Haggard

I'm really horrified to weigh myself again. It's been a good...month, at least. I think. Last time, I was around 140-142. I haven't been eating a lot, if at all, most of the days, and I certainly look smaller. But there's just something about stepping on the scale.

The reason I haven't been eating isn't a good one. Let's just say that uppers are appetite suppressants, and I'm finally giving in to Phoenix culture. Or maybe I'm just getting back to my white trash roots. I can accept that. I'm afraid to go back home. I don't want to leave Becka, my apartment, or my appetite suppressants. I never feel like I'm getting enough done grad school-wise, and I never feel like I get enough sleep. I crashed for fourteen hours yesterday. Up for three days, crash for twenty-four hours. Repeat. I swim a lot; it's too hot here to wear anything but a bikini. Food makes me gag.

I can honestly say that I'd rather stay here all summer. I don't want to go back. Home just makes me depressed and there are no distractions. If I go back I'll just get sicker, and by the time I get back to Phoenix I'll be so miserable that I'll go on another week-long bender and come out on the other side looking all Black Snake Moan, just like last time. Haggard. I look haggard.

Luke

Disclaimer: If I seem like a narcissistic, co-dependent, shallow, selfish train-wreck now, you should have seen me four years ago.

In August of 2008, my boyfriend of two years dumped me over the phone. No explanation. Major depressive episode ensues, which brings about many bad decisions on my part. The biggest bad was Luke. 

Luke and I had known each other since we were little kids, around eight or nine years old.. We did children's theater together; his mother was our director. 

Fast-forward, I'm nineteen and he's twenty-one. I hate myself. I'm a sweet, blonde, broken little college sophomore who's never really drank alcohol and I never miss classes and get good grades and work forty hours a week. I run into Luke at a store one night, and though we barely recognize each other (it had been at least seven years), we hit it off and decide to hang out that weekend. 

Fast-forward six weeks, and I can't get out of his basement because I can't move. There's dried blood on the mattress and I have too many bruises to count. I don't know what time it is, but I think I've been there for at least eight hours. My left wrist is fractured. Luke's passed out on the mattress next to me in a manic coma. The cuts on his back look infected, but that could just be the light. 

I can't go into the gory details of our "relationship," except to say that for a few hours every night, we were hell bent on hurting each other as much as possible. It was sex, but it wasn't about sex. Looking back on it now, four years later, and I know that  he hated himself just as much as I hated myself, and we took it out on each other. It was cathartic. He brought me to a very sheer precipice with a stable railing. I knew I wasn't going to fall, but I had a lot of fun staring into the abyss. Anyone reading this who's been in a relationship with a passionate manic-depressive psychotic knows what I'm talking about. 

Luke and I stopped seeing each other eventually, but whenever he goes through a manic stage, he'll call me again and if I'm not seeing anyone, we'll meet up. Not usually for sex, sometimes just to fight. Usually, just to convince the other to live a little while longer. That's usually his game. He'll call me when he's got a needle in his arm, or when he's on the edge of a bridge, and ask me why he shouldn't do it. I'll call him when I need self-contained self-destruction. We don't really want the other one dead, because we still have utility. But I don't care about him any more than he cares about me, and I know we scan the obituaries once in a while for each other's name. 

The only reason I'm bringing him up now is, I go home in a few days, and I'm going to be seeing him for the first time in over a year. I haven't had sex with anyone in almost two years. I'm not sure what I'm doing to do when I see him, but it will probably involve drugs and a lot of blood. People who haven't been there, they don't understand. He's like a hit. I need a hit every once in a while or I go genuinely crazy. Times like now, when I'm actively suicidal, Luke makes that feeling go away, and it goes away for months. The worse he hurts me, the longer the bad feelings stay away. 

Anyway, that's Luke. My brother/lover/dealer/torturer. In very, very small doses, he's exactly what I need.

I'm not dead

Semester ended, another 4.0. Working on my Master's thesis this summer. Still no contact with Liam, which Becka is thrilled about. I'm seeing a few different guys right now (not sleeping with any of them). Started eating a little more, waist started getting a lot smaller, hair's getting a lot longer. I think my look right now would be "white trash swamp junkie with nice hips". It's hotter than it sounds, I swear.

I've really started to embrace my mortality. Not to sound too poetic, but I'm excited to crash.

Now self-destruction...

Haven't spoken to Liam in two weeks. I think I'm happier.

Then again, I've also spent the last two weeks in an alcohol-weed-cocaine-ativan coma, only waking up every few hours to figure out whether or not I've got the guts to cut myself open yet. I haven't. There are three different guys I'm seeing now. Not sleeping with anyone. Don't need to add sex to this mix. Nothing makes me feel anything, and when I do feel, it's awful. 

Most of the time, I'm crying. 

"Don't cry don't feel."

Most of the time, I'm listening to music that makes it worse. I'm supposed to feel my feelings, right?

Sorry if this doesn't make any sense or seems disjointed. I've just woken up and I'm not sure what's still in my system. 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry

Liam and I are done. Done, as in, done. And I'm telling you think for accountability's sake, because I'm not going back. This is the fifth time we've broken up in a year, and I'm so fucking done with it. This is the first time I initiated it myself.
And yeah, I can admit that it was 50% pulling my head out of my ass, and 50% my eating disorder making me choose between him and her. And I chose her. Sometimes, it's good to lean on her for support, even if it's for the wrong reasons.

And I can't stop thinking about Grant, and fuck me if I don't have the absolute worst taste in men. Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment. Or I just can't give or receive love without throwing a little Stockholm Syndrome or general fuck-up-ed-ness into the mix.

I don't know where my mind is, and I don't know where my commitment lies, except in getting down to 125. School's out for summer and, aside from my thesis, that's all I care about.

I've never been so ready to quit.

And someone pushed me back up the hill again. I go in for Intensive Outpatient Treatment on May 3rd, for at least a month. It's group therapy three hours a day, five days a week, not counting the extra two hours I'll spend every week with a nutritionist and personal therapist. I can admit that at this moment, today, I have absolutely no desire to go. I'm only going because my therapist scared me into it, and because Liam is twisting my arm. He says if I don't get help, he'll never speak to me again. That's a pretty solid threat, seeing as I'm in love with him. 

I don't want to go. At all. Whatsoever. I don't want to get better. I'm still too fat for recovery. I have nothing to recover from yet. I'm not there. I still weigh over 135 pounds. I'm not there yet. I'm not ready for this. I don't want this now. 

And I can honestly say that I've never been this depressed in my life. It's a weird feeling, hopelessness. This is relatively new for me, though from a clinical standpoint, I'd say this is probably my third major depressive episode about a year and a half. I've never been so ready to quit. Just let go. I feel worse every time I wake up and realize that I woke up and all I have left to look forward to is waking up. I know Liam loves me, but I don't believe it. I don't believe he'll stay with me throughout all this. I believe I'll go to therapy and get "better," and once I'm "better," he'll finally feel like it's okay to leave. And then I'll relapse. And I'll have nowhere left to go. And I can't tell him any of that because it sounds like blackmail. "Stay with me or I'll starve myself to death." And that's not why I want him to stay. 

That's the sort of tragic inevitability of it all, and I feel like I've started to accept it, as melodramatic as it sounds. He'll leave. Everyone will leave. And then it will just be me. And then no one. 

Riding the high

Finally back into the 130's! I hit 138 this morning, and I couldn't be happier. Well, technically yesterday morning. Right now it's 1:30am. I'm watching A Streetcar Named Desire, grading Research Methods papers, and picking up the apartment so Dinah doesn't have so many places to get lost. She's still tiny enough that she can get lost in a studio apartment.
Haven't gone over 500 calories in the last 5 days. Ironically, I feel like I have much more energy than normal (though that could be because having to wake up and feed the kitten at 8am is putting my sleep schedule back in order). Either way, I'm riding the high right now, wherever it's coming from. I've also stopped getting so upset at little problems in my life, academically, socially, romantically, or otherwise. Liam and I are getting along much better and my stress level has dropped. I know that's because I'm transferring all my stress to controlling food. But honestly, I'm not even registering hunger cues anymore. They just dropped off the map, and I'm sleeping like a baby.
Right now, in this moment, I am happy.
Hard to believe that less than a week ago I was suicidal. I guess I technically still am. Only, this is...well, painless. It feels good. If this is death, then...I guess I don't know what to think. Thirteen pounds to go until my UGW, and we'll see what happens from there.
I feel calm for the first time in a long time.