5:25 p.m. - 02/25/03
at mercy house, we fell.
not feeling right. down, shut-down, scared, out of it. not feeling like myself (again), which makes me afraid this is myself.
it's not. and things have been sheer chaos the past few days, even though at times, it's been beautiful. take deep breaths; don't beat yourself up. you'r ehaving a rough day; that won't last forever. tomorrow might be the best thing since ben harper. do you know why you're scared?
no. I woke up ready to sleep again. I got all shaky when I felt like I was going to throw up, like I couldn't keep it from happening. like I wasn't in control.
cut off from your power, which is yourself, and feeling afraid. of what?
home. home is the first thing I think when you say that. I can't be scared of home.
what about home?
the idea that I might lose it. I'm finding good things in myself. I'm finding that everything I always prayed for is inside me (though I needed outside forces to help access that and though, with that girl, I can connect to the world in real, true ways). now, I'm scared I'm going to lose her and then, I'll be alone. the most alone I've ever been. without myself.
we did that once. you're scared of going back into that. do you know why?
I think I'm scared the way I was scared in The Past. and in the past, I couldn't deal, so I shut it off, and I kept myself lost. now, there's this possibility that we might face it, and I don't want to because I don't want to feel that fear. I don't want to see what I pushed down. but if I don't, I won't know myself either. I'm scared to lose all the good I've found in the face of this (which must be bad) and I'm scared to never know myself because I'm too afraid of this one part.
it's only one part. I know it seems huge, seems vast, seems capable of overwhelming right now, but it's only one part. and when you work through it, you will learn its beauty and its wisdom. it will be on your side, and not the illness's. right now, it's even more powerful because it has allies. it can call on depression and shut you down or call on anxiety and speed you up past too fast. if you could find out what's wise in it, than it would team with you, and the illness would have one less weapon. one less way in.
I'm really, really tired of hating myself. I'm really, really ready to be done. I'm just exhausted right now, drained...drained because I'm so numb and dead and not even here.
and you took your meds and yesterday was your birthday and you tell yourself you ought to be just like everyone else. everyone else who is healthy.
yes.
why?
because I want to be strong enough to keep myself safe. I don't want to be the weak one anymore, even just in terms of me versus my brain. I want to be the one in charge. In that one very small regard, I want to be the adult. The responsible one. The one with the power and the voice, who makes the decisions. that's what I want, but I don't think I can have it. I take so many meds in a day, and I still end up here.
because it isn't all chemical. because you are facing something very, very hard.
but that's so stupid! it isn't supposed to be hard. I always said that it wouldn't be hard for me because I know how beautiful it is.
it. it's still a secret you've kept from yourself. you don't know for certain what it is.
but I know where my head has been.
yes. but what else? you're ignoring all the parts of your life that don't go away. you're ignoring the fact that you're brain is swollen with thoughts of ed and identity, with thoughts of your illness and what it means. you're not even going into the thoughts of Tracy, who did not make it through. and these are the things- you know these are the things that are really wrong right now. the work with the doctor is difficult and will be painful at times, but what's painful now you're staying silent over. and mute isn't beautiful. mute isn't powerful. mute isn't anything but middle school all over again, and baby, I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want to do that again.
I don't want it either. I don't. I swear this time I really want my voice. I really want it, no matter what I have to say or how I sound when I say it. They can't take that away from me. I don't want to be mute.
Then speak. If you don't want to be mute, speak up, speak loudly, speak long.
I just want to cry and huddle and hide.
ok. but first, show yourself one more time, that you're allowed the words. you are worth the words and the space they take. go to bed if you need to, but first just tell your story, to remember that you have one. you have a right to recall it, again and again and again.
once upon a time, there was...me. But not me, not in the way I want to know myself. I was young, maybe ten, maybe older. I had quit talking about what was painful. I didn't want to hurt anyone and I wanted people to ask me what they wanted to know; I wanted someone to say, "what is your story?" so I kept quiet and waited. I didn't want anyone to feel pain over what I had done and likely done wrong, so I kept quiet. I don't know, if that was why, but I know that's what I did. that's what I did. I shut my mouth, and I didn't open it. my vocal cords went cold. they went cold, until I couldn't feel them anymore. and my mouth reshaped itself and everything went to shadows. later. in middle school. first there was fourth, fifth, sixth grade. and I lost Brooke to a band of vagabondes, who I couldn't make myself be, and Chelsie played games that scared me sleepless, and no matter how many times I got up in the middle of the night to check the time, I couldn't make myself call for a ride, go home. and I just kept waitinig. I just kept waiting for that person that was supposed to come. I knew someone was supposed to come because I kept writing it in my stories. In my stories, there was always a hero, a teacher, a counselor, a friend, a wizard, a parent, someone. In my stories, someone always came along to save me, but in life, I couldn't find them. And I just kept quiet, waiting for someone to ask. I just lived quiet, waiting for someone with the right noise to appear.
And sixth grade came, and I started to feel scared all the time- and panicky. I was always doing things wrong and the teachers that I wanted more than anyone to love me always saw. In seventh grade, I was desperate; I split my personality into fragments, searching for the right person to be. If I'm right, someone will take interest. Someone will save me. And people started to read the stories, and they didn't like the sad endings, or they helped me rewrite the prose. And I just felt no good, no good, no good. I just felt all the time like my hero wouldn't come.
And it was me, it was me, it was me...but I didn't know.
So in eighth grade, there were all these angels, who rotated saving my life, and I thought I was going to live except I couldn't stop crying or thinking about death, and when I graduated at the end of that year, I stood in the hallway and bawled. I was leaving my heroes, and I wasn't capable of surviving without them. So I took what I had and I ran with it, damnit. I quit eating, I started purging, I cut and burned up my arms. I took what I had and ran. I took my anxiety and my shame and I built cities with it. I built America with it, always expanding, always past its means. I made it real. and I hated myself, but at least that hatred did something. I took the dead pieces of me and used them to keep me alive. Like unicorn blood- a half-life.
And then I wasn't even dying, but they put me in the hospital anyway. And I don't even know if I had an eating disorder, I couldn't tell if I did, but I knew that for the first time in my life, there were people asking questions about the silence, and teaching me how to start with my own sentences. They were saying, "You don't have to be cut off like this, alone" and they were saying, "No matter what you do or say or feel, we will not leave' and I couldn't help it, I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it; I fell in love. And I believed I was home; I believe I was home, and I got better like a girl posessed. I got better at light speed, and I hung onto it in spite of everything, and those that I loved fumbled, and fell, and Tracy died, and even as I'm writing this, I'm waiting from Mom to come in and say, "What's wrong? What happened? Not another one?!" as if one isn't enough. As if enough doesn't come back to me again and again and again. This one thing is not scarce. This one pain is big enough. And I don't know what I have or have had. I don't know what they'd call it, or if the insurance companies would call me a fraud. I didn't lose the right amount of weight and I didn't spend enough of my life ill to really be sick. But I still needed it. I still needed it, ok? I still needed Rogers. Rogers: the Emerald City. The gorgeous galaxy. The new horizon. The round world. I still needed it to take my life back, to learn how to live it. And I need the doctor now. I needed that fucking outpatient program, I needed Harriet, I needed Judie. I still do. I have this sickness, this horrible evil took-your-girl-away sickness. And I still need help. And I still need love, and I don't want anyone else to go away because I'm still waiting for them to come back. I'm still dwelling over white-out and uno-cards and all the little shit that memories are made of, waiting for lost girls to come back. Come back to me. I miss you. I need you. And God, there has to be something wrong with me if I can't hang onto it and I needed it this badly. There has to be something wrong with me because of all this pain. How do I do it now? How do I keep from building cities and nations with my pain? How do I just sit and wait for it to be dismantled, when I know how to turn it around and use it to my half-life (dis)advantage?
I don't want to trust. I don't want to wait. I don't want to love. I just want out of this whole mess before it hurts again and worse.
I just want to be three and home with my family who know they are my family and would never let me leave.
chord
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