7:55 p.m. - 02/08/03
[[!you better believe that I am trying to beat this.!.>
It occurred to me today that an eating disorder could probably be considered "one hell of a detour" no matter who the patient was. I wonder if he meant it that way, that way of, "It really sucks that you couldn't get help for being in pain. That you had to get help for being bulimarexic, and by the time you got help for *that* you were so far into it, that it's taken nearly two years to start more focused work on the issues behind it." I understand that. I understand that even for people whose eating disorders "make sense" - who have been sick "more intensely" or longer than I have, this might not be the main road. I mean, everyone has issues behind their ed. Even the girls for whom magazines or opinions of boyfriends are the main impetus are vulnerable to those forces for a reason. I think the reasons are the main road. I think we all deserve to receive help with our pain simply for being human. I think we're fundamentally deserving of that much, and it isn't fair how much I had to do- to stay hidden, to survive and to receive help.
Nevertheless, I don't *know* that this is what he meant (which is why tomorrow when I see him for the appointment I'm trying to convince myself I don't need-after all, if I don't need it, my guilt can course freely through my frame- I'm going to ask him.) In the meantime, I suppose I need to know what I heard. I've felt a little guilt at taking something he said so poorly, when he obviously didn't mean it this way, but I know it has more to do with what I've been told (which I guess the comment triggered) and the semi-weirdness of the last appointment. He's so good about maintaining boundaries, and I rarely realize how much I appreciate that- but seeing him in such a rough state Wednesday made me feel like I needed to be better, like I was being difficult, like I needed to caretake. I'm still glad he came, though. Having issues come up isn't exactly a negative consequence, unless I choose not to talk about them (which I won't.) And I do think the consequences of him coming in are lesser than the consequences of if he hadn't. I didn't really explain what I went through in that waiting room, in the two hours it took him to make it to pseudo-health. I did alright for awhile, until I realized he might not come at all, or he might cut my time short (which he called to say he planned to do at one point- to split the hour between myself and someone else who was waiting; fortunately, when I became a basketcase, he abandoned this plan.) Abandoned. The verb to end all verbs. I think that's what started to hit me, just as it hit me in the few days after he left. For the most part, my struggling these past couple weeks was only magnified by his absence, not created from it. Those first few days, and those last two hours, were about abandonment, though. At the end I wanted to cry because I made it all the way to Wednesday, and now I still felt on my own.
And then he came, and he took me into his office, and I cried without being alone, which is better.
I think that's how we ended up talking about the eating disorder as a spin-off from my main plot. If there was a disorder for abandonment, I'd be the case study, I'm sure. Random as it seems considering my parents aren't even divorced. (My sister, yesterday: "Does mom's voice being on the answering machine mean they're officially divorced?" Me: "It means that the power went out, and Mom was the only one here to fix it." "Oh. Good." "So, no- despite the fact that they can't live in the same state, our parents are still 'together.'" Sarah: "It's not really that they don't live in the same state that concerns me. It's the other overwhelming evidence." Laugh.) When we go into that rawness, I know it's my core. I feel all my ages inside that. I feel the oldest girl who lost Rogers and Tracy, and I feel all the youngins, to the point that I'm preverbal. I don't know exactly. Part of me minimizes that, too. How can it be such an issue when I was never left in a dumpster or on a doorstep? But this isn't intellectual. It's scrapes against muscles far below my skin; it's the idea that the cavity through which I breathe is indeed a hole. And I know that's a huge part of the beginning, but I can't seem to find my way into it. Not fully. I get caught up in trying to justify what's come since. I have an eating disorder. Someone needs to know that.
I have a guess about who that someone is. I think she's sitting at a keyboard, getting ready to hit a period and end this sentence.
I've never thought of it as real for more than a few moments at a time. I don't believe my friends with eds when they tell me it's real because their perception was distorted in their illness. (These are girls who also thought I was thinner than they were when it wasn't the case, girls who couldn't see clearly through ed's eyes.) I don't believe the shock of staff when I first came to Rogers because I still feel I was faking, dramatizing- the way I considered it the. And I don't believe doctors because I've never had a doctor tell me that I'm sick this way. I've been treated for it, talked about it, had it dissected and removed, but no one ever said, "You have an eating disorder." I was never verbally diagnosed. They wrote it on papers, they treated me as if I knew, but I didn't. I still need someone to say it. I still need it to be real. Which seems odd, knowing me. I'm constantly trying to make painful things not real. But this one needs to be true.
What can I say? I spent years in doctor's offices, being told that they couldn't find anything, being told I was fine, being told- with small laughter and twinkling eyes- that maybe I just didn't want to go to school. It was a joke they could laugh at because I was so damn good at school, so damn good at behaving and loving it and lassoing As. I couldn't laugh at it. I took every word I heard as truth, serious more than gullible. I kept tabs on what people said, how they acted, what they believed, so as to play the best possible person in their presence. It ate away at me that I was a liar (not that they thought I was.) It ate away at me that I was faking. It ate away at me that I wasn't really sick, and the harder I fell into believing that - believing my pain was created and self-serving - the more ill I became. The more pain I endured- but silently. By fifth grade, my mom told a doctor I'd stopped getting stomachaches. By sixth grade, the school nurse said, "I know Mary wouldn't come in here if she weren't really hurting." But when people started to believe in me or simply to start voicing that they did, I wasn't swayed so easily as I was into feeling criminal. I was off the hook, but stayed inside the prison. I took on that I had convinced them of something untrue- that I was honest when I was not. I began to feel more shame when with those people who believed me than with those who did not. I created no-win situations and kept my mouth closed, breathing shallow breaths to suffocate the pain.
When he said to me, it was one hell of a detour, I didn't hear that he wished it had been unnecessary. I heard that it was. I didn't hear my own longing that no one would ever have to go through this; I heard that I had no reason to. I didn't hear that I am better and deserve better than this illness; I heard that I am supposed to be. I'm a feminist of high intelligence; I'm not supposed to be susceptible. Well, fuck that. It's not true. You know how many brilliantly smart feminists have eating disorders? More than I want to admit. So, why do these thoughts come up when he says something so unintended to provoke them?
"One. Hell. Of. A. Detour."
Nowhere in that statement does it say, "It wasn't real."
Nowhere does it say, "You faked it."
Nowhere does it say, "You shouldn't have. You should have done something else. You could have, and you didn't, so you're bad."
Nowhere does it say, "It was unnecessary."
Nowhere does it say, "You weren't in enough pain to justify that."
Nowhere does it say, "You're supposed to be smart" or "...have potential" or "...be better than this."
Nowhere does it say, "You didn't work hard enough to get out of this. You aren't going fast enough."
Nowhere does it say, "I see through you. I know it was never real. I know even when you whine about it now, you're faking."
Nowhere does it say, "You're such a needy fraud. I see right through you."
Nowhere does it say, "You're wasting my time and keeping people who really need and deserve help from getting it."
Nowhere does it say, "That's what you've done for years now, and that's why your friends aren't better. Your illness was fake, so you got through it more quickly (and it's done now!) and in the meantime, you kept them from getting what you need. What's happening now is All. Your. Fault."
Anyone see those statements in his words? No. Neither do I. So why did I hear them? This is one hell of a guilt trip I'm giving myself. Shame is quite a bit to put up with for something so minimal as five non-malicious words. Shitty body images, ed desires, weird fears, head crashing in, low self-esteem, self-judgment...it's all quite a bit to go through for nothing. I don't think I'd do that. I think there must be more to this. Generally, I avoid something through shame. I avoid something by choosing to look at it in that light. (For the record: why the hell didn't Harriet *help me see that* rather than attacking me when I was already shamed?) I'm not sure what it is. I suppose that's the next question.
One possibility: I don't want to accept my complete lack of control. My inability to save my friends. My inability to keep people safe. My inability to even be struggle-free myself (because if I were then I would be able to caretake better, i.e. help them more.) My inability to quit having needs, and my new-found desire not to suffocate them. I don't want to face those things, the powerlessness I feel over them, the pain of putting myself first when people I love are in such *peril*...or have already succumbed to it. Aigh. I hate this.
In the meantime, there are things I need to know. Things like - 1) There is no logic that says just because a food is scary, it is somehow worse for me; 2) I need to stay nourished and find better ways to deal with my emotions (even if that means not dealing with them, and the fear in that, temporarily); and 3) My body is not my enemy, blast it! I actually feel ok looking at my reflection, so why do I feel so bad inside of it? I am supposed to have muscles and skin and bones and fat and hair and all of these things. I am not lumpy. I am not huge. If I were, it wouldn't matter, but as it stands, I'm not. I'm a high-kicking, weirdass-dancing, soul-jiving superheroine. So fuck the rest of it.
chord <--who stands high atop her profanity and brandishes a sword
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