The destroyer takes all

Ana the destroyer is taking everything. My marriage. My dreams for grad school. My hopes for any kind of future. My soul.

I believe my marriage is over. My husband and I have struggled for years with this disease. I feel he doesn't understand; he feels this has taken over everything. He escaped to Florida on Thursday, supposedly to work on the boat of a friend. But I believe he wanted to get away from me, or the me that I now am since Ana came to stay.

He sounds so angry at anorexia and I feel he blames me for getting it and this most recent relapse. Without him, I feel lost and lonely and scared. I feel as if I will die of anorexia. And that's a terrible burden to put on anyone.

I think anorexia has so damaged our relationship, it cannot be repaired. I can't seem to make him hear - I didn't do this on purpose, and I am so sorry for what it has done to us over the past years. I love him so much it hurts. I also love him so much, I can't continue to put him through this.

Then there's grad school. I got a 3.7 last semester, and I was quite proud of that. Even with my recent relapse, I have been pulling near a 4.0 in my classes this semester. But I chose to go into the hospital, and now I'm so far behind I feel like I'm smothering. After days of constant writing, up until 2, 3 a.m. I turned in the rough draft of a literature essay that I was told probably won't earn a grade any higher than a B to a B- — after extensive revisions. So instead of resting today, as I so desperately needed so I can think more clearly and actually be able to eat, I again spent hours at the computer trying to salvage this piece.

Today - it's 3 a.m. right now - I have to write the rough draft of another essay, complete a 10-page take-home midterm, read a short novel and then write a 1 to 2 page response essay on it. All of this has to be completed by noon Tuesday.

But my grief over my failing marriage, combined with my sorrow over my now screwed up grad school record - the one source of self-esteem that I had; that I believed in - makes it almost impossible to think about writing another word.

Sometimes heartbreak can hurt so much, it silences everything inside of you.

I need sleep and I need food. I can't seem to find a way to give myself either. And without David, I don't really want to live anyway.