7:55 p.m. - 12/07/02
**my heartbreak always breaks my fall!>-!
deep sadness tonight that's making my chest ache and my stomach hurt. it's making my shoulders heavy and my throat clinch against the pain. I don't know how it started, really. a little bit of ed madness yesterday, the kind that would have had me eating a meal made up of safe foods had I been in D!@#$%^. but I'm not in D!@#$%^. I'm at my dad's house, or actually my dad's office, using his computer. and last night when I wanted to eat safe foods I ate pizza. at a restaurant where trains ran around the perimeter of the room, near the ceiling, and the owner was obviously sexist. tonight a lot of the thoughts were back again, but I still ate...so I don't know what the ed is trying to block. maybe it was this sadness. this awful hollowing sadness that comes in like a tapeworm to eat away my heart.
I've been watching Christmas movies to pass the time. just the short cartoon ones: Charlie Brown (which is my favorite), The Grinch, Frosty The Snowman. I nearly cried during Frosty because Karen in the movie made me think again of Karen-at-Red, and I became very not ok because I have no idea how I can get a hold of Karen, even to try and know her in this outside world. She isn't working there anymore, and even though Silje sent her a letter through Sara, the manager, she never heard back. she and Silje were terribly close, and I just keep thinking that if she didn't respond to Silje there's simply no way she'll respond to me. but then, it's been a year for me, and maybe she was following the rules. rules seem like such a faint hope with someone like that. but come on. she looked through Spilling Open the night Dale sent it to me. she checked on me when I checked out a razor, and she held me at the end when I couldn't stop crying.
I still can't stop crying. not inside. not in the way that matters. I still can't calm the pain that makes the tears a hot commodity.
I want it back. I want it back so badly. I'm getting very used to crashing at places that aren't home, and in some ways that's nice because the more time I spend at this brother's house or that brother's apartment, the more D!@#$%^ starts to feel like just another stop on a road trip. but it's difficult to be with so much "family" lately. It seems to me that this is the hardest time to be Mary Brave. to think of myself as her. surrounded by Lastnames, I have a hard time being anything but a Lastname myself. but then, I know that Mary Brave is who I am. I was explaining to Britt the other day that when I think about women who change their names after marriage, and how it takes them awhile to adjust and feel that their married name is "their name" I realize that I have had the exact opposite experience. I mean honestly. realizing that the name I needed was Brave and starting to incorporate it has been absolutely freeing. after years of not feeling like my name fit me, even though we had some good experiences, and people were always saying "it's such a writer, actress name"- I finally feel like I've come into the name that's *mine.* and I just want to get closer and closer to who that is. and I need a family. some dear ones have already asked for a place in it, but I need to reach out to people who don't read this journal. I need to ask those people in my life who have been blood to me for some time if they can commit to it. I need something to tell myself in the dark, when I can't sleep.
(everything is nightmares lately, with the exception of the night I saw Tori. dear God, if one more person from my past attacks me in a dusty room...)
there are other things I need. I need Red people. and if Sara and Silje and Dixie are the extent of Rogers in my life, I need to accept that and start seeking them out more often. I need to not go weeks without calling Sara, I need to find ways to talk with Silje on the phone and not run up triple-digit bills, I need to call Dixie. I need to write Rogers. I need to send the letter I wrote to Dave. I need to send a letter to Brea and one to Stacy, and maybe a couple others. or maybe just a card to everyone, but specific letters to those first three. I need to find some sort of resolution; I'm a writer and I can't survive without denouement.
(that's how I ended up buying Dune Messiah today. must. know. more.)
I also started thinking last night that I should write myself a letter from them. I guess I was thinking about that list of questions I made a little while back, and how they were really prompts for things I need to hear. I live a great deal of my life by that quote, "such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves"* as I'm always wary of needing to hear something from someone else. I'm not sure it will be enough for me to hear it from myself this time, but at the very least I need to clarify what I need to hear. and I can use it as a step to figure out whether I can be happy with the words if I write them. and if I can't, why not.
I'm kind of torn sometimes between asking Dave about this and asking Dr. R, partly because I really want to have Dave as one of the people in my outside world (odd, I know.) That being true, it feels weird to be like, "hey, I have a question for Dave-the-therapist, but then I want you to be Dave-the-Dave again, ok?" I mean maybe it isn't so much wanting to talk to him as a therapist as it is wanting to ask him about the time when he *was mine* - but I still feel like it blurs a line I need to make in order to have a relationship. but maybe that's an impossible line. I think mostly I'm scared that they will need it, and if it's impossible, that complicates things. but I remember what it was to befriend Chas and Mandy. it took a great deal of time, and things were odd. learning to call them by their first names? learning to deal with what that meant? in many ways, the last step was them being able to come to me, something that is still very rare. I just want these Rogers people to understand that I'm willing to do whatever work it takes to change the relationship into something healthy. I really, really am.
I realized today that an unwillingness to do the work is pretty much the only reason I don't hold onto a relationship. It isn't that I don't love the person, or care for them, or feel upset that I am hurting them by cutting ties. I simply can't put myself through the pain of all the relational *work* if I don't feel like there's a payoff in the relationship itself. I feel like it's extremely worth it here. with everyone.
sometimes I think about sending them a box. with a letter about what I've been doing. and a letter about how much I've missed them. with a copy of the poem I wrote for them when I could finally write agan. with a copy of the things I need to know or would like to hear them say. with a promise to work until *we* work with anyone who can make the same promise to me. sometimes, that seems excessive, but a year leaves so many things unsaid. I feel kind of sorry for those people that I'm not planning to write a letter to specifically, and I obsess about the fact that *they* might be the ones to write back. I don't want to lose the chance to talk to anyone...so? what on earth am I supposed to do?
this is just more babbling, and I know that, but my heart is heavy, and my chest aches.
the most recent time Sara and I talked, I asked her for addresses again, and she said she would send me a few. I know she's struggling, and I wouldn't want to push her on it even if she weren't, but I really think it's important to me to write some letters soon. I guess I can always write them and send them (or others) later. all things at the right time, I suppose. maybe people will be more likely to write if a letter is a separate stress after the holiday than if it comes amid the craziness of one. I just don't know. there are too many fucking variables, and there's so much more at stake than my gpa.
I really just want to be loved. and I know I am. I have a new pact with myself that whenever I start to feel this crazy kind of loneliness, I need to write at least three e-mails to people who make my heart smile, and one to myself as a reminder that I'm not alone. the last one is to keep from depending on other people to ease my loneliness, while still pushing myself not to isolate. (oh, the things I do for sanity.) I can't really tell if it's working yet, but it does spark something inside me when the name registers as Mary Brave.
I really need to read the book "Lost and Delirious" is based on, so I can determine how adamantly opposed I am the fact that there's a character by that name in the book. There are some really wonderful points in that story, and some really uncool ones, mostly based on the fact that things that characters don't have their proper foils and so it's kind of hard to decipher what is the character's reality and what is the author's actual take on life. For instance: it's justified for a girl whose love breaks up with her because she can't bear the repercussions of being in love with a girl to cut off her feminine side and try and be like a man. It's not so justified for people to think that the only strength women can have is to cut themselves off and try to be men. and if Chaucer is that close to Freud we have problems. (Lost and Delirious is based on a book which is loosely based on The Wives of Bath, one of the Canterbury Tales...)
my only remaining issue of note is that I'm terrified whenever I think about Dr. R. it's not that I made any promise to talk to him about the relationshit, but I know I need to. I know I need to talk about sex, and I need to rehash the experience I have had with relationships despite the fact I've never gotten anywhere near an official date or like-like "relationship." I'm just really scared. I realize that part of what I'm scared of is that he's going to tell me I'm not gay, that I can't be. it's not that I want to be gay necessarily; I don't want to have a sexuality at all, but if I do, I want to be able to choose it, and I want to choose girls. and I know that there are so many people who can't choose, and yet I do know people who based on their experience *have* made a conscious decision, so maybe I can, too. I guess I just feel like this is a basic drive and when it comes, it won't be logical. like I can't say to myself, "these are all the reasons it makes sense for me to be gay." I'm really scared he's going to tell me that I have to be straight because I'm more scared of it. that the only thing a girl gets this scared over is the truth, so I'm running from what's real. and I think that would be almost as bad as my assault nightmares. which means he won't do it. because he doesn't violate me, even with his words. but I need him to understand how deeply this thing runs, even if I don't understand why it's so. even if I keep paging through my "abuse" history going, "there is no justification of me being this scared of guys!"
I'm moving to a commune for cuddlewhores where all you have to do is snuggle and no one has to leave.
chord
*Franz Kafka
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