I had this terrible habit in my teens of imposing diets upon myself, under the guidance of no one wise enough to tell me otherwise. They were ridiculously unhealthy; nutritionally and psychologically.

This one occured at age fourteen, somewhere between the piles of diet magazines and my own constant food-centric rumination. I had mentally stumbled upon a diet so perfect, I thought at the time, that I may have cracked the key to eating. Regardless of societal three-meal-a-day norms, regardless of evolutionary hunger cues, regardless of all the common sense that you'd expect a bright girl to possess, there I stood grinning at this glowing prospect I now held; The Hundred Rule.

All and every food was permitted - in 100 calorie servings. And of these servings, I was allowed fifteen each day. I deemed these servings 'meals' in attempted psychological trickery. Fifteen whole meals! It was a diet of pure indulgence! And all this while I was creating a daily calorie deficit of about five-hundred; I was thrilled!

Thrilled; I posted myself entirely against my better judgement. An apple was a 'meal'. A cube-inch of cake was a 'meal'. Each 'meal', as I called it, was far too small to be labelled thus. And with this I had eliminated the experience of satiety. I was never full, and seemed to obsess about the next few incoming calories.

I think I managed a week or two. What had I achieved? Certainly no weight loss; I simply hadn't the weight to lose. Rather, I'd turned into a tired, miserable and hungry shadow of myself. I'd eroded the natural ghrelin and insulin cycles that had previously captained my appetites. I'd taught myself that my efforts result in failure, and instead of recognising the inherent stupidity of the plan, I attributed this personally.

Harshly and personally.

I'd lost to the monster again.

An inane post to punctuate this otherwise highly analytic stream.

A resemblance to the undead, and perfect-fit three-dollar op-shopped Doc Martens. Three dollars! I think I overdosed on dopamine when I found them. Excitement isn't a dominant act in my emotional repetoire, but these cheap babies did it.

I love fashion; the art of covering the body, of hiding or accentuating. I'm no stylist. Rather, an intensely visual person who takes genuine pleasure in the aesthetics of it all. But lately, I've felt my sense of style wane such that it's detracting from my peace of mind. Each day features a minor change to an otherwise formulaic composition (full-length skirt, tee knotted at the waist, the same boring flats). This regression to essentially the same outfit cannot be explained by a lack of clothes; my room is bursting. More than anything, I think it's a sign of the rush I've existed in lately. Panic and rush; revert to safe and predictable.

I know it's nothing and I'm nothing and nothing anyone wears truly matters when the cosmos is considered (personally, this happens with a dangerous regularity). But I'm also quick to dismiss the little things that make me happy, or calm, or peaceful. If I resist trivialising it, make a small effort, and actually enjoy the cultivated tonne of clothing I live amongst, good things might happen. Maybe.

There is this grotesque quintessence of op-shopping that fascinates. The unknown origin, the faceless previous owner; whom one-day strolls past and recognises this or that, dress or coat. That distinct odour, an uncomfortable mix of detergent and dust. The awkward vintage not enough aged, not yet aesthetically-ripe. The tasteless homage to the Mona Lisa on a hand-embroided, dead-skinned, polyester jacket.

I was so repulsed that I almost bought it. 

On an unrelated and regretably egocentric note; I am low. It's a cocktail of rejection, albiet self-inflated, and the stumbling upon a friend-of-a-friend's success. I've decided that I'd like to be mildly famous. I quite liked reading my name in jet-colour school bulletins. I'm going to find the adult equivalent.

She passes on boxes of gossip, shiny and gift wrapped, but completely empty. Underneath her bed she keeps a voodoo army of everyone she knows; she acts out in miniature the knots she'll later tie into the social fabric. A narrative of sorts; seeds neatly planted in the other's mind. "I don't lie, I play tricks". She likes to play tricks because it's fun.

In the fourth grade she told her teacher that she didn't do her homework as her father had had a heart attack (he hadn't).

Over time, habits persisted and lies spawned until her world became a spider's thick web. They poisoned her relationships. They grew like a filthy deposit, sticking between her fingers and everything she touched.

At age 22, she added what would become her final lie to the pile, which instigated an avalanche, crushing her to death.

I want to escape my skin and leave my burnt-out carcass lying on the floor. I slept twelve comatose hours last night, a further two during the day. The day's goals linger unfinished; no, unstarted. And again I'm ready to collapse. I have no energy, I'm wearing chain-mail dresses and dragging weights with my feet.

A quiet corner of the University

When I found myself with a (rare) extra twenty minutes before my train, I had a peek in the second-hand store near-by. I found these pretties, including the double-cross dangly earrings that I immediately put on for the day. I've nothing to say more intellectual than 'look, pretty!' Today was impossibly draining, for reasons I can't identify; unfortunately this manifests as vacuous posts.

The sunset at which we began drinking last Saturday

This morning, a rare and genuine wave of happiness came over me, and strangely, I wasn't suspicious. Usually I find simple and unexplained happiness more of a mock; something that comes only to tease, 'this is what you're missing'. But today I embraced it. Bowie sang about the Starman in my little ipod-confined world, the sun so elegantly hitting the filthy train window. We raced across a river at a speed reserved only for CityRail; but that was ok, because the moment was glorious and rare.

I had this terrible habit in my teens of imposing diets upon myself, under the guidance of no one wise enough to tell me otherwise. They were ridiculously unhealthy; nutritionally and psychologically.

The first I can remember was in my first week of high school, during an ice-breaking activity in one of our pastoral classes, a human-bingo type thing. We had a list of questions and had to go around the room, asking people if they fit the criteria, until we had them all completed. 'Find someone who has three pets'; 'Find someone who can speak another language'.

'Find someone who doesn't eat junk food'.

In a class of essentially children, this question was tricky. No-one satisfied criteria. So I, like some sort of misguided modern-day martyr, stood up and heroically announced;

"I do not eat junk food!"

Or something to that effect. Point is that I had just committed myself to total junk-food abstinence in front of 30 or so of my peers, despite my normal and healthy partiality to it. Now I was socially accountable. I remember thinking, 'Now I might actually lose some weight!' - albeit off my slim 12-year-old body, but details like these didn't occur to me until many years later.

So for the following school lunches, I couldn't bring myself to eat anything from the canteen. As if my friends, happily munching away on the occasional ice block or chips, would even remember my valiant pledge, let alone judge me for doing the same as them.

Of course, I didn't abstain for the remainder of my six years at school. But man, did I feel the glare of judgmental eyes when I did indulge. Whose eyes? I'm not sure. Perhaps that monster Perfection.

I think he was looking on and laughing at me every time I tried.

A tiny collection of photos I took in Paris. I used my little Canon point-and-shoot when I travelled around Europe by myself last winter (or what was summer here). I'd quite like a DSLR and the know-how to use one, but sadly I do not possess these things nor the money to acquire them. Taking photos every day for almost two months left me with a new-found interest in photography. I don't pretend to be any good, I'm just a particularly visual person and my camera has a decent lens.

In the moment, anxiety is terrifying - necessarily by it's definition. For those not too familiar with the process, here's how psychologists theorise that anxiety works:

Take an individual who is finely attuned to their bodily sensations.

'Oh, what was that? A strange twitch?'

A less neurotic person ignores it, but the anxious persist.

'Why would there be a twitch?'

Worry triggers other autonomic effects. Breathing increases, heartbeat becomes prominent, maybe some sweating or shaking. Before they know it, the anxious are suffering a full-blown panic attack, drowning in their bedrooms which have inexplicably filled with water, muffled noise and bubbles of air the only things to come out as they try to scream, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!"

So the water thing may not be an exactly common symptom. But I believe it is normal to attribute the bodily symptoms to external events. I felt a monumental pressure on my chest and I couldn't breath. Ergo, I was drowning. My brain doesn't usually let me down, but I really think it could have come up with a more plausable explanation in this case.

None-the-less, there I was standing on my bed, craning my neck to reach the surface, tears streamimg down my face (further evidence for the water interpretation). Brother opens my door, his confusion causing him to forget what he came in for, stares perplexed for a moment, then slowly back-tracks and leaves. Which makes me reassess the situation and decide that I was indeed not drowning.

Anxiety, in retrospect, is hilarious.

I have probably set you up for little but disappointment as I am certain you will never see more flattering images of me than these. My web-camera is delightfully low-resolution.

Hair colour has become my latest creative endeavour. I defied the mortal sin of hair-bleaching and did it myself; on a boredom-driven impulse in my nan's bathroom, no less. Incase we are unacquainted, my hair was initially dark brown. The blue-purple-green was a very temporary play with colour which has already washed away.

Thus far, there seems to be a theme to my ramblings against which this vanity-post seems uncharacteristic. But I'd quite like Huntingdale to evolve into an expresssion and reflection of myself; including my penchant for fashion and beauty and all kinds of charming colours.

It seems unfathomable that I actually have to get up and *do* stuff. Every cell in my body is clinging to the false hope that maybe, just maybe, I won't have to get out of bed today. But becaus reasons for this include 'university: it was all a dream' and 'exits bedroom; discovers apocalyptic destruction of entire world', this seems unlikely.

Sometimes I avoid doing the things I have to do by creating mental lists of the things I have to do. This avoidance strategy paints me as a rather organized (and capable) individual, but there is an inherent flaw to this technique. You see, I reach a point on my list where the pressing and salient tasks have been mentally mentioned, and the realization that I might have to stop making lists and start acting on them stares me in the face.

Often (always) I choose to ignore it, by adding more items to the list. If the end of the list heralds the point I start 'doing', the list will never, ever end.

'Then I have to... Have a shower. And wash my hair. Then dry my hair.'

Never, ever, ever end.

'After that... Make my bed. Tidy my room. Clear out my desk.'

And before I know it, I've committed each of the minor tasks that compose my day to the list, inflating their value and making me want to avoid them as much as the major psychology report that sits mockingly at the top of the list.

And that's how I psychologically trap myself into achieveing nothing.

If you don't know me personally (and the confessional nature of this blog makes me hope you don't), I was successful throughout school. I came first a lot, I have many lamenated certificates. Somewhere along the lines, this type of praise and my self-worth became entwined. Only now that I'm at university and 'struggling' (read: not coming first) is it apparent that there might be more to me. I've lied, stolen, cheated, but somehow these moral lapses don't register against not studying for university. A complete lack of motivation seems to be the more abhorrent personal failure.

It's something that's occupied a considerable portion of my attention. The suggestion that it's a sign I'm in the wrong field is proved wrong by the fact that I genuinely love psychology. There's this version of myself, closer to the asymptotic perfection, who in fleeting moments of motivation is actually productive. Who sees what she wants and acts so to get it. The problem is in accessing that part of myself, rather than the conditions around me.

Perhaps I'm reading too far into it. It most certainly would not be the first time; over-analysis seems to be a personal trait. There might not be any problem at all and I'm grasping in the dark at nothing. Unfortunately, as you'll probably gather as I post, accepting that
'there's nothing wrong with me' is much more difficult than it should be.