Counseling and Panic Attack

Yesterday I had an intake interview at the counseling services place here on campus. I guess it was a good thing. I know I should be in counseling, but I really don't want to. I'm going to do it though...probably. I told Tracy I would. I talked to her after classes after I went there and she said she was really rpoud of me, which was good to hear. She also said that she was half expecting to get a text around 10:30 that said I didn't go to the intake interview. That was not so good to hear. She also said I sounded "good", which was also not so good to hear. I hate the word "good". Good means healthy and healthy means fat and fat is the worst possible thing I could be. Lately my moods have been really weird too. Before I was in a constant state of....I guess apathy is a good word to describe it. Now I'm either feeling really great or really really horrible. Before I was feeling bad, but now when I feel bad it's like 100x worse then before. I'm even cutting again, which is really stupid, but I just feel so bad and I get a different kind of relief from cutting that I didn't used to get before. I can't explain it. I guess that's kind of really not good at all. Speaking of not good, I had a panic attack in bio today. That was FUN. Except not at all. I don't really know what happened. I guess it's because I didn't understand anything about the material and I started freaking out. It was so embarassing. I had to get up and leave. God, I'm such a loser.

- Danyele

Quick Update

So I had...not a great weekend, but it was much better then last weekend. I mostly didn't do too much except catch up on my sleep. I have an appointment to see one of the counselors on campus in the morning. I don't know if I really want to go see this counselor, but I probably need to and when I told Tracy she said she was proud of me and no one has really ever been proud of me before except her so I guess it's a good thing. I hope I can find the building tomorrow morning. Moving on to some good news, I got into the women's choir I auditioned for and I joined a dance class. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I'm really not surprised that I got into the choir. I hope I don't re-injure my knee in dance class though. I danced up until I was about fifteen and then I hurt my knee and had to stop, but hopefully if I just take one class once a week I will be ok. Anyway, I have to go to sleep so peace out.

- Danyele

College > High School

College is awesome. I love all of my classes and I especially love the fact that none of them start ridiculously early. When I was in high school I had to wake up by 6:30 and leave the house by 7 in order to get to homeroom on time. Now my earliest class is 9:15 and that's only on Thursday for bio lab. My first class on Monday is at 1:10 pm. That means I can be a dumbass on Sunday night and it doesn't even matter. Haha. Choir is good too. The choir director is awesome. We had rehearsal Monday night and it was great. There was no yelling or verbal abuse or anything like I'm used to at a choir rehearsal. Haha. I also joined some clubs. Well, I joined a lot of clubs. I got tricked into signing up for a bunch of stuff at the involvment fair this past weekend. I probably won't even do half of the clubs I signed up for. i think I'm gonig to do NJPIRG, Queens Chorale, and The Green Print newspaper. I was thinking about auditioning for a musical for one of the theatre groups, but I think that would be too demanding and I want to sign up for a non-credit dance class so I don't think I'm going to even bother with the musical. As far as eating...eh, I've had better times. I'm in the middle of a fast right now because somehow I got up to 129.7. Yeah, that caused a minor freak out before choir rehearsal on Mondy, but this morning I weighed in at 126.0, which is still not great, but it is better then 129.7. I still need to lose 18 pounds. Well, I need to go to class soon so I'll update again later.

- Danyele

Everything

Today (techinically yesterday since it's early in the am) was my first day of classes. That was certainly a different experience. My first college class ever was General Psychology. It was a lot of note-taking though. Six whole pages in my notebook are now filled with psych notes just from today. I think I'm probably going to like the material, but I'm curious to see how uncomfortable I'll be when the professor lectures about eating disorders. That will be awkward. Anyway, then I had some precalc (because I'm an idiot and couldn't do the stuff of the placement exam even though I already had precalc) and that was lame. It was a restitution period, but we didn't have any material to go over because we hadn't had a class yet. We reviewed real numbers....which was lame. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this isn't middle school. I think maybe it was just because it was the first class and there really wasn't anything to talk about. After precalc I had a few hours of doing nothing so I went to the bookstore to pickup the books I had ordered and paid for online. Oh my god. Picking up all of my textbooks at once was SUCH a bad idea. In theory it was good because then I'd only have to go to the bookstore and wait for my books in that ridiculously long line once instead of multiple times. I forgot to think about just how heavy all of those books would be. I don't know how I managed to even get them to the bus stop. My arms are killing me now. I'm pathetic. I dropped them off at my car and then went over to another campus. Today I also learned that trying to catch a bus off of the main campus mid-day is nearly impossible. The bus was PACKED. I had to get on it though. So I did and then I had a bunch of time to burn before bio so I decided to try out for choir. I went there and I went in the audition room and met some of the music staff and they were looking over this thing I filled out about my choral experience. So one of them starts asking about the director of one of the honor choir I had been in and before I could even answer he had looked at my high school and started talking about how he knows my high school director and how we always look so professional with "perfect hair and perfect hemlines". The mood immediatly lightened. Then I auditioned and I was just looking to get into the general choir, but he mentioned that he would try to get me into the more select choir if my scheduled could be arranged. I have bio during one of the rehearsal periods. The only thing is, General Biology is maxed out with students and it would be almost impossible for me to switch sections. I didn't tell him that though. I'll just let him handle it. After the audition I still had a good two hours before bio. I walked around the campus and smoked because I didn't want to get on a bus to get back to my car and then have to get back on a bus to go back to the same campus I was just at an hour earlier. Then I went to bio and it was....bio. Then I went back to my dorm and realized that my laptop screen is broken. It really needs to be fixed. Something is wrong with the screen and if you put any pressure on it (like, if you're adjusting the screen or something) it flickers white and gets stuck on a white screen and you have to hit it to get it to fix and I just shouldn't have to do that with a computer I paid almost $2500 for. So I called Sony customer service and waited forever on hold so they could tell me that my warranty would only cover the repair if I sent out the computer, which would take 7-10 days from when Sony recieved my computer. That really means it could take up to a couple of weeks. I told the customer service rep that I did not like that idea and she told me that they could send someone out to my apartment to repair it, but that wasn't covered on my warranty so it would cost $150. I was furious, but I need my computer so now I have to pay $150 for them to fix something that shouldn't have even been broken. Lame. My friend Chris visited not too long ago. He is at the same college as me, but living on campus. I picked him up at his dorm and then we hung out at my apartment for a little bit. Then we went back to his dorm and I met his friends. I've recently realized that I completly lack social skills. Do you want to know how many friends I've made so far since I've been here? None. I guess that's ok though. I really didn't come to college to make friends. I came to college to get an education. Speaking of friends though, I was talking to one of my best friends yesterday. She goes to a different college that's just a few hours away. She's...well, she's fat. She's about 5'0" and about 140 lbs. I'm about 5'8" and about 125 lbs. so my BMI is significantly less then hers (about 27.4 compared to about 19.0). Anyway, she tells me that her mother is fraking about because she's lost 6 pounds since she's been away at school (about two weeks). First of all, I don't know why someone would tell this to someone they KNOW has an eating disorder, but she did. I know I should be concerned and I would really like to be concerned, but I'm actually just really jealous. Even though she's overweight and it would be healthier for her to be 10 lbs lighter, I am still so jealous. If she loses enough weight to weigh less then me I'll just die. I figured out that she would have to weigh about 97 lbs at her height to have about the same BMI as me, but even so if she even gets close to my weight I'll just freak out. I really will. Bleh. I'm going to sleep. I'm so exhausted.
- Danyele

That Jerk Called Me Fat

So today was going pretty good at first. I had orientation and I met some new people and all was going well until we were doing these icebreaking activities in a field. We were all standing in a circle and all the girls had left their purses in like a pile on the outside of the circle. So we're all playing this game and I notice this boy going over to the pile so I kept my eye on him while we were doing the game and then I see him picking up the purses and looking at them and I'm just about to go over there and stop him when I see him picking up MY purse so then I'm like "Excuse me, what do you think you're doing?" So the kid obviously hears me and drops my purse, but continues holding my stupid bag full of papers I got at the info session as if it belonged to him and that was what he was going over to get. I was pissed so I walked over there and grabbed my purse and then walked over to the boy and grabbed my bag and then he started defending himself in this thick Staten Island accent that I could barely understand and then he slipped in that I was fat. I don't even think anyone else heard it, but I did. So then I just turned around and left. Thankfully a campus bus was pulling up just as I was leaving so I just got right on. One of the orientation leaders stopped me on the way and asked if I was ok, I told her that I was fine and just panicked a bit because I thought someone was trying to steal my purse. It was a lie. Anyway, I got on the bus and about five minutes into the ride I realied that I had been so upset that I didn't even look to see which campus the bus was going to. I asked the girl sitting behind me and she said it was going to another campus and then to the campus near where I live, so I just sat on the bus for a while and when it got to the campus near where I live I got off and walked back to my apartment. It was about a 40 minute bus ride and then a fifteen minute walk back to my apartment and the entire time I was in panic mode. I seriously thought that my heart was going to explode and I was breathing so heavy other people probably thought I had a severe cold...or asthma or something. I ended up spending the rest of the night in my apartment (except when I went to the store to get more diet pepsi) instead of going to the rest of today's orientation activities. I was also planning on going to this frat party some guys invited me to, but I didn't even feel like doing that either. The stupid boy ruined my whole day. I told Tracy that a boy called me fat, but she couldn't really talk because she was going out with Jim soon. Jim is her boyfriend. I've never met him, but I would really like to meet him. I'm so curious about this Jim. All I know about him is that he is tall and thin...and his name is Jim even though I thought his name was Andy for about a week. Anyway, I didn't want to ruin her night so I told her I was fine even though I was freaking out. I think she believed me. I feel sick. I'm going to bed now.

- Danyele

WARNING: Entry Includes Weights and BMIs

Tomorrow I'm being oriented. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I know that I have to figure out how to get to another part of my school's campus (a part that I've never been to) by tomorrow at 3 pm or else I'll look like a huge idiot. I'd rather not look like an idiot before I even go to class. It's really setting in now that I am no longer in high school and that I'm a big bad college kid now. It's weird. I was thinking back on high school and I kind of wish I didn't have such a terrible time over those four year. Well, it was more like three years. Freshman year was kind of good. After that I only really liked to talk to one or two (maybe three on a good day) people in the whole school. My senior year was really the worst. It's kind of expected that senior year is your best year. Mine really wasn't. In fact, not only was senior year my worst year in high school, it was also probably the worst year of my life. Everytime I think about senior year I remember how glad I am that high school is over. Moving on, I started talking to Chris again today. It was stupid and I feel like an idiot for making up with him after what he said to me, but I did. I often make stupid decisions. I'm still eating horribly. I did a little bit better today. I took laxatives last night...because I'm stupid. I spent a lot of today working on my collage book of models and celebrities. I actually have three and the oldest one dates back to when I first developed my eating disorder. The reason I have three is because I used to misplace them so I would make a new one...but then I would find them again. So anyway, I have three. It's really interesting to look back at the pictures I cut out and put in there and the stuff I wrote when I first developed my eating disorder. There is a clear difference between the kind of body type I thought was desirable. Before I just had pictures of thin celebrities. None of them were like skin and bones, just regular thin. Like, I went through a phase when I thought Penelope Cruz was perfect so there are a lot of pictures of her in there. Anyway, now the pictures I put in there are of pin thin models and actresses. Like today I skipped over the new YSL add with Gisele Bundchen because I don't think she looks very thin in it. How ridiculous is that thinking? Also, I look back on my food logs and I can't believe all of the crap I ate. I used to eat a single serving bag of Doritos for lunch sometimes during freshman year. Sorry if I'm going off, but I remember when I started being really disordered I stopped eating lunch completely. I used to sit with these two girls Jaclyn and Candice and Candice was fat (like literally overweight) and she was always trying to lose weight. So she'd see that I wasn't eating lunch so she would cut down on what she was eating too. Then Jaclyn, who was naturally very thin, would get really anoyed with Candace and Candace would always make these comments like "Oh, people are going to think we're anorexic because we don't eat lunch." I think that she was probably one of those wannarexic girls. I think she thought it was cool not to eat lunch and that it was glamorous for people to think that she didn't eat. However, she was really pretty fat so it was obvious that she did, in fact, eat. Of course, I wasn't very thin then either. I was about 140 lbs when I was a freshman which is like a 21.9 BMI, which is on the fat side of "healthy". I was pretty chubby. I still am fat now, just now quite as fat. Plus, I grew almost an inch since 9th grade. I'm not sure how that happened, but it did. I've been weighing myself like...every five minutes and I'm fluctuating between 122 and 125, which is between a 18.7 and 19.1 BMI. I don't know how I gained so much weight so fast. I was down to 117 when I came back from North Carolina which is 17.9 BMI which is like...not so bad. I can deal with 117 lbs and 17.9 BMI. I cannot deal with 122-125 lbs and 18.7-19.1 BMI. Ideally, I'd like to be 98 lbs, which would be a 15.0 BMI. That would be amazing. I realize that if I was that skinny I'd be really sick though. Like, I don't really get my period now and I'm a "healthy" weight so I don't know what would happen to me if I was 98 lbs. I'd probably die. That would be bad. I think I'm going to try to get down to like 108 lbs and then just maintain. I think I'd be happy at that weight and I'd be able to be like...ok at 108 and I wouldn't freak out for being too heavy....even though I'd really like to be 98. I was down to around that weight sophomore year and I was pretty happy with that. I think that's going to be my goal. Ok, so I'm done rambling now. Sorry that was so....random. Oh, one more thing. I cut out a two page spread of a bunch of models I found in an old issue of Vogue and hung it on my refrigerator...just to be a reminder. But seriously, I need to sleep now if I'm going to be alive tomorrow for orientation. Peace out.
- Danyele