9:04 p.m. - 12/02/03
and it's burning in my chest.>>*
I almost didn't write in here again tonight. What part of the earth would quit spinning, precisely, if I didn't journal? The to-be-continued's wear me down, to tell the truth. If I leave a story half-told, then - when a day or two passes and I have a new story to tell or a new emotion to vent - I don't know how to fit it all in. Who wants to talk about Friday and Saturday, when it's nearly Wednesday now? When so much has happened, and so much has forced its way toward the surface, and so much has begged to be read?
I'm writing a story. I want to know why, exactly, I'm writing a story. It's a ridiculous question to ask, especially at this point. I'm writing a story because one way I know to process certain intense, confusing, and isolating emotions is to write. (Maybe the emotions themselves aren't inherently isolating, but I isolate when I feel them, so for the moment, it seems that way.) I'm writing this story because, right now, to draw a link between what it means to begin having a sexuality and what it meant to begin telling my story makes what's new and overwhelming (and frightening and and and) seem less daunting and more like a blessing. I'm writing this story because there's passion and rage and frustration messed together all through my body, and I don't have a good place to throw paint. To take thick color and smudge and smear and scrape indentions... I don't know who I am, but I swear I am losing her mind.
In my day to day life now, it's like I know, like the "which label fits me" question has been answered, and I'm just waiting for a confirmation letter in the mail. Day to day now, it's ridiculous that everyone else doesn't know (and it's terrifying to think that they might or that they will), and it's ridiculous that I hold fast to this "uncertainty" when it's really so obvious. I remember. Writing my first and last erotic story when I was barely on the brink of puberty. Feeling dirty so much of the time. Erasing my first and last erotic story and writing a goddamn apology to my computer, saying something to the effect of, I know it's bad enough that I'm thinking these things, but to write them down was just...what? Unforgivable? I remember fantasies that I never allowed to claim that word. Fantasy was something safe and good with dragons and fairy princesses and nothing like blood that comes monthly or a desire to kiss, lick, lift, or gently bite at flesh. I remember the seductive stories I wrote only in my head, and felt such shame for, the vague plot-lines that bore a resemblance to seventies sci-fi, the images that I held onto, trying to make them stay clear and alluring. Trying to hang onto one flash of a body and let it satisfy whatever hunger I tried so hard not to have. I remember how I loved, how I attached, how my passions filtered, how I fantasized. I know the men were props I knew to have but not how to use. The women carried everything; it's the women I drank in. Last night when the nightmares where my heart threatens to explode stretched into sexual themes as well, it was the women. It's in the music I listen to, the characters I claim as relations, the news I seek, the people I model. It's there whether I'm uncertain about it or not. It's here. Saying, "Yes, I remember when you had 'something almost like an eating disorder' and 'pseudo-agoraphobia', too. How long are you going to spend putting me off, saying you don't know?" But I don't know, or I don't want to. How can I be certain, and why would I want to be? I don't want a relationship. I want to know who I am, but this part... This part, this part, this part. I stood in a dark bathroom, trying to shake off hormones, asking myself what my (adored, female) teachers would think if they knew I had this side. I wrote a fucking apology letter to my computer after writing an erotic story. I put men into my fantasies like tokens, and maybe some day they'll matter, but I don't expect it now. Please. I don't need this. I was crying so hard last night, already, crying so hard over the fact that, eating disorder opened up and dissected and given all this time to translate into real issues, I have more than life issues to handle. I have a whole other fucking disorder, disease, to deal with. Agoraphobia. I hate the word, even as I'm grateful that it's finally a term, an illness, something separate from me. I hate that I went through all this shit to end up back at a beginning somehow. If I'd been given help for the anxiety when it began, I wouldn't have had to work through everything I'm working through just to start working on this. I'd have issues of separation anxiety, grief, sexuality, whatever the hell else, but I wouldn't have an entire disorder left. And when we get behind and below the agoraphobia what will lie there? And if in the meantime, cancer or godd knows what else shows up at my door, what will I do? I don't know why it even matters to ask these questions. So I'm angry and frustrated, so what does that change? Everything. If I would pay attention to the feelings, they would tell me how to deal. If I would listen to my broccoli, it would tell me how to eat it.^ But I'm angry, and I'd rather ask questions about the problems I don't have (but might someday) than deal with the ones on my doorstep. What the hell is sexuality anyway, and where did I sign on for it? How the hell do I hold my own against the onslaught of shame that's had my entire adolescence to fester and grow? I know better than shame now; that doesn't give me an escape from it. Yesterday, when I finally pushed myself out of a long silence and voiced for the doctor the mean thoughts he says are not my reality, despite their continued existence in *my* head, the voice that he calls Aunt Sue, I started to cry. I'd been composed the whole session, far from stoic, but nowhere near the verge of tears. And saying those words again, saying defective and deserving to be hurt... Tears sprang from those words. Even now, when I don't live off them; even now, when I know they aren't true. I still hear them, and they still bully me, and that still hurts so badly and leaves me so weak.
It wasn't much more than a year ago I claimed my name. A year of being addressed Mary Brave. I pray to whatever I can still believe in that the word holds up for me now. Now, when I have to face an illness I've had my whole life (so much longer than the ed, so rooted in me, so overpowering, so strong) without the safety of a Rogers. Now, when my most particular shame is being challenged by a strong presence and a desire to win my validation. That part of me I don't want, don't want, can't want is pleading with me to indulge it, to serve it, to speak it aloud. It wants to be claimed like the name was, and I'm not sure, even with the name, I have the strength to do that. So why am I writing stories that just stir everything further and don't communicate a thing. I want to run and visit you. I'm with you tonight. My bed is your bed, and I'm curled in the center, and you're telling me whatever you know to say. Or you're singing me to sleep or you're brushing my hair, or you're sleeping on the bed, too, and letting me watch the peace on your face. The peace that comes when there are no more nightmares about defects in a person, an overactive heat in the body, or the patterns of a heart.
If it's true, I can accept it...just let me lie here and not mention it awhile.
chord
(thanksgiving/ the weekend to be continued some other day)
^Bird by Bird reference to a Mel Brooks routine
�
�
