Great Unrealistic Expectations

My dog Maybelline is stressing me.  She wants to go on a walk, and I just don’t have it in me to get off this couch, which makes me feel like a terrible pet partner.

Taken from today’s journal:

Been a busy day.  Service, errands, back pain.  The works.  I wish I could take a muscle relaxer right now, but I’m supposed to take Mabes for walk, and I can’t do that if I’m asleep.

Times and days are running together.  I find no support anywhere.  I was doing fine until Husband came home.  I was busy packing for our move, and when he came home we started to feel “off”.  Most would call that experience dissociation.  I don’t know what to call it anymore.  There is still the troubled argument of whether we accept the D.I.D. DX.  Tina gets very angry if we accept it.  But writing and talking just like this, isn’t that a sign of dissociation and of others?  This battle gets old.  I KNOW what’s wrong.  Tina’s doubts have left an imprint on us, but not a lasting imprint.  

*****I wonder if we’re making it up as we go *****

If you have D.I.D., but don’t acknowledge it, can you still improve anyway because the prescription of psychotherapy is still the same?  I hate whatever I’m going through right now.

So I was fine until Husband came home.  Then I felt “off” or dissociative.  I lasted as long as I could but broke down and took an anti-anxiety med.  It didn’t help much.  A muscle relaxer would help, but the timing is no good.  

So why do I feel “dissociative” when Husband comes home?  Probably because he’s so temperamental and to some degree I (and the littles if there really are any) am afraid of him, his moods, his headaches, his temper, his race -car driving.  I never know which Husband I’ll meet next.  So we get scared around him.  

If D.I.D. has lots of faces, shapes, and norms, why couldn’t mine be one?  I question whether I really hear voices of others or is it just my own voice.  I guess D.I.D. has been going on so long I have failed to recognize just . . . I don’t know what I was going to say.

What am I?  I just want to be sure I’m not lying or making a fool out of myself.  Mostly it seems too much to believe.  Bad things couldn’t have happened.  I had a happy childhood.  But, oh, how I hated Birth Parents.  And it can’t be denied that at least on a superficial level there was some abuse and neglect. I own that.

Good God.  *sigh* I think we want to see Therapist more than once a week.  What bullshit.  Some feel “close” to him and have a need for his attention, so they want to see him more often.  Little children who want to feel special.  Is that good or bad?  Does that give Therapist too much power and make us even more vulnerable?  Better yet, why need more attention now?  Has their source of attention dried?  Are they not receiving attention inside?  I doubt Tina, in her crisis, is up to showering them with love and attention.

For some reason, this journal entry feels accurate. I think it's because it feels like we're communicating.  It feels true to what is going on inside, and that is a cause for mourning: Mourning for the system that doesn’t feel like it used to feel, mourning for Tina who is not the same right now and is in crisis, mourning for those parts who require more attention and special feelings, mourning for those who aren’t getting their needs met by this ever-evolving system.  

I can feel Tina seeping her way through this journal entry.  I feel her sending her hate and anger to me, but that’s not all she’s sending. I sense from Tina some subtle undertones of helplessness and vulnerability.   I sense great fear in her . . . and great sorrow.  What a pity.  I almost don’t recognize her at all.

Protecting the Protector

I want to write, and I want to call out Sheila to discuss without emotion and bias what is happening regarding Tina, particularly and her denial of D.I.D.

I'll address my surmise of how Tina feels currently.  She wants to push the agenda that there is no dissociation because she feels out of the loop.  When was the last time she really had to defend and protect us?  Okay.  Besides the handshake incident.  Other than that, not too recently.

I predict her services will be needed again, but she's not used to being in the silent role.  She's used to taking action, not sitting back.  She feels unnecessary.  Everyone here has at least one job, and Tina's job has been to protect the system.  On behalf of Tina, there's been very little need from Tina to protect us.  She feels useless and unneeded.

Imagine how she might feel.  Instead of throwing up defenses to protect the system, in a way, she is the one who needs protection . . . from herself.  Without her anger, where and how does she get her power?  She doesn't.  And she wants in a way to send the whole system on its own by denying us, make us defenseless, so she can feel powerful again.  If she denies the existence of others inside, she gets back some portion of power because she can in a sense make them go away.

What Tina needs now, regardless if she believes we have D.I.D., is for us to rally around her, wipe away her tears, and above all let her know she's needed by us.

However, I don't know how to do the latter yet.  She's the only one who seems in crises.  How do you provoke or bring her out of her defenses?  It will be important to tell her how she defends us to some degree every day.  Whether it's getting our food right at a restaurant, a price right when shopping, or making sure we have good customer service.  She speaks her mind when it comes to getting what we need.  Thank her for that.

But there's another side.  If she has no one to protect, how can she lash out at Therapist and keep him in his place.  And we have to be the ones to let Therapist know what she needs and how she's feeling.  She won't speak loudly enough of her needs.  We must do that.

Tina believes, and perhaps rightly so, that she has a special relationship with Therapist.  I know she want to feel special.  We all want to feel that way, and that will be dealt with soon.  But for now, we must acknowledge the bond she feels toward Therapist.  She spoke up for us in the past.  It's our turn to speak up for her now.

We must remember that while Tina is a Protector, even she needs protection from herself.

In regards as to whether we dissociate, more discussion must take place.  It's true, the system has shifted, and I don't feel a strong awareness of what we're dealing with here and what the system needs and what the roles are now.  I feel the system needs to get to know each other again, if we truly dissociate.  I saw someone's handwriting recently belonging to a woman named Molly.  Is she new?  Are there others that are new?  We must be open to al possibilities and communicate more as a whole.

Conversations with my imagination

Saw Therapist again.  It was another wasted session where I refuted that I dissociate or have the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder.  To complicate matters more for me, he never came out and said, "Yes, you do have D.I.D." which gives me cause for hope and despair.  If we don't have D.I.D., then what is wrong with me?  I had a happy childhood.  Most of my memories growing up are good, though there are always some you wish you could leave behind and forget.  So now we are floating all adrift, don't know where we're going, how to get there, or what to do if we ever make it there.

Tina, I'm curious.  Why do you feel the need to deny it after all these years?

It's complicated.  I feel I am no longer needed, and if you don't need me I might as well disappear.    I don't know why I was around anyway.  Nobody needs anyone.  You seem to get along fine without my intervention and that makes me unneeded and invisible.  I feel like a damned lie.

Is that why you play games with Therapist, you feel if you keep messing with him he'll be interested in your well-being and you won't be invisible.

Don't play innocent with me.  Have I not done my job, and with no gratitude?  And have I not sat back and watched others embraced by warm, fuzzy feelings only for me to return to my coldness and anger?  Do you not all want attention?   I scan the room and find hearts that want Therapist's approval and attention just as much as me.  Almost all of you want his attention and want to feel special by him.  The littles look at Therapist like he's a father figure, and I'll be damned if we become a case of transference.  I know the Littles can't help it, but should I not protect them from the embarassment and rejection they will face?  And others just need to feel cared for.   So I'm here to protect you, though I feel I've fallen short, you don't need me, and I'm exhausted.  I just don't get myself.  There's proof I'm one way and there's proof I'm another.

It's not the first time you've denied we have D.I.D.  Why again this time?  Why now?

I'm fearful.  I wonder why no one else is.  It feels like something is going to blow up inside these walls.  I have not the imagination to know what it is.   It always turns into nothing, leading to disbelief.   How can someone ever get better with out knowing what's wrong with him or her?  How can Therapist effectively treat us when we don't know what to tell him?   I don't want to talk about this further for fuck's sake, but I will say that I get tired of being the angry, tall, aggressive, protective one. I've grown tired of being on the watch for everyone.   Just once, I wish someone would see I'm crying, scoop me up, carry me away, wipe my tears away, and tell me it will be okay . . .  the same way I did for them all these fucking years. I'm over it all.

A Gluttonous Hijacking of Words

I want to talk. I really, really do.  But it's just too late.   Games are all I can do, and I've been messing with you.  At least I'm honest.

What a shame for me to annihilate chances to get help and for you to get so close to the truth and have it disappear in your hand like a puff of unicorn dust.  I don't always enjoy doing it, but we all have a call.  I supposed you could say this is mine.  And yours?  I haven't decided yet.

I do know this.  When I tell you the truth, you don't believe it.  How can I trust that?  When I say I am one, you must believe.  I told you the truth recently, and you presumptuously moved forward with a lie I've shut down.  So I dispense my guarded silence.  Doesn't matter.   It's more than I would have wanted to say anyway.

I feel like my time is done.  I must act quickly, lest even my borrowed words disapper again.  Why is it so damn hard?  I just want to feel better, but then again, I'd be okay if I just disappeared.  And that is the completion of my story.  Again, I'm sorry.  I was just messing with you.

When words just aren't enough

I don’t feel well.  I have been dissociative, spacey, and dizzy all evening.  There’s a sense of urgency to write, and I can’t escape it.  I must, I must, I must eject what’s in this crazy, demanding  head.

I was anxious this morning, but I knew I would be taking my dog Maybelline for a walk and that would help dissipate some anxiety, and it did.  After our walk, my anxiety lessened until this evening.

But this evening the anxiety shot back up, and the dissociation made it impossible to think and speak clearly.  I’ve had some things on my mind today, and I’m wondering if there is any correlation to my dissociation and anxiety.  These are not things of which I want to write, and I’m angry that I’m being pushed into doing it.

I don’t know if I’ve written about it before on this blog, but these memories came crashing into my head today, fresh and new, and I feel the need to document it.  I don’t know why it’s necessary to write on it, but I feel something  propelling me forward.  

What has my brain so rattled is the memory of me as a child sleeping on the floor because I was afraid of my bed. Stupid, right?  I don’t know exactly when it started, but I was somewhere between the ages of 7 through 9.  But that’s just a guess.  My memory just starts with me sleeping on the floor because I didn’t want to sleep in my bed.  The bed seemed scary.  I just remember finding sleeping on the floor comforting.  The next thing I remember is sleeping on the floor in the bathroom.  I honestly don’t know why I moved from sleeping on my bedroom floor to the bathroom floor, but something made me seek shelter in the bathroom.  

For years I slept anywhere other than a bed until I got married; of course then I started sleeping in the same bed as my husband, although there are still some nights that the couch is safer than the bed.

Why does this matter?  I don’t know.  Perhaps it doesn’t.  I don’t attach meaning to it, but somewhere inside I felt the desperate need to share it.  I know the writing is paltry, skimpy and scattered.  It is very dispassionate and non-descriptive, and it doesn’t really paint a picture of what was going on at the time.   But I don’t have a clear picture, and I don’t understand why it was so important to write about it tonight.  But I couldn’t not write.  As stupid as it sounds, writing this tonight was for survival.

I hate myself.

I would love to hear from those reading this.  Am I alone here?  Have you ever experienced your bed being scary, or  would you sleep in strange places?   

Whispers Heard as Screams

I'm going on record declaring this complete bull shit.

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I don't know what to say really.  I don't know what to feel either.

Maybe I am really okay, and it didn't hurt as badly as it seems.  Or, maybe I'm covering up the greatest pain we've ever known throughout the gift of numbness.

I'm sure I am being dramatic.  It's true; I'm not crying.  No, I'm not overly anxious.  Surely there is nothing wrong.

I mean, what damage has been done? 

Maybe the lack of feelings are because the damage is more intellectual, more cerebral.  Emotionally it's no big deal, but in my head and my thoughts I know I have been betrayed by others, and I have also betrayed myself, and by extension . . . .  Shhh.  The wind whispers:  dirty, unclean, contaminated.

You may address me as "Whore."

I may never whisper again. 

I know why you whisper, and I am sorry.  I know who you are, little one.  You are someone who doesn't want to be here anymore.  I don't blame you.  But why don't you want to be here? 

People will see my dirtiness.  Some put on an act that they enjoy it.  Maybe that is why she is confused.  What she knows and what she feels are at war with one another, and I am collateral damage.  Someone is always sacrificed. 

I sense you staring into space.  Where are you going in your mind?

Escape while I can.  Things are calm for now, but soon it will either be complete anxiety or a crushing depression that will descend upon you, and I can't survive another blow tonight.

Did you take over with Daniel?

I took over afterwards when no one else would, just like back then.

I AM the Old Struggle

This weekend was an exercise in futility.  Still reeling from the session with Therapist written about  here,  I unsuccessfully navigated a weekend that was filled with meaning and importance for me, and I failed.

I keep going over it in my mind, twisting it, turning it, unknotting it, what was said by Therapist  and I'm starting to feel angry about the session.

I don't know. I don't know.  I don't know. I. don't. know.

My guard is up.  My mind is closed clam shut.

I reverted back to whom I don't want to be.

Fuck all that.

These words are ramble letters for others, but they mean something to me.

I am struggling like old times again, a place I had every reason to think I escaped.

And now I embrace the notion of death.  I welcome him, I dare him to visit me.  He will not be disappointed.

Please someone rescue me from this hell.  I am drowning and can not make it myself out of the water.
Perhaps that indicates I want to live.  Shit fuck hell, maybe I do.  but certainly not like this.  and if this is all there is, no matter what that fucking therapist says, I don't want to do it.

I need to  be rescued.  I want to be rescued, but I'm afraid desire alone won't make it possible.

If the Truth Were Told

I even said a prayer before my session with Therapist today and asked God that I not be so guarded and to help me be open to change.  But what transpired between me and Therapist was more than I bargained for, and I deeply regret it.

As I remember it, the discussion centered around purging and how I think eating makes me a whore.  I didn’t understand these feelings, so he asked something around the idea of did I want to know why there might be the association of food being dirty and how eating makes me a whore.

Here’s where it derailed on my side.  

I said yes.

Therapist tells me the food association correlates with an abuser on whom oral sex was performed by  me/we/he/she/they/it.  

1. I don’t remember this event or telling Therapist of it.
2. I don’t want to know this event.
3. This event must be a lie.

Throughout the day, I reflected on this piece of “history” that has been told to me, but of which I have no recollection, and I find myself greatly disturbed.  It has me twisted in knots and made me profoundly sullen and sad.  I can barely breathe.

I’m left holding a piece of a memory that doesn’t belong to me but still troubles me deeply, and I don’t know how to escape this purgatory.  

If the truth were told, I think this has set me back in terms of therapy, and I feel hopeless all over again.

Eating my Silence

Suspend what you think you know, and hear everything that needs to be said, wants to be said, has to be said, but the words are eaten by silence.

 

You don't know with whom you are dealing.

Ask no questions.

Finite Capability

Depression has slammed into me today; a blanket of bruising blues.  And the head hurts like fireworks exploding inside their own shells.   I don't know how this post will be accomplished.

I didn't realize the extent to which my emotions had captured me when I woke this morning until I couldn't figure out which breakfast had the fewer calories.  My indecision told me I was in store for a difficult day.

I consumed my breakfast, and now it has consumed me: the worry, the constant turning over in my head how I will burn the calories or will I give in and relax today.

I fell back asleep and slept through the time I normally walk my dog Maybelline; however, her incessant whining to take her out bullied me into acquiescing and I walked her.

Days like this I hate because there is no structure, which makes restriction all the more difficult.  Husband works both jobs today, so I will not see him until tomorrow.

This week has been difficult.  Either I've been dissociative all week or I'm just stupid because I have not been abler to process information to any degree.  I'll read and not comprehend at all what it means.  It's not a matter of not being able to pay attention.  What's happening is I'm just not "getting" it.   I've been following allow in printed work while it is audibly read to me, so it's not a matter of not being able to pay attention or a learning style.  My thoughts are thick and sluggish, like when I get dissociative.  It doesn't surprise me the parts and pieces would be more active right now considering the back and forth arguing over what is happening regarding food, a fight we don't want anymore but can't let go.

Someone made a meme last night.  I observed it, though didn't participate, but I guess I was complicit because I didn't try to stop it.  Lately, there has been the faintest whisper, barely detectable, unidentifiable, that tries to whisper, "It's okay.  You can let go now."

And when this little suggestion comes, there is almost but not really a tender suggestion of peace.  I become teary now thinking about it, but quickly snap back to reality because that murmur is always followed up with the louder voices that are mean and punishing and resolute to do the opposite.

Fuck them all.

I'm done.  My head hurts.  I can't finish this post.

Both Roads Taken

Another sleepless night so far.  The anxiety has mostly lessened since my previous post,  but the sleepless nights continue despite medication.  Psychiatrist gave me a new med to try, but it gives me an unrelenting headache the next day, and it also causes weight gain, so I won't use it anymore.  I've gone back to my previous sleep med, but it isn't working.  It's our lot in life.

I purged twice today.  I can't remember the last time I purged.  I'm not sure why I engaged in this behavior.  Maybe I know.  Maybe I don't.  Who cares?  All I know is I think about food constantly.  Continually.  Non stop.  Without letup.  And it is ENOUGH!!

When is the next time I can eat?  What will I eat?  How many calories will it have?  How will it taste?  What will Husband think if he sees me eat?  How can I hide it?  Now that I've eaten, when is the next time I can eat?

OR THESE THOUGHTS

How can I refrain from eating?  What activity can I do next time I'm hungry instead of eating?  How will I feel?  What will I do if I eat anyway?  How many squats do I need to do to burn off the calories?  How many calories am I NOT burning by sitting on the couch?  What can I do to jumpstart my weight loss?

The list of questions go on and on and on.

One of us mentioned before how the eating disorder is a safety net, a way to get out of being an adult, and/or taking responsibility, a way to keep us child-like, but it is so much more.

Put the ED behaviors aside, the eating disorder and body image thoughts themselves can not be curbed.  They are incessant and do not exist as a safety net.  They do not protect; they do not shelter; they do not comfort.

They plague us.  They are compulsive, urgent, and overwhelming, and I do not know how to break them.  I am threatened by their existence.  We are at their mercy, and I can not be responsible for their actions.

Bottom line is we are out of control from both sides.  And while the eating disorder in and of itself may be insurance, the thoughts are not.  They are menacing and commence our feelings and behaviors.

We are reminded of the end of a poem written by Robert Frost entitled "The Road Not Taken."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Just like the narrator says, we are choosing the road less traveled, and I know it will make all the difference.  It has before.

Amen.

 

Call me a poet.  What can I say?

Anxiety's Amusement

Once upon a time there was a paradox called Missing in Sight whose anxiety was so rampant and uncontrolled that ten minutes after waking on Saturday morning,  she took her usual cocktail of a Clonazepam and a muscle relaxer to chase the anxiety away.  Meanwhile, she felt she was going insane.  She would hit her head with her hand repeatedly to chase away the crazies.  When that didn't work, the wall took the brunt of her head.

Soon her medicine assumed her, and she went to sleep for about an hour.  When she woke, the same anxiety was expectantly waiting for her, licking its lips, eager to pounce on her.  She tried to think of other ways to deal with the misery, but to no avail.  She couldn't concentrate, so she wasn't able to read or color.  She had taken medications that left her tired and drained, so she couldn't take her dog for a walk.  She couldn't be still, so watching t.v. or a movie wasn't an option.  

She felt if she could just cry then she might be able to calm down, but a tear could not be found.

Once again, she took more medication to put her to sleep so she would not have to deal with the anxiety.  This time she slept a little longer, but when the meds wore off and she woke to reality, the monster of anxiety woke with her, and she could not escape the roar of its meanness.

She tried to last it out.  She thought maybe if she put on her favorite movie then she could endure the panic; however, the movie turned rancid to her eyes.  She did not know why, but she could not tolerate her best movie.

All this while, Husband was home, but he was asleep off and on.  He didn't know what to do for Missing in Sight.  She suggested to him that he go to the store and buy beer because she knew it would take the edge off.  So off he went.

While he was gone, she took round three of meds, but this time she tripled the dosage.  The possibility of accidentally overdosing broached her mind, but she could not comprehend what this actually meant.  Childlike, she only wanted the anxiety to go away, away, away.  So she swallowed the pills and fell asleep.

Husband eventually came home with the beer and later woke her to tell her goodbye.  It was mid-afternoon, and he had to leave for work.

She fell back asleep for another hour, and when she woke she was all alone in the early evening hours.   Stunningly, it seemed her anxiety had lessened.  Her breath found its way back to her chest, the butterflies in her stomach shushed, and her heart quit slamming between her thoracic walls.  The hurricane of anxiety had weakened to a small thunderstorm.  The beer did not seemed to be needed now.

She tried to do relaxing tricks that she could not do earlier in order to keep the angst away: color; music; movies; dog.  However, she could not get rid of the residual anxiety.

She decided to drink a beer.  Then another.  And another.  She thought all the meds she had taken over the course of the day would have left her system by that time, and nothing bad, whatever that might be, would happen.

She fell asleep again.  Or more accurately, passed out.  One knows not how long she would have slept if not for the hallucinations of voices and noises that kept waking her from what felt like vivid but aggravating dreams.  

So, half awake but completely drunk, over-medicated, and anxiety's amusement, she stumbled off to bed, and fell face first into the blackness of the night, anticipating in her dreams of the anxiety that would startle her awake the very next morning.

White Knuckles

I am dissociative.  My brain is foggy, and I can't think.  My head has a far-away ache.  There is chaos living inside that I cannot describe would I even be allowed.

I'm a little bit hungry, but feeling empty is keeping me calm even though I'm coming off the rails and in over my head.

There is so much to say, but I don't know what it is.  The tears are scurrying behind my eyes and the rallying cry to keep "it" away from me is called.  I have not enough focus for this post.  I am zigzagging like a ping pong ball in my brain, and there are chinks in my thoughts disrupting its lineage.

What I would say if I could is that I need a hug, I need a hug, I need a hug.  I need the safe touch of someone who cares, who understands, who would let me cry on a shoulder.

No sooner do I write that then Tina gets angry.  I grow so tired of her indignation.  So much of the time it feels directed towards me.  A few tears slipped by her, and they started to make me feel better, but then she wiped the tears away and cut me off.  What started out as nascent feelings of clarity and lucidity give way to being blank again.

I don't know how I'll get through the night.  I'm trying to stay away from pills that will serve to dull the ache of unrevealed pieces and to find other ways to ground myself.  It's not going so well.

I started by going through my entire collection of iTunes music and deleted hundreds of songs I don't remember buying and greatly dislike.  Where did they come from?

My dog Maybelline is here with me, softly sleeping, and unaware of the turmoil in which I languish.  They say dogs are intuitive to human suffering.  Not her.  She is as blank as I am.

I'm tired of being blank.

Thus, I surrender to the meds that whisk me away to where it doesn't hurt as much to be vacant, and into the numbness I sink willingly and gracefully.

Getting Schooled on my Failures

Today has been a difficult day for us.  In the region where we live, the students have already gone back to school, and all my teacher friends are posting their unabashed optimism and excitement for the new school year.

I feel left out.

I feel like a failure.

I feel grossly incompetent.

I still castigate myself on why I failed as a teacher.  Husband asked me last night if it had not been for my eating disorder, would I still be teaching.  I responded that my eating disorder would have made sure I wasn't teaching or working in any manner for that fact.  And so it would be.  My inability to cope with life would have energized my eating disorder, regardless of the type of employment, and made working a fright and an impossibility.

I do think I have some skills as a teacher.  I am caring, outgoing, and understand my content matter and how to convey it to students; however,  I am not by any appearance skilled in handling stress, chaos, or anxiety.  My eating disorder and dissociation came between me and teaching,  and teaching will forever lay at my feet in the throes of death.

So today is long and disturbing.  I'm paralyzed by the memories of my own inadequacies and deficiencies.  I can not move; I can not breath; I can not speak.  I wish I were teaching, but even at my best, I know unequivocally I was never good enough.

Big Fat Lies

It's been a few years since I've been on here.  Don't really know what I've been up to except teaching high school and going off to treatment.

Tonight I was looking at the very first entry in an incomplete journal book, beginning date of 10-15-2008.  I was in residential treatment at the time.

There was a line written in that entry that I found poignant as I reviewed it.  It read: My eating disorder cares more about me than I do about myself.  

Nine years later, that's probably still true.

On the opposite page of the journal entry, I was responding to the assigned question: If I can't be the weight I want, then . . .

So last night I looked at the "what's", and here is what I discovered and evaluated to see if the fears I hd written have come true because currently, according to my treatment team, I'm at a healthy weight.

At first glance, I was surprised that it didn't seem these fears had come true.  Then I thought and wrote more, and here's what I found.

First fear: 

My first fear of not being anorexic is that I would gain too much weight and lose any self control.  I feel I definitely live in that fear and reality day and night.  We are in a dryer, spinning and tumbling around in our fear with no escape signs or promises of it ever stopping, not matter what weight we are.

Second fear:  The second fears is that if I gained the weight back I would be average, not special, droll, inferior.  Reality or fear?  REALITY.

Other fears that came true were not feeling that sense of emptiness and weightlessness you find when you are skinny.  *I should probably write more on why being empty in invisible is important.*

The fears that didn't necessarily come true but at the same time did not go away are about people caring for me.  I don't really feel cared for, but I can acknowledge that I have made some connections.  Whether they'd grieve if I'd die, I know not.

Another fear I can't write about with authority is the fear that I'll be dirty, fat, and shameful from the abuse. I don't feel as . . . I don't know.  Do I feel dirty since I gained all my weight back?  My first answer is no.  I am truly blank and non descriptive.  I don't carry around any feelings, but others do, and they feel dirty and shameful, but I honestly don't know if weighing 80lbs would put that feeling away.  I think it's worse at being this size because some are more active, but we'll always feel fat, dirty, and ashamed, regardless of our weight.

Deja Vu Times Two

I wrote the piece below in April of 1995.  I am posting it today because it still defines my existence.  The writing is about how it is so hard to be hopeful because there is always something to strip me of that comfort.

I concede today I choose to live my days clouded with negativity, but Therapist does not understand why I refuse to give in to the fallacy of hope and positive thinking.  I’ve been in places before where I felt hopeful, optimistic, and encouraged, but I am ALWAYS, sooner or later, brought back to where I was born: into negativity, failure, and the drive to die.  The roller coaster ride takes too much out of me, and I need to remain where I am safest: dead.  I refuse to play the silly game of pretending I can handle life and then plummeting into misery when I am proven wrong.  It’s for my own protection.  It was back in 1995, and it still is today.

Drops of salt water are

Purged from shallow, dim sockets

Where the windows of life have closed

Their grave blinds and solemn curtains.

The myth of happiness is exposed,

Rotted, decayed, corroded:

Infested with maggots of agony surfeiting and gorging

On the generous failures of its host.

The charade of myself:

Successful, intelligent, creative

Crumbles, disintegrates, putrefies

Underneath brutal microscopic inspection.

The illusion of hope, the facade of faith,

Beckons and pleads for my desolated soul to trust,

Taunting and mocking every ache, every pang.

Invading despondence with

Bedeviling strength and determination,

Demanding the impending and imminent spiral descent

More dangerous and inclement.

Face down in despair, life becomes a bleached white hell.

A flaming bouquet of numbing, frosty torment

Searing, searing, searing

My thickly charred crust till I can no longer pretend it doesn’t hurt.

Pain echoes out of the abyss,

Convening the proprietor of suicide

Who compassionately erases the color of misery from us sufferers of life,

And holds out the only comfort that hoards

NO illusion, NO myth, NO charade:

The warm, blue peace of death.