10:55 p.m. - 09/12/02
[[//looking. back- seeing far -landing //right// where we are::||
Last night was the first time I slept the way a healthy body might in quite some time, and it felt good. I had to coax myself out of some mid-night insomnia, but waking up this morning, I felt rested, felt revived. And that's so rare for me - so often I go to bed not knowing if I'll be up all night or sleep so deeply and so long I'm sick - that it was joy. And now I feel tired enough to do it again, but I doubt I will. It's rare, you see. It's rare.
I spent the day doing three projects for school, which is why I'm so exhausted, I guess. It was nice to be doing projects, to do something other than reading and worksheets and problems at the end of this or that section. Still, it's more time-consuming that way, and I just didn't let up until quite some time (it can't really have been seven hours, can it?) had passed. I don't think teachers realize how long some of these things take, but then, maybe they just don't realize how obsessive a recovering perfectionist can be. I'm not sure how I can work all day and still feel slacker-ish, but those messages imprinted in my head are hard to shake. I did have some joy, though. I had to do a "fashion strategies" (I still have to write that course title in quotation marks) paper responding to an article (on a fashion trend) of my choice, so I followed my primary goal of "I will use this class to blatantly advertise my values and beliefs; I will *not* let it undermine them" and wrote it in response to one I found on men's skirts. I kept laughing, wondering what they must think of me at this school, at the same time I found it odd they'd think anything at all. Even after hearing a Jeep with a flag-draped bumper blare "Born In The USA" - I still occasionally forget that some people draw their conformist lines much closer to home than I do. I understand the symbolic issues of men's skirts, the ideas they might bring up, but the skirts themselves are not an issue to me. I was surprised at how conservative the article was.
And then, for God knows what reason, I had to do a a project called "Names...and things" for my *creative writing* class. My *creating writing* assignment was to write my name in Hieroglyphics, write my name as a rebus, come up with three pseudonyms and give reasons for the choice (haven't done that yet, though one is of course, Atomgirl), and make *business cards* for two professions, two businesses, one relative, one teacher, another two professions (supposedly of the class' choosing, but you know, I don't have classmates), for one of my pseudonyms, and for myself. It took forever, and I still have *no idea* what any of this has to do with my developing as a writer. I mean, I enjoy the Atomgirl business card that says "progressive philosophy and personal evolution since 1985" and I enjoy the just-me business card that quotes Dar ("she gave me the language that keeps me alive") but *what* did I learn here? And shouldn't I be aware that I learned it if I did?
I made the mistake of looking at the next project before I finished this one. It may very well be equally bad. But at least it involves writing. Moralistic, fable writing, but writing nonetheless. Who would have guessed *creating writing* would drive me mad?
You, probably. Probably you. I guess I have the least patience for the abuse of things I love. That would make sense.
I'm a little worried about people again. A little lot. Sara had her electrolytes checked on Monday, and even though I'm sure she's ok, I'm never "sure" of anything. And it's been months since Dixie wrote. I know I have to call her, but I'm scared of what she'll say. I'm leaving this paragraph; it's only welling my paranoia to talk of it.
Or is it post-traumatic stress when it is or was once justified?
I never thought I'd be relieved to be told I was traumatized. But I am. Over and over again, even when I feel a little guilty- like I've misrepresented things, when someone references "the trauma" I've been through, I'm grateful; I'm relieved. It makes it real again, makes it enough. It says, "your parents didn't have to beat you, and Chelsie didn't have to rape you, and your teachers didn't have to throw you into walls. what happened was more than enough to be horrible; it was traumatic." I remember sitting at the table with Rhonda and Stacy and reading them my autobiography assignment, having Rhonda say that even if nothing had *happened* (with Chelsie; you know my memory's a little fuzzy here and there), the fear was traumatic. And the anger Rhonda felt was valid because if nothing else, she was angry that I'd been made to feel that fear. That changed a lot for me. It said, "Your feelings, your perception, your response, is as important as the intention of the person. To you, it is more important." I never knew that could be true before. I had to believe the opposite, to survive. It's funny; I was just telling this to someone today. I have written in one of my middle-school stories that the important thing is the intention behind a person's action, not the feelings of the girl who receives it. It was a revelation at the time. I didn't know then that some of my lightbulbs could burn.
Burn. I haven't...I haven't given into the airhole urges, and they're lessening a little, though I still feel screaming in my head when I think of certain things. I ate oatmeal for breakfast yesterday, something I haven't done in ages, and the spoon was so warm. I touched it against my arm a minutes, and it felt good. It scared me that it felt so good. It wasn't painful, and I didn't want the pain so much, but if burning would bring *that warmth* I thought...Later, Dr. R told me to keep a cold glass nearby when I was doing schoolwork, and if I started to go crazy (not in so many words) I could hold the class for a minute or so to bring myself back to the moment. (The kleenex principle again.) I wondered if maybe that was all I wanted. The comfort of warmth and the grounding that comes with being in the present. Being in the present and only the present. I think if I can keep my anxiety down that way, and get my warmth from showers, zip-up sweatshirts (oh, I can almost live in them again! the weather's getting close! yippee!) I might get through it without even starting. It's been a long time since I've had a week like this and not tried. I'd say I never had, but never is too scary; it builds pressure I don't need.
Sometimes impending accomplishment is enough like expectation that it makes my head spin similar directions. (When he uses the word "expect" he conditions it: "your expectations," he says. "As you define them, as what works for you." This is why, even when it doesn't go so brilliantly, and I leave wondering if maybe I hype him up too much, when he really is a doctor after all, I know he's great for me. Because he uses "brave" and redefines "expect." And some of them he knows and some of them he feels, and it's rare to find a full-fledged doctor who trusts both. In himself as well as within me...)
It's done a lot for me - this therapy. I think of where I was with Judie, and I wonder if I got anywhere at all. But I must have. Because I held on, after all, and I was at a place where I could say what I could no longer do when Tammy asked. I was at a place where I could allow myself to be admitted to the hospital. And it felt good to be with her, to sit with her, even if I slept for a day afterwards, and far from lessened my purging. I don't think I would have gotten well (even to the extent of "well" I am now) having stayed there, but I don't think I didn't get better with her. And I feel something for her; I have a gratitude that turns to her at times.
And RED, we all know RED, and Dr. R. These are the ones I credit with really changing me. These three. I learned from Harriet, but I was hurt there, too, and not in the way I was hurt at times by Dave. Bette was too interim to really teach me much, though the experience of Bette fits into larger models, has something to say. It's just odd to think of all of them, to think of what they've done. The IOP, too- I forgot them; of course, there was that, too. And all these people, all these hours, it's so hard to chart the progress that I've made. I know I'm different, in a way that means I'm more myself. I know I've gained the ability to trust my feelings and my perception a great deal more, to doubt that I have to be in pain all the time. I've experienced a place where I was loved and supported and allowed to feel, and given the chance to hope I may have that again. I've learned to have needs, to trust them, to not constantly berate myself for them (though I'm not always trumpeting quite yet), and to get them met. I've gotten to the point where my illness occasionally seems like the exception to a healthy reality, and that is quite a change. It may seem to disappear completely when I fall back into It, but...the change remains through every warped dimension. I am more who I was. In the beginning.
Sometimes I think life is all about learning what you knew just before gestation/ infancy. Learning again what you knew as you were on the brink of physical beginning, on the brink of birth, getting back to that point. I guess that's how I can have changed to be who more who I was. How I can be different than I was a year ago and somehow more myself. How I can feel I'm traveling through time in more than one direction. Simultaneity. It's a complicated faith I don't quite understand. But I enjoy the exploration. When it's 11:30 and I've closed up school for the night, the journey is a joy.
I think, right now, that the reason therapy (in and out of Rogers) has been so good for me has to do with more than the good of therapy itself. I think, maybe, the needs behind my illness- the abandonment, the thirst for support, and care, and understanding- were so directly met in the process by which I was taught to understand myself that I got better in two ways at once. Translation: While I focused my energy on discovering my needs, the people around me were unconsciously healing them. By some divine fate, what I needed slipped in, while I was still working on determining it. And I think maybe that's why I've stayed "well" in the ways I have, the ways not all my friends have been able to stay. It isn't that I'm trying harder or that they're more sick; it's that the world has yet to meet their needs. The opportunities have yet to surface. For me, they surfaced simultaneously (what choice did they have?- I don't believe in linear time), and so I have twice the foundation. I have the faith and the proof below me all at once.
I want that for everyone, and I want everyone to know that. If it's true. I want to say to them: it isn't you. It isn't me. It was the way things are, and I don't understand it, but it worked. I wrote that in an e-mail today also. I said, the goal is to have it work. To understand the self, the needs, to believe in the worth. The goal is not to prove the effectiveness of therapy, this or that model, to win a doctorate degree. We are not pawns of those in the mental health system; we are there employers, and I want to know that in my deepest self. I want to not be scared to say I know this.
But see..."I *heart* the opportunity to truly learn that my needs are worth meeting at the same time they're being met in a genuine, kind manner" would crowd a t-shirt much. so "I *heart* therapy suffices. for me, they've been synonymous. for you, maybe the ocean is the key...
chord
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