9:50 p.m. - 09/22/02
||cocooned in my room]--
So I just wrote an e-mail in which I mentioned allergies, and on the your-message-has-been-sent screen which followed there was an ad for Allegra. This magnifies my ever-present paranoia. I think, given the necessary time and attention span, I could be a really good conspiracy theorist. Or, minimally, add paranoia to my illustrious list of mental warp-ed-ness.
I will not stop writing e-mail just because my computer has eyes. George Bush can read my e-mail if he wants. Letters make me happy, so meh.
...How am I? I'm not completely sure. I went out with my parents today (yes, both parents- my dad is actually home for a day or two) and had an ok time. I didn't want to take my anxiety meds before leaving (for whatever reason) but I brought a dose along just in case, and I'm really glad. I took it just before we went into the massive Borders (massive Borders stores are pretty much the only option for book-buying in this oh-so-scary neck of the woods), and whether it helped or not, goodness knows I was crazy enough having taken it to make me worry about how I would have been otherwise. I felt really self-conscious everywhere, again. Like everyone could see me and knew I wasn't supposed to be there. Like my normal, browsing behavior was somehow criminal and any moment lights would flash, buzzers would sound, and I would be flogged unconscious in the middle of the self-help section. The ultimate headline.
I kept it pretty much in control, or the propranalol/alprazolam did...but it was still a bit odd. This summer in New York was the first time I realized that, if I hadn't bought or stolen anything, there was no way an alarm would sound when I exited a shop. If an alarm did sound, I would not be punished because...I would not have done anything. It's literally taken me some seventeen years to realize that I will not be caught and punished solely for existing. Sometimes I still forget that. My right to exist, to explore. I keep waiting for the bottom to fall out, forgetting I'm as human as everyone else.
I want to know my own worth. It's really difficult these days.
I've started to really not like bookstores. My last few experiences have been really bad, saved only by time in the children's sections, cursing Gary Paulsen, praising Katherine Paterson, and (for the first time ever) being mistaken for an employee. That last part was nerve-wracking but a little wonderful. I was bashing a "companion book" to Harriet the Spy at the time (I hate when authors write sequels to other people's books) and it felt a little like a compliment to be asked if I worked in a bookstore. I almost asked if I could help the woman anyway because I'm not completely ignorant, though I'd never been to that particular store. Anyway.
I just keep searching for salvation in books...or actually, friendship. Affirmation. I'm always looking for the next book that will say to me, you're not alone. The substitute companionship that can remind me of everything I know and every friend I *do* have. I barely read at all while I was at RED, (I *never* read self-help or recovery-related books), and that makes sense to me now. At RED, I had enough perspectives, enough affirmation, enough challenge. Here, I need something I can touch, a version of friendship I can reach. I kind of want to explain that to Dr. R in case he's done as much reading as I think he has. I want to say, "it's not that I'm trying to *study* this, it's not like I need to know everything about it to feel smart, but if you can give me one little book to help me through this- if you can suggest *one little title*- it'll help." I never thought I'd be that girl whose best friends were bound in paper covers. Or maybe I always knew I was that girl, and it's only the current obviousness of it that surprises. I always knew I was that girl; I'm surprised that everyone is aware of it now. I've lived here two months less than one year, and I have yet to meet or make a friend outside my own head.
Maybe I just don't want to keep track of anyone else. Maybe I know that even the best sort of intimacy could not, at this point, balance my attending school. Damn the N*land faculty and their blasted girl-destroying skills.
Anyway. I just need That Book. I don't care if it's memoir or case study or self-help or fiction or poetry or sci-fi or what else. I just want it. This time, I want the book that knows what it's like to be disillusioned with what you've based your life on. I want a book that understands the loss of self following a sudden realization of reality. I don't even know if what I'm experiencing is reality. I don't like saying I'm disillusioned because I don't know if it's been an illusion; I don't think it has. But it's just so bizarre. I don't want to be anyone outside my recovering-personality, and I don't trust who I am inside of that. I am clearly losing my mind altogether.
I looked at cards for awhile and felt better. It must be the corniest thing in the world, but sometimes I look through cards and I see a sweet one, and I feel like someone has sent it to me. It cheers me up. Like the teddy-bear shaped card asking me to feel better "beary soon" knows I'm having a rough moment, and truly wants to help. I'm not delusional...it's just...being this alone, even inanimate support can make the difference.
I don't mean to underestimate the friends I do have. Letters, e-mail, mixes, memories- these truly sustain me. But I'm human. If I don't have a girl to hold, I grab a rabbit or a bear. If I don't have a voice, I seize the written words.
My glasses came in Friday, and when I went to pick them up, I heard another client use the northern "o." I instantly looked up, ready to tackle her with joy, and (I was still blind at this point) I saw that she was red-headed, with a child, about Brea's build. The similarities just ached in me, and when I was given the glasses, I looked over just to make sure it wasn't...I don't know. I guess I allowed myself hope for one second that I'd been given yet another miracle. But just to hear it. So distinct, so clearly Wisconsin/ Minnesota, left me sore, left me revived. It's sweetbitter pain. The sweet overwhelms; the soreness is the aftertaste. The momentary pang following love.
The air right now is positively painful. It's remarkably fall air. And everything about it, the light, the temperature, the direction of the breeze- everything about it is last fall. Beginning, end. I don't understand how anyone believes in linear time, living in a world as cyclical as this. It's almost terrible. To look out at the woods that could be Wisconsin woods, and then to see them in the light of the night I came home. To have it be last September and November all at once. It's a little awful now. But if I could go back, I wouldn't warn myself. I'd let her think that moment would last forever, even as I pray this one won't. Maybe a year from now, I'll think of tesseracting and decide that I would rather she be surprised by the glory that will await her in two years. Maybe some marvelous turn of events will leave it all as resolved as life can be and still progress.
I want to be loved again. By them. And I will find a way to have that. I will find a way to put Rogers to rest at the same time I maintain the beauty of it in my life, and maintain contact with the *people* of it in my day. Daily, in-depth letters or a lone signature sent annually, I don't care how they keep in touch. But, I guess, those years I shut myself off from contact, I missed more than physical hands. I need them to keep touching. I need them to keep reminding me this body is visible and not abhorrent. That I am here and worth the air.
I want to be remarkable, and silence does not speak that way.
I don't feel real right now. Because I am more aware of where I was than where I am, of who I was than who I am. Because a girl who does eat and does exist and does know the body below her is attached to the (not-so-vicious) thoughts inside, does not fully make sense to me. I still understand myself then better than I do now, especially so since I've lost my most current identity. I miss myself. I want to find her again, and there's so much to articulate, I pray I'm able to condense it by Wednesday. There's so much to say and have heard, I'm overwhelmed. Tomorrow, school starts again, after a glorious weekend away. I'd like very much to crawl into a closet and have the doctors and the e-mail visit *me.* I'd like very much to live in an enclosed space where the thoughts can only expand so far before they have to take a breath, rest, disipate.
One of these days. I won't be afraid of growing beyond my own capacity to be responsible for that growth. One of these days, I won't be afraid of how I speak and what I say. There will come that day.
I try to live my life as if every day were my first. It explains the feelings of ineptness and allows a place for awe.
chord
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