10:15 p.m. - 11/12/03
--she's afraid of the light in the dark.::-
It can't possibly be 10:15. It can't possibly be 10:15 because I can't make sense of the fact that one night, I stay up until three and don't even feel drowsy, and the next I'm floundering by eight. It's truly something like one or two a.m. right now; that's the only explanation. I do not get this tired at 10:15.
It doesn't matter. It makes me a little sad that it doesn't matter, that I have such lack of schedule (though some would call that freedom) that it makes no difference what or how many hours I spend awake or asleep or whether it's consistent day to day. Then again, a lot of things are making me a "little sad" - read, either very sad or depressed - today. I feel isolated. I need to break out, but I'm falling into that part of the depression where it doesn't seem like it will matter. Sure, I could call one person, and then that phone call would end, and then, I'd be isolated again. I could go out, but then I'd come back, and in an hour it would be the same as if I hadn't gone out. Maybe worse. Maybe worse, if it's a day like today when going out is a reminder of a despicable fact: that wanting it isn't enough. Wanting to be well, wanting to be finished with illness, wanting to know people and be comfortable in public is not enough to make it happen. I think when I conceptualized this move, part of me really believed that the excitement and the accessibility of activity and interaction would dissolve all internal obstacles. Thrown into the city, I'd swim. Now, I find that it's very easy to make an apartment as secluded as a rehabbed barn on the outskirts of nowhere (D!@#$%^). It's very easy not to leave the apartment, not to meet people, not to do a thing with my life, except analyze it, and perhaps go crazy doing so. Do nothing except work to be less crazy, and in working go insane. Did I mention I've had kind of a hard day?
It's not anything particularly bad, but I'm such an assemblage of outlets; I need other people plugged into me. I need interaction. And today, I went to the library. The better close branch, which doesn't have a fantastic collection, but is certainly something, and I actually have a library card, finally, which means I had the opportunity to get some of what I've been meaning to read 'home' with me. Opportunity meaning I didn't actually seize it. Why? Why? I don't know why. I didn't actually get a library card either. One was gotten for me. I hate this; I don't even want to type it. My mom and I went to the library, and my mom went to secure a library card; I wasn't going to get one as I have yet to get a state ID and need photo identification in order to do this. But while I browsed, my mom made a case with the librarians, who she said were really nice, that despite my being 18, I'm an unemancipated dependent, so perhaps I could get a card as her daughter, without id, et cetera. They went for it. She brought me a form and told me to try and sign it at a legible size, and I felt like such a ... freak. Accomodated. And the card is beautiful; it's absolutely gorgeous. I've never lived inside the city limits of any town; I've never had my own library card, and this seems magical to me. But I was walking through the aisles between shelves, tracking books that weren't there...and it became that much clearer to me that what I want is not something I can have yet, have instantly - and for the most part, I don't even know what I want.
I know that I've considered dropping the agoraphobia diaryring once or twice, thinking I no longer had that problem. I want that to be a reality, diaryring aside. I wandered that fucking library, and I could have taken anything in it home with me; I picked up a couple of books as I browsed, and do you know what I did with them finally? I put them back on the cart under the "please do not reshelve" sign I usually ignore. (I know my alphabet; I can reshelve accurately.) Just put them back. Because the idea of going up to the desk and interacting with someone, of having them see what I'd picked out, of having them see how many books I'd picked out, of having them say something to me or maybe be angry...was enough to make me flee. To be honest, when I walked through the door and the security guard glanced up at me, I was basically ready to flee. But there doesn't have to be a security guard. There doesn't have to be anyone. I walk into an establishment, and I instantly know that everyone else knows I'm not supposed to be there. I feel them watching me and wait for them to attack. I feel them waiting for me to screw up, give them their opening. In stores, I feel like everyone knows I'm shoplifting, and I've never shoplifted a thing in my life. I feel out of place, undeserving, not allowed, all the fucking time. And I hate it because I know that I belong in that place; that part of the city is so wonderful; someone's painted "LIES" in red on the box with the newspaper and the second-best independent book store is there and... I hate it. I hate feeling like a freak. I hate saying I feel like a freak and receiving the sympathy. I'm not sure which I prefer: the people who don't know and therefore think I'm a thieving lowlife (because that's the default) or the people who feel I need to be spoonfed because I'm just so shy. I didn't want to check out a book from those librarians, after they'd been told I was an unemancipated dependent. Is it better than having to wait until I'm able to summon whatever I need to get the state ID and get a card of my own? I don't know. But having my mom say that to me, come to me with that, with that "I fixed it" all over again hurt so much. She smoothed it over. She communicated for me. She's my interpreter. Like in freshman English when I'd answer questions and Jarrod who sat in front of me, would hear the words under my breath and say them aloud. I'm not a whole person. And it's not fair. And I don't know how to admit it; I don't know how to tell anyone. Everyone knows I have an eating disorder, and everyone knows how marvelously well I'm doing in my recovery. But even the Rogers loves...to call them...to say, you know the struggle with socializing and going out...it's really quite a bit more than a lack of practice or the fact that I'm an introvert. It's really agoraphobia (the fear of reentering situations that have caused anxiety in the past), and it's really very scary, and I suck at fighting it. I suck at fighting it, and I'm sorry because I want to live well, but I can't even get myself out onto the sidewalk. Yesterday was my mom's birthday, and I had to tell her to either party at home or go out without me because I couldn't leave. I'm a normal person, young, alive - I want to go out and have fun and make friends, and wanting it doesn't make any difference. My phobias do not care what I want. The ways I've adapted around them (can we really call that adaptation? the way I've lived since I was four, unable to speak for myself, unable to live outside my own home and my family?) are the only ways I know. That's what matters to the phobia. Not that I get depressed when I can't see people and have that charge. Not that I miss hugs like I miss Wisconsin. Not that I want to go out in the world and do something...I don't want to wait around. And it's going to have to be that way. It's going to have to be the fucking systematic desensitization. Think about going to the library. Go to the door of the library. Enter the library. Browse the library. Select a book in the library. Take selected book to desk. Check-out the book. ...And tell me, when I'm with the doctor and we're standing in the aisle and I can't select the book because it's as bad around him as it is around anyone, when I start crying in the middle of the library because I can't take a book of the shelf, I can't want something, I can't have preferences, I can't take what others might want...tell me how I'm going to feel more normal then. Tell me how it will be able to show my face, after everyone who works there's seen it tear-stained. I've developed an allergy to pity. I feel screwed.
I see a doctor twice a week. The day after I see him, my brother sees him, and then afterward he drops by for dinner and a visit. Every single week, I'm jealous that he got to talk that day, got to be heard, got to have the outlet of that office, when I didn't. The next day, the same thing happens, except it's with my mom, and I give her little messages or tasks - please check that he scheduled Friday's appointment for four, etc - because I want so badly for it to be me. I see a doctor twice a week, and I'm still, I'm still, I'm still...damnit. There isn't a way to finish that sentence that isn't thick with steam.
I'm still trying. That's the answer. I'm still trying. Explain it again. I'll go in again Friday, when I do have an appointment, and I'll explain about how the eating disorder that found all sorts of reasons to stay in my life entered it originally because of the school cafeteria. Because of all the people at all the different tables. Because I had to choose which of three lines I wanted to go in, and then what I wanted to eat, and I had to carry it on a tray in front of everyone, as if I thought I deserved it. And I had to pay a woman at a register, a woman who'd see what I had, and a woman who would certainly, certainly, certainly tell me I didn't have the money. I didn't have enough. I know there are internal issues at play here that are so much bigger, that came out in all aspects of my life - how I loathe shopping, how I struggle(d) with food... But sometimes I feel like a fraud. For going to Rogers. For getting that part better. I feel like I don't really have an eating disorder; I have this anxiety disorder and one of several ways it played out was through food. I feel like, when I explain to them that a book is like a cookie, they'll string me up for wasting their time. Because it's not really an eating disorder if it works that way. Because, while I'm explaining how I don't deserve anything, it becomes obvious that I don't deserve help.
I know I do. I deserve to be in the world. I have a right to go places, to speak, to interact with people, to borrow books, to buy things, to eat...I know all of this. I can say all of this because of Rogers - because of the one part of my life that I have worked out. Sometimes my life feels like school, at my pre-homebound sickest: I'm bordering 120 percent in English and "failing" (in psycho honors terms: C and below) everything else. I have a 120%, if you don't count that as a lie, in battling an ed. I'm seriously advanced in my work with that. But in the rest of my illness? I'm remedial. I'm incapable. Good-for-nothing.
What a horrible, horrible term that is.
While I cry over this, I'm running in circles in my head trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. Obsessing over the options, which I don't even really know. Choose-your-own-insanity. If I pick A, avenues C, D, and E, are available. If I pick B, avenues F, G, and H are available. Based on my second choice I have a set of options that make up my third...on and on and on. And one moment, I can never in my life work with eating disorders again, and the next, I can't possibly work with anything else. One moment, I can't ever apply to Rogers; it would break my heart... And the next... there's not another place in this world I can imagine myself in.
I keep hearing the Superdoc asking me why I'm thinking about the future, when there's so much difficulty to focus on right now, hearing him ask me to hand over the future-worries and just focus on right now. Maybe I'm obsessing to avoid right now. I don't know what life path to take is a little more normal than I can't check out a library book. And I want a beacon down the road, a "this is what I'm working toward." More concrete than health or self or even home. I want a vision of my life in a year or two or three. I want a vision of my work...
Reasons today was not completely pointless: it involved more good bonding time (her birthday went well by the way, and she loved her gift...even though it lacked the dried macaroni and paste necessary in every truly stellar homemade gift) with Mumsy, we finally have our DSL installed, I have my first-ever library card (which I'll eventually learn to use), I finally wrote a letter to Jenna - and sent it, and I got myself to cry. I know when I need to cry and can't, and it sends me off my rocker pretty quickly. Oh, and I crocheted more of my pretty offset cluster squares. Mary learned two new stitches earlier this week, and Mary is once again a hook-wielding crochet-fiend who cannot control her reactions to exceptional yarn.
Mmm, yarn.
chord
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