Disappearing...

I'm wasting away. I MEAN it. And I don't get it, I really don't.

I realise I didn't eat as much as I should have done in the last few months: but when every day seems like an intolerable pressure for one reason or another, I suppose one has an excuse...

For the last three years or so, I've seen a crash coming: that the lifestyle was, in some way or another completely unsustainable - that pretending to be happy whilst having to keep an eye on the situation just to see what was going wrong next was going to break me.

Anybody who's known me intimately will know one oft-repeated phrase of mine: "energy is a finite resource" - and fighting to stop that energy being drained at an unsustainable rate is a kind of catch-22 situation. If you don't fight, then the energy gets drained. If you do fight, you drain the energy still quicker for the possible payoff that the rate of decline will slow.

And then finally, it all drains away and something snaps. In my case, it finally went (if I'm being truthful with myself) sometime in mid-September. And that was when the trouble really started, because I only resisted snapping in the past because I could see the storm clouds quite clearly. I knew what was coming. Only this time, I couldn't avert it any more.

Acceptance is a fine thing, but people that practice it are rare, and well, I think you can see what's coming here. Everybody hates rejection, but some people hate it more than others.

Any more would be telling tales out of school.

I don't eat much when I'm worried - it comes, I think to wanting to make sure I have enough money: a subconscious fear that I don't know the root of. So it comes as no surprise that I lost 15% of my body mass from September-February. This was noticeable when I was getting dressed the last time I stayed at R's. It wasn't a good day and she was very snappy.

"Those jeans are too big," she said.

"I know," I said in a straightforward way, trying to hide the embarrassment I felt, because I knew what was going on. "I've lost a lot of weight just lately." I didn't elucidate, because, to be honest, I was a bit sick of repetition.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not anorexic: I don't like being this thin in the slightest, and the fact that I have a genetic syndrome that makes putting weight on very, very difficult doesn't help. I don't want to be like this. I actually sit down and make sure I do three meals a day (which on re-reading sounds slightly pathetic), and I can't work out how to put weight on again. I don't want my weight to stabilise at this level, either.

The worries are lifting. I'm stripping my life of dysfunction one level at a time, especially when it's my tolerance of others that facilitates the dysfunction, and I'm concentrating on my life for the first time in nearly 20 years - not acceding to anybody else's desire for me to be part of their life is an odd feeling. I was never afraid of being alone, but when I've been in relationships almost constantly for 20 years, and still retain a deep capacity to love others, that's a kind of hard thing to prove. But alone I am, and happy I am. It's liberating. There's no dogma there. If the right relationship presents itself, I won't say no on principle, but nor am I looking.

"But if you do not find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go on your way alone, like a king abandoning a conquered kingdom, or like a great elephant in the deep forest."

- Buddha

So if I'm not worried, and I'm eating OK, why is my BMI stuck at 17.1? I don't like it and any suggestions would be fine, except "go see your healthcare provider," because I'm going anyway.

Back to the silly links soon.