Motivation

I slept twelve hours, woke up this morning lithium high, walking into things, sick. In and out of tangled dreams all night about playing my bass guitar I ran to the bathroom and threw up and threw up until it hurt. I felt miserable. I looked at myself in the mirror, at my face all fuzzy without my contacts and like a peach-colored ghost in a cheap movie, and though the rest of me was blurred my eyes were impossibly concentrated and clear, and they looked infinite, infinitely sad and shameful and disappointed and lost.
And I decided right then and there, I can't be that weak anymore. Because I felt my dependence on things like substances, and I felt my dependence on pain. And I realized the brave thing is not to take the drugs and throw up or cut my wrists, the brave thing is to NOT do these things, to stand up to my monsters and my past. The brave thing is not to never have sex or to have sex with everyone I see, but the brave thing is to dare to love, to dare to have sex with someone I love, to understand it's not giving a part of myself away but rather sharing it, to force myself to see that sex has a pure side, made of glass. (Does it? It must, mustn't it, for anyone to think it's beautiful?).
For now Ayn Rand would hate my motives and I don't care. Ayn Rand is a bi*ch. And like Shauna said (this may not seem to fit but it really does): "You think I'm a virgin but I f*cked your father."
Why am I suddenly doing this to myself? Trying to be confident when for so long my main concentration has been on how to most effectively destroy myself? Because my whole life, people have always been amazed at all the things that I do: soccer, tennis, honors classes, cello, violin, viola, standup bass, bass guitar, piano, teach violin lessons, acting, church. I expected myself to be good at all these things, to be the best, to be perfect at them, and I'm not, and it's frusterating because I'm good at all of them but I'm not great at any one of them, and I've never been or done anything remarkable.
And this year I joined debate because I thought it looked fun and really interesting. It was the first thing in a long time I did purely just to have fun. And that's still my main reason for doing it. But... but I have a chance... to be good at something. And I need to believe that it's possible. And I need to believe that maybe I am talented at debate, that maybe working hard and being a perfectionist may finally pay off. I need to believe it is possible for me to live for this.
And this is the motive Ayn Rand would hate: I AM GOING TO TRY, YET AGAIN, TO QUIT THROWING THINGS UP, TO QUIT CUTTING. NOBODY WILL KNOW. NOBODY WILL SUPPORT ME. AND WHY? FOR MY DEBATE COACH. She'll never know. She'll never know the things I do when I'm not at practices. She'll never know how incredibly screwed up I really am. She would, I think, if she knew any of this, be incredibly mad at me. She'd probably call me stupid (that's what Kayte said, she said, "for being the smartest person i know, you're also incredibly stupid). But I need to do this for her, because she sees something in me that nobody else has ever seen before... because I think that despite all my logical reasoning about how there is no such thing as caring about someone, most of all me, I think that she cares about me. And I think she wants me to be confident.
But I don't need her to know, that I'm doing this for her. I want to be confident solely for myself, but I can't, and Rand will forgive me my borrowed motivation and go to Hell. (I guess I'll meet her there).
If I want this, this debate thing, badly enough, I have to be confident. And I don't know how. Fifteen years of branding has completely burned into me a unipolar opinion of myself: that I am stupid, weak, and incapable. And now I am being forced to suddenly believe the opposite? How can I do that?
Not for myself I guess. But maybe, just maybe I can do it for Amanda.
SCREW BULIMIA. I hate it. I hate doing drugs I hate what I'm doing to myself. I HATE EATING DISORDERS!!!!!!!!! AND SELF INJURY!!!!!!!!!!
I can beat this. I know Amanda doesn't know me very well, but she's the only one that believes in me, that believes it is possible for me to have that confidence I lack. And out of everyone telling me I'm stupid and incapable, and one person telling me I can do this, I choose to believe her, for once. I choose her as my motivation.
Because I have allowed myself to do the one that always hurts me, in the end: to care about her, to love her.