10:44 p.m. - 10/07/03
give me a picture. [] give me a trigger word.
I exhausted myself. And then I showered, rested, felt a bit rejuvenated, and was nearly turned inside-out by a trigger beyond anything I've faced in months. The sort of trigger that happened back when I didn't know what my issues were, back when it was all new to me, back when I never felt safe feeling. Now, I'm exhausted again. And even though I know that the triggered experience was important and informative and really will help me in the long run (blah, blah, blah) I prefer the fatigue inspired by massive amounts of cleaning/ organization this morning. Did I mention that I'm not unpacked yet? That the mess of my moving in is still significantly present, still a task at hand? I finally returned to it today, and I did some light-speed, serious work. Good, except that I wore myself out and secured a migraine in the process. But a great deal more of the floor is visible, I emptied several boxes and filled another (with things that I don't need present, but I don't want to get rid of yet), and I made somewhere between fifty and seventy dollars. Yeah. I freaked out a month or so ago when I realized I had way less money than I estimated, and so I've been "paying myself back" since and none of this money - which was apparently missing, not spent - needs to go back into savings. So, I worked hard for good pay. For a girl who has no income and no job a fifty - seventy dollar profit in a day doesn't seem bad.

And - if you were wondering - no, I don't think it's a coincidence that I dove into massive amounts of cleaning the day after introducing a topic that absolutely terrifies me in therapy. I haven't given myself time to think about it or ponder about it or even daydream about it, and I'm perfectly ok with that. I'm perfectly ok with running around doing anything but thinking about it until I'm trapped in his office Friday. Well, maybe not quite that long. Maybe I want to think about it a little before Friday's appointment so that I don't feel trapped and forced to talk, but knowing how things go, we'll probably end up talking about something entirely different, and all my worry will be for naught. (Did I just say "naught"?) Not that I think he's going to forget this subject. And I don't particularly want him to - at the moment because I want to clarify some things. Like I want him to understand that it isn't ok for me to have any sexuality. Not any one. (I know. Just shush for a moment.) And I want him to understand that I wasn't asserting that I had any such thing; I was just talking about history. Basically, I need him to understand just how terrifing this all is and how completely not prepared to deal with it I am. I don't want the ease with which I began to talk about it Monday (before it sunk in, and I tried to morph into a turtle) to give him any false information. I don't want him thinking I'm more accepting of this than I am (read: at all.) I don't know why. I guess I'm afraid he'll hurt me (unintentionally, by pushing too hard, too quickly) if he doesn't realize the scope of what we're dealing with.

But then, he does know he's basically the first person I've ever talked about this with (aloud.) He does know how quiet it's all stayed. There must be some clue in that to how ashamed I've been, and how afraid. And he is (97, maybe even 98, percent of the time, a very intuitive Superdoc.) Maybe we'll survive. (It's been over 24 hours and the world has not exploded. I may not be copacetic, but I am having to reevaluate things, however slightly.)

So, the trigger. Obviously, that's important to talk about. I could brush around the day with discussions of mounting tape and trips to the mailbox, and men who know how to greet a girl on a block in a city, in a residential district where no more than three people are on the same block at a time (thereby making my moment.) I could, but we'd know it was avoidant, and though we probably wouldn't think significantly less of me, we wouldn't have reason to think more. I'm determined to go above and beyond the call of recovery posterchild. Not really. Really, I'm just tired and want to let this one thing out in full - what happened inside as well as what everyone saw happen - where I know I can. Bless journaling.

John comes over on Tuesdays. Generally speaking, he has an appointment with the doctor, and afterward he drives the five seconds from there to here, and Mom makes dinner. He stays maybe an hour after we're finished eating, then leaves for home. It's becoming a ritual, though everyone's very clear that it is not mandatory. (I will point out that I was not asked whether or not it was ok to invite this ritual. I'm used to it now, so I no longer care, but at first I was upset. Mom didn't realize that although John is family, and therefore very low-maintenance company - especially considering he's *John* - he still counts as company, and invitations need to be cleared with me.) Anyway, tonight is a Tuesday night, so John came over. I woke up when they were nearly finished eating; having collapsed onto my stripped mattress for some sleep. I joined them, ate, talked, and eventually we moved into the living room, to the more comfortable chairs.

At least, that's always the excuse for moving into the living room. It doesn't apply much if you sit on the piano bench, as John and I ended up doing. First, he drew my portrait, which was fun; it gave me goosebumps to have him stare at me. I get chills when people pay attention to me. I can't tell if that's simply sad or cute in a vulnerable sort of way. Anyway. John drew a decent picture of me and added a speech balloon that bashed Tori Amos a little, specifically her cover of Lovesong by The Cure, which I haven't heard, but nonetheless could not allow. (It's Tori.) So, I wrote a disclaimer under the picture. Then he drew himself and a speech balloon for me to fill, and I had him saying how Avril Lavigne is a musical goddess and he really always wanted to be a member of the Ghostwriter team. That sort of thing. He wrote his own disclaimer (simple, to the point: Bullshit), and we were basically finished. Except then I started to play piano, and he joined me, and we joked around and played together for awhile. He started to make fun of the piano in "Silent All These Years" (and you don't knock that song, of all songs), playing it and talking about how it was so easy (and since the boy is a prodigy and makes everything *look* easy, it was especially annoying), so I started beating on him, pulling his hands off the keys. He fought back, the way brothers do, and I kept telling him he was not allowed to undermine the glory that is Tori Amos. Not here, not with me. I told him, "Take it back! Take back what you said about Tor!"^ which made him laugh, but he didn't stop fighting. Eventually, I retreated to my bedroom, turned Silent All These Years on rather loudly, and let it play for him. He said, "I know how it goes," and started to play. "It's just like this. Easy. Simple." And so the fight continued. Stupid, silly, screwing-around among siblings.

And my energy is heightening, and there's all this riled-up anxious craziness pushing me to keep moving, to keep it up, to keep going, and John's still smiling, so there isn't anything wrong, right?, but Mom says, "Mary!" in this shocked and horribly reprimanding tone, "Stop!" Immediately, I stop, still holding John's arms, then drop them, then stare at her. The ceiling seems to fall in on the room. The quiet is asking her what the hell she meant by that, and she's saying how she's sorry, she shouldn't have butt in, it was our game and so forth. I backed away from John, entirely shocked and feeling like my organs were on fire, and someone was cutting the cords in my throat. "See you next Tuesday," I said to John, waiting for the perk in my voice that would show I was joking, and went to my room. I closed the door, left the lamp off, and went into the rather spacious closet where I thought perhaps I'd be left in peace. (I knew better, but one thinks wishfully.)

Mom came in, almost immediately. "Can I just say-" she said.

"Get out of my room," I said, instantly, automatically, waiting for my voice to turn joking, to relent.

"Can I just say-" she said again.

"Get out of my room," I repeated, and my voice was louder, more curt, not at all bending with the amusement for which I was still waiting. This was not a big deal. Last Tuesday was horrible. Why was I making this one worse? Nothing had happened. Why did I feel so bad? Why was I telling her to go away when she was the person I needed to talk to about it? I didn't have time to change my answer to fit what I knew; she had already adhered to my order and left the room. I sat in the closet and the tears perked in my eyes. I turned off Tori and tried to understand what the hell was happening. I could feel the scream inside me, the pain given voice, yelling, "I didn't do anything wrong!" The voice was young - so young - and the tears were so terrified and hurt and furious (and afraid of being furious, and so ashamed.) She yelled at me, and I didn't do anything wrong. She singled me out, and I wasn't doing anything. We were both roughhousing and she reprimanded me, acted like I had done something wrong. And I hadn't. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't done anything.

I started to understand. I started to remember, far from certain that I wanted to. How often I had felt this way before. How much of my childhood was spent feeling this way. Flushed with a door slammed behind me, feeling the anxious, riled-up energy spin me around. How could I know when to stop and how to slow down when everything was moving so fast around me, when everything surrounding me kept speeding up? And why was it ok for everyone else but never for me. Why did they laugh at me when I was serious, why did they get mad at me when I was playing, why did they treat me like a child, but have expectations as if I were adult. Why, why, why?

It was a feeling like choking on thick, steaming waves. It was a toxic memory. School and home and everywhere, never having any way to understand when it would be too much. When entertaining would become annoying, when cute would become babyish, when spunky would become the evil Bad. It's a child's feeling, and so it seems like it should be small. It seems like it should be miniature now, the sort of thing that, faced with rationale, will lessen, heal instantly, be gone. But the feeling, when I let it come up was very much intense, very much still here. And the child who couldn't understand, on whom such inconsistent expectations were placed. The child who was so terrified to do anything because it could so easily be the wrong thing - the girl that I was, odd-placed in that picture perfect memory - started to make sense. Shame made sense. Fear made sense. Anger made sense. Doubting my own reality, my own ability to assess a situation. We were just playing; no, I'd done something wrong. I'd crossed a line. I thought it was ok, but they didn't. What I think can't be trusted, can't be real. It started to make sense.

I've understood it, and believed it, as myself-now for some time. It was a theory presented to me by doctors who helped me look back, that I adopted and agreed with: I doubted my own perception, I restrained my humanity out of shame, I didn't trust myself to be, freely. I accepted it before, long since, but now I understood it. I understood it as a small child, who has been crying and screaming for so many years, who is approached by someone almost kneeling, whispering, "This is what's going on. It's not your fault. You haven't done anything. It's not about that, and it's not about you being bad." I could feel that child screaming and crying and quieting and looking up with tears still in her eyes, unable to believe it after all this time. Knowing it was true. I could feel myself, all old and on the other side, listening to her, wanting to take in her story by osmosis, wanting to ensure I didn't forget again. Wanting to know that this was real.

We'd joke and what I'd say wasn't funny. We'd talk and my words went unheard. My thoughts in someone else's voice went over better. My needs were too much, my joys were too time-consuming, my self was too young or too old or too quiet or too loud, never right, and never safe. Just when I'd managed to shut my mouth, someone was saying I never spoke. Just when I'd managed to restrain every last part of myself, someone was commenting on how I never loosened up, let go. Always wrong. Not like a character in a story. Not understood the way a protagonist's motivation must be understood for the scene to feel real to the senses, not simply logical, but *real.* This is my history. This is where I was. This is how it was. This is why I was so afraid, everywhere, and so confused and so ashamed. This is why it never occurred to me that the problem was at home or at school or anywhere other than inside me, and this is why it never occurred to me that I deserved help with it. Why need help with something that's not wrong? And how do I deserve help for something that's my fault?

I didn't know how to tell Mom - when John left and the door was closed, when we talked and I cried, and she told me a million times that she was sorry, and I told her a million times that I knew that and forgave her, really, truly did - that it wasn't about tonight. The words flew out of my mouth at her. "I didn't do anything wrong!" and she told me again and again that no, I didn't, she did, that's why she was the one apologizing, and I didn't know how to explain (and did I want to?) that I was screaming about so many situations, ones I couldn't even remember. That I understood about tonight, that she had forgotten John and I could manage our own relationship, that she felt she'd butted in where she had no place, that she was sorry and taking responsibility. I didn't know how to explain that this made tonight unique in a series of situations that didn't end so well. No one told that little girl it was the adults' fault, not for many, many years. No one knew how to help her believe it. Dr. R, the Rogers folk, I and whomever else, have all been talking to this child, trying to explain it to her, and it wasn't until I felt tonight that I was able to understand it well enough. I had to feel what I felt then and hear what I know now.

It was abusive. It was toxic. It was subtle, unintentional, mystifying. It was so entirely terrifying. It was...and do I know that truly now? Is there a way that I can make that awareness especially secure? These years, these millions of times that I've defended it, prosecuted myself, and now I see what they see. Now I see what no one could show me, see the past through my own eyes. Now, I remember fighting with Dave, who antagonized ritualistically and not without mirth - how I went along, volleying words right back at him for awhile, and then sunk into myself and apologized over and over again. I remember how he told me that I hadn't done anything wrong, didn't need to apologize, that we'd been doing it together, and there wasn't any reason for the guilt. I thought I was being dramatic, playing him for sympathy, turning out of actual comfort back into my sick and needy role. Maybe, that was some of it. But why was I sick and needy to begin with? And why did I collapse into guilt, so naturally, with such speed?

I knew it. I learned it. And tonight for better or for worse (for better, I think, though it didn't feel that way - and I'm scared no one will understand how it was simultaneously so small and so big) I remembered. My mom lost her mind for half a second and I relived it. Do you know what this could mean? This could mean I'm not that exception, that one sufferer in all the world who has no reason for their illness. This could mean wholly believing what I've wanted to be true: that I have a right to my feelings, my perception, and my memories. That I didn't spontaneously self-destruct. There were reasons. I don't have to fabricate them. I don't have to answer with shame.

There's enough pain in what happened, in the history. I want to be done adding to it with judgment, guilt, and shame.

chord

^variation of a line from Adventures in Babysitting

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