UC/debate/sickness

Before I go on about debate, I got into the University of Chicago, which I was excited but not surprised about.
Friday when I went to school I was struggling not to throw up. I was very sick all through seminary and chemistry. In the middle of government I went to the bathroom to call Amanda to ask her whether I should go to the debate tournament. I couldn't get ahold of her, and I wanted to continue the success I had at the Carroll tournament, so I went.
For a long time on the way there I had to just focus on a cloud in the distance and hold a bag in front of my face. I was positive at one point that I was going to throw up. At first I was pretty upset, because I knew it would be embarrassing, but eventually I came to peace with it in my mind. Everyone around me was sleeping, and I honestly just longed for the relief of throwing up.
I didn't throw up, though, until right before my first round. I felt so terrible by them. The rest of the tournament swirled by in a haze of nausea, puke, and confusion. I became extremely familiar with the corner toilet on the third floor becuase I had to run there very frequently. I went to the third floor because there weren't any people using that bathroom. I felt safe in the stall. It also felt, though, like when I used to be bulimic. All of the feelings of dependency on and worship of the toilet came back and made me feel even more miserable.
I had my dad call in an anti-nausea/barfing prescription and Amanda and her boyfriend Geno picked it up for me. Jill and Brittany were amazing.
That first night at the debate tournament we were in the coolest hotel (it had the pool in this indoor atrium in the middle of it with all of these tropical trees) but I spent every hour all night in the bathroom kneeling to the most prominent god my last few years of life. It was terrible. It was the most sick I've been since last year at orchestra festival. I might have been even sicker this weekend, actually.
We weren't really sure what was wrong with me. We thought it was the flu, but I was really sick, and I didn't have a fever, so my dad said it was probably food poisoning, but we don't really know for sure. It was one of the two.
When I woke up Saturday morning I was so sick that I couldn't really walk. I'm not exaggerating. I was walking to the bus and Jill and Brittany just told me to stay where I was and they'd have the bus come get me. I felt really cold and panicky and alone as I was waiting for the bus next to the hotel. I didn't think I could make it through the day, and I thought I would probably have to drop out of the tournament.
I asked the front desk of the hotel for some plastic bags to throw up in on the way to the high school, but I didn't use them. I decided to take things one round at a time. I didn't want to drop out, and while I was debating I felt less focused on how sick I was.
I ended up going 4-1 and breaking. I lost quarter finals to silly Hannah Paine on a 2-1 decision. Brittany, Jill, and Greg all admitted though that I was definitely not debating up to my usual standard. That is probably because I was thinking the whole time of how if I threw up in the middle of the debate Hannah would be confirmed in her suspicions that I was a subhuman creature and all of her subsequent condescending looks would be justifed.
The ironic thing was that she shook my hand for the first time after the round, after "having a cold" for two years. I was kind of happy, because it's the first time I've been sick, and I didn't bother telling her I had the flu or food poisoning or whatever. I figured she could just get sick for all of those times she's been mean to me.
I got seventh place. I was sad about that, and it was weird because the person that got sixth had a lower record than me (he had a 3-2 preliminary record), so I think they messed up the placing, but I'm not going to contest it and start a major movement so I can get sixth place instead of seventh. But Amanda F. won the tournament, which made up for everything.

I was so sick when I got home that I really want my parents to just take care of me. At first my mom of course thought I was faking it and being a hypochondriac, which is what she always thinks when I'm sick. I guess I should have left it at that, but I really needed them to take care of me. This is my last year at home, and since seventh grade every time I get sick my mom just says I'm being a hypochondriac and nobody really helps me emotionally. I really wanted her to care.
When I got on the scales and showed her I'd lost six pounds in one day, however, she and my father told me they believed I was being bulimic again. It all seemed so unfair; I was on the verge of throwing up again, I felt like the living dead, my stomach was twisting and turning and my intestines were sending sharp pains throughout my abdoman so I could barely think, and they were telling me they thought it was my fault, they thought I'd just taken laxatives or OD'd on lithium.
It made me very mad. I just went to my room and cried. It was 10:30 p.m., and it had been such an exhausting weekend. I really just needed them to take care of me. That's all I want from them. I just want my mom to be there for me the way that I need her to. I need her to support me, not telling me I'm making up everything I feel.
One of the major reasons I started self-injuring in eigth grade was that nobody could tell me that pain wasn't real. Nobody could say I was a hypochondriac, and it was all in my head. Nobody could deny me that. And the reason I needed a pain that no one could deny was partially that I felt like my mom denied everything I felt. I felt like everytime I felt sick she said I was faking it, every time I tried to tell her I wasn't okay she thought it was in my head, and every time I tried to tell her I was sad or upset about something she just turned it and made it about her.
I realized Saturday night that I still feel like she does that, and I still feel like I'm the one taking care of her, although it's better than it was, and I still need so badly for someone to take care of me.
I called Amanda and she told me something important. She said my friends were taking care of me. And that's so true. She and Brittany and Jill and Kristin and Alexis and even Shea, who wasn't there, took care of me this weekend. They were my parents.
And Amanda called me "honey," which Ariel does sometimes. I really like it when people call me honey because it feels like they're taking care of me for once, instead of me taking care of the world. All of these years with my belief that I carried the fate of my family on my shoulders, my belief that I had all of the responsibility in the world, have left me with such a hunger for someone to take care of me. I need it. I need it so badly.
Amanda called my parents Sunday as I slept all day and told them I was really sick, and they believed her, and my mom was a lot nicer after that. But it didn't erase the hurt and anger I felt Saturday night.

So... please take care of me sometimes, when I'm sick... you do, I know you do, but I need it. I need you to say, "Shh, honey, everything is going to be okay." I need to feel like I'm not in charge. I need to feel like someone will take control for me. I need to feel like someone is holding me so I can cry.