3am – Wake up for the fourth time. This time I’m up. I watch some shitty tv on my tablet. Joe Carroll was dead, they confirmed it with DNA for fuck’s sake. Ugh. Turn it off. How about a podcast. Sword and Scale, it’s been better this year. He’s at least narrating again, not just playing some shitty quality 911 calls that are barely legible. 45 mins into a 1 hr 15 min show and I realize I just don’t give a fuck about this story. There’s David, Jason, and Scott and they’re all caught up in the murder of David’s sister somehow. Big surprise, they failed a polygraph. They ask for a lawyer and the police keep talking to them, so everything probably got thrown out anyways. No, I’m done with this nonsense. How about “Lorde – Melodrama.” I am a forest fire, after all. One girl swaying alone, stroking her cheek. I’m a little much. At least this is beautiful. I feel ugly, I’m playing with my hair, but it’s too fucking short to do anything with except the whole headband bullshit. So I’ll just hold on to the beauty of Lorde’s perfect voice and her sad and yet hopeful tale. It feels like it was written just for me. Thanks Lorde, you’ve done something good for humanity. Your melodies are beautiful, your lyrics hit every single neuron with the perfect pitch,rhythm and melody. You’re beautiful and you give me hope. It’s 5:15 now. 45 minutes until I get up and make the bed and pick out an outfit, a tricky proposition this morning. I got 2 of the most beautiful skirts yesterday. One short and one long. I think I want to wear the long one, but I have to find the right shirt for it.
Today is shot day, it’s a boost to my brain and I’ll feel, even if I want to be numb. Estrogen does that, like a lightening bolt to the feels. All the feels. The tastes, the sights, the smells, the joy, the pain. It’s a magic hormone and my life is better off with it than it was without. I’m still unsure about the boobs, but the brain changes are magical. I can finally cry. I feel things other than anger. I love to cry, it’s a freeing feeling that I never knew I could have. We had this chat in cafe a few days ago. Is it dopamine or oxytocin? I don’t know, but whatever we get from it, it relaxes and frees us. I can’t believe how many years I spent missing these feelings. Things smell stronger, the roses more potent, but the fowl odor of seared animal flesh in a kitchen is also stronger. I guess it’s a give and take. I can’t eat meat anymore. Maybe bacon, but even bacon is just once in a while, I don’t want it all the time. And even once in a while, I remember what I learned in my Animal Science classes, the brutal slaughter of these poor animals. I know, it’s a necessary evil, I guess. But it still makes me sick to think about. The sounds these desperate animals make as their lives are ruthlessly taken en masse. The smells of blood, guts and shit. The kill floors are not for the faint of heart. Maybe I’m the faint of heart, I guess. I digress. Today I will feel more than yesterday and the effects are almost immediate. 15-20 minutes and I feel the hormones surging through my body. The moon will be brighter tonight, if there is a moon. And if not, the stars will twinkle brighter and the sky will be bigger and more open and the possibilities, so many possibilities. I’ll see my face and I’ll recognize her, Clara, in the mirror. Even in the warped funhouse mirrors of this house of horrors. It’s not. It’s a safe place, where I’m allowed to be. I can be me and no one is judging me. I have friends and they have interest in me and love them. Not in a weird way, just care. I care for them and hope for the best for everyone here. We’re all working so hard and I know I’m not the only one that plays tug-of-war in my brain. I see it in their eyes, the angles of their brows and lips. Their words and with their silence. How they curl up on a couch and try to make themselves small, or maybe how they stand in the hallway showing off their favorite tiktok dances. Maybe today is joy, they have it, the joy that they promise us over and over.
But before we get there, we have 30 minutes to kill, so I’ll spend it here, writing to you, whoever you may be out there. I have hope for you, too, if you’re real and not just a bot or AI or some other bullshit. The jury is still out, I don’t know what’s bringing you here. I know that last night, google crawled my site. I’m indexed and according to the stats, 6 visitors came. 4 from Poland, 1 from France and 1 from Germany. All unique and sitting at their desktop computers. Hmm… What does that mean? Let’s not spend too much time focusing on that. If you’re a reader and you’re real, you are so very welcomed here. I can’t promise you that I will lift you up, but I hope I don’t bring you down. Each morning that I wake without a terrible nightmare, I have a new hope for the day. And being that it’s shot day, I have higher hopes, because the highs will be higher, the joys more joyful. Of course, the sadness that comes will be devastating and I can’t yet envision a day where there isn’t sadness, at least at some point during the day. What I can guarantee is that I’m working hard to write it all down. All the thoughts, good and bad and grey. I talk about grey here, just be. Not good. Not bad. Just be. The living equilibrium that means balance. And that balance allows me to nourish myself, to talk to my friends, to enjoy our groups, to make it to the cafe on time, with the rest of the group. It allows me to see your smiles as well as your frowns. I like my living equilibrium, on the days that I can achieve it. But it is shot day and with that I can expect that there may be some tears. Maybe a lot of tears, because I am cracked and chipped. I guess it’s age and how life has come at me in so many different ways. But you, dear reader, you’re my coping mechanism. You’re how I can handle the anxiety, it’s how I can wake up at 4:30am and put these spinning thoughts to good use.
I’m better on my own. I’m a liability. They say, “you’re a little much for me.” Those words cut so deep. “You’re a lot today,” is what Danielle Gauthier would say, sometimes often. But only after she promised to love me as I am and that she’d, “never give up, never stop trying.” Oh well. A lie. Just another lie. I get it, we change, we progress, we stop taking our meds because we think we don’t need them anymore because we’re mentally ill and our brain is tricking us and then we find people that want to fuck us, so they tell us whatever we want to hear, so they can get off. They patiently wait and pretend they aren’t trying to wreck your home and take you away from your spouse and your child. They just send text messages saying they love you. Did you say you love them, too? I don’t know. You said, “no, absolutely not,” but that was probably a lie, too. That’s what you do, you lie to people you are supposed to love. You lied to me and now I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t. You were playing house with your boyfriend every other week and telling me you still loved me. You were saying I was your person, but telling me I couldn’t text you. You weren’t responding to me. Space. That’s what you said you needed. Ok. Space, I’ll give it to you, but that wasn’t enough. You had to go back. You had to leave your family behind, again and again. Fuck you, you’re making me cry again and I hate you for it. There they are, the tears, welling up behind my eyeballs, the pressure building in my head. The change of shape of my mouth, nose and eyes. A sniffle. I hate you for this, the pain you inflict on me each and every day. I hate you for this. I love you, still, but I hate you for this. This is brutal and cruel. That’s what you are, brutal and cruel. It’s all coming out, every last bit of cruelty is going to be exposed and you’ll be embarrassed, shamed and guilted. You are a bad person. You are. I’m sorry I lied to you and said that you weren’t. I knew that day that you talked to him while I was at NAPA with our kid and you said you were a bad person, I knew what you were doing. I knew exactly what was happening and you knew it was wrong. And you did it anyway, You know right and wrong and you chose wrong, because you run and hide like the coward that you are. You’re a coward and you deserve what you have coming. You deserve how life is going to catch up with you, faster than you could ever run. You’re disgusting. You’re pitiful. You’re sick. You’re very, very sick and instead of getting help, you’re running to the arms of someone that will tell you don’t need meds any more. Good, because it’s only a matter of time until you do something you can’t take back. You’ll explode or kill yourself and he can deal with the fallout. Not me. Him. And your sisters will pay for the funeral. And they will tell the funeral director to drain your blood and snatch your organs and fill you with preservatives, like you did to all those animals in the lab. And your body will sit in a closed casket, in a vault under 2 tons of dirt. You’ll mold and fester in the practical, but probably not the best coffin that Lisa will buy for you. It will be practical, because she’s a greedy cunt. It’s already too late for you. It is. You’re beyond redemption. You say there’s no hell and I would normally agree, but for you, you deserve hell on earth before you finally shut down. Your brain is going to explode like chernobyl and nothing will make sense and you’ll suffer. And it’s all your doing.
I love you till my breathing stops. I love you til you call the cops on me. I’ll find a way to be without you. I love you. I let the seasons change my mind.
But today, I am angry and hurt and that’s fine. I’m letting it come out here. Willingness to process these stupid fucking feelings, 11/10. Get them the fuck out of my head and on to this blog. I need to get up, it’s 6:05 am and I have a day to contend with.
6:18 and Splataaah should be opening soon, I’ll have things to do. I’m wearing the long skirt, not the short one with this adorable soft red/dark pink top that matches the tiny flower pattern so perfectly. Almost too perfectly. I walked down the hallway and I saw that Santa came last night for a select few. We’ll keep their names secret and have my suspicions on who Santa might be. She left her laptop sitting by the directions for putting together these gifts. It’s sweet and I’m not sure how they were selected, but I’m sure they needed to be lifted up and Santa is good at doing sweet things to lift others up, even as she struggles herself. She’s a good person with a big heart. Just seeing acts of kindness make me smile and the anger and hurt that I was feeling this morning while I was writing is melting away. That’s the power of community, of this so-called sisterhood that Danielle Gauthier swears she’s a member of. Right. I know what the sisterhood is, now, and she ain’t in it. They wouldn’t have you, Danielle. To be a sister, you must be authentic and you fail the test.
I love morning time and I love getting dressed up. I put on just a touch of makeup today. Pink lips, mascara and eye shadow with bits of copper sparkle that go with the red and pinks in my shirt and skirt. It’s adorable, Katerina told me so with her unique and beautiful enthusiasm that makes you feel like the belle of the ball. I adore her and her beautiful mind. I adore her story of coming to America at two years old, adopted at the cusp of the Russian cutoff of Americans adopting Russian babies. I love how she remembers flashes of being on the jet plane that flew 26 hours to reach her new home, her and her twin sister crying and no doubt scared. Her parents came twice to Russia, once to visit their orphanage and see her and her twin sister and once to bring them home. I love her perfectionism, which has made her a top student, no doubt, but also brought us together to struggle through the layers of pain and find recovery. There’s motivation in her voice, there’s bravery in her eyes as she battles her own mind as she tries to eat. Somewhere in her brain there is screaming, “DON’T YOU DARE EAT, THIS WILL KILL YOU.” It’s just like my brain that comes up with any and every convoluted excuse it can to convince me to let my organs shut down and my body die. You heard it yesterday, screaming at the top of its lungs, “DIE… YOU MUST DIE.” We understand each other, she and I and all the patients here. It’s a bitch and it unites us to fight together and it’s a fight that varies behind each set of eyes, with different hurt, some of us searching for safety, other control. But regardless of the reason, and believe that is not an exhaustive list, the battle is the same against our own brains that want to betray us and leave us only bones and skin and dead. The one thing that I can assure you is that this is not something any of us chose and it’s not something we can just turn off. It’s not vanity and it’s not sexy. It’s a curse, brains that want us to be beyond perfect, flawless. And when we fail to achieve perfection in another area of life, it attacks the one thing that it can absolutely control, our nutrition.
Yes, we look in the mirror, but it’s not happiness and beauty we see, it’s flaws. Flaws that starving ourselves for one more meal is supposed to cure. “I ate the cookie, now I’ll skip two days of meals,” it tells us. “You can survive on 500 calories a day” , “on 200 calories a day” , “on water alone.” “I’m not hungry any more, my stomach doesn’t hurt, it’s not churning any more. I feel fine. I feel normal. I feel good, look, look, I’m beautiful,” it whispers in my ear, the Devil on the left, silencing the angel on the right. She’s louder and more convincing than all the angels and all the research and all the Drs. in the world. That’s why this battle is so hard to win. It’s why I didn’t check out on day 29, ready to take this on my own. It’s why I’d sacrifice love, relationships, opportunities and a future for her. It’s why if I want to win this fight, I’ve got to get my head back in the fucking game and quit fucking around. QUIT FUCKING AROUND. I have to shut her down and silence her song. I have to write a new melody and beat to dance to and I have to dance to that song everyday, for the rest of my life, because her voice won’t stop, ever. All I can do is try and outplay her. It’s all we can do, sit in the pain and discomfort. I’ve been sitting here now for days.
And here’s the rub, as Wendell would say, I’m excited about breakfast. I hope it’s cereal, something extra sugary, like cinnamon toast crunch or honey nut cheerios. I want the sugar high to go with my estrogen buzz which, by the way, I can already feel and it’s only been 10 minutes. I want yogurt and fruit, but the real reason we all get up and get ready with such enthusiasm every morning is that single cup of coffee. Our one reward and the moment we savor. But it’s the trick that I learned from Belle, our half French, half American sister, that you can add water (or vanilla soy milk if you have it) and make an Americano, thus doubling your coffee enjoyment. The anticipation is killer. It’s 7:40 and we should be heading down to the Bonsai Cafe in 5 minutes or less. However, we’re short staffed, again, so we may be a little bit late. Athena is the BHT and she’s great. I like her a lot. She’s very chill. She went with me to the oral surgeon’s office when I had my wisdom tooth extracted and escorted me home, or well, back to the hospital. It’s home. I feel more at home here now, than I feel at 2250 right now. Even with all the cats, dogs and juniper, my mother, it just feels so hollow there. I don’t know how to fill that space.
Breakfast was a semi success, depending whose voice we’re listening to I guess. I finished all of breakfast, dragging it out to the very last minute and into supplement time to finish my yogurt. Does that mean that my values won over her? I guess so. I have to pee. Brb. Annnnnd I’m back. One nice thing about having to pee 30 times a day is that every time I wash my hand and then I apply lotion, so my hands and arms are so fucking soft right now. I know Brandon really likes my delicate soft hands. Anyways, breakfast… I’m in the very back corner by the window, with no one sitting in front of me, Belle beside me, Rose at the end of the table and Margie cattiecorner from me. I love sitting with Rose, we’re old school, but she speaks so softly and my hearing is pretty awful, so it’s hard to have a conversation with her being at the other end of the table. Belle is hilarious and I like when she talks. She doesn’t say a lot, but what she does say is fascinating. Also, she wears these amazing wigs, one blonde, one black and they are so pretty. I didn’t know they were wigs until she brought up that they were. It makes me want to get extensions. I wouldn’t trust myself with a wig, apparently you have to thin them out and cut them and prep them.
I think I added to the list of pros for leaving here bathroom privacy. More importantly, bathroom sounds are not embarrassing when you’re in your own bathroom and the loud ass fan is on. Thank god for those loud ass fans. It just hit me a few years ago why they make them so noisy and it’s a blessing. Here, even in separated stalls, every potty sound you make, farts, plops, pee rushing out of my bladder like a fucking waterfall echos through the whole bathroom. It’s been the cause of some really shitty (sorry about the pun) and embarrassing moments. Remember, DO NOT BE GROSS. I think that’s like rule #2 or something. It’s ok to talk about pooping with other girls, it’s just part of life and being a girl, they love to talk about it for some reason. But goddamn if you make loud bathroom sounds, they will all make faces and look at each other as if they just heard or saw a car wreck. So, yeh, I’m looking forward to the privacy of the bathroom.
I’ve been lying every day for the last week or so. I’m lying to nurses, I’m lying to my team, I’m lying to the MC, I’m lying to my peers. I’m a liar. One of the things about being in the hospital is that they are constantly checking in and asking, “numbers,” which means SH/SI numbers. I was being honest until the Nurse Bailey incident, but since then I’ve been all zeros, baby. “Got safety numbers for me,” they say. You bet I reply, “0,0” It’s not like I will get support during meltdowns anyways. I’d rather just isolate, write, cry by myself and try to push away those thoughts on my own. That’s what I’m going to have to do in 6 days anyways. On my own, making choices for myself without the safety net. My anxiety is noticeably lower today, it has to be the combo of lexapro and buspar. I just feel more calm overall and my depression is a lot lower. I still have a lot of big feelings and emotions and processing them still makes me feel like shit, but I am able to pick myself back up a lot faster. I still have anxiety, 7/10, but that’s down from 9-10/10 everyday. I hope it just continues to come down as Buspar and Lexapro continue to build in my bloodstream. I also want to use diffusion around my thoughts, leave on a stream, if you will. Breathing doesn’t do much for me. I mean, I know physiologically that it slows my heart rate down and resets my central nervous system, but I hate focusing on breathing, except when I’m running. No running allowed, not yet anyways. Maybe after PHP. But, yeh, I’ve been lying and I feel guilty about it, but I also just don’t see the point in worrying everyone here. They took my belt and try as I might, I haven’t engineered a new way to do myself in, so I’d say I’m safe no matter what while I’m here. I’m nervous about the freedom in PHP. I know during the day I’ll be in the hospital, but it’s nighttime, when I’m all alone… when there’s no nurse to go talk to, no BHTs checking on me every 15 minutes… It’s scary. I’m so impulsive and those SH/SI thoughts feed on impulse, they’ve been trying to hurt me since I was 15 years old and they’ve almost worked on more than one occasion. The fact that I’m feeling better here doesn’t really mean much when I head out into the real world.
Anxiety to me feels like I’m just really nervous. Like that feeling I got before taking a test that I didn’t study enough for and I know I’m not going to do well, but way more intense and there’s no feeling of finality. Like when you finally take the test and it’s done, for better or for worse, it’s done and you can calm down. But this anxiety isn’t triggered by any one thing, it’s a combination of current situations and thoughts that just won’t slow down. Danielle was always trying to get me to say what was making me feel anxious and I would get very frustrated because I couldn’t put my finger on it. She was actually right about something for once. The therapists, nurses, MCs and BHTs all say the same thing, “What’s making you feel anxious?”, and most of the time the answer is, “I just don’t know.” It’s just a general feeling of dread, like something is about to go wrong. That split second when you realize you’re going to get into a car wreck or that a wreck is happening, that’s how this feels, but all the time. Well, most of the time. I don’t know how I’m supposed to function like a normal adult. How am I not supposed to think about suicide if I’m in a constant state of distress? No one seems to have the answer to that. Well, they do in a roundabout way. “Sit with your pain, feel your feelings, quarantine them and diffuse those thoughts.” They say it like that’s something I can just do, accept pain and feel it long enough to hurt and then diffuse it. Maybe if I knew how to diffuse it, I could move on in my life and start this glorious next chapter that Alina, my therapist, keeps talking about with such enthusiasm. Maybe I could burn the book and start fresh with a notepad and pencil, because I keep going back to the same chapter and it hurts me everytime.
I keep checking google analytics. Are people really reading this blog. I’ve never had a blog index so fast or get traffic so quickly. I probably should style the blog some with a nice theme, some cool imagery, avatars to create a safe image of my peers, but then I think, who cares about style, just keep writing. It’s the content that’s going to get indexed, not some stupid avatar. 16 visitors from google in under 24 hours from launch is actually kind of a lot. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but most blogs that I put up (granted the content was shit and they were just marketing blogs) barely got 30 views a month unless I bought traffic. I’ve had success before, I know what it feels like and there’s this nervous part of me that feels like my life is about to change. I’m not seeking fame, actually the opposite, I want to hide. But I also think the story of a transgirl with anorexia surviving a violent, abusive relationship and seeking happiness, the supposed joy, of recovery is a pretty interesting story. I’d read it, maybe. But this blog is about so much more than that. It’s about surviving, changes in your life (wanted and unwanted), discovering who you are, finding your core values, learning about being a girl, finding a sisterhood, mental health, mental illness and I think the list goes on and on. Have I said before that I never dreamed I could write this way or this much. I thought I didn’t have anything to say, but my brain says differently. It turns out, all these thoughts, feelings and emotions can mostly be put into words. That’s powerful for me and maybe for someone else going through the same thing. I’m writing this for me, it’s my outlet. It’s my survival technique. But, if anyone does read this and it helps them feel less alone, good. If it gives them someone to sit at the bottom of the well with, then good. And if no one ever reads a single word, that’s fine, too. It’s about me, but it can be about you, if you want it to be. We are all human after all and most of what I’m saying is really about basic human needs, like belonging, self worth, values, safety, healing, etc. Those are the things that make the human species a little different from most other species on the planet. A beautiful flower doesn’t care about belonging, it will grow on a cliff where no other flowers, animals or people will ever see it. Humans can’t live on a cliff, alone. We need these things, we crave them. I crave them, now more than ever. I don’t want to be alone.
I get a little bit of comfort knowing that Brandon intends to spend most weekends with me. That means a lot of different things. He’s excited about having Juniper in his life. During our visits, as we’ve gotten to know each other better, we’ve also made a lot of plans and many of them include places we’re going to take Juniper together. He has some really great ideas, museums, the circus, movies, parks. And he wants to take me places, too. A theme park, a water park, shopping trips together. But it also means time with just the two of us. Intimate moments and not just sex. Moments to share with each other in the most vulnerable way. I’m not sure I’m ready for this, but I’m pretty sure my horoscope has told me to embrace the change in relationship like every day. He says he won’t hurt me. I want to believe, I want to trust him. There are a few complications that we can talk about later, but he’s a good person, a kind hearted person that genuinely cares about the people in his life. And there are a lot of them, both family and friends. I worry about my own jealousy more than anything. I worry that we’ll become really close and then I will be a crazy bitch, we can’t have that. I don’t want to be a crazy bitch, or any kind of bitch, REALLY! Danielle was always saying I should be, “a badass bitch,” but if that’s anything like her, I want nothing to do with that shit. “Badass?”, more like unhinged and unmedicated mental illness. A solid reminder to take my medications as prescribed. Anyways, I do have hope that we have some sort of future, but I can’t tell what that’s going to look like at the moment and that part is scary. All that I am sure of is that I love that he’s come to visit me every weekend and most of the time we end up snuggling on the couch for the full 1 ½ hours just chatting about life. I get butterflies anytime I think about it, about holding onto his arms and him gently touching my side or legs. Is this real safety I feel or just another illusion? I don’t know yet, but I’m going to do my best to find out. I’m going to explore this further. I can’t wait to get out of here, to see him in real life. I can’t wait to share myself with him, I love that feeling of being able to give something unique to him. OMG, I’m gushing again, it’s embarrassing. But, also, I don’t want to hold back on any of my thoughts. This writing is nothing if it isn’t authentic. Authenticity, a core value that I must focus on today.
Today, I promised to focus on core values. The things that make me, me. Persistence, love, authenticity, creativity, sharing, collaboration, family, just to name a few. Those are my true values. I do know who I am, actually, Danielle. I’m not scared to be me anymore.
Oh, but back to what I was saying earlier about success. I’ve had it in some way or another, multiple times and it’s exciting, because there’s the moment before you actually get there that you know you’re about to get there. Like everything builds up to that point and you can feel the shifting currents of the wave coming straight for you. I feel that right now and I don’t know if it’s the writing, or the recovery, or the processing of emotion, but it feels like things are about to change for the better and that all this struggle is going to be worth something. I’m going to be worth something to someone and that gives me hope. Hope is a motherfucker, but it can be a beautiful thing that carries you through the hardest moments in life. It’s done it before and I think it’s doing its best to do it again. I love that. I want hope and I want to give hope. I want to spread it around like confetti on New Year’s eve and let everyone have a piece to put in the collection and remember a special moment. I love hope. Hope is a brilliant part of humanity.
And now, we prepare for yet another meal to sit through. I’m so conflicted. I know what my values are and what I need to do, but I don’t want to do it. She’s telling me not to. She’s so aggressive and unrelenting. She’s right, I will feel a lot of discomfort from eating my snack. I will feel my body processing the food and my stomach will churn and rumble. I hate my body processes. I hate nutrition. She’s so loud. I’m a fighter, but when you’re fighting your own brain, it takes a special kind of fight to contend with it.
Oh, I did so poorly at snack. I don’t think I drank a ⅕ of my shake. I feel guilty. I showed up, but I’m in the very back corner of the room, as far away from everyone as possible and my stomach just doesn’t want the weight of the shake. I’ve been restricting enough that I probably have slowed down my stomach’s processing of food. It kind of hurts even with just that little amount of shake. I mean, I did finish breakfast, but I don’t want to snack anymore. I’ve never liked snacking and we have too many of them here. Three to be precise. We eat every two hours and it is too much. The other 3 are meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner. It doesn’t matter. I’ll step down to PHP regardless of what I do here. I don’t have to try anymore. I’m not going to phase II, I’m leaving here an underachiever. I hate not winning, but this game has no winners, imho.
And now, I’m hiding at the end of the hall in my special seat. I just can’t be in the room for group today. I just don’t have it in me. The seriousness, the discussions, the heavy air from all the mouths breathing out warm breath, all of it. Just let me be. I need to be in my room. I need space and I don’t have it. Courtney hinted at getting me more room time yesterday. I’ll believe it when I see it and I’m not asking again. I felt like I was sinning the last time I asked and Alina said, “No, it’s reserved for patients that really need it,” yeh, ok, fuck you very much. I guess that was the start of my loss in faith in Alina. She no longer wanted to work with me to get what I needed to be comfortable here. Why should I trust her in any capacity? I know, I know, we’re staying positive today. I think I will meet with Alina today, if she gets around to me and she’s going to quiz me on the restriction, which is fine. My message is consistent, I am processing big emotions and Danielle emotions always make me want to restrict. I was triggered by the Amazon thing, the sex dice, but then every emotion I have came out. I still feel like I need to cry some more, but haven’t yet. Numbness. Anorexia gives us numbing of our deepest trauma and pain. That’s what this is, I think. I just have been feeling so much lately and remembering things and worried about the house changing more and tired of treatment. I don’t want to go negative, so I guess I should stop. I don’t want to ruminate on those thoughts. I think right now, I just want to sleep a dreamless sleep again. But anytime I close my eyes, there’s the risk that there will be a visitor to my mind that will leave me shaken.
Last night I dreamed about changing the strings on my guitar. My “friend” from high school was there and kept telling me I was restringing it wrong. His name was Josh Jones and he was always a bit of a bully to me. We fought more than we got along I think. The friendship pretty much ended when he stole a bunch of CDs from me. Like wtf, who steals CDs from their friends. It was so bizarre. The problem was that his best friend was also my best friend, John Rawls. John was forced to pick between the two of us and he chose Josh over me. Okay. Cool. Now I’m completely shut out of my social circle freshman year of high school. The loneliness… that feeling of not belonging… yeah. It was a weird year for me and didn’t really get better until the next year or maybe the one after that. Actually, I don’t know if high school ever got much better for me. I was part of Drama Club and had drama class for 3 years with the same people, so that was kind of cool. I still think fondly of most of those people. Tiffany Gaines especially. She was really cool. To be initiated to the Thespian Society, some of us had to dress like Spice Girls and go walk around the mall. I remember someone calling us faggots. Lol. It was TN, so no surprise there. It was the first time I dressed up like a girl. She gave me clothes to wear and did my makeup. I remember feeling shy about it, but also excited. It was fun and Tiffany was really cool and really nice to me. She would be a friend if I knew where she was today. She married her high school boyfriend, Jesse and last I heard, they have quite the clan. I hope she’s doing well, she was a nice person and always authentic.
Alina pulled me for a session. I hate our sessions and I don’t really listen to anything she has to say. “How can we challenge those thoughts around meals?”, fuck if I know. “Can we use opposite action around meals?”, I’d rather not. How does opposite action address my shitty body image issues? How does eating help me deal with the pain? I want to be numb, remember? I know, it’s maladaptive. I know, but these feelings are too big to process all at once and I need to slow them down for fuck’s sake. I need a break at some point during the day. Geeezzz. “You’ll have the same at PHP,” oh, perfect. Just what I wanted. I mean, in theory, we’ve repaired the relationship or whatever. It doesn’t mean I actually feel warmly towards any of them or at all. I don’t trust them. I don’t trust the plan. I look forward to the freedom, but it’s terrifying. Truthfully, I doubt I’ll be at PHP very long. I’ll either quit or I’ll be sent back up to inpatient. I’m in full blown relapse. Not by choice, by cope. The choice has been made for me. I’m just here, riding the wave. I want to feel hunger pains, I want my body to hurt instead of my mind. My brain has just been taxed too much lately and this feels natural. It’s maladaptive, yes, but it works. I’m not doing opposite action at meals. I don’t want to eat. She tells me so, over and over and I’m entranced. I can’t escape her voice and her words make so much sense right now. She’s telling me she loves me and that we can have glorious success again, if I just follow her. She’ll take away my pain. She’ll give me reasons. She makes me feel accomplished. She’ll let me drive, I’ll have control of something critical in my life. She wouldn’t make it up, these things are all things I’ve experienced before. And, she keeps reminding me, it doesn’t matter if I eat here or not. I’m going to PHP and I’ll have the chance to really flourish at our big goal. It’s a big goal that we have. 100 lbs in 30 days. We can do it if we work our asses off. She’s going to hold my hand and take me there. She’ll take away the pain and send it back to those that inflicted it on us in the first place. They’ll feel it, all of it. She’s telling me, push the envelope. How many meals can you skip before they start freaking out? Make them sweat it out and she’ll take care of me and my body. She’ll massage my brain, she promises and I believe her. We’ve been here before and we’ve been through it before.
I need a nap before I sit at lunch and stare at my plate. Hopefully I took a risk and not a write in today and it’s easy to ignore the meal. I have no idea though. Maybe I just won’t go.
Things to talk about later:
- Girl’s modesty and my opinion
- Summer skirts and dresses
- Makeup ideas
- Hair ideas
- What to do about her voice
- Danielle – food and cooking
5:01 PM and I finally got Bella her Kudos from last week. She hooked me up with all of these really cool 90’s band stickers, so I wanted to give her something really cool that she would love, so I got her the 4 pack of Essentials body wash. That stuff is life altering, hand down the best body wash money can buy. Not even kidding. She liked it so much she gave me a hug. Admittedly, kudos started out as giving away bracelets and things that we made. And Rose painted me an amazing polar bear mother and baby picture that I want to get tattooed. It’s so good. But I’ve been trying to get people things that have meaning and I usually include a note of some sort to go along with it for encouragement.
I drew Becca for this week and I got her a gold chain that says, “Unbreakable,” and talks about her resilience and how she can survive anything. I was just so touched by the necklace Kirsi got for me, I thought maybe it’s something Becca would like and would remind her that she is loved and she is strong.
The first gift I gave was my Jokic jersey and I think it upped the game, people started finding really nice gifts for their Kudos person and I think it’s been great. It’s just a fun way to brighten someone’s week here and mix up the pace. It’s been one of my favorite things to do while I’ve been here. I think I’m leaving Tuesday, so I’m going to have to order the kudos for the person and include a gift card or something. I don’t know. I don’t want to miss out on this coming week. It’s just so much fun.
The therapist and dietician here keep saying that I can just reassociate cooking with something positive. Like I’m going to do undo 8 years of history, something we did every single fucking day and magically it will become something I enjoy again. I think it’s ruined and I don’t think it will ever be something I think fondly about again. I get it. Nourishment, your body has to have energy to stay alive. I know. I don’t care, see, that’s where they lost me. I did care and I thought we were working towards the same goal, then they threw a wrench at my goals and plans and it really fucked with me. And now, I can’t find the value in nourishment for the sake of nourishment. I can’t push past the horrors of not eating with my loved one every day. I no longer have the drive or the will, so I don’t want to do it anymore. I’ll never cook again and eating is pretty iffy, tbh. It’s not like I can make something positive out of something that I did with the person I love every day. It just can’t happen. I will never be able to eat and enjoy it again and I especially won’t be able to cook. There’s trauma there that just can’t be undone. I’m so sad today, just thinking about it. Alina wanted me to set goals for nutrition this week and I just don’t have any. What’s the fucking point? I don’t want to gain weight, I want to lose it. I don’t trust their plan at all. So, I’m just going to restrict every meal from here until step down day and try and lose as much as I can. I think PHP is going to be a train wreck, but something has to change. If they won’t give me a team change, then maybe the change of scenery will help. I’m not going to cook meals on saturday and sunday and I’m not going to eat HS snack that they send home with me. That’s stupid, why in the fuck would I do that? And how would they even know? The only way I would actually do it is if they give me a roommate with someone I really like already, like Polly or Rose. Then I would have to eat, because I wouldn’t want to wreck their progress.
I really love the modesty that young girls have, it’s really cool. Priscilla wore this skirt yesterday that nearly touched the floor and she looked like a maiden princess, it was beautiful. I wore a long skirt today and it got so much positive feedback. I really appreciated it. 8 months ago I would have hated the idea of long skirts, but I love them now. I love the way they flow when you walk. I noticed that about Priscilla, too. It’s so elegant, so feminine without being obvious about it. That’s not to say that a short skirt or dress doesn’t have its place. When I know Brandon is coming for a visit, I like wearing something a little sexy for him to make him think about sex. It keeps him interested and coming back. Not to say that my personality isn’t enough, but he is a guy, afterall. And men can’t help but think about sex every six seconds or something like that. Testosterone is just a very powerful sex hormone and it really does kind of make them think about what’s going on between the thighs. They can’t help it, it’s just how it works.
I liked what I did today with makeup, just some eyeshadow and mascara and lipstain. It was the right amount for what I wanted to present. But these fucking headbands are all I can figure out to put in my hair. So, it’s either wear it down, either parted at the side or in the middle, or wear the head band, which looks cute, but I just feel like I overdo it. I got a bunch of hair tie thingies smuggled in by my mother and some berets, but I just can’t ever get it to look right. It’s weird, because before Danielle decided she hated me, she would help me with hair and she could fix it and make it look super cute, it’s just something that I’m obviously doing wrong. Headbands would probably work, I’ve seen Betty use them and they are cute. Becca does something similar to a headband for her short hair. I need to go see my hair girl, if she’ll still talk to me. She can tell me what to do. I need a trim anyways, but she’ll give me ideas. Danielle went around town trying to make all our shared people hate me, so we’ll see. But that may be something I do when I get a pass finally out of here, which won’t be until PHP.
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