5:00 p.m. - 08/30/02
::jigsaw pieces of my past->::
I got a beautiful letter today. Two actually, and all but one paragraph was beautiful, though all of it was written with love. I just read the second one, so maybe in a moment I will feel able to talk of them; for now I need to rest and let my head/heart wrap around the words.
I found myself again last night; she comes when called, if only I hang onto her. I went up into my loft; there was a clear spot on the floor near the big window which is actually a door. I sat there with the largest piece of paper I've drawn on since art therapy, (I used to very much prefer small sketching; now I need space to stretch in), lit the candle Joy (mom's coworker) gave me on my birthday, and listened to the first side of Silje's tape. I hadn't heard the tape since that really hard night a few weeks ago, when I used it to try and lull myself to sleep, and I was amazed at how beautiful it is. A few of the songs are ones I knew but, since we listen to such different music, never really saw the full beauty in, and it's nice- it really was- to hear those words: from the speaker, from dear Silje, and from myself. I try to think sometimes, not only how it would be to give this or that song to a certain dearheart, but also to let the words apply to me.
So I stretched across the thin paper "canvas" letting my soft pastels run across the white. I haven't used pastels since therapy either, but something about them felt right, felt freeing. I didn't draw in any way that would be worth showing anyone, by which I mean that I did not show the modicum of artistic talent I did develop as a kid, but rather drew as that undeveloped kid. And slowly things started to pour out. I noticed how the colors played out on the page, remembered an Elisabeth Kubler Ross assertion (red is the color of danger) and saw the way my eyes, my ears, my throat and arms, were caked in red. My senses were all stifled, cut, or scared. My mouth, conversely, was a brilliantly calm blue, one that made me feel safe and want to speak. And I knew that must be part of it. That I had feelings and maybe even observations, experiences in the right-now, that I wanted so badly to express, but was afraid to fully take in with my senses.
Near the end, my face ended up behind the smoky black curls of smoke, hidden and trapped. I felt how much I wanted to break through that quiet, the numbness I had put up for protection, but I felt, too, the loneliness of staying locked behind it. Even self-made smoke-curls suffocate a girl; it's true.
And I drew some cool blues and yellows close to me, something almost spiritual, safe but still enclosing. Another stick lashed out at the lines to give me space, don't stand so close, I need some room to breathe. And then I was sad because if I pushed everything away, I would have nothing; if I pushed everyone away to get my space, I would be lost in the vastness of it. But by the end the arms with their green-red scars and hands bandaged by love-sockets that burn in blowing out, had a shadow of blue, had something almost like a shadow or a background highlight reaching out but from enough distance not to be imposing, not to intrude. And I thought to myself, something I'd forgotten much more deeply than I have the feeling of being safe in what people-who-are-not-me call God: that maybe that feeling doesn't have to be what they say it does. Maybe I don't have to have the relationship I'm *supposed* to have with that side of the scrim. Maybe..."God" can just be what I need without the rules.
That saved me once; the memory has taken long to come.
I started to draw exits for the trapped lines, highlight beauty in the dead-limb mess of chest. And things started to look less clownish and a little more alive. I felt the pain that was begging to be express, but also the support within expressing it, and I knew it was coming, that if I would hold out against compulsivity for just another twelve hours, until I had seen the doctor-dear and taken the opportunity to exercise that voice of mine, then maybe I would be ok. Maybe I would remember that even when I'm alone in a room, if I fall back I will be caught. Even if I'm fallen in a room, if I reach out I will stand. If I reach in, I will not be shocked by electricity or erased by body/soul erosion. Bye, bye me. It won't happen. I will be safe, if I take the time to secure that I can do what I need to stay that way. If I make my choices with my safety in mind, I will be safe.
I have some dears to remind me of that. I have letters from Silje with lines like "your strength amazes me" and "you know how to brighten up my day." I have a doctor-man who leaves the post-hyphen part of that title in need of new connotation. Who tells me that I can see him between last Wednesday and the coming one, who makes it work, and more than that, makes it good. I think sometimes I still expect that I am talking Finnish in a Spanish world. And when he understands it is that much a miracle.
We waited in his office for awhile. It seemed longer because these two kids (probably nine and twelve) were there also and the younger one had taken over my chair. It is not OCD that I always sit in the same chair; it is comforting. And I was fine in the mushy white one on the other side of the wall, but it was not so nice to know that if I could endure the strange expression of the 9-yr-old when I asked him if he would switch, I probably could have had it back. But then, the white one sits alone like cheese, so his friend or perhaps foster brother?, wouldn't have been in roughousing proximity. I dealt.
They were fun. They played very physically, and at point, built a tower out of- them. I was very much intrigued by how my life would have been different were I a boy at +/- ten years old, though they lost me at a game termed "Bloody Knuckles." Let's pound our fists together until they bleed, cos that sounds fun. I was very much a girl when I heard that proposed.
So the doc appeared, and had a nice conversation with the older of the two, who very much did not deserve the doctor to bend down. He (the 12-yr-old) was being ever so manly and mature, talking in this gruff, polite voice, and shaking hands with Dr. R. I was very glad when the doctor stood up tall and talked to him as an equal (he caught on after about a microsecond), as the kid totally deserved it. His "mature" performance was far better than most people I know double his age. I was much impressed.
Moments like that make me sad not to have my vision. It's ever so hard to people watch when you can't glance over, when the features blur, and basic colors are hardly distinct for definition. I will be happy to have my lenses back, in the spiffy new Frames of Subtle Mystery. I think I'm growing used to blindness, and that's bad.
So the 12 and 9 year olds left with their token guardian, and the doctor invited me in. I managed not to misjudge the doorway this time (I occasionally run into things: the joy of astigmatism meets meds) and sat down without bruises. He came in as well, shortened the ever-so-long moment of silence we always have for goodness knows what cause, and asked me how I was. I said so so, and he repeated it. Things went on from there.
Ooooh, event-recollection. Scintillating, yes?
He mentioned that a lot had been going on for me, to the point it might be hard to talk or even think of, and I replied that yes, it was overwhelming, and I'd dealt with this by *not* thinking about it for most of the week, by being compulsive and doing schoolwork, and not feeling anything except addicted and crazy as me-in-middle/grade-school. He asked how long it had been going on, how long (about 18 hrs) it hadn't, and when I realized that I was avoiding my feelings. I told him somehow, the fact that by last weekend I was absolutely wrecked by my upsettedness and from Monday on I was nothing beyond "in school" clued me in. He thought maybe I'd been worrying about the future, and I admitted that comes in... The fear rears its ugly head occasionally, like whenever people mention I *have* a future. But mostly, I'd been overwhelmed by the same things I talked about on the sorta-birthday: about losing Tracy, losing Rogers, and losing generally. I told him about Dave's phone call, and like a good little therapy-god he confirmed that it had been my home to call, my family to inform. We talked about when I first came here after discharge, and how no one was really interested in hearing about Rogers; no one really understood the depth of the wound. We talked about the similar situations I was always having, like when Judie refused to see me, when I got kicked out of the IOP- he added the time Harriet tried to send me away and the 8-wk mark, when there was the possibility we'd split as well. I hadn't thought of those, I'm not sure they're exactly similar, but they're relative I guess. Rogers is by far the greatest pain, and was by far the hardest to leave/ lose, but it meant something to me that he saw the pattern. I wanted to ask him - maybe I'll have the breath another day - why it kept happening. I very much believe that life is cyclical, and that themes return, usually so you can learn from them more fully than you did before. But I very much don't understand what I'm doing to keep bringing this up in my life. Other than the lesson of "it's not always good to fall in love with your therapist(s)" which I think I have down. I don't consider him the band-aid to all my pain; I don't feel like he can fix it all, or even that he's all I need in life. So maybe it's not something I'm doing. Maybe it's like abuse. It keeps happening and it has absolutely nothing to do with me.
Wouldn't that be nice...though my controlling nature doesn't dig the lack of power. There must at least be some -defense- I can have, mustn't there? Other than the instinctive, "I'll just never get in a relationship/ care for anyone ever again. Then I won't be hurt." Riiight. Mary-completely-alone-right-now would be less painful that Mary-afraid-she-will-be-later. Methinks, there's a better solution to be had. Mehopes, anyway.
He said a lot of really resonating things, few of which were painless. We talked a little about what I most feared Rogers would say if I told the people there how I was feeling about them Even Now, and what I would must love to hear them say (even if that, too, would bring some pain.) At one point or another during the session, he said a few of the things I'd asked them to say. He'd give an example and he'd use the words, use the collective first person, that would strike through me. And as I let the tears stream down (I call it breaking, but what relief it is to cry there) I knew how deeply runs that pain. The mere idea of them saying these things to me- the good ones or the bad- was enough for me to cry.
But I didn't stop talking, even in the tears. Before I went in to see him, I was feeling mostly copacetic, so I kept trying to sabotage myself back to where I *really* am. (Feeling fine is dandy when you actually do, but I don't dig only feeling fine because I'm safe-at-the-doctor, and then going home having said nothing about all the pain outside that safety.) I tried to draw up the pain that I felt at the end of the last session, thinking I was going to go a whole week without talking to him, and my feelings found their way back to my voicebox again. In some of the deepest tears, I drew the voice to speak in words as well. And I said to him, "I don't understand. I don't understand why no one ever needs me as much as I need them. And I don't understand how they could spend three months telling me that I could trust my voice, my perception, my feelings, that it was all true and right, and then when I told them I wasn't ready to leave, they didn't listen. It doesn't make sense." I fell back into crying, relieved to have said two of the scariest things, and he said oh-so-softly (tone not volume) "It doesn't make sense." The smoothness of the words was a relief. I want him to understand, and he does. I can't risk them not understanding right now, so it's such a relief to have *someone* who does. We talked about how completely uncharacteristic my last few weeks there were, how their inability to hear what I needed then was completely opposite of every other day I'd spent with them. I told him that throughout my stay, I'd been weird or at least quirky for wanting to stay, but it had rarely been something people beat me up about. Most of the residents dealt with it or made generally-kind sorts of jokes, and most of the staff understood. And I didn't understand why they didn't listen when they were they ones who taught me to expect I'd be heard. I want to know now. Why? Why was I discharged in November, when I was an absolute wreck over it? Because there were so many people in more immediate danger than me? Because my food was good and that was all that mattered? Because I was a playwright with a conference coming in New York?
I loved New York. I absolutely loved meeting Ruth and having the YPI experience. I didn't know how desperately I'd love playwrighting until then. But...whether I could have known this or not, it would have been worth missing to stay at Rogers. *Especially* if Dr. R is right in saying that I would have eventually been ready to leave. I don't have the experience to believe that, though it is a nice idea- I still think I could have stayed there years and never found the desire to leave- but if he *is* right, it would have been worth another few months, another year. It would have been worth school being thrown completely off track and colleges having to deal. It would have been worth staring down the room where I held Tracy, after the loss. It wouldn't have been worth losing her, of course; nothing is...but maybe that isn't something that, even given the power to go back and replay this year, I could have changed. I think sometimes that I'm completely separate from what happened to her, that maybe there was no way I could have stopped it, even if I'd known of it and been able to physically stop it. I think sometimes that it was completely outside of my world, that my sheer force was incapable of saving her, and maybe maybe there could be peace in having known her at all. Maybe I was lucky just to be her mate, her one-week sister, her polar opposite. I don't believe this yet, but sometimes it creeps in. And no matter what else, I *am* blessed by knowing her. That part is real.
Back on the couch, we talked also of what it was like to *go* to Rogers; he wondered if the pain of leaving my parents was similar to the pain I felt now, and I told him there was a general feeling of displacement then as now. I wanted a home I didn't have (or rather, didn't know yet that I had) and that was painful, but a different painful from having had one I no longer do. I told him that even in the terror of my first weeks there- because it *was* terrifying to be admitted- I knew that the home I wanted to run to was not the home I had with my parents. I knew that not only had I lost the house (it sold soon after I left for WI) I had lost home. Or never had it. I wanted to run, to hide, to be safe, but I knew somewhere in me that home-with-my-parents did not provide those things. And so I stayed.
I told him of the first weeks, so scared. How the people seemed so wonderful, and I was so afraid they'd hate me; I started eating so as not to break the rules- to be liked. When I got angry, I locked myself in my room, I couldn't bear the idea of them seeing me explode. I knew they'd stop being kind, they'd explode back, they would leave. I knew something absolutely horrible would happen, and it was a long time before I was able to truly let loose even there. When I saw that they stayed, and they didn't scream, and they didn't break, when I saw that they loved me as much (...) as they had before the feelings, I grew safe. I started to understand that what I was experiencing was genuine. And that's when it started to be really wonderful, instead of scary-but-still-good. That's when I started talking "more than my share" in group and not apologizing for it. When I started screaming one second and laughing the next, because anger and gladness were safe. Because I was that multidimensional. And that was ok.
I really felt love there, and I truly believed that it was genuine. I want to still believe that now. I need them, even miles and so-many smoke-walls away.
At the end, he told me that he had to send me back to D!@#$%^ until Wednesday, but that he was by no means leaving me, or sending me away. He said it twice, actually, that he would be here Wednesday, and beyond Wednesday, and that in the meantime, I knew where to find him, right? He's so beautiful like this, so genuinely good. I don't have to scrape through all the pain of talking to him to find the bits of good, the way I did (especially the later days) with Harriet. I don't have to work to be grateful for him; I just am.
He doesn't do cognitive-behavioral or role-play or any of the shitty sub-groups of psychotherapy that people work. He just takes the best of all of them, and does it naturally, does it genuinely, at the right speed with the right intention. He doesn't say, "How about you talk to me like I am Rogers now, and I'll respond?" He just talks, and somehow all the good of that is had without the weirdness. I want to clone him and give him as a Christmas present to everyone in the world. Including him. Because I can't believe how easily he's good at this.
It's so much easier to quiet down the feelings when you've let them scream their loudest for awhile. It helps to have someone who watches you touch your tears for an hour, and still shakes your hand at the end.
Little things and many of them...
chord
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