*Times Like These* Epilogue

Epilogue 1

Over the next year and a half, into my grade eleven high school year (this year), I still suffer with an eating disorder that still hasn’t completely been rid of my life, and a drug addiction that I battle with all of my entire being. And I just can’t seem to be able to feel good about myself yet, and I don’t know if I ever entirely will. 2

In one of the earlier chapters I bitched about Blaine. I must be very hypocritical to allow myself to “stoop so low” again. I went out with him earlier this year. It actually wasn't that bad. 3

But, so far this year I’ve struggled to keep up with my classes and I hope that I will do better over the next year when I move to the city. For the past fourteen or so years of my life I’ve lived in this shithole and I’ve had numerous chances to get out, but I’ve always managed to somehow fuck it up for myself. 4

So far, while living here, I’ve tried to make good of the life I’m trying to live. I still get high, drink, smoke and pop pills occasionally, but I am slowly convincing myself that I do better when I function without. I don’t know if that’s true since I’ve seemed to fall so far behind in school since I haven’t taken pills. I don’t know if any of that is good, but in some ways, sometimes, it feels okay. But I don’t know anymore. 5

Marilyn and I are still best friends and we’re celebrating our ten years of friendship on the sixteenth of July. I honestly hope that we have at least another ten years of friendship after that. 6

Carmen and I are on our way to having a closer friendship since I’m beginning to confide in her more. I just hope that I don’t need to fear telling her too much like I did in the beginning with Marilyn. 7

I try to look on the bright side more often, but usually that doesn’t work very well and I fall into depression too easily again. But I think that things are beginning to look up for me now that I’ve begun to accept my grandpa’s death and that it’s okay to cry and to ask for help. I can now accept, maybe too easily, that I’m not going to be the most beautiful woman in America, or the world, and I can also accept that with everything that may happen to me in life, I don’t need to escape it in the world I created for myself while I was getting high every single day. 8

Now, I’m beginning to think a little clearer, too, and I can now say that I begin to feel a bit, if at all, better about myself. It may not be a lot but it’s a start. I honestly feel that glad that I’m able to start over again. Even if I contemplate suicide and think I’m crazy, I still feel proud that I can say to anyone reading “my story” that I may not look too brightly to my future, but I’m glad that I have one since I’ve had so many different things to go through during my seventeen years. 9

Every single day I wake up and, though I don’t actually think it, I am grateful that I’ve awakened and that I’m not completely alone anymore. If it were possible, I’d like to leave the past in the past and never have to deal with it ever again. But I know that I won’t be able to go forward if I don’t deal with the present or the past first. And with all of the things I’ve had to face throughout my long, but short, seventeen years, I hope that I don’t fall into many of the same routines that I once had depended on, and those that I still fear possible today. Really, I do know that life is never all that I think it is–I should know, I’ve gone through too much and somehow managed to survive. And I think that’s what matters most in life to me. Survival.10