I’m reading Chloe Caldwell’s The Last Book I Loved on the Rumpus and the more I read the more my mind turns in on itself, searching for things to grab onto.

suicide.

my grandfather.

my father’s mental state.

my own time in a psych ward, after being released from the hospital: they thought I was a danger to myself. my room-mate had black hair and painted nails and she said that things slept in the closets, I remember listening to her tell me that she was a bat, and she would try to hang upside down at night to sleep, I don’t remember if she ever actually did hang upside down.

windows.

bathrooms.

nurses always watching: you can’t go to the bathroom alone in a place like that. you really can’t go alone if you have an eating disorder, they make you wait, and the food sits, and your stomach coils and you fall into yourself and you wait your turn.

hospitals still make my stomach turn.

its funny what another person’s words can do to you.