Update from my brand new iPhone 4s, bitches!

Step by Step

Oh, no, I don't mean the family sitcom. I mean the way that I am currently taking life, in order to focus on what I need to focus on and to process the world in a way that will not overwhelm me completely.

Breathing shallowly

i found myself watching the skin around his eyes, wondering what my own face looked like.

"Whatever you want, Chel."

"I just want," shielding my eyes with a trembling hand, i surrendered to my eyelids' importunity, making sure in the back of my mind to keep track of how much more water i would need to drink to fight off the dehydration so badly built up from the insomnia-ridden nights that had brought me to this moment--this sad, sad moment--of clarity, this small period of unusual clarity and unselfishness, in which i would confess not only my desire to separate but my deepest uncertainties to the one person who has kept me alive, "to be happy."

"I'm sorry."

don't be.

Before Dawn

I began to cry. Thomas shifted slightly and opened his eyes with some difficulty. He looked at me.

"I'm afraid that I'm going crazy," I confessed.

"Why?"

"Because I've just completely lost it."

"Why?" he repeated, as stern as he was honest.

"I know what I should be doing, and I know what's wrong," I blubbered, "but I just can't get myself to do it. I feel like I've lost control."

"You'll be fine," he said, stretching an arm over my torso in a half-hug, "just play on your iPhone or something until you get tired."

"But I am tired -- I can feel it in my eyes--"

"Just do something to keep your mind busy for a while. Lying awake worrying won't solve anything."

I knew he was right and his calm was infectious. I layered an arm over the one across my stomach and laced my fingers into the hand on the far side. I gripped it tightly, holding onto it as if it were the only thing keeping me from drowning -- and, in a sense, it was -- he was the only thing keeping me from being carried away with the current. The current of my own creation, that spiraled out of control and grows stronger and never calms. I tried to slow my breathing. I tried to clear my mind. I tried to focus on what I had beside me -- what, or rather, who, was keeping me afloat.

I nodded,

and said nothing.

"...but you should be proud of your accomplishments. You've had to deal with this for the last ten years of your life."

I stopped nodding and gazed at the floor.

"And you need to remember that it's not you -- it's an illness. It's not your fault."

I pressed my teeth into my bottom lip and blinked my eyes clear. I nodded again, slowly, and in my head I wondered how he knew I thought it was my fault.

Later on I realized, while swirling frozen yogurt around a raspberry in my cup, how much comfort and hope I found in that little phrase. It also occurred to me that, had he known me better, he wouldn't think that way. I swallowed the last of the yogurt.

Tom stood and offered to help me up. I took the hand (and I think it felt like life's).