Fragility.
After the first restful night's sleep in nearly a week, I'm feeling pretty damned good. My thought processes are clearer and I finally managed to remain awake during the hour-long busride to work. Hurrah! But with all this positivity, I'm questioning why I'm musing on all things morbid, this morning.
This body.. I feel it dying all around me. Like some ancient, craggy Scottish castle, this fleshy husk teeters on the brink of an eroded highland cliff. It's only a matter of time before it begins to heave and crumble, tumbling into the froth below, giving up its place in history forever. Perhaps I'm romanticizing again.. Or maybe I read too much Brontë. But I've never been so keenly aware of my own mortality as I am right now.
I stepped into the shower this morning, feeling my heart perform its spongy ballet, and wondered exactly when this will have gone too far. What price am I paying? Am I damaging my nervous system? Will I suffer from kidney failure when I'm 35? Exactly how much time am I stealing from the future to purchase this mock-thinness?
I boggle at the fact that, according to psychiatric records, many anorexics seem to believe there is no harm in starvation. How could one not be conscious of failing health? Of every skipped heartbeat? Colour me hypochondriac, but nary an evening passes where I don't lay in bed, wondering whether I'll be allowed to experience yet another day. Whether my father will enter my room dutifully, at 6am, to find his dearly departed daughter. (No wonder I never get any restful sleep.)
Perhaps my tendency toward introspection has afforded me an objectivity not seen in more "hardcore" anorexic cases. Perhaps they're further along in the disease than I am. Perhaps I'm not as malnourished as I could be. And part of me wishes that I were, because having the disorder and being conscious of having the disorder is a double-whammy, for it's tantamount to facing a self-imposed death sentence. You deal not only with the illness itself, but with the fact that it could be prevented... if only you didn't want it so much. The selfishness of my actions never fails to surprise me.
I have to stop this. But I don't want to. Therein lies the suicidal rub.
I think too much. Back to work.
This body.. I feel it dying all around me. Like some ancient, craggy Scottish castle, this fleshy husk teeters on the brink of an eroded highland cliff. It's only a matter of time before it begins to heave and crumble, tumbling into the froth below, giving up its place in history forever. Perhaps I'm romanticizing again.. Or maybe I read too much Brontë. But I've never been so keenly aware of my own mortality as I am right now.
I stepped into the shower this morning, feeling my heart perform its spongy ballet, and wondered exactly when this will have gone too far. What price am I paying? Am I damaging my nervous system? Will I suffer from kidney failure when I'm 35? Exactly how much time am I stealing from the future to purchase this mock-thinness?
I boggle at the fact that, according to psychiatric records, many anorexics seem to believe there is no harm in starvation. How could one not be conscious of failing health? Of every skipped heartbeat? Colour me hypochondriac, but nary an evening passes where I don't lay in bed, wondering whether I'll be allowed to experience yet another day. Whether my father will enter my room dutifully, at 6am, to find his dearly departed daughter. (No wonder I never get any restful sleep.)
Perhaps my tendency toward introspection has afforded me an objectivity not seen in more "hardcore" anorexic cases. Perhaps they're further along in the disease than I am. Perhaps I'm not as malnourished as I could be. And part of me wishes that I were, because having the disorder and being conscious of having the disorder is a double-whammy, for it's tantamount to facing a self-imposed death sentence. You deal not only with the illness itself, but with the fact that it could be prevented... if only you didn't want it so much. The selfishness of my actions never fails to surprise me.
I have to stop this. But I don't want to. Therein lies the suicidal rub.
I think too much. Back to work.