I'm only a breakable girl

Ingrid Michaelson sings - we are just breakable, breakable, breakable girls... – I’m only a breakable girl. When I hear news from my family, news that I can do nothing about – I self-destruct. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, nothing makes sense, life is not worth living. Yesterday I was so tired, my head was spinning. Though I was dizzy for most of the day, still I couldn’t make myself to go to bed early. Today is a bit better, but not much.

I look at the food, and I want to throw up. Dead pieces of chicken, fluorescent orange from the sauce concocted by mixing fat, fat, and more fat. Rice is white and bland, tasteless, made of paper. A power bar sticks to my tongue, overly sweet, sticky and fake. Only water tastes decent – because it has no taste. I make myself eat – I finish my son’s oatmeal – it’s rubbery. I open the fridge – cold sausages make me think of vomit, orange juice  - too acidic. Nuts. I open up the pantry. OK, something – I can eat nuts. So far my stomach is ok with that. I’m hungry, but nothing seems eatable. Self-destruct.

I go to bed early, 8pm or so. It’s cozy, the pillows seem inviting. I lay down, and I can’t make myself turn off the light – there is something I have to do. I can’t rest. I pick up the book. It’s Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters. I feel like one – one with an invisible family, with an invisible grief, one that makes me into a monster, hideous, shameful.

As the day goes by, the sun helps. As the day closes, the darkness doesn’t help. I keep working until my eyes close, until my hands can’t type a single letter, until my head drops to the pillow. Self-destruct.

I’m only a breakable girl. I have to stuff pillows of ignorance around myself – have to stop calling, have to understand that without protecting myself, I won’t be able to heal. Can I?