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.