They are Poles Apart from Me..

The smiling, curly-haired librarian, having taken my library card and scanned it, peered at her computer screen with a thoughtful expression, her free hand tapping the smooth, polished wood of the desk in front of her. "It arrived this morning, Emily!" she told me. I"I'll just run upstairs and fetch it for you." Having said so, she vanished, returning barely minutes later with a massive, bible-like book under her arm.

I stared at the hefty volume in some sort of amused bewilderment, before stepping forwards to relieve her of her burden. "Thanks a million!" I exclaimed, looking down at the monstrous text that i now held in my hands. Iris Murdoch's the Green Knight. And I was supposed to have this read for Friday.

On initially seeing the book, and glancing over the short description the lecturer had inserted at the top of the week's tasks sheet, I was pretty much expecting the text to be laboriously complex, unengaging, and difficult to read. However, a few pages into my humongous doorstopper of a novel,  I discovered, much to my surprise, that I was actually enjoying it. In a strange, oblique sort of way: the story is complicated, full of abstract language and sensuous naturalistic imagery; and as I read I could not help but ponder as to whether or not I was actually picking up on everything that professor Murdoch actually intended an active reader of her text to do.

But yet, despite all that, this text spoke to me, touching my heart and speaking to my soul in ways which I hadn't in the least anticipated. And I could relate, if not palpably identify with, a number of the novel's various and strikingly diverse different characters. One of these was the girl Moy. Naive, innocent, childlike, little Moy's special relationship with the external world is explicit from the beginning of the novel; as is the extent to which she is something of an outsider in her own closely-knit family circle. Because Moy is an oddity, in a way: she is patently, fundamentally different from her bookish, elegant sisters; indeed from all of the other members of the small circle of friends known collectively in the book as the family.

And Moy can be seen to embrace this difference, while at the same time, it can be seen to be tearing her apart...

Reading Moy's story, was enough to bring tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Because I could really...feel, her pain; that sense of fragmentation deep within your own sense of self. Because, likeMoy, I know that I am so very, very different. That I am an oddity, that I am set apart from the other girls at my age. It feels as if we occupy two entirely different worlds.

There is that part of me..that part of me which does not care, that I am different. I am a dryad; a nymph, a spirit of the woodlands. I am a flowergirl with wild rosebuds in her hair and daisy chains around her neck. I am an explorer, a tree climber, an elf, a keeper of the forest's hidden and secrets. I can run through daisy strewn fields with Benny at my side, my hair wild and loose and streaming behind me like a banner; my leggings, torn and snagged from branches and brambles, Here, there are no judgmental eyes to gaze critically at me with scorn or disapproval. I can be the wild girl of the woods...I am free.

But then...then, there is that other part of me; where lies a pain so sharp it seems like it might slice my heart in two; a thick, interpentrable root of despair, stemming directly from that knowledge that yes, I am different, I should not be like this; I am so fundamentally and critically different from the other girls my age. That this is not the way it should be, for a bordering on 22 english girlin the modern world of the twenty-first century. No social life, no relationships, no job, no dependence.

How...how do i negotiate my way through this? I want things to change; I want to wear a pretty dress and pencil eyelincer onto my eyes, to go out there into town in a group of giggling girls, and dance my heart out on the dancefloors of those sparkling, glittering nightclubs, feel the beat of the music pulsate with my heart and fill my body with its irresistable rhythm. But yet, simultaneously, there is that massive part of me which is desperate, so painfully, agonizingly desperate - for things to remain the same. To never leave home; the home that I love and where I feel safe, the sanctuary where I can take refuge from the cruel eyes of the world.

The Eye of the Storm...

10 past 5, sunday evening, and I'm sitting at the table here at home. The wind howls eerily around the walls of the house, rattling the weighed-down lids of the wheelie bins outside the garage and causing the limbs of the eucalyptus to shudder and sway as if shaken by some great giant's hand, tough-skinned branches still adorned with the leathery grey leaves despite the onset of winter's chill as November tightens her icy fingers over the landscape. Some of the leaves are lost, however, prised off by those cruel, pitiless fingers to be cast away into the depthless darkness of the night.

And I realise now, if I had let - if I let ED have its way - then I could have been could be lost, too. Cast away into the darkness, having lost my grip onto the branches...the branches which make up the tree, the tree which made up of all the many, inter-twined little branches of my life.

Looking out my bedroom window, over the garden where my heart is at home. <3 

The past few months, it's true...I let recovery fall by the wayside. Those long, idyllic, sun-soaked days of summer were over. I was back at college, and the reality of that was slowly beginning creep up on me, as sharp and as stinging as a slap to the face. I was desperate to prove to myself that I could do this, that I could be a Trinity student, that I could make Mam and Dad proud of me and succeed in a course which I possessed no love or passion for.

And of course, just as I had initially feared, everything was beginning to crumble up again, before my very eyes.

But I was stubborn, in my own little way, turning my face away from that second, but no less harsh, other reality: as painful as the wound which has been ripped open before it has properly healed, as bitter as burning acid upon a parched tongue. The reality being, of course, that I was falling, and falling, hard. That reality was as harsh and as painful, as that which I first encountered in September, when the fairytale of that beautiful summer finally drew to its inevitable close. The two of them crowded amongst themselves within my head, bludgeoning and pulsating through my blood with a terrible, insistent, deadly beat. In a way, they had both merged into one: two realities, two voices... You are a failure, Em. There is nothing left for you but to become the skinny girl. Noone will care if you live or die. I am useless. What the hell are you doing in Trinity? How did I get here? Why...why do I exist?

I just want it all to...to end.

But over the weekend...sitting at my kitchen table, listening to the wind outside. Surrounded by those who I love, and who I know will never give up on me...made me think, made me realise...realise what really, really matters.

And I know...I know that I am never going to be an achiever. That Emmy has long gone. The girl who got the best grades, who had such high aspirations for something...something more. No. That's not me anymore...and it breaks my heart every day, to think of how much I have changed; of how I have lost, that ability to study, to dedicate myself to my study, to be the girl who succeeded.

But I realise...I realise now that I was wrong, so wrong, to put my recovery aside, to put Trinity before my recovery. The way my ED works, I suppose, is that through restriction, my brain was enabled to assume a sort of "calm" of sorts I suppose: a calm brought about by the assurance that I had not eaten enough, that it's ok, Em (ED), you are not going to gain any weight today. You can be at your ease. That Voice. That horrible, malicious, cruel, cruel voice. And when I would make any weak, desperate attempts to resist that voice and nourish myself...thn the voice would...explode. that's the best way I can describe it. Like a storm in my head. Again, I know this might not make much sense to people...it doesn't really make much sense to me. All I know is, I was desperate, so, so desperate, to calm that storm and get back my focus. I have to. I have to restrict! What other chance do I have? I have to get back to that studious Emmy! This is the only way!

But no. I was..I was wrong, so wrong.

I know I have to face the storm...

But I know that I can overcome it, and battle my way through the rain.

And this time, I will not let those winds carry me away.

I will be like my eucalyptus trees...the winter may come and the storms will rage around me. But they will not knock me down or take any more of me away. I will stand tall, and brave, and find my inner strength. Like those beautiful, endurant, brave grey trees, I know that I can be strong. <3 xxx

Remember.
There will always be another chance, to go back to work, to take up that course, to go back to college.
But there will only ever be one chance at life.
Each and every one of us, will only ever have, one body.
So let's stand strong together against the storm. <3 xxx

I didnt want this to change..

I dont really consider myself as that much of a reflective or philosophical sort of person, but today, as I arose with the ascending sun and pottered outside to my usual designated spot beneath the blooming bower at the back of the villa, the rocky coastal highlands to the north dominating my field of vision as I gazed towards the horizon, my mood became sombre and my thoughts began to race faster than a hawk in flight.

As I gazed out at the distant mountains, silvery grey peaks soaring majestically upwards, reaching for the blue, fathomless heavens above them, a wave of reflective sadness washed over me, leaving me feeling drained and despondent. Because I know, it is wrong, it is not right for a 21 year old girl to feel the way the way I do, about living at home, not being at college or in the realm of employment: or quite simply about life, in general.

Because the truth is, I dont want my life at home to end. My home is my safe haven, my sanctuary, my comfort zone; the nest in which my siblings and I - in that sweet, glorious summer of our lives termed as childhood - were raised and nurtured and gently allowed to grow.

Everything about my home to me is comforting, lovingly familiar, safe, warm, and unchanging.
Sitting around the fire on a cold winter's night, flames hungrily licking the logs and kindling placed in the hearth, while others leap upwards against the sooty blackness of the chimney, twirling and flickering like lithe dancers garbed in silks of dazzling red and and orange and gold. Cooking in the familiar, sparkly-clean, blue-tiled kitchen as evening shadows lengthen and the sun begins to gradually sink beneath the Slieve Blooms to the west; the delicate smells of herbs and fresh bread in my nostrils as I stir pots and lift hot trays out of the oven with my checked black and white oven gloves. Taking Benny out onto the bog on a sunny spring morning,the dew seeping through my shoes and the sharp nip of the dawn tickling my cheeks, while Benny's ears flap joyously like the wings of a young bird as he prances across the heathery expanses.

And I know that I wil have to leave it...but I don't want to, and am so, so deeply afraid of doing so.

For when I get back from mallorca, I will need to make a decision about whether or not I am going to return to Trinity, and, if I am not, I will then subsequently need to decide where the next twist in my road is going to take me.

I suppose I am just sad, and frustrated. As when I went into hospital I expected to come out and, as well as being fully recovered from my eating disorder (which I know, deep down, of course, that I am not), that I will also being more mature, more assertive, more confident, and ready to take on the world. But the truth is, I still feel very much like that scared little girl going into secondary school all those years ago, when ED first caught hold of my hand and beckoned me to follow him along the path which would lead to my very own ruin. I just hope that this month, I will be able to make the right choices - choices which will enable me to make some positive and generative changes in my life, and enable me to become independent. I want to be able to have my own income and start earning money, as the fact that financially I am completely dependent on Daddy only serves to fuel my sense of self-hatred and guilt. I want to pay them back for everything they have done for me, for giving me all the love a parent could ever bestow upon their child, and more - I want to make them proud. But at the same time I am so, so afraid of leaving the world of my home, of leaving the life that I love. And of course, I suppose it is made worse y the fact that I dont even know where I am going to go, what exactly am I going to do. Change can be as scary as the deepest and most darkest of winter nights, and certainly just as full of uncertainty.

I didn't want my life here to change...