Beginnings

I'm used to my life now. Its not ideal necessarily but its my life. This is what I was given to work with. It is how it is. But when I was 16 the pain was brand new. I had lived my life to that point with what I can only assume is a fairly common amount of stresses and miseries. I had about 6 months to a year when I was 12 when I was so terrified of the dark that I spent at least a portion of every single night crying and shivering even with the lights on. But other than that my childhood was fairly happy. Normal. Uneventful. But when I turned 16 the walls started caving in. Its astounding actually how the depression almost coniencided with that birthday. I turned 16 in September and by christmas at the latest I was in deep. I thought (probobly like everyone experiencing depression for the first time) that it was a phase. A bad day, week, month. That all I had to do was wait it out. Like everyone has learned to do with bad days. Just wait it out, wait for tomorrow to come, the clouds to pass, the pain to go away. I was always introspective, a quiet kid who kept to herself, and I honestly don't know if anyone really noticed a difference in the beginning. I myself don't remember much about the beginning. I only remember falling. Falling into the pain, falling away from everyone else, curling into myself, curling into a ball. Litterally. I found a space on my bedroom floor- a 2 foot square butted up against the wall in between the side of a dresser and the mirrors of my floor length closet. In that tiny little space I curled into myself and fell away from the outside world. Fell into starvation. Fell into the tears. Fell into the pain. I found that tiny space comforting. I still do. No world to hurt you. Nothing else to take care of, no one else to care for. No questions to answer. No expectations. Just me and my reflection. Smooth hard surfaces against warm comforting skin. And tears. In that little space the me I could only feel could stare straight out at the me the world could see. I don't know if I have ever looked in a mirror and seen ME. I understand how science and reflections work. I understand that that is me (save the opposite thing). But not me. The girl I see and the girl I feel are very very different. If I ever experienced the simple act of looking in a mirror and relating to that image i certainly didn't past the age of 16. And I certainly haven't ever since then. As the depression grew deeper so did that gap between my external and internal selves. So deep that at some points they actually split. But in the beginning it was just me and a sad sad shadow of what I thought I should be, fighting it out in that tiny little space. And waiting. Waiting for it all to go away. I never chose to be anorexic. I didn't go on some diet that sucked me in or conciously decide that I wanted to control my food intake. I have had stomach problems my whole life. I was overall a sick kid- not like most people think of sick kids- I wasn't whisked through hospitals and surguries. I didn't have cancer or _____. I was just sick. Imagine having a cold for like 1/2 of your life. Thats the kid I was. I remember having to stop my bike in the middle of my paper route and lay down on the curb because my stomach was cramping so hard that I could do longer pedal. Laying down numerous times with bathroom tiles cooling my back waiting for the pain to subside. At the beginning of my junior year of high school my stomach seemed to be tightening almost every time I ate so my mom took me to get help. The gastroentologist we found had (unfortunetly for me) just been promoted to head of the eating disorders unit at the hospital down the street from his office (the hospital I would later be admitted to). He was one of those doctors who would rush into the room, scan my papers, scan me , tap my stomach a few times and rush out. He took half a min to think about my stats-
16 year old white middle class suburban female.
Honor roll student.
Over achieving.
normal weight
Textbook case for an eating disorder.
and decided I was anorexic. Before I did. Now my mom will argue me on this and over the years I have realized that this disease is part of me. Its who I am. Who I was mostly likely going to be regardless. Part of me realizes that there is no way that this man caused the past 13 years. 13 years of pain and hell. There is no way that that one day, this one man's opinion could have created the thousands of days since then of crying, suffering, laying in heaving pile on bathroom floors. I realize that now. But then (and honestly still a bit) I blamed him for opening that door. For pushing me through. I had never thought of anorexia. Never thought- I'll try to starve this pain away. Never thought- I'll numb myself with hunger. Force away the thoughts by making my mind concern itself only with survival and starvation. He introduced that notion to me. He brought that option to the table (litterally). And I will in some ways always hate him for that. Who knows if I would have found it. How I would have found it. Most of me thinks, knows, I would have. I am textbook case. Things that people without these disorders would never in a million years think of doing I do naturally. Without thought. It is who I am. But still.... I was scared and I was sad and was trying to figure out how to deal with that. Or better yet not deal with it. Run. Run from it. Run far far away. From the pain. From reality. And he gave me a door. He gave me a place. A goal. A destination. I took his threat of sending me to a hospital if I didn't gain weight as more of a promise. I let his diagnosis become a self-fullfilling professy. Its not like I thought the hospital would be fun or a vacation or something. Not really. Although honestly it was a little. Who doesn't dream about a couple weeks without the stresses of day to day life? But it wasn't that. I was dilluded into imagining that hospitals were sunshine and rainbows. But when you are in a seemingly endless tunnel you take the route that leads you to light. without regard to where it drops you out. you never think that staying confined in a darkened hole might hold less horrors then stepping out into a unknown world. I was trying to run away from the pain. I still convince myself I can- its why i move so often, change jobs so often, am so terrifyingly afraid of permanance. I want to believe that the pain is here. its in this place. this situation. not me. not living and breathing in me. whereever i go. i dont want to believe it now. at 16 i couldn't believe it. i couldn't even start. so I switched the energy i had been using to run away from myself and put it into running toward the hospital. Which makes no sense I know. Who chooses to make themselves crazier? Or if not that at least let themselves go crazier. Stop trying to stop the crazy and let the world just spin. Let go. It was like I laid down at that moment. Put down the weapons. Gave up. Decided to let the insanity save me. Which makes no sense I know. A lot of what happened doesn't make sense now. And probobly didn't then- to anyone watching in. But to me somehow....

At the gym

I have planned and unplanned a dozen things to do today. A dozen trips, projects, plans. Im trying to plan away the energy in a fight that I never win. I wrote a story at the gym today that was brilliant. Everything I write at the gym is brilliant, of course brilliant when I can't actually write it. And you can't prove that it wasn't any more than I can prove that it was. Because you can't actually WRITE at the gym. Or maybe you can - maybe you can learn but I haven't yet. I would love to be able to because everything I write at the gym is brilliant. Like I said. How did today's 'story' start? Oh yeah- I can't slow my mind. Its hip-hopping (I don't know if I wrote that at the gym- OK- I do know that I didn't write that at the gym. I wrote it now- in my car in the parking lot of the gym. which kind of counts, right? And I can't remember exactly what i wrote in the gym (which was brilliant) so I'm trying to regrasp it now. Maybe I can find a little brilliance in paraprasing?- rewriting?- trying to fill in the gaps of missing old words with new words. Same thoughts (mostly) new words (slightly). I hope I'm not taking a spot someone needs with my car- Anyway, where was I? Oh- I can't slow my mind. Hip hopping from one thought to the next, one word to the next. My eyes darting and dropping from one object to the next. one tv i can't hear to another. there are 5 tvs and they alternate between the same two channels. I like to bounce between the 2 same channeled ones trying to make sure there is no lull in the broadcast. Trying to move quick enough back and forth to not miss any of the commercial now playing. This is not what I wrote at the gym. What I wrote at the gym was brilliant- this not so much. Why can't I remember what i wrote in the gym? Shit- i'm starting to not want to write- i want to get it out. damn it! concentrate. I can't make my mind stop. my eyes are flitting form one thing to the nezt. one tv to another to another to one with the same station as the first. to the aerobics class being held. to the person in front of me. to my book which is opened to the first page. contents on one side. prologue on the other. this is the second book i have tried to read today. while i was at this machine. i have read the first paragraph 3 times. the first sentence at least three more. 'i went seal hunting today' bourdain. i got it in the hopes that i could fall into it- away to it. stop my world from spinning by engrossing myself in someone elses. food memoirs are good for that. light, funny, and sometimes written well enough to actually be inspiring on some level. the first book that i read the preface and half of the first chapter of is a memoir of a girl who grew up under a schitzoprenic mother. i think its written well and i couldn't concentrate enough to hear the writting so i switched to bourdain. 'i went seal hunting today' the movie on tv #2 is lit really fakely. hair lights in nature. i think its the bad news bears. my neck hurts. i dont really want to write anymore. fuck. think. maybe if you get it out you can still it. i dont think so- i'm writing to feverishly. im only perpetuating it. what was the word? i used a good word when i 'wrote' at the gym today. it was kind of like perpetuated but not. Not in meaning- in sound. damn it. what was it? damn it. damn it.
have to let it go. i talk in i's when i talk to you, ficticious reader. I think in we's and yous. we've got to get through this. you've got to slow down. come on we're ok. you can do this. but i only talk in i's when i talk to you. or when i talk to myself but someone else. thats not as crazy as it sounds i dont think. i never talk to anyone else when i talk to myself. i just talk like im talking to someone else. is that better? Ok. I answer as myself when i talk to myself. idont expect someone else to answer. thats when you are crazy, right? when you talk to yourself as someone else and you expect someone else to answer. jesus. i bet im not making any sense at all. i need to stop talking about where I am and start talking- i mean writing- about how i got here. its an interesting story i swear- at least i think it is.

The Birds

I have four birds tattooed on the insides of my wrists. Every single thing about them is deeply personal and important to me. What they are. Where thier placement is. When I got them. But when it all comes down to it I put them there to try to save my own life. They are there to keep me from killing myself. More precisely they are there to keep me from deciding that one day that I would like to see just how much blood one of my veins or arteries could spill out when split. They are there to keep me from accidentally taking my life. A possibility that is unfortunately incredibly plauseable for me at this point. So the birds block the veins. Thier wings and tails cover the arteries. Their delicate feathers remind me that this is worth fighting for. That life is not something to be thrown away. On purpose or by accident. I don't show them to people. I don't talk about them unless asked and usually even then I stick to praising the tattoo artist and pointing out how well they were done. Since I have gotten them I have told my best friend and I have told Mike. Anybody else who has seen them has just that- seen them. I've had them for over a quarter of a year now and my only family and friends that know are those who have actually been in my physical presence in the past 3 months. I went alone to get them, purposefully, when Mike was out of town. If he had been in town I would have gone while he was at work anyway. I wanted to be alone. I sat with the tattoo artist, mostly in silence, for close to 4 hours, just watching and feeling the birds embroidered into my skin. Absorbing the imagery mentally as well as physically. Taking in the pain it represents in all forms. Alone, I was able to revel in the one of the few chances I get these days to accompany the internal pain with actual non-questionable physical pain. To feel the pain in a way I don't normally get to. The tattoos face me- upright when I hold my hands to my face. Into my body when my arms are by my sides. They are for me, so much so that in order for someone else to see them clearly and upright they basically have to stand behind me and look over my shoulder. I very consiously made that decision when i got them. They are for me to see and me to feel. Anyone else who sees them is secondary. They are not a badge or a decoration for the outside world so much as they are a promise to myself. An image for myself. A reminder of the fight and the pain, the strength and the artistry that are my life. As corny as it sounds. They are my jesus. they are my savior. even better they are me. the part of me that is good and strong and willing to fight. When I first thought of getting these tattoos I wanted one on my wrist right above my pulse. A small black square. It was to represent the struggle of my eating disorders. When you are in the hospital they take your pulse a lot. Partially just because it is a hospital and partially because as an anorexic you are in essance slowly killing yourself. The nurses want to make sure you are still alive today. Ever since I was first hospitalized I have found myself reaching for my pulse when I'm sick or stressed or lightheaded or dizzy (as I tend to get a lot- at this very moment I can barely see the words, my screen is rocking so much.). I grasp onto my wrist and feel for the beating. When I'm lightheaded or dizzy it reminds me that yes I am still alive. My heart is still beating- it is all still working- it is all still ok. When I'm stressed or scared or I feel like my heart is racing the slow steady pulsing calms me. Reminding me again that it is still all working. That it is still ok. As long as my heart keeps beating I can make it through whatever. It is one of the only constistancies I have in a world that is continuously spinning and shaking and folding in on itself. My heart keeps beating. It is the fight. I wanted a black box at the point my fingers reach for to symbolize that consistant fight. but at some point I saw an image of two songbirds. I had been thinking that anything symbolizing the fight had to be as dark and empty as the fight itself. But the birds were beautiful and I felt something toward the image. And I wanted it. I grappled with the thought that the fight isn't pretty. It isn't superficial or ornate. It is painful and it is hollow and it is never ending. Putting birds in that spot undermined the pain and the helplessness that the spot above my pulse represented to me. And the images weren't origonal enough- they weren't me. But I wanted them. And as I thought of them more I began to feel them there. These two birds on my wrists began to carry me. When it hurt too much, when I just wanted to stop, the birds started to carry me through. I can see them holding on my limp wrists dragging my defeated body through the world. For a little while there they were accompanied with a theme song of "I'll fly away". The song is religious and if you imagine it the way I do the birds are carrying me in a very cruficial like fashion. Which bothers me. I curled up on my couch one day- "i'll fly away" on repeat on my itunes sobbing hysterically and trying to understand my minds imagry. I am not a religious person. I do not have a god or symbols that give me strength outside of myself. But these birds- I have these birds. Along with an entire cast of characters that live within my mind's world. They are my gods and my devils. There is a mouse in my chest that scrapes at my ribcage in anxiety. A neighboorhood of fuzzy balls- like dustballs or cat toys- that inhabit my lungs and steal the air when I'm stressed. A family of ameabas named Joey. A black crow that I don't understand but can only assume represents death or sorrow. Or both. They have all come into my life as an adult. I was not a child that had imaginary friends yet somehow I find myself to be an adult with an entire set of imaginary enemies. I think when you live in pain for a long time at some point you must give that pain a name. I have given mine many. And it helps get me through. I am visual- I deal with things by seeing them. Creating a world in a way that I want to or need to see it so that I can deal with it. It makes perfect sense that I should create so many visual manifestations of my pain. It is the only way I know how to even start relating to it. On top of that I am catholic. Not in the sense that I believe in, well anything, that the catholic church believes in. But in the sense that I want people I can turn to. Just like my mother's mom had a little visage of st____that she prayed to for good weather. and my father's mother's had a dresser covered with statues of mary and jesus and saint paul along with at least a dozen other saints I never learned the names of. I need to be talking to someone. I need to pleading with a face, a name, a story. Crying out for help onto a seemly empty sky or into a seemly helpless soul feels hopeless. So I cry to the birds. I pray to the birds. I beg them to help me. To carry me. To fly me away. And they do. Because they are me. And I am the only one who will ever be able to save myself from a disease that is my internal devil.

Cats

I keep telling myself to write about then- the beggining- the start of it all. before i got lost in this disease. i keep thinking that somehow by searching my way through that i can find my way out of this. understand it better. me better. figure out what got me here. but the words dont come. i can talk about the pain. today. i can talk about how i left the gym and my lungs suddenly seized and the world became confusing. i can talk about how i spent who knows how long- way too long- in the grocery store staring and fidgeting and circling the aisles. how i stood in line and clentched my fingers back from poking the magazines. just poking them. and the man behind me's paper towels. how i understand that that is not ok but how my hand somehow realizes that it NEEDS to be done. or just can not NOT be done. i dont know which. i can talk about how i heard people on a balcony laughing when i got out of my car and thought they were perhaps laughing at me and had to make sure i wasnt actually talking to myself out loud. when i was a child i didnt quite realise that even if you werent audible people still looked at you funny if your lips were moving. i think i didnt quite realise my lips were moving. i had to learn to talk to myself without my lips. without facial expressions and hand gestures. i still havent quite mastered it. i sit in my car in traffic and talk to myself in my head- thinking the world around me is none the wiser- then i look over at the person in the car next to me who is staring at me curiously and i realise my face and hands have been making gestures inappropriate for sitting in a car in traffic. i have taken to wearing an earpiece even when im not on the phone. so i can talk to myself in peace. i often still pull up beside someone who is obviously not fooled. i have talked to myself my entire life as far as i can remember. it seems like the most natural thing in the world to me. i had a paper route for a 3 or 4 year chunk of grade school/ junior high. just a few blocks within a 1/2 mile radius of my house. there were three things i particularly enjoyed about this paper route. one was timing myself to see just how quickly i could possibly deliver all of the papers. i would pedal as quickly as i could, drop my bike, sprint to one porch, dash through the hedges to the neighbors stopping as far as i could and still manage to fling the paper onto their porch. i believe i got it down to somewhere around 15 mins. which may or may not be at all impressive for the amount of papers delivered. the second thing was the cats. i loved cats as a child and on days i wasnt timing myself i would stop and pet the neighborhood cats. i was a super shy child but cats always seemed to love me. i could get anybody's cat to befriend me no matter how unfriendly i was told they were. i especially liked getting the timid cats to trust me. it was just a matter of getting low and being patient. moving slowly and letting them come to you. i had nothing but time for cats when i was a child. i didnt talk to people much but i had no problem talking to cats. the third thing i loved was talking to myself. i would ride from house to house and interview myself as i rode. one day 3 boys a bit older then me rode by on thier bikes while i was conducting one such interview and stared at me like i was crazy. they rode away laughing at me. at first i didnt understand. i wasnt talking out loud. if they couldnt hear me what did they think was wierd? it took me a while to understand that they saw my lips moving and that was enough for them to look at wierd. it didnt matter if people hear you speaking. from then on it has been a daily effort for me to speak to myself only in my head. which is hard when you are person who speaks with as much of her body as i do. i practically pantamime as i speak. i write by whispering a line out loud to myself all the while moving my hands around above the keyboard. then stopping only long enough to type it. its almost as if my mind and hands work together to form sentences. the thing i didnt like about the paper route was collecting the money. talking to the adults. knocking on doors my heart would race. i think that above the understanding of money this is one of the lessons my parents wanted me to learn by delivering papers. people were not my thing. adults especially. they still arent. my mother tells a story of my preschool teacher calling her in may and asking her if i enjoy preschool. my mom said that yes i seemed to and the teacher said its just that she hasnt said one word to me. ever. in the 9 months i had seen this woman 3 days or so a week i had never said a single word to her. and probobly not to any of the other kids either. that is the type of child i was. i was the kid who walked around with a snotty nose a box of tissues and did everything to avoid making eye contact with adults. i cried when i forgot my homework. never talked to adults but talked incessantly to cats.

face first on the ground

Sometimes the words wont come. the pain is so deep so dense that the words can't get through. then sometimes the pain manifests itself in the words. i sit down and words that dont even seem like they are coming from me flow out. like the disease is writing its own story and i dont even really need to be there. sometimes the pain writes the story, sometimes the pain blocks the story, and when i sit down i dont know which is going to happen. I have icredubly high standards for writers. i need to be pulled in, i need to feel like im there, feel the pain and the emotion like its my own memory. it is not enough for you to tell me your story you must make me feel your story, live your story, for 200 pages or 8 hours, or with the best writers for days and years to come. and if the story coming out of my head isnt enough then its hard to keep writing it- even just for prosperity's sake. if i can't make you feel the pain in whatever capacity you have to feel it then the story's not worth telling.

I abused my body quite a bit yesterday. slapped and scratched and threw my body at will. most of us past the age of 6 no longer know the feeling of throwing ourselves onto the ground. it is not a valid option in the adult world. you get fired or your girlfriend breaks up with you, you cannot fling yourself onto the pavement in a tantrum against higher powers if you believe in them, or the person causing the pain if they are in front of you. we use words, we use tears, some of us use strength, and some of us use distance, and some of use drugs which is in effect using distance i think. a distance from the person, a distance from ourselves. but none of us with any mental stability chooses to react by throwing ourselves face first onto the ground and failing our arms in a physical performance of our unhappiness at a situation. save a parent/best friend/child being killed suddenly or your house burning down. perhaps in that situation it is because there is no person to talk to, to fight, to plead with to change the situation. there is only pain, loss and a deep and unwilling acceptance. there is no need to save face when the situation is finite, unchangeable in the darkest sense of it. there are things you do not get over- you just get through. and sometimes getting through requires letting go of everything but the pain. stop fighting, stop pleading, stop talking yourself through it and just expereince the rawness of emotion. and if the pain is deep enough the dispair and the fear powerful enough it can throw you face first onto the tiled bathroom floor.
once yesterday i slid to the floor sobbing, my legs buckling against the gravity of the dispair. grasping for breathe i slumped agianst the refridgerator and the pain just pulled me down. onto the grimy kitchen floor where i lay in a puddle with the stains of spilled juices and dropped grapes and clung to myself. when the sobs slowed enough for my lungs to get air again i mustered the strength to lift my upper body off the ground and prop it against the refridgerator. wet and sticky my face streamed with tears and snot and grime i hugged my knees and screamed in whispers. opening my mouth like a concrete lion. roaring and raging in silence against and invisible opponent.
twice yesterday the pain threw me to the ground. the first time was soon after getting up, shortly after mike left for work. i stood in the dining room shoveling slice after bloated slice of sweet bread into my mouth. i ate half a loaf with more butter than necessary for a dozen people to butter a dozen rolls slathered in thick messy lines across each of the increasing larger slices. my mother made me the bread. it was sweet and loving of her, she went out of her way to make it healthy and vegan for me. and here i was desecrating her gift with not only gross amounts of butter but the knowledge that i was eating it just to throw it up. it wasnt her fault and it wasnt the bread, it was the day, it was me, the bread was just there. but the knowledge that this bread like so many other thoughtful gifts from loved ones meant only for my nurishment and enjoyment have met this same fate makes me feel horrible and ungrateful and unworthy of ever getting gifts again. not taking the time to savor it and the love put into it but shoving it in my mouth and then forcing it out of my body. it didnt want to come up. sometimes it just doesnt. sometimes my body clings to the nurishment with all it can. and i get angrier and rougher. i drank glassful after glassful of water and then threw up mostly water and hissed at myself in demonic sounding whispers to get some actual fucking food up with it already. i washed off the wrong end of a toothbrush and tried a trick i've heard whispered throughout eating disorder wards. i didnt understand it then and i dont understand it now. your throat is curved and a toothbrush is so rigidly straight. it didnt work but i also didnt try that hard. i thought about going downstairs and getting a straw. we have a box of the neon bendy kind used at kids birthday parties. i looked down at my hand covered in mucus and bits of food, shoved it back into my throat, and choking myself looked down into the compiled dirtiness of a toilet obviously belonging to a bulimic- the black mold crusted in areas where normal toilets only see water. i rested my head against my forearm and contemplated hitting bottom. how much part of me really is trying to make that happen. create a bottom so that we can finally hit it and then start crawling out. i do not know how to react to this- i only know that it is what i am doing. at least part of me and that i do not know how bad that bottom could possibly be. when i throw up whether other people are home or not i leave the faucet running. aside from creating a noise more pleasant than my heaves and choking it gives me a place to both clean and lubricate my fingers. i was holding my hand under the sink yesterday the first time i was thrown to the ground. as i moved my fingers under the running water i watched as the main 2 arteries on my wrist vividly danced and jutted out from my forearm. i saw myself slitting them, saw the blood spewwing out so violent that the image litterally knocked me off balance. the fear, the haunting realism, the knowledge of what part of me is capable of doing to the rest of me all merged like a giant hand and swatted me to the tiled floor. i lay huddling in a ball, shaking and sobbing for what could have been 2 mins or 20. when i finally stand i watch the girl in mirror for a long while- her lips quiver, her eyes shake, she looks rabid and pathetic.
the second time was that afternoon shortly after i managed to pull myself off of the kitchen floor where i had slid down in despair. i dragged myself off the floor, out of the kitchen, and into a chair in the dining room where i slowly and and with as much concentration as i could muster tried to im mike at work. i sat with a plate of mushrooms which i had somehow managed to cook in between the sobbing and the clinging and the kitchen floor. now in between the sobbing and the grasping for breathe i tried to get a single mushroom piece into my mouth and tell mike that the day is kicking my ass. he asks how my day was and i say just that- its kicking my ass today. he makes a lame joke, changes the subject a bit, tries i think to assess how bad it really is. and i stare at the computer and think how far away he is. from this from me. from actually getting it. how far i am from being able to explain. how 'its kicking my ass today' is the closest i can come to asking for help. how im afraid of bothering him at work, bothering him at all. worrying him, scaring him, losing him. how much it hurts, how scared i am, and how all i can say is 'its kicking my ass today'. and suddenly im off the chair and im on the ground. on my knees, back hunched forehead plastered against the wooden floor, teardrops mingling with dust bunnies. i cant breathe cant stop cant move save the shaking rocking of my sobbing body as it grasps for air. i eventally drop to my side fetal position my eyeline right where the wall meets the floor staring at the dust gathered there. i think its dirty, its disgusting, im disgusting. by my knees is a cabinet with mikes tools. i open it to look for an exact knife. i dont find one and luckily dont contemplate for too long the abuse that could be done with any of the other tools which im sure would work in a pinch. for some reason an exacto knife is the only thing that will do. clean and skinny and sharp. its the only thing i want. not a saw or hammer or sharp screw which are all there but not right. i will myself to close the door lean against it instead. mike wouldnt like this. this would make mike really sad. i weigh the options, which would make him sadder- which makes him more likely to leave me. disrupt his day, show him a girlfriend who is needy and scared and helpless or have him come home to the blood. or more realistically the scab. this is me getting through it. the cutting is me getting through it in the only one i can sometimes. but its me getting through it. by myself. and isnt that what everyone wants? for me to be able to stand up for myself, fight for myself, get through it without disrupting anyone else? leaning on that door i felt exactly like i felt at 16. at 16 i would have done it. done whatever i needed to get through it. its 12 years later and its the only fight ive won against this disease. its the only thing i can say i dont do any more. and still i dont really understand why winning that fight is a win. why avoiding this one specific act of self hatred makes me any better off. i know where i want the cut to be. how long, how deep. i see it on my arm and i whisper 'he would never forgive you'. by now the tears have calmed breathing comes easier. i pick myself up, sit down at the computer and type ' you know i normally try to get through this shit by myself but if you could come home anytime soon i could really use some help.' and he talks me through it like he always does, whether he knows he is or not. and he gets home as soon as he can and he hugs me and he holds me and tells me stupid things so i forget. forget that i found box cutters and ran the shiny blade of one against my skin. imagined pressing down. stared at the way my artery stands out so high and separate. imagined a tiny quick slit. a nip really. just for the blood. scared my self with the intensity of the thought. threw it down. closed the drawer. repeating to myself over and over- he would never forgive you.

I lost yesterday

I've been seeing blood lately. everywhere. i dont know why. im out of it- im struggling, yes, but the blood is new. or at least new for the moment. i've probobly experienced something like it before but like most sicknesses we forget the specifics as soon as we recover. we remember vague pain and discomfort but the details are lost until we experience them again. and with depression, at least for me, the pain seems brand new every time. and the imagined blood whether its a new symptom or a revisited one, is everywhere. i see myself slamming my head into things- walls, windows, tiled floors. i see myself fetally curled up in the middle of a room with a bright red liquid blanket spreading away from me- trickling, pouring, streaming out of an intangible wound. i feel my wrists slitting. i do not, im sure, imagine it correctly- it is easy in my mind the skin yielding softly, smoothy, quietly. there is no pain, the veins seem to pop like slicing through a plastic straw. the hand bends back in a way it only would if my arm was near sliced in half. and the blood bright and red pours quickly and neatly down my arm like chocolate sauce over ice cream. its not real. i know this. its also not a plan or a dream. its just blood. its only blood ive ever wanted- not death. i held a knife to soft flesh of my lower inner arm yesterday and pressed just enough to feel the weight but not enough to inflict damage. i haven't cut myself in close to a decade. its not a thing i want to go back to. i can''t imagine mikes face. i dont want to imagine mikes face. and yet i do imagine- over and over- the blood. my imaginary thoughts are bombarded by, covered in, this blood.
i lost yesterday. just lost it. in between the blood, and the pain, and the vomiting, laxitive enduced shitting, chest seizing sobs, and my mind running loops around itself, i lost it. at some point i gave it up. lay down in bed and left the world to run its course without me. i told mike it was better to waste this day than to deal with it. i woke up too early which is never a good thing for me. up early with nothing to do. plenty to do- theres always plenty to do- but nothing planned. nothing expected. noone to hold me accountable if my mind spins out. nothing on a schedule to tie me down from going crazy. this is never a recipe for a good day for me, ever. our plumbing was messed up and i was afraid the plumber would somehow know, or would find out. i am open with alot of people but some people for whatever reason i am never ok with knowing. i realised recently that if my neighbors ever asked i would immediately say i was pregnant and unflinchingly tell them i had had a miscarraige months later. they are not people who are allowed to know, neither is the plumber or the landlord standing in the bathroom with me at 9am. it ended up being our fault but more by negligence than harm and nothing was unearthed but still the nervousness of being discovered mixed with my inane fear of being disiplined for anything left me uneasy. i was the child that cried when i forgot my homework, i still shrink back like authoritative words are causing me physical harm. when i lived with other people my heart would race every time a housemate would call me. I would just stare at the phone nervously sure that they were going to be unhappy about something. i do everything but curl into a ball and shield my face with my arms when called into to talk to the boss. i am not good at being yelled at, even if no one is yelling. it was in the nervous expectations of being yelled at for something that i ran to the store to buy eggs. even though i likely didnt have enough time to get to the store and back before the plumber came and certainly not enough time to make and eat these eggs it was immperitive that i have them. egg whites are the closest thing that i have to a security blanket in a world where just the thought of eating most foods makes me run away into myself and curl into a little a ball. the thought of not having them readily available was making my mind shudder. i needed them. more than i needed to make myself or my house look presentable for the landlord and the plumber, i needed eggs that i would not have time to cook. i needed eggs to be sitting in my refridgerator. to what? save me? i knew how stupid it was as much then as i do now. some urges are not worth fighting. there are days i wake up with a mind thats racing around like a toddler after a day of eating halloween treats. these are days i should not drive. my mind is too busy chasing itself to fully concentrate on oh say focusing, paying attention, keeping my eyes still. and yet these are always the days i NEED to get to and back from the store in 15 mins. of course they go hand in hand. the need is only one of the many sticking points of a racing mind whose every thought is vitally important. imperative, necessary to go on with the day. i am sure that every new idea is my salvation. the one thing i can do to slow it. to stop the thoughts to litterally save myself from the day that is bound to happen. that is already spinning incesantly around me. but they dont. of course they dont. eggs can never save me. some days if i can catch my mind for long enough and force it into fulfilling one of these tasks i have a chance of escaping. excersise if it works does wonders. sometimes i can force myself onto a tredmill for long enough for the endorphins to kick in and gather back together the shards of thoughts that have exploded to the nether regions of my skull. many days each min seems like and hour, each step like torture- my eyes darting around the room and back to the clock every 2 seconds and i get off before it does anything. yesterday i didnt even try. when the eggs didnt save me i decided that buying some rings would and i drove to the mall, which is litterally 2 blocks away. and i couldnt concentrate enough to figure out where i was going and parked so far from the entrance i needed that i probobly could have walked a shorter distance from my house than from my parking space. and i wondered the mall looking as dishevaled as i had for the plumber for about an hour. i went into a store where the saleswoman said she had what i wanted but the store was so quiet and tidy and i was afraid of how i would look to her so i ran out while she was ringing up another customer. and i found what i wanted but not quite and i decided it wouldnt help today anyway because its meant as a symbol of recovering- promising recovery to myself- or at least promising to try and i really didnt want to try yesterday. so i decided that eating a box of chocolate little debbie snacks (and then throwing up of course) would help. so i drove to the grocery store and ate the whole box on the drive home. which is a great thing to do when your driving skills are already highly compromised. i understood half way through the box that this wasn't going to save me. i think i understood that before i opened the box but like i already said- i didn't want to try yesterday. i walked through a store in the mall thinking- i know you feel like you aren't anyone without the bulimia but you have to just give it up and you will find out who you are underneath it. to which i immediately replied- an anorxic. which is true. sadly, depressingly, honestly true. i have spent over a decade of my life jumping from one ED to another. if they are masking someone else below them i havent the slightest clue how to find her. but the bulimia, i understand, has to end. it has become too common in my life. too easy. too normal. but not yesterday. yesterday i didn't want to fight. i didnt even try. perhaps i was thinking of it as some sort of farewell. perhaps i am just a weak person. too weak to win this fight. perhaps i know that and keep myself from trying. before i gave up on my day yesterday i came home threw up. drove to a different grocery store where i stood in the laxitive aisle and had this conversation with myself
oh my god i forgot about ipikac. we really wanted to try that. im just so not in the mood to throw up uncontrolably today.
we'll have to do that next time.
there isnt supposed to be a next time. this is supposed to stop
but we're supposed to try ipakac. how can we stop without ever trying it?

like it was a tourist site i couldnt come home from vacation without seeing. as if drinking something and heaving uncontrolably is a desirable thing to do. this is why i must stop. i become infatuated with ipakac a few months ago while mike was still working from home and vowed to try it one day when he wasnt around. ipakac. the drug that sent karen carpenter into cardiac arrest. the drug that led to her death. i know this and yet... that is not good. because i know, know, that i would not take one dosage anyway. and i know that my body is already somewhat weakened by this disease. and yet...the desire to fuck with my body as much as i can is so strong. the desire to push as far as it can go. but what happens when you discover that threshold? fucking with death just to fuck with it- just to see if you can- thats not good. and yes death would never be the goal but just because it isnt the goal doesnt mean it cant be the outcome or any of a dozen other horrific internal harms that one can impose upon themselves. and yet...i stand in a grocery store and think about a drug that induces vomiting as if it is an amusement park ride. and then i pick up 2 bottles of laxitive instead. i can not tell you how many times i have stood in line with some version of yesterday's bounty. a box of little debbie snack cakes, an apple danish that im already picking at and bottles of laxitives. i often fear that the employee knows. im sure they don't unless they are bulimic themselves. at worst they probobly think-that stupid girl wouldn't be so constipated if just she stopped eating candy bars and snack cakes.

It is all that I have

Today has not been good to me. Or I have not been good to it. I don’t know. Perhaps I was given a hard day today and instead of fighting it I just pushed it further into insanity. there have surely been days that I faught a good fight and still lost to a mind that’s sometimes stronger than my will. As well as there are days that my mind is fairly placid and I simply sabatog myself. Regardless of how it got this way- today has not been good. Ive thrown up so many times that I have lost count. A dozen? More? Enough for my throat to be rasp and my hand to be cut where the knuckle hits the back of my molar. Enough to have asked myself many times ‘can this be over now? Please please can we be done?’ lately I have been trying to convince myself to stop. To decide that this is enough and find a way to move on. It isn’t so easy. Im not ready to let go. I don’t know a me outside of this disease. I don’t have a life separate from this. It is so ingrained in my identity that I don’t know how to lose it. I think I am waiting to bottom out. To hit a point where I can no longer except this in my life. But for those of us that push our bodies constantly just to know that we can- to prove that we do indeed have the control- how do you know how far is too far to push? This is today- this is why it happened, probably. This is part of it at least. I ate candy. Not much but enough it does not take much candy to feel like too much. Like 6 jordan almonds – sucking off the candy outside and spitting out the almond, 3 mallowcreme pumpkins, maybe 20 sugar free jelly beans. I estimate 200 calories. So in the logic of an anorxic- I tell myself I have to run 8 miles (because come on I’m going to eat other things today as well. I like to create a little calorie deficit). I go to the gym and after a half hour on the tredmill the room is kinda spinning and my eyes wont focus and im shaking. This is sadly not new or rare. I get this way at 3 times a week at the gym. Sometimes I run through it, sometimes I can’t. to my own credit I have never pushed so far as to actually pass out or vomit from activity. Although I have gotten close and I do wonder exactly what it would take. Today I left with only a 50 calorie deficit after subtracting the candy calories. Anything under an hour at the gym is more or less worthless in my minds eye. I’ll still go but all day I will chide myself for not doing enough. Oh I also weighed a pound or so more than yesterday this morning- I don’t know exactly. We have an electronic scale with digital numbers that go up and down within a small range around your weight while it calculates. If I step on and first red blinking number suggests a higher poundage than acceptable I will jump off as if its burning me. as though the number is not real until its fully decided and if I don’t wait for it I can pretend this day this weight didn’t happen. Somehow it actually helps. It’s the same way that I tell the treadmill at the gym that I weigh 125 every day even though I weigh close to 10 pounds less on any given day. I feel like if I gained back those 10 pounds I would be devastated to have to fess up to that in real calculated numbers. So I lie. And I generally just assume I burn 50 or so calories less than the machine says (although I don’t really trust the machines anyway). Anyway a pound didn’t cause this day. Didn’t help probably but most definitely didn’t push me into the shower with a plastic bowl. Im not that bad. Ah you see this is the problem. Im not that bad. In the car the other day I asked myself ‘do you need to hit rock bottom before you fix things?’ and I answered with another question of ‘what is this perverbial rock bottom and when exactly would I hit it?’ the general concensis is that I wont. on my knees in the shower today while crying and begging myself to stop I laid my head against the cold tile and asked ‘is this far enough?’ no. it is not. Because I am ok. Because I am not that bad. Because that moment ends and life continues. Normally enough. Because I may stand in the water and stare at white tiles and wish so hard to slam my head into them repeatedly. I may be able to see the blood smearing and marring the gleaning whiteness. I may wish for it and beg for it and imagine it with every fiber of my being. But I don’t do it. So its ok. Im not that bad. And how do you argue with that? On the one hand I have a disease that I understand fully to be a disease. But it helps me. it is me. it is all I have and all I know. I cannot express that enough. I cannot make you understand that if you don’t. it is me. and how do you walk away from you? From the only you you know? Even if it’s a painfull self distructive bitch of a self- it’s the only one ive got. I have never been an adult with some version of an eating disorder. I don’t know a me without it. I cant fathom a me without it. How do you walk away from you? How do you walk away from your only present and the majority of your history. How do you walk away from yourself? It is all that I have and all that know. It is all that I have and all that I know.