4:25 p.m. - 03/05/03
as frightened as a girl ::with a secret:: could be
Decision of the day: I will not talk unnecessarily about my illness to my teacher. It's not that I don't want to talk about it (I'm brimming with the need to recognize it lately), it's not that she isn't a good listener or fabulous person...it's simply that every time the subject of my eating disorder (specifically) comes up, I end up feeling worse. I think I need to raise my voice elsewhere. It's time for me to learn that selective speech is not the same as going mute again...The surrounding world is determined to tell me that today.
This morning: another visit between our heroine and her over-achieving sidekick, Superdoc. I've talked to him three times in four days, though yesterday was only for, say, five minutes. Today was a ninety-minute long stretch of intensity, during which we sidestepped Rogers (Sunday's main topic) in favor of what we call It. It is the secret, the uncertainty, the part of me that is starting to well up inside, but does not quite want to share itself yet. It is the thing that has been driving me crazy since Dr. R's silly little vacation, which definitely has to do with identity, definitely has trauma surrounding it, and possibly- well, let's just not talk about possibly. Possibly makes me nervous. Dr. R says that It is an egg, a Mary-egg (not a snake egg or a chicken egg, a Mary-egg) which cannot be forced to hatch any more quickly than is natural, but which needs nurturing and a safe place to incubate. I asked how he felt about the two of us taking our work to Rogers for a little while; it's the safest nest I know. I'd want him there, though. That's an interesting point to be at; we've worked so hard together now that I wouldn't want to go even to Rogers without him. (Though if I had a choice...the one I'd make...might ignore that little fact.) He also says that since this egg is a Mary-egg and Mary is good, there's no possible way that this won't also be good. (At the very end, he told me he guesses it will end up being one of my favorite parts of life, and I laughed at how ludicrous that sounds within the current climate of myself.) He also told me at one point that my anxiety is causing magic thinking, a false interpretation that pretends I have impossible power. My anxiety is telling me that I can get rid of It, partly because I want to, and partly because I don't. I'm scared of not being able to chop off this piece of my idenitity, and I'm scared that if I do so, I'll be hurt somehow... Somehow came out over time.
We talked about my recent difficulty with the eating disorder/ si again, and he asked a few questions about whether or not it was worth the temporary relief. He almost seemed to be advocating those behaviors, leaving me to tell him all the reasons that I don't want to use them. This illness is my enemy, it does bad things to me and my friends, it takes away everything good, and its payoffs last mere minutes with immense guilt following. Yet, when I'm already in a shamed and painful state, those few seconds of relief can still allure.
He said that we're dealing with something new, a very important something that needs to be integrated into my identity, and that we might not have gotten to this point (to address this issues) had I not developed an eating disorder. Like it or not, that's how I finally got help. (Please use other methods. They really do exist.) He asked me how worried I was that if I quit trying to break into this insight and stressing out over it, other people would see me as fine. There's more to me than my ability to "eat, study, and smile" - so what are my fears of achieving those things. Do I worry that people will quit checking in on me, on This, if I come out of crisis mode into something else?
I told him I definitely worry that (those people who should look after me) will not do so. Other than him, I said, no one is going to look in on this. No one is going to come up to me and be like, "How are you feeling about such-and-such? Do you need something? What?" except him. That's just the truth. My parents are not going to remember I'm sick if I'm not struggling visibly. That's still not a reason to relapse. I told him that I worry about putting it away, and I worry that I can't do so.
Finally, we got around to how much I'm afraid of myself. It's not even as simple as, "I'm afraid of this part of me that I don't quite know yet." I'm terrified of not knowing this part. (Doesn't that make for some hard-core ambivalence!) I told him that to me, not dealing with my feelings, not talking about what's going on, not working through issues, is like not eating, or cutting, or starting to caretake. It feels like relapse; it feels terrifying.
He said, "What if I were to say to you, 'I'm scared that if I hold my breath, I'll die.'" I could feel the air go out of me; any mention of trouble breathing sends a shiver through my lungs.
I said, "I always feel like I'm dying when I can't breathe...but...I know, I never do." I felt a bit like I was conceding, like he'd one the match, but I wasn't quite handing him a ribbon just yet. Then he clarified it to say that no one and nothing but *he* would be holding his breath. "I want to hold my breath, but I'm scared I'll die." What would I say to that? I told him I'd say that eventually you'll have to take in air, and you won't die, and it's ok, you'll be fine- etc. He said this is the same. I can't rush the process along, and if I let it sink below for awhile, he isn't going to stop checking in on it with me, and I'm not going to lose it in the meantime.
I felt the stress building suburbs in my shoulders, and I started to force words out, and when I couldn't find words, tears. I told him that if I don't deal with this now (which I'm not saying I could even do) I'm afraid I'll still be in the pain that I'm in, I still won't know how to do with it, and I'm afraid I'll lose myself the way I did years ago. I'm terrified to stop speaking lest I lose the ability to talk again. I'm terrified to stop checking in on myself every second in case I end up unable to access her at all. As I started to say this, tears welled up, and I couldn't hide them; I had to let him see me cry again. Even shamed, I feel better now than I did in that deadness. I don't want to go back to it; I can't go back to it. He told me that I'm a different girl than I was years ago. He told me that he really doesn't believe I can, with the experience and awareness I have now that I didn't then, make the same choices I had to make at one point to survive. He told me, basically, that swaddling a part of myself and suffocating it are not the same thing.
Which would be nice to believe. At some point.
In the meantime (because I needed a plan for the meantime, damnit!) I am to understand that my feelings, my freakouts, my stress right now are nothing of this part of me. They are the surrounding trauma, built around it when no one was around to help me understand it as a good and lovely thing. I am to treat it like a headache, with the understanding it's not a tumor. To talk back to it, to medicate, to call him if I need reminding. I said, "Aren't you sick of me yet?" and he said, "Why would I be sick of you?!" and I said, "I only talk to you everyday," to which he responded with a comforting description of my journey that seemed to acquit me, if only temporarily- and suggested we schedule an appointment for Sunday.
A really weird three-way conversation ensued in the waiting room (Mom added to the mix) regarding whether or not I need to go to New York on my own in April. He had asked me toward the end of the session to think about that, and I'd been planning on it, but when he talked with Mom, it really sounded like they were talking plane escorts. Like I needed someone to fly with me. I think that's terribly silly, and I wonder if it's what he meant. Yes, I will be nervous about flying by myself. Yes, I will do it and be fine, just like I have all the other times. I don't need a babysitter. And if I'm going to have one (or, say, a guardian at my beck-and-call) I don't have to stay strapped to them. I can depend on my family at one point and run out for city-excitement in the next. I will not spend the entire trip acting like a ten-year-old. I refuse.
All in all, a rather draining session followed by a physics test. Mistrandy likes to joke about how tests will determine my entire future, before telling me they don't matter. I told her there's really no reason to confirm (with the first set of statements) everything I already hear in my head. Tomorrow I have the test over everyone's favorite psych chapter: Sex, Food, and Eating Disorders. Right now I have a desperate need for naptime. Oh, yes.
Tomorrow's docket: the psych test, the gov't questions, the trip-thinking, and whatever else it is that I'm forgetting.
...Where do I send that petition for an early weekend?
chord
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