I disappeared.  Lo siento.  :(

I'm drowning lately in work and food.  And my laptop crashed so now all I've got is my lab computer.  Must get over paranoia of using Blogger in the lab.  Feels very exposed, but what else can I do?

Someday I'll have less work maybe?  This thesis has taken over everything.  I wake up shower run to lab work work work go home sleep wake up and do it again.  Weekends I spend with FH and we are lazy together.

I am whale-like.  I can feel it, I can see it, and the scale confirms it.  Ugh.

I have 45 minutes of freedom now.  Time to go read blogs.

<3

I am reading:

I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it.  I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

--The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Obviously this quote is not in the context of ED, but I find it hits a chord with me.  I separate my mind and my body but body wins.  I don't want my me-ness to be influenced by my body, but my body houses me and so it always determines.  I define my days by my body.  And in that response, I become less sure of my mind.  It is a vicious circle of insecurity.

The book is about sexism, not ED, but you should read it anyway.

Have returned alive from boat.  Also have horrendous cold.  Yuck.

Here is a pretty picture for you:

Degas

I feel bittersweet and illusory.

The doctor's scale told me Friday that I am fat.  (Somehow that makes it more official than my scale.)

I went to a concert with FH last night and jumped the entire time.  Today my legs are not sore but they are tired.  We went to the library and walked around downtown for a couple hours and then came back to his apartment and watched Princess Mononoke.

It's sad that FH is not really mine, but then again I suppose I am not his either.

All of next week I am on boat, which is exciting since I've never actually over-nighted on a boat before.

I want to write more, I want to let all the words in my head out, but I cannot because FH has just finished making me dinner.  So my brain will remain full.

Sorry I haven't been around much lately...I miss you guys muchly.

Love,

Salix

Life is busy and I am tired.  Data entry and data analysis and organizing next week's boat trips.  And trying to find a place to live in 2 months.

Therapist gave me a book to read called Eating in the Light of the Moon.

I went to the doctor's today to talk about birth control options (in addition to condoms, which I consider a must), now that I am apparently sexually active again.  Thinking about an IUD.  Gyno appointment tomorrow.  Blugggghhhh.

Okay, I'm boring.  I'll stop now.

Sooo I owe you guys an FH story.  From like a month ago.  (Seriously, a month.  He told me he liked me on May 27--which I actually only remember because my friends and I had an inside joke about the number 27 way back in high school and it remains one of my favorite numbers.)

Things about FH: he is from South America (which means that he has both a wonderful accent and a wonderful way of phrasing things).  He is tri-lingual (he got his M.Sc. in Japan).  He loves cute and fuzzy things (we watched My Neighbor Totoro together and I nearly died of CUTE) and also cephalopods.  He likes to cuddle and to spoil me.  He is 5 years older than me (I call him "asalta cunas"--cradle robber).  He loves books as I do; we have been trading our favorites back and forth.  His taste in music is reprehensible.  He makes delicious coffee.  He is very laid-back about things (though admittedly I am not sure how much of that is actually FH's character and how much of that is just due to cultural differences between the U.S. and South America).

And he likes me.  Very much so, according to him.

Watch it!  It's adorable!

Here is a copy/paste of the message I wrote to wonderful friend back when all this happened (because I have been analyzing data all day and I am tired.  Also I'm lazy):

He'd asked me if I wanted to move in with him and Y, since their other housemate is leaving. We were pretty good friends at this point, and he assures me now that he had no other intentions besides friends then (yes, I asked). I was, at the time, going through all the uncertain shit with D. FH knew this; I'd talked about it with him a bit. And so I asked him and Y to give me some time, I'd let them know in June (remember, the original plan was for Dl and I to take a 2 month break and then talk in June to figure out what we wanted. I figured that if D and I were still together that I would live on my own just so that I wouldn't have to commit to a full year's lease here). And they were both fine with that. 

After the official "I am no longer interested in you" from D, I went to FH and Y and told them that I would move in with them.

FH and I had been hanging out before then too, but the frequency escalated--partly because I have been making an effort to socialize more (immediately after the D thing, being on my own was horrible because I could not distract myself from being sad. So I spent a lot of time in the office doing work and in coffee shops with friend H and playing board games with FH & Y & A (Y's girlfriend)).

And last Friday we watched American Astronaut together and sometime during the movie he put his arm around my shoulders. And I told him he was being very confusing and I wanted some clarification. "I like you," he said, "and um yes, so. I like you." (Text doesn't actually get across how this sounded, and I don't actually think I can describe it--it was just very very classic FH. He is awkward just like me sometimes, and a little shy.)


And I said, "Wow. I... You like me?" And he said yes. And I said, "Okay. What are you going to do about that?" And this is when he kissed me.

In retrospect, I sort of walked into that one. It was horribly a stereotypical mushy romance sort of question. But I swear I did not intend it that way! My brain had already skipped to the "Oh that is not possible at all--we work in the same department, we are planning on living together, the D-thing--there is no possibility of a relationship" and so my question was intended more sort of as an "oh dear, well...how are you going to deal with your feelings?" (Gah that still sounds weird. But I think you will understand what I meant.)

Anyway. So then we had a very long talk and I tried to be as transparent as possible about my worries and concerns and everything. And his response is that he is patient. And so for now we are FH and Salix. And that is that.

He gave me a makkuro kurosuke for my office window.

Back at school, back to work.  Lovely lovely weather today, which makes me happy even though I'll be in the lab forever and miss all the sunshine.

Parents' house...ohhh not fun.  Triggers like crazy.  Bingeybingeybingeypants.  I weighed myself when I got home from the airport Sunday night and was very surprised that the number was not 10 lbs higher.

So of course I get back here and proceed to not-eat yesterday (this is not exactly true.  I did have a salad + mandarin orange for lunch with FH and then 5 strawberries + 2 small tastes of raspberry ice cream at his house later.  But not quite a food plan appropriate for recovery).  And now today I am GRAR FOOD because of not-eating and because GRAR PMS.  Ohai there, MonsterSalix.

Whenever I visit my father I get heartsick.  Somehow I always forget what it's like when I am away...and then I am taken aback at how much smaller, how much more fragile he looks when I see him again.  He shakes all the time now.  He cannot speak above a whisper.  Against all odds, he's holding on.  My mother is sarcastic and resentful and not supportive in the slightest and every time she makes one of those comments I just want to yell and scream and throw things.

FH cuddled me without being asked.  (He cuddles a lot.)  I said, "I'm not going back there again.  I'm not."  He didn't say anything, just held me tighter.

I haven't been able to cry over this, even though I feel that it would help.  Instead I wrote some random angst.

I need a million paper cranes, a googolplex of wishes.  I need a magic wand, a potion, an elixir of life and love and happiness festooned with silvery forty-twos.  What is six nines?The lump in my throat does not swallow away and my eyes burn like the desert sands of far-away lands where I have never been.  I will not cry I will not I will not I will not and if I say it enough then it becomes true.
Fragility steals into the unexpected cracks and multiplies itself with the speed of an accident, the sickening moment between the catch of a bike tire on a rock and the crack of a chin on the ground.  The dragging interminable nanosecond when you know all has gone horribly awry and you can do nothing, nothing, to stem the breach of the dam.  The little Dutch boy has not the requisite number of fingers.  Nine, perhaps, instead of ten.  Almost almost but never quite enough.  And mortality becomes a haunting spectre in your mind; Death cheerfully pulls back his hood and lets you stare into the empty eyesockets of the abyss, made all the more desolate because you know it is not for you, no, this is about someone much more important and you can only stand frozen and watch as he slides ever further into that gaze, sliding, slipping, falling, as you beg silently and grasp desperately to pull him back only to find that his limbs become smoke that dissipates at your touch, until blink—and there is nothing left.And you are hurtling out of control, rushing into destruction, driving and imagining here, right here, I could do it, there are trees, just swerve swerve swerve goddammit but your arms don’t obey and the wheel keeps straight and you make it to your destination still rebelliously alive and no one ever knows.  And you are sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor with a reed knife in your hand, the one you diligently keep sharper than a newly opened razor because reeds are delicate business and one stroke of the knife can be the difference between discordance and perfection.  But you are not strong enough to release the tears and so the knife kisses your skin, leaves kitten scratches, but never bites never scars you and so no one ever knows.  And you are spilling the pills out of the bottles you’ve stashed away, calculating the milligrams of oblivion contained therein.  You don’t know whether you’ve enough to remove the uncertainty of death, but it doesn’t matter because your brain and spinal cord are somehow disconnected and the muscles in your hands are flagrantly disrespecting your cognitive authority.  So you arrange your freedom in neat little rows and then put them all back, hide them away, because it helps just to know they are there (just in case, the small voice in the back of your mind whispers, just in case) even though you know with equal clarity that this is a safety net into which you will never fall.  And so no one ever knows.
You hear his voice and it is a whisper and you flicker the lights because with the lights on then surely you will hear clearly.   The shadows stopping your ears, muffling his voice, those will be chased away.  Only now it is bright and yet he still cannot speak and you still cannot hear and everything dims in your mind and you move automatically to adjust the pillows and ask mechanically if it is okay.  “It will have to do,” he says, and you say, “I’ll turn out the lights then?” and he slurs agreement and there is so much unsaid in this exchange and you open your mouth to try to bring meaning but nothing comes out and the shadows won’t allow you to be heard anyway.
He is so small, wrapped in blankets.  He cannot sit up now without assistance.  He is skeletal and balding and his sporadic tremors have become a constant tremble, though not of fear, because he possesses otherworldly strength.  It cannot last forever; Atlas eventually must lose his grip, but let us leave that thought unspoken.