TheBunnyBlog.com - March 29, 2008

I realize I still owe the final chapter to my manic summer. I would love to give it to you right now, but the truth is, I've got to get the happy back before I can finish it, because it was a funny and happy ending to a funny summer. If I finish it now, while I can't rationalize getting out of bed, it won't read right. I don't know why I can't get out of bed. My father is fine. I guess I've been underestimating how big a support beam good old dad is, because as of late, I have crumbled.

But don't worry about me. Like a bunny, I bounce back.

Since I've been spending a fair amount of time in bed, I've been doing some reading. I bought some black-market Adderall from Mexico recently, and am enjoying it immensely. While it makes a ringing sound in my head and often leaves me with suspicions--the "ninja in the bushes" phenomenon--the upside is significant. I can sit and read, even the most clinical texts, for hours without rest. It is wild. I've read about religion, science, math and history. I've read biographies and comedies and dramas. I've read more in three weeks than I have in years. I've felt...sated.

I've had a shitty life. I've been sick for the majority of it. I've been used and treated like shit by myself and others, and I've been addicted and crazed and blessed with a gene set that is, admittedly, recessive and fucked. Should I be allowed the opportunity to go to the creator, and ask him/her/it to change just one part of myself, to give me relief in one aching, thumping area of this sadistic lump of crap behind my forehead I use to reason my way through life, there would be so many things I could ask for, but I would not hesitate to know the thing I want most...

The ability to read.

I have such a restlessness in me, an unbearable craving for knowledge. I don't know where it came from. I want, want, want to learn and know things, and I cannot read. It is...sick. It is half the reason I am consistently depressed. It is worth buying black-market tablets of Mexican Adderall--and who is certain it's even Adderall?--crushing, snorting and thereby drawing forth horrible memories of Florida--Curacao, frankentits, uncontrolled stupidity and the smell of Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil--for just a few hours of linear thinking and focus, maybe just a few fleeting moments inside the temple of learning I so often find myself outside of, on the wrong side of the gate. I'd do it every day if I could stand it. I'd do it off oiled frankentits. But not in Florida.

I will never go there again.

You may be asking yourself, and rightly so, "How does a girl who cannot read become a writer?" That's a good question, isn't it? I really don't read books. Most of my inspiration comes from television, movies, art and comic books (I like the pictures). But there is one book I can read and read and read, whether I've taken Adderall or not. I've re-read it twice since dad went into the hospital and my brain broke. I found it ten years ago in a Barnes and Noble in San Antonio I stopped into to take an emergency shit. The bright green spine drew me in. On the cover was this bitchy and sad-faced girl with huge eyes, and at her waistline was the word "Wasted." Beneath it were the words "A memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia." Being bulimic--a kook--and a huge believer in fate and the significance of emergency shit stops, I decided that, though I could not read, I would buy this book and give it a shot anyway. It took three months to plow my way through the author, Marya Hornbacher's prose.

It's impossible for me, in common parlance, to explain my connection to this book without typing for days, and I could, quite literally wax Wasted for days, as I've read it no less than fifty times. The book is considered a classic, and it is said that--like all great pieces of art--it is a unique experience for each person who reads it. I imagine that's true, so I won't blabber on about my interpretation. I'll only tell you that upon reading it once, I decided that if I could be as brutally honest about my life as Marya Hornbacher, then it might be worth something to myself or anyone else. I got an ass kicking from a fifty-two pound woman. That's pathetic.

From Wasted:

You no longer face the threat, upon opening the door, of falling head-first in to the white light of silent hours and wild worries, as you pace up and down the hall, sit on the couch while staring out the window at the light coming off the lake, Getting lost in the light and the lack of boundary, sitting there listening to words whistle through your ears, listening to your breath or the wind or the light banging around in the echoing hole in your chest. Forgetting who you are and where you are and if you're there. Getting lost in the thought that you might be imagining everything, you might be dreaming your life. You look at your hand in front of your face, surrounded by light, and your heart thumps as you think: I'm dreaming, I'm not even here, I don't exist. It is too fascinating, the thought that you aren't. The thought that if you watch the lake long enough you might disappear into the white flames of light on the blue, which seem to be just inches from your face. It sucks you in, and you stare, only a little afraid. And then you scream, startled, when your mother comes through the door. You crash back to earth. It's dark. It's evening. You're here and your mother is looking at you and asking, What?

No more of that. Crazy girl. You're losing your marbles. Come in the door, eat. Fill up the space. Keep yourself on the ground.

The book was nominated for the '98 Pulitzer. I don't know which book won the prize that year instead of Wasted, and I'm not going to go snooping around the Internet to find out, for any evidence of its inferiority will certainly cause me to fly into a rage and break things.

Marya's next book, Madness: A Bipolar Life comes out in ten days. I can't wait. I've got my Mexican Adderall crushed and ready to go.

Posted by The Bunny at 7:16 PM