9:07 p.m. - 08/11/03
so hard to do. & .. so easy to say.
I wish I could know when I am healing.
There's no proper way to gauge it, no definite means of pointing out the progress. Not every day, not when the symptoms return, not when I'm too caught up in my experience to view it objectively. (Am I ever objective in viewing my own experience?) I just know that the past week or two weeks or however long it's been has felt so miserable...and I haven't done particularly well with it, not to the extent that I would say, I'm getting better. I'm doing well. I've downright screwed-up occasionally. There were days I just slept and didn't even fight the depression, and today I didn't even get on myself about eating a late lunch and a weird not-exactly dinner. Maybe "normal" people in the "real" world are allowed to have dessert for dinner, but I'm not, am I? Doesn't there always need to be a difference between recovery-normal and normal-normal? And why on earth am I looking for reasons to beat myself up?
Firstly, I don't want to miss anything. I have worked so hard and come so far, and the idea that I could let something eating-disordered slip in just because I've lowered my guard terrifies me. And maybe a few months ago, messing up one meal would have been comparable to opening a door for the illness to return through - but...maybe it isn't now? Maybe, for now, I don't need to be as rigid? Or rather, I don't need to worry so much when my meals aren't nutrition manual perfect? This is only dangerous if it's eating-disordered; there's no law that says I have to eat a balanced meal at every meal for the rest of my life. So how on earth do I know when it's ok, and when it's not? And I want to beat myself up for today because I feel like a sick moron not even trying to get better, so I want to point out all the ways in which I'm not trying, or not doing what I'm "supposed to" do. Though honestly...holding myself up to rigid standards and attacking myself when I don't live up to them is much more sick than having sweets for dinner...
I'm just freaked. The last week hasn't gone well. After the session Monday where I cried like I'd been split open, I fell back into the deep depression, and I just - haven't been that low in so long. It's impossible to live that way, and I know something different now - which is great, that's how it should be - but I kept haranguing myself as if the pain somehow convicted me of not doing my job. I've learned to view pain as a heads-up that lets me know when things aren't right and to view depression as a sign that I've numbed out an intense feeling - usually anger on top of injury or fear. I'm so used to recognizing the pain, delving into it, finding out the source, and doing what I can to express, communicate, or heal what's wrong that I just mobbed myself for staying in pain. Staying depressed. And it's slightly more logical than the whole "snap out of depression" idea - because these are actual skills I've learned to pull myself out of it, but sometimes pain is a response to something I can't control, something that won't calm down simply because I've identified it. Sometimes depression is a response to situations that I can't solve, numbing out feelings that I don't yet have the resources to cope with - and even with all the resources in the world would not be exempt from feeling depressed. My parents' marriage is falling apart. I'll never live in the only home I've known again. I see terrible sickness destroying people I love, and I've fought with everything in me against sickness in my own life. Today, almost two years later than I started winning the fight (over two years since I started therapy) I began something. I began fighting something. When he stood up at the end of the (for me, frustrating, getting-nowhere; according to him, very forward-moving) session, I threw my hands up, shook my head, and tried to talk. He sat down again and let me. I told him I'm sick of this. I don't want to start anything new. I don't want to fight something new. I'm terrified to do what I have to do, and I'm hatefully angry at myself for not having done it already. He said I have a right to be sick of it. He said, "Stuff has not been good to you. You've done good with stuff," and the sincerity and simplicity of that statement was so beautiful I overlooked (though involuntarily noticed; I'm a dork) the grammatical error.
I have the right to be sick and tired of being sick and tired.^ I've put up one hell of a fight and something...I can't explain what...something just keeps fighting back. Just keeps adding pain to the pile. I remember that night I was riding around with Charlie, so terrified...and how every time something bad happened, I would pray that it be the last thing and we'd find safety soon. Every time, as soon as I prayed, things got worse. And I'm not going into spirituality right now, but that's a bit of how it feels. Like I don't mind fighting but I shouldn't have to fight so hard. There shouldn't be so many things against me.
Now I just feel whiny. "Other people have it harder of course."
I think I've told him that more than once, and I'm pretty sure the answer was along the lines of, "What other people? Who are you comparing yourself to? Stop putting yourself in other people's shoes and start being more self-piteous!" ... so I'm trying. It sucks that I've worked extremely hard for (ten days less than) two years (actually, longer), and I still have so much work to do. It sucks that I spent all this time putting every ounce of effort I have into this, and making real progress, and I still have battles I haven't even started to fight. Like systematic desensitization/ phobia-fighting. How many mountains can you scale and still see so many more ahead?
I remember Harriet said that it is not an endless range of mountains, even though there have been and will be more than a few. Dr. R said to think of all the people waiting on the other mountains, which makes me smile even now. But it isn't fair. Success should be in keeping with the effort and the desire, and it simply isn't. Or maybe it is, but it's...so much more delayed...than I thought.
We talked about the work toward independence over the next year. It felt so awful in a way, to be planning a year in therapy, but then if he told me I'd be done sooner - or even then - I'd completely flip. It just seems like I've been at this so long. On the twenty-second (because I start counting at Rogers, though today I feel compelled to remember the eight months before Rogers as well) I'll begin my third year. I know people who've been at it far longer than that, but it's just...I'm just not them. And I feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for me, the girlbeing who works so hard and still has such pain and then goes and beats herself up for not getting better immediately. How can I even contend that I'm not trying? How can I even attack myself for my recovery, let alone take the thoughts seriously when they come? I must know, honestly, how hard I'm working. I must know what impossible things I'm up against. I must understand that the schedule doesn't exist. There is no recovering in a timely manner. Especially not when life continues and the things you started recovering from are supplemented by new struggles.
But we started our phobia-work today, no longer willing to wait for the move. And I managed to tell him something that I don't think I've ever articulated before, which we both understood only barely. It has to do with what happens in the phobic situations, how I freak out before anything I'm scared of happening happens, and not simply in anticipation of those things. I told him that something inside me shifts, that all the strong, brave, experienced parts go away, and the shamed, vulnerable, incompetant parts are left to deal with the horrible things that might happen. I wanted him to understand, even though I don't understand it myself, that I'm not afraid (so fiercely) of interacting with people or of having something go wrong, like we've discussed. There's this other part, the shift into shame. The part that doesn't feel a right to be anywhere, to need anything, let alone want anything, let along have or *get* anything... The same part that "didn't deserve" food, that "couldn't be" fed, that "needed to" purge. I told him it was harder because we're talking about it. I told him it would be easier to take these steps if we never said a word about them; he pointed out they aren't really vocal, verbal things. But I said it's more than that. It's the idea that, knowing I'd have to show Judie or Tammy a food log, I ate less. It's the shame and embarrassment inherent in this. In not being able to do something "so simple" and also ... just ... planted in the experience. I don't know why but all I have to do is walk into those certain situations and I may as well never have challenged a shame thought in my life. And I'm terrified to start. I spent half the session clutching a pillow, not really breathing, staring at the floor without using my glasses. I don't want to start. I don't want to need to. I don't want to be resistent. I don't want to be cured.
"Ambivalent" is so entirely understating this.
He gave me a note (on a prescription pad) to read later. I pulled it out when I was home along tonight. It says, "Some of the most simple concepts in life are also the most difficult." True enough. True entirely.
After the session, I went to shake his hand and he went to touch my shoulder, so as he did that I moved my hand up to squeeze his, and then we ended up shaking hands. It's testimony to how little contact I have how much that one moment a week means to me, but it was extra sweet today. And I swear one of these days, before I'm finished seeing him, I will give him an actual hug. Or ask for one. One of these days, I will.
In the meantime, I do not need to beat myself up for doing well, if at times only moderately, in an extremely difficult situation. I say we stop that and just cuddle.
chord
^Melissa Ferrick
