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Food for thought

Social media is responsible for a lot of good in the world: it has facilitated political change, bulldozed ludicrous celebrity injunctions and gifted us Caitlin Moran. But reliable it is not, for that which isn't posted, blogged or uploaded is often an awful lot more insightful than what is. When opinions are limited to 140 characters and images are notable by what has been photoshopped out, one is inclined to wonder about the truth. Self-editing is a modern pastime, and lately I have been guilty as anyone.

I never intended this blog to be a definitive account of life on dialysis - the experience is so subjective that such a thing could never exist. But I did mean it to be honest and open, or at the very least, cogent and spelt write (little bit of literacy humour for you there). Of course, there are reams of my thoughts and experiences that have not made it to the page: too boring, too repetitive, too painful or too self-pitying. But whatever is going on with my eating at the moment is becoming crucial and if I don't wrote about if then the blog will be little more than a fallacy and I might as well stop doing it. Or I could re-name it, "What's your favourite biscuit?" and use it as a forum to debate the merits of bourbons vs those crunchy ones with cream in the middle.

Anyone who knows me or has spent time with me lately - or anyone with eyes - will be aware that I have lost quite a lot of weight. I am embarrassed to disclose what I now weigh, but it is not very much. Not that it was ever about being fat or thin, of course; I was not even really trying to lose weight beyond the standard couple of pounds that most girls see as the key to financial/career/relationship/Olympic success. There is no one reason why I started losing weight, but several factors combined and I did; by the time I cottoned on to what was happening - a fair while after my friends and family had - I found I couldn't stop, or wouldn't. I don't know whether I would describe myself as having an eating disorder - at no point have I stopped eating - but I have been alarmed at the speed and vigour with which certain thought patterns have become entrenched in my mind. Even now, with this all out in the open and support coming my way on many different fronts, the ease of maintaining destructive, restrictive habits when pitted against the battle to ingest extra calories is very seductive. And, possibly, ultimately, deadly - a thought so cunt-fuckingly scary that it has spurred me on to action.

I have tried numerous times over the last few days to write in detail the hows, whys and where-fors of all this, and have failed each time. It all feels very personal and raw and it is resoundingly humiliating. Just walking down the road is humiliating, because I know I look horrendous and my stupid clothes don't fit anymore. Old Rosy would have been overjoyed to announce that her jeggins were loose - but Old Rosy also benefitted from a sense of humour and perspective that seem to have escaped me recently. The goal now is to be fit and healthy (which means a healthy weight) for a transplant...except, it is a transplant I hardly believe will come and so the incentive fails to take seed. I want to gain weight and I know I need to, but as my poor old dad found out, sitting me in front of carrot cake and jovially ordering me to eat is not, perhaps, the solution. I am not immune to the irony that after almost five years of kidney failure I am being scuppered by an eating disorder, and whilst a remedy to my kidney troubles will come from a stranger, only I alone can address what is happening with my eating. We are what we eat, so the old adage goes...and I want to be something. I want to be something extraordinary.

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Postscript

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