To Blog Anew or Not To Blog Anew...?

That is my question. Well... I've already started a new blog... It's different. Less personal. More hopeful. Not about me... about encouraging others who are recovering... I don't know where that leaves me here. I feel ashamed of my self-centred ramblings here. And yet... It seems like such a lot to just walk away from. 
 My weight is dropping and my mind is hurtling into the no man's land that sits between life and death. It is achingly desperate that my words can fly the banner of freedom, but my mouth won't be filled with the nourishment it needs. I am afraid that in a few months, my voice will be all there is. An empty echo. 
Heard but not seen.

Today...

... tears.

And I'm sorry that I can't feel stronger. I choose to be positive and to smile and to keep cheerful, and yet, alone, I dissolve. Head in hands. Desperation trickling through my, apparently, 'skeletal' body.


I was informed yesterday that I'm 1 kilo off being admitted. I can't have that. Not when I've just begun a phased return to work... not when it'll cost me my job... not when I want to do this so, so badly.


So why then, when I just have to put on a few pounds, am I battling the urge to exercise?


It's madness this illness. A bulging, black mass somewhere in the brain. It seeps and creeps and pushes into spaces, forcing itself against walls of reason and clarity.

It's My Party...

... and I'll cry if I want to.

Okay so No Party and No Tears, but it IS my birthday...
...and whilst it's been nice in many, many ways, I've struggled to keep my smile in place. 
On two unguarded occasions  it slid off my chin, provoking the observation that I looked sad.
It's important to me that they don't think I'm sad today. 
The pain is more painful for those who watch.


My weight moved up by point seven of a kilo last week. 
I can't begin to describe the misery that this small gain has caused, or the battle which has ensued.
Yet, I know I have to kill this Anorexia.
I know it even as I skip manically; as I push my body up on breaking arms; as I reach a breathless forty on my knee - to - elbow jumps, and as I crunch unforgiven coccyx on the hard floor.
I know it as I push each coveted mouthful past guarded lips, willing myself to swallow, to allow, to stay.
Each grind of my teeth, a perfectly synchronised nod and shake. 
A simultaneous, stereophonic yes and no.


In all my wildest nightmares, I never once imagined that my birthday this year would be spent trying to claw my way out of Anorexia.

I hope against all hope that next year, the narrative will be very different.

Halt

It never fails to shock when you wake up in the morning to find death sitting on the side of your bed, waiting for its subliminal whisperings to wake you.

Refusing to so much as glance at the intruder, I got up and went through my Sunday 'to do' list.

Number one, buy salad stuff for lunches... Number two, bake brownies for colleagues' birthdays tomorrow... Number three, mark kids' work... Number four, gym... Number five...

Still ignoring the cloak of darkness, I shower and find my way downstairs, chattering about Jamie Oliver and brightly listing ingredients, envisioning birthday brownies in cheery homemade boxes, red with white polka dots.

It'll be alright, I tell myself. Just keep moving. It'll pass.

Two days later, as I sit in the doctors' surgery, I wonder if it would have somehow all been okay if I'd made it to Tescos to buy what I needed.

"Back in a bit", I said, trying to ignore the back breaking heaviness and the winter chill as I grab my bag.

I never made it to the front door.

Instead, I half crawled up the stairs into my bedroom, where I sank down against the radiator, slumped in a dazed stupor wondering if there was anyone in the world who I could call to for help.

I didn't realise I couldn't move until I tried when I heard mum coming upstairs. neither did I realise that I was crying quite uncontrollably.

I've since been signed off work for a month (which I won't take) and had a week off work.

Unusually (for me), rather than the time off being detrimental, it has actually helped and I am feeling better than I did.

My folks (my poor folks) have been amazingly supportive, desperately worried and willing support me in almost anything that I think might help.

In desperate depression, I scoured the web looking for a hotel I could stay in just to get a break. The darkness worsened as my inability to make any decisions left me feeling increasingly despondent and hopeless. I figured that I would probably just spend the whole time binging and purging anyway.

I've ended up booking a week in a sort of retreat centre that I stumbled upon.

I have no idea how it will be, or whether I'll last the week. I leave tomorrow.

Certainly, last week, I was far too unwell to go anywhere.

There's no internet where I'm going so I will have to rely on my phone to check here or to post anything.

It's a risk, in some ways... I don't feel as though I am 'safe' with myself at the moment. Tonight's TWO binge and purge sessions show that.

The Woman was very concerned when I saw her last Monday.

She made me go to the doctor (saying that if I didn't, SHE would). She also gave me her mobile and made me communicate things during the week.

I was terrified by this new step.

This morning’s appointment with the Eating Disorders team was terrifying but I won't go into it at the moment. Suffice to say, they expect me to start full time treatment with them when they get up and running at the end of February.

I fought a surge of hysteria as they told me about eating two meals a day under their supervision.

I can't imagine being able to.

After this, The Woman was a warm blanket.

Halt

New Year

If I had less alcoholic tendencies, I'd have stood a better chance of enjoying the first day of 2011. Sadly though, in characteristic pathetic and humiliating style, I was unable to withstand the temptation of hitting the bottle too hard at a party last night.

My body is not a happy one.

I suppose it could be seen as a fitting way to end a year where my mind and my body have been in almost constant conflict. A year of internal chaos.

Perhaps the battle can be added to the fact that I'm 1) very hungover and 2) half bloody starved, as possible reasons for why I begin this year feeling too weak to even get up today.

Unspoken words lie like bricks inside me. To actually write them would be exhausting.

Therapy breaks often leave me in a sort of blogging limbo, although this one hasn't been too bad.

I was comforted that the woman didn't seem to want to leave me. She even made sure I had her email, although I think she knew I'd never use it.

Boundaries keep me safe, even if they also keep me in isolation.

I feel as though I should probably have all sorts of resolutions but in all honesty, I feel too tired and, rather embarrassingly, too hopeless.

It's been tough enough resisting the urge to entitle this post: Same Shit, Different Year.

(Does anyone else remember that trend where nearly every cynical, smart ass person they knew had a tshirt which declared 'Same shit, different day'? )

For those Who Know It's Christmas Time

Christmas Eve. 6.44 am.

I've been awake for hours. It's minus six out and I've been lying very still, hands tucked under my pillow to stop the chill.

I've been trying to pretend I'm sleeping. If I pretend perhaps it will really happen.

There's a whole other post in there somewhere, but it's not for today.

Finally I tiptoe out of bed and pull back the curtains.

I catch my breath, startled afresh by the stark beauty of the winter world.

Evergreen branches bow, weighted by heavy snow. The folds of thick coated earth gleam darkly in the midnight hues; The earth is dark blue and black and every shade between.

The neighbour's lights glow orange against the blues and I can't resist opening the window to take a postcard shot.

The cold Christmas air seems to shiver with silent expectation. The heaviness of the snowfall muffles even the sounds of nature itself and I am quieted by beauty.

I light a candle and place it on the windowsill before getting back into bed.

On the radio, the Band Aid hit plays and for the billionth time, I think about those who DO know it's Christmas.

Not in a way which disregards the starving: those afflicted by disease, drought, extreme poverty. That song was for them, and thank goodness for Geldoff and his incredible dedication to the cause.

But I can't help of think of those for whom the knowledge that it is Christmas, brings none of the excitement or seasonal cheer; none of the hope or expectation that glows around us, warming like a father hug; none of the childlike joy that pervades despite having shed the skin of youth.

For some, all that makes us glow, serves as a cutting reminder of what they have lost: loved ones, people suffering with terminal illness, the elderly, the lonely, so many.

I light my Christmas candle for those who have gritted their teeth and closed their eyes in the hope that they can make it through today and tomorrow. For those whose darkness feels even deeper next to the (often superficial) brightness of Christmas.

I pray (in honesty, without much hope) that the true magic of Christmas may be known in hearts that feel desperation and dread at this time of year.

(And yes, it's an almost impossible time for those with eating disorders, so I guess I don't get off Christmas lightly either... but I'm thankful that I'm loved today and I'm thankful that I'm not alone.)

Happy Christmas readers.

My prayer extends to ALL of you.

No Way Out

Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a blowtorch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep there's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Can you help me remember how to smile?
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded?
Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just a-drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

And everything seems cut and dried
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughing at the rain
A little out of touch, a little insane
It's just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Runaway train, never coming back
Runaway train, tearing up the track
Runaway train, burning in my veins

Therapy Today

Here's my session in words I can only just manage.

Arms and legs crossed.

My leg is twitching restlessly (angrily?)

She is "disappointed" to see me in this space after a positive Friday session where, having starved for a week, I was on a high.

I am worried by the word she uses.

Desperation claws at my insides, screaming that she will never understand.

She asks what I will do when the purging is no longer enough.

I tell her I will begin draining the blood from my body.

She tells me that my body will replenish it.

I don't mention that I am picturing my femoral artery.

I try to resist the urge to look at the clock as she talks.

Her words are like little woodpeckers on the side of my head.

Christmas?

She wants me to think about Christmas?

Did I not explain that two days without work leaves me reaching for death? What will stand between us for two WEEKS?

She reminds me that she won't be able to see me on my birthday (which she is not aware of) and I wonder if it is significant that it's the only day she has had to cancel.

That's all I can say for now.

Purge

My fingers
reach down
my throat,
push back
and I heave
and surge
and spew again and again
and
again
my fingers
reach down
my throat.

I wish
the pain
would fall out
this way
or
weighted words
unspoken expulsion
from hot heart pounding darkness.


Desperation

is flecked with orange

tomato skin.

One Day...

//

I follow the night
Can't stand the light.
When will I begin
To live again?

One day I'll fly away
Leave all this to yesterday
What more will your love do for me?
When will love be through with me?

Why live life from dream to dream?
And dread the day when dreaming ends.

One day I'll fly away
leave all this to yesterday
Why live life from dream to dream
And dread the day when dreaming ends.

One day I'll fly away
Fly
Fly
Away

Eloi... Eloi...

A few years ago, my sister was rushed from the ED clinic to the nearest hospital. Tubed all over, doctors and nurses desperately attempted to find veins that hadn't collapsed in order to save her from the effects of starvation.

Three and a half stone, barely conscious.

My paper souled parents, wrung out from the tortured grief, sat helpless at her bedside.

I don't recall much about that week, but I can't forget Dad's voice down the phone line, a dreadful effort at bravery from a man so broken.

"She's not expected to make it through the night".

Empty, I put the phone down and went to tell my youngest sister.

For that week, for all of us, life just stopped.

Another thing I can't forget, is that for long periods of time, all I could do was to lie, curled up very small, with Bear pressed in tight to my stomach, listening to Bebo Norman's CD, 'Between the Dreaming and the Coming True'.

I literally hung on to the lyrics of the songs on that album; lyrics that, at less hopeless times, I may have branded 'trite'.

Desperation changes the way we hear things. It changes how we hold things, and, which things we hold.

This week these words have echoed repeatedly through the desperate, aching tunnels of my mind.

"God my God

I cry out

your beloved needs you now".

It's Official

The trembling walk across the flagstones.

I'm fashionably late.

I don't realise at the time, but the man in the thick designer glasses and the understated floral shirt, watches from somewhere within the brick hexagon and says to his (note scribbling) trainee, "Ah. Here comes a skinny person. This must be her".

This man, I've met him before. About sixteen years ago.
I almost want to gag at the memory of a tortured, teenage me; hunched, shaking in the back of dad's car after a one off meeting with this man, my sister's consultant, in the unit where she was incarcerated.

I remember he was kind to me.
Finally: someone who wanted to know how it was for a sibling.
Muscles held taut in my gut, I clamp my jaw; frightened his listening will force a desperate stream of projectile grief.

My mother, dressed in the small laughter of middle class embarrassment, rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue.
Stupid daughter... Doesn't know WHAT she's saying..! As if WE ever lived in denial..! As if WE would ever overlook such a thing! OF COURSE we knew what was happening! OF COURSE we knew ALL ALONG!

Choking on the words forced back down my throat, I shook all the way home.
Shook as dad glanced apologetically in the rearview mirror.
Shook as dad worriedly concurred that PERHAPS it WAS possible that I had known, long before them, the reality of my sister's terrible death wish.

I didn't recognise the man, even as I tried to remember something concrete about the session we had had all those years ago.

I would never have dreamed I would end up in front of him again. And certainly not for this reason.

*****
At the end of today's assessment: the words, "Anorexia Nervosa".

Every syllable ricocheted off the wall of my chest.

How can I know and yet not know?

"You believe me? You take me seriously?"

I am frightened and shocked and ashamed and relieved and disgusted.


The question is not, whether I believe you, he says. The question is whether you can believe yourself and take this illness seriously.

Again. Bullets.

I'm not well.

I knew that.

I need another assessment appointment. We haven't quite covered everything.

We haven't?
God.

Worst thing?

I double booked it for the woman's appointment next Monday.
THAT'S how screwed my mind was.

Now what?

Before I leave, he comments on the dryness of my hands. Says he noticed as we met and shook hands.
He noticed that? What kind of person IS this?
He suggests creams.
I admit I am frightened of absorbing calories through my skin.
"Not possible", he persuades.
I nod, gritting my teeth and flashing untrusting smile.

"Ok", I lie. "I'll start using cream on the splits".
(I have eczema)
Next he'll tell me vitamins can't make you put on weight, but they can. I read up on water soluble and fat soluble vitamins. I know my stuff.

"I'm seeing ..... (my sister's name...)... this afternoon..."
Something in me freezes over
"I won't tell her I've seen you of course... confidentiality and all that..." He tails off.

"I have no idea what she thinks or feels", I offer, lamely because I am at a loss.
He looks at me, studied, careful.
"I think she's been very worried about you". Somehow, his hand is stretched out to me.
"I think she's been very jealous of me", I sink my teeth into his hand and bite down hard. "Jealous that she's in hospital and I'm not"...

He laughs (uneasily?). Blood drips from my mouth...

"...That's the only reason she gives a toss".

I walk away, my throat and eyes stinging and swelling; the metallic taste on my bottom lip.

He hates me. he hates me. He hates me.
He loves her. He loves her. He loves her.

I want to wring my own neck as I get into the car.
Maybe her neck too.

It's eleven o'clock.

The sun shines bright and I need to do a number of very bad things to get through the despair of the day.

I do all of them but still, thirteen or so hours later, I am sinking.

Corm Before The Storm

Beautiful Cornwall.

The unexpected warmth of the late October sun; the flat, brilliantly clear light; the depth of blue... This is a place I'd really love to live someday.
My friends have been great. True friends. No terrible questions. Just simple observations and a couple of honest conversations, which in all fairness, is a lot more than I have had with most people in recent months.

I hadn't meant to eat or drink tonight, yet having succumbed to the call of alcohol, I've given in to both. I feel absolute despair right now.
I'm sure I must weigh so much.
I will never go away again without my scales.

Tomorrow I drive home and in some ways, I dread all that is waiting for me.
I wish I never needed anything but oxygen again.

Things I Haven't Said

• I'm on half term, which I have been dreading because I don't operate well outside of my routine, particularly at the moment.
• In desperation, I recently phoned the local eating disorders consultant (who has had dealings with my sister for years). I have an appointment on Wednesday.
• I'm petrified that I won't be taken seriously if I attend on Wednesday, and I'm petrified that I will.
• I ended up in hospital on Thursday after a complete physical and mental meltdown. I'm ok but still very frightnened. 'Anxiety' isn't a satisfactory explanation for the crazy heart stuff I've had going on.
• Old friends I am staying with say I look very ill. I am perplexed by this as I have put on a couple of pounds over the last few days. I feel ridiculously big.
• I want to get better but I am desperate to lose weight. The two things are directly contrary to each other.
• I'm tired and feel a bit hopeless, despite looking forward to tomorrow's lone sojourn to St Ives.

Left

I can only feel the cold wind of despair as it howls through me. I am left gasping, winded by the force of the blasts.
It's not depression. It's despair.
It's the claws of hopelessness tearing at hidden flesh.
It's the mouth of disgust sucking marrow from my bones.
And I am left with nothing.
Nothing then
nothing now
nothing in the when.

Ahead, a black hole
Behind, a sheer drop.

Despair affords me no rope
with which to hang
on to hope, or choke
this demon.

It's been a steep weekend and I haven't got it in me to explain why.

I've eaten badly, drunk hungrily and driven frantically.

If you feel disgusted by my negativity, I can bet you a thousand wishes that you can't even begin to reach the levels that I have.
I have tried positive self talk, prayer, gratitude, acceptance, reprimand, reframing, reinterpretation, re everything.
I've counted my blessings, immersed myself in thoughts of those less fortunate.
I know I don't count on the scale.

I hate myself all the more for that fact that I have no excuse for my despair.

And can I tell the woman?
I don't want to see her tomorrow.
She expects me to have had a good weekend (as did I). The fact that I feel this hollow is shameful. I feel like a disobedient child.
I have let her down.
Somehow I must be choosing misery.
I am a disgrace.

Memorial

I have to admit that my blood ran a little colder as I drove back to the gym and heard this report on the radio...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100928/tuk-eating-disorder-victims-are-remember-45dbed5.html

I guess it is silly to get worried. After all, my choice right?

But the girl who died was six and a half stone.

I have fallen below six that there's nobody to scrutinise me.

My fear of a heart attack doesn't seem quite as strong as my horrible determination to lose weight.
Until I'm alone in the dead of the night, that is.
Then the fear of death at least matches the will to risk it.

This Little Piggy Went To Therapy.

It's been a pretty bad few days.

I paused as I wondered how I could possibly put this across to The Woman who sat, eyes cast down quietly, waiting for me to be ready.

I started with the weekend, which, FYI, I drank my way through.

I lost time on both evenings. I explained that on Saturday it was as though someone pressed the 'pause' button at around eleven thirty in the evening and neglected to press it again until around four in the morning.
What happened in those four and a half hours is anyone's guess. My guess is that I fell through a portal of the whisky kind.

My memory is bad enough, but add alcohol and I no longer exist at all.

The Woman listens to the story far too kindly.
My"pre emptive strike," she reflects.
"No. It's all my own stupid fault," I kick at a wall in my mind.
"Interesting word, 'fault'" she returns, and I break my toe against the wall.

Doesn't she want me to take responsibility for my actions? Hate me. Go on. Be disgusted. Tell me I'm pathetic.

(I'm suddenly very tired as I try to recall something from the session today. Another blank. Swiss cheese has nothing on my memory).

I told her about the dreams I had last night. She interprets them to be sexual. Apparently my unconscious mind is leading us to roads that need to be travelled down; roads which I am frightened of.

I wondered if she is actually a direct descendant of Freud.

Ok. So I'm part jesting, but twenty six cuts later, I can afford a little humour.

The desperation and despair that I have felt over the past three days have, at times, blown through me with a strength that has left me bent double.

i didn't make the gym once and as a consequence, combined with the calories I have consumed in alcohol, I managed to put on two pounds. Today I have barely lived a minute without sucking a piece of chocolate. It's compulsive.
Tonight I stood on the scales, hands over my face, registering the higher numbers through the gaps between my fingers.
I wanted to take a wood plane to my thighs.
A double edged blade had to suffice.

Normally a safe haven for my mind, even my workspace was invaded by the swooshing compulsion to lock myself in the second floor toilet and shred my skin with the scissors.
And all of this because of the desperation at not being able to stay in control of my body.
I need to be small enough to feel all my bones and yet, pathetically, I am sabotaging my own attempts to get thinner. More than that, I am actually putting ON weight again.

In a fit of frustration at this absurd part of myself, i declared that I could just 'give it all up'. I could eat normally again. i could just stop all this nonsense and eat.
The words even sounded hollow to me, but I carried on asserting it because a part of me wants to feel that it really could be that simple.

The Woman explains so gently, "it's a manifestation of your distress... BLANK BLANK BLANK... the extreme self loathing... BLANK BLANK...."

She goes on but I've shut my eyes and I'm holding my insides so tight against her words because her kindness is making my breath ache and my eyes sting and I can't let go, i just can't.

"Shutting me out?".

I don't know and I can't answer because loosening one part of me is all it will take for everything to split and fall apart.

I can't remember what she said then, but the pressure of her kindness leaves bruises around my eyes.

Today as I left the little house in the woods, I carried the heavy sense that I had spoken too much.
I have that same feeling about this post.

All Time Low

Sometimes song lyrics filter into our awareness and hook into something that we feel or think.
I guess I'm not alone in this experience as I know it's something that has, in itself, been sung about in the "strumming my pain with his fingers" song... Y'know the one... (Frustratingly, I can only think of The Fugees - with their irritating 'one time' spin on it- though I first knew the original version by __________fill in the blank_____).
THAT song tells of someone's shock and disbelief at hearing a young boy singing their "whole life with his words". The narrator (do songs HAVE narrators?) feels that his or her secret pain has been exposed, as though the boy has opened up her letters and "read each one aloud".
Interesting that the song expresses a sense of the agony that can come from being 'known' in an intimate way, of being revealed. The narrator prays that the boy will finish, suggesting that it is absolutely unbearable.
I wonder if the agony was in being known or in being faced with his/her own pain.
Perhaps a mixture.

I digress. I actually wanted to write about the very opposite reaction to the one I've just discussed.

I wasn't listening to the radio I had on as I was driving today but somehow the words of a song I've never heard, pushed their way into my head.
As lyrics sometimes do (and despite the fact I'm not completely sold on the song as a whole) they made something in me feel a little bit heard and understood and realised.
It's odd how a part of you can suddenly and unexpectedly be given a voice through a medium which has no knowledge of your existence, let alone experience.
I guess it's a testimony to the human condition and to the fact that in ways we don't necessarily ever get to experience wholly, we are never quite alone.

Praying won't do it
Hating won't do it
Drinking won't do it
Fighting won't knock you out
Of my head

Hiding won't hide it
Smiling won't hide it
Like I ain't tried it
Everyone's tried it now
And failed somehow

So when you gonna let me
When you gonna let me out - Out

And if you know
How do you get up from an all time low
I'm in pieces
Seems like peace is
The only thing I'll never know
How do you get up
Get up

‘Cos driving won't do it
Flying won't do it
Denying won't do it
Crying won't drown it out

Not really a song of hope or anything, but there may be something ever so slightly comforting in hearing another pose the questions that you have so often asked in the dead of night.

Fattening Up Under The Cloak

If I think of the chocolate and the jellybeans and the more chocolate and the more jelly beans and the rice crackers and the mini eggs that I have stuffed down me...
An endless onslaught of sugar coated dollops of fat.
My head is spinning in a panic of sugar and heart pounding horror at what I’ve done.

What have I done?

I’ve worked so hard to burn it all off and now, in one evening, I’ve thrown my body into chaos with a purge-less binge.

I want to run and not stop until my bones tear through my skin.

My mouth hasn’t been empty for more than 5 minutes since I left therapy.
Which implies that it was difficult right? But it wasn’t. Not really.

We spoke about a dream.
The bookshelf was a flimsy, wooden frame covering an entire wall. Like some sort of Ikea job, the frame had compartments, filled with rows of books.
They wanted to move the whole unit.
I stood and watched in silent desperation as the thin frame twisted and most of the compartments on the left side emptied crashingly.
I’d warned them it would happen and they wouldn’t listen.
We talked about how it was about therapy. Somehow. I think Friday’s session had some bits in it that felt very much like the shelf would twist and things would fall out.

I can’t remember what she said. Surprise. Surprise.

My heart is cloaked with sadness.
It has been since Saturday evening when my dad recounted his visit to the hospital where my sister is currently sectioned, caged like the animal her illness seems to make her.
He described how, as he sat next to her watching something on her laptop, her head suddenly dropped and lolled.
He'd asked if she was falling asleep and listened to her half breathed response. He helped her climb up on the bed and watched as she immediately slept.

A nurse popped her head round the door, apologetically, not realising dad was there, she called to my sister to say it was lunch. Feeding time. Force feeding.

“They’ve turned her into a zombie”.
Dad does an impression of her that all at once makes my eyes prick with unusual tears.

I don’t cry for her anymore. Not usually.
And I didn’t. But my throat ached and I had to look hard into the bottom of my glass to see the grains of the table.

My sister restrained, and injected with anti psychotics.
Sedated. Unable to run. Unable to rebel against the controlling regime they force upon her.

It’s her fault.
I comfort myself.
It’s her fault.
She’s the one who tries to starve to death.
Again, I am cloaked by a choking sadness.

And I am a desperate teenager again, wanting to scream,

Lethergogetyourhandsoffmysisterleaveheraloneleaveherthefuckalone, tearing at their strong arms as they manhandle my beautiful, frantic, sobbing sister.

In real life, all the books fall out at once.