6:25 p.m. - 10/07/02
^trying times>
I consider myself a realist, though I'm called idealistic. I don't think there's anything naive about believing in the best of people and the world, and I don't own a single pair of rose-colored glasses. Hope is not a painless emotion; it requires maintaining ideals as the darker realities challenge them, and believing that the best life is still possible. I don't see any reason to inflict our values on each other; I think "ethics" goes that way too often. People tell each other they have to act a certain way into be ethical; it becomes a "code" we can't all correctly interpret. I would just appreciate some kindergarten rules and some age-old wisdom. I would appreciate people taking care of each other, loving each other, looking out to make sure the people they walk by are ok. That isn't overly optimistic, so I'm tired of it being impossible. I'm tired of that *not being* the case, when it's so simple. Take care of yourself; take care of others. I'm not asking anyone to build an intergallactic space machine here. I'm asking them to live compassionately. I ask myself to live that way, and doing so brings me pain. It brings me to questions: why isn't this the norm? Why are we waging war? Why are we violent and violating? I don't want the sociological explanation; it doesn't have to be that complicated. It shouldn't be anymore complicated than what's right. What is the deep-in-our-heart *right* way of talking to a person, believing in a person, encountering them? Why don't people *do* this? Why don't people *care?*
I hurt so deeply, it cuts off my breath.
I met with Tammy today, and as my intuition prompted me to suspect, it did not go well. I managed to pysch myself up beforehand so that I was in an upbeat mood going in, but things were just shaky. In reality, probably 90% of the appointment went well, but we clashed so miserably in the other 10% I've spent the past 45 minutes in tears. She's a marvelous woman; she does me great amounts of good. But we believe differently about some things, and we have such different temperaments, that we occasionally struggle. She's frank; I'm quiet. She's brash; I'm careful. She believes I made a choice to do this and am succeeding. I believe I was given the opportunity to risk safely, and have moved forward from that chance. She tells me to take credit for what I've done; I want her to understand the importance of those who intercepted me during the downward spiral. I want her to understand and be one of them for the people in her care. I want to feel like someone, somewhere, is safe. I can't imagine she doesn't want the same.
She asked if I feel better more based on external or internal circumstances, and I said that, generally speaking, I felt better when I was doing well within myself. When I'm doing well in my own heart and head, I'm more able to feel and deal with the outside world. Of course, I'm very much affected by that world- by how my parents are and how my friends are doing- but I definitely have a better chance, if *I* am grounded. She asked if that wasn't new, and I agreed it was. "Before, I never felt good," I pointed out. "So it was all external."
I told her how so many of my friends, especially because a large portion of those I love came into my life inside hospital walls, struggle in a way that tears at me. I told her how I minimize my own struggle, how I feel guilty for getting better because I don't deserve it more than they, how I feel terribly sad and lost inside sometimes. I opened it up again, that wound that never closes. That miserable, smoking wound. When I told her, her face understood, but her words were, "We just have to accept that some people won't get better. Statistically, speaking 20% recover fully. 60% recover moderately. And 20% die. Some people, no matter what, just aren't willing to give it up."
I was absolutely floored. I'm still floored, typing this. If my body were a baloon, I'd be deflated; I barely have the air to breathe. As usual, when I don't have the words to respond, she kept talking, saying how, depending on how many people I knew with this illness, I was likely to have one "chronic" friend, until I finally managed to find voice and ask what exactly she meant by people who "couldn't" get well. Did she mean people who didn't try? People who weren't working at it, every day, with all the energy that takes? She went back through her words with me, giving some examples of people she'd worked with, people who'd been in and out of hospitals, women who said they wanted recovery, but never went in that direction behaviorally. She peppered the conversation with points like, "I don't see her anymore, though maybe I will when she gets back. Well, if she lives." I felt absolutely sick. More than I am.
I don't believe her. I *don't* believe that. I'm scared because that is what I see in this world, all around me, I see people who aren't willing to act with faith. All around I see people who aren't willing to believe, and act with that belief, and it leaves me absolutely terrified. I need to know where you are, where are you people who look at this world and go, "WHY? Isn't it obvious that we should be loving? Isn't it obvious we should hold onto each other, like family? Isn't it obvious the world is very much screwed-up and we'd better cradle each other as we try and fix that?" Why am I the minority, the idealist, for having that perspective? Hope is only painful in a hopeless world.
I didn't get better because I chose to get better. That simply isn't true. I didn't get better because I want to get better. I could never have done that. I didn't know what I wanted, what I needed, what I felt. I didn't know what safety was, let alone how to attain it, and no one had ever taught me, Mary, this is how you live. I didn't know, and I couldn't have made that decision. Commitment to the process, belief in what I'm doing, the desperate desire to live, and numerous other ideas have helped me to reach the point I'm at, but that absolutely *isn't* what sparked my recovery. Deciding to work at this isn't the first step. Desire, effort do not define progress. They simply can't. Because no matter how opposite our personalities, Tracy and I were equal in our desire to honestly move forward, and I'm a fucking poster-child while she's gone. I will never in a million years believe that Tracy could not have made it, but she *didn't* make it- not in our view, not in this life, not on this side of the scrim. I will never believe that there is a single person, not even the most adamantly pro-anorexic or the bulimic with the track record dating through decades, who cannot truly and fully recover from this. I don't believe that. That first risk, the one you take when you over and over again, hoping it will work this time because you want (we all want) so badly to survive, to live, to feel, and know we're safe, comes in a moment when you feel safe taking it. It comes in a moment, with a person, that you feel has the capacity to meet your need, either personally, or through some sort of action/ referral. It comes when someone takes the time to know you, inside and out, as much as they can based on your defenses and their own struggles, and realize what your needs are. Eating disorders are so largely about not having needs, not even the need for food, and people expect us to know, validate, and articulate what we need in order to make it through the struggle? It's ridiculous. I couldn't have told you I needed Rogers, though on some level, with all my fantasies, I knew. I couldn't have told you because I was so scared to need it, so scared to be told I didn't deserve it, or it didn't exist, but I still *told you*- with my obsessive love and my fantasies. I told you with how grateful I was for every second of affection, the smallest touch, the slightest acknowledgement of my presence. I showed you what I was starving for, even more than food, even more than energy or control- how I was starving not to be abandoned, not to be aloned, not to consistently and chronically be unsafe. I AM GETTING BETTER because I NEEDED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF and by some divine luck, I WAS. I don't know what needs are behind each individual's eating disorder, or other burden, but I do know that any need can be met, any feeling can be healed, any person can get well. Well. Not moderately well, not progressively well, but honesetly and truly whole. Every person has the innate ability to be who they are in a manner that leads to their peace. I believe that. And I believe that telling someone they can't get better, even though you maintain hope for them, telling someone they can't get better until they *choose to* is absolutely ridiculous. Ask them what they need in order to. Ask them what, in their wildest dreams, safety would look like. Life would look like. Hope would look like. The only reason people don't survive is because eating disorders are high-speed lethal weapons, and we don't get help in time. We aren't understood, we don't get our needs met, *in time.* Whose fault is that?
I can't believe that a woman who has worked with ed-patients for so long, and who was an ed-patient in her own adolescence, can believe anything other than what I've said here. I can't believe it because simply stating it weakens me, leaves me raw, and ripe with tears. I know- I'm starting to know- that we can't save each other, but does that mean we quit trying? Does our inability to perform miracles justify no longer watching for them? This is why I want I caretake; this is why I tell people I want to be a superhero when I grow up...because the idea that people in this world are choosing *not to* help, even to harm, leaves me absolutely wretched. It's painful enough to have hope in a world where things aren't perfect, where hoping for something doesn't make it real. I don't need to feel the pain of being the only one to hope. I don't need to feel I'm the only one fighting against the wrong we do each other. I don't need to feel that someone who helped me, in even the smallest way, to find my own opportunity to safely risk, doesn't even *believe* she can do it for everyone. Tell me you put in as much effort to a (likely) impossible task. Tell me you don't back down a bit when the obstacle strikes you as insurmountable.
I can't believe that, faced with living individuals who are unable to have any hope for themselves, *anyone* would even *be able* not to have hope *for* them. I can't believe that, recognizing our pain, we can see anyone but ourselves surrounding it.
And yet, I do it, too. I know I do.
I'm still trying to find a way to initiate conversations that doesn't always open with, "I love you; I'm sorry." Lean on me- I'll lean on you; none of us will fall.
Try?
chord
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