Warning: this is completely unedited, and pretty intense. From my diary, junior year in college.

Monday, February 17, 2003, 2:13 am

there are so many things running through my head right now that I almost can’t write. Maybe I’ll list instead.

My recurrent lateness (never stopped) and connecting new panic over schoolwork / not turning in papers (also never stopped, but worse than usual)

My recurrent bulimia (not again…). It started up again after I got down to 125. I was so happy with my size that when I fell off my diet, I started throwing up again. Now I’m up to almost twice a day, and [my roommate] has found out. I can’t believe I’m doing this again … finding the best bathroom, actually buying shitty food and eating it, then throwing up … it’s getting worse and worse.

Too many guys, too little consistency. I have a lot of dates and I’m so tired of it. I don’t think I can stop; dating has taken over my life. I’m worried that I’m not even an interesting person anymore … I have nothing to talk about except dating. I even listed “dating” as an extracurricular activity on my application to be a tour guide. I think I’m afraid to stop because I’m addicted to the self-esteem rush that comes from going out with a guy who wants to be with me. This realization makes me ill … am I that vain and shallow (hollow laughter. Please. Obvi)

You know, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid in college, this is why I wanted to go to Wellesley. Great, so I didn’t have this in high school, so it’s nice that I’ve gotten the experience. But now it’s time to push myself again. I just want to get away from this shit and “find myself.” I keep waiting for things to resolve themselves … no … no … I keep waiting to meet a boy who will “resolve it for me.” there. I’ve said it. That’s the truth, and it’s sick. No boy can resolve these problems for me, med student, congressman, or undergrad. This I need to handle on my own.

And I look at myself, edging closer and closer to losing all touch with the deeper julia, with the adventurous julia, eying the application to be a counselor here in DC this summer, abandoning yet another dream by mentally shelving Harvard architecture school. No, I know this isn’t right … if I stay here, it will be same old/same old … I can’t escape the cycle of empty nights … the cycle of three dates per weekend, three empty trysts, me left disappointed after each one of them, able to chalk another notch in my lipstick case, but not really a better person for it. No more interesting, no more accomplished, with one more dating story to regale my incredulous and probably bored-to-tears friends. One more story to make me that much more one-dimensional.

Maybe it’s like throwing up … I spend money and time getting food. I eat it. I throw it up. In the end I’m back where I started. I spend money and time getting ready to go out with these guys. We go out. It goes nowhere. In the end I’m back where I started. So why do I continue to throw up/date? Do I need the rush that comes with eating something incredibly fattening / going out with someone who will flatter me, make me feel beautiful and desirable and wanted?

Am I just as bad as the girls that hook up with guys at parties, because it makes them feel pretty and wanted? What makes me better? That they pay for dinner when they take me out?? That I try to stop them before we “go too far” as if that will be the decisive factor in their ongoing jury trial of me … why spend so much time and energy thinking about such things? About what people who don’t care about me and never will, think of me from our limited interactions?

Is dating just a polite way of whoring myself out? Have the fucking rules gone to my head and left nothing there save an egg timer and a prerecorded track: “I don’t do this. I don’t do that. I’m not that type of girl”? Who have I become? Where is the girl that was so interested in so many things, who was in a million clubs, who may not have been as cute, but was involved and engaged and didn’t need a million dates to prove her self worth to the world?

I just scrolled through my cell phone book, and I can’t help but shake my head with disgust. Dozens of guys’ names, guys who’ve been important for a couple hours or a couple weeks … but all guys who’ve moved on, who’ve left, who, for one reason or another, haven’t made footprints upon my life. They certainly haven’t made me a better person. I wouldn’t be able to call them if I needed a curtain rod hung or a ride to the grocery store. They wouldn’t be there for me if I wanted advice or a good cry. And so were those minutes—those precious minutes out of my life—were they wasted? Have all those numbers just become symbols and letters in the end? … Just an empty answer to a meaningless name game at some party? … “do you know so-and-so?” short pause “oh, I think I vaguely recall him …” and that’s it.

It’s over.