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10:15 p.m. - 08/23/02
don't take me seriously. but don't leave me. seriously.
It's bad. The other day I stared without blinking at an active lightbulb in hopes that the handful of doctors who believe light helps depression would prove accurate. Currently my mom is sleeping on the couch (again) and I haven't the slightest idea if she's staying there all night, or how many times she's done this, but I know it's not the first. I know I heard my father tell my mother that he's given up hoping for what he considers a happy life with her, and that he's spent the past half hour in his closet, searching for a book of Catholic Rites. I know that he was given the job in Narnia, that soon he will move back across the border, and my mom will come to me even more often than she does now to say I'm ignoring her, to say she feels alone. I can't explain to her that my distance is necessary for my own survival, that she's not the only person I'm avoiding (I'm avoiding everyone, including myself right now), and that she's only noticing because Dad has seized the moment to kick her to the curb. Justified or not, that curb will dent you dearly, I must say...

I never really expect it to get worse, which I guess is a sign that I've had a good year now of it getting better. Of course that required it to get Majorally Screwed Up a few times, and I would chalk up Right Now as a member of the latter group, but I kept expecting it to get better. And I don't just mean with my parents. I mean with everything. I didn't think anything could touch me when I survived January. I could no longer imagine relapse. I figured, if I didn't die over losing Tracy, then there's no such thing as doom. I've talked about everything feeling like a transgression in the wake of what happened to her; that would include me losing ground. I can't imagine getting sicker than I was in January, even though I've been much sicker the past few years. It would be like saying, "Hey, I have the audacity to relapse now for no apparent reason, but, erm, did ok when you suddenly disappeared."

Except I didn't do okay. And I'm not doing okay. I'm blinding myself with lightbulbs and trying to keep myself distracted. I'm not journaling when I want to journal because something tells me thinking is the enemy. I'm making bad cathartic art with Crayolas and twisting my head around fictions to keep the realities out. For the first time I have beauty in my life that even time cannot tone down, and now I have to avoid it to the extremity that I have, in the past, avoided things of pain. I have to try to not think that name, not hear that memory, not touch that space popping up into my brain. Memory is a mirage, and if I give it power, I'm afraid more than it will disappear.

The weeks between appointments seem to be growing longer. I'm counting down until Monday when Mistrandy will first arrive to start (what I will continue to refer to as) my senior year (damnit). I'm absolutely terrified of what I'll do to myself when I have actual schoolwork to be compulsive about, and I'm absolutely counting the minutes until I can be compulsive in that aspect. Maybe then I'll quit thinking all the shit I've been thinking. Maybe then I can stay distracted, if only just til Wednesday. Then I can say to him, "You told me once that if it came down to cutting, starving, purging, or studying like one posessed, the latter was your vote. And I told you studying makes me crazy, and it does, and it is, but the truth is just like all those other things, if I'm doing it, I'm already feeling crazy. So help me, damnit. I don't care what you have to do. Ok, I do care, but I don't care *much.* If it doesn't involve school-building-issues or anything else *all that* triggering, I swear I'll do it. Because I'm about to throw a year away for no better reason than I can't find a good reason not to.' But then again, maybe that's a reason all its own. It's been a year and three days ago I knew with my whole being why I wanted to continue this. Now I can't come up with one fucking reason, not one. Now I'm hanging on by my fingernails saying, 'if it was true for nine months, it must be true now'...so help me, please, help me. Because my palms are sweaty and I can't do this much longer."

How did I get through this in January? When I had no appetite (like now) and wasn't eating much? When I was feeling sick all the time, sleeping all the time, fighting thoughts like they were insects (just like now)? Did I get through it at all? Would it still be here if I'd really gotten through? Maybe I just pushed it down, down, down. Maybe I didn't want to deal then either. The only argument I have against my eating disorder right now is that it makes me feel physically sick. That when I don't eat enough I feel ill, and then when, not having eaten enough, I do eat something, I feel ill also. That's it. What happened to all my insight, all my awareness, all my progress and my growth? It must be here somewhere; it must be here somewhere. Someone please reach in and find it; my eyes are blurred by lightbulbs - I'm too blind.

The answer I need most right now is, "Why was I willing to keep recovering even though it meant losing RED? What possibly balanced that need, that grief, that robbery?" Even if everything else in my life is better now than it was then, does that even begin to balance not having them?

Nothing else made me get better, made me want it, made me feel strong. It was only feeling their presence that I was able to do this. So how do I go through this now, when that's so obviously past?

You won't get admitted/ if it looks like you've quitted...

Yeah I suck. And this is absolutely not advocating what I used to do. But I miss their presence to the point I question mine.

chord

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