Dear Journal,

It's funny how time seems to always repeat itself. How people never really change. It's all the same in the end. An endless cycle no one can escape.

I had slowly been accepting the changes with life at home as they came and even making a few of my own. It had started with hesitantly volunteering to fill in for on of my dad's pregnant secretaries. It was, to my surprise, rather fun to make a little idle chit-chat with the women there, all of which where hilarious. Then I made small changes at home. Keeping my usually shut door slightly ajar, then open once in awhile, and finally hanging out down stairs either by the pool or living rooms.

I was in the dinning room when Claire found me writing the "history" that Moria, my physiatrist, wanted me to write. Basically, I need to write down all the events I remember, year by year, before my eating "problem" and then a separate one for after my disorder started. I tried to explain to Claire how Moria believed there was a link but at the same time a distinct difference between the two. I was stuck on the year when I was eleven; Claire reminded me how that was the year I broke my arm on Claire's birthday.

It wasn't till I was alone in my room that I realized how repetitive life is- and then I cried.

It was on Claire's birthday, the twenty-second of June. School was out and Kristen was biking over to the pool to meet some friends and asked me to come along. I didn't want to go, to follow after her, but in the end as I so often did, I went along in her shadow. It was halfway through the ride that I grew angry. I tired of following. I was tired of being second. I was tired of being in the background, never getting to lead. So then I just didn't. I didn't follow. I turned around back and pedaled as fast as I could.

It was so great. The totally and complete freedom. I was the star now. No body was deciding where I go. It was all my own. Mine. And then I was flying. My wheel must have sunk, because suddenly I was airborne. Such a funny feeling to have the air rushing past you. And then, just as you realize you're flying, you start sinking. I felt like I crashed to the pavement. My cheek pressed against the warm asphalt. My bone in my arm had broken and yet the only thing running through my mind was how unfair it all was. To finally get the freedom you always wanted and then be punished after only a taste.

I was broken and hurt. I was so alone, or so it felt. Until I heard Kristen call my name. The last person I wanted to see me fall. The person I least wanted to try and help me. And yet despite what I wanted, she was what I needed. Kristen lifted me on to her handlebars. I should have been grateful. But instead I was angry. Angry at myself for falling so hard, and angry at her for being there to see it. When we reached the drive way it was Claire who opened the door. Little Claire seeing me hurt, and yelling for help. It was her job after all, the one who told. The one who's voice cried out.

We all had our jobs. It was me who fell, who broke. It was Kristen who tried to catch me, to save me. And it was Claire who told.

I cried so hard when I realized. Realized how this story was so much like the one of my eating disorder. How the night they found my broken body, the cry I had heard, why it had been familiar. Maybe I can't be saved; maybe this is destiny. I will always be the broken one of my sister, till I have too little left to break. And that somehow was the saddest thought. That maybe it was a cycle and maybe I should just tell my family so they don't waste to much time putting me together if I'm only going to break again.

-Olivia