8:45 p.m. - 07/31/03
born(e) *and* raised.
I'm not done being scared. All that's left now of today is how the appointment unfolded, but I'm afraid if I write it down, I'll have to feel it again. Honestly, how long has it been since I was more frightened of feeling than of shutting down? It's easier (but still not even easy) in his office; he's write to say it's safer there. My most anxious thoughts while we were talking had to do with him ending more on time, cutting it off before I felt at all capable of leaving. Bringing out all of what I've been hiding from these past few weeks and then leaving me alone with it. I was immensely grateful that he went overtime; I'm immensely grateful that - coincidentally - next week we switch to Monday appointments, so I have a mere three days between today's appointment and the next. I wasn't sure I needed an earlier appointment enough to ask, and then he reminded me we switch next week. And isn't it amazing how I can elaborate on these details and avoid entirely the actual substance of what was said? It's an art form...
I told him about what Dave said - Dave's words about Tracy. I told him how they'd shaken me up about as well as if I'd been there, just like old times, and how they have me questioning what I know of her, exploring all the pain of her story, the parts I sort of minimized before - but also questioning what I know of myself, of my own story, of Rogers and what happened to me there. He asked me what Dave had said, and I was surprised, just enough, at how hard it was to repeat the words. I told him that Dave says, looking back, she seemed like a walking dead person. I told him that Dave says we never really knew her. He said, "Wow," sort of quietly, and I sputtered out phrases to cover up the pain of the ones burned into my brain. I told him that obviously, it was even more awful because, granted I haven't talked to *a lot* of people about Tracy, but everyone that I have talked to mentions how she was so full of life and light and spark, and then Dave says this other thing, and it's so annoying because as usual, I can't tell if he really believes it, or if he needs to believe it, or if he said it to push a response from Sara. I have no idea. So I link the pain of those words to Dave; I say, "this is Dave's version" because that allows me to feel less hurt by it than I otherwise would. Because once, and unfortunately not now, I didn't place as much value in his words. It's easier to dismiss what he says, to be angry at him, to hide from the truth (because there is *some* truth) in what he says, if I blow it off as "just Dave." Unfortunately, over the past however many months, I've come to respect him a great deal more, and now even emphasizing the source doesn't protect me from the words.
Dr. R asked what Sara and I had talked about needing from this side of things, as in, why did we feel the need to "explore" this version to begin with, and I stumbled to answer because honestly I don't know. It's going to bring me pain, obviously; I'd rather remember Tracy as alive...so why...? I told him that I've worked very hard to remember the truth about Trace. I didn't want to put her on this pedestal after she died; I didn't want to remember her being perfect because who she was was so much better than perfect. I didn't want who she was to get distorted too badly by "what happened to her" - and I've fought really hard to keep my memory of her from getting too distorted by her death and my grief. He asked if it was more important to have a memory like a vhs tape or a dvd than to remember the essential points of who she is and how I knew her. I told him I prioritize the essential parts; that's what I want to remember. I told him the problem is that some of what Dave's referring to is what I remember, also. Yes, she had an incredible spark in her eyes sometimes, and she'd laugh at the simplest things...but other nights, she looked blind and out of reach. The most evident times were the ones where she really had tried to end her life, of course... I remember that morning, not long after she was admitted...finding her in a wheel chair outside the rc's office, her stomach full of poison, her eyes glazed over and unaware. She would tell me later that she had no memory of seeing me or of the quiet way I said hello. Her body was heavy as water before me, and all I could do was mumble hi and walk past her, away, ask what was wrong, and be told no one (among the residents) knew. We'd be told later, when she'd been taken to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. I would think she wasn't coming back, but I would ask about her along with everyone else, and I would greet her (cheery outside, frightened inside) when she returned. Looking fresh, alive, ready to take on her beasts.
The doctor said, "This must be so hard. We've never been here before." I told him I wish we weren't now. And now, again, I wish it. Now I'm remembering things I didn't even think of while I talked with him. The time Brittany overdosed, and I found her and told the staff. The way she came back bubbly and apparently carefree. The way I screamed at her in group for not understanding what she had done, for coming back as if nothing had happened. And Tracy's face, her eyes so wide, barely blinking...and the way she said, "I never thought about how it would affect other people." How later I would say, maybe Brittany didn't hear a word I said (and Dave would say she had), but I knew Tracy did. Tracy understood from an angle she hadn't before. Because I spoke up. About how terrified I'd been. About my position. Why wasn't that enough? To save her? To love her. To keep her safe?
If I could go back. And make it enough. If I could go back with a handbook and do all things for all people, so that what happened to Tracy and Jenna and Sara and...who knows who else...would not have happened. It isn't fair of me to suggest it, and it's not something I could do, but if I could go back and make their safety be like mine, travel-ready, tough enough to take on the road... I don't have much in my life right now that I would want to give, but that's one thing. If I could give them the version of Rogers strong enough to survive leaving it...
I would. And they'd be in as much pain as I am. And nothing is solved.
The "Tracy thing" as I tend to call it is so huge. More so with Dave's added comments. More so when it's not just defined as her actual death, but also every other experience of mine that ties into it, the experiences of friends that I've tied to it, the story of her life, my relationship with her, all of those things I was feeling simultaneously. We talked about this for so long, I worried that I'd never get to my worries about myself. About what my life looks like from a different perspective. Even about how I'd look through Dave's eyes. I told him the groundless worries that won't leave me alone - the possibility that Rogers is somehow less than what I make it out to be. I told him how doubting this one-steady-thing of mine has left me entirely shaken, and how - even though I can look at myself and know who I was before Rogers, who I was after, and what went on in between - even though it's obvious that they are as good as I say, that they work miracles - I still can't stop worrying that I'm wrong. I think about how they don't know. How they can't see or understand why I would find it such a home, and even though it makes sense that they wouldn't understand, I still worry that they're right. Maybe I trust them more than I trust myself...
I repeated the part of the conversation yesterday where Steph told me I was lucky not to be there, and I asked her if she was kidding, if she remembered who she was talking to. I told him how she said I was out "living my life" and I said I was in D!@#$%^. He said, (voicing me) "If only you could know what it's like for me" and I teared up again. I started talking about how I want to go back. I don't want to be sick, and I don't want to be around sickness, and I don't want to be in a hospital, but I want to go back and I can't. Ever. I didn't go into the million reasons that feeling's pumped right now. Sara's second stay, her impending discharge, my impending admission anniversary followed by my impending discharge anniversary (they're nowhere near as far apart as they should be) so forth and so on and sew buttons. I just told him that I want to go back, and I never, ever can. I told him how ludicrous recovery seems, as much as I love it. The only thing I want is to be there, and the only thing keeping me from being there is that I'm getting better, so what do I do? I keep getting better. I told him I feel something like I did when I first came back, when I was furious with anyone who tried to make me build some sort of life here, my life was back at Rogers. I was going back to Rogers, and I didn't need a new life here.
I feel a little like I'm about to get discharged again, too, and this time I don't have the denial that served me so well when I really was. This time I know that I'm not going back. He asked if I felt stuck, being in D!@#$%^, not being able to face the next challenges. I told him that I do feel stuck - I feel trapped - and that I'm doing everything I can think of to keep working so that maybe I'm a little closer to beating those challenges when the house *does* sell (if that ever happens)...but I'm also seriously hesitant because I don't want to be in an apartment with my mom (i.e. the divorce shit; I'm happy to report my denial in that area is still fully functioning) and also because I don't want to take more steps away from Rogers.
It's crazy, I said. It's stupid. I'm holding onto something I can't go back to. I'm protecting something that can't fulfill me, passing on things I could have to save this one I can't. He said I'd experienced competition; I'd been put in a position where I had to defend it. For a long time, I had to keep it safe from what my parents and my siblings said. I had to keep it safe from what I then assumed any normal person would think, hearing it was a hospital, (not understanding.) And I told him I feel like I'm crazy, but even now, if you talk to me about future experiences that are going to try and compete with Rogers, try and dislodge it from its place, I'd back off ten paces and stand still for the rest of my life. I'd do nothing rather than risk it. Despite how much of it I've already lost. Despite the fact that I can move forward and still hang onto a lot of what I have (i.e. I can still call them from the city.) If someone or something challenged Rogers, I wouldn't even have to think before I chose. My past over my future. Why?
He asked if there was any experience, other than the shit that went down with my family - experiences like being in New York or spending time with friends - that had tried to compete with Rogers. I scanned my memory. "No," I said. "New York's a little scary sometimes because it's the whole playwright thing, and that's part of what they wanted me to go and do, when I went off to live my life, so it feels like I'm moving away from them...but it's not really competitive in itself. And my friends are great. My friends are pro-Rogers." If they weren't I would beat them. "They kind of have to be."
He asked if there were any experience I could think of competing with it and proposed that nothing ever will. He pointed out that I had this huge horrible experience of having an eating disorder, and yet when asked if I would replace that part of my life given the ability to do so, I'd said no. And I stand by that answer because if I hadn't gotten an eating disorder, I wouldn't have gotten help when I did, I wouldn't have gone to Rogers, I wouldn't know some of the people whom I most love in my life, and I wouldn't be the person that I am. That experience is responsible for a huge part of my growth, but that experience is awful. He said, "If nothing can displace something as awful as being in the throes of an eating disorder, maybe nothing can replace something so wonderful as Rogers."
And in my mind there formed the quiet "maybe" of actual hope. The less doubtful maybe, the young one that seems like she might turn to you and whisper, "Do you really think so?"
Perhaps because hope seemed so novel after the past few weeks, I told him how hard it was to find. I told him how it took me sixteen years to find Rogers, to find a place that wonderful, and the place that I found (the wonderful, healing place) was somewhere filled with sickness where I could never live or stay, where few people would even understand my attachment. I cried. I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I'm lost. "Why couldn't I have found it somewhere else?" I said. "Why couldn't it have been anywhere else, somewhere where I could hang onto it?"
I love Rogers; I'd never replace it for anything, but after sixteen years of searching, why did I find the solution I would have to lose?
"That part," he said, "is really screwed-up." And as my shame kicked up, he followed almost psychically to say, "Not your thoughts about it. Those aren't screwed up." The fact that I could only find what I did where I did is screwed up. The fact that I couldn't have it with my family, or at my school, or somewhere.
I said, "It took me sixteen years to find Rogers, to find something that wonderful, and I can't even have it. I just don't know how to believe that there's going to be another place, anywhere near that good, where I can really stay. Where I can be healthy, be myself, and that won't be grounds for them to kick me out."
And I'm scared to find anything else. Scared to lose any more than I already have. I noticed as I was talking that there is one person challenging what happened at Rogers, one small voice poking it around, trying to see if it was really so great. Mine. The past week or two I've been on my own case, ready to dismantle the only thing that keeps me together. And I'm so used to diving into self-psychology and only dismissing those thoughts that are old-hat to me (the shame and illness woes I've been through a thousand times) that maybe I've been fooled. I don't know yet if I'm supposed to challenge this or not - maybe there's not a right or wrong track - but I'm fairly certain I'm not supposed to "what if" my way out of one true experience that has saved my life on several non-consecutive occasions.
See, I do still want to be their living proof. Mary Brave, a daughter, born and raised.
chord
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