My doctor refused to discharge me today. If any of you are familiar with the mental health medical system than you know that any change not controlled directly by you becomes as navigable as quantum physics without a calculator. This system, so broken and so destructive to the very patients they are supposed to be healing, is a mine field of incomplete paperwork and unanswered prayers. If you think mental illness is tough, please try and get help for it; your outlook on the question of stupidity will be forever changed.

I have had some success with the mental health system. It meant lying, begging, cheating and occasionally stealing. But it is a system that is given to us and until we can find someone strong enough to get past the fears of those who know nothing of this disease, it is the system we will live with.

Today my therapist begun seeing things in my behavior and in my words that concerned her. She wanted another look. Truth be told I coach most of my answers with my doctors, if not out right lie to them, so that their opinions are not based on a true picture but one I have painted with my own brush; it just seems smarter and safer for me. And the doctor I saw today is actually one of the ones I like.

I refuse to go into what she saw or what she heard during our session, mostly because it isn’t relative to the other points that I have to make. That, and my husband reads this blog. But no matter what was said the truth was there is something so demoralizing when one is forced to realize that once again the person I am trying to be is not the person anyone actually sees. It is hard to continue to fight when the hands you have in front of you were cut off long ago.

There are many points about myself that I try and hide; and I do a good enough job that those closest to me aren’t bombarded with the truth each and every hour. For instance, I literally welcome the idea of death. It seems like the one place that I won’t have to be me, and wouldn’t that be so wonderful for so many people. In death you just lie there; you can’t cause more stress to someone, you can’t frustrate or hurt someone, and the thoughts of all those around you are pointed to the goodness that might not really exist inside of you at all. Funerals are great for ignoring the obvious.

I don’t talk about my eating issues. I don’t mention the “a” word that doctors have been asking of me for the last ten years. I don’t mention the real problem between me and food, and I don’t mention the cause of another disease to be added to the thousands it seems I already have. Hiding how much I have eaten, when I eat, or even what I eat is as easy as taking candy from a baby – although I wouldn’t because you know, the whole not eating thing.

I don’t speak ever about the crushing hatred I have for my own self. I don’t speak about how easy it would be to finally give those I love the peace they deserve by simply disappearing. How wonderful would it be if you could come home each night and know that the world you have built is still standing? How much would you pay for that? How much would someone give for that? And if I can give it by just removing myself from the equation the question becomes why haven’t I?

I often wonder how it is I have become this person, when once I dreamed of becoming something so much more solid. At what point did the tides change? At what point did the road curve and I became someone I hated? It wasn’t born within me; it was taught. It was taught like all lessons through a series of events and personalities that I wrapped myself around.

When did I stop fighting for the little things because I was too scared of the big things? When did it come permissible to stay silent on such insignificant things as the radio station playing in order to find for myself a temporary disappearance from those who probably never saw me anyways? When did the softest of moments become dark so that I didn’t have to look at the truth surrounding me? And when did I become a person that could so easily hate the very things inside of myself that no one takes notice of? When did I become the who that most would find disgusting? And why do those around me not find it disgusting at all?

Who am I that I can allow the world to hurt me over and over without saying anything? Am I that scared? Am I that afraid to fight for the very things that I believe in, even knowing that those across from me are going fight for the very opposite of the things that I believe? Am I so scared of my own life that the ability to fight is left in an anonymous chat room? Am I so scared of living that I have already begun to die?

Am I so misguided that believing that this journey I am on to find the sources of my anger, the sources of my own discontent is simply a trek through a life of guaranteed failure? Am I so wrong in believing that maybe I finally am figuring out how to be happy by taking the steps to define what doesn’t work and makes me so unhappy? Am I naïve in believing that someday, someway, I will find the forgiveness deep in my own soul to finally begin to breathe not the stale air of those who demand their own power but the fresh air of my own hope? Is it possible to one day say the simple word, “no” and know without a doubt someone was listening? Is there, out there, someone who will see all the falsities, all the ruin, all the destruction and hug me so tight that the pieces of my soul can finally be fused together? Because, if it can’t happen it is time I learned how to let go.

I don’t know what my doctor heard this morning; it truly doesn’t matter. What matters is figuring out if the journey, which is causing the ground to start breaking apart, is worth the answer that only I am looking for. I am not looking to destroy that which is great and I am not looking to be standing in a circle pointing fingers. All I want to know is if I can find the change that will finally give my wings the air to fly.