I need to get out of here because I�m going crazy. That was my mentality, especially after making a dozen phone calls and finding out that I couldn�t go to Rogers and Laureate had a waiting list and blah blah blah. Plus I really want to go to a TF meet in So Cal ;) So it looked like a good time to go, all around. I want to go because I know I will purge much less there. Mia is someone I am ok eating around so I should do ok although I know I am going to restrict like hell, or try to anyway. I am going to try to allow myself to eat what I want though, to the extent that I know I won�t feel a really strong urge to purge. Because that is my only rule for the trip � NO PURGING WHEN I�M WITH MIA. I could get away with it, easily, but I want to use this as an opportunity to give my body a break. I�ve been feeling shittier than usual lately. Just general fatigue and shakiness. I feel like I have the flu or something, but I have no symptoms or fever so that can�t be it. Anyway I�m driving down tomorrow! Exciting. I�ve never taken a road trip by myself before but I�ve always wanted to. This is not really a road trip I guess since I won�t stay overnight anywhere on the way, but close enough ;) Maybe I�ll stop at the outlet malls on my way out there. I haven�t been there in so many years.

After Michele�s at 10am (which was good except that at the end she invited my mom in on a whim without asking me and I had a short-sleeve shirt on and I freaked out because I wasn�t sure if she saw my arm or if I covered it with my jacket in time� she hasn�t seen my arm in months so has no idea of all the burns on it. Michele didn�t say anything to her that was personal so that�s not why I was mad it was just cause I didn�t want her to see my arm and I didn�t expect her to be coming in.) I went to the DMV with my mom because she needed to renew her license as well. Their was a sign that said the waiting time was 3 hours! But there was this flashing announcement thing saying that a different DMV (farther away) had only an hour and a half waiting time so we left and my mom decided to make an appointment. I went online and supposedly the Concord DMV had only a 45 min wait so I decided to go there instead because I needed to be in Concord for group at 6, anyway. After spending forever trying to find the damn time (NO SIGN WHATSOEVER where the entrance was) I had to wait in line for two hours, not 45 minutes. But at least I got that taken care of. My license expired back in July but I never got around to renewing it. They are supposed to send you a form in the mail you know?! But I never got one so that�s partly why I was thrown off but anyway my mom wouldn�t let me drive all the way to LA on an expired license. Which is probably smart since there is a good chance I might get a speeding ticket� heh. I�ve been extremely lucky to not have gotten pulled over ever, so no one knew I was driving on an expired license which is the same as driving with NO license, as far as the cops are concerned. Yikes.

I killed time in my car working on a scrapbook and then went to group. That went all right I guess. We talked about dads. That was hard for me since all those dad issues are very much �surfaced� for me lately. I actually cried but I don�t think anyone noticed. I had a lot I wanted to talk about today and there were so few people, and all of them really quiet so I figured I wasn�t wasting anyone�s time (none of them were wanting to talk and we were all done with check-in) but Deirdre kept cutting me off. She seriously cut me off (in a non-obvious way so that I can�t say anything) at least four times tonight. In my opinion, she does this really often. And that really hurts my feelings. I mean what the fuck is up with that? She has interrupted other people before but she does it to me way more often than other people. I feel like she treats my problems as unimportant. Like, �Oh, Ruth will be fine. It�s just the usual stuff.� And there was a new member tonight, who I guess was new last week but I wasn�t there, and I guess I was more hurt by Deirdre interrupting and changing the subject from me so often because here she was asking questions of Lauren (the new girl) WHILE I was talking, and talking about how bad off Lauren was. I mean she made it sound like she was dying. Well, as I had learned by the end of the session, Lauren is �new� to all of this. She was talking about telling her friends about her ED in case she had to be hospitalized for a few days for �nutrients� which is what she was talking about (with Deirdre�s constant comments). When I was trying to be helpful, saying how sticking someone in the medical hospital (esp. the one she would be going to) would not be helpful if it was just a few days of an IV with sugar in it and them not even having ED protocol or groups or monitoring or anything. I mean hell, go to a REAL program! Go to a good program, NOW! Before you get so sick you are sucked into the warped thinking and you don�t want any help and then you spiral further. I am by no means �chronic� because I think you need to have had this disease for like 10 years to be chronic but in that group, I am. Out of the people there I�m the oldest and I�ve been sick a pretty long time in comparison, and look where it�s gotten me. You�d think she�d want to use me as an example. I mean I�m 19 and I still haven�t been able to start college as a freshman. I�m behind before I�ve even begun. If I could give any advice to a newly-sick person it would be to get treatment ASAP. I think that if I went to a really good program, a residential, in the beginning, or at least when my parents first were told I had anorexia (the issues and behaviors go back much further but I still think this is true), that I would be in a COMPLETELY different place then I am now. But instead of listening to my advice of looking for a real program instead of just doing this 2 day hospital shit (which I think will just make her want to get sicker, because that is what it would have done to me at her stage, and I was factoring that into the equation as well), she just ignores me and launches into her speech on how it�s medically necessary to hospitalize people sometimes. NO SHIT! I�M NOT STUPID! That�s the other thing, she constantly insults my intelligence. I don�t consider myself above average intelligence but she treats me like I�m blatantly STUPID. So I said �Well of course, I realize that, and if Lauren is medically unstable then of course she should be stabilized, but why not go to a program after she is stabilized, instead of having her be in the hospital for a mere few days and then sending her home?� but of course, this was ignored. So I was kind of mad, and hurt, and then I was getting annoyed because Lauren just started to bug me. She kept talking about how her family is so supportive and how she is annoyed with her dad for calling her today when she was home (she wasn�t at school) and asking how she was doing and if there was anything he could get for her, pick up a movie, etc. Sorry, I must have missed the offensive action by her father there. ?!?!?! When we were talking about dads, the three of us were all saying negative things and Lauren was talking about how great her dad is, so I know that her annoyance at him couldn�t have been cause he�s usually an asshole. So for her to be mad that her family is supportive and nice is coming off as really bratty. I�m surprised that she�s 17. The younger girls are more mature than her, in my opinion. Sigh. I asked Deirdre if there is an adult women�s group. Because on the something-fishy website there is a listing for the Concord Therapy Center and it said they have an adult group. Deirdre told me they did. I�m like why did you never tell me?! I mean duh, maybe I would have liked to join?!? So I am thinking about going to that group as well, just to see how I like it.

Guess who I ran into at the therapy center?! While I was sitting in my car working on my Rogers scrapbook (I hate Rogers but I did make some friends and that�s the only reason for this scrapbook � to put those pictures together in a nice way) of all things, I see Guy (I am not sure how you spell this name� or say it� because apparently it�s not what Deirdre thinks it is so now I�m confused and I have never heard him say his name before, only had other patients tell me his name) --- �J-eye� is how I thought you said his name, but whatever. I will find out eventually! I will make it my mission!) walk out the door! I recognized him immediately and rolled down my window and said �Hey, don�t I know you?! From Rogers??� and he recognized me luckily and was very nice and we talked for a few minutes. But his mom was right there waiting in the car so I felt a little awkward. I hope I run into him again because he seems really nice. I remember that Susan, another Rogers patient I was kind of friends with, liked him a lot and was always talking to him. I think it was because he could understand her drug dependency, but maybe I�m remembering wrong and confusing him with someone else. But I�m pretty sure. Anyway, he�s my age, and I remembered that he lived around here. I didn�t talk to him much at Rogers because I was way too shy. So I never really knew *exactly* where he lived, or got his email to keep in touch or anything. So I found out he lives near there (Concord/Walnut Creek) and he sees Terri, another one of the therapists there. I asked Deirdre in group if our groups is girls only, cause I never actually knew. She said it�s not girls-only, we just didn�t have any guys who wanted to join (she does have male patients). I told her that she should tell Terri that he�s welcome to come to our group if he wants to. I realize that he probably won�t want to considering we�re all girls and I can see where he would feel uncomfortable being the �odd one out� but I was thinking how lonely he must feel. I�m sure he is just so alone� he must have taken off a lot of school to go to Rogers (he was there a while, at least 2 months) and he might not even be in school right now, who knows. And I know that this ED has caused me to have no friends basically and I can�t imagine that part is different for guys, it�s probably even worse because at least more girls �accept� it than guys, in general (sad but true). So anyway I was thinking that if I was him, it would make me feel good to know that I was thought of and invited to come if I wanted to. I was shocked the invitation had not been made yet. I mean god, for someone who treats males and said there have been males in this teen group before, you�d think she would have thought of that. Deirdre can be so dense sometimes. She�s extremely intelligent, I don�t doubt that, but she�s not all that great at communication with all of her patients. Anyway, I thought that was cool to see him and I hope that Deirdre follows-through with telling Terri to tell Guy (will substitute his proper name when I learn it! LOL) about the group.

Up until this point my dad wasn�t terrible because although the DMV was a drag, at least I got it out of the way and my mom called the issuance department and they are federal expressing my license by Friday because she told them a sob story about how I had to be hospitalized, lol. I need an actual license if I�m going to fly and I was told at the DMV that it would be 6 weeks before I got my license so I was really worried. Tonight though, when I got home, my mom started talking about the hospital and how they were calling tomorrow (I know Mom, you told me three times already), and then said she really thought I should go and that I should talk to them tomorrow and do an assessment so I could go as soon as possible. She was being really� what�s the word� I don�t know. Kind of accusatory, like as if I have been �defiant� and refusing to go, which is completely the opposite of the truth so I was kind of mad. Because I mean I am the one who FOUND the program, and I never said I wasn�t going, so why was she going on and on about how I needed to go and blah blah blah, especially since the past few days she hasn�t really seemed to care either way (not to mention the past few MONTHS). After she kept going on and was sounding more accusing, like I had done something wrong or been refusing to go, I said that to her and asked why was she all of the sudden so pushy to get me to go when not even two days ago she hadn�t even cared? And she did the whole �I did care! I did want you to go!� crap but her actions certainly did not say that these past few months. She kept defending herself and denying that she had been unsupportive of me going before (she asked me several times if I �really thought I should go� to Rogers, as you might recall) and then I said �What, are you just doing this because you saw Michele today?� because she usually does that --- if Michele/Deirdre/Dr. Lowen says something like I need to be at ___ place, then all of the sudden she claims to have been in agreement all along, even if she wasn�t. Then she says �No, it�s because I saw the marks on your arm where you burned yourself.� Oh shit. Jaw-drop. Things went REAL downhill from there. At first I thought I was safe because she didn�t talk about it anymore after that and just said a lot of stuff I don�t remember most of, like how she cared and �always had cared� and that I shouldn�t put a time-limit on how long I stay in the hospital because my health is more important (a great line, but money is important too and we don�t have enough!) and even if a program is out of network (50% covered, at most) I could still consider it. Anyway, it got worse because Johanna had been standing there this whole time and I didn�t really care in the beginning when we were talking about the hospital because I feel bad that I never tell her like, if I�m planning on going, and when/where, and if I were her I�d want to know, but then after my mom mentioned the burning I certainly wished she weren�t there. So after my mom was done talking a few seconds go by and Johanna storms across the room to where my Mom is standing in the kitchen (I was in the dining room at the computer) and practically shouts �SO IS NO ONE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT RUTH IS BURNING HERSELF?!� And I said �No, because there�s nothing to talk about. I mean that is not something you just talk about. What do you want me to say? This isn�t some conversation you just have on a whim. It�s none of your business, anyway.� And she started yelling and got really, really nasty. Completely unlike her usual self. She was practically making FUN of the fact that I use my arm as a way to put out my cigarette. I started crying and asked her why she was yelling at me and what the hell was that supposed to do and how did she think that was going to help me and I already feel bad enough, obviously I punish myself enough I don�t need her yelling at me as well and soon after I went to my room because I couldn�t stand hearing her yell at me. I slammed my door so hard that It went PAST the door-jam and then I was locked in my room and had to have my mom come push the door in to get me out. As much as I wanted to just stay down in my room and not have to see her again tonight (and was REALLY glad I was leaving for LA the next day), I decided to come up here and write a diary entry instead. So I�m just ignoring her but she seems to be ignoring me as well so I doubt she�s noticed.

Johanna just came in here and apologized. Literally just now Kind of ironic. Anyway, she said she was just really upset and worried and �felt sick at the thought of you punishing yourself when you�ve done nothing wrong� and it just came out the wrong way. She said she must have been �channeling Lucy� which made me smile. I know she means well. Thank god she normally doesn�t yell at me like that though� because that really hurt. She�s been the one I felt most comfortable around and I feel like all of that has been violated now and it just doesn�t feel the same. I think I�ll constantly worry now if she�s mad at me and just suppressing it and pretending she�s not. Uggh. Lots of drama and crappiness. Too many emotions today! I�ve been a sobbing mess more than once (I started freaking out when I couldn�t find the DMV).

One more thing. I met another TF�er on Sunday! I finally met cat and bear claws in the flesh! I�ve been wanting to meet her sometime for so long but she�s been afraid of me ;) Haha. Anyway it was fun and we talked a lot and all is good and I plan to hang out with her again if she wants to :) I think Sarah has the kindest face I have ever seen. That I instantly get the sense that �I know I�m going to like this person� and know that I will be able to talk to them. And I don�t get that with a lot of people. Approachability, but it�s �Ruth-approachability� -- not the same thing as when other people call someone �approachable -- because for me the qualities are different. Anyway I had a great time and she is a very nice person! How was ZACHARY�S SARAH!?!?! I�m dying to know how you liked it.

I think, for now, that is all.