I keep this journal for myself; all of my entries are personal and written simply because I sometimes feel the need to write. The majority of it is public, so there is no need to add me if you simply wish to lurk my thoughts. If you would like to however, feel free. You know what to do.

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Today I went to the fair with a new friend of mine. It was a small festival at the church a few blocks up from my house, just a few rides and a couple local bands playing in a set up under a circus type tent. I wore my new floral print halter dress from Anthropologie and a lovely old pair of thong sandals that rubbed the delicate skin in between my toes raw but looked adorable. We rode everything but the ferris wheel (I have an irrational fear of heights), and attempted to win a cheap stuffed animal by shooting down a row of plastic ducks (no such luck). The air was warm and I welcomed the sun shining hot on my face after so many weeks of being cooped up in my dreary house, curled up in winter blankets with tragic love stories written by suicidal poets. It felt so good to smile, to talk, to walk arm in arm with this lovely new friend who made me laugh with the abandon of a little girl. When we got home I made dinner and we had vegan tacos and diet Coke; I changed into my pajamas and we sat in the living room with the window wide open and the cool night air rushing in and watched Twin Falls Idaho. I didn't think about the future, fat, or my miserably failed relationships even once the entire day; I cannot remember the last time I felt so content, so comfortable, so unburdened.

I want to bottle this day, these feelings, take a swig whenever I let my broken heart get the best of me. I am afraid to go to sleep tonight, to put my happiness to bed. It is so rare, and I am afraid it will be fleeting.

Perhaps you are a stone, but despite my attempts to harden myself and achieve unbreakable-ness, my outcome is always more like an icicle: cold and hard in appearance, from a distance seemingly unbreakable, but quick to shatter with the first fall, and impossible to hold. I will always melt underneath your touch (or even the mere memory of such), I will always splinter into shards with each rattle or shake.

2009, so far, has found me at my highest weight since 2003. Driven by a series of chain reactions, my weight in the last month or so has skyrocketed to a number that will certainly not be divulged.

At the end of the summer I made the choice to leave my eating disorder behind me and to begin a new stage of personal growth in my life. Nearly a year later I'm having this strange moment of lucidity. Obviously my strict regimen fell through. It takes an incredible amount of focus and determination to be able to force yourself into a chrysalis of spiritual growth. It isn't something that can be done easily or very well in the city and it certainly isn't something that can be done while working and going to school. It needs it's own time.

My life is in puzzle pieces. With all of the opposing things that I want to do, how do I resolve them together and find my path?

I can say this: I haven't purged in 5 months. I used to think that I'd be bulimic forever, that it wasn't something that would ever stop haunting me, that even if I were to stop then I'd still face a battle against it every day of my life. But I don't, right now. I haven't in a long time.

But at some point eating strictly for health turned into eating sensibly; and eating sensibly turned into eating what I wanted; eating what I wanted turned into eating whatever I wanted; then, eating whatever I wanted turned into enjoying everything I wanted, whether I was hungry or not, which in turn became eating whatever was available and stopping only to sleep.

Turns out that bulimia wasn't the one that got me. My real demon is older, from days long forgotten. My childhood COE. I'm a food addict, not a bulimic, at my most basic level.

I've come full circle. I remember this moment so clearly, so long ago. Am I just repeating the cycle now or is the circle finally closed?

In the last four days, except for a very unfortunate social outing (this is why I can't have friends, I forgot) involving a trip to a Chinese buffet, all I've taken in has been lots of tea, water, soy milk, various raw fresh vegetables, and three apples.

I don't want this for myself. I have goals far beyond those that can be mapped out on a bathroom scale. Still, if it will take me back to my low weight, I can already feel myself embracing old habits with open arms.

These days, I realize it's all about strength. I ended 2008 thinking about the words, "the love you take is equal to the love you make". I thought about the people I had seen and the things that I had seen in people, the places I had been, the experiences I opened (and closed) myself up to. I wondered if the changes that I had undergone were at all influenced by the company I kept or, if, for once, I had finally started thinking for myself.

Until now I have usually begun each year by telling myself, "new year, nothing new". Until now I have always felt really stable at the end of every year, sure of my direction, of my friends, of my relationships. Ready to carry on each year into the next, ready to reinvent myself as someone I might love. This year, though, things are more in transition than ever and the only thing I am sure of, the only thing that I can finally carry with me, is myself. For the first time in the new year, I feel more fortunate than ever. I have no complaints.

My only resolution is to be true.

Right now is my birthday and I'm thinking about what it means to be a year older.

This past year I have:
- realized what it feels like to be single, and an adult, after growing up in relationships.
- realized that I knew very little about myself without being in the context of someone else, and this needs to change if I want to be truly happy.
- realized that I don't like not having someone to share my life with, yet this doesn't affect my freedom to be an individual.
- realized that if I'm not going to live up to what I want to be, or what I think I can be, then I am a waste of fortune and space.

If I had to choose just one thing to be thankful for in this lifetime, it would be the way that things happen to me. I won't deny it now, I am thankful that I never have a moment to be bored, to be less engaged in my life than I should be. Lying in bed with a Bob Dylan book in my lap and I read:

"Well, my road it might be rocky,
the stones might cut my face -
But as some folks ain't got no road at all,
they gotta stand in the same old place -
Hey, hey
So I guess I'm doing fine."

Today I was debating fashion as legitimate art form. The person I was talking to was saying that fashion is just a commodity, a symbol of status and capitalism at work. The fact is, virtually everything has been corrupted by capitalism so it's really a useless statement to make. People buy and sell visual works of art; one would not call a Dali painting a commodity.

Clothing is expression. I put effort into the way I dress because I like colors and patterns and textures and experimenting with different combinations of them all to produce something interesting. Designers work the same way Picasso or M.C. Escher would - they gather their materials and create to express themselves. Clothing channels personality and expresses a certain vision or concept. Yes, their works are reproduced and a variety of people use them, but it is exactly the same thing with art. Painters don't usually make their own paint, they use colors already created and mix them in a way that appears new and exciting. Collage artists often take other people's images but arrange them in a way so as to make them their own. It's exactly the same with choosing clothing to wear. Sure, you are wearing other people's creations, but the way you mix them and organize them makes it something completely your own. Everything is recycled.

Fashion is really only a status to some people, but likewise intelligence, or knowledge of the economic conditions and such are people's ways of gauging status - it's just a different hierarchy.

No more food, no more sex. No more need. I must free myself from the complications that clutter my insides and make life seem such a burden. There has to be an escape from the heaviness of humanity. There has to be something other than these thoughts of him and such desperate longing. I have to be more than a body waiting and wishing to be used. Why am I so eager to please, to give away parts of myself to make others happy when I, myself am not happy?

I don't want to feel him inside of me any longer. Turn inside out, scrape myself clean.

"When I was five years old I saw an insect that had been eaten by ants and of which nothing remained except the shell. Through the holes in its anatomy one could see the sky. Every time I wish to attain purity I look at the sky through flesh."

Disco Pigs is an Irish film released in 2001. It is the story of Runt (Elaine Cassidy) and Pig (Cillian Murphy ♥), born on the same day, in the same hospital, moments apart. Twins, all but by bloodline. Inseparable from birth, they are almost telepathic. They are one, needing no one else, inhabiting a delicate, insular and dangerous world where they make their own rules and have their own language. They are also partners in crime, with an appetite for recklessness, exploration and destruction. But days before their 17 th birthday the perfect balance of their world begins to shift. Pig's sexual awakening and increasing jealousy begins to threaten their private universe. Unable to contemplate the loss of Runt, Pig’s unpredictable nature spirals out of control in a trail of violence and destruction. The inseparable are about to separate, and which one will survive will depend on which one can break free.

This film isn't for everybody, however, it is a film that shows fragments of human life that are not normally explored on the silver screen: The story of two people who are so intrinsically linked that when separated they cease to function on a normal level, and slowly descend into a permanent state of obsession, confusion and frustration.

Disco Pigs is Trainspotting in a clever conversation with Milan Kundera. Romeo and Juliet flirting with Primo Levi. Jane Austen discussing the ideas of true and heart-felt love with Sebastian Faulks over a slice of hot apple pie, with Richard Kelly eagerly taking notes. An honest mixture of genres and exploration of the human mind, captured beautifully on 35mm strips of film.

( I wish the sea would take me out of me and turn me into something else. )

Today I:

Woke up and made some green tea with honey; that was all I had for breakfast. I could have done without the honey; it's all sugar carbs.

Answered a few text messages, three of which were from my ex boyfriend, none of which were from my current crush. ("Crush" is such a juvenile word. I am no pigtailed schoolgirl scrawling his name into the margins of my notebooks - but how else to describe an unrequited longing?)

Tried on all of my clothes to find that most of my jeans are too big for me now. I stuck my arm down the waistband of the pair I chose to wear for the day and smiled to myself.

Walked to the grocery store and bought a few boxes of Boca burgers, a twelve pack of diet Coke, a bag of organic baby carrots, soy yogurt, chocolate rice milk, and cat litter. The guy at the checkout counter had gorgeous pale green eyes and the shaggy black emo bangs and heavily applied eyeliner of every other angsty suburban teenaged boy. He was cute though. He flashed me a grin full of perfect white teeth and said that he liked my shirt (Sex Gang Children, I was surprised that he recognized them - although he may simply have liked the design). I smiled back and found myself wishing that I was 16 again.

Skipped the gym because my Grandad had to go to the dentist and get a tooth pulled. He won't be able to eat any solids for four days. Lucky bastard.

Drove to the doctor with my Grandad to pick up his Vicodin prescription. I pocketed a few before handing him the bottle. They're sitting on my nightstand now, a small white pile, taunting me. You're a pitiful excuse for a granddaughter. You aren't to be trusted. Swallow us all and he'll be much better off...

Now I am sitting on my bed in a Hello Kitty pajama shirt that has long since been too big, halfheartedly picking at a tray of leftover sushi, the down comforter I've wrapped myself in and portable heater going at full blast failing to relieve the bitter chill drifting in through the cracks in my window. I am listening to The Mars Volta's Amputechture, remembering the first night I heard it, curled up with JB on his borrowed couch, my hands in is hair, his lips on my neck. I am trying to remember what it feels like to be touched, and at the same time, trying to forget. I close my eyes and can hear the echo of his voice in my head, feel his teeth pressing sharply into the soft flesh at the base of my neck as he whispers - barely audibly - "I want to hurt you." I doubt that this is what he had in mind.

I shuffle through each day like a zombie; somehow my body manages daily tasks with hardly any input from my brain. Hours, days, weeks, months pass by and I am scarcely aware. I wonder sometimes if this is simply what life is like. You grin and bear, settle for what you can get and simply... make it through.

You cannot for one moment think that by electing one person the world will change. Be that as it may, the showing of democracy this election year was as close to pure as it gets. The sheer force of will that one person can inspire in people - people not just in America but all over the world - is extraordinary.

I believe in democracy once again. I believe in this one man because of what he represents and what people have made him into. No, Obama will not change the world. The being he has created however, will. People from all over the world support him. He has defeated apathy; he has changed the way America feels about politics. That sense of alienation, of hopelessness has all but evaporated. Once again people realize that the power is in their hands. That is the single most important thing of all.

Whatever happens with Obama, if he fails or succeeds, if the economy continues on it's spiral, if the war continues, if poverty is a constant and the western world collapses - we have been shown what a vote can do.

Sometimes it seems as though everything I see, everything I hear and experience exists for the sheer purpose of making me hurt. It feels like all the things I have ever wanted but have never been able to get are positioned in front of me just out of my reach - close enough to make me hope and obsess, but far enough away so that I don't have a chance in hell of ever getting them. I wish I could be blind to these things, drive them out of my mind; but they are incessant.

I long to scream, but instead I suffocate my anger; I swallow it down into my stomach and attempt to starve it into submission. I long to cry, instead I sit and stare at a blank computer screen waiting for the pain to go away.

All days are the same. All hours run together; existence is seamless. But despite my life's completely stagnant state, I cannot avoid getting older. I cannot escape time. I cannot outrun myself. Starving does not prevent my existing; being smaller in a physical sense does not make me actually, substantially less.

No one cares whether they hurt me. No one pays any mind to how their words and actions affect me. I am afraid that despite taking up an inordinate amount of space that I am, indeed, invisible.

I no longer want to be a woman. I want everything that is soft and desirable demolished. I want to be angular and androgynous. I want to be hard edged, like a blade, cutting through all of this superficial need.

I wish I could be a different person. I could be a different person... or I could just completely regress, and spend the rest of my life under the bed with wine and books, and the occassional Xanax. Recent events seem to be encouraging the latter.

I never want to meet another human being as long as I live. This is difficult to accomplish when one has to go out into the world each day. A world full of people. Tons of them, swarming everywhere. Because of my job I am forced to look at them, to smile, interact. I have to hear my name in the mouths of strangers, and it makes me shudder. I don't know why. I suppose it's just too familiar; I dislike being known. I wish that I could lock myself up, become invisible. I don't like the look on people's faces when they see me, that "I want to talk to you. I want to get to know you. I want to get inside you. I want to be your friend." look. I DON'T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!!!! I don't want to be anyone's friend! No, that isn't completely honest. The truth is, no one really wants to be my friend. Unfortunately, they rarely figure that out until after a relationship has already been established, and I have become completely infatuated and permanently fused my lips to their asshole. Maybe the solution is not to completely shut human beings out of my life and begin having conversations with the stray kittens that frequent my backyard, but to just... stop caring. I'm sure I would mind much less when my relationships end if I simply didn't put anything into them in the first place.

I have grown just a little too fond of a boy who wouldn't love me with his heart stapled to a ten foot pole. I am never good enough, and it wears me down quite a bit.

I hate how new heartbreaks send me back to old habits, to people and things I thought I had left behind long ago. It's like being stuck in a labyrinth (unfortunately minus Bowie's Jareth in package baring tights and glittery eyeshadow); I think I see the way out then get turned around and trapped on the same old dangerous path that got me nowhere the first time. I'm not sure where to go from here.

I've been watching the Olympics sporadically. Normally I'm not at all interested in sporting events of any kind, but this year I've been spending a lot of time alone at home with nothing much to occupy myself with. I'm really only interested in swimming, diving, and gymnastics - in speed, agility, form, and smallness - and am fascinated by the idea that one's life might revolve solely around the body and yield such great successes.

If only we all could be so lucky.

I've realized that all of my dramatics are basically purposeless. I can cry; I can beg; I can threaten, but I can't force anyone's love or attention. For whatever reason, when it comes to relationships I am often overlooked. Maybe it's my negative attitude and stubborn depression. Maybe it's my living/ financial/ job situation; maybe people think I have nothing worthwhile to offer in a long term, grownup relationship. Maybe it's the way I look, or my ever present air of desperation. Maybe it has nothing to do with any of those things, and I simply attract and get attached to the wrong people. Maybe it's bad timing. Maybe I over think things, and there is no real reason to any of it, just the normal flow of life. In any case, I've hit quite a low of late. My usual coping mechanisms are of no help: I'm no good at starving anymore, drinks are too expensive, pills even more so, and hard to come by. I seem to have lost the ability to become numb or to filter my depression into something productive - writing, art, or even a "Fuck this, I'll show you!" sort of attitude that might fuel the start of a new diet or pursuit of a better job or return to school.

Next month is the tenth anniversary of my Mother's suicide. I've been thinking a lot about her lately. I used to believe that she hated me, that she was selfish, spiteful, cruel. Now I realize that a large part of how she behaved must have been due to her depression, to loneliness. I know now how living with the weight of an unrelenting sadness can twist the kindest heart into a bitter, cynical, contemptuous one, how you come to despise everything around you, even what you once loved. As a child, everything is black and white: there is love and hate, weakness and strength. There is no cause and effect, things just are. I never saw her as a person, just as my Mother. I saw her through eyes clouded with youth's hope, with idealistic and fantastical ideas of good and evil. Despite growing up in a somewhat abusive household, I took for granted that love was a given, that we were all to some extent protected and watched over, and attended to by someone (or something - I was a very spiritual child). I didn't fully understand what loneliness was. I knew that I was a person worthy of being cared for, worthy of life. I couldn't fathom what the loss of that "knowledge" could do to a person. I think sometimes of all the things that run through my head, of my self destructive behaviors and dalliances with suicide. I think of her alone in her room with similar thoughts that led her to the end of a rope, and I wish I could have known enough then to give her some hope. I wish I could have told her that I loved her, that her life had meaning, that she was needed, and wanted, and loved. But even if I'd had that chance it probably wouldn't have been enough. I never am.

"All this wishing I was dead is getting old, is getting old.
It goes on but it's old."

I am not very good at loving. Nobody is very good at loving me.

All I want is to be held. Not touched. A friend is coming by later; we will drink alcohol, I will not eat my dinner. He will touch me, making me even less of a human being.  But for those precious few hours it will all feel okay.

I hate myself, and therefore I honestly do not believe I deserve love of any kind. I don't believe it when people say they care, I'm too busy watching the end creep up behind me. Encouraging it, almost.

I am one giant self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you..."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.

"When you are Real, you don't mind being hurt. It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Today I had to - for the hundredth time - explain to someone my wearing long sleeves in the summer heat. I am put on the spot and struggle for excuses, most of which end up sounding ridiculous. "My arms are too fat." "I'm hiding a bad tattoo." "Nothing else was clean." Sometimes I just feel like shoving my bare arms into everyone's faces and screaming "Because I'm cut up like a fucking piece of meat. See, see?!" This is why I can't be around people. I appear to be a perfectly normal, healthy girl, but it's such a facade. I dress up all nice and paint my face pretty, smile, laugh, sit up straight... but if you can get to the real me, the thing hidden under strategically placed layers of fabric and makeup and fake smiles, I'm so ugly and alien. I am years of abuse, self destruction, and carelessness. I'm scar tissue.

I want more than anything for someone to see me for who I really am, and to not think less of me for it. I want someone to take me all in, then tell me I'm beautiful and mean it. But who could possibly...?

PETA protestors plan to lie nearly naked on large trays and covered with clear plastic in downtown Dayton today, June 12 to protest the meat industry and encourage people to become vegetarians.

The protestors plan to show up at Third and Main streets at noon to "demonstrate that all animals - not just humans - are made of flesh, blood, and bone; that humans and other animals have the same senses and range of emotions; and that eating meat is eating a corpse."

"We are challenging people to really think about what meat is," says PETA Manager of Vegan Campaigns Lindsay Rajt. "Eating flesh means eating the corpse of a tortured animal who did not want to die. We're encouraging kind consumers to give vegetarianism a try."

I had a health scare recently. I'd been feeling unusually awful, and began to panic right away, as is my nature. I made a list of signs and symptoms, and stayed up late searching medical websites for any and all information. I imagined and feared the worst, and despite being terribly poor and without health care at the moment, I finally managed to drag myself to the doctor. Thankfully my problem was minor, and rather easily remedied. I feel a bit ridiculous, but relieved nonetheless.

I got lucky this time, but I see this as a sign, a signal for change. I need to stop taking my life for granted and leaving so much to chance. It makes no sense for me to sit around and simply hope that things will work themselves out, to expect that the pieces of my life will fall neatly into place without my having to take any action to ensure it.

I have always been rather opposed to the idea of growing up, to responsibility and stability. I've always felt that I'd be a kid for what seemed like forever, and after that, well, it was always too far off to warrant any real concern. Time has an odd way of moving slowly, then suddenly. When I was younger I felt trapped and powerless in a world I didn't choose and couldn't control. One day I wake up and I'm feeling trapped and powerless against the rush of time and the abrupt adjustment of having to stand on my own. It's as if I became an adult overnight. Or rather, came to the realization of my adulthood overnight. I guess I've been struggling a bit with the idea that my life is completely under my control, to live and shape as I choose. Every action I take - or don't take - is entirely my own. There is no one left for me to lean on, no one left to blame.

I'm tired of feeling powerless. I'm tired of letting the course of my life flow according to someone else's plan. Recent events have made me realize that life is too short not to make an honest effort. (This past year has afforded me many opportunities for growth.) There simply isn't enough time not to say I love you when you're thinking it, not to go after the things you want, to do all you can to become who you are meant to be. There isn't enough time to bemoan the little things, to get lost in bad habits and the art of escapism. Self destruction and deprecation will eat away at you until you loose sight of everything else. Things can change in a split second, and you'll realize that you've spent your life wasting away. I have never been afraid of death, but I am afraid of a life unlived.

I've realized that I am grateful for every second that I have on this Earth, for every gift and opportunity I've been given, even the ones squandered. Does this mean that from now on I'm going to be a completely healthy and happy human being? Probably not, after all, nothing is quite that easy. But I'm sure as hell going to try.

"The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you're the pilot."