To me, this is one of those quotes that I have probably paraphrased and written off to a friend feeling trapped in their current life. But, just as I do with everything else, I do not allow myself to receive the same kind of messages. I was actually on a long drive with a friend last night and she discussed how trapped she feels up to this point in her life, and she is certainly accurate when she says that; the majority of her decisions have been made for her by the influence of her parents and she only recently has been working to change that. She recently got a piercing without her parents knowing as a small victory over a war’s worth of failure. There has always been a fear for her of straying away from order and dealing with all the consequences that could follow; for instance, the smaller issues like an angry yelling contest with parents to the greater magnitude of future existential regret for not listening. I am glad she is not the same heavily sheltered person that I met in middle school.

This quote is just everything I am not, especially right now; I am very eager to write about this because it is really tying into how I have been feeling. Obviously, with having an eating disorder, so many choices I make are out of my fears. Last night, I ate a fear food as a choice for hope that everything would be okay, but that only made things very catastrophic - even into the next day. I barely slept, but I honestly feel the most awake I have felt in this lower form of life I have been living for almost two months now. So, I followed with choices of fear: instead of staying in bed at six in the morning, I hightailed it to the gym out of fear of weight gain, I have been secluded in the house all day out of fear of having to deal with social plans that so often involve food, and I can easily calculate the rest of the choices I will make for today. In general, my life is heavily calculated in that regard.

However, that is not the only strong connection I feel to this quote. There is definitely a large internal conflict happening with me and my sexuality. There is a lot of fear and shame: I chose to get rid of anything I own that even had a rainbow on it, I chose to never even wear said items out of fear of vulnerability, and I am now struggling so much that I choose to not even say the word “gay” - last night, saying “not straight” was already hitting too close for me. It is even difficult for me to write about it because I now feel that any time I choose to talk about my sexuality - even in therapy sessions - is just drawing attention to the part of me that I am trying to re-bury. I am finding myself more and more often telling my friends how I wish I could start over - right back in the cramped yet very cozy closet. I keep wishing for it even though I know that wish will never come true and that I can never go back to stop my junior year self.

I just hate the whole period I had where coming out was a very big and in-your-face type of feeling. I hate that I outed someone I was hooking up with during senior year to some classmates because we talked about anything in that small classroom. I hate the culture of my college because it is honestly way too gay and in-your-face and it just makes me sick to my stomach. I think I would maybe be better off if I had not gone to any Pride events; I do not think I will go to any ever again in my life. It was just too much and, as previously stated, I really want to erase a good portion of these past few years. I would not label this as typical internalized homophobia, however; the thought of primarily pursuing those with a female anatomy - honestly, I could probably also get behind being with someone trans and I really am willing to keep many options open - is not the direct issue since that is just how my body is.

Yes, I can easily identify that to some degree these sentiments stem from what my mother did with my confidential information, but there is just something else that has to be making this bubble up to the surface. Maybe I just have too much time to think since I sit at home alone most days, whether it be on purpose or not, and allow the heavily dominant negative part of me analyze every aspect of what makes me a person. I feel like I have reached this new point of mental illness where I am losing a sense of who I am or, more likely, I have not been acknowledging that fact but have been medicated enough to function cognitively and deduce that. I find it hard to even describe myself sometimes and I have often said that I do not really feel like I am existing anymore. People give me suggestions of things to do but I know that I am not going to be at my best until it gets warmer out; once the spring hits, I am going to be absolutely fine and then continue to rise as I regain my college life. There is just such a long road to get there and I am only two months in.

Well, coming back to the quote, the whole reason I have written this stream of consciousness similar to a horrific work I read in my AP Literature class, is because there is essentially no such thing as a choice for hope for me as there is no hope to latch onto. Even as I continue with this medication that was prescribed to me which, I guess, makes me a bit more normal, I really do not think I have any hope and I am only growing worse. A big contribution to that is definitely that I am trapped here and there is no other way of thinking of it; obviously I know there is an end to this very literal house arrest, but nothing positive anyone tells me is going to change the fact that I have to go through immense hell by myself to make it. A very morbid thought that has sat with me even before this leave from Smith began is that I am definitely more likely to go down a darker path the longer I am here at home. It is honestly very shocking sometimes that I withhold from any sort of harm to myself since, like I said, I am always alone and could easily walk out the door to freeze to death, drive somewhere for other means, or even use all the easily accessible dangers in just about every room. The relevance to mentioning all of this is a potential concession to my previous statement: perhaps the very fact that I am unscathed and living is the closest that I get to a choice of hope, but a type of hope that is unconscious and out of my reach.       

However, an easy rebuttal could be that I am just too picky about what I am willing to endure doing to myself, or that my body is protecting me with the natural instinct of survival above anything else. So, I guess my choice to stick around is simply another choice of fear. It is definitely a very dark thing to declare, but it is not a very big shock for me. I am just left to wonder when and if hope will truly come to me in a more exhilarating way considering the closest I ever get is simple fantasies that just work to distract from the present. One could say that my life of fear is a curse, but it is also the silver lining holding my existence. It will just be a waiting game for Nelson to see me actually take his words to heart for myself.