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7:00 p.m. - 02/14/02
scatterbrain.
I was thinking about addiction today, and how my reason for not ever trying alcohol or drugs stems from my fear that I will end up a suburban addict. Suburban addicts, who are exemplified by a large portion of my extended family, frighten me more than street junkies with needles in their arms. I'm far more afraid to lose my integrity again (i.e. hide behind any false image, such as "loving corporate father," "dedicated PTA mom" etc) than I am to be considered a failure, which is saying a lot considering how terrified I am of failing. Anyway, this whole "high risk for addiction" popped into my head today, and I realized, (not coincidentally on Valentine's Day) that I am wary of marriage for the same reason I'm wary of drugs. I fear that I'm predisposed to live the cycle I've seen in my family, in the case of marriage: nuclear. My parents are spending this little holiday not speaking too each other, my mom spent the last half hour locked in the downstairs bathroom, while my dad gave up trying to vent about her to me, and sat down on the couch, dead as Homer Simpson in still frame.

Celebrate the fucking love.

I've had a better day, I suppose. I've been feeling ever so creative, and my thoughts are all over the place, excited. I spent most of the day doing research for my new play (after planning the essay I'll probably write for my please-god-college application). They both interest me bunches, though the play has temporarily taken over my excitement; that's ok because the play is something to work on now, as I finish up my first post-blue work, and the paper can wait a while, be perfected, et cetera. I just don't want to wait too long ... though my "award-winning" play was written in about three hours (or sixteen years, but that philosophy is a bit cliche, doncha think?)

The new play is spiffy (all writing is spiffy before it's actually transcribed to paper.) The creation stage is always the happiest; it's the *work* that starts to drain a girl. Anyway - it's an examination of the psychological theory that adolescents develop eating disorders in order to stay children. It brings up the possibility that this "reality" (if it is indeed a reality) does not necessarily mean ED sufferers are attempting to avoid adulthood, but are perhaps making an active (though not necessarily conscious) decision to heal childhood wounds. Rather than progressing into middle-age without mending ourselves, we do a bit of physical time travel trying to keep life from moving forward before we are healed enough to deal with it. The dilemma then becomes whether or not the person can reverse the physical regression before it proves fatal.

This isn't meant as a justification of the process because the risk remains, and certainly one hopes there is a less dangerous way to achieve the goal - however, if it can help change the perspective of all (or even some of) the screwy docs out there, then it might lead us closer to finding that alternative.

It's drawing on lots of old stories, myths, fairy tales etc (as I can never seem to avoid) - the "Eden" story, Peter Pan, and so on...and it also provides an answer to that age-old question, "Why the hell is Peter Pan always cast as a forty-year-old woman?"

There is major psychological bullshit represented in that casting choice, let me tell you.

The paper is also on eating disorders, but it's more broad...it suggests that eating disorders as a social illness mirror eating disorders as a personal illness. Therefore, the key(s) to healing the social epidemic of eating disorders would be relative to the tactics used with the individual. I'd go into this further, but then it won't all build in my head, and that would mean not having a decent essay to send to that please-god-college...sometimes I think I should be an olden-day philosopher: I want to simply pose thoughts, possibilities, and questions, without having to prove or disprove them first. I guess that comes from the same part of me that wants to discuss what I feel without having to justify those feelings logically. Would science be the same if Steven Hawking had waited to discuss the Big Bang theory until after he disproved it? I think sometimes the question, the journey it poses, and the fucking *possibility* or more important than the truth. Facts and truth are after all separate, and I've always been more inclined to search for "truth" in response to a question, then to be "handed" a fact...

Quotation marks and parentheses are my friends. I warned you that my brain is jumpy today...

The preceding schizophrenic thought processes are copyright chord. ;-)

c

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