5:10 p.m. - 03/07/03
||make me feel like crying tears I don't deserve.]
Showers should be placed on that list of underrated wonders. Surely someone is keeping a list. I don't feel so ok right now, and the shower has helped me to feel "not so ok" rather than "very not good." I'm having trouble sustaining my own okayness despite outside (and those damn internal) forces.
I just really hate the whole eating disorder thing. I mean, I really hate that such an evil exists in the world. I can't articulate it, and that leaves me feeling strangled. Looking through diaryrings today, (to see if there was one for Ben Harper, which there is, thank goodness) I found this "anorexic people suck" diaryring, and I just wanted to grow claws and foam at the mouth and fucking attack. I didn't click to read the description; thank God*. I didn't want to put myself through any of that. And then this afternoon I stumbled across another d*land account of eating-disorder-dom (not pro-ed though) and I just wanted to attack again...though more myself that time. I hate the helplessness. I hate the inability to do anything. I hate the illness that keeps on taking lives, and the people who simply do not get it, and the fact that I still feel one mention of my ed makes me entirely sick again, as if there are only two options: sick and recovered. As if there's no possibility between. I'm just sick with this. I'm sick with the reality of the illness, as well as the illness itself. And the degree to which people don't understand. Wow. I wish I could come up with a reason to play off my upsettedness as part of the illness itself. "This is just me being irrationally upset because of [stupid psychological symptom.]" But it's not. My friends are having heart attacks and strokes, my roommate died, I'm fighting (and winning, thank you) against this illness, and there are people who would say this. It makes me even more grateful for what I do at nourish. Even more grateful for all the people who come to me and say, "I don't understand. Can you explain it to me?" "I don't understand this illness," or "the way I understand doesn't fit with the idea of someone like you having it. So could you explain?" Tell me your story. I'm all the more grateful for the people who listen, who don't assume, who don't collapse it to the disease of aspiring fashion models. I'm sick of everyone else...
After my promise to myself two days ago to not talk about eating disorders with my teacher anymore, we spent yesterday talking about violence and Columbine. (And I was ok. Thank God*. I rarely talk about Columbine and remain ok.) She said something along the lines of, "I don't understand, and I'm glad. I don't want to be able to understand how someone could do that." The truth is, I agree with her. I don't want to understand malice or violence. I'm not saying the stuff of it isn't inside of me, too- of course it is. The outrage that hit me hardest in recent times left me really wanting to throw someone against a wall and pummel them. But the truth is, I couldn't, and I'm glad of that. It's not just the fact that I'm 5'3" and a weakling; it's also the idea that even if I'm drawn to a point where I *want* to hurt someone else, I know that I could never feel better for having done so. There would never be sweetness in that sort of revenge. Which is good for me, I guess. It speaks well of me. I simply don't understand how you can knowingly hurt someone else. I mean, is there a white-supremacists diaryring? How about one supporting rape? The pro-ana shit is bad enough, but to have this here, too... It just floors me. What's the applicative -ism? For people who hate those with a sickness? I wish my diversity teacher would give me an assignment so that I could talk about it. We have discrimination/ prejudice/ outright hatred topics often. I need an outlet. I need a microphone, but I'll accept a bullhorn right about now.
It makes even *less* sense to me than the pro-ed groups, which is really saying something. I don't understand it at all. I may be completely off base - because I've never been inside anything remotely pro-illness - but the way that pro-ed makes a (small) bit of sense to me is this: I had a desperate need for belonging, for attachment, for support. If I had found that in sickness and other sick people, I probably would have held onto it. That doesn't change the fact that friends-don't-help-friends-kill-themselves, and it's just an explanation from my random little mind, which likes (especially upsetting) things to be founded in some reason. But what's the point of hatred? I don't care what the point is, actually. It doesn't justify it. You can hate someone because you need to separate yourself from them. You can hate someone because you need to suffocate the part inside yourself which feels similar. But that doesn't seem, to me, like it's any less terrible. It's a reason, not a way to justify.
This pain I'm in is almost a reason to have been through all I have. At least I know I'll never be that ignorant again.
~
Upstanding
you say you can't stand
people like me
which I understand to mean
my skin offends you
the placement of my eyes
the disguise of thrift store
fashion fueled by the size
of nose and teeth and feet
and hairy thighs. no prize
pig here, I know, so
your hatred almost makes sense.
then I realize: you've never seen me.
and still you take offense.
such intensity when you say
you can't stand hearing from
people like me
which I understand to be
a reaction to the queer vibratto
that shakes a song
between my vocal cords
the shyness that equips me
with a silence keen as your - words.
my small and scattered accents
could disturb. then I remember
never have you heard me speak
one word.
so alright, I'll seek down
a different source. your hatred
has to have a reason, after all
of course- you wouldn't simply
judge me without an outright
violation of your laws
there must be continuity
predictable effect from concrete cause.
my perception? opinion? action?
views? my ethics or the path
they help me choose? the way
I spend my life? that's it. maybe.
that's what you cannot take.
but you know nothing of my life
you've never met the heart
your hatred tries to
break.
wake me. certainly
this isn't real.
certainly after a century
of movements, protests,
rallies, people know
how to let each other feel
help each other grow.
tell me you know - better
tell me I'm wrong.
tell me I misinterpreted
your form. your perspective.
your shaky song.
we've been on the same side all along.
tell me. it's more than distant,
prejudicial brand. tell me a story
I can understand.
~
Maybe I don't need a diversity assignment after all...
chord
*I continue to use this phrase despite having no spiritual connection to it...
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