Sometimes I just want to be completely still and quiet. It's in nights like tonight, driving with the windows down on a warm evening, listening to The Postal Service, and actually stopping at all the stop signs just because it feels so good to rest. And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd. I pulled over on the side of the road just to watch the stars. They don't move; they're so constant. The stars that I once gazed at, faith swelling in my heart, are the same stars that I now look to with a sad sort of hope. I want faith and love and consistency. I want stability and reassurance and goodness. I want change and a fresh start and a new place. I'm so ready to graduate, yet so sad that it's been seventeen years and I haven't accomplished much of anything. Why should I think I'll become a better person in the next seventeen? Why is life so hard? I have such a blessed life, but it's still so difficult to navigate. Will I ever be wise or good or noble? It's so much more comfortable to keep myself busy so that I'm too tired to think about these kinds of things. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

So I was reading through my old diaries from eighth grade, when I was sick. I have three notebooks full just from that one year; it's actually really sad, and at the same time inspiring, to read them.

Wednesday, March 5, 2003
Dear Ana,
I just filled up my other notebook during second period. You and I will be good friends. I'll call you Ana because it stands for what I am--Anorexic.

Thursday, March 13, 2003
Dear Ana,
Mom found you and read you. I'm completely out in the open now. I've been at the hospital and psychologist's office all day. The people at the hospital wouldn't let me see how much I weigh. But I told my new eating disorder psychologist that I thought I weighed 97 and my goal was 93. She said that I was a lot closer to my goal than I thought I was. They made mom throw her scale and her diet pills away so that I can't use them. It turns out that I've really screwed up my heart. My heart rate is pretty slow. It's 44 beats per minute. I'm now forced to stop track and I can't even do situps or anything. And they're trying to get me to eat 1,000 calories every day. They're crazy. They said that right now they're just going to get me to not lose any more weight, but I don't have to gain any yet. Still, it's really hard, and I don't know if I can do it. I have to go to the nurse's office for lunch every day so that she can make sure I eat.

Sunday, March 23, 2003
Dear Ana,
I hate you so much. I want to set you on fire and watch you burn. I wish you could feel pain so that I could light you on fire and burn you slowly--page by page. I want to see you suffer like I have been suffering. And it is all your fault. You--my confidant--betrayed me. Mom heard from you. Then she made copies of you and gave them to my doctors. You knew my thoughts, my feelings. You practically were me. And you betrayed me.
I make no sense. I don't know what I hate any more. Every bit of me is consumed with not eating, or eating just enough to keep my brain and heart working. But I'm not sure if even those are working any more. I'm completely consumed with the very thing I should be consuming. I don't care about anything anymore, it's like everything is gone. I'm eating 300 calories a day--a feast compared to my usual 100 or less. I'm still alive--well, my body is. I think a part of me went away a while ago. But I don't know how long I will last. I weighed myself at Tori's house when she wasn't looking. (All the scales in my house have been hidden). I weigh 90 pounds with all of my clothes on. Yet I feel as though I'm gaining weight.
I hate being around people more than anything in the world. I bet all my friends gossip about "that anorexic girl". I haven't told them, but I can't see how they couldn't tell. Dustin feels so far away. I don't know if he even has a clue. I want to tell him, but he wouldn't understand. Tori--I got so close to telling her, but then I couldn't do it. She wouldn't get it either. Everyone is constantly saying, "Morgan, you're getting so skinny. What are you doing?" I hate people. I want to get away from everyone. I can't go to school. I can't be at home. I want to go to that treatment center in New Orleans. I want to be around other girls like me. I want so badly to be understood. I'm not living anymore. This can't be life. I look out the window, and things look so beautiful. I want life to be beautiful, but it's not. I want to be free! I want to want to be around people again. I hate this. I want my life back! I want to fall asleep for a million years and wake up when everything is better. I can't live like this.

Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Dear Ana,
Do you ever get bored of your own existence? I do. I'm tired of calories and planning out ways to avoid eating. I want to dream...I want to be free to run if I want to, free to dance, free to laugh. I feel so tired...so weak...here I am, slowly killing myself and I feel so powerless to help myself. It's like I'm divided--part of me wants to eat, to be normal. The other part wants only to be thin. And with every meal skipped, the first part gets weaker and the monster stronger.

Friday, April 4, 2003
Dear Ana,
Yesterday when I was weighed, Dr. Bowsher got very serious. She said I've lost "a tremendous amount of weight." Dr. Rogers wrote out a meal plan that I'm supposed to follow. Three meals a day and two large snacks. A lot of food. My doctors told me that "we're out of time." Dr. Rogers said if I don't eat soon, I'm going to die. They called River Oaks and were going to send me but there aren't any girls my age, so they don't think it would be a good idea until some girls my age get there. In the meantime, I'm going to Southwest Texas Mental Hospital. How do you like that? Me in a mental hospital. They're going to put me on a 3,000-4,000 calorie a day diet. I'm scared. There is no way I can eat that much. I don't want to gain weight. Right now, I'm not focused on losing it--just on not gaining any. Wow. They said I'll be in for a month, maybe two. So I guess this will probably be my last day of school.

I'm really considering organizing all of my diaries from this time and putting them into some kind of novel chronicling mental illness.

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
--Christopher Robin

"When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb."
--Their Eyes Were Watching God

Tonight I feel an untapped rush of inspiration. And here I am, just letting it sit here, trying to mold it into words--which ultimately mean so little--rather than letting it transform my life. I tried to talk to Matt about this passion I have for something enigmatic and unfathomable, something that I haven't quite been able to place yet. It's this rush of passion and youthful ideal, a desire to charge out and start a revolution with Love as my sword. It's like sampling a taste of a destiny that's waiting for me if only I'll reach for it. It's the promise of youth, of an unknowable future beckoning me like a fresh journal with all the pages blank, yet so full of hope, waiting to be transformed. So many doors are still open and so many dreams are still possible.

"Whether one is Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian, how you live your life is proof that you are or are not fully His. We cannot condemn or judge or pass words that will hurt people. We don't know in what way God is appearing to that soul and what God is drawing that soul to; therefore, who are we to condemn anybody?"
--Mother Teresa

Commitment is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.
Learn Chinese: Oyster Hao

When you're not afraid to do it wrong the first time, you'll eventually get it right.
Learn Chinese: Boss Lao-ban

Could you let down your hair and be transparent for awhile
Just a little while
To see if you're human after all
Honesty is a hard attribute to find
When we all want to seem like we've got it all figured out
So let me be the first to say that I don't have a clue
I don't have all the answers
And God, I pretend like I do
-Lifehouse Trying

There's a girl inside me who believes in things that are beautiful; who wants nothing less than to be a catalyst to change the world; who believes that she is worth more than any boy's value of her; who is strong and determined; who strives to live selflessly; and who loves God more than anything. This is who I am, but somewhere along the way I've tried to bury her. It wasn't all at once; with each time that I did things that were unlike her, I shoveled a little more dirt into the hole. Everyone around me seems to be burying themselves, too, so it just makes it that much easier. But I'm ready to come home, at least for today. At least for today I'm going to stop running from God and from myself and I'm going to look for the beauty in everything.

Come to me, you who are weary, and I will give you rest.
-Jesus
Matthew 11:28

I feel like I'm past weary, and I'm burned out to the point of apathy. Rest. What would that feel like? Jesus, can I still come to you, even though I feel like I've been fighting you so much? I only want to do what's right, but things aren't always so black and white. Life is full of grey areas, and they are exactly where I fall. Here I've stumbled, afraid of being legalistic, yet at the same time afraid of doing wrong. Jesus, this is my prayer: please let me do what is right, even if I do it unwittingly, without peace, and never seeing confirmation that I am in fact doing so. I'm a mess, God, but honestly, all I want is to love you and to love other people more than myself. I'm sick of selfishness. All I want is to understand what it means to love.

Sometimes I forget who I am and who I want to be. Today, though, I remember. I want to be extraordinary, I want to live unselfishly, and more than anything, I want to find God.

When I consider the heavens, the works of your hand, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained; what is man, that you are mindful of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?
Psalm 8:3-4

Lord, help to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, you have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before you; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.
Psalm 39:4-5

My relationship with God is an incredibly difficult thing to define. I want him more than anything, yet I also struggle with him more than anything. I have this unexplainable knowledge, both a blessing and a curse, that there is a God; I couldn't run away from that even if I tried--because I have done both: tried and been unable to leave. I've never felt so out of place as in the times when I'm struggling with God. It's like that often, but this is what I'm wondering now: what if I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be? What if God allows me struggle with doubts and with him because he knows that ultimately it helps me grow? What if right now, when I'm thinking that I'm at my lowest point with him, I'm right where I'm supposed to be? When I'm disgusted with myself and with my lack of faith, maybe then I am really at my best because I'm not blinded by my own pride.

I highlighted my hair purple today, and I can't even really tell. I'm very disappointed.