4:30 p.m. - 09/05/02
.standard deviant..
All morning I enjoyed the solitude, and then she came home so quickly, it broke into my head. It would have been easier if I knew when she'd be home, if I could have counted the minutes instead of expecting the independence to stretch onward for any length of time. It's so different in the morning. In the night, I try to calm my body out of its spasms and its rigidness, cover my mind with an illusion of safety in hopes the rest of me will be fooled. In the night, I try to act like an adult instead of a small child, to not care that I'm the only one here, and if I say that out loud, someone will chop me into pieces with an ax. In the morning, I feel the same safety I earlier tried to pretend. It implies, I guess, that my older self fears being with my parents to the same extent my younger self fears being away from them. Seven still hasn't caught onto the fact that the people she wants around so constantly for her own protection are the ones doing the most damage. It will be a few years before she learns the term "irony" and overuses it.
That's the longwinded way of informing the world that I survived another 24-hr stint without my parents. I couldn't believe the extent to which they attempted to check my safety; I think it contributed to how scared I was when night fell. I kept explaining to them the things I wanted *myself* to remember - that I've done this a thousand times, that I'm home *every day* by myself, that being home at night isn't a whole lot more dangerous then being at home during the day, and so forth. They were trying to protect me from my fear, and instead they were giving it more weight. And night is always a magnifier. You'd think I was never hurt during the day, the way I go on after dark. But then, maybe the day's monsters are reflected in the shadows of the night.
I'm anxious all over again now, and it's harder to calm myself down when I know there really *is* someone in the next room making those noises. Maybe I should take my anti-anxiety meds; I've been doing it ever so often lately, but I'm ever so *stressed* lately. I'm not taking them anymore than I did during the last school year, and I have at least an equal amount of stress. Red-pain, Tracy-pain, school-pain, caretaker-girl-pain, and so forth. Living-with-my-parents-pain. Even when I'm in the middle of discussing them, the pain comes as an afterthought. Once again, everyone's asking me how I'm doing in the middle of my dad moving to Narnia (like when my mom moved here, like when my mom went to school in California) and I don't even understand why I should bother to be upset. Oh, it takes some getting used to: the idea when I'm sleeping in my bed, there's only one other person down below, and oh, shouldn't we be closer together if we're this much more alone? It takes some getting used to, but as I told Dr. R, I'm used to having to adjust, and I can adjust to anything.
I knew it wasn't a purely positive statement when I said it, and he knew that, too, whether or not he was aware of my awareness. (Mwa ha; follow *that.*) It certainly makes living here easier; I can take just about anything. Unfortunately, there are some things a girl should *not* get used to, and it's dangerous to do so. It's dangerous to feel strong because of how much abuse you can take; it keeps you from leaving the abusive scene. Sometimes I think the only thing sustaining me is that Rogers secured the "healthy doubt." Rogers meant that at the very least, I can always believe that *not everywhere is like this.* And maybe there isn't a rule carved in stone saying I must live in the place that is. Maybe there isn't a rule saying I have to be in pain the rest of my life. I don't deserve to be miserable, perhaps. Even with the perhapses and the maybes there's joy in knowing that. There's joy in believing it's possible that life does not have to be this way.
Whether or not it's meant to be the way it was at RED, I don't yet know. But it's easier to live, to want to live, thinking that I'm meant for what is good. It's easier to want this believing that with a little effort, I can bring forth my predetermined peace. Just keep remembering that. Don't let it let go.
John called last night, sounding like one who'd just been taking into an alley, beaten, and then witnessed a murder as he drug himself home. I knew something was up as soon as I heard his voice; he said himself he was "in shock" and even though, for his privacy, I won't relate the details here, I will say that it absolutely sucks the way his life repeats itself, the way shit consistently happens to him. Generally speaking, I believe in an internal locus of control (can you tell I'm taking AP psych?), and I would be asking, "What does he do to keep recreating this situation?" et cetera, but the boy can't possibly do anything that would prove him worry of said abuse. Even my "Are You The Master of Your Fate?" article ends with the rather important note that the otherwise-peachy internalists are in danger if they start to take responsibility for situations outside their control. Like thinking you're somehow creating abuse. I very much felt for him, and I very much did not want to caretake. I'm not naive enough to believe that what he's going through can be fixed in any snap!poof! sort of manner. He needs something big. I just wish with my whole heart that he could see (someone like or the real) Dr. R and develop a) understanding of the fact that he does not deserve this and b) strategies for getting out of/ avoiding the situation. I don't think he's creating it, so if he can just *deal*- just *run*- maybe things will work better. I kind of want to ask Dr. R if there's anything he can do, even though it brings up mixed feelings. I still have a little bit of neediness in my therapy (a lot of bit, actually) that says, "No! He can't work with John, too; he can't care for everyone else without losing track of me" - stemming, mostly, from the fact that my parents preoccupation with John throughout middle- and high-school kept them from even noticing how much shit I was experiencing. Two, I think I'd want to interfere. I'd want to be like, "Ok, you need to work with him, and you need to do this and this and that, and you need to fix this, and make that better, and teach him how to such-and-such." I'm not as worried about this, as I can easily *avoid* acting on the urge to control, but it's still there. It's like, "hey! I can't fix this because that would be caretaking and because I'm not capable of fixing this. But you have the degree so here's a list of what I need done; now do it." Yeah. I'll see how that goes...
My other (ok, so these two are two of many) dearling in the dumps right now is Chastity. I feel so sad for her; it hurts my heart to hear all the hell she's going through. And yet, she's *so* beautiful in her pain. She's being so open with it, and that's gorgeous. She's taking care of herself, and that's gorgeous, too- inspiring. She's doing everything she needs to and still crying as she makes the calls. And she's doing a little of that crying toward me, which is really touching. This is one relationship that would make a gorgeous graph. I think of the day I was the quiet student and she was the cool teacher and I think of who we are now, and it awes me-at-every-age. I think the best part in some ways is that we still have our relationship from eighth grade preserved. We haven't cut that year out of our friendship; we've just revised/evolved from there. And I adore that. I adore her.
She introduced herself with Hope For The Flowers this year. (Each year the ms staff introduces themselves with a book that is important to them. I went on and on about how cool this was last year when Mandy used my book of poetry.) She said it was special to her because she believes there's always hope and faith and because it was given to her by a former student and dear friend (aka me.) I was thrilled to the point of ecstatic!schoolgirl!crush! once again. I knew that was a Chas book; I'm so glad she loves it. Oh and...I'm so glad she loves me.
Just one more thing. The subject of her most recent e-mail was "Hi Sweet." I love this. I love people who just go for it and say the affectionate terms, especially the ones that are self-chosen...like "dearling" and "dearheart" are for me. I have others I use often, but I adored seeing that subject next to her name. It throws me back to the days of watermelon soap and glittery blue pens. I am going to cultivate one alter of myself to spend her entire life in those best-of middle school classrooms. She is one lucky alter, that girl...
The session with Dr. R yesterday was a little odd, and I felt a bit sad when he didn't say to me, "so do you want to meet before Wednesday again this week?" even though I know that if I'd asked him, it would have happened again. I don't think I necessarily needed to meet as badly as I did last time, or that it would have been as productive to do so, but I still felt the slightest bit neglected. Which I know is not about him. It's about a time when I didn't know how to say what I needed, and no one ever checked on me often enough for that to be ok...
Anyway, I had a little trouble talking. I didn't really feel like dealing with any emotions or putting any thought into my life. I was about one layer away from tears, and I was so sick of being that upset, that the layer was still very much in tact. I wasn't interested in delving into any one aspect of the recent pain with him, and I didn't really have any new information, so we just went around for awhile, with him saying lots of smart things and me saying lots of unnecessary ones. (I just didn't want so many silences as we were having, so I spoke and but said nothing...) Eventually, we did get to the basically important point of Why Mary Is Currently Overwhelmed By Her Future and her Present (Not To Mention Her Past) and that's where things went weirdly, though I don't mean that as judgment; I'm just still confused.
I told him that in the olden days, or "normally"- I was able to take refuge from my present in my future, by way of "things suck now but I'm working and I'm leaving in a year and this means they're going to be really wonderful eventually" and take refuge from my future in my past...by way of "It *is* really really scary to think about applying to college, and being in college, and graduating and being an adult, so why don't we just focus on right now when all you have to do is sit and type at your computer and that's *it.*" Normally, this worked well for me. It goes back, basically, to a moment between him, me, and a rumpled Kleenex, where he suggested I calm my future-anxieties by focusing on something really simple in the moment, like the feel of a Kleenex in my had. (I've since discovered this works fairly well for future- and past-pains.) I *like* this tactic a lot; I like not having to focus on the pain or work through it when it's that intense, to just find my way back to safety. It's a really good way to feel safe fast. For me. It works.
Or it did, the majority of times, until recently. Recently, I have no ability to calm myself. The future absolutely terrifies me. I have no sense of "it's going to be alright" and those points of life I used to look forward to- like college- only manage to send me panicking. Since I can't take refuge from the present in the future, I try to take refuge from the future in the present, which only leads me back to the reality that the present also sucks. The present which (when I am being silly and forgetting all the love I experience by way off my inbox, etc) consists of: living in D!@#$%^, being overwhelmed by schoolwork, not having any touch-able friends, and being driven ever-more insane by my technically separated parents. All of which is normal but it now has the added bonus of feeling pain I didn't let myself feel totally (not that I'm "totally" feeling it now; I think I'd die or at least be unable to function)- all that grief that's piled the past year. I can't take refuge in that, so I try to take refuge in my future, or my past, and the same cycle throws itself around again. Nowhere is safe. I'm in a tag game without base and my endurance sucks.
He said this was a really well-timed point for me to make, and I, in my "time does not exist" mindset, had no clue what he was talking about. He said that he'd been thinking of introducing me to this "instrument" that I could use, possibly, to better understand myself and have more control over my behavior. For instance, I'd become aware of the fact that a large part of my action is fear-based, is attempting to avoid greater or continued pain, and that was one thing we could discuss and try to change. The "instrument" and the "system of beliefs" threw me a bit. I mean, this is the point of therapy, right? To talk, figure yourself out, change some things. Why couldn't we just talk?
So apparently, we are just going to talk. The "instrument" is a survey he gave me a couple weeks back developed by some high-up doctor/professor (who I, unfortunately, can't imagine as anyone remotely like the doc; rather I see him as this pompous unfeeling scientific goon, and that skews my perception of Dr. R which is bad, and I should probably say so...) at the university in town. (Which happens to be the school Dr. R went to, for all those kids collecting chordchild minutiae.) *Anyway* the theory- and this is based on my memory of the abridged version I heard yesterday, so if you're going to put it in a paper or something, don't take my word- is that each person has four sections of temperament (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, and persistence) and three sections of character (self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence) and a survey is given (like it was to me) to determine first, where a person's report of their own behavior and actions stacks them in each of these four factors and two, where their actual behavior (based on how they take the survey, how the questions are read, levels of rigidity, et cetera) leaves them on that scale and in regard to others who take the test. Generally speaking, the discrepancy that exists (or doesn't exist) between the two numbers is what's of interest. For instance, my self-reported harm-avoidance score was a 98 (out of 100...he asked me what I thought it would be and I knew it would be "high." I still laughed when I heard how high.) the second score for harm-avoidance, however, was a 65, which suggests that throughout my life it has somehow been more beneficial to live with a high level of harm-avoidance. Obviously, we already knew this, but the survey itself (which is written to more clearly define the four categories, which in conversation as in life, of course mesh together) allows us to see some of the ways this acts with the other factors, as well as giving some information about *why* I might be this way. I still don't fully understand the difference between the two scores, and one of the few things I don't like about the test is that it seems to suggest that there's a norm-score (though it won't refer to it that way) and the score of the person based on their life experience. I firmly hold to the belief that everything I do is out of healthy motivation (i.e. I used an eating disorder to keep myself safe; the ed was not healthy but my need for what it did or seemed to do was "normal") and I don't think that I am somehow less healthy, or less as I'm supposed to be, than I was at birth. It seems to mean that the initial scores are distorted through life experience, and that I don't like. It could just be a misinterpretation of the information though; it's a pretty complicated little deal (as the awards this dude won for coming up with it would attest)...and it's not like I won't understand it better in the coming weeks. I very much intend to be like, "Is this what that means? Because I find that annoying" which I think will be a relief to the doctor-man. He kept encouraging me not to buy into this; he's interested in what questions it will bring up, and hopefully- what answers, not in proving the validity of the test itself. Which is really what makes him different from my vision of the dude who invented it. I was a little thrown by his proposing we work this way- for part of the session, for a little while- because I hate blatant cognitive/behavioral work. It makes me feel like a test-tube or a study instead of a person. I don't want to be dissected and I'm not a problem to be solved, and I've felt that doctors viewed me that way much too often. (I don't like this, despite the extent to which I analyze myself. I guess, I'm trying to grow, and I analzye compassionately; people who are trying to "fix" me just rip me apart to look for what's wrong. That's a little too close to abuse...) But if I keep it in perspective it really *is* another example of what I said I liked about him: that he takes the best of all fields and uses it; I was just thrown by how thoroughly he was "using" this. Then again, I don't know how other people use it, and if I'm being encouraged to doubt it, question it, and only use it as much or as little as I want to, I'd say I'm not a test-tube yet. Hip hip, hooray...
So, odd, but not entirely unpromising. And he was right in something he said- about how the more we discuss it, the more I'll think of it, and the less it will be a separate part of our discussion. It's just like any other smaller tactic we've used: he suggests it, it gets ingrained in me, we talk about my life in terms of the tactic. Eventually it will not be, "So is that everything you're experiencing? Ok, let's talk about this complicated theory now." And I do so prefer "Yeah, it's just another example of that one part of the theory." The theory is my servant; I am not the theory.
Mwa. There are weird psychological dominatrix images running through my head, and they need to leave now. So perhaps I'll do the same. It's not as if I haven't throughly bored everyone anyway. Someday, I really will write about that cute girlboy, the unfair teacher, and the boy bands.
Oh, wait, that would require change. And change is scary. Just wait till I tell you about my "novelty seeking" score. :)
huggle
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