Video

Jeans

Prior to May of this year, I hadn't purchased jeans since 2008. It wasn't because I just wore the same jeans from 2008. Once I started gaining weight after I had been at 90 lbs, I stopped wearing jeans. I pretty much stopped wearing pants altogether. First, it wasn't really by choice. It was because I only had size 00 and 0 jeans and they didn't fit me anymore. I could still fit into my less formfitting skirts and dresses, so that's what I wore. Once I stopped gaining, I was so depressed and couldn't even consider the thought of going into a store and trying on jeans at my new high weight. I probably would've been a size 6 or 8 at that time, which I realize isn't obese or anything, but I felt like a whale, especially since months earlier I had been a size 00. So since then, I haven't purchased jeans. I haven't had an occasion where I had to wear jeans. Then, I got hired at my current job. Part of the serving staff's uniform is dark wash jeans, so I had to brave the stores in search of a suitable pair of jeans. This was not an easy task not only because I didn't know my size, but also because I have a proportionally tiny waist in comparison to my muscular thighs and my legs are short for my height, so I just have a hard time finding jeans that fit right. When I got to the store, I started with a 6 because that seemed to be the size that looked most correct when I tried to compare my body size to the size of the jeans by sight. To my surprise, the 6 was huge. It was a pleasant surprise. So then I tried a 4. Still too big. So then I looked at a 2 and thought, "There is no way my big ass is going to fit into those little jeans." But I tried them on anyway and, what do you know? They fit. Crazy. A size 2. Then, I thought maybe the store was just messing with me because they were bootcut jeans and maybe bootcut jeans are cut bigger or something, so I tried on a size 2 in a skinny jean and, BAM, still fit. What? How? I don't understand. When I look at myself and then look at the jeans, I just don't see how I could ever fit my body into those jeans, but then I put them on and they fit, and they're not super tight or anything, they actually fit. Maybe I have that body dysmorphia? It's possible, but I suspect that jeans are just tricky. Anyway, if you're curious about my weight now, I can't help you, but, apparently, I wear a size 2 in jeans.

Hello again.

Hi. It has been a while, yeah? It has been six years, actually. Wow. It's really weird to look back on blogs written by my 18-year-old self. I'm 24 now. I live in Boston. I have been here for just over a year. I'm a grad student, studying playwriting, which I realize is a far cry from Biology. Haha. I'm also a waitress because I have to pay the bills these days. So I'm going to try to fill you in on everything that went down during my blogging hiatus, briefly.
A lot of things have happened in the past six years. Last time you saw me, I was living in New Brunswick, going to Rutgers. I think I was studying Biology? I don't know. Shortly after my last blog post, I left Rutgers and moved back in with my parents. I was sick, but I told myself that the reason I left school was because I didn't like Rutgers. I guess that was part of the reason too. I returned to my old job and went to community college for half of the spring semester while I shopped for a new college to attend in the fall. It was a really dark time for me. Honestly, I don't remember much of it. I can't remember when things happened and at what point during that period. I got really thin. At one point, I was down to about 90 lbs. I'm relatively tall, 5'8", so that wasn't good. I was really weak, balding, fainting all the time. It was pretty scary stuff. I got treatment and gained some weight, but I was still quite thin until that summer. I got mono. I've always heard of people loosing weight with mono. I gained weight, a lot of weight. I started school at La Salle University in Philadelphia that fall. I was about 120 lbs, but I was by no means healthy. It seemed as though I had swapped one disordered eating habit for another and I spent my freshman year binging and purging instead of restricting. I ballooned up to about 155 lbs and I was disgusted with my body, but I was doing well in school and I had friends and a life, sort of. I got involved in theatre again, which was something I had always loved, so that was good times. You hear about how your body will pack on the pounds after a period of starvation and I think that's what happened. My weight adjusted itself over the next few years. I wasn't "cured." I still binged and purged and restricted, but nothing like what I had done in the past. I was functional. My weight stayed around 130-140 lbs until my junior year when I had a bit of a relapse and starved down to 112 lbs. But it got better again and I didn't gain crazy weight like the last time. I finished undergrad, go my BA, and got into grad school. I still have disordered eating problems. I don't know that they'll ever go away. I'm at a "healthy" weight right now. I can't give you an exact number because I haven't weighed myself in over two years, but based on my clothing size, I'd say I'm around 130 lbs, maybe a bit more because I'm way more toned than I was back in the day. My life is kind of ridiculous, but, you know, I'm alive and making things work as best as I can.
I don't know if I'll be updating this regularly or not. I'd like to try, but my schedule is so crazy that I don't know that I'll find the time. We'll see. Thanks so much to everyone who has supported me over the years.

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