give me a break.

It's funny. The sight of me bragging, really truly bragging about staying up until dawn, drinking myself into a drunken stupor, smoking so many cigarettes that just the sight of one the next day makes me want to vomit, which happened three times last week in comparison to this week, where I've completely stopped all of my bad vices in an effort to cleanse myself and taking up the lemonade diet once again (for the previous bout two years ago, see these entries) vying for the outcome of a better body and better health.

No one batted an eye, looked twice or cluck clucked at my drunken verve. No one looked concerned or made fun of my overdoing it with drinking and going out. Why then would my friends, the people who love me, the people who supposedly care for me balk at the idea that I'm doing a cleanse that requires me not to do any of those things that were literally torturing my body?

I would like to imagine that my feathers just don't match everyone else's when I decide to go on an extreme diet, and it makes everyone else feel a little guilty about their own hedonistic ways: ice cream for breakfast, a pack of cigs a day, that extra serving of dinner, the visit to the bar for "just one" that becomes a ten hour binge of drinking and drugs.

So I say to them, fuck you. I don't give a shit about your fucking concern.

I've always been of the mind that I know what's best for me. I'm the one that has to lug this fat carcass around. I'm the one that has to look in the mirror at myself every day. I'm the one that has to feel the impact of long nights of drinking and smoking and lack of sleep.

What I'm always wondering is are people really for me or are they really for what I make them feel? I feel like I might get some answers regarding that over the next few weeks as I attempt to restore myself to a fully functional human being again. I have been spending more time at home, where I'd normally be at the bar. And it's been interesting to notice who seeks me out even though I cannot eat or drink with them.

I understand that food is everywhere. We need it to survive, to be, to live. What I think this diet forces me to see is how much it runs my life, how much it runs everyone's life without even the slightest realization. People eat everywhere, the remains of their on the go lifestyle are littered on the streets, crunching chips on the bus, organizing friendships around food. I feel apart and above all that right now and it feels like the worst part of this. I miss my friends. I miss hanging out with them and figuring out which cuisine we haven't had in a while. But I also know there will be many more days of eating in my life, so to sacrifice a couple weeks of them isn't the end of the world.