8:20 p.m. - 08/04/03
i wish for a place where the earth doesn't shake.
Sometimes, I mistype the date and feel like I've actually gone back in time. How odd would it be if today were August 4, 1993? I'd be eight and probably eating some of my father's standard birthday cake right about now, instead of procrastinating on the need to call him. It's not that I don't love my dad (I'm going to say that about a million times), but I just don't feel up to associating with either of my parents right now. I'm way too wrecked with the ("possible") reality (I'm still anchored to denial by at least one foot) of their divorce. That is, when I'm not entirely immersed in depression. I think I may have pulled out of that a bit today, though even I was shocked by the intensity of pain it took to pull me back. Consider that a moment. I didn't think about the intensity of depression being equal to the intensity of feeling it was numbing out. I was too busy being depressed. (To be honest, I may very well be back there again within the next few days. I have no idea how I'm going to hold myself together without going underwater a few more times.) But yes...after about forty minutes of feeling out of it, apathetic, and irritated by everything the doctor had to ask (all so pointless, all so theoretical, all so entirely not worth discussing...isn't illness grand...) I broke down entirely. I don't think I stopped crying - and crying hard, and choking, and sobbing, and sputtering breaths - for the rest of the session, which went almost double time again. I think we might actually pull off punctuality, if I could start feeling at the beginning of the session instead of twenty minutes from its scheduled ending time. I'm just glad I have a doctor who puts people above punctuality (even though it sucks a bit when you're in the waiting room.)
We started out (while I was all withdrawn) talking about the ambivalence about moving forward. I told him I don't want to do anything, and everything feels pointless. He pointed out how little effect what I choose to do or not do in any given moment right now has on my future, on the so called "forward motion." I told him I can't make it through the day and don't really care about what's going to happen three months or six months or a year from now. He asked me to imagine we had a contract for the house, closing in three months, and I believe I nearly burst. I was not in the mood for hypotheticals. Forty minutes of back-and-forth, as he tried to pick up where we left off last week and I tried to make it unerringly clear that I'm struggling hugely with depression. I hate how stubborn and unyielding I can be...but I suppose it's good that I work so hard to be understood - though it's better when I can just say, "I'm hugely depressed right now, and I need to talk about other things" instead of expecting my reticence and resistence to speak for me.
At least I didn't drive him to tears. At least I got there first.
The only thing I've managed to squeeze out any feeling over was the thing that burst out and splattered all over me. Can I just say how impossibly difficult it is to be at an age where you rationally understand that your parents are fallible people with real needs and real relationships and at the same time, be their child, and therefore, feel rage at them for what you can see so clearly is rational when you aren't busy feeling the fury? I know all these things. I know my parents love me. I know my parents don't want to hurt me. I know my parents worked really hard at their very difficult relationship for a really long time. I know they were in a lot of pain. I know I was in pain because of their pain. I know they're struggling with the aftermath of the decision they finally made. None of this seems capable of keeping me from feeling so angry, so hurt, so failed. The doctor talked about failings and the process of grieving those points on which our parents failed us, and I started to feel sick (from crying but also) remembering a comment of Brea's so similar to that when I was at Rogers. I realized that I thought, being eighteen, being "raised", being a Brave and not so much a Lastname, I was in my own hands enough that they could not shake my world. I thought that because I'm eighteen now and no longer seeking much from my parents, they couldn't fail to meet my needs. To have them do this...to have them make this decision that manages to hurt me *again* and so deeply (even though I know they don't mean to) seriously stirs waves. I hate them for hurting me. I hate them for being able, as my *parents*, to look at all the pain I face and knowingly add to it. I know I was in pain with their marriage, too, but as I told the doctor...the pain in their marriage never once gave me this feeling of such deep injustice. The fact that they're walking away from the pain, from the challenge, from the impossible, endless difficulty - knowing not only that doing so will add to my pain, but that - through everything - I've never had the option of giving up (unless I was willing to die) and never will, just eats at me. I repeated what I said yesterday, several times. I'm tired of having to be stronger than they are. I've spent a lifetime watching them try to take care of me, and I've spent years trying to work around the places where they couldn't, but where they were expected, so that I was not allowed to advocate for myself. I've had two very loving, very well-intentioned, and in certain ways very good parents leave me to work with nothing over and over again. To survive on nothing. To live on nothing. To build myself and my life back up from nothing. They put me in Rogers. Certainly *they* understand where I was, and how hard I've had to fight to get to where I am? How hard I will continue to have to fight? How many times impossibly, unbearably painful things happened, and I had to keep going, keep recovering anyway? How can they look at that and walk away from their own struggle? How can a parent look at their child doing agonizing work and knowingly give them more pain? In other words..."how can they do this to me?"
I'm hearing again and again that children are better at handling divorce than adult children, so I'm doing everything I can to act childish. To let myself feel the childish feelings - the ones that say they're selfish, and they're hurting me, and they're not being fair - despite what I rationally know. I guess this is a good tactic, as the doctor told me at the end of today's session to hold onto that part of me that's angry. He also said a time will probably come when I need to know more details to make sense of it all. I thought that time was coming this weekend, but it turned into realizing-I-didn't-care-why (at least for the moment) so that's where I've been. He also said to have the part of me that feels even the tiniest bit responsible understand that it was out of my reach. It was out of my grasp. No matter what I did or did not do, no matter how sick or how well I was, I wouldn't have been able to change this. Part of me wonders why he's even saying that; "of course" I know that I'm not responsible. The other part is knocked down a bit by the words. It's not responsibility she's interested in; it's control. I think it's John Bradshaw who says guilt is a way of having power when powerless in a situation. The part of me that wants to be powerful enough to make this un-happen doesn't like hearing she had no hand in its happening...
The sum of all these parts is just really, really tired.
Today went a little better, though. At least I didn't spend the entire day numb and brooding. I worked a bit on Jenna's page in my sketchy journal - which I just started yesterday (there's probably some good sign in that), and I wrote two letters. I've been really bad about replying to e-mail and snail mail lately, so that was good. And I decided I'm not going to my brother's this weekend. A few hours after I decided that, the visit was called off due to a conflicting job interview, though - so apparently I won't be on my own at all. I can't say yet whether I feel it's better that way.
And I thought I saw Brittany (from Rogers) today. I kept staring at her because it's been so long- I honestly couldn't be sure without the orange slippers and the scarf over her hair. She's probably the only person from Rogers I actually *could* run into; she doesn't live far from here. And I've been thinking I should contact her. I didn't feel like it would be good when I first got out of the hospital, but I've been feeling now like I could handle it, like I could benefit from it. Then I possibly-ran-into-her during a moment of huge anxiety (post-intensive-therapy-meets-public-lunching) and now I don't feel as sure. But hey, better to be ruled by hope than fear, right?
Except...what about blind optimism? Where does that land?
Also, my cousin Anna and her sister (i.e. also my cousin) Maggie called me today. I haven't talked to either of them in years, and it was very lovely and random. I felt a little awkward when Maggie asked me how my health is - because I've never talked to her about being sick; she knows it all secondhand - but I was amazed by her sweetness in asking. And having Anna call and say she loved me just made me feel really wonderful again. There's a lot to be said for girls who play the role of sisters.
But then, there's also a lot to be said for sleep...and hopefully a lot of sleep to be had.
chord <--who's fought the good fight and needs a super-rest-break
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