Incidentally, I think I might be reaching some sort of crisis point with my weight. My left hand has become raw and scaly again, and little cracks or cuts are appearing on the knuckles which don’t heal very well. I’m feeling exhausted, physically, a lot of the time, and daunted by the effort of confronting the simplest of daily tasks – picking James up from school, for example. It’s possible that the emotional richness is being slowly leached or bleached out of my perceptions of the world (possibly), and that the metaphysical depth is being flattened like a cardboard box being dismantled. (The world seems made of empty boxes, inhabited by insubstantial spirits that evaporate into nothing as each box folds down. Were they ever there?) Yet my brain often seems full of baseless anguish that’s attached to nothing, and I’ll suddenly experience pangs of sourceless poignancy, like those tangy salt crystals in vintage cheddar or gorgeous cookery smells wafting from somewhere out of sight. (Food image! Mmm!)
Behaviour-wise I seem to have become highly mercurial again. That’s an even better word than volatile, I think, because it’s not a simmering rage that bursts out. Inexplicable blades of fury suddenly stab upwards, through my chest: I’m fine. Then I’m not. I’ve started snapping savagely at my kids and, also, the naughty ones at school, which makes me feel dejected and humiliated, feelings I enjoy. I get easily agitated by Meggie and Daniel and am then horribly nasty to them. I find it difficult to guard against this because the nastiness comes out of nowhere.
It feels good to be back here, in that anorexic, reverse thinking sort of way, although I still feel much better than I did at my worst. Basically, I need to be cared for, but Jo is suffering from exhaustion from over-work. She needs to be cared for and I need to gain absolution by doing so. These are all warning signs, I think. I need to back pedal quickly. But how?
Middle-aged Male Anorexic 