today is pen clicks, watching rain on the porch, coffee, a new book, worry, food plots.

i am pretty good at pretending to everyone around me that everything is fine.

a few weeks ago a young woman came back into shelter after five months of being in housing. she had a crazy story of how she had been manipulated and violently kicked out of her apartment by devious roommates. we sat in a small room and she rocked and cried and told me that she had considered committing herself, but the hospital never took her seriously because she was so articulate and held herself together when she showed up there. she started to wail. what if i lose it again, and then i lose everything, again? this young woman writes articles advocating for former foster youth and gorgeous, soaring piano music, and when she processes her pain out loud it comes out sounding like poems. her mental health issues are much more serious than mine but i know this part of her. no one believes i'm crazy either.

yesterday i noticed small yellow bruises at the corner of my eyes. i googled "eye bruises" but i could only find things about black eyes, which i do not have. just small yellow bruises at the corners, extending my eyes like a cat's. two nights before, during shelter, i had developed something that felt like a migraine but wasn't. there was a dull ache in my head and there was the nausea and the light sensitivity and the need to sleep and the weakness, but there was no pounding. i felt like i needed to go home so i called my supervisor eight times and she didn't pick up the phone so i had to stay and in the morning all the young men who had stayed in shelter gave me shit for looking like i was about to pass out. i have to say, though, that those are some of my favorite mornings with them.

this strange illness lasted for another day and night, and included the symptom of not being able to tell if i was sick to my stomach or terribly hungry because i had eaten barely anything for several days. i remembered reading that sometimes people with migraines get migraines without the pain and don't know how to recognize them without the pounding. my migraines have changed form lots of times over the years and i wonder if this is what's happening to me now. i haven't even had them regularly since i was in college, but they've come back with a vengeance over the past four months. every few weeks miserable face down in the bed for a few hours. yesterday someone suggested i go to the doctor about that and i thought huh. that hadn't occurred to me.

sitting on my porch is lovely even in the rain. the rain doesn't come in and the rhododendron is blooming now and allows me to watch the small dramas of the street unfold in front of me while shielded from view. it is perfect for reading books or staring into space or anxiously clicking my pen or trying to write letters.

yesterday when i noticed the eye bruises i thought uh oh. i got out of my bed where i have been spending almost all of my time, watching television, planning escapes, crying, and feeling crazy, since this OD happened a month ago, and i went to the grocery store and bought some food that was not peanut butter or bread. i made a spicy garlicky tomato soup from my childhood and ate some and put the rest in jars. it came out looking like salsa because i didn't chop the onions fine enough but i didn't care enough to be fastidious with them. i made grilled cheese with mustard and remembered when ellen and i made grilled cheese and mustard in the minnesota summer rain. i made salad with newman's dressing and also remembered my childhood. i hoped this more substantial lunch would somehow right the wrongs i have been doing to my body. it did feel good but of course one lunch is just one step in the right direction.

i had been to see my therapist on friday. she is good in that she tells me things that are good for me to hear, and in other ways i am on the fence. like: i think i am smarter than her. and: she can only see me once a month. things she told me: you will be carrying this event with you for a long time. you are not crazy, you are behaving the way we all behave when we feel hurt by the people around us. what do you want to tell me about eating. you, unlike many people, ask yourself the question, what am i putting out into the world? but you are cutting everyone else too much slack. she reminded me that even though two drinks every few days is not a lot of drinks, it is a lot more drinks than i have been having, and drinking in bed is not the healthiest thing to be doing. she said why don't we try having two drinks a week. i said ok. ok. there have been other times when i feel crazy when all i want is to drink and it feels good, actually. right now i have just been doing it because it's what i know how to do, and it has felt bad. so, no more drinking.

so ok. now, the past two days, i eat vegetables, i read a new book about a dude who killed himself by his bipolar best friend. she says, some people think i should be angry at Harris, but i'm not angry. i believe in the possibility of unendurable suffering. when i feel crazy the best thing i can do is to read things that remind me that other people are crazy too and that it is ok and also that they function and write beautiful things. elegies. i sit on the porch and watch the rain, happily, and breathe air that is not the stale air of my bedroom. i still spend many hours lying in my bed, but less. i force myself to do some things. ten minutes meditating. half an hour of tarot. walk three times around the block, watching the leaves jewel, watching the sky change.

ok.