Jimmy: You make me so happy. Jimmy: It's great. Jenn: That's nice to know. Jimmy: Like, what the fuck? Do you know how much the world is against me right now? Jimmy: But somehow Jimmy: You make me feel better. Jenn: :] Jenn: You've proved to be the same for me, so I guess we're both just lucky. Jenn: Even when we're not. Jimmy.: That was beautiful. Jimmy.: LIKE YO FACE Jenn: :DDD Jimmy.: Which... I guess isn't really sarcasm at all. Jenn: Aw.

It's been almost a month since I last wrote in this. I guess you can say things have changed. I'm a little more obsessive about losing the weight now, about eating less and all that, but I'm also a little more flippant about it. This is both a good thing and a dangerous thing; it means that I'm not going to be breaking down every two seconds, but it also means that I'm not taking my health seriously anymore (and, clearly, that I don't give a shit about that). There's a new boy who will probably meander into my life within the next week or two. He lives in the next town over and I've only met him twice, but he's conveniently a friend of a very close friend who thought we were too similar not to be set up with each other. I was against the idea so emphatically that I completely missed the part where "awkward IMing" became "staying up past one in the morning talking" and "texting during school". And he's upfront about everything, asking me how I feel about our little arrangement and eventually telling me he likes me ("I mean, LIKE", he said, as if I needed clarification). And we've decided to see how well this talking translates in person. He's me if I were a guy who played a lot of instruments and had more - what's the word? - self-confidence. You know the sort; he's awkward and witty, with a biting sarcasm that almost doesn't fit him and a flirty edge that he usually keeps under wraps. Loves Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan. Vegetarian bordering on not-so-strict vegan. Wants to be a writer one day. He doesn't know about all of this, and maybe that's why I'm so nonchalant about it now. Finally, I've got a clean slate with someone I want a relationship with - Harrison had to "find out" about it and Tom figured it out on his own, but Jimmy... he doesn't even live here. I can sit here and become lighter and lighter and he probably won't even notice, because I'm happy now. Isn't that what really matters?

Here, let's sit on the radiator and pop balloons, hide these moments in our pockets so we can examine them later, when everything is done. Let's pretend we don't know that they know that we know because we don't, not really. Here, let's write each other all the letters neither of us have ever gotten. Let's read them in silence, sitting backwards in chairs and maybe we can forget to breathe every once in a while so none of this makes sense. I'll trace your font and unwrap your scent if you'll close your eyes and call me across that ocean I cannot cross, as if these fault lines were borders and we were stuck in our squares. So here, let's shed our skin and dissolve into these waves as they roll. Drive to the beach. I'll wait for your signal before taking my shoes off and stepping into the sand. We will drown here, our little mouths choosing familiarity over life, and maybe this is my largest fault. Because this is what I have become: jellybeans scattered across a tiled bedroom floor, naming all the colors. I am forever blue, you are always yellow, but together we are simply green.

No one should have to be so sick they debate going to school on their birthday, let me just tell you that.

We got our report cards today, weeks after everyone else. I have my suspicions that my brother was hiding them again, but he won't tell me he was, so maybe I'm just overly cynical. I got all As, all but Math, which was an 85. That grade should be higher, I know. I'm going to start staying after. But Danny got mostly 70s and 80s. Downstairs, my father is screaming. "DO YOU WANT TO GO TO A COMMUNITY COLLEGE?" he asks. "DO YOU WANT TO DRIVE A BUS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?" I neglect to point out that he's only a freshman, he has time, or that I know people with grades like that who have gone to state schools, or that you don't necessarily become a bus driver after community college. My mom reads the grades aloud to me and says, "This is in comparison to your brother's grades of..." I wish she wouldn't compare us. It makes me feel terrible.

It must be three by now. There's no clock over the mantle and our cell phones are too far away, but even if we weren't hiding from the cold with our blankets and our heat, we wouldn't want to get up. She's having her last sniffles, wiping under her eyes. He's making her cry in front of me and he doesn't even know it, and it leaves me stuck wondering if my advice is something I, myself, should take - is love truly worth the depression that inevitably nips at its heels? In the silence, with the fireplace crackling and the flames wearing thin, she moves closer. She kisses my shoulder in the way that she does: light, soft, vulnerable. I'm wearing a camisole for reasons I can't explain beyond saying that maybe, for once, I'm the one seeking physical attention. But even around her, I am self-conscious. I reach down to adjust it over my stomach, fearing there will be skin showing, and she sighs. Her face is down, away from me. "Jenny?" she asks. I can barely hear her. We're lying on my living room floor and the creaks of the house are overpowering her voice. But I hear her enough, and I say, "Yes?" There's a pause as I swallow, waiting. "I'm so happy you don't hurt yourself anymore." I don't know what to say to that, so I say nothing at all. Instead, I grasp a small part of her sleeve in my hand and hold it tightly. She puts her arms around me and runs a hand through my hair. Over and over and over again. And we just lay like that for another five minutes, breathing in and out, trying to shed our insecurities.

Happy Alienate the Eating Disordered Day.

My mother is drunk again, slurring her speech and trying to talk over the rest of us at the dinner table. I pick at the limp spaghetti noodles and try to tell myself it's okay, but I ate lunch today for the first time in a long time, just to see if I could do it and be alright after, and I found the answer was no. Well, it's nice to know, isn't it? Tom wrote to me a week ago and I have yet to respond. These questions about what I've been up to, they come once a month, and I'm finding my answers to be sparse. Am I really that boring? Or am I just holding back? It's so hard to fall for someone who lives one continent too far away to hold you when you need holding or call you when you need calling. I just want to hear his voice, you know? And if I can't have that, I guess I don't want anything.

Citigroup is failing. They're having a meeting today to talk about everything, all the senior executives, and my family fears for the worst. If they sell everything, my father will lose his job and we'll be left with nothing. I used to sit on my carpet and read American Girl books about Kit, the girl from the Depression. I frowned at her discovery of her father on the bread line, at her realisation that he was no longer employed. I thanked God I was better off than that. Why do you always think these things can't happen to you? Wake up. They can. I can't even imagine what we're going to do. He crawls out of bed when his alarm rings for the fifth time and he holds me when I pass him in the hallway, just to hold me. In a year, I'm off to college - where? Where can we afford after the dust has settled? Fordham has become a very real possibility, and although I can't say I don't love the idea of going to school in New York City, it's a little disappointing. But this isn't about me, for once. This is about everyone else.

We're writing about relationships in my Creative NonFiction class. We had to pick the one that meant the most to us, and I chose to write about Tom. So I started writing. And I never really stopped. I mean, I ended the scene when I had to, when it felt right to end, but I'm still writing it all down in my head, scribbling furiously with flashbacks and ever-racing thoughts. The highlight, I'd have to say, is here: "...but my vision is cluttered by faint inebriation - a mixture of Pimm's and carbonated lemonade and the way a boy can make you feel when the sun is setting." I write my best when I write about him, but I want to collapse when I'm done. And this is how it works.

My body is now involuntarily rejecting food. I've tried eating four times today and every time, I've felt like I needed to throw up after. I can't say this doesn't make things easier for me, but it's certainly scary. Why now, after everything, am I deteriorating against my will? This makes no sense. This makes me smile. This makes me fear.

How's your life been? Everything I expected it to be. Nothing I expected it to be. Could you go the rest of your life without drinking alcohol? No. If you asked me this six months go, I would have said, “Absolutely!” but now this is what my weekends have become. So no. Probably not. Do you hate the last person you kissed? The last person I kissed was the girlfriend of a once-close friend. I don’t hate her. I don’t feel anything for her. We were drunk, you see, and she had always been attractive. He wasn’t there, but he says the imagery is hot, and he’d like us to do it again. All I can think is that I would have made a better decision sober. When was the last time you felt upset ? As in sad-upset or angry-upset? The last time I was angry-upset was maybe a week ago, when a kid I know told everyone about the above incident at school and I got shit for it all day. I like my private life to remain, well, private. What are you listening to? Lua. Bright Eyes. I’ve heard it a thousand times and it still makes me want to cry. When’s the next time you’ll kiss someone of the opposite sex? Christ, I have no idea. If my ex gets his way (which he won’t), then this weekend. If I decide to be a wonderful person and abstain from imbibing until, like, college, then probably not until the summer, when Tom comes to visit from lovely ol’ England. Probably somewhere in-between. I’m not a wonderful person. What do your pants look like? Jeans. They fit me alright around the waist, but are too big for my legs, so they make me look all out of proportion. What's the best thing about Winter? The smell of the cold. Cold definitely has a scent, and I love the way it burns your nose when you breathe in. Do you hate when people smoke around you? I actually like it. I don’t smoke anything but cigars, and only when I’m intoxicated (this is making me sound like an alcoholic, and I swear I’m not), but my father used to come home smelling like the bar down the street when I was younger, and I’ve always associated that smell of cigarette smoke with affection. Do you have any plans for tomorrow? School. Driver’s Ed. College applications. Sleep. This is my life. Will this weekend be a good one? Probably not, no. Everyone’s busy, my ex wants to get back together, and I have college stuff to do. Do you have a tan? I'm a redhead. I don’t tan. I burn. Yeah, I'm bored of this already.

This should be a pretty self-explanatory post, but maybe it isn't. I guess I've just been thinking a lot. My writing teacher got me thinking when he asked us to write a list of all the people we've ever been romantically involved with, and to make a profile highlighting one of them. And I wasn't sure to pick the best one or the worst one, because both bring me heartache. It's true, you know. You don't know what you've got until it's gone, but I knew what I had even then, and I couldn't hold onto it. I'm not just saying this to make myself feel better; there truly was nothing we could do. I had to get back on the plane. I had to go back home. So why do I feel guilty, still? There's no possible way I could have stayed with him on the other side of that pond we call the Atlantic. So why do I feel like I should have anyway?

My mother has been drinking a lot more lately. Almost every night. She's not an angry drunk or a happy drunk, she's just a tired drunk, which probably bodes well for us. We just pretend she didn't fall asleep and continue watching our television shows. I don't want to overreact. I don't want to underreact. So my mind races a thousand miles an hour while the rest of me stays silent. There's nothing wrong with an adult having a few beers in her house, right?

Barack Obama is my fucking President. It has yet to fully hit me how wonderful this is.

I'm really scared for tomorrow. Words cannot explain how royally screwed this country can become.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo. It keeps me distracted. I enjoy distractions. They're beautiful and unhealthy. My therapist has this theory that people who stop eating are trying to hide from something. She wants me to write to myself and figure out what I'm trying to hide from. What if I don't want to know? What if I'm hiding for a reason?

Grinnell College is a place where students come to be part of a distinctive community. Tell us what makes you an individual and what you could bring to Grinnell. Let's forget, for a moment, that I'm basically a National Merit Finalist, because there are like 15,000 of us, so that doesn't make me very distinct. And I guess my 34 on the ACT and my 2220 on the SAT don't matter, either, because let's face it: people get 36 and 2400 all the time, right? I mean, enough to make me less than them. And once you take away the Model United Nations, Mock Trial, Robotics, Peer Support, Assistant Directing a friend's show, and drumming on the side (I'm not the only one who gets involved), there's really just me. What can I bring to your school? I can bring a life-threatening illness that started in my head, the chance of heart attacks when walking up the stairs. I'll bring a scale that reads not only my weight but my percent body fat. I'll bring a diet of lettuce and air, the distinct feeling of insecurity and low self-confidence that you just can't place. You're in the middle of Iowa? That's even better; less people to look out for me means I won't bring attention or too much worry. I promise I'll be as dedicated to doing my classwork as I am to getting thinner, but eventually one may have to cede to the other and I can't say I know which it'll be yet. Your psychologist will get a lot of work, probably around the end of the first semester when I'm stuck between being terrified it'll get out of control and being thrilled it'll get ouf of control. I'll bring cold-weather clothes back in fashion in the spring, when I'm shivering in class. I'll write more, maybe, but they'll be horribly vague and probably quite a bit autobiographical. I can bring my SAT scores, my ACT scores, my accolades, my extra-cirriculars, and my hobbies, because I can bring my eating disorder and unfortunately, that's the only thing that gives me any identity right now. I hope it's enough.

I miss Bobby Kennedy. I needed to know him. I never got to. I never got to see him on television. I never got to cry at his funeral.