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12.01.2015

to say: I know

This summer the Mr. and I packed up our tiny first house and moved into my dream home.

It is not what most people consider a dream home, but it is mine.

The house is 108 years old. The wooden floors creak under my feet. Cold drafts always seem to find my toes. Compared to our first house, this one is a mansion. An old, old mansion that has been almost untouched by time. The Mr. doesn't like to talk about ghosts, but I feel comforted by the possibility of their presence. They haunt this house as I haunt myself.

...

Molly makes me laugh now.

It took two years to tear down that wall I erected between us, but now only a few pieces remain like jagged teeth. I still can't cry in front of her, so she cries for me. She is a breath when I cannot breathe. She is a warrior when I cannot fight. 

I never thought it possible to consider a therapist as a friend.

...

I stopped weighing myself every day. I don't know when. It crept up on me, slowly slipping away when my back was turned. I seem like a normal human being when I eat, and sometimes I even fool myself. 

Fragile. I am walking on glass. I am ok, but I'm not foolish enough to believe I am safe from myself. It would be so easy to fall.

...

"Let's make a baby." I whispered to the Mr. one dark night. 

I was confident then, in that precious tiny moment. In the many days since, I have fallen apart over and over again. What was I thinking? I can't. I shouldn't. I won't. I wish...

The Mr. of course went straight to work devising a plan. "We could start trying this coming spring." He finally says as we walk through the park. He is smiling, looking at me, waiting for me to be excited.

I try to smile, but I want to be sick. What was I thinking? I can't. I shouldn't. I won't. I wish...

...

I am afraid that my life is looking perfect these days, and it nags at me like a sharp stick in my side. I am not that person. I am not put together. Did I create her again? That perfect shell who smiles in pictures and tries to make people laugh? Did I bring her back? Am I selfish? Or am I hiding? 

I don't know. 

I see people hurting and I want to grab their hand. I want to say, I know. I want to say, you are not alone. But here I am full circle once again. Would they believe me? Or would they shrug me off as just another person who repeats "I understand" because they don't know what else to say?

I don't know.

So C and M, if you are here, this is me trying to say, I know. Not everything, of course. But I know parts of your struggle far too well. I won't lie, things are ugly here, but they're honest. I'd like to say I barely recognize the girl who started this blog, but I still see her from time to time. I am not perfect.

But I am living.

6.10.2015

living

I miss writing here. I miss all of you lovely people. I'm tired of being afraid because it feels like all of my meaningful words have evaporated. I'm tired of being afraid that all I have left is superficial and shallow.

I lost my job at the end of April, and it felt like a deep, cleansing breath of fresh air.

It wasn't because of me, which was surprising. Every day was a struggle with my boss. She "understood," but she did not hesitate to tell me exactly how much money I was costing her by going to therapy every week. She was "sympathetic," but she openly mocked people who were even slightly overweight and made a big show of her diet and weight loss.

I was laid off due to financial reasons and she cried when she told me. She choked out the words between sobs and I felt guilty because I couldn't cry. I wasn't sad. Not even a little bit. I was elated.

Now I work from home as a freelance graphic designer. I can sit at my desk with a cat in my lap and a dog at my feet. I drink my own coffee and don't wear a bra. In the afternoon I can nap on the couch. It is the best thing I have ever done.

This is the part where it would be easy to say, "and they all lived happily ever after."

But in real life, the chapters keep going.

I get to work with people I want to work with. I get to create things I want to create. But I still lay awake at night paralyzed with anxiety about the phone call I will have to make tomorrow. I still waste an entire day crippled with anxiety about a project instead of working on it. But I am still here. My chapters keep on going.

I've said before that I don't believe you can be healed from depression. You can't recover from anxiety. I still believe that. But there's a third option that I couldn't see until now.

I am living with depression, anxiety, an eating disorder.

I couldn't see that option because it seemed as implausible as reaching up and curling my fingers around the moon. Somedays it still seems impossible, but I can see it now. And I want all of you to know that it exists.

So this is my new chapter on this blog. It's titled living.

2.18.2015

eleven o'clock on a wednesday

I am sitting in Molly's office again, but everything is different. Her new office is in a wealthy suburb that takes me half an hour to reach. The lobby of the building sparkles with marble floors and carefully placed black leather chairs. Once I came in to find a woman setting up an enormous golden harp.

She left the recovery center. I found out. I made an appointment.

It's both comforting and strange.

...

I'd heard the ads on the radio, the tv, and all over the internet. "Side effects may include suicidal thoughts or actions..." I'd heard them so much, I became immune. Then my meds changed and so did I. It was as though some outside force had possessed my mind. My thoughts are often toxic, but they are mine. They belong to me. This was different. These were not mine. I hope you never experience what it's like to have thoughts that don't belong to you like some sort of deadly alien virus.

I'd told myself to die a million times, but I'd never told myself to die when I didn't want to.

...

I hate roller coasters. 

I always say no, but every once and a while I find myself clutching the metal seat restraint as we go up and up and up and up. Everyone around me is shrieking in excitement and fear. I am white-knuckled, silent, waiting for the drop. And when it comes I don't scream and wave my arms in the air. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the ride to stop.

The drop isn't the worst part. The worst part is going up.

When things are good, I go up. I feel like I can do this thing called life. I make appointments. I finish chores. I shower and do my makeup and hair. I make plans and I then I follow through. And it's elating, feeling like maybe everything is going to be alright, maybe I'm going to be alright. But there's always a knot at the bottom of my stomach because I don't know when I will drop. 

And then I do. And it feels like an old cartoon where I'm carrying an anvil above my head, thinking it's something else. I was holding it up just fine until I looked at it. Then it crushed me. In the cartoon a laugh track would play, and I'd comically run around all squished for a while. In real life, I'm just stuck there, under that anvil. And it's crushing and awful, but worse is knowing that I was stupid enough to run around arrogantly carrying it in the first place.

...

Writing is so hard these days and I don't know why.