"nothing's measured by what it needs"
2002-09-29 2:28 p.m.

the new beck album is good, but i'm left feeling like i'm listening to gordon lightfoot. but that's good too though.

yea.

its just that these days, i don't really know what i can talk about that will portray me as a normal person with normal concerns. i'm really sorry this turned into an eating disordered girl's diary. but its what is happening in my life. so it feels appropriate to say that i'm really sorry i turned into an eating disordered girl.

and now my mother knows:
my mother knows because it was decided i should go into a stanford treatment program. i went in for my appointment with adriana friday morning, and i had lost a pound. and hadn't yet bought any multi-vitamin. and hadn't contacted any of the therapists she'd referred me to. she said calling the therapists was a moot point, though, because i'd need to go inpatient.

its quite understandable really:
i'd lost a pound because it was early in the morning (8:00) and i hadn't yet ingested anything, whereas my other appointments had been in the early afternoon following lunch (i would have had something to drink by then, if nothing else). ...i hadn't bought a multi-vitamin because ben's dad works for wyeth, so there are bottles of vitamins at ben's apartment, and i thought i'd wait a couple days rather than spending the 8 bucks (or whatever it is). and i hadn't contacted any of the referrals because i was still waiting on suzanne to see if it would be okay to keep seeing her weekly.

adriana said that maybe i was trying to get better, but that i couldn't:
she said something along the lines of... "it is clear to me that you cannot. i believe that you really want to. but you can't." then she accused me of manipulating suzanne into waiting another week.

then she did an ekg, took my blood, and brought the goddamn medical director of the place in to talk with me. in order to tell me that it is their strong recommendation that i go inpatient, as my weight is too low, my kidneys are starting to fail, my liver is spilling protein, my heart rate and blood pressure are too low, and my ekg (which i was never given the results of) wasn't too good. (interestingly enough, the medical director is from my hometown, a fact which, to me, already invalidated any opinions he might have had.)

so after four hours of being talked to and thinking that i had the option of going voluntarily or being forced to go involuntarily (which is hardly an option of going... and was incorrect, besides)... i agreed to go:
going pretty much meant i'd have to withdraw from school (i'm not smart enough to catch up after a month's absence). with suzanne's help, i emailed my professors. and i had to call my mother to tell her what was going on (as i was supposed to see her the following day).

ben came to drive me. my mom showed up and followed us. it really um. sucked. definitely.

stanford is ugly, or whatever i saw of it was ugly:
the vegetation looked dead or dying or simply brown. the hospital looked old and because of that, too gloomy. my room with lights that failed to work properly was right in front of the receptionists desk. it was horrible. everybody is always miserable in those places.

and they fucking weighed me on the super fancy scale in the hall and announced my weight. in front of both ben and my mother. 128. i figure all my clothes weighed 2 pounds (when i say i figure, i mean that i weighed them just now). so 126. my scale read 119 that morning. but i'm going with 126 because it was really a very very fancy scale.

so after 8 hours of talking with doctors and nurses and therapists that day about how good this would be for me, how good the program at stanford is, how i wouldn't be able to finish the semester without this because i'd continue to have problems concentrating, how i might not be able to finish anyway because it is quite possible that i could be dead by then....

after all this, i just decided to leave. i'm really happy with my decision.

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