I've got the autumnal blues

Fall is here, and today it finally hit me. I'm about to talk about my feelings now, so gear up for some shallow body image laments and painful reminiscences of last year.

At this time last year I was at college in New York. I was super skinny, enjoying French, theatre, and Psych classes, living with the best roommate ever, and for the first time in years I felt like I was worth something. Fall is my favorite season, and October my second favorite month (after December- Christmas, people!) so the pretty leaves and pumpkin heads made me feel all the more special. I still had issues despite looking awesome. I was homesick and withdrawn, the highlight of my day was the gym... but I had my appearance to fall back on, you know? Every time I was feeling like shit I could just look in the mirror and remind myself that I'd been striving my whole young adult life to look like this and now I FINALLY had. Anyways, I've told this story a hundred times- the one about me losing a ton of weight and feeling great, then all of a sudden taking this cataclysmic U-turn over to binge eating disorder. I won't tell it again, but in fact remembering it has helped me draw a seriously groundbreaking conclusion about why I can't seem to stick to a meal plan and eat normally. Here's why: See, if I had always been a binge eater, and had always been trying to go on diets and lose weight, and never had any bouts of severe weight loss through restriction, I would TOTALLY go for the idea of balanced meals and portioned exchanges. But since I know what it's like to have such fast and controlled weight loss through restriction, I can't help but hold out hope that maybe someday I can regain that ability. Does this make any sense? I feel like I'm not making sense. Obviously the thinking is unhealthy and warped, but my point makes sense right? I feel like it is so important for this to make sense because it explains why I have been constantly swinging back and forth between binges and crash diets- because I'm just that desperate to feel anorexic again.

Anyways, the only reason I'm feeling so unhinged by all these thoughts is because it's October, and I spend all three other seasons looking forward to fall, but I can't enjoy it because I'm just so sad about how much better I felt last year.