In some ways I feel like I'm starting this at the beginning of a new chapter in my life, in some ways I feel like you're joining me half way through. I'm not quite sure what I'm half way through yet though.
I'm going to explain why I'm addressing you presonally. It seems a little presumtious to assume that anyone will actually choose to read my blog over the billions that must be available out there. I think that's why I've never done this before - because really, I'm the kind of person that blogging was probably invented for. Prone to introspection, nothing makes me feel better than writing it down. I kept a diary from about the age of 9 til I was 18 and went to uni and spent too much time with boys, or to be specific, boy, to keep a diary. When I say I kept a diary I wrote it every day. Literally never missed one. A little anal I suppose but it didn't feel a chore, it calmed me and made me feel better. And in those diaries (thousands upon thouasands of pages, I still have them all in a box, I will read them one day i suppose) I always used to write as if I was talking to myself out loud, or to someone else. So that is why you get addressed. Even though the very fact that I think there's probably enough of these overly introspective cyber diaries to last us til something very very far away happens - probably the end of the internet - I have realised that I want to do this for my own sake, like writing a diary (no one has ever read my diaries) and therefore you don't really matter (no offense). But I'm still going to address you. Hypocritical? Paradoxical? I don't care - you're not reading this anyway.
Right, well, now we've got the formalities over with (I was an English student, I had to establish my grammatical format first, don't worry you'll come to understand me in time) I had better start 'proper'.
Why 'What Daisy Did Next'? Well as I've just said I was (and will therefore always will be) an Enlgish student. When I was little the 'What Katy Did' series was amoung my favourites and certainly from my favourite genre. So that's one level (English students always count levels). I also feel like I'm at a crossroad in life. A very big crossroad. It's exciting in some ways because there are many possibilities open to me (or many roads leading off it, to continue the metaphor). I had an excellent education, I come from a reasonabily privileged middle-class background and if I'm honest (and I plan to be excruiatingly honest here because I'm treating it like a diary and I think thats the only way that it will help me), I'm lucky because I'm intelligent (IQ about 150), socially adept, reasonably athletic, thoughtful and a good friend (I consider this one of my best qualities). So I've had a pretty damn good start in life. And things have gone pretty well. Lots of shiny academic qualifications, and some sporting ones too. So where are the quirks? Where are the bits that make this interesting, a real story? (because all real stories are interesting) Well, lets start with the biggies - my parents divorced when I was about 10 and up until the age of about 19 and a half I was obese. The former is where my real pain is. It's sounds to flip to me - my parents are divorced - and it is in some ways, it's a fact, it's simple, it's true and it happened a long time ago and most of the time I don't think about it and it doesn't bother me. But then something comes along (usually Christmas, that always sets me off and it comes around pretty regularly too) and I realise that it's not simple, it's not flip and I can still end up crying about it. And I mean properly crying - not a tear or two dripping down my face which all you normally get out of me, I mean proper internal agony when you can't physically stop crying, it hurts and you shake all over and your shoulders heave. I normally fall asleep after those, they're so exhausting. It's just been Christmas which is why I can remember how that feels so clearly, by August I'll have forgotten that my parent's divorce bothers me so much and my feelings at Christmas will take me by surprise all over again. Is is just me that forgets things like that? Mothers forget the pain of labour I guess. Anyway. I only had one episode like that this year, unfortunately or fortunately (I'm not sure which) it happened around New Year in a hotel room with my boyfriend. It was unfortunate it happened at all but then it does every year; I'm glad that he saw it. He's seen me having bad moments before but he couldn't fully understand part of me til he saw one of those, I now realise. Well unlucky, he's in the club now.
And for the second thing? The obesity thing. The big issue, haha. There's a good chance it's linked very much to the first thing (I was always a big child but honestly the real poundage and unhealthy eating habits only started after the divorce). So I was fat. I bet you want to know how fat. I would. I'm 5ft 6 and a half (the half matters to me) and from about 15 my weight was stable at about 14 stone. So, obese. But thing was I am apparently a master at denial. A real genius. I was so good I could have taught it except I was that good I didn't have any idea I was such a prodigy. I was confident, outgoing, reasonably popular - especially in sixth form - and I had more boyfriends than any of my thin, normal sized friends. How? Body confidence I imagine. Confidence in who I was. I projected such an exceptionally good image of loving being me that others loved me. I still don't know how much of that was real, or whether I actually don't like myself now. I think I do, I've just got wrapped up in body issues. I'm hoping that's one of the things I'll find out through writing this. So then, where are things now? Well I told you I was obese until I was 19 and a half. Around this time I started on Weight Watchers Online (why is a different story that I will definitely come to one day). I was desperate and again, I was at a crossroad. If I hadn't discovered Weight Watchers (WW) I would have gone to a very dark place. You see, my lovely 14 stone frame had been stable at this (admitedly heavy) weight for a good 4 or 5 years, or as stable as you tell without ever really weighing yourself. But when I was 18 and a half I went off to University as good intelligent middle-class girls from grammar schools do, and despite eating like a hefer at school, I started gaining weight. From looking like a large, overweight human being I was starting to disappear into my fat and look like a blimp, a large round blip. I was starting eat myself out of existance. I'm sure you know what I mean, there is a level on he fat scale when people start to not really look like people. I was starting on that. But I joined WW, I lost weight, it was hard, it was easy, I had no choice. And that was meant to be the end of the story. But then several things happened over the course of 2006. Not massive things, really (my best friend's brother was killed several years ago at Christmas. Bad things, for me, are now always in perspective with this). But things non the less that I only really see now, looking back at them, helped me start to put weight back on. By the way, I got down to 10st 4. That was my official lowest weight, and I was hot. Although I couldn't really see it at the time. But I'm not going to get started to on those massive issues now. I got thin in time for 2005 and in 2006 I put 2 stone back on and a few things happened that made me feel like I wasn't in control so much anymore, like the glittering golden girl that I was (inside) when I was younger, with all my potential, might not be doing as well as she had assumed.
In fact that's my story up until now in a nutshell. Happy childhood goes well apart from parent's divorce. She is gifted and pretty, a perfect combination only marred by her obesity. Goes to University, loses weight. The only blip on her horizons is cleared (apart from the divorce thing but that's below the surface anyway). She should now live happily every after. Only she hasn't. Perhaps that nasty issue under the surface couldn't be pushed down, perhaps she never really got rid of her eating problems, perhaps perhaps perhaps. And so now we are here, at this crossroads.
I stopped to think after writing all of that. It just came flooding out. Afterwards I wasn't sure what to say next, what to start on, which direction to go. Bit like my life eh? I still feel like I need to explain a little more. Firstly, in terms of direction, most of this year I'm busy. If you invited me out for lunch in July I could tell you exactly where I'd be, any day of any week. So when I say I lack direction I guess I must mean long term direction. Although until my job starts in March I am technically unemployed and have been since November so I have been directionless for several months which I've not enjoyed (I'm a workaholic generally). And what is this mystery job? I teach sailing and run sailing centres abroad, so at the moment I work seasonally hence the unemployed-since-November bit. Not that there aren't seasonal winter job available, but this winter was special. And yes it was because of a man. The man. My boyfriend, the one I mentioned earlier. I don't like the phrase boyfriend, it sounds too flimsy, too lame and pathetic for the relationship I have with my partner. But at only 22, 'partner' sounds a little grand, so I might just stick to 'man'. I don't feel like going into more about him yet, but the headline news is that we've been together about 18 months, I love him very much and we have fantastic sex (most of the time).
Other headline news before I sign off? (I can feel I'm approaching the end of this session, it has been very cathartic though). Well, as I have said, I'm now about 12st 7, 2 stone on the weight I was happy with even though I didn't know it at the time, I bloody know it now. I am very good, by the way, at giving myself a mental kicking. Mentally making myself feel awful for putting the weight I tried so hard to lose, back on. But anyway. It has happened and I am trying to be more positive and proactive, hence this, and also I am starting a diet on Monday. Now I never considered WW a diet - it was a re-education in healthy eating, or just an education in my case, and I believe this. For other reasons I don't feel it is right for me now, so Monday I have an appointment to start the Cambridge Diet (CD) having heard about it through blogs. It is a meal-replacement diet, a very low calorie diet (VLCD) and it works very fast. I have about a month or so til I start my job and I have decided drastic action is needed to ensure I am not this heavy when that time comes. And it is definitely drastic. But I have not been happy recently and I have been feeling tinges of depression and have decided that a) I do have an eating disorder but it one of those binge-eating ones that is less well known and are banded together under the umbrella term of 'binge eating disorders' (BED). I know I do not have 'classic' BED as I do not fit the exact symptoms but I have no doubt that I do have a form of a disorder. I'll share the gory details another time. And b) (sorry I nearly forgot b) I have decided that whilst my eating problems are not on the scale of anorexia or bulimia by any means, if I don't change something, or start getting help then I'm going to get into a lot of trouble. So I decided to start counsilling. Only thats easier said than done when you live abroad for 70% for the year. So for now I've decided it's something I will do one day and in the mean time I am going to blog, try the radical diet and have a go at rethinking me.
So, Monday is the big day. I'll spend some time over the weekend feeling nervous and back-blogging (is that a phrase?) to start to think more about a few things and also bring you up to speed. The delightful thing is of course that they are both one and the same thing.
Isn't writing things down great?
