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9:15 p.m. - 06/17/03
>>>especially when they say>>>they love me<<<
I feel wrong. Just wrong.

If last night had taken place in the nineteenth century, I would have been tied to a bed and forced to stay inside without moving for weeks. It didn't even occur to me that I was basically hysterical (in the not-happy sense) until I was calmed down a bit. All I could make myself think was that if it were a performance, it would have been a damn impressive one... But it wasn't. It was real. The tears, the sobbing, the screaming, the kicking at walls, the constant movement, the desperation...all of it, too real. That's why I went to bed at seven, after having slept most of the day. That's why I woke up at eight this morning and went back to bed. That's why all of a sudden I'm realizing that when you aren't active in your ed (or other destructive behaviors), it's very hard to remember what the need for them feels like. Until your room is spinning so fast and your throat is so choked with words you didn't say that you can't imagine putting another mouthful into it. Until you're so lightheaded, dizzy with anxiety that the idea of purging seems grounding, seems like it will calm the otherwise outrageous storm. Do you know how long it's been since I wanted to do anything like this?

Yesterday at lunch was the first time. The first time in ages. I was sitting at the counter and Mom sat down, too, and I don't even remember now what we were saying. She said she had an appointment Wednesday, I remember, and I asked if it was with Dad. She said no, and then she said that Dad's not going to this appt would not affect my relationship with him, and I told her I wasn't worried about that. I'd just been wondering if they were going to stay in therapy. She told me definitely. "Together?" I asked, and she said, "We have that option," with a guarded, "I suppose hell could freeze over" expression on her face.

Eventually, I took my food and left. I wasn't even thinking about the rules I learned at Rogers - like to keep stressful conversation separate from meals. I was thinking that it was the first time I'd walked out on my mom - just walked away in the middle of a conversation - in some time. I sat up here with my plate and stared down the boca burger for awhile, finally choking it down. She tried to come up once; I stopped her as soon as I heard feet on the stairs. I haven't really been talking to her. At all. Today was the first day when things were sort of "normal" between us again, but it all went to hell when her class started. (She teaches a class here one Tuesday each month.) I'd even been managing to say out loud all the things that were searing through my system, to say things like, "I know you're sorry. I can't even be mad at you properly because you're sorry." And later, when she mentioned taking up this tragedy with The Forces That Be, I responded curtly, "I don't think it was their decision." More and more of what I hear makes it sound like she chose this, like my dad didn't want it, and as much as I know not to listen to what I'm hearing, it pisses me off to hear that. If they don't both want it, why the hell is she allowed to do this? It's six against one. Six lives ruined for one selfish purpose. Five lives ruined for one woman's right to forge a new path and one man's inability to speak up against a single damn thing. I just want to shake her and make her reevaluate things. I want to say, "How long were you engaged? Well, take that long to determine if you really want this. Take that long to determine if it really means that much to you to be legally free to do whatever the hell you want, so much so that you'd throw away twenty-five years and five kids' families to do so." In all that avoidant sleeping I've been doing, I've had nothing but nightmares - awful abuse nightmares - with the exception of one dream. One dream. I dreamed that they were *reconsidering.* That it wasn't completely hopeless. I told my mom that this morning as well. I told her the one good dream I had woke me up into a bad reality. I wanted to knock her head off her shoulders. I wanted to pick up the telephone and beat my dad through the phone line. How can they possibly be doing this? I feel like every time I get my feet grounded is just every time I manage to forget for a second what's really happening. Then, before I know what's going on, I'm pulled up, upside-down, dizzy and dangling. Spinning and queasy. Saying why the fuck did you have to do this to me; - didn't you know?

Didn't you know that Tracy, my roommate Tracy, died less than two years ago, that I lost my home, that Sara's in the hospital, that Sara's at Rogers, that I can't go home, that - even better - my home doesn't exist anymore, that I don't know what I want to do next, that I'm fighting an eating disorder, depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, self-injury, and codependency? Aren't you fucking *aware*? How the hell do you put more on the shoulders of a child who is already sinking below the weight of everything she can't bear to carry?

You're supposed to be my parents. You're supposed to protect me. You're supposed to keep me safe. And if you can't do that, could you at least keep from hurting me? Please? Could you at least give me some neutral ground to fight off the rest of my demons on? What the hell are you going to throw at me next?

So last night she left to teach her weekly class down the road, and I fell apart. I was sobbing before I had tears, crying before I had sound, screaming before I had breath. I was running around thinking over and over again that I didn't know what to do. I wanted to call Sara, but I can't call Sara, not when she's at Rogers, not when she's already facing so much. I would never have wanted someone to call me with their pain while I was at Rogers, entirely overwhelmed with my own. She must think the same way... I couldn't call Sara, and no one else would understand, and I should call the doc, but what was the point of that when I wouldn't be able to talk, and he'd probably just say "I'll see you Thursday," anyway because lately he's taken to thinking I can get by on my own. I was reeling and bawling and completely lost, and Shannon called and I missed it, but I called her back, feeling so bad all the while because it wasn't hers to fix. It's no friend's job to pick up the pieces of the mess I am right now. It was so good to hear her voice. I made myself get off the phone and paige the doc; as soon as I got off the phone with his exchange I was crying again. I didn't even want to talk, so why had I called him? But before I could think straight (faster than he ever does), he had called me back, and we were talking. He asked what he could do for me; there was a long pause after which I said I didn't know. I told him I was spinning and freaking out and I couldn't calm myself down. He asked when I had gone from facing problems to being entirely overwhelmed by them, and I told him about the time a few hours earlier, when distraction no longer served to make me forget any of what I know. I reminded him of Thursday's conversation, how I cried harder then than I have in months, over Rogers and home and home and Rogers. I told him Friday my mom told me she and Dad are divorcing. I told him Saturday Sara called and said she was at Rogers. He told me the worst-case scenarios were happening all around me, and this time distraction was not enough to fix them.

It's not the worst case scenario with Sara, I said lamely, later. Thinking: The worst case scenario is death. Always. I wanted to say, some good things have happened. Stacy doesn't mean to be out of touch with me; her computer's just dead... But I didn't. I just kept sitting there silently, and he asked if there was anywhere I could go to get away from my family, and I told him I didn't know. I told him I had places to go, certainly, but not the stamina to do so. I told him I was too afraid. I might stop eating, I might not take care of myself, I might slide back after promising myself this wouldn't make me do so.

He asked if I had any doubt whatsoever that a visit was something I could not handle. I said, "Mmm..." into silence, which he heard as a "no" - I told him that it was definitely a toss-up at best. There have been times I was convinced I could not take care of myself if I went somewhere and done so. But to count on that? No, I can't count on that.

Where am I? I'm nowhere. Nothing can be real here, please. I'm no one. Make it go away. I'll do anything. Don't you see that after all I've lost, you can't keep taking things away???

They never did understand anything, did they? They never could. They could never offer me anything remotely like home. Well, at least it's obvious now! At least the world will understand. They'll call you a broken home; they won't be blinded by your intelligence and your humor and your arrogant insecurity. They'll understand why the first consistent, loving place I stumbled across felt to me like utopia. They won't look at me with that dumbstruck, confused look, saying, "But your parents always seem so great!" Fuck you. They are great... but fuck you. I want to go home.

I want to put myself up for adoption. I want to rebuild RED. I want to be healthy. I want Sara to be healthy. I want the plan I had for attacking all of this - the steadfast, focus-on-recovery, use-it-to-my-advantage plan to not have fallen apart within two days. And why - why did it fall apart? Because I didn't feel. Now, tell me what's wrong with that picture, besides everything. I didn't feel. What the hell else do I do with my time?

The doctor said distraction wouldn't work, and he was right. He told me to think about the specific limitations that keep me from being able to run to friends right now. He told me to think about the first day he saw me as my therapist, when we first started, when I said I was afraid to tell him how things were at my house because then he'd see my parents and he wouldn't believe me anymore. (Because the worst thing in the world to be is a liar. You liar. You faking, lying, liar.) And he said the horrible thing was that I was right. Not about him no longer believing me but about the fact that when my parents tell their versions of what our lives have been, they don't tell the story I tell. What's more they tell stories so different, you'd think one of them was dreaming and the other out of town. He asked me to imagine being a child in that house, trying to grasp reality, to feel grounded in my ability to recognize what was and was not real, when the two people who were supposed to understand reality always had such different pictures of it. He said I was right about the absolute worst thing, the thing no one wants to be right about. I was right where my parents were wrong. I understand what they don't understand. And that isn't fair. It isn't fair to have to deal with all the backlash from their lives just because I'm most capable of bearing it. This isn't what I want for my life. And you know? I was ready. I already had a new name and a new family in the works; I was already pulling away, saying you people are not enough for me. But now nothing seems tangible. I can't leave. I'm still here with her; I'm still not there with him. The woman who's comforting me and the woman whose fault this is are the same person. She lives downstairs, and I'm glad when she's not home. I'm glad when she thinks I'm sleeping even though I'm not. I hate her when my eating disorders starts to purr up into my life, starts to suggest things I don't want anything to do with. You fucking people. How could you do this to me? How could she, one second, be patting me on the back for how well I'm doing in recovery, and the next second tell me they're divorcing? How much am I supposed to have thrown at me, torn from me, and still be able to keep going?

This is like a joke. This is like the joke that someone makes when you're already over the edge, where you just throw up your hands and fall. Because honestly, I am not a superhero. I am not superhuman. I am not even two fucking years into learning how to live. And I can't take anymore. I just can't take anymore.

I wrote this two nights ago (or rather early yesterday morning.) I still haven't had the voice to elaborate or clarify:

for tomorrow (today)
what I want to say:
god. spirituality.
death. simultaneously
reincarnated soulmates.
me. her. connection.
reflection. overlap.
impact.

knowing I'm on this side
and still wanting to go back.

The last thing I need right now is to have to fight an active eating disorder on top of everything else. But you know what? The only things I need that I have are the ones I can give myself. The doctor said, at least we know now. The rippling waters, the situations that were somewhat up in the air, we're now rooted in a reality. Right? Was there anything left to bother me, anything that could get worse? (What's happening to Sara could be worse, you do understand that...?) But no, I said

Me. I said me. I said I'm scared what's going to happen to *me.* And he said, "Oh, Mary, do you really think the people who care about you - myself included - are going to let anything happen to you?" and I was grateful. I thought certainly we'll find a way through this, too. So why is it ripping me apart again today? Why do I still have tears left? Why can't I just exhale all the toxins into a bottle, cork it, and throw it at the perpetrators? Why does the victim always have to carry the fucking pain???????

I want to go home, and you know, you have to know, which one I mean. But the same weekend my mom told me she didn't feel like being married to my dad anymore, my sister-of-the-soul said home isn't where we left it. I can't have that information from a better source. I can't go anywhere else because I'm phobic, and I'll quit eating, talking, so on and so forth, the second I don't know the floor plan well enough to hide.

They've made everything worse when it was already impossible. They've given me an even more desperate need for home (was that possible?) and an even lesser substitute... How can you do that to your child?

chord

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