I have a new plan. I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but I'm going to apply to grad school in London, because I don't think Georgia is going to let me come back. If I were to get in, that would be amazing, and would prove that life is worth living, and that all things happen for a reason, but if I were to be rejected, it would just showcase the meaninglessness of life. So I'm afraid to apply, but I'm going to do it anyway, because I for sure can't get in if I don't apply, right? It's terrifying to think that my future is held on something so fragile as the whim of a single lecturer, who may or may not agree to take me under her wing as a research student, but it's probably good practice for me. Or something. I do wish she would reply, though. It's been more than a day. And I know that academics are busy, and that they often can't reply to emails on time, but it feels like she's going to reject my research inquiry, or maybe think that I'm rude, or something like that. I don't know what to think, really. I have no control over the situation anymore, and that's scary.
Someone at the AA meeting today said that experience is something we get right after we need it, and I think that's true. I wish I had experience with grad schools, and applications, and research inquiries, and all of this. I feel like I'm shooting in the dark with my eyes closed. And I can't ask my mom, because she would pitch a fit over me applying in the first place. Fortunately, E has some experience with helping other people apply, and with reapplying to school after having a mental health-induced leave of absence (and being accepted), so I'm trusting her to help me through. I do trust her, so much. Even though some of her edits on my research proposal weren't exactly what I would have put, I still changed them, because my level of trust in her is that high. Do you know how much I have to trust someone in order to trust their writing skills over mine? This is unheard of.
I really have no idea what's going to happen. I don't know if I'm being overly pessimistic when I say that I think I'm going to be rejected, or if that's actually true, but hey, Georgia wanted me, and I was only one of six candidates to get in, so maybe UCL will want me, too. It could be. I can't imagine it, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. I didn't imagine visiting E in England, or going to Georgia, or even living in this horrible sober living house, and somehow, I muddled through all of that okay. Or, well, I suppose one might argue that I didn't muddle through my stint in Georgia with any degree of okay-ness, but at least I didn't die. The point is, things can happen with no prior precedent. They have to. Experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world whose margins fade forever and forever when I move, and all that. Just because I can't imagine going to another country-- another continent-- for three years (and I definitely can't imagine it) doesn't mean that it can't conceivably happen. It could happen. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but that doesn't mean I have to purposefully crush them at every opportunity, either. I'm just going to try to practice mindfulness, stay in the moment, not expect anything, keep it neutral. But I just wish I could know so I could prepare.

I'm in rehab!
Okay, it's not really rehab. It's a sober living house, and I go to a therapy program during the day. But same difference.
I really hate living here. Everyone is so loud. They scream and yell and make such a big deal out of everything. I'm so hungry, but everyone's hanging out in the kitchen, so I can't go in there and get my food, because I don't want to bother anyone. But man, I'm really hungry.
I also have to go to AA. I really hate it. I have a lot of problems with it, but I'm too tired to enumerate them right now. Suffice to say it sucks, and we'll leave it at that.
(I have 11 days sober, though. So there's that.)
I feel like my life is changing so much, and I don't know if I'm ready for it.
Okay, this is more salient: I want to die, but let's not indulge that. It's symptomatic. Let's instead think about what it means. I want to die because I feel anxious, insecure, sad, hopeless, and despairing. It's valid that I feel that way, and I can sit in those emotions, but I don't have to take it to the extreme of dying. Instead, I can try to reason it out, allow myself to feel it without judgement, and see what's going on behind the pain.
1. I'm worried that people won't like me.
2. I'm worried that this situation will last forever
3. I feel that I'm not as good as other people
4. I feel that I don't have a future
5. I fear that people will end up abandoning me
6. I fear that I'm going to mess up somehow and this will make me a failure
Now that I've identified these thoughts, I'm going to try and talk back to them a little bit, starting with number one:
1. It's okay if people don't like me. Not everyone has to like me. I just need to worry about liking myself, and maybe being liked by the people who are important to me. I shouldn't be codependent, though, and I think I do have that tendency.
2. Factually, I know that this situation can't last forever. It can't. I'm not allowed to stay in the program forever, and I'm not allowed to stay in this house forever. Besides, my money would run out if I tried. I can't do it. Like it or not, something is going to change.
3. This is hard to talk back to. I feel like it's true, and that makes me feel insecure. But I think what I need to remember is that all I can do is my best, and other people aren't as hard on me as I am on myself. If I do my best, that's good enough.
4. I don't know that. This is a cognitive distortion called fortune-telling. I will have some type of future for sure, and what it is depends on what I do to make it happen.
5. I have no control over what other people do. However, I don't know for sure that they will abandon me. All I can do is love people and do my best to treat them well, and try to radically accept the rest.
6. I probably will mess up. This doesn't make me a failure, though.

I’m going to journal again, so it’s going to be fairly stream-of-consciousness.
I’m trying to be gentle and compassionate with myself, but it’s hard, because I feel like I’ve done so much wrong that I can’t even begin to come back from it. I’m definitely not what society would call a success, and it’s hard to reconcile myself to that. It makes me want to be even more of a wreck, because then at least maybe something would kill me. But I don’t want to be that person anymore. It’s just hard not to. I’ve been my enemy my entire life, and now I’m trying to be my friend, but it’s really hard. Everything is a stuggle. But I guess that’s okay. I have to stoically accept my tragic lot in life like some puritan pioneer. Like Ethan Frome with anxiety and an alcohol problem. Ew. But it’s true, rhere’s no use complaining. I just have to decide who I am and tick to it.
So, who am I?
That’s a hard question to answer. I really don’t know. I’m getting to know myself slowly, but it will take time. And rhat’s okay

Happy 2018! Here’s a list of things that I’ve done over the past few months:
-started my PhD program at the University of Georgia
-had yet another unsuccessful suicide attempt
-got hospitalized for 11 days
-got banned from campus because of it
-had to come back to California
-got a job
-quit the job
-started looking for therapy
-started an intensive outpatient program
-got switched to the substance abuse (dual diagnosis) track
-as of today, I now have to look for sober living because that’s required for the track
Wow!
Okay but anyway, I’m also high right now, so I’m going to journal, and all the housekeeping stuff can wait.
I’m feeling my emotions so much more these days. I’ve been numb for so long, and now it’s like I’m starting to finally see in color again. I don’t even know if I’ve felt this way since the summer before high school, except in weird manic bursts. It’s like I’ve been living in a fog for years, and now things are finally clearer. I actually feel optimistic sometimes.
And I’m doing this thing now where I’m trying to treat myself as I treat other people, as an experiment to determine something that I haven’t yet figured out, and honestly, it’s made the biggest difference. I feel like a shy little kid, finally being treated kindly for the first time, and it’s so Much, and I can see why there’s a trauma bond, because I traumatized myself with horrible horrible abuse for a lifetime, and now I’m going to fall in love with myself because I’m treating myself kindly, and really, is that the secret to loving yourself, really, that’s it? And I hope it doesn’t make me complacent, or think that I’m a good person, because I’m not a good person, but I can try to be a good person, and that’s what matters. I feel like I’m getting to know myself for the first time. Who is this person? I’m a clean slate— I’m going to start at the beginning and keep what I like. After all, I don’t have to be any way I don’t want to be. I’m going to adopt the Marie Kondo philosophy— does it bring me joy? It’s sort of a meme, but also it’s kind of fun and selfish and good. But of course I’ll change it to /will/ it bring me joy, because my short term goals shouldn’t overcome my longterm goals. We learned that today. See, program is helping.
Oh, I just realized that my deadly sin is pride. I’m so proud, and I can’t let go of it, because it’s all I have. Everything else is out of my control, but at least I can be right. Because I can’t be wrong, because I have to be perfect. Oh.
Okay, time for the nice to kick in!
It’s okay to not be perfect. Nobody’s perfect.
I’m scared to get better. I’m scared to face the consequences of what I did. Maybe it’s for the best if I move away. First to Georgia, and then, after I graduate, maybe to London. I never thought I would move across the world for a girl I met online, but maybe I should. I could get away from everything and start a new life as a new person. But I’m scared to lose the people I love. If I weren’t physically in their lives, would they still love me? I would miss them so much. But the truth is, I’m going to miss them no matter what. No matter what happens, things are going to change, and we’re all going to become real adults, not just twenty-somethings, but Real Adults. But that’s not bad. I went to a party over winter break where everyone was smoking and drinking and having so much fun. And like, we could have that. We could still have fun. It would just be a little bit different fun than what we have now. And that’s okay.
There’s a lot of stuff I have to do. But first of all, I have an apology to make. I’ve been such a bad sister to Talia, and I need to tell her how sorry I am. I was wrong and bad. That’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s been years of her offering me endless forgiveness that I didn’t deserve, and endless patience that I never appreciated. Why did she do it? Was it because she had no one else?

I was reading my old posts on this blog from when I was about 18, and I'm just so shocked at how much I've changed since then. I used to be witty, charming, dry-- rather pretentious, too, but let's not dwell on that-- and the very picture of a young parlor sophisticate. And now? Well. Sometimes, I talk about things other than my debilitating depression, and that's the absolute best the world is going to get from me.
It's rather sad, really. I believe firmly that I'm in the late stages of mental deterioration due to my drinking problem, and of course, the remedy to that would be to stop drinking, but, well. Sometimes things aren't quite as easy as they might seem (except me-- I'm very easy). I really don't know what I'm going to do when I get to Georgia, because I can't exactly be a successful and promising grad student if my brain turns to mush every time I try to read an article. Oh-- I never mentioned it, but I got into the University of Georgia for grad school! I'm going to be a PhD in Linguistics, provided I don't flunk out (which, as stated above, might very well happen). I'm excited, but I'm also vastly disappointed because I didn't get into any of my other schools. Georgia was my safety school, you see. That is to say, I don't know about USC yet, because they won't tell me, but I'm just going to assume it's a big fat no on that one.
The sad thing is, this was all easily preventable. I had good references, a good research statement, and a good writing sample. My resume isn't awful, and I look pretty good, except my GPA sucked. As I said, I have debilitating depression, and my senior year of college, I would spend weeks at a time in bed, never going to any classes, and not doing much of anything, really, besides drinking. I remember once I walked into my French linguistics class to hear, "bonjour tout le monde! Aujourd'hui nous avons un MIDTERME !" and I died a little bit inside because I hadn't been to class for almost the entire module. And then there was the time I was forcibly hospitalized and missed a midterm entirely... but that's another story. Anyway, as expected, I got a lot of Bs. Which, all things considered, wasn't too bad, especially since I literally couldn't study (see the above brain-turning-to-mush phenomenon), but grad schools don't really care about that. So I was rejected from UCLA and NYU and Arizona (which now boasts the scholarship of Noam Chomsky), and now have no choice but to go to the Deep South and live on ham, peaches, peanuts, and religious fundamentalism until the Good Lord takes me away. That is, if I want to pursue my dream. People have been telling me to wait a year and reapply and see if I can get into that cognitive science/linguistics program at Stanford, but I don't know. It seems to me that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and if I waited another year, there's no guarantee that I would a) get in anywhere, and b) remember anything about linguistics even if I did. So I feel like my path leads me to Athens, and come what may, I'll be a southern belle til the day I graduate.
That's coming in August, and I'm petrified out of my mind, but trying not to show it, because I know everyone doubts that I can do this, and I want to prove them wrong. Secretly, though, I'm also doubting that I can do this, if my track record at UCLA is anything to draw conclusions from. I'm quite literally terrified, and every day brings me closer to the day of reckoning. It's hard to stay upbeat in circumstances like these, especially since I still don't have a job. Granted, I haven't been trying as hard as I can, which isn't good either, but it seems like there's a lot of rejection going on in my life right now. I'm living in LA, trying to find somewhere to work that isn't a garbage dump or a construction site (actually, I would quite like to work on a construction site, but I don't think I would be very useful), but my mom is helping me with rent, and I feel terrible about that. Especially because I can't seem to stop drinking. I just don't know how to face life sober anymore, and that's awful, and I should be ashamed of myself (and I am), but it's so much harder to stop than it seems. Addiction is one hell of a thing, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Well, I don't think I have any enemies. But still.
One bright spot in my life is my relationship with my girlfriend. She lives in England, which is hard (and makes it difficult to explain to people, because oh, you met online, are you sure she exists and all that), but this is one of the most stable relationships I've been in. She's really wonderful, so smart and talented and warm and into social justice, and I really love her. Once I get a more steady job, I'm going to be saving up to go and visit her, and I just know it'll be worth every penny and more. I'm going to go to the post office soon, in fact, and send her a care package with lots of different types of snacks in it. I want to cook for her and show off my skills (because let's be real, I have a lot of cooking skills), but for now, I'll send her food, and it will be almost like the real thing. I'm so lucky! I feel like I've found the Grantaire to my Enjolras (made even better by the fact that she would understand and approve of that reference), and everything is so much better now that she's here. I can't wait until we can meet in person-- it'll be a dream come true.
My roommate and I made the most delicious soup yesterday. It was chicken ramen, but we didn't have any dashi stock or anything, so we used an oden soup base (and doctored it up a bit), and put in a chicken thigh and all the vegetables we had in the fridge. Then we used these delicious instant ramen noodles that we buy from Daiso and cooked them for about three minutes, and voila, le soup du jour était prêt! I'm very lucky to have a roommate who is also a good cook, and who doesn't mind doing all the cleaning with me. Our housemates are, shall we say, less than domestic, and it falls to me and Kitty to do mostly everything. But I don't mind. It's good practice for when I live alone. Right now, I'm waiting for them to come back, and we'll clean the house together, and then maybe exercise some, and then make dinner. They're on a hike right now, to which I was invited, but as we all know, hiking is really not my thing, so I decided to stay home. But I'm pretty glad I did. I feel like we spend a lot of time together, and I wouldn't want them to get tired of me.
Cece and I are writing a paper with my mom. It's very cool and professional, and hopefully, it will get published. I'm so excited, really. It's fun to work on a Real Adult Project, especially with a friend, and I think it's good for me to keep my writing skills sharp before I head off to Georgia. However, I'm having some problems actually working on it, because my concentration is terrible these days. I'm well aware that if I stopped drinking and started eating more than 600 calories per day, I would do better, but this is my lot in life, and I must accept it.
No, I must not. What the heck.
I really hope I can get better at concentrating when I get to grad school. This is my dream, and I don't want to heck it all up by falling down the neck of a whiskey bottle every time something mildly inconveniences me. I've wanted to be a PhD since I was a little sunbeam, and even if it means recovering, I'm going to do it. It's going to be hard, of course. And I don't think I'm in a very good place now, to be honest with you. But I'm trying, and I think that's really important. I'm going to be the person I want to be even if it makes me into a fully functional member of society.
What else?
Did I ever talk about my gender identity crisis? I don't think I did. I shall.
So, long story short, I don't think I'm a cis girl. I thought I had to be all my life, but I've never really felt connected to the idea of womanhood. It seems so foreign and strange to me. In the same way, though, I don't connect to the idea of manhood, either. I'm just sort of... there. That's one of the reasons I love angels so much. They don't need gender. They just are. If I had to choose, I would be a girl, but the beauty of it all is that I don't need to choose. I can just be Sunny without having to worry about any abstract social constructs that try to dictate my life. I love that I chose my own name, too. Of course, it's still a nickname, and I don't mind going by Maria, but I feel like Sunny really encapsulates my personality, and gets me outside of the gender binary. People call me that now, and I couldn't be happier about it. All this isn't to say that I feel dysphoria, or want to legally change my gender (even though California does recognize nonbinary genders now). I'm fine with people calling me she and her (even though I melt with joy when anyone says they and them), and I don't mind having the body I do (except for the anorexia part-- but that's a separate issue entirely). I subscribe to the gender euphoria theory, in which the thought of one's gender brings a source of joy. And it does. Every time I think that I'm allowed to be nonbinary, it brings a rush of happiness.
For a long time, this was really confusing to me. I would "pretend" to be nonbinary because it brought me joy, but I thought I couldn't be anything but a cis girl because I love presenting in a traditionally feminine way. But after some study, I realized that what I want is to be a femme, not to be a woman. I'm the highest of high femme, makeup and heels and dresses and long, glossy hair, but that doesn't mean I have to be a girl, and that fact makes me supremely happy. I don't mind being read as a girl because it means (in our society, anyway) that people are reading me as femme, but if things were different, and all genders were accepted equally, I would definitely want to be a they instead of a she.
I want to do something. I don't care what, just something. But I don't want to do it with anyone. I'm really feeling like having a me day today, not really hanging out with anyone, not really being social and readily available like I usually am. Maybe I could pop into Westwood and go to a cafe or something. Or maybe I could take the dog for a long walk. It would be good for me; I need to exercise more. I'm way too out of shape. At any rate, I want to treat myself, but I don't want to spend a lot of money doing it (well, I do, but I shouldn't). And I know it's not good to just sit here in bed all day. Unfortunately, it's a really low energy day, so even brushing my hair and changing my clothes felt horrible. So I don't know what I can really do with that, but darn it if I'm not going to try.
I wish my housemates weren't here. I would take a bath with that bath bomb that Lauren gave me (and take Vivian the Vibrator in with me and have a grand ole time). But they're here, and I don't think they would appreciate me taking up the bathroom for so long, so I won't do that. Still, I think it would be pretty fun to have a spa day.
All right, I'm going to figure out something to do (and maybe reply to all the messages that I have been ignoring while typing this). Au revoir, cherie!

February post! I do have a lot to say, but I'm reading fan fiction right now, and it's very absorbing. So I'll come back and post more later, but I wanted to make sure there was a February entry. It's very important to me. Okay, time to go see what those Les Mis cafe boys are up to!

Happy January! This is going to be the year when I write here often, because I think it’s really important for me to start journaling again, and my paper journal is lovely, but it’s more aesthetic, you know? So here, hopefully, will be a dumping ground for me to get my thoughts in order before I translate them to the handwritten page. 

I have a lot to say, but at the moment, I don’t have the mental capacity to say it. So I’ll let it cook for a bit in my head, and hopefully later I’ll he able to articulate it. 

That’s it for now; I just wanted to check in during this first month of the new year. Hopefully, more will be forthcoming in later days.