Skip to main content

everything is upside down and backward and sad


"You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and no one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad."



I don't want to go to my psychiatrist and put on a brave face anymore.
I don't want to tell Alex how much I want to get better.
I don't want to look into the future and see a happy, glowing, successful mother of two.
Because I don't want to be a failure.

I wrote a letter to Alex:
...There are several reasons why I made the decision to ask my Mum to use the private healthcare cover to see a private psychiatrist...
...you; because you made me realise that I can be happy, I can be hopeful, there is more to life; it is worth fighting my demons for, and because you definitely, definitely deserve better. I think, essentially, because you took away so many of my fears and brought so much sunshine into my heart, I realised that I wasn't supposed to be ill - it wasn't me - it didn't have to be that way. I could step outside of my unhappiness, I was strong enough, capable of being that girl that I should always have been, and ready to be the girl I am when I'm with you permanently....

I'm not a liar. Every word of that is true.
But is it possible?
How can it be possible when everything is upside down and backward and sad and I am so ingrained in it. That is my life.
It's so easy to act the small parts - the happy, cute, intelligent girlfriend when I'm with Alex, the vivacious, playful, compassionate friend when I'm at the Club, the mature, sensible, grounded woman when I'm at work... But they are just parts on a stage - a stage with the backdrop of a straight and narrow world - when I step backstage again, it's a dark labyrinth of tunnels filled with moth-eaten costumes, a musty, suffocating smell of dying perfume where the creatures of my eating disorder lurk like something in a twisted fairytale.
...ready to be the girl I am when I'm with you permanently.
Does that mean I'm ready to act for the rest of my life? No, I know that that would be impossible. Is it possible, is it really possible, that it's not an act, that it is happiness, that it is inside me, that I have been taking steps outside the convoluted mirror world with Alex... and that I can step outside for good?

If you haven't read Marya Hornbacher's book Wasted, I urge you to. It puts things into words that I so often struggle to do.


picture from: http://pretty-as-a-picture.deviantart.com/art/the-monster-in-the-mirror-85878360

Comments

  1. Beautiful post...in my opinion, sometimes an act is also the real thing. How do you distinguish between "real" and "made up" anyway?

    ReplyDelete
  2. "world's a stage and men and womean are mere actors"

    ReplyDelete
  3. your writing is so beautiful.
    just sayin'.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Don't be anonymous, leave a name at least so I can identify you back :)

Popular posts from this blog

With all my everlasting love, Goodbye...

Well, I got the job. I spent the last three weeks living and breathing the company and the role, preparing myself completely for the onslaught of interviews. Every spare moment pouring over economics textbooks, business journals and newspapers, paperbacks and online resources. I did everything I could to get that job. I sat on the train on my journey home with my eyes closed and sent my thoughts up to the sky please let me get it, please, please I start in 4 weeks, straight after I finish at the school. Right back in the centre of the City of London. where I belong . where I can thrive, work hard and play hard back to my best whatever that best is I got the call to say I'd been offered the job in the middle of my therapy session. I was overjoyed. My therapist congratulated me. We talked about the incredible progress I had made. We talked about the end... We decided that my last session will be the week before I start my new job. The sun was shining outside, I felt invin

The Hardest Post...

. This is the hardest post I have ever had to write. I apologise if it's sporadic and raw. This is everything from the last two months. When I went away with Alex for a weekend on the 16th July and when we went away for the second time on the 13th August. How things became incredible. How things fell apart. The writing in red is what I have written today - my input now - the writing in black is what I wrote on the date stated. Written on 19th July 2010 The dream is not a dream. It exists. I tasted it. I lived it. The happiness of my childhood is not dead. It lives around me – in other children, in other families. I walked hand-in-hand with Alex through the gardens of Chatsworth House, listening to the laughter of children, watching old couples sitting on the wall eating huge cones of soft white ice cream. Seeing families all around me. Joy, happiness, laughter, innocence, contentment, fulfilment. I was right all along. I knew it. I knew it! I had known all along what

Winning

A narrative of the last few days… So Friday was the big day. I went back to my university town for the Annual Dinner Night of my old society. All present members and all alumni – all my best friends, all my old lovers, and the place that made and broke my reputation. Thursday: all I ate all day were two sweets. And I only ate them because M offered them to me on two separate occasions in the library. (M – the law school guy I can’t stop myself from being besotted with.) I was convinced that I looked terrible that day so I hid in the library at law school during our break. I hadn’t seen M all week, but that day, I left my desk for two minutes and returned to find he had sat himself two seats away. I was mortified and pretended not to see him… although from that point on I found it impossible to concentrate on my books… He spoke to me first, and obviously when he offered me a sweet I couldn’t say no for fear of looking weird / seeming rude. Anyway, straight after my day at college was ov