It's funny, because when I took this picture, I was proud of my nails. There was some white. A lot of white, actually, for me. But, tonight, as I look closer, I can see the bloody skin on two fingers, the damaged cuticles.
Today, in therapy, I talked about eating. All of the eating I do. I said, out loud, to another human being, "I chew on myself." I don't bite my nails. That's a polite euphemism for chewing on myself, eating myself up. And that -- eating myself up -- is not a metaphor, it's an ugly, weird truth.
Les and I talked about that. How it might connect to me wanting to release myself from something. (I talk a lot about release). Then we talked about eating, eating food. At one point I imagined myself hemmed in and bound up and the only way to release myself was to eat so much I burst through my false skin to the true me. Hulk-ian, just not green.
Then we talked about having an itch when wearing a full leg cast. How, since you cannot scratch it, you scratch somewhere else. Maybe eating is me scratching the wrong itch, over and over again.
It sounds so poetic with all of these metaphors. It wasn't so pretty. I cried. I said that it was a gluttonous suicide. I nodded, I sat silent, I soaked it in as best I can. I used up three tissues. Turned 'em into snot castles.
I don't know the answers, really, yet. I do not know what I can or will do to change. All I can is this: what I am doing will make me die and I do not want to die. Not now, when I am finally figuring so much out.
Tonight I ate wild rice and vegetables. I can feel that I feel full. And so far, all I have done is look at my nails. I am writing this, scratching away on this keyboard. Maybe something is hitting the invisible itch. For now, my fingers are moving. Healing myself with words.
No, that's wrong. I have always had a certain facility with words. The words will not heal me. It's the truth sewn into the words. The willingness to hem myself to honesty.
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