10:15 p.m. - 11/05/02
[so we go from year to year with secrets:----
Lately, I'm so tense that people notice when they touch me. I hold myself so tightly that my body rebels when I attempt to move from my locked position into relative mobility. My legs, for instance, are not interested in standing, despite the pain of being lodged under me. And even though the Paxil commercials all mention tension, I can't seem to call it anxiety. After all, I'm not shaking, I'm breathing ok, I don't feel like my entire world is spinning around me. If this is anxiety, it is not the anxiety I know.
For the most part, today's sadness was relatively beautiful. The feelings of youngness I mentioned in the previous (random) entry felt deserving of affection. I felt okay being kind to myself because I always try to be kind to small children. It wasn't until tonight that it escalated into feeling alone, alone and terrified, the way I *spent* most of my childhood. I realized that I had lived a similar day to those I took when I was sick growing up, veg-ing and feeling sentimental. Now it was nighttime. Now, I had to face the terrifying reality that tomorrow meant school, and I had to go back. I had to go back, and what would happen to me then? I'd die, of course. I'd die, and no matter what, I couldn't get out of it; I had to go back at some point, but wasn't there a way, just any way, to make it so I could have another day of safety. I didn't lie about feeling sick. At night, in the early morning, when the realization that 8:00 was creeping-ever closer would hit, the sickness *would* return, would exaggerate. When I looked for symptoms, they were always there. Terror breeds illness, and illness was my safety, even then.
I keep telling myself, I don't have school tomorrow. I do not have school tomorrow. Not even homebound from a school that is not N*land with a teacher who is nearly always kind. That teacher has a dental appointment, and I have a day to do my schoolwork the way a sick girl does, from the couch, from her bed, from home without the interference of fear and abuse. Still, I can't bring myself to feel it. Part of me, yes, she is still suspended at age Seven, and in her world sunrise means the guillotine. Part of me is still thirteen and trying to find the energy to make the walk to her parent's bedroom, so she can ask for the day off, and return to a safer sleep than that she's had. I can't escape the fear that seems to be gone, just as I can't completely escape the fear of what will be. I started to realize today that wishing the school year would be over means wishing next fall would be closer, and I felt absolutely terrified. I grounded myself in the moment, but that gets more and more difficult as the moment seems less and less real. Why is it like this? Why does life seem so infirm? Sometimes I feel like the world around me could dissolve and everything's a dream. It isn't the same separation I felt when the depression blurred my world, but it's disconcerting all the time. Where is the structure that commands faith? Sometimes I feel like I could speak and speak and speak, and even my own ears would never catch the tone.
I guess it's an old riddle: If a girl falls in a forest, and no one's around, does she really fall?
If a girl lives in D!@#$%^, does she really live? Why is it that the fabricated world seemed so much more real? Why is that even when I play-up my own voice, my own movement, I can't seem to take in that I am real. I want to be real. I don't want to be a figment anymore.
I just want the world to be happy, and I want to be part of that world. I want to know I'm safe, and school will never invade again. Despite the college applications that must be sent off next Tuesday, school cannot hurt me anymore. I want to know this. I want to be safe again. I want someone to take me into their arms and say, "Whether you are seven, seventeen, or seventy, you can trust that between the two of us, your life will never again overwhelm you."
I need that right now.
chord
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