I want to be there for you right now. Whether you’re scared or not, I’m positive you’re feeling uncertain.

I have no answers. I am one clueless writer chick who occasionally has thoughts she is too afraid to share, about topics that terrify her. So instead she tells stories about herself? What a narcissistic cunt. 

I don’t care much that no one reads this. Maybe that’s strange, but I really can’t be fucked to be sad about it. What I do care about though, is that you, my sweet friend, feel better after reading. Or heard. Or thoughtful or excited. That you feel something apart from the fear we are so familiar with. 

And I mean, this fear is very real. We should feel fear in a way that inspires action, absolutely. BUT, it isn’t always the best state to be in when trying to care for yourself or the people you love.

So for your reading pleasure, my smoking hot reader, I have taken to the floor, which, by the way, is way more comfortable than anyone gives it credit for. The floor? Can’t recommend it enough. My spine? Straight as hell. Me? We’ll get into that eventually, but I digress.

So from the floor, my saucy reader, I bring you my thoughts unfiltered. Why I put my twitter drafts on this platform when I am too afraid to tweet them makes very little sense to me, but some bangers have accumulated, and they are begging to be shared.

Again I dip into my twitter drafts, and again, I make clear my inability to feel embarrassed online.

Buckle up, my red hot reader. 

great fucking song or great, fucking song

 I don’t tell people I’m bisexual, not because I’m afraid of their opinion, but because i’m embarrassed that no girls are into me.

how dare you go, “bleep bloop” –I say to my speaker, as it too, dies.

I have those eyes that somehow let strangers know I am here solely to be told weird stuff and it is my most treasured asset. 

an endless void you say?

listening to the Naropa archives and all the readings begin, “if you cannot restrain yourselves PLEASE go to the door to smoke.”

these are for me this too is for me

god bless us* everyone

*ppl who also pass out at work from period pain

today I told a customer my fantasy of donald drowning in all the blood he’s responsible for spilling so yeah, gonna have to find a new gig soon.

a depth of sadness previously known only to the occupants of the jcrew factory outlet.

idk i think I’m prolly appropriately rated

I only open Spotify for heartbreak purposes

and I bet that famous couple super care about your take and are not way too busy being hot and cool.

haven’t knocked around town in a good bit aye

if i saw Timothee Chalamet on the street I would simply hold my breath so that precious angel didn’t blow away

so many songs about being 17. You know what kinda rhymes with 17 and fits just as nicely? 23. Just a lil note. 

Thank you, my dear reader.

Remember that you are not empty or helpless, and that feeding that story won’t do you any favors.

Love you so much.

I’ve wanted to talk about compliments for so long, dear reader. So let’s fucking have it.

In true obnoxious writer fashion, I’ll start somewhere in the middle.

So!

Say, I read my writing to someone. They tell me, “You’re a good writer.” I wouldn’t trust this because see, I just prompted it. I read them my story about being bad at chess or whatever, and then they said something nice. Though I will accept the compliment as graciously as one awkward, online writer could, it will not sink in past the surface.

It is not that I am not grateful for this kind of reactive compliment–I am. I just can’t believe it.

The most meaningful compliments point to things we see as true about ourselves–things we know, on some level, already. Otherwise how would we believe them? Maybe it’s something we feel neutral about or that we don’t advertise. Even something scary.

The best compliments don’t sound like compliments; they just sound like observations–just stated facts. They don’t front as new information, they just are, already. 

Truth without a disclaimer always hits hardest. This sounds a little heady, so let’s bring it back down really quick. I’ll give you an example. 

Years ago, I was on the phone with my mom. I was sitting on a stoop–crying to her–really upset that someone I loved didn’t love me back. Hard to believe, I know. I said I was hurting because, “he’s such a special person to me.” 

She said very simply, almost dismissively actually, “Everyone’s a special person to you, Allison. That’s always been who you are.” 

Unfiltered, unprompted truth. I knew it was true because the way she said it wasn’t to cushion the blow, it was to make the blow make sense. You see? It was just a fact–it was why I was hurting. It was true. 

It’s the most meaningful compliment I’ve ever gotten, and it wasn’t meant to be one. Pretty cool.

I asked some friends what the best compliment they’d ever gotten was, and I really think I’m onto something with this. Their answers were never really flowery or sentimental; these compliments were just true.

My favorite one was a friend who told me, “she liked the way I said ‘thank you.’” 

Even this is something to be believed. It isn’t crazy or formal or emotionally charged, it’s just a fact. 

Sometimes we, and I am for sure guilty of this, are so hungry for this grand validation of our art or our lives or bodies that we dismiss the things about ourselves that people take notice of. Dear reader, these are some of the coolest things about us.

“I read your writing in your voice.” That, that’s a pretty cool one.

Dear reader, I like the way you say, “thank you”

I love you, and that’s true.

I used to wonder why we celebrate anniversaries. It felt arbitrary or self-indulgent, kind of a reason to not have gratitude the other 364, ya know? Our little floating rock’s position relative to the sun didn’t matter to me. I was just some punk kid with nothing to celebrate.

But then I started living through them–the years I mean. A year since I was flown to the hospital. A year since I left residential treatment. A year since I moved to Boulder. I didn’t celebrate so much as glaze over these days with a pseudo-celebratory tweet. I didn’t feel the weight of time, its importance, at all. But I started to notice them pass.

I bring this up, dear sweet reader, because today marks one year since I stopped doing daily treatment, and I have some feelings about it. I’ve been living my life for a year. A whole turn around the sun, man. The whole thing. Under my own power. Feeding my damn self. Staying alive.

That’s cool to me. 

SO! In honor of a year of freedom, I feel like maybe some kind of story is in order? A list of the times I felt powerful enough to start a cult? The time I was half passed out in a stretcher while an EMT vomited? Maybe the time I went to get the mail and saw a drunk guy asleep on my porch? (Complete stranger as well, like totally just passed out there walking home. Grown man. I left him a bag of snacks and carried on.)

ANYWAY. 

Maybe I’ll talk about chess, and how I’m just still so damn. BUT! That  I keep trying because it’s more about the person you’re playing. 

But I’m celebrating. I won’t self-deprecate tonight. Instead, my dear, insanely beautiful reader, I’ll tell you about a text from my mom that I got this evening. 

It said, “I hope you’re enjoying the life you’ve created.”

To avoid being mushy, I won’t well up in front of you. I will say, though, that I never thought I’d read that. 

My mom saw me in so many hospital rooms, through so many meals. So many breakdowns and appointments and “not looking good” conversations. But tonight, she said simply and sincerely, that she hoped I was happy. 

Happiness these days feels almost wrong–dismissive in a way. I think the more appropriate word is “capable”. I am capable of living a life that I am proud of–of being a person in this world. I am ready for whatever’s next. I’m ready, truly.

Dear reader, I think that maybe with this capability comes some kind of freedom. I want so much for you to feel capable of existing in this fucked up world in a way that feels important and real to you. 

I don’t love my body. In fact, I despise it. But I know that living this life is just so much more fucking important than starving myself to feel safe. Safety is such an illusion. It’s connection that’s real, yeah? And it’s leaning into what you’ve got.

Dear reader, my lovely friend, I hope you feel capable. I hope you are enjoying the life you’ve made for yourself, whatever that looks like.

All my love–every bit of it,

Allison

Are you out there, dear reader? Are you out there, still? I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and all the things I’d like to tell you. It’s selfish, maybe. But I always go on talking.

I’d like to tell you I started school again, and that one of my professors looks like Aang the Avatar grown up. I’d like to tell you that my grandfather passed away this week. I’d like to tell you that I don’t know whether or not I should go home for the funeral.

I’d like to tell you that I am very, very afraid. I feel the weight of disaster, and I’d like to tell you that.

I’d like to tell you that I’m maybe getting better at chess, though it is very hard to say. I’d like to tell you that I danced alone in my room for an hour. I’d like to tell you, regrettably, that I know Free Falling on the ukulele, by heart. I’d like to tell you that I baked cookies with chocolate kisses on top. I’d like to tell you that they melted in the oven to crispy pancake tits. 

I’d like to tell you that I’m so very proud of my best friend. 

I’d like to tell you that I’m scared, too. 

You’re not empty or helpless, and I’d like to tell you that.

I love you, dear reader. Tell me stuff.

My favorite saying is one I don’t believe, dear reader. I understand what it is trying to say, I just think it says it poorly. I heard it first from a very old woman wearing pigtails. I do not care to explain our meeting, but the saying, dear sweet reader, is a gem. This we’ll get into.

Our conversation went like this:

“I’m so afraid. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Well, what if the man upstairs only has one leg?”

Beautiful. Absolutely perfect. I’d never heard this before, but of course being the absolute kook I am, I loved it immediately. The more I thought about it–and I thought about it a lot–the more I found issue with it.

I decided to write a story about why. Here.

The Man Upstairs.

The Man Upstairs had no regard for the timing of E’s morning nap. Just when she would settle into the perfect mattress-dent, a shoe would hit the other side of her ceiling. Wherever she lived, she found more of the same. Never could she read in peace, or sip tea to the quiet morning without the constant clomping of shoes on the floors above. Footsteps seemed to fall from their owner’s feet as if they were ten sizes too big. 

On a particularly soft Sunday morning, E decided to steep a tea of her own creation. She named it after herself of course, including only modest scents, and the cleanest leaves. She saved this for special mornings–the ones that called out to be slept through–the ones she would spend on her porch, basking in the glow of the newly born sun. 

In these moments, she thought that drinking tea alone was the most important thing she would ever do. In these moments, she felt happy.

The man upstairs hadn’t bothered her for at least a day. It seemed like his last shoe had fallen–that maybe he had found the right size at last. 

The kitchen timer dinged, and E pulled herself from her perch to retrieve her tea. With a sarine smile and soft steps, she took the mug she herself had painted in two hands, and sighed with pleasure. Her first step from the kitchen towards the morning light was interrupted by a thundering crash from above. It startled her so completely that she threw the mug clear across the room. E watched in horror as it shattered into pieces, spewing sweet E tea on the foyer rug. 

“That’s it!” E screamed, breaking her personal silence for the first time in days. She ran to her laptop, hair aflame, and demanded this horrifically rude neighbor be removed.

Her landlord was a lazy man who cared very little who lived in his building. As long as they paid by the first of the month, they were of no consequence to him. As someone who always paid a week early, E had some pull with the lazy lump. It was quite easy to persuade him to allow her to interview her next overhead neighbor. When the Man Upstairs’ lease was up, E got to work.

She interviewed dozens of folks and then dozens more. Some were too loud, some were musicians, some seemed like the kind to have parties. And their feet! Their feet were all much too big for her liking. None of them were adequately silent. Well, none until the man with only one leg. She was thrilled at the prospect of a single foot–a single shoe! She handed him a pen and told him where to sign.

At last, thought E. At last.

The first of the month came, and after the footsteps of the movers subsided, E’s ceiling was silent as death. She was thrilled. E decided to congratulate herself on a job excellently done with a special blend of tea with the most lovely herbs imaginable. She boiled the water–being careful to turn the stove off before the kettle whistled–and began her seven minute steep. 

She returned to her couch, where she smiled to herself for nearly all seven of her idle minutes. Then, she heard a voice from above and the closing of a door. That’s alright, thought E. Surely temporary bustling. 

Only seconds left for her tea, and E went back to smiling. Smiling and sighing. 

Oh, but then, POUND POUND POUND on the ceiling above. POUND POUND POUND. “What?” Shrieked E, “How can this be?”

It was as if someone was up there…jumping. No. It was as if someone was up there. Hopping. 

Ding. Her tea was ready.

I love you dear reader.

-Al

I was reading about initiation rituals, dear reader, and how these are sorely misunderstood in our Capitalist hell. 

We are certainly NOT in need of great pain. We do however usually lack a meaningful community–one that will hear us and celebrate our return–one that will mourn our losses in a way that feels honest.

We are too busy working and distracting ourselves to hold each other in the ways that would solidify our healing. We are too preoccupied to see to it that the initiation experience is brought to a close. And so we are left, my dear, sweet reader, with the empty pain of outgrowing ourselves.

After a Big Hurt, our instinct is to find a place to process both the pain and the learning–this is a community. Without sharing our experience–either intentionally or out of necessity–we can’t seem to end the chapter of suffering that forced us out of outdated versions of ourselves. We become obsessed with licking our wounds–with retribution. We cause ourselves more pain. We inflict it, too, on whoever’s in range.

To fight this, we try with little success to jam ourselves back into the lives we’ve outgrown. With the Big Pain we’ve felt and the newness we now know is possible, we attempt to crawl back to the comfort of not knowing.

But Big Pain needs big change, my lovely reader. After something this dramatic, we know the future with certainty enough to go and get it. We can’t do this though, no matter how badly we want it, if we don’t in some capacity share the story of how we came to see change.

I find this idea both intuitive and impossible. We are rewarded for strength but never for failures–though of course we learn much more from skinned knees than a great haircut.

I didn’t understand this in so many words until this morning. But! I realized I’ve been trying to do this for years and years. This is where you come in.

I didn’t want to share my story “for real”–I didn’t think I had a community to share it with. Also and perhaps more importantly, I wasn’t done going through it. Fuck all, I’m still going through it. But I started writing about my Big Pain anyway, because it was too uncomfy to keep inside. I wanted to see if sorting it out on a page would help me move on.

It did–kind of. Sharing my story held my shortcomings up to a mirror. I’ve asked myself what I’ve learned from her–I’ve shared just about every one of my flaws with you–save a few bad hair days and some vices I’d nipped before I knew you. It wasn’t until I did that I started to let myself be different.

I’m really deeply moved that I’ve found you, dear reader, even if it was by accident. It was selfish really–I was writing for myself. It’s so cool though that forcing myself to reenter my past has brought me to a group of people willing to accept me as I am now.

This whole recovery thing didn’t stick until I started talking about what hurt with you. I hear your stories too, dear reader. I feel for you.

I am here to listen too, don’t forget that.

I love you so much. Oh, it’s a lot of love.

-AL

hey god 

it’s me, Allison

anyway. i wish you hadn’t died 

before I was born i really would have liked

to be your child.

 

i’d have been your least favorite daughter–

what with all the cussing

oh but i’d adore you 

and fuck, i wouldn’t care 

that you’d never read my writing

 

you’d have had a busy day.

 

The disconnect between the lives we live, and what we call divine without thought is discouraging to me, dear reader. Our experience is separated into what we can understand in simple terms, and what we can’t. What exists outside the limits of language we often call God, and by doing so we dismiss the thing that is actually beautiful about being alive. 

With this ‘either or’ we dismiss how incredibly beautiful it is to ask questions–to uncover why and how and where. By calling something Divine–say the concept of soulmates–not only do we discount our autonomy, but the things that (I think) are crazy beautiful about human relationships. 

Stay with me here if you can my darling reader; I have a point I promise. 

The choices we make, our ability to make meaningful connections with others, the chemicals that tell us when we’ve done so–this is so dope to me. It’s insane. 

I promise I’m not shitting on God–I think having faith great–I’m only offering something for my fellow atheist depressives. Maybe it’s because I’m stubborn to a fault, but religion isn’t something I can hang with. Either way, appreciating why something is the way it is is emotionally fulfilling to me. 

So here’s my take on destiny, my dear, sweet reader. Spoiler: I shit on it.

It’s impossible to nail down the start of the unraveling. It started long before I was born and will continue after I’m dust. I’m just one tiny choice of many, and being so am both the result of and the reason for infinity. So are you, dear reader.

I’ve been told this sentiment is cheesy, but I think its earnest. 

I was in a hospital with a woman who let me borrow her calligraphy pens, and this is why I moved to Boulder. Fuckin wild.

Her name is Megan. It wasn’t God with an all knowing, benevolent, crusty hand that mashed our worlds together, but every decision that we made until that point. 

It was the little bits and choices that lead Megan to work in an Eating Disorder treatment center, and all the ones that brought me there. Of these there are so many huge ones–big life changers mind you–and infinite tiny ones that I have long since forgotten. 

I got sick. I got sicker. I tried treatment. I decided to see a new therapist who recommended a psychiatrist who introduced me to a nutritionist who recommended the hospital she worked at. And those leave out all the really boring life stuff that made me the kind of person who would want to borrow calligraphy pens. 

A nurse walking by my room saw the writing I’d done with Megan’s pens, and told me about a calligraphy class she’d taken at a school in Boulder.

I looked it up. This place had a writing department called, and I shit you not, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Weird as fuck and right up my gauze-laden, boost-heavy alley.

It wasn’t magic. Not God’s crusty hand. But all of Megan’s choices–influenced by everything else in the world–and all of mine which had been influenced just the same. If I had endless time and a big old brain, I could make some kind of ridiculous decision-spreadsheet. I’d maybe even make an altar for it. 

But instead I will not do that. Cause I don’t have to. 

But I was talking to someone quite lovely about fate, and how when something bad happens, not believing in destiny kinda blows. Knowing that things are really just that bad right now, leaves a hole we are prone to filling with some flavor of anger. 

Here, where the atheist depressives and existential dreaders live, there is no dodging pain or loss with a simple “wasn’t meant to be”. Not believing in fate can be infuriating. See, our will has limitations. 

I got sick. I remember sitting in the car with my mom at the very onset of my disorder, crying because I couldn’t get these really punishing thoughts out of my head. 

I was so scared. 

They came without my consent–without me having chosen them–and no amount of starving or running or avoiding my life would get rid of them. Not believing in fate left me devastated then, and still does now. There was no REASON my brain or genetics or trauma existed this way. It just did. It’s insane. 

But see, the absolute destruction of a life and a lovely chance encounter with a beautiful stranger are only possible together. The absence of destiny means both are equally possible, but neither are required.

I would prefer that we didn’t die without our own consent, but see we don’t meet our best friend on purpose either. It just happens. It just happens because it does. We make choices because we have to. We get sick because the brain isn’t perfect. I think it’s beautiful and devastating and the only reason to keep going. 

Thank you Megan for the pens.

Thank you, dear reader, for all the decisions that lead you here tonight.

It was cheesy, but I mean it all.

I love you heaps.

Take care.

 

I’ve realized I’ve been telling my story out of order; that none of the pieces seem to match up end to end. Between fearful childhood and the quaking psych ward, I had been hospitalized twice.

This story in particular, my dear lovely reader, is very hard to tell. There is so much guilt and regret in what my life became, and in who I hurt during the middle bits of getting better. I’m going to tell you anyway though, if you choose to listen, because I think it’ll be worth the hurt.

I’ve been hospitalized three times. This is the story of the second.

Bruce had the most beautiful, blue eyes; when he was sad or scared, they couldn’t hide a thing. I wished they were brown. He was well into his sixties, but still he spoke to me like an equal. I liked him, I just didn’t listen.

I started seeing Stacy around this time too. We were somewhere between Cymbalta and Prozac when she started getting really concerned. It was at this point that Bruce decided he couldn’t help me. He wanted me to return to treatment, and I said no. There was no way I’d go back to a body I hated–to a body that made me unsafe–depressed. Not that I wasn’t depressed in an emaciated body, but that didn’t matter. He told me, in the kindest way he could, to not come back. He couldn’t enable me. He couldn’t watch me die.

I stayed out of treatment for two more months, in which time I had finished a semester of college with a 4.0. I had gone contra dancing with my best friend. I had been on dates. Had a boyfriend for a bit. I had been dishonest and unkind to the two people I loved without reservation. I had lied to myself as well–but that didn’t matter as much. 

In these two months, my mother fought while I slept. My body was weak and my brain thought only in numbers. Numbers and nothing nothing nothing. I needed to walk. I needed to get warm somehow. I had to fill my stomach with water. She cooked for me. She placed it on the table in front of me. She rearranged her life. She took it all on. All of it. I knew guilt; I knew love and sacrifice. I had to stop.

She was tired, and scared, and my best friend in the world. I decided I should try treatment for a second time–briefly–to get just healthy enough to take care of myself. My mom drove me to a hospital in Connecticut for my second try at treatment. The program was called Walden Behavioral Health.

I was admitted through the ER, and my primary fear was not what lay ahead, but that I would be larger than everyone else. I was scared that I’d be the fattest one there. I cried to my mom that I wasn’t sick enough–I felt like I looked too healthy–I wasn’t small enough to need this place. I didn’t look sick.

I weighed less than I had in fifth grade. I was just barely 20.

My mom was going to stay with my uncle an hour away in Providence, Rhode Island so she could be close to me. Guilt. Numbness. Fear. I didn’t need to be there; I wasn’t sick enough; my mom was giving up her life; I didn’t want to gain weight; my mom was worried and hurting. My mom was worried and hurting. I had to stop. I had to.

My mom couldn’t see me until later that evening, so they wheeled me through a locked door, alone. “Walden” was written in large, lilting letters on the unfeelingly white walls. They wouldn’t let me walk. 

I met with a psychiatrist within fifteen minutes of arriving. I was numb and tired and told her everything. I told her about food and my body, about treatment and Stacy and Bruce. I told her that I had anxiety attacks until I was fourteen, and that I used to be afraid of stars. I told her that when I was eight, I was afraid that the sun wouldn’t come up in the morning, and that I, or someone I loved, would die and I would be at fault somehow.

“Thank you for being,” she hesitated, “honest.”

“Of course.”

“We’ll start you on Zyprexa tonight.”

It was an antipsychotic, often used with schizophrenia, but also with what I had. Stacy had put me on it for a while, but I stopped taking it without telling her. I didn’t like how antipsychotic sounded. I just wanted to be 20.

Walden had seen marginal improvements in patients on this drug. One of the side effects was weight gain.

My dietitian at Walden was named Kate. With her, I chose my meals and snacks for the day. After an hour of deliberation, I chose a granola bar and apple juice for my first snack, which I would have to eat in five minutes. 

There was one room for us during the day. We ate there, watched tv there, met for “groups” there. It was there that I sat at a table with twenty other adults, half of whom had tubes connected from their nose to a bag full of nutritional supplement. This is how they were fed if they couldn’t finish meals at the table. This is how I would be fed if I decided not to eat. No, that doesn’t feel right. If I couldn’t eat. 

The woman to my right–a tiny, adolescent-looking patient–wasn’t eating, The woman to my left was breaking her chips into dusty oblivion. A woman across the room, hooked up to a tube feeding her both supplement and water, was sipping something from a plastic cup. From head to foot, this woman was concave. She was ageless in a way that only a skeleton can be–simply without life. I ached for her. I couldn’t help her. 

I drank my apple juice first, then ate the granola bar. I thought about my mom. 

She came after dinner, which had been one half of a peanut butter and jelly that I had eaten in small, delicate bites. She looked deeply worried and tired; I had seen her this way before. I held her for the better part of a minute, and told her I was doing okay. That I was okay. That I loved her and was so grateful she she was there. I loved her more than she could ever know–how could she possibly know?

We went to a visiting room, where another young woman sat playing cards with her mother. Neither spoke. I held my mother’s hand while we talked, promising her that I was going to do this–that I had to. She let go of my hand, and parted my hair in two french braids. How did she love me still?

My mother was the only daughter of two recovered alcoholics. My grandfather died when I was ten, and my grandmother now lives alone near a river. She watches Canada from her living room. I played there as a kids; carefree and showing skin. 

My mother raised herself. She cared for her two younger brothers, did the family’s laundry, cleaned. My mother needed no one. I needed her like my own lungs.

She came to see me in that Connecticut hospital every night for a week, and every night she braided my hair. We talked about a show she was watching–Vikings. Ootrid was the name of the buff, handsome hero, and we talked about him at length. 

“His father, and his father’s father, were named Ootrid too.”

“So our Ootrid is actually Ootrid, Son of Ootrid, Son of Ootrid.”

We laughed so hard we cried. I felt like maybe I might be okay. 

Meals and snacks were excruciating. The majority of patients were older–fifties or sixties–which surprised me. They would yell at the staff for salt, pepper, mustard, ketchup, something was cold; they were frantic in these needs. They cut their food into tiny pieces, and so I started to as well. I didn’t like finishing my food before everyone else, so I started matching their glacial pace. I found myself aching, always. I couldn’t help them, what could I possibly do? Listen, maybe. But they didn’t speak.

The sadness in this place was profound. The grief. The absence of people.

The ageless woman was  named Joany. She was my mother’s age. She had been in the hallway one evening when my mother arrived, and said a small, “hello” in her direction.

My mother found her eyes, and greeted her. Pain. Numbness. 

Wordlessly, my mom embraced her. 

I was there for a week, and in that time had eaten more than I had in the past three months. I was hitting a wall–I couldn’t keep eating like this. I had to stop somehow. But my mom–.

We decided that I’d transfer from the hospital, to a residential facility in Waltham Massachusett–another branch of Walden Behavioral Health. It took two hours to get there, in which time I had plenty of time to think of all the damage I had done to my life, all the food that was sitting inside me, and the all the wreckage I’d left. My mom played music both of us knew and we discussed the sex appeal of Vikings. 

We arrived in Waltham late that night–nine or ten. The intake was brief, and I was feeling horribly present. I could feel everything, and so was drowning in an empty pain in my lower stomach. My mom had to leave. I clung to her neck. 

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

 

Thank you, dear reader.

I love you most.

I feel funny, dear reader.

Not like, ill or stoned or whatever. I just mean that at this moment, I have the brain juice to not be a total drag. Which is great. 

Now, what do I do with this? Well, seeing as I have very few friends and an endless amount of self-importance, I’m gonna tell you a story. About me. 

And you’re going to laugh. 

I was in treatment for a long ass time, dear reader. It took years for my body to heal from the horror that was my brain ages 8-22. A lot of it was horrible–like–really really bad. Doing jumping jacks in corners and crunches at 3 am bad. 

NOT TO MENTION that when you’re considered “inpatient” (meaning you’re still pretty damn frail) you get checked on every 15 minutes. Even when you’re sleeping–or pretending to. 

Let me unpack this for you. Every 15 minutes, someone comes with a flashlight into your room to make sure you’re still kicking–metaphorically speaking of course, as kicking would be considered “excessive movement.” 

You wanna get yourself off in treatment? Oh it takes careful planning. If you have a roommate, it really gets dicey, cause come on have some respect. 

When you’re considered stable enough to no longer be peeped every quarter of an hour, you move to half hours. Then, you can really get busy. Still, though, you gotta be diligent. 

This, dear reader, is the blessing of PHP (partial hospitalization). You go to treatment during the day, and spend the nights in a halfway house type deal. You still usually have a roommate, but they tend to do more stuff than before so odds are you’ll get the room to yourself for at least an hour in the evenings. Lovely, right?

In 2019, I spent my birthday in PHP. It sucked to not be home, but dear god was it better than full HP if you know what I mean. 

My lovely friend sent me a birthday present, all the way from NY, and this meant a great deal to me. She had only good intentions with this gift, I promise you. But, she didn’t know I was only going to treatment during the day, so she sent my gift to the clinic and not to the halfway house. Which in theory, is fine. 

But was it fine my dear, sweet reader? No. No it was not.

My therapist, a really tough East Coaster 20 years my senior, and her very serious face found me in the clinic’s “lounge area”. She told me I had received a package, and that I needed to be supervised while I opened it. And this makes sense, of course. It could be contraband laxatives or whatever. But I knew my lovely friend had sent me something, so I wasn’t concerned. 

So I follow her down the hall and she hands me the box. Amazon. Neatly taped. I sliced it open with the reckless abandon of an anorexic girl who was well fed for the first time in years. 

There was a note on the top–one of those notes you can choose to include in an Amazon order if it’s a gift. I knew it was from my friend so, without thinking, I read the note aloud. To my therapist.

 

“Allison,

 

Now that you’re older, it’s time to start your collection. Sending you good “vibes” on your birthday.”

 

My voice caught on “vibes”. I looked at the note for way too long, not moving. I couldn’t look at my therapist. I could NOT look at my therapist. 

“I don’t understand” She said, “what is it?”

I reached into the box and pulled out a little black case. The name was right there on the lid. In big red letters. 

 

“Oh.”

 

I lost it. I was coughing so dramatically to hide the laughing, that I actually choked myself and had to catch my breath.

 

Some time between the “Oh” and the suffocation, she said, and I kid you not, “have fun.”

And then she walked out of the room. And I was pronounced dead at the scene.

 

Dear reader, if ever you feel embarrassed, remember that I unpacked a vibrator in front of my very serious therapist. And that she told me to, “have fun.”

 

I love you just so much.

Have fun.