I don't believe in the After-Life, which is the only thing that makes death terrifying. The idea that I will only live on through someone else's memories frightens me more than anything; the idea that I will die alone without anyone ever having loved me horrifies me. One of the reasons I create art and literature, I suppose, is because they are tangible things that people can remember me by. I am obsessed with the tragically young and gifted like Ian Curtis and John Keats, and just as obsessively fearful of dying young before I ever even do anything or am anyone.
How ironic is it that every day I hop, skip, and jump closer to death's door? Every time I purge I'm taking a chance; every day I take too many laxatives and not enough Gatorade and I feel dizzy and my heart starts to tremble a part of me panics--"Is this it?"--while the other part whines that I didn't get enough up. I have had all of the potential symptoms of cardiac arrest. I've bled internally from my throat, stomach, and rectum. I've blacked out in the shower and hit my head on the porcelain floor of the bathtub. I am at death's door, knocking and ringing the bell and Trick-or-Treating.
I've had over a hundred hits today from Scarlett's blog (thanks for the plug, haha) about our late night chat over the potential causes of our ED deaths. Not a hospital, we both agreed, nor surrounded by family and loved ones. Joking aside (and there were many, many sickening but hysterical jokes made at 1 AM), we have both given serious thought to just how we might go, be it by our own hands or the hands down our throats. I admit to having many fantasy suicide or cardiac arrest scenarios floating around my head--floating in a bathtub in a gauzy dress, discovered by an impressionable bell boy in the elevator of a five star hotel late one night--because an early demise has always seemed such a vivid, real possibility. A possibility I don't terribly mind.
My aunt, who wanted so very badly just to live, died before the age of sixty this past week. How unfair is it that the people who try so hard to live die, and I--who am playing with death every day, like I'm asking for it--am still trapped on this Earth? Death is never fair.
I dream about death, but I know it won't be fair. It has never been fair.
4 comments:
As much as I'm resigned to dying young, whenever I get bad palpitations or my throat won't stop bleeding I'm terrified. It's like I accept death in theory, but definitely not in practice.
Don't know how else to start or say "hi" so..hi. ha..I just want to say how I can relate. I remember when my disorder first started almost 6 years ago, I was 13, I frusturated my mom to no end,she kicked holes in the wall and told me how she'd just like to die because she didn't want to deal with me. One time we were in the car and she threatened to drive the car into a ditch because of me..At one point, and I think this was one of the coldest things she'd said (the other things were just mean, but not heartlessly empathetic like this) "I have no sympathy for you, you're chosing to kill yourself while I watched my sister fight to live. She wanted to live but she couldn't, she'd switch places with you in an instant but you're choosing to kill youself." My aunt had leukemia as a child and contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in the 80s which turned to AIDS and killed her..She was in her late 20s I think. When my mom said that to me= and still when I think about it, it makes no sense to me at all- this does not FEEL like a choice at all..but are we deluding ourselves? Even though I am much "better" than I was before, even though I feel relatively stable, or at least more so than before, I can't imagine a future where my death is not from my eating disorder. I can't imagine a future at all actually, that is normal. HOWEVER that will not stop me from going forward and seeing what will happen. I will not "willingly" actively use eating disordered behaviors, but if I ever do it will feel subconcious..in denial basically..ah, well I ramble, that's my few cents. I really do feel that you can someday find balance, or in the least something close to it. If we put as much anxiety and worry into "recovery" (I hate that word)as we did into appeasing our eating disordered behaviors it'd be so much easier..too bad we can't "make" our compulsions comply with what we "want" necessarily. Of course the sick part doesn't want it, but with moments of lucidity and determination to not fualter we could all make it..
@Scarlett
Most of my major "this could be it" moments happen when I lax nowadays. Combined with the pain of the cramps, and just how generally sloppy and exhausted I feel between BM's, I can't find it in myself to get so excited about the sight of blood in my watery stool or blacking out when I get up from the toilet or changes in my heartbeat. I want to care more. There is a part of me that isn't ready to die--that wants love, and success, and to do more in life--but the ED part of me thinks all of those things are impossible, anyway, so it doesn't matter.
This way of thinking is sick and sad, but the first step is admitting you have a problem... right?
@Kianni
Hi there :)
That is super intense. Don't feel bad for rambling; this entire blog is just ramblings with titles. It's weird, because I think (especially online) the ED community goes from these sicker-than-you competitions to denial that problems are serious at all. I would be lying if I thought that even after I "recover" (let's see how that goes) I would escape any of the health problems my ED has wrought on my body, and right now cardiac arrest seems inevitable. I am not attempting suicide right now, or actively trying to kill myself. I just don't care enough to do so.
I am trying to keep these lucid moments in mind this week as I embark on my first ever treatment center eval... I am trying, really, really hard to remember why I need help, because want isn't really strong enough right now.
Post a Comment