10:16 a.m. - 05/04/03
[:-we are fighting on .two different fronts. of the same war-:]
I want a radar, an alarm, the type of thing that would go off into loud freakish noises, or just a really bad song, at the first sign of something that is too much. I want to be able to run (without having a semi-asthma attack) away from the thing in question, or at the very least turn away and take the time to decide whether or not this is what I want to do, first thing this morning, last thing after such a hard day...I wish I had an illness no one had ever heard of...some weird virus you get from plants that only grow in Buenos Aires, and then only if it's raining on a Wednesday after Leap Year. I want to have that illness, so that no one ever mentions it, so that I know I'm one of a handful of people, a network I could hold onto and feed healing into, instead of too many millions. I lose my fingers quickly, counting this, and instead invest my tears. But it doesn't change anything. And everywhere you stumble, even if you're just trying to catch up on other people's words, it's there. It beats me to the party, every time. How many people died from the Plague? How long before we kill this rat once and for all?
You know, the doctor believes all the pro-ana shit should be taken off the web. He agrees with me that people need help, not censorship, that this illness is one of not having voice or power and to have that taken away won't help them. He also believes that continuing to allow such material on-line sucks in people who would never be sick (and that's true, it does), even if they would need help anyway. (i.e. I needed help in junior high, and wouldn't it have been nice if I didn't have to deal with an eating disorder on top of everything, by the time that help arrived?) And I'm not sure how you take it off and give help to everyone who was using it (which is of course, my only way of doing everything. "Yes, yes, this makes sense, but how are we going to make sure *everyone* gets better?") I don't know what to believe. It isn't even just the pro-ana shit that's hard to deal with; it's everything having to do with eds. I probably wouldn't be able to read my own journal, if I weren't the one writing it. Living it. The more that I have this illness, the less oblivious I'm allowed to be, and suddenly all those fucking statistics are in my face, with faces of their own. Eyes and smiles and fears and buried dreams. I can't save anyone. Times like now, I can hardly know. What the hell do I do with this heart that cares too much and these eyes that are scared to see? I doubt how many more angles I can know this disease from. Being thought to have it, having it, having a friend with it, losing a friend to it, seeing acquaintances acquire it, watching friends tread that frightening balance beam between sickness and health...it goes on. It goes on; I'm not sure how I do.
Someday, it isn't going to be like this. I just want to know that, if I have to stay on the front line, at the very least, there's an army behind me.
chord
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