My Summer Repertoire

1. “The Trees on the Mountain” ~ Susannah
2. “Aint It a Pretty Night?” ~ Susannah
3. “Willow Song” ~ The Ballad of Baby Doe
4. “Glitter and Be Gay” ~ Candide
5. “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” ~ Phantom (Webber)
6. “Think of Me” ~ Phantom (Webber)
7.  ”Special” ~ Avenue Q 
8. “I Dreamed a Dream” ~ Les Miserables 

… I like how it’s like “SOPRANO OPERA LAWL” and then there’s two huge belters.

Let’s see if I can actually do this.  

work in progress

A short story I’m working on. This is the rough draft, I haven’t edited it at ALL, and it’s also not completed, so if anyone actually cares enough to read it please do not judge too harshly. It’s still in its baby stages. 

 Trigger Warning: Suicide, Depression

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            The stars in the nighttime sky were glittering like diamonds, creating a vast landscape of light that shone against the dark of late evening. It was an unusually warm night in mid-October—the grass was littered with leaves of every color, their particular hues stolen by the darkness of the hour, and many of the trees had already began to bare, posing as skeletons reaching for the sky. With every step she took, the leaves crunched under her worn-down ballet flats, often wet like the grass below them as it had recently rained. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have grimaced as the cold, muddy rainwater found its way on her foot and into her shoes. Yet in her current state, it was not the cold of her hands or feet that she was feeling, but the piercing chill of her troubled soul.

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some promises to myself

Courtney…

• No more eating things you don’t need
• Don’t skip meals
• Don’t puke again
• Keep a better food log
• Remember to take your second anxiety pill
• Work out every day 
• Less aspartame, more water
• Read when you get depressed instead of sitting in your room crying
• Practice more frequently 
• Remember that you’re getting better, no matter how slow the progress is
• Stop looking in mirrors

I’m only supposed to work out 4 hours a week, but I’m pretty sure this week I did 5.

However, I also feel like I ate way too much. And even just today, I went out to eat for mother’s day- I had a salad, a plate of pasta, and some fat free frozen yogurt. Which is bad enough on its own, but then I ate cereal and yogurt in the evening that I KNOW I didn’t need. 

I just hate food. I hate having to measure everything to the exact amount to follow a meal plan and usually still managing to fuck it up. I hate feeling a desire to eat. I hate the fact that I enjoy eating. I hate the awful, sinking feeling in my stomach that resonates there after a meal, like I’ve just committed a murder, and I hate the fact that all my life I’ve seemed to have a spiraling relationship between emotionally eating to feel less depressed and starving myself to feel more accomplished. 

I eat to distract myself from my depression. I feel awful about it. I tell myself I’m never going to eat again. I restrict. I over-exercise. I get depressed. I eat. I  have an anxiety attack. I vomit it all up. Repeat. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I ‘binge’ eat, because it’s not usually in huge amounts, but sometimes I will find myself eating for no reason other than that I am extremely depressed. And as a long-time sufferer of an eating disorder, I am probably more ashamed of this fact than anything else. Because all I WANT to do is never eat again.  

I told my therapist at my last session that I feel ashamed of myself for shifting over towards the bulimic spectrum this year when I used to be more on the anorexic side of things. I feel like the fact that I don’t starve myself every day anymore robs me of the ‘honor’ I worked so hard to build up, which is bullshit because I didn’t even lose any weight after a while and I’ve always had an emotional attachment to food, even when I was keeping myself from eating it. I told her I wish I could just find the strength to be fully-blown anorexic again like I was when I was 14.

Of course, I don’t really wish that at all. This eating disorder is bullshit. I have too much I want to accomplish, too many important things in my future to let this monster in my mind steal them from me. And I’m going to defeat it. But as of right now, it’s still there, loud and strong and blaring in my head, and I don’t know how to shut it up. I’m getting better at not listening to it, yet I still hear it. 

I just want to be normal. I want to like myself. I want to eat healthfully and normally with no emotional attachment to food- or the lack of it- whatsoever. I want to feel comfortable in my own body. I want to appreciate myself. And I’m trying. But it’s just SO hard, when all you really want to do is starve yourself down to nothing. 

Starvation isn’t an option anymore. Purging isn’t an option, either. But the feelings that push me to do these things are still as legitimate as they ever were, and the voices are still telling me to I’m worthless and fat and need to be thin to be worth anything follow me wherever I go, and I still get more nervous than anything to go to restaurants or social gatherings involving food, and I still feel like the worst person in the world after a meal…

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m just whining like a child, now… that will get me nowhere. I’m just frustrated with myself. I want all of this to go away. I’ve wanted that for years now.

I guess I just have to keep fighting…

Love is like a scar. A beautiful scar, but a scar nonetheless. 

When you allow yourself to let your guard down enough to actually begin to love someone, you give them a piece of your soul— sometimes too big a piece, and sometimes too little. But a part of you is left with them nonetheless, and the part of themselves that they gave etches itself inside your heart to patch over the piece you gave them. 

I hate to compare human hearts to pieces of patch work. But it’s the only thing that seems to make sense to me.

Regardless of the havoc life tends to wreak, those fragments of your soul— those everlasting scars— will never leave you. You will never get back that patch of your heart from your lover, just as they will never get theirs. It lives on with you. It grows with you, stays with you forever, becomes just as much a part of you as anything else. You will never look someone in the eye that you were once in love with and truly find yourself unable to care for them.

You can hate them, if you really try. But you will care for them in addition to that hate, deep deep down. Not necessarily the same way you always did— it may not even be romantically oriented— but the affection will manifest itself in some way. At least… if you truly loved them.

Because that little bit of love they gave you long ago, the tiny piece of their soul they offered to you the first time you embraced and felt the magic of the world light itself on fire, the spark that ignited whenever your bodies would touch, the way they looked at you as if you were what made the stars shine at night— that never dies.  

That kind of power is beyond the ability of mere humans to destroy. 

It’s two thirty in the morning.

I’m sitting awake with my head leaned against the brick firewall of my sophomore dorm room. The window is tilted open so the nighttime air can creep in, making the place smell less stale, and the soundtrack of dorm life (water fountains clicking, toilets flushing, doors shutting, footsteps walking, and the occasional voice of a passerby) can be heard from outside my door. My phone is plugged into a speaker and is playing recordings of rainfall to calm my mind and help me sleep. The only light left in the room is coming from my blue lamp.

I will be leaving this room in a week. And as huge as this year has been, it still feels like I walked in here for the first time maybe only a month ago.

I remember having the key in my hand, eager to explore the hallway that would soon become mine to take care of and monitor for the year. When I opened my door for the first time, I was astounded by the size of my room (compared to my broom closet last year) and even more wonderstruck by the brick wall- a rare relief from the eyesore of cement blocking- which soon became the envy of all of my friends. I told myself this year would be a good one, and that I woudn’t let the emotional breakdowns that had been plaguing me for the previous few weeks interfere with my second year of college.

Hah. Ha. Hahahahahahahahha.

This year was probably the worst of my life, replacing the infamous 8th grade. Courtney Cunningham, the Sophomore Year of College Edition included a relapse, two hospitalizations, a suicide attempt, a car accident, a funeral, a handful of bad grades, a bleeding throat, too many screaming fights with my family, and finally more prescription pill bottles than I’m even able to count. Granted, the chaos eventually led to me finding the right medications under a proper diagnosis and being accepted into a treatment program that is slowly but surely making me better for the first time.

Looking back, I think all of this shit needed to happen. There was a lot building up to it (YEARS worth) and really, my head was just a ticking time bomb for a massive break down. I’ve known this for the past couple of years but convinced myself that my problems weren’t legitimate— that because I’m a white girl from a rich family “I can’t possibly have real problems” and because I’m not a size zero “I can’t have an eating disorder”. Bullshit.

But it took this breakdown to really get me to change. It took nearly every aspect of my life falling apart for me to find the motivation and the desire to start respecting and loving myself the way I have always deserved to be, but never fully received. It took me having to come to the choice of either taking my own life to escape from my misery, or fighting the demons and making my life something worth living. I came pretty close to choosing the first option, and sometimes the thought still wanders into my head and will linger there for a while like a parasite, but for the first time in my life I’ve fully committed to fighting and beating this. Rather than just spend my life surviving, being dragged through years and years of the same old self destructive bullshit just like I’ve always done, I’m doing the terrifying act of tackling the demon once and for all so that someday I can live the life I’ve always imagined. My future will be bright because of the work I am doing right now. I’m on my way to being fully alive for the first time ever.

It’s hard as fuck. I mean, I hate whining— life in and of itself is just hard for everyone— but to sit here and have to change every aspect of my mind is very exhausting. I find it difficult to concentrate in class or to pay attention to people while they are speaking because analyzing my thoughts is a process that is constantly occurring in the back of my mind. It’s a wheel that’s always spinning, never out of motion. And when I’m alone I have to put so much energy into planning what I’m eating and controlling the emotions I feel afterword— avoiding purging, avoiding skipping meals, actually eating 8 servings of fat a day (which is SO HARD OH MY GOD). I’m not super good at it yet, either— sometimes I just cry in my bed and then fall asleep for hours to escape it because I have no idea how to respond to these emotions. But I’m not hurting myself. I’m following my meal plan every single day and registering every feeling that goes through my brain. Every thought, desire, and action is being picked apart so that I can learn to understand and control myself— and someday, even love myself.

Of course, despite all of the terrible things that have happened, I can’t forget the best thing (and one of the only good things really) that happened to me all year: Michael. He stuck with me throughout all of this insanity (which was anything but easy for him I’m sure) because he believes in me and cares about me to the degree that he accepts the fucked up parts of my soul that no other person has ever known how to respond to. I’ve had people adore the good parts of me before, and genuinely love them, but as soon as my demons showed up that love was nowhere to be found. He’s taken me into his life with open arms and loved me in a patient, selfless, all-encompassing way that only he can do. I honestly don’t even really know how to accept this love, which makes me extremely afraid to calm down and trust that he truly cares about me as much as he’s proven himself to, but that’s something I’ve identified and am working with my therapist to fix. And either way, I’m fortunate to have found someone who cares for me so deeply, someone I can make happy despite the fact that I’m insane. He’s a pretty special kid.

Soon, this year will only be a memory. Tomorrow is my last day of classes and my annual formal for SAI. I’ll spend my last weekend enjoying my time with friends and sisters and my boyfriend, and then it’s finals week and everyone’s back off to their hometowns. I’ll be packing up my things, leaving this dirty room with its broken doorknob and janky windows, on my way to Dublin to spend a solitary summer focusing on my recovery.

This year wasn’t the most enjoyable. But I’m going to look back on it with pride that I survived it, and most importantly, with hope. Hope for a brighter future filled with love, self-acceptance, music, and Abnormal Psychology textbooks.

I think I’m ready.

i am a fat fuck of a failure.

and with that i shall go to sleep and attempt to escape from myself 

I don’t think I’ve done one of these since high school lawl

I’m bored and on duty. Why not…

• Can you count your number of serious relationships on one hand?

Two.

• Name something great that happened today?

I sat at the fountains with some people I love :) 

• Has anyone told you they missed you lately?

No :( 

• Where did you get the shirt you’re wearing right now?

My sister’s closet

• What’s your middle name?

Marie

• What’s the last song you listened to?

“Ode To Sleep” - 21 Pilots

• Was yesterday better than today?

No. Yesterday was worse.  

• This time last year, were you single?

Technically. But my heart was occupied.  

• Who is someone you’ll always hate?

There’s someone out there that I hate very strongly, and yet simultaneously I know I would probably take a bullet for them without a second’s doubt.  

• Do you have any siblings?

My sister! <3 

• Do any of your friends dislike each other?

We’re girls. There’s going to be drama and conflict to some degree. It’s unavoidable. But we all get along for the most part.

• What are you doing right now?

Sitting desk duty, getting ready to do rounds

•  Do you think anyone has feelings for you?

I mean, I’d certainly hope so given I’ve been with my boyfriend for six months

• Did you talk to anyone before you went to bed last night?

Elliot, Nick, my mom, Michael 

• What happened at 9:00 am today?

I was waiting outside the res life office to sign up for move-out shifts

• Do you care if people hate you for no reason?

I mean… I don’t think anybody hates people ‘for no reason’. But I care if people hate me quite a bit. Probably too much.  

• Are you happy with the way things are going?

Ask me this again in three months. 

• Do you currently like anyone?

I’m in love with someone. 

• Do you have a best friend?

Several. 

• Are you scared to fall in love?

I’m not afraid of the act of falling in love, as I already have with someone wonderful- It’s more that I’m afraid of never being entirely loved back by someone. So I kind of have this cage around my heart and won’t let anyone fully in. The sad thing is I was never like that before, I’m usually fairly open— but that’s just how life is I guess. 

• Next time you will kiss someone?

No idea, to be honest. 

• Are you in a good mood?

I feel fat and really want to run, but unfortunately cannot because I’m working… 

• Do you think ex’s can remain friends?

I did at one point. Sometimes it’s just impossible, though, as I learned… 

• Are you one of those people that always answer their phones?

My cell phone, yes. I never answer my home phone. It makes me nervous. 

•  Hate it when you go over to someone’s house and do absolutely nothing?

It honestly depends on the person. 

• Where is the last person you kissed?

Probably in his dorm room practicing

•  Do you honestly miss someone?

Yeah, I miss a handful of people.

•  Are you one of those people who gets jealous of boys/girls that your ex is dating?

hahahaha… when my ex got a girlfriend I was actually very relieved. I imagine in any other situation I would be jealous, though. 

• Were you single for your last birthday?

Yes. I got drunk and made out with people at a club to celebrate. Then I felt wrong about it and cried.

•  When was the last time you were in a car with someone besides family?

A few hours ago, with Christina haha

•  Have you ever kissed anyone with a name that starts with A?

……… yes

•  What was the last bed you slept in besides your own?

Michael’s

• Have you kissed the last person you texted?

Laura? No, but I’ve kissed her brother!

•  How many piercings do you have? 

Seven- three on my right ear and four on my right

• Did you have any unread text messages this morning when you woke up?

Several, yes.

•  What are you wearing on your feet?

A pair of sparkly sandals and an anklet around my right ankle

• In the past week, have you cried hysterically in front of a friend?

Ohhhhh yeah. Do you even know me? 

•  Does it bother you when people respond with one word texts?

It makes me unbelievably bothered. I took all the time to explain to you my thoughts and feelings and you just respond with one word? 

•  Have you ever gone tanning?

I’m ginger. We don’t tan.

• Is there someone that you want to see?

Yeah. I really want to see a certain person. 

•  You can get a puppy or a new car. Which do you choose?

For now, a car seeing as I just wrecked mine… Under any other circumstances, though, I’d want a puppy. 

•  Your last ex runs up to you, kisses you, & tells you they want you back. You?

HAHAHAHAHAHA THIS IS FUNNY BECAUSE THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED SEVERAL TIMES

•  Do you tend to hold grudges?

I’ll admit I do. Not my best attribute. I’m working on it, though. 

•  Anyone or anything in particular make your day better today?

Christina and Ailsa :)

•  What is bothering you right now?

My body. My weight. The fact that I’ve been eating 2,00 calories a day for the past month. Worrying I’m not good enough. Worrying about my grades. Take your pick?

•  Is it easy to make you cry?

Oh yeah. But it’s getting harder. This year has hardened me. 

•  Think back to August, were you in a relationship?

No. I think this was the point where I was finally starting to get completely over my ex, so I finally had the full “single” mindset. 

• Any drama in your life right now?

There’s always a little drama, usually just between myself and my problems though. I don’t try to make drama with other people. 

•  Do you think your boyfriend/girlfriend would ever cheat on you?

No. He’d honestly shoot himself in the face first

•  Did you sleep alone last night?

I did. 

selfish confession

I feel like my love and friendship and affection is constantly overlooked by those that I give it to.

And as much as I feel ashamed of admitting it… It hurts.

I’m just going to throw this out there once and then get over it

This day just really fucking sucked.

Sucked sucked sucked sucked. Not just for me personally, but for humanity as a whole as well (and I honesty feel bad whining about my own silly and petty problems when such awful tragedy has struck in Boston).

And now I’m done bitching about it and will get up and move on. Because that is what big girls do, and to dwell on negative feelings stemming from things that really do not matter in the grand scheme of life is unproductive, unhealthy, and immature.

Hopefully there will be an online charity effort for Boston I can give to or something like that. That would make me feel better. Also, thank you to all of you kind people that sent me messages to help perk me up- I will respond in the morning.

It’s four AM so I’m going to bed hopeful that tomorrow will be better.

I can say in the midst of this bad mood that I thank God for my warm blankets and my safe bed, which recent events in my country have caused me to realize I take for granted.

Self Destruction vrs. Feminism

I woke up at 6 and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I’ve been siting awake thinking. Never a good idea.
The online community of tumblr has my eyes to how many girls in my age group struggle with the same things that I do. (Yes, I know these are men’s issues too. But in my experience, things such as eating disorders and self harm tend to affect more women than men).

At first I sat here wondering why in the world I deserve any help when there are so many others struggling out there in this vast world- why should I, a rich white girl who has never really done much important with her life at all, bother getting help when there are others that have suffered so much worse and whose lives have so much more promise? What makes my struggle unique? Why am I still on this road to getting better when I’m obviously not worth it?

I realized that was just the depression talking, though. So I ignored that little voice the best I could and continued staring at the ceiling.

But then it hit me. Maybe the reason why so many girls feel this way is because of the way society is stacked against women.

Someone who took the time to read this will probably roll their eyes at how I’ve managed to drag the feminist agenda into what seemed to be a self-loathing blog post. But I’m serious. In a culture that is constantly telling us we are never good enough, and is essentially sending the message that our worth is equal to how much pleasure we can provide to men (i.e. our sex appeal), how are we supposed to grow up with a healthy self image?

If you’re a curvy girl, you’re too fat. If you’re a skinny girl, you don’t have boobs and aren’t “fuckable”. If you’re smart, you’re an outcast. If you’re not smart, you’re a worthless bimbo. Play sports? Dyke. Don’t play sports? It’s cause you’re a girl and girls can’t be good at such things! Wear make up? You’re a fake bitch. Don’t wear make up? Lesbian! And God forbid you ever try to take a stand against these societal rules, or you can say goodbye to having a social life and start getting used to constantly being ridiculed.

Let’s not forget, of course, that the way your body measures up to the doctored images of Victoria’s Secret Models will forever determine how worthy you are to most guys for a majority of your young life, even if it’s just subconsciously. A clear example of this is the “rating system” for how fuckable a girl is that I hear guys use all of the time in college- even guys that I’m friends with and do not otherwise consider douchebags. It’s so ingrained in our culture that these things are considered totally normal. Hell, just yesterday my boyfriend’s friends (who asked him to “do her once for me” the night we started dating) were teasing him by saying they were looking for me because they “wanted a blowjob”. These guys have spoken to me maybe once in my life, and have already decided to associate me only with sex. They don’t know two fucking things about me, but because they want to have sex with me they figure they don’t need to. And I’m supposed to find this flattering?

But then people wonder why there are so many teenage girls with cuts in their wrists. People wonder why more and more young women are feeling the need to starve themselves. People wonder why depression and suicide in teenagers is on the rise. People wonder why five year old girls now— FIVE year olds— are staring to feel insecure about their bodies. I started having disordered thoughts younger than most people with ED’s that I know, and even I wasn’t that young.

This culture is literally teaching young women to hate themselves. And no one is doing anything about it. So thus, more lives are ruined. I know a few extra girls on a diet may not seem like a big deal to some people, but this only leads to more hospital bracelets, more bloody razors, and eventually more funerals.

This has to be stopped.

Maybe there’s a reason why I’m getting involved in feminism around the same time I’m finally emotionally invested in my recovery. Realizing the damage that society has done to me has helped me understand the core of my own disorder and makes unrooting it easier. But it also makes me sad to know that there are so many other young women suffering out there like I have because of the images the media, which is ultimately controlled by men, forces down our throats.

I’ve got to do something about it. I don’t know what, and I honestly don’t have the emotional strength yet. But for now, getting better and rising above this bullshit will be my way of fighting back. The bigger battle will come later.

In this moment, I’m pretty damn proud to call myself a feminist. But now, I say this term with an entirely different meaning. One that hits much closer to home…

“Sleep well, my love”

It’s funny how words so simple actually mean so much.

But for now, sleep.