it is what it is
by Faith Reale
my dad has always said that. my psychiatrist at my first treatment center hated that phrase, it went against everything he believed in. he believed in behavior and action driving one’s life. for example, if i no longer shoved my fingers down my throat and threw up, i was no longer bulimic. if you could act “as if” you could accomplish all the things you wanted. i thought that this was horse shit and told him as much. i tried to keep our visits short except for the time i told him about my suicide attempt. i told him about the white pills in the orange bottle, about the wooden cabin in the woods, how i gripped my phone as i called my sister to tell her what i had done. how i wrote a general suicide note in the same notebook that i had been using to track the number of calories i was eating. i told him about the floor of the hospital, swearing twice in front of my Christian boss- fuck fuck. i told him about changing into blue-ish, green-ish paper pants and top. i told him about how i fell asleep on a mattress in a room with no door, just a curtain and how it was the best sleep i ever had. i didn’t tell him how when my mother bullied her way onto the psych ER, she clung to me as if she was reassuring herself that i was real, flesh and bone and not a ghost. i didn’t tell him how the nurse told me i couldn’t cry and how i saved up all my tears for when i was finally given privacy to shower. how i couldn’t stop my entire body from shaking as the tears scorched my cheeks like fire. i didn’t tell him how i talked my way out of being hospitalized with honey words that the hospital staff ate like they were bears. i shrugged and said, it is what it is.