Father Son Time.

"Take a deep breath. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. My son is stubborn and I know he can get through this. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be sad, but don’t you dare let this stop you. Don’t you dare let anything hold you back. And I’m really sorry if I’ve ever been the one to hold you back. You give ‘em hell, kid."
— My Dad.
 
I don't know why that one is there.  But I had put this on my tumblr so I guess that could be why.  I just got off the phone with my Dad where I told him all of my lovely feelings from the post below.  This is what he said.   Yeah, big moment, because a month ago at Twin Cities Pride I called to talk to my parents and my Dad said I don't even want to hear from you.  I have nothing to say to you.  Just talk to your Mom.
 
We've never really gone on father son bonding type trips.  When I was a kid, he used to take me fishing.  Once I hit puberty at 8, he stopped.  Today he told me he's not going back to Antarctica.  He's taking care of me.  He lost his sister about a month ago.  My cousin is dying, and I'm fighting for my life as well.
 
He said you're more important and I need to get you better.  And we can go on fishing trips like we used to, remember those, Blake?  He used my name.  He used my pronouns.  I think being sick has given him a new perspective.   And I want to take my son out for a beer.  So you can't give up, ever.  Don't you dare throw in the towel.


It's funny because my Dad is no where near religious.  But he's helping me to restore my faith just a little bit.  It's been so shaken.  But I think I'm starting to get my footing back.

Exit Wounds.

Tomorrow morning is another set of blood labs and another round of hormones.  I feel like I’m falling apart.  I take naps in the day and fall asleep for hours.  Friends will text me in the middle of it and I will text back later, sorry, passed out again.  They say, it’s okay, you probably just need sleep.  I feel like I’ve let them down.

The surgery didn’t kill it all.  It had already spread to my bloodstream.  Hence the hormones and the lab tests.  Hence me sleeping all the time.  I’m exhausted.  And yet at night, I still have a hard time closing my eyes.  Once I’m out, I sleep like the dead.  But in the middle of the day, I find myself passing out everywhere.  I just can’t sleep at night like a normal person.

I’m getting depressed.  I’m upset.  I’m pissed at some god somewhere I can’t believe in because they let me go through all of this shit.  Being trans* and being sick and having to give up being pregnant.  It’s not something I even really wanted, but it doesn’t matter because it was taken away.  I’m pissed at the loss.  I’m pissed because there’s a part of me that I now get to miss out on.  The other day I was in target with my Mom and I began to get sad.  Maybe because we were in the baby section because one of her co-workers was going to have a kid.  And I was maybe just upset because I don’t fit into societies script.  She sees me start to get sad and I try to hide it, but she says, you can always adopt.

I just hate that I’ve had to go through all of this shit.  I didn’t get a choice.  I didn’t get to have things be easier.  Truthfully, I know I’d be a great Dad.  I used to nanny all of the time.   It’s not even about having a kid biologically, it’s just that things were taken away from me and I’m pissed.  I want justice.  I look at my younger sister and I just want what she has.

She’s like the epitome of girl.  She’s smart and she’s talented and she’s pretty.  She has long hair and she buys into Womanhood.  She has a boyfriend of two years, and he’s wonderful.  She doesn’t have all these scars.  I do.  She can have the life you’re supposed to have, the one you realize you are supposed to have at an early age.  I never could.

And sometimes, I get the urge to try to be like her.  I told my Mom this today.  She said why would you do that?  Blake is awesome.  Blake is who you are.  Don’t be Trish.  Don’t be your sister.  Be you.  Be Blake.  I get the urge to grow out my hair again and be feminine and normal.  But I’m not normal.  And I hate that.  I hate that this is what society calls for normalcy.

I don’t dare tell my Dad any of this.   But I’m scared.  I know he’s scared.  I can hear it in his voice every time he calls me 20 times a day.  I saw it when I drove back to Minnesota for the 4th of July.  I saw it when I came home at midnight.  I saw it when he tries to hide it.  He’s scared.

I’m tired.  I’m angry.  I’m hurting.  I cried myself to sleep the last 2 nights in a row.  Maybe it’s the hormones.  Maybe it’s just me.  I’m freaking out about how the hell am I going to do my classes when I’m sick all the damn time?  I’m still sick.  Yeah, all the pain is gone because the tumor is gone, but I’m still sick.  I’m still hurting.  And I just feel so alone because I feel like no one understands how I feel.  No one understands that I’m upset.  I’m sitting here crying as I write this, and I freaking hate crying.  And I hate complaining.  I hate talking about it because I feel like I’m being a burden on everyone I live with and they already do so much for me.

I just want to hide away sometimes.  I feel like I’m letting people down because I’m not strong and because I’m still fighting and I’m sitting here crying and I don’t know why the hell I’m so upset but I am.   Sometimes, I just feel like letting the heaviness take me under, but that’s just really chicken shittish and so I don’t.  I’m not a coward.  I just want to be okay.  But I know that I need to hang on, and as exhausting as it is, it’s what I’m trying to do.

Shake It Out.

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around

Our love is questioned, such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues drawn
But it's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It's a fine romance but it's left me so undone
It's always darkest before the dawn

Oh whoa, oh whoa...

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat
'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me, yeah

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa
-Shake It Out by Florence+The Machines.

I'm in North Carolina.  I moved here for the rest of summer.  A bunch of things went down.  I had a hysterectomy on Friday.   I know, you're not supposed to start transitioning with bottom surgery, but I guess I had to do things a little backwards.  That's a joke.  I had a 6cm tumor on my right ovary.  They were able to save the left.  I'm doing better now.  I was discharged a day early, but moved to be with my parents.

My aunt passed away about 2 weeks ago.  It's been really hard.

I'm going back to St. Cloud once school starts and digging myself out of the hole.  A big thing has been letting go of people that cause nothing but drama.   I'm excited to see where I will be a year from now.  Hard to believe it was a year that I left.

Here's to letting go.

Marilyn Monroe.

I can be selfish
Yeah, so impatient
Sometimes I feel like Marilyn Monroe
I’m insecure yeah I make mistakes
Sometimes I feel like I’m at the end of the road

I can get low I can get low
Don’t know which way is up
Yeah I can get high, I can get high
Like I could never come down

Call it a curse
Or just call me blessed
If you can’t handle my worst
You ain’t getting my best
Is this how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt?
Must be how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt

Its like all the good things
They fall apart like…
Like Marilyn Monroe

Truth is we mess up
Till we get it right
I don't want to end up losing my soul

I can get low, I can get low
Don’t know which way is up
Yea I can get high, I can get high
Like I could never come down

Call it a curse
Or just call me blessed
If you can’t handle my worst
You ain’t getting my best
Is this how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt?
Must be how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt

Take me or leave me
I’ll never be perfect
Believe me I’m worth it
So take me or leave me
(So take me or leave me)
So take me or leave me
(So take me or leave me)

Call it a curse or just call
Me blessed if you can't handle
My worst you ain't getting my best
Is this how Marilyn Monroe felt, felt
Felt, felt? Must be how Marilyn Monroe felt,
Felt, felt, felt

Is this how Marilyn Monroe
Felt, felt, felt, felt must be how
Marilyn Monroe felt, felt, felt, felt?
-Marilyn Monroe by Nicki Minaj.

Last night I came out to a lot of people about being Trans* and I was surprised that if people had negative comments, they didn't make them.  But, that's not what I want to talk about right now.   Yes, it is amazing that I've had support.  I also haven't.  But honestly, I'm at the point where I know who I am and who I'm not.  I'm Blake.  Get to know Blake, or there's the door.  If you can't handle who I am, the real me, struggling to be a man when society calls for me to be a woman, then take me or leave me.  I'm never gonna be perfect, but I'm still worth it and just take me or leave me.  If you take me, take me exactly the way I am, flaws and all.  If you leave me, then leave me.  I just can't handle the in between stuff.

I'm me.  I'm not gonna let anyone tell me who I am is wrong.

1 year... Plus Kitty Minaj.

On June 3, it was one year since my Grandma passed away.  I remember blogging about it.   I remember speaking at her funeral.  I remember crying my eyes out and my Dad and my Granddad having to get me out of the room after she left.  I remember saying goodbye and it was really tough.

I didn't want to live without her.  I still wish I could call her up.  I can't.  Recently, I visited my parents in North Carolina for a month.  Did I post about that?  I can't remember.  It was hard.  My parents hadn't had the time I've had to get used to me because they don't live with me and they don't see me every day.   It's hard for them to use pronouns and my name.

Anyway, I was looking through family photos and it was weird because my Grandma and I looked so alike.  We had the same facial expressions.   While I was visiting, I decided to re-read Harry Potter.  And something one of my favorite characters said really stuck out to me.

When that character died when I was in the 7th grade, it took me years to be able to keep reading. 

I mean, the thing is, we don't really want to say goodbye.  Death can be sad.  It can be hard.  I miss my Grandma every day.  But he's right, you know?  My Grandma is still with me.  She's there every time I miss her and I have a feeling that she would still love me as Blake, had she met me.

In the year since I lost her, I've grown so much as a person.  I've made mistakes.  I lived my life as a borderline alcoholic for a while.  I have to take next semester off from school.  I have lost friends and pushed God to the sidelines.  I came out as transgender.  I've been assaulted.  I've gained new friends.  I've become more secure in myself.

And today, I got a kitty with one of my best friends, Cassi.  She's also transgender and my roommate.  We call him Kitty Minaj.  You see, life happens whether you want it to or not.  Things happen and people die and it sucks.  Sometimes life is shit.  Sometimes it's not.  But it's always worth it.   Sometimes it's new things like your cat playing with your shoe that remind you to hold on.  Sometimes it comes in books I finally have the courage to finish.  Sometimes you listen to a song and you're like, oh yeah, that's why I'm alive.

I know I've made some mistakes, but you know what?  It's all a part of the process.  And I'm gonna be okay.

Big Moment.

I did something today that I guess my Mom thought made me like my Dad, and she turns to me and says, “Are you sure your name is Blake, not Steve?”  Steve is my Dad’s name.  I smile, and answer, “Mom, you just realized what you’ve done?  You’ve opened a wormhole.”

“What?”

“You called me Blake.”

“Well yeah, I called you Blake. 
That’s what you want to be called, isn’t it? Blake Ryan?”

“Well, you don’t have to add the middle name, I’m not in trouble.”  I smile.

“You feel like you are Blake right?”  I nod.  “That’s who you are.  In the 3 weeks that you’ve been here, I’ve realized that Blake is here to stay, and Trish isn’t coming back.  And that’s okay, I guess.  I guess it’s something we need to live with because I just want you to be happy, you know.  I don’t want you to feel like you aren’t welcome in your parents house.  Or that when we go to see your Grandparents for Christmas this year, that you need to make up excuses on why you can’t come, or that when you do go that you have to pretend to be Trish for us.  Blake’s a pretty cool kid.  I’m not saying flaunt being a transgender, flaunt being Blake, because that’s kind of obnoxious, not that you are doing that, but just be Blake and they’ll come around.  You’re still a part of our family.”

“So, does that mean you’re cool with it, with me being Blake?”

“Well, I’ve accepted it.  It’s not what I would have chosen for you.  Because there can be really cruel people out there and I can’t imagine physically transitioning is easy.  But I love you, you’re my child.  That doesn’t change even if your gender does.  But I’m still the same on I’m not paying for a sex change if you decide to go that route.  If you want something bad enough, you can work for it.”


So that, my friends, is my big moment.

I just want to let everyone know, that there are people that surprise you, every day.  There are people out there who accept you no matter who you are.  I know it can seem rare when you are hurting.  Hell, a month ago, my parents told me I was no longer their child and you can see how they've come around.  There are good things in the world, even when things seem so hard and cruel and you just want to give up.  Please don't, please hold on.

What The Water Gave Me.

I haven't written in a while.  My life has been kind of hectic.  I know, I'm visiting my parents in North Carolina.  But I've been honestly trying to wrap my head around things.  People have been leaving.  Or maybe I've been pushing people away.  I guess a part of it is normal.

I arrived at my parents house on May 4th.  The flight was disorienting.  Flying from Minneapolis, trying to get through security, I was told that I wasn't me.  They had to check my ID several times.  I had the picture taken as Trish.  She was almost 19 and living in California.  She was with Kevin then.  Well, no, she wasn't, because he was still in Minnesota and she had been forced to move.  Her Dad took her to the DMV in between classes of her first semester of college.  But she was dating Kevin.  She texted him the news.  It was raining that day.  She was in the awkward stage of growing her hair out.  She was wearing a pink aeropostale sweat shirt.  She hadn't been eating much in months, and was purging almost every meal, and still it wasn't enough for her.  She would look in the mirror and try not to cry.  "I'm a girl.  I'm a straight girl.  That's what God wants.  That's what you have to be.  Be a girl damn it.  Be more feminine."  This was a year before her surgery to make her chest smaller.  A few months later, she began pleading with surgeons to do the procedure she had wanted for years.  She had asked for them to completely remove the offending breasts.  Her Mom and doctors would tell her that isn't what she really wanted.

Truth be told, Trish wanted to be more masculine.  She had spent the summer in between two places, stuck in limbo.  The first three weeks after graduation, she was with Kevin.  She was with her friends.  She went white water rafting with her youth group in Wisconsin.  She would play rugby.  Fourth of July, Trish moved to California. She came back the last weekend of July for her mission trip.  She left for California two weeks later, and then started college.

It just wasn't that she had moved.  She just felt sick with her body.  It didn't feel right.  Maybe that is why she kept purging almost everything she ate.  She wanted her body to be smaller, because she didn't like having a feminine body.  Because she didn't feel like a girl.  But she knew she had a part to play.  She didn't think that changing her body to match her mind was an option then.  She didn't know that until she was 21 and back in Minnesota.  Her life could not be more different.

In the last few months of Trish, she had moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota.  She still felt in limbo.  She had made friends in California.  She missed them.  But she missed her old life in Minnetonka, Minnesota, she had clung so heavily to.  She missed her old friends.  She was still playing a part.  She was unhappy.  She had moved into an all girls dorm room, the same dorm had housed the PRIDE community.  At the start of the year, Trish hadn't been ready to come out yet.  She put on a smile and lived with 7 other girls she didn't particularly get along with.  They would talk about her behind her back.  She would go through the motions.  She would go to class, and work at McDonald's, and put on a smile.  She would wear make up.  She would dress feminine.  And it was too much to bear.

In the middle of September, she couldn't live a lie anymore.  Sitting on her best friends dorm room couch, the same one from high school, the same one who was always there for her, she told him, I can't do this anymore. I can't pretend I'm straight. I'm not.  I don't feel right. I can't live there anymore.  I want to live in the PRIDE community.  I want to be myself.  I want to freaking live my life and not in denial.  She hastily emailed the residential hall director she had come to know over the last month and came out as bi, and asked to move into the PRIDE community.  The last week in her room with the girls was hell.  She hardly spent any time there.

A week later, she received an email from her new CA, Lance, saying her request had been granted and she could move in 24 hours.  That night, she told her suite mates that she was moving.  They were pissed.  How could you live with us when you're gay or whatever and not even tell us you are moving when you have known for a week?  Trish went back into her room and began to pack.

Over the months, she began to understand that the way she felt was okay.  It was okay to feel like her body was wrong.  It was okay to feel like she should be masculine.  It was okay to take hormones.  It was okay to cut her hair.  It was okay to pick out a new name.  It was okay to realize that Trish just didn't fit her, because she shouldn't have been Trish.

In February, Trish walked into a hair salon with her best friend, Jeff, told the hair stylist, a gay boy named Patrick, that I'm transgender, please shave my head.  It was February 22nd.  She had come out as Trans* 3 days before.  A few weeks later, my first binder shirt came in the mail.  It's amazing how much a binder shirt and shaving your head can be such a confidence boost.  Because for the first time, I was completely honest with who I am.  Who I am not, and who I want to become.

Trish is gone now.  Well, not completely, because you can't spend 21 years of your life as someone and then expect her to go *poof* gone.  Trish is there every time I try to buy alcohol.  Every time I go to the bar I perform in drag at.  Every time I have to buy something and they ask for my I.D.  Every time I fly some where.  Trish shows up.  They look at the person standing there awkwardly and double check for Trish every single time.  They make me show multiple ID's and then ask if I could please change my picture to a more recent one.

I feel in limbo every time I have to walk into the women's bathroom because my I.D states I'm female.  After landing in North Carolina, I decided to go to the bathroom.  Wearing a men's polo, a binder shirt underneath, baggy jeans, my old roommates old shoes he gave me, and a Give Blood Play Rugby ball cap, I walk into the women's bathroom because I don't want any trouble if I walk into the men's room.  A worker screams at me and tells me I'm in the wrong bathroom.

After the bathroom fiasco, I walk out to the area where I am to be picked up by parents. I haven't seen them since the awkward conversation we had in Perkins in March, where they met Blake for the first time, and my Dad cried and told me not to jump off a bridge.  I am waiting when a couple comes up to me and said, sir, may we please borrow your cell phone so we can call our son?  I smile, because I am ecstatic whenever people use my proper gender pronouns (pgp's, he's and him's) and hand him my phone.  He hangs up, says thank you sir, and hands me two dollars.  This is the south, and people are nice.  They call you sir or mam.  I go back to reading my copy of Rachel Maddow's book Drift when my Dad calls.  He tells me that he's running late.  I just keep reading and wait for them to see me, the panic growing.  A week before, they told me they weren't going to acknowledge me as Blake.  I was Trish, and I had to accept that.

It happens every time I am in public, and they use my pgps.  I smile, my Dad tries not to be visibly upset and just goes along with it.  It happens every time I take a shower.  Every time I have to take off my clothes and step into the shower, I try not to stare at my very feminine body and I think, this isn't me.  This is Trish.  Trish, just go away now.  You aren't me.  I try not to stare at this chest on my body.  I don't look in the mirror when I get dressed.   It happens when my Mom took me to the mall for some new clothes and some things for my new house to live in with a few other people.  She does well with buying me men's clothes, without question.  This is a trip I didn't dare take my Dad on.  She began to get uncomfortable when I picked up some boxers.  We came to the swimming section.  She told me she didn't think there was any way I could pull of being Blake in a pool.  Just get a women's suit.  I said there was no way in hell I would.  I'm not a woman.  My Mom thought I was being difficult, but helped me to pick out some men's swim trunks.  She even joked with me, saying, if Blake goes swimming this summer, make sure he doesn't go topless, that's illegal.

It happens when my Dad gets uncomfortable at my visual leg hair.  I haven't shaved since I was Trish.  There is always a reminder that I am stuck in limbo with almost everyone.  My parents just want me to go back to being Trish.  I can't.  Unpacking in my room, I am reminded that when I lived with them, I was a straight girl.  Going through the clothes in my room, I realize I don't wear almost anything I owned anymore.  Going through family photos, I look at pictures she is in.  She feels like a different person, although we share the same body.  But even my body is not the same any more.  Nothing is the same as when I left 9 months ago. 

Nothing is the same because every day I am changing.  I am becoming more confident in who I am as Blake.  I am becoming more accepting of who I am.  My name is Blake, I'm 21 years old, and I am a Female to Male transgender.   I haven't started hormones.  But I have an appointment with a gender therapist when I get home.  I am excited.  I am hopeful.  I know hormones aren't a magical pill.  I know if I have a sex reassignment surgery, it's not a magical answer, either.  There is no magical answer.  There will always be the people who don't understand.  The drunk guy waving a gun at me calling me a fucking tranny.  There will always be people in the world who don't understand.  I don't always understand it, either.  But I live it, every day.  Still, I'm mostly happy.  I wouldn't ask Blake to go back to being Trish, even if it makes things easier, or safer.  Having a gun pointed at me when Blake was 2 weeks old, I realized, Blake can't go back into the closet.  I'm not asking to be shot.  I'm not holding a sign up saying I'm a tranny, shoot me.  I am just trying to live an honest life.

To me, water has always been a sanctuary for me.  I was a diver.  I swam for 10 years before diving for 3.  I have always been a water addict.  I was afraid that it would be hard for me to do those things.  I realize now, why for the longest time, Trish would stand there in her bathing suit, looking in the mirror trying not to burst into tears.  In high school, she had a ritual.  She would be the last one to leave the showers after practice.  She would turn on the water as hot as it would go, and she would sit down, putting her head down on her knees, and she would feel her body float away.  A few times, her team mates asked her why she did that.  She had a good reason.  Her skin breaks out in a rash from too much chlorine.  But the warm water relaxed her, and sometimes, after everyone had left, she would break down and cry.  She would then float away and feel her body letting go.  It held her back.  She hated it.

Standing in my parents shower, I turn the heat on as hot as it goes.  I sit down and put my knees up to my chest.  I lay my head down and feel my body letting go. I feel the weight of the words people have thrown at me.  Homo.  Dyke.  Tranny.  Lez.  They don't sting.  They are just words.  I've taken most of them back.  I lay there and feel the water wash away my anger at people for not using my name and pgp's.  I feel the weight of being in limbo for so many years, just wanting acceptance, just wanting her body to not deflect, as she felt it had.  I let go of the idea that God calls me to be a straight female.  God just wants me to be happy and to love like He has loved me.  I think God is sick of people throwing ridiculous ideas, as if my gender identity or sexual orientation means He could love me any less.   I feel the nasty feelings of confusion and doubt melt away.

I am Blake, and that is what the water gave me.

Wrap me in a bolt of lightning
Send me on my way still smiling
Maybe that's the way I should go,
Straight into the mouth of the unknown
I left the spare key on the table
Never really thought I'd be able to say
I merely visit on the weekends
I lost my whole life and a dear friend

I've said it so many times
I would change my ways
No, nevermind
God knows I've tried

Call me a sinner, call me a saint
Tell me it's over I'll still love you the same
Call me your favorite, call me the worst
Tell me it's over I don't want you to hurt
It's all that I can say. So, I'll be on my way

I finally put it all together,
But nothing really lasts forever
I had to make a choice that was not mine,
I had to say goodbye for the last time
I kept my whole life in suitcase,
Never really stayed in one place
Maybe that's the way it should be,
You know I live my life like a gypsy

I've said it so many times
I would change my ways
No, nevermind
God knows I've tried

Call me a sinner, call me a saint
Tell me it's over I'll still love you the same
Call me your favorite, call me the worst
Tell me it's over I don't want you to hurt
It's all that I can say. So, I'll be on my way

I'll always keep you inside, you healed my
Heart and my life... And you know I try.

Call me a sinner, call me a saint
Tell me it's over I'll still love you the same
Call me your favorite, call me the worst
Tell me it's over I don't want you to hurt
It's all that I can say. So, I'll be on my way
So, I'll be on my way
So, I'll be on my way
-Call Me by Shinedown.

Today my Mom called me and told me that I wasn't welcome at her house.  I came out to her as being gay.  She disowned me.  I told her I wanted to change my gender.  She told me if I went through with it, then I'll be disowned.  She won't pay for it.  She won't call me Blake.  She won't use proper pronouns.

My Dad called me in tears and told me he loves me.  He wants to take me on a road trip this summer.
I have to see my parents for a month.  I leave in 6 days.  I don't want to go.  I don't want to hurt my family, so I'll be going I guess and then not coming back.

Wreck of the Day.

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And the light's always red in the rear-view
Desperately close to a coffin of hope
I'd cheat destiny just to be near you
If this is giving up, then I'm giving up
If this is giving up, then I'm giving up, giving up
On love, On love

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And I'm thinking 'bout calling on Jesus
'Cause love doesn't hurt so I know I'm not falling in love
I'm just falling to pieces

And if this is giving up then I'm giving up
If this is giving up then I'm giving up, giving up
On love, On love

And maybe I'm not up for being a victim of love
When all my resistance will never be distance enough

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And it's finally quiet in my head
Driving alone, finally on my way home to the comfort of my bed
And if this is giving up, then I'm giving up
If this is giving up, then I'm giving up, giving up
On love, On love 
-Wreck of the Day by Anna Nalick.

Remember how I said that music has this special part of my life?  There are so many albums I can remember pouring over the lyrics to when I was in treatment.  Music therapy was one of my favorite parts of the day.  I'm taken back to late April 2006.  I'm driving home with my Dad with my iPod on and the window down.  I remember him saying, finally you are recovering.  You are getting better.  Treatment is working.  I'm listening to this song and thinking, what if it's all just a joke?  A few weeks later I overdose and am sent back into the hospital.

It was this song that I went home and played for hours after my rape in January happened.  I remember sitting in my room crying and thinking, I'm the wreck of the day.  I'm left here angry and hurting and upset and what do I do about it?  What does God think about this?  What will people think?  I even had someone say, when I said what happened, I always thought you were smart enough to get yourself out of this situation.

But that's the thing.  Rape doesn't happen because a girl was asking for it.  Rape can be a girl raping a boy.  Rape can be a boy raping a boy.  A girl raping a girl.  It's not a girl drunk, wearing revealing clothes.  Yes, that can happen, but that's not always the case.  Sometimes, it's a girl begging to go home, fresh from the hospital, hopped up on pain killers because she has spots and is in the process of being tested for cancer. 

I never asked for it.  I asked to go home.  I was at a friends house.  He said he liked me and I said I didn't know how I felt.  I didn't know and I just wanted to go home.  He grabbed me as I was leaving.  I don't remember much of this.  I do remember screaming and him holding my mouth shut and I remember saying I just want to go home.

I remember walking home after and taking a shower, which you aren't supposed to do.  I remember going over the campus respect videos I had to watch before I could register for classes.  It said 1 in 4 are raped.  I didn't want to be a 1 in 4.  I wanted to go home.  I remember standing in the shower and feeling like I would never be clean again.  I can't wear my purity ring anymore, because I don't feel pure, I just feel tainted.

It's my roommate coming home from winter break to find me drunk at three in the afternoon, falling to pieces on our living room floor.  I drank for 14 hours that day.  I woke up in the morning and said never again.  I've been in therapy and it will be 3 months on April 7th.  I'm doing better, but at night, I relive it.

I feel dirty and used.  It wasn't my fault and I didn't "ask for it."  But there's a lot of pain I've been working on in therapy.  It's a step forward and a few back.  It's days of progress and feeling good, and a day of falling apart again.

Cough Syrup.

This song played on the last episode of Glee when a character was outed as being gay, and due to the pressure, tried to hang himself.  This song was playing as I was walking home from work last night, praying for the courage to not jump off a bridge.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been having a really hard time with everything, but seeing what it’s like to watch someone attempt suicide, to actually be in the other persons shoes, gives me the courage to keep going.
I’ve attempted suicide in the past, and sometimes, I still have thoughts, like, what would it be like if I just stopped living now? Would anyone notice, or care?  Or would people miss me?  Does my life even matter?  Everyone says it gets better, when’s it going to get better for me?  But I’ve never really seen what it was like for the other person, not just for me.  I mean, I didn’t know what it was like for my Dad to find me hanging from the ceiling.  I just remember him screaming and taking me to the hospital.  I just remember waking up from an overdose to him crying and my Mom saying f**k you and storming out the room.  I remember my older sister saying if I ever attempt again, she’ll never talk to me.  But I never got what it was like for them.
I just thought that they didn’t understand me.  And that’s true, I think to a certain level, you can understand what it’s like to attempt suicide, or like, all the feelings that come with it.  But only to a certain level.  But until you are actually swallowing all those pills, or hanging yourself, you can’t really know what it’s like to be at the rock bottom until you are there.

But I didn’t understand them.  I didn’t understand how hard it was for my parents or for my sisters, or for the friends who decided I was beyond messed up and left.  For the people who saw all my hospitalizations, and all my tears, and all my scars.

Which is why if you are thinking of suicide, please, get help.  Don’t kill yourself.  I know, it’s hard.  I’m not going to tell you that it isn’t, because it is.  I still have hard days.  But I want to tell you that you can keep going.   Heck, yesterday I wanted to jump of a bridge.

But I want to tell you that the thoughts pass.  Suicide is a permanent thing.  Sitting in therapy crying today about my rape, I said, I just want all the pain to go away.  I want relief.  I want to stop hurting.  I want to stop being in pain.  He said to me that if I killed myself, I wouldn't get that relief.  I wouldn't be alive to feel it.

Please, stay strong.  Please, don’t give up.  Please, get help if you need it.  That’s what I’m doing.  I am taking the steps that I need to take.  Please, go get help if that's what you need and just know that people love you dearly.

Don't give up.  Don't kill yourself.

Dog Days Are Over.

Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had and what was left after that too, oh
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
-The Dog Days Are Over by Florence+The Machines.


I've had a hard time with things from my past.  I've had a hard time being angry and hurting.  I ran away from my problems.  But you have to leave the baggage behind.  You can't carry all the burdens with you.  You can't hold on to the anger and the hatred and the hurt.  The betrayal and the frustrations.  Let it go.

Hang On.

I'm so stubborn, it's how I got here
So alone, feels like forever
Wanna swim away and breath the open air
But I feel so afraid, then I hear you say

Hang on when the water is rising
Hang on when the waves are crashing
Hang on, just don't ever let go

I'm so hungry, how can I stay here?
Starving for what I hold so dear
Like a hurricane it takes everything from me
Wake me from this dream

Hang on when the water is rising
Hang on when the waves are crashing
Hang on, just don't ever let go

Hang on when you are barely breathing
Hang on when your heart's still beating
Hang on, just don't ever let go

Three days, thirty years
So hopeless, doesn't matter
Don't say it's too late if you blink your eyes
The sun is rising, the sun is rising, oh

Hang on when the water is rising
Hang on when the waves are crashing
Hang on, just don't ever let go

Hang on when you're barely breathing
Hang on when your heart's still beating
Hang on, just don't ever let go
-Hang On by Plumb.

I just want to tell you that you can make it through this storm.  It's hard, but don't let go.  Keep holding on.

When Everything Falls Apart.

2 months ago, I was basically date raped.  I was extremely out of it and not even drunk.  I couldn't really give consent.  I was taken advantage of completely.  This was the day after my cancer scare started.  My first day back in St. Cloud.

I've been pushing people away.   I want to put a bullet in my head every day.  I feel hurt and angry and upset and I'm just sorry for all the people I've been hurting in anger.  Being used isn't fun.  But that doesn't justify it.

Sometimes, things happen.  One of my friends was physically assaulted last month.  Things get hard.  Things happen.  People hurt you.  I've spent the night basically crying while doing my homework.  Every morning, I wake up wondering why I even should get out of bed.  But I do.  I get up.  I breathe. I try to put myself together.  For the most part.

This past weekend, I got so drunk I can't remember what I did.  My point is this, sometimes, you fall apart.  Sometimes, you just feel like throwing in the towel. But you can't.  Yes, things are garbage right now.  Yes, I know how hard it is.  You feel like your entire world is caving in, so focusing on losing a bunch of weight, or treating others like crap, or pushing others away, withdrawing, and drinking to oblivion.  But I can tell you that it has to get better.

So hold on.  Because I have to believe that you are worth loving.  You are worth happiness.  You are worth good things.  You don't deserve to be used, thrown away, hit, hated.  You know, you deserve to wake up and live.  Every day.  Just keep going.

Life is short.

Last semester, I met a really great guy friend.  He and I have become even more close over the last few weeks.  He knew about my cancer scare.  Last night he came up to me with tears in his eyes and hugged me and said that his cancer has come back and has spread to his heart.  He told me that he had been thinking about giving up on chemo.  He told me that seeing me face my scare with the courage I had made him want to keep fighting.  He and I are in a performance group together at school, and he dedicated the song to all of us.  He told me that he is so glad I'm not cancerous.

He's 19.  Most 19 year olds are not dealing with this.  I'm 21. I thought, how close could I have been to that being me?  Most doctors do not test you for it for no reason.  They honestly thought I had it.  But my spots that had been growing rapidly and changing shapes, shrank.  My MRI came back showing this. My blood tests came back without cancer.  I have to do treatment to get rid of the spots.

Last week I started having mini seizures.  I haven't had one since Thursday.  But the thing is, I'm okay.  I'm not dying any time soon, that I know of.   I've come close to having more a few times.  But I've been drinking water.  I have been trying to eat every two or three hours and taking it slow.  I haven't been to a class at all since the semester started since it's mostly online.  But I'm working on getting healthy.  I'm working on getting out of the mess of studying I have to do.  My friend and I made a promise to each other that no matter what happens with us this semester, that we don't just lay down and die.  We don't give up.  We keep fighting.

I have seen God do a miraculous thing with my spots.  And even though my friends cancer has come back, I have the faith that God can heal him, if that's what God wants to do.  Life is so short.  You don't know when you're going to be called home.  You don't know how much time you have left.  But you have to keep moving forward when things get hard.  You can't just give up.

Get It Right.

What have I done?
I wish I could run,
Away from this ship going under
Just trying to help
Hurt everyone else
Now I feel the weight of the world is on my shoulders

What can you do when your good isn't good enough
And all that you touch tumbles down?
'Cause my best intentions
Keep making a mess of things,
I just wanna fix it somehow
But how many times will it take?
Oh, how many times will it take for me to get it right, to get it right?

Can I start again, with my faith shaken?
'Cause I can't go back and undo this
I just have to stay and face mistakes,
But if I get stronger and wiser, I'll get through this

What can you do when you're good isn't good enough?
And all that you touch tumbles down?
'Cause my best intentions keep making a mess of things,
I just wanna fix it somehow
But how many times will it take?
Oh, how many times will it take for me to get it right?

So I throw up my fists, throw a punch in the air,
And accept the truth that sometimes life isn't fair!
Yeah, I'll send down a wish and I'll send up a prayer
And then finally someone will see how much I care

What can you do when you're good isn't good enough?
And all that you touch tumbles down?
'Cause my best intentions keep making a mess of things,
I just wanna fix it somehow
But how many times will it take?
Oh, how many times will it take for me to get it right?

I don't know what you're going through.  I know what it feels like to have your world cave in.  To have your faith seem so small.  To feel so broken and on the verge of tears at every moment.  I know what it feels like to want to die.  To wish you could change everything about yourself because you'll never be good enough.  To feel like you will never get it right.  But those feelings are a lie.  You are good enough.   You are an amazing individual.  You might have made a few mistakes, but you can always turn around.  God always takes you back. You have God with you every step of the way, for the moments when it won't stop raining.   So don't think you can't ever accomplish anything, because you can!

Hold On.

I miss your soft lips, I miss your white sheets
I miss the scratch of your unshaved face on my cheek
And this is so hard 'cuz I didn't see
That you were the love of my life and it kills me

I see your face in strangers on the street
I still say your name when I'm talking in my sleep
And in the limelight, I play it off fine
But I can't handle it when I turn off my night light

But I can't handle it when I turn off my night light

They say that true love hurts, well this could almost kill me
Young love murder, that is what this must be
I would give it all to not be sleeping alone

The life is fading from me while you watch my heart bleed
Young love murder, that is what this must be
I would give it all to not be sleeping alone

I remember the time we jumped the fence when
The Stones were playing and we were too broke to get in
You held my hand and they made me crawl
I swear to God it was the best night of my life

Or when you took me across the world
We promised that this would last forever but now I see
It was my past life, a beautiful time
Drunk off of nothing but each other 'til the sunrise

Drunk off of nothing but each other 'til the sunrise

They say that true love hurts, well this could almost kill me
Young love murder, that is what this must be
I would give it all to not be sleeping alone

The life is fading from me while you watch my heart bleed
Young love murder, that is what this must be
I would give it all to not be sleeping alone

It was a past life, a beautiful time
Drunk off of nothing but each other 'til the sunrise

They say that true love hurts, well this could almost kill me
Young love murder, that is what this must be
I would give it all to not be sleeping alone

The life is fading from me while you watch my heart bleed
Young love murder, that is what this must be
I would give it all to not be sleeping alone
-The Harold Song by Ke$ha.

The last time I was in a relationship was with my ex.  We broke up 2 years ago in June.  The last time I saw him was almost 3 years ago.  And yes, it does get a lot easier.  Most days are really good.  I wake up and I'm pretty happy.  I get out of bed.  I shower.  I get dressed.  I go to my classes.  I work.  I have my stuff together.  But there are still days when I miss him.  I wonder what he's doing.  I wonder if he misses me.  I wonder if it tears him apart.  I wonder why we can't be together.  I miss him.

It's hard to get out of bed, let alone showered and dressed.  I skip class (this is rare).  I write letters to him that he'll never read.  It still hurts on these days as badly as it did the moment he said goodbye to me.  I have dreams about him some times.  I miss him.  I hate that I miss him.  But I hold on.  These are the days that turn into long nights, tossing and turning in my sleep.  My roommate has told me I talk about him sometimes.   But I hold on.

I get out of bed the next day and try to get the light back in my eyes.  I make sure that I don't stay broken, because these days are pretty rare.  My point is this, sometimes, life is really hard.  Some times, you want to fall apart and give up.  But don't, because it does get easier.  It doesn't always suck so bad.

Hold on.

Update.

Tomorrow at 10:30 I'll be going to the doctor for all my testing.  They're going to be doing almost every test possible because they think it's cancer.  If it's not cancer, then they will be treating me for whatever is wrong with me.  I've been nauseous for the last 48 hours and I haven't been able to keep any food down.  Not fun.  But I know that if it is cancer, then I'm going to be fighting it.  And if it's not, then I'm going to be working on getting healthy.

Tonight, we are young, so let's set the world on fire, we can burn brighter than the sun.   Your life matters.  You matter.  You are amazing and strong and beautiful and you deserve to live.  You deserve to love and be loved.  You deserve so many wonderful things.

The big C word.

Today I went back to the doctor. On Monday I am being tested for cancer.  I don't know much yet.  Just please be praying because this is what killed my Grandma.  The last thing she told me was you fight like hell to live.  Don't ever lay down and die.  So if it is cancer, that's what I'm gonna be doing.

Carry Me Home.

Give me a second I,
I need to get my story straight
My friend's are in the bathroom getting higher than the empire state
My lover he is waiting for me just across the bar
My seat's been taken by some sunglasses asking about a scar, and
I know I gave it to you months ago
I know you're trying to forget
But between the drinks and subtle things
Through holes in my apologies
I'm trying hard to take it back
So if by the time the bar closes
And you feel like falling down
I'll carry you home


Tonight
We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun


Tonight
We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun


Now I know that I'm not
All that you got
I guess that I, I just thought
Maybe we could find new ways to fall apart
But our friends are back
So let's raise a cup
'Cause I found someone to carry me home


Tonight
We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun


Tonight
We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun


Carry me home tonight
Just carry me home tonight
Carry me home tonight
Just carry me home tonight 
Carry me home tonight 


The moon is on my side
I have no reason to run
Carry me home tonight 
So will someone come and carry me home tonight


The angels never arrived but I can hear the choir
Carry me home tonight
So will someone come and carry me home


Tonight
We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun


We are young


Tonight
We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun


So if by the time the bar closes
And you feel like falling down
I'll carry you home tonight

I know, I love Glee.  That's not what's important right now.   What's important is that my entire life, I have wished that someone would be there for me, to take me home when I couldn't walk.  To be there for me and to let me know how loved and cherished I am.

That's when I realized that I have that.  I have God.  God loves me and God always will carry me when I can't walk.  I have friends.  I have amazing love and support and help and friends and people who are there for me no matter what I do.

Yes, I've been used, especially recently, but that doesn't mean that I'm not loved.  That doesn't mean that God isn't there to carry me home.  To make sure I'm okay.  To love me and take me back when I'm messing up.  To me, this song isn't about getting drunk or high and having someone carry you home from a party.  It's about making mistakes, but learning from them.  About never giving up.  About finding those people who will always be there.  About finding strength you didn't know you posses. 

Carry me home.

Wasted: What it's like to have an E.D

One of my favorite books of all time is Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher.  Yes, the book is extremely triggering if you are not in a good place, but it gives you such an amazing look at what it is like to have both anorexia and bulimia, and explains to you why it's not an option for the rest of your life.  I am forever kicking myself that someone stole my copy.

“You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and no one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad.”
“There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.”
“There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.”
“We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.”
“I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death.”
“You begin to forget what it means to live. You forget things. You forget that you used to feel all right. You forget what it means to feel all right because you feel like shit all the time, and you can't remember what it was like before. People take the feeling of full for granted. They take for granted the feeling of steadiness, of hands that do not shake, heads that do not ache, throats not raw with bile and small rips of fingernails forced in haste to the gag spot. Stomachs that do not begin to wake up in the night, calves and thighs knotting in muscles that are beginning to eat away at themselves. they may or may not be awakened at night by their own inexplicable sobs.”
“Bear in mind, people with eating disorders tend to be both competitive and intelligent. We are incredibly perfectionistic. We often excel in school,athletics,artistic pursuits. We also tend to quit without warning. Refuse to go to school,drop out,quit jobs,leave lovers,move,lose all our money. We get sick of being impressive. Rather,we tire of having to seem impressive. As a rule,most of us never really believed we were any good in the first place.”
“I began to measure things in absence instead of presence.”
“And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.”
“That’s the nice thing about dreams, the way you wake up before you fall.”
“When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you.”
“Never, never underestimate the power of desire. If you want to live badly enough, you can live. The great question, at least for me, was: How do I decide I want to live?”
“It is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The misconception that eating disorders are a medical disease in the traditional sense is not helpful here. There is no 'cure'. A pill will not fix it, though it may help. Ditto therapy, ditto food, ditto endless support from family and friends. You fix it yourself. It is the hardest thing that I have ever done, and I found myself stronger for doing it. Much stronger.”
“Hatred is so much closer to love than indifference."
“This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It’s hard to understand, when you are sitting there in your chair, having breakfast or whatever, that giving it up is stronger than holding on, that “letting yourself go” could mean you have succeeded rather than failed. You eat your goddamn Cheerios and bicker with the bitch in your head that keeps telling you you’re fat and weak: Shut up, you say, I’m busy, leave me alone. When she leaves you alone, there’s a silence and a solitude that will take some getting used to. You will miss her sometimes...There is, in the end, the letting go.”
“I do not remember very many things from the inside out. I do not remember what it felt like to touch things, or how bathwater traveled over my skin. I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break. Even now, when people lean down to touch me, or hug me, or put a hand on my shoulder, I hold my breath. I turn my face. I want to cry.”
“It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength that divests you of all strength.”
“My god! people say. You have so much self-control! And later: My god. You're so, so sick. When people say this, they turn their heads, you've won your little game. You have proven your thesis that no-body-loves-me-every-body-hates-me, guess-I'll-just-eat-worms. You get to sink back into your hospital bed, shrieking with righteous indignation. See? you get to say. I knew you'd give up on me. I knew you'd leave.”
“This is the very boring part of eating disorders, the aftermath. When you eat and hate that you eat. And yet of course you must eat. You don’t really entertain the notion of going back. You, with some startling new level of clarity, realize that going back would be far worse than simply being as you are. This is obvious to anyone without an eating disorder. This is not always obvious to you.”
“But in some ways, the most significant choices one makes in life are done for reasons that are not all that dramatic, not earth-shaking at all; often enough, the choices we make are, for better or for worse, made by default.”
“There is, in the end, the letting go.”
“And when, after fifteen years of bingeing, barfing, starving, needles and tubes and terror and rage, and medical crises and personal failure and loss after loss - when, after all this, you are in your early twenties and staring down a vastly abbreviated life expectancy, and the eating disorder still takes up half your body, half your brain, with its invisible eroding force, when you have spent the majority of your life sick, when you do not yet know what it means to be 'well,' or 'normal,' when you doubt that those words even have meaning anymore, there are still no answers. You will die young, and you have no way to make sense of that fact.
You have this: You are thin.”
“I was perpetually grief-stricken when I finished a book, and would slide down from my sitting position on the bed, put my cheek on the pillow and sigh for a long time. It seemed there would never be another book. It was all over, the book was dead. It lay in its bent cover by my hand. What was the use? Why bother dragging the weight of my small body down to dinner? Why move? Why breathe? The book had left me, and there was no reason to go on.”
“By November, you wish you were dead. You want nothing more. Every day, every fucking day, you run up the steps of the house, breathing hard, swing open the cupboards, thinking: You pitiful little bitch. Fucking cow. Greedy pig. All day, your stomach pinches and spits up its bile. You sway when you walk. You begin to get cold again.”
“I didn't particularly want to live much longer than that. Life seemed rather daunting. It seems so to me even now. Life seemed too long a time to have to stick around, a huge span of years through which one would be require to tap-dance and smile and be Great! and be Happy! and be Amazing! and be Precious! I was tired of my life by the time I was sixteen. I was tired of being too much, too intense, too manic. I was tired of people, and I was incredibly tired of myself. I wanted to do whatever Amazing Thing I was expected to do— it might be pointed out that these were my expectations, mine alone— and be done with it. Go to sleep.”
“I was used to sleeping with people because I endlessly found myself in identical situations where it was easier to just fuck them than to say no.”
“The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions.”
“The idea of my future simultaneously thrilled and terrified me, like standing at the lip of a very sheer cliff- I could fly, or fall. I didn't know how to fly, and I didn't want to fall. So I backed away from the cliff and went in search of something that had a clear, solid trajectory for me to follow, like hopscotch.”
“My bones are brittle, my heart weak and erratic, my esophagus and stomach riddled with ulcers, my reproductive system shot, my immune system useless... I'm not going to have a happy ending.”
“The bragging was the worst. I hear this in schools all over the country, in cafés and restaurants, in bars, on the Internet, for Pete's sake, on buses, on sidewalks: Women yammering about how little they eat. Oh, I'm Starving, I haven't eaten all day, I think I'll have a great big piece of lettuce, I'm not hungry, I don't like to eat in the morning (in the afternoon, in the evening, on Tuesdays, when my nails aren't painted, when my shin hurts, when it's raining, when it's sunny, on national holidays, after or before 2 A.M.). I heard it in the hospital, that terrible ironic whine from the chapped lips of women starving to death, But I'm not hun-greeee. To hear women tell it, we're never hungry. We live on little Ms. Pac-Man power pellets. Food makes us queasy, food makes us itchy, food is too messy, all I really like to eat is celery. To hear women tell it we're ethereal beings who eat with the greatest distaste, scraping scraps of food between our teeth with our upper lips curled. For your edification, it's bullshit.”
“Something had been confirmed: I was worth giving a shit about; I was getting to be a successful sick person. Sick is when they say something. Of course, I had been sick for five years. But now, now maybe I was really sick. Maybe I was getting good at this, good enough to scare people. Maybe I would almost die, and balance just there, at the edge of the cliff, wavering while they gasped and clutched one another's arms, and win acclaim for my death-defying stunts. ”
“There are women in my closet, hanging on the hangers. a different woman for each suit, each dress, each pair of shoes. I hoard clothes. My makeup spills from the bathroom drawers, and there are different women for different lipsticks.”
“For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame.”
"Eating disorders are addictions. You become addicted to a number of their effects. The two most basic and important: the pure adrenaline that kicks in when you're starving—you're high as a kite, sleepless, full of a frenetic, unstable energy—and the heightened intensity of experience that eating disorders initially induce. At first, everything tastes and smells intense, tactile experience is intense, your own drive and energy themselves are intense and focused. Your sense of power is very, very intense. You are not aware, however, that you are quickly becoming addicted.”
“Death is a fascinating thing. The human mind continually returns and returns to death, to mortality, immortality, damnation, salvation. Some fear death, some seek it, but it is in our human nature to wonder at the limits of human life, at least. When you are sick like this you begin to wonder too much. Death is at your shoulder, death is your shadow, your scent, your waking and dreaming companion. You cannot help, when sleep begins to touch your eyes, but to wonder: What if? What if? And in that question, there is a longing, too much like the longing of a young girl in love. The sickness occupies your every thought, breathe like a lover at your ear; the sickness stands at your shoulder in the mirror, absorbed with your body, each inch of skin and flesh, and you let it work you over, touch you with rough hands that thrill.
Nothing will ever be so close to you again. You will never find a lover so careful, so attentive, so unconditionally present and concerned only with you.
Some of us use the body to convey the things for which we cannot find words. Some of us decide to take a shortcut, decide the world is too much or too little, death is so easy, so smiling, so simple; and death is dramatic, a final fuck-you to the world.”
 “At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thing— who, your parents? They want you to starve to death? Not likely. Your environment? It couldn't careless. You are also doing it for yourself. It is a shortcut to something many women without an eating disorder have gotten: respect and power. It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.
And it is so very seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.
At first.”
“Madness is not what it seems. Time stops. All my life I've been obsessed with time, its motion and velocity, the way it works you over, the way it rushes you onward, a pebble turning in a brook. I've always been obsessed with where I'd go, and what I'd do, and how I would live. I've always harbored a desperate hope that I would make something of myself. Not then. Time stopped seeming so much like the thing that would transform me into something worthwhile and began to be inseparable from death. I spent my time merely waiting.”
  “Hospitalizations in general are blurry. The days are the same, precisely the same. Nothing changes. Life melts down to a simple progression of meals. They become a way of life fairly quickly. . . You may welcome this transition. It may seem inevitable to you. You have been removed from the world. . . It is all right, in a way, because there is nothing so sure, so safe, as routine.”
“Forgetting who you are and where you are and if you're there. Getting lost in the thought that you might be imagining everything, you might be dreaming your life. You look at your hand in front of your face, surrounded by light, and your heart thrums as you think: I'm dreaming, I'm not even here, I don't exist. It is too fascinating, the thought that you aren't. The thought that if you watch the lake long enough you might disappear into the white flames of light on the blue, which seem to be just inches from your face. It sucks you in, and you stare, only a little afraid. And then you scream, startled, when your mother comes through the door. You crash back to earth. It's dark. It's evening. You're here and your mother is looking at you asking, What?” 
"This seems impossible to me. It seems biologically impossible to stay the same size, although I must. It seems one must always be either bigger or smaller than they were at some arbitrary point in time to which all things are compared. The panties that are possibly tighter than they were. When? You can't say when. But you are absolutely positive no question that it's true.”
“He leaned down and whispered to me: No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's still going to be you underneath. And he let go of my arm and walked back down the hall.”
“The term “starvation diet” refers to 900 calories a day. I was on one-third of a starvation diet. What do you call that? One word that comes to my mind: “suicide.”
“I have never been normal about my body. It has always seemed to me a strange and foreign entity. I don't know that there was ever a time when I was not conscious of it. As far back as I can think, I was aware of my own corporeality, my physical imposition on space.”
“I wish I could find words to explain what this kind of cold is like – the cold that has somehow gotten in underneath your skin and is getting colder and colder inside you. It isn´t an outside sort of cold; it´s a cold that gets into your bones and into your blood and it feels like your heart itself is beating out the cold in hard bursts through your entire body, and you suddenly remember that you have a body because you can´t ignore it anymore. You feel like an ice cube. You feel like you´re naked and have fallen through thin ice on a lake and are drowning in the ice water underneath. You can´t breathe.”
“I began to feel like I was wearing a sign on my forehead that said FUCKED UP in big neon letters.” 
“When you believe that you are not worthwhile in and of yourself, in the back of your mind you also begin to believe that life is not worthwhile in and of itself. It is only worthwhile insofar as it relates to your crusade. It is a kamikaze mission.”
“People with eating disorders tend to be very diametrical thinkers – everything is the end of the world, everything rides on this one thing, and everyone tells you you´re very dramatice, very intense, and they see it as an affectation, but it´s actually just how you think. It really seems to you that the sky will fall if you are not personally holding it up. On the one hand, this is sheer arrogance; on the other hand, this is a very real fear. And it isn´t that you ignore the potential repercussions of your actions. You don´t think there are any. Because you are not even there.”
“We take a certain sick pride in the fact that we know the caloric and fat content of every possible food on the planet, and have an understandable disdain for nutritionists who attempt to tell us the caloric content of anything, when we are the gods of caloric content and have delusions of nutritional omniscience, when said nutritionist will attempt to explain that the average woman needs a daily diet of 2,000 or more calories when we ourselves have been doing JUST FUCKING FINE on 500.” 
“It's never over. Not really. Not when you stay down there as long as I did, not when you've lived in the netherworld longer than you've lived in this material one, where things are very bright and large and make such strange noises. You never come back, not all the way. Always, there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier, thin as the glass of a mirror. You never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad.
It is the distance of marred memory, of a twisted and shape-shifting past. When people talk about their childhood, their adolescence, their college days, I laugh along and try not to think: that was when I was throwing up in my elementary school bathroom, that was when I was sleeping with strangers to show off the sharp tips of my bones, that was when I lost sight of my soul and died.
And it is the distance of the present, as well - the distance that lies between people in general because of the different lives we have lived. I don't know who I would be, now, if I had not lived the life I have, and so I cannot alter my need for distance - nor can I lessen the low and omnipresent pain that that distance creates. The entirety of my life is overshadowed by one singular and near-fatal obsession.”
“Remember, anoretics do eat. We have systems of eating that develop almost unconsciously. By the time we realize we´ve been running our lives with an iron system of numbers and rules, the system has begun to rule us. They are systems of Safe Foods, foods not imbued, or less imbued, with monsters and devils and dangers. These are usually “pure” foods, less likely to taint the soul with such sins as fat, or sugar, or an excess of calories. Consider the advertisements for food, the religious lexicon of eating: “sinfully rich,” intones the silky voice announcer, “indulge yourself,” she says, “guilt-free.” Not complex foods that would send the mind spinning in a tornado of possible pitfalls contained in a given food – a possible miscalculation of calories, a loss of certainty about your control over chaos, your control over self. The horrible possibility that you are taking more than you deserve.”
 “I threw up again that night, half-afraid that my eyeballs would explode. But it was, by far, more important that I get rid of dinner. Of course, by then, throwing up was the only way I knew how to deal with fear. That paradox would begin to run my life: to know that what you are doing is hurting you, maybe killing you, and to be afraid of that fact--but to cling to the idea that this will save you, it will, in the end, make things okay.”
"As winter went on, longer than long, we both freaked out. My mania grew to insane proportions. I sat in the study room at night, wildly typing out Dali-esque short stories. I sat at my desk in our room, drinking tea, flying on speed. She'd bang into the room in a fury. Or, she'd bang into the room, laughing like a maniac. Or, she'd bang into the room and sit under the desk eating Nutter-Butters. She was a sugar freak. She'd pour packets of sugar down her throat, or long Pixie-Stix. She was in constant motion. At first I wondered if she too had some food issues, subsisting mostly on sugar and peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches on Wonder Bread, but my concern (as she pointed out) was “total transference, seriously, Max. Maybe you're just hungry.” Some Saturdays, we'd go to town together, buy bags and bags of candies, Tootsie Rolls (we both liked vanilla best; she always smelled delicious and wore straight vanilla extract as perfume, which made me hungry), and gummy worms and face- twisting sour things and butterscotch. We'd lie on our backs on the beds, listening to The Who and Queen, bellowing, “I AM THE CHAMPION, YES I AM THE CHAMPION” mouths full of sticky stuff, or we'd swing from the pipes over the bed and fall shrieking to the floor.”
“Me and my needs were driving my mother away. Me and my needs retreated to my closet, disappeared into fairy tales. I started making up a world where my needs wouldn´t exist at all.”
"At 1 A.M. I'd pull on my coat, my boots. Walk down the stairway, out the door, down the long driveway to the road. Sometimes, I'd go to the stoned boy's house. We'd sit and watch TV. We'd have sex, sometimes. I remember only that the bedroom had two windows through which blue light spilled, and it smelled sticky sweet. His guitar leaned against the wall. Sometimes, I'd just walk. Down roads and up roads, through hills, through the neighborhoods, cold. Counting the small squares of lamplight in the houses where someone was still awake. I wondered who they were, and what kept them up. I went down to the little strip mall, the all-night 7-Elevena single glow beside the dark bluegrass bar, the dark deli, the dark beauty salon, Acrylic's Only $19. I bought a thirty-two-ounce cup of coffee, black. I sat outside on the bench, smoking, holding the cup in both hands.”
"Crazy isn´t always what they say it is. It´s not always the old woman wearing sneakers and a skirt and a scarf, wandering around with a shopping cart, hollering at no one, nothing, tumbling through years in her head. No. Sometimes it is a girl wearing boots and jeans and a sweater, arms crossed in front of her, shivering, wandering through the streets at night, all night, murmuring to no one, nothing, tumbling through the strange unreal dimensions in her head.”
“I have not lost my fascination with death. I have not become a noticeably less intense person. I have not, nor will I ever, completely lose the longing for that something, that thing that I believe will fill an emptiness inside me. I do believe that the emptiness was made greater by the things that I did to myself.”
“There was a time when I was unable to get out of bed because my body, its muscles eating themselves away, refused to sit up. There was a time when the lies rolled off my tongue with ease, when it was far more important to me to self-destruct than to admit I had a problem, let alone allow anyone to help.”
“Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others get eating disorders.”
“I developed a deep, abiding fear of jeans, which I still have. I hold my breath and shut my eyes when I pull on a pair in the dressing room, afraid they will now, as then, get stuck at my hips and there I will stand, absurd, staring at the excess of hips that should, if I were a good person, be 'slim.'"
“Having a normal person around me made it poignantly clear to me that I was out of control.”
“I know how this feels: the tightening of the chest, the panic, the what-have-I-done-wait-I-was-kidding. Eating disorders linger so long undetected, eroding the body in silence, and then they strike. The secret is out. You're dying.”
“Everything kept turning upside down and backward, the perfect little family blown apart by the slightest touch, the team splitting into multiple teams, players switching sides without warning. My father, a brilliant and severely depressed man, was by turns adoring and unstable, My mother, a brilliant and severely repressed woman, was by turns tender and icy. My childhood home may as well have been a bumper car rink. We drove wildly around, crashing into one another and bouncing off again.”

Animal I Have Become.

I've lost about 8 pounds in the last week.  I've been restricting.  Last week I had a health scare and the doctor told me I need to lose about 50 pounds.  To someone who has struggled with an eating disorder for almost a decade, that is not the easiest thing to hear.   When they told me that, I wanted to break down and cry.  I was already angry with myself for gaining weight from being at college.  I've had a weight problem for years.

Last night, my suite mate and I were watching Mulan.  I said, even though Belle was my favorite, I always identified so much with Mulan as a little girl.  Looking at yourself in the mirror, wondering when the image in your head would finally be what you saw in the reflection.  It wasn't vanity, either.  But I have always been hyper aware of what I look like at all times, so I can berate myself for taking up too much space.  I wanted so badly to make my parents proud of me.  The end of the movie always makes me cry because I have always wanted my Dad to say those things to me.  That he was so proud of me.  I remember realizing with Mulan that if I was to be who I truly am, it would break my family's heart. 

When I have a break up, I restrict.  When I find out that my parents are splitting up, I restrict.  I've just been too nauseated to eat and in too much pain.  I cope by not eating, or eating too much.  There's this monster in my brain and I can't control it.  I know it's potentially deadly and that I shouldn't be playing with fire.

I always return to my Eating Disorder like a long lost lover.  It makes all the noise in my life a quiet hum.  But it's not okay.  I'm not okay.