A Final Post

Hi everyone. It’s been a while.

This is the final post. One more post, before I shut this blog down and remove it from that collective digital aether known as the internet.

When I started this blog, I was slowly drowning in my own insanity. Clawing desperately for the surface while only sinking further into the cold dark, I needed some reminder that the voice of me was still in there. That I still existed. That in the end, I had not lost myself. Not totally.

And I needed to be heard.

I have been heard. Continue to be. By others. Lots of others. But more importantly, by myself. It is my own voice that talks to me more often now. You see, while my brain is by no means suddenly a hunky dory place to be all the time, the life of it has gotten stronger. It’s almost like the part of me that is real has climbed higher up. I can see the fallacy below now. No, I don’t always remember that fallacy is what it is, but there will always be that knowledge logged in the back of my mind, at least.

I have decided to live. I hit a point about a week or so ago where I realized that for all the depression I was buried under, suicide was no longer a satisfying option. I realized that it’s not that I want to die. I want to live – just, happily. I don’t want all the hurt anymore. And I am too curious. Suicide would leave too many questions unanswered. The product of my life would only be a series of “what if’s.” I am too much a writer at soul to give up at finding out the end of the story.

And so I change the focus of where I move my pen. My story is coming off the page now. Out of text, out of isolation, out of this virtual reality that has contained my thoughts. And while my blackest of thoughts have needed containing, there’s enough of me now to set the rest of me free.

Sure, the flying’s not going to be easy. I am under no such delusions. It’s still going to be rough. And I will forget this confidence that pervades my moment. But I can remember again. Broken wings can heal. It’s better, I think, than merely staying perched on the tree bough to only sing about flying.

Does that mean I’m going to stop writing? Hell no. That’s a ridiculous idea. It’s just that my sanity is more robust now – it no longer requires this space to be heard, to be valued, to be validated. I am immensely grateful for all who have read, all who have followed, all who have written and connected to this space of my mind. It’s been good, y’all. I’ll leave this page up for another day or so in the hopes that some of you might hear my thanks.

And then – and then it will be time to sign off, take a deep breath, and face life.

Best of luck to us all.

Old Pictures

Old pictures are dangerous. Old pictures show the progression from that April to May to June, getting skinnier and skinnier and skinnier. Old pictures show faces thinning, waistlines receding. Old pictures show baggy jeans with thighs a mile apart, legs so skinny he said he could wrap his hands around them. Old pictures show memories of a time you think of as “when you used to be beautiful.”

Old pictures are dangerous.

Old pictures bring up regrets and longings and unconcluded failures – of what, you’re not really sure. It’s hard to know these days, what the achievement was and what was the stopping. Which way means giving in and what kind of boundaries you’re supposed to fit your life into. There are no easy answers these days. Not when life’s gotten this complicated.

It all used to be so simple.

There were rules, and you followed them. There were don’t’s, and you abhorred them. Body, mind, and soul, you had your purpose.

Don’t eat.

Being skinny was just a side effect.

But then again, in those days, so was dying.

Still, it would have been simpler. But being happy – that one’s harder.

Snow

The snow is thick and white and deep

and you, my dear, are far away.

And I, I am ineffably lonely.

 

The chill creeps in through window panes

and you, my dear, you do not call.

And I – I try not to say I want you so.

 

The world is cold and getting dark

and you, my dear, you laugh it off.

And I… I wish that you would care.

 

The snow grows thick and white and deep

and you, my dear, are still not here.

And I, I am still lonely.

Going Home

I am lying awake thinking of love and stories,

knowing that tomorrow I will be on a plane

back to where all the memories started.

My mind circles through now and then,

confusing tides of wanting and leaving

that wash up in a froth on my soul.

There’s a fear and a yearning,

knowing that tomorrow I will open the door

on the first eighteen years of my life,

a hope that maybe this time will be different,

and I won’t leave having cried my heart to sleep.

Again.

But you are there and she’s there and he’s there.

They’re all there.

It’s all there –

the physical reality of what I’ve tucked back in my mind.

And soon it might not all feel like just a memory.

Like something I just have to try hard to forget about at night.

I am afraid,

knowing that I will be on a plane tomorrow,

going home.

Over You

I am sitting by the phone,

wondering if I should call you,

because the people on TV were falling in love

and all I want is to hear your voice.

It’s been three months

and we can say the words

“I love you”

again, and know

that we are still just friends,

because that is all you wanted to be,

telling me that you weren’t ready

for anything else now.

But still for me there is the eternal wondering,

wondering what might have been

if I’d asked a year ago,

or maybe last week.

Would have been ready then?

You kissed me three months ago,

and that is something I cannot forgive,

for you have left me with the memory

but not the reality,

and it is the reality that I so desperately wanted.

I wanted you.

I still want you.

Because when I say those words,

“I love you,”

I still mean them.

As a friend,

as more than a friend.

As the girl who’s known you

for the past five years

and kissed you that one night,

who was on the other side of the phone

when you were crying.

You held my hand

and told me that you were pretty sure

I knew how you felt,

but I didn’t,

and when I asked,

you said yes.

But then rationality hit,

and you said not now.

You said that I should move on,

not hold on,

but love is not a choice, my dear,

and you are not an addiction I can quit.

I’ve tried falling in love again but, my dear,

my heart is still much too much yours.

I’ve tried to take it back,

tried to give it away,

tried to make it forget,

tried to make it stay

away from those dangerous thoughts of you,

but you are in every corner,

and I cannot get away

or by

or through

or past

or around

or over –

no.

I cannot get over you.

Broken People

I realized – or rather, remembered again – that broken people have a tendency to attract other broken people. We find them. We become friends with them. We fall in love with them.

And I think I’m okay with that.

My boyfriend right now… he’s wonderful. Really, he is. He’s sweet and crazy and thoughtful. So what’s the problem, right? Well, honestly… he’s just not broken enough.

Yeah, his life hasn’t been perfect. Yeah, he’s heard his parents fight – once. Yeah, he and his sibs don’t always get along – but they still talk. Yeah, he’s been down before – but never depressed.

And so, as much as we click on a lot of levels, there’s an entire part of my life, of who I am and who I’ve been and what I’ve gone through, that he’ll just never understand.

I’ve tried talking to him about stuff before. But when you haven’t gone through the fire, it’s hard to know how to soothe the flames. If you’ve never been drowned, you can never really understand the need for air.

He doesn’t understand that sometimes knowing the answer doesn’t help. He’s still able to approach problems with an everything’s-going-to-be-alright kind of faith that I have lost. Even when I am doing well, when my depression brain isn’t the one doing the thinking, it’s hard for me to be sure that everything’s going to work out. There’s a level of distrust that I carry with me now, a cynicism about the God and the universe that I believe in.

And so I find myself starting to squirm. For I can never achieve the same level of comfort with life that he has. I can never achieve the same level of comfort with him. But I try to tell myself that give it time, and maybe you’ll fall in love. Just try your hardest, honey, not to fall out of like in the mean time.

But I feel like I know in the end I’m just kidding myself. I have been in love before. I know what it looks like. And to a certain extent my heart is still taken by some of those broken people that I have loved. If I’m honest, really it boils down to one broken person in particular, right now.

So I know that really, I am just faking it. Faking it and hiding it and hoping that my current boyfriend won’t notice too soon that I don’t think we have the real thing.

For I am finding that while boys may come and go, scars are forever.

Invincible

I used to be invincible. Or damn close to it. I don’t know what’s happen; I used to be so much tougher when I was younger. Sick? No such thing. Colds, flus, even a bacterial infection or two – I’d still go to school, come home and do my homework (even when that meant staying up till 4 a.m.), probably even go to practice for whatever sport I was in at that point. My “sick days” were virtually nonexistent. I basically had to be puking my stomach out in order to stay home, or even tell my mother that it might be a good idea for me to go to the doctor. No, I powered through sickness, kept working, didn’t back down or slow down.

But what’s happened now? I’ve spent the last week in bed, completely knocked out from some unidentifiable virus. Thing isn’t even significant enough to have a name and yet I’ve been completely out of commission. Couldn’t study for my finals, couldn’t go to class, couldn’t go to work… hell, I was happy if I could sit up without the world spinning. But I feel like if I had gotten the same thing when I was little, I would have just brushed it off. Yeah, I probably would have been best friends with a tissue box for a few days, but I feel like I would have been able to get through it. And I’m criticizing myself for that. For not being strong enough. For being so weak – or at least what I perceive as weak. For me, that is. If anybody were going through what I’ve been (and half my house at college is), I’d see it as completely reasonable for them to hole up in bed and hide from the world for a week or two. But not for me. Because I feel like I know that I could do better. That I could get through this. That I could have just powered through and gotten everything done and just not been so damn sick!

I was an insane kid growing up. I’m not a huge fan of running. Ellipticals are beautiful inventions. But flat-out running… I’ve had an up-and-down relationship with the sport. But I remember being in middle school and forcing myself to go running – in jeans and flip-flops and 100-degree weather, no less. And I did it. Because it’s just what I had to do. I carried such an inner compulsion that there simply wasn’t a question. Sure, that compulsion was coming from my eating disorder… but still, that kind of will power is deathly attractive to me. To know that I once had it… I hate myself for not being that hard on myself now. For letting myself be bothered by things I would have taken in stride as a kid. For not pushing myself harder. And I know that’s my disorder talking, but there is still some true, me-based indignation there at core. Because I’m pretty sure that before I even had a disorder, I – me, myself and I – I was the one telling myself those words. Be better.

I feel like some kind of decrepit has-been. Because I know that before everything crumbled – I was invincible.

Stay

“Stay,” that one, dangerous little word. “Stay” – an invitation to a choice, a seductively simple little temptation. Who knew that a “stay” spoken at three in the afternoon could be so different from one spoken at ten at night? Who knew what staying could lead to? Who knew that staying would lead to anything in the first place?

He, so cautious, and I, the experienced one. What happened to the walls we had put up? What happened to the halt that we had spoken of before? The boundaries, the rules, the safeguards?

Who knew that that one little word, “stay,” could tear down everything.

 

I was in your arms.

Hands and fingers

wheedling and winding,

venturing their way down

towards those southern regions.

Advances perhaps uninvited

but also unreproached,

an assenting silence

deadly as matchsticks,

but oh, the fire.

3 a.m.

Well, it’s 3 a.m. and it’s been a long night. I’ve been battling the latest edition of the plague since Sunday, and the relatively well-behaved if incredibly sore throat that had started everything off has morphed into one of those unruly ailments that come with coughing. I’m currently trying to tame the hacking with one of the horrid-tasting but helpfully mentholated cough drops that boyfriend was wonderful enough to bring me earlier.

My emotions are pretty much off. I’m set to a pretty much constant state of “meh,” my physical symptoms basically overriding any emotional presence. As of today (well, I suppose it’s yesterday now…) I’ve been able to feel a bit of mild frustration and a few small waves of happiness, but no major ups or downs.

No, instead I’ve been preoccupied with the stupid acid reflux that’s been kicking my ass, four hours after I last ate anything. Come on, that’s not fair! Aren’t my esophagus and I supposed to be in the clear by now? Given the burning in my chest that persisted for well over two hours, apparently not. And then there’s the weird leg-twitchy-thing that decided to show up again tonight. And the mild body aches. And the restlessness. And of course, the insomnia. Oh joy.

But I think what’s really bothering me is that I have no fucking clue where I am when it comes to recovery. I feel like I’ve just been ignoring my eating disorder, trying to pretend like it’s not there. I currently don’t have a therapist. I’m about to make a med change. I haven’t really been able to talk to anyone about how things are going. I feel like I’ve just been going the route of “sit up and shut up.” Like I suddenly don’t have permission to not be okay anymore, and just have to keep things all bottled up inside, hide how I’m feeling from everyone because suddenly there was this mandate that I must be okay. I think some of this might be backlash from my book signing – everyone’s been telling me how brave of me it is to put everything out there, how I’m so much a stronger person for everything I’ve gone through – but I think that’s the catch. Everybody else is treating this like it’s past tense. Something that I’ve gone through. Not something that’s still going.

And I am still fighting. All the triggers, all the temptations, all the decisions I still have to struggle to make – they’re all still there. Every day. All the time. And at times I just feel so incredibly overwhelmed – but I feel like nobody notices that I’m drowning.

I’m trying to be okay, really. I don’t want to just sit around feeling sorry for myself. Maybe it’s just that it’s late and I’m sick and I’m tired. Maybe it’s that it’s 3 a.m.and still night time. Maybe I just need it to be morning.

 

Food Rules

I’m sure we all know that ED is pretty good at coming up with rules when it comes to food. Yeah, well, I’m in kind of an argumentative mood this morning, so I decided to come up with food rules of my own.

1. When it comes to coffee, I can have half-and-half instead of non-fat milk.
2. Scones are not the most evil thing ever.
3. Do I really need to decide what I get to eat for the day based on how I felt my profile looked in the mirror while I was changing clothes? No? I didn’t think so.
4. Screw sugar count.
5. I will not obsess about fat grams.
6. Seconds are okay.
7. I will not start planning next meal while I’m still eating this one.

Who knows how long I’ll hold to these rules. It might be for breakfast, it might be for the whole day. But however long they hold, hey, at least it’s fuck-you to ED for right now.

Here’s to fighting.