4:05 p.m. - 01/21/02
calling all the forces in
It strikes me that the reason I'm so drawn to write lately but lose the will once to this page has to do with my need now to not simply express my realities but communicate them. Journaling is just another way of running around in my own head, and although this being public eases that a bit, there is still the reality, that talking to oneself is only half as helpful as talking to another (good) human being.
That in mind...here are some letters I have written:
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Dear Laura,
I'm sitting here watching the snow melt around me (which is sad because it was beautiful like sand and diamonds and fog, and happy because it means I can go walking in the woods again soon), and I thought I'd write you a good morning. :-) Those are nice words to say when one is trying so hard to believe it is the good morning of a better day. I go back and forth lately between my own version of "crazy" and the loving inspiration that pulls me out of it. Today is one month without Tracy; oddly, it is also five months for me without purging. I'm still a bit overwhelmed that life could pile grief and celebration and a thousand other things into this single mountain of me. Tracy was a fan of inspiration; she used to steal my Iyanla Vanzant books and encourage all of us to try the risks suggested in them - she came back from every outing with some paperback form of motivation. Lately, I've been feeling somewhat consumed by how extensive this process of grief and recovery and life is; sometimes I forget that though it's a lifelong journey, I only have to get to the place where I'm willing to risk in order to begin reaping the benefits of that. I have a large risk planned today, and I hope with all my heart I don't back out of it. I see my therapist today, and I have to ask her to help me get out of my house. The very typing of that scares me, so I'm telling myself that it doesn't necessarily mean I have to *get* out of my house, but the question needs to be raised. It's a need I have to voice now. They know how toxic this environment can get, and my parents have begun to directly oppose my recovery (going against medical advice etc.) It's painful because I know they love me, they love me with all their hearts, and I them - I don't want to lose them, but I'm losing myself here, and I can only go so far into that and still be aware of it enough to ask for an out. I'm not sure what's coming; I'm not even trying to predict what the doc's response will be, but I'm trying this all the same. I have five months of strength to my credit, perhaps longer; and I have the memory of Tracy's strength, and the pain that makes me want so much to honor her. I've been rereading some of my journal entries from my last great "asking" - the third time I asked for medical/therapeutic help (the time I actually received it)...my credo from then seems to be, If you're going to make mistakes, make new ones. Risk turning onto another wrong path if it means escaping a dead-end. But do so with awareness, do so openly, so that you know when it's time to turn again.
It gives me hope to read the entries from this time last year when I was just beginning this chapter of the journey. It gives me hope to know that I felt so similar a fear and in time found something beautiful. I needed some hope. :-) So I'm grateful for it.
And for *you* as always...hope your sun is shining, too.
Love,
Mary
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And the one that will, if I can keep my clammy palms from making the ink run, be shared at that appointment tonight:
Harriet.
I write this because in the midst of my more extreme fantasies is the nagging reality that I may very well sit silently upon your couch again, desepite everything I ache to say - I might once again drive home in the aftershock of my reticence, feeling the dark sky like a mirror of every fear I still have not escaped. That dark silence surrounds me, in my mind if not outside of it, leaving me to communicate in the sheepish adolescent ways I later feel shame for: the manipulative tears, the ever-articulate defensiveness. And then the writing, documentation at last risked for the sake of survival. There is a hope in writing: the possibility that the words will have enough weight to merit change, or at the very least that in seeing them the next morning I won't be able to deny the intensity of what I felt. Minimization has long been a key to my survival, a tool of my shame to perpetuate my fear. There were so many night I went to bed lifted by hopeful ideas: This is the last staraw, I've had enough, I really will tell someone tomorrow- only to wake in the morning to convince myself it - whatever it was: emotion, illness, relationship was not as painful as my speaking would make it out to be. My pain must be great enough that the shock of being pulled from it will be lesser. As much as I have begged myself to find safety from the ever-multiplying line-up of "Its", by the time a scheduled "escape opportunity" arrives, I've once again paralyzed myself within the sharp limits of my fear. My fear of leaving, of being left, - of being separated, severed, disowned, alone. These terrors fly around me at high speeds, I choose to perpetuate the silence. I choose the false safety of familiar pain.
The times I have succeeded in breaking through - if not in convincing those on the receiving end of my need - have always begun with not waiting for the inevitable minimization of morning. in that regard this letter is a shallow attempt as it may easily remain hidden between these notebook covers, less shallow though than the last time I found myself at this level of desperation, when, on the verge of sleep, I made myself a half-hearted promise to write such a letter come the morning. (And did nothing of the sort.) I find hope in that - that perhaps I'm finally beginning to accept, that, like the cycles of my depression which came again and again until I finally asked for (and received) help, this too will return again and again until I'm willing to call it by name.
Enough words. There is an extreme power struggle taking place in my house as of late. My mom has given up censoring my feelings and allowed me to express (the existence though not the extent of) my anger. In some ways this feels better, though I'm beginning to understand this new tolerance simply fuels her perception that I don't love her, that I want nothing to do with her. You see, they are the victims, the unattended victims, and I guess they feel some sympathy is overdue. They've succeeded to make it all about them and their needs. You see the unwilling, martyred way they drive me to appointments, how they don't bat an eye as my number of outlets dwindles one by one. What you don't see, in part, is their extreme resentment toward my recovery. The way I'm shamed for forcing them to pay for therapy, instead of just letting them support me. Shamed for challenging the fact that my mom is all-powerful and if I'd simply let her in, I wouldn't need all this extra care. Shamed for staying in the hospital, for begging not to come home after discharge, for being too sick for them to neglect and too well for them to coddle. It leaves me in a place where my very recovery seems to be an attack on them, and if recent events are accurate evidence, not one they're going to put up with much longer. Instead of subtly undermining my choices, feelings, and progress, they are now directly opposing my treatment on the basis of their own needs and "parental rights." They have a scheduled meeting with the local high school, at which time they intend to enroll me as a homebound student. They've decided they understand why I can't be in school (incredible, really, considering even I don't comprehend it) but certainly I can handle a few classes outside the actual building, in my opinion, they're trying to prove that they really are superior to my treatment team (their apaprent lack of success so far comes only from my unwillingness to let them in) by overriding the decision regarding school. I believe, without a single doubt, that even if you and Tammy and Dr. R- can manage to keep them from winning this point, it will only seve to temporarily grant me some ground in a battle I'm no longer invested in. I need out and I'm coming to you with this because I really want to get out in a positive way. I'm losing hope if such a thing is even possible.
I've distanced myself from nearly every toxic influence that existed in my pre-hospital life; yet they remain here to break apart every forward step I take. Please - isn't there anything we can do?
Sincerely,
Mary -
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I can only hope that Harriet's response is as openly beautiful as Laura's was...
:chord:
"You can't always not get what don't want/ Flaunt what you got and what you got flaunt/ Speak double doom as much as you want but you can't always not get what you don't/ But you might get what you need..."
-Tracy Bonham
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