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7:30 p.m. - 02/23/03
just me and all the memories to follow down...>
Is the fact that I spent the majority of today out in the world, with an extrovert, enough justification of how completely asleep I am? I definitely felt more awake today, though a little of that was anxiety, which means- of course- that I forgot to tell the doctor I've been tired all the time. I've decided not to beat myself up about it, though, in part because that'd be counterproductive, and (in other part) because, well, I see him in three days.

Now, I'm sitting here, trying to be active in any of the three courses I need to be active regarding, and finding myself to tired to construct responses. The problem with this, is that I'd like to take most of tomorrow off, considering the birthday-element. That might be simpler than expected, actually, as we're currently enjoying yet another snowstorm.

I sometimes feel I should write a love-letter to February. February takes such shit from everyone, but God help me, I love her. Very few people I know have experienced (basically) every possible weather pattern on their birthday, but I've had parties in sun, snow, sleet, hail, rain, and at all points on the temperature spectrum. February's mysterious, like me. She puts it all out there, and somehow she's still full of surprises. And that's why, no matter how much you are sick of winter, you don't get to bitch to me about February...so, humph!

I told the doctor that it makes sense that the last few weeks have taken place in February. I've had quite a weird combination of sun, snow, sleet, hail, and rain emotionally, as well. Today is an optimistic day, though, even if I did have to take my stress meds twice. I didn't take them all week up until today, and I needed them, so let's just be grateful they exist. Let's not build guilt around meds the way we managed around food and sleep and all that other (actually rather good) shite.

Which reminds me, I remembered the elusive s-word in my acronym: It's "scarcity." It came to me while eating fruit salad, as earlier this week while eating fruit salad, I was hit over the head by one of my life-patterns. (Oh, we can try and make food just about nutrients, but the truth is, it's always going to mean more than that. The balance, I think, rests in only letting that metaphor meaning as much as is healthy or comfortable.) As I ate my fruit salad, which was heavy on strawberries, and slightly less heavy on kiwi and pineapple, I found that I avoided eating the kiwi and pineapple (even when I wanted a bite of them) because there was less, and I would run out. This was completely uneffected by the plentiful amount of kiwi and pineapple remaining in the kitchen. And I really do live my life that way- thinking that there's never enough to just go with what feels good in the moment. Blasted, non-helpful scarcity complex. You're going the way of all the others, you!

Weird mood comes with tiredness and procrastination. Sugar is the other ingredient. I think I should add caffeine just to see if I turn funny colors or develop any interesting twitches. Though that would counter my alprazolam, which I'm not up to right now. So. many. meds. But not for long. I'll go off a couple soon, and the parade of them won't seem so depressing. I will be grateful that I have access to working meds. I will be grateful that it's not a century ago, and I don't have to live the way my grandmother (amazing woman) has. Soon. I'm working toward that, and the thousand other things.

The appointment today went well. I felt more comfortable, especially after realizing that I wouldn't even have to push myself to ask for another appointment, considering our Wednesday appointments are standard. I think he's happy to accomodate that, though (as much as one can be, anyway). One of the points of his master plan seems to be that I realize recovery is not a straight line of progress, which correlates negatively with needing support ("I get better = I need less"). He told me he was going to use an especially corny metaphor that went something like what follows: When people plant a sapling, they do everything they can to nurture, care for, and protect it, and it never grows. The next season, it begins to shoot upward, outward; it grows by leaps and bounds. It's at that point that it needs more support than ever; it needs help fighting the wind and rain and whatever other weather that come across its path. I don't need to view my current need for support as evidence that I'm not doing well, that I'm not progressing, or that I don't rock the proverbial kneesocks.

(For the record, the song "We Only Come Out At Night" just came on, and I immediately started bopping my head back and forth which reminded me of that girl in the Peanuts Christmas special- it's actually a pair of twins, I suppose- who bops her head back and forth when they dance in the play scene, and I started to think how amusing it would be to see that scene reanimated with all the Peanuts characters dancing to Smashing Pumpkins. Call me freakish, but I think that'd be lovely.)

Back to terms of the appointment, I must say it helped that I was settling from high-intensity social interaction (said exchange with- nonetheless lovely- extrovert) into our less glaring repoire. (I enjoy many, many extroverts. It's just that, as an introvert, the difference is similar to walking through the city and walking by the beach. I love both, but after the city, I need rest. Dr. R is more like the beach, except that he occasionally tosses lobsters- or wait, gerbils...but that so doesn't fit the simile!- at me and asks me how I'm handling them. It also helped that I was noticeably anxious and that he had spent three hours with my parents the night before. Two axes and only one layer of ice, so to speak.

He went with my parents, first, saying quickly that he didn't want to focus on that for any significant amount of time (in keeping with our agreement several months back- that I exist, and need to be treated as if I exist, more than in terms of/ in response to my parents problems) unless I wanted that. He told me that it's definitely a very stressful time, and that I should recognize my father's anxiety as a sign of impending change, and not worry that it meant something bad was about to happen. The way he explained it, no matter what decision my dad makes (basically, either to change his life for the better, or to repeat and learn from an old pattern one more time) will be beneficial, and should be considered a success. Not to imply that it isn't a scary time. He told me that my dad's getting physically checked out this week (tomorrow) which I didn't know, and which made me feel better. I'm always so scared he's going to have a heart attack or go into diabetic coma or something because of how stressed he is, and how little he takes care of himself. But Dr. R said that he really feels that my dad is ok, as much as one can be at a turning point, and that he's talked with my parents about how to be honest with me regarding the facts without giving me the burden of solving them. (A job they've done noticeably better with in the 24 hours since they saw him. My dad even smiled at me today.) So I can calm down a bit, and focus on me. That's the point, right? To be entirely self-conscious, in a semi-positive way? To put myself first? I think that's one of the points, or at least one that's helpful.

Then he asked how I've been doing, and I told him I've had kind of a shaky time. I've realized in the past few days that I don't recognize stress or tension as anxiety, and so I don't take the necessary action (the type I would, if I were shaking or had a racing pulse.) I told him that generally, my anxiety lately expresses itself through that sort of stressed/tense feeling, or I just find myself shut down, so I haven't been dealing with it as well as I normally would. He seemed to think that this insight was a valuable one, as the more I'm able to recognize my anxiety (in all its forms, at all degrees) the better we'll be able to manage it. We. Sometimes I am so grateful for a simple first person plural. Bless him.

When he asked for a clue as to the source of said anxiety, I was a bit more clueless. I told him that my parents' issues had definitely been a stressor as of late, but I would say most of my recent experience has resulted from backlash due to our Wednesday appointment (when we discussed relationshit, in some ways for the first time.) I told him that I felt "normally" (noticeably) anxious for the first time in days, as I was sitting there- evidence by my swaying, fidgety presence, and he said that fidgeting often represented an impulsion to go in two directions, wondering if that felt at all relevant. I couldn't help but agree. I have been feeling rather conflicted regarding the whole "do I or don't I want to know" issue, and I said as much...adding that it is actual conflict now, as opposed to four days ago, when it the firm understanding that I didn't want to go into this and that I wanted this to go away like it did for the past eight years. (Wow. Eight years is a long time to stay silent about something. It makes me rethink my recent- more general- craving of muteness.) So, progress- in some form. Uncomfortable but different, and I appreciate different.

Being thorough, he of course asked what had brought about this slight change in my position, and I told him about a handful of events over the past few days in which people tried to look out for me and missed the mark (at times more than a little.) Sweet Britt encouraged me not to respond to her urgings if it was difficult to me (i.e. not to caretake) and even though I appreciate her need for reassurance (it's never fun to think people are hurting when they support you), I went a little, "hey, I can take care of myself remember?!" on her. The biggest interaction, though there were a few others, was the exchange between Mistrandy and my Gothic teacher. That one still floors me a bit. Questions like, "how can someone ask why I'm out before asking who I am or what I'm like? Why do people have to minimize me to my illness? Why do they assume I'm at a dangerous point in dealing with said illness? Why do they assume I need their help, that I'm not receiving adequate care, and that I can't (on many levels) take care of myself, now? Why do people say I have an 'eating disorder' when it's so much more complicated than that? Why are they placated just to know I'm eating 'normally'?" rampage through my brain. He seemed sympathetic and a little amused by my outrage (in the sense of, "rock on! she's justifiably outraged"- as opposed to the patronizing one. Because I did use the exchange with Brittany as an example, I need to point out here that I really do understand the kind intentions behind these interactions (and I wrote all of those questions thinking solely about the teacher conversation)...it just helped me see, again, how much I need to know myself. I need to know myself because I need to take care of myself, in the sense that I need to be my own advocate. I don't have to do this all on my own, but I need to be able to communicate to those darling people who *do* want to help (and how blessed am I to have them! seriously) how they can, so that I don't end up getting hurt the way I was so continually in N*land (by the handful of people who *did* stop to help.) I need to know myself so that I don't have to put up with the backseat-driving of the well-intentioned. I need to know myself so I can ever-more-correctly steer my own course. And I consider that something that will help my relationships, not something that will push people away. I'm not saying, "Everybody out of the Mary's-life-car!" I'm just saying, "I have this really cool treasure map I'm working on, and can we please stick to it for a bit?" (And obviously, there will be several turn-offs onto the specific streets and monuments of other persons' maps. Rock.)

So after a less long-winded version of that rant, we spent a moment celebrating the insight, and marked a side-issue that I'd brought up as being triggered by Mistrandy's words (the whole confusion over the ed concept) for further dicussion at a later date, and then he asked if there was anything I needed him to think about for/with me, and I said that probably what I need now is to explore why I'm so afraid of this [(specifically romantically/sexually) relational] part of me, so I don't have to use "because it's evil and bad and better off unknown" to fill in the blanks. He agreed to that and asked to what extent I believe in simple "fear of the unknown." I told him that in general that makes a lot of sense to me, and it may be helpful to keep the idea in mind these next few days. However, this specific issue feels bigger than that to me. I told him that since it stayed unknown to me (either "suppressed" as he prefers to say and I'm trying to, or simply not around, as I've always felt better believing) while all around me knew. He thought I meant that what stayed unknown to me was transparent to others, and I had to agree that there had been cases where other's neared the understanding I might be nearing now. What I meant, though, was that everyone around me began to develop romantic, sexual, exclusively relational inclinations while I stayed numb. And so it isn't simply fearing an unknown, but fearing something that stayed unknown in an environment where everyone else knew. (If no one I've ever known has gone to Russia, I might fear going because it's unknown. If everyone around me has gone, it's not just the unknown, but the strangeness of that unknowing- the idea that I must be hiding something that needs to be hidden; i.e. is bad- which bothers me.) So, I suppose we'll talk more on that.

And then I went out with Mom's "adopted" daughter (the extrovert) and Mom, which went fairly smoothly considering the level of socialization is about twenty times that of my normal evening. A little taste of what New York will be, in a sense. But New York will rock anyway.

There are less than three hours now until my birthday and less than twelve until the time I was born, and I've decided to be happy about this. I've decided to continue working at a balance of young-wisdom and adult-independence (without risking my beloved interdependence) and forget the whole idea of who I'm supposed to be. Most people, I've been told, view eighteen as a sign of liberty and on the way home tonight, listening to "No Name Face" and hearing that line in "Quasimodo" that says, "there goes the world off of my shoulders/ there goes the world off of my back" I remembered the doctor's concept awhile back that adulthood is when you no longer have to apologize for yourself to all those elders (though that takes practice, and obviously ageism doesn't disappear the day you turn eighteen.) So, I'm finding some hope in that. I don't have to throw away my identity or hate myself for not being recovered simply because I turned eighteen. Though I do still need an eighteen-song to replace Dancing Queen.

Hey, look. They do exist. Nothing I know now. And now I really must try and do some (more) homework (as I've been working on it off and on) so that I don't have to spend my entire birthday worrying about the papers I didn't write this weekend. Woot. Good thing I'm a genius and can crank out unimportant papers with relative quickness. (And none of them are far my diversity teacher, thank God. As much as I love to hear for him, I'd probably have an anheurism if he asked for a paper at this stage of our acquaintance.)

feel the beat of the tambourine, oh yeah-
chord

p.s. he gave me the word "transrational" today. apparently those emotive reactions I have which give me insight are trans- (rather than ir-) rational. I think, for the first time in my life, I'm in love with a therapist transference-free. heehee.

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