FATARMY!

Well we all know there isn’t one.  Do you feel my pain?  I hope so.  I am at my wits end, this lark seems to consuming me and my non existence in this world.  I can’t seem to make headway and if someone offered me diet crack, I’d fucking well take it.  I can feel time running out, every single day I can feel it trickle away and there seems to be little I can do about it.  My neck is stiff, my bones ache constantly and although I am eating healthier than I have done in ages and have cut out most of the things which I thought were the bad guys, I am still struggling to shift this meat.

I can hear the whining, the moaning daily in my head.  I can feel the loneliness and heart ache inside me.  I can see the pain in my face the darkness in my eyes, the life being kissed away and as I whisper to myself ‘it will all be alright soon’ the breath snuffs the final sparkle out and I feel there is nothing left. I don’t know if you will understand this, or know just what I’m on about  What I’;m hoping is that if you come across this that you will feel the numbingly boring constant process of tredding mud that I go through every single day.  To be me is to live your life in a box, only coming up for air when you have to.  My life is dull and empty - I know that!  I live it.  I am changing it, but nothing seems to change very fast.  Since January I have lost two stones, or so i believe.  My mind is so rotten now I can’t remember the smallest details, I rely on scrawling inside cupboard doors to remind me and the amount of stretch marks around my gut.

I want to feel human again, I want to feel alive and feel that this is all worth it.  The more the whispers get louder the more I see that if I can’t change this, then there really is no point.  I’m not the type to look to suicide for comfort - if that’s what you could call it.  But, I do wonder why I am here because this isn’t living.  If I feel this way then how on earth do people who weigh 400lb’s feel?  I can’t imagine, although I was nearly there myself.  I find it hard to express what I mean, I fill myself with food to stop the thinking process, I know that.  I was this close to calling for a take away the other night, but I stopped myself thinking of the guilt that would ensue after eating.  But eating good things hasn’t shifted the main bulk of this crap and I shudder to think just how many more years of this I will have to put up with.  Yes, its all in my head and to find the button and turn it off is obviously harder than i thought it would be.  Even the CBT didn’t work, but then really - what CBT was actually given during that time.  I’m tired.  I can’t give up.

It’s 12.59am, I’m 44 years old and listening to Aretha at home having spent the evening clearing through cupboards, wardrobes and chucking out stuff that has cluttered my life now for many many years.  I watched a little of Jools Holland Hoot ‘lets just bring in all my mates kids to sing songs they can’t even sing properly and who are pretty much a talentless bunch of brats who have jumped on the backs of their parents spine wagon spines’ Nanny.  I got bored pretty quickly.  So it is back to Aretha and contemplating what 2009 holds.

One thing I seem to have realized is that it’s basically up to me.  Now, I can go into this year not trying at all as in previous years, or I can try half heartedly, or I can give it a damn good shot and to the things which will make me change and be happy!  Now we all know it’s easy said than done, but somehow, on the 1st of January this year, I feel like something is brewing.  There is something else inside me and its been growing now for quite a few weeks.  I doubt it has anything to do with Guy Morgan at the clinic for eating disorders, or with me having digested a whole series of fat March, whom I believe had to use such a shite title because they realized that Fat Army was already taken! HA!

I know I’m bored, on a really big level and am ready for a change. Trouble is when I feel like this normally it means something big, and the biggest thing I can do is to change me, change my shape, change my outlook… I can only take a few steps at a time, and stop battering myself when things don’t go my way. I have watched people ride off the back of my hard work in the past, time and time again and some, who are still happy to do it. I find that amusing but also frustrating as I know what was given out and which also left me worn down and low. But I guess I cannot focus ont hat crap anymore. I can see the enefit of what I did in the past, I can also see the damage it did to me, someone with a pretty fucked up ed already. Its loads of things, loads of stuff which rears its head from the past, but not as much as it used to. But I can sit around contemplating this shite for the rest of my life. It just won’t get me any further, and I will make the bitter and twisted pills joke true, completely. It won’t even be tongue in cheek anymore.

I don’t want to end up lik that. Just like I don’t want to end up thinking about death every day, feeling ill every day, looking in the mirror and turning away quickly every day. I want to sing loudly about my ideas and have someone hear me call, and see how great they are and give me an opportunity. I am giving myself an opportunity to change and I know once I begin then all those ideas had can become reality and change my life for the better and alongside that, change the lives of people I love.

I feel out of breath, not because I’ve been running about like an arse, but because I have just lost that gusto needed in the past to realize the things which are important. 44 yers old and still living in darkness after nearly 15 years is not good for anyones soul. Literally, I have lived in my flat in the dark, blinds down, rarely opened unless pushed. In the early days it wasn’t so bad, but in the latter years, last 6 or so, its been pretty much in darkness. I’m at work more than home, so I guess really it doesn’t matter so much. But somehow I think I am coming out of my own darkness. From now on I shall list my achievements rather than feel that nothing has moved forward. I don’t want to be reminded by other folk anymore of how talented I am, or how much I have changed in one year. I need to be the one to remind myself of that. I had such great dreams, such big dreams for one person and they haven’t gone away as yet. Today, is the first day I believe in me to make that change.

Today I had to go to Vincent Square, back to the eating disorder clinic.  I
wasn’t in the mood for it, having spent 20 on shopping and treat for
Dominic, I had 20 quid left and I knew that wasn’t enough to get me there and
back in a cab.  So I looked everywhere at home and thank goodness, finally found some cash (15 quid of it) strewn in the bottom of my gym bag.   *gym?  Did you say gym?*I actually thanked God and thought; maybe this will be a good day after all. Like fucking hell!  I had booked my cab for a quarter past 8am to make sure it was there in time.  He said ok, no problem.  Having thought I called my
usual cab firm and not the ‘B’ labelled cab used for desperate needs in the
phone address book.

The cab arrived at 8.15.  A silver Mercedes, brand new with an old man with an ear peace in the front seat, I saw him staring at me and he was fast to react as he rolled down the window, the car still moving.  He made some excuse that he wasn’t the cab for my address.  At that point, I thought, ‘odd’ but I let it go, and in the back of my mind I already knew what had just taken place.  I called the cab controller who then told me a silver mercy should be pulling up..right..About…I interjected (just because I could and because I like the word)…’He was already here, and he already left saying he wasn’t the cab.. .’

The controller then disappeared and then came back with a few too many lies which followed the line of ‘Oh he’s just by the bins’…ummmmm ‘He will be there in a minute, a silver merc’.  I stated that I already knew that the car that went past was my cab, on time but for ’some’ reason not wanting to have a big bird screw with his suspension.  The controller said to wait.  By this time the time was witling away and getting nearer to the time of my appointment.  The anger in me was becoming more and more apparent and began to curse - loudly.  I called several times, and this time the controller didn’t even bother picking up the phone.

So I began to walk to the bus stop having rung my proper cab firm who didn’t have any for another half hour.  I rang and rang and by the time I hit the bus stop, and started looking for a black cab, the time was pretty much hitting 8.45am.  I was going to be late.

*Ring fucking ring*
‘your cab is outside’
‘too late, I have gone’ *insert all forms of letting them know they were a shite cab firm and that I’d be popping in later to see them face to face*
‘very sorry’
*disconnect*
******************************

***************************
[Their conversation]
‘why didn’t you pick up that fare?’
‘Too fat, she’ll ruin my suspension’
‘its work’
‘But who will pay when my suspension dies?’
‘Ok, Ok, I’ll lie for you this time’
************************************************************

‘Whatever’

Having then waited for another black cab, the first having turned
me down and drove past I managed to get a cabby who was not only polite and
chatty but who also had a very similar point of view on the way this country
is going down the fucking drain.  From people who have no ethics, to liars
and cheats and people who judge others how they wish never to be treated
themselves…  I am tired, really tired.  Neither paranoid nor schizophrenic
I am sick of the attitude in this country - so why not just join forces with the rest of the fuckers.

I arrive at the appointment ten minutes late to face an African woman at the entrance of the eating disorder clinic, of no small size herself standing staring at me as though I were an alien that just landed in a pair of lime green hot pants.  She watched me walk up the stairs scowling at me.  I looked at her, smiled and said ‘I have an appointment’ I didn’t look rough and ready to go, I don’t look like a drug addict and I certainly don’t stink of alcohol, so what’s with the glare you stupid ugly freaky bad weaved trollop?

‘What? ‘She said in disgust ‘You’re here for appointment, in this clinic?’
As my ears sifted through her mumbling, I wondered how she dealt with the majority of women in the clinic who are anorexic, suffer from bulimia and also the same eating disorder as I do… Granted, she could stop and be shocked, but hide it on your hard nosed ugly cunting face as it’s not the first thing of a morning I choose to see.  At least know what service the place provides you obviously work at, you ignorant excuse of a hairdressers dream.

So I went in, saw Guy Morgan, a tall creepy looking guy who looked as though he had just crawled through a TV screen escaping from South Park. I just couldn’t be bothered now; already a shite day and I can imagine what else was yet to come.  But full of interesting things to say about how the ‘programme’ will work.  Nothing like how Denise runs her sessions, and I knew she didn’t know what the hell she was doing.  There is no format to her sessions. AND it seems that she shouldn’t have even allowed me to go on any form of diet during the process. They can only check my behaviour as it stands by monitoring me as I am now.  Too late, I’ve paid for weight watchers and I am hardly likely to stop now.

Do I like him? No.  I don’t.  But then I don’t have to like him really do I?
I just have to make sure I have more than 40 quid for cab fare each week to
get me there and back.  I left knowing his therapy sessions would probably be the kind of to make a difference and as I walked away (because of course a clinic like that doesn’t have a cab firm to call for patients – ‘cause no one ever leaves there alive) I realised just how fed up I am of my life, of this country and the people in it. All the things I see and deal with daily. Today, I know for a fact if I had a gun, I would have killed.  I know it.  I have spent the morning thinking how I can get back at the cunt of a cab firm.  They cost me 7 quid in additional fares instead of 13 today and so I shall waste their time too.

You see, I see it this way - now all my life I have pretty much done things the way THE MAN tells you to. You know, straight up, tried to be as honest as I could, tried to stay on the straight and narrow and not shit on people.  In all of my 44 years I know it doesn’t work.  It’s a no win situation.  If you fuck up, if you go to prison, if you’re a bad kid labelled with behavioural issues, if you fuck with people, beat people, rip people off, if you’re long term unemployed, if you’re scamming the system,  ripping off the housing by subletting and owning your own property, claiming
whilst working, buying property whilst claiming housing benefit – YOU WIN.

That’s the truth, YOU WIN.  Straight up-no lie try it. I SEE IT DAILY, I HEAR ABOUT IT, I READ ABOUT, I KNOW ABOUT IT IN THE COMMUNITY I WORK IN. I don’t believe I treat those I don’t know disrespectfully for any apparent reason.  I attack when attacked and more than not I will keep out of trouble – in fact I have never been in trouble, not with the authorities.  I have a big mouth and a bad attitude but I use it with caution.  No conflict, no drama = no grief.  So why, when you’re going about your very own business, does this crap continue to happen?  I thought it would be a normal day today and instead, I feel tears well up in my eyes on the (had to get public transport) bus back to work.  I held back and again as I scrunched myself up as small as I could get into the seat so no one would moan that I was taking up too much space – it’s a fat girl trick.

On the way off the bus, an old woman sat across from me just staring.  So I
smiled, because again, rather than be arrested for attacking an elderly bird because of paranoia more than cause, I would rather that her thoughts were dispersed by warmth than anger.

But it was obvious from her look what she was thinking and it’s getting more and more apparent these days. The bigger I got the more I realised I am being judged on how I look. Yes, we all get judged and those that say they don’t judge are probably liars. As fat as I was in the past, I have never experienced this level of fat and so can now see the difference in the way I was treated when in the public eye. I guess I am hating the haters today.  So much for this rant.

It’s doing crap things to me; it makes me feel lost and really very sad.  There’s little I can do but do what I am doing to try to sort it out.  Guy can squeal at me
in the tones of that South Park councillor, really I am getting more from the
book I bought for 7 quid and it’s turned out to be worth more, so far than
anyone of these ‘trained’ people I’ve seen.  I have been taken out of my comfort
zone and no, I don’t like it at all.  But I don’t deserve the latest bashing; I can do bashing on me quite well without the rest of the world joining in.

I just signed up to weight watchers again. I did once, well, the last time was 2005 and look, four years + later I’m well and above what I was then. I don’t even know what good it will do. Defeatist? yes, but then after practically 34 years of thinking about weight and not feeling ‘normal’ I guess some how you get to that place. The shrink last week had said to me that she feels I always have some excuse that something isn’t working. Yes, that’s possibly true, but then again it doesn’t say that much for her either really. Seeing as I am coming to her because of an eating disorder and that I believe *generalisation coming up close your eyes* fat people some fat people are pretty damn devious.  Or should I say, those which have eating disorders of any kind can be fucking devious.  So much so, I felt her snippy comment was out of place.  She is there to give me tools, I can’t be the first difficult bird she’s dealt with and since when did anything happen to go her way, straight from the get go?

Any way it has made me quite peeved and normally I would go in and share it with her, or at least be open and honest and after her comment, it left me thinking why the fuck was I honest in the first place?  It makes me quite pissed off.  She asked whether I was angry at her last week and that I could be if I wanted to be.  Anyone who knows me will tell you, if I want to be angry I don’t frigging well need permission.  I don’t know who she deals with under this CBT thang, but I may well be a fat fuck with no real control over my eating, but I’m not a shy retiring type of fat fuck.

So she told me to follow a ‘plan’ before eating I MUST write it all down.  Now in my head that turns into some huge big complex thing which prevents me from moving.  I try to work it all out in my head and yet, it gets to be such a huge issue, I don’t bother t even think about it.  So I began to attempt to plan, whatever that means..I felt like someone had just pulled me back into school revision years and having just screamed ‘revise’ at me, without telling me just how one is supposed to do that.  So when the call came from Vicent Street eating disorder clinic, the people who assessed me and who supposedly have an understanding of my disorder, I was a little happier.  Then I listened to the bloke on the phone and he sounded just like a male version of my shrink at the other place.  I think, somewhere, someone must be breeding these very sensitive people who speak with their heads cocked to one side and speak in nice people tongue.  They don’t know how to be firm, and as Cameron my nephew says,

‘Get a spine man, get a spine…’

So, I shall see who gets over the wining line first, Denise, the mac daddy at Vincent Sq. Or Weight Watcher core plan.  Meanwhile I have to stop the growth of my gut.  I am American massive, that fatness which everyone knows is creeping into the UK more and more and we are becoming the super obese, the people whjo you only ever saw on documentaries from the states.  I am now pretty much on the outter circle of becoming one of those people.  I am a slip away.  It needs to stop now. Just how far will I walk to be who  am inside?

I guess i shouldn’t do anything when I am in gloomsville.  I managed to fuck up my wordpress update last night.  Now I had to reinvent my categories and things in the back end look odd and crappy.  Bloody shite.  Oh well.  I never know how to keep up with the bloody updates that wordpress and Joomla releases all the frigging time.  Fucking annoying.

I chatted to a friend last night even though the mood was blue and the black clouds were low  Funnily enough, by the end of the conversation, my mood had lifted a bit.  My shoulder responded to the pills this time and a bit more of the acid burning deep ‘I’m gonna burn your skin off’ heat spray also worked somewhat.  I still have the pain, but it’s certainly less than yesterday.  I’m at work today, for an hour I sat watching the squirrels play under the bark, darting in and out of the green litter bin.  I didn’t realise they weren’t that fussy in what they ate.  They came really close, nervous little furry rats.  I like them though, they make me smile.  I caught some on my blacksmerrrrry ferry and I may well put them up at some time, never!  I am off to find myself a new blackberry theme.  I survived for one more day!

That’s where I am right now. In a cage made of fat! I am in pain, I have this nasty weird feeling in my left shoulder, I don’t even remember when it arrived. It’s just there and it makes me feel scared and uncomfortable. My bones are weaker now, the more fat goes on, it seems the weaker they get. Like ivy crawling over a trees bark, eating into it until the wood is left hollow. I am drowning… After all this time, I am killing myself. I know it.

I have not much left to live for when I feel this bad. This is the first time that a large bowl of someting someting hasn’t taken my thoughts away from the way I feel. That pain in my stomach didn’t make me focus on it this time. This time I am thinking of death. It feels as though my body is dying. I am killing me softly…

Every time I breath i can feel my rib cage hit my huge stomach which somehow knocks against that pain inside my shoulder. It’s like a stitch inside my arm, aching. Nothing works to take that pain away. I took ibuprofen and sprayed Deep Heat, which only seemed to take off the first layer of skin with it’s burn and stench. I weighed myself after I ate - I never do that any more either. I am now 24 stones and a few pounds. I can’t even make a joke about it today. I am so far away from normal it is easier to keep killing myself. I have no idea how I shall ever be pulled back. There seems to be little option that works for my twisted brain. My way of thinking is changing, increasingly dark and deeply deeply unhappy. I have been here once before, when all seemed lost when there was nothing to keep me here. Then, I felt the brush of air against my cheek. Like a wisp of something and then it was gone. I can’t imagine there is anything there this time, waiting to keep me from the dark.

I cry more than laugh, I tire more than I feel energised. I am beginning to see the world through real shades of grey. There is no colour left inside me. I have to see the CBT therapist on Wednesday, I have very little to say. Two weeks on and I’m supposed to feel what? She wants me to keep writing things down. I’ve been writing in books for most of my life, telling myself stories on how I feel and what I want, how big my dreams were and now…Now- what difference does it make if I write the rules of why I eat this way? What good does it do me to concentrate on how much am eating each day for her to take a look over it in a second and pick out the most emotive words she can find in amongst the scrawl of anger?

I don’t quite see the point. The pain just grows along with my size - I have increased in weight since this hospital shite - just like I did years ago when I joined an over eaters group. The rolls of fat increase tenfold and the darkening of the skin as it runs against itself continues to discolour. Pain increases, I feel more low and isolated and then what? For years all I have seen is fat in that writing. In every picture I own, in any video’s that may have survived, FAT. It breathes. I hate everything. I don’t want to go back to work any more. I want to be free.

And all I have to do is jump. The more I think about how I would land if I fell from the window, is becoming increasingly intriguing. I sometimes imagine myself twisted in a pile below, blood oozing around me, hair matted, eyes open wide - no sign of life s I journey somewhere unknown. Sometimes I am naked, sometimes I am clothed and sometimes, sometimes I am covered in so much blood I can’t even see if it’s me. This is my worst self pitying moment in years. I am crying all the time and I want to run away from myself. The only problem is, I have no where to run to because fat always comes too. This pain in my shoulder just reminds me that I’m still alive. And that, that isn’t such a good thing right now.

I of course wouldn’t actually say no today to a food parcel. I bought some fresh bread from Porto’s this morning from a very stern bird behind the counter. She only ever greets the very posh in that place, to everyone else she cackles and frowns. I like the coffee, I like the bread, so apart from adding her to my shooting wall, there is little I can do. I don’t even feel like writing this morning. I’m at work, but not at work, if you know what I mean. I won’t be adding my time to the sign in sheet until 11am, because I’m good like that *rolls eyes*. I’m bored and waiting for other workers to come in, goats fed, gates unhinged and so am I…. My belly is rumbling which is a very odd thing for me as it doesn’t really happen that often, I don’t allow it to. I do want something to eat though, and not oats. I will be happy when this week is over and I can do what I want over the weekend. More than not, that means nothing!

Well, today was the second visit to the shrink. Denise is a pale, slim, quietly spoken woman who speaks with a faint accent of which I can’t place. She is sweet and professional and laughs at my very poor attempt at humour, which covers up my shame I guess in having to even speak with someone in order for them to sort out why I eat the way I do and why I have compulsive behaviour. She has a kind face, I kind of like her. Her eyes are big and pupils wide and she listens because she may well have to, but also because I think being the way I am and for her to have to suss out why, intrigues her. It bally well should, it’s her job!

The deal is this; That I concentrate on the rules I have made for myself around food which came from childhood. There are many, of course. But then why would someone who hates towing the line, create or carry so many rules forward from childhood? I haven’t a clue. Safety net? Who knows. I know if I write my top ten rules, number at one will be Food Waste, and not to have any. use my body like a trash can and eat whatever it is rather than throw it away. As a past raw mentor once told me, by doing this, I am treating my body worse than I do the bin. Well, lets see what happens.

I wanted to record the session, but couldn’t. I don’t think my impressive new Blackberry curve allows that, and if it does I have found it as yet. I forgot to take the digital recorder. I arrived there at 10 past 8 so fiddled with the internet for a while on the BB and before I knew it she was walking towards me, an image in green!

We discussed what I need to focus on to change the behaviour I have around food. So I rambled on, confusing myself even more about why I am like this and why at 44 I can’t change this myself without the help of the woman in green. She laughed at my jokes and listened and read the food diary I had done the week before. I don’t know if it made sense to her, as my writing was mostly in anger of the situation I found myself in for that week at work. My eating was largely major over eating an once did I binge the way I have been in the last few months. More than not, that is pre planned and happens at a weekend, when no one can hear my belly scream. I sometimes think of the image of that fat person ‘Gluttony’ in the film ‘Se7en’ where the killer forced that fat bloke to eat himself to death. Force feeding him until his stomach popped. Maybe I the feeling I get when I over eat or binge is that very feeling the killer forced the fat bloke to feel, and then he popped. Maybe I need to pop too!

She can be part of the army. Warrior puppet breaks loose in London Town!!!

I woke up after trying to climb up a little hill made of mud. It was a path at first and I had just come out of a large department store after having complained about the rudeness of every single worker behind the tills. I walked up a path with a Chinese bloke who happened to be one of the people who was rude to me, and the solid bricked path was between puddles which turned into a river on each side. The man went first and climbed what wasn’t really even a hill, until of course my feet started climbing it in my new white trainers. I realised that the mud had started to get softer and that suddenly i was sinking a lot more. There was no where to run, I tried to go backwards and ended up being swallowed into a landslide into the river. I woke before my head went under the mud.

It made me sad, i cried. I cried because that’s me being swallowed by fat. My life seems to have already int he last couple of weeks be focused on just how much i have damaged my body and now, it’s fighting back. I went to the doctors again yesterday. The sugar in my blood was 7.4 and it has to be below that, below 7. The nurse is ditzy (she claims herself) yet she is helpful and at least tries to listen. She also slipped into the conversation that I needed a liver scan. I asked why? She told me it was because the blood test had shown it to be ’slightly’ abnormal’ and that ‘this was normal with diabetes patients’. I somehow didn’t believe her. I said, why would they need to scan my liver then? She said, it’s just to make sure there isn’t anything else there. It is my worse nightmare to have to keep going to the doctors and to hospitals. I am tired of it already.

My books arrived from Amazon, you know, the ones I cancelled… That means I shall have two lots counting the ones from play.com. The books looks informative, GI index, How to reverse Diabetes and two others on Glycemic load. I wonder if it is possible for me to reverse it. I know others have, but I am sure that takes some serious control. I have to leave soon to go to Chelsea and westminister hospital to see the general surgeon. Not looking forward to this at all. In my heart I know having the stomach thing done is still a cop out. I will see, won’t I?