Wrong, wrong, wrong.

All of it, gone.

Arms I could clasp fingers around, hipbones that stood proud, holding every item like a tent.

That transcendental high after walking, starved, for several hours until dusk descends. The barometer of curious, shocked stares at rail-thin legs carrying you further and further and further.

"Recovery" can fuck off back home.

Less than 2 months ago, I weighed 86lbs. BMI: 13.18. Physically: tall, long, lithe.

Now, tiny bubbles of adipose tissue, filling up with fat. Weight: 108. BMI: 16.6. Thin enough to get stares, not thin enough to generate that intrigue or horror.

How, why? These do not matter.

How to get back does.

An evening turned into a night curled together, an afternoon spent apart then dinner with mutual friends. As dawn creeps up on a night of smoking, drinking and chats around YouTube finds, we part ways. We lock into a tight embrace, each unwilling to let the other go until he pulls me close and kisses me like he used to. Once, twice, too many times to count.

This time last year, I pined in his newly-declared absence. The white Vera Wang, silk gloves, crystal tiara and the surroundings of the 2nd best party in the world did nothing to stop the tears and hysteria over flutes of champagne.

Yesterday, I melted in his presence. In a small secluded house away from the source of fireworks that fizzled overhead, we talked until our voices meshed with the aubade, bodies intertwined.

Who are we to each other? The long-overdue question. Friends to fling to ex to just friends again, but with that something extra. That element of possession, exclusivity. Emotional significant others.

As the year drew to a close and we contemplated our futures, I lay curled in his arms breathing in his comforting, musky scent. I wanted no more any more, no more yet.

And I was happy.

There is nothing glamorous about suicide, its attempts or ideation. Of searching for heights to scale in a city of spires from which to leap and forever dream. Of counting each pill, each tablet (of whose source you can remember, every one). Of obsessive cleaning and buying yourself flowers so that your dwelling is a shrine to the image you want to leave. Of weaving the mile to a friend's house, intoxicated by the electrolyte imbalance robbing limbs of their movement and the heart flit with a flutter so erratic and strong that it shakes its corporeal cage.

The crash on the floor, the numbness. Of explaining a demeanor so calm and calculated, belying an impulse that doesn't add up. No trigger, turbulence nor tears yet a mind wanting to choose the other exit from purgatory and turning the body to wave goodbye to life without looking back.

There is no glory in being reduced to a fragile doll state, a comatose body with spirit long fled or an amorphous mass of carbon whose decaying stench permeates its surroundings.

Choose life, be it a daily struggle to survive or enriched and full. And do whatever it takes to make you make the right choice.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I realised that at some stage in the next decade or so, I might want to leave this all behind. I forge incredibly strong links between landmarks and behaviours - places, times, people. I knew that if I didn't have at least one day of semi-normal behaviours no matter what the consequences, I would never be able to break the association between this age and self-destruction.

It wasn't to be. Triggered three binge-purge sessions, which wouldn't be so bad (I never worked out whether being an incredibly clean purger was a blessing or a curse) if it weren't for the sheer exhaustion of no sleep the night before causing me to fall asleep mid-session and waking up too late, heart pounding and skipping far worse than on even the most violent of purges. Oh how fun refeeding syndrome can be, even when unplanned...

Thankful for the resultant digestive fuck-ups as a result, malabsorption suddenly turning into a lifesaver. Still didn't help with the several pounds of water weight I seem to have accumulated - and oedema isn't the easiest for me to shift with, er, having not eaten protein for about three or four months.

If that weren't enough of a trigger to never let another item pass through one's lips, this telephone call was. I'm normally too proud to be triggered by other people. If I am, I rarely translate those thoughts into actions. But yesterday night, I deviously extracted figures from a person who was talking about a mutual friend's eating disordered past. Not only was it someone I knew, the fastest rate of weightloss I have ever seen verified and just probing a single digit BMI, but the transition was exactly half of her body weight. Halves and doubles have always fascinated me. Half a normal BMI; half the starting weight; plus the additional anomaly of crossing that single-figure benchmark.

Suddenly, that slight ambivalence is gone again. The choice between recovery and deterioration became that much easier.

A hop and skip to the doctor's office. Weekly chores made bearable only by the thought that each week I'll prove them wrong a little more.

Needle flickers on the scale, down a tiny bit more. Bloodwork results in black and white. Still in balance.

You're going to die soon if you keep this up, he says to me. Oh, whatever. Your profession told me that I'd stunt my growth when I was twelve and I shot up 8 inches. You told me you'd section me six weeks ago if I didn't gain and I've lost and you've still let me go. I don't trust you to know what you're talking about. I don't trust you to keep your word.

Constant fast-forward these days; flying through legal texts fingers flaying over the keyboard, plasters over the paper cuts from turning the pages at reckless speed. You said I couldn't manage, you said that I couldn't possibly concentrate. Look at me: Oxbridge lawyer. On the home strait. The Bulge Bracket banks love me. Rocketing to a high flying career, beautiful house and all the riches a girl could want.

This isn't a disorder. It's not psychotic. Every action carefully calculated, logical towards achieving this end goal. Some people choose to wear outrageous clothes against the better judgment of society; we call them a subculture, not mentally ill. I choose to wear bones. Within that paradigm, everything makes sense.

A quirk. A valid choice.

Well into the 80s today.

13.5 on the dot.

I felt like a gazelle on the walk to my doctor's appointment. Legs long, toned and lithe in white ballet tights; GAP kids tutu and pink vest top just tight enough to show my figure, just loose enough to look effortless.

No imminent force of IP, no impeding weight gain yet. I am thin and I am still free. But there's always thinner, leaner, lighter.

I have oedema - 7lbs worth - spread throughout my body. Projectile vomiting all day - water, yogurt, cucumber.

Can't sleep. Cold sweats. Head still pounding and oddly, <i>craving</i> beyond belief. Bread. Bagels. Pitta. Couscous. Madeira cake. Cream crackers. The complex carbohydrates of which I am normally utterly terrified.

Maybe time to pop the zopiclone, but I have things to do tomorrow bright and early. Which is the least worst option now?