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You think this is easy? You think I want to be like this? Seven years ago I had a plan for my life, I had ambitions and hopes and dreams. I wanted to successful – I was going to go to university and get a degree, find a well-paid job and work my way up, promotion after promotion. I was going to meet a handsome, caring and intelligent man and we were going to get married. Once we were both settled into a new home together, we’d have children. Two I thought, but maybe three. We were going to be a traditional family – beautiful four bedroom home with white walls and fluffy carpets, black leather sofas and a piano for the kids to practice on in the living room. We’d have a lovely back garden with a shed for dad, a trampoline for the children and a little garden patch for me. Every night, we were going to sit down and eat our dinner together, discussing the day’s activities – congratulating each other on our achievements, helping solve any problems we’d encountered. Then eventually, the children would move out and flee to university. They’d get themselves a good degree, a great job, and the cycle would start all over again.

                I thought that by now I would be sitting in a university lecture hall and I’d be dating someone. Maybe he wouldn’t turn out to be Mr. Right, maybe he would. But I’d be succeeding, I’d be getting towards my end goals. I thought that I’d live in a house with some friends and we’d spend every day doing work, drinking coffee and moaning about stress. We’d spend the weekends getting drunk or watching films and ordering pizza and eating our body weight in pizza. We’d go on holidays – drinking holidays, sight-seeing holidays, camping holidays. London, New York, Italy, Greece, Egypt… I wanted to see it all.

                Where am I now? I’m sitting in bed and I’m trying to remind myself of all the things I have to live for. I’m trying to remember why I’ve carried on so far, why I should keep carrying on. I’m telling myself that there are people that love me, and that I need to focus on my own health and my own desires. I’m convincing myself that things can get better – that things will get better. I’m listing the things that I will do to change my life. I’ll change tomorrow. Maybe the day after. I’m reminding myself why I’m alive. I’m telling myself why I shouldn’t die.

                But at the same time, there’s another voice in my head. It’s telling me I’m worthless, that I’m not worth trying to save. It’s telling me that I’m weak for giving in, for giving up. It’s saying that I’m not trying hard enough, and everybody can tell from my appearance. Everyone can see that I’m not restricting as much, that exercise is a thing of a past. They all know that I’m binging more; they can tell from my rounder shape and thicker thighs and my chubbier cheeks. It’s telling me that I don’t deserve to be alive right now, that I’m pathetic and stupid and disgusting and weak and embarrassing and ugly and fat and I’m a failure.

                It’s telling me to kill myself and I don’t know how to make it stop.