So long story I won't bore you with, but I'm recovering from an eating disorder at the moment. And I might be projecting, but I see so many signs of its nastiness at work in Lydia.
I see it in that she is always cold, and needs the fire on and sweatshirts even in summer.
I see it in her only eating 1 meal a day.
I see it in her nastiness and snark. I've spent months thinking of nothing but food and it's made me mean, mean and dismissive of everyone else around me. I rewatched the bora bora vlog, and she seems like quite good fun. She has a laugh with Ali at least. Now she takes everything, and herself, so so seriously, and finds no joy in life at all.
I see it in her always talking about how shes a size 4 or 6, and xs, how she needs even these sizes taken in. She has her fake boobs to stop her looking emaciated, but without these she would look extremely unhealthy jn my opinion.
I see it in her bad skin, her sad eyes, her thinning hair.
I even see it in her routines. I've been a notorious late riser, night owl my whole life. Until this gripped me, and I've started waking up at 5am, ravenous. I've always been lazy around the house, but I've become obsessed with cleaning, housework, decorating, anything to take my mind off eating. I see this in her too, with her morning routines and constant distractions (garden, decorating, shopping).
I'm trying to self recover at the moment. Ironically this was brought on by an episode of bingeing / laxative abuse / purging after restricting for weeks and the mad binge monster kicking in. However this time I ended up simultaneously shitting myself and vomiting all over my bathroom, destroying my bath mat, and genuinely thinking I was going to die as I didn't have the energy to cope. Couldn't move to clean it up for half an hour, heart racing, and thinking I'm too old for this tit.
I'm now in the "feeding the extreme hunger" phase which is basically giving in to all the ridiculous fucked up hunger signals you are getting (body after being starved for so long wants more more MORE, I must have eaten around 10,000 calories yesterday and was still hungry). It was lockdown that brought this on so I'm scared the new lockdown is going to send me backwards, but we shall see.
Anyway, back to our favourite bleep. I really do see parallels, and hope she is OK. As much as she is a dick, this disease has no mercy and it would explain a hell of a lot about the complete 180 in her character.