madness isn't catching but it's something i've seen you learn. don't waste a life on gaining control when loosing it is all you know.

i can feel my anxiety displacing. i use to corner it off in the little area of my brain traffic lighted, "appetite" but now i'm not meant to do that.

it's difficult. sometimes far more difficult that i previously allowed myself to imagine.

all those thoughts of dying keep infiltrating my head. not myself dying but others. the whole world collapsing in on itself; family upon friends upon colleagues upon acquaintances upon strangers. i try and keep everything out by making up stories of my own death instead.

i sound so macabre but it makes me feel like i have some sort of control over my life. even though that's nonsense in reality.

i think about the accident; how frightening the world seemed, the whole prospect of being was, in that that instant. even now i shake at the thought of the route he took, it had nothing to do with me but i still feel responsible. i pace back and fourth, legs quivering, heart a quell of senseless emotion; please let him be okay, please let them all be okay.

i know loss is part of human existence, to be human is to live and to die but i feel unprepared for the prospect. i suppose most people do. i feel young and old at the same time, horribly cliched but true - you so long with the fear of a child but the body of someone aged and fragile soon your mind is fucked up even more than it was before.

x xx

without us would the world be better or is that just a hope unfounded?

most of the time i do not understand the world, it's cruelty and desperation. but sometimes, it still amazes me how beautiful it was made before we came.

x xx

watch the world go, see it swim and dive.

in cities we are anonymous; we slip through subways, onto double deckers, into starbucks for a skinny-extra-hot-no-foam-latte-with-caramel-syrup all with the bleepbleep of plastic credit and elderly bus passes.

some hate it. some love it. some just accept it; obvious choice, convient, pays better than ploughing beetroots. (i must confess here i don't know what the average beet farmer earns) the city just swallows you up, often from your birth till the birth of your own child.

i like the way i can dissolve in cities. the way i can exist and learn to sit with my existance, my need for air and space, but not be overly reminded that i am parked in the only space beside the first corner shop in fifty miles.

then there is the way characters form in the city; the crazy lady with a thousand piercings, the homeless man with a pregnant mutt, the private school girl who loves charity shops and the business man, the student, the nurse, anyone, everyone all filing past each other. there is an acknowledgement of difference, of the lines that divide each into their area of society but judhement subsides. you see so many lives in cities, so many strange sights, it becomes normal. you accept humanities difference.

i grew up in a small town, really more like a village bursting at the seems. maybe it was a good place to start, but a good place to end. i love it, in a strange way, but it is nosey and chatters and self contained. it has no need to look further afield, that worries me. 

i like where i was. i love where i will grow up.

x xx

going home to see them leave, i wonder if anyone realise the price some pay?

seven days, a hundred and sixty eight hours, ten thousands and eighty minutes.

it has been a week.

in that time i have not lost or gained. my heart is stable, almost good for the wreckage it is in.

it all seems so small in the grand wake of the world, i get frightened that family and friend's will think such small success is trivial; forget how long it took to get here.

but it's not trivial in the scale of my life, dominated by illness, my own and others, that i failed to acknowledge and other did not understand.

i've breathed each of those ten thousand and eight minutes, felt my heart beat fifty odd times in those sixty seconds, blinked inconsistently, slept fitfully, needed to pee far more than any normal person should. is this what it is to live?

i still struggle to convey how i am getting; when asked i reply with a breakdown of what i have done rather than how it made me feel. my feelings always come out as fine. i do not understand them any other way. but i guess some understanding of how i don't understand is better than nothing.

as i grow up, a little more each day, as i get better, a little more each day, i realise that are different things in me that anorexia hid.

there is the fact that i like chocolate and sitting still but there is more.

in high functioning adolescent girls symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders can manifest as anorexia nervosa. an inability to cope with change, the need for structure, organisation and planning, an intense interest in one very specific subject, a lack of insight into the emotions and feelings of both themselves and others, severe anxiety in social situations and a persistent misunderstanding of humour are all symptoms.

of course that is not to say you can jump to sudden conclusions if you fit a few diagnostic point.

but what about those who slip through the cracks; ever wondering why they are different, why cbt didn't work for them?

for in five cbt won't work because of underlying autistic spectrum traits. cbt didn't work for me; i can be as rational and logic as i like in words but transferring to actions and emotions is another thing all together.

i'm left wondering, is there a reason or an excuse why so many women go undiagnosed or have to fight to be heard? is that the health system is merely unequipped or is it rather that their intelligence is too good at allowing them to pretend in a world they do not understand?

just a thought...

love quinn

x xx

these are a few of our favourite things...

faith

knitting

my best friend

words

alfred the rabbit

green tea

my iphone

edinburgh

recovery

paris

daisy chains

warmth

posibility

starbucks

the westie puppy i will have

the beach

now there's question with no simple answer, mine would blurr to a thousand darkened polaroids.

describe me your life like i have to you. se vous plait mes cheries.

mine would be worn at the edges, thumbed like the case notes i've been. no date on the back because time has lost it's place. it's taken under water, for the depths are dark like the scars covering me. but the sun flicks through the ripples, and we are swimming to the surface. and are we ready for the sun to burn our skin and the air to rasp our lungs? who knows. but i think we've tested endurance, our bodies to brink and suffocating it's below the water. no more trending water, we are ready to swim.

with love,
quinn 

x xx