After A Lifetime Of Silence, It Is

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.

But New Love Only Lasts So Long, And Then You Crash Back Into The Real People You Are, And From As High As We Were, It's A Very Long Fall, And We Hit The Ground With A Thud.

My Brain Sometimes Departs From The Agreed-upon Reality, And My Private Reality Is A Very Lonely Place. But In The End, I'm Not Sure I Wish I'd Never Gone There.

It Is Not A Sudden Leap From Sick To Well. It Is A Slow, Strange Meander From Sick To Mostly Well. The Misconception That Eating Disorders Are A Medical Disease In The Traditional Sense Is Not Helpful Here. There Is No 'cure'. A Pill Will Not Fix It, Though It May Help. Ditto Therapy, Ditto Food, Ditto Endless Support From Family And Friends. You Fix It Yourself. It Is The Hardest Thing That I Have Ever Done, And I Found Myself Stronger For Doing It. Much Stronger.

I Was Perpetually Grief-stricken When I Finished A Book, And Would Slide Down From My Sitting Position On The Bed, Put My Cheek On The Pillow And Sigh For A Long Time. It Seemed There Would Never Be Another Book. It Was All Over, The Book Was Dead. It Lay In Its Bent Cover By My Hand. What Was The Use? Why Bother Dragging The Weight Of My Small Body Down To Dinner? Why Move? Why Breathe? The Book Had Left Me, And There Was No Reason To Go On.