I'm up to three miles each morning. I have not lost a single pound since last time I wrote, but I haven't gained either. I went on a speed binge last week and averaged 3 hours of sleep per night. Luckily it's over. At the time I justified it as burning calories and suppressing my appetite. Although that's true, my goal is not simply weight loss but perfection, and being that tired and strung out did not feel perfect at all.

On Friday I came home to an empty house. I baked instant brownies and made macaroni and cheese. While eating them I remembered my plan to attempt purging with my new knowledge, and so I drank plenty of water while shoveling food into my mouth. The brownies were so hot they burned my throat on the way down. I didn't cut them into bars but rather spooned the hot gooey rich and really quite disgusting mess in heaping gulps. Afterward I braced myself and went to the bathroom. I put my hair up in a ponytail and shoved my fingers to the back of my throat. I kept my fingers pushed all the way back through a couple of gags, and then to my surprise a brown watery mess like diarrhea came out. Without wasting a single second I repeated the action. I did this about eight or nine times until I was satisfied that everything from this meal was up. It was incredibly satisfying. But it was difficult and not something I can envision myself doing regularly. I've decided to reward myself with another binge/purge session of brownies IF I can make my goal weight of 145 by Friday night.

The only major drawback was very red and watery eyes. I also got those tiny popped vessels around my eyes that I used to get from throwing up when I was hung over. I was nervous that someone would think I had been drinking again!

I finished reading Wasted. Allow me to now engage in some hypocritical ranting. Although Mayra Hornbacher analyzes the events of her life and aspects of her own personality that led her down the path of disordered eating, I recognized a pattern in her thinking that I sometimes recognize in myself and others that I really hate. There's this compulsive need to be really screwed up, and doomed to a life of melodramatic self-destruction. But it seems to me like all of the psychotic behavior and self-destruction comes not from anything in the environment or personality of the victim, but from his or her own stubborn glorification of their own insanity. Her life was really not that bad. Her family was really not that messed up. Objectively speaking, she had a good childhood. So did I. So did most of us, probably. We are not victims. We are the perpetrators of the crimes being committed against us. I profusely apologize to anyone for whom this is not really the case. And I know there are some out there. But for me, and probably for many others, this lifelong spiral of self-harm is born out of conceit and stubborn selfishness. I like to think that I am the exception; that I deserve the horrible things that I do to myself because my life has just been so hard. Really, it's pathetic.

Oh by the way I have the flu. The back of my throat looks like a quentin tarantino movie.