this is where the healing begins

This weather is disgusting. I'm sitting in Starbucks with a hot chocolate trying to figure out exactly what it is that I am doing. I still feel very..."lost" despite all the opportunities that have turned up for me. It's a very weird paradox that I feel most mornings when I wake up. I'm excited, I am, but then, there is another part of me that just cripples my spine and I'm scared/anxious/nervous/whatever. I lay awake at night and stare at the ceiling trying to figure out whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing - the steps that I need to take, am taking, to get there. I don't know...night rolls around and suddenly its not...enough? Or maybe it is enough and I'm just dooming myself to failure because it's a pattern I'm so familiar with.

K, reminds us every Tuesday night that Recovery is about getting uncomfortable, and if you're uncomfortable, you're in the process. I guess it makes sense...well, I mean, of course it makes sense. I guess that's how I feel lately. Uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the idea of returning to the working world, of starting something new, of working towards something. I'm so used to shit hitting the fan in one way or another. The video store was an awesome job, until we went out of business. School was an awesome aspect of my life, until it wasn't. I know, I know, that's no excuse to just give up, but that doesn't make it any easier to keep one foot in the world and fight.

For the past three weeks, K, has asked me what defines me? How do I see myself? Think of something positive because the words and labels, I associate myself too are part of the reason I can't connect to myself; have a relationship with myself. I hear that things that people say; when V told the group that I was inspiring. And it's...it's like, okay, maybe I am or could be inspiring to other people. But to myself? Like lets get real. I've been kicked out of school and dropped out and I'm always that girl who just doesn't quite make it. One step forward and then two steps back. And so, I feel guilty and unworthy of anything that I can think of myself to be, except negative things because that's all I have ever amounted too. And it's easier. It's easier in the end to just give up or not try because then what have you lost? Really? So when K, asks me what defines me, I don't know what to tell her because the things that fall out my mouth, or the things I should or could say, just feel like lies. I guess, I just really don't know. 

And it pisses me off every week when K challenges me. When I'm midsentence and she cuts me off to fucking challenge me. To tell me the brutal truth. And I hate...love? hate? love? Hate...it? To tell me that it's quite obvious I don't want to connect to someone else, can't connect to someone else when I can barely connect to myself as an individual. The last person to step so fiercely on my toes...I can't even remember. It makes me angry, it really does. But when I sit back, there is a rational part of myself that realizes how lucky I am that someone cares enough, notices enough, to challenge me. I'm lucky to have friends who look out for me and care about me. V and J and B...Most of the time, I honestly don't even know where I would be without them. 

And on a completely other note. I did get a job last week. I dropped off a couple of resumes in town and then at the mall because they were hiring seasonal. I ended up getting an interview at a clothing store and they offered me the job 40 minutes post interview. I know, that despite the anxiety I feel about starting all over again somewhere new, I am excited about this. That's really what I have to remind myself about. One of the major perks is being able to wear sweatpants to work, provided they are the sweatpants from the company, which is pretty fantastic.

I've also started my grade 11 biology class. It's all prep so that I can apply to nursing school this year to start in the fall of 2012. It's a long ways away, and it's another one of those things where sometimes I think, whats the point? Why am I even trying because I'm doomed to fail always and why even put the time in. Why not give up while I'm ahead and then I can say I at least failed on my own terms. I seriously don't even know how to change my thinking, except to just keep fucking moving forward, even if it's baby steps.

Moving forward.

Eyes open. 

allthewaytonyc

I don't know where I'm at these days, and not even in the "oh god, everything is so awful, I'm so confused, nothing is making sense", kind of way. I can't quite put my finger on it. Things, haven't been going so great, but I don't feel so...stuck? Is that even the right word? It's one I've been using a lot lately to describe myself.

It's 1:05am. I've got to stop doing this. I've been watching the Manhattan in Motion video in repeat, because really, right now, I long to belong to the city. I long for that moment I got off at the wrong subway stop and didn't care. All that mattered was running down 14th street with an oversized suitcase behind me because the city was waiting for me, someone was waiting for me and that fucking moment she opened the door and I threw my arms around her and held on for longer than necessary because I knew what it felt like to belong again. To be apart of something. What I wouldn't give for that moment. I catch glimpses of it, sometimes can feel it in the quietest parts of myself and it all just comes rushing back in. All of it. The street vendors in times square and running in the water at Coney Island and the ice cream truck pulling away from us and Italian dinners and guzzling water and garlic na'an and I swear to god, somedays, it feels like yesterday. Like, if I reached out I could touch those moments. Hold them in my hands.

There's a lot to update on, and it's 1:15am and all I can think about is laying on the couch eating Crumbs cupcakes with you and not caring about the calories while we watched Coming and Going and it had to be have been one of the most monumental moments of my short life so far. And maybe its because for the first time in what felt like for fucking ever, I was enough. Who I was, was just enough and there was no pretending. No anything. It was all just enough.

If I close my eyes and quiet my mind, some nights it feels like I never left. The steady hum of the air conditioner? The traffic and sirens and people outside, the cat squawking in the other room.

It's just all so god damn beautiful.

in a frozen ground

I've been meaning to blog for ages. And it's not that I haven't had the time, it's just that I haven't had the energy. Also, I'd much rather be sitting in a Starbucks and blogging, however, getting there is next to impossible now that my car has broken down. It's done. It's a goner. It broke down a week ago while I was on my way to go and get gas. I knew the car was a ticking time bomb and just waiting to go off. It belonged to my brother who left it here when he move six hours away for school. He left it here to die.

Simple, right? Oh no. Not at all. Earlier that morning my mom had asked me to bring my dad down to her work in said car because she needed someone to stay with my grandpa while she and my grandma were running to an appointment. She only asked my dad to come because a) She knows I don't feel comfortable being alone with my Grandpa (which has everything to do with how he treats my grandma) and b) She didn't want my dad just chilling home alone. All fine and dandy, yes? Yes. Until we actually get to the coffee house (did I mention mid way to my moms work she calls me and says meet at the coffee house instead) and there is no parking. I've been driving less than a month, and still getting the in's and outs of parking, and when given the option, I always pull through or back in because I hate backing out of a parking space. So the only spot available I could back into, but I wasn't quite sure how to maneuver the car being on the other side of the road (sounds simple, right? Not for me.) ANYWAYS, this erupted a huge fight between me and my dad which ended with him calling me a "Fucking Bitch," and then throwing a kleenex box at me and storming out of my car. And of course, I reacted horribly. I called my mom and told her I was done, I was over it and blah blah blah.

Somehow, this translated into me getting into trouble. Yes. YES. I was pretty upset. When I explained to her what happend a few hours after the fact (she had to rush to the appointment), it didn't go well at all. In fact, she told me it was my fault and that I provoked him. FIRST, she told me that when she asked my dad what had happened he had no idea why I was so upset and that I just kicked him out of the car and all this other bull shit. Yeah, okay. So when I explained to her what happend, I of course was told it was my fault and that my FIRST mistake was provoking him. What's that? Oh right, the woman who just got punched in the face by her husband, that was her fault too, wasn't it? I cannot even begin to fathom what that felt like. I was screaming in my car, SCREAMING. The wind was knocked out of me. I couldn't breathe. My mother? Saying this? TO ME? I hung up and went inside and started throwing all of my shit into my suitcases. I didn't even know what I was packing and what I needed, I just kept grabbing things and throwing them in. My sister ended up calling me because my mom informed her what had happened and it was a nightmare. I threw everything into the trunk and I'm not sure where exactly I thought I was going to go. I ended up at Starbucks just to clear my head and when my other sister told me she was on her way home I decided to go home as well, and that is when, my car quit on me.

I have never been so terrified in my entire life. I was going uphill (and I drive automatic) when it started to feel like it was shifting back and forth and not working properly. So once I was over the hill, I accelerated and did not speed up. Pedal to the floor and my car would not go above 40. The RPM was in the red zone. I flicked my flashers and pulled over, turned off the car and of course, it would not turn back on. So I sat in my car and sobbed. I called my sister who came and got me while we figured out what exactly to do with the car. I couldn't afford 100$ for a tow. My mom was livid. And I knew that there was nothing that I did wrong. That car was here to die, and whether I hadn't gone out that day at all and left the next day when our fight blew over, the car still would have quit. But with everything that happened in the morning, kaboom. World War 3.

Things have settled down since then. My mom has apologized, which means a lot to me. Apologized for the things she said to me that day, and for the way she's responded to things I've told her within the past few weeks. I feel like we've made some progress (?), but at other times I feel like we've just acknowledged how fucked up everything is. I have gotten so close to telling her that she just isn't the same mom that she used to be now, post diagnosis, and that makes me angry. It makes me angry because I'm 21 and I still need my mother. It makes me angry because I feel forced to drop things I'm trying to work through because they are suddenly "less important" than what's going on. Miniscule in the overall picture? To her? Maybe. I don't know. But to me? Not at all. This is my life, and I've been mixed up and on the wrong path for eight and a half years. Change doesn't happen overnight, and I feel like I've been making so much important progress since coming home from NYC. Since therapy and now Koom Bi A.  But I feel, I don't know. Guilty for it? Bad? Or no, I feel like I'm supposed to feel guilty for that and bad for that. Bad that my dad is being robbed of his brain and instead of focusing on making him comfortable and spending time, I'm focusing on myself and trying to sort my life out. I'm angry at my mom. I'm angry because I'm 21 and I'm trying to sort out my life and fix things and figure things out and this is the most crucial time in my life, or it feels like that. And it's...I feel like, I feel like she wants to take that away from me. And I don't mean that in a horrible sense of "My mom is such a bitch!" I mean, it scares her to know she has limited time with her husband, and I think that translates to her being scared of the limited time her children have left with their father. And maybe she's right, maybe my friends are right, maybe one day I'll look back on this and regret that I didn't care enough. That I put myself first. That instead of spending that "limited time" with him, I chose to invest so much time into my life. But, what else can I do at this point? I think of where I was before NYC this summer - before Jill - before those nights of sleeping on her futon thanking a god I don't believe in for letting me remember what it feels like to be alive - and I can't...I can't go back to that. I can't go back to that miserable, sick, sad girl who hated the idea of another day, of a tomorrow morning. What kind of "limited time" can even be spent if I'm spending my days binging and purging and over exercising and literally begging to fucking die. I can't do that anymore. I literally don't have it in me.

And so this is where I am. Neither here, nor there. It's been a rough week. It's been a bitch, but I have to be proud of myself for the things I have accomplished in spite of that. The fact that as much as I was just ready to bail, I didn't. As much as I didn't want to go to Koom Bi A on Tuesday, I went. In spite of how much my family makes me feel like shit for needing medication, I made the appointment to talk to my doctor.

I can do this, and that terrifies me.

But I can do this.

Seriously over life right now.

10072011

I've been staring at a blank screen for like 45 minutes. I don't know what to write about today. I don't know how to write about today. I hurt.

I've just been camped out in my room because at least here I can pretend that I'm choosing to isolate, instead of my mom ignoring me. It's so weird that I fight like cats and dogs with my sister Melissa, yet whenever shit like this happens and nobody is "on my side," Melissa still talks to me. Still acknowledges me. Still goes to bat for me.

I'm a fucking mess.

tears of an angel

I really don't know how to explain it. I wish I did. I feel like when the night comes around, I'm a completely different person than I am during the day. It's like, the sun goes down and the world goes to bed and I can feel myself lose hope, lose optimism, lose my belief in myself. I don't get it. I honestly don't fucking understand it. My family is all curled up in their beds sleeping and I'm laying awake wondering what I'm doing with my life, wondering if I'll ever figure it out, wondering what would happen if I just didn't wake up in the morning.

When I used to lay awake years ago, I would dig my fingers into my palms because I couldn't bear to touch my body. I couldn't bear to run my hands over my legs, thighs, hips, stomach, arms...I couldn't bear to know I had a body, was a body. I fucking disgusted myself. I lay awake now like 40 pounds heavier and wonder why I'm fighting. I feel my heart beat and sometimes it just fucking hurts. I don't know. I'll wake up tomorrow, I'll read this entry and I won't even fucking recognize the person who wrote it until the sun sets and then I'll read it and slip into this silhouette that follows me throughout the day and know exactly who wrote it, will feel it.

I remember back in 2009 before christmas holidays, I was walking in the wet snow at night to Union Station to catch my train back home. It was so could outside, but I felt it from the fucking inside. Like nothing, fucking nothing could warm me up or thaw me out. I just remember walking, drinking starbucks from a christmas cup with Greg Laswell on repeat on my iPod. I was so fucking suicidal and avoided the subway because I knew I would probably jump in front of it if I went down into the tunnel. And so I just fucking walked on feet that ached and I was tired and cold and lost and hadn't eaten in four days. I was so fucking lost, I was so god damn lost and some nights, that image is just glued to the back of my eyelids and I cannot get away from it.

I don't get it. I lay here, every night, thinking that all I can and will ever amount to is my eating disorder. That why I am even fighting for any sort of life when I'm not going anywhere. All my friends will graduate this year and start a new chapter of their lives and I haven't even made it through first year. I don't have a job. I'm fucking in love with someone and too much of a chicken shit to even do anything about it. I feel like I'm just...here...occupying space. Wasting space.

And then morning comes and I'm driving down ninth line in my car thinking about buying running shoes bceause I'm going to train for a marathon, and that my life is worth living and that I'm on my way to figuring everything out, it's just taking me a little bit longer than the rest and that that is okay.

And for now, thats enough to get me through the night.

Winter's coming.

pumpkin spice latte

I've neglected the blogging world, quite clearly. I can't believe it's already October. When did this happen? Since getting my drivers license last month (score!) I've been doing a lot of driving, and its just crazy to see that all the trees are changing colors and falling. I can tell that winter is coming, fall is definietly in the air. It worries me a little bit. I feel uneasy; I don't feel quite ready for it yet. I don't know, it's weird. Last year I sort of had this, take the bull by its horns attitude about winter and, it actually went alright? At this time last year I was settling into Fazooli's and its just so crazy to think that that was actually a year ago. Sometimes, everything just feels so far away.

September was a crazy busy month for me, as it usually is. I dont even know where to begin. School started a few days after my last entry on the 7th. But things in my house also took a turn for the worst. A lot of things happened between me and my mother, and when school finally rolled around, my head was in a completely different space. I couldn't focus in class. It felt wrong to be there, I couldn't stop crying. I honestly felt like I couldn't breathe in class, and I just ended up throwing my stuff into my bag and leaving. It was hard, because I honestly felt like I was at a point that I was ready for school, but then other things got a better hold of me and I just felt knocked off my feet. I withdrew from my classes. Cancelled my loans. It was the best decision for me. And if I want to be 100% honest, I didn't even feel myself belonging in my program or the class. I think, maybe, all along I knew that. Maybe all I really did want was to want to want school. If that makes sense. I've been doing a lot of thinking about it lately. I just...I don't even know what I'm doing at RU. I look at my reasons for transferring there in 2009 and its such a load of bull. It's not where I belong or what I even should be doing. That's the thing, I don't know what exactly I should be doing, but I've been learning the things that I shouldn't be doing. RU is one of them.

I feel like that is just a huge weight off my shoulders to admit. Like, it's something I've known deep down inside, but because I clung so tightly onto the idea of school I was afraid to speak it, breathe it, say it out loud because than what? Who knows. I've been doing a lot of looking into colleges lately. These days, colleges also pair with universities so you're getting dual training and a diploma as well as a degree. And the best part, its not so much at once. You can do your two years of college, take a break for a year or so and then go back to university to finish. Something so much more suited to my style of learning. My sister was telling me this morning that that would be perfect for me - that I could go back and start college in the Winter term and finish in less than two years if I wanted...That I could get a working holiday visa for Australia or the UK or somewhere and explore and travel and live and it's just...its so me. I mean, I'm not sure about traveling to the other side of the world, because I have this overwhelming need to always be near NY, but it's just. The idea of it all, isn't so suffocating. It's...refreshing?

In regards to the fight with my mother. It all boiled back down to my dad. Because it always does. I don't want to get too much into it, because god, it was fucking awful, but I don't know. I notice a huge difference in the person I am because of how I reacted to the situation. I reached out. I reached out to my sister, to my mom, to my friends, to people because I couldn't be on my own. I couldn't just absorb it like the sponge I am used to being because it was killing me. It was eating me alive to be on my own. And look what happens when you reach out. You move forward. You work through it. We've worked through it. Sometimes, the memory of it still stings, and I know that that is because it is all just so recent. But still.

My friend from the UK came to visit me at the end of the month for ten days. I'm talking about a girl I have known since I was 13 years old, who I never met. We had talked about this day, for god, 8 years. EIGHT YEARS in the making. There were some rough moments, as there always is when you are spending 24/7 with somebody for an extended period of time and I think her and I were both ready for some space by the last day, but saying goodbye was hard. Harder than I anticipated. It was hard to let go, to let her get on the bus and leave and know that its unsure of when we will get to see each other again. It's not like J or K in NY where it's just a bus ride away that I can hop on whenever I feel like it. We're talking about a fucking ocean. And ocean that did its best to keep us apart, but it was just...I don't even know how to talk about it and put it into words - that moment we actually hugged, because its just so god damn beautiful I'm afraid I can't even say it without imperfections and distortions because thats this world. It was just...and then walking away from the Bus Terminal, I felt empty. I felt like I had left something behind - sort of the empty hollowness I felt when I stepped on the subway last July in NYC and pulled out of Union Square away from J, away from the city. Away from my life.

We told each other...lets not wait 8 years again, okay?

And then, the next day, I lost one of my best friends to the United Kingdom as well. Packed up his belongings into two bags and got on a plane to start a new chapter of his life. It's weird. We spent the entire summer not talking to each other, and we fight more than cats and dogs and he irritates the hell out of me, but he is also always there for me. Will always be there for me, and goodbye was hard. I sometimes feel that all my friends lives are taking off and I'm still here. I'm still here trying to piece my own together and figure it out so I can have that - that moment where you literally feel you're life take flight and begin. I catch glimpses of it when I'm in New York, and I think thats why it's so hard to come home. To stuff myself into...a box?...my reality...here. But that's just it. It is my reality. And I'm learning to accept that and work with it and go with it. Everybody keeps telling me that I'm strong, that I'm figuring it out, that I'm moving forward even if it doesn't feel like it, and I just...I gotta believe them. I gotta believe that I am changing and evolving and moving forward even if I don't feel it, because the minute I stop, the minute I give in...it's over. I gotta make myself believe that I will make it, until one day, I really do. And I will. Right now I just...I feel like the world has more to offer me than I do it. And that's okay.

I imagine what all my friends are doing right now wherever they are. K and D in the UK. J and K in NY. My old roommate, my friends from high school....

I can't believe its October. Where has the year gone?