Was writing more permanent?

I looked at myself from every angle with one eye open. At this point in my self-induced recovery, I had taken a comparatively big step; at my sister's request, I began having yogurt after a summer spent in Paris living off canned brussels. Seven years before, I spent my spring breaks traveling Europe with a baguette and jar of Nutella in my suitcase. What had happened between those years? What had changed my mind? Had it been a friend's mother who pulled me aside on the stairwell and told me I had begun to gain weight and should rethink my outfit choices? Had it been the best friend that tried to help by showing me how to do crunches on the hotel floor in Italy? Had it been my aunt who held a family meeting to question whether I had been molested or, perhaps was just gay, and that was why my hair was so short at such a young age? Had it been the sound of my freshman roommate throwing up? The sound  of the toilet flushing on the hour? Had it been the mother at M-Cycle telling me I could cycle faster? Or had it just been me within a body that I felt got attention before I did? How could I tell anyone I shaved my head, that I starved my body because I wanted to be without it? I wanted to eliminate anyone that was after the external. Maybe in some perverse? twisted way? I wanted to uglify myself and be liberated by another type of beauty. My life long project will be to make us blind and from that make us feel secure with only being able to feel to know. This isn't a wish for the sentimentality, but the desire to be inside the other, to reveal the secret scape. For whatever reason in my writing I cannot face myself. I feel trivial, superficial and one-dimensional reacting to visual detail and "confessions" such as weight (etc, etc). The ironic thing is in person I can reveal it all. I shy away from nothing. I let myself be exposed, perhaps needing to get the inside out. Perhaps with the hope that if I tell others what they expected I wouldn't want to admit, maybe they will have the courage to not hide from me. If only I could express the betrayal, the let down of discovering my best friend who had guided me through my eating disorder, who had watched me begin eating again and who I looked up to for eating and indulging was bulimic the entire time. I didn't want to be deceived. I didn't want to judge either. I just wanted us all to say what was really going on. Tonight was wonderful - the last days have been - encouragements and discouragements - but overall I have sensed a strong meaning. Different people came up to me and we talked through the hours, one after the other, as if it were a dating show but I was connecting somehow and in some way with everyone. Up against the wall, on a stool, on the bench, in the swivel chair I looked at everyone doing cocaine. Heads down, breathing in, and coming up saying, "Chelsea, things aren't perfect for me," touching the corners of their nose, "and for right now I am just working on ways to make things feel better." I watched with one eye open, but I listened and spoke with all of myself. I know we all want to be sober to our self.