Warning Signs

When I returned from my first psych hospitalization for my suicide attempt, my psychiatrist and my family and myself all tried to establish "warning signs." Signals that the ship that is me is going under, so I can avoid ERs and hospital gowns.

And we established that the "warning signs" were simply me... stopping. Stopping with basic hygiene, then with bothering to go to class, then with leaving the house. Not caring anymore. Combined with depression and binging, my apathy creates a hotbed for suicidal idealizations. My more impulsive suicidal thoughts can be worked through with willpower--mostly the fear of failing to kill myself right--within hours. It is much more dangerous, we established, for me to be left to stew in my own juices, so to speak.

Today marks 48 hours without having left my residence hall, and 24 without having left my floor (mostly to go to the bathroom). I haven't really made any attempt to go to class, my six hour studio classes,  classes missed that will surely dock my grade to a C automatically, my mediocre work aside. I have done no work aside from researching  residential care, and determining that everyone hates every single program. Though none of the OPs I've been talking with are aware of how much I haven't left the house, they all reccomend that I leave school for care. School doesn't refund, and that's the only thing keeping me here. If my medical evals come back poor, I'm going to have to leave anyway.

I kind of have an excuse for staying. I've been death warmed over with a virus--my nose clogged, my body dizzy and aching, my fingers icicles next to the heat of my tummy. I probably have had fevers. I am not lying about that, I suppose. But some part of me is thinking that maybe I'm fabricating my illness just to stay in and be dead to the world, the same part that thought I was making too big a deal out of this whole bulimia thing in the first place. The same part that doesn't believe me when I'm telling the truth and always, always thinks I'm lying.

I haven't showered in days, and the hair of my legs has grown thick and prickly. I haven't started another short story for my creative writing application, and time is ticking. I received my college recs from the registrar for the application a couple weeks ago. The one from my college counselor opens "The one word to describe _____ is resilience." What a lie.