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My life is governed by numbers.

I go up to 123.0. I swing down to 117.2. 35 calories in one-third cup of sugar snap peas. 190 calories in two tablespoons of peanut butter. 28 hours with no food. 2 small pieces of a flatbread pizza with friends. 3 beers to keep smiling. 4 hours of sleep. 20 more hours of no food.

23 days until the first day of Fall.

26 days until I see my mother.

It's not enough.

Those three words keep running through my head. They're there when I wake up. They're there when I lay down at night. At my desk. In the car. Out with friends. I don't know what they mean. Or maybe I'm afraid to look too close.

For a while the numbers helped. They were a focal point, a goal. Now they're just another weapon my brain uses against me.

12:01 a.m. and it's officially the last day of August. I am clinging to these days, and they are slipping through my fingers like sand.

"It's almost Fall!" My friend sighs happily. "Aren't you excited?"

I can't even force a smile. "Fall is more bitter than sweet to me." I say in a startling show of something like honesty.

"Why?" She asks curiously.

I shrug like it doesn't matter. "Winter comes next."

Here I will be honest and tell you that I am genuinely afraid of facing this Winter. I feel completely unarmed. Helpless. Do you know what it feels like to feel helpless against yourself? To feel trapped in your own head with no way out? To not even be sure if you want to get out?

To my friends, Fall is pumpkin lattes and cozy scarves and hot soup and bonfires and crunchy leaves and crisp fresh air.

I want to love Fall. I really do. But to me, Fall is dread creeping up my spine. It's a slow descent as the evenings grow darker. And you would think I would be used to it by now, but it somehow always sneaks up on me. Somehow I always forget how everything gets even heavier in the dark.

I can already feel myself slipping, but something feels off this year. It's like I've gone too far too fast. It's like I'm getting too close to the edge.

I noticed it first a week ago when I realized that talking has been growing increasingly difficult. I am on autopilot, vacant. I try to show some interest when people talk to me, but I can't hold conversations very well. I get lost halfway through. Today just the sound of people talking was so irritating that I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I know my boss has noticed, and I try. I try so hard to be bright and cheerful, but it's exhausting. Chatty clients linger. I try to rearrange my face into the appropriate expressions. Please just leave. Please just go away. Please stop talking to me. Please just leave me alone. By the time I get home, I have just enough energy to wander my house like a silent ghost, trying to lose myself in books or writing. The Mr. looks at me with worry growing in the crease between his eyes.

"You mean the world to me." He whispers in the dark. "You know that right? You mean everything to me."

I do. I do know that. It should be enough, shouldn't it? Why isn't it enough?

is there a pill to erase this?

Somedays I actually find myself wishing I was schizophrenic. 

I wish I could blame these thoughts on someone else. I wish there was a pill I could take to silence the hateful, hateful words in my head. But I know better. There is no one in my head except for me. 

And my capacity for hating myself is frightening. 

"what is depression like?" he whispered

I am Atlas, shouldering the entire world, knees buckling under the weight. I am not strong enough to bear it, yet here I am. 

My boss tells me about her son losing his job. I've never met him. I don't even remember his name, but I can't shake the weight of his life. My brother makes a bad choice. I am struggling with the burden of it. In another state, a little boy turns up dead in the trunk of a car. All of these things stick with me, cling to me, building up until I have to lock myself in the bathroom to breathe. I stare at my reflection in the mirror and try to remember why I want to go on living in this world. And sometimes the good is so hard to see. So hard to feel. So hard to remember.

Sometimes I can't sit still. I pace the hallways of my house, trying to distract myself, trying to focus on something, anything. But instead this restless despair keeps pushing me, pushing me, pushing me.

To what? I don't know. All I know is that I would do almost anything to make it stop. Scream. Hurt myself. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. 

Now I know what "manic" means. 

i'm trying, but i'm graceless

I don't know how to separate myself from my struggles. They are me and I am them and we are one tangled fucked up mess.

I think that's part of why things are so hard.

I have amazing friends, close friends, but they don't know. They don't know the ugliest parts of me. And the further down the rabbit hole I go, the more those parts become me. Until I stop and wonder if anyone really knows me at all.

Graceless
Is there a powder to erase this?
Is it dissolvable and tasteless?
You can't imagine how I hate this
Graceless

I'm trying, but I'm graceless
Don't have the sunny side to face this
I am invisible and weightless
You can't imagine how I hate this
Graceless

I saw The National in concert the other night. It was incredible. They were incredible. I cried when they played that song, Graceless. I can tell a lot of my friends don't really understand why I love this band so much, but that's ok. I know why. Their songs are full of a desperate sort of sorrow that broken people understand. Their songs reach out to me when I am at my lowest and make me feel like I'm not alone.

I'm trying, but I've gone
Through the glass again
Just come and find me
God loves everybody, don't remind me
I took the medicine when I went missing
Just let me hear your voice, just let me listen

Graceless
I figured out how to be faithless
But it will be a shame to waste this
You can't imagine how I hate this
Graceless

The Mr. and I spent Sunday night sitting in front of a little bonfire in our backyard, just the two of us drinking homemade cocktails. We ended up having a slightly drunken, rather serious conversation about, well, life. Mostly he talked, and I listened. There were several times when I the words were there, on the tip of my tongue. Everything. All the awful, all the heavy, all the mess. But I kept my lips pressed closed.

At the end as we were about to put the fire out and go inside, he suddenly wrapped his arms around me and whispered into my hair.

"I love you, and I hope that someday you can tell me everything."

I hope so too.

hunger is a vicious animal

Hunger gnaws at my lower back, right above my hips. It aches in my chest. It crawls down my arms until I can't feel my fingers.

It fights me until I am miserable, but if I make it, if I don't break, suddenly it's gone. Suddenly I don't feel anything.

And that's when I fee free.

...

Today I weighed in at 117.8 lbs. Yesterday I was 118.6 lbs. The day before that I was 119.8 lbs.

I can tell I'm losing too fast, too suddenly. I feel like a wooden marionette that someone else is propelling forward.

...

I've been biking lately. I've never been good at riding a bike, but I'm determined to learn. I found an amazing deal on Craigslist for a road bike older than I am. And I am in love. The Mr. loves biking. He refinished his old road bike and made it look beautiful. He bikes every day and has the sexy legs to prove it.

Biking is a lot harder than walking on an inclined treadmill.

Especially on an empty stomach.

The Mr. flies on his bike, he can tackle hills like their not a big deal. Most of the time, I'm fighting to keep up. To make it up those hills. But I grit my teeth and keep going.

Today we spent almost three hours out riding our bikes. We went to the library. I was running on one cup of coffee. By the time we made it to the library, I was shaking. Every time I stood up, the room swam. I had to cling to the shelf to keep from falling over.

But I didn't say anything. I just gritted my teeth and kept going.

When you teeter on that edge of exhaustion and hunger and weakness, and you come out victorious, that high feels pretty damn good.

...

I keep almost telling the Mr. things. Almost. We'll be laying together or in the car or walking somewhere and the words are there, on the tip of my tongue.

I think about killing myself almost every day. 

There's something wrong with me. I don't know how to eat like a normal person. I don't know how to stop. 

I think I need help.

But I don't. 

Because I can't help but pour over every possible outcome. I tell him I'm suicidal. He freaks out. Understandably. He thinks it's his fault. He worries about me every time he's not with me. He thinks he has to take care of me, watch me. He thinks it's his responsibility to keep me from hurting myself.

He insists I get help.

I tell him about my eating disorder relapse. He freaks out. He blames himself for not noticing. For not doing anything about the things he did notice. He thinks it's his fault. He worries about me all the time. He starts drilling me about what I've eaten. He thinks it's his responsibility to make sure I eat.

He insists I get help.

Talking ends with getting help. And knowing that keeps my mouth sealed shut. 

september looms

My mother has been sending me gift cards to the grocery store.

My mother.

Usually I understand her games, but this one has left me baffled.

Last week she called my slender little sister and told her to stop eating pasta and fruit. Yesterday I received the 2nd $50 gift card she's sent in a month.

I haven't seen my mother since Thanksgiving. Part of me is terrified that she thinks I am skinnier than I actually am, and that when she sees me in September she'll be...

What?

Disappointed?

I don't know why I care. I shouldn't care. I don't care.

Yet still September looms.