breathing underwater

Nights are days
We'll beat a path through the mirrored maze
I can see the end
But it hasn't happened yet
I can see the end
But it hasn't happened yet

Is this my life?
Am I breathing underwater?

Yesterday, my post was so positive. It had been sitting in my drafts for a while, and I finally decided to finish it. So I did. I posted it. 

But then I turned it over and over in my mind all day, and it left me unsettled. 

Things get better. I do believe that. But at the same time, is this better? Some of it is, clearly. The outside of my life is so much better. So why, why is the inside of me still poison?

I weighed in at 108.6 lbs this morning. 

Last night I dreamed that I ate half a jar of peanut butter. I woke up, panicked. 

Have you ever thought about safe foods? Why they're safe? What makes other food so dangerous? The easy answer is that I am afraid these dangerous foods will make me fat, but I think it's more than that. I think I call them safe foods because they keep me relatively safe from myself. It's not the food I am afraid of. It's me. It's me and it's not me. It's this thing other people call an eating disorder. I am not schizophrenic, but sometimes it feels that way. I know why people call her Ana or Mia. I know why they personify her as a being. Because in a way, she is one. She watches every bite I put in my mouth with her sharp hawk eyes. She punishes me for those dangerous foods. She punishes me for too much safe foods. Sometimes she punishes me for any food at all, and I end up locking myself in the office bathroom and doing hundreds of jumping jacks until my legs and arms scream in exhaustion and pain.

But in the end, she is not some other being that has taken up residency in my head. She is me.

I mentioned that feeling and emotion has been creeping back. I looked it square in the face yesterday and realized it looks suspiciously like depression. 

In a way, it was like the return of an old friend. Familiar. Comforting, in it's own twisted way. 

But everything is different now. People know.

The Mr. told me last night that he feels like I'm slipping away again. I could hear the fear in his voice. 

"Do you feel out of control like you did before?" He whispered.

I laid there like a log and tried to find an honest answer. Do I feel out of control? How do I feel? How do I feel?

I could feel his worry, his concern, his fear growing with my silence. I'm supposed to be getting better, aren't I?

"I feel tired." Was the only honest answer I could find. "Tired. Not sleepy. Tired. Worn. Overwhelmed."

"Overwhelmed" is a trigger word for people. They latch onto that word. "What is making you feel overwhelmed?" They want to know.

This question makes me immediately irritated. The most honest answer I can give to that question is everything. Everything is making me overwhelmed. Literally everything.

But people don't like that answer. They want to know what specific things they can remove from my life or help me with in order to fix this. 

I can't give them specifics. 

It'd be like if you walked into your house at night, tried to flip the light switch and nothing happened. So you're standing in the darkness flipping that switch when something, something that looks vaguely like your worst nightmare, starts coming at you from the shadows. And you don't know what it is, but you know it means you harm. So you start running, calling for help, and you're terrified because this thing is after you. 

And that's when I stop you and ask you very calmly, "Well what is it? I can't help you if you don't tell me exactly what it is." 

But you just grab me by the shoulders and scream at me to run. Why am I asking you such stupid questions? There's no time! You can't look back at it and tell me because you're terrified. 

It feels a little bit like that.