It’s the little things that are scaring me. About my OCD, my depression, my anxiety, my PTSD, my eating disorder. I feel like if I write this down it will make sense. That she will read it (even though I know she won’t).
There are things that I got past, left behind, and haven’t thought about in a while. Things that are coming back to me, and they feel like an uninvited guest that is overstaying their welcome. Someone I used to spend a lot of time with. But now I have no desire to see her.
No matter how many oils I diffuse, how many mason jars I buy, how many times a day I do yoga, how many bottles of organic apple cider vinegar, coconut oil, and raw honey I buy
She isn’t leaving.
She won’t let me listen to playlists on shuffle, it’s to chaotic for her. It makes her anxious when she doesn’t know what song is going to come on next. She cleans her ears with Qtips three times a day. Three Qtips each time. She has to knock on something made of wood or paper 3 times every time she thinks a jinxing thought. If more than 30 seconds passes without doing so, she starts to panic. She can’t fall asleep without her queue filled, her clothes laid out, her bag packed and triple checked, the door lock checked three times, and lotion applied to her hands and feet three times. It makes me nervous and I want to help her.
She’s always tired. She does everything from her bed. It takes her 3 hours to prepare for a thirty minute trip to the grocery store. Another hour to prepare for a shower. She doesn’t care about anything. She goes to class, gets in bed, goes to work, gets in bed. I hate her. She’s so ******* lazy. She stares at her scars, and wishes she had more. She wishes they were deeper. She isn’t going to do anything about it, I assure you, but she can’t get it off her mind. The dog scratched her leg last week, and she’s become obsessed with the new scar. It’s sickening. I want to, but I can’t help her.
She is always calculating and recalculating things in her mind, money and time and schedules down to a T. Always crunching numbers. Calculating how much each minute of a college semester costs, and adjusting for every new factor that comes to mind. She can’t take it when anything throws things off by a single minute or cent. She can’t deal with changes in plans, or cancellations. Even if nothing is wrong. She’ll start over thinking, thoughts rapidly increasing their pace as they violently force their way through her brain. She has to ring her hands or pinch her thighs just to catch her breath. It’s painful to see, and I can’t help her.
She used to have small flashbacks during the day, easy to cope with, more like a day dream. And it’s been four years since they’ve been a regular thing. But now they keep her up at night as she tries to fall asleep. She’s in another place. She can feel it on her skin, she can hear it in her ears, she can smell it around her. She keeps getting lost in this world, and I can’t get her out of it. I can see her trying to fight back, but it takes her forever to shake them. She comes out of it, dissociated with her head spinning, and she has to turn the light on and stair at objects and count tiles or walk around to make sense of things again. I feel like I’m watching her doing all of this and I can’t help her.
I buy all of this food and cook all these healthy meals, and she throws it all away. She just binge eats yogurt, boiled eggs, fast food and cereal. And I always hear her throwing up after. It makes me sick. She keeps putting boxes of multi grain cheerios in the shopping cart, and then putting them back on the shelf. Every week. She used to eat exactly 1 cup of that a day for about a year, and nothing else (at least nothing else that she doesn’t throw up). Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing diet for her, but I can’t stand the sight of them anymore. I can’t help her.
I just want to help her move on. Get out of this place. I don’t want to see her anymore. We’ve been friends since I was a kid. Her family is friends with my family. Some of my friends have friends like her, and some have no idea what I mean if I mention her. She doesn’t like to be around anyone, and no on likes to be around her. So I hide her. I can’t shake her. I can’t help her. I get her out of bed every day. I brush her teeth and help her to the shower. I get her out of the house most days. I help her write her emails, do her course work, make her coffee, and clean he room. But it’s too much. She’s a mess and I can’t help her.
I can't help her.