Reasons

It helps if I think of self as a character. Narrating my present: She lie in bed crying and holding herself trying to make a list in her mind. Mom. Kelly. Melissa. Grandma. Mom. Kelly. Melissa. Grandma. She kept repeating the names over and over to herself until she found her breath again. Mom. (Inhale) Kelly (Exhale)...She tethered herself to their memories and nailed the stakes into the ground. That's why you wake up. That's why you stay.  It made the realization that I'm really unwell easier to digest. It scared me that I'd begun to develop an indifference to vitality. And no matter how loudly I seemed to yell it no one seemed to get it. For all the good intentions I She still felt desperately alone. "I would check in every day, wouldn't I?" She asked herself. But it did her no good to get angry. She understood and knew that her friends loved her. It was just, at present that love wasn't enough. She wasn't entirely sure that anyone's love would have been. It's not quite dissociative. It's just how I've managed to cope while my body feels under attack. Mom. Kelly. Melissa. Grandma. They were my reasons. To not only wake up but to get up and to keep trying. I want so badly to quit. I'm so tired. Whatever l belief that I am special has all but been extinguished I'm trying to hold tight to the idea but...and the heartbreak just continues. 

But she can survive this. She has before. These are pages in one chapter but this is not the whole of her story. It helps if I think of it that way. Then I don't feel so sad about my sadness.