happy march...god i can't believe its already march.

so i have been hanging around bogota for a couple days now. its pretty weird being back cause of all the memories from last year. nothing's really changed either except that there are now three dunkin donuts on carerra 7. i am going up to the coast tonight as i am desperately in need of some sun and warmth.

i am going home in a week. i came up to bogota planning on living and volunteering here for a while. i guess i kinda never really believed that would work out as its been about a month now of increasingly bad behavior. i'm getting sick again and it sucks and i just can't let it get as serious as it did last time. i'm fucking scared out of my mind though. my mom and i are being at least semi open about everything now which is a healthy change but it means that i actually have to follow through with getting treatment this time around. and so yeah i am just absolutely terrified of that.

on a happier note...i bought some fucking awesome shoes the other day. yeah that's all the happiness i can come up with right now.

much love and i'll be seeing you guys soon.

um happy valentine's day?

I am in Bariloche now. It is really beautiful and the weather is just about perfect and I'm staying at a really nice hostel on the top floor of the tallest building in the city so the views out over the lake and mountains are absolutely stunning. Got a little bit drunk and stoned last night with a cute boy. So all in all everything is good. Oh and did I mention that Bariloche is famous for its chocolate? Indeed. I have been eating way too much of it.

Since last time...I did the Torres del Paine "W" trek with this kid Alex from western mass. funny how i often end up hanging out with people from good old massachusetts. The trek was really great. It felt a bit weird to be able to cross that off the "to do" list after looking forward to it for like two fucking years. and then it was back across the border into argentina. went to see the perito moreno glacier in el calafate. its one of the biggest and most active ice fields in the world. pretty damn cool. and then a couple more days of trekking around el chalten, a superbowl party, and then a 24 hour bus ride over to puerto madryn from which i emerged sick as a dog with some kind of ridiculous sinus infection type thing. my eyes were really swollen and being weirdly sensitive to light so i was pretty much blind for a couple days which really sucked. i am finally feeling better and am oh so appreciative of the fact that i can see again. so yeah now i am officially done with patagonia as bariloche is the beginning of the lake district. i'm not sure how long i will hang around here but i am in no rush to get on another long bus back to buenos aires). Not surprisingly I think I have decided against coming home at the end of this month. whether or not that is a good decision is up for debate. I was thinking i was going to have to come home soon just because of money but i think crawford del prete (whose kids i babysat weekly for about 7 years) is going to get me a ticket to bogota with his frequent flier miles (of which he has insane amounts). so that means i can get up there with enough money for a couple more months and hopefully find an apartment and volunteer work in bogota and go up to the coast to learn how to dive and all that jazz. so that's the plan as of this moment and i think i feel good about it.

hasta luego.

wow its been a long time. so lets see...after my last update i spent a hellish couple days in buenos aires dealing with airline bullshit and too many emails from my parents. basically they wanted me to come home right after leah left and my dad even went ahead and made me a reservation and i almost gave in and agreed but obviously i didn't (more about that later). i went to rosario for a couple days. its a nice city right on the river and i managed to go out and get miserably sunburned. i was there for christmas so the city was pretty much shut down but the hostel had a fun christmas dinner type thing and that was nice. and then it was back to BA to meet leah. it was so cool having her down here with me. we hung out in BA for a couple days, had lots of laughs, and a really fun new years eve. we went to the MALBA (museo de arte latinoamericano de buenos aires) and there was this pretty crazy exhibit by this brazilian artist. here's a pretty good desciption from a museum website:

Each installation has its own soundtrack: discordant music after Stockhausen, 'archetypal' Brazilian music and songs by Jimi Hendrix, multiple images of cultural icons such as Luis Buñuel, Marilyn Monroe and Hendrix are simultaneously projected onto the walls and ceilings. Some of the images are retraced in cocaine which Oiticica used as a reference to Inca spirituality and medicinal practice - a symbol of resistance against American imperialism and a comment on both the cosmetics industry and notions of plagiarism in art.

cause of the copious amounts of cocaine shown kids under 18 weren't even allowed in. crazy. so yeah it was awesome. good art museums rock my world. then we went down to villa gesell, a little beach town for a couple days and stalked hot guys and ate too many cookies and went bikini shopping. good times. we made a spur of the moment decision to get plane tickets up to iguazu and were so uber excited about going to the falls and then in all kind of ended in disaster in that i was sick the whole day we were at the brazilian side of the falls and then leah was too sick the next day to even go to the argentina side so that kind of sucked but shit happens right? it was karma coming back to bite us in the ass as we had joking about being "violently violently ill" for days and then low and behold we actually were.

leah went home on jan 11 and i flew down to ushuaia the morning of the 13. i've been here a week now and am headed out tomorrow morning to punta arenas, chile. ushuaia is cool mostly because of the stunning surroundings. it feels very surreal to have finally made it down here as it was supposed to be my final destination last year and for so long has just been a place on a map. i spent the last two days trekking around the outskirts of the national park with this crazy american guy. i won't go into all the details of it but fuck what ridiculousness. i've never been in winds that strong. we actually instinctively dropped to our stomachs to avoid being pulled right off the mountain.

tierra del fuego is a kick ass name for a place but the Beagle Channel? i mean come on what a fucking ridiculous name for a place of such grandeur and mystery. beagles are neither grand nor mysterious. try harder next time darwin.

right now the plan is to travel overland through patagonia and the lake district back to BA and then hop over to uruguay for a couple days. my plane reservation right now is for feb 23 so i have just over a month. right now i'm feeling like it is very possible that i will back out of that two and try to wander back up to colombia like i had originally planned but i'll wait and see how i'm doing. right after leah left i was really slipping into some bad shit so i know i prolly should come home but its so easy to lose sight of that because i am feeling good now.

okay so that was longer than it needed to be and prolly pretty boring and i'm not sure why i even bother updating this thing as i am in touch with everyone through email anyway. whatever. hope 2006 is treating you all well so far.

okay that was long and boring and i'm not sure why i really bother updating this thing anyway

so i`m back in buenos aires now. afer santiago i went up to tucuman which is a pretty shit city and from there up to salta which i also didn`t like much and then to cafayate for a day. cafayate is a tiny little town but the surrounding area is really beautiful. i went on this hike through the quebrada which was nice except that i felt like i was going to pass out the whole time. and then that night i got this incredibly stressful email from my mom and burst into tears in front of lots of people and one of the guys who works at the hostel decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try to get me dunk and hit on me. um so yeah the past couple weeks have been totally awesome. anyway...i`m glad to be back in buenos aires. i like ths city. i like big cities in general cause there`s so much to do. its nice and distracting. i think that tomorrow i am headed down to the beach for a couple of days to get some sun and then its back here to meet leah. yay!

okay so the email from my mom...having been away a month i finally cracked and emailed her and was more honest about everything than i ever have been (which wouldn`t take much really). i actually owned up to the ed, and cutting, and depression. i know that doesn`t sound like a big deal cause obviously she already knew and i knew that she knew and she knew i knew she knew, etc. but it feels like a big deal to actually say it (or type it as the case may be). she still claims that she has never had an ed (which i still think is a lie) but did own up to having "a history of seeing her body innacurately". now she really wants me to come home in january and get some treatment. i know she`s right. i should do that. especially since i`ve definitely been relapsing into disordered behaviors. but its seems so scary. i`m really afraid of how much work is involved in actually sorting this shit out. plus i feel like such a failure and a fake. travelling has kind of been the thing i hold onto as my passion, something i can use to define myself. and now it turns out that i suck at it and i don`t even want to be doing it, and maybe i`m going to go home after like two fucking months. it sucks. i haven`t decided yet though. i`m going to wait and see how everything feels after leah`s visit. maybe it will all magically get better. um okay yeah prolly not but i can hope right?

I had the most horrible dream last night. both my parents died within a week of eachother. and i was here in south america and so was rebecca and all these other random people kept showing up to give me advice and i had a pet monkey and i couldn´t stop crying and i woke up and thought it was real. maybe its cause somewhere deep down i secretly feel kind of guilty about not talking to my parents. or maybe not. ew chris flies down to trinidad to meet up with nicole today. and i´m here in santiago running around, getting lost and stressed out just to do him a favor. there is something very wrong with that. leah bought her plane ticket and is definitely coming to see me. yay! i hope everyone is doing okay with finals and all that shit that normal people have going on at this time of year. anyone have any exciting holiday plans?

I got to Santiago, Chile last night. I was in Cordoba for a few days after leaving buenos aires and then in mendoza for almost a week. i really liked mendoza. we went wine tasting but other than that didn´t really do a single thing. i`ve been so ridiculously lazy lately. i feel guilty about it because there are lots of things i could be doing. i have a feeling that this whole trip is going to be like that though in that i am only here travelling because i do not want to be at home. last year was about seeing south america. this year is just about having somewhere to be. still i feel guilty about wasting opportunities. anyway i am in santiago now and have no idea how long i plan on being here or even in chile for that matter. its so much more expensive than argentina. i´m really only here to do a favor for chris. i made out with cam again last night. i didn´t really want to. i wanted one of the hot aussies. oh well. there´s always tonight. other than that there´s not much going on. the past two weeks have been kind of hard for me. i have no idea how long i will end up staying down here.

well on my birthday i made out with another of the irish boys and then last night i made out with this canadian kid. that´s a lot of boys for one week. turns out that making out with guys without the intention of going any farther is pretty fun. i think i´m leaving buenos aires today. i haven´t seen much of the city but i figure i´ll do most of the touristy things when leah is here. that gives me about a month to do northern argentina. and then in january i´ll head south for patagonia. sounds like a plan.

if i was any more hungover i would be dead.

And so it begins. Again. My flight from miami to buenos aires on thursday night was oversold so i volunteered to stay there overnight in exchange for an $800 travel voucher. pretty good deal. now however my backpack is lost. well actually it should be arriving this afternoon. my entire life(not to mention hundreds of dollars worth of gear) is in that bag so it better fucking how up. also this shirt is starting to smell fairly bad. anyways i am in buenos aires now staying at the milhouse hostel. its a good hostel. always something going on. it incredibly weird being back in the traveller scene. i think i had semi forgotten how random and crazy it all is. but it also feels comfortable being back. like travelling is one thing i really know how to do. even though i´m not sure that i really want to be doing it at all. i´m semi worried that i´m not going to find this trip that exciting. everywhere i go will just remind me of somewhere else i have been instead of seeming new and different. also i think i´m going to get very lonely very fast. i´m not really in the mood for being alone right now.

i´m so fucking mad at my mother. she emailed me yesterday saying that she could tell when i came home in just that i had an eating disorde and cutting problem, that she repects my need for privacy but that i can talk to her if i want, that i should be smart and rational and not fall into those behaviors again, and that if i feel myself sliding i should come home and get help. who the fuck does she think she is? i´m at home for five fucking months and she doesn´t once mention that she´s worried about me or that i should get some help or anything. not one fucking word about any of it. she knew and i knew that she knew and still nothing. that´s not fucking respecting my goddamn fucking privacy. that´s being a god awful and fucking irresponsible parent. and she constantly makes these incredibly insensitive comments about depression and eating disorders and the like. it not about being pretty mom. its not about being stupid or immature or irrational. god this all makes me so mad i want to cry. what makes it worse of course is that there is a very real possibility that i am going to relapse and i am fucking terrified out of my mind about that. i don´t think i can go through it all again. and yet i miss it all so much. i am going to try so hard not to slip. i´m going to follow my meal plan carefully so i odn´t have to stress about what i´m going to eat and i´m going to remind myself every day that being in control does not mean starving myself. i am stronger than this. i think. i will eat two full meals everday. i will not go out and buy ephedra pills and i will not drop below 105.

i miss chris a lot and have a feeling that i am going to miss him for a very long time to come. i know that it doesn´t make much sense and that i only saw him a couple of times at home but i really really like him. i can talk to him about everything and he says the most fucking amazingly intense things to me. not to mention the fact that he is without a doubt the hottest guy i will ever hook up with. he has completely spoiled me. i went out last night with some people i met in the hostel. and i got drunk and ended up making out with this irish kid named shane. and it was fine but all i could think about the whole time was how i wished i was making out with chris. and i couldn´t even imagine doing anything more than kiss shane. i think that sleeping with chris (although undoubtedly rather stupid) was a really good thing. it so different having sex with someone who you actually know and care about. he knows which parts of my body i feel most self conscious about and he knows what to say to make me feel better about it and he knows about my scars and my newer cuts and doens´t get weirded out by them. and he doesn´t mind that i don´t shave my legs. i dunno. maybe i´m kind of over the whole casual sex with random strangers phase. maybe i might actually want something more. shocking i know.

tomorrow is my birthday. no birthday suicide attempts this year. that´s the goal.

so that´s the update for now. everybody must stay in touch with me as getting emails from friends totally makes my day when i´m feeling lonely and sad.