a wave of depression crashes over me, and i'm suddenly reminded of the first time i tried to take my own life. i was in 7th grade, and had just turned 13. i woke up one morning to find that the scale was not in my favor, which at the time was the final straw. i took a full bottle of motrin and a full bottle of extra strength tylenol. unfortunately, i couldn't get out of going to school like i had planned. and honestly, i think a part of me really did want to go. a part of me was just longing to be saved; for someone to wrap their arms around me and tell me, "everything's going to be okay..." another part of me wanted to know how people would react, if they would care at all. a very small part of me actually wanted to die. i thought that's what i wanted, until i actually swallowed the pills. when i got to school i was only there for an hour or so before i started to get violently ill, which is when i told my teachers what i had done. they immediately freaked out and called 911. an ambulance came to my middle school, they called my mom, and i laid in the conselor's office crying. "i'm so sorry.." was all i could manage to say. the paramedics made me drink charcole, which later made me throw up more than i ever have in my life, which is a lot. the doctors at the ER said i was lucky that no damage was done, and sent me off to the psychiatric ward. i stayed 10 days, went home, and immediately relapsed into my eating disorder. my point is this, at that time i just wanted to know that someone cared. i just wanted to feel loved and appreciated. but now it's the very knowledge that plagues me day after day. people caring hurts. it hurts because i know that i am hurting them. if they didn't care about me my actions wouldn't affect them, they wouldn't mind watching me struggle. but they do care, and so it's difficult. i am not blind to the pain i cause them. i know how my family sometimes worries that i won't wake up in the morning, i hear the doctors to my mom to prepare herself in the best way she can for me to die, i hear my brother blaming himself for everything that's going on, i know my grandma just wants me to be happy and things to be better, and can't understand why they aren't. i see the many letters written,"we're praying for you.. please get better.. you deserve so much better than this.. i can't stand to watch you go through this..." while those used to be all the things i needed to know, they are now the things weighing me down and sometimes making it hard to breathe. sometimes when i look back on my life over the past few years i don't know whether to laugh or cry. right now i feel like crying... right now i'm wondering what would be more painful: a relapse and slow death, or an act of suicide. technically, it's suicide eithe way you look at it. one is just more sudden, quicker, somehow more simple. i can't help but contemplate the act as i write this... how simple it would be. almost like turning the tv off. swallow a bottle of pills before bed, and before you know it you're off. is it really that simple?

this isn't what i intended...

i'm going to die... i realize this at the oddest times. today i sat in english class watching 'The Crucible' and i again remembered that if things keep going the way they are going i will soon die.
i'm not losing weight as rapidly as i want to, which only makes my behaviors worse.
and logically i know that weight isn't the only factor in health. i have known people who were at their ideal body weight and still died from complications.
sadly, as soon as i write that i think to myself, "that better not be me... i better at least die thin."
how fucked up is that?
thinking about my thoughts makes me want a cigarette and a cup of coffee, neither of which i can have in school.
i look down at the time a realize that lunch is in 20 minutes. damn it..
i want to skip but the hunger is almost unbearable.
i start running through my head all of the possibilities i could allow myself to have, and the only ones i can come up with is fruit and salad. and if they don't have fruit or salad? nothing. or my eating disorder tells me that i could just purge, but i am so sick of purging. (no pun intended)
my thoughts spin out of control and i lose them and then find them again and try to put the pieces together but somehow they never fit. why is this happening to me? why does it have to be this way?
i never really thought too much about how i would die, not until this year anyway. i always had it in my head that i would die someday when i was old and after i had lived my life and done everything i wanted to do. i would have traveled the world, had kids and grandchildren, had a successful career, been happy. and when i died, i would die knowing that i had no regrets; that my life had been, for the most part, good.
however, that is not how it's playing out. the way things are going, i will die 16, miserable, and most of my life experiences will have been bad ones. i have not traveled the world, i have not become a mother, much less a grandmother, i haven't even graduated high school, and i have too many regrets to count. this is not how i want things to be... so why can't i stop doing what i'm doing?

murderer.

i remember that day like it was just yesterday. panic filled me; how could this be happening? i was too young, it was too wrong, i didn't deserve this... i had been through enough already, right? but somehow i deserved it all. being traumatized wasn't enough; i now had to deal with the horrible, and yet innocent, consequence of the humiliating act that i somehow provoked. obviously i had done something terribly wrong to deserve this, obviously there was something very wrong with me; god was trying to punish me. i didn't want to deal with it.. in truth, i didn't know HOW to deal with it. instinctively i made myself sicker to rid the "problem". i rationalized that it was okay because i couldn't handle it, but now i really regret doing so. after i knew it was over, i was overwhelmed with relief and tremendous guilt. that guilt still follows me everywhere i go. i found myself arguing with one of the nicest people i know, insisting that they don't understand, that i AM a horrible person that deserves to burn in Hell for what i've done. she said she understands, but i'm not so sure. i wonder if things would have been different if the situation wasn't a traumatic one. would i have still done the horrible thing that i did? i like to tell myself that the only reason it is okay is because of the circumstance in which it happened, but i still carry around unsettling guilt and shame. i feel like a murderer. i feel as if i don't deserve health and happiness. i feel like a huge part of me is missing. i can't overcome the feeling of loss. i wonder if i wouldn't have done what i did, if MAYBE things would be better. maybe that would have been the thing to motivate me to be healthy, and keep me healthy. but no.. i didn't choose that road. instead i chose to do something so selfish and immature. i don't think i can ever forgive myself..

accepting reality.

i just realized something... i'm going to die. as i sat here, locked away in my room smoking a bummed menthol newport, i remembered that i'm going to die. right now i'm healthy, but i know it won't last; not with what i'm doing. i'm already slipping away quicker than i anticipated. i barely made it through the last relapse; i know i won't make it through this one. i'll be lucky to make it to 17. it's hard to accept, but i honestly don't think i have what it takes to get better...