But The Quest for Beauty is a Beast.
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Bedtime Thoughts & Cambodia
In some ways it is so odd, not having what my mom called, "the demons inside you." I feel so strange, not being controlled by food, the scale, the mirror, everything... Not having every thought center around weight loss, how I look, how fat I am, how ugly, despicable, worthless.
And I am so terrified. I shove the fear down. Down farther than my gut, into the unknown, where it only surfaces at night. I am afraid that I am not better, that my eating disorder is only in remission. Every night before bed I think about some of my hospitalizations, my first when I was thirteen, the long months spent on bedrest, the tubes... But the one memory that always comes up is the year I was at my sickest; I was seventeen, and had recently spent 9 1/2 months straight in two treatment centers and one hospital. My funds were exhausted and doctors were tired of me. If I lived or died was up to me. And I could't live, yet I wouldn't die. So I lingered between life and death, each breath difficult to take in, and each step excruciating.
Never in my life had I felt such pain. Never in my life could I suffer through it again.
I don't know why I am "better" now. I don't know what snapped, no huge reality hit, nothing changed. So why? This is why I fear relapse.
I am looking at going to do volunteer work in Cambodia this summer, to help girls who are being kept as sex-slaves. I want to go, but it requires $2,200 that I do not have. If I had known sooner I wouldn't have bought this computer, as my finances have now dwindled to a mere $200. I really want to help. I want to do all that I can. At my college one of my professors is going to have me speak about racism on campus, since I am one of the few students she has noticed who stands up against it. I sometimes wonder how I ended up here. I feel like I don't belong. A liberal, a democrat in a town of wealthy republicans, many of whom believe that the white race is superior to all others.
Sometimes, I guess you can only speak and do what you believe is right. If my eating disorder has taught me anything, it is that I am stronger than even I know.
1:04 AM - Friday, Feb. 25, 2005
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dying - living
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