“There are parallels to the themes in my music,” she adds.
“I think one of the main themes has been a sense of feeling isolated in some way in my life, or not feeling like I belonged.”
The first poem she shared on social media was called Aspartame – named after the artificial sweetener.
It tells the story of the singer moving to LA aged 20, trying to win the affection of a man, while being in the throes of an eating disorder.
Bulimia is an eating disorder and mental health condition where people binge on food and then make themselves vomit, take laxatives or exercise excessively – and while anyone can get it, the NHS says it’s more common in those aged 15 – 25.
It’s something she’s touched on in her music before, in 2012’s Electra Heart, on track Teen Idle, she alludes to being bulimic, with mentions of purging.
In Aspartame, the descriptions of the physical side effects of bulimia aren’t sugar coated, she is “rail thin in a polka dress” with “tooth enamel dissolved by stomach acid”. And in Smoothness of Money, she talks about a “binge-purge cycle”.
For Diamandis, she says she felt comfortable exploring the illness in her poetry as it is something she now feels far removed from – and that it is important to take away any shame from the condition.
