Page 7 of Bewitch

What if she were here and sleeping, though? I can’t assume she would be up and wanting to talk to my fat ass.

Shit. Okay. I can be strong.

But how?

I climb out of bed and turn on the light and force myself to look in the mirror. Head on, even in PJs, I don’t look that overweight, but here we go. I suck in a breath as I turn to the side.

Man, do I hate that view. There. If I don’t want to look like that anymore, I need to not eat. No more food. No bingeing. The cycle needs to end.

I can do this.

I have to.

But I already took that first step. Not only did I got to the gym, but I signed up with my very own personal fitness trainer. That’s huge, right? I should celebrate that Lucas didn’t kill me, and it’s not as if I want to eat chocolate or cake or anything like that. A peanut butter sandwich isn’t the worst thing in the world.

No. No!

Gah, what I need is a sponsor like they have in AA. I need someone I can text or call when I want to eat food to tell me, “No, don’t eat that. Wait an hour. If you’re still hungry, then eat. For now, just drink water.”

Hmm. Maybe I’m thirsty and not hungry.

I fill up my water bottle from the tap since I don’t want to drink all of the bottled water on us. It’s not as cold as I would like. Well, two water bottles would be okay, right? I mark a “D” on the lid of this water bottle, fill it back up again, and shove it into the fridge. Then, I grab a second water bottle, mark this one with a “D,” and then guzzle it down. I fill this one, too, and put it back in the fridge beside the first one.

There. That should do it.

Hoping I’ll be able to fall asleep now, I settle into bed and shut my eyes.

Every few minutes, I peek an eye open. Time is trickling by, and I’m trying my best to think about working out and how sore I am.

That’s it. Maybe if I did some body weigh moves like squats and lunges.

I climb out of bed. My PJs—a matching purple floral shirt and shorts set—are nice and loose so there’s nothing to prevent me from squatting. I hate squats, though, so I switch over to lunges. Hmm. There was a guy at the gym who was doing a walking lunge type thing while carrying weights. Let’s see… We have some cans of Chef Boyardee. I love that stuff.

I grab one can in each hand to use as weights and go down into a lunge. Whoops, too far. My knee slams into the ground. Man, did that hurt. Okay, let’s try again. I lunge on the same side and then take a step forward and try to lunge, but I took too long of a step so I have to readjust and try again. Up and down the room I go, trying to master this. It’s actually not that easy because I keep going either too far or not far enough. By the time my legs are dying, I’m starving all over again. Is this real hunger, though? It might just be thirst again. I am working up a sweat, crazy enough as that sounds.

After drinking both bottles of water, I have to pee, and then I try to lie down, but my heart is racing. I’m all amped up from the additional exercise. Shouldn’t that make you tired? What time is it? One in the morning. Shit. I guess that means Brooke’s not coming back tonight. Good for her.

But as much as I am happy for her, and I really am thrilled for her, I can’t help feeling depressed. Declan is a hottie. He’s almost as hot as Lucas is, and I’ll never have a guy look at me the way Declan does Brooke.

Emotions are another reason why I binge, and I’m too weak to hold back any longer. I have two sandwiches with a ton of peanut butter and enough jelly to ooze out of it, and then I take a spoon and eat a little more peanut butter until I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror because I’m eating while standing.

And I hate that girl in the mirror. I hate me.

It’s a terrible, horrible feeling to be your own worst enemy.

I just sabotaged myself, and all because I don’t trust myself to eat healthily. All I wanted was to try to push myself way too hard, and I worried that would happen, and yet I still couldn’t stop myself. One sandwich. Why couldn’t I have stopped at that? Or why couldn’t I have had one taco at the Mexican restaurant? A fish taco. Not the best of options, but still, it would’ve been better than all of this, but no. I had to go ahead and eat to the point of gorging myself.

Tears slip down my cheeks, and my shoulders slump as I start to bawl. I have to do better. I need to. I want to.

That has got to be the first step, right? I can make progress. I can get better.

Right?

No more. This won’t happen again. I won’t let myself get to this place where I’m back to bingeing and feeling absolutely miserable. Because that’s an even worse feeling than how stuffed my stomach is, the sheer misery that comes after a binge, the utter self-loathing.

Still sniffling, I climb back into bed, but it’s a long, long time before I’m able to fall asleep, and then when I do, the nightmares I have make me wish I hadn’t slept a single second.

There’s just no relief in sight anywhere.

---