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3:05 p.m. - 09/14/02
i'll write something important later. really.
I have much I want to talk about, and school seems the least worth writing about, but school is what I can't get off my mind. School now, school then, school before. School here, high school, middle school. My psychology teacher and my physics teacher. Me. I know I'm somewhere in all this, but I can't place myself. I look at them, I see their power, I get scared. I equate the low point on the totem pole with a lack of power, and I don't handle powerlessness well. I need my power; I have power. But I forget this.

I'm no longer angry at her (psych teacher.) I *am* still rather defensive, rather hurt, and rather frantic to solve it all. A bit obsessed, I suppose. I have a tendency to try and convince people to see my point, to change their behavior, by way of my passion. Even when they aren't in the room. I keep going over my argument again and again, and since she isn't here to hear it, I fail to convince her each time. I'm starting to feel out of sync with myself because of this. Because I'm so focused on what she can do, on what others can do, can still do, despite their being miles and years away from me. I want to have the power that they have. I forget that the ability to control myself is less fulfilling than the ability to care for, respect, protect her. I start to want the stability of control, control like they have, at the sake of my real power. That effect, the effect of their behavior, makes them seem more powerful. I'm hurt not only by what my psych teacher has done/not done, but by what she has managed to bring up of other people's actions. I'm hurt by the flaws she's exposed in my defense system, and I'm not convinced they're doors I built purposefully, rather than cracks I overlooked. I'm a little frustrated with myself, that I didn't keep this from happening. And when I start trying to control myself, and my world, and the other people in it, I throw myself further into danger. I heard in my head a few minutes ago- "there is an unseen order/ I do not understand/ a higher wisdom/ and a love/ and I am in its hands" which reminded me that I'm trying to gain that sense of self-transcendence, of a power, a hope, a safety *beyond* me and what I do, and that made me feel a little better. I would like to believe that I am safe even when my actions can't protect me. But my present faith is fledgling at best, and I wouldn't mind a little control over the situation.

We used to scream at Dave when he told us control was an illusion. "Well, fine, then, but it's a *nice* illusion! I don't care if it isn't real; I want it!" That's a little of how I feel now. I don't want to surrender this. I want to fix it. The situation, the behavior, my behavior, her behavior, my reaction. I want to manipulated and interfere and control where it is not my place. To protect what is my place, and the sense of safety I don't (at the moment) feel there.

I don't agree with the juxtaposition of firm standards into every situation. I don't try and make a circumstance fit into a rigid set of beliefs; I don't try to make people fit one either. I have ethical cornerstones that I take with me, things I hold as deep truths, things I hold high in the grand scheme of Character, but I don't have firm expectations about how any person or situation (except maybe myself) should meet them. I don't think I do, anyway. I don't believe a rule exists where an exception can be found, and I don't believe that the effacement of an exception makes a rule legitimate. The act of preserving rules at the cost of truth is a defense mechanism if I ever saw one. It's a statement that the sense of stability, of safety, is more important than determining what is actually needed in a situation, is more important than accepting the differences in individual people and situations. It isn't fair to expect a homebound student to fulfill classroom goals in the same way as a classroom student. My goal is *not* to avoid classwork by any means; it's to avoid being frustrated by a set of rules which I *can't* conform to. I can't know what she says in class, I can't read what was in her mind as she wrote a test question, and I can't not be homebound. It's a common issue with AP classes. Teachers lose the right to teach the course if a certain number of students don't take and pass the AP exam. So they teach the test. They teach a structured, intellectual approach, that does not allow for creative and individual thought. What type of teacher might that draw? What type of person would say, "That's the class for me?" A person who's defense is to maintain security at all cost, through rules. A person who is not me. Who does not go into every situation, examine it, and quickly set up "rules" of my own based on the situation itself. That's my response to change, when I'm not hiding from it. I don't pack my beliefs and move them into a new situation. I just don't.

And I know no one claims life is fair, blah, blah, blah- but I *am.* I work really hard to treat people fairly, to be kind and just and see them as individuals. I work really hard to meet my responsibilities in a relationship as defined by *that* relationship, and I don't slack on them unless I'm either very much afraid, or very much overwhelmed by my responsibility to myself. Another person, however without malice, who isn't fair this way, who won't determine her needs instead of her rules, who won't find a pleasing compromise, is hard for me to understand...

And this person is painful to me. Because it reminds me of high school. It reminds me of Neverland. Of being considered such a horrible spawn of a being for the most part, because I was sick. Based on the misinterpretation of symptoms, based on my inability to conform to standards and behaviors and expectations. I didn't do my homework or I didn't do it the right way. I didn't know the material, or I didn't learn it at the right time. We'd been given time for homework and I was writing poetry. We'd been given time for lunch, and I was doing homework. We were supposed to be taking a test, and I was panicking. My way of surviving was misinterpreted as rebellion, as laziness, as everything but an illness that was taking as much as it gave me. And I honestly doubt it would have effected the majority of the teachers who were adding difficulty to disaster if they'd known what no one knew: that I was really, really ill. I honestly doubt they wouldn't have retorted with something like, "Well, it's *your* illness, and your supposed to deal with it, and I can't go changing the rules just for you. Besides which, it's a *mental* illness, right? So why don't you just *stop* already?"

Right. It's an eating disorder. I must want it or I wouldn't have one. It isn't serious. It has the highest fatality of all mental illnesses, but you know, it isn't like a real illness. It isn't dangerous and terminal and really hard to fight. It's not cancer or anything.

On top of which, AP Psych Teacher, assigns this project. It's experiential: we basically pretend to be addicted to ice cubes and journal about how trying to get the ice cube "fix" and keep our "habit" a secret affects our lives. I'm supposed to simulate addiction. I started shaking when I read it, and granted, in the past week, I've started shaking at some point or another pretty much every day, but it's just horrible. It's really horrible. It's interesting, it's intriguing, and it's horrible. I'm supposed to *simulate addiction?* When I already have the addictive pattern in my head, when I've already experienced the social ostracism, and the pain of keeping secrets/ telling lies? I'm supposed to pretend this, for a lark, for education, when I've experienced the real pain of it firsthand?

Is that even *safe?* I live in constant fear that the patterns will somehow take over fully again, and I will be back in my illness full-form. So of course I don't think it's safe for me. But is it safe for *them?* Is it safe to give people a dose of the addictive mind? Isn't that dangerous? And what's more, what about the girl who doesn't eat lunch, doesn't drink water, wouldn't be caught dead chewing on an *ice cube* even? What about me-when-I-was-in-school, completely incapable of doing that project, completely incapable of telling my parents why they couldn't sign the permission slip...? Me-then and me-now. It's all about the two of us, the three, four, five, six, of us. It's all about who I've been and who I am, and trying to take care of all of us at once. Watching what happened once happen in little parts again, and trying to keep from believing I'm back in ninth grade. I'm not safe yet, or I don't know I am.

And in the meantime, there's middle school and dreams running around in my head. There's future and past and subconscious reality. And I don't have anyway to sort through it in the next five minutes, before I go on with my day. I can only go on with my day and hope that sorts through it, just a little further, just a little more. I can only live the days between one Wednesday and the next and hope the other 167 hours/ week are as beneficial as that one...Hope.

And read and distract myself and try to survive my own transformation.

chord

"I had been sitting alone with books,/ Till doubt was a black disease,/ When I heard the cheerful shout of rooks/ In the bare, prophetic trees. // Bare trees, prophetic of new birth, You lift your branches clean and free/ To be a beacon to the earth,/ A flame of wrath for all to see.// And the rooks in the branches laugh and shout/ To those that can hear and understand:/ 'Walk through the gloomy ways of doubt/ With the torch of vision in your hand.'" -Aldous Huxley

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