4:05 p.m. - 04/07/02
am I
I thought about writing a letter to Dr. R, but seriously what good would that do for me, and how can I stand to keep writing letters? What is it about depression that makes you hate yourself and every little behavior that defines you? I can't stand the way I write when I'm depressed; I can't stand that I get depressed when I'm depressed. And most of all I can't stand that I'm not the only one here who is. I can't stand that I don't have a family all bright-eyed, pushing me to do things I can't do, not understand for hell or high water why everything is so difficult. Instead, I have pill-popping, day-sleeping, life-hating cynicists who stumble out into the living room (if you can call that tile and *those* couches a space for living) at 4 in the afternoon and say, "Something's the matter; I could sleep some more."
And could is a stupid word to use, when you know, Dad - you *know*- you're going to go watch the baseball game in that dark little hole of a room, and you're going to sit in that "dangerous chair" and fall asleep and snore loudly and wake up tomorrow and wonder where the weekend went.
You asked if I'm mad at you, Dad; of course I'm not. Of course I'm not mad at you. How could I be, when all I do are those same things? When I'm completely incabale of living the life I ask from you? How could I be angry when I sleep days away, then complain about the correlating migraines? When I forget to take my meds and walk like a somnambulist from room to room? How can I *complain* when all I am is the same combination of misfiring receptors, the same combination of lacking will and lacking choice.
I'm weak, too, and that's why I hate it so much.
I hate that I can't leave this house (I *can't leave this house*) and they stay here and they twist it into a place of silence and depression and sleep. "Oh, it's just a sleepy Saturday" or Sunday, or for God's sake Thursday if the schedule fits. It's the weather, it's the time of year, it's the amount of work this week. It's seratonin or Type 2 ADD or ill nutrition. If our behavior's all those things, than what are we? What defines me?
I hate this. I honestly do. I don't want to go down this route again - for God's sake I don't want to *say* that again!..."oh I'm so sick of this." Fuck that. I have 635 Atomgirl entries testifying to how much this sucks. How many more times can I 'document,' 'express,' repeat? I am so fucking overwhelmed with all this shit.
I want my own place but I can't *have* my own place because I wouldn't be able to leave it to work and support myself, because I'm too terrified my parents will at any moment disown me to upset them like that (again), because as much as I want to be on my own, the moment I left I would fall apart because someone could come in and hurt me - who will protect me with them whole houses and highways away?, because I need their transportation and their food and their money and their things and them. Because I am dependent; I am a 17-yr-old girl with a 7-yr-old lifestyle. I am a failure.
And don't you understand, I DON'T WANT TO BE? I want to be the posterchild - oh, Red, you can think of me. When it gets hard, when all the suffering starts to eat away at you, you can say, "But remember Mary? Remember how well she's doing, how far she says she's come? Remember how much we saw her turn around, open up, trust? Remember how the girl we didn't think could stay bawled when it was time to leave? *Remember Mary?*" Yes, I want that to be me...please, God, let that be me. Let me be that much for them...but how do I explain. How do I explain that it's so hard. It's not fair how hard it is. And I'm not backing away from the challenge, the way Harriet used to say- I'm not giving up because the mountain is too big...I just can't take any of it right now. I can't take how there's no one to talk to and I don't have any friends and it could be weeks before I find a therapist who'll take me and even if I am seeing Dr. R every week like we planned, how am I going to make it through the *hours?* How am I going to make it through the menial tasks that make up my life, the things that don't matter, serving people who do?
How am I going to write letters to friends that won't make me feel like I've let them down, letters I won't regret an hour later? How am I going to cope with how many people won't write back, or how many addresses I don't have? And how am I going to cope with Jenna who will never cross my doorstep again?
Jenna, who I know somewhere in the place where silly optimism and blind hope refuse to reach, has gone on.
Can't I just go away for a few days? Back to the time when the center of all this was me? And my welfare? Back when the people in power didn't even know my parents names, when they looked after me so blindly they had no idea there was another side? Back to the point when everyone around me was to sick for me to care if I disappointed them?
I want to be your A+ child, RED...but my voice falters, and I WILL NOT CALL.
chord
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