I was thirteen when I wrote that. All the entries up until about 10th grade are like that. No clothes talk, no records of what happened at school, nothing about cute boys, just pages upon pages of viscous self-deprecation. There's something wrong with that. I still write in my diary, but I realize I only write when I feel bad or depressed or fat. I have been writing in it at least twice a week since eighth grade.

The summer before high school, I decided I wanted to be an actress. For the first time, my life had some meaning. As I entered high school, I seemed better for the first time in a year. I was not depressed as much, nor was I trying to starve myself, a practice I had implemented several times in middle school. Nearing the end of ninth grade, I began to manage JV Volleyball. I stopped wearing my glasses. I started to lose weight. Suddenly, everything was going right.

I lost a lot of weight that summer, by exercising, not starvation. I joined the Softball team. I had a lot of friends. I was even going out on dates. I was happy. Then Sara and Erica had a fight. They were two of my really good friends, but they had been drifting apart. Something happened, I don't even remember what. And I had a choice, I could only stick by only one of my friends. In hindsight, I see I really did not HAVE to choose one or the other, but at the time I chose Sara. Erica and I have not spoken since, but I do not regret my choice, Sara is one of the best friends I have ever had, and (if you will excuse the pun) I will stick with her through thick and thin.

But the choice was not without its emotional tolls. I began to exercise heavily in order to distract myself from the fact that my life seemed to be caving in around me. I told myself it was because I had put on a few pounds. I guess I came to believe that was the real reason, too. I convinced myself I was fat again. And that terrified me more than the thought that I had just lost a best friend. I felt like a failure because I could not keep the weight off for more than a few months.

At the end of the year I lost many of my senior friends to graduation and college. I became depressed again, given that I had fallen deeply in love with one of these friends. Over the summer, he began to date another friend of mine. She was skinny. I think that he wanted her rather than me because I was fat. I WAS fat. I was a failure, too. I had regained the majority of the weight I had lost plus several more (I had also gained 2 inches of height, but try telling me that then). I fell in to a deep, isolated depression.

That summer was the first time I made myself throw up. I stopped eating, and when I did eat, I made myself vomit to get rid of it. I don't know why. My life revolved around when I was going to eat, what I was going to eat, and how I was going to get rid of it. When junior year started, I had lost too much weight in a week, and I was living so few calories a day. The stress of junior year was unimaginable, and I used food (or lack thereof) as an escape. It was something I could control, and if I could control that one little thing, then I could also control my schoolwork and grades.

Sara got a boyfriend that year. I hated him, I still do. He abused her, and I hated him for it, and her for allowing it. He told her constantly that she was fat, and she believed him. I hated him for that, too, for at the time Sara was a tiny 5'4" and barely 120. I couldn't control her relationship with him, and she wouldn't listen when I told her what a jackass he was. I was frustrated, so I began abusing diet pills. I took three or four a day to control my appetite, and to make myself feel "in control." I left the evidence in plain view of Sara near our neighboring lockers, hoping that she would reach out and help me. But she never noticed. She never really noticed me at all that year. Nobody did.

I suppose I should mention Mark in here somewhere. Mark used to be my friend. But the day before he left for Israel for a semester, he hit on me. I hated it. It made me feel lower than dirt. And then he left for months, so I had no closure. For months I beat myself up over it, saying things like "he caught me off guard" and "I will never let someone patronize me like that again." I convinced myself it was my fault for being a slut. I had to be, why else would anyone ever want to date me? I was fat, afterall. Mark was only acting on my signals. I felt awful after that.

My self esteem just kept getting lower and lower. I had gotten braces and felt like an awful human being. My weight skyrocketed. I felt sick to my stomach all the time. I felt like dying. It was like I was thirteen all over again.

Then there was Billy. My friend from Camp. I liked him, so I told him so in a letter. But he had fallen for my friend, Mary. Skinny, beautiful Mary. I wanted to kill him for it. Not her, it wasn't her fault, she was skinny and attractive, how could he not fall for her? I blamed him because he said he was "sorry he made me cry." No one makes me cry. Ever.

After junior year, things began to perk up ever so slightly. I was the fattest I have ever been, but I felt good because all the stress was gone. I had an internship that summer, too. That's where I met Carl. Carl was my first boyfriend. I hated him. I don't know why I agreed to go out with him. Honestly, I don't think I could have done any better. He was fat, too. It said 285 on his license and I knew that was a lie. He used to try and get on top of me, and I couldn't breath. But he was the best I could do, the best I can ever do. No one but a fatso can love another fatso.

I began to throw up again that summer, trying to escape Carl, work, everything. Suddenly I got very very sick. They said it was something called "Gastro Interitis" but I knew it had something to do with my Bulimia. That was also the first time I started calling myself "Bulimic" or "Anorexic." I had 104 fever, had not had my period in almost a year and had intense stomach pains. I had been throwing up at least twice a day for over a month. I was hospitalized and I resolved never to throw up again. It hurt like hell. I promised God one night that if he just made the pain go away, I would never make myself throw up again. I was that desperate.

I dumped Carl after a hellish 5 weeks. On his eighteenth birthday. I'm a bitch for doing that. I hated myself for it, I still do. I told him it was because of school, but I lied. It was because he disgusted me. He was fat, and even the thought of touching him made me want to wretch. That must be what people think of me, I told myself. Just the thought of him still makes me shudder. How can anyone physically love a fat person? How could anyone physically love me? I was fat, just like Carl.

Then Senior year started, and I was moderatly happy. Until I lost a bet. I had bet my friend that if he took Home Economics for a semester, I would compete in our school's talent/beauty pageant. I lost the bet. I was perfectly willing to go for it. But I was so fat. So I threw up, I starved and I exercised. I broke a promise to God because of that stupid thing, so I guess I'm out with him now, if I ever was "in". Oh, by the way, I lost the pageant, too. Who can blame the judges? I must've looked disgusting in that dress.

There was one bright spot in the audience that night, his name was Jason. I had met him at Sara's birthday party, and he was in the play with her at his all-boys' school. I liked him a lot. But he was a freshman. And that was the end of that, for the time being.

So I shifted my attention to a dreamy junior by the name of Rick. But was shot down as quickly as I had picked myself up from Carl. Rick only dated blond, thin girls who wear size zero bellbottoms. I was a fat brunette. Once again I was depressed. Sara wasn't helping. She had been doing plays at the boys' school, and had had all the guys fall for her. She was in turmoil over "who to pick" and I hated her for it. I was jealous, that's the bottom line. I have never had anyone fight for me, and I hated that she was complaining about it. She kept saying how alone she was and how lonely she was without a boyfriend (she had broken up with the evil one a few months before). I wanted to scream. I had no one. She wasn't the one who was alone, I was. Why couldn't she just open her eyes for a second and see that?

I wanted her to know what I had gone through, what I was going through under her very nose. She was still one of my best friends and I would never ever do anything to alienate her or cause her distress so I stuffed every feeling down until it was little more than a dull discomfort. I rationalized that if she knew about my problems, I would become a burden. So all I could do was be there for her and hope that one day she would return the favor.

Eventually Sara started dating a boy named Chris. I like him, he loves her and she loves him, they're good for each other.

The day before one of Sara's parties, I tried to kill myself by slashing my arm repeatadly with a knife and a razor. It didn't work. But I still went to the party the next night. Nobody noticed the slashes on my arm. Not even my own parents. I complained of pain and kept rubbing the scars, but no one noticed. I felt like crap, I felt invisible. But they kept calling me "the funny one" and the "nice one". I guess I really was cut out to be an actress, I fooled them all. I still am. I'm an expert at it. I started dieting again shortly after that, and exercising over 2 hours a day. I was terrified of the scale. The numbers never went down, no matter what I did.

I resorted to diet pills after the "competition" started. It's this silly thing between me, Sara and our friend Kate. It began when Sara started saying things like, "Chris thinks Claire Danes is pretty, so I need to be as pretty as she is" i.e. as thin as she is. So she started dieting to compete with girls in the plays with her that she thought were "perfect." Even though she is as thin as any of them. She began wanting to "be beautiful for Chris". I despised her for that, I couldn't understand why she would ever want to go through what I went through every day for a guy who loves her just the way she is. She had someone who loved her, she had won, she didn't need to suffer like I was. I had no one, I didn't deserve anyone.

So Kate started dieting too. And I had to follow suit, otherwise I would be "the fat one" forever. Sara kept saying how she needs to "severly diet". She's not anorexic, she has a body image problem, but she does not have an eating disorder. I wanted so much for her to just stop whining and see what I was doing to myself, see what she had pushed me to do. She didn't know what fat was, she didn't know that everytime she put herself down, it made me feel like an obese, ugly monster.

Soon the subject of the prom came up, and Sara made the comment that her size 8 dress was "huge". That was the breaking point for me. If her size eight was huge then I must have been beyond obese in a size 12. I lost any facets of control I had once retained. I began to starve myself again, and to purge when I did eat. At the moment I'm writing this, I'm a mess.

And that brings us up to date. I am seventeen years old. I will graduate in less than 6 weeks. I am going to prom with Jason next Saturday. I have eaten very little today. I have been depressed for days and no one has noticed. Every time Sara, whom I realize I associate with my vision of a "perfect" body, puts herself down, I dive deeper into my disorder, losing touch with any remnants of a happy life. I am dating Jason, and am very happy to have him, although I do not know what, if anything, he sees in me. I am sad and tired and sick. I have been for four years, and nobody seems to notice. I have told people about my Bulimia and Anorexia, but no one has made a move to do anything to help me. I guess they don't really believe me because I'm still overweight. I just want to be thin, that's all. Is that really too much to ask? I want to be normal. I want someone to realize what I'm doing is dangerous, not just a phase. Phases don't last four years.