In my lapse of writing I returned to school, and by all outward accounts I am doing well. Grades are solid and there have been no missed classes. For the most part I am keeping up. But underneath the show things are grim. I anticipated my reaction to the stress, but I felt like I would be able to counter the anticipated backlash. And maybe I am still handling it. I don’t know that I’ve abandoned all hope. But my historical mechanics of stress management have manifest again and self-destructive means are the end. For me, the smallest amount of negative stress makes me physically ill. I break out in fever blisters, endure hot and cold flashes, and an untamed panic wails from the abyss. I can’t sleep, I’m too exhausted to blink, and my thoughts commit suicide in their infancy. This reaction is as natural to me as breathing.

When I last left you in the Summer, communication with one of my abusers was imminent. The disaster that was to be our correspondence didn’t fail to disappoint and unnerve me. And even after I imploded, he exerted a continual presence in my madness and undoing. He continues to resurface in my daily thoughts, though how prolific the damage I am not willing to say at this moment.

One of my biggest obstacles is what to disclose to Therapist. My theme right now is denial, denial, denial. If I deny it long enough, loud enough, and hard enough, then it didn’t happen, it doesn’t exist, and the devil made me do it. (For future reference, reader, it is not a good regular practice of denial to overtly confess your thoughts to your therapist.) But I also don’t want to sabotage myself, and I can see my epic denial failing me. Nevertheless, it is what it is, and for now, I’m just not ready.