Diary entry, February 6, 1983

Dear Diary,

You can’t believe how relieved I am because I didn’t have to go to church today!

Notebook, 1992

Dear me—

Hi there.  I won’t ask how you’re doing because I know, so...I guess you’re doing all right, you’re still smiling sometimes, although yesterday you were pretty angry over a dumb dominoes game.  I know, it wasn’t the dominoes game that made you mad.  I know it upset you when Ryan wouldn’t leave you alone, why won’t he leave me alone when I ask him to?  Anyway, you’re spinning and sinking again, I can tell, which doesn’t make you very happy although you know why.  I know you’re just sick of all this crap, you wish it could be over and you wish you could make your past vanish, or at least not matter, but you can’t.  Just accept it.  Yeah, I know, it’s hard to accept.  You’re getting that scared despairing desperate fear again in your chest, it had left you alone for a few weeks but it’s back again, like it or not.  The world’s not going to disappear any time soon.

Diary entry, May 25, 2004

It’s a good thing I’m on the Lexapro or else I don’t think I’d survive this phase of my alleged recovery.  But I really have come too far to go back.  For the second time in my life I've passed the proverbial point of no return.

The Crooked Window

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it.
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Essay, April 26, 1989

Picture a black, moonless night.  Picture yourself working your way up a mountain, a mountain so tall that the peak is not in sight.  You have climbed and climbed for what seems like forever, and you wonder if you will ever reach a plateau.  Forced to stumble on in darkness, you curse and cry of the cruel fate which pushed you to this endless mountainside. 

For so long you have walked alone, frightened and cold, that you ignore the paths which spring up beside you and lead in unknown directions.  Sometimes you hesitate, tempted by the chance of finding a better route, but you kill the longing by reminding yourself that this mountain is all you know and it is all you have.  Do not take chances – do not stray off the road which has always supported and welcomed you

You took a different path once.  And even though it was beautiful, and even though it was warm and inviting, it was not the easy way you had been led to believe.  It too was a struggle, and you were not prepared to face the difficulties ahead.  In anger and confusion you turned to your mountain, and now your mountain forces you to painfully remember the path you once knew.  Do not take another risk although you do not know whether or not the risk is as dangerous as you once believed.

You have poured every ounce of your energy into scaling your mountain.   If you abandoned your mountain, you might not have any life left inside of you.  No matter what you have been told, you know that they mountain They call Hate will never break your heart and lie to you, as the mountain Love did long ago.

Notebook, 2013

Because you are the waving gun         

Because you are the last admission

Don’t blame me for your bleeding gums

You are the one who brushed them

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin