O K

I woke up too early this morning. The bedroom seemed too hot, so I laid on the livingroom couch but could not get back to sleep, distracted by the kittens darting across the wood floor, scraping the planks as they galloped from one end of the room to the other. After trying the bedroom once more I resolved to stay awake, if only to prevent myself from feeling defeated by the trapped heat and my waking brain.

If I know anything about myself it is that my disorder seems particularly active in these early-morning hours, first teasing me about my apparent and instant hunger when I 'should not be' eating anything until after eight AM (I have been up since five-fifteen and still have not eaten a thing, although I truly did not want anything and still sort-of don't, I swear), then egging me on to the point of endlessly kneading the skin and 'fat' on my stomach and hips and ass. Even as I type this, I pinch. Moving outward from my belly-button I grab and pull and hope to feel each fatty cell as it sits mockingly atop my abdomen, which is toned but somewhat hidden; another excuse for holding a grudge against myself. And another, for I can feel the hard, flat surface of my hips extending all the way 'round to my lower back, a most beautiful aspect of my physiognomy compromised by soft, malleable skin. None of it should even exist, something gurgles, so you must conclude you are doing something wrong (it says), all of those carbohydrates and treats you afford yourself, grosse vache, chose méprisable.

Do I listen? How can I avoid it? As a necessary aspect of my recovery I must acknowledge every bit of innerspeak regardless of its origin and, if I do not do this, then I could again begin to believe in what my disordered mind spits at me, simply because it is a voice different than my own that I do not trust and therefore so believable in its slander, because of its harshness and tongue thick with bile. But it is because I am able to sit and write and explain to you about my relationship with my own anomalous thoughts (which, might I remind you, have to do with neurons and trauma and absolutely everything else) that I know I have killed a part of myself which crusades against myself, although its propaganda still rings clear as a bell, but it is just ghosts, only specters mournful of their own death because they had wished to murder me instead.

I freely employ such metaphors here because they are sensical in the context of such grand, sublime things. If I did not explain them in such a way, non-disordered people might never grasp the full meaning of my illness, and I would not have as much fun writing about it. Alice says it best:

Presently she began again. "I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards! The antipathies, I think-" (she was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) "-but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand? Or Australia?" (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke- fancy, curtseying as you're falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) "And what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."

Yes. I prefer to consider my illness as an infinite rabbit-hole leading to everywhere, a fixture in a dream I dream every night that haunts me like white rabbits and red queens during the daytime. Simply put: I am so well that I can make fun of how unwell I used to be - and write fairytales about nasty thoughts, lies, and everything else that might see me sick again.

I am Alice, a decade later.