You hear about the children starving in third world countries. People do food drives and fundraisers, take mission trips, donate money...

You don't hear as much about the people starving in America--people who are starving by choice.

While I, myself, have not been diagnosed as anorexic, I was certainly very dangerously close, teetering on the edge. I obsessed about every single thing I ate or drank, and was doing an unhealthy amount of exercise.

It's a recipie for disaster, let me tell you. My body constantly felt weak due to the large amounts of intense HIIT and cardio I was doing, and added to the fact that I ate very little for breakfast--if I ate breakfast--wasn't helping.

There's also the amount of mental strain, from counting and re-counting calories, figuring out ways to get rid of food without people noticing, finding time to fit in long workouts...

Self-loathing and guilt would set in whenever I missed a workout, ate "too much" or something that was "bad", or the clothes I thought by now would fit.

The entire time, I wanted to quit. I just wanted to be like those genetically blessed people who could eat whatever they wanted and never gain a pound, never had to workout or buy bigger sized clothes.

And at first, I convinced myself that it was fine, I wasn't doing anything unhealthy...I could only ignore that little warning voice in the back of my head for so long, before I finally just had to face that fact that my obsession with calories wasn't healthy. Or that my fitness regime was wearing ym body down, not building it up and making it stronger.

It was hard to stop counting calories, to cut down my exercise to thirty to forty five minutes of cardio, instead of an hour and a half, six days a week. I was so scared to eat more than 1,200 calories, convinced it would make me fat.

I did gain weight back, and that scared me even more. But I just couldn't shove away the fact that what I had been doing was slowling destroying me. And even though I wasn't to the point of anorexia, I still feel such immense shame about what I did. I feel shame abotu my body still, and about how it looks. But I'm done going to extremes to get it. What's the point of being skinny if I'm miserable, weak, and tired?

I don't have abs, a thigh gap, or a big butt. But if that's what it takes to be beautiful...then I don't want to be beautiful.

I've spent enough time reading Prose to know what gets the likes, sadly it's not my forte as a writer.

Sex is a stupid activity if you analyse it, you can dress it up in fancy words but really; that goes in there, wiggles around a bit and its done. Some of these stories! Well, two hours! You could have gone to Leeds by British Rail in that time! Oh and the one thats based in an office, what? The phone never rings? The cleaners don't come in( 'just move over sir and I'll vacuum round you, my shift ends in half an hour, can't stand here for two hours waiting for you to finish going up and down' ), modern office furniture isn't built to take the weight of two people doing that! No Cctv in place?

I'll concede sex is an important part of life and with the right person( or people) fun, but to write or read about it? Personally I'd rather watch paint dry.

As for teenage angst, I'm old enough to know that "secret we cannot tell the young" which is -- don't look if you are under 21 -- Once upon a time your parents were teenagers and yes they do know what you are up to, as most proberly they did it.

Worse still parents still have sex, they proberly have a better sex life than you do. Those people that go to BDSM play parties? Swingers groups( they still exist I had to google it) they are parents, maybe yours. And the real killer, you are going to turn into your parents one day, Oh, you say you won't, you'll try hard, you'll be different, but one day looking in the mirror you'll see a little bit, maybe a mannerism, a wrinkle, may be its just a word you used, its started. When I read the teenage whines I'm terrible tempted to say 'just you wait it gets worse', but I don't because I can remember what it was like.

Then failure, why the big deal? We all do it, how many novels have you left unfinished? How many poems have been thrown out? How many times have you said not doing that again and then did?

If you haven't failed you haven't lived, get over it!

If any of this resonates with you, clicky the little heart thing then:-

GO WRITE YOUR OWN NOVEL

Trying to stifle my creativity. You’re driving me crazy. Like some mad scientist shot up with rabies, experimenting on babies, handing out scabies. Telling me to stay calm, but where is the safety? You say there’s no diagnosis. Keep your theories, your pamphlets, your prognosis. Trying to keep us under hypnosis, underestimating your own psychosis. Loss of humanity causes words to decay. Losing their meaning, slipping away. Like a pair of jeans beginning to fray. Materialism is warped, people begin to pray. Poverty and hunger, death and destruction. The only way you know how to function. Sheep without a shepherd, brain abduction. Advertisements, agendas, hidden seduction. Pushing your phony medications. Sitting on your throne giving bullshit consultations. Waiting to take over, media manipulation. Mind sedation, crumbling your reputation. Tell me, what’s your strategy? Trying to deprave us of our morality? Captivity of our confidentiality? You won’t break my spirituality. In the midst of all this pollution, there’s those who know of a solution. Ridding the world of all the confusion, fighting for our restitution. One day you’ll be overthrown. Your lies, your weapons, drones and clones. No longer able to judge and condone, intellectuals uncovering what’s left of your unknown.

I have realized that typing away on a computer keyboard makes me think of someone playing a musical keyboard. It REMINDS me of that. I have realized that we, as humans, find a sense of comfort in our ability to relate one thing to another. I have realized that the entire existence of us as people depend upon mathematical equations within the patterns of nature and the scientific chemical changes throughout our bodies; throughout our brains, to exist. We are defined by the things we say, the way we appear, and the simple look on our faces as we run into new people. Immediately, we are defined and put into the order of how pleasing we appear to be every single day. Then, the process continues as we communicate. What we say; it all files us into more and more specific areas of the kind of person we are. But what if you were to discover that perhaps no one was who they appeared to be? What if, perhaps, we as a people have instilled within us a societal fear of being ourselves? That we are so afraid to be who we are because we fear judgement, or personal misplacement, that we entirely put ourselves away and take shelter in a mask of conformity and bottled emotions and untrue opinions and untrue happiness?

My life isn't the best, I barely sleep and I am constantly looking over my shoulder and thinking that I can't trust people for no reason. I don't have many friends, and the ones I do have either betrayed me or slowly got less and less close to me. I'm not trying to look for pity or anything, but I write because I want to get away from reality. I love reading fantasy or writing because it makes me think about something other than how I currently live. I don't like being alone without something to do because I start thinking negativly about myself, or convincing myself that I'm not good enough or something like that. When I write, I put all my energy into it, I put in my dreams, my nightmares, and my true feelings that barely anyone knows about. I mostly write poetry about bullying, so I'm pretty sure anyone who reads my writing can see that I was bullied a lot. But, writing for me is, I guess like an outlet. When someone close to me dies I write non-stop for days. It's just how I cope, I guess.

Madness Eh?

You want to solve madness? Ok, let's talk about madness. It's not hard to find. Just turn on your television, and tune into the news. Politicians are crooks. Entertainers are perverts. Kids are running over their parents. People are blaming either side of the political aisle for the problems, and all of them are just a bumbling mass of angry nays.

Madness Eh?

Isn't it mad that instead of worrying about the future for our posterity, we are only worried more and more how to get things we "deserve?" How about the madness of instead of worrying about making good grades and getting a good job we are worried instead of how professors and speakers have hurt our feelings? What about some real madness like the fact that our kids have to go to school and face the fear of some mad man with a gun, and then instead of receiving the care and sympathy they need, they get turned into political weapons. How about the madness of the late night "prophets" that sit around insult the religions of the kids and the nation in order to push an agenda against owning firearms, while the opposite end of the spectrum is too scared of losing their firearms to come to an agreeable conclusion.

Madness Eh?

How about instead of us constantly getting mad at each other, at every belief, at every little gnat, why don't we focus on ourselves? We cannot change the world, only ourselves.

Every breath you take could be you last.

Your body doesn't promise you that the next heartbeat will come,

And that's okay.

For many, death discreetly dictates there every move.

Limiting people from experiencing amazing things.

You only get one life,

Make it count.

You can't live in fear of death,

It's pointless.

Death is going to happen.

It's just a fact.

No matter how much bubble tape you smother around yourself.

So why would you halt your life in favour of death?

Try new things,

Live life with abandon.

Embrace change.

Don't be afraid to risk it all.

Seize.

Every.

Moment.

So when the day comes,

And your time is up,

You will have no regrets.