I don't want to eat anymore

For the past two to three weeks I have been experiencing polyphagia/hyperphagia — excessive hunger or increased appetite. It is so bad it has come to the point where I have to stop myself from walking into the kitchen or going near any food, and I am wearing my retainer during the day to simply stop me from eating. In the past couple of weeks I have eaten whole packets of ravioli and tortellini (that read “serves 4” on the front) in a day, whole bags of beans, tubs of yoghurt and packets of waffles. I’m not eating anything severely unhealthy in excess — I am having the occasional chocolate and handfuls of candy but I’m only slightly grateful that I haven’t eaten a whole pack in one sitting.

A couple of weeks ago I ate a whole box of chocolate sticks and it made me so ill that I threw up. The reason I have been eating so much is because I just do not have the ability to feel full. My stomach has felt like a bottomless pit. I get hungry only a couple of hours after eating a meal, and I will serve up something small like a cup of oats and yoghurt, only to go for second, third and fourth helpings. I’ve tried drinking water to check if I’m just thirsty, but I get to a few cups only to feel even hungrier.

My diet hasn’t changed in the past month. I have been eating more vegetables, but my diet is more or less the same. The feeling of vomiting is present after I eat, and I often feel constipated and bloated with my bowel movements having a putrid odour.

It is so gross. I can’t even walk up to food without wolfing down a whole plate or two. I can’t stop eating and I will just go for more servings. I have gained more than ten percent of my body weight (that’s five kilograms/eleven pounds) in the past week alone, and I have clothes that were once loose that now don’t even fit me properly anymore. I just eat and eat and I don’t feel full. I’ve eaten slower, purposely, and eaten everything with chopsticks, and I sit there for forty minutes consuming a plate of regular-sized dinner, but I’ll still finish it. I’ll go back to my room for half an hour, then I’ll get bloody hungry again.

I refrained from seeing the doctor until symptoms got worse because I put it down to the ordinary culprit of PMS, despite never having PMS apart from mood swings, and I refrained from writing about it on my blog because I did not want people commenting about what diseases or illnesses I could possibly have, or giving me suggestions I couldn’t handle. My own paranoia started as a child when I would worry incessantly about being ill until my doctor told me “if it doesn’t hurt all the time, likely nothing is broken, and if you can still move, you’re most likely alright, and if nothing is bleeding excessively, it’s probably something small”. That is the primary reason I left it until symptoms worsened. I’m just a paranoid soul and I shake off my worries and dislike visiting the doctor.

I went for a blood and breath test this morning to see if I have a stomach ulcer (yeah, great, hopefully not), iron deficiency (this seems to come and go), diabetes, and just to check up on my cholesterol and other issues.

Also, the migraines have been terrible. I also can’t seem to get enough sleep — I get the same amount I usually do and have no trouble falling asleep, I never wake up during the night — and I still feel so tired by afternoon.

I feel like shit, to be frank. It makes me so upset that I can’t get up properly in the mornings because my head feels like it is going to fall off. I can’t concentrate on anything. My moods have dipped and I have been crying, screaming and yelling at things, but that may just be a result of the pain. At the same time, I know I am refusing to believe I am stressed or depressed again.

I was going to see Lime Cordiale last night to celebrate my birthday on Wednesday, but I was ill so I didn’t go to work and I was in bed half the day (the other half in the bathroom feeling just as ill). I’m home again today and I have to work on a group assignment due in the next few, and I can’t even concentrate. I was supposed to go for a lovely dinner with James tonight, but that isn’t happening anymore.

If this is what being 22 is like, well, it can go and get stuffed. Ugly thing. But my parents bought me lots of tea for my birthday and filled one of my large shoeboxes with tea. :’)