Diary Post #776
I’ve been trying to do some form of exposure therapy to develop an eating disorder that will finally make me skinny. I started following a bunch of mentally ill teens who are anorexic online. I'm spying on them, hoping that maybe I'll start to want what they want.
It's a lot of girls; they post before and after pictures of celebrities who have lost weight. They put their BMIs in bio. There’s a ton of abbreviations I have to solve: edtwt, shtwt, ana, wl, sw, cw, gw, ugw. It goes way beyond thinspo, some girls like to post deathspo.
Everything is pink with ribbons. Brandy Melville, Hello Kitty, Shein, Kpop, Sanrio. They post pictures of big milk teas and cakes. They make threads on how to avoid eating.
They are all complaining, they all live at home. All of them are under 25. I am thinking they either grow out of it or die before then. Most profiles I click on say 15 years old, not based in the US.
I guess I could do this. I already have an app where I log my meals. If I don’t log them, I compulsively write them in my notes app. Weird fat drink, weird fat biscuit, crispy rice bowl, milk tea latte.
Priorities change, people change. My grocery list is just ingredients now. I don’t remember how it was to have emptiness in a day. If I have freedom, I get nervous. Understanding your parents feels Faustian after so many years trying to do it all differently.
I realize I haven’t written in awhile; I wonder if anyone is sad about that. I’ve felt hollow, uninteresting, but my brain keeps chanting: what does it matter if I'm unhappy, if nobody even knows? It’s all for nothing, if I don’t turn it into something.
Something, okay. So, I write more.
I get angry at the guy screaming and walking around all over the train on my commute. People outside this city love to talk about mental illness and poverty and what it does to people, but I think a lot of them would be less empathetic if they were held hostage by a freak on public transport most every day. If they had to hear some weird black guy do a fake Jamaican accent while yelling the N word in your face over and over again - and you can’t even glare because that might piss him off, that might set it all off. And then you’re just CCTV footage that gets posted online. You’re gone too soon. You’re no, she wouldn’t have wanted her death to be politicized. Well, I kind of do. I’m in the process of writing a very loose digital will and that’s probably the first thing I'll put, as a disclaimer. You can use my death to feed your ego, and you can use my death to validate your agenda.
I think maybe we judge normal people too harshly, weirdos too well. All the time, people get angry at me for faux paus, opinions, canceled plans. And it’s like, you know I could just buy a gun, right?
I don’t, though, I buy iced coffee from La Colombe. I buy a 100% virgin wool scarf from SSENSE. I use Klarna, ShopPay, and Chase points. You could look down on me for those purchases or you could just nod your head, agree I need these things. Awful, precious things. Agree I am actually the best. Agree there’s no fault here, must have been the wind! Say it now: there is nothing wrong with you, Maddy - I agree that you need more things, less people.
I am sleeping and he is painting. Kind of painting, he says it's not painting as much as drawing, smudging, coloring.
He starts to make breakfast and I hear all the breakfast noises. I love it, not because I like somebody making me breakfast (which I do), but because he will add a surprise. He is always surprising. Like, he could be making bacon and eggs, but he’s going to add something else. When he does things, he’s always happy to show me.
Once we agreed on a picnic, he came to the park with everything made for us. He pulled out every item he made with excitement, which made me excited.
He had a sort of candelabra he was very proud of. He kept trying to light it, but it was windy and dark. I think he was a bit disappointed about the fancy candle, but I was so happy. If he gave me pennies, I’d put them in a special jar. If he gifted me mold, I'd let it grow all over my room.
It’s like warm sunshine, if he smiles - it makes me want to smile, too. I used to write partly so he could see what I’m thinking; I don’t always want to say what I think. Right now, I think about sitting at a desk for thirty years, getting varicose veins and brain tumors from my computer. I am frantically googling best careers, but I’m 27. I have no skills, I’m already fucked.
I text him, he says
well it’s not the time to solve it
and maybe it isn’t.
