varied - 02/10/03
if I know crazy...^
2:50 p.m.
I need to learn to take my own advice. Maybe I will in not too long. Detachment, as a loving choice, has come back to me again, and I see that there are several areas in my life where I need to re-apply it. Aigh. I love her definition, though. I love the idea that I can care about a person just as much when I'm not obsessing over their situation as when I am. I love the idea that I can stay calm and still stay attached. (And I'll call it attached anyway- because her definition of attachment makes me mad. The doc and I have been talking about my tendency toward attachment as a gift- and a bit of a challenge- lately, and I don't want to lose that perspective.) At the same time, I need to be looking at my life in terms of what I can manage. It's not safe for me to continually feel out of control. I need to reasess situations where I feel that way and find the power I do have. I need to stick with fixing my own problems and healing my own life. Not because I don't care about everyone I love, but because...if I keep up this dependency, I'm going to lose myself. And that means losing those I love anyway. I need to do this because I'm having a hard enough time right now without adding to it the bonuses of massive helplessness and caretaking.
5:20 p.m. (oooh. magic.)
That sort of time lapse is what occurs when I decide, just before school, that I will steady myself through the clicking of keys, am then interrupted by school, and take an hour to recover from the massive amount of physics we attempted comprehending. Actually, it was probably five problems or so, and considering I did all but those five problems on my own, without being taught the lessons, that's not bad. I miss velocity, though. Do I really care about latent heat and the transfer of energy? I'll tell you this, though- the amount of energy Mary loses doing her physics homework is equal to the amount of energy gained by said (evil) physics homework.
Lame physics jokes. Rock.
I didn't write last night because I was up late losing a little under 200 dollars to the stock market. Not seriously, of course (as if I have 200 dollars to lose)- and I wasn't all that upset (or all that surprised, considering the current economy.) Mostly, I'm glad to have finished a project that I freaked out over so thoroughly a week and a half ago. I don't handle anything dealing with finances well. (For instance: my inability to pay for my own purchases, rather than having someone check them out for me.) Of course, I go to a school that treats people like people and gives assignments (generally) that aren't made to make you feel like you're less than one-inch tall. So when I actually managed to start the assignment, I had very little trouble with it. It's finished now, and I can return to ignorance; tra la. By the time I'd filled out opening and closing values as well as the change for three stocks over two weeks, I was exhausted. And well, an entry just didn't win priority over sleep.
I spent a lot of time (at one point) trying to keep myself from needing sleep. Similar to trying to keep myself from needing food. One of these days I'll learn it's ok to be human, in every sense of the word, including need. One of these days, what I want will equal what I am. "The happiest man in the world would look into the mirror and see only himself, exactly as he is."*
So obviously anything that did happen has left my mind completely. Not completely. I saw the doctor, and we talked, but lately, I'm so confused by my own circumstances, I can't seem to keep track of what I know. In such a state, journaling would be helpful, but it would require me to journal before I forget, and that is assuming I understand at all. (Following me?) I know that issues of attachment and identity are high right now. Relational issues are high, which is interesting considering I have so little exposure to relationships. Understanding who I am- specifically in how I connect to and differentiate from- those around me is rather prominent in my thought-scheme, as is who I've been and how I handle that. Forgiveness. Forgiveness has brought up some interesting brain- (and heart-) weather in the past few days.
I've been trying to gather the strength to forgive myself, specifically for developing an eating disorder. Unfortunately, this means letting myself believe I've had one, which raises a whole set of...gerbils?...on its own. But yes, identity, relation, and forgiveness. I think they're tied largely by the fact that escaping/creating identity and escaping/creating relationships were both huge parts of why I became sick. I needed to not be myself, to suffocate who I actually was, and I needed to establish *some* identity so as to be worth the time of others. I needed to protect myself from the would-be romantic relationships prematurely forcing themselves onto me (and- to a greater extent- the pain of the genuine connections I did have, due to the whole abandonment wound) and at the same time part of what I was avoiding was the "inevitability" of being alone. That meant I couldn't avoid relationships completely. I needed a solid way to fuel them, which I thought dependency would create. It's such a mess of double-meanings. In all my crocheting, this is the craziest yarn ball I've had to unfurl.
I decided a few days ago that I really want to forgive myself for what has happened over the past few years, and that's led to a lot of confusion. To begin with, I hesitate to say that this is what I want. For one thing, I'm scared that forgiveness is an action, not a process- that I have to feel it completely to begin with rather than learn it over time. (Ah, my friend, dichotomy. The blissful all or nothing. ...Bah. My old struggle with making decisions (or decisive action) because I'm afraid I won't have a way out of them.) Also, I worry that forgiveness is letting myself off the hook for something I need to still feel guilt regarding. If I decide that what happened was ok, how I do I explain the fact that it needs to not happen again? That those who are going through it need to get out? That it wasn't what should have happened, and that I didn't choose it? If I say, "this is what happened, and it's ok" - how can I justify my beliefs now about recovery versus illness? I talk a lot about how much I owe to recovery, making sure to separate that experience from the illness itself, but the truth is the line is not so clear. Much of what has happened to help me achieve (just) this level of self-awareness and self-sufficiency has happened because of the eating disorder. Nothing, not even the depression, the anxiety, the shame- could bring therapy into my life before I started purging. Nothing else could have landed me at Rogers. And that scares me because how can I claim the recovery and not the sickness? How can I claim the sickness and not minimize how much I care about recovering? And also, in a time that's so hugely difficult regarding the ed part of this (where I'm questioning it, feeling it, thinking it- doing all but acting on it, basically) how can I even begin to admit to myself what brought such goodness into my life...when it means risking the belief that I need that same means in order to *keep* what I've acquired? I had plenty of reason to be in therapy long before I started restricting. (That's another thing. Should I call it restricting? Or is that just technical bullshit? Once, I knew that this was starvation. But maybe "restricting" is better the way that "purging" is better in that it has more meaning than the action. I restricted much more than my food.) Being alive is enough reason to be in therapy; I think. Who can't use a place to vent and question and discern? Still, I didn't receive that place and that guidance- that little bit of help and hope that I have now- until the ed. Which I hate. Which makes me so angry. How do I tell my struggling friends that they absolutely have to fight against this and tell those who don't have it not to play with fire - when I admit that it took this for me to get help? I'm so incredibly disturbed by that. I say that I received help because I'm a human being, but that's what I want to be true. I deserved help simply because of who I am, yes. Ok. But did I get it for that? Did I get it when I was five and terrified to illness over school (which I thought I loved)? Did I get it when I was ten and lost my appetite along with my best friend? Did I get it when I was fourteen, withering in corners, and pushing myself into other's view- in the hopes I would survive? Did I get it, even, as a freshman, when I had abusive teachers causing panic attacks, negligent guidance counselors ignoring the knowledge that I was suicidal, and rampant depression, anxiety, and eating disorders? No. I got it in the week or two following the first time my dad saw me purge.
I hate this.
I feel like, admitting this, is admitting that there's value in being sick, which I don't believe there is. I can't believe there's value. Knowing there isn't value is what keeps me strong. Knowing what happens- what happened to me, what happened to Sara, what happened to Tracy, what happened to twenty other girls I'd name if you knew them, I can't possibly sit here and say it did me good. It didn't. There's value in my recovery, but had I not recovered, I'd have no access to it. The needs behind it were valid, but the way I managed to finally meet them was deadly. It's like saying, from the ground, "I need someone to catch me," and when no one does, climbing a story at a time, and then repeating it. You just keep jumping from balconies, and eventually it's done.
You're done. Finished, without ever being given a chance. And that's...well, that's not ok. It isn't. It isn't ok that Tracy didn't get to live out the fullness of her life in a way that could brighten the world. It isn't ok that Sara balances on a tightrope of sly electrolytes, while we, in the bleachers, hold our breath. It isn't ok that I died in more than one way without ever knowing who I was. It isn't fair that I could have died in a way much more permanent, all because I needed things I couldn't say and couldn't do. All because I needed what I knew better than to believe I deserved. Attention, affection, connection, peace. It's not too much to ask, for anyone. It's not.
But I don't know what to tell people. Could I have fought for myself any differently than the dangerous way that sprouted in that quiet? Could I? If I could return now, as my advocate, I would be screaming in offices, raising uproars, saying, "Someone has to help this child! Someone has to put their act together and see! You all know it's there. It isn't hard to recognize. Someone refuse the blindness everyone around her is choosing. You. You will help her fix this. You will not look by while the wolves close in; you will not do nothing yet another time."
Because they did know. They knew. It's funny, isn't it? When a kid stops talking, stops writing, stops letting herself be visible? It's funny when she sits with her eyes closed and misses more school than she attends? It's funny when she's exploited and abused by teachers from the time she's seven, and when she begins living out after-school-specials to deal with that? It's funny when everyone wants to be a hero, rather than consistent- wants to swoop in, save the day, and be on to a new plot. Same time, same channel, different damsel in distress. I want to shake them. Not all of them, of course. The same year the social worker mistook my anxiety for normal junior high excitement (no longer depressed! yeay!...not) was the year that Chas and Mandy and Miss Cpeck and the band directors were all saving my life. It's not to say that everyone refused to see. But no one took enough action, and that just isn't fair. I know I couldn't have advocated for myself at that point. I had no voice to speak up with; my throat was closed with shyness and with shame. I had no ability to determine who could help me. I had no sense of my own merit. I would never have pled my case effectively because I thought I deserved worse than what I was getting. I need to forgive myself for those beliefs, but how do I? How do I forgive myself for what is so obviously not ok? I know they weren't me; they were illness. I know I learned them, didn't choose them. At least, I sort of know these things. But I feel the same anger at myself that I feel toward the adults in my past-life. The same, "Why didn't you do anything? Why didn't you run to someone? Why didn't you stamp your foot and say, 'Don't you see? This isn't ok!'?"
Because I never stamped my foot and I never raised my voice and I never ran in hallways meant for walking. I kept my voice quiet, and when I needed to communicate, I did it in a way so subtle, so unconscious, that I wouldn't even know myself how many rules I was breaking. Until it was too late, at which point, I would think I'd chosen to break them, and take upon myself That Guilt. It isn't my fault. In order to have chosen the eating disorder, I would have had to choose the entirety of experiences and lessons leading up to it. I would have had to choose how my parents treated me, what my siblings did, what I learned in school, and how I responded to all this. I would have had to choose the interplay of all these things, and I can't have done that. As much as I tried to believe that I could control other people's responses through my behavior, I couldn't possibly have done that. And if I couldn't choose the ingredients, the product wasn't mine.
Maybe it's harder to believe it's all random. Maybe it's harder to believe that all of these events and experiences, choices and people, created something no one individual could be aware of when they chose. That frightens me more, I think. At the same time it allows me not to feel guilty, it takes away the feeling of power. And I have power now, better power, but I still have to walk back into those situations and feel what I felt then, and if my power was illness and control, how will I survive even the memories? How will I look at myself and say, "Yes, I understand this." Say, "It's ok that it happened because it no longer is." It can't be ok that it happened. It's my whole life. It's my childhood. My only childhood and they ripped it to shreds with mis-perceptions, prejudices, hurt, loss, exploitation. How do I forgive the situation? How do I simultaneously believe that I was worth not having to go through that and forgive the fact that I did? I can't carry around my life feeling affronted by how it's unfolded. That would be...like carrying Rogers around completely focused on the fact that it's gone. My childhood was not horrible. Horrible parts created horrible things which brought into my life non-horrible things, but at risk greater than I would ever want to take. Admitting I deserved an advocate means taking in, fully, that I didn't have one. And is that ok, as a child? Is it ok that I wasn't my own voice? Is it ok that I didn't know any better than what I did? Did I fail them, even when I was trying so hard to make As?
Dr. R talks about empathic failures, and how- when they take place between therapist and client, parent and child, et cetera, it is always the adult's fault. I wonder what responsibilities a child has. At what age are you supposed to care for yourself, to know your needs and make sure they're met? I'm scared to look into how long I've spent not meeting them because I feel like even if it was ok then, it's not now. I turn 18 in 14 days. I graduate this May. I feel like someone is going to throw me into adulthood, and I won't be able to hide my incompetancy. I don't have the adult thing down. I told the doctor this; he said, "There are some forty-year-olds who don't have it either."
To say I had an eating disorder. To say I didn't choose it. To say I needed what it brought. To say I didn't know any other way. To say I didn't even know *that* way; it began outside my awareness and grew outside my control. To say I deserved to have my needs met. To say I deserved to have my needs met without being deathly ill. To say I still deserve this. To say it isn't my fault that I didn't know better. It isn't my fault that I didn't do anything else. To say I don't have to be sick to keep meeting them now. To say, "Did you hear the doctor? He said he will not leave."
But how does it work? It's the ultimate opposite of dichotomy. The idea that I'm grateful for my recovery and violently oppose the illness I recover from. How does it work to say, I got what I needed, but please don't get what you need in this way? I got what I needed, but I now know other ways. I can't transplant them. I didn't know them then. Had I stayed in my illness, I would never have known them, let alone been capable of putting them to use. So how do I forgive myself for what I didn't choose and be grateful for what I loathe remembering? It's selling out. It's supporting pro-ed bullshit, which I hate. It's defacing the struggles we all went through (are still going through...why can't I get that through my head?) and demeaning what happened to my friend. Tracy. It's glorifying what has brought me grief and pain and...
You know what it's like, in some awful metaphoric way? It's like bearing a blessing of a child, conceived via a rapist. And how do I say, this child- this recovery is the best thing I could ever have hoped for, without taking in that I wouldn't have her without the pain. How do I keep that truth from feeling like encouragement toward others to go looking for the "rape"? And what's more, if I accept, somehow, that the recovery is joy and the illness is pain, how do I manage those relationships where others stay in illness? How do I handle knowing how wounding the act itself is and how liberating the freedom from it can become?
I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do for you, for me. This is how it becomes about attachment and detachment. I don't know how to explain that no one needs this illness, when it's how I managed what I need. But it's also how I kept from getting what I needed. Does that help it make sense? Because of the illness, I wasn't able to let in love, for myself, for others, wasn't able to be in relationships I craved so desperately, wasn't even able to work my way out of the non-ed facets until I was behaviorally stable? Everything I needed experienced direct interference from the eating disorder. But there was day-to-day survival, wasn't there? Or dying in a way much slower than I imagined, a way too slow to tell? And indirectly...how else could I have gotten what I needed? How can I say to someone, "Just *go* to therapy" or "Just *shake* your guidance department until they listen. Just *make* it happen"...when I know how hopeless it all seems?
I mean...there has to be an answer, right? I'm missing something or making it too complicated. How can what killed me and what saved me be like sisters?
chord <--who will try and write later about the, slightly different, topics of her appt yesterday
*or something like that (-Albus Dumbledore, regarding the Mirror of Erised)
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