You begin with Atkins, because it starts with the letter "a" and you read-allabout-it in the newspapers and the magazines. You buy the packages that come with a point ninety-nine attached to the price tag, and set it up on your shiny-clean kitchen tabletop. You regard the plastic measuring cylinders, the protein shakes, the "NO!" signs to plaster over your Carbohydrate Closet and get to work. You begin with Atkins.

The second letter of our great alpha-beta is "b", and B-b-b-b spells bulimia. Bulimia spells breakdowns in the bathroom. Bile comes up after triglycerides and fatty acids, chasing the protein pathway down your oesophagus and past your palette. You buy bikinis to reveal your thinning body and beautiful berets to cover your thinning hair. "B" comes after "a", which means you're on the right path as your body builds up and breaks down.

"C" you, see me; "c" is the third and triads are great things. Good things come in threes, as the old saying goes, and so do Comfort, Consolation and Craving. You sit in your bedroom at night, curled up in a corner and so happy you can't help but cry as you count your ribs one by one. Consolation codes itself in endorphins, and endorphins mean Cadbury and Godiva and Belgian sea-shells, which you celebrate by throwing away. Craving follows, but it's probably just that psychological displacement theory: where other people want you so much, lust after you, desire you and need you to a point where you need too. (C also stands for carbohydrates, but you're not thinking about that, are you?)

There's follow up treatment for what you're doing, and it starts with the letter "D". It's not the grade that you got in high school because you were too busy discerning the difference between nail polish brands to study. It is, however, how you spell "death", a word that you spelt "deaf" in your exam paper because you didn't have Microsoft Word to check it for you. Your very chic laptop's with you now, though, so you get to type out your suicide note in style and print it out in a font that's prettier than the Arial 12 your education tried to force onto you.  

Escape starts – and ends – with the letter "e", and that's what they're calling it six feet above as they lay you down to sleep. You remember that poem – 'when I am dead, think of me – but not too much". It's all right; they barely remember you at all. Another starlet with miracle clavicles is just another starlet. It was too awesome to be amazing, too burdensome to be beautiful, too cumbersome to be craved, too damn good to die.

'F" is the world telling you to figure it out instead of figuring it out.