When I was being tutored for the SAT , one of the passages was about a girl who was the "happy one" out of her deep, twisted, depressed group of friends. They were all smart, funny and beautiful, but all not right in the head. I wish I had friends like that.

I wish I could be truly happy, like everyone around me. I wish I could shake off this torment, this questioning of existence. I wish I wasn't a masochistic and a perfectionist. I don't understand why I still want to die when I'm in a land of potential with parents and friends who take help me take advantage of it. I think, if I was a poor rural woman somewhere far away, birthing children in a hut...I know I'd already be dead. Have you ever read The Awakening?
Perhaps I am ungrateful, perhaps I am trapped--I don't know, and neither gives any solace. Look at me, having overcome my social anxiety. A success story with everything going for her, a paragon, a winner. Talking to everyone, laughing with everyone, joining in on life with everyone. So I'm not afraid of people anymore. But,
I'm still afraid.

I should be spending my time wisely, but I suppose I'm not wise. I'm uninspired to do anything, except perhaps write here. What is there to say though? Alright, here are the more mundane things that have been on my mind.

I have finally found the ecstasy of sex. It still amazes me that I'm not eligible to birth the next Jesus anymore...nope, any pregnancy would be due to carelessness; miracles are reserved for the innocent.

The medicine never lets me reach the pinnacle, but only since this week have I found it even remotely pleasant. Three months into nonvirginity; I was starting to get scared that I was permanently numb.
I wonder if I should tell my mother. Her opinions of me seem so innocent, so sterile...I don't want to tarnish myself in her eyes. In the same way, I won't tell M about anorexia. He knows about my cutting, my drinking, my depression, but not this. The bones that peak through my skin, casting shadows; the concavity of my stomach when I lie under him; the sharp, feminine jawline that he's told me he loves so much... I refuse to darken his eyes.

Sometimes I think I am working myself to death. Sleep and food collide into an abyss of half-existence--I barely know how many hours I've slept or remember what I've eaten last. Is that faintness I feel? Or just me being a detached ethereal being, as always. I can't tell. Am I losing weight or staying the same? How skinny am I, to others' eyes? Do I look like I'm dying? Does something else give it away? My frozen lips, my frantic hands, my lifeless eyes. I

can't tell.

Purgatory

I wonder if I should tell my therapist about this blog. No doubt, it isn't conducive to my progress "forward."
But I love all of you here. I love reading about your lives, your thoughts. I love how kind you are to me and to everyone and anyone in need. I love how truthful you are, how candid and real. I love your eloquence--no matter how much some of you may deny it, every single one of you takes my breath away with the beauty etched on my screen. And I love how strong you are, we are. On the edge of a cliff, teetering but steadying ourselves before its too late. Surviving, despite such fragile souls that almost seem meant to break.

I am so saddened to see people leave and abandon their blogs. Even if they are doing so to recover--for me, at least, there would be so much to miss. And then the others that go to the hospital and never come back...then the sadness becomes painful.

This place is purgatory. People come and people go, but this place never changes. It is a netherland veiled by fog and limbo, a place where lostlings huddle in the dark for warmth.
We are all lost here.

I despise English teachers. Painfully stupid sorority-type girls who, with every ounce of stupidity they lose, gain a gallon of bitchiness. To study to become an English teacher, or even that major in general, is laughably easy and I bet they had ample time to procrastinate with partying. Now they are obsessive mothers who enjoy being pregnant every other year, and get extra money by bullshitting their way through a school subject. I am a bionengineer that loves to write, and it almost embarrasses me to know that I have some connection with them.

Writers, however, are another species altogether. Writing is an art with severe restrictions, trying to convey the unexplainable with mere words. When one is compelled to express something so vast, it is because one yearns to be understood. Is tortured by it, is detached by it, and is lost--so lost--in it.

Anyway, excuse that rant. I've decided I need a set of goals to adhere to this year.
1. Don't die. (intentionally or accidentally)
2. Try to do well in school without punishing yourself for every misstep.
3. Don't go down a spiraling abyss of addiction that will violate the above.
4. Don't push people away.
5. Don't think too much. Or, don't go down the rabbit hole.

You'll be free child once you have died,
from the shackles of language, and measurable time.
And then we can trade places, play musical graves,
till then walk away
walk away
walk away walk away

I went to therapy, the first time since last school year. A new therapist, but a friend of my old one so it's ok. They both have said that I seem bright. They both had met me with a hint of puzzlement, hidden but I could see. Prodding me, trying to figure out why I was there.

I don't have relationship problems. My family isn't scarred by addictions (I doubt my mother's furniture hoarding counts, comparatively). I was never raped, thank the gods, and I live in a town that is clean-cut and poised to nurture a bright little girl.

But I cut, and problem drink, and restrict and occasionally purge. I write in a blog within an Ana Community. I too often crashcrashcrash, and I wonder how anyone could survive without these things I cherish.

Yes, I was trapped in a manipulative friendship for years, but that's more than twelve months into the past. Now my life is perfectly normal--or simply "perfect." I doubt it could get any better, putting regrets aside. I am ontherighttrack, with everything to gain and nothing to lose.
So what's wrong with me?

"I always like to ask my patients what they want to change in their life with DBT. What do you want to change?"
Nothing. This is perfection. This is as stable as it gets.
"I don't know."

Numb

I've never been so numb. I could cut for ever, and still find stone.

Eyes Fall Out

I am too aware. It is killing me inside, to observe the world around me as a sociological article expressing the patterns that seem so cliched to me (from reading "New York Times" excessively, no doubt). I see the college fervor in every one of my classmates--the AP and Ivy-bound, secluded to our own classes. Intelligent or at the very least fanatical, and cutthroat in the subtlest way. A pure reflection in the book I'm reading, Catalyst.

And here I am playing my part, being a sheep to all of it. Getting tutored for the SATs, ACTs, SAT II, APs like the comfortable middle class straight-A student that I am. Supportive parents that will pay anything for fluff and test improvement and practice books and any intellectual (college-recognized) thing I want to do. Watching my peers do the same, watching kids who are out partying drunk every weekend get into my rigorous classes because of their pushy parents. Watching the freshmen come in armed for it all. Might just be me, but I see a lot of superskinny beautiful young girls filing in. Dressing in the bohemian shirts that make them look even smaller, clutching books to their sides. Who has time to eat anymore?

And I am their role model. The Renaissance Girl of our time, yeah. Fashion, figure? Got it. Culture, intellect? Got it. Resources, ambition? Got it. Aren't I going places, the urbanite hipster who's got it allundercontrol just like the unsmiling, pensive girls sitting in a forest in expensive clothes in Urban Outfitters. Starving, most likely, but they are beautiful girls in beautiful drapery set against beautiful landscapes. Dream come true. There eyes beg of something more, but why ask for too much out of life? Dream come true.

"Can you open your eyes to wide?" she asked. "Because mine have fallen out of their sockets."

Back :D What a plane ride though, 14 hours in transit, with a cold no less.. But this is what I've learned in list form:

1. The younger generation, and the youth-oriented cities, are hardly different than America. Okok, besides the 17th century churches on every block in Moscow and the old palaces lining the canals of St. Petersburg. The malls, the cafes, the band posters...forget any thoughts of the Soviet Union for sure.

2. The fashion (did you know this was coming? XD) EVERYONE, I'm talking like one-third of the whole population, wears black leather jackets and skinny jeans. I was so exotic-looking with my long hippie skirt and baggie hoodie it was unbelievable, haha. The women are so tall and yet they *still* don 6-inch heels as if walking on cracked sidewalks in stilettos is a piece of cake. I, honestly, felt so short and pudgy next to them..
Oh, and just about everyone smokes as well. The only thing that makes me hesitate to go abroad to Russia is that I'd be so tempted to expand my bad habits.

3. I feel like Russia is still coming of age, shaking off the communist era as its youth grow up in a different world. The communist regime wasn't bad for Russians, but rather different. And now there are kids being born, such as my tour guides little son, who haven't even spent their childhood in Russia. I see on the street old women in layers and handkerchiefs, looking out of place--lost. And then I visit a classroom of young kids, talking about their videogames and their cellphones... It is just a world apart. I feel like the whole of Russia is holding its breath, neither here nor there--waiting for those unfettered eyes to prove themselves.