I got home from an anime convention last night, and my dad cornered me and asked me if I had had anything to eat that day. I was exhausted - too exhausted to make excuses or lies. I said, "I don't know..." He said he wanted me to eat something, now.

I argued about the time, how I was tired, not hungry, I didn't want to eat before I went to sleep. He didn't listen, didn't flinch. So I told him I'd eat an apple. While I nibbled like a pathetic rabbit, sitting at the kitchen table in the dead of the night, he said something that suprised me. He said, "If you're going to...do this, then you might as well take a scientific approach to it."

He told me he couldn't make me eat, but he could at least make sure I got my nutrients. He told me he'd be mailing some drinks I could sip in the morning that he usually gives to little African kids when their bodies are too weak to consume solids. I couldn't believe that he wasn't going to scold me, and that he was giving me these drinks for starving kids. But after I thought about it...I could believe it. It must be hard, to be him, to watch me.

I was shaking my head and laughing nervously with a half eaten apple in my hand, but I promised to try it out, and see what happened. My dad told me, "I just love you, and I want you to live." He hugged me, and when I woke up this morning, he was already on a plane back to Arizona.

When I had my bath last night, I didn't read like I usually do. I spent a long time thinking about things. How I feel bad about being annoyed with my dad for wanting me to eat food. He said I wasn't consuming enough calories for my brain or body to function and he wanted me to be well. How can I get angry at that? But I almost can't help but feel like a little kid. I don't want to be helped. I want to do this on my own. But I know I can't. I just feel...foreign to myself and it's unnerving. Anyway, my dad picked up my slimfast and my diet pills and stuff, read the ingredients and said, "This is crap." I couldn't help but laugh and realized that I've been wanting to say that about my life and my habbits as of late...

This is crap.