please read if you read my blog, if you care about me at all

There was a comment made that I am doing these things to get attention. I have made myself wait all day to post on it to try to sift through my feelings. But if you are reading this blog, it affects you I suppose, so I believe it's something I need to address.
I don't get angry very easily, and this comment made me very, very angry. It struck a nerve. I think it struck a nerve because that's what my mom always used to say, when I was in eighth grade. She said that I'm just doing things to get attention. Well the first thing I'd like to point out is that if someone is doing things to get attention, it is because they are very desperate for it, which probably means they need it. I mean if someone is cutting or something to manipulate, that's not okay, but if someone cuts in a visible place so people see that something is wrong... I think that there is a source of concern there to make sure that individual is okay, if they feel so ignored that they cannot even tell people how they feel, they have to show them. I have felt like that, like I needed to cut in order to feel like my feelings were valid. However, as I will now proceed to explain, the only person's validation I was trying to get was me.

I DO NOT SELF INJURE, TALK ABOUT SUICIDE, OR STRUGGLE WITH BULIMIA BECAUSE I WANT ATTENTION. I thought a lot today about whether the reason this comment made me so incredibly angry was because it was true. Sometimes we react to the truth with rage. But I have thought about it a lot, and it's not true.

I'm sure a lot of what I'm going to say here now won't make as much sense if you've never been extremely depressed or never been abused. But this is the truth:
The first time I ever cut, I cut my wrist. It was in seventh or eigth grade. It was mostly to get attention. I was somewhat suicidal (you have to be to cut your wrist, especially the first time, when you don't know how deep you can go before you'll die), but mostly I was reaching out. The next day I told two people, and they told my parents, and I started getting help. That was a somewhat isolated incident.
A few months later my real problems began. I felt so angry with myself all the time, and so depressed and miserable. I don't know how to explain a depression like that unless you've really suffered with depression. I don't think most of my friends understand the magnamity (I think I spelled that wrong) of these depressions. They're horrible. Anyway, I was so used to my mother hitting me all the time. I was used to being screamed at. I hated myself, and getting hit and screamed at was what I felt like I deserved. When my mom quit doing that, I was lost. I didn't know what to do when I felt that intense anger. And when my mom quit screaming at me and everything was when I started feeling so much anger at her that I couldn't handle it. I was more angry at her for not hitting me than I ever was at her for hitting me. So I remembered how wonderful it felt when I cut my wrist (I really do love pain. I dissociate almost immediately, but I can still live in the thrill of hurting myself). I started cutting because I couldn't handle it anymore. I didn't cut anywhere where people would see. I told no one. I wasn't doing it to get people to notice my pain. I was doing it because I didn't know how to live without being hurt.

Journal entries about the descent into cutting (*TRIGGERS* to SI-ers): 05-03-03, Anger, something I am not used to feeling. But lately it has slithered unnoticed into my life like a snake through tall grass. 05-04-03, It is my body bleeding numble on the floor and into the sink. Why does it not hurt me? How can I be immune to that intense of pain? 07-19-03, I haven't taken my medication in 11 days. I hate the way I feel off of it, but something inside of me that I don't understand keeps me from taking it. I can't go to sleep. The nightmares are waiting. I have trained myself to wake up at night so I don't slip into unwanted terror. 07-30-03, I HATE fighting with my mother. In those few blood-red instants of bitter argument, an oppressive hatred bubbles up from deep within me, a rage I have been trying so long to deny. I feel control slipping away and dissociation slipping in and then, if the argument reaches fever-pitch, my memory fails me. And later, looking back, once the rage and sickening hatred and cursed amnesia have slipped away and I am once more in control, I feel so... empty. So hollow and bent and finally broken. 08-02-03, "What was I like," I say, "when I was little?" Terry's eyes stare into mine. ..."You were also very, very guarded. You did not show much emotion besides anger. But you feared anger so greatly. When I aske dyou if you were mad, you would forcefully say 'NO!'. 08-26-03, I'm wondering if I'm screwed up because sometimes I want to die and sometimes I try to and sometimes I cut. Does that make me messed up crazy? I feel messed up. I wonder if all the world sees the pain in me. They must, because sometimes it's like pain's all I am. Pain and sarcasm and laughter tears. I'm having a hard time living without abuse. Abuse is all I've ever known, and it's so weird now that it's gone. Life doesn't make sense anymore. 08-28-03, Man I hurt, like glass going through my system. I want to go into the kitchen and stab myself deep in the heart with the butcher knife so my parents can see me die. When I'm in a lifeless heap on the floor, maybe Dad will start talking about money again and Mom will go back to making pasta salad. F them. I'll do that or take drugs, die slow. But Siobhan would kill me if I killed myself. It would kill Shauna. I think I'll just cut instead. I think I'll start cutting again. It's the only way to keep from killing myself. 09-04-06, People think lives fall apart in one tragic crash, one giant meltdown. But it's the little things, really. One resurfaced memory, one small mesh of cuts on your wrist, one week wtihout eating. It all adds up and before you know it everything is shattering. It deserved stitches and I sat there calmly and pressed 1/4 inch of my X-acto knife into it. It sahould have hurt like heck but I felt no pain as I jammed the knife into my leg, as I soaked up papertowel after papertowel of bright red blood. Six cuts on me right now. That's how life falls apart. Not in one huge, mindnumbing crash, but int he cuts that get deeper and deeper. ...And cutting... I guess it's to feel. I feel so, so numb all the time that I need to let it out. The cutting doesn't hurt my outsides but it hurts my insides, which is really more satisfying anyway. I'm just having such a hard time feeling. 09-12-03, Nothing was fair and I was worrie dinto a constant stomach and head-ache about everyone, all the people that make up my world, and I wanted so badly to shatter something but there was nothing but my heart and I wished someone could understand. 09-14-03, I think that I am committing emotional suicide. And I like it. I'm that much of a monster. I want to destroy myself so I am so physically and emotionally numb that I feel absolutely nothing, so there is no way anyone or anything can ever hurt me. Lately I have been hurting myself emotionally and physically every chance I get. Since I cannot kill myself, this is as close as I can get. Dear God, let me go. 09-21-03, Thursday night I took nine lithium. There are razorblade bites all over my legs. I was scared. My head hurt. I'd gained six pounds in two days. I woke up in another world... I went to the bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left in me. All of me ached and hurt. All of me twanged with fear. 09-30-03, I've been cutting every night in the shower. My upper legs are a solid mass of razor cuts... changing for gym is hard. I face the wall and pull my sweats up, holding my breath through the whole thing. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before somebody sees. 10-02-03, All the time I feel so distant, so far away. Day after day, week after week. I live above the world, disconnected.... I wonder what it would be like to stop fighting and let myself fall. I could be safe forever in a hospital. But my life. My life. 10-05-03, Will my life always be like this? I've been hurting myself routinely fore alwost a year. I told no one. By now I'm heavily addicted, I don't think I can ever stop. I can't remember the last time I was happy. I don't think I've ever really been happy. 10-07-03 Sleeping, eating, breathing, laughing... none of it seems to matter anymore. What's the point? All that's real in my life is pain and fear. I think that now I hate myself more than I ever have before in my whole life. ...I think that part of the reason I cut (besides that I hate myself and deserve to hurt) is that now that the abuse is over I just didn't know how to live without daily pain. So I replaced it with my own abuse.

That's how the cutting got bad. It was never about attention, not the daily cutting. It was about hating myself, needing to escape. That's still what it's about. I never learned how to deal with anger. I never learned how to live without abuse. Now, I cut because it lets me escape from extreme emotion. My first reaction to being told today that I do this for attention was to want to cut, because I was so angry and I never know how to handle anger.
I DO NOT CUT FOR ATTENTION. I CUT BECAUSE I LIKE THE FEELING OF HURTING MYSELF, BECAUSE I LIKE THE HIGH, I LIKE TO SEE THAT I AM HUMAN, I LIKE PUNISHING MYSELF, AND IT'S AN ALTERNATIVE TO KILLING MYSELF. I CUT BECAUSE IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER, WHETHER I TELL YOU OR NOT. EVEN IF I STOPPED WRITING IN THIS BLOG, THAT'S STILL WHAT CUTTING WOULD BE ABOUT.

Journal entries about the eating disorder *ED*: 06-30-04, I can't eat anymore. It's partially that my stomach is shrunken. But mostly that I just can't. My brain won't let me. It purges me of dirty food. Emptiness is pure, clean. My brain screams for jogging miles on an empty stomach. 'Purity,' it tells me. The drab comfort of the eating disorder keeps me up. The numbers on teh scale go down and down. My muscle bulks from all the running; the remaining calories burn into ashes. I weigh my goal weight. Why am I not happy? Why am I not complete? 07-02-04, Mom says I look thinner. Craig says I look thinner. I am a monster in the mirror. I look fat to me. I always have. I always will. Until I am a stick figure, a bundle of skeleton-marrow, my hatred will crack the glass. 07-04-04, Sitting on the hard church pew, suicidal thoughts surging like siezures through my small body, I make a decision to tell Terry I can't take my meds. I am trapped in a wooden box. I know she may put me in the hospital for Friday and Saturday, but I don't care anymore. I almost want to be there. I need to. I am not safe out here. I need to stabilize. How unfathomably good it would feel to, just once, let the glue holding my insides tightly together melt a bit and scream at the trees. I HATE BIPOLAR! AND OCD! AND DISSOCIATION AND EATING DISORDERS AND THE ADDICTION OF SELF-INJURY!!! And sometimes the largest scream of all, I HATE BEING ME!!! If I don't do something soon bad things will happen. Cement will crumble. 07-08-04, I'm sitting there on TErry's couch when the quiet fibers of the universe start to bend. I can feel the elements crumbling, the sky collapsing. I want to tell her I'm suicidal but it just on't come out. ..."You know, I really want to hit you," Mom says, "it's amazing that I haven't." I splinter inside. "Go ahead!" I sob, "hit me! I don't care!" but she stays still. 'Take me to the hospital,' I'm screaming in my head. It won't come out. I am exhausted of living, exhausted of bipolar. I feel so hollow. 07-22-04, I've quit eating again. Nobody really notices. My head feels clearer, more complete without the octopus-ink of food in my stomach. I'm never hungry. Sticky candy gets caught in my throat and gags back up... And people say they love me, but do they really? And people say they care, but do they ever think of me? 07-24-04, Healing is such a fickle action, moving on is so much easier said that done. 07-25-06 I look in the mirror before getting in the shower. My upper body is very thin, my ribs defined, my muscles firm. Almost skeletal, for a moment. But my lower body is all fat. I believe all 110 pounds of me is riding in my butt. I look grotesque, a vivisection of a fat and thin lady gone wrong. I am mad at everything and nearly everyone right now. I feel sick with pungent anger; I hate the nausea. It saps me of energy, makes me exhausted, always in need of more sleep. I don't want to go through this cycle again. I'm sick of being alone. There is more to life than this. Part of why I"m so miserable is that long ago I fell comfortably into the role of the abused, thought it was my job. Now, still desperate for abuse, I don't fight it. 08-02-04, I feel so fat. All I ate today was a taco and a bite of brownie, but the brownie was a slip, a sign of weak character. I'm 109 pounds now and I am a bohemoth when I look in the mirror. ...But I can't live like this. Nobody understands me. I have no one to talk to. I am so alone, burying land mines in my heart like I don't know they'll explode someday and kill me. 08-03-04, I don't take them all at once this time, but in groups of four. They slide down easily with Diet Sprite. Half a brownie is in my stomach, and it's coming out. Shoving a finger down doesn't work, and there is no Ipecac syrup. But this always works. Always. The afternoon is terrible. I always forget the horror of lithium overdoses. On the internet desperate posts are met with scolding: you need help. I know it. I know I'm bulimic. But knowing it changes nothing. I don't know what to do. There is no one to talk to. Ghosts of the past have faded. Three hours after eating the brownie, I hang over the toilet and puke it back up. Vomting is spectacularly asphyxiating. Half-digested food swims int eh toilet. Tears are hot on my cheeks. ...There is purity in the purge that balances the dirty feeling of the binge. I feel miserable but there's no one listening to me crying. All I want is somebody to understand, to care. I'm sick of being alone. I'm sick of hurting myself. I am glad to have the food out of me, I feel cleaner. But I hate myself for needing this. In the end, my tears are nothing, uncared for and unnoticed, only two small splashes in a toilet bowl. Most of the tears won't come. They are bottled up inside of me, sloshing around when I walk, forever unreachable. 08-04-04, I've been on-off bulimic for a few years now. I don't like it. The relationship is heavily abusive. ...To my friends, my face is blurred into the wallpaper. They still believe that I am a rock. They odn't know that when you smash me open I'm just another geode lined with shattered crystal. 08-05-04, Olivia buys me a decaf coffee smoothy. I want to slip it in the trash, but Olivia would notice, so I slurp the whole thing down. Later, at home as I pop fiber laxatives, I decide to take care of myself. I will be brave. I will tell Kristin. I will, I will. 08-08-04, Dad mentions suicide again and my mind closes. I go into the bathroom and make myself throw up my dinner of salad and a chunk of bread. My face is pale and pallid as it struggles to shatter the cold prison of the mirror. 08-09-04, Finally breaking the barrier between embarrassment and necessity I try not to blush as the laxatives are rung up in Safeway. This morning inordinate amounts of lithium purged my nauseated system. Later, running painfully on an empty stomach and a twisted knee, I realize I'm going ot start school shattered again, lost, no better than last year, no progress made. Again and again I'm losing it. 08-11-04, The box says dependable, says overnight, says gentle. I agree with the first two. But at 5:00 a.m. when I wake up with my bowels roiling and on fire, I don't agree with the last one. I sit stiffly on the toilet, a statue of pain, nausea coursing through me. I'm goign to throw up all over myself, I really am. 08-14-04, WHen I think I"ll never wear just a swimmingsuit again, I hate myself for what I've done, what I'm doing. But there is an instant when time stops, when the sun hangs in the air like a pale frisbee, when the clocks turn to mud, and you feel hollow, so horribly empty... you feel nothing. And life becomes a nightmare, as you wonder through the numbness or the anger whether you will ever feel again. That is when the steel comes. It is a desperation, and the pain is a comfort, a reassurance that you are not as numb as you feel. The eating disorder is a battle for control. The cutting is a double-edged sword- one side against the numbness, one side against my throat. So I hate it. But I need it.

There's more, oh so much more, agony in my journals relating to mental illness, self injury, and bulimia. I think, though, that hopefully those entries will show you that my main problem all along is that I never did anything for attention, I never asked for it when I needed it, when I could, I never let people know I was cutting, never told anyone I was throwing up until I told Amanda my sophomore year. For years before that I was so alone in the isolation. My reasons for both the bulimia and the cutting are I think explained pretty well in those passages.

This blog began as a way to reaffirm myself, to psychoanalyze, and it has become exactly what I have been accused of self-injuring for- a way to get attention. I am incapable, for some reason, of acting how I feel in real life. My friends never know I'm depressed. I can't act depressed. Sometimes I am able to say things to try to express my depression, but mostly everyone thinks I'm just great. I can't really talk to my friends that I see on a daily basis. I have self-injured and binged and purged to cope. I can't explain how horrible mental illness is if you haven't experienced it. It, not attention, led me to my problems. It and the abuse in my past. Now, I still don't cut for attention. I swear to you with all my heart that every time I cut it is because I feel like I can't experience another moment of life with the emotions (or lack of) I am experiencing. It is rarely, rarely for attention. Every time I overdose on drugs it is because I feel like I can't stand this world anymore. It is not for attention. Every time I throw up or take laxatives it is because I need control and believe I am fat. It is not for attention. I have always been so bad about getting attention. I've always been so guarded.

This blog, though, is a plea for help. I has been ever since the first person posted in it (who hasn't posted in it for a very long time). It has been ever since I realized that I have finally found a place where I can express myself. I want to promise all of you that my self-injurious actions are not to get your attention. I know that I already have your attention. Posting about how I feel and what I do on this blog is to get your attention. This is all that I have. You that read this... you are the only people that know me, the real me. Your love is the reason I get up every day and yank myself through these unbearable hours. Your support is the reason I keep posting endlessly about things that probably bore you to death. Yes, I am seeking attention, but not through my actions... through my words. That is the only way I believe I can seek attention. Something inside of me won't let other people know about the cutting or the eating disorder or anything. Very few people know that about me. To nearly everyone, I am the kid who's good at math and plays a bajillion orchestra instruments. They would be very surprized to know the things that I write on here. You are my support. You are my attention.

I have been misunderstood, which is understandable :-) I know in my heart that the reason I do these things is still the same reason it has always been: addiction, depression, loss of abuse. It has not turned into attention seeking actions. I have never let people see my cuts (only scars) or notice my eating disorder. I have so many lies and excuses to cover me up. But this blog, this is the truth. So I'm sorry, but you're wrong. It's not so simple as just deciding to get better. I can't do that. I keep doing it over and over again and I keep being thwarted by the messed up channels of seratonin in my mind. I won't use that as an excuse. I know I have to keep fighting. But people... I am fighting. I am giving this all that I've got. I have never been one to give up. I have never been one to use half-hearted efforts. This is me trying. You are my reasons for temporarily getting up every morning. But I have always had reasons in my heart for living. They have been what kept me from suicide for all those years before I could explain to anyone the horrors in my head.

I love you. In a way I am using you. But please never view my actions as attempts to get attention. I have a way with words. I can write well... artculately, eloquently. I don't need actions to get your attention when I have my words.

Love is real, even if everything else in this world can't hold. Love can hold.

(and to the person that left that comment- I know everything else that you said was true, and I know that you are right about many things, and I know that you love me, and I love you too)

I don't want to be alive anymore, but I'm just as afraid of death. I just want to cease existing... I can't do this.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too

Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down

If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down

Okay, I'll admit it, I'll drop the politics. I'm terrified right now. I'm scared. I'm panicked. I'm angry. I'm lost. I don't have a word bad enough to describe my current emotional state. It's off the spectrum. There is no spectrum.
I'm fighting. You know I'm fighting.
I can't believe in people when they're away. My friends, my family... I can't remember that they are real if they are not talking to me. This is proving to be a problem. I feel so alone, because nobody seems real. I need to be told constantly that I am still loved or I won't believe it. I need to be spending time constantly with people or I can't believe in them.

This is the devastation. It has to be. I must be at the bottom of the abyss. There must be no worse place. I can't imagine much worse than this.

politics

I am still not okay so I will talk about things that matter more than me.

I don't know what's up with Israel and Lebanon. I know Israel won't talk to Lebanon because the Hezbollah are basically in charge, but how is bombing each other repeatedly going to help? How does that make the Israeli government any better than terrorists, if the terroristic Hezbollah are essentially their own government?

We can't stay in Iraq because if we do, we'll be there forever. Handing off one Iraqi province (and having multiple deaths occur because of that or just simultaneously) is such a small part of what we need to do before we can leave. The Iraqi people, many of them at least, believe that another dictatorship is inevitable. They're not working with this democracy framework we're trying to force. They're just sitting there, waiting to blown up by another tyrant. However, we can't leave Iraq because if we do they may just end up like Lebanon, ruled by terrorists, and we may just end up like Israel, trying to solve problems by bombing and bombing. And maybe this whole thing is like Vietnam, and all the bombing won't do much because the terroristic operations are so spread out and diverse. It never helped to bomb Hanoi. It's too unstable to leave. We can't stay. What the heck are we supposed to do?!

I don't know what to do to myself. I don't want to kill myself, because I'm more afraid of death than I am of life. I don't want to cut, because I've done that so much I'm bored with it, five years of it and it seems a bit anticlimatic; I need something newer and more severe. I don't want to overdose, because that would just make me sick and throw up all day tomorrow which wouldn't help me feel better in any way except that I'd lose weight. I don't want to use inhalents, because I really don't want to get addicted or go to Hell. I don't want to go drink alcohol, for those same reasons (I really am afraid of God). I don't want to burn myself, because I never could figure out how to do that properly. I guess I could go jump off the porch or the roof. I haven't done that since eigth grade. But that's not really new either.

It seems like I've done everything you can do to hurt yourself. I've punched walls, cut myself, burned myself, overdosed, drank, tried drugs... and I'm still miserable. All these things have just kept me alive. But they're probably condemning me at the same time.

There's got to be something left to do, something that will make me feel better... I can't have done everything...

Oh right. I know how to make myself feel totally miserable. This is the Josh cue. This is what Josh did before he overdosed. He said, I can't do all those things, so I'm going to overdose on drugs so I can feel like Lindsay did. So maybe now I'm supposed to say, I'll go look at porn so I can feel like Josh did. But I think that that would make me throw up far faster than the pills or the ipecac syrup I have been daydreaming of lately.

I....... don't........ know..........

I've just finished reading Brave New World, and despite the lunacy of all of the characters, despite my lack of understanding of the ending, and despite all the drugs Aldous Huxley was on when he wrote it, I liked it a lot.

Some random parts from it:
"What fun it would be... if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
"One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies."

People Huxley quoted:
"They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and destractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false- a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth." -Maine de Biran (I think)

"[Philosophy is] the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct." -Bradley

Anyway, the book made me think.

I don't want to write more at the moment as I have lost control of my emotions in general, which frightens me.

It is an odd sensation, to stand on the crumbling edge of an abyss, unable to look back and remember what it was that made you stay so far away. I feel as if the land underneath me is giving way, and I can't stop it, and once I fall in there will never be hope again.

Please remind me of why my diaphragm continues to contract, why I do not cut, why I don't overdose, why I am not running upstairs to drink all the alcohol my mom keeps for cooking... because I'm forgetting right now. I'm forgetting everything. The only place I can look is down.

I'm worried about myself. That doesn't happen very often.

Ha Ha , I love major ad-hominen attacks thrown about by major world-figures like pathetic attempts at humor.
No really, this did make me smile.
The whole world just just get along. I never did like Putin. I don't know a lot about Cheney, except that his hunting mistakes have become the stuff of international politics. I wonder what would happen now if the United States were to annoy Russia enough to push it into another cold war. I think we need some better global standards of who does and who doesn't get what kind of weapons, as long as I'm on that line. When do justice and fairness bow down to "why the heck give an unstable, third-world country access to weaponry that could blow us to Pluto?"

I hate politics. People are so stupid. I know when they allowed women to vote they thought it would push the United States more towards peace. Failure. But the world has got to move towards peace somehow or we'll destroy ourselves.

But perhaps global warming will fry us before we even get the chance.

Olivia: Kyle kissed me.
Me: How was that?
Olivia: I don't know. It feels weird to have someone else's tongue in your mouth.

Understatement of the year. I agree. It does feel weird. I've been talking to a lot of people, and most of them said that making out with someone stimulated them in some way. It at least released a few hormones. It has never does this for me. It has never felt sexual at all. This is, I suppose, a good thing for me, and a good thing because of my age. But I just want to feel what they feel, just once. I know I have hormones in me somewhere.

I'm seeing Charlie again tomorrow. All I am doing with Charlie is using him. I guess he may be just using me too, so it doesn't matter. Or maybe that's just my excuse. Charlie is my experiment though. I do like him. He's a great guy. But I don't really care about him anywhere near the way I care about Josh. He doesn't even know me. I enjoy kissing him. That's all I am using him for. I am using him to figure out how to do it so I enjoy it. And I'm getting somewhere. This probably makes me a horrible person. I don't know. I just enjoy how uncomplicated my relationship with Charlie is.

There is a postcard on postsecret this week that says this (I am entering the word pertinent to me): "Sometimes I [kiss] men that I don't like so I can almost feel like someone really wants me, and to almost prove to myself that I'm not damaged goods." This is also exactly how I feel when it comes to Charlie.

I don't know.

I'm having anxiety attack after anxiety attack at the moment, and I am fighting off the nihilism, and I feel like crap.

movies

This past week or so has been characterized by movies. I didn't really realize how much movies affected my thoughts until this week.
The first movie I saw was High School Musical. And let me tell you, that movie is cheesy. The story, all of it... it could never happen. But the songs are all incredibly catchy, and I liked it. It was a happy movie.
Then I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. That one was hard, because it was showing me pictures of eternity that scared me, and what I am fighting off the most at the moment is eternity. It was an awesome movie, but it made me start having all those panicky feelings again. I really liked that Elizabeth fell in love with Jack though. William is just too unbelievably noble.
Next I saw Little Manhatten, which was really cute, but I really don't think it's possible to be in love at that age. I think that's what made it really cute.
Shattered Glass- the movie I saw with Olivia, Katie, and Claire on Saturday- is like a portrait of borderline personality disorder. I swear that Stephen Glass has that, if the movie is accurate. Anyway it's an awesome movie, but again depressing.
Superman bothered me a lot because it threw me into feelings of futility and eventually selfishness. Why bother? I thought. There will always be more people dying. I hate these feelings I get sometimes, but I might as well be honest about them. I thought that maybe after a point it would just get to be too much if I were him, and I might just give up. I also don't think I could be that brave. I like to believe sometimes that I could be, but when it comes down to it, I don't think that (being vulnerable) I could walk through bullets or something. Also the movie bothered me because a plane could never reach outer-space or weightlessness without blowing up. Space shuttles have really expensive heat tiles so they don't blow up when exiting the atmosphere. Planes don't. The plane would light on fire and explode before they got through the atmosphere and past gravity. I've known that since I was seven. Come one movie producers/script writers/etc.
Anyway, the movie depressed me for the next movie I saw, which I saw last night for my class: An Inconvenient Truth. I had this long fight with my parents last night about global warming and whether it's real. They don't think it is, and I think they're crazy. Wouldn't it be better to cut down on carbon emissions and see whether it was true that way by following related trends than to continue doing what we're doing and see if it's true that way by observing whether Greenland melts and covers San Fransisco in twenty feet of water? Better safe than sorry.

During the movie I was partially selfish, and angry, and scared, like with Superman, because I felt like I couldn't do anything, and maybe the world will just self-destruct and what do I care? I don't care about the generations after me, I only care about myself. Eventually, however, I defeated that feeling and realized that the world can change, but not if it's full of people thinking like I am, feeling futile. If I do my part, then I am contributing to the world. Even if it seems futile to me, it is my responsibility. I can't just give up because I feel like I have no influence. And I really do care. I care about the environment, and my children's generation, and human beings, and peace. After a while, I guess, after all the killing and hurricanes and everything awful that goes on, some part of you has to stop caring as much, or you'll die, but you still care in your heart of hearts.

One other shameful feeling to get off my chest: sometimes I get very angry. I only get angry at my mother or my dog. When I'm angry at my dog, I think about how small she is, and how extinguishable her life is. I don't think about hurting her or anything; I will never hurt anything or anyone if I can help it. But it bothers me, how angry I get. I don't want to believe I'm capable of doing something horrible. But I know I am. It's only and my mom and my dog. But it's so, so much anger.

YAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY for the ACT's!!!!!

So I didn't actually do much better on the composite. I didn't achieve my goal of 34. I got a 33. But it's the subscores that are so funny and amazing and ironic, and ultimately wonderful for me.

But guess what's so funny. You know how I got an 800- a perfect score- on the critical reading in the SAT's? And I got a 33 in it on my ACT's a year ago? I got a 30 this time! That's only the 92 percentile. Bad for me. You know why? Their stupid freaking time limits!!! I so ran out of time! I was filling in random bubbles, looking at the questions, barely scanning the stories, racing to read a whole story and answer five questions in two minutes. On the first half of the reading test I got all of the questions right. On the second have, I missed five out of eighteen. Five happens to be the number of questions that I didn't have time to answer. Huh. Funny.
Oh well, I know I'm good at reading. I don't need the SAT or ACT to prove that to me. I just need the fact that I'm an anti-social book nerd and then it's obvious.

Anyway, the important scores are these: I got a 34 in math, 99th percentile, definitely high enough for any math/science school like MIT and Caltech, and I got a 32 in science, 99th percentile, also definitely high enough for MIT and Caltech and any other school in the nation. And I got the same again in English- a 35, 99th percentile. However, on the essay for the ACT I got a 12 (the one conveniently about fast food, which is what I did my history final on) and I only got an 11 on the SAT. Stupid SAT's. :-)

But here is the point of all this mumbo jumbo... those test scores? They are high enough to get into any college in the country. Any. MIT is the third hardest to get into in the country as well, I think. But my test scores are good enough for it.

Here's the real implication that I care about right now: I DON'T HAVE TO STRESS OUT ABOUT STANDARDIZED TESTS ANYMORE!!! I'M HOME FREE!!! No more nights of that sick, tight feeling in my stomach, thinking about the SAT's/ACT's, none of that. I'm taking the SAT's again in the fall in an attempt to increase my math score, but I don't have to, because my ACT's are high enough, and I think all the colleges I'm applying to take ACT's or SAT's. I don't have to obsess anymore! I don't have to worry!!!

I can't explain to you how wonderful that feeling is for someone with OCD and an anxiety disorder. No more of that horrible thinking!

I've got the GPA (unless it gets screwed up in the fall, but that's why I'll apply to MIT or Caltech for early admission, so they won't know); I've got the leadership positions in church and Key Club; I've got the involvement in debate, music, and science/biology olympiad; I've got the service, through my school and the Humane Society; I've got the notoriety with doing well on all the American Math Competition tests, biology olympiad tests, and all of my writing awards; and I have MIT and Caltech's major entrance requirement: I love to learn. *insert demonic laughter that only a high school student stressed about college can understand... go watch "The Perfect Score"...* I HAVE IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good AP test scores? I've got them. Impressing class load? I've got it. I can get in now! I thought maybe I wasn't smart enough. That's what I decided when I saw my SAT's last week. I'm not smart enough to go to MIT. But I am! I'm two years ahead of myself in math. They'll love that! Look at me, I'm unstoppable!!!

Now, unfortunately, to come down from all of this euphoria, everyone else that applies to MIT and Caltech also has all of these things. But maybe I can be one better. Maybe I really can get in. Maybe I really am smart, and just not bright compared to my school. Maybe I really am capable of achieving these high expectations I've set for myself. Maybe I'm not a failure.

After all of this, the odds are that I will still be rejected from MIT and Caltech. I know that. Everyone that applies is smart, and has these things, and only 8% are accepted. That's a hard percentage to be in. The top 8% of the 99th percentile. And I didn't get into the science summer program through that place affiliated with MIT. Even if I did get into MIT and Caltech, I doubt we could afford the tuition. I know all of that. I know that all of the odds are still against me. But for the first time ever, I HAVE A CHANCE. Even if it's tiny, I have it.

It is... possible.

Josh's story

We went to cemetaries last night to write. Cemetaries don't really frighten me, as I believe that all those bodies are just piles of rotting organic material. The souls go somewhere else. Anyway, I wrote this, and it is probably the most honest thing I've written in quite a while.
***
Let me tell you a ghost story that will make your hair follicles harden and turn your arms into winter orchards. Let me tell you the story of teh real ghost that you should fear.
The ghost is a boy. He is tall, which sandy hair and diamond-cut eyes. His hands feel gentle and strong when they hold yours. He is quite handsome, you would say, if you saw a picture. If you saw him with his hands around a dark-eyed girl you might almost believe in him.
He takes advanced placement classes in school. He is very smart. His test scores carve him out from a large society and sculpt him into an elite one. He reads philosophy and the classics. He devotes himself flawlessly to academics. He is on the scholastics team at school. He loves chemistry, and measuring things, and empirical evidence.
This boy dances to trans, some hybrid of techno music with a beat as fast as your heart, and plays video games with his friends. He goes to church every Sunday. He is popular and well-liked. Ties hang on him effortlessly. The wants of girls dance piroettes within his peripheral vision.
He works at a fastfood restaurant. He makes ice-cream cones perfectly, down to the top that curls down onto the softened layers. He saves his money for college and so he can serve a mission for his church.
He likes to get things done. He relishes his own productivity. He knows that someday he can be an asset to society.
This boy likes most food, but not egg or potato salad. He has freckles and his eyes still see his surroundings with 20-20 vision.
I know what you are thinking. "This boy is not a ghost," you tell yourself, "He is just like me, or anyone else." You are both absolutely correct and terribly wrong.
All of these things I've said are true. The problem is that this boy defines himself by them. He defines himself by how many hamburgers he can make in an hour, and how well he can do on tests, and how popular he is. He has built his identity on what his teachers and friends say, on the way his slightly-thin frame manipulates the mirror. And because of this definition, something that has been happening unrecognized all along has consumed him and spit him out as a phantom, a ghost.
You see, he works because he is afraid of the horrible things he does to himself when he is not busy. He bases his self-esteem on his hamburgers because without that productivity he cannot even fathom how he will love himself. He relishes his popularity because when he is with people he has an identity. He is terrified of being alone. He tries to do well on tests becasue he fears that he is really stupid and worthless, and the tests are the only way he can suppress those fears. He saves money and exists in the future because there is no way he can exist or be happy right now. He believes that if he works hard enough or goes to school long enough or makes enough money he will find happiness, or at least a justification for the oxygen he utilizes, becasue he has no kind of happiness and feels guilty for his existence.
This is the way it has always been, but something is happening now. All of those things that he uses to define himself- grades, work, friends- have fallen away. He can no longer maintain his reality, and it is crumbling. He is realizing the transience of everything in his life. He is realizing that there is nothing past the surface. Now he has no reason to love himself and every reason to despise himself. Now he keeps busy to keep running from all of his fears. At his very core he fleeing in terror from the center of his being. He is drinking and cuttnig his arms and overdosing on drugs. He is trying to kill himself, but he knows and has always known the truth: there is no real, permanant escape from himself. He cannot run forever, and he is getting tired, slowing down.
He has quit caring about everything. He finds it difficult to even breathe, even though his body does it for him. He knows he can't find his identity in that body anymore. He believes taht once everything is gone- all the friends, jbos, and grades- once it has all fallen away and he reaches the center of himself, there will be absolutely nothing there, only the vestigal wreckage of his universe. He cannot fathom why anyone would love him.
See, you are half right. Perhaps he is just like you, or anyone else. But he is a ghost. He is a ghost that can beat any of your campfire stories. he is a ghost that can frighten you more than any unquiet spirit or restless zombie. He is the ghost you have always been afraid of because there is a part of him in you. Let me tell you about a ghost. Let me tell you about a boy who is sobbing all alone in his room right now because there is no escape, and he's told himself that he doesn't care for so long that he is beginning to believe it.

personality color

I think this test was created for people who didn't undergo a major personality change in fourth-fifth grade. I took in the first time, acting like I was under the age of ten. I took it the second time, acting like I was over the age of ten. I got two different results, which concur with the two personalities I've had in my life. I still retain traces of the first, mostly the good ones, but I have been largely taken over by this second set of characteristics. Tell me if these seem accurate:
personality under nine= RED.
REDS are motivated by POWER. They seek productivity and need to look good to others. Simply stated, REDS want their own way. They like to be in the driver's seat and willingly pay the price to be in a leadership role. REDS value whatever gets them ahead in life, whether it be in their careers, school endeavors, or personal life. What REDS value, they get done. They are often workaholics. They will, however, resist doing anything that doesn't interest them.
REDS like to be right. They value approval from others for their intelligence and practical approach to life, and want to be respected for it. REDS are confident, proactive, and visionary; but can also be arrogant, selfish, and insensitive. When others interact with you, as a RED you respond to them best if they are precise, factual, direct, AND show no fear!
(test)
I think I still retain some of these characteristics. This is how my mom is, and when I was young I was a lot like my mom. I still get done what I value, and I'm still a workaholic. I seek productivity and some part of me needs to look good to others. Most of those other things, however, no longer describe me at all.
My personality now= BLUE (but also WHITE mixed in)
BLUES are motivated by INTIMACY. They seek to genuinely connect with others, and need to be understood and appreciated. Everything they do is quality-based. They are loyal friends, employers, and employees. Whatever or whomever they commit to is their sole (and soul) focus. They love to serve and give themselves freely in order to nurture others' lives.
BLUES have distinct preferences and have the most controlling personality. Their personal code of ethics is remarkably strong and they expect others to live honest, committed lives as well. They enjoy meaningful moments in conversation as well as paying close attention to special life events (e.g. birthdays and anniversaries). BLUES are dependable, thoughtful, and analytical; but can also be self-righteous, worry-prone, and moody. They are "sainted pit-bulls" who never let go of something or someone, once they are committed. When you deal with a BLUE, be sincere and make a genuine effort to understand and appreciate them.
***
Most of that describes me. I don't pay any attention to special events though, and several of my friends are yet to receive their birthday presents. And I don't believe I've been self-righteous very often (but I am worry-prone and moody).
Here are some WHITE characteristics that I have (most of the WHITE stuff doesn't apply to me, but these things do):
WHITES are motivated by PEACE. They seek independence and require kindness. WHITES need their "alone time." WHITES are much stronger than people think, but are not often seen for their strength because they don't easily reveal their feelings.
***
My father is a white. I think I get the blue from my mom and the white from my dad. My mom is kinda a blue-red-yellow, more red than and yellow than blue, but still containing enough blue to give it to me (if only genetics were this simple). My father is pretty much just white. He's the only one of us that fits neatly in a color.

I just thought this interesting. Do you think it's accurate?

random topics

My friend's dog is being put to sleep today. It's hard to see and remember. She's a sweet dog too, and I've known her since they got her when we were seven or so. It makes you remember how extinguishable life is. It just takes a few drips of fluid to shut a brain down. Why are we so transient?
I am depressed today, over a lot of things, and over nothing. It will pass though. It's a medicated depression. I know that life will go on.
I'm having a hard time with the way I think about Josh. He did some things two nights ago that I wish he hadn't done. I don't know how to deal with it so I just... don't. It happens to me. I realize that in the midst of his psuedo BPD diagnosis, if he really does have the symptoms, I can relate to them. I don't have BPD, but I do have a lot of the characteristics, and maybe it will help to understand them. The book I have says that the diagnostic criteria are:
1. Unstable and intense interpersonal relaitoships, with marked shifts in attitude towards others. This is Josh's main characteristic, but I think it's characteristic of me too, with my friends mostly though, not with boys. However, I do do that splitting thing, without realizing it, separating the good and bad parts of people, and it makes looking at the world hard. Until today I didn't really think about it, but it's me doing the splitting, not the people being split.
2. Impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially self-destructive. I fit this two, my two areas being some chemical abuse and bulimia.
3. Radical mood shifts. This is hard to discern because I have bipolar disorder, but Josh definitely has these.
4. Inappropriate, intense anger. My parents insist that I had this my entire childhood. But it happens rarely these days. There are times when I am inappropriately, intensely angry. But it is mostly not in public places. Josh also doesn't fit this criterion.
5. Recurrent suicidal threats, attempts, or self-mutilating behaviors. I don't threaten suicide. I think that's manipulative. But I do do the other two.
6. Marked and persistent identity disturbance. This one is odd to me, as I believe everyone has it. But I guess it's just this super-ambivalence and confusion over identity, and changing depending on who you're with. I do the changing depending on who I'm with thing, and am unsure of my identity, but don't really think it's a BPD thing, just a normal teenage thing.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Yes I have those.
8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Yes I do that.
9. not established, but considered- psychotic experiences. Yes I've had those.

I guess I can see why my parents think that I have this disorder. But I think that that diagnostic criteria is very ambiguous. It can be present in a lot of problems, like my DID, anxiety, OCD, and bipolar.
My mom also thinks that she has BPD, which I could believe. But although BPD is fairly common, more common than my bipolar disorder anyway, I don't think I have it.

And I know it's bipolar and not BPD because off meds the mood swings are long.

I wrote this last night at my writing class when I was sitting at a pottery kiln:
"It smells like cows out here, and wet grass, and I feel at peace. I wonder if this is because nature is soothing, or because I am away from the world, or because I am truly existing at my maximum capacity. I have been questioning a lot of philosophy and religion and, essentially, my own existence, but I am at peace, somehow, despite the questioning.
I have always assumed that peace and contentment required answers, but perhaps it is not so.

People's blogs are so... veiled. The public ones, the ones that our friends see. Like mine at xanga. People are more honest in their writing than they are in reality, which is a start, but they still don't reveal themselves.
What would happen if we did? If we all acted like who we were? Who are we anyway? What would happen if we understood ourselves, even privately?

I've gained two pounds. I realize, that just like that, I cannot love myself anymore. I guess it's not really sensical to most people, but those two pounds just make me worthless. I have to start eating less, as I have been eating normally.

If two pounds and a low SAT score will make me worthless, how in the world can I ever find enough worth to sustain me?

blowing stuff up and patriotism

Although I try not to be sexist, the joy in blowing stuff up seems to be imprinted and unmethylated (sorry, too much genetics) mainly in the male genome. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. I think that the Fourth of July is one of them. Most people enjoy blowing stuff up- or at least watching stuff get blown up- on Independence Day.

I like fireworks a lot. I think of them as, in the context of that book I just listened to, a sort of fusion of classical and romantic thought, kinda the way I think about quantum physics. Fireworks are mainly products of chemistry, and to design them one must have a very extensive understanding of chemical reactions, I believe, but they are also art. It's a fusion of art and science. It's a job for people with brains like me, brains that don't really lean one way or another, brains that make choosnig career paths difficult. Even though I don't really like chemistry, I think it'd be a fun job.

Fireworks are illegal in our main city, but there is a small city right outside the city where they are legal, and there are fireworks everywhere out there on the Fourth. We drove out there and watched other people's and set our own off. I really like artillery shells and Roman candles (these sort of hand-held mini artillary shells which may actually be illegal- we didn't want to ask). Anyway, it was really fun, the sky exploding with a massive amount of beautiful chemical reactions.

Also, I might as well say that I really like the Fourth of July, but not so much for what it celebrates. I understand the breakthrough of the Declaration of Independence- and find it ironic that it was based on the ideas of Loche, a European- but I also don't think America is independent because only those men with those ideas could free it. I think that Paine was right- a planet cannot control a satellite that exceeds it in size. England would have inevitably, in my opinion, lost control over the colonies, whether it happened in 1776 or later. So I think that the Fourth of July shouldn't be as much about that original independence as about all of the people that have died since then to try to maintain the country. Even if our government has some major issues, I believe it's doing a bit better than those authoritarian or gurella (sp?) governments in Africa or wherever. If the poor are being subjugated, it is not because of some sort of conscious alliance against them, it is an unfortunate flaw in the economic system. I believe that democracy- ours, or parliamentary, or whatever- is workable, more workable anyway than a lot of governments, and I believe that all of those stupid liberal democrats that won't quit complaining about our government should look at the world, in places like Africa, and see what they can do to bring them up from the ashes to at least some sort of humane level.

People look down their nose, sometimes, on the soldiers that have died in America during wars that have proved unprodcutive or wrong (ie Korean, Vietnam, possible Iraq- it remains to be seen), but the point is that they believed in what we have enough to die for it, and that will always be worth honoring, even if they died in a futile war. That's what I think we should celebrate on Independence Day.

stressful college stuff

AP scores were good though, that makes up sorta kinda for the SAT's. Not really I guess because the AP scores don't help much if I can't get into college. But it still brought my depressed spirits up a little bit from their depressed SAT slump...
so anyway AP scores:
US History: 4
Biology:5
Both of these scores are much higher than I expected. But I would have rathered the SAT scores were better and the AP scores were lower. Oh well. You take what you get I guess.
My ACT scores are still lost somewhere because I didn't actually pay for the writing part until today... but if they are high enough then I have everything made for MIT. If not...
one
last
chance

happenings

Hello all. I am alive. It made me feel really good to come back and see all those comments of people that care... sometimes, especially on vacation, especially amidst family crisises (is that the plural?) I just feel so... forgotten. Never really unloved- I've always felt loved- but uncared about. I'll talk to people and in the middle of what I'm saying they'll talk to someone else. That happened a lot last week when I was rafting with my family, because my family's a bit like that. I guess I just get annoying or something, so they quit caring about what I'm saying. But nobody can interrupt me here.
My church camp was really fun when it comes to the social stuff. I worked hard at being social, and Olivia helped. But what must really be written about the church camp is that I had a complete and total breakdown. Every day I was so... not depressed but... anxious... that I just didn't want to be with people. I literally was too exhausted to go through the effort it took to talk to someone. I just couldn't handle it, so I kinda shut down. Every day over and over in my head there was such panic, such fear, such utter chaos and such a feeling of disconnection. There was nothing to hold onto. I was at church camp and I didn't believe in God. I didn't believe in... anything. It happened just like it did four years ago when we almost had to come home from Maui early because I was going crazy. The only way I could describe it then was crazy. I couldn't explain the things I was feeling to anyone, which just made me feel even more alone and isolated. This time I have the word in my vocabulary to encase the whole experience, to make it so you understand what it is like: total, absolute nihilism.
Yes, nihilism. My worst fear. And it enguilfs me so thoroughly that when I am in it, I cannot remember ever not being in it, and I cannot imagine a future in which it will not be there. I just... deny everything. Life is meaningless. So what. We make friends, get married, have kids, die. But it's nothing. It's all superficial. It's surface-features. I can't even remember it perfectly now, thank God. When I am like this, I just don't seen any reason to be alive. I don't see any purpose for any of the things people do. People are just effecting out these hollow existences that don't matter, that disappear in the mosaic. Everything is... empty. Just so pointless.
The worst part, though, is that it's not just life that's pointless and empty, but death. There is no God, no nothing. Either you stop existing abruptly and your consciousness goes away- which was the most kind thing I could think of happening when you died- or you went to heaven and lived eternally in this pointless, meaningless state, or you went to hell and felt... awful... forever and ever and ever...
It makes me shudder thinking about it, even now, trying to explain it, trying to remember it for you and myself. I couldn't live, because there was no reason for living. But I couldn't die either, because death was even worse- an eternity of that miserable feeling. When I am depressed I get suicidal, and death seems like a haven. That week at church camp there was just no escape at all. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere that contained any meaning. I would start obsessing over the pointlessness, over the hollowness before and after deaths extending forever into time. Then I would start becoming extremely anxious and get anxiety attacks. Then those anxiety attacks would build and build into full-blown panic attacks. And then I couldn't breathe and I couldn't do anything. What do you do, then? When you can't live, because it's driving you crazy, and every waking moment is filled with nihilism, and you can't die, because it is the summation of everything you fear in the realm of existence? I was terrified of life, and terrified of death. There was nowhere to go. There was no alleviation. Cutting would have done nothing. Suicide would have realized my worst fears.

People think that suicidal depression is as bad as it gets. No, you're wrong. It's this nihilism. It is this complete fear of... everything. That's what it was most characterized by- a fear that I cannot even imgine now that I am sane again. I can only read through my journal entries and wonder how I survived the week.

I called my parents, panicky, breathing hard, five, six times or more every day. I tried to explain to them what was wrong, but I didn't have the word- nihilism- yet. It was only this amorphous, terrible thing that I could not escape because there was nothing else in the world but that creature. I called one night sobbing. I was in the corner of my bed, and I just couldn't believe in anything anymore. Why was I alive? Why was I there? What was ever the reason for breathing, for living, for dying, when everyone lived those mediocre, pointless lives? I can't explain the horror. I know I sound melodramatic and hopelessly emo. But it was real. It wasn't some superficial insanity. It was full-blown. There was no anasthetic, but there was no way to feel.

I had to have a bunch of the counselors there give me a blessing, which is something our church does when you're really sick. I shuddered there on my chair, trying to think about God, when God meant pointless eternities of misery. My parents told me to take more buspar, so I doubled it. Slowly, despairingly, it began to work. For four hours at a time I would be okay, and then the terror would come back. I would come crawling back to the buspar. It was my only connection to any sort of reality that I could cope with, that held meaning and sanity. It pulled me back from that state I was in, the state in which I believed there was no other state. Being in and out of those two states, when I was sane I could begin to believe that perhaps the insanity was transient, and in that possibility there was hope, something that simply did not exist in any shape or form in the other reality I was living in.

When my parents came for me I was a wreck. I was holding it together, cobbling it with buspar, but the second the buspar ran out I was back in my nightmare, back in my endless succession of panic attacks. My mother gave me xanax, which I guess my psychiatrist prescribed for me when they called him while I was at camp. I kept having those attacks of nihilism when I didn't take a pill just on time, but it started to wind down. I started to come back to a world with meaning, the world most of us live in. That's where I'm at now. I'm okay again, but I'm really dependent on the pills, and I'm really afraid of going back to that place. I fear it more than anything. More even than eternal damnation, I think. I can handle depression. But that way I was living... that's as much hell as there can be for me. It cannot possibly get worse than that. (knock on wood.)

I am okay now. I went rafting and had fun. The anxiety is managable. I drove back seven hours all by myself from Wyoming today, listening to this book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance which was very interesting, and with which I disagreed with vehemently. I believe in my religion again, and in myself, and in happiness, and calmness, and belief itself. I lost my concept of just pure believing as a verb for a while there, but I have found it again. The book said one thing that I believed though and found immensely interesting... you know that delay between when you see the tree and when your mind becomes aware of seeing the tree? (there is a delay, it is a tiny fraction of a second, but from the reading I've done on neuroscience, and I think to anyone who thinks about it logically, there is definitely a delay.) If you think about that delay- and how really the past only exists in our minds, and has no reality, and the future exists only in our plans and has no reality, so reality exists only NOW- then there really is no reality for a conscious being besides itself. Anything it sees is the past. That fraction of a second, that tiny delay, makes what we perceive are reality really only a thing of our minds.

Wow. What an awesome take on existentialism. It made me stop and smile and laugh because the concept is just so... cool. So something I could have never thought of.

Anyway, my college creative writing class starts tomorrow and I'm scared to death. I bet they will all hate me. I don't know what to bring, how to act, where to sit. No, I'll sit in the back. And I'll make Olivia take me there. But I really am scared.

My SAT scores have diminished any hubris I had built up though. I am very angry with myself, and very disappointed. I will have to pray that my ACT scores are good enough, or pray I can do better on the SAT's or ACT's if I take them in the fall. That is my last chance...

Scores:
critical reading: 800
writing: 780
math: 660

Why can I do calculus, and linear algebra, and solve multivariable discrete dynamical systems with these variable matrices so easily, when I cannot do algebra for a stupid SAT?

There is hope in my ACT's though. I felt alright about the math on those. I will know tomorrow morning. Pray to the God you believe in for me, please. I need it. The strength of everything is in belief.

Sorry, I'm kinda posting a lot. But I forgot to post about my mental health state this past week.

I thought I could handle everything without slipping away, but I couldn't. I quit eating for a few days, and then compulsively ate again. There was no purging though; no laxatives, no overdoses. I thought about OD-ing today, but I decided not to. I'm trying to transcend that.

The anxiety and panic attacks and OCD have been very bad lately. I haven't wanted to tell anyone, because I didn't want to screw with my meds again. However, I can't handle this anymore. I feel like I did four years ago when I was going in and out of dissociation and psychosis. Thinking about boredom makes me feel like my molecules are going too fast; my electrons are gaining so much velocity that they're escaping the gravity and flying off into space, grabbed by inappropriate atoms with filled valence shields, converting me into some freak anomale.

I'm doing a little better bipolar-wise at the moment, but at Civitan I resembled a yoyo on crack. There was no reason for it; everything was so spontaneous. There were no triggers to change my moods. One instant I was happy and alive and real, and the next I was dead and depressed and lost. I raged against the bipolar all week. I suppose these rapid cycles that happen when I'm on meds are way better than the extreme, longer cycles that happen when I'm off meds, but they're so disconcerting. The difference between on-med and off-med depression for me, however, is that when I'm on meds I know I'll come back up. The difference between medicated hypomania and mania is that when I'm on-meds I'm just hyper, annoying, only slightly out of control, rather than spiraling into psychosis.

However, I need to do something about the panic, the anxiety, the compulsion, the unending obsessions. Please, please, please God give me one day where I think about my ACT's and SAT's less than ten times. I just want to forget them! Please help me to stop having panic attacks when I think about boredom.

I don't want this! I don't want any of this. I took one of my mom's xanax, because when I get like this they usually calm me down quickly. I know I shouldn't self-medicate, but it's mroe appealing to me than falling into that psychosis that I went through a few years ago.

Civitan

When I started this blog, there was no one reading it, and I swore to tell the truth in its entirety. This was the only place that I was completely and totally honest about my life. I wanted to understand something: the wholeness past all of the deception. When people started reading it, it increased the cathartic effect of truth-telling. It really was complete, devoid of fabrication; people read it, which made it real.
Now, there are several people reading this, a few of whom are hopelessly entwined in my truths. But this blog began a year and a half ago as an exercise in understanding my unimpeded identity, and it will continue to be that. I will continue telling the truth. Perhaps maybe I can take this exercise and implement it everywhere in my life.

When I got to Civitan I was thoroughly numb. I saw Josh everywhere. I sat in the couch that I sat in last year when I first saw him, hovering over Jane, smiling, and so hot I thought I'd never have a chance. It was easy, though, when I found out that he was one of those unconfident boys that doesn't seem aware of how cute they are. I'm good about seducing those. I can feel confident around people that don't feel confident; it's only around those that do feel confident that I lose all of my assertiveness.
I saw Josh in the cafeteria, in the stairwells. They were these little phantom images of Josh, because he was gone now, because I could not let him go no matter what I tried.

I found Emily. Or rather she found me. I wasn't sure whether to expect her there or not, and I wasn't sure how to deal with it if she was there. I was paranoid that she wouldn't like me. I was paranoid that I would screw everything up. It wasn't about Josh when it came to Emily... it was just about wanting her (needing her in some ways) as a friend.
It was odd, meeting someone I knew a lot about. It was hard to get over how real she was, in stark contrast to those ghosts of Josh that were floating everywhere. I didn't bother trying to pretend to be someone I wasn't; I just acted liked myself and prayed she'd like me.

We have these envelopes at Civitan that people send you notes in, and after dinner on Sunday, the first night, I found a note from Josh in mine. "I'm here. I'm sorry." I don't know how to explain to you how I felt in that moment. It was as if I had been living in this dream world for three weeks. I think that I had forgotten Josh was a real person, and seeing his handwriting shook everything up for me. I didn't know what to think, feel, or do. Yet again I was trapped in an emotional situation that I was not ready for and had not prepared for. My wrist was still swollen from the last time that happened.
I panicked, I'll admit it. My heart started training for the Indy 500. My lungs felt like they were struggling with iron constraints. I had to keep trying to calm myself down from the rampant anxiety. I tried to close my eyes and imagine seeing him, and it made me feel so disconnected from reality. I had thought I would never see him again; I thought that's what his therapists said had to happen. I thought that he didn't love me anymore, and that his love for me had been part of his BPD all along. I thought that he wasn't the same Josh that came to prom a month ago. I didn't know how to handle this new person. I had just started trying to get over him (although I still thought incessently of suicide and I still knew I'd never get over him in the way Ariel told me he'd gotten over me).
When I did finally see him, sillhoetted in a doorway, the bottom dropped out of everything (I'm sorry, this sounds so dramatic, but it was dramatic). He saw me and turned around and walked away. I saw him and it was like seeing a ghost in the flesh, like seeing a resurrected being. I had almost convinced myself that there was no Josh anymore in the world, only those flimsy memories, and seeing him jarred all of my shaky resolutions that I had been struggling to build since I got that message on my cellphone.
I also knew, upon that fleeting glimpse, that I still loved him with all of the passion that I had ever loved him with, and that if there was anyway, anyway at all in the universe, that I could still be with him and that we could be healthy, I would give up everything material that I own just to have it.

That night was... awkward. I didn't know who he was anymore. From the stories I had been told, he had changed a lot, lost control. Emily sat between us and I didn't look at him, except to look at his hands, which were shaking uncontrollably. I didn't speak to him. I asked Emily whether I should talk to him, and she said only if he talked to me. I didn't know who he was anymore, and I was prepared to ignore him the whole week if he ignored me. I wasn't sure how I could handle loving him directly again; I didn't know if the fierceness of my emotions would be containable in that stressful atmosphere. I worried that I would explode. Every time I saw him I felt like crying, crying, crying, because I thought I had lost him forever. Having him there, seeing him... it was like someone was giving me some tiny shred of hope again, some tiny, feeble ray of light in all of that consuming darkness that threaten to destroy me. I can't blame myself for groping for it, for clinging onto it like it was the only objective thing in a subjective universe.

He did come and talk to me that night. While we were playing games I stared at him and felt that my cardiac muscles were slowly dissolving and my heartbeat was converting to mush. I didn't know how I could go on living my life without him. I remembered all of those days in the past few weeks that I have tried to be strong but ended up in messy tears. I remember all those wondering hours when I pondered whether it was possible or worth to survive after all that had happened. I remembered my tentative resolves to keep on living, to try to find all of that worth inside of myself. I remembered looking inside of myself and being truly shocked at the strength that I found there, beyond everything. I knew that I could exist without Josh, that I could possibly learn to live someday. But I also knew that I would give anything just to have him back again, just to make it so that I and his health could coexist.

Small talk? Maybe. He stood next to me. He said something like how are you, and I answered. I asked if he was doing better, and he said somewhat. It was awkward at first. But he was still Josh. From everything everyone had been telling me, he had metamorphosed into some boy I didn't know. But when I saw him I realized that he was still the Josh he'd always been, but he had lost control, which was bad, and he had lost his masks, which was good. Of all of his masks, I like his raw and bleeding face better- bleeding from the cold, but finally exposed enough to heal.
That night we sat in a group around Dennis (the leader guy) and Josh held my hand. The whole universe was flying through my mind at that moment. I didn't know if it was healthy, or right, so I kept asking Josh, kept letting go of his hand and making sure that I wasn't the focus, that he was himself and not his standard Lindsay-mask. He insisted he was though.

Over the week I realized that he is beginning to make the changes that he needs to make. I am no longer the center of his world. One of the biggest reasons I was attracted to him last summer was that he needed taking care of, and I needed so desperately to be needed. But I understand now that we both need to change those pathologies. I need to let go of that desire to be strong by taking care of him, and find strength inherent within myself (which I am beggining to do). He needs to let go of clinging to me and being absolutely dependent on me, and give everyone in his lives the roles that are appropriate in his healing (which he is beginning to do).

On Monday he scared me by yanking me out on the roof (very against the rules) so he could talk to me alone. I was having a panic attack the whole time we were up there (I'm a little paranoid about breaking rules). He explained to me that his parents told him he wasn't allowed to talk to me for six months to a year, which I explained to him was very not true. I had thought I wasn't allowed to talk to him for at least that long. It was a miscommunication. When he asked if he could kiss me I let go of his hand. I backed up five feet across the roof (I'm amazed at my presence of mind amidst the panic attack). I made him sit there for a minute and really think about what differences there would have to be if we were involved again. I made him think about how I would just be a part of his life, not his whole life. We both thought about it.
He didn't kiss me until we were both entirely sure it was right. It wasn't exactly at that moment. I kept, over the week, constantly making both of us step back and evaluate what was going on. I kept asking if he would be okay on Thursday when I left. I kept reminding of my constancy (and me of his, as I have that symptom of BPD majorly). I kept telling him that I would continue to exist when I went home on Thursday, and he didn't need me to be with him to be happy.

I think that our relationship over the week was making some major moves towards health. I wrote him several notes, all saying that it had to be a healthy relationship, because I'd rather have no relationship than an unhealthy one. We were keeping it real. It was hard for me to try to adjust to not be the center of his life, but it was a relief to know the pressure was gone and that he was beggining to heal.
I also cannot explain to you how wonderful it felt to know that his love for me hadn't been part of his BPD, and that it still existed even when he was trying hard to contain any BPD tendancies.

I don't think we should ever be together really alone, without a social setting, for quite a while. It keeps things real. I don't think, for instance, that it will be smart to do anything like prom for quite a while. But I do believe that these babysteps are taking us to a better place. What we both made clear over the week was that things absolutely had to change. There simply was not the option of going back to the way things were, as tempting as it was. The week was constant work, constant evalution of the way things were going. However, things can be better if they have to be different. That's what I'm always trying to tell myself: as scary as change is, it's worth reaching out sometimes and grasping it, just because of the possibility that things can be better.

However, I am leaving out some majorly important parts of the week. That's how my relationship with Josh was going. But there was an equally important relationship present that I was struggling to hold on to, and totally confused about: my relationship with Emily.

Emily loves Josh. I have known that for a few months, ever since I talked to her one time quite a while ago about how I was afraid that Josh was deifying me (which he was). It was pretty obvious in that conversation. However, although I am horrible about fear of abandonment and I need to be told every day that someone loves me for me to believe it, I didn't want to be afraid of what would happen between Emily and Josh. Through all of this I have tried really hard to just trust God. I felt in my heart that Josh was the right one for me, the one I would be with forever. But I also felt that if that ever quit being true, God could handle the situation and help me pull through it.

As soon as Josh grabbed my hand on Sunday night I thought immediately of Emily and knew things were getting complicated. I knew she liked Josh a lot. So I wrote her a note about it, and she wrote back confirming my fears to the worst degree.
I didn't mind that she likes Josh. There's not really much you can do about loving someone. However, I felt totally and completely miserablet that she had to see Josh coming back to me. I think that sometimes Josh isn't really sensative of what girls aroun him are feeilng. I know that he knew Emily was hurting, but I don't think he thought really about how horrible it would be to watch what happened if he were her. I don't even think I really undrestood how horrible it was.

But my last post was about her. Every time I saw her I felt physically sick. I felt doubled over in pain. I hate hurting people. But it was such a horrible situation. I just couldn't let go of Josh because of her, even though a large part of me wanted to. This made me feel selfish, which made me angry at myself. I wanted so badly to do something that made everyone happy, but it was a lose-lose situation.

So although I was so happy to have Josh back, I was also completely and totally miserable. This misery was my fault of course, not Emily's. I want to emphasize that I'm responsible for my own feelings and reactions.

I also really do not want to lose Emily as a friend over this. She is an amazing person. Even though she was hurting all week, she helped me through it. How unselfish is that? I think it's amazing. I don't know if I could do that. I remember when Kayte and Sam hooked up, and how angry I was unconsciously at both of them. I really admire Emily's strength, and that she cares about me even though I have partially ruined something important to her.

Well, the drama continues. I went whitewater rafting yesterday on the Lochsa which was really fun, as there were quite a few large rapids (although none as big as one of the ones on the Snake that we do every year). I was FREEZING though. The water temperature was 40 degrees.

Tomorrow I'm leaving to go to church camp for a week, and then rafting for a week. I'll be back on July 2nd because I have a college class starting on the 3rd (the writing one). I have to drive back from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, all by myself, which is like six hours. I am excited partially because it means I am growing up and can be responsible enough to drive home alone, but I am unhappy because I really hate long-distance driving.

What happens when everything is lying on the ground... Do you pick up the pieces all around? And if the world should fall apart hold on to what you know... take your chances turn around and go.

I don't know what to think or feel at the moment. Civitan was pretty amazing in a lot of ways, and totally completely miserable in others. I will write more later, as I've been whitewater rafting all day an am exhuasted right now.

One time, when I was fourteen, I fell totally in love with this boy named Sam. Every time I saw him my heart would skip ten beats. I loved him for a year. Then we had our eighth grade graduation dance. When he danced with me, I felty like I had escaped my body somehow and transcended all of my misery. He held my hand and I thought I had it made.

The next week I watched him kissing one of my best friends. I'll still remember the way my stomach felt in that instant, knowing that I was just one dance. He went on to be in love with her for two years... I loved him secretly. Some part of me probably still loves him, but I let it go as much as I could, as it hurt so, so badly.

em·pa·thy

1. Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.
   

Sometimes, when I look at someone, somehow I can feel some of what they're feeling. Maybe it is that I see myself in them; maybe it is that I can imagine their emotions. Maybe the way I feel when I look at them isn't the way they're really feeling at all but rather the way I would be feeling if I was them. It doesn't matter, I think; it's all empathy in the end.

That's what Civitan was. There was a small amazing spark of happiness exploding inside of me. But every minute there was that suffocating punch of empathy. So much I felt like crying a lot.

I didn't eat part of the time, not much anyway; I was cycling like crazy from hyper to really depressed; I felt like everything was spiralling out of control. But I got my hope back, when I thought it was lost.

I can't say it wasn't worth it, to get him back. I can't lie. But it did hurt- more, I think, than anyone will know. I kept remembering watching Kayte kiss Sam at morp in ninth grade and the way my stomach dissolved in that instant...

and it hurt so much.

I hate myself when I cause pain.

what I'd say to him

Well I'm off to Civitan. I do believe it will hurt a lot; I'll see him everywhere, us, last year, so full of hope.

I was listening to this song the other day and it seemed so appropriate... it's everything I say to Josh inside my head that I'd never tell him:

"Behind These Hazel Eyes" (Kelly Clarkson, although I doubt she wrote the words)

Seems like just yesterday
You were a part of me
I used to stand so tall
I used to be so strong
Your arms around me tight
Everything, it felt so right
Unbreakable, like nothin' could go wrong
Now I can't breathe
No, I can't sleep
I'm barely hanging on

Here I am, once again
I'm torn into pieces
Can't deny it, can't pretend
Just thought you were the one
Broken up, deep inside
But you won't get to see the tears I cry
Behind these hazel eyes

I told you everything
Opened up and let you in
You made me feel alright
For once in my life
Now all that's left of me
Is what I pretend to be
So together, but so broken up inside
'Cause I can't breathe
No, I can't sleep
I'm barely hangin' on

Here I am, once again
I'm torn into pieces
Can't deny it, can't pretend
Just thought you were the one
Broken up, deep inside
But you won't get to see the tears I cry
Behind these hazel eyes

Swallow me then spit me out
For hating you, I blame myself
Seeing you it kills me now
No, I don't cry on the outside
Anymore...

What is it in us that finds the strength to live when everything has fallen apart and it seems as if there is no hope? That odd rejuvination at the end of everything has been one of the most amazing things in my life. When it seems like nothing's left, when it seems like everything has liquified and run away, I find this rock-solid place within myself, at the bottom of everything.

Yesterday was the last day of school. I survived my junior year, somehow. This is the first year since eighth grade that I've had really stressful outside circumstances that justified my depression. The past few years I've pretty much just made myself miserable. But, it means another year has gone by during which, miraculously, I have managed to keep my 4.0 GPA through the bulimia and cutting and debilitating depression. Maybe there's something wrong with that. Maybe it's bad that I will let everything else go before I let my grades go. I know that for a lot of really depressed kids grades are the first thing to go. I'm not sure why they are the last for me. I'm not sure why they matter so much. They probably shouldn't. I should probably care more about being happy than having A's. But it does make me feel better that no matter what happens to me, I will fight to have that consistency in my life, those A's on my report card. I think that ultimately what keeps me hanging on to my grades is that they are the last thing separating me from my brother, and years ago when I swore I would never be like him, part of that promise was that I would always care about my grades and do well in school.

I feel so weak. I don't know how I'm doing this. Every day I keep getting these urges to do things like cut, but somehow I don't. I don't understand where my ability to keep breathing is coming from. I don't understand why I suddenly want so badly to live. There's been so many times where I've thought my life was so unfair, because there were so many people dying of cancer and car accidents that wanted to live when I was healthy and all I wanted was to die. The funny thing is though that even when I was that depressed, I think that if I got cancer I'd want to live. I think that if I ever die young I want it to be that I chose it, that I killed myself, not that something else killed me. Something in me always fights. Something in me can't give in when it's the outside forces hurting me. I'll let the inner deterioration run its course, but the second you try to hurt me or try to force me into something, I will fight you. I'm the only one allowed to hurt me. It's control. It's safety.

But I'm alive. This summer will be busy. I have to work five hours a day on my PCR and southern blots in the genetics lab. I'm going to read a lot. I'm going to practice violin a lot. I'm going to understand why I want so badly to live. I'm going to make it so I'm not miserable next year. I'm going to do something, anything, to uncover that rock place inside of me and build all of my hopes on it instead of the shiftiness they're built on now.

I haven't forgotten, either, that the rock is God.

why am i being positive when i feel miserable?

I found this word today...
cic·a·trize (sk-trz)
tr. & intr.v. cic·a·trized, cic·a·triz·ing, cic·a·triz·es
To heal or become healed by the formation of scar tissue.

Everything is kinda falling apart. Josh has borderline personality disorder. I cried tonight, harder than I have since I was little. It was one of those sessions of heaving sobs, when your whole diaphragm contracts, tight as a fist, and pained noises. At first I was alone, but then my mom came out and held me.
Because I'll probably never see him again. Because his love for me was a part of some disorder, it wasn't real like my love for him. Because that hurts like all hell.
In the end, though, what has always mattered more than anything is that he gets better, that he heals, finds happiness somewhere. Never in me, I guess. Now, all I can really be is some distant friend, some memory of a horrible time of his life.
I trusted him so much, and he left me in the end. It's not his fault, and I don't really blame him, although I am irrationally angry with him for not loving me the way I loved him, for being able to move on while I sob uncontrollably and live in this haze on a daily basis. Still, he has proven to be like everyone else in my past- damaging, painful, and in the end, always abandoning.

How can I just let go of him? I thought I would be with him forever. I don't have a choice now, for his sake, and I guess mine in some way. I have got to let go. I have got to let go somehow or I'll be miserable forever...
Right now that seems the plausible outcome, the misery. I can't imagine living, really, without talking to him, without his emails, without everything...

There are memories, so many memories. I will write them all tomorrow as the first step of letting go. Right now they rush through me and make my dry eyes wet again. They hurt more than the memories of being raped do.

I'm not sure how I'll be okay. I can imagine being better, someday, but I can't imagine getting better. However, I believe I can go to sleep in a few minutes, and wake up, and live through tomorrow. When eternity is too huge a chunk to handle (especially when the boy I imagined spending it with is now completely lost), I'll just have to live for tomorrow, live for the day. Tomorrow, I will find something to make me happy, if only for an instant, if only something small, and it will be the first step.

I like that word a lot. Cicatrizing. Creating scar tissue. Healing.

It seems like every day I just do what it takes to live for ten more minutes, and that's it. I used to be alive... now I'm just surviving mostly.
Yesterday I got invited to two parties, went to neither. I couldn't stand the thought of standing around and getting hit in the head every once in a while with a frisbee. I felt like cutting my other wrist, but after some internal debate I decided to do the responsible thing. My parents and I went to Tropical Snow. Erin was working. Just seeing her helped. But not enough. I still felt all crazy, so I went to a movie with Brittany. (The Da Vinci Code). That got me through until 11 p.m., which got me through until I went to sleep, which got me through until this morning. And then there was church which pulled me through until noon. I came home and I made a collage about Josh, which tortured me but kept me alive until 2. Then I tried to do some homework and I started losing it again. Everything fuzzes in and out. I can't stop and think because I start panicking and hyperventalating. I can't think. I think about the past and it's like this bittersweet hole that consumes me. I think about the future and I get that fluttering sick feeling again. I think about now and I want to kill myself, because I'm not really here, I'm doing the one thing that I hate- surviving, turning off the feelings, breathing for ten more minutes.
I think my parents think I'm handling this Josh thing. I think everyone does. But I'm just good at swallowing it all, at dealing with crap when I have to. It just works to get me through. It's all building up though, inside of me, and the craziness is coming back. I feel crazy crazy crazy. I want to feel but I don't want to feel. I finally quit feeling about Josh and everyone seeing him but me and talking to him but me. I finally just shut it all off because I couldn't handle it anymore.
Erin says I feel things more deeply than everyone else. I guess she's right. I don't really know why. I wish I didn't sometimes, and sometimes I'm so glad I do.

Tonight I was starting to get all panicky and weird again so I watched another movie (Redeye). I've realized that watching movies is the only thing that connects me, grounds me, when I'm floating away. So I do it a lot when I'm trying to keep my heart beating for just two hours. Then I can do something else.

Every once in a while I stop and I just cry, although I don't really understand that because all the feelings keep getting shut off. I don't know what I'm crying about. Everything.

You know why I'm writing this? To live five more minutes. Because while I'm typing this, it doesn't matter that Josh is somewhere, happy and alive, and I'm just surviving because I'm lost without him in some way I could have never expected. While I'm typing this it's okay that I feel totally alone and hollow and eaten-up inside. While I'm typing this it's okay that I'm numb and can't feel and that everything starts going black when I think about that girl that kissed Josh. While I'm typing this, I can be sure that I am safe.

But in a few seconds I will hit "publish post" and everything will be variable again. It's kinda late though. I might read, and that might get me to bed. And then I will sleep. I love sleep. Last night I had a dream about Ariel, even though I've never seen her, and she was holding me on a couch as I cried, and I felt so safe. I can't feel like that in real life. So I guess those dreams are the only times I'm really alive right now.

That's so messed up, isn't it? I want this to go away but I don't know how. I'm losing control again in a bad way. I can't look at anything or it starts swirling. I can't think becuase there are too many voices in my head. I wouldn't want to think anyway.

I feel so horrible... I want to throw up all this pain and misery and anger. No, anger is what I need. I realize that I feel the most lucid when I'm angry. Not angry enough to cut, not angry at anyone or anything, bust just angry at the world. But I don't want to have to be angry or asleep to feel alive. I just feel safer when I'm angry, I guess. When I'm sad so much can hurt me.

Am I sad? Not in the conventional way. But yes, I am sad, horrible sad. So sad that everything is melting away.

cacoon

I'm getting in that mood again. I always think there's something wrong with me when I'm like this. This tingling spreads inside of me and the whole world seems to swirl and slip a notch, and float away. I think it is Josh. I think it is what happens when I think of him. I know I am not supposed to have my life connected to him at all, but everything in me revolves around my memories of the way he laughs, the way his hair sticks up when it's not perfect and he's too distracted to care, the way I fit into this perfect pocket next to him in the night.
It makes everything surreal...
I took the SAT's today. I tried to focus on reality, on the calculator beneath me, see-through and laced with electronics, on the people around me, chewing on pencil erasers and glaring at me when I dropped things. It couldn't be real. And neither could Josh.
They told me he's out of the hospital. Is he really out there, somewhere, breathing and wearing socks and pants and sitting on a couch? Is he thinking of me? Why didn't his parents tell me he was out of the hospital? I know that I'm supposed to be letting go of him. But do they assume it happens automatically like that, like somehow I can stop myself from thinking about him several times every day?
Everything clashes like that. I went out to lunch and I ate a lot and I laughed a lot and I tried to connect myself to all that is real, but I got really confused about what's real and what's in my head, what's allowed to exist and what I have got to destroy.
Fuzz creates this little package around all of the objects, the staplers, the keyboard, the wood paneling on the walls, like I couldn't handle the edges without the softness, like the splinters would somehow tear me apart. The stitches on my wrist pull, desperately trying to remind me of the reason for all of this loss.
If I could touch you, I would. I sit here, reading, clutching the phone. When the reality of the world around me becomes redoubtable, I pull myself into a small envelope of confused philosophies and I read until the world in my book and the world of softened edges become so close that the similarities overwhelm the differences with their calming washes of real and unreal light. Yesterday in English class my teacher gave away books, and I collected them like tickets to a place where there is no fear. I stacked them up on my desk in stolid towers and worshipped their indifference. They were the catalyst, the final key to the reaction, carrying me from the lucidity I fought for last week to the daze I sink into now.

I don't know what's real anymore. All I know is that I love him, and it's not the way I thought love would be. I thought love would be this amazing fusion of passion between two people, this never ending fountain of connections too thick to sever with small annoyances. Now, though, love is something animal, something uncontrollable that perforates my defenses and allows the emotion to seep out the cracks. However, even if I could choose to control it I wouldn't, just for the instants that make it real, just for the moments in which life is chaotic yet complete.

My phone just rang, vibrating against my fist, and there was Stevie inviting me to a party. I laughed and said I might be there. Now, however, I think about what it would be like, the boys laughing and joking, boys I don't know or don't like, the girls acting that way they do around boys they think are hot, the glacial surface that melts underneath, warping reality with fakeness, and I just don't think I can handle it. I might get in bed, grab my book, and sink a little farther into this cacoon. As confused and fuzzy it is in here, as striped with guilt and pain and loss, it is warm.

I don't want to feel empty anymore. I don't want to feel alone. I don't want to feel vulnerable, helpless, and lost. I don't want a cavity in my chest. I don't want to cry about how beautiful a pink flower is against the sky.

There is something missing here. There is more to life.

I want to do something about the world. Having thought about it a lot lately, I might join the peace corps for a year after college. I need to at least try to make a difference.