6:10 a.m.

I wonder, I wonder. Every morning I wake up and wonder if I'll have the strength to see it through. Yesterday I didn't. Yesterday I fell asleep behind the wheel of the car. Yesterday I went home right away, home to soft clothes, nagging anxieties, fitful sleep and a doctor's appointment. The sedative he prescribed allowed me to sleep for 2 1/2 hours, a new record. And although it is counterindicted, at 2:30 a.m. I took one of my regular pills and was from then on able to sleep in 45-minute bursts.

I have been running on adrenaline for four weeks. My body is eating itself. Every morning I wake up and feel the pressure of half-digested food in my gut. Every morning I wonder if I will be able to make it through the day and every day I wonder this while smelling the rank evidence of my body's refusal to exist under such conditions.

My mind, also, is eating itself. Even on my day off I cannot spend more than 20 minutes without an educational thought entering my head. In another reality, this would make me an exceptionally good teacher. In this, it makes me exceptionally sick. I jerk awake, thinking of seating plans. The faces of my worst classes rise up to gag me while I eat.

Eating and sleeping were once the cornerstones of my existence. I am a classic endomorph, living through my body pleasure. Until last year, when I almost flunked out, I have never undergone stress so intense and continual as to rob me of sleep for even a night. I have never turned away from a meal, unable to stand the thought of expelling it in a rush in mere hours, and being miserable in the meantime. Missing even one meal was for me cause for tears. These days, the causes for tears are so numerous that my missing appetite doesn't even make the top 50.

I have another doctor's appointment tonight. I don't want to die. Living like this, though...