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Journal Entry
December twentieth, 1999
This week has been gruesome. I have gotten a maximum of three hours of sleep per night, and I wake up in the midst of it with crumbling shadows of a nightmare filling the room. It makes me afraid to close my eyes. It makes me afraid to move. Even in the sunlight. I feel like I am the vulnerable prey of some large beast in the corner (in the shadows of my nightmares . . . in the shadows in my room?). I binged without purging the other day. It was such a sharp impulse that I was unaware of what was happening. I hope it is an isolated incident. It made me feel so disgusted with myself. This morning at five a.m., I was up running through the kitchen. I hadn't eaten something substantial in so long that my hands were shaking, and moving made me dizzy. I was opening drawers and doors like a lunatic, flipping packages and boxes around to look at nutrition facts. Calories: 120, 150, 220, 140. There was nothing that I could eat without completely killing my rules. And that would have been . . . disastrous, or something of an equally deadly nature. In the end, I drank some diet Dr. Pepper and slid beneath the covers to toss and turn, sleepless, for four more hours. Every time I closed my eyes, they opened themselves in a rush. It was an awful, awful night for me. The one positive element is that I did get to see some good writers in action, earlier that night.
Somehow, I managed to drag my sorry posterior into school today. Peter gave me another /\/|\/\ poster to add to my broad collection. Trent Reznor is apparently going to be participating in an online thing tomorrow at eleven-thirty p.m. I'm hoping that I'll make it in. I have promises from two people that I'll get in, and I have their good wishes on my side, so we'll see what happens. I'm anxious about it, but… I'm thirteen years old. I have a long time left until my situation becomes hopeless. He's just such a great inspiration in everything I do . . . it may sound morbid, but in that grey area when there are still several hours until my designated eating times, I can see him or listen to his music and it's not quite as painful. That works with very few artists, for me. Maybe it helps me revel in my own emotional anguish, and that way I forget the physical stuff. J Either way… I don't know. Everything is so difficult to explain, for me. There are so few words in this language we speak, and the majority of them don't work at all.
I have gotten an admirable amount of writing done - at least, it's admirable considering how little I've been able to write - and even though very little of it is journaling, it helps a little bit. Because I know that I have improved. I'm still not that splendid a writer . . . but I need to give myself some time. I have a long wait ahead of me. I really think that my life will improve overall when I turn sixteen. (I have a few years left, but even my older friends have been planning ahead for me.) A friend of mine - who lives in an apartment, but is going to buy a house or something with another friend, soon - is willing to house me. Apparently, at the age of consent (which is sixteen in the state where I live), you can move out. As long as you have a job and a place to live, there's nothing that my mother can do about it. I know she would not forgive me for a long time, and call me all sorts of nasty names, but hopefully she wouldn't go through the whole legal process. I don't think she has the patience, or the money.
I've been finding it more difficult to exercise after I eat, lately. I have been gradually lowering my allowance, but it takes awhile. I need to get used to the drastic drop I took a couple of weeks ago. It's really taking its toll on me. But nevertheless, for some reason I am ceaselessly energetic, even going sleepless without too much fatigue the next day. I'm just so excited. I have been losing weight. Just knowing that I am still capable of some level of control, especially with something as important as weight . . . it's almost soothing, in a way. My mother doesn't even notice. I find it comical that she doesn't. My friends are the people who worry about me. The ones who care about my health. I don't like seeing them so afraid for me, but this is something I have to do. To prove to myself that I can do it. And I can do it. I have willpower that I didn't think I had, and energy that I didn't think I had, and resolve that I didn't think I had. I, personally, am pretty proud of how well I've been doing on this diet.
More next week, maybe
the monster is me.
It is a cruel hunger. It is physical, inside and out of me; it is emotional.
Can I defend myself?
I am immersed in a reservoir of screaming people. Their stern panic, how they struggle with it. They scold me. They represent their fear and attempt uselessly to defend it in the brutal court of my doubts. With their despondence and scolding, they are allowing this monster inside me to grow. They let this shadow wind its course through my veins and insides, letting it fill my muscles with fatigue. This ache. The ache of muscles becoming meals. This beast inside has an appetite that cannot be sated by food. Will not be sated by food. I refuse to let it.
I want to scream at them to stop, the people who scream at me. They cannot understand that they are feeding this beast. This gruesome thing that is becoming me. But I have no voice in this. The engine of my throat is flooded with dust. I am running on dust, blood, and cornflakes. I am feeding on my own muscles. This thing inside of me is ripping me apart and literally eating me alive.
Is this beast living inside of me. . . or am I living inside of it?
Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if I want to live. If I want to be better. Is it the monster telling me no? There is this void, this wide, deep gap inside of me. . . something that I want to die, to shrivel and disappear like clovesmoke inside the sky's greyed womb. Maybe that means that I want for me to die, too. Do I want myself to die? Often, I want it with a passion surpassing nothing else in my life that I have ever known. So often. I want to stop being. To curl up and hide and sleep until my life is something I enjoy, until I am pretty and happy and thin.
I'm pushing myself down, with this. Making myself slowly deteriorate. Right now, I want to take this to the stars. I want to go too far. I want to be extreme, and dead, and mad. More than that, I want to be contented with just being, but for now I want to starve. Right now, I want to take the sickness to the extreme. On the stained wings of an angel's corpse. This monster inside me that I am fighting. . .
. . .I am the monster. This is me, eating away at me, flooding myself with grief and loneliness. I have no one to fight but myself. There is no one to blame.
So what do I do now?
