i think i realized something last night - but i don't know if i'll be able to explain it very well...

i was lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep, not really thinking about anything in particular, when all of i sudden tears started to burn my eyes. i felt at that moment that i wanted to die, right then, i wanted to die desperately. despite these strong feelings i also felt a little puzzled...i had been laying there benignly, why did i feel like i wanted to die? what caused it, what was at the root?

and i think i may have an answer. maybe not THE answer, but an answer.

Fear.

i felt this unbelievable fear squirming beneath my chest. Struggling, growing, pushing. Fear of what? fear of life. i just had these thoughts: "i can't do it, i can't do it, i can't do it. i can't make it through life. i can't! i can't live these days, day in day out, i can't do it! it's too hard!" a terrible lump in my throat just started to grow and grow.

when i'm at work and i get a difficult project or something that i think is going to be hard, i get a similar feeling...i close my door, i can't breathe and i cry and cry, thinking over and over, i can't do this, i can't i can't. what i felt last night was this feeling times a thousand.

so many things i'm afraid of. the mediocrity of life, of days. the fact that i'm 28 and have done nothing spectacular with my life and there appear to be no future plans for fantasticness. the fact that i'm ordinary. the fact that i had enormous potential and did not go anywhere. the fact that days are ordinary. the minutae of life. the constant battles, the daily drama that i care nothing about. each day i am faced with my own sheer inadequacy. the fact that i have fifteen different lives within me that will never be lived. the fact that i am nothing. when i leave this planet, by whatever means, a strong wind will blow and i will be forgotten. each day is a chore to get through and all i see are days and days and years of choreful days. that in a world full of people and souls and plants and sun and animals i am alone. there's the terrible fear of a lifetime as lonely as this day.

i think so much is tied to this fear. the starving, the throwing up, the cutting, the eating, the drinking, the obsessions, the medicines...i think a lot of it is a desperate attempt to hide from this fear, this fear that chases me and threatens to catch me off guard like it did last night and overwhelm me in the quiet night.

there are other things, i'm sure, that i'm running from. pain, sadness, loneliness, a litany of other things. but last night in the quiet the monster of fear was rising from underneath my sternum and my first instinct was death. anything to get away from this phantom.

i don't really know what to do about it. but at least it has a name.

starving + bleeding