I am tired of hurting inside. I am tired of this inexplicable ache that will not cease. Around every corner is another person I must pretend to be happy for. I want to feel joy. I want the flutters in my stomach and to feel my heart skip a beat from something other than anxiety. I crave the sun on my face and chest, and wind in my hair that isn't bitter and snowy. I want something to hope for. But all of those things seem a thousand miles away, and I'm stuck in the in between place. Self centered, self destructive, a failure, a disappointment. Somewhere between suicidal and okay, and I don't know how to get out.

Guilt. That is the one emotion I can't seem to get out of my system. I'm sitting in front of my open window, listening to the snow fall. It's quiet outside. Class was cancelled today and all I can think about is my headache and the guilt I feel that I'm not sitting in a library somewhere with my face buried in a book about burn trauma. Things have not been right lately. At first I wasn't sure, but now I'm very certain that I have not been happy for the past four months. I can't say I know the exact reason. I'm afraid that I've allowed myself to feel so much, I am losing my ability to feel the things that I need to. I no longer enjoy my solemnity or my morning walk to school. Maybe it's the snow, but maybe it's me. Back to the guilt. I feel guilty because i have drifted apart from my family, and many of my friends. I am home with both of my sisters today, but I was downstairs for a total of ten minutes before I returned to my room. I didn't know what to say to them. I don't feel a need to sit and talk with them. I feel guilty because I nearly can't stand one of them. Everything she does makes my skin crawl. The way she eats, talks, sniffs, dresses... I feel like I don't deserve the people that care about me because right now I don't feel I can care for them back. The other night I stormed out on someone. I know he cares about me, and I used to feel that way too. That was over a year ago and I don't feel the same anymore. I haven't. I feel bad when I don't go see him, so I do sometimes and pretend I care. I know it's the wrong thing to do, but barely anyone spends time with me. Anyway, he begged me to visit him, so I did. When I got there, he was very drunk, and decided to take it upon himself to be, for lack of a better word, an absolute dick. So I left. He tried to follow me, but I peeled out of his driveway. I thought I would at least feel angry, but I didn't. I felt nothing besides a desire to go home and sleep. I'm not sure what is going on in my head, but I need it to stop. I need to feel something besides the pain I have inside. This frustrating ache that I have no reason to have! I feel selfish and stupid, but it won't go away. I need something positive to focus on, or I'm afraid I might give up.

Sometimes I experience thoughts and emotions that I'm very certain no one wants to hear, so I keep them to myself. They brew inside me, and then I crack. I sit at the desk at work and cry about how frustrated I am. I've decided that whenever I have these feelings, I'm going to write here. Frustration number one: work. My job is not difficult. I sit at a desk for eight hours and deal with hotel guests, as well as manage events and do laundry. Unfortunatly, the hotel I work at is so small that I'm here completely alone when I work the 3-11 shift. Now that winter has truly set in, we have few guests. Often I don't see another soul for the entire shift. No one talks to me, so I begin to feel very alone. This is an unhealthy state for someone of the likes of me. I begin to think unhealthy thoughts, and about bad behaviors, and my mind is overtaken with negativity about myself. I develop a poor outlook. And here I am with no one I feel I can go to with these things. Frustration number two: Recovery. I never imagined that getting better could be so painful. I developed an eating disorder when I was 15. It has been almost five years of throwing up everything I eat and intermittently starving myself, all the while running 6-8 miles a day and cutting out meat and carbs from my diet. I am still angry at myself. The memory of making myself vomit for the first time is still engrained in my mind. I can clearly see my 15 year old self looking in the mirror. I had lost 40 pounds by running. I was finally a healthy weight, but I began to worry. What if I gained it all back? I would once again be the fat, awkward girl at school that no one really cared to talk to. Unnoticed. I'm fairly certain that's a 15 year old's greatest fear. Then, aha! I can eat whatever I want and if I throw it up, I wont get fat. Maybe I'll lose some more weight too because I run! I was thrilled with my brilliant plan. So I made myself throw up my dinner, and before I knew it, purging was no longer an option. I had to do it. My sickness quickly mutated. It began as just a thing I did after regular meals, and within a year, it was something else entirely. I couldn't wait to get home from school so I could shove everything within sight in my mouth and then make myself throw it all up again. It's an impulse that I'm sure will never go away. It got to the point where I could eat an entire pound of spaghetti, a few bagels, chips 'n salsa, a half a container of ice cream, cookies, ect. Anything I could find. A whole pizza and four bowls of cereal. It didn't matter, as long as I ate it and then purged. Of course my family began to notice, but we didn't talk about it. We don't really talk about things. It became worse. I then discovered through more unhealthy decisions which I will not expand on, that I could also starve myself, and at the very least, I could eat only fruits and vegetables, as long as I threw up everything else and kept running. I began to experience the effects of electrolyte imbalances and anemia. My hair started to fall out, my legs cramped up, I easily got migraines, and I was tired all the time. My dentist told me that if I continued to mistreat myself, I was going to have root canals performed on my back teeth. He told me all of my teeth were decayed. I was silently trying to deal with this in high school and then in nursing school. Tomorrow marks a month of recovery. I exercise five days a week, and I eat healthy. I eat carbs, and I will have dessert. I've gained about five pounds, and I'm sure it's mostly muscle, but it's painful. I always thought that when I got better, I would be excited and proud of myself. I thought it would feel great, but it doesn't. I'm so uncomfortable in my own skin, and I don't know how to like myself. I turned my mirror around, and I only wear loose-fitting clothing. I cannot describe the fear and disgust I have. I know it's the right thing. The cycle can end. I always believed I would be sick for the rest of my life. I know the thoughts will never go away. I will always have a difficult time liking myself, and I will always experience the urge to binge and purge. The difference is, I know that I can say no. That is something I'm incredibly thankful for.

I want someone to listen. I don't want to hear what they think. I have so many horrible thoughts and feelings inside me, and I want to say them without being told I'm wrong. I'm always wrong. I don't have anyone to tell these things, because I'm wrong. I'm a horrible person, I'm never going to graduate nursing school. I'm going to flunk out and owe all my loans back. I'm disgusting and I hate recovery. No one is ever going to love me the way I envision it in my head. They're going to find themselves fascinated by my personality and my appearance, and within a couple months, they'll realize how strange and emotionally untable a person I am, and they'll leave me just like everyone else does. No one sticks around. Not even my friends, it seems like. In the end we only have ourselves, and I don't even want me. I'm fucking useless. I can't do anything right. I can't be the right person for anyone, and I know how I'm going to end. These are the things I can't tell anyone, because they tell me I'm wrong.

I suppose I owe myself a little update, just to organize my thoughts and the past couple of month's events. I finished my third semester successfully... almost. My clinical instructor failed me in my mental health course. She told me I was unprepared and unprofessional. In my defense, I have a very rough past where mental health is concerned, and as for the unprofessional aspect, I'm not quite sure what to say. Maybe it's my two-toned hair and 00g plugs. I can't say. I will still graduate in May, but I will have to retake mental health from May through June. I will still graduate, so long as I take the most difficult route, it seems. I start classes after work today. I have managed to stay single for three months now, and considering my track record, that is somewhat of an accomplishment. I don't do well by myself. I don't have anyone to rely on. I feel important and wanted in a relationship, and I suppose that's why I'm so dependent. I am trying to stay single for as long as possible, so that I can learn to rely on no one for happiness but myself. So far, so good. There is someone I like, but he goes to school in Rochester. That's that. I know better than to try to be with him. I have so many other things I need to focus on right now. Christmas came and went. My brother, his wife, and my niece came to stay for a couple of weeks. I only got to hold her a couple times, but she is beautiful and I'm happy that they're trying to make things work. In other news, my best friend and I are saving up for an apartment. I love my sister, but I can't stand living in Cato anymore in that house. It doesn't feel like home to me. It's a half hour from my school and my best friend, and I can't handle it anymore. If I manage to save enough money, we will get an apartment together in March, regardless of the fact that my parents are not keen on me moving out. Not at all. I want so badly to show them that in the past year, I've growm up a great deal. I work so hard in school, have kept a job for seven months, and I'm taking care of myself. I may only be twnety, but I'm one of the most mature 20 year olds you'll ever meet. I just want them to trust me, but I'm not sure how I can do that. I have nothing else to say at the moment. Aka my boss is here :p

I don't understand how people can write daily. Even though I had plenty of spare time this week, and I'm on break and got my projects done early, I did not. I haven't sat myself down and created something meaningful in months. It has been a constant, non-stop day-to-day bustle that I absolutely hate. For the past four months I've gone to school Tuesday through Friday. Some of those days start at 05:00 and end at midnight. From Friday through Monday, I work. On top of this, I have exams, paperwork, projects, and a struggling social life. Unfortunately it is verging on non-existant. I can almost blame myself for that. Good 'ole Jim broke up with me about a month ago. It was certainly a surprise to me. I saw him about four times a week. I always tried to make time for him, and we got along very well. I had called him to ask a question, and just like that, he said he didn't have feelings for me anymore. He hasn't said a word to me since. I was hurt and shocked, but things are a lot better now. The positive side of it is that I drink less, spend less money on gas, focus more on school, and have time for other things. What other things do I do? Lay in my bed and watch movies, if you must know. This is very exciting stuff. The semester will end in about a week and a half, and I'm thrilled. If everything goes as planned, I have one more and I will be finished with nursing school. I'm both proud and terrified to say that I'm graduating in May. I must add, I'm now an aunt! My brother and his wife welcomed Anya Jade into the world a month ago. She's absolutely beautiful and I get to meet her for Christmas. That is all the exciting and riveting material I have to share of my current comings and goings.

There is nothing better than healing.