You Will Miss Her Sometimes. Bear In

My God! People Say. You Have So Much Self-control! And Later: My God. You're So, So Sick. When People Say This, They Turn Their Heads, You've Won Your Little Game. You Have Proven Your Thesis That No-body-loves-me-every-body-hates-me, Guess-i'll-just-eat-worms. You Get To Sink Back Into Your Hospital Bed, Shrieking With Righteous Indignation. See? You Get To Say. I Knew You'd Give Up On Me. I Knew You'd Leave.

The Idea Of My Future Simultaneously Thrilled And Terrified Me, Like Standing At The Lip Of A Very Sheer Cliff- I Could Fly, Or Fall. I Didn't Know How To Fly, And I Didn't Want To Fall. So I Backed Away From The Cliff And Went In Search Of Something That Had A Clear, Solid Trajectory For Me To Follow, Like Hopscotch.

Soon Madness Has Worn You Down. It’s Easier To Do What It Says Than Argue. In This Way, It Takes Over Your Mind. You No Longer Know Where It Ends And You Begin. You Believe Anything It Says. You Do What It Tells You, No Matter How Extreme Or Absurd. If It Says You’re Worthless, You Agree. You Plead For It To Stop. You Promise To Behave. You Are On Your Knees Before It, And It Laughs.

There Are Women In My Closet, Hanging On The Hangers. A Different Woman For Each Suit, Each Dress, Each Pair Of Shoes. I Hoard Clothes. My Makeup Spills From The Bathroom Drawers, And There Are Different Women For Different Lipsticks.

At Times It May Seem Worse - Harder, At Least - To Live Through The Despair Of This Loss Without The Temporary Comfort Of Our Addictive Behaviour. We Cannot Drown Our Sorrows. We Must Face The Fact That We Don’t Know, Really, Where We Are, How We Got Here, How Long The Pain Will Last, Or How To Move Past It. That Uncertainty May Be The Most Painful Part Of Not Knowing A God: No One Is There To Reassure Us That A God Will Take The Pain And Confusion Away. We Simply Don’t Know. And We Have No Way To Numb Ourselves Or To Forget The Condition We’re In.