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10:15 p.m. - 10/01/02
%lean on me%
Speaking strictly of this moment, I'm ok. The day has been blissfully slow. I'm setting very small goals for myself, but the amazing thing is I'm meeting them. Keeping the bar low is working right now, and I'm not even feeling too terrible about it (compulsivity fades once breached) because I know this is what I need. I need to sleep more than I usually do, and move more slowly. I need to do some but not a good deal of schoolwork and keep my sights on pacifying my life in the face of this emotion. Every time I do this it gets easier. I remember, one of the last times, I told myself to treat it like a flu. Take time for me, set smaller goals, understand that the priority was just to hang on as time healed what it can. As crushing news becomes ingrained in daily life and chemicals restore to normal levels. As meds find a way to take hold of higher anxiety levels and calm me down again. I only took my as-needed anx. meds once today, instead of the two I'm allowed. (The two I haven't done in months, until this most recent turn of pain.) I didn't need the second one. I'm feeling tired but not so anxious, not so pained. There have still been rushes of how badly I want this or that blade, but I haven't given in. I hope this is all Dr. R meant by rapid progress. I hope that everything I see is all he sees.

So today, I wrote a crappy play on extradition for my government class. (Sometimes, hell is doing what you love, distorted.) It took a great deal less time than I expected, though; so that's a blessing. I also finished Farenheit 451 which I kept put off reading, but thought would be a good "lazy school" project. Quite the author that Ray Bradbury; wish I'd followed through on all the times he was recommended to me. I'm trying to make my mom read that and Memoirs of a Bookbat as a two-book set on censorship, but I doubt she has the time. I'm just relieved I got both those done. I'm going to do a tiny psych assignment between the doc and school tomorrow, and I'll have three classes worth of work to turn in, which I don't feel bad about. Also, next week is play-week, which means I'll get a version of the vacation I thought maybe I wanted, without the anxiety of taking it as medical leave. I'll have work to do (I hope) but I'll be at that college near Neverland for most afternoons, so I won't be able to meet with her as often. I hope that's still ok in light of this. I don't think she thinks I'm working less than I should be, even though I'm working less than my compulsivity demands. I've been trying to compare the work I'm doing to the work I did last week, when I had very little from my teachers, and it's about even. So I guess it's ok if I'm a little slow.

I hope there comes a time when I'm ok with the reason I have to slow down or do something a little differently. I hope there comes a time when I can go up to someone and say, "No, this is how it has to be- not simply because I am a person with a mental illness, but because I'm human, and I deserve individual attention, evaluation, and respect." I really want to be able to make that statement, to myself and to others. This past year, I've had the most amazing advocates. Dr. R continues to completely blow my mind with his ability to convince people (including my parents and a public school) to do what is in my best interest, and also...my mom has always been an advocate when I was able to communicate to her I needed one. My mom kicked ass with the insurance company to get me into RED last year, and she continues to kick ass when necessary now. I really am grateful for that, and I hope that I can still have them-and-people-like-them for a good time coming. But I would also like to be able to be my own advocate as much as possible. I would also like to believe, as firmly as I can, that I deserve the best treatment and solution possible. I hope so.

When I was in sixth grade, I had to have my mom write notes for literally everything. This assignment is smudged; I need a note. I didn't quite finish the extra credit; I need a note. I'm exaggerating, but it's true. I couldn't talk for myself, couldn't stand up for myself, couldn't believe I wouldn't be smote on the spot were I to try and speak in my defense. I've come a ways from that, and I would like to think that I can go further still. I want to learn how to use a telephone, how to ask for things and believe I deserve them, how to get a job that doesn't make me crazy, a good job I believe I deserve, and how to go into my supervisor and say, "I can't help this; I need what I need."

I lost my voice for a long time. I want it back now, and I want it back fully. I want to be able to do what I need all the time, and not always have to do it by myself. I think that's a common theme in my life. I want the extreme options- the ability to do everything on my own, the ability to become completely behaviorally sick again- and then I want to pass them by, to compromise, revise, evaluate. I want to know that I can have whatever I choose to have, and then I want to choose what I really need. I don't want to need people all the time, but I want to be as close to them as if I did.

I watch a great deal of television on the basis that cast members remind me of people I know. I'll see that person and think to myself who they're just like, and suddenly I'm hooked on a show I'd otherwise hate. I can't say it's healthy, except that these aren't generally people I'm able to communicate with in more legitimate ways, and I'm lonely as a six-year-old without her teddy bear. It leaves me an open-book emotional viewer, which is sometimes upsetting when others are in the room. I will grin at something cute and nearly start to cry at something that hits home. I guess it's kind of like talking to people in my head. Dr. R said that's healthy (really healthy) so long as I don't feel so fulfilled by it I've no desire to seek them out in other ways. And that's really only as far as this is, also. I watch because I can see them smile and think of when my friends smiled that way. I wish I could be close to them in a more real way. But I know I've come from something. I used to watch cheesy save-the-world tv shows (Touched By An Angel brand) and wish I lived in that world. I used to write stories, in my head and in my notebooks, where I could be the one they came to save, where someone would stop and help *me.* Everyone I met, I waited to have them be my hero, and many were, but always in more collective ways. There was no defining person, no defining moment. I'm who I am because of so many people, so many times. The reality that I'm still here is the sum of all of that.

It's better now because when I watch TV I'm thinking of people I miss but truly know. I'm not wishing that John Dye or Roma Downey would swoop down from heaven and save me. I'm thinking how good it feels when someone laughs that way at a joke I've made, or the first time I read that book that's in their hands. I'm pushing for the day that I'm ready to reenter some of these relationships, to try at least. I almost called RED the other day; I don't know if I mentioned that. I made a plan that I was going to call them, and then I started thinking about what I was going to say, and I started to cry talking. So I just sat down on my floor and had the conversation right there. I didn't know I had the tears so I cried them, and when the tears were cried, the logic that says it isn't time yet came back to me, and the impulsivity disipated. Someone will still be there when I'm ready to reach out. And they will direct me toward whomever else I need. I wish with all my heart I could trust that all the time, but I know it sometimes, and sometimes has more effect than I ever realized before.

One of the main differences in my life now and my life Then is the amount of "thens" I've had. I've seen some really beuatiful things now, things I couldn't imagine (or could only imagine) a few years ago, and I've seen myself get through (not just survive, but grow from) really difficult times. I know that by default, if I go to sleep, I am likely to wake up the next morning. I know that if I white-knuckle-grit-my-teeth it, the anxiety will fade, the depression will light, the urge to self-destroy/preserve will evolve into new information I can use in knowing myself. Ultimately, I have to keep working in recovery because if I don't, I won't be able to keep working in recovery. When I give up, I can't learn. I don't mean I can't make mistakes; I want to make mistakes, but I want to live, too. I keep telling myself that if I go back to the eating disorder, I'm only going to postpone the time when I can do what will *really work* in this situation, a statement that means there truly is something that will really work, and that it is inevitable. Faith returns however slowly, and it's nice to believe.

I also keep telling myself- and I'm not sure how this translates- that recovery is an extension of illness. I don't want to believe they're separate, even though I know vast differences between the two. Saying this, however, helps me connect the fact that my illness is still here, and its presence is not a failure on my part; it's simply a reality. The illness is here or there would be no need for recovery. The recovery is the next step in the illness; it's the next step in life. It's all connected, and I don't have to be afraid because there's never going to be a choice I can't take. That's what I want to know- that I'm not closing any doors; I'm not too lost to live the life I'll decide tomorrow that I want. I will forever have the right to make the choice I passed up yesterday.

I remember saying and being told in the hospital, "Give recovery a shot. You can always go back to being sick again, if you decide that's what you want." And it seemed kind of juvenile to me, even though it worked. I don't always like the idea that I could get sick again, and I don't want to say that getting sick again is a solution to not liking the path things are taking (reorganize the path!)...but...it's good to know. I'm in charge of how things go, even if living in D!@#$%^, with my parents, a godawful addiction, more schoolwork than anyone should be subjected to, and college-of-all-things on the horizon, would make it look otherwise. I still have power in my life.

I still have rights no one can take away. I have the right to be me, and I have the right to go to sleep right now. I'm seizing the latter, and I'll work on the former tomorrow. I think I've worked on it today.

chord

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