9:05 p.m. - 07/09/02
they be my water. when i'm thirsty and dry.
I've been upstairs restoring the poster that I made at RED. two of the inscriptions were near disappearing, and as much as I didn't want to interfere with the poster's authenticity, I couldn't lose the words from Stacy and Kat. so I sat with a pen and a flashlight, nearly blinding myself trying to define which lines were the paper, which lines were the drawing, and which lines were their writing. it took me ages, but I finally have all the words in tact, in ballpoint, which means that they should survive at least as long as I do. thank goodness. I need to write Stacy, since- even talking to Silje today- I still didn't have the courage to ask for the first floor number. in all actuality I could probably just call and ask for first floor, without knowing the extension, but that's just an extra excuse for me not to call her. I'm getting desperately near my one year mark (one year from admission; it's one year from discharge that they can contact me outside of work), and the time, in some ways, has gone so quickly that I'm no longer too worried. I think Stacy will keep contact with me, and I think Brea will as well. I hope I can get in touch with Karen, and Sara, and Stephanie, but that's all months away, and as is evident from the last week's entries, I have more pertinent paranoia to engage in...
The truth is I want to be in touch with everyone, but I need to be realistic, to some extent. I need to be realistic as much as will suit me.
So I talked with Silje today, and as always, she was very supportive - despite how difficult a time she's having personally. She did say one thing that kind of pushed a button for me; she said, "you're always doing well" (kind of flippantly), and I didn't like hearing that. One of my ED's favorite *punch*lines is "you were never sick" and it goes into that easily enough from "you aren't sick now." I mean, if all my friends from Rogers had eating disorders, and all my friends from Rogers are struggling, how am I ok unless it's that I don't have an eating disorder? Basically, this just pushes me into wanting to "prove" I'm sick again through my behavior, "prove" I'm in pain and also struggling. fortunately, I haven't taken this track. instead, I've gone for the one that says, "hi, I'm having a really hard time, and even though it's not evident from my food, you should be aware that my continued compliancy is a sign of strength and effort *despite* the pain I'm in, not a contradiction against that pain." I don't really have anyone to say that to, but I say it to myself anyway. I think in lots of ways, it makes me feel disconnected from my Redlings to not have ED stuff to talk about. in some ways, I want to be struggling, because my struggle was part of what connected me to them, originally. I have to bear in mind as firmly as I can that, no matter what the voices say, I grew close to them as I grew better. I grew close to them as I grew *well.*
Staying well = staying close. Staying well = being capable of having healthy, close relationships with them. If I get sick, how weird will it be, trying to be friends? When they were once the nurses shooing off my sickness? I am staying well...
Which is not to say that I am well now. I'm having a really hard time, though dealing with that today has left me much better than I was this morning. By "dealing" I mean "feeling"...I've done some distraction, some writing, some crying, some talking to folks who are busy across town. I have a sneaky little hope that I'm Dr. R's last appointment tomorrow (I'm seeing him later than normal) because I have so much to talk about, I don't know how I'll squeeze it all in. I need to remember to ask what he thinks about my headaches because that's not on my mind at all, and I don't want to forget it. the results from my mri came back and all was normal, or as my dad so eloquently put it, "there's nothing in your head"...this is fine, of course, except that I'm still getting the headaches and the nausea. I want to ask the doctor if putting the scans and tests on hold is reasonable, or if there are a few more we should do before taking a break. (I think I'll be ok either way; I'm just not ok feeling like I have a test every other hour. That'll make a girl feel sick even when the day *doesn't* demand Motrin.)
I finished The Tunnel and the Light, and I have to say, there were times reading that book that I wished I were illiterate. It confirmed my not-completely-paranoid belief that I could be very easily manipulated into cult-life. I think it was how zealously she discussed her topic, combined with her explanation of how people who did not accept this as truth were simply not yet ready to believe it. I was desperate to be enlightened at the same time I was insulted. I wanted to be good enough, basically. It's fitting: she uses this analogy throughout the book about how enlightenment does not justify superiority in the same way that a fifth grader would not pick on a first grader for lacking intelligence. (She seems unaware that this sort of thing happens.) As a kid, I was constantly in emotional turmoil over my inability to do high school math. I have bold memories of subtraction worksheets interrupted with my brothers commenting, "Why did you cross out that problem?" "Because it's impossible!" "No, it's just negative." "What?" "It's just negative; it's less than zero." "You can't do that." "Yes, you can!" "Well, *you* can, but we're not there yet!"
What I didn't say is that I wanted desperately to be there. I was aware that no matter how quickly I learned something, I would never catch up to my siblings, with their six and four year head-starts. And that's how I feel about this enlightenment. I feel the same desperation and the same impossible pressure. She talks about life as a school (of all things) and says that when we die we will evaluate every thought and deed and choice that makes up our lives- and at the same time be given complete awareness of how each of these thoughts, deeds, and choices effected everyone else in the world. So of course I've gone around for the past two days beating myself up for every "wrong" thought I've had. I think I've stopped trying to think because I'm aware that I can't possibly be enlightened all the time, and how else am I going to get an A+ on my final exam...
urgle.
There's a lot in the book that I found really true and really helpful, and even more that I thought, "I would really like to believe that someday" - but for the most part right now, there are other parts of the life/death topic that I need to focus on; there are other pains and pleasures I have need to explore. And I think, really, that's the most "enlightened" thing I can do; at least I hope so. I hope the best I can do is to say I'm not ready for all of this information, and so I'm going to do my best to incorporate it in my life in some ways, while pushing it back temporarily in others. And I'm going to do my best to ask my questions, and *be* skeptical, to give my mind as much weight as Elisabeth's. Because even if she is getting her thousandth life-school doctorate and I'm just starting second grade, aren't we still peers on some spiritual level? Am I not still as worthy as her?
You see what it does to shame to trace some Stacy-words. You see how the flat world crumbles when my Aristotle articulates it must.
mwa ha
chord
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