Nauseating purity

is it possible to escape unscathed

He’s texting me asking me if I miss him. What do I say, God? What do I say? Do I just not respond? I feel terrible. I know I’m a bad person. I know I’m breaking his heart, I know I’m proving him right, but he thinks I love him, and I don’t, not anymore. I kissed another man; how could I still have feelings for him? He doesn’t know I kissed someone else. He doesn’t know Gustav, and he doesn’t know I’m in love. I have to end it somehow, and I’m a ghost girl, literally and figuratively, but I think the term fits because I am so pale. I hate facing the consequences of my actions. I just have to remind myself that he doesn’t really care about me.

Commitment stresses me out. I get myself into something, and I almost immediately regret it. I think about all the ways it could go wrong, all the ways I could potentially come to hate it. I’m an avoidant princess. I’m terrible over the phone, but if you can get me in person, I’ll be your love bug. I can’t feel trapped. If I feel trapped, I will find any route of escape and take it. I won’t be your girlfriend, but please don’t abandon me, it’s too much, it’s all too much. I feel like I’m drowning.

Sometimes I look in the mirror, and I’m so proud of what I’ve accomplished, but I know I’m still so far from my goal. After all these years, I can actually see a gap in my thighs. All I want in life is the perfect body, but I’m in a constant state of wanting to lose 20 pounds. I feel like I’m huge compared to my friends because of my height and being fat.

My biggest fear in life is getting fat and failing; before that, it was losing my dad, but I couldn’t control that, so now the only thing that terrifies me is getting fat and failing. Lots of people are constantly telling me it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to fail, but that’s just not true. Failure is not an option. Failure is never going to be an option. I have lost everything, and I have only myself. If I fail, I have nothing, so no failure is not an option, and I understand that success is subjective, but my idea of success is happiness, and being clinically depressed for so long, it seems like that will never happen. Success for me is getting married and having kids, and doing a career I enjoy, traveling, and being skinny forever, which I understand sounds juvenile, but that’s what I want. If losing weight has made me realize one thing its that if your life is really captivating, food will not be your number 1 concern.

I remember when I was young, every Saturday my father would take me to the farmers’ market in town. We would walk around, and I would get my face painted. He would buy us a lemonade and a big bag of caramel corn, and he would always buy me a giant whole cucumber to eat on the way home. Being raised the way I did is probably the reason I’m so healthy today. I’m a freak for vegetables. Every day for lunch, in elementary school, my father packed me half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and lots of carrots and cucumbers. I hated it at the time, but I reminisce a lot now about the simpler times when all I had were my carrots and cucumbers, and I wasn’t aware of everything terrible going on around me because I was much too absolved in my world of vegetables.

I think I’m depressed, I don’t know why I’m saying this like it’s a newfound discovery. I’m always depressed, but I feel so useless these days. I need someone to give me a purpose or put me to work, give me some use, so I don’t feel so lifeless.