5:50 p.m. - 07/15/02
s.o.s. :: stranded on the nomanisan island
it's Tuesday - no - Thursday? no. Monday. it's Monday and everything feels out of sync; my deja vu is more real than reality.
I have a whole list of things to say. It's the only way I'm here, my only weapon against the blankness of this little white box; let's see. how do I tell you any of these things? maybe I don't want to say them; maybe I just want the way the lines are separate and even, the way my handwriting has nothing on blue ink, white looseleaf, harshly folded halves.
there is a doodle near the the list. snake! it reads. because this morning when I was white-knuckling it down my driveway, praying the dog next door would not try to maul me a third time, I nearly ran over a black snake with my bike tires. the nice thing about gravity is that by the time I realized what I was about to hit, I had already passed him and was almost to the road. that should be a metaphor for something. life should work so easily as coasting downhill over fears.
I miss Sara. I want to call her, but it's too near dinner time. I'm scared to call her because as much as misery loves company, I don't want us to feed off each other's woe. I guess I'll have to make a promise to myself to end the conversation if it goes that way, or at least to talk about something other than recovery and all the reasons life can suck. hey, for all I know, she's had a great day and I can bask in her good energy. if not, at least will both hang up with the knowledge that somewhere (not so) far away, someone else is going through the same struggle. I'm so tired of struggling, and I'm so tired of not admitting I am. it's hard when you were hospitilized for an *eating* disorder, when for four months the only people you really talked to were the therapist who dropped you because you didn't have enough of an eating disorder (among other things) and the dietican who obviously focused on your food. it's hard to remember that "eating disorder" is a misleading term, that really this is a disorder of compulsivity, fear, need, control, chaos, and desperation for survival. they can teach you how to eat your meals, and the thoughts will start to go away as well, but all in all, even if you follow a meal plan (mostly) for ten months, that doesn't mean you aren't struggling. there were all those other things (remember?) the depression and the guilt, the shame, the fear, the loneliness, the abandonment, and the fear it would happen again.
The fear it was something you'd done, something you still did, and maybe would never stop.
I want to call up Superdoc and beg him to just fix me. Please. I know now that I don't have everything I need, I know that it isn't about me being evil (mostly), but I just want it to be finished. not the life, but the struggling. it's a grass-is-always-greener phenomenon; I look at the other things people are struggling with and (mostly) I think, give me *that.* Give me fashion and sports and parents' business dinners. Give me something that isn't so vague. I'm tired of a disease I can no longer see, a disease that fades in and out, magnified one moment, invisible the next.
I'm craving sickness. Which doesn't mean I want the bulimia, or the anorexia, or the cutting back. I don't want any of that. I don't want to give my energy back to something so falsely hopeful; I don't want to get caught up in all that extra pain. I really do know now that no matter what it promises me, the eating disorder is just another problem at this point. there's nothing good that it could do, and if I think there is, I just have needs I must meet another way. I need to know the needs, not try to meet them in a way that *does not* work.
but I am *craving* sickness; I am begging for it, and this is something so familiar. I remember how many weeks, (and I mean *weeks*) I missed of school as a kid. before it was obviously anxiety, before I was lying plainly to my parents to avoid it. when I was just so sick. sick was comfort, illness was safe for me, and I want to go back to that place. I want to go to the hospital, where people bring you pills and take your pulse. I want someone to hold my wrist in three fingers, count out a minute on the clock, and tell me I'm alive. I need to be taken care of; somewhere along this line I've lost track of how to take care of myself.
and I'm back at the same fear that kept me stuck at RED (well, one of them) - and I don't even remember how I learned differently. I don't even remember how I got through it. it goes: I don't want to love myself; I want *you* to love me. I don't want to take care of myself; I want to be taken care *of.* and somehow I learned that when I cared for myself, other people's caring felt more brilliant, less like a heroin hit and more like a sundae, but how did I *get* there? and how do I *risk* that in this place - where I don't have Brea and Sara and Sara and Stacy and Lisa and Lainie and Leah and Kat? how do I risk this in a place where people *aren't* constantly proving to me that they will stay and be wonderful no matter what?
maybe this is why I'm here, but I don't care; I just want to go home. they should have let me stay. they should have said, "ok" and worked out a plan. they taught me how to tell what I needed, how to speak up for what I wanted; this is all I want now. this is all I need: to be loved the way they loved me. to go home. again.
please tell me you can go home again.
last night I started bawling, and I couldn't even tell Mom why. I tried to push the words forth- Sara, Silje, the only one staying well, and I'm *not* well, and this is so hard and when I call Rogers, I get a girl named Courtney who is really nice and tries to help me talk, but I just say "oh, no, sorry, never mind" and turn into a dial tone because as much as I want to befriend her (so I can say to myself, "hey! I know Rogers-now as well as I knew Rogers-then") I can hardly talk to anyone these days, and we have never met. I didn't tell her any of this; I let her talk about NY and all the other things that are bothering me, the things she knows, and I let her hold me as I cried in the middle of the friggin mall (again) and started to think that one of these days (one. of. these. days.) I will be given an award for how many times I've completely fallen apart in the middle of the ritzy city shopping center...
I'm just so tired. the only person in my life who seems to have it together to take care of me is Dr. R, and since I'm not taking care of myself, I feel like I need him all the time. the other night was so so hard, and I called Rogers, hung up, called Sara, who wasn't home, and then called Rogers again. Rogers brought me Courtney, who was really lovely, but just led to more crying, and Sara led to Sara's mom, who is Really Lovely, but is as far away as Red. still, she said to me, "it's so good to hear your voice" and "how are you? ...do you want to talk a minute" and I was like, if you were not ten mizillion miles away and Sara's mother, I would want you to be my therapist.
but nevertheless she is our Rogers-Mom. and even Sara smiles when she says that. I wish more than anything that tomorrow was Wednesday; no, take that back, I wish it was last year. I don't want to be sick again (I *hate* this illness; I swear to God I do), but I so badly want to be getting better among friends.
where are my angels/ where's my golden one?/ and where is my hope now?/ all my heroes have gone/ some are being beaten/ and some are being born/ and some can't tell the difference anymore... -jewel
mandy wrote me today.
chord
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