. I will eat, no matter how uncomfortable that makes me or how much I really don't want to. T is dealing with an incredible amount of shit that keeps piling and piling up. The last thing I want to do is add any more worry or pain to that load. So I won't. To the best of my abilities, I wont.

On another note, I woke up at 113.6 pounds this morning (11:30am). I don't have any urge to consume anything at the moment. That is a blessing, seeing as this is day two, that wretched day I haven't been able to get my ass over for the last 6 or so days of attempted fasting. I've gotten through day one and failed on day two, it's been like a black-and-white-tiled floor, one colored tile after the other, for those six days. That's an annoying fact and I don't want to repeat the pattern today. I need to succeed - for my own sanity.

I hope nobody minds, but I want to put some pictures on this blog - in this post. I'm going to try to figure out how to do it so that they are covered for the casual viewer and then I will add them. To warn you, they will very likely be of food. I'm having an incredible fascination with the most beautiful types of foods and things lately. I may also include some small photos of things that made me smile in the last couple of days.

-Run With Me

Frozen Bananas blended with water and vanilla to make a delicious, healthy Ice Cream!





Lemon Cupcakes With Lavendar-Infused Lavendar-colored Frosting...




Coffee cake layered with gateau, coffee beans in a saucer, cup of coffee, chocolate/espresso candies topping the cake... delicious.




p.s. 113.6 pounds, just to keep count down here in case this is the only part you are looking at. I have no idea how I'm losing this much weight this fast. But I won't question it. Absolutely not. =D

3:30am

It's 3:30 in the morning and I am about to go to sleep. I just wanted to update that I am fully and totally exhausted. I spent the night playing games (both question games and board games) with friends at their various houses and apartments. I went through the process of sorting through all of their dramatic bullshit to get to the good parts of the night. But there were some good parts. I feel satisfied, happy that I went and a little sad because the night was long and unproductive and only placed me exactly in the center of quite a few messes.

There isn't really much to say this deep into the night about how I'm doing or who I am. I have no intellectual innuendos for you or gems of knowledge you can glean. I just have me. At 3:30 in the morning. Utterly tired to the far reaches of even my bone marrow.

I'm going to go to bed now. I'll say more in the morning and probably be more coherent in doing so.

-Run With Me

p.s. 114.2 pounds at this wee hour of night.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Today will be the start of my first ten days. Yesterday, I fasted successfully, but this morning from 12am to 1:30pm I consumed. The second day always holds me by the hair and beats me with a club of nails. I need to figure out how to stop that from happening again. I will be doing my research and racking my brain to figure myself out enough to fast the way I used to. The longest fast I ever did got me to 98 pounds after 15 days. It was meant to be a 16 day fast but I started to have some medical difficulties so I stopped.

I have literally two nickels to rub together right now. That should help me not to be able to eat. I do have a little bit of consumables here in my home... dried cherries... peanut butter - those are the things I failed on last night. Got me from the 115.4 pounds that I had reached by nighttime to the 116.2 that I woke up as.

I'm going to start my fast as of 2:30pm today, so that I have a midday start time and a midday end time. I am also doing it this way because I woke up about half an hour ago and I don't think I should count the time that I was sleeping.

I'm making some telltale tea - that's what I'll call it because it's a horror story on my digestive system - and drink that, let it have it's horrific effects on my body, and then go to meet up with my friends for an evening party that we decided to have before the school year ever ended.

I'm going to do my research and soul-searching now. I will post my results when I have some.

-Run With Me

p.s. I guess I lied that this wasn't going to be weight-obsessed... but it shouldn't always be that way. We'll see.
116.2 pounds

Monday, May 24, 2010

Who Am I?

I am a monster tracking the footprints of an eating disorder through the dark. I have an ED-NOS, am 117.6 pounds (as of this morning) loosing my arrow at an 86 pound target that is red only around the edges and invisible in the center. I am grieving for the loved ones I have lost, five of them on five separate occasions - they are not my family members but my best friends and my lovers from a past age. I am afraid - I have 2 very close friends now whom I cannot lose and stay sane. I accept that we are all in danger of dying and it makes me terrified for their lives. I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which manifests itself in various uncomfortable ways. I am the youngest in my family and in my group of friends and acquaintances. I am the youngest of everyone I surround myself with and yet I've had more experiences in my life than anyone I've met so far... I don't want to be this person. I don't want to be an 'old soul' or 'broken', a 'survivor' or 'tested'. These are phrases others who know me sometimes use. I want to be able to live a boring life; in order to do that I needed to have lived a boring life. I'm still so young. I'm trying to have my childhood now. I can still be innocent! i can have that, right? Everyone still has some innocence left in them. I believe that.

I'm sitting out in the sun righ tnow, in 90-something degree heat, writing this in my paper journal that I finally gave in and decided to keep. I have tasked myself with beign out here for three hours to try to lose just a little bit more weight today than I might otherwise.

Today is Day One of my first (out of three) ten day fast. Between each stretch of ten days, I give myself two days to consume up to 1000 calories of healthy proportions of healthy, nutrient-filled foods. That is, to clarify, 1000 calories total for both days. Then I will fast for ten days, take two, ten days, and hopefully be at my goal weight: 86 pounds.

I DO NOT want to make this blog into an obsessive weight-counting diatribe. I want this blog to actually be worth something to someone. I will fill you in on the important things that can and do happen in every day of my life. I will let you know my Theories and Principles of Life which have saved my life and others' lives. I will hopefully figure out who I really am and who I want to be. I will make life goals on this blog, and I will pursue those goals with updates on my progress here.

What can you expect from me? Pain. Relief from boredom. Entertainment. The occasional witty phrase and perhaps a gem or two of unexpected knowledge.

Having said all of the above, I will recap this way: I am a young man with ED-NOS. But that is only one way to describe me. I will talk about most aspects of my life here. I want to be very clear when I say, please comment to your hearts content. This means that I need you to know that I WILL NOT MIND insensitive comments when they are made either with a grain of truth to them or with your wholehearted belief in them. If you are sending mean comments with no purpose to them other than to sting someone else for your own entertainment, give up now. You won't get any respect from me.



-Run With Me

p.s. I am now 116.0 pounds (3pm). This is how I will comment on my weight usually - as a small post-script at the bottom of a post.
"You have to judge by what is dead." - Sylvia Plath

Dear Orchestrated Self-Consumption,

If I breathe more deeply, will I survive on Nothing longer? I want snow. Not only that; I want to go places in the snow – walk a white strawberry field or traverse snow-slushed roofs and people-watch from that perch. I want to jump and feel the air rushing past my face as I plummet into a snowbank where I will sink, dissolving the snow with my own heat, until I'm drowning and have to drink my way out or freeze into a Popsicle for some bear to eat.

“Can I be a cold-weather sunshine addict and substitute warm rain for all these smarmy habits I've picked up, one by one, to caress? I ask because I am at once an injector, a smoker, a snorter and a popper. I do what's for pleasure, for forget, for a griefless night.”

There I was, a heroin addict. I was a junkie who didn't think that junkies existed but still had the theory:

the only person who likes a junkie is another junkie.


I used for six years, shooting into the backs of my knees after my first track-mark in the crook of my right arm. Then October 23rd, 2009 happened and I came clean. Haven't used heroin, alcohol, any illegal substances whatsoever since that date.

I want to hit the road and experience more in every day life. I feel I am in stasis. How could I have gotten here, this place that is the same as every day before it with only minor variations? How could I have let the stillness take me over, without even attempting to resist? And what can I do to fix this problem? I feel I am a failure. Already. I have failed myself. But if only I knew how I have done it, I would know how to fix it, how to avoid it in that place and time they call the future.

I see myself as reactionary, a self-preservationist with a knack for the more dangerous side of life.

I've come to some conclusions about life. That every experience is a cloudburst of chemicals released in some jitter and float across the synapses in the brain. That I care about that fact.

I have no sense of Weltanschauung. I don't need it.

Welt·an·schau·ung /ˈvɛltˌɑnˌʃaʊʊŋ/ [velt-ahn-shou-oong]–nounGerman.
a comprehensive conception or image of the universe and of humanity's relation to it.


Am I symptomatic of an age?

And if I don't eat,
do the incomplete protein chains go to the liver to be converted into glucose, forming energy from nothing?


Primary realization:

I am still. There is a tenseness in me that speeds my heart, the blood pumps in my temples, in my ears, around my brain. I feel it. And yet I am starving and it is numb. Not me. I'm not numb. The world attached to me, a limb, is numb. I can't feel it.

Who Am I? That is what you are all wondering. I will have to find a way to answer this question, soon, without submitting myself to that tendency to lie about the little things that no one cares about to begin with.... I have that in me. It kills almost everything good around me. In this, Honesty is my policy. But Honesty takes time.