I haven't been sleeping well. I'm not an insomniac; when I go to bed, I have no problem falling asleep. But I hate going to bed. It makes me feel alone. It makes me feel defeated and empty.

Naturally, lack of sleep has a negative affect on me. My skin reacts violently, as does my hair and my appetite. I look terrible. I feel pretty awful, too. Day after day, I resolve to go to bed at a reasonable time, to try to get at least five hours of sleep, but when night approaches, I cannot face going to bed. I don't want to lie there and feel small and confined. I don't want to surrender to coziness and comfort. It feels like failure.

I've been having awful dreams. I don't remember them in the mornings, which I resent more than I can say. Upon waking, all I'm left with is some of their color, and the strange taste they've imparted on my tongue. I can't see them, so I can't face them, and that makes me angry. I wake up feeling drained, and try to piece the dreams together by sifting through their hues and odors of rust, but despite the effort, I'm left empty-handed.

A couple of nights ago, I remember dreaming that I was searching for something, or more specifically, for someone. Mind you, I don't remember the chronology of the dream, but I remember the process of searching. I never saw this person and never called the person's name, but I knew where this person was. I knew exactly. But in trying to get there, I kept encountering forces that spun me away, almost in jest, as if they were trying to throw me off course, like the blindfolded participant in Pin the Tail on the Donkey. That was the whole dream. The people, from what I remember, were entirely faceless, but their hands were perfectly clear. I was unable to speak, and just bounced from one pair of hands to the next, feebly reaching out.

Last night, I dreamed I was being strongly persuaded to do something I wasn’t comfortable doing. Like the previous dream, there were no words or faces that I remember, and I have no idea if there was any specific activity involved. I remember the dark red and orange colors, and I remember a feeling of being pressed. Again, there were no faces, but many hands. There was not a sense of immediate danger, and there was no violation of a violent or sexual nature, but I remember hating the situation I was in, and feeling like I had been backed inescapably into a corner.

I wake from these dreams feeling sad and dirty. They make me feel ugly on every level.

I’m not depressed. I’ve seen depressed, and this is not depressed. This is work.

I’ve often thought of eating disorders as a sort of prolonged self-rape. The sufferer violates herself through cruel control of something that is supposed to be completely natural, even beautiful. She beats herself into submitting to truly foreign and inhuman behaviors. She wantonly ignores her most basic instincts. Her body says “No” as it wastes away, it says “No” by signaling with heart palpitations and blackouts, it says “No” by digesting its most vital bone and tissue cells, and still she persists. With bulimia, the rape analogy is a bit more graphic: There is an insertion of a foreign object or substance into an orifice, which whams in and out, either physically or chemically, until a discharge results. It’s a trauma.

I hope I’m done with that shit. At the same time, I miss it. I miss the familiar beginning and end of the cycle. I long for the control. I forget how to eat. I forget how to sleep. I feel new, and so far from myself.

I’m OK. I go out, I have fun, I laugh. I’m trying to learn a balance of how to do that while feeling things I never let myself feel before. I’m feeling things that I used to repress or expel, and yeah, that’s awesome, but I feel stunted and flawed.

It has always amazed me, the capacity we humans have to lie to ourselves. On some level, we are fully aware of our harmful actions. Somehow, and sometimes quite vividly, I was aware of what I was doing to myself, and why I was doing it. I knew it was not healthy to binge and purge, but it helped distract me from myself. It got me out of my head. Admittedly, it got me out of my head through me sticking my head in the toilet, but it provided an external distraction from some frightening internal feelings. I’ve always been … absorbent, I guess. I soak things up, I feel too much, and I don’t know what to do with what I find. (So I’d puke it into the toilet? Bright girl.) It was my coping mechanism, a way of controlling and forgetting.

Most importantly, it was MINE.

It was also STUPID.

Like I said, I knew exactly what I was doing to myself. I knew that the deeper I went and the more I lied to myself, the harder it would be to wade out again. Ultimately though, I think that either the truth wins out or you die. It may be hard to bust through it, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort to erect and maintain the fortress that keeps you away from yourself.

Lookit me and all my melodrama: “My soul is a fortress of LIES!”

I’m really sorry.

Some kind friends have said they are proud of me, they think me brave for finally and honestly fighting this crap that I brought on myself. Thanks guys, really, I am constantly overwhelmed by your sweetness and your generosity. The fact that people like you love me has always been my saving grace. I don’t know what I think about the existence of God, but I pray, in my way, that whatever Power you do believe in blesses you. Because I am blessed, in my way, because of you.

I don’t feel brave. I feel little and weak and stupid. I feel like an ungrateful, teary-eyed, bleeding-heart moron. I feel like someone gave me a perfect treasure, and I deliberately took a huge bite out of it and spat the mouthful into the gutter before running the rest of the treasure along the pickets of a fence. I feel like a fool.

Again, this is not depression. I’ll be ok. This is work.

Look: our lives are like the houses we occupy until we die. It isn’t always up to you how big your house is or what it looks like, but in all situations, it takes work to make the house into a home. I’m doing some serious spring-cleaning and renovation right now. The gutters have gotten out of control and the basement needs cleaning, but I’ll weed my way through it.

I’m also not deluding myself that I’ll experience some glorious, phoenix-esque rebirth after all this shit is sussed. I’m not going on to a spanking new, gold-gilded page of my life, I’m just going on. I don’t mean that in an existential way. I’m just learning how to be.

First, I’m learning how to sleep.

It's raining today, and yesterday I could smell spring.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

One-Armed Paper Hanger Earns her Wings - 07.29.05

Sugar & Lemon - 07.28.05

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