for the next few weeks, i took pleasure not in the okay time i was having, but in the fact that i was having it. i made it through christmas and new year’s and i was acting like some semblance of myself. i had lost about fifteen pounds, and now i began to put on weight again. my father and my friends all congratulated on my astonishing progress. i thanked them. in my private self, however, i knew that what had gone away were only symptoms. i hated taking my pills everyday. i hated that i had a breakdown and lost my mind. i hated that unfashionable but relevant word breakdown, with its implication of the machinery giving in. i was relieved to have made it through the reading tour, but i was exhausted by all the things i had yet to make it through. i was overpowered being in the world, by other people and their lives i couldn’t lead, their jobs i couldn’t do - overpowered even by jobs i would never want or need to do. i was back to about where i had been in september, only now i understood how bad it could get. i was determined never again to go through such things.

@1 year ago