It was easy to figure out, when I was at the Lodge in Utah: I want to be a person that other people can confide in, I want to be a person that other people can turn to for sympathy and care and a shoulder to cry on, all because I didn't have that when I was growing up. Kristy was wonderful, but she never was the type to listen very well; the only person I had was Mimi, and I wanted to be Mimi to others. It's a very maternal thing, what I try to be for my friends, for strangers. But it makes me happy. My therapists, though, all of them from Dr. Reese to the doctors I have now, have told me that it's not my job to be the world's therapist. It's not my job to heal everyone.

Lately, I...first, I have to tell off Abby to get her to make a breakthrough, which is fine. But then I'm trying to reach out to Tree Daniels? I'm trying to convince Carly to trust people? The conversation with Carly left me confused...and tired. Not tired physically, exactly, but tired mentally because my first thought was, "Well, if she doesn't expect anything from relationships, then I'm going to be that friend who changes everything and fixes her of this!" But the idea of that made me so...tired. Wasn't I the one who told Logan that I have to fix myself? Isn't that the same for her? And more than that: when did I become the person who heals everyone? Dr. Axtell said that my problems are heavy and gigantic and exhausting, and when I put healing others over healing myself, I hurt myself, and that there's a difference between being a good friend and doing what I do sometimes...what I feel like I should do with Carly.

But I guess it's even more than that: it's that, ever since December, I thought Carly and I were building a friendship that started with our art bonding and was going deeper. But when she has this categorical rule that she'll only give so much...then do we have a real friendship at all? Is being more than just art friends...worth it with someone who isn't willing to have a relationship? I don't want to sit around and therapyspeak at each other when it's clear that under it all, she's not willing to invest in me like I'd be in her, and...that she doesn't trust me. I understand that her family has been hard, but...if she's that closed off, I'm not egotistical enough to think that I'll be the person to magically heal her after all of this time...I don't know. I just feel suddenly like she's fenced me away from her...and I don't know if I want to stand there with a pair of wirecutters and snap the electric wires that keep me away. At what point do I say that it's not worth it?

Ironic: Tree accused me of stealing Carly away from her. The truth is, Carly was never available to be stolen in the first place.

When I was crying to Logan during lunch the other day...I thought to myself how I couldn't understand how Sunny would run away. No: what I didn't understand was how Sunny would want to run away and not want to come back. How she can live like she does.

But I was wrong. I know how Sunny can want to run away. I wanted to do it, too, once. Not run away, though. I wanted to die. I never got far enough to decide how, if I wanted to swallow pills or sit in the garage with the car running and fall asleep on the concrete of the garage that was mine was I was a little girl. Never wake up. Or maybe I'd slit my wrists because feeling real pain in my body might distract me from how empty I was feeling. How far away and detached, like I was floating three feet above this thing called Mary Anne, this pathetic thing with her pathetic, ashed out life. The fire burned away everything, even my will. I was empty.

Nobody knows. Only Logan. And my doctors, but...I had to. I didn't mean to tell Logan, and it changed every inch of us. It's why he hovered so much...nobody really understood, how the boy who said that I didn't have to talk to him after the fire, but he wanted me to talk to somebody, like Dr. Reese, could suddenly cover me like a blanket, so worried every moment for me. Things didn't get better until I was able to live my life again: until I wanted my life again. And I couldn't want my life with Logan telling me to want it. I had to put my pieces back.

So I understand, where Sunny is coming from. Logan's wrong, she and I are similar...so I have to help her. I don't know how. I don't know what it is that she'd hiding from and what it is that she needs. I'm still learning that about myself...every day. Every minute, every day, I'm trying to understand myself, and what all of the empty parts mean.

In group today, our therapist Alicia spread out art supplies on the conference table, this cornucopia of creativity. I hesitated, of course, because I'm not Claudia. I'm not...much of anything when it comes to art. I can knit, though, and I asked Alicia if I could knit something instead. She studied me for a while and then reached to the table and grabbed a digital Nikon camera and gently set it in my hands.

She told us that we talk so much about our bodies, how we feel about our skin and all that roils underneath it to make us see ourselves the way we do. A warped, sick way that...destroys us. So, we were going to use these art materials to represent how we see ourselves in more than words.

Here I was, still stinging from what Ashley said on the boards. I talked to Logan about it...I told him that a part of me wondered if she was right. Or if maybe that's how everyone sees me back at SHS: still meek and weak and a nice and quiet shadow of someone else. He said that I'm clearly not the same. I am stronger. It's partly why he thinks that the two of us feel so right together now, because I'm more sure of myself and what I want...and saying what I want as opposed to hoping that someone would magically know what was in my head, so that I wouldn't impose or be a bother. I have a spine.

I just...forget about it sometimes.

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I'll do the memo later. After Kristy...I need to write this all down, I need to see why she and I can't be friends until she understands. I have to understand that, too.

Last year, when we moved into the barn, I had those nightmares again. Plus, I missed the club, school was harder...it was all just so overwhelming. I felt like everything was spinning out of control. I obsessed on how I looked and then exactly what I ate...I got compliments on my weight loss at first, so I knew I was fixing something that was wrong with me, I was so ugly on the outside... It was Sharon who said I was anoretic first, in early December; I was so angry at her for that. But for as often as she is horrible with her hovering now...she was right. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have gotten treatment so quickly. It saved me. In a way...I owe Sharon my life.

I was everything to everyone back then, I was Supergirl. All I had to do was stop eating. I lost twenty-one pounds; I could count each one my ribs, my vertebrate, run my fingers over them like the keys of a piano. To this day, everyone believes the story that I was just stressed from doing too much. I gained weight over Christmas break, I kept gaining slowly the next semester...I kept up appearances perfectly. Nobody knew that my trip to "Iowa" was really to a treatment center in Hartford. The older BSC girls know what it was anorexia. That it is. Those girls, Logan, Barbara and Tess and Dawn. I relapsed in early summer, but I clawed back. This fall, I've been better. Much better; sometimes I feel "normal" again. Not lately. I know that I'm sliding and why. I just have to keep telling myself this, that I know how to fight back, and not let the mirror shout back at me the way it does some days. Not let the people who treat me like I'm made of glass or that I'm "Miss Waistline" bring me down.

What Kristy doesn't get is, I've been standing up to anorexia for a year now. I'm fighting it. I found my voice for the first time in seventh grade, with my father. I used it more and more in eighth. I'm quiet, but I'm not shy anymore: I am not silent anymore. In the end...I will be shouting. In my own Mary Anne way, I will shout. One day.