Wednesday, Oct. 08, 2003/1:59 am

Sunday 28th September

Evening, about 11-12pm

I have to get better.

Yes, you read that right.

I don't know how or where or who can help but i have to change something. I've made a decision, to live, and it's going to be hard, so hard. I might falter or trip along the way, it's certain actually, but one thing is for sure; i can't go on like this. Without any sort of strip to balance upon.

I don't want to become a newsflash. A poster child for anorexia. I don't want to fill television screens and stare forth from magazine stands. I want to be normal. I want to be able to breathe through my own skin. To get through days without feeling as if my knees are about to drop in weakness.

The hospital is as haunting as i anticipated, being kept in these surroundings. The plastic orange lino and white checkered ceiling, the scenery for a rise in depression. A perfect petri dish for breeding anxiety, itching, racing unhappiness and self loathing.

My potassium level dropped all the way to 2.2. I've been on tablets, and candy pink medicine that tastes vile. I also had to be attached to a heart monitor incase i caved beneath the strain. I was kept on the drip until this morning. Now they have put me back onto small doses of injected insulin.

I have eaten. I've had to. To keep my blood sugars up and notes satisfactory. I've felt so disgusted with every forkful i take in. Tears salting each sauce and lettuce leaf. Just trying to manage it, reason with the demons inside my head. Resting a hand over my extended stomach, pressing with as much might as i can, wishing it could sink away. Tonight's dinner ended with the bed sheets pulled up to me chin, curled up into a ball, sobbing and shaking. I couldn't handle it, it all became too much. After cutting the pasta bake into tiny pieces and moving them around on my plate, i achieved just one tuck into the concoction. Along with a tear of brown bread. There were also chips but i piled them up, as far away from me as i could. Scared to even look at them, greasy and shiny.

I feel so full. Like I've overeaten, even with the smallest of consumption. Half a slice of turkey and a mini portion of cabbage seems like a buffet inside me. The food weighs heavy on my spoon and my conscience. Fingers dragged down with the place of metal cutlery, holding poison, my enemy. The toxin that i fear will make me fatter.

No one understands.

I confess, it's all still here. Ideas of bingeing, purging, laxatives. It's going to be such a long road to travel, to reach any situation of survival.

I just have to see how it all goes. Except i must try. Try to listen rationally, let that small voice, shadowing in the corner, come forth and battle the insults.