When I got to Arizona, I slept. I was exhausted and really didn't want to go see my dad that night because his family just bugs me and I can't get used to it. They make me, in a word: miserable.

My mom woke me up, and after much whining and arguing, I packed my stuff back into the rental car and we drove to my dad's place in Phoenix. After about half an hour there. My step mom, Sandy, decides I need a new wardrobe. I try to tell you I don't have room to pack new stuff, I am exhausted, and I want to spend time with my dad not her.

We go to Kohls or however you spell it. She says, "We'll only be here an hour." We do my least favorite thing in the world: go to the dressing room and try things on and on and on again. Just give me a panic attack. She doesn't let me get anything I like or want in the first place, tells me it doesn't look good and basically gets what she wishes she could wear if she were younger for me. We're there for three and a half hours. She decides I need to get new make up, jewlery, shoes, make up, and a new hairstyle. She was pushing for a peticure too, but I changed her mind. I was exhausted, to the point of fainting.

She makes me change into my new clothes which are tight and make me feel enormous. We go to the mall and get my ears pierced dead at night. Then, around midnight, I get a haircut in the kitchen. No food. I guess I don't 'need it'.

She spends two hundred dollars of my dad's money of stuff I don't want and won't use. And I have two little studs in my ears which I really hate having to clean.

Yeah, I know this is no reason to complain but it made me mad because during this whole time I didn't get to see my dad or my aunts or my grandparents or my mom. Just her and her annoying laugh and tight death grip on my life.

The next day we go to church, I feel extremely out of place and uncomfortable, that's okay, I brought a book. My new church clothes are itchy and baggy on me and I feel fat.
When we get home the baby won't eat. And then we discover something, he'll eat if he sees me eat. This here has to be the worst situation I could ever find myself in. Sandy gives me this heap of caserole on my plate and tells me to eat it so that the baby will. I sit there while everyone watches me and the baby eat, one bite at a time. I was holding back tears trying to do this for the baby, and I realized that him and I aren't much different. We immitate what we see and we are weird with our food and we both take each day one bite at a time.

I go home. My family on my mom's side are all having this huge Italian dinner. I take a piece of garlic bread and eat it for about an hour. And then I go throw up.

It seems like going to Arizona, as much as I love it, unearths all this crap for me and sets me back into a relapse. There are all these burried emotions and...hungers. I'm always so painfully hungry there. Back at home Louisiana, I feel nothing, no hunger pains, nothing. But in Arizona with my family, I guess that emptiness becomes apparent to me. All of the love swirling around me and them just makes me feel empty and hungry. I am straving for love and affection and to be normal. Just as I am starving for some unattainable body ideal.

The next day I eat and eat and eat. It's all this huge cycle of binges. Lasagna, french fries, chocolate, dr. pepper, and cookies. I eat in secret when no one is around in the middle of the night or when everyone is watching TV, and when they are around I eat nothing. My stomach is killing me all this time.  
I eat and eat until I can't take it anymore. My mom tells me my aunt is worried about how thin I am and my weirdness with food, she tells me about a time when all my aunt ate was an iced tea a day when she was modeling and how screwed up life became after that.

We go out to eat at a Mexican restaurant. I try to order all the healthy food, my aunt watches me and smile and says she's proud of me, I did good for eating. I want to hug her and have her tell me there is an end to this in sight, that I will be okay and beautiful and happy like her someday because right then I felt so disgusted with myself in every matter. But instead, I take a sip of my diet coke and smile.

That night I can hear my grandfather talking about my brother Peter. How fat he is, how he's a screw up. I run to the kitchen in a blind fury and grab the loaf of bread in the kitchen and the jar of peanut butter in the fridge, I slather peanut butter on a slice, fold it, eat the crust off, and shove the rest in my mouth. I do this with every single slice, all twelve from start to finish. I feel nothing, nothing but anger at my grandfather which I take out on myself. The voice in my head tells me everything I've eaten that day and says things along the lines of, "you fat bitch, you never do anything right."

I go to sleep with the worst stomach cramps in my life.
It seems during my vacation all my hopes for recovery just evaported momentarily because I was in unfamilliar territory.

I still haven't weighed myself and I don't know if I should.
More happened during the trip, good things. They just don't seem as important right now.