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.

Crazy People

A lot of my friends find crazy people on the street funny. Its harmless on their part and human nature, I think, for the most part. Buts its not an emotion i have ever been able to share. Crazy people make me very very sad. Because you are not born crazy. Nobody's really born crazy. You are born with the genes and more than likely in inevitable death sentence to the disease buts it pretty well hidden in most children. Its not like retardation. Which is horrible as well, but usually in that case you never knew a life without it. Your parents and your friends never knew you outside of it. Craziness is different. Imagine you have spent years of your life being 'normal'. You are probobly at most a quirky kid- weird, slightly off, not quite right but still within the confines of normalicy. And then after 18, 20, 23 years of life you begin to lose your mind. As far as i know (and i've havn't researched this or anything) most physcological diseases kick in in your early twenties. So you have spent decades of your life functioning- relatively in control of yourself, and then suddenly one day you begin to hear to voices. Can you even image what it must be like to hear voices? To honestly and totally realistically hear another person's voice in your head telling you to do things you dont like or want to do?
If you have ever sat in a car or at an office or in an interview and begged begged your mind not to take you somewhere you didnt want to go. Or lay huddled on the ground hugging your knees pleading through the tears for your mind to let you be. for the voice that tells you you are worthless and horrible and waste of space on this earth to silence- to please please just quiet. For the part of you are that itches and scratches and scrambles toward self distruction to slow. For the dispare to please please for gods sake just let up. If you have ever been there than you know how perilusly some of us grasp onto the strings of sanity. Dangling so precariously that one disaster, one strong wind, one day of forgetting how hard you must hold on- how tightly you must grasp your fingers at all times- and you can fall. and the fall is deep. the fall is far. and the journey to get back up, to get out is a hard and long one. one that some people eventually can not make. People spend years in a flux between the sanity and the insanity. Years where they go back and forth, up and down, hiding it until they cant any longer and eventually bringing those around them into the horrible amusement park that is their life. It doesnt just happen one day. You dont wake up having lost your mind. You wake up out of control of yourself today and maybe for a week. and then your ok- you break out. but there are more weeks and soon months and then at some point, for some people, if they dont or cant get help it becomes too much and they are essentially lost forever. They cannot make the climb a single time more. So for those of us that fall- but not too far and have the stength of mind to pull ourselves out each time- seeing people like that makes you want to fall on your knees and thank the universe, thank whatever being you may think is out there- thank nature itself that we can get out. that it isnt forever for us. That it is today. And today may suck. But we can get up- there's an out for us. Because there isn't for everyone.

3 am in the ER

Of all of the abusive things I do to myself self mutalation seems to be the hardest one for other people to understand. Sticking my fingers down my throat they follow- its not a choice they would make for themselves but they get the basic sentiment. Just about everyone in our society these days has some spoken or unspoken desire to change something about the way they look. You’ll even hear healthy women talk about eating disorders like they are a dieting option ‘oh I would give anything to be able to be anorxic for week’ is a statement I’ve heard many times. But hurting oneself is much harder for outsiders to understand. Maybe its because as humans we spend so much of our lives doing every possible thing we can to avoid pain but people just don’t get it. I don’t get it and I did it. And the fact that its socially unacceptable is only compounded by the fact that its so visable. Cuts are a difficult thing to hide. If I was in a program where they said if you throw up you will be kicked out- I would just throw up quietly and lie and say I wasn’t doing it. But scabs and scars are harder to hide. That’s why so many mutilators I know have scars on their asses and inner thighs. Places where only the most diligent guardian would take the time to check. I never hid it- that defeats the point to me. Its like getting a beautiful and personal tattoo on your back- I wanted to see the cuts. At a time in my life when everything I did was based on trying to please the people around me, I was told that one of my only coping skills made everyone sad, angry and overall very upset. So I decided to stop- before I cared about it what it was doing to my body, before I was ready, before I had found a different better way to deal with the pain- I decided just to quit cold turkey. And I did a lot of stupid, sometimes dangerous things trying to avoid the one thing they had deemed inexcusable.
I’m 16 and I’m scared and full of nervous insatable energy that I can’t make go away. And all I know is that if I cut it will make mom and dad sad and the therapists angry and everyone- everyone disappointed in me. And the therapists tell me to hold ice in my hands and snap rubber bands on my arms, clench my fists really hard. Which never works and only proves how much they don’t understand. And the energy grows and all I want to do is cut. All I want is to make it go away. And im a horrible unlovable person already and I just don’t want to make anybody hate me more. Don’t want to make anyone else sad. But the pain, the energy, are so much, so deep, so intense, and I cant make it stop. But I want to be a good girl- a good person. So im on my bedroom floor crouching on my knees, digging and ripping my nails through the carpet like a crazed, rabid animal. I’m ripping the heads off of teddy bears, pulling off the arms and legs, throwing the stuffing around the room like frienzied snowballs. I have memories of crushing up and snorting meds, cutting all of my hair off, piercing my eyebrow with a safety pin, giving myself a tattoo with a sewing needle and India ink. Im on my bike riding as far as I can go. Im throwing up more. Im running away in every way I know how except the one that actually works. Now im not saying that cutting is healthy and who knows if I would have kept at it if I would have done something stupid and irreparable by accident in the process. But I do know that trying to avoid it left me in an ER at 3 am with a nurse trying to shove a tube up my nose in the aftermath of the stupidest, most dangerous thing I have probably ever done.
It’s a summer afternoon and im alone in my house when the energy starts crawling inside of me. Im roaming the house aimlessly searching- for release, for salvation, for an answer somewhere to the questions that my mind is throwing at me. Whats wrong with you? And why can’t you just stop this? And finally and unquestionably- why not. I try to escape to my room and theres a scissor on the floor so I scramble out and down the stairs. I try to zone out into the tv and theres a bread knife staring at me from the brown matted family room rug. Its like a movie or a dream, its seratted edges taunting me. Like it was placed there. Like it’s a sign. Still to this day this memory is almost comically sad to me. Im huddled on the couch hugging my knees staring terrified at a random bread knife in the middle of the room. In my memory but not necessarily in reality the sunlight hits the metal in a single stream making the blade sparkle and glow. I literally run out of the room. Sat there shivering, huddled into myself until I was almost certain some part of me would lash out and grab the wooden handle without my permission, and then launched off the couch and hugging the wall, sprinted out of the room. Down the hall and into the kitchen. Which is not a good place if one is trying to avoid knifes. I plant myself on a stool in the middle of the room and grip onto the bottom of it. And somewhere in the fear, in the haste, in the terrifying energy, I decide that I will drown the pain. In medicine. .i don’t know what I expected it to do. Don’t know what I expected to happen. I guess I thought it would numb it- numb me. Carry me out of the dream. So I reached on top of the refridgerator pulled down bottles and started swallowing pills. A handful of this, a dozen of that. Prozac and depacote, Zoloft and paxil. Pills I was on combined with pills I had been taken off of. Medicine that had proved it didn’t work along with pills we were still waiting to see the effects of. Nothing ever seemed to work for me so I had been going from one dose to another to a whole new prescription for months. And I swallowed the remains of at least 4 different bottles. And then I thought about how the drs had told my brother not to drink on antidepressants because the pills mixed with the alcohol can get you very drunk very quickly which sounded about exactly what I wanted so I went searching for a beer. Which I found in a cooler in the backyard and drank a sip of and promptly spit in out. Which only shows how much I really hate the taste of beer. Plus just the act of swallowing 3 dozen pills had somehow calmed the feelings somewhat so I figured it would be enough. And my friend called to see if I wanted to go play tennis so I went off on my day. Oblivious.
And we played tennis for a little while but I felt weak and increasingly nautious so we stopped early. And I told her what id done and she seemed worried but no more worried than everyone seemed about me those days. And she dropped me off at home and I tried to make myself throw up but the bile was disguisting and it burned so I stopped. And the next thing I remember I’m in a car being driven to my weekly Eating Disorders meeting and I don’t say anything about it to whichever parent drove me there or anyone else in group even though my leg has started tapping feverishly and I can’t stop it. I also don’t say anything to my dad as he drives me from group to the theater where my boyfriend is in a play that night. I do tell my boyfriend but I don’t know if its before or after I lose feeling in my legs. Before or after the room starts to spin and I start to hear music that isn’t there. I don’t go into the theater- I don’t watch the show. I spend the next two hours in the back of his car watching the pattern on the back of the front passenger seat dance and animate in circus scenes. Turn into elephants and giraffes and bears in party hats balancing on balls. I hear the entirety of a sesame street album I loved as a child blaring in my ears. I pour myself out of the car and try to figure out who would be blasting children’s music so loudly in a parking lot. Somehow in the craziness I come to the understanding that it isn’t really out there and crawl back into the car. And I wait for him, understandably pissed off, to come off the stage. And he takes me home and he takes me to my room and he goes downstairs. And he tells my mom even though by then the hallucinations have stopped and I can feel my legs again. And I hear her on the phone with someone although I don’t hear what shes saying and they tell her to bring me to the ER even though its fully 8 hours since I’ve swallowed the pills. And so we’re back at the same hospital where my ED group took place 4 hours ago, back at the same hospital where I was admitted for anerxia and depression 4 months ago. And my mom is worried and my dad’s pissed off and my boyfriend’s just there with the same scared tired look he’s had for months. Its his second time in this ER in a quarter of a year. He’s visited me in this hospital and the other one more than a dozen times. Hes been the one ive called in tears, hes held me and listened and done his best to understand when and why his girlfriend morphed into someone else before his eyes. Hes tired. And my dad who normally tries to understand- who has dealt with his own demons and by all accounts should understand has hit the breaking point from sad and worried to just plain angry. Well probably worried and angry but the anger is what I see. He sits in the waiting room not talking and stewing. He later tells me he was so angry because I sat in a car with him for 40 mins and didn’t tell him. Because I could have died- could have killed myself and I didn’t say a word. I can never explain how that thought never crossed my mind. That there was a consequence of my actions longer lasting than the immediate never entered into my thoughts. Still now it doesn’t quite sink in. when heath ledger died a few months ago and his family all stood by and said that he would never kill himself on purpose it hit me a little (don’t ask why heath ledger as opposed to any of the other celebrity or non-celebrity drug deaths made this sink in. I have no clue) People die without meaning to from doing the very same thing I did at 16 just with a different combination or number of pills. People die. But for me as a teenager I was just running. I was just avoiding what they told me not to do. I was being a good girl. But in that ER nobody saw that.
I don’t remember much aside from the anger and the humiliation and the thought that everyone was making way way too big a deal of this. Its over already. Its all gone. I can feel my legs. I can even control my legs. There is no more Jim Henson- no juggling bears in tutus. Can’t we just go home now? And the silence of my dad’s anger is defeaning. And my boyfriend leaves because its late now- I don’t know how late but its late. And my mom is an angel. My mother has handled everything to that point and even to this point with a grace and sanity I can only hope to find in myself one day. My mother is not blameless in my disease- no one is blamed more than me but no one escapes totally unscathed. But there is no one I would rather have on my team in times of crisis than my mother. She is a woman- she is a human, and as such I have seen her break and cry plenty of times but when she needs to get through something or needs to get you through something- my mother somehow has the strength to turn it off. Do what needs to be done. Get through it. You can lay down your head and cry when its over. And she does, and she did many times back then, I know. But through a crisis, when there is a task at hand- the woman is amazing. And the most amazing part is that she does it with sympathy and caring- she has the incredible ability to turn off part of her emotions while still keeping others in tact. Turn off the part that affects her and concentrate only on the wellbeing of those around her. She held my hand symbolically through much of this just as she physically held my hand that night. Held the plastic blue bean shaped tray that they gave me to vomit into, held my head up and my hair back. All the while I kept instisting I was ok- why can’t we go home now?
We can’t go home because one of the medicines, Depakote, a medicine I actually was on at the time fucks with your white blood cell count. So much so that while on the correct dosage prescribed to me I had to go get my blood checked every other week. And I took at least two weeks worth. At once. So no. I couldn’t just go home. They had to take my blood. And wait for it to come back. And while I was waiting- just to pass the time- I got to drink a cup of charcoal. I personally think this was more to teach me a lesson than for any actually health benefit, but then again we have already established that I don’t actually grasp the complications of what I did. If you’ve never seen a cup of charcoal imagine think black paint mixed with handfuls of sand and you’ll get the idea. We are not talking a small cup, a measuring cup, no we are talking somewhere close to 12, 16 ozs. Keep in mind we are talking about a girl whose stomache has shrunken from close to a year of anorexia- a girl who would probably have a hard time keeping down a 16 oz milkshake or smoothie. Or anything else actually appetizing. They give me the glass of thick black liquid and when I say I won’t be able to keep it down they gave me the aforementioned plastic blue tray. My mother tries to coach me on different ways to get it down. I try to shoot it, I try a straw, I try to chug it. Your body does not want to drink 12-16 ozs of think black sandy goop. It revolts. I can barely even get any of it past my tongue and into my throat. I gear up, suck down a little and inevitably 3/4 of it comes up into my mother’s tray. The nurses have no sympathy. My father has no sympathy. The nurse keeps coming in to check on me and threaten that if I didn’t finish it she will have to stick a tube down my nose to pour it down. After a couple times of hearing her somewhat empty sounding threat I finally say ‘do it. I’ve had 3 sinus surgeries. I can handle shit being stuck up my nose. I prefer you stick a fucking tube down my throat than to have to drink this shit’ I most likely claimed it was actually impossible for me to just drink the liquid. This is when my father left. He was angry and he was fed up and he thought I was being a baby about it all. At least that’s what I thought at the time. I don’t know what I think now. I guess I still think that. So when the nurse comes back it’s just me and my mom. And my mom holds my hand while the unsympathetic nurse attempts to shove a tube up my nose. I say attempts because she didn’t actually do it- well she succeeded after a decent amount of force on her part and decent amount of pain on my part to get the tube up my nose- and even part of the way down my throat before she gave up. Just said she couldn’t do it and I would have to finish the black drink manually. I believe I was rather pissed off myself by this point and I said something- probably not calmly or quietly- about how if this when 3 months ago and I was still on the eating disorders floor she would have figured out some fucking way to get a tube down my throat if need be. My cursing and my irrateness doesn’t help garner her sympathy and she quickly yanks the tube out and leaves. And through the crying and the vomiting and the blood dripping out of my nose I keep telling my mom I can’t do it and she just keeps rubbing my back, petting my hair, and saying yes you can. In that soothing yet authoritative voice usually reserved for a 5 year old trying to read their first big kid book. I didn’t finish it all. They came back and said the tests were fine before I could muster the strength of character or stomach muscles. Whichever was needed. Sometime before dawn a woman from 5 west comes to talk to me. 5 west was the physciatric ward. I knew that because when I was on 3 east (eating disorders) there would be hushed rumors about people coming down from 5 west. Like we with our patients starving themselves into comas and throwing up into drawers so noone would see, were the sanest of the sane and 5 west were the crazies. I did not want to go to 5 west. I tell the woman this- probably in not very nice terms. She informs me that if we were in the state of ny this would be taken as a suicide attempt and I would have to be admitted, by law, whether I wanted to be or not. To which I respond something snotty about how I'm lucky that we aren’t in new york then, huh?. In the end I convince her that I wasn’t trying to kill myself and after a bunch more buracracy that I only remember as lots and lots of offices I am allowed to go. And in the growing morning light, close to 20 hours after I had sat alone in my parent's kitchen with a carcophony of pills, my mother drives me home.

Please just get me to the car

its always like this.
Im moving through life. Im doing fine. Probably not amazing I’m probably not beaming, not dancing on air.
But im standing
im moving.
and then im huddled on the floor of my mind. Suddenly the world is spinning around me and all im thinking is get a grip. Hold it together. please don’t cry.
Not here.
Not now.
Not in this grocery store, not at this party, not during this interview. Please just get me back to the car, back to the house, just hold on until I can sit down.
Alone.
Away.
Safe.
It is always sudden. And you would think by now it wouldn’t be – id hear its footsteps, feel its presence, before. Before it took over. But no. it takes me by surprise every single time. There are triggers. I know there are triggers and I know the names and faces of many of them. But they change so often and so quickly that its hard to keep a complete catalog of them. And they aren’t always triggers. Some days I honestly can eat like a normal person. Relatively speaking.
I don’t eat like a normal person. Ever. I am aware of that.
But some days I am better. and im given to believe that those somedays always possess the possibility of becoming everydays. So if I can sanely eat a piece of chocolate a day for 5 days in a row I suddenly believe that this is how it will be. That I am ok with chocolate. We’ve become friends. we’ve made our peace. And then on day 6 I eat the rest of the bag in 10 mins and end up on a bathroom floor crying. And in a pool of tears and rage and hatred for being so nieve, I berate myself for falling once again into foods trap.
Food and I are not friends- we will never be friends. Especially not a food such as chocalote. Or bread, or ice cream. And obviously if you’ve a problem with bulimia perhaps it is a good idea to stay away from chocolate, or bread, or ice cream.
And I do.
Most of the time. Or least most of the time that I can feel the restless energy burning inside of me. I can tell a lot of the time when im ok and when im not- ive learned through the years how to tell whats bubbling beneath the surface. I generally know safe and unsafe foods. And there are times when they stay within their determined catagories and I stay within mine. Safe/ unsafe. Sane/ insane. And when everybody is categorized and contained me and food can function somewhat well. As long as I stay in the sane colomn and only eat from the safe column we’re all ok. But even if I start on sane one taste of unsafe can thrown me across the room. Some days it isn’t that way. Some days I am so locked into the sane category I can eat a piece of chocolate and not be knocked around. Some times even for 5 days in a row. But if on day six I wake up with even one unnoticed toe curiously pointing over the line, testing, tasting- then the first bite will send me over the edge.
So maybe- maybe I just shouldn’t eat from the unsafe side? Even if I could get over the bleak forcast for a lifetime of meals lacking all dairy, wheat, fat, and sugar it still wouldn’t work.
Because they switch sides too.
Things that are safe one day are precariously dangerous the next. Today it was popcorn. 98% fat free popcorn. Popcorn and I are normally ok. But today as I stood and stared at the ile my mind got caught in the mosaic of boxes. it sent out a warning. I thought nah its just my old friend popcorn. But as I put it in the cart my chest seised. The world got wobbly.
Suddenly.
Always suddenly.
I could feel the tears welling up- the familiar internal voice‘’just hold it together’.
I couldn’t take it out, I couldn’t put it back. I don’t know if its because im stubborn or because I have immense authority issues even when the authority is myself, but sometimes, a lot of times in this situation I cant back down. Cant put the raisin bran, the dried pineapple, the 98% fat free popcorn back. Because its not fair, its not right, because damn it it was in the safe category yesterday. Yesterday I could have eaten the popcorn and been fine. (well relatively) yesterday I would not be almost crying in the grocery store. So why are you fucking with me today?!
Yesterday I chewed gum and held back tears while everyone ate cake around me. Cake that smelled fucking delicious by the way. So haven’t I earned this? I held it together in a situation that made sense. I understood yesterday and I made a choice and I stood up like a big girl and chose to do what should have made me healthier. More mentally stable. And now? Now im standing in a grocery store with the walls spinning around. Im picturing myself giving up huddling in the grocery cart. Im trying not to cry. Really? Fucking really? This is what I get? This is what I get even when I exert all of the self control in the world? This is what I get 12 hours later?! I get berated and I get abused and…fucking traitors.
The popcorn.
My mind.
I thought I was ok today. But this? Come on really? And mike’s asking if im ok and im standing in line burrowing my face into his shoulder. And hes paying for the popcorn and the diet soda and his dinner. And we’re walking out the door and my legs don’t want to hold me up. Don’t want to move anymore. im picturing myself huddled in the cart with him pushing me through the parking lot. And I’m mentally taking to myself in an all too familiar voice- Please don’t cry, hold it together. Please, just get me to the car.

Rolling down the HIll

They say that anorexics are often being stifled- being controlled by someone else to such a point that they are literally trying to make themselves smaller so that they can fit in the world. This has never made sense to me- no one is stifling me so much I as stifle myself. Shrinking away from myself by shrinking into myself just doesn’t make sense. I do however huddle. I make myself into a little ball- when im most depressed or stressed I am most likely to be found not hiding under the covers in my bed but on the floor. Preferable in a corner, preferably with a mirror. Marya Hornbacher wrote that sometimes when she feels unconstrained she has her husband sit on her -an idea which seemed ridiculous to me upon first reading it. I mean she is a woman who weighed less than 60 pounds for a chunk of her adult life- having a grown man sit on her does not seem smart, or safe. But thinking about it it makes total sense. That’s what I do with corners. I create a tiny space and I fit myself in it and then I feel safe- confined.
This is my space-
this is my world-
it ends right here with this wall and here with another.
Theres not enough space for bad things to get in.
this is me and my space. Its comforting. Its where I go to throw my hands up. I give up- I’m done- I can’t fight it anymore. That’s when I find a corner
and I huddle
and I cry.
And in lui of actually huddling: when life is at a point where I can’t or wont stop- don’t have the option to throw up my hands and find a corner- I see myself huddling. I imagine things a lot- mentally right things in a physically wrong world. At concerts I have cartoonish arms ala mr tickles that grow out and pick people up that are in my way - depositing them along the side and out of my line of view so I can happily watch the band. Often times my gangly arms will reach out and cover the mouth of some loud talker at a bar or resturuant. Embarrisingly, for a little while when I worked at a retail clothing store I would lean back against the kaki wall and imaging snatching screaming babies out of their mothers arms or their safe little strollers and and slamming their heads into walls until in a bloody mess they shut up. I don’t know if a maternal instinct has set in since then or I’ve just gotten nicer as I age but I don’t do that anymore. My mr tickles arms may stretch their little bonnets down over their little screaming faces but that’s about the extent of my imagined harm to babies these days. With the exception of the bloody babies these thoughts often make me giggle with glee- if only for a moment. Today I went for a hike in hopes that sunshine and nature and the feel of wind on my skin would shake me out the depressive funk I’ve been in for days. That maybe doing something would give me the energy to do anything actually remotely productive today. (which it didn’t unless you count chopping up a single fig and mixing it with a teaspoon of peanut butter, cinnamin and way too much splenda in a tiny little bowl and then eating it by the spoonful- productive.) Hiking the downhill portion of a fairly steep hill I mentally decided to give up. I saw myself just stopping and huddling into my familiar little ball. I saw my huddled self rolling uncontrollably down the zig zagged hill. Even now, just as it did earlier the thought of makes me giggle with glee. a moments giddiness in a day of ambivilance is helpful little ray of sunshine. I try to laugh at the craziness as much as I can. Cause, fuck ,what else can you do?

Argue with my body

When its hard I argue with my body- why wont you just do what I ask? And my body in turn agrues violently back- why are you trying to steal my substance? I push harder rougher my stomach clenches tighter ----my body trying to resist an act that it knows will kill it if performed well and often enough. I once ate an entire box of donuts. I sat down on my grey bedroom rug and shoved the donuts one by one into my mouth. This is done, obviously, without tasting or enjoying them- sometimes pushing the huge chunks so far back into your mouth that the taste buds don’t even have their chance at them. These are the times that it comes up easy- the times when your body helps the process along. Your stomache no more wants to keep a dozen donuts than it wants to give up the measly everyday ‘meals’ I so often ask it to. You learn over the years the things that come up easy and the things that don’t. the tricks and whatnot. I often think that what im doing is normal- that any sane woman trying to keep her weight in check would throw up if they realized it was a valid option. Who doesn’t do countless things in their day that make them scream internally ‘redo! I need a redo! Go back 10 mins and lets do that one over’ And what rational person wouldn’t grab the option to take those things back? This is my redo- this is my time out- go back- start things over again. Its both an apology to myself (sorry I lost control for a min there just give me a sec and ill fix it) and a punishment for doing it wrong in the first place. There are two basic ways I throw up and both are very different in almost every way except the general outcome. Over the years I have learned how to use my stomach? muscles to push up? Out? From the inside. Its clean. Its quick. Its quiet. It doesn’t make your eyes red and your face stained with tears and snot. Because of this It has the added advantage of not making you feel totally crazy and out of control. This method has in the past decade become as natural as peeing for me. This is why I disconnect it from being a disease. You don’t think theses anything wrong with peeing right- something went into your body that it doesn’t need so it gets rid of it. I’m certain my body doesn’t need that extra few hundred calories. This is the appology its easy and quick and painless. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way though- sometimes for whatever reason my body doesn’t want to give up that roll or apple or candy. Sometimes it just resists. That’s when it gets messy. And painful. And dangerous. I may joke about my eating disorders, I may be flippant about it in passing but its horrible and humiliating and painful on that bathroom floor. No rational person would take fingers covered in half digested food and stick them into their mouth. No rational person would wipe their nose with the back of their hand and then stick it- snot covered- into their mouth (I have tried to stop this since recently realizing that the fact that I have had a cold for nearing 6 months may be partially due to this practice). No rational person would realize they are constricting their airway and stop for a second move over a bit and continue to do whatever activity it was that left them gasping for air in the first place. No. no rational person is present when I wage these wars against myself. Things that used to stop me cold I now shake off quickly or barely even notice in the first place. I don’t throw up until I bleed (often) or force myself into dry heaves as I have heard some girls do. But I continue through pain that would have stopped me cold years ago. Choking is only a momentary setback. Dizziness only a reason to hold on. I have gotten used to seeing the girl in mirror before I wash up- red eyed, tearstreaked, snot and food plastered to her face. I wash her away and think- patetic. All the while contemplating what else I can eat next. You see- the second way only comes after a snap- a breaking point into a spell that is hard to get out of. Sometimes I throw up 6, 8, a dozen times a day the first way. I throw up this way at work, friends houses, in public bathrooms, while on the phone with people. Some days I do it close to every time I go into a bathroom. As natural as peeing. But the second way, the second way being partially a punshment is unnatural and angry and harsh. It’s a fuck you to my body- you wont be- wont do what I want? We’ll see about that.

Screaming

They tell me I'll bleed to death one day. Accidentally push too hard- cut too deep, slice anartery. They tell me I'll scar. I scar out- not like some people with soft smooth scars. I scar in puffy outward scars. They tell me I'll have them my whole life. They don't understand that I want the scars. I love the scars. The scars represent something- they are in essence battle scars. Remnants of a deep war I waged with  myself for years. I like the scars. I loved the blood. The red flowing blood- so dark- so loud it could not be ignored. They didn't understand that for a girl living in silence, the blood, the scars were a scream. Not a measly, tiny, 'cry for help'- a term thrown around near daily about me and the people around me back then. No- a loud, piercing, deafening, scream.

When the energy boiled up inside me so much that I felt like I would burst, the cuts opened a path for it to seep out. The way one pierces a potato so the skin doesn't rip open in the oven. The internal heat of the potato will become so high, the steam so dense, that it will rip the skin apart if you don't give it a place to escape. The slices let the energy escape in thick red puddles that I would let run down my arm. I always waited to wash away the blood. I liked to see it- an actual physical manifestation of a pain that I couldn't, was ashamed to, verbalize. A scream in a world of created silence. 

I don't have many scars and they're not extremely noticable. I've never not gotten a job (like they told me would happen) because a potential boss looked at my arm and was clued into how fucked up I really am. Not that I know of at least. I have friends who have known me for months, years, when one day upon passing them the chips or holding open a door the notice the scars and look at me in shock and confusion "what happened to your arm?!" I don't have an answer ready for those times. Not really. Not a good one at least. I sheepishly, embarassedly, tell them I was a self mutilator when I was younger. I'm not embarassed about the scars, not embarassed about how I got them. I'm embarrassed at the attention- at the fact that they will ask if I am ok now. That I will have to lie and say yes or say not so much and have them worry about me. God- worry about me. I hate concern- I hate the attention of concern. If I want someone's help- need someone's help it is incredubly hard for me to ask. I cannot handle the attention. The furrowed brows- the expectations. Concern always feels like expectedness to me. Like now I must produce something for you. What exactly am i supposed to procure? A happy girl- with concern you are supposed to be weak enough to allow those around you to be compassionate. Weak enough to let them take care of you. Which is something I can't do- because it comes with strings- the expectation. Again the expectations. So so many expectations. The expectation that I will let you make me feel better. Let you fix it. If I come to you with a problem I am supposed to let you solve it. Thats the deal. I let you feel helpful- you walk away proud- needed. But if you can't fix my problems- if I don't let you fix my problems- if I can't procure a happy girl...then I have failed you. Then I have made you feel bad and weak and useless. How can I inflict that upon the people I care about? So I scream in silence. And I smile in your company. Through the thick layer of glass that is between us- through the fog and the spinning of the room around you. I stand  on a street corner and imagine myself laying in a fetal position on the sidewalk. But all the while I hold a conversation with you. I see myself there. I nod. I laugh. I tell a witty story if I've got one. All the while I'm laying on the sidewalk, I'm curled up in a ball hugging my knees, I'm under the table at restaurant hiding myself. Screaming silently. 

I'm not manic

I'm not manic- at least not manic in the way that people who are manic get a lot done. Quickly. I don't know much about mania but I know that I am not that. I don’t get a lot done. Quickly. Or ever really. Perhaps I am manic in some sort of way. I know I am manic in some sort of way. In the way that sometimes I want to rip my eyeballs out from the boredom. The angry gripping energy that boils up inside that makes me want to do something, do anything, do everything. The energy is always internal though- it doesn’t seep out into the actuality of accomplishing anything. It manifests itself in days of unstoppable fidgeting, fighting, planning the perfect thing to do , the perfect place to go, the perfect plan to get it out. But nothing's ever perfect enough so I don’t do anything. I normally just end up so disparate at the lack of choices that I give up on planning, on running, on fighting it at all and just crumple into myself. I cannot count the amount of times I got in my car as a teenager planning to go on some elaborate trip only to end up in a parking lot 10 or 20 or 5 miles from my house crying and pleading for it to stop. Calling my mom and telling her I was going somewhere for a couple weeks. No I don’t know where. I don’t know how long. I have no idea what answers I gave to certainly asked questions like where I would sleep or how I would pay for things. I'm sure I had some sort of plan. A brilliant plan I'm sure that included something about experiencing life and sie la vie and all that shit. And then I'm driving and I realize I'm just running and I realize it isn’t going to work- I cant outrun this. And then I'm pulling over because I cant see through the tears enough to drive and I learned my lesson about trying to drive while crying month ago with that tree. And I'm throwing a glass bottle on the ground outside the car in some parking lot somewhere in jersey and cutting my ankle with the glass. I'm letting the blood and the pain and the endorphins carry the energy away. at least a little. I’m on a train platform staring at a route map trying to decide if the pain will more likely go away in south amboy or Trenton. Or maybe I could go north somewhere. Maybe the energy -the pure energy of the pain will dissipate somewhere in ny. I’m on one side of the train tracks at a station I must have walked the 3 miles to and then I'm on the other because I decided west is probably better. and then I'm crying and somehow my dad is there and he drives me home promising he will drive me to upstate new york to see one of my best friends if I just come home. I never ran away from them I was running away from me. I cannot imagine how painful it must be for a parent to know that. And to know that that is not possible- to wonder and worry about the dangers about how far your child might possibly run. To try and save someone from themselves. Perhaps there is some phycological disease that explains everything I do perfectly. Perhaps. But I don’t know it. Perhaps if I started to go to drs again they would tell me something new- give me some new diagnosis some newly discovered or widely known phycosis with a name that explained it all. Oh I have…..now I understand! Perhaps then I would get it, everything, my life and my actions and why things spin around me so much. Perhaps It would make the spinning stop. I doubt it. I also don’t have insurance so I ignore the possibility. Some days I am good to myself. Some days I sooth myself with imaginary hands- pet my head ‘you’re doing the best you can’ rub the small of my back ‘you can only give what you have to give’ pat my shoulder with a reassuring ‘”these are the cards your were dealt”. Other days it’s bare knuckled punishing blows . ‘you just aren’t trying hard enough’ a right hook to cheekbone ‘your life isn’t harder than anyone elses’ a punch to the head ‘you don’t deserve to feel bad for yourself’ a hard jab in the stomach. I know I am falling because of the anxiety and nuatia and way my lungs gets heavy and leaden when a character in a movie is about to do something obviously leading to embarrassment. The way I have to turn away and just wish, wish their impending humility would pass already just go away so I can return to my romantic comedy so that both of our lives can be ok again. I know I am falling because of the bitchyness because of impatience that is well more severe than my normal high strungedness. I know I am falling because I hardly ever want my boyfriend to touch me. Because sexuality all but turns itself off. Because I fully understand that it is not him, not him. Because I wouldn’t want anybody to touch me. And because it doesn’t matter. Not to me. Not for me. It matters because he deserves better but that’s a different story all together. I know I have not fallen fully because I don’t sit in corners, on floors, huddling my knees and crying and rocking for hours. Not a lot. Not lately at least. I don’t know if that is partially or fully because I live with him. Because we both work from home. Because he is here- always here- in a way that I am both greatly thankful and awefully embittered by. I do know that the one time in the past few weeks that I did find myself huddled in a crying ball was also the one time In the past few weeks I actually came home to an empty house. I do know that what should have been a 5 min shower just to get out the door turned into 20 mins of me telling myself I had to stop crying, had to get off bathtub floor, had to pull myself together. Me picking myself up a little bit, crying at the effort, at the fact that it was an effort and shriveling back into my knees. Crouching, crying, letting the cooling shower mix with the tears. I do not know if it happened because he wasn’t there- or was allowed to happen because he wasn’t there at least. I do know that I trust him. Fully. With the actuality of who I am. Or least I trust as much as any girl who has truthfully had every single long term relationship, with every single boy she has ever loved, end with them honestly painfully shaking their heads with despair and pity. Crazy. I have been called crazy by just about every boy I have ever dated. Every boy who has known me long enough to get past the appeal and intrigue of what seems like harmless wackiness, cuteness, adorable creativity to the grittyness of these diseases. To the girl huddled in a ball crying with what seems like unstoppable force. I trust him. As much any crazy person can trust any sane person to willfully participate in this world that is our own hell. You see we understand—we would run from it if we could. Most of us do. I spend most of my life running, running in circles around myself, from myself. So how much can you possibly trust someone else to willfully follow you down the rabbit hole? Down the spiral staircase to the depth of a mind that fights and forces and pushes against normalcy.

Intro

I will forever be 16 when I cry. The girl that I was before is so foreign that I don't remember her and the woman that I attempt to be will forever be dominated by the girl I was when it started. Scared and lost and confused with this thing that was taking over her mind. Still on good days I forget the bad, still on bad days I don't know where it came from. How I got there. Here. This is an account of what I deal with now and what I dealt with then. I don't know how to spell- grammar and sentence structure.... this is just it. Its just how I feel. I don't feel in full sentences most of the time. Forgive me if its self indulgent. Forgive me if its over dramatic. Forgive me if its long winded and confusing and you just can't understand what I'm saying. Forgive me if its gross or painful. This is just it. Its just how I feel.