I wonder sometimes, if any of this is real….if any of it is really chemical, really a disease…or if I’m just so selfish, so deceitful, so pathetic that I manage to create these problems. What I feel is real….but do I really have the control to stop it? No one really seems to believe…to care that I’m sick….no one seems to think of me as sick…just….I don’t know….attention-starved. Why am I so desperate to know how much weight I have to lose, how many times I have to purge, how many stitches I have to have to get a clinical diagnosis of…..anything…..anything that says I’m sick and not just a manipulative bitch. I told my mother I felt sick this morning…..I was so scared before she got here…..my heart was beating so fast and it was hard to really breathe. She told me I had said that six times since she’d been here. That’s when I realized that she had heard me each time….but she’d learned to ignore me. Eventually, I’ll shut up and it will “go away” or at least I’ll stop talking about it until I’m scared that I’m dying again. God, I can’t explain this to anyone. That’s what it feels like…like I’m going to pass out….like I’m going to die….alone…..with no one there….no one caring. I’ve been in therapy for five years. Five years. I’ve learned a lot in five years. But I’ve learned that people expect me to be so damned strong…..because my grandmother was, because my mother was…and is…….but I’m TIRED of being strong. I’m just not. I feel like I’m losing touch with reality and every time I try to tell someone that, I get this attitude….this look that says, “I’m ashamed of you. You only fall apart if you let yourself.” It’s not about that anymore. It’s not about letting myself….it’s about having no control over stopping it……and being the only person who realizes, who believes that I don’t have that control.

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