Days turned into weeks and I went on more job interviews then anyone should ever have to. My days felt heavy with a sense of defeat although I thought I was putting up a good front. I was looked at by friends, family even my kids like I was a ticking bomb. They didn’t tip toe around me but approached hesitantly with caution as they seemed unsure of the exact moment I would crumble into a million pieces. I had basically checked out of my brain and operated mostly feeling like an out of body experience. I was going through motions still doctors, physical therapists, job interviews, animal visits, apartment hunting and wine. Always wine. My weight again was topic of conversation and I know everyone was worried about me but between feeling like I was in a fishbowl with all eyes on me and the constant criticism of my inability to eat, I could barely stand it. Any moment I could I was sleeping. Going through enough therapy I know it’s a sign of depression, but I did not have time to fall apart. However that’s exactly what I felt was happening. Every day became more excruciating not having a job or place to live. I was technically homeless but technically not. I was fortunate enough to spend 7 nights a week between friends and family who rallied around me. It was amazing how they took us in, but I needed to fix this and I couldn’t. The anxiety was almost unbearable to me. I was jittery and my arms were weak with angst almost every minute of every day. It was not an existence and I was fading away to boot. My identity, my life, my dreams and my waistline were reducing to nothing. I looked at myself in the mirror one day, something I used to love to do, but now a days was repulsed and embarrassed at the sight of myself. I saw my reflection and no longer recognized myself. I saw not only a tired, worn out, beaten down old woman; I saw death. Death of the spirit I once had, of the vibrancy I once gave off and of the woman I once was. It felt like a death had occurred. It felt like a murder had taken place, but no one discovered it yet.  It was murder in the first, premeditated. I was the only one who knew of this murder, this violent crime that had been committed. The pounds that were shed, the skin that I was now in held an empty shell of the person I once was. Like in Under the Tuscsn Sun when they tell Francis she’s at a crossroad and they don’t want her to end up an empty shell of a person. That is what I had become; an empty shell person. Where people would look at me and wonder what I must have gone through to end up that way.  As I looked in that mirror, twenty six pounds lighter then a few months before, eyes sunken, hair raw and brittle, skin pale in color and eyes no longer bright. There stood the empty shell. There had been a death. There had been a murder of sorts. The death of a woman I once knew, the death of a woman I once loved; that woman was me.