10:30 p.m. - 05/17/03
go read the caged entry. it's better.
I sent out this "please help me with my homework" e-mail the other day, in which I asked that people fill out ten questions. I think I've made the count I needed (twenty), but I'm too struck by the answers from my family to verify that. I e-mailed it to all four siblings (because hey, I have four siblings - that's 1/5 of the way there) and they all responded. I'm just a little weirded-out by the way they responded. Not one of my brothers answered it seriously, which is fine; some information slipped through their humor. (With John, the painful-insight type of humor; with Joe, mastered sarcasm; and with Dale, self-proclaimed smart-assiness.) I'm not worried about the project by any means. I guess I just felt surprised by some of what they could say. Most of my siblings and a few friends responded that the benefit of their family meals (the oh-so-interesting topic of this assignment) was that no one starved. Dale made a not-exactly-there joke about throwing up. And I know that I live in my life constantly, and I forget things that are going on for my family, but seriously..."nobody starved" just hits me where my ribs meet; it hits hard. I'm thirteen again, and I'm wanting to scream at my father, "What the hell does it matter that you're putting food on the table, when I can't even eat it?" I starved. I grew sick. I didn't stay healthy and well-fed, and why does my own family assume that simply because I apparently had the option of eating (but didn't actually have it, not once things got underway), these meals fed us. Also, we were talking mainly about "family meals" which stopped taking place regularly, as my siblings moved out. They were all gone by the time my ed was diagnosed. Still. I'm writing a paper critiquing this book on education, complaining that the entire public education system is fucked-up, and it isn't simply a matter of getting money where it needs to be (which obviously does matter quite a bit); there are subtler, equally brutalizing injustices that take place in schools with money. I'm saying, find out what's wrong with a particular school and deal with it. And as much as I'm enjoying the essay, it's another example of that heart-hitting blow. When did it stop mattering what I felt? (I need to make sure it doesn't stop mattering to me.) Why was it ok for people to say, "Eat your dinner; people are starving in Africa" - when I was starving right in front of them. I think about our government's distribution of funds and how the schools that score the best on their standardized tests (and have the highest percentage of white students) receive the most bread in return, and therefore, continue to do well on their standardized tests. Schools like N*land, with a 98+% white student body, and a 100% white faculty. I think how even for a school like N*land the funding was not enough to shelter us from atrocities committed mainly by the faculty. And I think how, in *my* life, when they're handing out bread, there's always someone who has gone one more day without eating, so I'm always given none. A lot of this paragraph should be in past tense, but it feels current as I remember it. It's not always like this now. I need to remember that.
I'll talk about why the essay is fun tomorrow; my energy is still non-existent. Better day for (me against the) depression today. Probably a 5 to yesterday's 7. Self-esteem is probably a 5 as well. (Yesterday I gauged it at about 2.5 - not the worst I've ever felt, but pretty damn awful.) So obviously there are more important discussions for me to have, even with this little journal...But I have no energy, and I'm still not sure if my sleeping has improved with the new meds (shouldn't that be obvious?) ... and you can find what I'm feeling now in about 9/10 of the entries in this journal. Look for RED, and red, and Rogers, and home. Look for names with exclamation points after them.
Look for me, and if you find her, send her home.
chord
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